Turtle-Dove (Rigolette)

§425 "There is still one step left. Through its own consistent development, Mystery, as we saw in Pipelet and Cabrion, is driven to debase itself to mere clowning. The one thing necessary now is that the individual should no longer agree to play that silly comedy. Turtle-dove takes that step in the most nonchalant way in the world."

§426 Anyone in two minutes can see through the mystery of this speculative clowning and learn to practise it himself. We will give brief directions in this respect.

§427 Problem. You must give me the speculative construction showing how man becomes master over animals.

§428 Speculative solution. Given are half a dozen animals, such as the lion, the shark, the snake, the bull, the horse and the pug. From these six animals abstract the category: the "Animal". Imagine the "Animal" to be an independent being. Regard the lion, the shark, the snake, etc., as disguises, incarnations, of the "Animal". Just as you made your imagination, the "Animal" of your abstraction, into a real being, now make the real animals into beings of abstraction, of your imagination. You see that the "Animal", which in the lion tears man to pieces, in the shark swallows him up, in the snake stings him with venom, in the bull tosses him with its horns and in the horse kicks him, only barks at him when it presents itself as a pug, and converts the fight against man into the mere semblance of a fight. Through its own consistent development, the "Animal" is driven, as we have seen in the pug, to debase itself to a mere clown. When a child or a childish man runs away from a pug, the only thing is for the individual no longer to agree to play the silly comedy. The individual X takes this step in the most nonchalant way in the world by using his bamboo cane on the pug. You see how "Man", through the agency of the individual X and the pug, has become master over the "Animal", and consequently over animals, and in the Animal as a pug has defeated the lion as an animal.

§429 Similarly Herr Szeliga's "turtle-dove" defeats the mysteries of the present state of the world through the intermediary of Pipelet and Cabrion. More than that! She is herself a manifestation of the category "Mystery".

§430 "She herself is not yet conscious of her high moral value, therefore she is still a mystery to herself."

§431 The mystery of non-speculative Rigolette is revealed in Eugene Sue's book by Murph. She is "une fort jolie grisette". Eugene Sue described in her the lovely human character of the Paris grisette. Only owing to his devotion to the bourgeoisie and his own tendency to high-flown exaggeration, he had to idealise the grisette morally. He had to gloss over the essential point of her situation in life and her character, to be precise, her disregard for the form of marriage, her naive attachment to the Etudiant or the Ouvrier. It is precisely in that attachment that she constitutes a really human contrast to the hypocritical, narrow-hearted, self-seeking wife of the bourgeois, to the whole circle of the bourgeoisie, that is, to the official circle.