The "Court"
Jester and "Foolishness"
The fool, who
was sitting beside the fire, heard these words, leapt to his feed came
before the King, and skipped and danced for glee, saying I "Lord King", so God save
me, your adventures now begin, and often you will find them perilous and hard ?
— Perceval, or the Story of the Grail
The court jester,
the clown, the fool or the buffoon, is a mythic figure representing the inversion
of the powers of the king (as the possessor of supreme powers) — or as his alter ego. He is
therefore often the victim chosen in folklore as the substitute or foil for the king in rites whereby
the people respond frankly and unceremoniously to such powers.
Court jesters were
first recorded in the courts of the Egyptian pharaohs and were in vogue up
until the 18th century in European courts, salons and taverns. They were often physically
mishappen, if not also psychically disturbed. Ideally they were a powerful reminder of the
distortion of the human condition — more immediate than the photographs disseminated via the
media of today.
Additionally, due
to the freedom front censure and responsibility for their actions which they
were accorded, they were able to mirror! parody and mimic court situations in such a way as
to bring out truths which would otherwise be collectively and carefully ignored. They were often
masters of song and dance' and could be a dramatic foil to pomp, superficiality and falsehood
of any kind. As an ambiguous and often an-drogynous figure, the jester could function as a
powerful social catalyst—for good or for ill, depending upon the response of those by whom
he was surrounded.
The fool is an
enigmatic symbol of the point of crisis when the normal or conscious appears to
become perverted or infirm, and in order to regain health and well-being is obliged to turn to
the dangerous, the irrational, the preconscious and the abnormal. As such, the fool is to be
found on the fringe of all orders and systems, outside all conventional categories, processes and
social rules. He is the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious (and between the
attributes of the right and left hemispheres of the brain) — a reminder that, after having failed
in
our effort to order and understand the universe in the hght of our intellect and instinct, there
nevertheless remains another way.
Eliminating the
jester from the covert Is as risky as allowing him to play his role. For. if
"foolishness" is not given a channel through which to express itself, it seeks its own channel
anyway. Parliamentary and international assemblies. particularly those in which each is
conscious of the high purpose and seriousness of his role, run a considerable risk of
incorporating distortion into their proceedings and results because of an inability to accept what
a jester would reveal. (Political cartoons offer a partial remedy, but they lack the significance of
being accepted as part of the proceedings and thus have little affect on them.)
It requires greater
maturity on the part of all participants' especially the chairperson and
principal speakers, to play their parts in the face of such instant feedback. In the absence of
children at international assemblies, who can say whether our international emperors wear anv
clothes?
1. Fiji
