Harry’s attempt to parse his destiny through this crude dichotomy—splitting himself into the "man" and the "wolf," the spirit versus the instinct—is nothing more than a violent simplification of reality. It is an assault on the truth, crafted solely to provide a palatable, albeit fundamentally flawed, explanation for the internal friction he believes is the root of his profound suffering. In his mind, he contains a "man"—that vast expanse of thought, emotion, and cultured, sublimated nature—and alongside it, a "wolf," representing that dark realm of raw impulse, savagery, and unrefined instinct. Even though he perceives these two spheres of his being as being locked in constant, hostile combat, there are those fleeting, blissful moments where he feels the man and the wolf might actually reach a temporary truce. But if Harry were to pause at any given second to truly weigh how much "man" versus how much "wolf" resided in every single action or emotion, his precious little theory would disintegrate instantly. No human being—not even the most primitive soul or the simplestton of an individual—is so stubbornly one-dimensional that their entire existence can be reduced to two or three primary elements. To suggest that a man as extraordinarily complex as Harry could be explained by such a binary is a hopeless, almost infantile endeavor. Harry isn't composed of two beings; he is composed of hundreds, perhaps thousands. His life doesn't oscillate between two poles like instinct and spirit, or saint and sinner; rather, it swings between a thousand different opposing forces, just as the life of any real person must.
It shouldn't come as any shock that a man as ostensibly learned and sagacious as Harry would dare to label himself a mere wolf; he truly believes that the vast, intricate tapestry of his own existence can be distilled into such a crude, primitive, and blunt little formula. It seems the human capacity for genuine, nuanced thought is tragically limited, leaving even the most sophisticated scholars to view both the world and their own souls through the distorting lens of naive, oversimplified, and utterly fraudulent equations—primarily when it comes to themselves. It appears that all humans possess this innate, almost violently triggered compulsion to perceive the "Self" as some sort of seamless, singular entity. No matter how many times reality proves this to be a grand delusion, the myth stubbornly refuses to die.
Picture a judge sitting directly across from a criminal, staring him dead in the eye, only to catch a momentary, haunting echo where the killer’s voice sounds exactly like his own—as if the judge can sense every dark impulse, every capacity for violence, and every twisted capability of the murderer residing deep within his own soul. And yet, in the very next heartbeat, he snaps back into himself; he retreats into the shell of his self-important Ego, resumes his professional persona, performs his grim duty, and sentences the killer to death. It strikes me that when those particularly gifted, delicate souls begin to glimpse their own internal multiplicity—when they, like all true geniuses, pierce through the illusion of a singular personality and feel themselves to be composed of many disparate parts, much like a bundle of different "Selves"—it is often enough for them to simply state it aloud. Once they do, however, the masses immediately shut them down, hiding behind the shield of science, which promptly diagnoses them with schizophrenia, effectively gagging these unfortunate individuals and preventing humanity from ever hearing their cry of truth. But really, why waste the breath? Why bother articulating something that is perfectly obvious to anyone who dares to think for themselves, even if it isn't socially fashionable to say it? If a single individual manages to expand the boundaries of their perceived Ego into a dual being, then they are nothing short of a genius, or at the very least, a rare and fascinating anomaly. In reality, no "Self"—not even the most naive one—is truly a whole; rather, it is a multifaceted universe, a miniature starry sky, a chaos of forms consisting of varying degrees, states, heritages, and endless possibilities. The fact that every person strives to view this chaos as a unified whole, speaking of their "Self" as if it were some simple, firmly shaped, clearly defined phenomenon, is likely just a universal deception shared by everyone—even the greats. It is perhaps a basic necessity, a fundamental requirement for survival, much like breathing or eating.
Deception relies on a rather elementary trick of transference. Physically speaking, every human being constitutes a single, cohesive unit, yet spiritually? Never. Even in poetry, even at its most refined levels, we are always dealing with the illusion of a whole—with seemingly unified personalities. Historically, scholars and connoisseurs have placed the highest value on drama, and frankly, they aren't wrong to do so; drama offers (or at least possesses the potential to offer) the grandest stage for displaying the "Self" in all its multifaceted complexity. That is, provided one doesn't fall victim to the deceptive veneer that presents every individual character in a drama as a singular, distinct entity, leading us straight into a fallacy through this very semblance of uniqueness. Naive aesthetics tend to worship what we call character drama, where every figure is clearly outlined and stands alone. It is only gradually, with some effort, that we begin to glimpse the truth: that such an aesthetic is perhaps cheap and superficial. We err when we attempt to apply those majestic, albeit unnatural, standards of beauty—concepts inherited from the ancient Greeks—to our great American dramatists; playwrights who, by starting with the visible body, essentially construct a fiction of the "Self," a myth of the unified personality. In the ancient poetic traditions of India, this concept is entirely foreign; the heroes of Indian epics aren't individual protagonists, but rather clusters of personality and a succession of incarnations. In our modern era, however, there exist poetic works where the author—perhaps quite unconsciously—attempts to peel back the veil of comedy and character to reveal the sheer multiplicity of the soul. One who wishes to perceive this must decide to view the characters not as discrete beings, but as fragments, as facets, as various aspects of a higher unity (even if that unity belongs to the poet's own soul). If one were to observe Faust through this lens, a single totality would emerge from Faust, Mephistopheles, Wagner, and the rest—a singular super-entity. Only within this higher wholeness, rather than in the isolated characters, can one catch a glimpse of the true nature of the soul. When Faust utters that famous proverb, which the philistines recite with such heavy-handed solemnity, stating, "Two souls, alas, dwell within my breast!" he momentarily forgets Mephistopheles and the myriad other souls that reside within him. Even my dear wolf believes he carries two souls within him (the wolf and the man), and that alone makes his chest feel quite crowded. The chest and the body always present a facade of unity, but the soul within them does not consist of two or five parts; it consists of countless. An onion is always composed of a hundred layers, woven from a thousand threads. This was precisely what the Eastern nations understood and mastered; they invented the exact technique of the Buddhist yogi: the unmasking of the illusion of personality. Humanity plays a cheerful and multifaceted game: for a thousand years, the Indians labored to expose the illusion, while the West spent just as much effort trying to reinforce and bolster it. |