ABSTRACT
The simpleton is a Forrest Gump or Elwood P. Dowd (Harvey) representing certain truths about ourselves which are as universal as the truths they counterbalance. The simpleton is "out of it" in the same sense children and clowns and fools seem "out of it", yet privy to a larger wisdom. The mediating wisdom of simplicity is quaintly articulated in the Yiddish tale of the Clever Man and the Simple Man. While Greek comedy has its origin in the Dionysian festival, it shows itself even in its Dionysian context, and dedicated to Dionysus, as belonging to Comus. Commonplace items are now elevated—like Marcel Duchamp's notorious bottle rack. The art of the commonplace is likewise the opposite of that art which, also in flight from the real world and perhaps with some disdain or despair over it, takes delight in abstract forms. Instead of being revitalized, the world of the commonplace is rendered even more commonplace.
