ABSTRACT
In The Man Without Qualities, Musil says of war that it “arises (like crime) from all those things that people ordinarily allow to dissipate in small irregularities.” 1 Long before him, speaking of “the Serene Peaceful State of being a Fool among Knaves,” in his Digression on Madness, Swift distinguishes the Folly praised by Erasmus 2 from perversion, just as Goethe opposes Narr – the Fool – to Tor – the Knave. The literary works we present draw attention to madness as it fights perversion, so as to incite thinking about events that have been falsified or erased. 3 The work of madness is to inscribe in the past memory cut out in the present.
