[MD] Don Quixote?

[david buchanan]

Marsha "cannot stop thinking about Percival:  poor fool (Fal Parsi.)"


dmb says:

 Poor fool? I knew that was wrong, so I looked it up. "Wagner's spelling of Parsifal instead of the Parzival he had used up to 1877 is informed by an erroneous etymology of the name Percival deriving it from a supposedly Arabic origin, Fal Parsi meaning "pure fool"."



As the legend usually goes, it is Parzival who finds the holy grail. He is an archetype known as the wise fool, meaning he knows what to do by instinct. According to the head of the religious studies department at my uni, his name means "pierce the valley". Upon hearing this, I scratched my head and asked, "pierce the valley? What the heck is that supposed to mean?" He travels between the extremes on either side, she explained, gesturing the shapes of mountains on either side of the valley, and he shoots right through by taking the middle way. 

Looks like you've been fooled about fools by a fool. There's a certain purity in that.