For that way leads to madness

That Way Madness Lies

Another piece of compost brought to you by Thaatchaayini Kananatu

Who wrote that phrase? That way, this way, all ways, always leads to madness. I am still searching for the origin of those words, stringed together to form a forewarning of sorts, before you take that plunge, or walk into the darkness.

Where must I look - to find this personality, this anonymous writer, who until we meet word for word, remains illusive in the background of the unknown? I must leave it, but this previse tends to hold its palm against my face, as if to say, “Not so fast Missy”, like an aunt who catches you stealing a cookie from the jar.

As time catches on, my feet are stuck in this quicksand, this phrase, pulling me deeper and deeper into a fathomless end. I must shout, cry out, yell for help, a shot in the dark. But what is this, I hear a reply, a wizard that lurks in this deep forest of words, will he show me the way.

A Shakespearean prose answers my distress:
“O! that way madness lies; let me shun that.”

In Act III, Scene IV of King Lear, he speaks the prose that could release me from this sucking ground. How honestly I wish for it to be Shakespearean, for that would justify my love for it and the man who first penned it down on his mind.

Or is it older and wiser, coming from the desert lands of Arabia, in the much foretold Arabian Nights. A man, so wise, translated those tales from Arabic prose to:
“By Allah, had the case been mine, I would not have been satisfied without slaying a thousand women, and that way madness lies!”

So wrote Sir Richard Burton in the words of the English, but what of the Arabic prose, that might have sounded sweeter since it is the original syrup, of which the Englishman may have diluted. Does it all begin in the Middle East, at such places where madness indeed lies?

Perhaps not, as it seems not to exist in any other translation of the One Thousand and One Nights. Burton may have taken the phrase from Shakespeare and inserted it in his translation.

And so now, gently I raise my two feet above the ground, and hover above the trees to view this desolate place, where words rule my fate. Just beyond this jungle, lies a hill, no a mountain, of such great heights. As if that is my destination, to find myself at its foot, and attempt to climb and reach its summit. As if that would mean, I was indeed a great, great, great writer.

But, surely, that way leads to madness.