Majnūn et Laylā, Don Quichotte et Dulcinée. Les extraordinaires aventures des foux amoureux
Majnūn and Laylā, Don Quixote and Dulcinea. The Extraordinary Adventures of the Madmen in Love

Summary/Abstract: Is the love-story in which Don Quixote and Dulcinea are involved a re-writing of the Arabic myth about Majnun and Layla? Majnun is the “Madmen”, and Layla is the “Night”. The primary, archaic forms of the myth describe the rapture of love, experimented by the dervish-poet Majnun, in the proximity of Layla's tent, while the lover hasn't received the divine gift of contemplating the face of his beloved. Later on, in Sufi literature, the ecstasy of love, experienced by Majnun and Layla symbolized the love relationship between the Sufi mystic and God, the theandrical meeting between the human being and God in the mystery and union of love. The blissful insanity of the fulfillment of earthly love thus symbolizes the blissful insanity of the fulfillment of mystic love, the recollection of the continuity of the existential love due to which the human beings free themselves of the rationality of non-love, in order to meet the Divine Being, in the Night of the Presence.

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