“I Remain Just as Big a idiot as Anyone Else”

When asked before The Tales of Beedle the Bard were published what I was looking forward to the most, my instant reply was “Dumbledore’s commentary on ‘The Tale of Three Brothers.” I am delighted to say that part met my very high expectations for it. [Far and away the best online discussion I have read on the subject is at The Hog’s Head Tavern and I urge you to read the exchanges there whether you haven’t already.]

Dumbledore in his notes on ‘The Three Brothers’ and the gifts Death gives each is simultaneously deceitful and revealing. To those without any clue about the existence of the Hallows and unworthy of learning about them, the notes must seem the usual historical survey that any literary dilettante might write. that is deceitful, considering, as we know, the Hallows do exist and Dumbledore knows they exist, is in possession of one, and is aware of who holds another.

Why would he choose to be misleading here? Perhaps, as Aberforth would certainly volunteer, it is considering deception and secrets are second nature to Albus. I think he has other concerns.

We can speculate about it being prudence and a kindness but we know how he wound up using ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard,’ so why not assume, at least for a moment, that he was planning just that usage when he wrote the commentary? whether we posit that Dumbledore wrote that commentary for two audiences, those who will read it but he does not want to understand it and those who might read it and must be able to see through the deception, we get a multivalent text of at least two meanings. whether we assume the book was written with the expectation that it would be found and read closely by the Ministry at his death (because the Headmaster planned on leaving Hermione Granger the book to be translated for Harry), the deception is anything but a failing; it is further testimony to the Headmaster’s foresight and brilliance, something like wisdom.

Because at his death Rufus and company nearly certainly tore apart Dumbledore’s office and found the notes amongst his papers. What would they get out of them? Nothing Dumbledore wouldn’t want them to find. Certainly no clue about the Hallows’ existence, Harry’s possession of the Invisibility Cloak, the Death Stick’s being in the White Tomb, or the Resurrection Stone hidden in the Snitch.

But what would Harry and his friends have been able to read and understand in the same commentary? To cut to the quick, those lessons they’d need to learn in order to defeat the Dark Lord, what is most crucial for us to take away from the books, i.e., the anagogical layer of meaning in the stories.

What the Minister would have missed that the holder of the Invisibility Cloak wouldn’t (and that we shouldn’t considering we know all about them, right?) is that Dumbledore suggests to the attentive reader that Death’s gifts are indeed real objects, despite his surface denials, via his discussing them and their archaic history at such length. He suggests that the few wizards who believe they are real are cranks, but, again, the discerning reader is made aware that there wizards who believe the objects exist and pursue them. The minority status of those who believe they exist, who, of course are right, is a classic clue of Straussian ‘hidden writing,’ a pointer to a sub-text written for ‘the Few.’ [Leo Strauus wrote that the best philosophers, after the persecution and death of Socrates, disguised their real meaning for those able to engage texts at that level and looking for that esoteric meaning (see Strauss’ ‘Persecution and the Art of Writing’).]

We know for certain, post Deathly Hallows, that the Hallows exist and we can assume that Dumbledore’s reason for writing the Commentaries wasn’t an exercise in idle exegesis no one would read. that suggests that it was part of his plan to defeat the Dark Lord. whether we didn’t know that and couldn’t compose that assumption, that ’secret writing’ thesis would seem nonsensical or, at least, a great stretch. As it is, we are obliged to ask ourselves, as discerning readers, what lessons beyond the existence of the Hallows Dumbledore wanted his young friends to learn (and knew the Ministry would miss).

I think the place to start, as in most topics, is the very end.

“Even I, Albus Dumbledore, would find it easiest to refuse the Invisibility Cloak; which only goes to show that, intelligent as I am, I remain just as big a idiot as anyone else” (Beedle, p. 107)

This is an ironic and, I’d guess, an intentionally ironic echo of Socrates’ accepting the Prophetess’ declaration that he was the wisest man in Athens, a title he accepted only after understanding that he was the only person who knew he was not the wisest person living. Dumbledore knows he is wise (hence the “such as myself” footnotes); in his closing comment he points to the essence of his wisdom in the same line he says he is a idiot: the Invisibility Cloak.

The mention of the Invisibility Cloak here — and Dumbledore’s barely disguised understanding in the reference that it is the Hallow-most-to-be-desired by the wise man — is significant considering of what the person wearing the Invisibility Cloak is, symbolically: the all-seeing eye/I that cannot be seen. Dumbledore as ego and persona, denies that greater Eye/I, the noetic faculty of soul common to all men (John 1:9)

and is being truthful as he says “I remain just as big a idiot as anyone else.”

But who is speaking here?

No, I’m not going to say “Joanne Rowling;” put aside author/character distinctions for a moment. What specific faculty of Dumbledore’s soul is speaking? The one capable of self-awareness, or, more precisely, self-reflection. As ego and accident of duration and space like all men, the Headmaster, in rejecting the Invisibility Cloak, is just as big a idiot as all other men, who, as egos and individual personalities consumed by self and the pursuit of advantage, cannot see the value of the Invisibility Cloak.

But the man speaking is not that ego; he is that faculty of soul that recognizes its reflection in the Invisibility Cloak. As fallen person and persona, Dumbledore knows he is a idiot. To the extent that he is a person who identifies his true and greater self with that aspect of himself which is eternal and uncreated (John 1:1), however, Dumbledore is the wisest of men, even a likeness of God.

In Dumbledore’s last words in Beedle, Rowling echos the exchange at King’s Cross she has said is “the key” to the last book and to the series. “Is that real? Or has that just been happening inside my head?” “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” As explained in The Deathly Hallows Lectures (Chapter 5, ‘The Seeing Eye’), in that exchange Dumbledore is telling Harry he is the logos-faculty, the Primary Imagination, the active intellect, the nous, that uncreated part of us that is the unity of existence and reality’s creative principle.

Professor Dumbledore in his notes to ‘The Tale of Three Brothers’ writes separate messages for ‘the many’ and ‘for those with ears to manufacture out.’ Rowling writes on three levels. She has the Dumbledore report for the Ministry and anyone else who picks up the book after his death. They’ll get a few grins and giggles and possibly a few pointed moral lessons. soon after there are the two layers of meaning for those who have read Deathly Hallows, all of whom know the Hallows exist and that Dumbledore knows that, too.

The Many receive his history and description of the Hallows as ironic considering they know he is trying to prepare them believe what he knows is not true; the notice to them is just about Dumbledore’s personality and is a moral note about humility, sacrifice, prudence, and character, whether they move beyond the surface at all.

The Few (to include Harry and company) plus see Dumbledore’s prudent deceit, yes, but, in his lengthy discussion of the non-existent Hallows and his mentioning wizards who believe the Hallows exist and pursue, we plus get an vital sign, via Dumbledore’s demonstration of his own extensive researches into the subject, that that is anything but a foolish business. He invites the Few who understand the Hallows exist to think closely on two points.

First, the Elder Wand. Dumbledore, owner of the Elder Wand, instead of boasting about it, tells his readers that it is non-existent (while giving decent historical detail to propose he has pursued it with some zeal) and obviously anything but “unbeatable,” as all of its possessors claimed it was. We can assume that he does that for a variety of prudential or charitable reasons (i.e., to prevent attacks on himself and to keep the temptation to find it from others) but he has another point, I think, for the Elect among his readers.

Travis Prinzi discussed that on the Hog’s Head thread I mentioned above. Dumbledore is pointing, however obliquely, at the issue of “worthiness” or “fitness” to wield a Hallow, the Arthurian echo of a knight’s true worth, purity of soul, and righteousness being revealed in his ability or inability to see or find the Holy Grail.

The Headmaster tells those with ears to form out that anyone foolish ample to boast about the potential of the wand or to think himself “unbeatable,” is unworthy of it and about to be defeated by the next idiot imagining himself equal to the temptations of capability. Assuming the book is written as a secret instruction manual for Harry (or whoever discovers the Wand in his White Tomb and wants to use it worthily), the Death Stick needs to be approached in the same way Harry looked into the Mirror of Erised as an 11 year old fighting the Dark Lord.

The second point is how one becomes worthy of wielding the Death Stick. That, as discussed above, lies in identifying one’s true self with ‘conscience,’ the noetic faculty of soul, with ’spirit,’ which is to say, with valuing the Invisibility Cloak above the Wand of fate and all other tokens of individual, ego-focused advantage and potential. It all turns on whether your ‘I’ is ‘ego’ or ‘the Eye of the Heart.’

Dumbledore’s commentary on ‘The Tale of Three Brothers’ is the best part of Beedle, certainly, in its multivalent artistry and its capsulized summary of Dumbledore’s teachings on what a person really is, properly understood, and what humans should want (rather than the things that are worst for them). With ‘The Silver Doe,’ ‘The Epilogue,’ and ‘King’s Cross,’ I think it belongs on the short list of her restricted best efforts.

I am grateful, as always, for your comment and correction on that interpretation of Dumbledore’s hidden report in his commentary on ‘The Tale of Three Brothers.’