The World Through A Window

 

"Why do you call my attire fantastic?" asked Herne [who is still wearing the costume he wore in a play about King Richard]. "It's very much simpler than yours. It just goes over your head and there you are. Besides, it has all sorts of sensible elements you don't discover till you've worn it for a day or so. For instance," he looked up at the sky with a sort of frown, "it may be going to rain or something; it may turn very cold or the wind be very strong. What will you all do then? You will make a bolt for the house and come back with a paraphernalia of things for the lady; perhaps a huge horrible umbrella that will force you to walk about like a Chinese Emperor under a canopy; perhaps a lot of wraps and waterproofs and things. But nine times out of ten a man only wants something to pull over his head in this climate; he simply does this," and he plucked forward the hood that hung between his shoulders, "and for the rest of the time he can belong to the Hatless Brigade...Do you know," he added abruptly and in a lowered voice, "there's something very satisfying about wearing a hood...something symbolical; I don't wonder they corrupted the name of the great medieval hero into Robin Hood."

"What do you mean," [Olive] said, "by saying a hood is symbolical?"

"Have you never looked through an archway?" asked Herne, "and seen the landscape beyond as bright as a lost paradise? That is because there is a frame to the picture...You are cut off from something and allowed to look at something. When will people understand that the world is a window and not a blank infinity; a window in a wall of infinite nothing? When I wear this hood I carry my window with me. I say to myself—this is the world that Francis of Assisi saw and loved because it was limited. The hood has the very shape of a Gothic window."

-The Return of Don Quixote, G. K. Chesterton