تحفة فنية من روائع الأدب العالمي وإبداعاته...لعل المقولة التي تقول أن هذا الكتاب الخالد لا بد من قرائته ثلاثة مرات في العمر على الأقل غير مبالغ فيها ففي أحداثه المتهكمة ما ينبه الحواس ويرفع الذائقة ويزيد الحكمة...بحثاً عن البطولات الزائفة يصنع دون كيخوتة أو كيشوتة سمه ما تشاء أحداثاً لا يمكن للقارئ أن يمل منها ومن خلال صديقه أو معاونه سنشو بنتا سوف تضحك كثيراً ....إن قصص دون كيخوتة لن تشيخ أبداص وتلك البطولات المفقودة التي أثرت على عقله من خلال كتب الفروسية التي قرأها سوف تصنع إبداعاً لا مثيل له
النسخة التي بين يدي لعلها الأفضل من بين الطبعات وهي نسخة دار المدى التي بذل فيها مجهوداً يشكرون عليه ..لا تفوت

" - Ditosa idade e século ditoso aquele em que venham à luz as famosas façanhas minhas, dignas de serem inscritas em folhas de bronze, esculpidas em mármore e pintadas em tábuas, para memória no futuro."

Vencida a barreira da linguagem desusada e do tamanho pouco prático do tijolo, há ainda que lutar contra a lonjura do final sem perder a paciência. Das incontáveis aventuras vividas por Dom Quixote e Sancho Pança, já muitas me desapareceram da memória. O que fica é uma mensagem mais poderosa que é similar em todas elas e se prende com questões do quotidiano que perpassaram através do tempo, permanecendo actuais e comuns a toda a humanidade. É o que faz deste livro uma obra inesquecível e atemporal.
Às vezes é chato, outras cansativo, mas é (quase) sempre divertido, e fica connosco para lá do término da leitura.

I was in the fifth grade, devouring The Hardy Boys and Chip Hilton, on the cusp of adolescence, when a nun put this in my hands. Holding the thickness, I wondered at the malicious minds that devised new tortures for parochial education. But soon, a few chapters in, the world turned for me, colors changed; things and people, I realized, were not what they seemed. So, when I smile softly, or bristle instead, at the passing panoply, the quotidian things in life, it's because long ago someone laid Cervantes on my desk. Yes, there are faces in the clouds but not everyone sees them. When you're next stopped at a light, turn up your car radio, and match the baselines to the variety of walkers, even if they don't know they're dancing.

At its best this long story resonates and is most eloquent. After reading who can ever forget the incomparable duo of the knight errant, Don Quixote, and his squire Sancho Panza. Considering the book was written in 1605 it has, at times, an almost modernistic feel to it with witty observations and humour on the human condition. It can be uproarious and the ending is most sad. As the story progressed, I did find Sancho of greater interest.

It is a road journey with the most powerful, whimsical and hilarious encounters featuring the knight errant misconstruing out of proportion, all that he comes across, causing havoc to all, particularly his hapless squire.

Don Quixote takes on the persona of a knight errant believing as truthful all the assorted adventures, fables, romanticisms, and mysticisms of his large collection of knight errant books that he has read. His aim is to put all their “teachings” into practice when he sets off on his adventures to make the world a better place. There are endless quotes in the book from the many knight errants that he has read of (possibly like individuals today who can quote verbatim from all the Star Trek episodes they have absorbed over the years). He is a man possessed and deluded by these books. Sancho, becomes, in some ways, the straight man on these quests; trying futilely to dissuade our knight from these encounters with supposed monsters and evil armies. By the end of the book, I became more absorbed and sympathetic to Sancho and his endless proverbs, than the rantings of Don Quixote on his mission from God (or his blessed books).

However, the book is way too long. It is repetitive. I started to groan when coming across another endless passage of Don Quixote expatiating on the glories of knight errantry and reciting at length various knights who had set forth and describing their endless accomplishments. The same for his professed love and devotion to the beautiful, Dulcinea, whom he has only glimpsed from afar. This unfilled love quest is a constant throughout the story.

The women they meet on their journey are always the most beautiful, the most virtuous (a word used frequently throughout), and the most modest in temperament – until the next woman they meet.

There are passages that are stirring and very well written. It can be superb story-telling – but at times it bogs down into sheer tediousness and endless inconsequential detail. I would recommend an abridged version.

If some people find that these 1000 pages of Quixote are not enough...

There is still The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox

and another I enjoyed, Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene

La bondad, la amistad y la ilusión de creer que podemos soñar un mundo mejor, son solo algunos de los regalos que “Don Quijote de La Mancha” nos ofrenda a sus lectores. Aquí compartiré mis emociones, pues nada de lo que diga podría sumar a la maravillosa abundancia de reseñas y estudios sobre la obra máxima de Cervantes.

Siguiendo los pasos del Caballero de la Triste Figura y su escudero, me desconsolé con cada angustia de Sancho al creer que perdía a su amo (¡qué modo cruel de simbolizar a quien en la amistad o el amor se adueña del corazón de uno!); me enojé con los imbéciles que quisieron aprovecharse de la nobleza de los héroes para inyectar su burla venenosa manifestando sus almas miserables en un circo de humillaciones; me conmoví con el cariño de Rocinante y el Rucio, ¡ni hablar del modo como Sancho quería a su asno! Admiré y me enamoré de la libertad de la pastora Marcela; otro tanto me ocurrió con la laboriosidad de Dorotea, pero sufrí un desprecio profundo contra su amado Fernando… Padecí el tonto candor de Lucinda y la alienación de Cardenio; de hecho, uno de los momentos más desgarradores de mi lectura fue cuando Don Quijote se encuentra con él y lo abraza porque reconoce la soledad de la locura en su semblante y su historia. Si sumo y sumo, me queda la sensación de que Don Quijote y Sancho son un símbolo que congrega, une y reúne a su alrededor seres bonitos a pesar de la violencia del caos de la vida y la necedad de lo humano.

¡Cuán inmenso e intrigante es lo humano! Por ello, ante “El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de La Mancha” no son pocas las reflexiones que derivan de su estructura, de sus cabriolas, fintas y ornatos lingüísticos. Tantas más son las disquisiciones filosóficas acerca de los dilemas humanos que encarnan sus protagonistas. Para mí guardo que este libro tiene el poder de la pica que rompe el hielo del corazón, pues me recuerda las bondades de la humanidad, la fe en el amor, la confianza en la amistad; pero también evoca la malicia que retenemos cuando nos proponemos hacernos infelices a nosotros mismos y a quienes nos quieren. Uno entiende por qué esta obra es un absoluto clásico universal, cuando se da cuenta de que Cervantes fue un ingenioso lector del alma humana.

The Rarest of Gems: Comedy/Tragedy in Equal Measures

Rare is the story that works well as simultaneously a comedy and a tragedy. Come to think of it, I don't recall reading or seeing so brilliant a comedy/tragedy in a novel or film (I admit my knowledge of theatre is sorely lacking). The only one that comes to mind that most closely approaches Don Quixote, though still miles below it, was the film version of Forrest Gump.

Like Don Quixote, Forrest Gump is episodic in nature, the story progressing through sketches over time, many of them humorous with at least two tragic threads tying them all together: society would always exploit, but was never going to accept, a slow-witted man despite the fact that he was such a significant participant in history and, though Jenny loved Forrest, she would not accept him as her lover and mate until she was nearing death, raising a son of which he had no idea, conceived in their one sexual encounter. Flashback to 1994:

n  You died on a Saturday mornin.' And I had you placed here under our elm tree. And I had that house of your father's bulldozed to the ground.... I don't know if we each have a destiny or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze, but I ... think maybe it's both... I miss you Jenny. If there's anything you need, I won't be far away.n

I came late to Don Quixote, only reading it a couple of years ago. As most everyone knows, the novel follows the misadventures of Alonso Quixano, an idealistic hidalgo who has absorbed every known book of chivalry, which he describes as giving him an expertise on knight-errantry including the deeds, holdings, history and general character of each knight ever recorded. He believes himself to be a valorous knight-errant whose name is Don Quixote de la Mancha and sets out to right all wrongs, revitalize chivalry and live out a noble's narrative.

One cannot doubt that today Don Quixote would be committed at least temporarily as a danger to himself and/or others for analysis and treatment of potential mental disorders. He thought windmills were giants, sheep enemy soldiers and fell in love with "Dulcinea del Toboso," whom he describes as a vestal maiden with rosy cheeks, alabaster skin and flowing hair when she was in reality a strapping peasant woman named Aldonza Lorenzo who has barely acknowledged Don Quixote.

Don Quixote's "faithful squire" Sancho Panza calls him the "Knight of the Woeful Countenance." Sancho accompanies Don Quixote for most of the trip suggesting pragmatic, logical options in lieu of Quixote's fantasies unbound by reality. The droll and portly man is full of common sense but has not a grain of spirituality. He provides some comic relief by dropping pithy epigrams, such as "he who's down one day can be up the next, unless he really wants to stay in bed, that is...." He also acts as a "sanity check" on Quixote's world of whimsy. ("Is it possible that your grace is so thickheaded and so short on brains that you cannot see that what I'm telling you is the absolute truth?”).

Don Quixote is filled with hilarity but tinged always with the tragedy borne of sympathy for this man who is ridiculed and played jokes on by people who care not one wit how it might hurt him, for this man who faces long odds and tries and tries and is bound to fall ultimately under the weight of a society, then and now, which did and will not tolerate people who deviate so far from accepted norms; and, the tragic fact that the idealism of nobility and chivalry of centuries ago are no longer nearly as important (and haven't been since at least the early 1600s).^

Despite its tragic elements, the novel contains some of the funniest scenes in all of literature. In a way, and what I found most surprising in reading this classic is, the humor is nearly timeless. I've seen dozens and dozens of bits in comedy films and television shows and comic skits that are in some way derivative of the classic comedy and satire of Don Quixote.

Cervantes' paradoxical question seems to be whether it is better to view the world as it is or as it should be? Artist types would say the latter. Kafka said, for example, "Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza." Emily Dickinson wrote, "Much madness is the divinest sense."

I sometimes fall into the camp of Kafka, Dickinson and Quixote, when I get to thinking how the world (and life) is sometimes just too damn sad not to block out some reality.

Then I ponder, am I so different than most today? Why do we love reading novels of other worlds and times for which we must temporarily suspend our disbelief (a form of momentary, voluntary madness) hours on end to enjoy the story, why watch movies in which we get to live a different life in the mind for a couple of hours, why root for a sports team playing a game in which we have no *rational* interest in the outcome?

Why, we value escapism and temporary madness so much that many of today's mythical figures in society's eyes are entertainment icons, media stars and sports heroes! But, I digress....




^A passage I highlighted on the tragic aspect stands out still: "Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good." I should add here that this gem applied since biblical times.

done quixote!!!
pun quixote!!
fun quixote??
none quixote...

and that's not entirely true; there are some rollicking good times in here, but the first part is so much endlessly episodic violence, and while the second half becomes calmer and more focused, it never got my imagination engaged nor my blood flowing.

in fact, although i know he really does love it, i can't help but feel that brian's recommending this to me is similar to the duke and duchess having their fun with don q. i feel like brian is pulling a prank on me - that he does not want me to meet my reading goal and is laughingly crowing, "no, karen, you will not read 150 books this year!! i am preventing you!!"

i will show you. despite the amount of time i was stalled on this one, i will come right back in the game.

but this, i did not love this. and a lot of it is just context. i can appreciate it as an artifact and as a foundation for western literature, but it suffers from the fate of any work that was not edited professionally.

tastes change over time. just in the same way that marilyn monroe would have probably had to drop fifteen pounds to rock our modern-day underfed runway ideal, so this book could lose a similar amount of text. stop frothing, bri, seriously if this turned up in some slush pile somewhere, there would be allll kinds of criticism, and it might even get passed around the office (lgm) a few times to the giggles of the editorial assistants: "this guy can't even keep the supporting character's wife's name straight!!", "this is inconsistent!!"," "this is repetitive!""what is this interlude that has nothing to do with anything else doing in here??" "this is flat-out stolen from another source!!!"

an editor would go to town on this puppy.

but we have the luxury of reading this 500 years after it was written and marveling at how fresh and modern it still sounds. and part of it is very modern. but grossman's frequent "cervantes probably meant ____here" or "this is the wrong reference" would not play in a modern novel. if jonathan safran foer had done this, there would be a crown of pretentious classics majors drawling, "i can't believe he said "perseus" when he meant "theseus"... " guffaw guffaw.

but 500 years down the road, we can afford to be more forgiving. vanity press authors take heart!

and i am aware i am being nitpicky, i am more just interested in pointing out how a lot of people who love this book would be very indignant to read something produced today that had so many obvious flaws.

but i do admire longevity.

i just couldn't get into it, overall. there are a lot of great moments here: the burning of the books (nooo!), the puppet show, don q. in a cage, and great non-action sequences in the discussions of the value of drama as a medium and the difficulty of translation and many other minor occurrences.

the first half is just episode after episode of this delusional thug with some kind of 'roid-rage, meth-aggression attacking people and innocent lions, unprovoked, and his sidekick who is a grasping fiend who would sell you out for even the promise of a sandwich. and it all reads like marx brothers slapsticky stuff. i mean, how do you break someone's nose with a loaf of bread??

with the second half, it is better and becomes more self-reflexive and much sadder, but a lot of it still remains tedious. the second half, written ten years after the first part, frequently references the unauthorized sequel to don q that some guy wrote and pissed cervantes off. it is like a mean girl passing notes to the cool kids, "did you hear what he said??? that's my man he's messing with!!" etc etc.

and i am not a lazy reader, even though my tastes tend toward a faster pace than this, but i have read plenty of slow-paced, dense prose that didn't make me take out my mental red pen and slash away at what i felt was extraneous or repetitious.

i can appreciate the message about art and its impact and its potential and its place in the world, but i did not have fun reading this book.

and i make no apologies.



and for jasmine - who doesn't think there is anything complicated or pretentious in the spanish language - this qualifies, i think. it gets all meta in the second act. for its time, it was seriously mind-bending stuff.

come to my blog!

Look, I am not going to try to convince you to read this novel. Like Ulysses, it's historical importance creates its own polarity that will either repel or attract; so if you come to this masterwork with the proper field alignment the attraction will be undeniable and you will be subsumed by the codex for the western novel, entertained by the original buddy story and frustrated by the abject cruelty of a world that takes advantage of Quixote's mad sanity for some laughs.

Don Quixote is a massive, complex work. At its centre is the familiar comical farce of a delusional hidalgo and his squire, from which foundation Cervantes finds room for a multitude of philosophical and psychological digressions, uncovering themes and implications so wide-ranging as to defy concise encapsulation.

Foremost is the likable character of Don Quixote himself, whose blend of intellect and delusion is something familiar to us. Don Quixote speaks to the power of fantasy, and we are sympathetic towards his desire to do good and to strive for something greater than himself. But his character also hints at the potentially damaging capacity of self-deception as an isolating container for ideology, and an engine for misguided action. There is something of David Foster Wallace in Cervantes' conflicted esteem and criticism of this double-edged potential of entertainment (the analogy of chivalry romances being the TV of their time being hopefully not too much of a stretch).

I was surprised at how quickly I was drawn into Don Quixote, though after the first few episodes I was skeptical that the simple premise would be able to sustain such a lengthy work without becoming tiresome or repetitive. But I believe maintaining the engagement of the reader was at the forefront of Cervantes's mind, as he is constantly playful and inventive, moving first in the direction of more complex and involved plots, then to deeper explorations of his characters, and to wider societal and philosophical considerations. Surprisingly, through much of the latter half of the First Part, Don Quixote himself is largely absent from or tangential to the plot.

But perhaps the most striking and unexpectedly progressive element of the novel is its meta-fictional aspect: the way it plays with perspective and authorship, and blends and contrasts fact and fiction. Don Quixote, which depicts a fictional world, is acknowledged also as an artifact of the real world, which is then inserted back into the fictional world - all of which has strange implications for those living in both. As described within the novel, authorship is split between the narrator (presumably Cervantes) and at least three other authors, in addition to a fifth author of an alternative, "unauthorised" version of the Second Part of Don Quixote. Though the first three are understood as fictional, the last is in fact real, and the alternative Second Part was actually published in Cervantes' lifetime, and is likely to have motivated him to write the "official" version. The implications of "true" and "false" versions of fictional narratives is brilliantly and humourously explored throughout the Second Part. The novel itself never relinquishes its own veracity.

However in my opinion, the Second Part's preoccupation with meta-fiction detracted from its storytelling. While the plot of the First Part had moved progressively towards a "novelistic" structure containing an overarching narrative with subplots, the Second Part regressed to a more traditional, episodic format. Additionally, the plot of the Second Part relied heavily on deceptions created by other characters who were, like the reader, "in on the joke", in order to provoke amusing responses from Quixote and Sancho. I felt something was lost of the purity and authenticity of their adventures through these contrived manipulations. The consistency and realism also suffered in the Second Part, as certain actions of characters became noticeably incongruous to their personalities. Sancho's wisdom in governance, for example, is amusing in its irony when contrasted with his ordinary foolishness, but it is out of place with his character and undermines any serious analysis of his development.

Though Don Quixote is generally recognised as the first "great novel", I'm not convinced it is correct to call it a novel (the precise definition of which I am finding difficult to pin down). It certainly does not feel like a modern novel. Character development is not its driving force so much as humour and satire, and despite some moves towards a narrative arc, it retains a meandering, episodic structure which does not seek resolution. These elements seem to align Don Quixote more with literature's past than its future, though it is clearly a work which strives to free itself from tradition, and succeeds in breaking a lot of new ground.

Don Chisciotte non poteva che andarsene in una sera di pioggia. Ironia della sorte, la prima sera di primavera piove. Il cavaliere è stato quasi un nonno: all’inizio sempre pronto a divertire, a raccontare storie, ad accrescere meraviglia e fantasia; poi in corso d’opera come un adulto con un adolescente, un po’ fastidioso, apprensivo, si scaccia ma si sa che c’è e gli si vuole bene per questo; e quando le pagine corrono verso la fine il pensiero diventa malinconico, l’adolescente diventa adulto e realizza la pienezza della vita e l’importanza degli affetti.
Tutto è doppio in questo romanzo. Don Chisciotte e Sancio, Ronzinante e Babieca, Dulcinea e Teresa, realtà e immaginazione, amore e morte. Anche i personaggi delle storie parallele si muovono in doppio a sottolineare quello che è forse uno degli intenti dell’opera: fantasia e realtà sono due facce della stessa medaglia, a dividerle solo il bordo. E allora è facile che nel cavaliere dalla trista figura coesistano don Chisciotte e Alonso Quijano il Buono, e che in Sancio si ritrovi il rozzo scudiero e il governatore accorto. Due amici che si prendono cura uno dell’altro, Sancio a vegliare sulla pazzia del suo padrone, e don Chisciotte sulla condotta di Sancio. E poco importa se chi attorno a loro li derida e li schernisca. Loro fanno scudo, spiazzano con la loro verità/fantasia, con i loro incantamenti fino a raggiungere quello che nella burla è di fatto ciò che conta: il cavaliere viene riconosciuto come un eroe e come tale accolto. Quella che vale è la sua bontà d’animo, che da sola abbatte le barriere dell’indifferenza e della reticenza di fronte alla sua pazzia e addirittura lo eleva agli occhi di chi lo guarda.
L’immaginazione non si può dominare, cavalca a briglia sciolta nonostante la ragione la voglia pressare, comprimere e ricondurre fra righe perfette. Don Chisciotte è un grande sogno e ci si risveglia nell’ultima pagina.
Onore a chi con la sua fantasia è riuscito a tenere il filo di tante sete e creare un arazzo bellissimo.

Another Epic classic complete! Thank you to my Goodreads Completist Book Club for giving me the inspiration to finally tackle this big book. I am sure I would have eventually read it someday, but it is nice to have some extra motivation.

I did enjoy the Don Quixote experience quite a bit. In general, it was slapstick comedy and tongue-in-cheek humor – but, there were a lot of literary acrobatics, word play, etc. taking place as well to keep me interested, guessing, and thinking as a reader. At times it did get a little bit repetitive, but I guess that it to be expected with such a large book.

The book is in two parts, and I believe when people read it today it is almost always considered one book. But, when I read a bit about the background, I discovered the first part was originally released as its own book with the second following several years later. I did feel like the two were quite different from each other and I did like the first part much better than the second. Most of the dragging and repetition I encountered came during the second part.

Overall, a great experience but it does take a lot of time to make it through. It is 100% worth it if you like the Epic classics!

Oh, and the windmill thing . . . takes up only a page or two. It is interesting that it has come to define this character and story as a whole!