Whatever else Don Quixote may be, I never found it boring. Parts of it were very funny, others had wonderful similarities with Shakespeare, some bits were more serious: it's like a mini library in a single volume. Wonderful.

Overall, it has quite a Shakespearean feel - more in the plotting and tales within tales (eg The Man Who was Recklessly Curious, stolen by Mozart for Cosi fan Tutte) than the language. In fact, the story of Cardenio is thought to be the basis for Shakespeare's lost play of the same name.

Humour

Very funny - slapstick, toilet and more subtle humour, with lots of factual historical and chivalric detail as well, but it doesn't feel especially Spanish to me. Certainly long, but I don't understand why, supposedly, so few people manage to finish it. Some of DQ's delusions hurt only himself (tilting at windmills), but others lead to suffering for his "squire" Sancho Panza (tossed in a blanket) or reluctant beneficiaries of his salvation (the beaten servant, beaten even more once DQ departs) and bemuse people (mistaking inns for castles, sheep for enemy armies and ordinary women as princesses) and are used to justify theft (the golden "helmet"/bowl) and non-payment to inn-keepers. His resolute optimism in the face of severe pain and disaster is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Sancho wavers between credulity (wishfully thinking the promise of an island for him to rule will come true) and pragmatism.

Two Parts

Part II starts with Cervantes' response to the unknown writer of an unofficial sequel to part 1, though DQ, Sancho and others also critique it in early chapters. The following story presumes that part 1 is true, and shows how DQ's resulting fame affects his subsequent adventures. A very modern mix of "fact" and fiction. Some characters doubt his exploits, others pander to them, especially the duke and duchess who go to great lengths to treat him in knightly/chivalric manner, and provide new adventures (for their amusement, at the painful expense of DQ and Sancho). Sancho gets rather more scope for lengthy meanderings of jumbled and largely irrelevant proverbs. Less slapstick and more pontificating than part I - both DQ's advice to Sancho on how to govern his promised insula and when Sancho has intriguing disputes to resolve.

A Third, courtesy of Borges?

Borges wrote the short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (published in The Garden of Forking Paths ). Menard is an imaginary writer, described as if he's real, who “did not want to compose another Quixote” but “the Quixote” by combining the don and Sancho into a single character and by, in some sense, becoming Cervantes.

What Don Q Means to Me

I was wary of this book for many years; I feared it was too heavy in ounces and themes/plot/language, but only the former is true, and that can be obviated by a comfy chair (or an ebook).

I plucked up the courage to read it shortly after joining GR, partly through encouragement from others. It was a revelation, both in terms of the power of GR friends to enrich my life and my own confidence as a reader.

My enjoyment was heightened by reading it whilst my kid and their friend who was staying (both aged ~10) repeatedly watched and quoted Monty Python's Holy Grail - very appropriate!

Is Don Quixote one of the most impressive, mind shattering, extraordinary works of Spanish Golden Age? Yes, hundred percent it is! Is it worth to get lost in nearly 1050 full pages of adventure? Again yes it is absolutely worth it!

There so many critics defined this unconventional classic as depressive, dark and as for the second part of the book which is written after 10 years takes darker, more serious turn!

In my opinion this is one the saddest stories I’ve ever had. This story is mostly about journey matters more than the destination as you have a delusional mind and see what’s not out there! It is sad to see Don Quixote interpret everything from his own distorted perceptive which makes him vulnerable and gives people enough opportunity to take advantage of him. Yes, he’s living in a different world and reading forbidden works about knights direct him to his own escape route.

The dynamics between him and his loyal squire Sancho Panza and their noble adventures, the people they meet through their way who tell their own vivid stories including damsels, peasants in love pick your interest and finally you realize you don’t want to skip any of those chapters because the writing structure resembling Arabic Nights and Canterbury Tales keeps you allured.

Overall: this is one of my favorite classics I enjoy to reread which helps me to enjoy something different and learn to see things from Quixote’s creative and vulnerable mind!
Here are my favorite quotes:

“Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.”

“The wounds received in battle bestow honor, they do not take it away.”

“The fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else.”

“Perhaps to be too practical is madness.”

“Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?”

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water”

And here’s my all time favorite quote of the book:
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”( definitely resonates with me)

n  In soccorso dei deboli e dei bisognosi.n ...
.. non Dio ma un cavaliere errante porrà rimedio alle ingiustizie.


Si ride tra queste pagine per lo strambo abbigliamento dell’hildago Alonso Quijano che, ribattezzatosi don Chisciotte, attraversa le terre della Mancia in cerca di avventure.

Si ride per quel Sancho Panza scudiero proverbiale che tra una bastonata e l’altra affianca il suo padrone.

Entrambi affetti da cecità ma se il servo non vede per ignoranza, lui, il cavaliere errante, ha scelto di non vedere la realtà.
Ogni cosa, allora, assume una dimensione magica e così accanto ai famosi mulini a vento anche delle semplici otri contenenti vino, appaiono come mostruosi giganti che vanno eliminati ad ogni costo perché ogni avventura portata a termine è un passo in più verso l’amata Dulcinea, rozza contadina che don Chisciotte trasforma in nobile donna.

Il primo libro è maggiormente un racconto a cornice perché ogni incontro che contiene il racconto delle vicissitudini di personaggi che a loro volta hanno storie intrecciate.
Il dolore di amori non corrisposti oppure impediti dalla prepotenza dei forti: questo sembra essere il leitmotiv.
Un intreccio di genere epico, lirico, tragico e comico.

Se il primo libro finisce, tuttavia, in modo frettoloso, il secondo a mio parere calca troppo la mano sui travestimenti e la burla.
Tutti gli incontri, difatti, di questa seconda parte, sono incentrati su personaggi che assecondano la visione di don Chisciotte e costruiscono scenari per ingannarlo.
Una piega che non mi ha convinta totalmente, dato che ho trovato questo divertimento troppo cinico tanto da essere chiamato alle sue spalle don Chisciocco!

Io sostengo da sempre che il gioco è bello quando e corto e alla lunga stufa.

Ma:

” Ogni giorno si vedono al mondo cose nuove: le burle si trasformano in realtà e i burlatori si trovano burlati.”

Molto interessanti sono le discussioni su svariati argomenti (nobiltà, ricchezza, commedia, poesia..) dove don Chisciotte dimostra cultura e saggezza.

Il contrasto tra la folle illusione e l’acuta ignoranza dei due protagonisti va pian piano sovrapponendosi verso un finale dove chi era folle rinsavisce viceversa.

” non è stata cosí cattiva la mia vita da dover lasciare dietro di me una reputazione di pazzo;”

I am going to miss the ingenious hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha and and his witty squire Sancho Panza. Reading about their adventures has been a therapy to me for almost two months. I am sorry, it is over.
It is a great novel about the most important things in life - freedom, loyalty, kindness (and cruelty), friendship, insanity and common sense. It is a story about the courage to be an odd duck and often a laughing stock (some might call that insanity). But, above all, it is a story about having faith and then losing it. And losing faith means mental or physical death.
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'When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!'
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'So it isn’t the masses who are to blame for demanding rubbish, but rather those who aren’t capable of providing them with anything else.'
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'I think and believe that I’m enchanted, and this satisfies my conscience, for it would weigh heavily upon me, if I believed I wasn’t enchanted and had let myself be locked up in this crate like a lazy coward'
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'It’s up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they’re going well … For I’ve heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what’s more, she’s blind, so she can’t see what she’s doing, and she doesn’t know who she’s knocking over or who she’s raising up.'
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'... truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future'
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'Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it.'

يا عشاق القراءة..ها هي نهاية كل منا..فارس بلا قضية..بطل بلا بطولة؛ عاشق بلا حبيبة
بصراحة بدأت في قراءتها مرغمة..من يود قراءة كلاسيكيات القرن 17..؟

و لكن سرعان ما جذبني كيخانا الطيب الشغوف بقراءة قصص الفرسان..فيحول نفسه لفارس احمق
ويسافر خلف هدف وهمي..
من اجمل ما تم كتابته عن الحماقة عندما تتملك من الإنسان..قد تكون راكضا خلف مثاليات...أهدافك نبيلة
و لكن ماذا عن وسائلك؟

لم يترك سرفانتس طب��ة او طائفة في اسبانيا الا وانتقدها ..لاقى فارسنا مهانة متكررة في خروجه. .او رحلته لاصلاح المايل !!ا
ليعود منكسرا لكتبه
تماما كما انكسر سرفانتس طوال حياته وتجاهله الجماهير..
و بعد وفاته تم طبع دون ك��خوته مئات المرات

و صارت قراءتها من سمات المثقفين لانها بالفعل تعبر ببساطة و صدق عن مصير القراء ..ممن تتمكن منهم المثاليات. .فلابد لهم من صدمة تؤكد لهم كم كانوا ساذجين

ترجمة: عبد الرحمن بدوى اكثر من رائعة

La figura de don Quijote, lamentable (y a menudo malhumorado) caballero andante, y de su ridículo escudero Sancho, es celebérrima — incluso ha llegado a ser el símbolo de las letras hispánicas. Pero lo más curioso es que casi solo es eso mismo: un símbolo, una figura, que ilustra hasta qué punto se puede llegar a enloquecer tan solo por leer libros. Una figura desde luego universal, ya que hoy día, se podría contar una historia muy parecida: pongamos por caso algún lector obsesivo de novelas (yo mismo ¡o tu, querido/a lector!) o gamer trastornado por los video juegos y series de fantasy. Ese desgraciado sale a la calle, creyéndose de la misma alcurnia que Gandalf, Bilbo o Dumbledore. Lo que ocurre luego es poco sorprendente: demasiado débil para provocar una matanza, hace el ridículo, lo toman por loco, le dan de hostias, lo hacen un cristo, lo echan al calabozo, hasta que al final, lo que podía haber sido un cuento heroico o una tragedia, acaba siendo una deplorable payasada.

De hecho, la pareja de don Quijote y Sancho muchas veces me hizo pensar en la tradicional pareja del circo: por un lado, el Carablanca, sofisticado, distinguido y de triste figura; por el otro el Augusto, patoso, tontorrón y alegre. Es muy posible que ambas tradiciones tengan un origen común… El famoso dúo del Gordo y el Flaco (Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy) es uno de sus recientes avatares.

Digo que aquí don Quijote y Sancho solo constituyen una figura, una imagen, porque la verdad es que la narración de la novela de Cervantes (como otras obras picarescas de la misma época) no tiene argumento siquiera. Es una serie de aventuras y episodios extravagantes, que tienen poco vinculo entre ellos y, básicamente, todo eso no va a ningún sitio. De modo que, al cabo de pocos capítulos, Cervantes empieza a insertar otros cuentos dentro del cuento principal. Algo así como Las mil y una noches o el Decamerón, Don Quijote de la Mancha es, al fin y al cabo, una colección de novelas cortas: Grisóstomo y Marcela, “El curioso impertinente” (compárese con Othello), el cuento (más o menos autobiográfico) del cautivo, el discurso de Quijote sobre las armas y las letras, el cuento de Cardenio, Luscinda, Fernando y Dorotea (compárese con A Midsummer Night's Dream), etc. Historias y discursos, pues, insertados dentro del cuento principal; este cuento mismo siendo presentado por su autor como un relato derivado, traducción de un manuscrito árabe de un tal Cide Hamete Benengeli… En fin, que la novela de Cervantes no tiene una forma lineal, de principio a fin, sino un movimiento espiral y desatado, de arriba abajo o desde dentro hacia afuera, y aunque la lectura sea amena siempre, el lector (un poco como Quijote en su jaula) a menudo ignora por donde lo están llevando.

Otro punto evidente es el carácter paródico de la novela de Cervantes. Como es sabido, a Alonso Quijano se le va la castaña, no solo porque evidentemente es un viejo chocho, sino porque, al parecer, ha leído demasiadas novelas de caballería. Las referencias a los libros que se encuentran en la biblioteca de nuestro protagonista son múltiples y, en muchos casos, desconocidos o olvidados (al menos del que escribe estas líneas). Algunos de estos libros, sin embargo, siguen siendo obras maestras y hasta best sellers desde el medioevo: Palmerín de Inglaterra, Tirant lo Blanc, Amadís de Gaula, El cantar de Roldán, el Libro del Caballero Zifar, y sobre todo el gran ciclo de las leyendas del Rey Arturo y de los Caballeros de la Mesa Redonda, desde Lancelot y Tristan hasta Le Morte d'Arthur (véase, en tiempos más recientes, The Once and Future King). Es evidente que Cervantes debió ser un fan de este tipo de literatura. El cura y el barbero, que deciden quemar los libros de caballería en el patio de la casa de Quijano, son obviamente unos pavos empedernidos. El largo debate que tienen Quijote y el Canónigo acerca de las virtudes respectivas de la literatura histórica, del teatro y de las leyendas caballerescas (cap. 47-50), es uno de los pasajes más fascinantes de esta novela. En todo caso, la primera parte del Quijote es un intento burlesco de “desmitologizar” las leyendas y convenciones caballerescas.

Sin embargo, me parece que también hay otro aspecto quizá, un poco escondido debajo de estas historias de locura y de caballería andante. Bien es verdad que Cervantes se burla de los libros de caballeros; sin embargo, esa burla no parece sincera, ya que por otro lado el autor demuestra un conocimiento y, tal vez, un amor a esa clase de libros. En verdad, yo diría que Cervantes se burla de otro tipo de literatura: cuando los personajes de su novela se refieren a los libros de caballería andante, muchas veces es para compararlos con las Santas Escrituras, y es inevitable pensar que, si los libros de caballería han vuelto loco a don Quijote, los mitos y las leyendas que contiene la Biblia han tenido un efecto similar sobre la civilización Europea.

Aun más, no me queda nada claro que don Quijote esté verdaderamente loco, en el sentido de que haya agarrado una sobredosis o algún pedo brutal a base de libros de caballería — para mí que sólo está pasando por una crisis de mediana edad algo intensa... De hecho, es una persona que razona con destreza y trata de convencerse con todas las justificaciones posibles de que la realidad es conforme a lo que esta escrito en sus novelas de aventura. Y cuando no sabe dar más explicaciones, siempre recurre o cede al mismo argumento: es que ahí hay un encantamiento (o sea, un milagro). Una persona religiosa no renegaría de este método de explicación “científica”, ni tampoco del empeño repetido de don Quijote en que la gente con quien se topa confiese, como un Credo o acto de fe, la belleza de Dulcinea sin haberla jamás visto. Por decirlo de otro modo, la figura del Quijote no es más que una metáfora de la santidad, del martirio, e incluso del fanatismo, o sea un anticristo bufonesco. De paso, está forma radical de denegación de la realidad que ilustra don Quijote no solo es aplicable a la religión, sino también a la política (recordemos los alternate facts). Y finalmente, la denegación es la esencia misma del acto de leer ficciones: o sea lo que mejor nos define como lectores de novelas.

***

Lo que está en juego en el relato de la segunda parte del Quijote parece bastante trivial: en resumen, don Quijote se da cuenta que la sin par Dulcinea no es más que una labradora bastante cutre y, claro está, concluye que ha sido embrujada. Una forma de volverla a su hermosura inicial es que Sancho se dé 3.330 azotes (¿acabará dándoselos?). Sancho, por su parte, tiene una autentica fijación por conseguir el gobierno de su famosa “ínsula”… ¡A partir de allí, puede empezar de nuevo el cachondeo! El cual, se despliega de forma extensa en las aventuras — un tanto sádicas — de los duques (cap. 30-57, con un montaje alternado entre las aventuras respectivas de don Quijote y de Sancho), de Altisidora, de Sansón Carrasco, etc. Quizás uno de los episodios más notables de esta segunda parte sea la del “retablo de maese Pedro” (cap. 26, puesto en música por Manuel de Falla) — dónde el teatro se asemeja peligrosamente a los libros de caballería —, que curiosamente me recordó la escena de The Murder of Gonzago en Hamlet (III,2) — donde el teatro se asemejaba peligrosamente a la realidad.

Sin embargo, esta segunda parte es muy distinta a la primera. Aquí Cervantes se centra bastante más firmemente en sus dos protagonistas, don Quijote y Sancho: las historias insertadas que abundaban en la primera parte ahora ya casi no aparecen (el propio personaje del bachiller hace la crítica de este procedimiento recurrente de la primera parte en el capítulo 3 de la segunda). Sin embargo, aquí hay otra forma de mise en abyme, aun más barroca y vertiginosa, provocada por la publicación apócrifa, entre las dos partes, del Quijote de Avellaneda: en varias ocasiones, los personajes de Cervantes discurren sobre la existencia de la primera parte, de la segunda apócrifa y aun de la segunda que estamos leyendo.

Finalmente, y aunque deba confesar que la novela acabó haciéndoseme sobremanera larga y a ratos tediosa, el que realmente es “ingenioso” es el mismo Cervantes, que consigue, a partir de una pareja francamente poco prometedora — un semi-loco que no para de dar sermones sobre lo grande que es la caballería andante, y un semi-cateto que ensarta refranes capitulo tras capitulo — consigue esculpir unas figuras propiamente míticas que, voluntariamente o no, han engendrado un sinfín de pareja literarias de varones: Bouvard y Pécuchet en Gustave Flaubert, Sherlock Holmes y Dr. Watson en Arthur Conan Doyle, Phileas Fogg y Passepartout en Jules Verne, Frodo y Samwise en J.R.R. Tolkien, Vladimir y Estragon o Hamm y Clov en Samuel Beckett, Tintín y Haddock en Hergé, Jon Snow y Samwell Tarly en A Game of Thrones y muchos etcéteras.

Tal vez incluso podría decirse que don Quijote y Sancho han llegado a liberarse de la misma ficción cervantina. Recuerdo un viaje que hice hace años por la Mancha: los habitantes se referían a tal aldea, tal camino, tal venta — hoy ya transformados en zonas industriales, en hipermercados o en autopistas — como a sitios donde verdaderamente estuvieron don Quijote y su escudero, recitando las virtudes de la caballería andante y las gracias de la sin par Dulcinea del Toboso. Tal vez Cervantes fue el inventor de la novela moderna, pero lo cierto es que Cide Hamete fue cronista o historiador de una realidad desvanecida.

La muerte de don Quijote es un momento verdaderamente penoso: de pronto la realidad fantástica heroica, poética, fabricada por el Caballero de los Leones, se desvanece. Obviamente, no puede soportar la realidad prosaica, ruin y hasta asquerosa de lo cotidiano (las zonas industriales, los hipermercados, las autopistas). En realidad, aunque don Quijote acaba renegando de los libros de caballería, el libro de Cervantes es una exaltación del poder de la literatura (y tal vez de la religión) contra la realidad. Y mientras la primera parte pretendía burlarse y destruir el género caballeresco, la segunda, en particular en su patético final, parece ser una reafirmación nostálgica del mismo.

De no morirse don Quijote, Cervantes hubiera podido dejarnos una tercera parte, una novela pastoril, la de Quijótiz y Pancino. Ojalá… Desgraciadamente, Cervantes murió pocos meses después de don Quijote, quizás contagiado por su misma melancolía. Otros muchos autores (Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Mann, Borges, Fuentes...), cineastas y músicos se encargarán de la posteridad del caballero de la Mancha; el más reciente siendo Salman Rushdie con su Quichotte.

N.B.: La versión del Quijote que he leído es una adaptación al castellano moderno, de la mano de Andrés Trapiello. Puede que esta versión sea algo más legible que el original, pero habiendo comparado ambas versiones, la verdad es que la lengua castellana ha evolucionado bien poco desde los tiempos de Cervantes (no podría decirse lo mismo del inglés de Shakespeare o del francés de Montaigne), con lo cual una versión modernizada es algo de lo que uno puede perfectamente prescindir. También tengo en casa una edición antigua ilustrada por Gustave Doré (con el estilo dramático que caracteriza sus grabados) y una, más reciente, traducida al francés, con pinturas desestructuradas de Gérard Garouste.

Revisión: Quiero destacar el maravilloso álbum titulado Don Quijote de la Mancha, Romances y Músicas, a cargo de La Capella Reial de Catalunya, bajo la batuta de Jordi Savall. Esta adaptación musical recoge muchos de los romances, canciones, seguidillas y sonetos que se encuentran integrados (o simplemente aludidos) a lo largo de los capítulos de la novela de Cervantes, y los entregan con músicas y cantos propios del medioevo y renacimiento. Una lectura del Quijote (en ocasión del cuarto centenario de la obra) sobremanera enriquecedora y exquisita.

n  “I know who I am,” replied don Quijote, “and I know who I can be...”n

I bought this book under the sway of a caprice which, if it were not too hackneyed to say so, I would call quixotic. This was two years ago. I was in the royal palace in La Granja de San Ildefonso, near Segovia. I had just toured the palace—one of the finest in Spain—and was about to explore the French gardens, modeled after those in Versailles, when I encountered the gift shop. Normally I do not buy anything in gift shops, since half of it is rubbish and all of it is overpriced. But this book, this particular volume, called out to me and I obeyed.

It was a foolish purchase—not only because I paid gift-shop prices, but because my Spanish was not anywhere near the level I needed to read it. And at the time, I had no idea I would be staying in Spain for so long. There was a very good chance, in other words, that I would never be able to tackle this overpriced brick with Bible-thin pages. At least I left myself some hope. For this is not the original El ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha—written in Spanish contemporaneous with Shakespeare’s English—but a bastardization: its style diligently modernized by the writer Andrés Trapiello. Even with this crutch, and even with an additional two years of living in Spain, this book was a serious challenge.

Before charging headlong into the thickets of criticism, I want to say a word in praise of Trapiello’s edition. Cervantes’s Spanish is not as difficult as Shakespeare’s English, but it still foreign enough to prove an obstacle even to native speakers. I know many Spaniards, even well-read ones, who have never successfully made it through El Quijote for this very reason (or so they allege). Trapiello has done the Spanish-speaking world a great service, then, since he has successfully made El Quijote as accessible as it would have been to its first readers, while preserving the instantly recognizable Cervantine style. And while I can see why purists would object to this defacement of hallowed beauty, I would counter that, if ever there were a book to painlessly enjoy, it is El Quijote.

To get a taste of the change, here is Trapiello’s opening lines:

n  En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, vivía no hace mucho un hidalgo de los de lanza ya olvidada, escudo antiguo, rocín flaco y galgo corredor. Consumían tres partes de su hacienda una olla con algo más de vaca que carnero, ropa vieja casi todas las noches, huevos con torreznos los sábados, lentejas los viernes y algún palomino de añadidura los domingos.n

And here is the original:

n  En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor. Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noches, duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lentejas los viernes, algún palomino de añadidura los domingos, consumían tres partes de su hacienda.n

Now, undeniably something is lost in the transition. Cervantes’s “duelos y quebrantos” (lit. “aches and pains”), for example, is undeniably more evocative than Trapiello’s “huevos con torreznos” (eggs with bacon); but without Trapiello I would have no idea what Cervantes meant. It is also worth noting how similar the two are; Trapiello has taken care to change only what he must.

Onward to the book itself. But I hesitate. The more I contemplate this book, the more I think that a critic must be as daft as the don and as simple as his squire to think he can get to the bottom of it. Cervantes was either extremely muddle-headed or fantastically subtle, since this book resists any definite conclusions you may try to wring from its pages. Perhaps, like many great books, it simply got out of the author’s control. Just as Tolstoy set out to write the parable of a fallen woman and gave us Anna Karenina, and as Mark Twain set out to write a boys’ book and invented American literature, it seems Cervantes set out to write a satire of chivalric romances and produced one of the great works of universal art. It is as if a New Yorker cartoonist accidentally doodled Guernica.

The key to the book’s enduring beauty, I think, is Cervantes’s special brand of irony. He is the only author I know who can produce scorn and admiration in the same sentence. He is able to ruthlessly make fun of everything under the sun, while in the same moment praising them to the heavens. The book itself embodies this paradox: for it is at once the greatest rejection of chivalric romance and its greatest embodiment—an adventure tale that laughs at adventure tales. There is no question that Cervantes finds the old don ridiculous, and he makes us agree with him; yet by the end, Quijote is more heroic than Sir Galahad himself.

The central question the book asks is whether idealism is noble or silly. The Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is an undeniably hilarious figure. But do we laugh at his expense, or at our own? Is his idealism pathetic, or is it our realism? The book resists both horns of this dilemma, until finally we must conclude that we are all—dreamers and realists alike—equally ridiculous. For we all reside in a social world whose rules only exist in our beliefs and in our actions, a world which we create but do not design. It is only Quijote who seems to realize (however unconsciously) that, by changing the script, we can recreate the world. And he does. By the time we get to Part Two, everyone is playing along with Quijote.

Even so, I am not able to go so far as Miguel de Unamuno, and consider Quijote a sort of messiah. I do not think Cervantes’s irony permits this. For Quijote truly is out of touch, and frequently gets pummeled for it. And even when his fantasy inspires others to play along, and to help him create his new world, they never do so for disinterested reasons. Some, including Sancho, play along for gain; others do so to control or to help Quijote; and most do it just to have some fun at his expense. This is the dilemma faced by all revolutionaries: they have the vision to see a better world, the courage to usher it in with their actions, and the charisma to inspire others to follow them; but most worldlings chose to play along for ulterior motives, not for ideals; and so the new world becomes as corrupt as the old one. To put this another way, Quijote’s problem is not that he is out of touch with the social order, but that he is out of touch with the human heart.

Much of the greatness of this book lays in the relationship between the don and his squire. Few friendships in literature are so heartwarming. Sancho, in his simplicity, is the only one who can even partially meet Quijote in his new world—as a genuine participant in Quijote’s make-believe. Of course, Sancho is not free from ulterior motives, either. There is the island he is to rule over. But the longer the story goes on, the more Sancho believes in his master, and the less he pursues material gain. We are relieved to see that, when finally offered his island, the squire comes running back to the don in a matter of days. As the only two inhabitants of their new world, as the only two actors in their play, they are homeless without one another.

It is useful to compare Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’s method of characterization. As Harold Bloom points out, Shakespeare’s characters are most truly themselves when they are alone, soliloquizing. When together, on the other hand, even close friends and lovers never seem to communicate perfectly, but talk past each other, or talk for their own benefit, or simply show off. But don Quijote and Sancho Panza are most truly themselves when they are with each other; they draw one another out and spur one another on; they ceaselessly bicker while remaining absolutely loyal; they quibble and squabble while understanding one another perfectly. When they are separated during Sancho’s sojourn on the island, the reader feels that each has lost more than half of himself. For my part, though I am not sure it is more “realistic,” I find Cervantes’s friendship more heartening than the bard’s. Though they begin as polar opposites, the squire and the knight influence one another as the story progresses, eventually coming to resemble one another. This beats Romeo and Juliet by a league.

What strikes most contemporary readers of this ur-novel is its modernity. Formally, Cervantes is far more daring than his Victorian successors. This is admittedly more apparent in Part Two, when Cervantes has his characters travel around a world where Part One has already been published and read widely, and where the spurious Part Two by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda (a pseudonym) has just been released. This leads to self-referential tricks worthy of the coolest postmodernist: the duo encountering readers of the prequels and commenting on their own portrayal. Another daring touch was Cervantes’s use of the Arabic historian Cide Hamete Berengeli—whose book, found on the streets of Toledo, he is merely transcribing into Castilian—which allows him to comment on the text he is writing: praising the historian’s scrupulous attention to detail and skipping over boring sections in the “original.”

All this is done, not merely to be clever, but to reinforce the sense of infinite irony that pervades the text. The gap opened up by these tricks is what gives Cervantes room to be so delightfully ambiguous. As the authorship is called into question, and as the characters—who are imaginative actors to begin with—become aware of themselves as characters, the sense of a guiding intelligence crafting the story becomes ever more tenuous. The final irony, then, is that this self-referential irony does not undermine the reality of the story, but only reinforces it. In Part Two, especially, the characters leap from the book into reality, becoming both readers and writers of themselves—so real, indeed, that we risk repeating the don’s error of mistaking the book with reality.

Having said all this in praise of El Quijote, I should mention some of the book’s flaws. These are mostly confined to Part One, wherein Cervantes inserts several short novelas that have, for the most part, aged poorly. At the time there was, apparently, a craze for pastoral love stories involving shepherds and shepherdesses, which nowadays is soppy sentimental trash. One must also admit that Cervantes was a very mediocre poet, so the verse scattered throughout these pages can safely be skipped. On the whole, though the book’s most iconic moments are in Part One, Part Two is much superior and more innovative.

Part Two is also far sadder. And this is the last ambiguity: the reader can never fully decide whether to laugh or cry. Tragedy and comedy are blended so deeply together that no emotional response seems adequate. I still have not decided with any certainty how I feel or what I think about this book. All I know is that I wish it could go on forever—that I could read another chapter of don Quijote’s and Sancho Panza’s adventures for the rest of my life. To reach the end is unbearable. Don Quijote should live eternal life. And he will.

This superb parody of medieval romantic tales based on legend, chivalric love, and adventure. Don Quixote’s madness lies in his credulity. For him the chivalric tales are histories not fictions. The comedy lies in the Don’s bravado and rhetoric, matched at every turn by failure, which usually amounts to a good hiding.

Cervantes great gift, among others, is modulation of the narrative. The text is always good-naturedly winking at the reader. It seems at times to be a novel of soliloquies, long monologues, a device from the stage.

I’m comparing J.M. Cohen’s translation (this book) with Edith Grossman’s newer translation. (I’ve read both.) And so far Cohen prevails. Cohen has this slightly more formal diction, which, when it comes to Don Quixote‘s dialogue, is simply funnier than the same line in Grossman.

In the north of England there once lived a middling sort of gentleman, who, due to a kind of cantankerous disinterest in the human race, was very much taken with reading, so much so, in fact, that he believed that he had read every novel that was worth reading. He had, to the astonishment of the online community, read In Search of Lost Time, Anna Karenina, Henry James’ later novels, The Iliad, The Magic Mountain, and so on, multiple times, and as a result the unfortunate man’s brains became addled. It was, however, perhaps Don Quixote, Cervantes’ famous novel about a mad old man who believed himself to be a knight errant, that did him the worst damage. He bought up numerous copies of the book, in multiple translations, and, after reading them all, he started to think himself, not any old knight, but the Knight of the Mournful Countenance, Don Quixote.

To this end, he ordered a helmet from ebay, which to the naked [or sane] eye would have looked like a reproduction Optimus Prime mask. Next, he purchased a sword, a samurai sword, to be exact, from some shady youngster whose acquaintance he had made on a street corner at 3am, and who had initially tried to persuade him to buy a small packet of white powder. These things, though lacking quality, came easy to our hero, but more difficult to acquire was his Rocinante, for there isn’t much call for horses in a busy northern city centre. A solution was found, however, when [P], for that was our hero’s name, spotted a mongrel, homeless dog one evening, which, to him, had the appearance of a magnificent steed. ‘You will be my Rocinante,’ he said to the nervous animal, as he patted its dirty flank. ‘You will accompany me on adventures great, will ride with me into battle.’ The mutt seemed none too interested in these promises, and chose to nose its own leg throughout the short speech, but when [P] called it followed, hoping that this mad new master might have as much food in store as strange ideas in his head.

After being well fed and rested, both master and mutt set out the next day in search of chivalrous acts to perform. Early in their journey the pair came upon a man sitting on the ground, his hand out stretched, asking for alms. Of course, any sane person would have passed on by, or nonchalantly let a coin or two fall into the man’s palm, but [P], not being in his right mind, saw not a beggar, but a powerful Genii.

‘O most marvellous and talented Genii’, he said, ‘have you come to grant me wishes?’
‘Wot?’ said the man.
‘What do I wish? I wish…now let me think…’
‘Are you mad, man?’
’Who is Madman? Is he some kind of enchanter?’
The beggar rolled his eyes. ‘’Ave you got any change, mate?’
‘I do not carry a purse, Genii. I am Don Quixote, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance!’
‘You’re an imbecile!’
‘Hold your tongue; for although thou art a Genii I will not take insults from thee.’
At this, [P] drew his sword and Rocinante, not much in the way of a horse, barked excitedly.
‘Help! Police! This man is trying to kill me!’ shouted the beggar.
Fortunately for him, a Policeman was passing, and seeing, not a chivalrous knight, but Optimus Prime wielding a samurai sword, promptly intervened.
‘What is going on here!’ he said.
‘Good Sir fellow knight,’ replied [P], noting the Policeman’s uniform and baton, and thinking them a suit of armour and a lance, ‘this impertinent Genii hath insulted me and I must defend my honour, as befitting a noble and brave knight errant.’
‘I think you’ll be coming with me, sir,’ said the unruffled policeman, who had seen much worse than this whilst on duty.
‘You want me to accompany you to your kingdom? I must assume there is a knight’s council taking place; or perhaps you need my help in fighting some giant, who hath enslaved your beloved? Pray wait until I have taken care of this small business, and I will do my duty and aid thee.’
Our hero made ready to swing his sword, and would have cut the poor beggar in two, had not the Policeman expertly brained him with his baton. As a result of the blow, [P] fell to the ground in a daze, his sword flung far from him; he was bleeding from the head. ‘Ah, foul double-crosser! Thou art in league with the Genii! In fact, thou art probably not a real knight at all, but a vision, a trick of this so powerful magician!’ Full of wrath, he tried to rise to his feet, and so the Policeman brained him again, and gave him a number of hard punches in the mug for good measure.

When [P] came round he found that he had been imprisoned in some sort of castle tower. His head hurt and his legs felt weak, both of which he attributed to having been given a potent potion, famous for sapping the strength of the most chivalrous and hardy knights. After a moment or two [P] collected his wits, and noticed that he was not alone in the cell, for a young lady was sat on the bench beside him.

‘O beauteous lady,’ he said. ‘O Princess, did the bad knight and the evil Genii capture you too?
‘Great. A crackhead,’ she muttered to herself.
‘Why, yes they attempted to crack my head. You are unharmed, I trust?’
‘Lay off the pipe, man.’
‘Let me introduce myself, Princess,’ said [P] with a flourish.
‘The last guy who called me princess asked for a handjob and then broke my jaw.’
‘A villain! How could it be!’
‘Occupational hazard. I’m a hooker, love.’
‘Ann Hooker? I have not before heard of thee or the Hooker kingdom,' replied [P] musingly. 'I am Don Quixote, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance.’
‘What, as in Cervantes?’
Ah, does her knowledge surprise you? Can a prostitute not read?
‘Cervantes, my father?’
‘No, as in the author who wrote Don Quixote. I have a degree in English literature, you can’t fool me. So where is Sancho, DQ?’
‘Sancho?’
‘Yeah, Sancho Panza, your sidekick, your foil. You have to have a Sancho. He’s the one who you promise the insula to.’
‘Insula?’
‘Yes. An island. At first it seems as though Sancho is stupid, that he is following you out of greed. But it becomes clear that, really, he is doing so out of friendship. To some extent, Don Quixote is a kind of buddy comedy. It’s quite moving, really, in that way. Anyway, you need a Sancho, because he, unlike you DQ, sees the truth of what you encounter, he…Oh oh oh, oh no…I’M YOUR SANCHO!’
‘Friend Sancho, why art thou dressed as a lady? Are you here to break me out of this castle prison?’
‘Oh no, listen, I expect to be paid for my services.’
‘I have promised you an insula,’ said [P] with great seriousness.
‘Look, DQ, I see what you’re doing here. It’s all very quixotic. You know that word came from the book, right? Something excessively romantic. The modern world needs you, I get that. Ideals. Dedication to just causes. Ok. But have you tilted at windmills? That’s important. It’s a very famous scene.’
‘There are no windmills in the city.’
‘Exactly. And who is going to write your history? The real DQ had Cervantes. And, y’know, you can’t just ignore the fact that in the second half of the book he is famous, because the first part, Cervantes says, had spread word of his madness and adventures.’
‘Ah, I have this covered. I’ve set up a twitter account. You must follow me, Sancho!’
‘Right. And I guess you’ve already got the ‘is art dangerous’ angle covered. Uh, clearly it is. Y’know, Flaubert used that idea, or stole it if you like, for Madame Bovary. How much can art, books, whatever, influence you? It's a fascinating question. They burn your books, y’know, your friends do.’
‘They what my what now? This is an outrage. I have a pristine hardcover copy of The Man Without Qualities!’
‘Gone, DQ. That kind of book gives people unsuitable ideas. What about the stories-within-stories stuff? Lots of that kind of thing in Don Quixote.’
‘Well, this was my first sally. I haven’t got around to all that yet. But I did meet this Ann Hooker lady, a beautiful Princess. Her story ought to be told.’
‘But Ann is Sancho, remember?’
‘Stop quibbling, Sancho. And, er, your bra strap is showing, please adjust it. I will tell the most interesting tale of how Sancho met Princess Ann, and persuaded her to swap costumes.’
‘Very good. But, I must warn you, that being DQ is very likely to cause you physical harm. Nabokov called the book crude and cruel, and, well, it is violent. DQ gets beaten up frequently.’
‘One must risk all to win all.’
‘Fair enough. But, y’know, the whole thing becomes repetitious, there’s no denying that. You’ll have to do the same sort of thing over and over again.’
‘Such is life, Sancho. I would rather encounter the same wonderful thing again and again than have terrible variety.’
‘You’ve become a philosopher, DQ.’
‘I am simply a knight, Sancho, but we knights do trust in our brains, as well as our arms, on occasion.’
‘You’re very good at this, I must say. That sounded just right. Ok, but one last thing, if you have read Don Quixote then you must be aware that what the hero of the book thinks he experiences isn’t real, that where he sees giants there are only windmills, where he sees The Helmet of Mambrino there is only a barber's bowl.’
‘Ah, Sancho, of course I know that. But isn’t life more beautiful if you approach it with a noble heart, with wonder and awe? I'm not advocating that everyone ought to become Don Quixote, because to be him is to be insane, but one should have a little of his spirit in you. Isn’t that the book’s true message? Those batterings that he takes, which grouchy old Nabokov objected to, those are but the workaday world rapping you on the knuckles, telling you to settle, to be reasonable, to give up your ideals, to stop dreaming the impossible dream. Well, I tell you, friend Sancho, I tell all of you, to dream on, dream the fuck on.’

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm a fan of popular fiction. I desire enjoyment from certain factors of pacing and style that the literary elite consider "common" and I, in turn, generally find "literature" to be incredibly pretentious. This has led me to hold what some might consider "uncultured" opinions about various great works.

Which brings us to Don Quixote, which many in the literary elite consider to be the greatest novel ever written.

Did I love Don Quixote? I wouldn't go that far. Does it deserve to be called the greatest novel ever written? I'm willing to put it on the short list.

Here's the thing: Cervantes published Don Quixote in the early 17th century, while Shakespeare was still working through his "tragic" phase (Hamlet & whatnot). By rights, it should be like so much other "classic literature:" dense, slow, utterly irrelevant to modern life, and soporific. Instead, it's dense, slow, engaging, and surprisingly relevant. Cervantes manages, almost continuously, to be clever in ways that transcend the 400-year gap and resonate with us now. There's no question that adapting to the writing style of that era is a challenge, and Don Quixote will be slow going to readers accustomed to modern pop fiction. But most intelligent readers will consider this a price worth paying.

Why Don Quixote still works stems largely from its having taken the formulas of "heroic knighthood" (which we are still vaguely familiar with as legend today) and showing it to be cartoonish and absurd. Despite the cultural gap, modern readers will still get the gist of the parody, even if they haven't read the chivalric literature that it is an explicit parody of.

The other reason the story works is because, strangely, we find ourselves continuously at odds with the author over the character of Don Quixote himself. We are told, at every turn, that Quixote is a fool, a madman, and a sinner. Cervantes breaks from the traditional role of a passive narrator to make constant judgment on Quixote's failures and flaws. And because we see Quixote so maligned by both his own author and everyone in the book, we as the reader fall in love with him. By writing a book about a dreamer with unassailable ideals but using the narrative voice of a vitriolic cynic, Cervantes forces us to stand up for the nobility and purity that Quixote achieves. Cervantes has, in effect, martyred his own protagonist in such a dramatic way that it falls to the reader to elevate Quixote to the status of saint.

And any book that can pull that off is worth the difficult prose.

This book is crazy and it's about madness. What a mess. I think it's supposed to be about catholocism, but no thank you.

This book is about 1,000 pages. I enjoyed the beginning and some of the ending, but the middle just goes bananas. It was long and dragging. I'm told it has a lot of analogy with the catholic church, which was huge in Spain. I must admit that I kept losing the story and wondering what was going on in the middle. I mean it just dragged on.

I love the Windmill scene and the whole thing with Dulcinea, but man, so much of this story could be cut out. It's hard for me to see why this is such a classic. The scenes that have been made famous are the best parts, but seriously, the middle is bonkers and hard to read.

got to know what the deal is with those windmills