What a joyful, interesting, funny, educational and rewarding experience reading Don Quixote has been! I read it accompanied by the 24 excellent lectures given by Professor Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, available free on the Yale University website. Had I not simultaneously read the lectures, I would have missed so much of this richly layered text. I certainly wouldn’t have understood the wider political and social themes, or the many literary references, and I would have missed a lot of the humour and irony. I am so pleased to have rounded off my year’s reading with this wonderful journey.

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.

“In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind.” (I thought of myself when reading this quotation from the book)

So, yup, I’m done, and I am going to madly miss him, the mad Don Quixote of LaMancha, knight-errant (or, wandering knight, though he wasn’t officially a knight, and he certainly “erred” many times) and his loyal squire Sancho Panza, and his dream of Dulcinea and a life of service to the needy. Is he crazy? Enchanted? A serial Santos? A sweet, if somewhat delusional romantic? If “chivalry is a religion, are there sainted Knights in Glory”?

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, 1,023 pages, was published by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, which allowed the author to comment in part two on the critical and public reception of part one; meta-fiction! And to also playfully dismiss all the competing stories popping up/ripping him off in a time prior to copyright laws (No, Sancho explains to people who have heard of him, we are neither drunkards nor gluttons; we sometimes survive on a handful of acorns and grapes over an eight day period!).

I read this (or at least parts of it) or much of it decades ago. But in part because I just had one of those "decade" birthdays, I thought I would read a couple larger-than-life classics. It was also mentioned in a recent novel trilogy by J. M. Coetzee as embodying the very spirit of spirituality and truth, so I just dusted it off the shelf, took a deep breath and started again on the journey of the Don's journey. So it is an early seventeenth-century novel, maybe the first modern novel, a kind of response to Books of Chivalry that were written in Cervante’s times, books much read in the previous couple centuries and still being read. There's a pretty funny (!) book-burning scene (!) where all sorts of books by authors who were contemporaries of Cervantes are thrown in the fire. To the very end, Don Quixote (mock) castigates books of chivalry as trash, while holding up his own story as the very truth.

The premise for the book-burning is that a guy who has been reading these chivalric romances renames himself Don Quixote, mounts an ass he calls Rocinante, takes along a sidekick, a former farmer named Sancho Panza he elevates to squire status, and heads out to save damsels from distress and right the wrongs committed against the downtrodden and dispossessed. He's an obvious fraud, or a pretty obvious one, as he actually does help some people. But he's also possibly a little crazy, as he intends to slay a monster everyone else can plainly see is a windmill:

"Giants! The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures.”

I like the opening, with its anti-prologue, naming--as most books do many--zero weighty texts such as the Bible or erudite scholarly works. And this is followed by a few mock-epic sonnets in honor of various central characters we'll meet in the book.

2/10/23 update: I am now 1/3 through this more than a 1000-page tome, and still enjoying it. (too long, you say? What else do you have to do with your time?! Work, have relationships with real people?! Pah!) One question about Don Quixote is whether he is delusional or just a "cockeyed optimist." I think that the jury may still be out on that one, but I mark B on my multiple choice test. I'm pulling for him. And what is the race in which he seems to be entered? Well, essentially, the goof wants to win the heart of the small town girl Dulcinea, whom he has elevated to the status of a Goddess. Sidekick Sancho Panza observes that she may not be all that, but you know, there's no accounting for taste. You know, you say tomato.

And at the almost halfway point, we haven't really met her yet! Maybe she's just--as in most romance-and-chivalry King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable-type tales that have inspired (or deluded) Don Quixote--a fantasy figure, "the object of desire," whom the Don has little chance for in reality (unless she's deaf, blind and deluded, herself). Or maybe she is herself an illusion, an enchanted vision??!! I mean, he's just a goof, maybe flat-out nuts, and not all that much to look at himself. That ill-fitting helmet! The sad ass he rides, Rocinante, sigh. (The use of ass throughout instead of donkey may not always be intended as part of the comedy, given it is appropriate to call this animal an ass, because it just is one, but for this lifelong juvenile, sometimes the word ass adds to the comedy for me). That and the constant mention of roosters throughout, but only as cocks. (I know, that stopped being funny in fifth grade, right?)

2/12/23 update: Interlude, at the Conclusion of Part the First:

In the last several hundred pages I have begin to think of Don Quixote in contemporary terms; thus:
On the Matter of George Santos as Reincarnation of Don Quixote:

*Both are nerdy (possibly) psychopathic (ok, probably not the Don!) liars with inflated images of themselves
*Both rename themselves to create better impressions of themselves
*Both create elaborate costumes to impress others (Santo, in drag in Brazil, and now dragging the image of a politician; Quixote dressed sort of like a shabby knight on an ass--haha, I know, I’m killing myself here--instead of a steed)
*Both invent elaborate histories/back stories for themselves (but here Santo is the more outrageous)
*Both invent stories about themselves to impress others; in one latest "adventure," Don Q aspires to become either an Archbishop or Emperor to impress his desired one; he beats himself bloody to impress her and others that he is brave, in keeping with the Tenets of Chivalry. (Think Of Santos claiming he was robbed and beaten on the streets of New York; and obviously the U.S. House of Representatives gig will undoubtedly impress some of his "friends" or donors or love objects)

But at page 350, I confess I much prefer Don Quixote, whose heart is pure though his words be somewhat deluded. But you decide--I mean, both are entertaining, I read or scroll for the crazy anecdote or tidbit of the day about both of them--and see if you can imagine each of them sing with their heads held high along with this 1967 Shirley Bassey version of "The Impossible Dream" from Man of LaMancha:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzBIs...

“To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest.”

2/13/23 update: I am well past halfway, too many fun things to report, but at the beginning of book two, Cervantes pauses to do meta-fiction, as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote are back home, between chivalric quests, to kind of assess where we are at this point in the tale. Panza reports how the people of the town (or, the reading public) see them and their knight-errant adventures, which is as we see them, as ludicrous (though we may see the duo as slightly more sympathetically than they have heard some critics do) and dangerously misguided, nuts. This is certainly true of Squire Sancho’s wife Teresa, who sees him as abandoning his family for false promises of riches, which is almost certainly an accurate observation.

Sancho reveals that people have heard about their travels because there is a book, called Don Quixote, Part One, a public record of their tales, written by none other than (the brilliant) Miguel Cervantes, setting down the “true and accurate” details of their travels, a true history, contrasting the frivolous chivalric romances of the day. This provides the occasion for Don Q to talk about the uses of literature to instruct and entertain, and so on. He doesn't see the critiques of them as knight and squire all that seriously. Many great people are not fully appreciated in their time, he notes. But Don Quixote is of course eager to know how he is being represented, in case the news could possibly help him make his case with Dulcinea.

2/14/23: Goodreads friend Jeff was kind enough to call attention to my misnaming Sancho Panza with the spoonerism Pancho Sanza, which some people might have seen as my clever word play consistent with the comic linguistic buffoonery of the master Miguel Cervantes (no, they wouldn't, Dave, you idiot!). Neither is it a sign of incipient dyslexia (I hope!). I hereby correct my "slip" though I had a momentary temptation to just leave it there. But then I noticed I had also misspelled Dulcinea. . .

2/19/23 update, 3/4 of the way done, including a break to read some other things, because this puppy is loooooong (but ultimately charmingly satisfying!). Again I promise not to retell the whole dang novel, but I will say that in the second half there seems to be some serious consideration about whether it is Don Quixote of LaMancha is actually mad. Or is he enchanted in some fashion? A related question gets raised: Is the fair maiden Dulcinea actually real?! I mean, have we actually met her?! (Uh, no). Though Sancho decides she must in fact be real. Adventures continue to happen that the Don sees in considerably different ways than anyone else in the world. Sancho even tells others, my Master is flat-out crazy, but I will never part from him and his promise to make me Governor of an island, and so on:

“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!”

“'But to my mind', said Sancho, 'the knights who did all that were pushed into it and had their reasons for their antics and their penances, but what reason have you got for going mad?' ‘That is the whole point', replied Don Quixote, 'and therein lies the beauty of my enterprise. A Knight Errant going mad for a good reason--there is neither pleasure nor merit in that. The thing is to become insane without a cause and have my lady think: If I do all this when dry, what would I not do when wet?’”

Don Quixote is a model wise fool: “The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.”

“Don Quixote is so crazy that he is sure no author could have invented him.”

2/22/23 update:
My update to bring me to the conclusion of the tale must need be brief, but suffice it to say that even the last pages have their sweet pleasures, as they return home to decline and. . . well, death. Highlights? The bearded duennas. Sancho as (yes, oh ye of little faith!) Governor of his promised small island (though, true, no one has ever heard of it, and on a map there is no water around it, and it was only for ten days, but still, our hearts leap and our heads nod: Don Quixote has come through with at least one promise; can there be more?).

*I think of this book as a precursor to buddy road stories from The Three Musketeers to Huck Finn to The Road to Mandalay (Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis!) and thousands you can name. We love them.

*Our narrator asserts that after centuries of chivalric romances beloved in Spain for centuries, that this one is history, the truth:

“It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.”

*I love the story of Sancho’s self-lashing, as they deludedly determine that this will be the thing that releases Dulcinea from what they think of as her enchantment. 3,000 lashes, self-administered, though the scenes become comic, not really torture. Does it work?! Read it to find out!

One of the best books of all time, and mostly just fun!

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.
Don Quixote ~~  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra



n   Don Quixoten is as good as, if not better than, everything you have ever heard about it. I've not felt such a sense of accomplishment in finishing a book since I closed the cover on n   Ulyssesn 15 months ago. Yes, it’s that good.

If you’ve never read n   Don Quixoten you are more than likely to be familiar with the story of n   Don Quixoten, but there is so much more to this amazing piece of writing than an old man fighting windmills.

n   Don Quixoten by  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra has been called the Bible of humanity and the universal novel. After having read it, I believe this to be true. Published in 1605, this two-part book is the work of fiction that single-handedly created modern Western storytelling. n   Don Quixoten’s effect is everywhere ~~ he's in Mowgli from n   The Jungle Bookn and Billy Pilgrim in n   Slaughterhouse Fiven.

Four hundred years later, n   Don Quixoten’s importance has not diminished.



Alonzo Quixano, an impoverished man possibly of the gentry ~~ one is never quite sure ~~ rises one day after reading too many romances. Driven mad by that other world where knights, courtly manners, the meaning of life, and greatness of soul are upheld and ~~ most importantly ~~ evident, he decides to change his name to Don Quixote de la Mancha. Putting on armor and helmet ~~ at least that’s what he thinks his hat is ~~ he sets out to seek a quest to do chivalrous deeds in the mundane world. Or is the world not so mundane?

As he travels, he meets royalty and clergy, rich and poor, fellow-travelers and the working classes. Throughout, he is accompanied by Sancho Panza, who is quite his opposite: a realist who sees life as it is but who is too kindhearted to go about forcing his views on others. Sancho is especially admirable in this regard, because if indeed Don Quixote is great, it is a greatness the world does not recognize.



The world Cervantes creates reflects the cross-section of a society moving from one world toward another, a world which is incapable of recognizing either itself or others because societal standards are changing. Cervantes seems to be concerned about this changing and societal flux. The glorious truths of dogmatic religion and romantic chivalry may or may not work in the practical world where money, power, and pragmatism are what really matter. In the pragmatic world, shrewdness, power, wealth, gender, and youth matter. Noble values are ridiculous and pitiable at best, dangerous at worst, and ugly realities whatever way one looks at them.

The question here is Don Quixote a great soul in a small, mean-spirited, cruel world? Is this a story which is a pitiful depiction of an old man’s dementia? Is Cervantes on the side of his hero? Or does he really think there is bliss in avoiding ideals and the written spiritual and romantic books which indoctrinate? I don't have an answer to this. Neither I think did Cervantes.

Cervantes writes about his time and about the Spanish character, but he also writes about human nature, universal hopes, general historical and social factors. Whatever one thinks of  Don Quixote, this extremely long novel is a classic that should be read by all who treasure brilliant literature.

This review feels incomplete, but I think it's best that way.

بیایید به آنهایی که دوستشان داریم، دُن‌کیشوت هدیه بدهیم!

من این کتاب رو به پیشنهاد فهرست "صد رمانِ برترِ تمامِ دوران‌ها"ی نشریه‌ی گاردین خوندم. دن کیشوت در اون فهرست صدر نشینه!
یکی از بهترین رمان هاییه که در تمام عمرم خوندم و موقع خوندنش گاهی با صدای بلند می خندیدم و گاهی بر انگیخته می شدم و گاهی درس می گرفتم. این رمان، اولین رمان مدرن به حساب میاد. یعنی سروانتس قواعدی که تا اون موقع برای رمان نویسی رایج بوده رو نادیده می گیره و دن کیشوت وار شروع به نوشتن رمانش می کنه. این کتاب در ابتدا به صورت یک جلدی نوشته میشه اما از اونجایی که با اقبال زیادی از طرف خوانندگان روبرو میشه و به چند زبان ترجمه میشه، یک کشیش بی مایه، میاد جلد دومی برای رمان سروانتس می نویسه. سروانتس هم عصبانی میشه و ده سال بعد از نگارشِ جلد اول دن کیشوت، شروع می کنه به نوشتنِ جلد دوم دن کیشوت. و تا انتهایِ جلد دوم هم به اون کشیش بد و بیراه میگه. برای من، جلد دوم به اندازه ی جلد اول جذابیت نداشت چون فاصله ی نگارش بین اونها ده ساله و مسلماً نویسنده در ده سال دچار تحولاتی از جمله کهولت سن و کم حوصلگی میشه و گمون می کنم همین امور در افتِ طنز و تهور قهرمانِ داستان بی تأثیر نبوده.
دن کیشوت کتابیه که هر رمان خونی باید خونده باشه. محمد قاضی این کتاب رو از فرانسه ترجمه کرده اما جوری ترجمه کرده که انگار خودِ سروانتس به فارسی نوشته!

این کتاب درس‌های زیادی به من آموخت لکن از بین همه‌ی اونها، یک درس رو نصب‌العین کردم:
غمِ همسایه خوردن، خر را هم از پا در می‌آوَرَد.

Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago….
…
The truth is that when his mind was completely gone, he had the strangest thought any lunatic in the world ever had, which was that it seemed reasonable and necessary to him, both for the sake of his honor and as a service to the nation, to become a knight errant and travel the world with his armor and his horse to seek adventures and engage in everything he had read that knights errant engaged in, righting all manner of wrongs and, by seizing the opportunity and placing himself in danger and ending those wrongs, winning eternal renown and everlasting fame.
…
“Oh, Señor,” said Don Antonio, “may God forgive you for the harm you have done to the entire world in wishing to restore the sanity of the most amusing madman in it! Don’t you see, Señor, that the benefit caused by the sanity of Don Quixote cannot be as great as the pleasure produced by his madness?”

Find any list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, and the first one on the list chronologically is usually Don Quixote. It’s considered the first “modern” novel for doing something that seems unremarkable today: fully developing more than one character, and using the relationships between those characters to explore the world. I’ve read a fair number of books that have made the Pop Chart 100 Essential Novels Scratch-off Chart because they are the first this or the first that, but it can be pretty hit or miss whether the book still holds up today (like  Frankenstein and  Jane Eyre) or does not (Robinson Crusoe). Some credit probably goes to the excellent translation done by Edith Grossman, but Don Quixote not only holds up, but is an incredibly readable, entertaining, apparently timeless novel.

Don Quixote tells the story of Alonso Quixano, a man driven mad by obsessively reading the stilted chivalry fiction of the time until he decides at the age 50 to become a knight errant. He renames himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, though he will soon be known as The Knight of the Sorrowful Face. With his old nag Rocinante, and his neighbor farmer-turned-squire, Sancho Panza, he roams the countryside looking to right wrongs, and help the oppressed, all to win the love of a beautiful woman he calls Dulcinea of Toboso. But because he’s mad, his adventures are usually misadventures—there’s a reason this novel gave birth to the expression “tilting at windmills.”

So what makes Don Quixote feel like contemporary fiction? First of all, Don Quixote is an incredible character, constantly keeping the reader and the other characters off balance. One minute he is completely mad—especially in the first part, he sees a distorted, romanticized version of what’s happening, like an imaginative toddler, seeing adventures and dangers where they aren’t, and spinning up identities and backstories for all he meets—and the next he says something completely intelligent, even profound. Sancho Panza is likewise a richly detailed, multifaceted character, both simple and calculating, capable of deceiving Don Quixote but always loyal and with proverbs for every occasion. Don Quixote’s idealism constantly clashes with Sancho’ realism, and they are both full of contradictions, just like real people. They are also surrounded by a host of entertaining secondary characters: the innkeeper, the priest, and the barber; the lovers Cardenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando, and Doretea; Doña Clara and Don Luis; Bachelor Sansón Carrasco and Tomé Cecial; the fair Quiteria, rich Camacho, and desperate Basilio; the Duke, the Duchess, and Altisidora; Roque Guinart, Claudia Jerónima, and Don Vicente Torrellas; Ana Félix and Don Gaspar Gregorio.

Also, the structure of Don Quixote was ahead of its time and adds to the richness of the story. The narrator is telling a history researched by a historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli, which was a narrative trick of the time, but one that gives the story a feeling of authenticity. What we think of now as the first part of the novel was published in 1605. Though it ends with references to a possible follow up if more of Cide Hamete’s writing were found, this too was apparently a not uncommon way to end the chivalric fiction that Cervantes was deconstructing. But then Cervantes actually decided to write a sequel novel, which was published in 1615 and is now just considered the second part of the novel (Cervantes also used this opportunity to fix a couple of plot holes in the first part, and respond to certain criticisms as well). In a stroke of genius, and in what have been the first meta move ever in a novel, everyone in the second part of Don Quixote is aware of the original novel and most have read it. They all already know who Don Quixote is when they meet him, and have their own motivations for interacting with him, all of which gives the second part of the novel a different feel from the first part. And in an even more meta, more bizarre twist, while Cervantes was writing the true second part of Don Quixote, someone wrote and published a false second part. So not only does Cervantes open the true second part with a take down of the false second part, but he makes references to it through the rest of the novel. And the ending feels modern too, and certainly fulfills the novel’s stated goal of rejecting the conventions of chivalric fiction.

Most of all, Don Quixote works today because it’s very funny, full of entertaining stories and occasional madcap action. It keeps the narrative flowing with asides to the reader and cliffhangers. There are interesting philosophical discussions, and endless stories about a different types of love—requited and unrequited, instant and deep, lustful and filial—and even a couple of novellas told within the novel, including “The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious,” about a man Anselmo who wants his best friend Lothario—yes, that Lothario—to test his wife Camila’s virtue and instead they fall in love and eventually run away together. Finally, it’s a novel that discusses and celebrates the importance of books, writing, and stories.

Don Quixote has something for everyone. Were there times I wished it were a bit shorter? A few, but the pieces all come together (often with fun, serendipitous reunions between characters) in a way that I couldn’t decide what I would cut. It’s a remarkable novel, richly deserving its place at the beginning of lists of the greatest novels ever. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5. Highly recommended.

Bonus quotations, because there were too many for the start of the review:

“You should know, Sancho, that a man is not worth more than any other if he does not do more than any other. All these squalls to which we have been subjected are signs that the weather will soon improve and things will go well for us, because it is not possible for the bad or the good to endure forever; from this it follows that since the bad has lasted so long a time, the good is close at hand.”
…
“Do not eat garlic or onions lest their smell reveal your peasant origins. Walk slowly; speak calmly, but not in a way that makes it seem you are listening to yourself, for all affectation is wrong. Eat sparingly at midday and even less for supper, for the health of the entire body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in your drinking, remembering that too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise.”
…
To believe that the things of this life will endure forever, unchanged, is to believe the impossible.

المثالية والواقعية في نص أدبي لطيف يجمع الخيال والمغامرة والفكاهة
دون كيشوت وتابعه سانشو في رحلة الفروسية بين الوهم والحقيقة
فكرة مبتكرة وحبكة طريفة في رواية مكتوبة في بداية القرن السابع عشر
النسخة هنا موجزة بترجمة جميلة للمترجم صيّاح الجهيم

Mio caro don Chisciotte,
sono passati decenni dal nostro primo incontro. Bimbetta settenne, m’accompagnasti per mano nel tuo mondo incantato.
Imparai a vedere il bello grazie a te che, iniziata l’avventura, trasformasti in castello l’osteria. E sempre grazie a te capii che anche la più folle delle idee si può coltivare e nutrire come il fiore più bello.
Ridano pure gli stolti. Continuino a ravvisare mulini a vento al posto dei giganti.
Ci salutammo alla fine del viaggio. Sapevo che avrei potuto ritrovarti. E così è stato.
Oggi, ti ho seguito come feci allora. E ritrovo la dignità, la saggezza e la bontà che varcano i confini della follia, quella follia che appartiene esclusivamente ai puri d’anima. E che forse vien chiamata follia in luogo di saggezza o sapienza intrisa d’intelligenza e nobiltà. Vien chiamata follia la smisurata ambizione di sanare soprusi e ingiustizie. Perché solo quella follia fa nascere chi deve resuscitare quelli della Tavola Rotonda, i Dodici di Francia, i Nove della Fama. Solo quella follia dà vita a chi deve cacciare nell’oblio i Piatir, i Tablante, Olivante e Tirante, i Febo e i Belianigi e tutti i cavalieri erranti. E se per il tuo coraggio senti “scoppiare il cuore in petto per la voglia che ha di affrontare quest’avventura, quanto più essa si annunzia difficile”, a me che ti seguo fa lo stesso effetto.
Il cuore scoppia in petto ogni volta che la fantasia sfida con irriverenza la realtà, scoppia in petto quando l’ordinario si fa straordinario, quando la diversità se la ride della normalità. Il cuore scoppia in petto per ogni diversità che si fa vessillo e procede a testa alta senza piegarsi al volere dei “normali”.
Quei “normali” che vivranno savi e morranno folli, mentre tu, come tutti i puri di cuore, potrai fare il contrario. Non prima d’aver lasciato al mondo un segno indelebile. Un sogno. Non importa quale. Ognuno troverà il suo.
Viviamo folli finché possiamo, ché a morir savi siam sempre a tempo.

Giace qui l’hidalgo forte
il cui valore arrivò
a tal punto che ebbe in sorte
che la morte non trionfò
della vita con la morte.
Poco il mondo calcolò.
Se ebbe d’orco la figura,
un’insolita misura
la ventura in lui provò:
visse pazzo e morì savio.

Adiós, don Chisciotte. Un abrazo.

84th book of 2021. Artist for this review is French painter Honoré Daumier.

3.5. Don Quixote rather famously stands as the first “modern” novel, published in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615. They are very different beasts. The first part, or Book I, is perhaps the Don Quixote people think of: the thin, mad(?), Spanish man (Alonso Quixano) who decides to become a knight errant and rename himself Don Quixote. He manages to acquire a squire in the portly Sancho Panza and thus their adventures begin. Don Quixote sees inns as castles, ugly women as princesses, your everyday vagabond as some great criminal. . . He is always attempting to exact some knightly behaviour on the unsuspecting; and famously, of course, attacks windmills, claiming they are giants. On opening the novel at the beginning and starting to read I was stunned by the freshness of the prose (thanks to Grossman’s translation, whom I trust for her translations of Gabo) and the humour, which I believed to be actually humorous. The problem with the humour is though it never technically faulters, Don Quixote is almost 1000 pages long and so at times it feels as if it is the same gag running, told over and over, with slightly different twists. And besides, in the beginning we find Don Quixote’s madness humorous and by even the midway point, we start to find it endearing. I won’t go into all the possible interpretations of his madness as they are spoken about elsewhere by better speakers, but for me, Quixote’s unwavering desire to be a knight errant did strike me as being quite poignant when thought as simply as him staying true to what he believed in. At one point, after all, Don Quixote says to a man, ‘“Let me conclude by saying, Señor, that you should allow your son to walk the path to which his star calls him.”’



Book 1, for all its humour and chivalric tales of madness, was slow reading to me. Don Quixote feels long, much longer than it actually is. This derives mainly from the episodic nature of the first Book (and in part the second); it is full of stories, stories within stories, tangents, monologues. . . Minor characters appear and when asked by Don Quixote who they are and what they are doing (before he runs them through with his lance, for no good reason) they spin a long yarn about their life, their love, their failures, and all the while we know as readers that this minor character will finish his spiel, Don Quixote will realise that killing him because he is the devil or whoever else isn’t so wise and let him go, and down the same road another fellow will come along with a tale. At times it had the stop-start feeling of a short story collection. This presented a problem for me and damaged my experience of reading it. I had heard Book II is considered different and by some “better”, so that kept me reading through the longer and more uninteresting side-plots of the first Book.


"Don Quixote and Sancho Panza"—1855

And Book II is better. The humour feels reinvigorated and there’s a new angle to the already slight meta elements of the first part: now, in Spain, in reality, there is a fraudulent Don Quixote Book II. Cervantes is returning to set the record straight, it seems. But he does so with wit and grace. The characters in the novel are also aware of a fraudulent copy (for, I forget to mention, the book is actually published within the story too, and Don Quixote becomes “famous” in his own universe). It reminded me somewhat of Byron’s poem “A Vision of Judgement” which is a satirical poetic smackdown of Robert Southey’s own “A Vision of Judgement” from the year before. Cervantes not only mocks the fraudulent copy of his work but also mocks himself and addresses errors in Book 1 (which Grossman helpfully points out at the time: the misnaming of Sancho Panza’s wife (she has about 4 different names in Book I), the inconsistencies in the plot, most notably, the discussion of the disappearance/theft of Sancho’s donkey without it occurring in the plot). Quite meta. So we then have stories within stories, stories within stories again, real stories in reality within the fictional story, etc. Book II is far more enjoyable than Book I in my opinion and almost caused me to be magnanimous and give this 4-stars but the truth is despite loving Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and all the ridiculous things they got up to, this novel is long-winded. There are pages and pages that I didn’t care for aside from the famous duo. As far as the literary world goes this is perhaps a vital read and I am glad I finally read it. Despite the seemingly subpar rating, I’ll be thinking about the pair for a long time, about them vomiting on one another, about them arguing, about Don Quixote standing up to lions, getting caught hanging from a window, the two of them being tricked more times than there are pages, about every bruised body, broken tooth, windmill/giant, love for a lady one has never met, sweeping 17th century Spain with all its bandits, priests, prostitutes, soldiers, innkeepers, dukes and duchesses. . . all its kaleidoscopic madness that has kept it surviving until today as one of the most translated book in the world. And now I can refer to something as Quixotic with good faith and intention (and good memories of the beloved and most insane sane man to live: Don Quixote).

n  “Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”n

Why did no one tell me this book is hilarious? I can't believe it took me so long to finally pick it up.

Don Quixote is densest in the early chapters, which are packed full of footnotes that should be read for full context. I highly recommend using two bookmarks-- one for your place in the story and one for in the notes. If this seems too much like hard work, I want to reassure you that the notes become less frequent as you progress through the book, but they add some very helpful background information in the beginning.

If you don't know what it's about, Don Quixote follows the titular character and his lovable squire, Sancho Panza, as the former declares himself a knight-errant and goes looking for noble adventures. The context is important here because, at the time of the novel, chivalry romances like Amadis De Gaula had become so popular in Spain that monarchs of the time feared the influence of them on the impressionable minds of young people.

Cervantes responded by writing a parody of these knightly adventures. Don Quixote has read so many of these books that they have had a profound effect on his mental state. He gets caught up in a fictional world created by his imagination and truly believes that not only is he a knight, but the inns he encounters are castles, the prostitutes are princesses, and the windmills are... giants. This latter is, apparently, an iconic moment in the novel and I can definitely see why-- it is so funny. I read it through about five times and laughed each time. I think it's the way I hear Sancho saying "What giants?" in my mind that cracks me up.

The adventures do feel repetitive at times, and I don't feel like either Part 1 or Part 2 needed to be as long as it was. The buffoonish squabbles get old after a while. However, I really enjoyed the switch to a more meta style in the second part, which the notes will tell you was published some ten years after the first. In this, Cervantes explores the idea of characters knowing they were being written about, and the book takes a more philosophical - and arguably darker - turn.

I read some critical interpretations alongside the book, and I found Edith Grossman's especially interesting. She says she saw Don Quixote as a terribly depressing book. Nabokov, too, called it "cruel and crude" (that's the guy who wrote about the stalking and raping of a child). And though there are many moments of humour, I don't disagree with them. There is something undeniably sad about this book, too.

Maybe it is sad because this man is so deluded, so wrapped up in fictions. Maybe it is the way he allows himself to be deceived, and the ways others take advantage of this chance at deception. But I think, personally, that it is sad because none of it is real. Don Quixote wants something admirable, to do good, defend the weak and defeat the bad guys, but it is all in his naive imagination.

I don't know what was truly intended by the ending but, unlike some, I don't see it as a final victory. Instead I see it as a sad loss of something important. Either way, I am glad to have finally read this book. We can argue about interpretations, but Don Quixote's impact on western literature cannot be overstated.

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When I read excerpts of Don Quixote in high school, which I think must be a requisite for any Spanish language class taken by anybody ever, I was astounded that something so seemingly banal could be as wildly popular and possess such longevity as this book is and does. At the time, I did not find Don Quixote to be anything more than a bumbling fool chasing imaginary villains and falling into easily avoidable situations, and the forced hilarity that would ensue seemed to be of the same kind I recognized in farcical skits performed by eegits like The Three Stooges.

But I suspected there was something more to Don Quixote than what my 14 year-old impressions were telling me, and I’m glad I finally read this book in its entirety. Having done so, I’ve discovered that Don Quixote is not a bumbling idiot—far from it, in fact. He is highly intelligent, highly perceptive and observant, and most surprisingly, and in spite of his delusions of being a knight errant, he is actually also highly self-aware. The combination of these traits makes him one of the most interesting characters in literature, and if it weren’t for his fallibility in misinterpreting reality (to put it nicely), the brilliance of Don Quixote would be elevated to unapproachable levels.

Putting the characters aside, though, I have to say that the storytelling here is simply superb. When reading an English translation, I never know whether credit for this ought to be awarded to the author or to the translator (or to both!), but nonetheless this is the kind of writing that just pulls a reader along effortlessly. Each episodic adventure rolls seamlessly into the next and even while the subject of many of these adventures covers similar ground—a maiden who has been dishonored by her man is one such theme, for example—it never seems recycled.

Don Quixote is actually comprised of two volumes written about a decade apart. Historically speaking, there was an erroneous book published in between Cervantes’s own two works under the pretense of being the “real” volume two of the tale of Don Quixote, but was attributed to an unidentified author with the pseudonym Avellaneda. It is likely that this fake version lit a match under Cervantes, and what I love about this little piece of history is that when Cervantes actually completes his authentic second volume, it is riddled with allusions to Avellaneda’s deceptive book, and these allusions become so ingrained in the text that it becomes difficult to separate fact from fiction. At one point Don Quixote meets someone who claims to know him, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the claimant has actually met Avellaneda’s Don Quixote, and the real Don Quixote is horrified that someone should have the audacity, not just to impersonate him, but to do such a horrible job impersonating him, that he goes to great lengths (and yes, we’re talking about the character here) to prove to anyone and everyone that he is the real Don Quixote. He even changes his itinerary to avoid a city that the fake Don Quixote purportedly goes to, just to make it clear that Avellaneda is a lying whore and cannot be trusted. Metafictional stuff like that can be pretty entertaining in its own right, but the fact that it was implemented in a book written over four hundred years ago just makes it all the more mind blowing, or at least it does to me.

All in all, I had a hard time letting go of DQ when I finished this book. It turns out I really fell for the guy.

To compensate for an unliterary childhood (no furtive torch readings of Alice under the duvet until the wee hours for me), I hit the universities to read English Literature, which I failed to study, focusing instead on the local record shop and depression. To compensate for an unliterary literature degree, I ramped up the reading to more sensible levels, and began an ongoing passionate marriage with the written word: a marriage of comfortable convenience spiced up from time to time with trips into mindblowing orgasmic delight. As I leave my twenties, a mostly intolerable decade, survived thanks to all the books on my ‘read’ shelf, I raise a virtual muglet of hemlock to the written word and to Goodreads (which has steadily declined over the years, sadly, and not because of the users), and this masterpiece, the final orgasmic delight of this decade of life, the sort of novel that arrives once in a while and reinforces the most important thing: transcending the shittiness of existence through the soma of language. Cheers, pals!