Absolutely superb.

While ostensibly about Don Quixote, the lectures are broader than that, dealing also with elements of literary criticism. While perhaps best known as the author of Lolita, Nabokov's critical essays (he has several books of lectures, including one on Russian literature among others).

But these lectures on Don Quixote take a fresh look at a novel which has received a great deal of criticism in the past, much of which Nabokov considers misguided.

Those who have read, or reading, or plan to read DQ will find these lectures add greatly to their enjoyment of the book. Even when one doesn't agree with Nabokov, he requires one to think about his views, which can be nothing but a good thing.

If you read Don Quixote all the way through, you may be very surprised by what you may find. (See my review.) Nabokov, master of craft, with cunning wit, and direct and determinate views lays bare all.

There is considerable wit and sophistication in this series of lectures which Nabokov diligently prepared. There are considerable footnotes, which were asides (sometimes hilarious, and often very insightful) which Nabokov prepared as alternate material if his lecture started running a head of the clock.

A double vision delight, reading one book while reading the insights of a master novelist on it.

I liked Nabokov's lectures on Don Quixote. I don't read or speak Spanish and could not grasp why the work is considered the first modern novel. Nabokov analyzes it in terms of the plot, knight-errant culture, other contemporary writers who were copying Cervantes, and what it was like to be living in the century Cervantes wrote the book. To me this was fascinating. I knew that I would not get all the jokes based specifically on the Spanish language, so I gave up trying to read an English translation. Nabokov opened up a window for me to understand Cervantes.

The majority of this book is just a summary of the novel. I don’t think Nabokov adds much in his lectures, except to point out some minor details and highlight the cruelty played for laughs throughout. I would recommend reading this only if you don’t plan on reading Cervantes or want a refresher. The chapter-by-chapter quotation-heavy recapitulations that make up most of this book do a good job of jogging the memory or giving you a sense of the major beats if you aren’t engaging with the roughly thousand pages of the original.

Vladimir Nabokov realiza un estupendo análisis del Quijote (El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha de1605 y la Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha de 1615 del español Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra).

Este libro reúne las notas que preparó Nabokov que le sirvieron para dictar clases sobre el Quijote en la Universidad de Harvard donde ejerció como profesor visitante en el semestre de primavera del año académico 1951 - 1952.

Según la opinión de Harry Levin, profesor principal del segundo semestre dedicado a la Novela, el Quijote era el punto de partida lógico para hablar de evolución de la novela. Nabokov estaba de acuerdo con él y empezó a preparar sus lecciones.

Nabokov estructuró sus lecciones en cinco capítulos: 1) Dos retratos: Don Quijote y Sancho Panza; 2) Cuestiones de estructura; 3) Engaño y crueldad; 4) El tema del cronista, Dulcinea y la muerte; 5) Victorias y Derrotas.

He aquì algunas citas del autor:

Sobre 1) Dos retratos: Don Quijote y Sancho Panza:

Dice Nabokov: «Estoy pensando sobre todo en la primera parte de la obra, pues en la segunda se observan algunos cambios extraños en el carácter de don Quijote: Junto a lapsos de lucidez conoce lapsos de miedo. Asì que subrayarìamos de nuevo el dato de su coraje aboluto olvidàndonos, por asì decirlo, de cierta escena de la segunda parte donde tiembla de miedo porque su cuarto se llena de gatos. Pero en conjunto es, entre los caballeros andantes, el màs valiente y el màs enamorado de cuantos hubo en el mundo. No tiene malicia; es confiado como un niño. Hasta el punto de que su puerilidad destaca a veces quizà màs de lo que prentendìa destacarla su creador. Cuando un cierto giro de la novela, en el capìtulo 25 de la primera parte, se le ocurre hacer "locuras" como penitencia -"locuras" premeditadas a sumar sobre su locura normal, digamos"-, demuestra una imaginaciòn de escolar bastante limitada en materia de barrabasadas»,

Sobre Sancho Panza, dice Nabokov: «el sutil e inspirado crìtico español Salvador de Madariaga ve en Sancho una especie de transposición de don Quijote en otra clave. Es cierto que ya al final de la obra los dos parecen intercambiarse sueños y destinos, pues es Sancho el que vuelve a su aldea en èxtasis de aventuras, con la cabeza llena de esplendores, y es don Quijote el que le dice secamente: "Dèjate desas sandeces". De modo que podrìamos decir que Sancho, vigoroso y viril por temperamento, presto a la ira y atemperado por la experiencia, rehuye los combates desiguales e inùtiles no porque sea un pusilànime, sino porque es un guerrero màs cauto que don Quijote».

Sobre 2) Cuestiones de estructura:

Dice Nabokov: «Pero antes unas consideraciones generales. Se ha dicho del Quijote que es la mejor novela de todos los tiempos. Eso es una tonterìa, por supuesto. La realidad es que no es ni siquiera una de las mejores del mundo, pero su protagonista, cuya personalidad es una invención genial de Cervantes, se cierne de tal modo sobre el horizonte de la literatura, coloso flaco sobre un jamelgo enteco, que el libro vive y vivirá gracias a la auténtica vitalidad que Cervantes ha insuflado en el personaje central de una historia muy deshilvanada y chapucera, que solo se tiene en pie porque la maravillosa intuición artìstica de su creador hace entrar en acción a don Quijote en los momentos oportunos del relato.»

Sobre 3) Engaño y crueldad:


Dice Nabokov: «Las dos partes del Quijote componen una auténtica enciclopedia de la crueldad. Desde ese punto de vista, es uno de los libros más amargos y bárbaros de todos los tiempos. Y su crueldad es artìsitica.»


Sobre: 4) El tema del cronista, Dulcinea y la muerte:


Dice Nabokov: «Como ustedes recordarán, antes enumeré diez puntos o aspectos en relación con la estructura del libro que nos ocupa. Algunos, como el uso que hace Cervantes de citas de romances y de dichos populares, o sus juegos de palabras, solo fue posible mencionarlos de pasada porque no podemos palpar el texto original a través de los estratos superpuestos de una traducción, por buena que sea. Nos detuvimos un par de minutos en otros puntos, como el arte excelente de los diálogos de la obra y el convecionalismo pseudopoético de sus descripciones de la naturaleza. Señalé el hecho de que, en la evolución de la literatura, la personalidad del entorno sensual ha ido muy a la zaga de la personalidad del habla humana.»

«Ahora va a ocurrir una cosa muy curiosa. Mientras Cervantes anda inventando encantadores que supuestamente han escrito su libro, y mientras dentro del libro don Quijote anda peleándose con encantadores salidos de los libros de caballerías, Cervantes -el autor real- se da de manos a boca con un encantador en el nivela de la llamada "vida real". Y va a servirse de esa circunstancia como instrumento particular para divertir al lector»


Sobre: 5) Victorias y Derrotas:


Dice Nabokov: «de los cuarenta episodiso en los que don Quijote hace de caballero andante, que esos episodios revelan ciertos elementos de estructura artística admirables, un cierto equilibrio y una cierta unidad; impresiones que no serían posibles si todos sus encuentros hubieran acabado en derrota para él. En sus cuarenta encuentros, don Quijote tiene que habérselas con muy diversos seres y artilurgios.»

Nabokov destaca por su sensibilidad artística y su gran imaginación creativa, en ese sentido, en este capítulo presenta a las batallas de don Quijote como un largo juego de tenis (!), con sus victorias y derrotas sumando puntos para ganar o perder sets. ¿Podrà don Quijote ganar el partido a sus enemigos?


Asimismo el libro contiene narración y comentario que realizó Nabokov del Quijote (ambas partes, la de 1605 y 1615, que sirve como un recordatorio de todas las aventuras). Además se añaden dos apéndices sobre pasajes de Novelas de caballerías (se tratan de Le Morte d'Arthur de sir Thomas Malory y Amadís de Gaula de Vasco Lobeira) que Nabokov tenía a la mano para complementar sus lecciones. 


Finalmente el libro contiene imágenes de los manuscritos de Nabokov y una sección de notas explicativas.


Recomendable para quien disfrute de conocer más sobre Don Quijote.

Do not have much value if you have already read Nabhokov's 'Lectures on Literature'.

Nabokov jako wykładowca i autor wykładów sprawdził się dobrze. Jego wykłady o Don Kichocie - bohaterze Cervantesa, którego Nabokova początkowo nie znosił - są świetne.

This book was amazing. Nabokov was forced to lecture on Don Quixote in order to teach for a semester at Harvard, but he went into it with a total disdain for the book. So what did he do? He went through it with the finest-toothed comb you could possibly imagine, took copious and meticulous notes, and came out of it with a much greater respect and admiration for Cervantes' work.

I wasn't the hugest fan of DQ when I finished it, either, so I figured I'd take up some scholarly works to see if I could get a better respect. Needless to say, this was absolutely perfect to do that. Obviously, you wouldn't want to read this if you haven't read DQ itself, but I really enjoyed this book.

Some years ago when I betook myself to read Don Quixote, I came away from it disappointed. Book I seemed to be most of what was promised, but by the end of Book 2 I was unhappy with the constant beatings of the protagonist and the general level of cruel behavior. I never did a review of Don Quixote, thinking I was missing something everyone else understood. With my take on the Don, it was a huge relief to read that in the opinion of a great thinker, multi-lingual author of important novels, and lecturer, Don Quixote is needlessly cruel, violent and not the best in great literature. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Don Quixote let me know I was on to something.

For example I think that Don Quixote is the literary progenitor of terrorism. The essence of terrorism is that the world is only an image, designed to seduce and that random violence in the name of purification, of the self or the world is to do holy work. The Don is self-deluded. He believes that what he sees is the work of an evil enchanter and can be made better by the use of the sword and lance. The injured are deserving of their injuries and the injuries suffered are cleansing.

Re-consider the famous Tilting at Windmills. The world as an image produced by evil enchanters. The windmills are evil not because they are evil but because someone wanting to create a more perfect world needs to see them as evil enchantments. And so seeing, it targeted. And somehow this madman’s attack is romantic? Try something I have never heard anyone suggest: View the attack from the POV of the windmill owners. That family must pay for any damages and suffer the loss of whatever wheat is not ground to flour and so the trail of damages accumulates long after this famous ‘comic turn’. Once the incident is over, and the windmill is back in service-or is it forever stigmatized as possessed or a symbol of evil?

Where this the only case of innocence people more or less randomly assaulted the windmills would be just that, an incident. Instead the books contain nearly continuous acts of that random violence in the name of abstract ideas and not to produce a definition of madness; but as is a justification of violence to make the world a more perfect place.

Vast parts of book 2 of the Don Adventures might be slap stick to some but to me it is people bleeding and broken. Too often in the name of elaborate, designed to be harmful jokes, run on a man who we are supposed to believe is at minimum innocent and at most sincerely believing in hisown goodness. Slap stick ends somewhere between lost teeth, bleeding faces and being blasted and burned. Legitimate slap stick does not leave the victim bed ridden for weeks.

Lest someone accuse me or Nabokov of binary thinking. There are more choices than terrible and great. The Don has pride of place as one of if not the first modern novel. I suspect that it was not the first but the first to survive the market place of time and this is a mark of greatness. Nabokov admires much that is admirable in Cervantes’s novel, but VN’s job was to provide six lectures, at Harvard U no less, of critical analysis, he would have been derelict had he not pointed to both the best and the less than.

For example Nabokov reminds us that much of the violence and romanticism was in keeping with the named songs of the great Knights errant. From this light some fraction of the violence was part of the satire. Up to the reader is how much was in service of satire and how much was just violence.
At the lower end of Nabokov’s analysis are the occasions when the story line conflicts with itself: Sancho’s’ mule is stolen from him and returns absent explanation. People finish dinner, then an adventure and sit down to dinner. Some of these situations hardly matter except as a reminder that editing was not the profession it would become before being gutted by the profit motive.

I have read other literary lectures by Nabokov. I do not get exactly why he was fixated with the geography of the fiction writer or why he chooses to criticize Cervantes for being bad at geography. It is hard to believe that even a contemporary Spanish reader picked up on the errors in the fictionalized Spain of the Woeful Knights wanderings.

There is much to learn or to add to your understanding of the great early Novel, Don Quixote by reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Don Quixote. However even this should be read critically. It is not Nabokov at his best but just as the original has its limitations, so too does parts of these lectures.

Included in the published edition are extensive notes by Nabokov intended as outside reading for his students. Reading these will help to prove that VN does respect his subject and acknowledges its greatness. He also is honest enough to state when a passage or chapter is filling.

Respeto su opinión incorrecta pero no la comparto.

A Vladimir no le gustó mucho el quijote

Es un curso sumamente fantástico para todo tipo de lector; para los que quieran conocer El Quijote como para los que ya lo han leído. La seriedad, entusiasmo y talento pedagógico de Nabokov lo hacen único. Su método tan poco convencional difumina completamente todas las sombras que puedan ocultar la realidad sobre el libro de Cervantes. Dejando en evidencia lo verdaderamente rescatable como lo es y será siempre su personaje principal: don Quijote de la Mancha.