Don Quixote Quixotically Distilled

If you haven't read Don Quixote and plan to, this is your spoiler alert.

If you have, please feel free to comment with your thoughts on this 'first modern novel' and my summary to save those in the first category who value their time.

Rather quixotically, I decided to read the classic novel 'Don Quixote'?for these two reasons:

1. It is considered to be the 'first modern novel' (written in the early 17th century).
2. I wanted to?understand the deeper meaning?of the wonderful word quixotic (having boldly used it in a 26-word list in Hard Facts about Soft Skills for youth).

As I set out on my reading journey, I had no idea quite what a peregrination it would be. In fact, I have to admit (with mild shame) that, until I started the journey, I had no idea what the word ‘peregrination’ even meant! And now I have?Miguel De Cervantes (the author) and Edith Grossman (the translator) to thank for figuratively and literally introducing me to the meaning of this and 70 other new words.

Having set a personal goal of reading twelve books in 2018, which is quite a feat for a fickle reader like me, I was storming along with nine under my belt by June. Then I picked up Don Quixote – and fast-forward four months I've just finished it.

I loved it and I hated it. Here’s why...

The story is told in two parts, and over what seems like an infinite number of chapters. Working through Part One, the reader is introduced to a provincial sad-sack of a chap (Don Quixote of Mancha, who believes he is a Knight Errant with the purpose of saving people from misfortune and villainy) and his (for some unclear reason) faithful companion Sancho Panza, the Knight's Squire.

The protagonist’s real family name is thought to be Quexana, before he gives himself the name Don Quixote. He’s a 50-year-old "man-of-all-work"?who is?"a remarkable sight: tall, scrawny, lean, sallow, wearing tight-fitting clothes, awkward, and not at all graceful". He has a housekeeper and a niece but no other family. He's also patently deranged. He creates a persona,?Lady Dulcinea of Toboso, based on a?very attractive, if not "beauteous" peasant girl from a nearby village whose real name is Aldonza Lorenzo "with whom he had once been in love, although she, apparently, never knew or noticed". Quixote has moments of lucid genius, but get him on the topic of chivalric pursuits and he becomes as unhinged as an abandoned farmhouse’s front gate.

Sancho is wise to Quixote's madness, and oscillates between calling him out for it and feeding into it. He tries but fails to help Quixote see his armoured helmet for what it really is (a barber’s basin, and not "the helmet of Mambrino"), yet he creates a lie that Lady Dulcinea has been enchanted and now looks like a peasant girl. Eventually he reveals his insights in a letter to his long-suffering?wife, Theresa Panza, when he says "I've heard in this land that Don Quixote, my master, is a sane madman and an amusing fool, and that I'm just as good as he is". Quixote describes Panza to an acquaintance by observing that "when he is hungry, he seems something of a glutton because he eats quickly and chews voraciously, but he is always perfectly clean.". The truth is that Sancho is a gluttonous, proverb-ridden and avaricious character who is both simple yet wise.

Each chapter has?its own intriguing, yet similarly themed sub-heading, with a standout being "Chapter LXII - Which relates the adventure of the enchanted head, as well as other foolishness that must be recounted". And each chapter?unfolds in a similar fashion: there's an encounter with other people, Don Quixote behaves oddly or misinterprets a situation, it gets quite bizarre, and then the chapter ends.

The reader is left with a view that Don Quixote needs to give up his "punctilious defense of chivalric decorum" to live a simple life at home, and that Sancho Panza needs to help him get there and then get on with caring for his own family.

In an early chapter, the experience a farmer has when meeting Quixote is not dissimilar to my experience in reading the book: "he despaired at hearing such an enormous amount of foolishness; in this way he realized [Don Quixote] was mad, and he hurried... to rid himself of the impatience Don Quixote provoked in him with his long-winded harangue.". Many of the characters Quixote meets are left impatiently furious with his deranged acts and speech, with one rightly observing "this gentleman must have a few vacant chambers in his head.".

The rambling story includes tales of "beauteous maidens", of requited and unrequited love, and of the imaginary Lady Dulcinea of Toboso, to whom all Don Quixote's exploits are dedicated. We are?treated to some?sage (and strangely contemporary) advice from beauteous?maidens such as "beauty in the chaste woman is like a distant fire or sharp-edged sword: they do not burn or cut the person who does not approach them", and "the lover of the beautiful thing might be ugly, and since ugliness is worthy of being avoided, it is absurd for anyone to say: ‘I love you because you are beautiful; you must love me even though I am ugly.’".

Later in the book, Quixote is challenged by another Knight Errant (The Knight of the White Moon)?over a?"question of precedence in beauty" between his own Lady Dulcinea and the challenger's Lady. Quixote wins the duel, restoring Dulcinea's place at the top of the beauteous ladder.

Despite the madness of Don Quixote and the repetition of his adventures in Part One, there are some memorable phrases and laugh-out-loud moments including these treats:

• "the concoction took effect, and the poor squire began to erupt from both channels" - after Sancho consumed a balm Quixote had made to assist their recovery from a beating they took. TMI in today’s world.
• "Tell it however you wish, fate has willed that I cannot help listening to you, and so continue." - talking about his inability to escape the ramblings Sancho enjoyed
• "And the best thing about her is that she’s not a prude. In fact, she’s something of a trollop: she jokes with everybody and laughs and makes fun of everything." - Sancho irreverently describing Dulcinea of Toboso just before invoking Quixote’s ire.
• "To become distinguished in letters costs time, sleepless nights, hunger, nakedness, headaches, bouts of indigestion, and other things of this sort" - Quixote (accurately) waxing lyrical about what sacrifices you need to make to graduate from university.
• "I also saw that the number of simpleminded men is greater than that of the prudent, and though it is better to be praised by a few wise men and mocked by many fools, I do not wish to subject myself to the confused judgment of the presumptuous mob, who tend to be the ones who read these books." - says a Canon who attempts to dissuade Quixote from chivalric books and practices.
• This interchange between Sancho and Quixote after the Knight has been caged for some time:

????????????????Sancho: "have you had the desire and will to pass what they call major and minor waters?”

????????????????Quixote: “I do not understand what you mean by passing waters, Sancho; speak more clearly if you want me to respond in a straightforward way.”

????????????????Sancho: “Is it possible that your grace doesn’t understand what it means to pass minor or major waters? Even schoolboys know that. Well, what I mean is, have you had the desire to do the thing nobody else can do for you?”

• "Casildea of Vandalia, the cruelest lady in the world, and the hardest to stomach, but indigestibility isn’t her greatest fault" - the author's description of one of the book’s many beauteous maidens.
• Explaining that a male character wasn't chosen for marriage as he was "better endowed by nature than by fortune".

Sancho's occasional genius and eloquence?at times even?take Quixote (and the reader) by surprise; once when Quixote is so moved by it he cries "Devil take you for a peasant! What intelligent things you say sometimes!".

But on multiple other occasions, Sancho is slammed.?“Madman, what are you saying? Have you lost your mind?” and in chastising Sancho for accusing someone of being a harlot "Oh, base, lowborn, wretched, rude, ignorant, foul-mouthed, ill-spoken, slanderous, insolent varlet!". A Part?Two?character who has had forewarning of Sancho's mental capacity is still shocked on meeting him and left viewing him as?"one of the most solemn simpletons of our day".

Eventually, the simple yet somehow wise squire?gets under Quixote's skin sufficiently to warrant this blast: "Force the proverbs in, string them together one after another on a thread! No one will stop you! My mother punishes me and I deceive her! I tell you to avoid proverbs, and in an instant you have come out with a litany of them that have as much to do with what we are discussing as the hills of úbeda. Look, Sancho, I am not saying that an appropriate proverb is wrong, but loading and stringing together proverbs any which way makes your conversation lifeless and lowborn.".

There are several interpolated novels within this book, which provide the reader some respite if not relief from the madness. One titled "The Novel of the Man Who Was Recklessly Curious" is an interesting tale of a paranoid lover and the extent to which he is prepared to go to ruin his bromance and romance. Later in the novel, it is?explained?that the author's fake author (Cide Hamete, a character that Cervantes introduces in various chapters as the author of the book)?almost didn't get his work?translated because the translator found the novel was too "dry and limited" and that "in order to circumvent this difficulty, in the first part he had used the device of some novels, such as The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious and The Captive Captain". That tactic certainly works.

By the Second Part’s Prologue, the author is poking fun at the reader by?referring to us as "illustrious or perhaps plebeian" people, who "would like me to call [Quixote] an ass, a fool, an insolent dolt, but the thought has not even entered my mind". At this point it’s been 450 pages and 52 chapters, and likely most readers are there already.

Part Two?gets a little recursive as the author starts talking about a knock-off version of Part?One that is in the wild, and characters are introduced who have already read Part?One?and learnt of Quixote's exploits.?The author even observes?that "some people say: ‘Second parts were never very good,’ and others say: ‘What’s been written about Don Quixote is enough,’ there is some doubt there will be a second part; but certain people who are more jovial than saturnine say: ‘Let’s have more quixoticies: let Don Quixote go charging and Sancho Panza keep talking, and whatever else happens, that will make us happy.’ ”. The reader is left to decide which camp they are in, and abandon or push on (it could safely be assumed 50% do each).

Early on in Part Two, a father gives his Quixote-perplexed son the following advice, which doubles as subtle guidance from Cervantes to his reader who by now is trying to make sense of Quixote’s intelligent insanity: "I don’t know what to tell you, I can say only that I have seen him do things worthy of the greatest madman in the world, and heard him say things so intelligent that they wipe out and undo his mad acts: speak to him, and explore what he knows, and since you are clever, you’ll make a reasonable judgment regarding his cleverness or foolishness, though to tell you the truth, I think he’s more mad than sane." adding "he is a combination madman who has many lucid intervals…he is a gallant madman, and I would be a weak-minded fool if I didn't think so".

Part Two features a couple who are surely history’s ultimate pranksters: The Duke and Duchess, who invite Quixote and Sancho to their estate and host them there for days and weeks. They play daily tricks on their visitors, to the point that the reader’s frustration with Quixote and Sancho’s naivety is supplanted by anger at the host’s evilness. Sancho even gets appointed governor of an outpost, in a prank that last days before he abandons his post. But it's all for the estate's (and reader’s) entertainment, and both certainly get their money's worth.??

Eventually escaping without a clue that they'd been subjects of a pre-camera world’s Candid Camera set, Quixote overhears a conversation in a room next to his at an inn where?one?subject asks another "why does your grace want us to read this nonsense? Whoever has read the first part of the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha cannot possibly derive any pleasure from reading this second part.". At page 845 and without a sign of an ending, the reader is likely to be found agreeing. But then the other subject remarks "Even so,?it would be nice to read it because there’s no book so bad that it doesn’t have something good in it.", and the reader's roller-coaster ride goes on.?

As the book approaches its inevitable (and much welcomed) end, and "melancholy and low spirits" are said to be?drawing?Quixote's life to a close, Sancho takes up the self-flagellation challenge laid down by Merlin (during an earlier 'enchanted' experience Quixote has) in order to disenchant Lady Dulcinea (who you'll remember Sancho lied about being enchanted). Having spent plenty of time sensibly avoiding his burden, Sancho finally starts flogging himself, but then cheats his way out of completing the 3300 lashes.

In his final days, Quixote wakes from a long fever?to?announce "My judgment is restored, free and clear of the dark shadows of ignorance imposed on it by my grievous and constant reading of detestable books of chivalry. I now recognize their absurdities and deceptions, and my sole regret is that this realization has come so late it does not leave me time to compensate by reading other books that can be a light to the soul."

And I am left wondering whether the four months it took me to wade through this book have delayed my reading of other books from my reading list, and whether this one had been a light to the soul.

I now define ‘Quixotic’ to mean: capable of being seen as crazy or ingenious, depending on your view point.

The last words belong to Cervantes: "it was his great good fortune to live a madman, and die sane."