Book #77: Don Quixote

Book #77: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (translated by John Ormsby)

March 11, 2014


I am thrilled that I can finally say that I have read Don Quixote. It's a lengthy book, and so I was hesitate to start it, especially when I've been so busy lately. But I recently decided that my full-time teaching position has put me in a financially advantageous situation, at least enough so that I could finally feel comfortable quitting my other part-time job. A tutoring job; while I'll miss some of the people I work with, and some of the interactions with the kids, the disadvantages of working there have recently come to outweigh the advantages, especially since they don't pay that great and I'm making okay money now. So that will free up some time for reading, and maybe having a social life at some point.

Anyway, with my busy schedule it took me a little while to get into Don Quixote (the full title is The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha), but over the last couple of weeks I've taken my own good advice and have been reading when I might instead have been watching TV. And even the few times that I flipped the TV on and checked the channels, none of the reruns and shit looked nearly as good to me as reading more of the book. I absolutely loved it; I don't tend to gush on these blog posts, but I think Don Quixote may be one of my new favorite books of all time.

Most people are familiar with this story, because it's such an old book. Cervantes was around in the very early 1600s, just after the time of Shakespeare. Much of the first part of the book, and some of the second, reminded me of Shakespeare's comedies, with the coincidences and the "happy endings." See, in the first part of the book, the knight-errant Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza (one of the best, best, very best characters in literature of all time) found themselves mixed up in a lot of people's business. Their travels and their encounters with other people allowed them to more or less accidentally leading these people to resolving their issues. So even though Don Quixote is a joke as a knight (the most famous scene, of him fighting the windmills that he fancies to be giants, happens within the first few chapters), he brings more happiness than trouble ('and that not a little') to the people that he meets, in his bumbling way.

Cervantes published this book in two volumes, of course, about ten years apart. The first one, which ended with Don Quixote being tricked into going home in a cage by his well-meaning friends, was, I take it, a smashing success. Cervantes created a pretend author for both volumes, a "Moor" (African) named Cide Hamete Benengeli, acting as if he himself were merely the translator for the story. In the second part, when Don Quixote and Sancho set out again for more adventures (their third and last "sally," having taken two separate trips in the first part), their fame has spread due to Benengeli's fictitious (but of course, Cervantes's very real) Part One. Then, in the last quarter of the story, there's frequent mention of a "fake" second volume, not written by Benengeli but someone else, and Don Quixote and others frequently criticize it as being a fake; a young damsel who plays a trick on Don Quixote even tells him that she saw devils tearing it to pieces in hell. I began to wonder if someone had really had the audacity (even in an age where copyright laws did not exist) to steal Cervantes's characters, and produce a cheap knockoff sequel in the style of a straight-to-video, unnecessary sequel to a blockbuster hit. But when I checked Google after finishing the book today, I saw that this was so! And Cervantes even calls the other guy out by name. He works this fake book into the story, and it steers the plot in some ways, which I found very interesting. Real life critics have written off the fake Part Two as being awful, unfit to stand next to Part One. And Part Two was even better.

I don't want to say too much here, so I'll just add a bit more here about Sancho and then leave off, in hopes that anyone who reads this who has never read Don Quixote will go and pick it up (I don't think John Ormby's translation is bad at all, but I've heard that some newer versions are great as well) and read it for themselves. Even just one little adventure or mishap at a time; this book would be absolutely appropriate to enjoy over a long stretch, just enjoying in intervals.

Sancho is a brilliant character, and I felt like he was easier to connect with than crazy yet intelligent Don Quixote. Don't get me wrong, I love Don Quixote; Cervantes has me convinced that he was, indeed, a kind gentleman; not only that, I admire how he goes after what he wants. I read that over the centuries, different popular views of the novel have been taken. I'm of the view that in some ways, Don Quixote did have the right idea. People played tricks on him and made him look like a fool, to be sure, but none of that touched him...he was perfectly content to be a crazy knight. But Sancho is very human. He is not just the portly sidekick; he has a mind for his base needs first (his food and his sleep, of course), but who doesn't? He's practical in many ways, even though he does follow along with Don Quixote's delusions (though he pretty much knows that his master is crazy...it was debated, at least a couple of times in the book, if this did not make Sancho crazier than Don Quixote himself). But Sancho wasn't crazy, just loyal. Greedy, sure, but when his desires to be a governor, a man of power, were fulfilled (even in pretend, not that he knew this), he realized that power isn't such a great thing, after all. He also proved his practicality and shrewdness, much to everyone's surprise. Cervantes clearly loved Sancho, to make him the one who, in the end, learned the most (he was especially clever in fooling Don Quixote, on only a couple of occasions and only in their own best interests). Don Quixote's ending is sad, but I won't get into it here. I love this book. Everyone should read it. The end.

P.S. Okay, I lied a bit. I read over the above post and thought, well, no, that's not the end. I do want to make a couple of comments about the gender and racial issues of this book. Not to criticize or downplay the value of it; if anything, it stands as a piece of history, and reflects the cultural attitudes of Cervantes, and perhaps many people in Spain at the time. See, I don't know much about Spanish history, about it's involvement with the Middle East and Africa and all that. I know that Spain had the best sailors in the world; there are some details in the book about the use of 'galley slaves,' and apparently Cervantes himself served time as one. Sounds miserable...it's crazy to think that a man could go from such an awful situation, to having written one of the greatest novels of all time. Indeed, Part Two is called the "first modern novel" by some.

Okay, but the issues that I want to address are these. First off, all of the women in the book who are "good" or whatever are always beautiful. Like, drop dead gorgeous. Every last one of them...unless, of course, Cervantes just really, really liked women. But damn, a woman has to be beautiful in order to be worth anything? I was tempted to say, well, fuck you, Cervantes. But that's not quite it. It's more like, wow, history has not been kind to my gender. But in Part Two, there are some women who are a little more than pretty faces, like the young woman who mistakenly shot her boyfriend and killed him when she was tricked into thinking he was cheating on her. Or Altisidora, the young damsel living in the duchess's house (another interesting character, but crazy herself, along with her husband), who tricked Don Quixote into thinking that she'd loved him, and that his unkindness to her had killed her. I mean, besides describing the "good" women as being beautiful, and deserving of the happy endings that they receive, I didn't find Cervantes to be overly sexist...I mean, not for someone living in the early 17th century.

Also, the same gender arguments could be made in regards to Shakespeare's work; I don't wonder much if Cervantes was inspired by him. Also, the same arguments about race. Cervantes, in some parts of the story, describes the decrees that expelled 'Moriscos" (black people in Spain). This had been done between as Cervantes was writing Part Two, so of course it was a contemporary issue. Cervantes, overall, seems to praise the decree, but through the character Ricote, expresses that converts should be permitted to stay, and that perhaps the Inquisition has been overzealous in that respect. Cervantes even makes his fake author, Benengeli, a Muslim. So I'd say again, that for a Catholic living in Spain the early 17th century, Cervantes was fairly moderate in his political views. That's progressive, I guess?

So again, this did not lessen my enjoyment of the book any more than the oppression of females in Victorian England doesn't hinder me from enjoying Jane Austen's works. It's helped to give me a bit of a perspective of Spanish history, if anything, and on the stereotypes of women present in even the greatest of works in history (and today, of course). And I do close this post by saying, long live Don Quixote and long live Sancho Panza.