Reading the Classics discussion

This week we will read and discuss chapters 12-21 of Don Quixote. I look forward to more discussion of our noble knight and his comedic adventures.

For some reason, it was kind of a slog for me to get through Chapters 12 to 14. Maybe it was due to the long blocks of text that felt kind of like it rambled on (even though I know in many instances that’s intentional by Cervantes especially when it’s Quixote doing the rambling), but it’s still hard for me to focus on what is really being said especially when I feel like the purpose is that nothing is really being said at all.

The story of Marcela and Griostomo just didn’t really interest me. I wonder if anybody else had similar thoughts. I would love somebody to change my mind.

On the contrary I found the story to be an interesting sideline. The author skilfully veils his own 'history' by using several narrators. Similarly, the story of Marcela is warped by people. She is seen as a little cruel and weird, then downright evil. IMO she isn't as bad as the people say — her defence of herself is well reasoned. Chrysostom (he is called Chrysostom in Ormsby — why?) was really a sentimental old fool who should have been more practical and less romantic and it isn't Marcela's fault — she isn't a coquette and never encouraged him. She shouldn't be kept at home for her beauty — she never asked for it. So the story is told by an unreliable narrator to point out how different people's perception of the truth can be. The same can be applied to Don Quixote's story. This makes Don Quixote open to different interpretations but we may never know the truth — that perhaps only lies with Don Quixote who is in no fit state to tell it out as he is delusional (or is he?).

In my edition, a line in Chapter XV that I can't stop laughing at from our friend Pancho Sanza - "If this mishap of ours was one of those that can be cured with a couple of plasters it wouldn't be so bad, but I'm beginning to think that all the bandages in a hospital aren't going to be enough to even begin to sort us two out. "