Reading the Classics discussion

Discussion thread for Don Quixote revised Week 7. More fun and storytelling at the Castle! Or is it an Inn???

Is Don Quixote mad, a knight errant or a learned scholar - the discussions around and about him are open yet the interactions are always changing.

Is he not perhaps all three?

Yes, all three - that magic number three.

I was thinking - are we ever told how old Don Quixote is? I don't remember being told that. I get different impressions all through. Of course, Don Quixote's own madness makes him think himself much younger. I wish I had paid more attention to this.

L_Gail wrote: "Yes, all three - that magic number three.

I was thinking - are we ever told how old Don Quixote is? I don't remember being told that. I get different impressions all through. Of course, Don Quixot..."

An interesting question. I don't think we're explicitly told, tho I think of him as a grizzled old soul of early to mid 40s... beaten down by life, having crossed over from his bleak reality into the fever dream of the chivalric novels he's used as an emotional escape for years.

I imagined him probably around the same age. Maybe he's having a midlife crisis?

I just started Ch 41, but am finding the captive's story to be less captivating. I think I got lost with all the details of his slavery, though it was interesting to note that many of the details were taken from Cervante's own life.

Just finished C45 and I can say with certainty that I'm ready to see the last of the Inn and all its characters. I'm sure the plot develops from here, but the lunacy is starting to feel a bit repetitive and occasionally forced.

I finished book one. I am ready for Book Two. It is supposed to be more philosophical?? maybe

Just a reminder that this week (May 20-27) is a week off in the Cervantes schedule, time which can be used to just take a rest, read something else, catch up to where we are, catch up to L_Gail, or eat as many cheesesteaks as you possibly can over a 7-day period.

Feel free to continue the discussion. I'll finish up C46 tomorrow and drop some thoughts in here.

While the antics at the Inn have been jolly, it seems a little too good to be true that all these mad love affairs are worked out and wrapped up so neatly. It does seem almost ridiculous, but in a lighthearted way.

I did notice how all the women who arrive are so amazingly beautiful, each more beautiful than the last. And yet Don Quixote is not swayed by any of them as he pines for his Dulcinea. Remembering back to Sancho's description of her, she was rather burly and definitely not pretty! Does Cervantes add all these other beautiful ladies to emphasize Don Quixote's madness even more? Makes me wonder. The other characters have definitely written him off as a raving lunatic...

I think I am glad Dulcinea is beautiful in Don Quixote’s mind.

I am not too thrilled by cultures that can only value women if they are young and look like goddesses.

I have to admit, I have tired of all the “goddesses” in these stories.

Sign me old and sour.

Me too. I found these women rather dull and boring. And characterless. I didn't even feel like discussing them. I wondered if Cervantes was just parodying the way stories were written back then but there wasn't much to support this.

The entire book seems both a love letter to and a parody of the earlier tradition of chivalric novels. Cervantes admits this thru his own characters. Everything tying up nicely and neatly is a long convention of storytelling (and they lived happily ever after...). Dulcinea is 'real' within the story, but her beauty is part of Quixote's wider delusions.

Is Quixote mad for indulging his fantasies? Or is the world mad and drowning in its own drudgery? So far, I'm not sure Cervantes is condemning or even making fun of Quixote in this novel. It may be everyone else he's laughing at... perhaps even particularly Sancho, who seems to proceed with one foot in both worlds, unable or - arguably worse - unwilling to choose between his own fantasies (the promised insula!) and reality.

The novel is certainly a parody of chivalric novels, that is evident. Though I'm not sure about the story of Luscinda and Dorothea; it was a Shakespeare plot, right? That doesn't seem to fit if the story's intention is satire of Happily Ever After endings. I thought that the story really exemplified Don Quixote's madness — he is sidelined in his own history. There's a suspicious lack of mockery about the force-everything-happily-together ending. Anyway, I found the grovelling and sobbing of Dorothea and Don Fernando going unpunished in ch 41 rather putting off, but ofcourse the book is old so it's hardly a flaw :).

Is Quixote mad? In my opinion, mad in this world, but very sympathetically so. If not mad -- if the choice of bringing back chivalry was conscious -- at least hopelessly idealistic. The line between hopeless romantic idealism and madness is a thin one. But, strangely enough, to me, Don Quixote, too optimistic as he is, doesn't seem like a fool. The world appears cruelly cynical when one is sympathetic to Don Quixote, and after all, I felt his demand for the perfect world where everyone is honorable is not entirely unreasonable; we had been promised that frequently enough by philosophers and statesmen. Maybe not as perfect as he imagined -- and certainly not about the particulars he is concerned with, except for the perfect justice (as he would imagine perfect justice to be -- delivered by brave knights-errant), but the sentiment is still relatable. At one point I found myself saying that no loving God could let Don Quixote suffer as he did at times. These views are, of course, completely personal. So, Don Quixote doesn't seem to me all that stupid to long for the world he wants.

A more cynical view is that he is mad because he does expect too much and he should accept and adapt to the world the way it is and his failure to do so comes from his own weakness, (or maybe not even weakness; he is so kind, so noble, so thoroughly innocent that I'd expect the moment his utopia takes form in his head, the next moment he'd rush to execute it) which necessarily makes him mad. I'm stuck between wistful longing and sympathy for the sentiment he stands for and cynical amusement at his state. Nothing in between! Such an effective character -- in more ways than Cervantes intended!

Sancho; the middleman, Cervantes does laugh at him often enough. I wonder what he will choose.

Oh, and I'm sorry if it's too long to read.

How can Don Quixote's idealism be considered madness when all the love stories intersecting at the end tie up so perfectly? The impossibility of that happening so conveniently may be Cervante's way of showing that Don Quixote isn't really so mad after all.

*at the inn

I don't know. Perhaps Cervantes' little story could be meant to encourage idealism but somehow, I don't think so. Cervantes loves Quixote but he doesn't let him win; he always loses, he is in the wrong, he is the madman and he clarifies it while still sighing at his innocence. Frankly, I think the story is too vague to actually point to a concrete purpose. I'd call that a flaw.

Don Quixote's madness is, well, grey. The word 'mad' has a rigid feel to it; either you're mad or you aren't, and people's minds are not chess boards. They're grey and complex and contradictory, and Cervantes has left it vague enough for us to interpret it differently depending on our little eccentricities; to some he is a raving lunatic, to some a bit like an amusing cage animal (not many I hope!), to others an eccentric old man rising and dreaming greater dreams than the society dares, and to some a weak old man who should stop looking at the world with rose tinted glasses. I'm really looking forward to reading part 2 in Grossman's translation, maybe it'll turn out to be better than the one I read!

FWIW, I've been enjoying the Grossman translation.

The more we read, the more I think Quixote is mostly a construct or vehicle for the tying together of many different tales, much like Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights or the Narrator in Canterbury Tales. Cervantes weaves together many old stories into the fabric of his novel. Quixote feels like a plot device.