J.C.'s Reviews > Don Quixote

Back to work after the Christmas and New Year break, I found myself skimming over some of the lengthier accounts of the many and varied adventures happening to Don Quixote and his trusty squire Sancho, as they wend their way (on a bag-of-bones horse, Rozinante, and an ass, Dapple) in the sixteenth century, across the fields of Spain. This is “knight-errantry”, at least as far as the eponymous hero is concerned; Sancho is a bit more down-to-earth. Actually the copy on my shelves might have dated from that era. The pages crumbled away as I turned them; for weeks our house has been littered with tiny shreds of yellowed paper where the Don and I have traversed a later century together. I love old books. In his introduction, Henry Grattan Doyle points out that, while this translation by Peter Motteux is not always the most accurate one, it is “much closer in spirit and language to the time of Cervantes himself” and has “the magic power to transport the reader back across more than three centuries”. The richness of language, particularly with regard to the endless proverbs quoted by Sancho, is a joy to read.
For me this story is timeless. It is superbly entertaining (do read Fionnuala’s amazing review, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1578405363) but Quixote and Sancho in their erratic wanderings stand outside time, while Don Quixote’s adherence to a former chivalric age holds just as firm today, if not more so, in its nobility and integrity. Our knight errant is, by everyone around him, declared insane; but Cervantes plays with this theme of insanity as he does with everything else in the book, and is at pains to point out that Don Q’s insanity is only when he is in chivalric mode. On occasions when his knightly role is not is play he is accorded wisdom and wit. Sancho repeatedly asserts that he follows the adventurer only for what he can gain for himself and his family; but there is loyalty there to match the humouring and even humiliation of his master as he careers wildly about, mistaking windmills and the hammers of fulling-mills for giants and armies to be vanquished, and roadside inns for castles.
Whenever the story appears frivolous or nonsensical there underlie sentiments or themes that transcend the ages. Don Quixote’s beloved ‘Dulcinea del Toboso’ is the epitome of the beautiful and noble ideal, worth fighting for, worth dying for. As the Don veers dangerously into having his dream quenched by reality she is ‘transformed’ by the pragmatic and resourceful Sancho into “an ugly, rustic, wench”, whose restoration to her own ‘divine’ features then forms the basis of much of Don Quixote’s mission; but his love and loyalty to her remain steadfast. I wish I could say more about the end, but I can say only that as Part II unfolds (and the characters are far more developed) there is question of which of the two, Don Quixote or Sancho, is the more insane!
In Part II our heroes are picked up by a Duke and Duchess who take their own turn at humouring and humiliating the pair, in a much more sophisticated way. I found it interesting that this was much more unpalatable than previous pranks played upon them either for someone’s amusement or for their own good, in terms of getting Don Q to go home and be sensible. Elements of slapstick comedy are present throughout, but are indulged in at length, for instance, where Sancho’s trick of effecting Dulcinea’s ‘enchantment’ is turned on him in that he has to undergo a penance to achieve her disenchantment. It is really funny, though, when he manages to beat the nearby trees instead of himself, knowing full well, of course, that there never was any ‘enchantment’ of 'Dulcinea'. Tables are constantly being overturned in this novel, and there are so many aspects at play that it is no wonder it has kept readers entertained into another century beyond Henry Grattan Doyle. What was clear to me was that Cervantes had a jolly good time writing it. I wonder if it was the discovery that someone had written a follow-up that made him turn with more seriousness to Part II?
I should add that I read this book after having read Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote. Of course, I can now attempt a more informed comparison. Greene’s focus is the church, and he uses Cervantes’ theme of insanity in the dogged pursuit of truth and integrity as his vehicle for turning his supposed descendant into a reluctant and almost hapless opposer of the rigidity and corruption of the Church, while the Communist mayor plays Sancho, the realist, but without the Shakespearian-type buffoonery of the pranks played by everyone upon poor old Don Quixote. In Don Quixote, the church is a given; the Curate is “a notable Joker, and merrily inclined”. He is involved in the subterfuges used to persuade the Don back to sense, as in Monsignor Quixote the churchmen bring him home, but there the resemblance ends.
I can say that Don Quixote’s final battering (and he takes several) and the Monsignor’s poor old mechanised 'Rocinante' reaching the end of its days result in the same end for each of them – with one difference, that one dies with the ideal of truth, and the other rejects it; as to which, you may guess!