The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of
La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (1547 to 1616), or as it is usually called, Don Quixote, has the remarkable distinction of being
one of the first works recognised as that defining element of western
literature, the novel. That alone might make it worthy of consideration,
but over the four centuries since its
first publication, Don Quixote has often been celebrated as
one of the best novels ever; that is, it is often regarded as one of the
greatest literary works of all time.
Don Quixote is easy to summarise simply. Alonso Quixano, a middle aged Spanish nobleman, leads a quiet and easy life, until unaccountably becoming obsessed with the world of chivalry from incessantly reading epic tales of heroic knights of former ages. These imaginary legends fill up his thoughts so much, they sunder his grasp on reality and inspire him to become a knight himself. He swears an oath to become Don Quixote, a worthy knight who will champion the causes of justice and honour.
Setting forth, his old horse Rocinate becomes his mighty steed and later a local
farmer, Sancho Panza, becomes his squire. What follows is an epic,
rolling itinerary of often comical adventures and mayhem as Don Quixote pursues his holy
quest with a righteous but misguided vigour and passion.
Alonso Quixano’s perception is entirely
subordinated to his self-created character of Don Quixote and the world must
fit into this new vision. An early encounter demonstrating his radical,
novel outlook takes place at an undistinguished inn, which Don Quixote takes to
be an imposing castle. The ladies of the night to be found there are, to
him, noble ladies of the realm and his visit ends up in a violent struggle, which to him is an honourable battle
in which he must take part as a champion of righteousness. All are
baffled by Don Quixote’s extraordinary behaviour, and the other denizens of the
inn take him to be a mad man. This is the theme of the piece - the concept
of the self-created individual, who acts in accordance with their own vision of
reality, regardless of worldly dangers and the bewilderment of those around
them.
Sancho
Panza plays a role in balancing both of his master’s characters. Whereas
Alonso Quixano seems like a dry academic obsessed by a world of books and Don
Quixote the fanatical, idealistic knight of legend, Sancho Panza is an earthy,
practical man who has little time for learning. Sancho regularly points
out the lunacy inherent in Don Quixote’s plans but then carries on with them
nevertheless, which much later on seems due to love and loyalty for his friend.
Don Quixote acts from a set of virtues based on the code of the knights of
former ages; Sancho acts generally out of self-interest. For all Sancho
Panza’s worldliness though, at least compared to his master, he still falls for
Don Quixote’s promises of wealth and noble titles. The glittering lure of the literary legends that have bewitched his master can still enchant even the pragmatic would-be squire when it comes to tales of riches.
It is
tempting to a modern reader to think of Don Quixote in terms
of role models but the concept involved has a timeless appeal. We may be
familiar with people who are inspired by characters from TV and film such as
Captain Kirk, Superman or Doctor Who or more broadly from the culture around
us, possibly as an amalgamation of many cultural sources. The appeal is
in the idea of cutting away society’s assigned silhouette for each of us, of
not accepting the limitations of the ordinary, mundane life that many feel has
been preordained for them, but instead reaching for a fantastic world of
feeling and excitement, possibly more real to the individual than reality
itself.
Don
Quixote seeks to throw off his colourless, entirely uneventful existence for a
far more attractive, thrilling life of never ending danger and adventure.
It is important to note that Alonso Quixano should be content - but he is
not. He is not poor or lacking in personal resources. Yet his heart
yearns for much more. The question that speaks to us is, why let the
events and environment around you dictate so much of who you think you
are? Why not set out on your own destiny? Has the road this far
which you have travelled along, conforming in so many ways, taken you to where
you wanted, where you hoped or dreamed? If not, why take one more step
along that path but instead set off for a new journey, completely of your own
creation.
In Don
Quixote, it is literature that provides the answer to these
questions. By making the legends come to life, Don Quixote seeks control of
every facet of his existence; most importantly his own sense of self, his own
character, his very being. To himself, he is never more real then when he
takes on the identity of a fictional character, created from his own
imagination. Throughout the pages of Don Quixote, reality
is constantly at battle with or overridden by the protagonist’s imaginary
world. The reader is left questioning whether there is a real world out there
or whether, to some degree, we are constantly acting in accordance with a world
that is created out of our imagination.
An
implicit element of Don Quixote’s vision is that the world must now conform to
his ideals, no matter what cost, and that he will no longer submit or accede to
it on grounds of mere necessity or practicality, for ease or comfort. Although the act of self-creation is centred
on himself as the protagonist of his own life’s play, by extension all the
world takes its place within the structure provided by the taking on of his
imaginary character.
We
often think of the idea of literature affecting or even invading the real
world as a postmodern, metafictional idea yet this is the central
theme of Don Quixote. This theme is developed ingeniously and
comically in the second part, published around a decade after the first.
In Part two, Cervantes assumes that the reader has read, or is at least
familiar with, the first part of the adventures and also a series of fraudulent
adventures written about Don Quixote by another author. Don Quixote,
Sancho Panza and other characters accordingly comment on both the original part
and these other fake adventures and the reader enjoys the characters discussing
literature both biographical (at least in terms of the novel’s characters) and
fictional about themselves.
Literature
and story-telling have such powerful roles in our lives, even without realising
it, that it is difficult to not think of ourselves as characters in the ongoing
play of our lives. When we recount events that have happened,
particularly the important emotional dramas that we undergo, these are often
versed in terms of characters and motivations. Not many of us will
undergo a personal conceptualisation as radical and thorough going as Don
Quixote, but most of us will have a concept of ourselves and the type of person
we think we are or wish we were.
We use
this concept in trying to understand and decide what we think we should do or
how to be, in part to have some confidence in ourselves in coping with life.
This self-image might range in precision from a rough idea of how we expect we
might behave in a social situation all the way to a sophisticated philosophy of
what it means to be a human and the nature of ethics or morality.
Some
people are capable of describing what they think of themselves and their
character in detail or with a surprising degree of pride or forcefulness,
verging on almost the defensive. If they were to set this out to their
friends and family, they may be surprised how little correlation their
description might have with those nearest to them. You may not be Alonso
Quixano dreaming up Don Quixote, but your concept of yourself may still be
somewhat misplaced or even fictional, at least in comparison to the accounts
others may provide, especially in the area of what you would like or wish your
character or personality to be and how generally people think of us.
Some
part of our self-image is likely to have an element that derives from our own
imagination, drawn in large part from the culture that we observe around us,
especially when considering our highest aspirations and ideals for ourselves
and the lives we lead. Don Quixote is
merely the most extreme case of how many of us really think of ourselves.
The
once well known phrase of tilting at windmills illustrates these ideas.
In a famous scene, Don Quixote takes a set of windmills to be ferocious giants
ransacking the land. Lance in hand, he sets forth to vanquish them,
with disastrous results. An allegory for too much of our own behaviour,
this scene speaks to us of wasted energy and action spent on seeking to achieve
misguided and possibly unachievable goals which we only pursue for distorted,
misplaced ideals or desires that, if we are truly honest, we often do not
really possess.
A
noteworthy aspect of Don Quixote, especially given the age in which
it was written, is the role of religion. There is no reason to think that
Cervantes was anything but a sincere Catholic and throughout the novel Don
Quixote regularly professes his faith. Yet aside from Don Quixote’s
imaginary world of enchanters, sorcerers, giants and monsters, nothing
supernatural happens in it at all. Whilst many of the characters profess
to be religious, there is little that anyone does that has any particularly
religious nature to it, aside from various ceremonial activities. The
fantastic imaginary world of Don Quixote aside, the real world that is depicted
is very much Sancho Panza’s world of practical action, pain, suffering and
greed. Despite Cervantes’ presumed faith, the reader cannot help noting a
certain scepticism, as if religion is no more real than Don Quixote’s world of
wizards and dragons. Don Quixote’s
imaginary world does not need the intervention of the genuinely supernatural to
sustain it; only his passionate commitment is required.
As a
valorous knight, Don Quixote often proclaims his undying yet chaste love for
Dulcinea, an imaginary lady he ranks as equivalent to a princess. Utterly
unattainable, his eternally unrequited love is part of the noble code of a
knight. This pure, virginal adoration of a member of the female sex is
somewhat at odds with the regular appearance of prostitutes in the text.
Also, many of the stories told in the pages of Don Quixote include the
appearance of dazzlingly beautiful young ladies, occasionally nude with only
their long hair, Lady Godiva-like, to cover their modesty. Young
handsome men contend for the favours of these beauties, leading to a usually
satisfactory conclusion. Whilst the titular character may restrain
himself to an idealised vision of courtly love, that’s certainly not how the
rest of the cast behave. The gently titillating eroticism that flickers
every now and then takes us further away from a religious outlook on the
world.
Although
by the end, Alonso Quixano gives up on being Don Quixote, the reader cannot
help admiring him for his mad quest and extraordinary escapades. Despite
the mayhem and the disasters, he has lost nothing by taking on the role of the
brave knight instead of spending more months alone in his library with his dry
books. We feel that his experiment has been a success. The reader has
also gained so much from reading his enjoyable, crazy and often funny
adventures and is challenged to consider what they too might make of
themselves, how they might create their own being purely as an act of the
imagination.
We may
not wish to take this to the preposterous extreme of Don Quixote, but there is
genuine inspiration to take up symbolic arms and challenge the world with what
we believe. The genius of Cervantes is
that his book is often given to children to read as an enjoyable and comical
adventure whilst at the same time, other older readers think of it in profound
terms as a guide to life, a Bible almost, that they treasure.
Don
Quixote can have even greater resonance in our present age, in which we are
often viewed as mere consumers, our only genuinely creative influence being the
provision of data about our choices in the goods and services we consume which
feed algorithms which provide advertising to us. As our role as personalities
degrades to the binary, flat abstractions of the digital world, Don Quixote and
his wilful self-creation,
of the creation of his own world, shines as a guiding light, intense with his
determination and urgency to act.
