Speaking of knights in shining armor, we now turn to Don Quixote of La Mancha, Knight of the Rueful Figure. His armor isn’t exactly shining, but with his faithful squire Sancho Panza the impoverished gentleman sets out to revive the extinct order of chivalry in the degenerate world of 17th century Spain.
He suffers more cudgelings and tumbles from his horse, Rozinante, than victories, but he remains true to his love, the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso, and retains his dignity, his honor and his faith in knight errantry. And along the way he invents the modern novel.
Despite its popularity—the first part of Don Quixote was an immediate best seller upon its publication in 1605 and it remains a classic more than 400 years after the publication of the second part in 1615—readers have long disagreed over what Don Quixote is about. Is the ingenious gentleman to be admired or ridiculed? Is he wrong to maintain his idealism in the face of reality, or is society wrong to persecute him? Cervantes himself claimed that he wrote the book to lampoon the popular books of chivalry. But for all of his knight’s foolishness, Cervantes treats him with respect and affection.
Few authors have been so closely associated with their creations. Cervantes, an ex-soldier wounded and captured in the naval battle of Lepanto, and his escape from Algiers was as dramatic as anything he made up. Like his creation, he suffered poverty and struggled for recognition during his lifetime, but has been recognized since his death (on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23, 1616) as Spain’s greatest writer.
Cervantes could have been writing of himself or his alter ego when he wrote, “Poverty can cloud nobility, but not obscure it altogether.”
Well aged
The character of Don Quixote has moved from literary creation to cultural icon. His name has become an adjective (quixotic) and the image of the knight tilting at windmills has become shorthand for recklessly idealistic endeavors. The book has aged well over four centuries and is still as funny and moving as when Cervantes wrote it.
Much of the humor does seem a little cruel today. I first came to Don Quixote in the seventh grade and raced through it with glee. Maybe that’s a key to enjoying it. As an adolescent I was enthralled by the earthy humor and undisturbed by the cruelty. As I have gotten older I have come to appreciate the characters more.
I refuse to see Don Quixote as a fool. He seems to me a tragic hero, made the butt of jokes by people who are more realistic but more shortsighted than he. Sancho, who sees himself as a simple, practical man, sees quite clearly that the master he is serving is mad but refuses to let reality interfere with his faith and friendship. He is one of the most endearing characters in literature.
Author and character
What makes Don Quixote so modern is its self-awareness. Don Quixote himself is confident from the outset that some sage has been entrusted with chronicling his career, and he acts in the knowledge that everything he does is being recorded. His nominal chronicler is the Moorish scholar Cide Hamete Benengeli. Cervantes is merely the translator. In the second part of the book, Don Quixote and Sancho are aware that they already are in print and are famous characters.
Late in the part two of the book, the characters learn of a spurious sequel written by someone calling himself Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda in which Cervantes and his characters are maligned. The author of this faux Don Quixote has never been identified. Cervantes’ knight and squire treat this cheating author with dignified contempt throughout the remainder of the book.
Don Quixote is said to have been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible. There are more than 20 English translations, beginning within a few years of its original publication and five of them published since 2000. Picking the best is a matter of taste and opinion. The ones I am familiar with are Walter Starkie’s unabridged translation of 1964 and Edith Grossman’s from 2003. Grossman’s was widely acclaimed as being accessible to modern readers, but I much prefer Starkie, whose playful language gives a sense of what the original must be like for those lucky readers who know it in the original Spanish.
Whatever translation you prefer, we can all wish, along with Cide Hamete Benengeli: “O fortunate Don Quixote! O famous Dulcinea! O droll Sancho Panza! My you jointly and singly live infinite ages to the delight and general enjoyment of mankind!”
With all the translations available, you won’t have any trouble finding one to enjoy at your local library or bookstore.