Title: Don Quixote (Goodreads)
Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Translator: Edith Grossman
Published: Harper Perennial, 1615
Pages: 940
Genres: Classic
My Copy: Paperback
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)
Don Quixote is a staple in western literature, it ushered in the golden age of Spanish literature and it is also is one of the earliest examples of the modern (canonical) novel. The novel tells the story of a Spanish nobleman (Hidalgo) obsessed with the chivalric romance literature of the middle ages, who sets out to try and revive chivalry. With his trusty squire Sancho Panza, he sets out on an adventure to undo all the wrongs and injustices he encounters in the world. Claiming to be a knight. he gives himself the name Don Quixote of La Mancha.
From the very start, we get a sense that maybe Don Quixote is crazy. In psychology the term Quixotism relates to “over-idealism” and is often used in reference to someone with a naïve romanticism towards utopianism. The term “tilting at windmills” refers to a scene near the beginning of the novel where Don Quixote races off to fight giants that were actually windmills. If you consider that Don Quixote went mad from all the books he was reading and set off to try and fix the world, then this could be used as a metaphor towards Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra own feeling toward the same books, but rather than fixing the world he wrote Don Quixote. This brings to mind the quote from Toni Morrison “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
Don Quixote, like many books of the time, was read to children; this is a novel I could never imagine being read to any child now. However one thing that makes this novel so great is that there are so many interpretations to be taken from the text. Harold Bloom (who wrote the introduction to my copy of the book) calls this a work of radical nihilism and anarchy, in the way it glorifies fantasy over reality. Calling him the Sorrowful Knight whose objective is that “He is at war with Freud’s reality principle, which accepts the necessity of dying.” The translator of the edition I read, Edith Grossman, has said, “When I first started reading the Quixote I thought it was the most tragic book in the world, and I would read it and weep”. However when she worked on the translation she remembered “sitting at my computer and laughing out loud.”
After the French Revolution a popular interpretation of the novel was that it was about ethics and righting the wrongs of society. While later on it was a social commentary which always lead to the discussion of whose side Cervantes was on. You could even pull some religious or feminist themes out of this novel but for me, I read this as a Marxist text. The relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza was a good representation of the class struggle. It is evident that Quixote needed Sancho Panza more than Panza needed him. Sancho Panza was there to rise the ranks of society while Don Quixote was be completely lost without his squire.
I cannot talk about Don Quixote without mentioning the way that Miguel de Cervantes played with intertextuality. This novel is split into two parts; the first part was originally published in 1605. In 1614 a second volume was released by an anonymous author. It is believed that Miguel de Cervantes started writing his second part after this and in 1615 it was released. While part one was a spoof of the literature that annoyed him, part two was more an attack on this unauthorised story of Don Quixote. It even made references to this scandal as Don Quixote explores the concept of someone writing about him.
This is the type of novel that deserves to be read again and again. Every reading will probably offer something different and this review is a reference point of what I got out of reading this book the first time around. If you get the chance, I recommend reading this with someone. I read this with Hilary from Yrrobotfriend and the discussions were the best part of this reading experience. While reading this novel I enjoyed part one the most but on reflection, I think part two offers more.
What makes you say that Don Quixote was considered a “children’s story”? I’ve never heard it described as such before. There was a version of the book written for children in the early 1920s, entitled The Story of Don Quixote. The authors of this travesty, Arvid Paulson and Clayton Edwards, neglected to mention Cervantes as being the author of the original tale they “borrowed”. Theirs is a bowdlerised text that leaves out many things and changes the narrative in ways that make it suitable for consumption by children. There are also other “retellings” of the story that have been published as children’s books, but they also differ markedly from Cervantes’ original. As I said, I’ve never heard the idea before now that Don Quixote was considered a children’s book.
I remember that horrible The Story of Don Quixote. I can not find the article I was reading (should have written it down), but it refers to the book been read to children. This was back when it was first published but back then I don’t think they referred to books as adult, young adult, or children books. I just thought it was interesting that people read this book to their kids, I can’t imagine that happening nowadays.
Hmm. I’m thinking that some clarification of this point in your review is warranted. I don’t think DQ is usually considered to be a “children’s story”, and if you claim that it is, then you need to provide academic evidence to back up your claim. It’s a rather important distinction to make, I think, between a book being a “children’s story” and one of the most highly intellectual and profound works of literature ever wriiten. I think it matters.
This is a good point of a minor detail of the review. But I do appreciate it. I don’t consider myself an academic writer but I need to get into a better habit about these things.
A minor but important detail, I think. I know you’re not writing from an academic point of view, but I think that academic consensus of opinion about literature should always be our reference point when writing about classic novels, and not something we’ve read on wikipedia or in a single article. There’s too much misinformation and too many ill-informed opinions masquerading as “fact” on the internet, which is why I’m big on the proper referencing of anything even mildly contentious. I guess I’ve just had “reference it” drummed into me at university, but it does prevent conjecture creeping in. *shrug*
It is a very good habit to have drummed into you
Oh wow, I didn’t realize this book was THAT old (published in 1615)! I’ve always wanted to read it but its size intimidates me. Also, how great is this character name: Sancho Panza haha! Sounds like some Mexican gangster 😛
You should read it, try reading it with the image of Sancho Panzo as a Mexican gangster, see how the works out.