Cervantes: Don Quixote

[Loki]

Loved it, especially the second half.

By the way, we're lucky to have the second part. Probably Cervantes didn't want to write it: from the end of the first part we cannot be sure of this. Maybe Avellaneda's Quixote spurred him to write the second part.
Even more impressing is the likelihood that the original version of the book was formed by the first six chapters and part of the seventh. But, as far as I'm concerned, I cannot imagine Don Quixote without Sancho.

Someone mentioned the ending: I think it's quite moving, seeing Alonso Quijano again, and his being so sad and so sincere.

[Daniel del Real]

The problem with Classics in general is that, if and when we read them, we did so at school; we were not mature enough to grasp the whole meaning of these works and we hated them because we had to read them, not because we liked them. The result is that, in most cases, we never looked forward to going back to them when we became adults. Of course there are exceptions.

It was the total opposite to me. I was always looking to read the classics when teenager and was thrilled when we had to read one for school. Then little by little moved to XIX century novel, and from 3 or 4 years ago I can't seem to abandon XX century or contemporary writers.

[Loki]

I was always looking to read the classics when teenager and was thrilled when we had to read one for school.

That's the same for me now, I want to read classics, and I'm lucky because I attend the faculty of modern languages, and there is a lot of literature. Probably it's going to change in the future.
I often feel ignorant for not having read so many classics that everybody talks about.

[Hemmo]

I've just finished DQ - in an English (Edith Grossman) translation. Like others I really enjoyed it and found parts of it very funny (surprisingly so). I guess what I didn't quite get was the universality of it. In his introduction Harold Bloom compared it to Shakespeare in being about something specific but also being easy to relate to but I never quite saw it that way. I particularly liked the way the tone darkened between the two books and, like others, I found the ending very poignant.

[Daniel del Real]

I've read the Quixote twice, once when I was very young and one in its 400th anniversary, back in 2004. My intention is to re-read it every 10 years, so in 2014 is the next one. Can't tell how much I love it, how fun and deep, sharp and witty this book is.

[kpjayan]

That reminds me to read the Edith Grossman's translation sometime this year. I have been keeping it aside for last 3 years...

[Hamlet]

I'm a couple of hundred pages away from the end of Don Quixote.

I've chosen the new-ish translation by John Rutherford. Penguin, and so far folks, it's been a good read, a 'blast' as we say over here. Well, some of us, at least!

I'd tried it out many years ago and only got as far as a "third" of the way through.

I didn't understand at the time that it was composed in two parts, written in 1605 and 1615, if I recall, and the extent to which the multiple narrators-tehnique is deployed and how this complicates and blurs the story.

I also found a new article on the structure of the book by chance, the old loose/episodic vs not structured like a modern novel debate, arguing that Cervante's work was far more advanced in terms of structure than has generally been believed in the past.

It's not as 'early' as was once thought, perhaps . . .

I found my way back to it having read about Shakespeare's use of Cardenio for a lost play co-written by him and John Fletcher, the dramatist who it seems took over from Shakesperare as the lead writer for the King's Men. Cardenio is one of the many stories within the story, another feature I had no memory of. I also didn't recall how quickly the famous windmills scene arrives.

Or that Don Quixote's journey, like his mind, goes in circles bringing him back home at one stage. I'd assumed he set out and reached the 'end' of his journey somewhere else, but looking at maps of Spain, it made a lot of sense.

That aside, the new translation is very funny, and you have to admire the translator's art, the choice of English slang and similar techniques to convey some of the blunders by Sancho especially.

A fabulous read and a long one!

[Tagir]

F. M. Dostoevsky:
"Around the world there is no more deeply and more strongly this composition. This last and greatest word of human thought"
"If the mankind stands at the day of judgment, he humanity, it will be sufficient to present the one and only book that all sins were released - "don Quixote", Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra..."

[Hamlet]

F. M. Dostoevsky:
"Around the world there is no more deeply and more strongly this composition. This last and greatest word of human thought"
"If the mankind stands at the day of judgment, he humanity, it will be sufficient to present the one and only book that all sins were released - "don Quixote", Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra..."

Pleased to hear that Dostoevsky thinks so... but what happened with Nabokov, got out of the wrong side of bed that morning, didn't enjoy his breakfast cereal that day, and went ahead and wrote a book expressing the contrary opinion -- stating that Don Quixote is a primitive and nasty book, written with a humour designed to provoke humour at the expense of the characters, which Nabokov seems to suggest was the way of things at the time and in keeping with the age/Spain of the 1600s ... I haven't read it, this is as much as I can glean... anybody know the Nabokov criticism of Cervante's masterpiece?

nb- I recently found an article suggesting that it's not a primitive novel in the sense that crirtics previously believed, that is -- entirely episodic/organic in structure, but was in fact designed with much greater sophistication by Cervantes, even though it is the "first novel/ great early novel...."

[Hamlet]

http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Don-Q...4930765&sr=1-1

Nabokov's book -- lectures on Lit.

[Tagir]

Nabokov, Nabokov... who are interested in the views of this narcissistic and pompous chatterbox?

[Hamlet]

Nabokov, Nabokov... who are interested in the views of this narcissistic and pompous chatterbox?

I suppose it's the pesky few hundred thousand who've read his books and think he's a great stylist and that Lolita's a masterpiece, but apart from that and a coupla' hundred English professors, I can't really think of anyone else?

Oh yeah:-

"He's our greatest stylist"
Martin Amis

That's +1 extra.

[Emre Gurgen]

I agree: since 1600 (or thereabouts) Don Quixote has been a best-selling classic. This is due, in part, to the fact that Cervantes was one of the first authors to combine so many different styles into a new form of fiction. Prior to "Don Quixote" people wrote poems, histories, epics, devotional prayers, epistolary books. Cervantes is largely credited with creating the world's first modern novel: everyday people writing about everyday events in prose.

Emre Gurgen
www.don-quixote-explained.com

[Cleanthess]

Nabokov, Nabokov... who are interested in the views of this narcissistic and pompous chatterbox?

I like Nabokov, a lot. But it is pretty obvious that Nabokov is running on the middle of the pack among the Immortal Western Writers Marathon. Cervantes is up there leading the pack with Kafka, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Dante, Vergil, Horace, Homer and a couple of others. I'd be surprised if Nabokov is still read by the masses a couple of centuries from now. I see him being read in that distant future like Oliver Goldsmith or Izaak Walton are read now.

I think that it was jealousy that drove Nabokov to write those lines against Cervantes. Remember Nabokov was a man who could not bring himself to name his favorite writer (he just provided the dates of his/her life in the prologue of 'Invitation to a beheading': "My favorite author (1768-1849)" I'm guessing Maria Edgeworth, but I'm almost certainly wrong).

Those who have not read Don Quixote have no idea what that book is like. Let's consider the framing (just like with Velazquez' Las Meninas, the framing is very important for Don Quixote). Don Quixote is supposedly a commissioned translation done by Hamete Berenjena (Eggplant) of some very old Arabic papers found by Cervantes at a Market years ago. But then again Don Quixote and Sancho meet with people who have already read the Don Quixote book and its fake imitations. These kind of meta-fictional games are very far ahead of Cervantes' time.

Or consider the very disturbing stories inside the novel with no apparent relation to the main plot at all; and yet these stories contradict what is written as the main plot by hinting at a different hidden meaning. Then again this kind of unreliable not-narrator-but-author is unparalleled by anything else written so far by anybody in any language; perhaps the future will bring some author capable of writing plots this complicated.

And then there is the main character, the hero: Don Quixote, and the fact that you don't know if Cervantes likes him, hates him, finds him ridiculous, tragic or what the hell is going on.

Now consider how Cervantes convincingly during the evolution of the novel gets Sancho from a start as an uneducated but dubious follower to a disappointed but loyal companion who knows that Don Quixote is crazy, to a hopeful and greedy wise guy to a stricken by grief friend to someone crazier than Don Quixote.

And yet none of these things are even the main plot or are part of the main structural elements of Don Quixote. Any reader who is not naive while reading Don Quixote is bound to be wowed by Cervantes, and remember: Don Quixote was the first modern novel and it has yet to be equaled according to some recent surveys of readers and writers.

[Hamlet]

I like Nabokov, a lot. But it is pretty obvious that Nabokov is running on the middle of the pack among the Immortal Western Writers Marathon. Cervantes is up there leading the pack with Kafka, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Dante, Vergil, Horace, Homer and a couple of others. I'd be surprised if Nabokov is still read by the masses a couple of centuries from now. I see him being read in that distant future like Oliver Goldsmith or Izaak Walton are read now.

I think that it was jealousy that drove Nabokov to write those lines against Cervantes. Remember Nabokov was a man who could not bring himself to name his favorite writer (he just provided the dates of his/her life in the prologue of 'Invitation to a beheading': "My favorite author (1768-1849)" I'm guessing Maria Edgeworth, but I'm almost certainly wrong).

Those who have not read Don Quixote have no idea what that book is like. Let's consider the framing (just like with Velazquez' Las Meninas, the framing is very important for Don Quixote). Don Quixote is supposedly a commissioned translation done by Hamete Berenjena (Eggplant) of some very old Arabic papers found by Cervantes at a Market years ago. But then again Don Quixote and Sancho meet with people who have already read the Don Quixote book and its fake imitations. These kind of meta-fictional games are very far ahead of Cervantes' time.

Or consider the very disturbing stories inside the novel with no apparent relation to the main plot at all; and yet these stories contradict what is written as the main plot by hinting at a different hidden meaning. Then again this kind of unreliable not-narrator-but-author is unparalleled by anything else written so far by anybody in any language; perhaps the future will bring some author capable of writing plots this complicated.

And then there is the main character, the hero: Don Quixote, and the fact that you don't know if Cervantes likes him, hates him, finds him ridiculous, tragic or what the hell is going on.

Now consider how Cervantes convincingly during the evolution of the novel gets Sancho from a start as an uneducated but dubious follower to a disappointed but loyal companion who knows that Don Quixote is crazy, to a hopeful and greedy wise guy to a stricken by grief friend to someone crazier than Don Quixote.

And yet none of these things are even the main plot or are part of the main structural elements of Don Quixote. Any reader who is not naive while reading Don Quixote is bound to be wowed by Cervantes, and remember: Don Quixote was the first modern novel and it has yet to be equaled according to some recent surveys of readers and writers.

Very interesting post Cl. Enjoyed reading it.

[Remora]

I'll defend Nabowkoff. (Probably a losing battle, but as JLB says, a gentleman only fights for lost causes.)

What he says about Cervantes and Don Quixote has to be taken with a grain of salt. He does admit the novel's cultural impact (Huge!!), but you're quite right to think he disparaged the novel's artistry.

It's an unfair criticism, because what Nabowkoff is essentially doing is comparing the mid-20th century novel, of which he was arguably THE MAN, to the 17th century novel. As with most things, with the passage of time, the way the novel is written has improved. It's a natural progression which can be applied to tennis, baseball, and usually most other things. Everything gets better, in terms of the new techniques and the new insights involved.

So to apply Flaubert's harsh aesthetics to Cervantes isn't unlike comparing how tennis is now played with how tennis was played in the 1920s. The level of ball striking and the athleticism involved aren't even close. So it's unfair of Nabowkoff to take the two eras out of their contexts and compare them mono y mono.

I will say this though on behalf of Nabowkoff. He knew how to write. He knew what he was talking about in terms of how to write the modern novel. And he spoke his mind. Next to artistic freedom, the freedom to speak one's mind, is democracy's most lasting legacy, Nabowkoff believed. And he lived it. That's rare, actually saying something and then following through. But I'm getting way off topic, aren't I? Back to Cervante's Don Quixote. I read it, and I enjoyed the consistency of the prose and the slapstick comedy. And in the end, I did shed a tear for the errant knight. One would've been heartless not to have.

[JCamilo]

I am curious to know why nabokov is being attacked. The only portion of the criticism here quoted, which i would hardly base any attack upon Nabokov, is just... correct... Quixote is a primitive and nasty book, written with a humour designed to provoke humour at the expense of the characters. There is nothing wrong there, specially considering sometimes the humor of Quixote can be brutal, almost 3 stooges like. It is primitive. And the humor happens taking advantage of the characters, specially the first part. There is of course more on Quixote, just probaly, like Nabokov probally said more than this.

It is good to note, a writer aesthetically close to Nabokov, Cervantes, Borges also had critics towards Cervantes style, albeit his love for the characters.

[Cleanthess]

I'm not gonna lie to you, it feels odd having to defend Cervantes, considered by many of the best fiction writers as their master (Fielding, Sterne, Dickens, Dostoyevsky...), but 'cosas veredes Sancho/you'll see some things Sancho'...

To clarify matters fully I'm not attacking Nabokov as a writer. I love his work. I love Bend Sinister, Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada or Ardor. I adore Pnin and The Gift. I worship his book on Gogol. My point is that, compared to the usually very high standard level of his analysis, his comments about Don Quixote are either lazy, naive or tainted by some ulterior motive.

I don't believe there was one lazy molecule on Nabokov's entire body. You just need to notice how insightful and/or attentive his comments about Tolstoy, Proust and Dickens are. And the books by those writers are quite long and detailed.

I also don't think there was a single naive atom in Nabokov's brain. His unpacking of a writer as complex as Gogol remains unmatched to my knowledge. Nabokov did it to the point of finding the exact early short story that explains Gogol's main hidden themes (sin, repression, fear, dominance, homosexuality, etc.) and the reason of his later religious nervous breakdown: Shponka and his aunt. Consider two writers as complex as Gogol that remain mysterious to this day after almost one century of failed interpretations: Melville and Kafka. Nobody has still satisfactorily unpacked Pierre or The confidence man. As for Kafka, Max Brod wrote that once Kafka read to his friends one of his disturbing, horrifying stories and after he was finished he bent over with laughter, to his friends amazement: Kafka intended the story to be read as comedy!!!

However, when it comes to Don Quixote, Nabokov's analysis boils down to 'Eewww, gross' and 'Cervantes, you big meanie!'. Don't get me wrong, those are perfectly good and valid points to make, if you are a high school teen writing a book report.

So knowing what kind of person Nabokov was, my best guess was that, Nabokov being a vain/proud man, he was jealous of Cervantes glory.

As a reference consider the criticism of a book from the same period as Don Quixote done by a Russian writer contemporary with Nabokov: Bakhtin's book on Rabelais. That book is a masterwork of analysis putting Gargantua and Pantagruel in the proper context and pointing out its intentions and methods. This despite the fact that G & P is a lot meaner and nastier than Don Quixote (people are eaten alive, Panurge kills people, Panurge has a woman mass raped/bukkakked by a pack of dogs, etc.).

Anyways... Cervantes was not writing a 'realistic' novel, he was writing an experimental novel, mixing Chivalry novels, Lucian of Samosata's work, Boccaccio's tales, Picaresque novels, and Teofilo Folengo's Baldus, etc. into something new and wonderful. Some of Cervantes innovations were imitated while he was still alive, others had to wait two centuries until Laurence Sterne and Jean Paul Richter continued them; still others will perhaps be re-explored in future centuries since they remain unparalleled to this day.

As for there being a continuous progression from the past/a decay from a golden age in the past: when it comes to the arts those are mostly myths. Consider how Dario Fo or Tony Kushner or Harold Pinter are so much better than Shakespeare. Or how our contemporary classical music composers are so superior to Bach/Haendel/Mozart/Beethoven/Wagner. Or how our contemporary painters put Leonardo/Michelangelo/Velazquez/Rembrandt/Goya/Van Gogh/Picasso, etc. to shame.

Sorry for the long post.

[Cleanthess]

It is good to note, a writer aesthetically close to Nabokov, Cervantes, Borges also had critics towards Cervantes style, albeit his love for the characters.

Borges, being a genius for detail and a careful reader, compared the Tale of the Genji (from Japan circa 1000 CE) with Don Quixote and pointed out how on the Tale of the Genji there's is a comment about how the fireflies darken the stars of the night sky (iirc) or some-such, whereas on Don Quixote it never rains, not one single time. Borges also wrote;:

Convivial prose, prose to be spoken rather than declaimed, that is Cervantes' prose, and he does not need any other kind. I imagine that the same observation is right in the case of Dostoevsky or Montaigne. This style vanity is specially hollow in the case of an even more pathetic vanity, that of perfection. (...) You can not change with impunity any line manufactured by Gongora, but the Quixote wins posthumous battles with its translators ... Heine never heard Don Quixote in Spanish, and yet he immortaly sang its praises. More vivid are the German or Scandinavian or Hindustani ghosts of Don Quixote than the verbal artifices of more eager stylists.

prosa de sobremesa, prosa conversada y no declamada, es la de Cervantes, y otra no le hace falta. Imagino que esa misma observacion sera justiciera en el caso de Dostoievski o de Montaigne. Esta vanidad del estilo se ahueca en otra mas patetica vanidad, la de la perfeccion. (...) No se puede impunemente variar ninguna linea de las fabricadas por Gongora; pero el Quijote gana postumas batallas contra sus traductores... Heine que nunca lo escucho en espanol, lo pudo celebrar para siempre. Mas vivo es el fantasma aleman o escandinavo o indostanico del Quijote que los ansiosos artificios verbales de los estilistas.

[JCamilo]

Yes, Borges attacked Don Quixote's style for a long time. His Pierre Menard was pretty much a joke on how seriously his critics are taken by his peers. He was attacked by them for "Profaning" Quixote by suggesting Quevedo would be a much better writer for this. Borges often lamented that Don Quixote was national work of Spanish Language, because in his opinion it somehow kept spanish from developing in a more sophisticated language.

This same essay you quoted is an evidence that Borges thougth the style of Quixote was flawed. The essay is about the superstitions of readers. The first superstition is the belief a classic is always a example of style ot the point of giving to the work, styles that are not there. And he give the example of Don Quixote. He say it clearly:

(...) En verdad, basta revisar unos párrafos del Quijote para sentir que Cervantes no era estilista (a lo menos en la presente acepción acústico-decorativa de la palabra) y que le interesaban demasiado los destinos de Quijote y de Sancho para dejarse distraer por su propia voz.(...)

Then he presents the opinions of Unamundo and Groussac and their attack against the style of Quixote and defend saying the prose of Cervantes it is the convival prose. He is not defending the work, he is saying this "bad style" is the style Quixote needs.

Then he goes to another superstition about the perfection of a work. And he goes to say a perfect work is bad, won't survive. And gives the example of Quixote, because it is imperfect and even bad translated survives, since the charm of the work is not style. Rather than character of Quixote, giving the example of Heine.

Borges is, pretty much, more close to Nabokov than not. (Borges is more delicate than Nabokov, no doubt, Nabokov positions himself as a boxer after all). But then again, the attacks against Nabokov seems exagerated. What he said it is so false about Quixote? What is quoted here is true. I know Nabokov strong position against Dostoievisky, he may have said things beyond it but really... Cervantes works have this style, be his play, poems, other novels. So, really why is Nabokov being attacked ?


Latter in life, he showed regrets, albeit never denying the flaws of Cervantes, but saying Don Quixote had the only possible writer and was written in the only possible way.