Cervantes

– Don Quixote Essay, Research Paper


Cervantes’ greatest work, Don Quixote, is a unique book of


multiple dimensions. From the moment of its appearance it


has amused readers or caused them to think, and its


influence has extended in literature not only to works of


secondary value but also to those which have universal


importance. Don Quixote is a country gentleman, an


enthusiastic visionary crazed by his reading of romances of


chivalry, who rides forth to defend the oppressed and to


right wrongs; so vividly was he presented by Cervantes that


many languages have borrowed the name of the hero as the


common term to designate a person inspired by lofty and


impractical ideals.


The theme of the book, in brief, concerns Hidalgo Alonso


Quijano, who, because of his reading in books about


chivalry, comes to believe that everything they say is true


and decides to become a knight-errant himself. He assumes


the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha and, accompanied


by a peasant, Sancho Panza, who serves him as a squire,


sets forth in search of adventures. Don Quixote interprets


all that he encounters in accordance with his readings and


thus imagines himself to be living in a world quite different


from the one familiar to the ordinary men he meets.


Windmills are thus transformed into giants, and this


illusion, together with many others, is the basis for the


beatings and misadventures suffered by the intrepid hero.


After the knight’s second sally in search of adventure,


friends and neighbors in his village decide to force him to


forget his wild fancy and to reintegrate himself into his


former life. The "knight" insists upon following his calling,


but at the end of the first part of the book they make him


return to his home by means of a sly stratagem. In the


second part the hidalgo leaves for the third time and


alternately gives indication of folly and of wisdom in a


dazzling array of artistic inventions. But now even his


enemies force him to abandon his endeavors. Don Quixote


finally recognizes that romances of chivalry are mere lying


inventions, but upon recovering the clarity of his mind, he


loses his life.


The idea that Don Quixote is a symbol of the noblest


generosity, dedicated to the purpose of doing good


disinterestedly, suggests the moral common denominator


to be found in Cervantes’ creation. But in addition to


furnishing a moral type capable of being recognized and


accepted as a symbol of values in any time or place, Don


Quixote is a work of art with as many aspects and reflections


as it has readers to seek them. Considerations of general


morality thus become intermingled with the psychological


and aesthetic experience of each individual reader in a way


that vastly stimulated the development of the literary genre


later known as the novel, and Fielding, Dickens, Flaubert,


Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, and many others have thus been


inspired by Cervantes. In Madame Bovary, is Gustave


Flaubert, for example, the heroine changes the orientation


of her life because she, like Don Quixote, has read her


romances of chivalry, the romantic novels of the nineteenth


century.


Cervantes demonstrated to the Western world how poetry


and fantasy could coexist with the experience of reality


which is perceptible to the senses. He did this by


presenting poetic reality, which previously had been


confined to the ideal region of dream, as something


experienced by a real pers

on, and the dream thus became


the reality of any man living his dream. Therefore, the


trivial fact that a poor hidalgo loses his reason for one cause


or another is of little importance. The innovation is that


Don Quixote’s madness is converted into the theme of his


life and into a theme for the life of other people, who are


affected as much by the madness of the hidalgo as is he


himself. Some want him to revert to his condition of a


peaceful and sedentary hidalgo; others would like him to


keep on amusing or stupefying people with his deeds,


insane and wise at the same time.


Before Cervantes, literature was, as occasion offered,


fantastic, idealistic, naturalistic, moralistic, or didactic.


After his time, literature continued to exploit all these


types, but with them it was inclined to incorporate, as well,


some readers’ experience of them. Romances of chivalry


could now attain a significance beyond that of mere books


and could become what people felt or thought about them,


thus growing to be the very dynamic functioning of living


persons. In Don Quixote, for example, the hero takes them


for the gospel; the priest believes them to be false; the


innkeeper admires the tremendous blows delivered by the


knights; his daughter is taken by the sentimental aspect of


the love affairs which they describe; and so on. But the


reality of the literary work is the ideal integration of all


possible experience which all of the possible readers


undergo. This point can be further illustrated by taking


proverbs as an example. Before Don Quixote, many


collections of sayings and proverbs had been published, but


when Sancho interspersed these proverbs helter-skelter in


his conversation and thus brought his master to despair,


the proverbs became the living experiences which Sancho


and Don Quixote derived from them. In this manner,


everything in Don Quixote can be either real or ideal, either


fantastic or possible, according to the manner in which it


affects the variety of readers, whether they be creators of


beautiful and comforting illusions or dispassionate


demolishers of dreams. To live, for Cervantes, is to let


loose the extensive capacity of all that is human; it may also


be to remain deaf and inert before the attractions of love,


faith, and enthusiasm. All who live in the human universe


of the greatest book of Spanish literature succeed or


destroy themselves, according to one of these opposing


trends.


When compared with such a prodigious book, all of


Cervantes’ works which have not previously been


mentioned, no matter what their value, must be relegated to


a lower level. Among his dramatic works, La Numancia, a


description of the heroic defense of that Iberian city during


the Roman conquest of Spain in the second century b.c.,


and the amusing Interludes, such as El Juez de los


divorcios ("The Judge of Divorces") and El Retablo de


las maravillas ("The Picture of Marvels"), are


outstanding. Also worth mentioning is the verse Voyage


to Parnassus (1614), in which almost all of the Spanish


writers of the period are lauded, and Persiles y


Sigismunda, published posthumously in 1617. In this


last-named work the author returns to the theme of the


Byzantine novel and relates the ideal love and


unbelievable vicissitudes of a couple who, starting from


the Arctic regions, arrive in Rome, where they find a


happy ending for their complicated adventures.


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