Lazy Sunday

Our clockwork children wake every morning at 7am.  Since the age of about three they have been trained, on weekends, to stay in bed with a book (looking at the pictures at the stage before they could read) until a more sociable time: say 8am.  As I am an owl not a lark this is still painfully early for me.  For some reason though,(perhaps connected with giving up alcohol on my 'stretch the summer clothes' diet) I was also awake early this morning and dived straight into Don Quixote which had (I confess) had me drooping with boredom/tiredness the night before.  But miraculously (or perhaps because confession is good for the reading soul) this morning I hit my first truly enjoyable patch.  And indeed for the first time I was inspired to scribble quotes and thoughts in my notebook.

I had found the first 200 odd pages more of a chore than a pleasure.  But I really want to read this book, and more importantly I want to enjoy it and understand it and experience what others obviously find in it, such as this quote from the Guardian:

"In 2002, a panel of 100 leading authors from 54 different countries - including Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, Seamus Heaney, and Norman Mailer - named Don Quixote as the "most meaningful book of all time". It bagged 50% more votes than any other book. Asked to explain the novel's grip on its readers' imaginations, Mancing replies, "I've read thousands of novels but I've never read anything that I've wanted to come back to as I do this one." "

Or V.  S.  Naipaul quoted on the back of the Grossman translation:

Don Quixote begins as a province, turns into Spain, and ends as a universe...The true spell of Cervantes is that he is a natural magician in pure story telling"

The man who got me interested in the book in the first place, Harold Bloom does at least have this to say:  "No two readers ever seem to read the same Don Quixote" and I'm not sure that I'm reading the one he was reading when he says:

"Cervantes' two heroes are simply the largest literary characters in the whole Western Canon, except for their triple handful (at most) of Shakespearean peers.  Their fusion of folly and wisdom and their disinterestedness can be matched only in Shakespeare's most memorable men and women.  Cervantes has naturalized us as Shakespeare has; we can no longer see what makes Don Quixote so permanently original, so searchingly strange a work.  If the play of the world can still be located in the greatest literature, then it must be here."

(The Western Canon)

So far I have failed to enjoy the lists of chivalric heroes, been mildly amused by each adventure (though they have rather felt like just one thing after another) and nearly died of boredom myself during the shepherd Grisostomos's funeral.  The best bits have been the conversation between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and the actual down to earth character of Sancho himself.

Thankfully, this morning's section (Book I Chs 25 to 27) had lots of conversation.  Indeed Sancho, having been banned from chatting in an early chapter, is clearly full of pent up talk and begs for permission to talk.  After a full paragraph of proverbs I got the first flavour of DQ as a person:  "Lord save me!....What a lot of foolish things you put on the same thread Sancho!  What does the subject of our conversation have to do with the proverbs you string together like beads".  But perhaps my disappointment stems from the erroneous expectations of the novel.  I'm taking it at the realistic level.  Perhaps I need to be more allegorical. 

I love Sancho's constant sub plot of when he'll get his insula or worrying that DQ will be made an Archbishop errant rather than an Emperor which would impinge on his gifts to Sancho, and in this chapter the refrain about the lost donkey and the anxiety about the correct paperwork for him to obtain replacements from DQ's niece. 

But this morning I did begin to see more clearly the levels of potential complexity which have been hinted at in earlier chapters. DQ starts off on a meaningless penance: implores the rocks etc to witness his admittedly invented grief, and then when Sancho wants to leave on his journey, says, no you can't go yet : "Now I have to rent my clothes, toss aside my armour, and hit my head against these rocks, along with other things of that nature, all of which will astonish you."  Later, "At least Sancho...I want you to see me naked and performing one or two dozen mad acts, which will take me less than half an hour, because if you have seen them with your own eyes, you can safely swear to any others you might wish to add".  In the end Sancho satisfies his conscience by seeing him do a cartwheel while wearing no knickers and is happy that this is evidence of sufficient madness for him to be able to make the rest up.  Seeing the two of them interact at the level of knowing that they are performing mad acts but working out a sort of method for them does begin to give me a sense of Bloom's 'play of the world'.

There is also a telling passage when Sancho has worked out that the lady Dulcinea of Tobosa is in fact a lusty labouring girl he knows, DQ confesses that he's met this love of his chivalric life four times and looked at her once.  He goes on to tell Sancho that most of the heroines of chivalric romances are also made up "And therefore it is enough for me to think and believe that my good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and virtuous.......And to conclude, I imagine that everything I say is true, no more and no less, and I depict her in my imagination as I wish her to be".  The mad man know he is mad and rationally creates and regulates his madness. 

Bloom also says that Books I and II are very different and readers usually have a marked preference for one other the other.  On the evidence so far, I'm hoping to be a book II person.

Comments

[Margaret Able]

The best part of Don Quixote for me is the mix of genres and styles. I also enjoy how most of the characters become either storytellers or literary critics. Of course, it took me until my mid-thirties to appreciate this; when I first read DQ in high school I hated it. I just thought it was a story about a pathetic old man who got abused a lot. My perspective has really changes as I've gotten older -- I still see the pathos, but I also appreciate the narrative craft.

Hang in there -- you'll figure out what is appealing to you!

Good luck,

Margaret
http://www.bookishmarginalia.blogspot.com

[Sandra]

That's interesting - I suppose DQ himself is already a storyteller, the story being his life. I really want to enjoy this book so all the angles I can find to appreciate it from are welcome.

[Stefanie]

I loved the part where DQ tries to convince Sancho that he must witness his acts of madness so he can go tell Dulcinea about them. And earlier than that, Sancho proves himself smarter than he looks by hobbling DQ's horse so they can't investigate the horrible noises in the dark. That was good for a laugh. I haven't decided yet if DQ is truly mad or willfully mad.

I must admit that there have been moments when the story has been a bit tedious but so far I am enjoying the book. Hang in there though, maybe you will be a book two girl :)