Don Quixote
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Wikipedia-Article "Don Quixote"
- This page is about the fictional character and novel. For other meanings, see Don Quixote (disambiguation).
Don Quixote de la Mancha (spelled Don Quijote in modern Spanish) (IPA: /don ki'xote ð̞e la 'mantʃa/) is a novel by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It is one of the earliest written novels in a modern European language. Some people consider it the finest book in the Spanish language. [1]. Nevertheless, it is almost universally accepted to be the emblematic work of Spanish literature.
The adjective "quixotic", at present meaning "idealistic and impractical", derives from the protagonist's name, and the expressions "tilting at windmills" and "fighting windmills" come from this story.
There are many adaptations of the book, mostly designed to modernise the text and to shorten its length. One such adaptation is authored by Agustín Sánchez and runs to only 150 pages.
Contents |
The book
The novel actually consists of two parts: the first, titled El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, was published in 1605 (off Juan de la Cuesta's printing press in Madrid on December 20, 1604, and made available to the public on January 16, 1605) and the second, Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha, in 1615 (a year before the author's death). In 1614, between the first and second parts, a fake Don Quixote sequel was published by somebody using the pen name Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. French Don Quixote specialist Dominique Aubier suspects seriously Lope de Vega of being the author of that literary jest. For this reason, Part II contains several references to an imposter, whom Quixote rails against, and Part II ends with the death of Don Quixote (so no imposter could experiment again with Cervantes's character).
Cervantes tells that the first chapters come from the "chronicles of La Mancha", and the rest was translated by a morisco from a found manuscript by the original Arabic author Cide Hamete Benengeli ("Mr. Hamid Eggplant"). This and other narrative resources parody the then-popular genre of chivalric romance.
The plot covers the journeys and adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Alonso Quijano is an ordinary Spaniard (an hidalgo, the lowest rank of the Spanish nobility) who is obsessed with stories of knights errant (libros de caballerías), especially those written by Feliciano de Silva. His friends and family think he is crazy when he decides to take the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha and become a knight errant himself (a don being a title of a higher nobility, and a quixote in Spanish was a piece of armor). Then he sorties to wander Spain on his thin horse Rocinante, righting wrongs and protecting the oppressed.
Don Quixote is visibly crazy to most people. He believes ordinary inns to be enchanted castles, and their peasant girls to be beautiful princesses. He mistakes windmills for oppressive giants sent by evil enchanters. He imagines a neighboring peasant to be Dulcinea del Toboso, the beautiful maiden to whom he has pledged love and fidelity.
Sancho Panza, his simple squire, believes his master to be a bit crazy, in particular he knows that there is "really" no Dulcinea, but he plays along, hoping to get rich. He and Quixote agree for instance that because Dulcinea is not as pretty nor does she smell as good as she should, she "must have been enchanted", and from that point on the mission is to disenchant her.
Both master and squire undergo complex change and development throughout the story, and each character takes on attributes of the other as the novel goes on. At the end of the second book, Quixote decides on his deathbed that his actions have been madness. Sancho begs him not to give up, but to no avail.
Master and squire have numerous adventures, often causing more harm than good in spite of their noble intentions. They meet criminals sent to the galleys, and are victims of an elaborate prank by a pair of Dukes, when Sancho is made "governor" of the nonexistent Barataria.
Many Americans may be more familiar with the musical Man of la Mancha than with the book itself. If they read the book, they would be in for some surprises: for example Dulcinea, or Aldonza Lorenzo, one of the main characters of the play, is never seen in the book.
In the novel, she is constantly invoked by Don Quixote as his lady, but never appears, allowing his hyperbolic statements of her beauty and virtue to go untested.
Opening sentence
- En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.
- "In some village in La Mancha, whose name I do not care to recall, there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a greyhound for racing, and a skinny old horse."
The phrase de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme was made famous by the book, and, like other fragments of the book, is a common cliché in modern Spanish.
English Translation of Agustin Sánchez's Adaptation (First two paragraphs)
Note: The Sánchez adaptation is a shortened version of the original and allows the student to gain a quicker understanding of the story without being burdened excessively by every detail which appeared in the original. This shortened adaptation still runs to about 150 pages.
- "In a village in La Mancha, whose name I don't wish to recall, lived, a long long time ago, a gentleman, tall and dry as the flesh which wrapped around his 50 years, and which kept him reputed as being a good man. As the story goes, he was called Alonso Quijano and he lived a modest life without luxuries, although within his house, nobody lacked food or a good piece of velvet with which to light up the holidays. Don Alonso lived with a female servant who had already reached fifty years, and with a niece who had not yet reached twenty, and he was an early riser and fan of hunting which led him to have a narrow friendship with the priest and barber of his village. As a gentleman, he had hardly any responsiblities, and so he dedicated his many hours of free time to reading adventure books. He was so fond of the stories about giants and battles, wandering knights and captive princesses that it led him to sell a good part of his land to pay for books and more books.
- By day and by night, don Alonso had nothing to do better than to read. Because of the books he stopped looking after his home and neglected his affairs, so soon, by dint of reading so much, and sleeping so little, his brain dried up, and he became mad. Suddenly he released the grip on the book he was holding between his hands and furiously brandished his old sword and began stabbing at the walls as if he was defending himself from a legion of fierce giants. He had convinced himself that everything he had read in the books was true........"
Importance
Don Quixote is often nominated as the world's greatest work of fiction. It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter are usually focused on the psychological evolution of their characters. In Part I, Quixote imposes himself on his environment. By Part II, he is no longer physically capable, but people know about him, "having read his adventures", and so, he needs to do less to maintain his image. By his deathbed, he has begun to assume a new identity, including a nickname, "the Good".
There are many minor literary "firsts" for European literature—a woman complaining of her menopause, someone with an eating disorder, and the psychological revealing of their troubles as something inner to themselves.
Subtle touches regarding perspective are everywhere: characters talk about a woman who is the cause of the death of a suitor, portraying her as evil, but when she comes on stage, she gives a different perspective entirely that makes Quixote (and thus the reader) defend her. When Quixote descends into a cave, Cervantes admits that he does not know what went on there.
Quixote's adventures tend to involve situations in which he attempts to apply a knights sure, simple morality to situations in which much more complex issues are at hand. For example, upon seeing a band of galley slaves being mistreated by their guards, he believes their cries of innocence and attacks the guards. After they are freed, he demands that they honor his lady Dulcinea, but instead they pelt him with stones and leave.
Different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. When it was first published, it was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution it was popular in part due to its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and disenchanting—not comic at all. In the 19th century it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on". By the 20th century it became clear that it was not simply a unique and great moral work, but the first true modern novel, as Dominique Aubier writes: a "systemical and structural masterpiece".
Following the Cuban revolution, the revolutionary government founded a publishing house called Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute), to publish large runs of great literature for distribution at low prices to the masses. The first book published by the Instituto was Don Quixote.
For the 400th anniversary of the original publication of the novel, the Venezuelan government printed one million summarized copies for free distribution. Similar initiatives took place in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries around the world.
Use in Tourism
The autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha has used the fame of Cervantes's novel to promote tourism in the region. A number of sites in La Mancha are linked to the novel, including windmills and an inn upon which events of the story are thought to have been based. Several trademarks also refer to Don Quixote's characters and events.
In 2004, a scholarly team lead by Francisco Parra Luna announced that it had identified the "real" hometown of Don Quixote, which is never actually named in the novel (the very first line of the book begins, “In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall ....”) Based on clues in the novel, along with computations of the time it would have taken a man on horseback to reach the various locations referenced by the author, the team identified the place as Villanueva de los Infantes, a small town some 144 miles south of Madrid.
As reported in press accounts, Mariano Sabina, the mayor of Villanueva de los Infantes, said upon hearing the news: "I’m delighted that my town is the famous place in La Mancha. Now I hope the whole world will know us."
Literary Influence
Influences for Don Quixote include the Valencian novel Tirant lo Blanc, one of the first chivalric epics, which Cervantes describes in Chapter VI of Quixote as "the best book in the world." The scene of the book burning gives us an excellent list of Cervantes's likes and dislikes about literature.
The novel's landmark status in literary history has afforded it a vast and nearly innumerable legacy of influence. To just enumerate a few examples:
- Cardenio, a lost play by Cervantes's contemporary William Shakespeare. Itself the source of later plays, it is based on one of the interpolated novels in the first part.
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding notes in the preface that it is "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote"
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is often attributed as a retelling of Don Quixote
- The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis includes a character called Kapetan Enas whose alias is Don Quixote
- Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges is an essay about a (fictional) 20th century writer who re-authors Don Quixote. "The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer." Borges' story is also well known as a central metaphor in John Barth's famous essay "The Literature of Exhaustion"
- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne is rife with references, including Parson Yorick's horse, Rocinante
- Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene. Monsignor Quixote is said to be a descendant of Don Quixote.
- Asterix In Spain by Goscinny and Uderzo. Asterix and Obelix encounter Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on a country road in Spain, with Quixote becoming enraged and charging off into the distance when the topic of windmills arises in conversation.
Literature
- José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta: "Los quijotes del Quijote": Historia de una aventura creativa. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 1997. ISBN 3-931887-14-6
- José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta: "El Quijote como tragedia y la tragedia de don Quijote". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-00-4
- Cervantes y su mundo I. V.V.A.A., Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2004. ISBN 3-935004-89-3
- Cervantes y su mundo II. V.V.A.A., Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-935004-91-0
- Cervantes y su mundo III. V.V.A.A., Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-10-4
- Agapita Jurado Santos: "Obras teatrales derivadas de novelas cervantinas (siglo XVII)". Para una bibliografía. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-935004-95-8
- James A.Parr: "Cervantes and the Quixote: A Touchstone for Literary Criticism". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-21-X
- Reichenberger: "Cervantes and the Hermeneutics of Satire". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-11-2
- Kurt Reichenberger: "Cervantes, un gran satírico?" Los enigmas del Quijote descifrados para el carísimo lector. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-12-0
- Kurt & Theo Reichenberger: "Cervantes: El Quijote y sus mensajes destinados al lector". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2004. ISBN 3-937734-05-8
- Karl-Ludwig Selig: "Studies on Cervantes". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 1995. ISBN 3-928264-64-9
- Krzysztof Sliwa: "Vida de Miguel Cervantes Saavedra". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-13-9
- V.V.A.A., Cervantes. Estudios sobre Cervantes en la víspera de su centenario. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 1994. ISBN 3-928064-64-9
- Dominique Aubier, Don Quichotte, le prodigieux secours du messie, editions M.L.L. 1997 ISBN 2-9508391-2-6
- Dominique Aubier, Don Quichotte, le révélation du code de la Bible; editions M.L.L. 1999, ISBN 2-9508391-4-2
- Dominique Aubier, Don Quichotte, Prophète d'Israel, éd. Robert Laffont, 1968, Paris
- Dominique Aubier, Don Quijote, Profeta y Cabalista, ed. Obelisco, ISBN 84-300-4527-9
- Dominique Aubier, Don Quichotte, la réaffirmation messianique du Coran editions M.L.L. 2001 ISBN 2-9508391-8-5
Films and Iconography
Several films are based on the story of Don Quixote, including:
- Don Quixote (1933), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- Дон Кихот (1957, a Soviet production by Grigori Kozintsev
- Man of La Mancha (1972), directed by Arthur Hiller (also a stage musical by Dale Wasserman)
- El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1991), a television miniseries directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón
- Don Quixote, begun by Orson Welles but never finished; a reshaped version by Jesus Franco was released in (1992)
- Don Quixote (2000), directed by Peter Yates
- Lost in La Mancha (2002) is a documentary movie about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make a movie adaptation of Don Quixote.
Hanna-Barbera released a short-lived children's cartoon based on the story called Don Coyote and Sancho Panda. Other than the anthropomorphic main characters, the other roles' species have not been changed, and use the original names.
Don Quixote inspired a large number of illustrators, painters and draughtsmen such as Gustave Doré, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Antonio de La Gandara.
In Bolivia, Don Quixote became a symbol for justice in a series of paintings by the muralist, Walter Solón Romero. These were painted during many years of dictatorships that led to Solón´s arrest and torture.
Opera, music and ballet
Don Quichotte, opera by Jules Massenet, premiered at Monte Carlo Opera on February 24, 1910. In the title role at the first performance was the legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, for whom the part was written.
There is also Master Peter's Puppet Show, an opera by Manuel de Falla based on an episode from Book II. Also based on an episode from the novel is Die Hochzeit des Camacho, an early opera by Felix Mendelssohn.
Richard Strauss composed the tone poem Don Quixote, subtitling it "Introduction, Theme with Variations, and Finale" and 'Fantastic Variations for Large Orchestra on a Theme of Knightly Character.' The music is full of musical tics, pops, and other random sounds symbolizing Don Quixote's insanity, and they increase in volume and frequency as the music develops.
Georg Philipp Telemann wrote an orchestral suite entitled "Burlesque Don Quixotte".
In 1972 Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot released an album entitled Don Quixote. The album's title track was a folk song based around the character of Don Quixote.
In 1973 Rudolf Nureyev and Sir Robert Helpmann filmed a ballet Don Quixote over 25 days in 40 degree heat in Melbourne's Essendon airport hangar, and is considered one of Australia's greatest artistic achievements.
Spelling and pronunciation
Quixote is the original spelling in mediaeval Castilian, and is used in English. However, modern Spanish has since gone through spelling reforms and phonetic changes which have turned the x into j.
The x was pronounced like an English sh sound (voiceless postalveolar fricative) in mediaeval times—/kiˈʃote/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet—and this is reflected in the French name Don Quichotte. However, such words (now virtually all spelt with a j) are now pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative sound like the Scottish or German ch (as in Loch, Bach) or the Greek Chi (χ)—/kiˈxote/. English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, although more Anglicized pronunciations of "Don Quixote" often sound more like "Donkey Hotey" or "Don Quicks Oat" or even "Donk Quitz Olt".
400th anniversary
The book's 400th anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2005. Spain issued a commemorative €2 coin. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez's government handed out 1 million free copies as part of a national literacy program [2]. In the UK, BBC Radio ran during two weeks a ten part serialisation of an adaptation of the work. In late 2005, Peru presented at a book fair in Guadalajara a version of Don Quixote translated into the Quechua language.
See also
- Belianis
- List of characters in Don Quixote
- Asteroid 3552 Don Quixote, named after the character
External links
- Free eBook of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra at Project Gutenberg
- Project Gutenberg e-texts of [3]
- Spanish language newspaper elmundo carries the text in spanish without advertising as a courtesy
- Spanish language audio of entire book
- Official Don Quixote Quatercentenary site
- Notes on the novel
- Don Quixote Virtual Museum of Don Quixote
- 400 Windmills Weblog Devoted to Discussing Don Quixote
- Is There a Hidden Jewish Meaning in Don Quixote? by Michael McGaha (Pomona College, Californie)
- The secret kabalistical encodings in Don Quijote.
- El secreto de Don Quijote
- Coloquio Cervantes http://www.ou.edu/cervantes/coloquiocervantes.html
- The Translator as Author: Two English Quijotes, by Anthony Pym, Intercultural Studies Group, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.
