Chekhov’s Mistess

Early Thoughts: Some Modern Issues in Don Quixote

I know some have gotten to a slow start and others are zooming right through. So far, I’m in the slow camp, but now that I’ve gotten most of the site issues resolved, I should have more time. This post will be short, but I hope to throw these issues out and see if anyone cares to comment:

A couple of things struck me about the beginning. Both touch on DQ’s modern relevance. First of all, Cervante’s madness stems from his reading – from media. In our era the medium usually accused of influencing behavior, even causing violence, is music. So my question, if you do indeed believe that DQ is insane, is this: Could his madness really be caused by books, or is that a convenient scapegoat?

That leads to the censorship that we see in chapter five’s book burning. The conversation between the priest and the barber is interesting because they are making judgments on the worthiness of various texts based upon their own motivations and their perceptions of morality. Quixote’s niece wants to just throw them all out because she thinks the books have harmed her uncle. Is there good and bad censorship? Aside from that, it’s amazing that censorship still happens today based on the very same issues. It’s clear that burning his books had no effect on DQ, so why do it in the first place?

That’s it. It’s late, but I wanted to quickly share a few thoughts before we get into the meat of things.

comments

Bud,

I’m of the opinion that D.Q.’s madness stems from his susceptibility. The books are a facilitator, but I think that D.Q. goes mad because of his willingness to follow a thread of thought too far. It is an obsession, just as we see people become obsessed by things in our own time (like the Kennedy assassination, of proving that the Bible is literally true, etc). I think that is the root of D.Q.’s madness and that, which is human nature, certainly has not change in 400 years.

    – Scott (04/07  at  12:50 AM)

I agree that obsession would be an accurate “modern” term for the particular madness that Don Quijote suffers.  He is intelligent, well spoken and, for all intents and purposes, normal except for his delusions about being a knight errant.  It is a very narrow and specific “madness”.

I admit, I did not think of censorship while reading the book burning passage in chapter 5.  It is an interesting observation.  I did think of scapegoating, however, not quite in terms of censorship.  It seemed to me that housekeeper and the neice view the books of chivalry as the root of Quijote’s problems, like a concerned loved one would view drugs or alcohol with one who has an addiction.  Most likely the housekeeper, who is the most vehement about burning the books, is illiterate.  As they were burning the books I thought of it, more as throwing an alcoholic’s booze away in a last ditch effort. 

The priest and the barber, who agree that Quijote has a serious problem, become the more reasonable (and very comic) voices as they select certain books to be saved based on their own judgements.  I read this as if someone was saving a good vintage wine from being flushed down the toilet just to save a drunk, but deeming the cheap wines flushable in the effort.  Very funny.

This fits with the idea that Cervantes was presenting the books of chivalry that Don Quijote so worshipped as “easliy consumable” hackneyed stories with little intellectual (nutritional) value.  They were easily written, easily read and predictably entertaining.  Harmless, really (and most likely that is how they were defended at the time) unless someone becomes obsessed with them, like Quijote does, and starts implementing the principles and practices they expouse.

Indivdual censorship seems to be something that Cervantes would have been in favor of, in the form of, carefully selecting what you are going to be “filling your mind with” based on it’s intellectual merit rather than on it’s capacity to simply entertain.  In other words, not unlike many writers today, he was frustrated with the reading public and, more importantly what the public was reading.  Cervantes was not a very “commercially successful” author.  To enable his writing he relied on private benefactors more than he relied on the public.  He was a failed playwright and alternately praises and takes shots at his contemporaries in the text of Don Quijote.

In our contemporary times I wonder if Cervante’s voice wouldn’t be more similar to the voice of say, an independent film maker, whose films will always be in the shadow of big budget Speilberg-type hollywood movies that people flock to for their easy to swallow entertainment value.

    – heather (04/07  at  03:12 PM)

When Cervantes has Quixote go insane by reading too many books, I assume he’s giving a sly dig at his audience - “Watch out, all you book-lovers, you’re next.” The more of DQ I read, in fact, the more I see Cervantes in the line of such authors as Mark Twain, PJ O’Roarke and the writing staff of The Simpsons - brilliant satirists where absolutely no one is safe, not even the author’s fans.

    – Jason Pettus (04/08  at  05:56 PM)

Bud,

(I’m slow, too.)

I was struck by the contemporary relevance of the book-burning, too--and the discussion of literature (or, today, t.v. or music, or movies, or video games) as a cause of madness. I cherish the comment about one book that should be saved on account of it’s being a satire of romances, not a romance itself: a nice justification for the impotance of the Quixote itself. But more than that, I love the priest’s familiarity with the texts. He has read many of them himself and leaps at the chance to add a few volumes to his library. Moral gatekeepers are so often connoisseurs, aren’t they?

I love the way Cervantes teases the absurdity of the attempt: walling off the library only convinces Don Quixote of his own importance--the famed conjuror Freton or Friton (a pun on fry? as in steak frites?) has seen fit to visit him and deny him his books, well, then, he must indeed be a knight errant…

    – Anne Fernald (04/11  at  09:44 AM)

I’ll echo Anne.  I thought Chapter VI was extremely funny--it seems as if the priest has read *all* of those books...and no one there bats an eye! 

The neice:

“Your grace should send them to be burned, just like all the rest, because it’s very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing, and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease.”

The priest:

“What the girl says is true"…

Hm.  It’s both delicious irony and fodder for conspiracy theorists: if the priest and barber had a hand in the creation of the MS itself, they would of course play along with the construction of the appearance of Quixote’s insanity.  But in the meantime, the priest gives himself away as literary critic.

And yes, I was also reminded of the “culture wars” and the whole “garbage-in, garbage-out” mentality of life immitating art.

P.S. Anne--yes, that Fritón bit made me laugh aloud (it is a pun).  I immediately pictured a huge fried thing waving a wand!

    – amcorrea (04/15  at  08:36 PM)

I have a couple of questions for you… I am doing a research project into the anniversary of Don Quixote whilst I study in Spain for the year and I am continuously asking myself the same questions and hitting myself against a brick wall with the responses…

Why do you think Don Quixote is a still such a prominant novel in our times?

What does it offer the reader? An understanding of an era of enlightenment or a comical satirical look at a world through the eyes of a lovable madman?

Do you think it should be taught in schools, just as Shakespeare is, in the English speaking world?

In your opinion, does it deserve the hype?

I know these are obsure questions but just trying to trigger a response beyound the academic writing I can research on my own. I am after honest and down to earth responses. Please include any opinions or information you have about the anniversary or the book.

Muchas Gracias

    – Catherine Bowe (06/14  at  02:50 PM)

Catherine, I think you will find the answers (at least from our perspective) on the pages within this site.

Cheers!

Bud

    – Bud Parr (06/14  at  09:11 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: April 06, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

Tags: Don Quixote

• Comments:7
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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