Chekhov’s Mistess

“Fortunate the age and fortunate the times”

We have a running joke in my family: When someone mentions a foreign city, for instance Barcelona, I habitually look wistfully into the air and say, “Ah, I recall my days in Barcelona,” at which point my wife reminds me, “Day.”

Corny I know (you have to be there), but I have been to many places for a very short period of time; usually longer than a day, but sometimes not; some too were only places I’ve read about. Still, I do indeed recall them all fondly and with great wanderlust. But in “recalling” these places I am only reflecting on them in my mind’s eye, a romantic vision.

When Don Quixote longs for the days of the “Golden Age” [p76*]:

“Fortunate the age and fortunate the times called golden by the ancients, and not because gold, which in this our age of iron is so highly esteemed, could be found then with no effort, but because those who lived in that time did not know the two words thine and mine. In that blessed age all things were owned in common…

no one around has the wits to remind him that what he speaks of was never his reality, only an ideal that no longer exists, echoing his quest, echoing the time of the writers whom he [Cervantes] idolized, like Virgil, and announcing a theme of satirically condeming Spain’s shift into capitalism.

In the essay “The historical and social context” in The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes B.W. Ife spells out the social-economic climate of the late 16th century Spain:

Wealth is the key to understanding these changes and divisions. Taken as a whole, Spain was an extremely prosperous country in the early modern period, but the gap between rich and poor grew steadily wider throughout the sixteenth century. At the same time, the traditional correlation between social class and economic circumstances came under significant strain. New routes to wealth were open to all classes and ethnic groups, and no class was immune from poverty. The result was to reverse the polarity between wealth and status: where once membership of the ruling class would almost inevitably bring prosperity, in the changing circumstances, wealth was increasingly used to buy rank.

Later in the same essay, Ife says: “many of the gentry had fallen on hard times, while the “new rich” were rising up to take their place.” It is clear that our man is on the losing end of that equation, but it is also clear that Don Quixote laments not just the wealth that he may have enjoyed as a Gentry, but the status that went along with it, that status anyone could buy. So it seems that Don Quixote may not have been a Marxist in the making, rather a conservative (sub)consciously longing for his old position in life.

Later, on page 106, Don Quixote, who often speaks in great metaphors, says in response to Sancho’s lament over “this great storm of a beating would rain down our backs:”

“Yours, at least, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “must be accustomed to such cloudburts; but mine, brought up on cambric and fine Dutch linen, of course will feel more deeply the pain of this misfortune…” [emphasis added]

Ah, but is it the misfortune of the blows that DQ feels so acutely? The absence of “thine and mine” that DQ longed for in the Golden Age is indeed the romantic longings of a dreamer, because he truly seems to long for a time when “mine” did mean something, it meant a life of fine living.

I guess I’m just being “Quixotic” when I recall my days in Sevilla.

• all page references are to the Grossman, hardcover translation.
  

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: April 12, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

Tags: Don Quixote

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