Explication:
Reading: W&H: 1901-1944, Cervantes' Don Quixote.

When we meet Don Quixote, he is a 50 year old bachelor.  If he were younger, we might forgive his behavior as youthful or idiotic because he hadn't yet learned what the world is like.  If he were much older, we might dismiss his behavior as senile or somehow affected by the frailties of age.  If he had a wife, we assume that she would have forestalled Don Quixote descent into madness; although Sancho Panza's wife is unable, or perhaps uninterested, in keeping her husband home.  What drives Don Quixote mad?
p. 1905     reading books of chivalry . . . he almost entirely neglected . . . the management of
                his domestic affairs.  Indeed his craze for this kind of literature became so
                extravagant that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of knight-errantry

Gutenberg's printing press was invented in about 1450.  A hundred years later, Cervantes can imagine Don Quixote addicted to popular literature.  What kind of literature is Don Quixote devoted to?  He valued:
1905        In those books more than pearls, especially when he read of those courtships & letters
               of challenge that knights sent to ladies, often containing expressions such as: "The
               reason for your unreasonable treatment of my reason so enfeebles my reason that I have
               reason to complain of your beauty."  & again: "The high heavens, which with your divinity
               divinely fortify you with stars, make you the deserver of the desert that is deserved by
               your greatness."

You make think these are simply meaningless gobble-de-gook; Dr. Seuss gone bad.  But, like so much in Don Quixote, they parody medieval values; in this case theology.  Medieval scholasticism had propounded complex linguistic puzzles, asking "how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?"  St Anselm dreamt-up the wonderfully elegant Ontological Proof for the existence of God, which went like this:

Say one person imagines or thinks they have a $20 bill in his pocket.
Another person sticks his hand in his pocket to discover that he actually has $20.
Which is more desirable?
Of course we all would prefer $20 in hand to the idea of $20.
Bishop Anselm says that you have just demonstrated that what actually exists is superior to what exists only in language or as an idea in the mind.

Now tell me who or what God is.  After some time we are likely to accept Anselm's fancy definition:
God is that being than whom nothing is greater.
So if we think of any desirable attribute, it is immediately subsumed or added by this definition.
Didn't we say that existence is a positive attribute?
Yes.  So God must exist by definition!

Say we have 2 cases:
In the first case God exists simply as a word or idea.
In the 2nd case God actually exists.
Like the case of the $20 bill, the 2nd possibility is superior to the first.
Therefore God must actually exist by definition.

Welcome to medieval scholastics.  This is exactly the kind of reasoning that Cervantes ridicules as complex, mentally challenging, & total useless:
1905      These & similar rhapsodies bewildered the poor gentleman's understanding, for he racked
             his brain day & night to unbowel their meaning, which not even Aristotle himself could have
             done if he had been raised from the dead for that very purpose.

Don Quixote:
1906     so immersed himself in those romances that . . . his brains dried up [&] he lost the use of
            reason.  His imagination became filled with a host of fancies he had read in his books --
            enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, courtships, loves, tortures, & many
            other absurdities.  So true did all this phantasmagoria from books appear to him that in his
            mind he accounted no history in the world more authentic.

Once again the parallel here is medieval theology.  The implication is that it dried up people's brains until they lost of the use of reason & imagined a world filled with devils & witches & angels & spirits.  So true did all this phantasmagoria appear (as in Dante's work), that people preferred to shut themselves up in monasteries to dream their lives away, rather than opening their eyes to see the actual world.

Don Quixote seek out a medieval monastery, but:
1906     having lost his wits completely, he stumbled upon the oddest fancy that ever entered a
            madman's brain.  He believed that it was necessary . . . that he should become a
            knight-errant, roaming through the world . . . redressing all manner of wrongs & exposing
            himself to continual dangers [to] win everlasting honor & renown.

Don Quixote assembles a rag-tag suit or armor.  He refurbishes:
1906     some rusty armor that had belonged to his great grandfather & had lain moldering
            in a corner.

Cervantes wants us to see this as regressive & a return to ancient & outmoded & now ridiculous ways, because the target for his ridicule is medievalism.  But consider that in 1550 armor & swords & something resembling knight-errantry was exceedingly contemporary, popular, & above all, paid handsomely.  In 1598 Juan de Oñate & other conquistadors walked into New Mexico to "subdue" the Pueblo & Hopi people; &, of course, to look for the gold that they found in so many tons in Mexico & Peru.  Spanish armor & conquistadors would not be the stuff of legend or nostalgia for a century of more after Cervantes' time.  This recognition makes Cervantes' intent to ridicule medieval values clear.  He is not interested in ridiculing militarism.  Cervantes' target is the Courtly Love culture & otherworldly attitude that characterized medievalism.

Don Quixote's horse is "all skin & bone," nonetheless:
1907     He spent 4 days deliberating over what name he would give the horse.
            . . . He finally decided to call the horse Rozinante.

The footnote explains that Rozinante implies that this horse is the prototype or model horse; something like a Platonic form or ideal.  Compare the notion of a circle.  It is essentially a definition or a conception.  Every actual circle that is drawn is only an illustration or an instance of the idea.  Don Quixote's horse is suppose to work similarly.  The name also illustrates the fundamental process at work in Don Quixote, which is Platonic or theological: bringing to mind an ideal & then projecting it into the world, regardless of how badly or falsely it works.

After acquiring a horse & armor, a knight needs a lady to whom he can dedicate his works of glory.  Don Quixote:
1908     found one whom he might call his lady!  . . . a good-looking country lass
            with whom he had been in love, although it is understood that she never
            knew or was aware of it.  She was called Aldonza Lorenzo.

Don Quixote embarks on his first sally:
1908     . . . His madness prevailed over every reason.
            [He let] his horse choose the way believing that in this
            consisted the true spirit of adventure.

As the horse wanders, Don Quixote offers idiotic prayers:
1909      O thou wise enchanter, whosoever thou mayest be, whose duty it will be to chronicle
             this strange history, do not, I beseech thee, forget my good horse, Rozinante.

Cervantes never lets us forget that Don Quixote is deranged & his delusions have no basis in fact & are worthy only to be laughed at:
1909     . . . such intense heat that it would have been enough to dissolve
            his brains, if he had had any left.

Don Quixote mistakes "women of the town, as they say" (i.e., prostitutes), for gentry:
1910     . . . when they heard themselves called maidens, a thing so out of the
            way of their profession, they could not restrain their laughter.

Our knight wants to be consecrated.  Chapter 3 offers a parody of this medieval ceremony.  Instead of a church, we have a country inn.  The inn keeper, who was "a bit of a wag," sees a joke in Don Quixote's request & consequently plays along until things get out of hand.  Don Quixote is intent on keeping an all night vigil in the courtyard where animals are watered & fed.  When teamsters attempt to water their mules, Don Quixote attacks them for their irreverance:
1914     . . . He gave the carrier such a hefty blow on the pate [head] that he felled him to the ground.
            [He] opened the 2nd muleteer's head in 4 places.

Alarmed at the violent turn of events, the inn keeper warns his guests that:
1914     . . . The man was mad & as such, he would be acquitted even if he killed every one of them.

The inn keeper decides that the easiest way to deal with the madman is to humor him.  So the inn keeper quickly consecrates our knight:
1915     [He] brought out forthwith a book in which he kept his account of the straw &
            barley . . . [&] read in his manual as if he had been repeating some pious
            oration.  [Everyone struggles to keep] from bursting with laughter at every
            stage of the ceremonies.

Don Quixote now has armor (even if the visor on the helmet is pasteboard), a horse, a lady, & an office or a name.  Thus armed, he sallies forth to make the world right.  Naturally, he mistakes every situation & succeeds only in making things worse.  He finds a sheep owner chastising a negligent shepherd, who is:
1916     so careless that every day he loses 1 [sheep].
1917     "Have you the impudence to lie in my presence, vile serf?" said Don Quixote.
            [He] told the farmer to pay up the money [to the servant he was whipping] unless
            he wished to die.

After Don Quixote leaves, the owner of the sheep says:
1918     ". . . I can double the pay."  Catching the boy by the arm, he tied him again to the
            oak & gave him such a drubbing that he left him for dead.
            Such was the manner in which the valiant Don Quixote undid that wrong.

Don Quixote next runs into traders from Toledo on their way to buy silk.  He challenges them to:
1919    "Let all the world stand still if all the world does not confess that thee is not in the all
           the world a fairer damsel than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso.

Because:
1919     Both the tone & the appearance of the horseman gave clear proof of his insanity . . .
            [the traders, one of whom] was a trifle waggish in humor [asks the knight to] show
            her to us, & if she is as beautiful as you say, we shall willingly & universally acknowledge
            the truth of your claim.

Don Quixote responds, saying:
1919     "If I were to show her to you . . . what merit would there be in acknowledging a truth so
            manifest to all?  The important point is that you should believe, confess, affirm, swear,
            & defend it without setting eyes on her."

What is the joke here?  Obviously it ridicules medieval faith in the unseen.  Don Quixote's formula suggests that the more fervently one believes in the absurd, the better; & conversely, acceptance of the realities of this world is without merit.  Don Quixote's attack if fortuitously ruined when Rozinante stumbles, throwing the old knight to the ground, where:
1920     Seeing that he couldn't stir, he resolved to have recourse to his usual remedy, which was
            to think of some incident form 1 of his books.  His madness made him remember . . . a
            story familiar to children . . . yet for all that, no more authentic than the miracle of Mohammed.

A peasant finds the prostrate knight & takes him home, wishing:
1921     he were in Hell rather than to have to listen to such a hodegepodge of foolishness.  This
            convinced him that his neighbor was mad.

Put to bed in order to recover, the curate, village barber & housekeeper make plans to cure Don Quixote's madness.  The housekeeper correctly surmises that:
1922     . . . Those accursed books of chivalry that he continually reads have turned his brain
            topsy-turvey.  . . . They have ruined the finest mind in all La Mancha!
1923     That same night the housekeeper burned all the books she could find & some that
            perished in the flames deserved to be preserved forever in the archives

Don Quixote's friends take additional steps:
1923     One of the remedies that the curate & the barber then prescribed for their friend's
            infirmity was to wall up the room where the books had been stored so that when
            he rose he should not find them . . .  & they agreed to tell him that an enchanter
            had whisked books, room, & all away.

When Don Quixote could get out of bed:
1923     he could not find the room in which he had left them [books], he went up & down &
            all over the house looking for it [finally deciding that] the Devil in person took all away.

Don Quixote's niece asks if home and ordinary life aren't better than:
1924     roaming the world in search of better bread than is made of wheat?

Apparently not:
1924     During those days he held many pleasant arguments with his 2 old friends the
            curate & the barber.  He would maintain that what the world needed most of all
            was plenty of knights-errant & that he himself would revive knight-errantry.

Don Quixote's efforts attract Sancho Panza, who also has:
1924     very little wit in his pate.  . . . The poor wight resolved to set out with him [Don
            Quixote] & serve him as a squire.  [Hoping that] he might meet with an adventure
            that would earn for him, in the twinkling of an eye, some island, & he would find
            himself governor of it.

The notion of suddenly becoming the governor of an island reminds us that these are the glory day of the Spanish empire & that there are indeed many Spanish governors living in splendor on Caribbean islands.

Chapter 8 presents the most popular scene that so many Americans & Europeans know, even if they have never read a word of Don Quixote: the windmill scene.  Don Quixote asks:
1925     Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, 30 or 40 hulking giants?

Of course the prosaic Sancho does not see giants:
1926     Those over there are not giants but windmills, & those things that seem to be
            arms are their sails.

After the futile charge, Don Quixote explains:
1926     the magician Freston, the one who robbed me of my study & books, has
            changed those giants into windmills

The scene is ridiculous, but we could easily imagine a medieval mind, like Dante's, explaining how things are not what they seem, because magicians & devils are at work:
1927    Don Quixote could not help laughing at the simplicity of his squire.

But Cervantes or the narrator never tires of reminding us that Don Quixote sees:
1929    in his imagination what did not exist.

When Don Quixote charges a flock of sheep, believing them to be "his mortal enemies," he is hit be rocks that the shepherds launch from their slings to devastating effect:
1931     . . . A smooth pebble hit him in the side & buried 2 ribs in his entrails.  . . . Another
            . . . carried away with it 3 or 4 teeth & grinders out of his mouth, & badly crushed 2
            fingers of his hand.

In an age before dentistry, Don Quixote is most concerned about his teeth.  He asks Sancho to see how many of his teeth are missing, when::
1931     precisely at the fatal moment . . . all that he had in his stomach discharged itself upon
            the beard of the compassionate squire.

In turn, Sancho:

1931    felt that his own stomach turned, & he emptied its full cargo upon his master

Ah, the suffering a knight is forced to undergo.  Despair not, Don Quixote says:
1932     . . . For God, who provides for all, will not desert us, especially being engaged,
            as we are, in His service.

Perhaps the most mischief that Don Quixote causes occurs when he happens upon a file of prisoners being escorted to due service in the galleys.  Don Quixote thinks:
1934    here is the opportunity for me to carry out my duty: to redress grievances

Why does Don Quixote imagine that this is a case of injustice?  He sees men in chains who have been tried & convicted by due process of justice.  Where is the injustice?  Of course there is none.  Don Quixote is laboring in fantasy.  Given a chance, the criminals tell lies to Don Quixote, which (like the medieval world) he prefers to the hard truth.  Thus Don Quixote makes his own judgment:
1938     I realize, moreover, that perhaps it was the lack of courage of one fellow on the
            rack, the want of money of another, the want of friends of a 3rd, & finally the biased
            sentence of the judge that have been the cause of your not receiving the justice to
            which you were entitled.  Now all this prompts & even compels me to perform on your
            behalf the task for which I was sent into the world.

That task looks like nothing so much as stirring up chaos & confusion: madness.  Before anyone knows what he is doing, Don Quixote manages to take command & liberate the prisoners, whom he commands to present themselves before the Lady Dulcinea.  When the men, intent on escape, decline, crazy Don Quixote berates & threatens them with worse punishment than they had for this offense!  Whereupon they rain a shower of rocks on the madman & leave Sancho in his underwear, having stolen everything of any value from the pair.

In the last sally we will consider, Don Quixote attacks a religious procession that is parading a statue of the Virgin Mary!  This seems to be the most flagrant example of how crazy Don Quixote is: attacking religion in the name of the same religion!  The Reformation is underway in Germany & France.  Martin Luther's challenge that the institutional church failed against the principles articulated in Paul's gospel had been promulgated in 1517.  But rather reflecting the growing bitterness & violence of the Reformation, I think Cervantes' target in this episode remains the same: medieval scholastic theology that seemed to change things from black to white & back again.  Sancho speaks for sanity, asking:
1941     What devils in your heart are driving you on to attack our Catholic faith?  That is a procession
            of disciplinants [especially religious laity] & the lady they're carrying on the bier is the most
            blessed image of the Immaculate Virgin.

Don Quixote attacks & commands:
1941    You must instantly free that beauteous lady whose tears & sad appearance show clearly that
            you are bearing her away against her will & that you have done her some grievous wrong.

Don Quixote is defeated & the 2 adventurers limp home:
1943     Sancho Panza's wife ran there, & as soon as she saw Sancho, her first inquiry was whether
            the ass had come home in good condition.

The implication is that the ass has more sense, or is at least more useful, than Sancho himself.

Don Quixote again heals in body, but not in mind.  He & Sancho will continue to sally forth into our world, which is governed by dull sanity.  They cannot win.  The medieval world is gone.  Cervantes is too close to the reality of the medieval world to find it nonthreatening, nostalgic, or charmingly imaginative. Strangely, his character, Don Quixote, has been taken from Cervantes & given another popular cultural designation.  In the last sentences of the introduction to Cervantes, our editor says:
1904     His [Don Quixote] quest, literally for chivalric adventure, is more fundamentally for the spark
            of imagination that redeems ordinary life.

This interpretation will not square with Cervantes, who time & again, forthrightly declares Don Quixote insane.
 
 

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