I finished reading Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote last night. I’ve not been able to read it before but I got hold of the Edith Grosman translation which makes it much more accessible. It is a book which is deeply amusing but which, nevertheless, engages us in the human tragedy. The gentle Knight’s quest is to destroy injustice and we are allowed to accompany him and his squire as they battle against Death in a medieval Spanish landscape.
Cervantes led an eventful life and only began to write the novel when he was older and ensconced in a debtors’ prison. His left-hand was crippled after a time in the Spanish militia and he spent many years at sea and was enslaved by Barbary pirates for five years, eventually being ransomed by his family in Madrid.
He gave us a character who is completely unthinkable as a living being, and yet one who, once you have engaged with him, takes up a permanent residence within you.
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Mar 26th, 2006 at 3:18 am
I have not read this book yet but your review has me highly eager to. (I love the wording in your last paragraph here.)
Mar 26th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
I couldn’t help but comment on the last sentence. I read Don Quixote last year. It was a bit of a slog at times and I wasn’t sure if I liked it (although parts of it made me laugh out loud), but when I turned that last page I found that Don Quixote had indeed taken up residence in me. He has a way of haunting a person.
Mar 28th, 2006 at 12:50 am
John,
What makes the work ironic is precisely because of the observation you make in your last sentence.
Scot
Mar 28th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
What an accomplishment John. I confessed I never finished it when my high school English class required the reading. But I’m working on the Garcia Marquez translation right now, on and off.
Mar 31st, 2006 at 1:05 am
The last sentence is really beautiful, and I could not resist quoting it on my blog.
Jun 19th, 2006 at 2:05 am
I’ve been reading the online version, and am almost through Don Quixote. I agree; there is something tragic and something real about Quixote. I guess we’ve all been a fool for love, or an enormous, yet delusional cause. Quixote is so anti-heroic: he always does the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place–yet, so much for the right reasons.