Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances, that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray – he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants – Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances, that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways.

While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray – he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants – Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together, and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four hundred years. With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote generally has been recognized as the first modern novel. The book has had enormous influence on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, 'just as some people read the Bible.' “Don Quixote”, I answered, and looked into almost shocked facial expressions, followed by quiet, uncomfortable giggling. What was the question?

While it is true that the translations are quite different, they aren't so different that you should wait to read it. Just grab a copy and start reading it. Just the same, if you are going to buy a new copy, I recommend John Rutherford's translation from Penguin Classics. It is laugh-out-loud funny — most likely providing the closest.

If my friends at the coffee table had asked: “What is your favourite book, Lisa?”, and received that answer, they would have nodded knowingly, sympathetically, adding some random fact about the 1000+-page-classic I claimed to love more than the countless other books I have read. But that was not the question. It was: “With which literary character do you i “Don Quixote”, I answered, and looked into almost shocked facial expressions, followed by quiet, uncomfortable giggling. What was the question? If my friends at the coffee table had asked: “What is your favourite book, Lisa?”, and received that answer, they would have nodded knowingly, sympathetically, adding some random fact about the 1000+-page-classic I claimed to love more than the countless other books I have read. But that was not the question.

It was: “With which literary character do you identify most?” I was not the first one around the table to answer, and there had been plenty of identification with the brave, the strong, the pretty, the good, the clever heroes and heroines of the literary universe before it was my turn. I had time to think, and to think carefully. There is no one like Don Quixote to make me feel the connection between my reading self and my real life. Who else loved books to the extent that he was willing to immerse himself completely in the illusion of his beloved fiction, against all reason?

Who else struggled to survive and keep the spirit of beautiful ideas in the face of ugly, mean, bullying reality? Why was there such awkwardness when I said I identified with Don Quixote?

Because he is clumsy, he is bullied by the brutal ordinary people who can’t stand a mind focused on literary thoughts and idealist ideas, he is treated badly and made fun of. He is so very UNCOOL! He makes a silly figure in the ordinary society where appearance and participation in shared activities are more important to social survival and reputation than reflective thinking and expression of individuality.

He is off the main track, and that is only acceptable to the world if you are a strong, fighting, violent hero, not if you are a harmless, yet ridiculous dreamer. If you can’t be one of the group, you have to be stronger, more violent than the majority. Just being different is the most dangerous, the most hated thing in the world. But I don’t think there was much choice for Don Quixote. He had seen the raging madness of the world, and made a decision: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness.

Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” In the most famous scene of all, the dialogue between Sancho Pansa and Don Quixote reveals the deliberate choice to see more in life than just the mere practicalities of food provision and business: 'What giants?' Asked Sancho Pansa. 'The ones you can see over there,' answered his master, 'with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long.' 'Now look, your grace,' said Sancho, 'what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone.' 'Obviously,' replied Don Quixote, 'you don't know much about adventures.” If you only have one life to live, why choose the boredom of reality when your mind can create an imaginary adventure of giant proportions? What a wonderful match they are, the idealist dreamer and his realist companion, complementing each other perfectly while exploring the real world in the same way Dante and Virgil complement and support each other’s thoughts while they explore the fantastic fiction of Afterlife in the Divine Comedy.

To me there is more heroism in seeing a perfect horse in the lame Rosinante, or a beautiful woman in the ugly, mean Dulcinea, than there could ever be in the strongest superhero riding the most powerful horse and gaining the love of the most stunning lady. That is a no-brainer, while it requires deeper thinking skills to see the adventure and beauty in average, weak, ugly life. The moment Don Quixote turns ridiculous, and sad and “quixotic” in my world, is the moment before death when he renounces his ideal in favour of the mainstream understanding of Christian “comme il faut”, breaking Sancho Pansa’s heart, who, in his own, realist and practical way, understands the world’s need for characters like Don Quixote. The sanity Don Quixote gains when he dictates his last testament is the capitulation of the tired, worn-out spirit.

He has already stopped living. Another of my favourite windmill-fighting characters,, foresaw the weakness of old age and wrote his testament to the world at the height of his intellectual power, thus haunting the bigot winners of his dying body afterwards with his words of idealistic power from the other side of the grave. And for all those who smile at Don Quixote: it is much braver, and harder, to fight inanimate, mechanised windmills than fire-spitting dragons! And: you have to have more than an ounce of Don Quixote in you to try to review this book of superlatives! Done quixote!!! Pun quixote!! Fun quixote??

None quixote. And that's not entirely true; there are some rollicking good times in here, but the first part is so much endlessly episodic violence, and while the second half becomes calmer and more focused, it never got my imagination engaged nor my blood flowing.

In fact, although i know he really does love it, i can't help but feel that brian's recommending this to me is similar to the duke and duchess having their fun with don q. I feel like brian is done quixote!!! Pun quixote!! Fun quixote?? None quixote. And that's not entirely true; there are some rollicking good times in here, but the first part is so much endlessly episodic violence, and while the second half becomes calmer and more focused, it never got my imagination engaged nor my blood flowing. In fact, although i know he really does love it, i can't help but feel that brian's recommending this to me is similar to the duke and duchess having their fun with don q.

I feel like brian is pulling a prank on me - that he does not want me to meet my reading goal and is laughingly crowing, 'no, karen, you will not read 150 books this year!! I am preventing you!!' I will show you. Despite the amount of time i was stalled on this one, i will come right back in the game. But this, i did not love this. And a lot of it is just context.

I can appreciate it as an artifact and as a foundation for western literature, but it suffers from the fate of any work that was not edited professionally. Tastes change over time. Just in the same way that marilyn monroe would have probably had to drop fifteen pounds to rock our modern-day underfed runway ideal, so this book could lose a similar amount of text. Stop frothing, bri, seriously if this turned up in some slush pile somewhere, there would be allll kinds of criticism, and it might even get passed around the office (lgm) a few times to the giggles of the editorial assistants: 'this guy can't even keep the supporting character's wife's name straight!!' , 'this is inconsistent!!' ,' 'this is repetitive!'

'what is this interlude that has nothing to do with anything else doing in here??' 'this is flat-out stolen from another source!!!' An editor would go to town on this puppy. But we have the luxury of reading this 500 years after it was written and marveling at how fresh and modern it still sounds. And part of it is very modern. But grossman's frequent 'cervantes probably meant ____here' or 'this is the wrong reference' would not play in a modern novel.

If jonathan safran foer had done this, there would be a crown of pretentious classics majors drawling, 'i can't believe he said 'perseus' when he meant 'theseus'. ' guffaw guffaw. But 500 years down the road, we can afford to be more forgiving.

Vanity press authors take heart! And i am aware i am being nitpicky, i am more just interested in pointing out how a lot of people who love this book would be very indignant to read something produced today that had so many obvious flaws. But i do admire longevity. I just couldn't get into it, overall. There are a lot of great moments here: the burning of the books (nooo!), the puppet show, don q.

In a cage, and great non-action sequences in the discussions of the value of drama as a medium and the difficulty of translation and many other minor occurrences. The first half is just episode after episode of this delusional thug with some kind of 'roid-rage, meth-aggression attacking people and innocent lions, unprovoked, and his sidekick who is a grasping fiend who would sell you out for even the promise of a sandwich. And it all reads like marx brothers slapsticky stuff.

I mean, how do you break someone's nose with a loaf of bread?? With the second half, it is better and becomes more self-reflexive and much sadder, but a lot of it still remains tedious. The second half, written ten years after the first part, frequently references the unauthorized sequel to don q that some guy wrote and pissed cervantes off. It is like a mean girl passing notes to the cool kids, 'did you hear what he said??? That's my man he's messing with!!' And i am not a lazy reader, even though my tastes tend toward a faster pace than this, but i have read plenty of slow-paced, dense prose that didn't make me take out my mental red pen and slash away at what i felt was extraneous or repetitious.

I can appreciate the message about art and its impact and its potential and its place in the world, but i did not have fun reading this book. And i make no apologies. And for jasmine - who doesn't think there is anything complicated or pretentious in the spanish language - this qualifies, i think. It gets all meta in the second act. For its time, it was seriously mind-bending stuff. When I read excerpts of Don Quixote in high school, which I think must be a requisite for any Spanish language class taken by anybody ever, I was astounded that something so seemingly banal could be as wildly popular and possess such longevity as this book is and does. At the time, I did not find Don Quixote to be anything more than a bumbling fool chasing imaginary villains and falling into easily avoidable situations, and the forced hilarity that would ensue seemed to be of the same kind I rec When I read excerpts of Don Quixote in high school, which I think must be a requisite for any Spanish language class taken by anybody ever, I was astounded that something so seemingly banal could be as wildly popular and possess such longevity as this book is and does.

At the time, I did not find Don Quixote to be anything more than a bumbling fool chasing imaginary villains and falling into easily avoidable situations, and the forced hilarity that would ensue seemed to be of the same kind I recognized in farcical skits performed by eegits like The Three Stooges. But I suspected there was something more to Don Quixote than what my 14 year-old impressions were telling me, and I’m glad I finally read this book in its entirety. Having done so, I’ve discovered that Don Quixote is not a bumbling idiot—far from it, in fact. He is highly intelligent, highly perceptive and observant, and most surprisingly, and in spite of his delusions of being a knight errant, he is actually also highly self-aware. The combination of these traits makes him one of the most interesting characters in literature, and if it weren’t for his fallibility in misinterpreting reality (to put it nicely), the brilliance of Don Quixote would be elevated to unapproachable levels. Putting the characters aside, though, I have to say that the storytelling here is simply superb. When reading an English translation, I never know whether credit for this ought to be awarded to the author or to the translator (or to both!), but nonetheless this is the kind of writing that just pulls a reader along effortlessly.

Each episodic adventure rolls seamlessly into the next and even while the subject of many of these adventures covers similar ground—a maiden who has been dishonored by her man is one such theme, for example—it never seems recycled. Don Quixote is actually comprised of two volumes written about a decade apart. Historically speaking, there was an erroneous book published in between Cervantes’s own two works under the pretense of being the “real” volume two of the tale of Don Quixote, but was attributed to an unidentified author with the pseudonym Avellaneda.

It is likely that this fake version lit a match under Cervantes, and what I love about this little piece of history is that when Cervantes actually completes his authentic second volume, it is riddled with allusions to Avellaneda’s deceptive book, and these allusions become so ingrained in the text that it becomes difficult to separate fact from fiction. At one point Don Quixote meets someone who claims to know him, but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the claimant has actually met Avellaneda’s Don Quixote, and the real Don Quixote is horrified that someone should have the audacity, not just to impersonate him, but to do such a horrible job impersonating him, that he goes to great lengths (and yes, we’re talking about the character here) to prove to anyone and everyone that he is the real Don Quixote. He even changes his itinerary to avoid a city that the fake Don Quixote purportedly goes to, just to make it clear that Avellaneda is a lying whore and cannot be trusted.

Metafictional stuff like that can be pretty entertaining in its own right, but the fact that it was implemented in a book written over four hundred years ago just makes it all the more mind blowing, or at least it does to me. All in all, I had a hard time letting go of DQ when I finished this book. It turns out I really fell for the guy. I guess the goal of reviewing something like Don Quixote is to make you less frightened of it. It's intimidating, right? It's 940 pages long and it's from 500 years ago.

But Grossman's translation is modern and easy to read, and the work itself is so much fun that it ends up not being difficult at all. Much of Book I is concerned with the story of Cardenio, which Shakespeare apparently liked so much that he wrote a now-lost play about the guy. I loved that part, but for me, the pace slowed down a I guess the goal of reviewing something like Don Quixote is to make you less frightened of it.

It's intimidating, right? It's 940 pages long and it's from 500 years ago.

But Grossman's translation is modern and easy to read, and the work itself is so much fun that it ends up not being difficult at all. Much of Book I is concerned with the story of Cardenio, which Shakespeare apparently liked so much that he wrote a now-lost play about the guy.

I loved that part, but for me, the pace slowed down a bit in the latter third of Book I. There are two more 'novellas' inserted that have little or nothing to do with the plot; feel free to skip them. (They're discussed in the comments section if you're interested.) Book II was published ten years after Book I, in 1615, and with it Cervantes pulls a typically Cervantes-esque trick: he imagines that Don Quixote is now a celebrity due to Book I's success. This changes the perspective considerably; whereas folks used to be mystified by Don Quixote, now they often recognize him, which generally results in them fucking with him. It invigorates the story; since Book II feels so different, I didn't get the feeling I often get with wicked long books where I kinda get bogged down around the 2/3 mark.

Proxmox Serial Port Pass Through The Fire. In fact, I ended up liking Book II even better than Book I. Quixote messes with your head. Cervantes pulls so many tricks out of his bag that you're never sure what's coming next. For a while I suspected that and were all made up. I had to Wikipedia Martin de Riquer to make sure he was a real guy. That's how sneaky Cervantes is: he makes you think I thought Don Quixote was tremendous. It's like nothing else in the world.

I'm glad I read it. And I'll end with what might be the best quote of all time, and a brilliant thing to say to your wife: 'I want you to see me naked and performing one or two dozen mad acts, which will take me less than half an hour, because if you have seen them with your own eyes, you can safely swear to any others you might wish to add.' Don Quixote kicks ass. By the way, for another take on the story, here's Kafka: Without making any boast of it Sancho Panza succeeded in the course of years, by devouring a great number of romances of chivalry and adventure in the evening and night hours, in so diverting from him his demon, whom he later called Don Quixote, that his demon thereupon set out in perfect freedom on the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack of a preordained object, which should have been Sancho Panza himself, harmed nobody. A free man, Sancho Panza philosophically followed Don Quixote on his crusades, perhaps out of a sense of responsibility, and had of them a great and edifying entertainment to the end of his days.(This is the entire text of his parable 'The Truth about Sancho Panza'; it and others can be found ).

Whatever else Don Quixote may be, I never found it boring. Parts of it were very funny, others had wonderful similarities with Shakespeare, some bits were more serious: it's like a mini library in a single volume. Overall, it has quite a Shakespearean feel - more in the plotting and tales within tales (eg The Man Who was Recklessly Curious, stolen by Mozart for Cosi fan Tutte) than the language. In fact, the story of Cardenio is thought to be the basis for Shakespeare's lost play of t Whatever else Don Quixote may be, I never found it boring. Parts of it were very funny, others had wonderful similarities with Shakespeare, some bits were more serious: it's like a mini library in a single volume. Overall, it has quite a Shakespearean feel - more in the plotting and tales within tales (eg The Man Who was Recklessly Curious, stolen by Mozart for Cosi fan Tutte) than the language.

In fact, the story of Cardenio is thought to be the basis for Shakespeare's lost play of the same name. Humour Very funny - slapstick, toilet and more subtle humour, with lots of factual historical and chivalric detail as well, but it doesn't feel especially Spanish to me. Certainly long, but I don't understand why, supposedly, so few people manage to finish it. Some of DQ's delusions hurt only himself (tilting at windmills), but others lead to suffering for his 'squire' Sancho Panza (tossed in a blanket) or reluctant beneficiaries of his salvation (the beaten servant, beaten even more once DQ departs) and bemuse people (mistaking inns for castles, sheep for enemy armies and ordinary women as princesses) and are used to justify theft (the golden 'helmet'/bowl) and non-payment to inn-keepers.

His resolute optimism in the face of severe pain and disaster is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Sancho wavers between credulity (wishfully thinking the promise of an island for him to rule will come true) and pragmatism. Two Parts Part II starts with Cervantes' response to the unknown writer of an unofficial sequel to part 1, though DQ, Sancho and others also critique it in early chapters. The following story presumes that part 1 is true, and shows how DQ's resulting fame affects his subsequent adventures. A very modern mix of 'fact' and fiction. Some characters doubt his exploits, others pander to them, especially the duke and duchess who go to great lengths to treat him in knightly/chivalric manner, and provide new adventures (for their amusement, at the painful expense of DQ and Sancho). Sancho gets rather more scope for lengthy meanderings of jumbled and largely irrelevant proverbs.

Less slapstick and more pontificating than part I - both DQ's advice to Sancho on how to govern his promised insula and when Sancho has intriguing disputes to resolve. A Third, courtesy of Borges? Borges wrote the short story 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' (published in ). Menard is an imaginary writer, described as if he's real, who “did not want to compose another Quixote” but “ the Quixote” by combining the don and Sancho into a single character and by, in some sense, becoming Cervantes. What Don Q Means to Me (This section was added after an epiphany, which prompted me to make my reviews more personal.) I was wary of this book for many years; I feared it was too heavy in ounces and themes/plot/language, but only the former is true, and that can be obviated by a comfy chair (or an ebook). I plucked up the courage to read it shortly after joining GR, partly through encouragement from others. It was a revelation, both in terms of the power of GR friends to enrich my life and my own confidence as a reader.

My enjoyment was heightened by reading it whilst my son and his friend who was staying (both aged ~10) repeatedly watched and quoted Monty Python's Holy Grail - very appropriate! The Double-Edged Sword It is a double-edged sword isn't it, reading great books too early in life?

If we read a book too early in life, we may not grasp it fully but the book becomes part of us and forms a part of our thinking itself, maybe even of our writing. But on the other hand, the reading is never complete and we may never come back to it, in a world too full of books.

And if we wait to read till we are mature, we will never become good readers and writers who can do justice to good books. The Double-Edged Sword It is a double-edged sword isn't it, reading great books too early in life? If we read a book too early in life, we may not grasp it fully but the book becomes part of us and forms a part of our thinking itself, maybe even of our writing.

But on the other hand, the reading is never complete and we may never come back to it, in a world too full of books. And if we wait to read till we are mature, we will never become good readers and writers who can do justice to good books. So we have to read some good books early and do injustice to them. Only then can we do justice to ourselves and to great books later on.

When we meditate on this. Now the question is which books to do the injustice to and which the justice. Do we select the best for the earliest so that they become a part of us or do we leave the very best for later so that we can enjoy them to the fullest? Tough choice.

I have never been able to resolve. To compensate for an unliterary childhood (no furtive torch readings of Alice under the duvet until the wee hours for me), I hit the universities to read English Literature, which I failed to study, focusing instead on the local record shop and depression. To compensate for an unliterary literature degree, I ramped up the reading to more sensible levels, and began an ongoing passionate marriage with the written word: a marriage of comfortable convenience spiced up from time to time with trips in To compensate for an unliterary childhood (no furtive torch readings of Alice under the duvet until the wee hours for me), I hit the universities to read English Literature, which I failed to study, focusing instead on the local record shop and depression. To compensate for an unliterary literature degree, I ramped up the reading to more sensible levels, and began an ongoing passionate marriage with the written word: a marriage of comfortable convenience spiced up from time to time with trips into mindblowing orgasmic delight.

As I leave my twenties, a mostly intolerable decade, survived thanks to all the books on my ‘read’ shelf, I raise a virtual muglet of hemlock to the written word and to Goodreads (which has steadily declined over the years, sadly, and not because of the users), and this masterpiece, the final orgasmic delight of this decade of life, the sort of novel that arrives once in a while and reinforces the most important thing: transcending the shittiness of existence through the soma of language. Cheers, pals!

I got an interesting question from reader Aster about the Jervas translation of. In his version of Jervas, the opening sentence of the preface was different from what I had quoted in. It turned out that both sentences were correct. It is just that some editors change translations a lot.

Mine was Edited by E C Riley, who is excellent; but that means the Oxford World’s Classics edition is kind of a conglomeration. At first I thought that Aster must be mistaken, so I went searching through my collection of translations. I never found it, of course, but I did come upon an interesting translation controversy. In the introduction to his own recent translation of, John Rutherford opens with, “Yet another Quixote translation? Isn’t it an act of quixotry to write the thirteenth English version of the great Spanish novel?” He goes on to explain that previous translations have been too reverential, usually at the expense of Cervantes’ excellent sense of humor.

In this regard, he provides an example. Cervantes gives the alert reader the chance to catch a telling and amusing glimpse of the brash young graduate Sanson Carrasco’s sharp-witted malice, and of Don Quioxte’s bumbling innocence, in a deft parody reversal of a conventional formula for leave-taking at the end of Chapter VII of Part II: “Sanson embraced Don Quixote and begged to be sent news of his fortunes both good and bad, to rejoice at the latter or grieve over the former, as the laws of friendship required” That is clever. And it is entirely in keeping with the book. Many characters make fun of Don Quixote and he is far too earnest to ever notice. So Sanson is saying, “Please tell me if things are going wrong so I can celebrate!” Rutherford goes on to show that other translators completely dropped the joke.

But he didn’t mention, so I checked my copy. Abrazole Sanson, y suplicole le avisase de su buena o mala suerte, para alegrarse con esta o entristecerse con aquella, como las leyes de su amistad pedian. This translates roughly, “Sanson embraced him, and he asked to be notified of any good or bad luck, to rejoice with this or be sad with that, like the laws of their friendship asked.” Do you see the reversal that Rutherford is talking about? It seems to me that Putnam has it right (although why he moves that ending clause to the middle, I can’t say).

What are we to make of this? It could be that I am simply a lousy Spanish language translator. Well, actually I am a lousy translator. But I don’t think I’m wrong here. Not to mention that Putnam and every other translator agrees on this reading.

That brings us to a second possibility: Rutherford is using a different Spanish language text. After all, they aren’t all the same. Rutherford says he used Luis Andres Murillo’s modern of the book, which was published in 1978. That could explain the difference. Internet Business Promoter 11 5 Business Edition Cracked Games. But I suspect that the problem is just a matter of approach.

Rutherford wants to translate Don Quixote in such a way as to highlight the humor in it. And given that one could reasonably argue that the phrase was meant to be that way, Rutherford has decided that it was meant that way. I think that’s entirely valid, even if I think the comedy comes out very well in the “reverential” translations. If you are still looking for a translation, Rutherford’s Penguin Classics edition is a fine choice. “Abrazole Sanson, y suplicole le avisase de su buena o mala suerte, para alegrarse con esta o entristecerse con aquella, como las leyes de su amistad pedian.” There is no joke: “alegrarse con esta” refers to the one closer to the verb and so to “buena suerte” and “entristecerse con aquella” refers to the one further from the verb and so to “mala suerte”. It is not an expression similar to “former and latter”. Whoever thinks there is a joke here got it wrong.

As for Rutherford, “to rejoice with this or be sad with that” I cannot know whether an English speaker understand it this way as well, that is “this” refering to the one closer to the verb and “that” to the one further from the verb. If he didn’t, why then didn’t he used ‘former and latter’?

Kind regards, CMV.