Don Quixote
kwiks'ot, Spanish don ke-ho'ta, a novel by Miguel Cervantes. It was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615 respectively. The book was a burlesque on the popular tales of chivalry. The first part met with immediate success. Five editions were printed within a year. Cervantes, who regarded Don Quixote as of minor importance to his dramas, postponed writing the second part for some time. When he finally began it he had lost interest, and wrote in a half-hearted fashion until some one else published a spurious second part. This enraged Cervantes, and the book was finished forthwith. It was never so popular as the earlier part of the work, although quite equal to it in humor, vivacity, and invention, and surpassing it in literary execution. It is said that Don Quixote has found more readers than almost any other work of fiction. Up to 1874, 278 editions had appeared, 81 of these in Spain, 191 in other countries.
To appreciate fully the humor of Don Quixote it is needful to know something of the region through which the gallant Don rode in search of adventure. La Mancha is the name of the district, and it is the dullest and most unattractive region in all Spain. "The landscape of La Mancha has the sameness of a desert without its dignity." The few poor villages are utterly lacking in the picturesque and romantic. Altogether no place could have been chosen to make more ridiculous the exploiting of knight errantry. "Don Quixote himself is always a misfit." His imagination clothes the most commonplace circumstances with romance, and his thirst for adventure is only equaled by his propensity for getting into ludicrous difficulties. After all, there is something about the character of Don Quixote that we like, and that wins our sympathy and almost our admiration. He is at least brave, honest, and boyish. Sancho Panza, Don Quixote's squire, is simple and faithful. He is as devoid of imagination as his master is full of it. The contrast between the two adds charm to the picture.
See Cervantes
SAYINGS.
Murder will out. As ill luck would have it. Let us make hay while the sun shines. You cannot eat your cake and have your cake. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion. A little in one's own pocket is better than much in another man's purse. I can tell where my own shoe pinches me; and you must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff. Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.
CRITICISMS.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are "two of the most notable creations in all fiction, whose adventures have given multitudes pleasure in the past, and which will give still greater multitudes pleasure in the future."
Probably no book except the Bible has exceeded Don Quixote in the number of translations into foreign languages and the multiplicity of editions.
Don Quixote came into being as a protest against the unreality of the novels of chivalry which at that time were so popular that they were apparently having a marked effect on the national life and turning the people into a race of sentimentalists. An old writer says that it was "next to impossible to walk the streets with any delight or without danger, so many cavaliers were prancing and curvetting before the windows of their mistresses." It was a wholly unnatural and theatrical revival of knight-errantry. But, with the appearance of Don Quixote, playing the gallant after this manner took on a new aspect. The person who did so was twitted by high and low, and these fantastic love scenes became things of the past, while the novels that inspired them went out of fashion.--Clifton Johnson.
Don Quixote is the book of humanity.--Sainte Beuve.
In one sense Don Quixote is a satire; but the follies it ridicules are those common to all humanity and to every age, and the satire is of that rare kind which moves not to depreciation, but to love and pity of the object--to sympathy rather than to contempt, and to tears as well as laughter. . . . . So this burlesque of romance has become a real picture of life--this caricature of chivalry the truest chivalric model--this life of a fool the wisest of books.--Watts.
No doubt Cervantes at first proposed to himself a parody of the romances of chivalry, but his genius soon broke away from the leading strings of a plot that denied free scope to his deeper conception of life and men.--Lowell.