The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha

[Sancho]

“Wouldn’t it be better to stay peacefully in your house and not wander around the world searching for bread made from something better than wheat, never stopping to think that many people go looking for wool and come back shorn?”

— the niece of Alonso Quijano (Don Quixote) reasoning with her uncle

So I’ve decided to reread Don Quixote. I’ve got a copy of it in a relatively recent translation by Edith Grossman. I’ve also got a copy of it in the original early-modern Spanish. I thought it’d be fun to go back and forth between the two.

If any of my fellow bibliophiles on this site would like to weigh in with their insights on Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece, I’d sure like to read your thoughts.

By the way, Don Quixote’s response to the above goes like this:

“My dear niece, how little you understand! Before I am shorn I shall have plucked and removed the beard of any man who imagines he can touch even a single hair of mine.”

Yeah! Go-Man-Go

[Danik 2016]

Good idea, Sancho! D. Quixote certainly deserves an own thread. Just downloaded John Ormbys translation, as my bilingual Quixote ( Portuguese/Spanish) is gone together with my other books.
To read it again would be to great an enterprise for me at this moment, but I´ll be happy to compare impressions and translations with you.

[bounty]

ack Sancho---id be happy to join in but I just started gone with the wind and its 860 pages long!

[Sancho]

Awesome, Danik. For as long as I can remember I’ve been drawn to this text. I don’t know why. Even before I’d read it I was drawn to the idea of it. Maybe that’s because it came out of Spain rather than England and when translated it’s translated into modern English. In school I struggled with Shakespeare’s Early Modern English. (Cervantes and Shakespeare were contemporaries but certainly didn’t know each other, and possibly didn’t even know of each other)

Another explanation for me gravitating towards Don Quixote rather than Hamlet is this: the woman who taught Shakespeare in my high school had some pretty severe looks and a teaching method to match. She’d wear the same battleship gray dress suit every day and had an overly hair-sprayed helmet of hair that matched her outfit. She wore these half-lens reading glasses on a chain around her neck and when she’d get excited about something they’d sort of bounce up and down on her huge bosom. She had a set of knockers that I’m frightened of to this day. By contrast our Spanish teacher was young and friendly and drop-dead gorgeous. All of us young lads were head-over-heals in love with her.

Speaking of drop-dead gorgeous, Vivien Leigh as Scarlet O’Hara wasn’t a homely girl, eh bounty? I got around to reading Gone With The Wind probably ten or so years ago when I was on a Civil War binge. In the Atlanta Airport between B and C concourse there’s an exhibit about the history of the city. They’ve got pictures of important events and people throughout their history — from Martha Lumpkin (Atlanta was originally called Marthasville) through Ted Turner. There’s a picture of Margaret Mitchell and Clark Gable with Mitchell clearly star struck. Anyway I think you’ll find there are some problematic parts of that novel. Have you ever read Flannery O’Connor? She was a southern writer and a contemporary of Mitchell’s. She wrote a few novels but she mostly wrote short stories.

[Danik 2016]

Well, teachers certainly are an influence, Sancho, but then D. Quixote and Sancho are so different from Hamlet. Hamlet certainly deserves pitty for his lot. But he also demands patience with all that being and not being, more not being than being. On the other hand, the Quixote turns into a man of action. Quite late in his day and after dozens of books, ha feels prepared to act on a world he doesn´t understand. Today I think people would say that the Quixote lives in a parallel world. Anyway, I think one is more ready to identify with the Quixote or with practical Sancho than with Hamlet.

[Sancho]

I think you’re exactly right, Danik. Don Quixote did not contemplate “not being” by his own hand, although he’d happily sacrifice himself for the honor of the lovely Dulcinea of Tobosa. On the contrary he rises above everything that is thrown his way. My copy of the book has a nice essay by Harold Bloom where he addresses just this subject:


Hamlet does not need or want our admiration and affection, but Don Quixote does, and receives it, as Hamlet generally does also. Sancho, like Falstaff, is replete with self-delight, though Sancho does not rouse moralizing critics to wrath and disapproval, as the sublime Falstaff does. Much more has been written about the Hamlet/Don Quixote contrast than about Sancho/Falstaff, two vitalists in aesthetic contention as masters of reality. But no critic has called Don Quixote a murderer or Sancho an immoralist. Hamlet is responsible for eight deaths, his own included, and Falstaff is a highwayman, a warrior averse to battle, and fleecer of everyone he encounters. Yet Hamlet and Falstaff are victimizers, not victims, even if Hamlet dies properly fearing a wounded name and Falstaff is destroyed by Hal/Henry V’s rejection. It does not matter. The fascination of Hamlet’s intellect and Falstaff’s wit is what endures. Don Quixote and Sancho are victims, but both are extraordinarily resilient, until the Knight’s final defeat and dying into the identity of Quijano the Good, whom Sancho vainly implores to take to the road again. The fascination of Don Quixote’s endurance and of Sancho’s loyal wisdom always remains.

Later:


Hamlet subverts the will, while Falstaff satirizes it. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza both exalt the will, though the Knight transcendentalizes it, and Sancho, the first postpragmatic, wants to keep it within limits. This is the transcendent element in Don Quixote that ultimately persuades us of his greatness, partly because it is set against the deliberately coarse, frequently sordid context of the panoramic book.

The “deliberately coarse, frequently sordid” are my favorite parts of the book.

[Danik 2016]

I like the effect of the complete work, there is a bit of too much beating and hurting to my taste but I think that is how it was at the time.

Hoewr, before diving into the human conflicts a matter reminds to be cleared. By skimming though foreword and beginning of my translation, I found this poem, maybe elucidative as to the gender of Rocinante:
"ON ROCINANTE

I am that Rocinante fa—,
Great-grandson of great Babie—,
Who, all for being lean and bon—,
Had one Don Quixote for an own—;
But if I matched him well in weak—,
I never took short commons meek—,
But kept myself in corn by steal—,
A trick I learned from Lazaril—,
When with a piece of straw so neat—
The blind man of his wine he cheat—"

And here is further Proof:
"DIALOGUE
Between Babieca and Rocinante

SONNET

B. “How comes it, Rocinante, you’re so lean?”
R. “I’m underfed, with overwork I’m worn.”
B. “But what becomes of all the hay and corn?”
R. “My master gives me none; he’s much too mean.”
B. “Come, come, you show ill-breeding, sir, I ween;
’Tis like an *** your master thus to scorn.”
R. He is an ***, will die an ***, an *** was born;
Why, he’s in love; what’s plainer to be seen?”
B. “To be in love is folly?”—R. “No great sense.”
B. “You’re metaphysical.”—R. “From want of food.”
B. “Rail at the squire, then.”—R. “Why, what’s the good?
I might indeed complain of him, I grant ye,
But, squire or master, where’s the difference?
They’re both as sorry hacks as Rocinante.”

[bounty]

don't want to steal any of the don Quixote thunder, so i'll be brief.

I have a book called three by flannery O'Conner (i see she only lived to be ~39 yrs old) but ive not read it. maybe i'll give that a shot after gone with the wind and maybe if you go really slow here i'll catch up.

Mitchell wrote about atlanta having earlier names, its first, prior to Marthasville, was terminus, because of its situation on the railroad. scarlett has an affinity for the place because it was "born" the same year she was.

my copy of the book has a drawing of Rhett and scarlett on the cover and I can remember seeing photos of Vivian leigh. am looking forward to watching the movie (not just because of Vivian leigh!) when im done with the book, which im really enjoying so far. its oddly a lot like war and peace but that book was torturous.

[Sancho]

I came across that passage too, Danik, right after you and I were chatting on that other thread about your uncle’s painting and whether Rocinante was a mare, a stallion, or a gelding. It made me wonder why I had the idea Rocinante was an old mare. And I think I have an answer. Cervantes describes the horse as a rocín, which in Spanish means useless old horse. Generally the English translation is nag, which means useless old horse. So for a translator that substitution seems like a no-brainer. But modern English speakers tend to use the word more as a verb than a noun. To nag is to pester. And it is applied to women more often than to men. As a noun in English a nag is more often an old woman than an old horse and it is hardly ever applied to an old man. Needless to say when used towards a woman it is offensive, although not as offensive as the word we use to describe a female dog. So I think I was unconsciously assigning a gender to Rocinante based on the inherent misogyny of my native language.

Bounty, you should have no trouble catching up with me. I’m taking it real slow and enjoying the ride. Also reading it in English and then comparing certain parts to original Spanish is taking some time. My Spanish stinks. If I’m in a restaurant and the waiter only speaks Spanish, I’m capable of getting what I want about 4 out of 5 times.

Flannery O’Connor had Lupus. Her last few years were painful. She wound up moving back in with her mother because she needed the help and evidently those two banged heads a bit. A lot of her stories reflect this. I’ve read her collection of short stories A Good Man Is Hard To Find and her novel Wise Blood. I can recommend both with no reservations.

[bounty]

im only a 5th of the way through Rhett and scarlet, so quite a ways to go still...

poor girl. life is too hard for too many people.

one of my local libraries is having a sale this month. if I spot anything else by O'Connor, i'll grab it.

[Sancho]

Quite early in the novel Cervantes lays out the reason for Alonso Quijano going over the edge and becoming Don Quixote. I think he’s also taking a pot shot at some of the maddening, over-the-top prose of the most popular genre fiction of the day — chivalric literature

Trying to make sense of this sort of writing is what scrambled poor Alonso’s brains:


“La razón de la sinrazón que a mi razón se hace, de tal manera mi razón enflaquece, que con razón me quejo de la vuestra fermosura.” Y también cuando leía:…“Los altos cielos que de vuestra divinidad divinamente con las estrellas os fortifican y os hacen merecedora del merecimiento Que merece la vuestra grandeza.

Para los gringos:


“The reason for the unreason to which my reason turns so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of thy beauty.” And also when he read:…“The heavens on high divinely heighten thy divinity with stars and make thee deserving of the deserts thy greatness deserves.”.

He goes on to say that even Aristotle couldn’t figure out that mess. I pictured the poor man in his house late at night, reading under candle light with wrinkled brow. I sympathized with him because at one time in my life I tried to get through the Sandymount Strand chapter in Joyce’s Ulysses.

[Danik 2016]

I came across that passage too, Danik, right after you and I were chatting on that other thread about your uncle’s painting and whether Rocinante was a mare, a stallion, or a gelding. It made me wonder why I had the idea Rocinante was an old mare. And I think I have an answer. Cervantes describes the horse as a rocín, which in Spanish means useless old horse. Generally the English translation is nag, which means useless old horse. So for a translator that substitution seems like a no-brainer. But modern English speakers tend to use the word more as a verb than a noun. To nag is to pester. And it is applied to women more often than to men. As a noun in English a nag is more often an old woman than an old horse and it is hardly ever applied to an old man. Needless to say when used towards a woman it is offensive, although not as offensive as the word we use to describe a female dog. So I think I was unconsciously assigning a gender to Rocinante based on the inherent misogyny of my native language.

Bounty, you should have no trouble catching up with me. I’m taking it real slow and enjoying the ride. Also reading it in English and then comparing certain parts to original Spanish is taking some time. My Spanish stinks. If I’m in a restaurant and the waiter only speaks Spanish, I’m capable of getting what I want about 4 out of 5 times.

Flannery O’Connor had Lupus. Her last few years were painful. She wound up moving back in with her mother because she needed the help and evidently those two banged heads a bit. A lot of her stories reflect this. I’ve read her collection of short stories A Good Man Is Hard To Find and her novel Wise Blood. I can recommend both with no reservations.
Sancho, we have the word "rocim" also in Portuguese, but there it merely means a weak horse. "To nag" I know as a verb. I never heard about the nag, horse or woman. It explains your association. Rocinante has a female ring for me, because on the German forum there is a very spirited lady with the nick Rossinante(with two ss because Rossinante hasn't anything to do with raisins).

[Danik 2016]

Bounty, I've read gone with the wind a long, long time ago, but I still remember a bit of it, so maybe we can exchange impressions.

[bounty]

id enjoy that danik, but if we do, I suggest we only do so sparingly so as to not derail don Quixote at all. plus, since Sancho read it some time ago maybe it would work out alright.

[Danik 2016]

No much danger of derailing D. Quixote, Bounty, he got already his full share of derailing in his days. But if you prefer you can open a thread for "Gone with the Wind".

[bounty]

heck danik, there might already be a gone with the wind thread. give me a bit and i'll peek...

[Sancho]

Bah, to be human is to stray off topic. Besides, I’m willing to bet Margaret Mitchell read Don Quixote, and I know Flannery O’Connor did. And anyone who’s read Don Quixote is touched by it and to a greater or lesser extent it influences the way they see the world for the rest of their life.

You know the Southern Gentry of the 19th century was certainly living in their own reality. What were they thinking? For that matter, isn’t any young man who joins up and goes off to war, on somewhat of a Quixotic adventure?

[Danik 2016]

Quite early in the novel Cervantes lays out the reason for Alonso Quijano going over the edge and becoming Don Quixote. I think he’s also taking a pot shot at some of the maddening, over-the-top prose of the most popular genre fiction of the day — chivalric literature

Trying to make sense of this sort of writing is what scrambled poor Alonso’s brains:



Para los gringos:



He goes on to say that even Aristotle couldn’t figure out that mess. I pictured the poor man in his house late at night, reading under candle light with wrinkled brow. I sympathized with him because at one time in my life I tried to get through the Sandymount Strand chapter in Joyce’s Ulysses.
Hi, Sancho,
It's already late and my reason is somewhat weakened and may easily turn into unreason, so tomorrow I'll come back with a better answer. But you seem to have a charming translation there.

[Danik 2016]

So, still on the madness of D. Quixote:
A layman pouring over books and specially on chivalry books might still be a very unusual sight at that time. Books were probably held in awe by all the people that didn´t read them. At the beginning of 20 C, a Brazilian author created a Brazilian Quixote called Policarpo Quaresma. Instead of chivalry book, Policarpo had in his library every possible book that exalted the Brazilian Nation.

It seems that what both these Quixotes wanted was a more ethical world than the one they knew. Needless to say they both went mad, while trying to correct matters.

[Sancho]

Good point, Danik. There were no lending libraries back then, so books would have been out of reach for the vast majority of the people. In the very first paragraph Cervantes describes the gentleman of La Mancha as a member of the rural gentry. He has a horse, a racing greyhound, a housekeeper, and a handyman, but he seems to be in decline: his horse is a “skinny nag,” his housekeeper is “past forty,” and his sustenance consumes “three-fourths of his income.” His diet includes an occasional stew of “beef more often than lamb,” beef being cheaper than lamb at the time. In fact he’s become so obsessed with books that he “went so far as to sell acres of arable land in order to buy books of chivalry to read.”

Two of our early Presidents kept large personal libraries, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Jefferson was so far in debt by the time he died that his library was sold to the government in part to pay off his debts. Jefferson’s library became the start of The Library of Congress. I read a comparison of Adams’ and Jefferson’s books. Evidently Jefferson’s books were in terrific shape. Adams’s, by contrast, were a mess. His were all beat up, dog-eared, underlined. Adams had running conversations with the authors that he’d written in the margins. But that’s another story.


It seems that what both these Quixotes wanted was a more ethical world than the one they knew. Needless to say they both went mad, while trying to correct matters.

Spot on, Danik. From Don Quixote:


The truth is that when his mind was completely gone, he had the strangest thought any lunatic in the world ever had, which was that it seemed reasonable and necessary to him, both for the sake of his honor and as a service to the nation, to become a knight errant and travel the world with his armor and his horse to seek adventures and engage in everything he had read knights errant engaged in, righting all manner of wrongs and, by seizing the opportunity and placing himself in danger and ending those wrongs, winning eternal renown and everlasting fame.

Yeah! Go-man-go! And, you know, he did achieve “everlasting fame,” eh?

[Danik 2016]

Just lit on this, while looking for a poem for another thread:

"Don Quixote
A poem by Nazim Hikmet

The knight of immortal youth
at the age of fifty found his mind in his heart
and on July morning went out to capture
the right, the beautiful, the just.

Facing him a world of silly and arrogant giants,
he on his sad but brave Rocinante.
I know what it means to be longing for something,
but if your heart weighs only a pound and sixteen ounces,
there's no sense, my Don, in fighting these senseless windmills.

But you are right, of course, Dulcinea is your woman,
the most beautiful in the world;
I'm sure you'll shout this fact
at the face of street-traders;
but they'll pull you down from your horse
and beat you up.
But you, the unbeatable knight of our curse,
will continue to glow behind the heavy iron visor
and Dulcinea will become even more beautiful."
https://www.poetrycat.com/nazim-hikmet/don-quixote

No honorable mention of Sancho and Dapple though.

[Sancho]

Just lit on this, while looking for a poem for another thread:


No honorable mention of Sancho and Dapple though.

Flunkies get no respect. At the beginning of the book he did get one of those humorous poems where the poet lops off the last syllable of the last word on each line.

[Danik 2016]

This poem is quoted above. :)

[Sancho]

And he’s off, full of good intentions, on his first adventure.

I read a book a while back all about the American Army in the Northern African Campaign at the beginning of WWII. An Army at Dawn, by Rick Atkinson. What a mess — the army not the book. It was basically a book about a green army making all the mistakes a green army makes on first contact with the enemy.

Don Quixote’s first sortie reminded me of An Army At Dawn. He makes the basic tactical error of riding all day, when it’s really hot, in full armor, and wears himself out. He sees what he wants to see not what’s really there. He sees a castle instead of a humble inn. He sees a couple of fair maidens instead of a couple of hookers. He misidentifies the enemy, and assaults two innocent mule drivers instead. He has multiple equipment failures. And in the end he winds up getting beaten with his own (broken) lance.

But he does manage to get himself knighted.

So, woo-hoo success!

[Danik 2016]

"He sees what he wants to see not what’s really there. He sees a castle instead of a humble inn. He sees a couple of fair maidens instead of a couple of hookers. He misidentifies the enemy, and assaults two innocent mule drivers instead."
A very important point, Sancho and maybe one of the themes of the novel. The Quixote tries to force his own parallel world on reality, and reality responds, or rather, hits back. I think many people live in parallel worlds, but the Quixote is particularly innocent.

[Sancho]

The Quixote tries to force his own parallel world on reality, and reality responds, or rather, hits back. I think many people live in parallel worlds, but the Quixote is particularly innocent.

I agree totally, Danik. And it is one of the facets of the novel that make it timeless.

I suppose one of the clearest examples of Don Quixote in his own parallel world and trying to draw others into it is the incident that occurred almost immediately after he is knighted. He comes across a boy who is tied to a tree and being lashed by an man. Turns out the boy is a shepherd for the man’s sheep. Evidently the boy has been a lousy, inattentive shepherd and due to his carelessness the farmer had lost several sheep, hence the corporal punishment.

At any rate the knight sees an injustice that must be righted. He demands the farmer release the boy or prepare the be run through by his lance. The farmer, fearing for his life, does so. Initially the boy sees the knight as his salvation and lays out his grievances against the farmer. One of the boy’s grievances is that the sheep farmer hasn’t paid him. The knight demands the boy be paid. The farmer agrees to pay the boy, but has no reales on his person so he must go back to the house at which point he will “pay the boy what he deserves.” The boy is no fool and and tells the knight the minute he’s alone with farmer, the lashing will continue. But Don Quixote insists that the farmer is bound by the order of chivalry to honor the agreement. In other words, he is trying draw the others into his parallel world. And then he rides away, problem solved, the wrong has been righted — mission accomplished. And of course as soon as he’s out of sight, the farmer “tied the boy to the oak tree again and gave him so many lashes that he left him half dead.”

It reminded me of the “Mission Accomplished” banner on USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 and a certain US President (Dubya) declaring the end of combat operations in Iraq — whoopsie

[Danik 2016]

This is a very good example how D. Quixotes parallel world works, Sancho. The knight goes away satisfied that he has accomplished his mission and the boy gets a worse beating.

Today the great producer of paralell worlds is the internet.Additional to the good things it brought, like chatting with people from other countries, there are these hate groups. Recently I learned that there are groups in Brazil that want to abolish schools as something unecessary. And so they have started menacing and attacking schools, killing students and teachers. About two weeks ago a 13 year old killed an 71 old teacher and wounded several students and other teachers with a knife. This week a man attacked a Kindergarden and killed four children. The man hadn´t any personal connection to the Kindergarden. Instead of the misdirected idealism of the Quixote, there are very bad and also misdirected people at work.

[Sancho]

I heard about that, Danik. And that sort of stuff, I’m sure, has many Brazilians asking themselves — has the whole world gone crazy? We’ve certainly had our share craziness — school shootings, foreign adventures, insurrections, and the general hatefulness that goes along with political polarization. I think modern readers find a lot of things familiar about the backdrop of Don Quixote. I mean there’s just a feeling in the countryside that things are are coming apart. At the time, Spain as an empire, was overextended and in decline. The people were caught between two juggernauts, the crown and the church. Neither of which were taxed, which left the burden squarely on the backs of the peasants. An amazing thing about Don Quixote is that Cervantes gets at all of this and does it with such humor.

I liked the scene where he’s standing at the watering trough guarding his armor, waiting to be knighted by the inn keeper, and one of the mule drivers comes along to water his mules and tries to move The Don’s armor. I couldn’t help but to picture the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail — “NONE SHALL PASS.”

[Danik 2016]

Yes, I agree with you. Maybe it was a way of forgetting that he was in prison, but a sort of "resting carrying stones" as we say here. Possibly Cervantes remained sane in a Spain that exacted so much of him but gave little back by transferring the madness to his character.

I don´t think I saw this Mounty Python, but if one does n´t have a water fountain one has to be satified with a trough!

[Sancho]

This is what I like so much about this website:


Maybe it was a way of forgetting that he was in prison, but a sort of "resting carrying stones" as we say here.

That is something I’d’ve never known, unless you posted it, Danik.

Cervantes certainly did have an eventful life. Not just imprisoned, but abducted by Barbary Pirates, enslaved and then ransomed. Like his protagonist, he was a survivor.

Monty Python’s Holy Grail
The Black Knight:

https://youtu.be/ZmInkxbvlCs

“Okay, we’ll call it a draw.”

[Danik 2016]

Lol! A modern Quixote or just a thickhead?

[Sancho]

Haha, thickhead I think.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of those films that men of certain age can quote, chapter and verse. It’s a sort of shared experience without which we’d be unable to communicate with each each other.

If I were to say, in an outrageous French accent -

“Yer mother was a hamster and yer father smelt of elderberries.”

Everybody in my demographic would know the context:

https://youtu.be/cG-AYVb3LGA

[Danik 2016]

Thanksfor the clarifying video, Sancho. I was a bit puzzled about those endearments.
Now returning to the Quixote. Have you already arrived at the episode when he tries to free gale slaves? It struck me as similar to that of the boy only much more people and corresponding confusion were involved.

[Sancho]

Hi Danik, I’m just catching up with you. I’ve have a couple of busy-busy work weeks. Tell me your impressions of the galley-slaves incident and by the time I sign in and read it I’ll be caught up.

But first I wanted to jot down a quick comment about the most well known scene in the book. And also I wanted to quote my favorite line in the whole book.

Said Sancho:


What monsters?

You know, considering the windmills of Spain at that time, I kind of see what Don Quixote saw. They do look a little like monsters. What I wasn’t prepared for was how violent the attack on windmill/monster was. The Knight and his horse were lifted into the air, then hurled to the ground, nearly breaking poor Rocinante’s back.

The windmills:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windmills_of_Consuegra_(7079300441).jpg#/media/File:Windmills_of_Consuegra_(7079300441).jpg

How Gustave Doré imagined it:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Don_Quijote_Illustration_by_Gustave_Dore_VII. jpg#/media/File:Don_Quijote_Illustration_by_Gustave_Dore_VII. jpg

[Danik 2016]

Don´t mind me, Sancho read the book in your own rhythm and time. Let the galley-slaves rest a while, until you come naturally to them. My memory of the book is rather jumbled up, not chronological, occasionally something surfaces as just now, when I asked with Sancho, but for a different reason "What monsters?". The fact is, that inmy memory the monsters were giant and so I went for the original which read:
" —La ventura va guiando nuestras cosas mejor de lo que acertáramos a desear; porque ves allí, amigo Sancho Panza, donde se descubren treinta o pocos más desaforados gigantes, con quien pienso hacer batalla y quitarles a todos las vidas, con cuyos despojos comenzaremos a enriquecer, que esta es buena guerra3, y es gran servicio de Dios quitar tan mala simiente de sobre la faz de la tierra4.

—¿Qué gigantes? —dijo Sancho Panza.

—Aquellos que allí ves —respondió su amo—, de los brazos largos, que los suelen tener algunos de casi dos leguas.
—Bien parece —respondió don Quijote— que no estás cursado en esto de las aventuras6: ellos son gigantes; y si tienes miedo quítate de ahí, y ponte en oración en el espacio que yo voy a entrar con ellos en fiera y desigual batalla7."
https://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/clasicos/quijote/edicion/parte1/cap08/default.htm

And then I wanted to know what my translator had made of it:

"“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your worship,” said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.”
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/996/996-h/996-h.htm#ch8"

So it seems that your translator took some liberty with the original text turning the giants into monsters. But this may have a reason. No doubt you have heard about the "cleaning" of books that is going on, revising older classics and specially children books like Mark Twain"s to take out every word or expression that can be deemed offensive to current readers. One of the forbidden words, for example is "fat" or any word that refers to corporal weight. So it might be possible that your translator in a quixotic spirit transformed the giants in monsters to preserve her text from the monsters of modern censorship.

Giants or monsters I saw the whole seguence of Gustave Doreé, the scene is terrible.

[Sancho]

Ack Ack Ack!

You’re right, Danik. It’s Giants. It was such a short line I did it from memory and subconsciously substituted Monsters for Giants. Duh. It was late. Have you ever heard of the Major League Baseball team The San Francisco Monsters? Me neither.

Ah well. Short line - short memory. Ya know, my memory is the second shortest thing I’ve got.

[bounty]

Haha, thickhead I think.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of those films that men of certain age can quote, chapter and verse. It’s a sort of shared experience without which we’d be unable to communicate with each each other.

If I were to say, in an outrageous French accent -

“Yer mother was a hamster and yer father smelt of elderberries.”

Everybody in my demographic would know the context:

https://youtu.be/cG-AYVb3LGA

no chance English bed-wetting types!

now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!

[Danik 2016]

Ack Ack Ack!

You’re right, Danik. It’s Giants. It was such a short line I did it from memory and subconsciously substituted Monsters for Giants. Duh. It was late. Have you ever heard of the Major League Baseball team The San Francisco Monsters? Me neither.

Ah well. Short line - short memory. Ya know, my memory is the second shortest thing I’ve got.
Happens in the best families, Sancho! Anyway, Im glad it is just a little memory slip and not a translation mistake.

[Sancho]

Happens in the best families, Sancho! Anyway, Im glad it is just a little memory slip and not a translation mistake.

Thanks, Danik. And me too.


no chance English bed-wetting types!

now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!

Haha, “Is there someone else we can talk to?”

So here’s something that happens to me whenever I’m reading a good book — somehow the book seems to relate to just about everything else that’s going on. Here’s an example:

The other day I was driving around, streaming some tunes, letting Siri decide what to play. (Somehow Apple Computer Company knows what I want to hear.) Anyway Win Lose or Draw by The Allman Brothers Band comes on. It’s probably one of the more mournful rock and roll songs ever made. Basically it’s about the cold desperation of being locked up. It’s a story told by a prisoner more or less to his girl who is slipping away while he’s stuck on the inside:


Endlessly facing the cold concrete floor
Four cold grey walls, and no doors
I barely remember the last forty days
Or just what they're holdin' me for
So far away, they tell me:
"Boy, You're here to stay; win, lose or draw"

I liked this line:



There's two men in one room for ten long years
Still strangers that talk away the time


It got me wondering - is that how Cervantes came up with all these adventures? Did he survive jail by telling stories? Did he learn to tell stories as a result of being imprisoned? I donno.

[Danik 2016]

From what one can glimpse by Wiki, Cervantes led a very uneven life. He knew want poverty, debts and he was heavily wounded losing the use of his left arm during the war. But the Quixote, started in 1605, wasn´t his first work. It is very possible, I think, that he wrote it to while away his time in prison.

But somehow all roads of adventure lead to him.

[Sancho]

Miguel Cervantes certainly didn’t live a cloistered life, and I think that is partly what makes Don Quixote such a compelling work. And in that respect I think we can compare him to Herodotus. They both lived their lives with verve. They got out there. Neither had to rely too much on second-hand information. They both had a finger on the pulse. I think we can trust their instincts. Okay, I’ve mixed enough metaphors for one post.

[Danik 2016]

Lol! But one of the women of his house had to go to the cloister. In those times the cloisters sometimes waranted food and house to the poor woman, while the rich one had to bring her dowry.
Didn't know about Herodotus, though
Got the feeling that I just literalized your metaphors, Sancho.

[Sancho]

I’m not sure why Herodotus popped into my head except that when I read him I get the sense he was a man of the people. He was out talking to people who’d witnessed firsthand the things he wrote about and witnessed much of it firsthand himself. The Histories, like Don Quixote, l can pick up and open at random, then read a few pages and find something really interesting.

I didn’t know about Cervantes’ sister(?). Did she get stuck in a nunnery?

[Danik 2016]

I`ve been looking into Cervantes family to sheck that information, but the results are very meager. Apart from their names little seems to be known about them. He had a illegitimate daughter with one Ana Franca de Rojas, a married woman, which he recognized as Isabel de Saavedra and his own wife was Catalina Salar de Palácios.

I found also a reference to four women of his household: his sisters Andrea e Magdalena Cervantes, Constanza de Ovando, daughter of Andrea, and his own daughter Isabel de Saavedra. They were despectivelly called The Cervantas.It seems that they didn´t have jobs, but they not only were the main providers of the house, they also had to find the ransom money to free Cervantes from his captivity in Argel. And the bad renascentist tongues remarked that they received gentlemen at their house, at any time of the day or the night.https://gauchazh.clicrbs.com.br/comportamento/noticia/2016/04/o-que-sabemos-de-fato-sobre-a-vida-de-miguel-de-cervantes-5783485.html
Following the radical changes of that time, it seems that one of these four women later went to a cloister. Gentlemen or no gentlemen it is very probable that without the Cervantas there wouldn't have been any "D. Quixote".

[Sancho]

Indeed, there is no Don Quixote without Miguel Cervantes. He knew his subject well. On the topic of the Galley Slaves, he seemed very in tune with how incarcerated men act. Which is to say, a man in chains will do or say anything to shuck off those chains. Once free, any promises made under duress are considered null and void. I’ll bet most readers saw coming a mile away the ending of that chapter. I did. Sancho did. I’m kind of surprised (but not really) that The Don didn’t see it coming.

[Danik 2016]

Lol! if he did he wouldn´t have been who he was. I think the Quixote is also a book about to what extent a man permits his perception to cheat him. I remember there is one (of many) episode that shows this with special beauty, when he and Sancho are forced to pass the night in open country.

[Sancho]

Very true, Danik. I liked the scene where they are outside after the skirmish with the Basque. Our brave knight, if you remember, lost half his ear to the sword of the Basque. He insisted to Sancho that knights errant care little about such trifles, but as the night wears on he comments a number times about how his wounded ear is bothering him. Personal fictions will only carry you so far, I suppose.

[Danik 2016]

I don't remember the part about the ear, Sancho. But if it is the same episode, he is very bothered about the noises he hears during the night.

[Sancho]

Yep, he lost part of his ear to The Basque and later lost a number of teeth when he was attacked by sheep herders. (He’d imagined the two herds of sheep were armies attacking each other and wasted no time joining the fray. The sheep herders seeing their flocks attacked by a crazy man, pelted him with rocks, gathered their sheep and skedaddled) Anyway the truly comic part was after the battle when The Don asked Sancho to look in his mouth and tell him how many molars he’d lost the one side. Sancho does as requested and asks — how many did you used to have? The Don says he had a full set. Sancho said something like — well, you have one left.

I like the vividness of the scenes of the two of them sleeping outdoors. Cervantes has a real knack for describing that type of event — the shadows, the night noises, their imaginations running wild. It really puts the reader right there with them. It made me remember camping with my family when I was little. We’d gotten to our campsite after the sun was down, so we were pitching the tent and setting up the camp by lantern light. Cicadas were buzzing, owls were hooting, there was a loon on the lake, critters were scampering through the forest, and everything beyond the lantern light was open to imagination. The next morning I got up and looked around and nothing seemed quite so “big” as it did the night before. Don Quixote had such an experience just after he set the galley slaves free (I think it was that night anyway). It was after dark and he and Sancho had decided they were going to have to sleep outdoors. They were hungry and thirsty and could hear running water in the distance. As they neared the stream or waterfall they could hear a heavy stomping or thumping and believed giants to be there. Sancho had to hobble Rocinante to keep Don Quixote from going on the attack. The next morning they discover that they are near a mill and the stomping was actually fulling hammers pounding the weave of a fabric. (There was also a pretty good fart joke that night as Sancho was holding Don Quixote back.)

[Danik 2016]

I particularly like this episode of the night outdoors (not really an episode because actually nothing happens outside the fertile imagination of the knight) but it is this lack of action that points out so clearly the difference between fantasy and reality. Besides I was also impressed by the many noises at night. It is more an audible than an visual chapter.

And I like very much the story of Dorothea but can´t say if it is near or far from that chapter.

[Sancho]

Dorotea certainly cuts a wide swath in part one. In fact, it seems to me, Cervantes takes pleasure in upending the gender norms of the day, not to mention the gender norms of the chivalric tradition. Well, as I understand them anyway. At any rate Dorotea has a compelling story, as does Luscinda. Those two women are much more interesting than the objects of their affection, Don Fernando and Cordenio. For that matter, the story within the story about the love triangle between Camilla, Aselmo, and Latorio is more interesting when viewed from the perspective of Camilla than from either of the two men. Aselmo was self-obsessed and Latorio was predictable (and long-winded, and boring), but Camilla had depth and intellectually ran circles around the men.

To find another compelling female character, I’d go back earlier in the book to the chapter where The Don and Sancho fall in with a bunch of goatherds who are on a funeral procession. They are taking a young goatherd, Grisóstomo, to his final resting place, which is a spot at the base of a crag where he first met, and fell in love with, Marcela. The girl had no interest In Grisóstomo and had thwarted all of his advances. In fact she never even gave him an inkling of hope. So…Grisóstomo offed himself. (A permanent solution to a temporary problem, I say.) Anyway, all of Grisóstomo’s friends and in fact the whole town blamed Marcela for Grisóstomo’s death.


This is the body of Grisóstomo, who was unique in intelligence, unequaled in courtesy, inimitable in gallantry, peerless in friendship, faultless in generosity, serious without presumption, merry without vulgarity, and, finally first in everything it means to be good and second to none in everything it means to be unfortunate. He loved deeply and was rejected; he adored and was scorned; he pleaded with a wild beast, importuned a piece of marble, pursued the wind, shouted in the desert, served ingratitude, and his reward was to fall victim to death in the middle of his life, which was ended by a shepherdess …

Marcela, it seems, has no interest in any man and prefers the isolated life of a shepardess tending her flock. So as they are putting Grisóstomo into the ground Marcela shows up at the top of the crag and delivers a speech essentially making a case for free will:


…I return here on my own behalf to explain how unreasonable are those who in their grief blame me for the death of Grisóstomo, and so I beg all those present to hear me, for there will be no need to spend much time or waste many words to persuade discerning men of the truth…

…According to what I have heard, true love is not divided and must be voluntary, not forced. If this is true, as I believe it is, why do you want to force me to surrender my will, obliged to do so simply because you say you love me?

…Honor and virtue are adornments of the soul, without which the body is not truly beautiful, even if it seems to be so. And if chastity is one of the virtues that most adorn and beautify both body and soul, why should a woman, loved for being beautiful, lose that virtue in order to satisfy the desire of a man who, for the sake of his pleasure, attempts with all his might and main to have her lose it?

I was born free, and in order to live free I chose the solitude of the countryside…

And at that point, the clue bird landed on just about everybody at the funeral and, to their credit, they could now see things from Marcela’s perspective. And then it was pretty much — let’s get this dude in the ground and get back to our goats. (I’m paraphrasing here)

I’m thinking a good way to read Don Quixote is to try to read it from the perspective of a 16th Century Spanish woman.

[Danik 2016]

And a quite forgot that splendid Marcela not to speak of Luscinda.She must have been one of the first female activists to speak their minds that "no is no".When one sees this valiant characters of Cervantes coming valiantly out of the chaos and the mist that surrounds them one can´t help thinking how much tamer the novel became at later times.

[Sancho]

After the stories of Marcela (no means no), Dorotea (you make a promise, mister, you better keep it!) Luscinda (I don’t care who I’m supposed to marry, I’m holding out for my true lover-boy), and Camilla (you two morons aren’t clever enough to share my space), I was getting all geared up for a tale about the Moorish lady — Maria Zoraida — but this one turned out to be more about The Captive than about Zoraida. According to the footnotes much of the Captive’s tale is autobiographical and about the writer’s time as a prisoner in Algiers. It is fascinating. Cervantes names names and uses true historical events to flesh out the story. There’s even a swashbuckling part where The Captive, Zoraida, and crew make their escape and sail for Spain. Don Quixote stays out of the way while these stories are being told. He just doesn’t play a big part in these chapters. He’s off doing his own thing, or standing guard out front of the Castle/Inn, or generally indisposed. It’s a nice story-telling technique by Cervantes to expand the narrative and set aside for a while the parallel universe Don Quixote has created in his mind.

Anyway I’m just starting Book Two of Don Quixote, which was published 10 years or so after Book One and is generally published as one big book now. In the conclusion of Book One our Ingenious Gentleman is ignominiously returned to La Mancha, and El Sancho never does get his Isla — Oy vey.

[Danik 2016]

You are a very fast reader, Sancho. I remember taking ages in finishing that first volume of the Quixote.

Maybe now there is the moment to mention that besides the "internal meddlers" that so to speak stole some of the limelight of the knight, there were external meddlers too. The Preface of my English translation mentions a certain Avellaneda, who took it upon himself to write a sequel to volume 1 of the Quijote, with an insulting Preface to it´s author. Cervantes was more occupied a that time with more recent works, but Avellaneda's abusive enterprise, moved him to produce a own and definitive sequel to the Quijote. So the novel got a legitimate sequel and Avellaneda became part of the history of it´s production.

[Danik 2016]

Here in the own words of translator John Ormsby:
"He had got as far as Chapter LIX, which at his leisurely pace he could hardly have reached before October or November 1614, when there was put into his hand a small octave lately printed at Tarragona, and calling itself “Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licentiate Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda of Tordesillas.” The last half of Chapter LIX and most of the following chapters of the Second Part give us some idea of the effect produced upon him, and his irritation was not likely to be lessened by the reflection that he had no one to blame but himself. Had Avellaneda, in fact, been content with merely bringing out a continuation to “Don Quixote,” Cervantes would have had no reasonable grievance. His own intentions were expressed in the very vaguest language at the end of the book; nay, in his last words, “forse altro cantera con miglior plettro,” he seems actually to invite someone else to continue the work, and he made no sign until eight years and a half had gone by; by which time Avellaneda’s volume was no doubt written.

In fact Cervantes had no case, or a very bad one, as far as the mere continuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to it, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned man could pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with having lost his hand, with having been in prison, with being poor, with being friendless, accuses him of envy of Lope’s success, of petulance and querulousness, and so on; and it was in this that the sting lay. Avellaneda’s reason for this personal attack is obvious enough. Whoever he may have been, it is clear that he was one of the dramatists of Lope’s school, for he has the impudence to charge Cervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his criticism on the drama. His identification has exercised the best critics and baffled all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear on it. Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes knew who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a mosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of language pronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese himself, supports this view and believes him, moreover, to have been an ecclesiastic, a Dominican probably.

Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he is too dull to reflect much. “Dull and dirty” will always be, I imagine, the verdict of the vast majority of unprejudiced readers. He is, at best, a poor plagiarist; all he can do is to follow slavishly the lead given him by Cervantes; his only humour lies in making Don Quixote take inns for castles and fancy himself some legendary or historical personage, and Sancho mistake words, invert proverbs, and display his gluttony; all through he shows a proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has contrived to introduce two tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth century novellieri and without their sprightliness.

But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we must not forget the debt we owe them. But for them, there can be no doubt, “Don Quixote” would have come to us a mere torso instead of a complete work. Even if Cervantes had finished the volume he had in hand, most assuredly he would have left off with a promise of a Third Part, giving the further adventures of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza as shepherds. It is plain that he had at one time an intention of dealing with the pastoral romances as he had dealt with the books of chivalry, and but for Avellaneda he would have tried to carry it out. But it is more likely that, with his plans, and projects, and hopefulness, the volume would have remained unfinished till his death, and that we should have never made the acquaintance of the Duke and Duchess, or gone with Sancho to Barataria."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/996/996-h/996-h.htm

[Sancho]

I’m not a particularly fast reader. I just found myself on a couple of long airplane trips with nothing much else to do except read, and since I didn’t have my Spanish version of the book, I burned through the rest of Part I fairly quickly.

I think you’re exactly right, Danik, Cervantes may have never been motivated to write Part II if the false Quixote hadn’t been published. In the prologue to the real Part II he certainly does seem interested in settling a few scores. I like how he calls out the writer of the false Quixote for not even having the guts to use his own name.

Speaking directly to his readers:


I think you will say that I am showing great restraint and am keeping well within the bounds of modesty, knowing that one must not add afflictions to the afflicted, and the affliction of this gentleman is undoubtedly very great, for he does not dare to appear openly in the light of day but hides his name and conceals his birthplace, as if he had committed some terrible act of treason against the crown.

He then tells his readers to pass along a couple of stories to the writer of the false Quixote if they ever happen to come across him. The first involves a madman who inserts a reed straw into the posterior of a dog and blows the animal up like a ball. (Yeech!) The second story also involves a madman and some dogs. In this one the madman goes around dropping stones on the dogs. He does this until he drops a stone on the head of a much-beloved hound of a haberdasher who then beats the madman “to within an inch of his life.” It’s not too hard to figure out who the haberdasher, the madman, and the unfortunate hound represent.

Cervantes then goes on to tell us that at the end of Part II Don Quixote will be dead and buried, thereby making it impossible for anyone else to appropriate his creation for a future tale. That got me to thinking about how many later works were influenced by Don Quixote. Thankfully nobody has tried to outright steal the character the way the writer known by the pseudonym Avellaneda did, but there are an incredible number of Quixotic characters in literature and film. Prince Myshkin of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot comes immediately to mind. And there are many many more who were influenced less directly.

According to the footnotes in the translation I’m reading, Shakespeare may have written a play about Cordenio which has been lost. The story in Part I about Cordenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando, and Dorotea certainly reads like a Shakespeare drama. But Cordenio reminded me of another character in literature — Ad Francis — from Ernest Hemingway’s story The Battler. I found myself wondering if Papa Hemingway was somehow influenced by Cervantes when he wrote The Battler. It’s one of his Nick Adams stories. Nick has hopped a train but then gets sucker punched by the brakeman and tossed off the train. Nick then meets a couple of Hobos who invite him to share their dinner. One of the hobos, Ad Francis, it turns out, used to be a prize fighter. His face is all beaten up, he’s got a cauliflower ear, and generally looks like hell. Well things are going just fine, everybody’s getting along well, but then Ad snaps and wants to fight Nick. The other hobo, Bugs, has to knock out Ad with a blackjack to keep him from attacking Nick. It reminded me of Cordenio telling his story to Don Quixote very cordially at first but then snapping and going totally ape on our poor knight errant.

[Danik 2016]

If I wasn´t sure Cervantes at botton liked dog and only wrote those dog stories because he was enraged at Avellaneda's interference with his novel, I would as people say today, instantly unfollow and cancel Cervantes. But his respect for dogs was imortalized in "The Dialogue of the Dogs" which no doubt you know.

But Cervantes was really very angry and he wanted to show whoever attended to the name or pen name of Avellaneda, that he was meddling with the wrong person. So he decided to take care personally of the destiny of his characters and protect them from any Avellaneda that was hidden in the bush and the inevitable TV series.

I remember that the second volume is very different from the first.

As Influences there were many. In Brazil we have the quixotic Policarpo Quaresma, a discreet public sevant who invents various projects to improve Brazil and fails with all of them

[Sancho]

Until you just told me about it, Danik, I was unaware of Cervantes’ El coloquio de los perros. I’m only guessing, but I’d say Cervantes was an animal lover. I say this primarily because of his treatment of Rocinante in Part One. Also I’d say he knows well the animals he writes about. At one point in Part One Don Quixote comes to a crossroads and lets fate decide which road to take, which is to say he let Rocinante decide which road to take. Well the horse immediately chooses the road that will lead him back to his stable. (My wife keeps a couple of old horses, and those two animals always know exactly which way to go to get back to the barn — and the horse feed). I’d also note that in the initial description of the gentleman of La Mancha, he says he keeps a Greyhound.

In my translated copy the Haberdasher’s dog is referred to as a hound. In the Spanish the word is podenco:


Perro ladrón, ¿a mi podenco? ¿No viste, cruel, que era podenco mi perro?

Edith Grossman’s translation:


You miserable thief, you dog, why did you hurt my hound? Didn’t you see, cruel man, that my dog was a hound?

In earlier translations the word is
lurcher, which is a crossbreed of a greyhound (racing dog) and some type hunting dog. Whatever the case, the hound was more valued than the regular dogs, perhaps even stray dogs. And of course Cervantes must have loved dogs because in the analogy the hound was a stand-in for his novel, the hat-maker was himself, and the dirty-rotten-stone-dropper was Avellaneda.

Haha, we’ve got our share of Policarpo Quaresma here too.

[Danik 2016]

Sadly, my on line version is without any prologue at all so I thank you for your information and the quotes, Sancho. I would have liked to know how Ormsby translated "podenco".

As you enjoyed the Quijote so much, maybe you would like to check out his "Exemplary Stories"(which include The Dialogue of the Dogs). The stories are as colorful and entertaining as those included in the Quixote.

As for Policarpo Quaresma, one of his great feats was that he sent, in sheer absent mindedness an official document written in Tupi, to Parlament, I believe. After that, the poor man was put into a mental hospital.

[Sancho]

Cide Hamete Benengeli tells us in the second part of this history, which recounts the third sally of Don Quixote, that the priest and the barber…

Most of the tales of chivalry that Don Quixote has read and which have driven him to seek adventure as a knight errant are couched as true history. Whether as an ancient history that was found by a mysterious old lady in a crypt, or a text written in an obscure language and translated by an unnamed university Don, the tales of chivalry are meant to make the reader believe that they are an actual history. I think Cervantes is having a little fun here by telling us Part Two of the story of Don Quixote through the wise Moor (Praise be to Allah) Cide Hamete Benengeli, who is evidently a lover of eggplant. (Benengeli is a play on the Spanish word for eggplant — berenjena.)

We find out early on in Part Two, through Bachelor Sansón Carrasco, that this history of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Cide Hamete Benengeli is about attacking windmills not giants and flocks of sheep not armies. At any rate, it impels Don Quixote to once again take up arms and sally forth a third time.

[Danik 2016]

Lol! I used to call him Cid Biringela, when I read the book. I think at the time there was a general invoking of old manuscripts. Cervantes may be poking fun also at the fascinating travelers and discoverers, like Marco Polo and others. As you wrote, the manuscripts conferred more credibility to the stories.

[Sancho]

I’m afraid I don’t know much about El Cid, but he was a real person, unlike Don Quixote. As far as I can tell he was quite the tough guy (possibly more of a mercenary) who lived during the High Middle Ages. Also in North America he’s got an extraordinary number of Taco Trucks named after him.

[Danik 2016]

Nor do I, Sancho. But it might be an ironic reference to the medieval Spanish hero El Cid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cid. Fighting with Christians and Muslims El Cid became the great national hero, all what neither Cervantes nor his Quijote didn´t.

[Sancho]

Oh, I’m pretty sure Cide and Cid I’d not an accident on Cervantes part.

I’m finding that as I read along I keep making obscure connections between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and other dynamic duos, like Batman and Robin. Or given that The Don had his mind twisted by the pulp fiction of the day, maybe Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction:

https://youtu.be/dLdRsofkCVs

But the movie that just shouts at me as I read some of the more comic episodes of Don Quixote is Dumb and Dumber. I mean here’s a couple of guys living in their own reality, traveling around, having adventures, and creating havoc. So I got to surfing around on the web to see if anybody else saw the connection between Lloyd and Harry and Don Quixote and Sancho, and of course many people did. I found this on the Wordpress Blog from a reviewer named Pete Karnas and he says it much better than I can:


Here’s the story: two half-wits (one delusional, the other just plain stupid with moments of remarkable clarity) set off on a quest in the service of a beautiful, unwitting woman. *Along the way, both characters are repeatedly ridiculed by those around them, although their own idiocy insulates them from the effects of this scorn. *They are physically abused, often by each other. Copious hilarity ensues time and again as the result of disgusting bodily functions.
That’s pretty much what happens in my all-time favorite moronic comedy, Dumb and Dumber. *It also happens to fit the plot of Don Quixote quite nicely.

Here’s the rest of Pete’s review:

https://petekarnas.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/don-quixote-and-sancho-panza-the-original-lloyd-and-harry/

[Sancho]

Well, El Don Quixote is having splendid success on his third sally. He soundly defeats another knight errant, who turns out to be the bachelor. (The bachelor was sent by the priest and the barber to defeat Don Quixote and bring him back to La Mancha where they could keep an eye on him, but the bachelor badly underestimated The Don’s prowess. It turns out the old man has some ninja moves.)

Next Don Quixote defeats a huge lion in brutal combat. He comes across a couple of guys who are taking a pair of lions in a cage, on a wagon, to the king, a gift of the General of Oran. He insists the lion keeper open the cage so the he, a valiant knight, can conquer the beast. The lion keeper only does so to avoid being skewered by The Don’s lance. What happens next I could post in the nature-writing thread, because Cervantes writes a beautiful description of how lions act:


The first thing the lion did was to turn around in the cage where he had been lying and unsheathe his claws and stretch his entire body; then he opened his mouth, and yawned very slowly, and extended a tongue almost two spans long, and cleaned the dust from his eyes and washed his face; when this was finished, he put his head out of the cage and looked all around with eyes like coals, a sight and vision that could frighten temerity itself. Only Don Quixote looked at him attentively, wanting him to leap from the wagon and come within reach of his hands, for he intended to tear him to pieces.

These are the extremes to which Don Quixote’s unprecedented madness took him. But the magnanimous lion, more courteous than arrogant, took no notice of either childishness or bravado, and after looking in both directions, as has been said, he turned his back, and showed his hindquarters to Don Quixote, and with great placidity and calm went back inside the cage.

Thus ends Don Quixote’s encounter with The King of the Jungle.

[Danik 2016]

I wasn't sure if I had seen Dumb and Dumber, so I looked it up.It was apropriately translated as "Debi e Loide" which names together form the word debiloide, someone with a very weak intellect. The Portuguese title conveys the idea however, that both are very similar in their dumbness.

I enjoyed the lion episode. The description you chose is in fact wonderful and best of all, nobody gets hurt.

I have a feeling that in this second part the perception of the environment is different than in the first: the lion is a lion and not a dragon or another pre diluvian monster. The question is more how the Don absorbs the fact that he is carried in a cage.

[Sancho]

Yep, Dumb and Dumber is another of those movies that men of a certain age can quote chapter and verse. It’s low-brow entertainment, but oh man, is it funny. I seem to keep coming up with contemporary comedy movies to compare Don Quixote to. I haven’t gotten to Animal House or Caddy Shack yet, but I’m sure there’s Quixotic behavior on display in both those movies. Also I’m reminded that for all its literary merit, Don Quixote was hugely popular in its time.

From Dumb and Dumber:


Lloyd Christmas:
That's a lovely accent... New Jersey?
Lady at bus stop:
It's Austrian.
Lloyd Christmas:
Austria! Well, then. G'day mate! Let's put another shrimp on the barbie!
Lady at bus stop:
Let's not.

Hey, who hasn’t confused Austria with Australia?

From Don Quixote:


“Oh well, if none of you understand me,” responded Sancho, “it’s no wonder my sayings are taken for nonsense. But it doesn’t matter: I understand what I’m saying, and I know there’s not much foolishness in what I said, but your grace is always sentencing what I say, and even what I do.”

“Censuring is what you should say,” said Don Quixote, “and not sentencing, you corrupter of good language, May God confound you!”

Close enough, I say.

[Danik 2016]

Lol! Had to do a bit of research

https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/lifestyle/talk-like-a-true-aussie-top-10-aussie-sayings-and-what-they-mean/news-story/d216f699ddee5bd0ed643d9244a336be

So Lóide comes from Lloyd. What is the name of the other one?

And Sancho is right! If he understands himself so why don´t the others?

[Sancho]

The two main characters were Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne. Sounds like the Portuguese version was quite clever in naming the movie. The comparison to Don Quixote is not perfect. Lloyd and Harry are both incredibly stupid and delusional, and they are on a chivalric quest to return a briefcase to a beautiful woman, but they tilt much more towards Sancho than to Don Quixote. And both have a sort of good-natured innocence about them, like Sancho, or like Larry, Curly, and Moe (and sometimes Shemp) for that matter. I used to love watching The Three Stooges in Spanish-speaking countries. It’s just as funny in Spanish as in English, maybe more so. Anyway The Three Stooges is usually translated as Los Tres Idiotos. Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.

[Danik 2016]

I´ve been wondering if the pair Quixote and Sancho weren´t inspired also by the theater of the period. Until it got more democratic the theater used to assign "tragedy" seen as something noble, spirit elevating, to the aristocrats, while the comic roles where reserved to the people. In older plays the pair melancholic aristocrat and witty servant, in male or female version, are very usual. Often there is a parallel plot with the master marrying the lady and the servant marrying the maid. Maybe this division had to do with the preferences of the audiences.

Mr Pickwick and specially Sam Weller seem to be inspired by the Quixote. If I rightly remember Pickwick has also his bouts of trying to save the world, but his world is another much more solid one. Sooner or later his adventures will land him in front of a full table with excellent food and wine and surrounded by the convivial spirit of his friends.

[Sancho]

Ya know, Danik, Cervantes never disappoints. He plays around with just those ideas in the section I just finished. I wonder if he lost some of his readership when he published Part II. The writing, it seems to me, is much more sophisticated, and so are some of the ideas. But then again there is still enough slapstick to keep even the most unsophisticated reader happy.

I think he hits upon this dichotomy between aristocratic sensibilities and peasant sensibilities in his chapter on the wedding of Quiteria and Camacho/Basilio. To reduce it to the absurd, Quiteria is beautiful, Camacho is rich but low-borne, and Basiilio is poor but high-borne. Don Quixote takes the side of Basilio, but Sancho takes the side of Camacho:


”To hell with Basilio’s talents! You’re worth what you have, and you have what you’re worth. There are only two lineages in the world, as my grandmother used to say, and that’s the haves and the have-nots, though she was on the side of having; nowadays, Señor Don Quixote, wealth is better than wisdom: an *** covered in gold seems better than a saddled horse. And so I say again that I’m on the side of Camacho, whose pots are overflowing with geese and chickens, hares and rabbits, while Basilio’s, if they ever show up, and even if they don’t, won’t hold anything but watered wine.”

“Have you finished your harangue, Sancho? Said Don Quixote.

“I must have,” responded Sancho, “because I see your grace is bothered by it; if you hadn’t cut this one short, I could have gone on for another three days.”

Yeah, Sancho! Go-man-go!

Sancho then goes into a quite nuanced (and uncharacteristic) allegory about death. It’s worth reading. Part II, Chapter XX.

It does seem like the literary community puts drama and tragedy on a higher pedestal than comedy, and so does the theater and film communities. A perfect example is Dumb and Dumber. The star of the show is Jim Carrey, who was hugely popular in the nineties for comedies like Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, Mask, Me Myself and Irene, just to name a few. Well he makes a dramatic film, The Truman Show, which gets all kinds of accolades from film critics. A friend of mine summed it up well. He said, “you know I’ve seen The Truman Show once, but I’ve seen Dumb and Dumber hundreds of times. So I ask you, which is the better film?”

[Danik 2016]

Sorry Sancho for the late answer. Eyes not so well these days. I agree with you that Cervantes must have lost some readership with part II. Even today, many of the people I know that read the Quixote, if they are not scholars they stop at part one where the episodes are more vivid, popular and less sophisticated. Adaptions, like children versions, in Portuguese there is the famous one by Monteiro Lobato, ignore the second part.

"It does seem like the literary community puts drama and tragedy on a higher pedestal than comedy, and so does the theater and film communities." I absolutely agree with you. Elitism exists even with music. There used to be a CD producer here who called itself "Biscoito Fino (Refined Biscuit) meaning one would find only great artists in it´s catalogue

I guess Cervantes wanted to capture the different audiences. I personally prefer him when there is more story and less reflection.

[Sancho]

No worries, Danik. I’ve been operating in fits and starts this past month or so with a crazy-weird work schedule. I never quite know when I’ll have time to read or to visit this website. That said, I’ve enjoyed immensely reading Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote and comparing certain parts to the original early-modern Spanish. I’m probably half way through Part II.

You know, on a similar note, I think Herman Melville lost a lot of his readership when he published Moby Dick. Before that he was wildly popular for writing adventurous sea tales, and with Moby Dick a lot of his readers seemed to think — hey, wait a minute, this book has the stink of highfaluting literature on it.

I’ll also mention that I read Inferno, but I’m guilty of skipping Purgatorio and Paradiso

[Danik 2016]

Thanks for understanding, Sancho. I go on but by bits.

And even so you found time to finish the second part of the Quixote, congrats!

Lol!Melville wrote two more door stoppers. I think one of them was Typee or something similar. Tried to read it, but didn´t manage it.

As for Dante, I think it is one of the cases where the Inferno is more interesting than Purgatorio and Paradiso put together. His final meeting with Beatrice is an anticlimax. But he was already very old when he wrote that part.

[Sancho]

Hah! Door stopper is a good description. But I actually enjoyed even the most tedious parts of Moby Dick. I liked the details about whaling and I loved his depictions of 19th century sailor talk.

As I think I am figuring out on this time through Don Quixote, Sancho is hilarious. He’s quite the talker, and has an opinion about everything. He usually backs up his opinions with a Sancho-esk proverb. Which is to say, a well known proverb that has been butchered by Sancho but fits the situation, in Sancho’s mind anyway — much to the delight of The Duchess and much to the annoyance of Don Quixote.

Here’s Sancho when told that as a governor he should go on hunts for dangerous animals:


“No,” responded Sancho, “a good governor and a broken leg stay at home.”

Edith’s footnotes tell me this a variation of: “A good wife and a broken leg stay home.”

Don Quixote’s response is:


God and all his saints curse you, wretched Sancho, as I have said so often, will the day ever come when I see you speak an ordinary coherent sentence without any proverbs?

But the duchess weighs in on Sancho’s behalf:


Sancho Panza’s proverbs, although more numerous than those of the Greek Commander, because of their brevity are no less estimable. As far as I am concerned, they give me more pleasure than others that may be more fitting and more opportune.

Okay she’s being a tad condescending towards Sancho, but Sancho doesn’t take offense and is comfortable with his world view. Don Quixote’s reaction to Sancho’s proverb by contrast reminded me of an early Saturday Night Live skit where Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtain debate a topic on a local news program. Jane would start out with a well reasoned, well thought out position. Then Dan gets his chance to give the counterpoint and starts with — “Jane, you ignorant slut,” and goes on to give a poorly reasoned, poorly thought out defense.

[bounty]

my apologies to don Quixote, but...

I am making it my literary life's mission, any time moby dick is mentioned, to jump in and say moby dick sucks!

[Sancho]

Hahaha
I googled “Moby Dick sucks,” and I gotta say, they didn’t come up with anything that was literary at all. (I clicked on it anyway)

[Danik 2016]

Poor Moby Dick. Thought I would be bored by it, but I enjoyed the book very much. Not on account of the whaling, but because it depicts the epic adventure with intensity

[Sancho]

I haven’t quite figured out if the duke and the duchess are just having a little fun at the expense of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or if they are genuinely interested in the knight and his squire, or if they are trying to keep the dynamic duo safely ensconced at their villa to keep them from creating any more havoc among innocent herds of sheep and windmills in the area, or a combination of all of those.

Whatever the case they went to no small effort to create new adventures for the knight errant. One of the more ambitious deceptions involved Don Quixote and Sancho flying off on Clavileño (a Pegasus-type horse) to deal with the giant/sorcerer Malambruno on behalf of the Dolorous One. Modern flight simulators have the benefit of computer graphic interfaces and motion simulated by putting the whole contraption up on hydraulic lifts. For the 16th century version of a flight simulator they used bellows to simulate the wind and hot coals to signal that our two aviators were getting too close to the sun, and eventually they used fireworks to turn Clavileño into a smoking hole (to borrow some modern fighter pilot lingo). Pretty clever, I say.

Anyway once back on the ground Sancho insisted to the duchess that he’d seen the earth from the heavens and it was the size of a mustard seed. He also claimed to have played with the seven nanny goats of the constellation Pleiades. Don Quixote was dubious of Sancho’s claim, but told him:


Sancho, just as you want to people to believe what you have seen in the sky, I want you to believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all I have to say.

A lot of the the analysis has Don Quixote actually believing his adventure, but Sancho inventing his. Sancho could have several motivations for this, the most logical being it was in his own self interest to play along with the ruse in order to get his governorship from the duke. At any rate Cervantes leaves it up o the reader to decide. It’s not explicit in the text. To me it seemed that Don Quixote was acknowledging that his adventures were fantasies, which was a rare display of self awareness on his part. And his exchange with Sancho was of the “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” variety. Hey, Sancho, don’t try to bull sh*t a bull sh*tter. We’ve got a good thing going here so let’s don’t screw this up.

A quick note about Pleiades — I know the constellation as the Seven Sisters not the Seven Nanny Goats. Maybe Seven Nanny Goats is a Spanish thing, or perhaps a Sancho thing. The Japanese call the same cluster of stars Subaru for unity and only use six of the stars (you can count them on a Subaru’s hood ornament.) I think it’s pretty cool that for thousands of years people have looked at the sky and made up stories about the stars. I also think it’s pretty cool that a lot of the stories run parallel to each other. The Greeks looked to the northern sky and saw Ursa Major or Big Bear. The Greeks had a whole story explaining why the big bear in the sky has a long tail but the bear in the mountains has a bob tail. Independently a lot of Native American people also saw a bear when they looked to the northern sky, and they also had a story for why the sky bear has a long tail but the grizzly bear doesn’t. I had a Hawaiian tell me they call that constellation Na Hiku, and in their culture it’s a kite. It makes sense they wouldn’t call it a bear since, as far as I know, Hawaii doesn’t have any bears. For understandable reasons Polynesians in particular hold Na Hiku/Ursa Major/The Big Dipper in very high regard as a navigation aid. You know who else used Ursa Major (and no doubt Cassiopeia and Polaris) to find their way? Captain Ahab! Arrrg.

[Danik 2016]

Wonderful post Sancho. I dimly remember the Duke and the Duchess having their fun with the adventurous pair. D Quixote also appears as you showed as a much more ambiguous character in this second volume, while Sancho tries more to humor his master.
Coming back later for the Pleiades. Windows actualization just
now taking over.

[Sancho]

Thanks Danik, and thanks for reading along on this adventure. It has truly helped.

I must say, I’ve enjoyed immensely this time through Don Quixote. Edith Grossman’s translation reads much smoother than the version I read last time, which was translated by Tobias Smollett. Comparing both of them to Cervantes’ Spanish has been challenging and has proven to me that my Spanish really-really stinks.

[Danik 2016]

It has been a pleasure, Sancho. I wish I would have been able to contribute more.
If you feel inspired sometime visit or revisit the Pickwick Papers. I think you will like Sam Weller in spite of Victorian morals.

[Sancho]

Be careful what you wish for — you just may get it. Since Sancho is so fond of explaining the world with his proverbs, I thought I’d toss one back at him.

In Chapter XLV of Part II Sancho finally becomes governor of an ínsula, compliments of The Duke. He’s been dreaming of becoming governor of his own island since early on in Part I when Don Quixote had mentioned to him that it was the sort of thing good squires were rewarded with. Almost as soon as he becomes governor, he realizes it’s not for him. The food is bad. The work is hard. The hours are long. And he misses Don Quixote and his donkey. Oddly though, he does a really good job for his people as governor.

One reason he’s a good governor is because he’s a good guy — he wants to be a good governor, he tries hard, and he has a strong sense of right and wrong. Another reason is the farewell he had with Don Quixote. Just before he left for his ínsula, Don Quixote had a long talk with him about the philosophical basis behind being a good governor. It is a high point of the novel. Every modern-day governor or political leader should read it. It sort of flips the script on Machiavelli. It’s at the end of Chapter XLII.

Sancho resigns his governorship after only ten days. He then retrieves his donkey from the stable and heads back down the King’s Road to rejoin Don Quixote. As he ambles along, he is the picture of contentment.

Ya know, Danik, I haven’t read Dickens in quite some time, and I’ve never read The Pickwick Papers. I’ll have to give it a go.

[Danik 2016]

Lol, this one is current here too! I remember Sancho being a governor of an island and a good one but not that it was for only ten days.

Maybe the Quixote (at least the part about the island) should be obligatory reading for modern politicians.

[Sancho]

Cervantes doesn’t pass up too many opportunities to take a pot-shot at the fake Quixote. In fact when The Don and Sancho are on the road to Zaragoza they meet a fellow traveler who is reading the Fake Quixote and through him they learn that the fake Quixote went to Zaragoza, so they abruptly change their plans and go to Barcelona. As the sun rises on their first day in Barcelona the two them gaze out at the sea for the first time. I like the way Cervantes describes it:


Don Quixote and Sancho turned their eyes in all directions; they saw the ocean, which they had not seen before: it seemed broad and vast to them, much larger than the Lakes of Ruidera that they had seen in La Mancha; they saw the galleys near the shore, and when the canopies were raised, their pennants and streamers were revealed, fluttering in the wind and kissing and sweeping the water; from the galleys came the sound of bugles, trumpets, and flageolets, and the breeze carried the sweetly martial tones near and far. The ships began to move, performing a mock skirmish on the quiet waters, and, corresponding in almost the same fashion, an infinite number of knights on beautiful horses and in splendid livery rode out from the city. The soldiers on the galleys fired countless pieces of artillery, to which those who were on the walls and in the forts of the city responded, and the heavy artillery shook the air with a fearsome clamor and was answered by the midship cannon on the galleys. The joyful sea, the jocund land, the transparent air, perhaps clouded only by the smoke from the artillery, seemed to create and engender a sudden delight in all the people.

It seems to me the description is vivid enough that Cervantes is drawing from personal experience. Sancho however didn’t have the background to make sense of it:


Sancho could not imagine how those shapes moving on the ocean could have so many feet.

[Danik 2016]

Lol, delightful! I think however one of the prior aims of part two is to remind the readers that there is a fake version and to mark the difference between both.

[Sancho]

Indeed, Danik, and he doesn’t just want to delineate the differences between the real and the false Quixote, he wants to prevent anybody from creating any more false Quixotes. So I guess this post isn’t really a spoiler since Cervantes tells us at the outset that Don Quixote will be dead and in his grave by the end of Part II. What he doesn’t tell us is that Don Quixote will regain his sanity by the end of the book. (Just as the Dalai Lama promised Carl in Caddyshack — when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness). At the end of the false Quixote, the knight winds up in an insane asylum, but at the end of the real Don Quixote, he dies at home in his bed with all his friends and relatives around him:


“Alonso Quixano the Good is truly dying, and he has truly recovered his reason; we ought to go in so that he can make his will.”

This news put terrible pressure on the already full eyes of his housekeeper, his niece, and his good squire, Sancho Panza, forcing tears from their eyes and a thousand deep sighs from their bosoms, because the truth is, as has already been said, that whether Don Quixote was simply Alonso Quixano the Good, or whether he was Don Quixote of La Mancha, he always had a gentle disposition and was kind in his treatment of others, and for this reason he was dearly loved not only by those in his household, but by everyone who knew him.

I think Cervantes is telling us that the real Don Quixote is Alonso Quixano the Good, just an ordinary man with big ideas, perhaps like his readers. He died in his bed with loved ones around him and not on far flung battlefield as would a knight errant. I finished this book just as I did the last time — with a tremendous feeling of goodwill towards others. So thank you again Miguel de Cervantes.

[Danik 2016]

Congrats for finishing this masterpiece for the second time, Sancho!I think that among other things Don Quixote is about preserving ones humanity, even if all odds are against it. Thus to be able to live in an unstable and unjust world he had to be crazy but to die he had to be sane.

Just to give your a foretaste of The Pickwick Papers, here is the introduction of Sam Weller to Mr. Pickwick:


Mr. Snodgrass did as he was desired; and Mr. Samuel Weller forthwith presented himself.

‘Oh—you remember me, I suppose?’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘I should think so,’ replied Sam, with a patronising wink. ‘Queer start that ‘ere, but he was one too many for you, warn’t he? Up to snuff and a pinch or two over—eh?’

‘Never mind that matter now,’ said Mr. Pickwick hastily; ‘I want to speak to you about something else. Sit down.’

‘Thank’ee, sir,’ said Sam. And down he sat without further bidding, having previously deposited his old white hat on the landing outside the door. ‘’Tain’t a wery good ‘un to look at,’ said Sam, ‘but it’s an astonishin’ ‘un to wear; and afore the brim went, it was a wery handsome tile. Hows’ever it’s lighter without it, that’s one thing, and every hole lets in some air, that’s another—wentilation gossamer I calls it.’ On the delivery of this sentiment, Mr. Weller smiled agreeably upon the assembled Pickwickians.

‘Now with regard to the matter on which I, with the concurrence of these gentlemen, sent for you,’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘That’s the pint, sir,’ interposed Sam; ‘out vith it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farden.’

‘We want to know, in the first place,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘whether you have any reason to be discontented with your present situation.’

‘Afore I answers that ‘ere question, gen’l’m’n,’ replied Mr. Weller, ‘I should like to know, in the first place, whether you’re a-goin’ to purwide me with a better?’

A sunbeam of placid benevolence played on Mr. Pickwick’s features as he said, ‘I have half made up my mind to engage you myself.’

‘Have you, though?’ said Sam.

Mr. Pickwick nodded in the affirmative.

‘Wages?’ inquired Sam.

‘Twelve pounds a year,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.

‘Clothes?’

‘Two suits.’

‘Work?’

‘To attend upon me; and travel about with me and these gentlemen here.’

‘Take the bill down,’ said Sam emphatically. ‘I’m let to a single gentleman, and the terms is agreed upon.’

‘You accept the situation?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.

‘Cert’nly,’ replied Sam. ‘If the clothes fits me half as well as the place, they’ll do.’

‘You can get a character of course?’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘Ask the landlady o’ the White Hart about that, Sir,’ replied Sam.

‘Can you come this evening?’

‘I’ll get into the clothes this minute, if they’re here,’ said Sam, with great alacrity.

‘Call at eight this evening,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘and if the inquiries are satisfactory, they shall be provided.’

With the single exception of one amiable indiscretion, in which an assistant housemaid had equally participated, the history of Mr. Weller’s conduct was so very blameless, that Mr. Pickwick felt fully justified in closing the engagement that very evening. With the promptness and energy which characterised not only the public proceedings, but all the private actions of this extraordinary man, he at once led his new attendant to one of those convenient emporiums where gentlemen’s new and second-hand clothes are provided, and the troublesome and inconvenient formality of measurement dispensed with; and before night had closed in, Mr. Weller was furnished with a grey coat with the P. C. button, a black hat with a cockade to it, a pink striped waistcoat, light breeches and gaiters, and a variety of other necessaries, too numerous to recapitulate.

‘Well,’ said that suddenly-transformed individual, as he took his seat on the outside of the Eatanswill coach next morning; ‘I wonder whether I’m meant to be a footman, or a groom, or a gamekeeper, or a seedsman. I looks like a sort of compo of every one on ‘em. Never mind; there’s a change of air, plenty to see, and little to do; and all this suits my complaint uncommon; so long life to the Pickvicks, says I!’
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/580/580-h/580-h.htm#link2HCH001

[Danik 2016]

In fact they´ve already met here:

‘My friend,’ said the thin gentleman.

‘You’re one o’ the adwice gratis order,’ thought Sam, ‘or you wouldn’t be so wery fond o’ me all at once.’ But he only said—‘Well, Sir.’

‘My friend,’ said the thin gentleman, with a conciliatory hem—‘have you got many people stopping here now? Pretty busy. Eh?’

Sam stole a look at the inquirer. He was a little high-dried man, with a dark squeezed-up face, and small, restless, black eyes, that kept winking and twinkling on each side of his little inquisitive nose, as if they were playing a perpetual game of peep-bo with that feature. He was dressed all in black, with boots as shiny as his eyes, a low white neckcloth, and a clean shirt with a frill to it. A gold watch-chain, and seals, depended from his fob. He carried his black kid gloves in his hands, and not ON them; and as he spoke, thrust his wrists beneath his coat tails, with the air of a man who was in the habit of propounding some regular posers.

‘Pretty busy, eh?’ said the little man.

‘Oh, wery well, Sir,’ replied Sam, ‘we shan’t be bankrupts, and we shan’t make our fort’ns. We eats our biled mutton without capers, and don’t care for horse-radish ven ve can get beef.’

‘Ah,’ said the little man, ‘you’re a wag, ain’t you?’

‘My eldest brother was troubled with that complaint,’ said Sam; ‘it may be catching—I used to sleep with him.’

‘This is a curious old house of yours,’ said the little man, looking round him.

‘If you’d sent word you was a-coming, we’d ha’ had it repaired;’ replied the imperturbable Sam.

The little man seemed rather baffled by these several repulses, and a short consultation took place between him and the two plump gentlemen. At its conclusion, the little man took a pinch of snuff from an oblong silver box, and was apparently on the point of renewing the conversation, when one of the plump gentlemen, who in addition to a benevolent countenance, possessed a pair of spectacles, and a pair of black gaiters, interfered—

‘The fact of the matter is,’ said the benevolent gentleman, ‘that my friend here (pointing to the other plump gentleman) will give you half a guinea, if you’ll answer one or two—’

‘Now, my dear sir—my dear Sir,’ said the little man, ‘pray, allow me—my dear Sir, the very first principle to be observed in these cases, is this: if you place the matter in the hands of a professional man, you must in no way interfere in the progress of the business; you must repose implicit confidence in him. Really, Mr.—’ He turned to the other plump gentleman, and said, ‘I forget your friend’s name.’

‘Pickwick,’ said Mr. Wardle, for it was no other than that jolly personage.

‘Ah, Pickwick—really Mr. Pickwick, my dear Sir, excuse me—I shall be happy to receive any private suggestions of yours, as AMICUS CURIAE, but you must see the impropriety of your interfering with my conduct in this case, with such an AD CAPTANDUM argument as the offer of half a guinea. Really, my dear Sir, really;’ and the little man took an argumentative pinch of snuff, and looked very profound.

‘My only wish, Sir,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘was to bring this very unpleasant matter to as speedy a close as possible.’

‘Quite right—quite right,’ said the little man.

‘With which view,’ continued Mr. Pickwick, ‘I made use of the argument which my experience of men has taught me is the most likely to succeed in any case.’

‘Ay, ay,’ said the little man, ‘very good, very good, indeed; but you should have suggested it to me. My dear sir, I’m quite certain you cannot be ignorant of the extent of confidence which must be placed in professional men. If any authority can be necessary on such a point, my dear sir, let me refer you to the well-known case in Barnwell and—’

‘Never mind George Barnwell,’ interrupted Sam, who had remained a wondering listener during this short colloquy; ‘everybody knows what sort of a case his was, tho’ it’s always been my opinion, mind you, that the young ‘ooman deserved scragging a precious sight more than he did. Hows’ever, that’s neither here nor there. You want me to accept of half a guinea. Wery well, I’m agreeable: I can’t say no fairer than that, can I, sir?’ (Mr. Pickwick smiled.) Then the next question is, what the devil do you want with me, as the man said, wen he see the ghost?’

‘We want to know—’ said Mr. Wardle.

[Sancho]

Sounds like great fun, Danik. I’m gonna have to read it now. Also I kinda feel like I should read Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. I’ve read a few stories in it but haven’t read it cover to cover. Right now I’ve switched genres and I’m reading The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. So far it’s been grand.

[Danik 2016]

The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. Sounds interesting, Sancho!

[Sancho]

I’ve been having much fun reading this book so far. It’s a first novel by a young writer who originally self- published it. When I read sci-fi, more than probably any other genre, I just let go of the reality of the daily grind and go wherever the writer’s imagination wants to take me. And in this particular case we’re going on a somewhat Quixotic journey on the starship Voyager with a multi-species crew - Rosemary, Kizzy, Capt Ashby, Dr Chef, Sissix, Jenks, Lovelace, Ohan, and Corbin.

Here’s a sample. They’re discussing weapons proliferation and the development of a new weapon that targets genes:


Jenks shook his head. “Why can’t people just stick with bullets and energy bursts and be happy about it?”

“Because people are a**holes,” said Bear, dutifully keeping his head down. “Ninety percent of all problems are caused by people being a**holes.”

“What causes the other ten percent?” Asked Kizzy.

“Natural disasters,” said Nib.

I’m about halfway through the book and things are starting to look a little dicey for the crew. I’m not sure they know it yet, but I think they’re heading for an angry planet.

[Danik 2016]

There is something familiar about them. Are they inspired by Star Wars?

[Sancho]

Woo - tough question. There is a chapter in the book where the Voyager goes to Port Coriol for supplies and and a little R&R. Once there it sort of had the feel of the bar scene in the first Star Wars movie, but a lot of things remind me of the bar scene in Star Wars — New Orleans for instance. Or maybe a combination of smugglers in Star Wars and sailors at port in Shanghai in the 19th century. Anyway in tone the book feels much more like the cooperative/compassionate theme of Close Encounters than the good vs evil theme of Star Wars. Or perhaps it’s a little more Odyssey than Iliad. At any rate the writer is good at imagining different species, cultures, languages, and interspecies communication with a tilt towards getting along with each other rather than wiping out each other.

I’ll see where it goes. This book has kicked off a series of Voyager books by Ms Chambers. I think I may be hooked.

[bounty]

Sancho, have you ever heard of or watched a movie called the next three days?

[Sancho]

I have not heard of it and I’m not much of a movie guy. Any good? I’ve got streaming services and since Hollywood is still on strike and they’re not making any new stuff, it’d be a good time to catch up.

[bounty]

the male lead in the movie is played by Russell crowe. he's an English teacher at a local community college and he (and therefore the movie) make a really poignant use of don Quixote. it's almost worth watching the movie up until that point just to see it in context.

if you are interested, there is a website called fsharetv that has it, and tons of other free movies.

[Sancho]

I’ll have to check it out. I need a break from the news cycle — another day in America, another mass shooting.

[bounty]

I don't expect it'll be a great revelation to you, but I particularly enjoyed it, and thought you would too. I like when movies are literarily insightful like that.

[hellsapoppin]

Always loved Don Quixote as it is truly a great book. Did some reading of it in Spanish and loved the old Castilian form. For example, Sancho address Don Q as "Vuestra Merçed" ("Your Grace") which is an address not used anymore in modern times. If you do read it, you will need a dictionary to define all the ancient terms used in the book.

[Sancho]

Oh yeah. Don Quixote is a book I’ve been fascinated with for quite some time. I’ve read it, from one perspective or another, probably 6-8 times. The last time, which was what prompted this thread, I was reading Edith Grossman’s translation along side the original in early modern Spanish. My friend, Danik, was helping immensely. The experience, as was the experience on every other reading, was splendiferous.

Okay, truth be told, I started reading the original next to the translation, but my Spanish stinks so bad that I resorted to just reading selected sections of the Spanish version. To give you idea of how lousy my Spanish is — there’s always a little bit of a mystery concerning what’s going to show up at the table when I order at a restaurant in a Spanish-speaking county. Anyway I’d bought a leather bound original Quixote in a nice bookstore on Florida Street in Buenos Aires with the intention of putting it on my bookshelf for show (next a copy of The Good Soldier Švejk in Czech that I’d bought in Prague). The problem with buying an iconic book like that, in Spanish, in a Spanish speaking country, from a woman who was clearly a book lover and an admirer of Don Quixote, is that she’s liable to assume I speak Spanish. And so she started jabbering away about books and Cervantes, and god knows what, with me in a rapid-fire colloquial Spanish. I kept up with her as best I could, but I really wish I knew what she was talking about.

You know one thing I noticed right away in Argentina is that they still use Vos down there. Usted, Tu, and Vos. They also use Vosotros, which as near as I can figure is an Argentine version of “Y’all.” Also the double L is pronounced differently in Deep South America than it is in Spain or Mexico. I tried to order the Pollo (poi-yo), but I got the finger wag from the waiter — “No, señor, en Argentina es po-jo.