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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.
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.
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.
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 rest of Pete’s review:Quote:
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.
https://petekarnas.wordpress.com/201...oyd-and-harry/
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:
Thus ends Don Quixote’s encounter with The King of the Jungle.Quote:
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.
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.
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:
Hey, who hasn’t confused Austria with Australia?Quote:
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.
From Don Quixote:
Close enough, I say.Quote:
“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!”
Lol! Had to do a bit of research
https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au...643d9244a336be
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?
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.
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.
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:
Yeah, Sancho! Go-man-go!Quote:
”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, Seńor 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.”
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?”
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.
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
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.
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:
Edith’s footnotes tell me this a variation of: “A good wife and a broken leg stay home.”Quote:
“No,” responded Sancho, “a good governor and a broken leg stay at home.”
Don Quixote’s response is:
But the duchess weighs in on Sancho’s behalf:Quote:
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?
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.Quote:
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.