Liberal Arts Blog: Don Quijote — first and best novel of all time? So say the “world’s top authors.” Are they right?
Liberal Arts Blog — Tuesday is the Joy of Literature, Language, Culture, and Religion Day
Today’s Topic: Don Quijote — first and best novel of all time? So say the “world’s top authors.” Are they right?
How could you possibly tell unless you have read all the novels written since? An “impossible dream” so to speak. And, who has really read the whole thing (honestly)? Today, a few notes on one of my favorite books from adolescence. I confess that I was (and still am) a huge fan of “Man From La Mancha” and especially the song “The Impossible Dream.” Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
QUOTES — the perils of reading, the madness of reality, the truth is like oil
1. “Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
2. “The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”
3. “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
NB: Opening sentence: “En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace much tiempo que vivia un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocin flaco, y galgo corredor.” (In some village in La Mancha, whose name I do not care to recall, there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a skinny old horse, and a greyhound for racing.) True confessions: there is one opening line I like better: that of A Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Anos de Soledad) but I’ll save that for next week.
CERVANTES HAD A HAZY LIFE THAT RIVALED THAT OF HIS HERO
1. Little is known of his early life or ancestry. Was a morisco? (descendant of Muslims who converted to Christianity) Or was he a “converso”? (a Jew who converted rather than be expelled in 1492). Many theories. No proof.
2. He lived in poverty and left Madrid at age 22 after wounding a man, Antonio de SIgura, in a duel.
3. To clear his name, he joined the Spanish Navy and fought and was wounded in the Battle of Lepanto (1571), one of the turning points in world history, in which the Holy League defeated the fleet of the Ottoman Empire. He lost the use of his left hand.
NB: He was captured by Barbary Pirates and kept prisoner for almost five years (1575–1580) in Algiers, and, perhaps, Istanbul. He had been born in Alcala de Henares in 1547. He died in 1616, probably of diabetes. But no certainty here either.
THE AUTHOR’S SURVEY: 50% more votes than any other book!!!!
1. Who voted? Really, really big names: Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, Seamus Heaney, Carlos Fuentes, Norman Mailer. You get the picture.
2. “If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote,” (Ben Okri, Nigerian author).
3. “I read it every year as some do the Bible” — William Faulkner.
NB: “While clearly a masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw — that of outright unreadability. This reviewer should know, because he has just read it. … Looming like one of the Don’s chimerical adversaries, it is a giant…But the giant has a giant weight problem and is elderly, and soft-brained. Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that Don Quixote could do.” (Martin Amis)
Don Quixote is the world’s best book say the world’s top authors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to words, language, literature, religion, culture. Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to Words, Language, Literature (eg. quotes, poetry, vocabulary) that you have not yet shared.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
