Oh my stars and garters — Week 9!, wherein both marchers errant and their faithful squires cavort, with strange and pleasing results. As Mr. Magoo pointed in last week’s comments, we’ve hit a heckuva milestone by flipping past page 400 (Grossman). And you know what they say about Don Quixote: the last 540 pages are the easiest.
For me, this last patch wasn’t quite up to the level of, say, the tale of Zoraida and the Captain, which was a pure page-turning treat. But I’m glad we’ve left that inn, at least for a stretch. It was starting to get kinda claustrophobic in there — like some sort of 17th Century Bob’s Big Boy, with an infinite number of wandering Dons and their flawless luvs supreme. It feels like most of the main threads have to come to some sort of resolution, leaving an appealingly open road for the second part of the book. Speaking of which…
Next Wednesday: …to Part II and beyond! — let’s aim for the end of our second Chapter II (page 473 Grossman), where I’m glad to report that the three of them appear to be having “a most amusing conversation.”
I just received my SF Ballet 2007 brochure and the 8th program is a full-length performance of Don Quixote–April 28-May 5, 2007. Mark your iCals!
I’d pay to see the dance of the smitten shepherds calling “Leandra, Leandra.”
-Cecil
The priest’s rant on the quality of plays being undermined by consideration for their commercial mass appeal ain’t changed in 500 years! But his proposed solution of “an intelligent and judicious person” censoring what could be produced reflects his character’s & his occupation’s elitism (p. 417-18). Note after this highminded discussion Cervantes moves quickly on to Sancho asking DQ “have you had the desire and will to pass what they call major and minor waters?” (p. 420-21) Now that’s the kind of tastelessness we’ve been wanting more of!
Some time back (I can’t remember when) I posited the idea that Cervantes is perhaps challenging Christianity (by having everyone assume chivalry with its high Christian ideals was foolishness). On page 416, I noted the canon’s argument to the priest (largely in favor of the unities of drama) that “For what greater nonsense can there be for a child to appear in the first scene of the first act in his swaddling clothes, and in the second scene to be a full grown man with a beard?”
As far as I know, there is only one story of Jesus between the Nativity and his entrace into Jerusalem. Anyone else get the feeling in the last interpolated story that the Christians were acting badly in betraying parents, kidnapping, etc.? I keep circling back to the idea that the church is the main target of this satire.
Dr. Vitz, I had completely missed that reference. Which means I must have been pretty out of it, because “swaddling clothes” is a dead giveaway. Good thing you weren’t around in Cervantes’ day, or you surely would have gotten him stretched on the rack.
Dr. Vitz: I agree that the church seems to be a target here, but not in a mean way. And none of the priests actually seems to be a dirty rotten scoundrel–most of them seem to be more bumpkinish rather than churlish. But that doesn’t mean that Cervantes wasn’t lobbing a few at the CC overall.
Cecil: HA: I thought back in mid Part I that the whole thing was claustrophobic–even the countryside was closing in on me. Glad to know someone else got the willies from those tight quarters!
Blanket Toss: Has anyone thought about what the “blanket toss” really means? Coming up in Part II, Sancho continues his complaining about his blanket tossing at the “Bob’s Big Boy” (cecil’s words) way, way back in Part I. It seems like he’s always bringing it up as one of the worst things that ever happened to him. Anyone else wonder about this? There must be some more meaning to that incident than I can decipher. I mean c’mon. It sounds like just more moshpit hijinks to me, but then I’m feeling a bit simpleminded right now.
I don’t think Cervantes is anti-Christian. I think just the opposite. I think he supports the goals and ideals of the faith. His problem is that no one seems to believe it applies on a day to day basis – except maybe DQ.
I think the canon’s statements are not a critique on the religion as much as the storytelling style. The inn may be claustrophobic, but DQ is good about obeying the unities because the travels cover very little physical space; it’s the stories that expand the horizon. I can’t help but notice though, that the New Testament works the same way. Jesus and his disciples cover little physical ground, but the parables make it seem like more.
The Reader of the Sorrowful Face (me) is happy to report that he has caught up at last, having bravely slogged through the interminable ruminations at the Bob’s Big Boy, which nearly ended his noble quest. I thank God and my many patron saints for helping me endure the hardships of Part One, and may He grant me swift and safe passage through Part Two.
Computilo: I’m thinking (and maybe I’m the simple-minded one), to paraphrase a certain Austrian neurologist, that a blanket toss is just a blanket toss. Seems like a pretty humiliating thing for a grown man to go through in public like that–especially one who’s thinking he’s on the road to his own insula.
about the blanket toss–i keep thinking sancho’s really saying–“hey DQ, remember when you were totally messed up and completely unable to protect or rescue me? yeah, remember the blanket toss, *ssh*le?”
I remember copping onto Sancho’s fixation with the blanket toss a few weeks and thinking it had to do with Cervantes focusing on the comi-tragic quality of human falibility, the characters’ inability to achieve their goals, the ego’s frailty. Sancho’s been physically beaten to a pulp by DQ and others time and time again and he’s as resiliant as Wiley Coyote, but he can’t bear to be the butt of a group joke. Drop an anvil on me but don’t hurl me up in the air like a baby. That kind of pain smarts too much to forget. I like the idea offered up by e. that what he’s also doing by constantly mentioning it is riding DQ for abandoning him.
I found Sancho’s attempt at getting DQ to see that DQ has not been enchanted by using a common sensical riddle pretty savvy. Of course, it doesn’t work, but bless him, he’s trying. And Dr. V – your point about the canon’s comment at p. 416 is spot on (I didn’t catch it). Re: Cervantes being a believer in Christian goals, I agree; however, I’m wondering whether Cervantes isn’t also critical of those goals when no one in the book seems able to achieve them in their daily lives? Like – “beware of striving to achieve unachievable goals: it can be hazardous to your health.”
Wow! I’ve forced myself to go on, and glad I did—look at the comments waiting!
Computilo: I’m with you about Sancho and the blanket. Strikes me as one of Cervantes’s worst habits—to continually refer back to something not all that funny the first time as if it were the height of knee-slapping humor. Like you, I wonder if I’m missing something. Might have been quite a ribtickler in 16th-century Spain.
OMinK & Dr. V:
a) I’m glad the potty humor’s back, too. Sancho and DQ seem to have got their groove on again in all kinds of ways. Growing even closer in fact as Sancho goes deeper into DQ’s madness (“Dude, where’s my insula?�)
b) I was really impressed by that moment where DQ answers the canon’s charges about how he can believe that chivalrous nonsense. The Don answers with this elegant speech (p. 425 Grossman) where he details all these heroes—some historical, some fictional—that you’d have to believe were false to accept the canon’s argument.
I do think there’s something subversive here. Not anti-Church per se, but definitely disturbing. What all the characters in the Don’s list share in common is that, real or not, we only know them through the medium of books. If literature’s untrustworthy (as so many of the characters in Cervantes’s telenovelas—I mean, um, interpolated novels, Edith—are, then a whole lotta what we mortals call “truth� gets a lot more wobbly. The only thing an idiot like me knows about Abraham Lincoln or Albert Einstein comes from books: there’s only so much I can know directly via my own experience. What happens if I can’t trust them?
Seems to me Cervantes is playing with this dilemma (the modern dilemma?) in a whole bunch of different ways, from knights who are really poor Spanish landowners to Moors who are really Christians to shepherds who are really poets to goatherds who are really rich landowners’ sons out to woo their sweethearts.
Cecil, thanks for keeping us moving along.
One last quick thought:
Sancho’s vacillating faith in the Don’s story as stand-in for our own vacillating faith in stories? The Don believes; Sancho half-believes; we readers don’t believe but agree to half-believe to keep the pages turning. Sancho as Cervantes’s idea of the perfect reader?
fwiw, the blanket toss gets me every time. there’s something very borscht belt about it, him complaining about the same thing every 50 pages for hundreds of pages. Such a noodge!
It’s all part of that Sancho = Zero Mostel note that I so dig.
-Cecil
Well, I missed the swaddling clothes Jesus reference. For such reasons, I am afraid to watch the Da Vinci Code unless cecil runs a real time blog to clue me in to all the Holy Book references.
A few random sections I enjoyed: I took some indescribable pleasure in the way Mr. C transitioned us from DQ failing to aid the innkeeper,…”But let us leave the innkeeper here, for someone will help him, and if no one does, let the man who dares more than his strength allows suffer in silence, and we shall go back fifty paces and see how Don Luis responded to the magistrate ….” I found that an interesting, (modern?) way to move from one scene to another.
The obligatory lawyer joke from Sancho, who sometimes seems to be the only one making any sense, “how can you make me believe he is enchanted. Ive heard lots of people say that when youre enchanted you dont eat, or sleep, or talk, and my master, if he isnt held back, will talk more than 30 lawyers.”
Plays as saleable merchandise that are written to satisfy those who will pay for them.
The need for an intelligent and judicious person to determine if plays are good enough to be shown. The priest seems to be calling for an omnipotent censor which I find scary and appalling. I cant imagine living under such a system and leaving free will aside.
This has been such a great experience. I cant wait for the next book cecil tells me to read!
Rodney is right about the dubious nature of books – another modern touch for Cervantes. I’m currently staring at a group of students taking an exam, and one of the topics they can write about is the idea of absolute vs. relative truth. I suspect most will tell me that all truth is relative (as did Einstein).
My take re: DQ is not that Cervantes is anti-book, but he is against the randomness of giving priority to “historically correct” books over “chivalric fiction.” If, as David Byrne tells us, “facts all come with a point of view,” then fact and fiction differ only in the number of adherents they have.
I can’t help but think I may be rehashing points I made back in the GRDM – sorry if this seems like repetition.
Goodness! Thanks to all for this week’s comments. I’ll just add a note on the language of lists I’ve been noticing for the last 50 pages or so. Of course the Don has been florid throughout, but I hadn’t really enjoyed the rhythm provided by passages filled with serial commas until recently. “Leave my presence, unholy monster, repository of lies, stronghold of falsehoods, storehouse of deceits, inventor of iniquities, promulgator of insolence, enemy of the decorum owed to these royal persons.” Or “I was stunned, Anselmo shocked, her father grief-stricken, her kinfolk humiliated, the law solicitous, and its officers alert.” A whole story in one sentence!
Well, I came to a complete standstill this week; a five-day weekend trip that was *designed* to get me away from kids, work, and all other responsibilities also wound up de-Deathmarching me. I will be back on track, though lapped, later this week.
(Mr. Magoo: So, what you really want is “Pop-up DaVinci Code”?)