Text/Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Xie Yangliu
One
Regarding the movie "Lawrence of Arabia", there is a famous film review: when the teenager watches it, he is sleepy; when he watches it in his prime, he is passionate; when he watches it in the elderly, he is full of tears.
This comment may be more applicable to Don Quixote.
The poet Heine said he reread Don Quixote every five years, and each time he reflected it differently. From the initial disappointment to the later astonishment, Don Quixote is like a magic mirror that appears regularly, reflecting the life of Heine and all readers.
Don Quixote and Sancho/Picasso painted
It can be said that no literary figure is more like a mirror than Don Quixote.
Cervantes seems to have injected a great deal of contradictory and naturally merging elements into Don Quixote with some mysterious magic—the simplicity of abundance, the pain of happiness, the madness of reason, the melancholy of clarity, the parity of the sublime, the greatness of smallness... All this makes Don Quixote, after exhausting the laughter and tears of the world, hang in the center of the temple of literature as a multi-faceted mirror reflecting all sentient beings.
Bust of Cervantes at the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
As a mirror of life, Don Quixote allows all readers to look at themselves in front of him. From this mirror, the young man sees his ridiculousness, the old man sees his wisdom; the dreamer sees his passion, the man who loses his way sees his confusion; the idealist sees his faith, and the nihilist sees his absurdity...
As a mirror of the times, Don Quixote reflects the awakening and change of the inner spirit of mankind. From him, contemporaries saw humor and irony, the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century saw the light of reason, the romantics of the 19th century saw the passion of life...
The most important thing is the depth of human nature that Don Quixote, as a mirror of human nature, contrasts with other literary typicals. His sheer power of action and Hamlet's rich inner drama, his exuberant tension of life and the delicate emotional world of young Werther, his courage to dedicate himself to ideals and Faust's struggle between spiritual flesh...
This list of literature can still be listed all the time —
Pushkin's "superfluous people", Lu Xun's "wanderers", Lermontov's "contemporary heroes"... In the face of Don Quixote' mirror of human nature, it will reflect a richer spiritual connotation.
Two
Of course, this literary list must not be missing Sancho.
As another protagonist in the book, Sancho himself is a mirror, opposite and mirrored by Don Quixote. But this metaphor is not appropriate because it statically defines the relationship between the two. In fact, the two masters and servants have been influencing each other in their long journey.
Don Quixote represents the mainstream cultural tradition, pursuing pure rationality to the point of madness, so that in reality, all those who do not conform to his ideals will be "tampered with" by him with fantasies; Sancho represents the folk cultural tradition, shrewd in simplicity, cunning in goodness, pragmatic and never fantasizing.
Don Quixote and Sancho/Gustav Doré painted
But in countless adventures, the two mirrors are getting closer and closer.
In this "master-slave dialectic", the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho is increasingly close to that of equality and friendship. The master learned the empirical wisdom of the servant and gradually ceased to fall into a state of illusion; the servant also learned the rational spirit of the master, and saw the light of the ideal with simple eyes.
The sum of the two may be about equal to complete wisdom.
This, Cervantes frequently hinted at. After becoming governor of the island, Sancho kept in mind Don Quixote's admonition to benefit the people, and not only judged the case like a god, but also formulated a set of "Sancho Constitution" for the local area; Don Quixote, because Sancho was not around, was not guarded and depressed, so that he had no intention of embarking on the road to pursue his dreams again.
Eventually, when Sancho discovers that his adventure with his master is "more satisfying than any governor of the island", and when Don Quixote decides to build a shepherd's paradise on his way back home, the two originally conflicting ideas merge and together constitute the highest state of the human spirit.
This spiritual realm was reached by Confucius in his travels around the world "knowing that he could not do it", and Qu Yuan reached it in the upward and downward exploration of "the road is long and his cultivation is far away"... Don Quixote and Sancho, on the other hand, came to this high temple of mankind with a donkey and a donkey, amid the laughter of the world.
But cervantes gave Don Quixote more than that.
Quixote with Sancho/Salvador Dali painted
Three
Perhaps the most important question around Don Quixote is: Is he a lunatic?
Different readers, different opinions. For Cervantes, the answer to this question is clear — Don Quixote in the first part may be crazy, but the second is not. Borges once said that his love of only the second and first chapters of Don Quixote is probably rooted in this.
In the first part, Don Quixote is often very rough, and even in a rare state of sobriety, his words and deeds are like a ridiculous monster. In the second part, Don Quixote shows a moving spiritual power with true chivalry. Even the nobles who mocked and teased him could not help but be impressed by his great boldness.
In Cervantes' setting, Don Quixote in the second part has seen the first part of Don Quixote and is critical of himself in the blurred boundary between reality and fiction. This seems to be another metaphor for the mirror—Don Quixote looks at himself as a mirror.
More interestingly, Don Quixote also saw more than one version of Don Quixote. His path to his dreams seemed to become a long corridor lined with mirrors, and Don Quixote wandered back and forth, as if to understand the true meaning of the ancient philosophical proposition— "know yourself."
On his deathbed, Don Quixote finally uttered the heartbreaking words to Sancho: "Friend, I thought that there have been Ranger knights in the world throughout the ages, and I was wrong, and I mistook myself, and I taught you this insight, and you became a madman like me, and I now ask for your forgiveness." ”
Don Quixote on his deathbed / Gustav Doré painted
Sancho did not answer positively. But all the readers whose dreams have not been extinguished want Sancho to say the words: "Yes, there were no Ranger Knights in the world before, and you were the first!" ”
Of course, Don Quixote will not be the last Ranger Knight. Although Turgenev lamented in his speech that hamlets are becoming more and more in this world, and Don Quixote is becoming less and less—we seem to be paying more and more attention to the changes in the hearts of individuals, forgetting the mission of exploring adventure.
However, as long as human beings have the patience to read Don Quixote, this mirror of dreams will not be broken; as long as human beings have the courage to go down the unknown road, this spiritual courage will not be lost.
The Year of the Tiger is approaching, so you may wish to take advantage of the holidays to read Don Quixote again, and in the magical journey of this knight, we can find our youth- the passion of the Milk Tiger Howling Valley and the dreams of the Tiger. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)
Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie
Editor-in-charge | Yang Chuying