The "Don Quixote" windmill in Consuegra, Spain. They are famous for their novels.
Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place where I don't remember the name...
Arguably the most famous in the history of Spanish literature, this sentence begins miguel de Cervantes's first modern novel, Don Quixote, the genius aristocrat of La Mancha.
Portrait of Cervantes (1547-1615).
Published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, the book tells the story of Alonso Quijano, a 16th-century Spanish nobleman who was so passionate about reading that he ran away from home in search of his own chivalrous adventures. He became a Ranger himself: Don Quixote Delamanta. By imitating the literary heroes he admired, he found new meaning in his own life: helping troubled maidens, fighting giants, correcting mistakes... Mostly in his own mind.
But Don Quixote is much more than that. It's a book about books, reading, writing, idealism and materialism, life... and the Book of Death. Don Quixote went crazy. "His brain dried up" Because of his reading, he was unable to distinguish reality from fiction, which was considered interesting at the time. However, Cervantes is also using Don Quixote's madness to explore the eternal debate between free will and fate. The misguided hero is actually a man who struggles with his own limitations to become the person he dreams of becoming.
Open-minded, traveling, well-educated, and like Don Quixote himself, Cervantes was an avid reader. He also served the Spanish royal family in his adventures, which he later included in novels. After defeating the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto (and losing the use of his left hand, becoming "Lepanto's One Hand"), Cervantes was captured and demanded a ransom in Algiers.
This autobiographical plot and his attempt to escape is described in "The Tale of the Captive" (don Quixote Part I), in which the character recalls "a Spanish soldier named Savidra", referring to Cervantes' second surname. Many years later, back in Spain, he completed Don Quixote in prison for irregularities in his accounts while working for the government.
Leaning on the Windmill In the first part, Chihano, under his new name don Quixote, collects the accessories necessary for any other knight: his armor; a horse, Ronante; and a lady, an unsuspecting peasant girl, who will perform great chivalry in her name.
When Don Quixote recovered from his first disastrous battle as a knight, his close friend, priest and hairdresser, decided to examine the books in his library. They burned his knightly books. Although several books (including Cervantes' own Galatea) have been preserved, most were burned by don Quixote's madness.
Jules David, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, 1887.
During Don Quixote's second expedition, the peasant Sancho Pansa joined him as his loyal attendant, hoping to one day become governor of his own island. The two have differences on various fronts. Don Quixote is tall and thin, and Sancho is short and fat ("big belly"). Sancho was an illiterate commoner who responded to Don Quixote's elaborate speeches with popular proverbs. Since then, the mismatched images have been typical of literature.
In the most famous scene in the novel, Don Quijote sees the three windmills as terrible giants he must fight, which is where the term "windmill tilts" comes from. At the end of the first part, Don Quixote and Sancho are tricked into returning to their village. Sancho has become "Don Quixote" and is now increasingly obsessed with getting rich by ruling his own island.
Cover of Don Quixote Part II (1615).
Don Quixote was a great success and was translated from Spanish into the main European languages. In 1614, an unknown author, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, published the second part. Cervantes incorporated this false Don Quixote and his character into his own second part, adding another chapter to the history of modern narratives.
The first part is a reaction to the knight's romance, but the second part is a reaction to the first part. The rest of the second part is like a mirror game, reminiscing and rewriting episodes. New characters, such as nobles who have also read part one, use their knowledge to tease Don Quixote and Sancho for their own amusement. Tricked by the other characters, Sancho and the badly injured Don Quixote finally return to their village again.
After lying in bed for a few days, Don Quixote's last moment arrived. He decided to give up his existence as Don Quixote forever, to renounce his literary identity and die physically. With tears in his eyes, he left Sancho, his best and most loyal reader, toward his death.
The original unreliable narrator Don Quixote was obsessed with chivalric romance, including episodes that mimic other narrative sub-genres such as pastoral romance, tramp novellas, and Italian novellas (some written by Cervantes himself).
Given the events that took place in Europe at the time of the novel's publication, Don Quixote's transformation from aristocrat to Ranger was particularly profound. After centuries of Islamic existence, Spain was reconquered by the Christian royal family. Social status, race, and religion were seen as determining one's future, but Don Quixote rebelled against that. "I know who I am," he replied harshly to anyone who tried to convince him of his "true" and original identity.
Many writers have been inspired by Don Quixote: from Goethe, Stendhal, Melville, Flaubert and Dickens, to Borges, Faulkner and Nabokov.
More than 400 years after its publication and great success, don Quixote still has the message that any way we filter reality through ideology affects our view of the world.