20 years ago, I first read the novel "Don Quixote" by the Spanish writer Cervantes, and the protagonist left a deep impression on me, and recently I have a deeper understanding and understanding of reading it again.
Don Quixote is a novel satirizing the demise of chivalry, the protagonist of which is called Don Quixote, a tragic example of a ridiculed and battered idealist. He is a poor squire living in the village of Lamancho, because he was fascinated by reading knight novels, determined to restore the chivalrous way, so he imitated the ancient knights to travel the world, fighting uneven, so dramatic stories happened one after another, until his deathbed, he soberly realized the harm of knight novels.
Don Quixote in a statue
His character is complex, and in his body, the sublime and the comical duality are organically unified. On the one hand, he is detached from reality, immersed in fantasy all the time, and lacks sufficient estimation of his own strength, so that he has repeatedly failed; on the other hand, his motives are kind and innocent, determined to eradicate the demons of the world, oppose oppression, hoe the strong and help the weak, and are full of selfless and fearless spirit.
Byron once commented: "Don Quixote is a sad story, the more laughable it is, the more sad it is, the hero is righteous, the subduing of the bad guys is his only purpose, and it is those virtues that drive him crazy."
Reading the work makes people laugh, but it is a kind of laughter that makes people cry.
Don Quixote, who has made a mistake of the times, wants to restore the chivalry of the past in real life, thus making him an exaggerated and comical character, but he is a "madman" with a lofty spiritual realm. In order to pursue his own ideal of justice, he endangers and disregards himself, willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of society, from this point of view he is a figure with a tragic element, he is ridiculous, lamentable, sad, and respectable. The author reveals the tragic essence of Don Quixote's character through comedy.
Don Quixote and Sancho
Don Quixote is strongly dissatisfied with society, cursing his era as an "era of many disasters" and "an abominable era", and his determination to fight injustice, which cannot be said to be wrong, but that his mind is still sober and has a sense of the times. But the mistake lies in his style of play, his subjective fantasy of eradicating social evils by reviving chivalry is in conflict with everything in Spanish society in the period of capitalist infancy, and is incompatible with the laws of historical development. His actions and situation always contradicted his predetermined goals, and also contradicted the reasonable concepts in the minds of normal people at that time and the natural laws of life. Funny and crazy personality, absurd and stupid Ranger actions, pedantic and stubborn will to fight are always laughable.
Motivated by kindness, he got the opposite result, and he rescued the shepherd boy Andres from the landlord's whip, thinking that he had done a good deed, and went away, but as soon as he left, the shepherd boy was whipped even more cruelly, so that the shepherd boy angrily accused him:
"No matter how unlucky I am, it is better to be unlucky with your help." May God curse you! Curse all the Ranger Knights in the world! ”
Don Quixote single-handedly rushed to society, he "had enough to be beaten, he had exhausted his luck, he tasted the hardships of the road" everywhere. But Don Quixote, who made the mistake of the times, wants to restore chivalry in the era of the prevalence of muskets, which inevitably turns him into a comical and ridiculous character with a comedic character.
The windmill with which Don Quixote fought
He acts in a knightly manner, completely irrational, intoxicated by subjective fantasies, and is a complete lunatic. Not only that, but he was also a man of vanity and arrogance, who considered himself a savior who could save the world from suffering, whose "heroic deeds can be immortalized once he has done his heroic deeds", and who has not yet traveled the world to think that he can be the emperor of Trabisan. He was also a man of great self-esteem and a strong sense of personal heroism.
His image is by no means a simple reproduction of an ancient feudal knight, nor is it just a comical figure that makes people laugh. Otherwise, he would not have played an important role among the most outstanding typical figures in the treasure house of world literature, and this image would not have survived to this day.
He fought against the windmills every time he walked, because he regarded the windmills as giants that endangered mankind, and he rescued the slaves, in his view, "Man is born free, and it is cruel to treat free people as slaves." Among his series of exaggerated and grotesque acts was his sympathy for the enslaved people, his yearning for freedom, and his resistance to the tyranny of the feudal dictatorship.
He was a firm believer in chivalry, never admitted defeat, and came up with all sorts of ridiculous reasons to defend himself, believing that the magician had taken him against him and deprived him of the glory of victory, and that he was not afraid of insults and blows, nor did he lose confidence. He fought with the sheep, and he was not afraid of death, daring to fight with the African lions. From all kinds of unpredictable dangers, he shows the noble virtues of his character, showing that he is not afraid of hardships, is not afraid of sacrifice, and is indomitable in realizing his ideals.
Don Quixote fights the flock
In ecstasy, he is the embodiment of chivalry, he is sober if he is not involved in chivalry, he is a man of great learning, and don Quixote in his sobriety is a disseminator of passionate humanistic ideas. He is sometimes sober, sometimes confused, and the concentration of these extremely contradictory phenomena on his own constitutes his complex and rich character, and this extremely contradictory character of his is a sad phenomenon arising from the extremely barbaric society of absolute monarchy in Spain.
He believed that whether a person is noble or not is not in the doorway, but in virtue, because "blood is passed down from generation to generation, virtue is cultivated by oneself, virtue has its own value, and blood is only borrowed from light." This practice of changing the nature of the exploiting class by means of moral preaching is precisely the reflection of the class nature of humanism.
His ranger adventures are ridiculous, but his hatred of rape and sympathy and defense of the oppressed, his unshakable faith in truth, his spiritual qualities of sacrificing for truth, and his humanistic anti-feudal demands are all very noble and great.
He was obsessed with chivalric fiction and had long been poisoned by the ideas of feudal culture. The means he chooses to resolve social contradictions are backward, contrary to the course of history, and as a result are punished by life, and this absurd act of violating conventions cannot reflect serious social conflicts, and the nature of conflicts is therefore necessarily dramatic. But his pursuit of beautiful ideals, and his lofty spirit and virtues, represented the progressive requirements of the times, and this demand could not be realized under the historical conditions at that time, and he went through countless hardships in his life for the realization of his ideals, and suffered insults and ridicule from the world, and when he woke up from the crazy fantasies, he immediately swallowed his breath, which made his character have tragic colors.
On his deathbed, he said:
"I used to be a madman, but now I have a clear mind", "Now I know that the books are all nonsense, and it is too late to regret it."
In his philosophy, he mistakenly believed that the Ranger could coexist with any socio-economic situation, and as a result, he was punished by society.
His character is contradictory and complex, ridiculously cute and pathetic. The ridiculous thing is that he is detached from reality, pedantic and stubborn to replace reality with fantasy; what is lovely is that he is virtuous and noble in spirit; sadly, he is sincere for the benefit of mankind, not understood by people, and cannot achieve the desired effect.
It is exaggerated and grotesque from the partial point of view of his Ranger behavior, but the image of him as a whole and in substance is highly typical of realism. He was a bankrupt poor squire, a victim of feudal culture, under the feudal tyranny of Spain, the bankruptcy of the squire and the petty nobles, their strong dissatisfaction with reality, remembering the prosperity of the empire's strong days, and the idea of chivalry had a great influence in their minds. It can be seen that Don Quixote's Ranger thought has a realistic basis and is a pathological psychology with social causes.
The author successfully portrays this typical character, combining the sublime and the comical. Don Quixote, detached from reality and living in a vain fantasy, is a pathetic figure who deserves sympathy. In a sense, he is a backward figure who hinders the development of history.
(This article is original by Fengzhu Qingyun, welcome to pay attention to, take you along with long knowledge!) ）
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