Lectures on Don Quixote

Vladimir Nabokov, Fredson Bowers

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780156495400
• eBook ISBN: 9780544998087
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria europea

One of the twentieth century's greatest novelists offers his take on the Spanish classic.
 
The author of Lolita and Pale Fire was not only a master of fiction but a distinguished literary critic as well. In this collection of lectures, which he delivered at Harvard in the early 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov shares insights based on a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the seventeenth-century novel by Miguel de Cervantes, a timeless classic and one of the most deeply influential works in all of Western literature.
 
Rejecting the common interpretation of Don Quixote as a warm satire, Nabokov perceives the work as a catalog of cruelty through which the gaunt knight passes. Edited and with a preface by Fredson Bowers, this volume offers "a powerful, critical, and dramatic elaboration of the theme of illusion" (V. S. Pritchett, The New York Review of Books).
 

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Narrative and Commentary
Part One (1605)

CHAPTER 1.

A country gentleman read so many books of chivalry that their fantastic adventures seemed to him to be true and worthy of emulation. “At last, when his wits were gone beyond repair, he came to conceive the strangest idea that ever occurred to any madman in this world. It now appeared to him fitting and necessary, in order to win a greater amount of honor for himself and serve his country at the same time, to become a knight-errant and roam the world on horseback, in a suit of armor; he would go in quest of adventures, by way of putting into practice all that he had read in his books; he would right every manner of wrong, placing himself in situations of the greatest peril such as would redound to the eternal glory of his name. As a reward for his valor and the might of his arm, the poor fellow could already see himself crowned Emperor of Trebizond at the very least; and so, carried away by the strange pleasure that he found in such thoughts as these, he at once set about putting his plan into effect.” He burnished up some old pieces of armor left him by his great-grandfather, and seeking a name of renown for his nag, he called it Rocinante, and himself—plain Alonso Quijada, Quesada, or Quijana—after the example of Amadis who had added to his name that of his kingdom, “our good knight chose to add his place of origin and become ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha’; for by this means, as he saw it, he was making very plain his lineage and was conferring honor upon his country by taking its name as his own.” But then “he naturally found but one thing lacking still: he must seek out a lady of whom he could become enamored; for a knight-errant without a lady-love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul.” He then thought of a good-looking farm-girl with whom he had once been smitten although she had never noticed him, and “For her he wished a name that should not be incongruous with his own and that would convey the suggestion of a princess or a great lady; and, accordingly, he resolved to call her ‘Dulcinea del Toboso,’ she being a native of that place.”

CHAPTER 2.

“Having, then, made all these preparations, he did not wish to lose any time in putting his plan into effect, for he could not but blame himself for what the world was losing by his delay, so many were the wrongs that were to be righted, the grievances to be redressed, the abuses to be done away with, and the duties to be performed. Accordingly, without informing anyone of his intention and without letting anyone see him, he set out one morning before daybreak on one of those very hot days in July.” The skit on chivalry books continues when he speaks of himself in the manner of the books he has been reading. “‘O happy age and happy century,’ he went on, ‘in which my famous exploits shall be published, exploits worthy of being engraved in bronze, sculptured in marble, and depicted in paintings for the benefit of posterity. O wise magician, whoever you be, to whom shall fall the task of chronicling this extraordinary history of mine! I beg of you not to forget my good Rocinante, eternal companion of my wayfarings and my wanderings.’ Then, as though he really had been in love: ‘O Princess Dulcinea, lady of this captive heart! Much wrong have you done me in thus sending me forth with your reproaches and sternly commanding me not to appear in your beauteous presence. O lady, deign to be mindful of this your subject who endures so many woes for the love of you.’

“And so he went on, stringing together absurdities, all of a kind that his books had taught him, imitating insofar as he was able the language of their authors. He rode slowly, and the sun came up so swiftly and with so much heat that it would have been sufficient to melt his brains if he had had any.” Realizing he has not been dubbed a knight, he determines to ask the favor of the first person he meets. He arrives at an inn, which he mistakes for a castle and the landlord for its castellan.

CHAPTER 3.

After a vile meal which he conceives to be of delicacies, he falls on his knees before the bewildered landlord. “I may tell you that the boon I asked and which you have so generously conceded me is that tomorrow morning you dub me a knight. Until that time, in the chapel of this your castle, I will watch over my armor, and when morning comes, as I have said, that which I so desire shall then be done, in order that I may lawfully go to the four corners of the earth in quest of adventures and to succor the needy, which is the chivalrous duty of all knights-errant such as I who long to engage in deeds of high emprise.” Don Quixote’s dream comes true only because the innkeeper is a rogue and a sport with a sense of brutal humor. The parody of chivalry literature is continued by Cervantes in a new way. Here it is the roguish innkeeper who plays up to Quixote the dreamer, and reminds him, as it were, of some fine points: knights, no matter how gallant they are—and indeed in assistance to their gallantry—should carry “well-stuffed purses, that they might be prepared for any emergency; and they also carried shirts and a little box of ointment for healing the wounds that they received.” The vigil takes place, interrupted by a fight with some mule drivers who disturb his armor in the watering-trough where it lay. Finally the innkeeper dubs him knight in a mock ceremony and Don Quixote sallies forth in search of adventures after thanking the innkeeper for the honor of knighthood. “The innkeeper, who was only too glad to be rid of him, answered with a speech that was no less flowery, though somewhat shorter, and he did not so much as ask him for the price of a lodging, so glad was he to see him go.”

CHAPTER 4.

After releasing, as he thinks, a young servant being flogged by a brutish farmer, who redoubles the punishment the moment the knight rides off well content with his redress of a wrong, Quixote rides on his way back to his village to find a squire. He encounters six travelers with their servants. Eager for an adventure, he bars their way and after a haughty gesture, “‘Let everyone,’ he cried, ‘stand where he is, unless everyone will confess that there is not in all the world a more beauteous damsel than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.’” One of the merchants, seeing that they were dealing with a madman, demands to be shown the damsel before they are willing to commit themselves. “‘If I were to show her to you,’ replied Don Quixote, what merit would there be in your confessing a truth so self-evident? The important thing is for you, without seeing her, to believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend that truth. Otherwise, monstrous and arrogant creatures that you are, you shall do battle with me.’” After further quibbling by the merchant the enraged Don levels his lance and attacks him, but unfortunately Rocinante stumbles in mid-course and the knight is thrown on the ground, where he is well beaten by a muleteer and left lying in the road unable to move.

CHAPTER 5.

A farmer neighbor finds him and escorts him home. “‘Wait, all of you,’ said Don Quixote, ‘for I am sorely wounded through fault of my steed. Bear me to my couch and summon, if it be possible, the wise Urganda to treat and care for my wounds.’

“There!’ exclaimed the housekeeper. ‘Plague take it! Did not my heart tell me right as to which foot my master limped on? To bed with your Grace at once, and we will take care of you without sending for that Urganda of yours. A curse, I say, and a hundred other curses, on those books of chivalry that have brought your Grace to this.’

“And so they carried him off to bed, but when they went to look for his wounds, they found none at all. He told them it was all the result of a great fall he had taken with Rocinante, his horse, while engaged in combating ten giants, the hugest and most insolent that were ever heard of in all the world.”

CHAPTER 6.

The curate and the barber, friends of Don Quixote, inspect his library. His housekeeper and his niece propose even more drastic measures than the priest does, who thinks that some of the books might be pardoned and spared the bonfire that is already prepared in the courtyard, and the barber is still more lenient. (This is a wonderful scene to be read aloud.) Cervantes’s own Galatea is mentioned among the titles that the two men pore over before consigning them to the flames or putting them aside for preservation. The likes and dislikes of the curate are not very clear; but it is evident that he prefers prose and verse to be polished. There is something curiously Shakespearean in the dialogue here in chapter 6. The literary allusions were no doubt much funnier and more subtle than they seem to us now.

“‘And this,’ said the barber, taking up yet another, ‘is The Mirror of Chivalry.’

“‘Ah, your Grace, I know you,’ said the curate. ‘Here we have Sir Rinaldo of Montalbán with his friends and companions, bigger thieves than Cacus, all of them, and the Twelve Peers along with the veracious historian Turpin. To tell you the truth, I am inclined to sentence them to no more than perpetual banishment, seeing that they have about them something of the inventiveness of Matteo Boiardo, and it was out of them, also, that the Christian poet Ludovico Ariosto wove his tapestry—and by the way, if I find him here speaking any language other than his own, I will show him no respect, but if I meet with him in his own tongue, I will place him upon my head’ [as a token of respect].

“‘Yes,’ said the barber, ‘I have him at home in Italian, but I can’t understand him.’

“‘It is just as well that you cannot,’ said the curate. ‘And for this reason we might pardon the Captain if he had not brought him to Spain and made him over into a Castilian, depriving him thereby of much of his native strength, as happens with all those who would render books of verse into another language; for however much care they may take, and however much cleverness they may display, they can never equal the original. I say, in short, that this work, and all those on French themes ought to be thrown into, or deposited in, some dry well until we make up our minds just what should be done with them . . .” These are charming remarks on translation, generally.

CHAPTER 7.

In this chapter, when despite the curate’s easygoing leniency, the housekeeper, a living symbol of ignorance, crass common sense, and old-woman stupidity, burns all the books in the house, one feels still more clearly that the skit on chivalry romance is diluted and drowned in the interest that the author has for his “strange madman.” It is important to note the shifting of tone at this point in the story, in these chapters 6 and 7. Another thing: the walling up of the room where the books had been, surely a costly and complicated operation carried out by the curate and the barber, is quite as fantastic and crazy as the enchantments that Don Quixote sees around him. The point is that, though it may be argued that his friends were merely playing up to his madness, you must have a streak of madness yourself to devise and carry out such a stratagem; and the same refers to the various enchantments practiced by a dreadful ducal pairon our knight and his squire in the second part. When Don Quixote inquires where his study and books have vanished to, his housekeeper “had been well instructed in what to answer him. ‘Whatever study is your Grace talking about?’ she said. ‘There is no study, and no books, in this house; the devil took them all away.’

“‘No,’ said the niece, ‘it was not the devil but an enchanter who came upon a cloud one night the day after your Grace left here; dismounting from a serpent that he rode, he entered your study, and I don’t know what all he did there, but after a bit he went flying off through the roof, leaving the house full of smoke; and when we went to see what he had done, there was no study and not a book in sight. There is one thing, though, that the housekeeper and I remember very well: at the time that wicked old fellow left, he cried out in a loud voice that it was all on account of a secret enmity that he bore the owner of those books and that study, and that was why he had done the mischief in this house which we would discover. He also said that he was called Muriaton the Magician.’

“‘Freston, he should have said,’ remarked Don Quixote.

“‘I can’t say as to that,’ replied the housekeeper, ‘whether he was called Freston or Friton; all I know is that his name ended in a ton.’

“‘So it does,’ said Don Quixote. ‘He is a wise enchanter, a great enemy of mine, who has a grudge against me because he knows by his arts and learning that in the course of time I am to fight in single combat with a knight whom he favors, and that I am to be the victor and he can do nothing to prevent it. For this reason he seeks to cause me all the trouble that he can, but I am warning him that it will be hard to gainsay or shun that which Heaven has ordained.’”

The composure and artistic nature of this intonation “Freston, he should have said” is a peach to be palpated and piously savored.

The third farmer who appears in the book is Sancho Panza, whom Don Quixote persuades to become his squire. Sancho Panza is in a way a coarser edition of Don Quixote. Note that he leaves his wife and children for the sake of a dream: the governorship of an island, which, no doubt, Don Quixote described to him with inspired eloquence that seduced the poor oaf. Sancho Panza is introduced as a witless fellow. He will change. Already at the end of the chapter his talk is not that of a fool.

CHAPTER 8.

Now comes the famous chapter of the windmills. After a new series of preparations (new buckler, squire, the squire’s mount—a gray ass) Don Quixote sets out again in quest of new adventures. The author’s intention was to start this new sortie with some stunning feat that would put into shade all his previous adventures. Note how alive the windmills are in Cervantes’s description. As Don Quixote attacks them “a little wind came up and the big wings began turning”—just at the right moment. The shock of being hit by a vane sobers Don Quixote into assuming that the gesticulating giants he had perceived through the shimmer of his fancy have now transformed themselves into what Sancho said they were all along—windmills. They have taken their cue from the rustic squire. The magician Freston is at work again.

Very curiously, Don Quixote is shown roaring with laughter at one of Sancho’s Panza’s remarks: “‘God knows, it would suit me better if your Grace did complain when something hurts him. I can assure you that I mean to do so, over the least little thing that ails me—that is, unless the same rule [as for knights-errant] applies to squires as well.’

“Don Quixote laughed long and heartily over Sancho’s simplicity, telling him that he might complain as much as he liked and where and when he liked, whether he had good cause or not; for he had read nothing to the contrary in the ordinances of chivalry.”

Note the lovely description with which the next exploit begins—the dromedaries, the goggles, the allusion to the Indies, everything is first-rate from an artistic point of view: “there appeared in the road in front of them two friars of the Order of St. Benedict, mounted upon dromedaries—for the she-mules they rode were certainly no smaller than that. The friars wore travelers’ spectacles and carried sunshades, and behind them came a coach accompanied by four or five men on horseback and a couple of muleteers on foot. In the coach, as was afterwards learned, was a lady of Biscay, on her way to Seville to bid farewell to her husband, who had been appointed to some high post in the Indies. The religious were not of her company although they were going by the same road.

“The instant Don Quixote laid eyes upon them he turned to his squire. ‘Either I am mistaken or this is going to be the most famous adventure that ever was seen; for those black-clad figures that you behold must be, and without any doubt are, certain enchanters who are bearing with them a captive princess in that coach, and I must do all I can to right this wrong.’”

The author intends to balance the brutal scene of the windmills with a romantic one. Note that all night Don Quixote had kept night-dreaming about his imagined lady love. Now comes a natural sequel. Again muleteers take a hand in the encounter but now they fall upon Sancho Panza while Don Quixote routs the good friars. Indeed, the whole encounter is a great success, even when one of the lady’s squires, a Biscayan, attacks him. After receiving a heavy blow, Don Quixote approaches the frightened Biscayan determinedly, raising his sword on high for the fatal blow, as the lady in the coach and her maids are praying to God to save them all. “At this very point the author of the history breaks off and leaves the battle pending, excusing himself upon the ground that he has been unable to find anything else in writing concerning the exploits of Don Quixote beyond those already set forth. It is true, on the other hand, that the second author of this work [Cervantes himself] could not bring himself to believe that so unusual a chronicle would have been consigned tooblivion, nor that the learned ones of La Mancha were possessed of so little curiosity as not to be able to discover in their archives or registry offices certain papers that have to do with this famous knight. Being convinced of this, he did not despair of coming upon the end of this pleasing story, and Heaven favoring him, he did find it . . .”

CHAPTER 9.

In Toledo Cervantes finds an Arabic manuscript by Cid Hamete Benengeli, Arabic Historian, which he got translated and which includes an illustration of the battle with the Biscayan, t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Frontispiece
• Copyright
• Editor’s Preface by Fredson Bowers
• Foreword by Guy Davenport
• The Lectures
• Introduction
• Two Portraits: Don Quixote And Sancho Panza
• Structural Matters
• Cruelty And Mystification
• The Chroniclers Theme, Dulcinea, and Death
• Victories And Defeats
• Narrative and Commentary Part One (1605)
• Narrative and Commentary Part Two (1615)
• Appendix
• About the Author
• Footnotes