DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA: Four Hundred Years Later

There is a time for some things, and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Part II, Chapter 35.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
George Bernard Shaw


Four hundred years after the publication of Part One of Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes is enjoying a stunning resurgence in popularity. As the Spanish-speaking world commemorates this event, his best-known novel has been near the top of the bestsellers lists.

It’s been a fascinating phenomenon to watch.

In every bookstore one sees copies of the novel piled in stacks close to the cash register, and booksellers are thrilled at the quantities being purchased. In addition, throughout Latin America, there have been countless programs and lectures devoted to Cervantes’s creation.

In Panamá, La Prensa has published several reports about what local experts have to say about Don Quijote. The interesting thing is that the majority of these “experts” lack formal training in literary studies. Instead, for most of the capital city’s lectures, a procession of architects, attorneys, physicians, sociologists, entrepreneurs, and politicians have stood behind the podium, sharing their thoughts on this classic.

After reading the reports of their talks in La Prensa—including the publication of portions of their conferences—I’ve come away convinced of one thing: most of the presenters have either read Cervantes’s work superficially, or not at all.

Mostly, their commentaries praise the knight-errant’s spirit of self-sacrifice and his sense of social justice, particularly noting how he attacks fierce windmills in an attempt to defeat evil.

I find this disconcerting. So far, most of the insights of these notable citizens have been little more than a recycling of the universal clichés that emanate from a great work of art, such as Don Quijote de la Mancha, and which most people with an adequate college education can readily manipulate without really having read the book.

But I can forgive these “experts.” Completely. I have to assume that their prominent professional and personal standings have placed them in the unenviable position of having to hurriedly prepare a talk that is intended for those who, like many of us, wish to learn about the novel without going through the trouble of reading it.

Yes, I can easily forgive these experts because, as I learned years ago, Don Quijote de la Mancha is a very, very difficult book to read.

The first three times I tried to penetrate Cervantes’s work, I was unsuccessful. On each occasion I couldn’t get beyond the fifth chapter. To be honest, during each attempt I found Don Quixote undecipherable and, worse, boring. But I kept on trying because my professors always raved about the novel in their classes and I, not wanting to be left out in the cold, would make yet another effort to read it.

I kept this up until I had the good fortune, as a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, of enrolling in a course on Hispanic Renaissance poetry; and the following semester I took a course on Hispanic Renaissance prose. My professor on both occasions was Dr. Alicia de Colombí-Monguió, a genuine scholar of that era. Her lectures were wonderfully vivid and full of splendid anecdotes about the writers. Indeed, she was a gifted teacher, able to pass on her vast knowledge with supreme ease.

At the conclusion of the second course, Dr. Colombí closed her book, and with a mischievous smile, said, “Now, you are all ready to read and understand Don Quijote de la Mancha.”

Trusting her judgment, the first day of summer vacation I picked up Cervantes’s novel again, and it was as if the heavens had opened. Don Quijote, which before had seemed dull and impenetrable, was now strikingly clear and gloriously resplendent.

Suddenly, I was able to see why it’s called a work of genius. Throughout the narrative, Miguel de Cervantes, like a dazzling magician, ponders on the nature of his own invention—the modern novel. At the same time, he manages to enchant his readers with the adventures of a knight who, in his madness, attempts to make the world conform to his beloved books of chivalry.

But I would’ve never understood Don Quijote de la Mancha without the benefit of having studied the major works that preceded it, and which Cervantes relies on so heavily for guidance and inspiration.

That summer I came to revere Don Quijote de la Mancha, and I was so affected by the novel that I willing spent several years under its spell, making it the subject of my doctoral dissertation.

This year, the year of the four-hundredth anniversary of the novel’s first appearance, I am awed by the thousands, and perhaps millions, of Spanish-speakers who are eagerly trying to decipher Cervantes’s genius.

Yet I’m sure that only a tiny fraction of those who have purchased a copy of Don Quijote de la Mancha will be successful in finishing it. A more realistic fate: many Latin American households will now own a book that is destined to sit on a shelf, unread after an honest but frustrating attempt.

It’s a shame that such a remarkable wave of enthusiasm for reading—that only happens once every hundred years—should pass us by without our fully taking advantage of it.

I propose that for 2015, in commemoration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Part II of Don Quijote, (and why not, after all, Cervantes’s sequel, published ten years later, is superior to the original), we prepare a legion of teachers who, after studying the novel in depth, will lead organized reading groups, opening the eyes of thousands to the genius of Cervantes.

And then, in addition to uniting entire nations by way of the act of reading, we can save all those copies of Don Quijote de la Mancha from idly gathering dust.