Don Quichotte

The book

The Romance is built in two volumes. The first was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. In 1614 a Don Quichotte apocryphal book occurred, signed enigmatic Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. For this reason, the second part contains several references to the impostor of Don Quichotte, and her creator that certain authors identify like Lope de Vega. Cervantès makes die its hero at the end, so that it is never ressuscity by another Avellaneda.

Cervantès declares that the first chapters are drawn from the “Files of the English Channel” and the remainder translated since the Arab from the morisque author Cid Hamet Ben Engeli, the enchanter who draws the strings from gift Quichotte throughout the novel. The intrigue covers the voyages and the adventures of Don Quichotte and its rider Sancho Panza. It is a Hidalgo (nobody of noble birth) who is obsessed by the books of Chevalerie. His/her friends and his family think that it is insane when it decides to become in its turn a knight-errant and to traverse the Spain on its horse, Rossinante, as a combatant the evil and protecting oppressed.

It passes for one illuminated near those which it meets. He believes that the ordinary inns are magic castles and the girls of peasants of beautiful princesses. He takes the windmills for giants sent by malicious magicians. He considers that a country-woman of its country, Dulcinée of Toboso, that he will never meet, is elected of her heart in which he swears love and fidelity.

Sancho Panza, its rider, whose main concern is, as his name indicates it, to fill the paunch, estimates that its Master suffers from visions, but it conforms to its design of the world, and undertakes, with its Master, to break envoûtement of which is Dulcinée victim.

As well the hero as his servant undergoes complex changes and evolutions during the course of the account.

Little by little Sancho Panza operates a metamorphosis, and heavy peasant who it was, it is transformed into a being more educated, causing even by his perspicacity and the smoothness of his judgment the astonishment of the people that it manages when it is named governor of an island by the Duke and the Duchess (Volume 2, chapter 55). Don Quichotte, as for him, remains invariably faithful to itself, it does not yield to any external pressure, it faces the archers of the enquiry who are with his cases since it released the galériens (Volume 1, chapter 22).

At the end of the second volume, Don Quichotte, overcome by the knight of the White Moon (the graduate Samson Carrasco), is turned over from there at his place. Sancho begs it not to give up, suggesting to him taking the role of shepherd, often put in scene in bucolic stories. Having given up the reading of any tale of chivalry, it recovers the reason and is consequently proof of greatest wisdom, before dying surrounded of the affection and the admiration as of his.

The two accomplices lived together much adventures, often causing many damage. They meet, during their peregrinations, quantity of characters who deliver a detailed sociology of Spain of the century of gold. One sees there ravelling criminals sent to the galères (are Jews continued by the Inquisition?), of the Morisque S under the blow of the edict of expulsion of 1610 (Ricote, Anna Felix).

Don Quichotte is one of the books most read in the world. Great success as of its first edition, it also was the subject of a musical comedy as well as several more or less happy film adaptations.

Don Quichotte breaks with the medieval literature and is essential, by its narrative techniques, its internal movements, the intervention even of the author inside his text, like the Romance first modern.

Each time carried a different point of view on the novel. At the time of its first publication, he was generally regarded as a comic novel. After the French revolution, it was popular partly because of its ethics: the individuals can be right against a very whole company. At the 19th century, he was regarded as a social comment. At the 20th century it was arranged in the category of the traditional arts persons, and was regarded as a precursory masterpiece.

Orthography and pronunciation of the name

Contrary to an generally accepted idea, the pronunciation Don Qui' ch' otte is not a Francization of the Spanish name. At the time of Cervantes, the name of the hero was written Don Qui' x' except with a X ; and the X still decided at the XVIIe century as the consonant cluster French CH . The French Don Quichotte and the Italian Don Chisciotte thus modified the C-W communication to respect the pronunciation of time. The Portuguese Dom Quixote , for its part did not change anything in the manner of writing the name of the hero, because the Portuguese pronunciation of the X , which is preserved until our days in some words, was equal to that Spanish of this letter at the XVIIe century: CH . The Spanish title is El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote of Mancha , as far as the Portuguese title is O Engenhoso Fidalgo Dom Quixote da Mancha . In some Portuguese words, the X decides like ks ( tóxico ), or like Z ( exército ) i.e. like Z French , but also like CH , as in Quixote or in caixa . On the other hand, potugais the jota of it does not replace the X : it has the same sound as in French, i.e. J .

The English for its part modified the pronunciation while preserving the C-W communication of time. In Spanish, the pronunciation of the X passed later to Rh (jota Spanish, corresponding to a deaf form or not voiced R French ) which at the XVIIIe century was written J , following a Spanish spelling reform.

What modified the noun in Don Qui' I except . (although the old pronunciation does not lend itself at the risk of bad comprehension with respect to a public not-accustomed to Spanish phonetics, contrary with the modern pronunciation)

Other glances

Michel Foucault

“Don Quichotte is the first of modern works since one sees there the cruel reason of the identities and the differences to be played ad infinitum of the signs and the similitudes ; since the language breaks there its old relationship with the things, to enter this solitary sovereignty from where it will not reappear, in its abrupt being, which become literature; since the resemblance enters there an age which is for it that of the insanity and imagination. The once untied similarity and signs, two experiments can be constituted and two characters to appear face to face. The insane one, heard not like patient, but like deviance made up and maintained, like essential cultural function, became, in the Western experiment, the man of the wild resemblances. (…)

At the other end of the cultural center, but near by its symmetry, the poet is that which, below the differences named and daily envisaged, finds the hidden relationships of the things, their dispersed similarities. ”

Michel Foucault, Words and the things , Paris 1966, Gallimard editions, p 62-63.

Jorge Shine Borges

Jorge Luis Borges published in 1947, in the review On , an account: “Pierre Ménard, author of Quichotte”. It described there the literary destiny of a novelist who recopies word for word and line with line the book of Cervantès. Comparing the Quichotte of Ménard with that of Cervantès, Borges takes for example the sentence of this last: “the truth, whose mother is the history, emulates time, deposit of the actions, witness of the past,” Borges notes: “Written with by the “genius being unaware of” Cervantès, this enumeration is a pure praise rhetoric of the history . Ménard writes on the other hand: “the truth, whose mother is the history, emulates time, deposit of the actions, witness of the past,” the history, mother of the truth; the idea is amazing. Ménard, contemporary of Williams James, does not define the history like a research of the truth, but as its origin. Contrast between the two styles is also sharp. Archaïsant style of Ménard - in the final analysis foreign - fishing by some assignment. It is not the same for its precursor, which handles with ease Spanish running of its time. ” The parabola, l'" Ménard" effect; , thus allows Borges to show that there exists a kind of déceptive morals , which would make that a “beautiful style” could not at the same time be and to have been.

Benoit XVI

Benoit XVI, “Teoría of los principios teológicos”, published in Spain by Herder, " Theory of the Principles religieux" , in connection with Don Quichotte:

Don Quichotte starts like a bouffonade, a kind of bitter joke which is not simple spring of imagination or literature. The auto-da-fe that the priest and the barber make, in chapter VI, with the books of poor the hidalgo have an air of absolute realism: thus is liquidated the medieval world and the door is closed again irremediably on the past. By the figure of Don Quichotte, one new era emerges… The knight became insane. Awaking dreams of antan, a new generation meets the truth, naked, without assignment. The lively espieglery of the first chapters leads to a blossoming… What a noble madness in that of Don Quichotte who elects a profession where the nobility of the thought, the honesty of the word, the liberality of the acts, valiancy in the achievements, patience in work, generosity with oppressed, and finally the maintenance of the truth, although it costs of it him the life to defend it! The foolish madness converts into the expression of a pure heart…
Brûler the past, here the hour of the synthesis. Today, the core of the madness touches the level of the conscience, that coincides with the extraction of the kindness of a world whose realism is mistaken…
It is not a question of a return to the world of the time of the knighthood, but to remain waked up in order to never not lose sight of the fact the dangers which threaten the men when, burning their past, they even lose a share of them…

Boris Mouravieff

Don Quichotte is introduced like a character " which was baited to fight face the " influences; A" under all their forms and particularly that of windmills . " This combat being regarded as vain and promised with the failure like with the exhaustion of the forces. (The " influences; A" are the influences created by the life itself, which form the Loi of the Chance or Loi of the Accident , under the empire of which is placed the human fate. (Gnôsis t.1, Study and comments on the esoteric tradition of Eastern orthodoxy , p.134)

Jose Saramago

“Don Quichotte is obstinated not to be itself, but with being that which leaves at his place to enter this parallel world and to live a new life, an authentic life. I believe that at the bottom, which is tragic, it is impossibility of being someone else.

One can regard Don Quichotte as the first modern novel, but its author is surely not the first modern narrator. I think that Cervantès did not invent anything. It is enough to read the first chapter of the book to imagine a Mister who sat down in front of his public to tell him a history: “In a village of the English Channel, etc, etc” It is the diagram of the oral narrator.

Don Quichotte does not die, because that which will die, it is a gentleman, poor a hidalgo name of Alonso Quijano. In my opinion, it is an basic element. It is not Don Quichotte who dies, but Alonso Quijano.

Don Quichotte is this other than we cannot be, and it is for that we like it. ”

Daniel Serra, Jaume Serra, Cervantes there Leyenda de Don Quijote , Spain, 2004. Programmed in France under the title Cervantès and the Legend of Don Quichotte (Arte, March 4th, 2005).

Fatty Günter

“the noble knight, the idealist, who fight against windmills, the dreamer which takes his hallucinations for reality, the odd one, the Master and his servant, the feet on the ground, the prosaic servant. It is a couple which we still find in our reality, at the same time allied and adversaries. It is a duet which resists times which change. ”

Daniel Serra, Jaume Serra, Cervantes there Leyenda de Don Quijote , Spain, 2004.

Influences of Don Quichotte

There exist some attempts at continuations of Don Quichotte which were written in French: History of the admirable Don Quichotte of the English Channel , Filleau de Saint Martin and Robert Shawl, and the new and true Continuation of the history and the adventures of the incomparable Don Quichotte of the English Channel , unknown author.

The influence of Don Quichotte is notable on historical characters like Simon Bolivar;

The poet and novelist Jose Rizal, hero of Filipino independence, designed his literary work and policy while taking as a starting point the ideal quichottien.

Exploitation

The autonomous community of Castille it Manche exploits the celebrity of the novel of Cervantès to make the promotion of tourism in the area. Several sites have a bond with the adventures, of which mills and an inn where it is said that the events occurred.

Films and iconography

Several films are based on the history of Don Quichotte, including:

Don Quichotte (1933), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Don Quichotte (1957), directed by Grigori Kozintsev
Gift Quijote (1965), television serial directed by Louis Grospierre
Man off Mancha American Musical comedy of Wasserman Flagstone in the Years 1960
the Man of Mancha , French-speaking adaptation of the preceding one, text translated and adapted by Jacques Brel which interpreted it on scene with Brussels and with Paris in 1968.
the Man of Mancha , film adaptation of the musical comedy by Arthur Hiller in 1972
“Quichotte of Miguel de Cervantes, El” (1991) (mini), Directed by Handbook Gutiérrez Aragón.
Don Quichotte , by Orson Welles unfinished. A version back in shape by Jesus Franco was presented in (1992)
Don Quichotte (2000), directed by Peter Yates (Téléfilm)
Lost in Mancha (2002) report on impossibility of making a film , according to the fallen through attempt at Terry Gilliam.
Don Quichotte inspired a great number of illustrators and painters of which Gustave Doré, Honore Daumier, Pablo Picasso, Albert Dubout, Salvador Dali, Antonio of Gandara, Raymond Moretti and Gerard Garouste.
Don Quichotte inspired also a cartoon entitled Don Coyote and Sancho Panda .

Music

Don Quichotte also inspired the musicians:

Don Quichotte (1897), Symphonic poem of Richard Strauss.
Don Quichotte in Dulcinée (1932), three songs for baritone of Maurice Ravel.
Songs of Don Quichotte , written for Chaliapine, of Jacques Ibert.
Don Quichotte (1910), heroic comedy in 5 acts, of Jules Massenet.
the man of the mancha , Jacques Brel

Less known:

Don Quichotte (1869), opera of Henri Baker.
New Don Quichotte (it) (1789), opera of Stanislas Champein.
Don Quichotte (1829), opera of Giuseppe Mercadante.
Don Quichotte (1874), opera of Emile Pessard.
Don Quichotte of the English Channel (about 1765), opera of Niccolò Vito Piccinni.
Don Quichotte (1727), opera of Giovanni Ristori.
Don Quichotte of the English Channel (1771), opera of Antonio Salieri.
Don Quichotte (1791), opera of Angelo Tarchi.
(1923), Manual opera of of Falla
Faust Trilogy - Don Quichotte - Saint François d' Assise (1929), lyric tragedy of Charles Tournemire.
the knight-errant (1946), choreographic epopee in four tables, texts of Alexandre Arnoux, music of Jacques Ibert.

Dance

The French choreographer, Marius Petipa, created in 1869, a ballet in 4 acts, on a music of Leon Minkus. Many recoveries took place as from 1970, of which those of Rudolf Noureev, then director of the National Opéra of Paris.

Celebration

Spain and Spanish-speaking America celebrated the 400 years of this major work throughout the year 2005. On this occasion, a young Spanish mountain dweller, Javier Cantero, climbed the top of the Latin America, Aconcagua, culminating to 6960 m, in December 2005, in order to read there a passage of Don Quijotte of Mancha .

Random links: