The Phrenological Journal & Haunted Typebox Blog

I’ve made the somewhat obvious (but no less satisfying) jump from ‘The History of That Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de La Mancha’ to ‘The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark’. The parallels are many, the discoveries joyous (even through Hamlet’s eternal gloom). While I would not be the first to point out these shared sympathies—I could read criticisms on the subject—there’s nothing better than making those discoveries for one’s self. Thus prefaced, let’s get to the Prince and Knight.

That William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died on the same day, is almost a little too perfect, propelling all observations into a kind of literary kismet (which, according to wikipedia is a bit of conceit, as Spain and England were using different calendars). In Bloom’s introduction to Don Quixote, he points out a similar murkiness in ‘authentic motives’ shared by the two characters. He doesn’t get much into the madness, and that’s where I’ll begin.

Hamlet’s story is the reverse of Don Quixote’s. Hamlet tells us in the beginning that he’s putting on the aires of madness. Don Quixote tells us in the end that he’s taking them off. Yet it’s hard to say how much control either one has over their madness, despite their claims to the contrary (Don Quixote has madness within madness in the Sierra Moreno). Yet they are their own stability. Those around them, all those kings, barbers, bishops, and dukes have their lives dictated to some degree by it. I.e., while Hamlet and Quixote are infirmed, it’s those around them who are affected.. Hamlet’s compatriots engage in the Quixote guessing game, trying to disprove madness with intelligence, and vice versa. They can’t hold the two values simultaneously, and this cognitive dissonance reverberates across both narratives.

Which makes me wonder just what was going on in Europe at the turn of the 17th century that engaged these two men to write these stories about characters who have so transcended the boundaries of their respective stories. I’m unable to answer the cause, but rather interested in  the effect. These characters are so transcendent because they break through their texts. Bloom points out that in Hamlet, “all the rules of normative representation are tossed away, and everything is theatricality. Part II of Don Quixote is similarly and bewilderingly advanced”. Both narratives contain critiques of their respective forms. Both narratives offer stories within their stories, external readings brought in to affect their characters actions.

And yet, as much as these two characters are so alive in our universe, it’s impossible to imagine them existing in the same universe. Sure, both live in corrupt and crumbling kingdoms, and suffers the slings—if not arrows—of outrageous fortune. But they could never meet. Their characters are of different forms, and different stuff. You can be mad like Quixote, or you can be mad like Hamlet. I think most people flatter themselves as the former, but the latter is probably closer to the truth.

Here’s an observation on kitsch, to back me up. Through my journeys to various antique stores and flea markets, I’ve noticed the preponderance of decor influenced by Don Quixote from the 60s and 70s: sculptures, paintings, and wall reliefs of Don Quixote and Pancho*. There’s a dearth of Hamlet book ends. Yet, how the play’s lines litter our speech. I’m not sure what we would say if Hamlet had never been written. Because of Don Quixote we know jousting at windmills, but because of Hamlet we know ‘murder most fowl’, ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’, ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’ and ‘to sleep, perchance to dream’. And many more. If Quixote decorated our dens, Hamlet still corners the market on adorning our words.

I leave it here, because I’m not yet done with Hamlet. I’ll get to that apology, anon.

*This probably has a good deal to do with Man of La Mancha, which is a different beast, true.

Bloom says in his introduction that we will never know the true motives of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But just as we will never know their motives, we will never know the motives of Cide Hamete, the history’s fictive author. After all, what can we make of a devout muslim who praises the actions of this delusional Christian knight? How much irony do we ascribe to his ovations? And for that matter, what do we believe he has left out (given that the book’s second author makes claims that Hamete, “probably gave us too little rather than too much.”) Like Cervantes, Hamete’s apparent purpose is to denounce those false and degenerative books on chivalry. But Hamete’s polemic is frequently subsumed by the crackling velocity of Quixote’s narrative. Without those chivalric tomes, Quixote would still be Quixana, and the history would be not.

It’s hard to tell if Hamete is genuine in his appreciation of Quixote—and if he is, he must suffer from Quixote’s infectious madness. Many who meet Quixote find themselves pretending to Quixote’s situation—with ostensible motives of helping or mocking him. As Hamete himself points out, the duke and duchess are just as mad for going to such lengths to have fun at the expense of Quixote’s apparent madness.

I suppose Hamete sees the fulfillment of his own purpose in Quixote’s madness. Every windmill mistaken for a giant, is another knock on chivalry’s tarnished image. But even Hamete seems inconstant here. We must wonder if he would facetiously praise Quixote in Mohammed’s name. In a sense, his polemic against chivalry is his excuse for following Quixote, for pretending to his madness.

I would warn readers of this blog not to read further, lest the ending of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha be revealed to them, but that would be presumptuous. Which is not to deny existence to any chance readers, but to temper my own expectations. Let this preamble then close so I may begin my eulogy for the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

It’s hard to say goodbye to a character in a book. At the best, when you close the covers that character is still alive, so you may still imagine them in some further adventures. But Don Quixote dies. And he does so twice, once by his own hand and once by his sorrow’s (though these causes are so intertwined as to make them one). Or perhaps it is, as he claims, God that retires Don Quixote. We should blame that false Knight, the bachellor Carrasco, since he conquers the Knight, and that causes the sickness. Don Quixote, sick to the heart, develops a fever which—ironically—gives him a sudden lucidity, and Alonso Quixano denounces his mad, chivalrous self. This is the death that’s hard to take. It softens the blow for Quixano’s death. Because no reader can conclude these adventures and not love Don Quixote, and feel betrayed by Quixano (and justly his God).

I finished the book in a cafe, and as I closed its covers I looked up at those around me. People sipping drinks, others walking by, people being people. And it came to me that we are all Don Quixote. I don’t mean for this to sound grandiose. It was a quieter truth—and not an original thought either. But I felt it profoundly. In a strange melding of Borges and Bloom, I truly began to see everyone as Don Quixote, in a very literal sense. Which made me laugh, and it became a kind of game. The man punching away at his iPhone was Don Quixote, as was the woman with the double-wide stroller. Just as Borges says that we can read every book as though authored by a someone else, I think it’s possible to read people as though they are, in fact, Don Quixote (even if they never read the book). And the world makes a good deal more sense by it.

Why else would we derive a word, quixotic, from this character’s name? There’s no Hamletish, no Havishamic, no Marlowic. And yet,the experience of reading Quixote’s pursuits defy the pejorative nature of the term. Because we have to love him. Which is to say nothing of Sancho. And as Sancho would say, “there’s much to say about that.”

The Knight of the Sorrowful face is again free, and so am I. Away from the confinement of privilege, and the pranks of the Duke and Duchess, he can do what he does best: devise his own jokes upon himself. But oh, how I wept with joy at chapter LIX, where Don Quixote’s greatest adversary is revealed: the author of the false Quixote (it’s true, there were at least two tears in my eyes when I read this most meta of moments—You may say two tears do not make a weeping, but how my heart sang when I read this!).

It is a welcome change after the previous section. It’s curious how both volumes reach a kind of plateau in their second acts. The narratives start to belong to others. In the first, it’s a volume of writing found by the curate, and in the second it’s to the cursed Duke and Duchess. It is when the story is in the hands of our knight that it blossoms, that the full potential of Quixote’s questionable madness can take us into new and uncharted realms of brilliance.

Yes, it’s the Knight of the Sorrowful face who guides us. But does someone guide him? Quixote is a chivalric knight who serves his lady and his god, but just as his lady is a projection of his delusions, the same could be said for his god. I believe it’s Bloom who points out that while Quixote professes faith, he is ultimately drawn by his own whims. His god is in his universe, as real to him as the pasteboard Moors in the Master Pedro’s puppet show. Is there a god over Don Quixote? There is certainly providence in this universe (we, today, could not stand the narrative conceits that bring together the far flung lovers in the first Volume, but such is the concept of providence in the 17th century). But a god? For the historian, of course, there is. And the name of that god is Muhammad. But how little his hand seems to be in play in this most important history.

I was kind of right, but really I was wrong. The two people that I predicted would do well ended up in the bottom three. And one of them (Alexis) was the loser of the night. This was somewhat heartbreaking, particularly because the judges considered saving her, but decided against it after her last-chance performance. Which is really too bad. I think that overall she’s stronger than Michael Sauber (and a more even performer than Anoop).

What I find truly alarming though, is how I actually felt sad when it was revealed that she would not be saved. This alarm on my part rings of intellectual snobbery, and a falsity of my own intentions. I didn’t start this project to be above it. After all, American Idol is a story, and a pretty long and interactive one at that. If you give it time, it will suck you in.

P.S.: I think Adam’s performance of ‘Ring of Fire’ was dreadful. Randy called it a ‘Nine Inch Nails’ version, but it actually felt more like a histrionic Doors performance. As he squealed: ‘it burns, burns, burns’ I said, ‘yes, yes it does!’ Simon was correct in calling it horrifying.

I can’t talk about Don Quixote today. The actions of the Duke and Duchess are too cruel, almost unconscionable. Even has Pancho shows his ability to govern. 

Instead, I look forward to Grand Ole Opry week on American Idol. Here’s how it should go down:

Alexis probably stands the best chance. She’s got memphis roots, a natural drawl, and her vocal style is probably best suited to country.

Adam will be interesting to watch. While he probably couldn’t lose at this stage if he tried, it’s hard to see him really kicking out the country in any way that feels authentic. He’s dramatic and hyperactive. Though he looks like Ryan Adams. That could help.

Allison should have no problem carrying this category. She’s a rocker, and the roots of rock and country are intertwined. She’s easily become one of my favorites this season.

Anoop’s place in the competition feels the shakiest to me. He’s been uneven and hasn’t shown the best judgement in song choice or delivery lately.

Danny—you know—he’ll deliver. He delivers on everything, he’s affable.

Kris should have no problem here. He’ll strum his guitar, look out of this doleful eyes and still fail to really impress me.

Lil Rounds may not be the most country of the group, but she’s so confident, so poised, and has such vocal power it’s hard to see how she could not do well here.

Matt See Chris, above, but replace guitar with piano.

Megan. I love Megan. She’s said that she fears Country Week, but I do look to her for one of the most original performances of the night.

Michael will either perform MOR country rock or he’ll dig down into his working-class roots and really bring himself into it.

Scott will probably play the piano. And he’ll probably do pretty well, but I see something sleepy, something…

It’s hard to view one’s photography, and photography in general, in quite the same way after seeing Everlasting Moments.  It just so happens I was taking photographs with my digital camera an hour before seeing the film, and a few hours after looking at a book on Jaromir Funke’s photos. And then came ‘Everlasting Moments’, which blew it all away. Every film deserves a warning of some kind, and the one for this one is: you’ll never want to shoot digitally again.

The film’s title is unfortunate, because it seems to indicate a sweet nostalgia. You won’t find it here. The film from Swedish director Jan Troell is easy to blow all out of proportion, to over-glorify in layer’s of synonyms for beauty. Movies about an art form have a way of becoming subservient to the art form, to confuse themselves with the art form (Basquiat, for instance). Troell’s film avoids this by holding back on the camera porn, stringing the moments of artistic beauty between moments of domestic horror. The story is of Maria Larsson, a lower-class housewife in a small town in fin-de-siecle Sweden. Photography is not yet in the hands of the average person. Maria comes by a camera, and finds momentary escape from her abusive, alcoholic husband. If this sounds shmaltzy, it’s not. We take for granted the idea that art transforms lives. It does, but it does so roughly, intermittently, through—and with—a great deal of pain. It’s easy to see how a Hollywood hack would remake this film. You could hang this narrative on the skeleton of ‘Titanic.’ It would be terrible, but it would work.

It’s the true story of one of the director’s own relations (wife’s-cousin’s-brother’s-something). In a way, it’s also the story of my own father, who grew up with a brute of a father with an insatiable appetite for a drink and a tendency to speak with his fists. My dad found his salvation through a photo-development kit from Eastman Kodak. Eventually it lead him out of that dreary and tumultuous situation and into his career. A career he retired from, as digital photography replaced its analogue precedent. He wasn’t bitter about it, but he was tired of being bored in his lab. In his retirement, he shoots exclusively digital now. It’s his anachronistic son who still keeps a supply of film in the fridge.

Here, from “The Volume Library” of 1928 (A Concise, Graded Repository of Practical and Cultural Knowledge Designed for both Instruction and Reference), is a useful bit of information on the methods of execution practiced in different countries, as well as signifying the publicity of the executions. Of particular note is the technological advancement shown by the United States.

Perhaps even more interesting is the item’s placement in the miscellany: between “Echo” and “Expectation of Life.”

Methods of Execution by Country (1928)

The question that runs through Quixote is whether or not the “knight” is mad. And it’s not just the reader that asks it. The characters do too. From those encountered in route, to the loyal squire, Sancho, the debate rages across Spain and even all of La Mancha (Cervantes used this joke twice, I will use it once).

I can’t judge Quixote’s sanity, but what I can judge, or at least opine on, is how the argument reveals something about the 17th Century’s idea of madness (and our own). Despite Quixote’s obvious outward signs of madness (charging a flock of sheep, wearing a barber’s basin on his head, etc.), many of those who meet him hold this judgement in reserve. The reason? His intelligence. Those who meet him marvel at his contradictory nature: the aforementioned signs of delusion versus his lucid explanations of philosophical concepts. Such contradictions create cognitive dissonance in the 17th century mind. But in ours?

I was talking to a friend of mine about this dichotomy, how alien it seemed to me. Those of us in the twenty-centuries are accustomed to the idea of madmen being geniuses—it’s de rigeur. So much so that anyone who wants to be perceived as a genius, takes on the colors of madness, builds a mythology of irrational acts. I think of Dali who, naturally, illustrated Quixote, but the list goes on: Crispin Glover, Marilyn Manson, Truman Capote, Thomas Pynchon. I think it’s a fin de siecle trend, and we see the genesis in Van Gogh, Rimbaud, even Poe. Genius = Madness.

But not so in 17th c.  Spain. No, here madness has its equivalency with idiocy. After all, it’s still the dark ages of what we now know as psychology. At some point it all changed. The insane could be ingenious. It may be that our Knight of the Sorrowful Face, with Hamlet as accomplice, ushered in this idea even before that dutch painter removed part of his ear.

Idol is starting to get sad. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense (not the way Simon did when he used it to describe Anoop’s performance). No, it’s sad to see these people go. This means I’m so far gone in this American Idol mess that there’s no other way out then to finish the season. But it’s going to be hard.

Yes, it’s hard to say goodbye to Jorge Nunez, who broke down into a bilingual thank-you speech when he found out he made it into the top 12  13. He’s cute, his voice has a good tone, and he brought genuine emotion to every performance (save the last, he just wasn’t cut-out for Michael Jackson and he floundered when the judges asked him about it). We also said farewell to sixteen-year-old Jasmine Murray, who seemed like one of Idol’s brightest stars. Her R&B vocals should have been able to carry Michael Jackson. Still, she was up against my girl Megan Joy. With her tatts and her love of Bjork, she’s got my heart.

This involvement is unnerving, but let us turn to Don Quixote, because his quest too lacks neither heartbreak nor travails. And suddenly a question of his madness starts to ripple through the book. Volume II is more philosophical and the Knight, in turn, is seemingly more lucid. In fact, it’s a good XXVI (26!) chapters before Quixote enters into unprovoked combat. Whereas in Volume I, he saw enemies in every cart and procession, in Volume II he’s more likely to enter into conversation than to draw his sword. But here is the line which breaks our understanding of Quixote:

“this was the first day he really knew and believed he was a true knight errant and not a fantastic one…”

Actually, this is not the first time. Earlier we learn that the Knight of the Sorrowful Face Lions is said to have retracted a portion of his adventure, claiming he “had invented it because he thought it was consonant and compatible with the adventures he had read in his histories.” So, Sir Knight, how mad are you? Are you just pretending?

It’s a good question and not a question that we’re unprepared for. Twice we are presented with the question of the difference between going mad and choosing to go mad. Quixote presents the argument in the mountains of Sierra Moreno claiming it is superior to choose—his reasoning having to do with the nobility of sacrifice, penance. The Knight of Mirrors makes a similar claim, though on slightly different grounds: “The difference between those two madmen is that the one who can’t help it will always be mad, and the one who chooses can stop whenever he wants to.”