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.”