Masterpieces of the masters of fiction

by William Dudley Foulke

The Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is more widely known and recognized among mankind everywhere than any other single character in fiction. And indeed there has never been any other character more elaborately developed.

In the matter of plot, as well as personages, the scope of this work is rather narrow. It is merely a series of adventures, and while the priest, the barber, the bachelor, the duke, the duchess, and many other persons appear incidentally, and while all of these are well sketched, the work would be nothing except for the wonderful sayings and doings of the mad knight and his squire. And the contrast between the two sets forth in the strongest possible relief the characteristics of each. Don Quixote, solemn, tall, lank, “with cheeks that kissed each other on the inside,” and Sancho, short, fat, round-bellied,—the knight filled with fine spiritual fire, his madness enhanced by endless fasts and vigils; the squire sleeping, eating, thinking of nothing but the facts of physical existence,—Don Quixote, the dreamer, the idealist, the gentleman—for there is no one trait which shines through all his madness as unmistakably as his gentility; Sancho, a coarse, sensuous clod, an odd mixture of simplicity and shrewdness, garrulous, full of proverbs, with a rustic and very fleshly philosophy of his own, a squire who sometimes cheats his master with false tales.

Don Quixote goes forth upon his battered Rocinante, to redress all wrongs, actual or imaginary, to fight windmills, to engage in desperate battles with flocks of sheep; to sail upon enchanted barks; to fly through the air on a wooden horse; and perform a thousand extravagances, travesties of the impossible prodigies recorded in books of chivalry and enchantment.

The description of Don Quixote’s madness is masterly. His inability to separate actual occurrences from the figments of his imagination appears with wonderful power; for instance, in the scene of the puppets, where he demolishes the apparatus of the show, and then agrees to pay for the damage, and again refuses when the lady for whom compensation is demanded has been already rescued, fact and fancy contending with each other inextricably in his soul. As a study in psychology, no character of fiction or drama outside of Shakespeare is at all comparable to “Don Quixote.” Yet through all his grotesque hallucinations appears his essential nobility. As Sancho says of him, “He has a soul as clean as a pitcher. He can do no harm to anyone, but good to all. He has no malice at all. A child might persuade him it is night at noonday. And it is for this simplicity I love him like my heartstrings, and cannot be handy at leaving him for all the pranks he plays.” Thus do we love the simple-minded, even in madness.

One of the clearest evidences of Cervantes’ genius is his power to make even the vagaries of a madman so laughable. In any other hands the adventures of Don Quixote would not be funny. I remember once seeing a dramatic representation of the story, in which Henry Irving impersonated the hero. It was well done, but it was not amusing. The poor knight was so utterly wrapped in his hallucinations that he was an object of pity rather than of laughter. But in the novel itself the humor of Cervantes overcomes even our sympathy. The wild reasoning of Don Quixote is often so irresistibly absurd that his madness is forgotten. For instance, he does penance in the Sierra Morena in honor of his Dulcinea, and proposes to imitate Amadis and Orlando, who tore up trees by the roots, slew shepherds, demolished houses, and performed a thousand other extravagances. Sancho remarks that these knights of old had a reason for their follies and penances, but that Don Quixote had none, to which his master replies, “In this consists the refinement of my plan. A knight errant that runs mad with cause deserves no thanks, but to do so without reason is the point, giving my lady to understand what I should perform in the wet, if I do this in the dry.”

The Spaniards say that “Don Quixote” is untranslatable. Of course a masterpiece of this kind can not be enjoyed to the full, with all its delicate aroma, in any other tongue, and in one sense it can not be fully understood by any one who is not himself a Spaniard, who has not the feelings, the surroundings, and perhaps the prejudices to which the great book was addressed. But, judged by such a standard, what masterpiece of past times can any of us fully enjoy? In another sense, however, a foreigner can enjoy “Don Quixote” better than a Spaniard; for some of its most characteristic features are those which to one who lives amid the same surroundings will pass unobserved. No one can judge of the perspective of a great work unless he be far enough away to see it in its relations to the rest of the world. In this larger sense, I think that Don Quixote can be understood by an American of our century as well as by a Spaniard of the time in which it was written. Something of the details will escape him, but the beauty of the whole may be even more apparent. The things that we lose in translation,—for instance, the sonorous solemnity of the magniloquent diction of Don Quixote,—are atoned for by the fact that Don Quixote himself is a more distinctive type to us than he could have been to the people of his own age and country.

I am not sure but that the Englishman or the American can grasp the sum total of his qualities better through a good translation than even in the original. The Spanish of “Don Quixote” is somewhat archaic, and in places a little obscure, even to the most proficient in the living tongue. So elusive is the pleasure which comes with the dry humor of such a book that it must offer itself spontaneously, it must fit the mood of the reader, it must be the luxury of an idle hour, or much of the charm of it will escape. Therefore it is that I have found in Shelton’s translation, and still more in the recent rendering of Mr. Watts, a keener pleasure than I have ever been able to dig out of the original mine.

“Don Quixote” is not without great faults. It was written carelessly. This indeed often adds to the naturalness of the descriptions and the situations, but the blemishes are sometimes self-evident and glaring. For instance, after Sancho’s ass has been stolen by Ginés de Pasamonte, the squire is represented, sometimes as walking, sometimes as riding on the very animal he has lost. Some of Cervantes’s commentators, like Clemencin, who are mathematical rather than artistic in their criticisms, call our attention to the numerous incongruities of this sort. But the greatest masters of literature, even Homer and Shakespeare—have been guilty in the same way.

Indeed, there is a good deal in “Don Quixote” which reminds one of Shakespeare. Take for instance the following discourse between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza:

“Prithee, tell me, hast thou not seen some comedy played wherein are introduced kings, emperors, pontiffs, knights, ladies and divers other personages? One plays the bully, another the knave; one the merchant, one the soldier; others the witty fool and the foolish lover; and, the comedy ended and their apparel put off, all the players remain equal.”