DON QUIXOTE, don kwiks'6t; Sp. don ke-hot'a. To have written the book which for three centuries has best interpreted Spain to the world is the title to fame of Cervantes. Most artists in their view of life are merely personal; Cervantes is national and universal.
In him the genius of his people finds its best expression, yet his masterpiece speaks to all men irrespective of period or race. Books that do this may be counted upon the fingers of two hands, but among them is Won Quixote.' When it appeared in 1605, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was but two years short of sixty. A native of Akali, near Madrid, he had been a soldier in Italy and the Azores, a captive among the Barbary pirates of Algiers, and at home a dabbler in drama and pastoral romance, as well as a collector of taxes and of provisions for the Indies fleet. He had been imprisoned twice be cause an agent absconded, and once in La Mancha at Argamasilla de Alba, where tradi tion has it that he began his 'Don Quixote' in confinement. The original of his hero is said to have been Rodrigo Pacheco, whose portrait hangs there in the parish church in witness of his restoration from madness in 1601 by the grace of the Virgin. For 10 years after the publication of the first part of (Don Quixote,' Cervantes did hack writing for the illiterate, and composed poems, plays and stories to please himself, while vainly seeking court favor. Then, on the appearance of a continuation to his great work by an Aragonese enemy calling himself Avellaneda, Cervantes hurriedly com pleted his authentic sequel, which was issued in 1615. In the next year, after producing a long heroic romance, he died.
That Cervantes was no enemy to the worthy romances of chivalry, this last effort — (Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda' —makes clear. Yet it amused him to break a comic lance against the silly books in this kind which had succeeded the de Gaula.' He conceived the notion of showing a meagre, middle-aged gentleman, gone mad from the reading of such fantastic fictions, attempting to enact in the world of actuality the role of mediaeval knight errant. This gentleman, tak ing the fancy name of Quixote or ucuish," sets forth upon his nag, Rozmante, to win glory for his lady, who is only a peasant wench. He makes three journeys. The first and briefest results in his being dubbed knight by a rogue innkeeper. The second, after his mischievous books have been burnt by his friends, a barber and a priest, involves also the misadventures of his squire Sancho Panza, an unromantic anti-hero who was invented as an amusing con trast to the valiant hero. From encounters with windmills and sheep, to the capture of a barber's basin that resembles the helmet of Mambrino; from the release of ungrateful con victs to a penance of love in the mountains, the experiences of the precious pair parody those of the old romances. At length the disguised barber and priest prevail upon the knight to enter a cage wherein he is brought home on a bullock cart, believing himself under enchant ment. His third quest, filling the entire second the novel, is longest and most enjoyable.
e Don Quixote is surer than ever of his dignity and of the glory of knighthood; and Sancho is wittier, richer in proverbs and in common sense, loving, yet playing upon his master. The climax of interest is reached when a duke and duchess entertain the two, fooling Don Quixote to the top of his bent with elabo rate pageants and arranging a mock island for Sancho to govern. Finally, the bachelor Sam son Carrasco, who has already failed in one effort to fetch Don Quixote home, succeeds by overthrowing him in combat disguised as Knight of the White Moen. He is brought disconso late to his house, having vowed to abandon knighthood for a year. He thinks to turn shep herd; but his heart is broken, and he recovers his reason only to part with life and the weep ing Sancho.
Like other great works, this has been sub ject to various interpretations. Some have held it to be a satire directed against individuals Charles V, Philip II, Ignatius Loyola or the Duke of Medina Sidonia. A Spaniard has pro nounced it to be a mystic allegory, (Dulcinea) being an anagram of 'Divina Luce,' or divine light. An E.nglishman— A. J. Duffield— has written a volume to prove it an attempt to ex --'pound the nature of madness. An English woman — Mrs. Oliphant — regards it as Cer vantes' confession of his own disillusionment with life. Many have seen here his design to present personified the two elements in human nature, soul and sense, poetry and prose. Thus Coleridge has said of Sancho, "Put him and his master together and they form a perfect in tellect, but they are separated and without ce ment; and hence each, having a need of the other for its own completeness, each has a mas tery over the other."' Some have held that Cer vantes sides with Sancho as ridiculing extrava gance of feeling and imagination, Heine de claring that this is the greatest of all satires against human enthusiasm, and Sismondi call ing it "the saddest book ever written?' Others have maintained that Cervantes intends us to approve rather of Don Quixote whose faith and character rise superior to the ills of sense. But whatever interpretation be taken, it is cer tain that Cervantes was not exclusively either an idealist or a realist, that he and his age were not philosophic or likely to allegorize outside the domain of religion and that he was not a pessimist. It seems certain, too, that his mas terpiece was not a carefully planned structure like the Comedy,' but rather a spon taneous growth. Having set out to poke fun at absurd romances, Cervantes became interested in his burlesque hero; he took from popular literature and from observation the anti-hero as a foil, supplied adventures and a life-like dialogue as the best means for playing off one against the other, and, assuming the humorist's attitude, stood aside to smile at the delusions of both realist and idealist, favoring neither artistically. Thus his Don Quixote and San cho developed from contrasted literary and so cial types to contrasted types that are national and universal.