"In short, our hidalgo was soon so absorbed in these books that his nights were spent reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk, until the lack of sleep and the excess of reading withered his brain, and he went mad. Everything he read in his books took possession of his imagination: enchantments, fights, battles, challenges, wounds, sweet nothings, love affairs, storms, and impossible absurdities. The idea that this whole fabric of famous fabrications was real so established itself in his mind that no history in the world was truer for him." Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by John Rutherford.
I could have delved deeper into the History of Don Quixote de la Mancha when searching for a piece of text to read, but of late I've become interested in looking at artists' renditions of literary scenes and characters. So here we have Cervantes' description of Don Quixote's descent into madness, but we also have Gustav Dore´'s (1832-83) rendition of Quixote going mad from his books. What struck me about both the image and the corresponding textual description is their sheer richness. Cervantes wants us to be in touch with the body as much as the mind. We must feel the relationship of what is physically within us to what is somehow contained despite of our physicality. What is written is somehow able to transform and possess the body of one who succumbs to it. This is a cause that writers early in the modern period took up and that in some ways defined many of the great books that were to emerge between 1500 and 1900. My other favorite for this, of course, is Emma Bovary.
It seems what I'm saying then is that this richness of image and text comes from the relationship that writer and artist establish between what is body and what is not. In Dore´'s strikingly detailed image we have the object i.e. books lying untended on the ground, and Quixote, this regal looking old man, sits in his chair attempting to stave of the "disorderly notions" that crowd around him. The key word here is "attempt"-- if we look at the image again, we'll see that the sword points in a direction almost opposite to where the monsters, princesses, and angels surround the hero. Clearly, Don Quixote likes to play.
We never really know how tongue-in-cheek Cervantes was being when he addressed Don Quixote's problem for surely he was aware that the adventures of this crazy would be analyzed forever. Similarly, when Flaubert said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi," there was a tacit admittance that the problems of the character were his as well. What I want to say here is how do we judge ourselves or characters such as Emma or DQ for living a life that is imagined through the help of objects, words, and images. Or should we perhaps do the opposite-- judge ourselves against them? I mean, Emma was a bitch to her husband and Don Quixote couldn't have cared less whether Sancho Panza lived or died-- yet, these people obsess us because of their naked presence and because we see them digesting what they read and see.
Yesterday my cousin A. and I had a conversation about writers who make their readers physically react through their words. My favorite example for this feeling is TSE and his Love Song. Emma and DQ experience something similar-- except that unlike us, they let themselves try to make it real.
It seems what I'm saying then is that this richness of image and text comes from the relationship that writer and artist establish between what is body and what is not. In Dore´'s strikingly detailed image we have the object i.e. books lying untended on the ground, and Quixote, this regal looking old man, sits in his chair attempting to stave of the "disorderly notions" that crowd around him. The key word here is "attempt"-- if we look at the image again, we'll see that the sword points in a direction almost opposite to where the monsters, princesses, and angels surround the hero. Clearly, Don Quixote likes to play.
We never really know how tongue-in-cheek Cervantes was being when he addressed Don Quixote's problem for surely he was aware that the adventures of this crazy would be analyzed forever. Similarly, when Flaubert said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi," there was a tacit admittance that the problems of the character were his as well. What I want to say here is how do we judge ourselves or characters such as Emma or DQ for living a life that is imagined through the help of objects, words, and images. Or should we perhaps do the opposite-- judge ourselves against them? I mean, Emma was a bitch to her husband and Don Quixote couldn't have cared less whether Sancho Panza lived or died-- yet, these people obsess us because of their naked presence and because we see them digesting what they read and see.
Yesterday my cousin A. and I had a conversation about writers who make their readers physically react through their words. My favorite example for this feeling is TSE and his Love Song. Emma and DQ experience something similar-- except that unlike us, they let themselves try to make it real.
Might not be anything, but perhaps you know of a Shoshana Felman essay (can be found in Poetry in Theory, p. 478) about the psychoanalytical triple in Poe. A similar set of triples here of reader, DQ, Cervantes, and the stories?
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