>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales: On behalf
of the Hispanic division I would like to welcome everyone
to this beautiful room. It's quite a treat for me to be here so I hope you appreciate
that as well. This is the Rosenwald
Room of the Rare Book and Special Collection Division who also helped us collect this
wonderful display that we're going to be talking about after the talk. As you know this year we celebrate
the 400 anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,
the author of "Don Quixote", first novel reaching the modern
world and published in 1605 and today you get to see one of
those 1605 editions so it's-- >> Oh my. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales:
pretty exciting. The Library of Congress has an
unparalleled collection of editions of "Don Quixote" and other
miscellany including two definitive editions, one pirated in Portugal and another published
by the author in Spain. The library also has
the translations-- all the translations to "Don Quixote" including a
beautifully illustrated edition in [inaudible] that we
couldn't bring today but we have another event
on "Don Quixote" in December and we'll have that then. Researchers who would like to learn
more about our collection can start by [inaudible] book where we,
it's a collection of the books of, by Miguel de Cervantes in
the Library of Congress. So today we have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Hernan
Sanchez Martinez de Pinillos from the Department
of Spanish Portuguese at the University of Maryland. >> Whoo! >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales: [Laughs]
Professor de Pinillos holds a Bachelors and a PhD in
Medieval Literature with Honors for the Best Dissertation
in Spanish Philology at the Universidad Complutense. He has a Masters in Philosophy and a
PhD in Spanish Golden Age Literature from Columbia University
in New York. He is corresponding member for the
Spanish Royal Academy of History since 2012 and a Member Collaborator of Cilengua Centro Internactional de
Investigacion de la Lengua Espanola. He has published a
scholarly edition and study of a 15th century manuscript
and numerous articles in prestigious journals
on major works of Spanish and Latin American
Literature including Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Quevedo. Currently he's working, or he's
reviewing a publication of the books "La poesia del pensamiento
Quevedo y la tradicion occidental", and "Cervantes and Edgar
Allen Poe in Counterpoint". After Professor de Pinillos' talk
we're going to have my colleague from the Hispanic Division Juan
Manuel Perez is going to be talking about some of the rare
editions that we have here at the Library of Congress. So I hope you'll stay
for that as well. So welcome, Hernan. >> Hernan Pinillos: Thank you very
much all of you for being here today on a rainy Friday afternoon. Thank you very much Dr. Georgette
Dorn from the Hispanic Division and thank you Talia and thank you
[talking in foreign language] from-- [ Inaudible ] >> Hernan Pinillos: That was? Okay. Yeah I was thanking Dr.
Georgette Dorn for the opportunity to commemorate Cervantes'
anniversary-- the anniversary of his
death and Talia and the head of the Hispanic department also for
well, yeah, contributing to this, the possibility of this event. I'm going to be talking
a bit about the invention of the character Don Quixote, how
the novel presents this character and the construction of the
novel and then the projection of "Don Quixote" throughout
the ages in different context. In the opening chapter of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" we meet a middle aged
small town bachelor whose life is defined by its monotony
and invisibility. He lives with his young
niece and with a housekeeper. He has but two friends. His name is Alonso
Quijano or Quijada. Alonso has no productive activity
to occupy his fertile imagination. As we are informed
of the dull details of a poor hidalgo's
everyday life we learn that his only distinctive feature
is that he devotes all his time, day and night, to the task of
absorbing books of chivalry to the point of obsession. Ignoring their [inaudible]
distinction between history and poetry, Alonso Quijano loses
himself in books of fiction he deems to be histories of facts. In the madness of reading
fictional literature as history, Alonso Quijano begins to imagine
the script for his own life. And at this point something
remarkable occurs. Quijano begins moving out of himself
as he formulates a new life project in the form of a real
character of his own invention. We as readers are present as
Alonso Quijano reinvents himself. The character invented by the
author is presented to the reader in his intimate process of
transformation and self invention. A main character invented
by Cervantes, Alonso Quijano recreates himself
as the knight Don Quixote. By naming himself-- it takes a week
to think of his name, Don Quixote-- Alonso Quijano literally wills
himself into a new existence. In a sort of reproduction
of the baptismal sacrament, an outer baptism of sorts as
some critics have termed it, Alonso Quijano's madness and
conversion are here inseparable. Madness is conversion and
conversion is madness. We can recall all the famous
religious conversions of the past. St. Paul, St. Augustine,
St. Francis. But even more relevant are
Ignatius of Loyola and Santa Teresa who are great readers
of chivalry novels. Ignatius of Loyola read romances
of chivalry while convalescing from a wound, and the
religious order he created, the Jesuit Society, was to be
a sort of spiritual knighthood. So you see the parallels. The stated cause of Alonso
Quijano's conversion is reading, but the underlining causes have been
described differently by critics. Midlife crisis. Boredom. Love. Fear of old age. The will to leave behind an
empty and meaningless existence. And thus the knight Don
Quijano, the hero of a tale of chivalry is being born. From now on his life will be an
imitation of art and an attempt in transforming life into art. Ortega said, whose philosophical
system was born as a commentary of "Don Quixote" in 1914 in the book
"Meditaciones del Quijote" wrote in 1935 in [inaudible] that whether
he be original or a plagiarist man-- man or and women-- or women, are
the novelist of him or herself. Women and men are continually
rewriting themselves after becoming dissatisfied
with older versions, with their older versions and then
revising their previous selves into someone new. Bored of being the
invisible man Alonso Quijano, the ostracized non-entity
Alonso Quijano the great reader of novels will die to be reborn
as the author of his own story, the novelist of his own existence. A life titled "The Ingenious Hidalgo
Don Quixote de la Mancha" [talking in foreign language], a title that
is both absurd and subversive. The adjective ingenious doesn't
usually qualify the noun hidalgo, a social category of lower nobility
whose distinctive mark like that of all nobility would be courage. In the medical treatises of
the times, men of high wit, [talking in foreign
language] were described as having a precarious
psychological balance. [Talking in foreign language]
was typically accompanied by some sort of mania, no? So this is a strange
juxtaposition, no? [Talking in foreign
language] After [talking in foreign language] comes the
honorific title Don [talking in foreign language] . Together Hidalgo and Don
represent a contradiction. This is a socially subversive
equalitarian absurdity. Usurping the title Don, reserved
for the upper classes of the, the real upper ranks
of the nobility, our hero's promoting himself
from the class of the hidalgo, the lowest rung of the
nobility to that of a caballero. Those who could introduce their
first name with the title, Don. So, [talking in foreign
language] is completely an absurd and also subversive title. Here the Don is related to caballero
and caballero has a double meaning in the mind of Don Quixote. Well in the mind of Don Quixote
it represents a night in-- a night errant, a knight
in shining armor. But caballero is also a social
rank, so here you see the conflict, the misadjustment between
literature and life that will characterize
all of "Don Quixote". The social meaning of Don pulls
the character back into the reality of contemporary Spain in 1600
even as he attempts to escape that reality into literature,
escaping into literature. The antithesis between
the fake Don title and the hidalgo condition
is followed by the augmentative Quixote. Derived from the pejorative
suffix ote modeled after the last name Quijano. Don should antecede the first name, as in Don Alonso, or
in Don [inaudible]. So we have here another absurdity. The name Quixote is derived
from the last name Quijano but in Spanish surnames
derived from first names. Sanchez originally
meant son of Sancho. Gonzales, son of Gonzalo and so on. And the name Don Quixote
the normal linguistic and historical process
has been inverted. The first name is derived
from the family name. So the aberration of the title Don
with a surname, the family Quijano or Quijada affix in the
manner corresponding to a given name is the
onomastic expression of the protagonist
subversive madness. The name Quixote is
most probably derived from the [inaudible] word [talking
in foreign language] a piece of armor that covered the thigh. Don Quixote is modeled after Sir
Lancelot, King Arthur's champion with whom Don Quixote
will prove to be obsessed. But instead of an offensive
armor like the lance eluded to in the name Lancelot, Quixote
refers to a defensive armor that covers the area
around the genitals which has inspired quite a few
several psychoanalytic readings, no? So then we have "El Ingenioso
hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha", no? De la Mancha in contrast with
the exotic beautiful landscapes of idealized romance novels, Don
Quixote hails from the parched, uninteresting, dry plains of
la Mancha and central Spain. In imitation of Amadis who
hails from Gaula, Wales, Don Quixote incorporates
his homeland de la Mancha into his name as well. The associations that de la Mancha
convey are opposed to the enchanted and exotic faraway lands of
the original chivalry knights. Furthermore, la Mancha
has a double meaning. It refers to this dry
region south of Madrid, but mancha also means stain which
could imply of converse origin, not of pure blood, in
another possible jab at the established
order's ideological system. Well if Cervantes creates
Dulcinea who has-- I'm sorry, if Cervantes
creates Alonso Quijano who has created Don Quixote, Don Quixote in turn
invents the fair Dulcinea from a [inaudible] according
to Sanchos' description, peasant girl from neighboring
[talking in foreign language] . The romantic and existentialist
versions of Dulcinea has become, they have become popularized
as explained by the Spanish philosopher
Miguel de Unamuno. The causes of this
love affair as follows. Idleness and an unfortunate
love affair led him to reading books of knight errantry. And after several pages of extolling
Dulcinea's [inaudible] of glory, Unamuno addresses "Don Quixote"
as follow: And now my Don Quixote, take me somewhere where we can
be alone together for I want to have a heart to heart talk and
speak to you as many men do not care to speak even to themselves. Was it really your love of glory
that led you to invest [inaudible] of whom for a while you were
enamored with the image of Dulcinea? Or was it your unhappy love for
the commonly young peasant girl, the love which she never heard of
nor paid any heed to which turned into love of immortality? So Don Quixote's love quest for
Dulcinea will be, as you know, one of the main drives of the novel. And so how is Don Quixote born? How is the character set
out on the roads of Spain? Well he is born free from baggage. A new man in a 50 year olds body who in his madness believes
he is a knight errant. A new identity is anachronistic
both from a historical and from a biographical
point of view. As his niece will point
out in the beginning of part two, Don Quixote
is obsolete. His materials conditions,
age, physique, social and economic
circumstances make him unsuitable for his intended life project. Very little is known of the
protagonist's 50 first years. We do know that he, that as he
approached his late 40's he turned to reading novels of chivalry. But Cervantes offers us
nothing, or next to nothing. Old book without a
past we know nothing about his parents nor
his birthplace. Why is this? What is Cervantes' purpose? Alonso Quijano has been a non-entity
for almost 50 years as we said, and the [inaudible] regarded-- as the [inaudible] regarding the
protagonist's names underscores. But this lack of a past
allows the author to create, to give us a character with
greater freedom of movements. He evades predestination, present
in the heroic, aristocratic, idealized romances of chivalry,
and also the determinism of the anti-heroic picaresque
novels with their materialistic and pessimistic anthropology
that foreshadows in many ways social Darwinism. A symbolic understanding
of Don Quixote's lack of early life history can be seen as
the expression of all that is new, the importance of the future instead
of the past, of the possibility of self creation, self recreation
versus social conformism, a slap in the face of the
established order once again. Don Quixote's born as an act
of independence of a new kind of hero, heterodox and alone. And so in chapter two the
imposter, the self appointed knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha will set out on his adventures
one hot July morning. Don Quixote breaks away from
his past, from the monotonous and predicable existence of his
small town of 50 year old life and he is born to run on the road
less traveled and breaking bad. Because Don Quixote
will be excommunicating for attacking a funeral procession. Don Quixote will become an
outlaw after setting free a group of [inaudible] dangerous
prisoners in shackles. But Don Quixote does
have, in spite of this, a strong ethical and
aesthetic system. A complex personal creation made
up of the heroic code of romances of chivalry, of the perfect
courtly lover infused with biblical ancient
Greek and Christian values. In his self invention, Don Quixote
will rely on two famous sentences that will carry him and
Sancho through the novel to Barcelona and back home. The first one is, "each person
is the heir of his own actions" or more literally, "each person
is the child of his own words". The Spanish for this well known line
is [talking in foreign language]. To a Spanish [inaudible] cannot fail
to invite comparisons with [talking in foreign language]
literally son of something and more appropriately
translated as son of somebody. [Talking in foreign language]
was subsequently shortened into hidalgo meaning gentleman. Since hidalgo explained one's status
as deriving from one's ancestors, the countering assertion that each
one is [talking in foreign language] that is, each one's worth is a
result of what he does rather than what forbearers
did or were have reputed to have done is an expression of
more than idle observation in an age which antedates the first successful
social revolutions in Europe. [talking in foreign language]
reflects a manner of valiant people, not by social status
or popular esteem but by their true moral worth. The other sentence that founds Don
Quixote's personal ethical system is, "I know who I am and who I
could become", said by Don Quixote to his neighbor Pedro Alonzo in
the fifth chapter of the first part when his neighbor finds the
knight confused and beaten up and referring to books of chivalry. The peasant, baffled by these
words uttered with such conviction, will manage to escort Don
Quixote back to his village. [Talking in foreign language]
said in a different context, trite as it may seem to us, a
logical statement of identity, I am I, the fundamental
statement of consciousness is in reality a tremendous achievement. In Don Quixote's phrase,
it can be read and has been read alongside
other defining religious, moral, existential and philosophical
maxims no? I am who I am, Exodus 3:14. Pindar's, become whom you are. Socrates, know thyself. Polonius, to thine own self be true. Descartes, you know, I
think therefore I am. Spanish philosophers
Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset who both kick-started their own
systems of thought as a meditated of Cervantes' novel commented
intensely this phrase in an existentialist context. Ortega founded his
concept of the heroic on what he deemed Don
Quixote's courageous will to resist the pressures
that will lead him to lead an inauthentic existence. Hero for Ortega is he
or she who discovers and affirms her original self
against all social conventions, obstacles, prejudices,
conventions, or expectations. What is extraordinary is that
Don Quixote joins from the outset of the novel the aspiration to
take action to self knowledge. Other famous characters believe that an individual
designs his own fortune. In Shakespeare, Iago
and Hamlet for instance. But only Don Quixote links self
realization to self knowledge. The following quote from a
popular best seller self help book, this quote really captures
the essence of the romantic existentialist
tradition of Quixote commentary. The book is "I Will Not Die an
Unlived Life" by Dawna Markova. Through fear of knowing
who we really are, we sidestep our own destiny
which leaves us hungry in a famine for our own making. We end up living numb,
passionless lives disconnected from our soul's true purpose. But when we have the
courage to say-- but when we have the courage to
save our life from the essence of who we are, we ignite
becoming truly alive. But Don Quixote is not alone. In chapter seven he [inaudible]
himself with a squire for he, for which he chooses a peasant from
his village named Sancho Panza. Sancho Panza is everything Don
Quixote is not and vice versa. Everybody, including people
who have never read the book, know that Don Quixote's tall and
thin, Sancho's short and fat. The word Panza means
potbelly in Spanish. Don Quixote is a very
minor aristocrat. Sancho a commoner. Don Quixote's a great reader. In fact this is what
makes him Don Quixote. Whereas Sancho is an
illiterate peasant. Sancho becomes, belongs to
the culture of [inaudible]. He opposes the great body of folk
wisdom crystallizing proverbs to Don Quixote's reliance
on written text. So there will be a
continuous contrast between Don Quixote's
expansive literary imagination and Sancho's common sense. Don Quixote champions the
personalism of feudalism with its reciprocal and abstract set of mutual obligations while Sancho
yearns for a relationship based on and mediated by money. But these are not of
course absolute oppositions. George Orwell in an
article entitled, "The Art of Donald McGill",
observed that two principles-- noble folly and base wisdom-- exist side by side in
nearly every human being. If you look into your
own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza? Almost certainly you are both. There is one part of you that
wishes to be a hero or a saint but another part of
you is a little man who sees very clearly the advantages
of staying alive with a whole skin. He is your unofficial self, the voice of the belly
protesting against the soul. It is simply a lie to say
that he is not part of you, just as is it a lie-- just as it
is a lie to say that Don Quixote, that Don Quixote's not
a part of you either. So Don Quixote will be based
on the unending conversations, exchanges between Sancho
Panza and his master. In contrast with the Picaresque
novel and its monological world of survival, isolation,
and loneliness, in Don Quixote the dialogue allows
both characters to define themself-- themselves, and influence
each other. A dialogue always assumes
a certain degree of equality between the speakers. The opposite of a dialogue
is the sermon, the harangued official speech. Europe as you know was divided
into strict social classes and that class rigidity
made dialogue across lines extremely difficult. But Cervantes created a
situation in his novel that required a constant
crossing of class lines in the continuous dialogue
between a peasant and an hidalgo. It would be hard or
perhaps impossible to find a similar situation in prose
writings in Spain or elsewhere. It is true that we have
in Spanish place many, many a place with the
archetypical funny man [inaudible] who had criticized the
behavior of young nobles. But this group of plays categorized
as comedias, a genre favored by local hidalga and
other playwrights. In these comedias [inaudible]
criticism was on the whole discarded by the play's upper
class characters. [Talking in foreign language]
would connect with the audience who would laugh at him when
he pokes fun at the noble but incomprehensible
ideals of the upper classes. Because he could not understand
their motivations nor their values. So the Spanish plays have been
described as a dialogue of the deaf in terms of social classes. In Cervantes' novel it's-- on the
contrary it is a constant exchange between the authority
figure of Don Quixote and the illiterate Sancho Panza
who has on his sides facts and common sense, what
will carry the novel. Language communicates,
reveals the inner self of one's character to another. Never in literature had dialogue
and conversation been shown as so integral to experience before. Don Quixote and Sancho
never talk past each other. They listen carefully and adjust
their answers accordingly. And their unending
polemic conversations and winning camaraderie and
true bonding will culminate in a true friendship expressed in a
letter that Don Quixote will address to Sancho Panza in the
second part of the novel that he will sign simply
as "your friend". We can, from a more abstract point
of view we can see in this portents of the dialogue, a protest
against dogmatism, against the idea of a static, unidimensional
world view, you know? Cervantes' novel is structured
as a dialogue on the road and an outward journey with
several stays at an inn or a castle with numerous encounters with
people of all social levels. But this journey is also a tour
through all the literary regions of the imagination known in
the early 17th century Spain. "Don Quixote" simultaneously
incorporates into itself and carries on a dialogue with all
the forms of fictional and non-fictional literature
current in that time. Professions of literature, and that
includes both writers and critics, consider "Don Quixote" at the
center of the history of the novel. It includes and sums up
everything that went before it. [Inaudible] essay in the prologue,
[inaudible] and chivalry novels in the form of parody, the
pastoral and picaresque novels, byzantine novels, Italian
humanism, Spanish mysticism, the perfect tragedy and prose, comic
plays, [inaudible] sonnets, ballads and burlesque poems, etcetera. No book owes so much for
existing literature and no book is so different from that literature
wrote Carroll B. Johnson. So as Don Quixote the character
breaks away from his past, as he broke away from
his past and refused to accept the social role
handed to him by his ancestors and his environment, Cervantes
the author will break away from all forms of literary
imagination once he has absorbed them and proven that he
could write excellently in all those different
genres and forms. The second part of
Cervantes can be-- the second part of the novel can
be described as Cervantes' act of independence from tradition. After proving like later young
Picasso that he could model and excel-- he could excel in every
mode known of literary imagination. But Don Quixote of course as you know not only sums
what has been written before, but also projects itself
into the future. As [inaudible] observed, all the
ideas of western novel are present in [inaudible] in "Don Quixote". From "Joseph Andrews" written
in the manner of Cervantes by Henry Fielding, to Charlotte
Lennox's "The Female Quixote", from Tabitha Tenney's
"Female Quixoticism" and most popular novel
written in America prior to the publication of
"Uncle Tom's Cabin". From "Moby Dick" and "Madame
Bovary" to Dostoevsky's "The Idiot", from "The Great Gatsby"
and the novels of Galdos to "Huckleberry Finn" and Faulkner
and Kathy Acker's "Don Quixote" which was a dream, novelists had
been exploiting and experimenting with the possibilities inherent in what Harry Levin called
the Cervantine principle. Every novel bears a Quixote within
it like an inner filigree just as every epic poem contains
"The Iliad", like the fruit, its core observed Ortega
y Gasset in 1914. [Inaudible] imagination observed
that "Don Quixote" contains within itself the whole
potentiality of the genre, and that the entire history of the
novel could be justifiably thought as iteration of the
theme of Don Quixote. The old opposition between
reality and appearance, between what merely is
and what merely seems. Here are some of the lessons
created and passed on by Cervantes to later novels: the
anti-hero as protagonist and a new understanding of heroism. The celebration of freedom through
the poetics, authors, narrators, characters, readers, and the
anthropology of the novel. The conflict between inner
conscience and the outside world. The antithesis between
imagination and the pragmatic, or between poetry and prose. The inclusion of all social
levels of language and the renewal of rhetoric through the
omnipresence of spoken language. The fusion of travel and dialogue
is a commentary both critical and compassionate on humanity. The alternation of adventure
and experience, and of humor and philosophical depth,
the truth of fiction versus the fictitious
appearance of reality. The questioning of the
relation between what happened-- the story, and the account of
what happened-- the discourse. The art of capturing a person's
faith in a single phrase. The invention of a myth that
springs from a core of a culture, from the core of a culture. The novel as a self reflecting
genre through irony, playfulness, and parody and the
development of meta-fiction. "Don Quixote" intertwined stories
and different levels of fiction, literature within literature, written by numerous
internal authors. The first author, the second author and unreliable narrator
named [talking in foreign language] historian, the Morisco translators,
the Morisco translator. But also many of the
characters are writers as well. The [talking in foreign language]
the lovers and poets [talking in foreign language] the captain
who chronicles his life as captain in Algiers, the [inaudible] from
Toledo who writes chivalry novels and Don Quixote himself as a
character in search of an author who will write down his deeds. Cervantes creates a meta-fiction
in which the massive presence of literature is complemented by a
series of theoretical discussions on the art of literature. Arising as a natural consequence of Don Quixote's strange
literature-based madness. From the 9th chapter of the first
part, Don Quixote will be the story of the fictional protagonist
and what happens to them. And simultaneously a meditation
on the nature and modes of invention of a literary text. That is, "Don Quixote" is a novel
about the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho and a book about the
adventure of writing "Don Quixote". In the second part of the novel,
the characters become readers of the first part and
discuss literature as though they the invented
characters were as real as the author and us the readers. Pirandello and Unamuno-- Pirandello
in "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and Unamuno
in his novel [inaudible] "Mist" will take Cervantes'
strategy to the limit and make the character
more real than the author, rebel against said author. Meta-fiction is a narrative
form of metaphysical questioning which makes us ponder our
own place in the world. And as [inaudible] observed
in the, in his essay [talking in foreign language] it unsettles
the reader's own reality principle. According to [inaudible]
Don Quixote's legacy is that the novelist teachers
the reader how to comprehend the world
as a question. And last but not least,
Cervantes gave us a literary form where a character undergoes
deep inner development and transformation. From conversion and
madness to lucidity and reckless spiritual youth
to wise disillusionment. Cervantes promises in the
prologue of the second part to give the reader "Don
Quixote" character [talking in foreign language] expanded
versus the arrested development of the wooden characters
in bad novels such as "The False Quixote" written by Cervantes' mysterious enemy
Alonso Fernandez Avellaneda. The Quixote of part two is a changed
man and the novel can be read as the growth of a poetic mind, a poetic mind that
develops a new inwardness and melancholy possessed
by self doubt. Don Quixote gives up most of the
aggression and [inaudible] violence that mark his attempt to revive
[inaudible] chivalry in part one and adopts a new moderation, peace
ability and humanity according to David Quint in "Cervantes's
Novel of Modern Times". And Sancho who grows in
importance as the novel develops, evolves as well, from a peasant
with not much in the way of brains to the wise governorship
of [inaudible]. Cervantes' novel can in fact
be read as Sancho's [talking in foreign language] Sancho's
formation and education. Perhaps it is this
quality of Cervantes' novel that [inaudible] Dostoevsky
to conclude that "Don Quixote" condenses the deepest
meaning of the human experience. Here is the famous passage
from "A Writer's Diary": "There is nothing deeper and
more powerful in the whole world than this piece of fiction. It is the final and greatest
expression of human thought, the most bitter irony that a
human is capable of expressing. And if the world came to an and
people were asked somewhere, well did you understand
anything from life on earth and draw any conclusion from it? A person could silently
hand over 'Don Quixote'. Here is my conclusion about life". Due perhaps to the symbolic
power behind the mythic and easily visualized Quixoticism, Cervantes's invention has inspired
an extraordinary number of readings, interpretations, adaptations, and
re-fashionings in almost every genre and medium from sculpture
and painting to opera and animated cartoon. Modern philosophy and politics
also cannot be understood without the mark of "Don Quixote". In Anglo-America this influence
can be recognized at the level of mentalities in the process of
Don Quixote's self invention based on his personal notion of
freedom and responsibility. This could be linked to the
archetype of the self made man and Don Quixote's famous phrase
in chapter 66 of second half, "Every man is the architect of his own destiny" encapsulates
this attitude, this stance. He says, "Every man is the
architect of his own destiny" when Sancho Panza is
looking for excuses after his questionable defeat
against the Knight of the White Moon when he accepts full responsibility. Thomas Jefferson considered "Don
Quixote" the best work in its genre and had his daughters study Spanish
with a copy of "Don Quixote". In Jefferson's political rhetoric
of freedom and potential equality and the "all men are created
equal" sentence contained in the second paragraph of
the United States Declaration of Independence we can recognize Don
Quixote's personal moral philosophy [talking in foreign language] . Abraham Lincoln's second
inaugural address, March 4th, 1865 famous motto "with malice
towards none, with charity for all", echoes the ending words of
Don Quixote's self portrait in chapter 32 of the
second part of the novel. After having listened to
the disparaging condemnation of his life's purpose and ideals
by the judgmental house chaplain in the duke's palace, Don Quixote
concludes his self defense speech with the following words:
[talking in foreign language] In Tobias Smollett's
1755 translation, "my intention I always
direct to a worthy aim; namely to do good unto all
men and harm to no creature". Dr. Martin Luther King's
Quixotic 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech
can be read as modeled after the romantic interpretation
of Don Quixote's declared mission in his famous golden age speech,
to bring back the golden age utopia on Earth, to go forth and change
the world and to build a society that is nobler, kinder, and just. Chapter 11 of "Don
Quixote", first part. Recently, American
filmmaker Martin Scorsese in his autobiography writes, "I read 'Don Quixote' just before
starting 'Gangs of New York' and discovered that everything
you might want to do with style, Cervantes did first; time
shifts, answering his critics of the first volume in the
second, all the new wave tricks. It's both terribly
funny and maddening because by the end you don't
really know where the point of view is coming from,
who Don Quixote is, or if he really believed
in what he was doing. And the relationship with
Sancho Panza is great, but over the years I
was against reading it because it had become a cliche. The man charging at the
windmills and all that. The one film version I did see
was Grigori Kozintsev's made in Russia 1957 which
I thought was good, but I haven't seen [inaudible] film, and 'Man of La Mancha'
really isn't for me. Anyway, I just found out that
Cervantes did it all even before Joyce and Melville. In conclusion I would like
to pay the brief homage to Bob Dylan alongside Cervantes,
the recent Nobel Prize winner." Well let us compare the
episode of Don Quixote's dream within a dream story in Montesinos
Cave in the second part chapter 23 with Bob Dylan's iconic 1965 song
"Desolation Road", the closing track of Dylan's studio album
"Highway 61 Revisited". Dreams have fascinated people for
centuries and are present in some of the world's oldest texts. For example, Pharaoh's
dream interpreted by Joseph in the Old Testament. Latin literature has Scipio's dream
complete with a trip to the moon and a vision of the
future of the Roman Empire. Yet the difference
between these dreams and Don Quixote's dreams
is essential. Most dreams from ancient literary
text are either revelations about the future or premonitions of future disasters
or coming successes. Not so with Don Quixote's dream. In it our hero is deeply
troubled by his role in history and especially worried
about his relationship with Dulcinea, or to Dulcinea. Don Quixote wakes up after
falling asleep when he sits down in the cave, and so
he awakens within a dream. Montesinos, the legendary
figure of Carolingian ballads, that is Spanish ballads inspired
by the French epic poem [talking in foreign language] greets the
knight of the sad countenance. And he says, "it's been a long time
valiant Don Quixote de la Mancha, that we who live in these
lonely places have been awaiting for your visit. Come with me illustrious sir, and I
shall show you the marvels concealed in this transparent castle. Translation, John Rutherford. Don Quixote continues his account
to Sancho Panza and his guide and to the guide who
led him to the cave. Says Don Quixote, "The
venerable Montesinos took me into the crystal palace where
there was a marble tomb upon which I saw a knight who was lying
not one of bronze, marble, or jasper but made of real flesh
and real blood". Don Quixote-- Montesinos explains
to Don Quixote that it is-- that this is his friend Durandarte,
the flower and mirror of the brave and enamored knights of
his time, kept there, enchanted like many other men
and women are also kept here by Merlin the French sorcerer. Durandarte had breathed his
last breath in Montesinos' arms after requesting that his
heart be cut out and taken to his beloved Belerma as a
famous ballad sung in his tomb. Oh my cousin Montesinos,
listen to my last request. When I'm lying dead before you and
my soul's flown from my breast, take a poniard or a dagger,
cut my heart from out of me, carry it to fair Belerma,
to wherever she may be. Although more than 500
years have now passed, none of us has really
died says Montesinos. Don Quixote then recounts a scene where there was a great
weeping and wailing. I turned my head and through
the crystal walls I saw in another room procession
of two files of lonely damsels, all mourning. All the people in the processions
were the servants of Belerma and Durandarte enchanted together
with their master and mistress. Montesinos informs that the pallor
and the rings under the eyes of Belerma are not caused by that
problem women have every month because it has been
months and even years since it last came
knocking on her door. We inhabit an underworld where the
characters are grotesque distortions of their previous heroic selves. Leading the strange
absurd life trapped in another dimension
of space and time. One hour has passed
according to Sancho, and three days according
to Don Quixote. But as Sancho Panza says, maybe
what seems to us like an hour seems like three days down there. Cervantes' degraded
vision of the past reveals to us how the subconscious mind
of Don Quixote is much less sure of his role in the world
and of the moral qualities of the woman he loves. The mythical times of heroes
and legends has been infiltrated and slowly eroded by prosaic
details, aging and decay. And nothing similar can be
found in renaissance literature. Placing myth in a prosaic setting,
subjecting the idealized creatures of legend to real time is a
mode of questioning and dealing with the past passed down from
Cervantes to Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Joyce's "Ulysses"
and relived by Bob Dylan to revolutionize the
American song tradition. In "Desolation Row" in its surreal
lyrics, Dylan weaved characters from history, fiction, the
Bible, and of his own invention into a series of vignettes that
suggest entropy and urban chaos. For Andy Gill, the second is
"an 11 minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a
Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge
cast of iconic characters, some historical, some Biblical,
some literary, and some who fit in none of the above categories. And some as Romeo,
Cinderella, and Ophelia taken from the idealized literature that
purveys Don Quixote's imagination. In Cervantes' cave of Montesinos, an
uncanny purgatory of broken myths-- Cervantes' cave of Montesinos
uncanny purgatory of broken myths, the heroes of French epic and
Arthurian legends have become, alongside Don Quixote's beloved
Dulcinea, enchanted figures of desolation, eroded by centuries
of prose, quiet in their tombs, or passing by in a whaling
procession of unending sorrow. In Dylan's "Desolation Row", Cane
and Abel, Robin Hood, Casanova, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the
Phantom of the Opera, Cinderella, Romeo and Ophelia unite with
Belerma and Durandarte, Montesinos and Dulcinea, lost souls in a poetic
limbo awaiting for [inaudible] for the messiah knight or
the American [inaudible] who would redeem them from
the horrors of history, from the horrors of time. Now, sit [inaudible]. [ Applause ] >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales: Would
you take some questions from them? >> Hernan Pinillos: Yeah, sure. >> I have a question. It's not every day that we get to
meet an expert on "Don Quixote" and I just have a particular
question. In 2002 I believe it was
"Guardian" was it that named, that requested the best
hundred writers of the time to select the best 100 books
in the history of humankind and of course [inaudible]
"The Gilgamesh", "The Old Man and the Sea", "The Iliad"
[inaudible] but when they got to Don Quixote they couldn't
even categorize it as number one and they named it the
best book ever written. And then we see Don Quixote in every
day aspects; book marks, in statues, in billboards, and everywhere. Yet I was astonished that on April
23rd when we celebrate the death of Cervantes, and Shakespeare,
Google Doodle did not pay tribute to "Don Quixote" [laughter]
and Cervantes and then it was a bombardment
of Shakespeare all the time. I mean what's your take on that? What's the, your take on
the fact that we have, according to [inaudible],
according Carlos Fuentes, according to [inaudible]
the best book ever written that doesn't get the attention
that Shakespeare gets these days? >> Hernan Pinillos: Thank you. I don't know, I guess the
reasons to be political. On literary grounds it's
difficult to defend. There are Shakespearean
critics who caught up in the what has been termed
bardolatry make pejorative comparisons with Cervantes. No it's quite common to say well,
in this regard Cervantes is better, but only in this regard no? You have [inaudible] who
termed "Don Quixote" a squire, or could be a squire of "King Lear". >> Wow. >> Hernan Pinillos: Harold
Bloom talks about the invention of the human based on Shakespeare
but there are many things that Cervantes passed
on to literary tradition that are not present in Shakespeare. First of all, he invented
the prevalent form of modern consciousness
which is the novel. And Shakespeare's dealing with
the tragedy in the mode of cineca, and Shakespeare read "Don Quixote"
part one no, [inaudible] lost play. And he read a lot of
Spanish literature. He read "La Philistina"
[assumed spelling]. He read sentimental romance
novels, pastoral novels that influenced his writing a
lot, but Spain was the enemy so it wasn't a matter
of quoting too much. The ending of Hamlet you know with
those deaths, successive deaths, accumulation of deaths,
that's present in the Spanish sentimental
romance novel. But yeah we don't have this crossing
of social lines in Shakespeare. We don't have the strong feminine
characters, Dorotea, Marcela. Now compare them with
Ophelia, Desdemona, you know? You know all the women
who-- Cordelia-- you know, who let themselves
die for a man. Women who were played
by male actors. In Spain you had female
actors interpreting strong women characters. Another aspect which I didn't
develop, or I didn't touch is, that is present in Cervantes' humor, humor in all its levels
and functions. You have slapstick comedy, but
you have the folly as a basis to British humor, you
know, laughing at oneself. In Cervantes' own creation of
his fig- [inaudible] figure in the prologues, you
have [inaudible] that doesn't take himself seriously. And then you have also the first
time, according to one critic, where the unmotivated action,
the rupture between cause and effect is presented in
chapter 25 of the first part. In Don Quixote's penance he's
going to do wild and crazy things in imitation of Orlando who went
mad because of the infidelities of Angelica with [inaudible]. But Sancho tells him
that you have no reason and there's also Cardenio
who's going crazy because Lucinda he
thinks has betrayed him. And Don Quixote says
it's not a problem, no? [Talking in foreign language]
I do this without a cause, so he's just starts going
mad without a cause, no? That's the first representation
of the absurd you have. Think of Ionesco [assumed
spelling], Beckett, or the great Spanish Theater of
the Absurd, unjustly forgotten, Javier Consela Miramura
[assumed spelling]. Also Monty Python,
the Marx Brothers. You have the essence, the core, the
germ of that humor in "Don Quixote". >> First of all, thank
you very much. That was very enlightening. >> Hernan Pinillos: Thank you. >> No philosophy has had more of
an impact on modern literature and existentialism
[inaudible] mentioned Quixote in that context [inaudible] Ortega. Ortega said that man has no-- [ Inaudible ] You've got Kafka, you've
got Dostoevsky, all these writers heavily imbued
with existentialists [inaudible]. So we could call "Don
Quixote" rather than [inaudible] the
first existentialist hero? >> Hernan Pinillos:
Well, the thing is, existentialism is a 20th
century movement, right? With [inaudible]. So there are, I mean as a
historical determination, we can do existentialist readings or
we could find existentialist motives in "Hamlet" and in "Don Quixote"
but I think yeah that it, in their core you can find
[inaudible] we see the construction of the character Don Quixote
breaking away from the essence of being an hidalgo, or
being a 50 year old bachelor, and he just reinvents himself. So that, yeah that strikes to
the, your quote, the separation between history and nature. And Ortega and Unamuno constructed
their philosophical systems as commentaries on "Don Quixote". In 1905, "Vida de Don
Quijote y Sancho", life of Don Quixote and Sancho. In 1914, "Meditations
on Don Quixote". On just reflecting on "Don Quixote"
they came up with their system. So you could say at least that they, they're at the basis
of this thought school. Thank you. Yeah. >> I was, I'm curious. It doesn't have much to
do with your presentation but I was just curious right now
since you brought up the question of Shakespeare if you have read
the [talking in foreign language] and what do you think about
this question of what is-- >> Hernan Pinillos:
I haven't read it. >> Okay, forget it. >> Hernan Pinillos: But
do you want to comment? >> No, [inaudible] I wanted
to know what was your opinion about [inaudible] the first novel
ever written or [inaudible]. >> Hernan Pinillos: Well the term of novel you have the
idealized novels of-- I mean of Greek literature, the
Byzantine novels derived from Homer, and then you have in Rome two
great novels in "Satyricon" and "The Golden Ass"
[talking in foreign language] so this is defining
the modern novel. But also some critics
say the picaresque novel "Lazarillo de Tormes"
is the first novel. Some will say "La Philistina"
[assumed spelling] biological work, play, that can be read
as a [inaudible] novel, so there's a big theoretical
discussion but in terms of modern literature with
this new heroic stance with his proto-existentialist
elements, characters that grow, that change. Because Ancient Greek novels
were based on very fixed, defined characteristics, no? [Inaudible] the revelations, the
encounters, voyages, perfect loves. But it's a different mode. So this would be the mode
of the modern novel, okay? Thanks. >> Talia Guzman-Gonzales:
[Inaudible] questions? Okay and then we're
going to [inaudible]. >> Hernan Pinillos: Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
