from "Don Quixote"

2016.08.16
I finished "Don Quixote" for a second time a few weeks ago. (living out some old maxim that just as a piece of architecture should be viewed in the morning, mid-day, and dusk, so should this book be read as a young person, a middle-aged guy, and an old man.)

I read Edith Grossman's 2003 translation. Some highlights I made to record here:

The one passage I remember from my first reading is from Marcella's defense, as she's being accused of a shepherd's death because of her failure to return his love:
Heaven made me, as all of you say, so beautiful that you cannot resist my beauty and are compelled to love me, and because of the love you show me, you claim that I am obliged to love you in return. I know, with the natural understanding that God has given me, that everything beautiful is lovable, but I cannot grasp why, simply because it is loved, the thing loved for its beauty is obliged to love the one who loves it.
In the same way I sometimes dig the KJV version of the bible, this translation is nicely old school:
Heav'n, you're pleas'd to say, has made me beautiful, and that to such a Degree, that you are forc'd, nay, as it were compell'd to love me, in spite of your Endeavours to the contrary; and for the sake of that Love, you say I ought to love You again. Now, tho' I am sensible, that whatever is beautiful is lovely, I cannot conceive, that what is lov'd for being handsome, sho'd be bound to love that by which 'tis lov'd, meerly because 'tis lov'd.
Marcella in Don Quixote.
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Another idea I saw cited in Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" was "Comparisons are Odious":
'Stop right there, Señor Don Montesinos,' I said then. 'Your grace should recount this history in the proper manner, for you know that all comparisons are odious, and there is no reason to compare anyone to anyone else. The peerless Dulcinea of Toboso is who she is, and Señora Belerma is who she is, and who she was, and no more should be said about it.'
While here "Comparisons are Odious" mostly applies to people, I find it critical in my understanding of "Amor Fati", the love of one's fate; we spend so much effort comparing this world to all these other, slightly more pleasant alternative universes (just like this one, but I'm not stuck in traffic!, for instance) that it makes us miserable with very little return.
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Harold Bloom's Introduction to the work mentions:
It remained for La Rochefoucauld to restate the other side of the paradox: some people would never have loved if they had not heard of love.
The book cites verses from other source, such as Commander Escrivá's
Come, death, so secret,
so still I do not hear your approach,
so that the pleasure of dying
does not bring me back to life.
and there was also a reference (Sancho watched everything, and not one thing caused him sorrow) to
"Nero, on Tarpeian Rock, / watched as Rome went up in flames; / crying ancients, screaming infants, / and not one thing caused him sorrow."
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Of course, much of the joy of the book are the proverbs and quotes, famously by Sancho but also Don Quixote himself:
too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise.
The ox who's free can lick where he pleases.'"
(Grossman explains "A proverb that extols the joys of liberty.")
stultorum infinitus est numerus:
"The number of fools is infinite."
Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it's bad luck for the pitcher
"I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to the lowborn is throwing water into the sea."
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At one point the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance says "Now you will see, said Agrajes" which Grossman footnotes "Agrajes, a character in Amadís of Gaul [One of the most established tales about knight errantry] would say these words before doing battle; it became a proverbial expression used at the beginning of a fight."
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Some passages still resonate today:
"Be quiet," said Don Quixote. "Where have you ever seen or read that a knight errant has been brought before the law no matter how many homicides he may have committed?"
"In short," said Don Quixote, "it seems clear, Sancho, that you are a peasant, the kind who shouts, 'Long live whoever wins!'"
"Even so, I want you to know, brother Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that there is no memory that time does not erase, no pain not ended by death."
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I was interested in a view of the year that seems to put the year into five seasons, not four
spring pursues summer, summer pursues estío, estío pursues autumn, autumn pursues winter, and winter pursues spring, and in this way time turns around a continuous wheel;
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Finally, I loved this rant:
"Oh, base, lowborn, wretched, rude, ignorant, foul-mouthed, ill-spoken, slanderous, insolent varlet! You have dared to speak such words in my presence and in the presence of these distinguished ladies, dared to fill your befuddled imagination with such vileness and effrontery? Leave my presence, unholy monster, repository of lies, stronghold of falsehoods, storehouse of deceits, inventor of iniquities, promulgator of insolence, enemy of the decorum owed to these royal persons. Go, do not appear before me under pain of my wrath!"

Hello from Ireland!
Rudy Giuliani: "Under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States. They all started when (Hillary) Clinton and Obama got into office" Between this and "Obama founded ISIS", Republicans are deciding to double down on Big Brother-esque rewriting of history.
The next level: Zapp Branigan READS those Trump Quotes