Don Quixote, Cervantes

Drunk man salutes his dog
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

Finally, after two and a half months (more or less - I wasn't counting), I've come to the end of Don Quixote.

I'm really pleased I stuck it through. It wasn't a hard book by any means, but at 760 densely printed pages it was a major commitment, and I've not been willing or able to take on such a load many times in the past. Sure, I've read Moby Dick and Crime and Punishment but this is probably the longest book I've ever gotten through. Considering that the typeface was quite tiny, the dialogue compressed onto as few lines as possible, and the pages themselves physically large, 760 pages of this would seem like nearly twice the same in any other book.

The story itself is excellent. I got through the adventure of the windmills very early on - I think that because a lot of people are familiar with this tale, there aren't that many who have read the piece to its end. The windmill adventure only lasts a page or two, and is quite minor next to the whole. Still, it was good. I liked Sancho Panca a lot more than I thought I would, and Cervantes has a mind full of proverbs ready to use and abuse when it comes to his squire.

Also, I'd never known before that the book was really split in two - the second published years after the first; in the meantime, a false history of Don Quixote's adventures was published, and Cervantes takes a lot of time to rip this piece to shreds. It's one of the earliest inter-literal books I've found, wherein one author makes so direct a reference to another, and involves his characters in the discovery of this other book, rather than simply mentioning it in passing. The creation of Cid Hamet Benengeli also works a nice trick, leading the reader, as it were, to imagine Cervantes as no more than a middleman in relaying the history. One wonders if he was mindful of his own skin when he decided on this ploy, or if it was simply another example of his intertextualising.