“Who knows where madness lies?”: From Quixote to Eternity, for “neither good nor evil can last for ever”

air photo of don quixote by catherine  talese, who  writes:"fantastic conversation today on Part I of Don Quixote! Thanks AIR and Joan E. Roney Benjamin Heim Shepard Emily Schuch Julie Mcclelland Barrett Vicki Cerrud for diving deep into themes of class, gender, and reality in today's discussion!"

"Joan E. Roney is with Catherine Talese and 3 others at Lower East Side.

January 25 at 4:31 PM · Lower East Side, New York · 

Rainbows 🌈 & Kitty views from Cervantes Don Quixote AIR book club .... believe the impossible dreams.... @ Lower East Side"

  

For the  last  few  weeks, we’ve all  been  chasing  windmills.

Some losing  our minds. 

That’s  what living here is all  about…

Looking for democracy amidst the ruins.

Embers  burning.

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?” writes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in  Don Quixote.

 “Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

Certainly Quixote does,

Poking his head into the story,

Suggesting windmills can be more than they appear.

Cervantes reminds us there’s more out there for us,

if we look a little closer, without reality getting in the way. 

Reading it, ideas move forward and backward,

Through countless cultural touchstones.

From Monty Python Movies to Borges stories to Kundera novels,

That came here first.

Cervantes seems to everywhere.

Reading it is like seeing my world with a map I never knew,

Connecting stories and novels, movies and road trips,

and ideas leagues of writers would appropriate throughout the history of literature.

“When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude,” writes Milan Kundera, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

Caroline Hellman, who masterfully writes about the invisible road maps between stories, referred to Melville invoking Cervantes:

“If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; …the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes..”

Written in the backdrop of the Inquisition, Cervantes has nothing to lose.

He sold his land to buy books.

It’s a book in praise of books, notes Catherine during our  book group chat on the text.

Why did you pick this as a topic, I ask.

You picked it.

I thought you did.

We all did.

What is madness or sanity or event reality?

I am not even sure Quixote did any of this?

Was he dreaming, at home imagining away?

Whether it’s a hallucination or a Netflix movie, Quixote and Sancho are working through questions about reality, chivalry, or friendship.

“Don Quixote and Sancho really listen to each other,” writes Harold Bloom in the introduction to Grossman’s magisterial translation. “[T]hey change through this receptivity.  Neither of them overhears himself, which is the Shakespearean mode.  Cervantes or Shakespeare: they are real teachers of how we change and why.  Friendship in Shakespeare is ironic at best, treacherous more commonly.  The friendship between Sancho Panza and his Knight surpasses any other in literary representation.”

Reading the novel, one uncovers a history of ideas, empires in decline, chasing windmills, the imagination meandering, humans interacting with shadows dreams, others and themselves.

Catherine follows,  quoting from the prologue:
"Let it be your aim that, by reading your story, the melancholy may be moved to laughter and the cheerful man made merrier still; let the simple not be bored.. let the grave ones not despair you, but let the prudent praise you."

A exploration of the road, the work is also a meditation on the nature of love.

Catherine points to Chapter XIV: Marcela's monolog on the obligations of beauty
.
Scene: at the burial of Grisóstomo, a shepherd who dies of unrequited love. All present agree that Marcela, the wealthy and beautiful woman who he adored, is a cruelty temptress, a wild beast and a basilisk.
.
Enter: Marcela, All receive the radiance of her beauty and scorn her.
Her speech.
.
"Heaven made me beautiful, you say, so beautiful that you are compelled to love me whether you will or no; and in return for the love that you show me, you would have it that I am obliged to love you in return."
.
"Those who have been enamored by the sight of me I have disillusioned with my words; and if desire is sustained by hope, I gave none to Grisóstomo or any other, and of none of them can it be said that I killed them with my cruelty, for it was rather their own obstinacy that was to blame."

Can we see others on more honest terms, instead of projecting our ourselves, needs, and fears onto  them?

Love thy enemy, implores  Matthew.

Catherine posted Cervantes quotes all  week long,  wondering about

Don Quixote: Chapter VI
“What happens when a priest, a farm girl, a barber and a housekeeper walk into a library and are determined to burn all those sinful books at the stake?

For Cervantes, the scene turns into a discourse on the Golden Age of Spanish literature and a primer on what merits literary praise; a well conceived story? narrative inventiveness? polished prose and clear dialogue? well observed characters? Or is it the realism?”

It’s a book about going nuts, reading too many novels, hand in hand, the ever evolving narrator inserting Cervantes into his metafictional dialectic.

“This Cervantes has been a good friend of mine for many years,” notes the Barber in Chapter VI.

“He is better versed in misfortunes than in verses. His book has a certain creativity; it proposes something and concludes nothing.”

It’s a blur, this story.

But so is living.

Riding back home after the session,

I thought about Quixote’s fantastical search,

About  love and wonder and  lostness.

Among the recesses of our minds,

There is more to things that we immediately see.

There is more to  it all than reason.

 “For reason, on the one hand, signifies the idea of a free, human social life,” writes  As Kathy Acker win her Don Quixote:  “On the other hand, reason is the court of judgment of calculation, the instrument of domination, and the means for the greatest exploitation of nature.”

Is order the instrument of domination?

That judgement is what Cervantez was trying get away from as the Inquisition raged.

Reality is over rated,

hence the imperative to look elsewhere.

The magic realists embraced Quixote’s journey into a garden of forking paths,

where a funeral march takes us from this life into the next,

friends meeting at the crossroads, and talking.

Borges’ labyrinths, and its secret paths connecting his life to that underworld,

and Quixote’s musings, escaping back into his library where magic realist ficciones felt more imperative than the reality around him.

“We are climbing Jacob's ladder”

Bruce sings in  the car to Mom’s the next morning,

his in homage to Pete, the great folk singer.

“The women in Milwaukie made a nice verse,”

Pete follows, playing with Arlo.

“We are dancing Sarah's circle.”

Even if we can’t see it, we all have to know, we can climb that ladder from this life

into some other way of being.

“Never blame anyone for the harm they cause each other,” preaches Donna later that morning at Judson.

“Accept, never fix people, welcome,” she continues,

paraphrasing Romans.

“Accept one another.”

Embrace the other.

“Call people in instead of out.

Spur one another toward love and good deeds

Without giving up meeting each other,

Meeting together.

“This is my story, this is my song,” we sing with  Blessed Assurance.

The teenager and I walk East, through the Village,

Chatting  the afternoon away.

Greeting  friends.

And I make my way up to Grand Central,

Looking  at the river  as the train  takes  us to Poughkeepsie,

The sun descending on the water.

Off to see Rob,

Where the conversation about Quixote continues,

Quixote taking all of us for a piss.

A folie à deux in  his own

 “healthy reaction to a mad world.”

Be realistic,  dream the impossible.

Cervantes helps us understand,

“For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.”