Don Quixote

I am now on page 657 in my readings of Don Quixote. I found many an interesting and "woo woo" filled moments whilst reading but I'll concentrate of the few I thought were the most relevant to our class discussions and other readings.
But first, I'd like to start off by saying that we ALL need to work together at bringing this phrase back into popular use:

"The tambourine's in just the right hands." - Sancho pg. 602
This of course means that "matters are being handled by someone competent." Just imagine the literary and vocabulary fun and adventures you could have!

Anyway...I found several delicious bites of irony in reading this section, one being in the conversation between Don Quixote, Sancho, the cousin. On page 600, the cousin is explaining what we writes about and is convinced that his books containing irrelevant facts, such as who got the first cold ever, are masterful works full of "allegories, metaphors, and transformations that delight, astonish, and instruct, all at the same time."

After hearing this, good ol' D.Q. responded:
"You have said more, Sancho, than you realize. For there are some who exhaust themselves learning and investigating things that, once learned and investigated, do no matter in the slightest to the understanding or the memory." The day was spent in this agreeable conversation, and others like it."
-601

The cousin is one of those investigating and leaning all those things that do not matter and yet he agrees with Don Quixote when he says this. I want to believe that Don Quixote knew what he was saying and was giggling to himself as the cousin went on heartily agreeing with him. I can't really tell if that was intended irony, or if I'm just trying to read too much into it, but I'm leaning more towards intended than not.

The next piece of irony I found on pages 630 and/through 632. This is the section containing the puppet show performed by a disguised escaped gallery slave that D.Q. had freed earlier. ( I love how past characters keep showing up to help confuse and baffle poor Don Quixote). Before Don Quixote takes it upon himself to avenge the menaced puppets, he's commenting, loudly, on the realism, or truthfulness of the show. First:

"Boy, boy,' said Don Quixote in a loud voice, 'tell your story in a straight line and do not become involved in curves or transverse lines, for to get a clear idea of the truth, one must have proofs and more proofs."

Then on page 632, when Don Quixote objects again to the straying from the concrete truth by objecting to the Moor's use of bells instead of drums:

This was heard by the Master Pedro, who stopped the ringing and said, "Your grace should not concern yourself with trifles, Senor Don Quixote, or try to carry things to far that you never reach the end of them. Aren't a thousand plays performed almost every day that are full of a thousand errors and pieces of nonsense, and yet are successful productions that are greeted not only with applause but with admiration?"

And Don Quixote agrees. The irony lies in that before, Don Quixote was screaming the Platoian cry of Truth! Truth! But then he accepts it for what it is, a play. A imitation of events and people for the sake of enjoyment. But then Don Quixote turns around yet again, just a few lines later, and sees the play's attack on the innocent puppet characters and ,even though he just a puppet version of Don Gaiferos, D.Q. can't take such injustices acted upon such a knight so he wipes out not only the puppets but the whole play and stage. The ring of irony runs full circle; from desire of actual truth, to suspension of disbelief, back to the "actual" truth of the offenses acted upon a great knight, a puppet version of that knight, but still an embodiment of that knight. And that was enough for our valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha.
The irony lies in the wishy-washy foundation of when truth is necessary. And to begin with, the whole concept of truth is grotesquely skewed by Don Quixote's pick and choose, then fabricate and then maul kind of mentality . And then he wants accurate truth (like the truth found in his books of chivalry) but is then able to accept the events as a play, a showing of imitations with the intent to entertain and delight, and then goes back to his mad truth and stops the vicious attacks on the puppets, that he had just accepts as being imitations that entertain. But thus is the madness of madmen.

Now, this brings me to my big Woo Woo. In the beginning of Chapter XXIX, specifically on 647 and 648, Don Quixote and Sancho come upon a small fishing boat pulled up on shore. And the first thing Don Quixote says and thinks is hey, this was put here for me to partake in a fabulous and chivalrous adventure. It (finally) hit me, in a very woo woo like fashion, that Don Quixote is like a child. He embodies the innocence a child holds before they experience life and learn from it. Now Don Quixote has experienced life, drank deep from it's cup, if I may. But he has completed the circle of experience, only in a new, mad way. Instead of starting at innocence, rounding to experience and knowledge, and finishing on the "innocence" (or lack of thought that couldn't be innocent) of death, Don Quixote begins at innocence as an innocent child, rounds into an experienced adult, but then circles back to childlike innocence through the his migration to the fantasy world of Romance.

When a child sees a lone boat, parked in the middle of no where with no one to be found, you can bet they're gonna play in it. They're going to pretend the boat was sent to him by Zeus in order for him to sail to the Underworld to retrieve a bolt of fired earth so Zeus can rekindle his fire of sky and lightening ...or something like that. A child will pretend, just as Don Quixote does, that they are in some magical world of fantasy and dragons. And like Don Quixote with his oh-so-special madness, a child can rope others, adults (the supposedly sane) into playing along in their worlds of make believe and can even get other children (crazies) to believe in the very world itself.

Finally, this brings me to a few passages I found in Frye that relate directly to my ideas of Don Quixote as an innocent child.
"The perennially childlike quality of romance is marked by its extraordinary persistent nostalgia, it's search for some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space."
-Frye 186

Does that not embody Don Quixote to his very core? Is he not trapped in a "persistent nostalgia" searching ,or maybe it's better to say, living "some kind of imaginative golden age"? You can imagine my excitement when I found this passage? Everything that Don Quixote is and all that he represents, neatly packaged and tied up with a bow in a single sentence. Don Quixote stays true to his innocence. Everything we, or Sancho, sees as normal or ordinary, Don Quixote sees as fantastical and full of impossible possibilities. He is forever living in the romantic traditions of yesteryear. This entire (almost) 1000 page novel is about the saga of Don Quixote as he struggles to stay innocent in his madness, despite all of the best efforts of his friends, family, and even strangers, surrounded by a world of experience and experiences.
And just when I didn't think it could get any better...

"In romance the central theme of this phase is that of the maintaining of the integrity of the innocent world against the assault of experience."
-Frye pg. 200

Don Quixote maintains the integrity of his innocent under the endless assaults of reality and its experiences rained down upon him by Sancho, the barber, the priest, and basically everyone else Don Quixote has ever met. He even experiences his folly when he mistakes a windmill for a giant, a statue for a captured damsel, and suffers the very physical consequences. But our valiant knight perseveres, and stays the innocent, mad knight we all know and love. His will shall never wavier in his conviction, his innocent marriage to the Romance of the Golden Age of knights.

I think we all need to take a few moments and really remember the innocence of our childhood. In doing so, we all realize that each and everyone of us was once a tiny Don Quixote. Rowing our enchanted boats, storming our blanket fort castles, saving our favorite stuffed dog Scruffy from blood thirsty kitty pirates. However we played as a child, we were, without a doubt, in the realm of romance, where innocence ran supreme and experience was just a proverbial notch on our belt, or plane, or sword, or maybe even a wand. Depends on one's preferences.