What It Is
The inn (the venta) where Don Quixote sees a castle. There are two at the start of the book: the one of the knighting, on the first sally, and the one of the blanket, where he is received by Maritornes and where Sancho is tossed, which returns to host the book for almost fifteen chapters, in the middle of Part One. It is the place where the practical world collects the bill: the innkeeper, his wife, the muleteer, and the guests contradict the castle with the payment, the bed, and the blanket. It is also the setting the book fills with other people: the priest and the barber, Cardenio and Dorothea, Don Fernando, the Captive and Zoraida, the judge, the Brotherhood officers. Between the two things, the castle and the bill, lies the space where Don Quixote's madness is obliged to live with those who do not share it. In Part Two the inn comes to be an inn, and it is this displacement that the symbol keeps.
Where It Appears
The first inn appears in Chapter II of Part One, at the end of the first day's journey, when the gentleman, tired and hungry, sees an inn with two girls at the door and turns it, from what he has read, into a castle with towers and a drawbridge.
como a nuestro aventurero todo cuanto pensaba, veía o imaginaba le parecía ser hecho y pasar al modo de lo que había leído, luego que vio la venta, se le representó que era un castillo con sus cuatro torres y chapiteles de luciente plata, sin faltarle su puente levadiza y honda cava, con todos aquellos adherentes que semejantes castillos se pintan, since to our adventurer everything he thought, saw, or imagined seemed to be made and to happen in the manner of what he had read, as soon as he saw the inn it presented itself to him as a castle with its four towers and pinnacles of shining silver, lacking neither its drawbridge nor its deep moat, with all those appurtenances that such castles are depicted with.
In Chapter III of Part One, the innkeeper, seeing the mad guest, joins the game and gives him the first practical lesson in chivalry: what the books do not say is what was too obvious to say, money and clean shirts, and when the gentleman splits the heads of two muleteers with his lance the innkeeper shouts that madness will absolve him.
El ventero daba voces que le dejasen, porque ya les había dicho como era loco, y que por loco se libraría, aunque los matase a todos, the innkeeper cried out that they should leave him alone, because he had already told them he was mad, and that being mad he would go free, even if he killed them all.
The second inn is that of the plank bed. In Chapter XVI of Part One, the innkeeper's wife, the daughter, and the Asturian Maritornes tend to the battered gentleman. He imagines he has arrived at a castle and that the innkeeper's daughter is the lord's.
él se imaginó haber llegado a un famoso castillo -que, como se ha dicho, castillos eran a su parecer todas las ventas donde alojaba-, y que la hija del ventero lo era del señor del castillo, he imagined he had arrived at a famous castle (which, as has been said, were castles in his view all the inns where he lodged), and that the innkeeper's daughter was the lord of the castle's.
When Maritornes enters the room to go to the muleteer, he takes her by the wrist and feels her as the goddess of beauty: the tow shift is gossamer, the glass beads are pearls, the breath of stale salad is aroma.
Y era tanta la ceguedad del pobre hidalgo, que el tacto, ni el aliento, ni otras cosas que traía en sí la buena doncella, no le desengañaban, las cuales pudieran hacer vomitar a otro que no fuera arriero; antes, le parecía que tenía entre sus brazos a la diosa de la hermosura, and so great was the blindness of the poor gentleman that the touch, nor the breath, nor other things that the good damsel carried in her, undeceived him, which might have made anyone who was not a muleteer vomit; rather, it seemed to him that he held in his arms the goddess of beauty.
In Chapter XVII of Part One, after the night of fisticuffs, he attributes the damage to an enchanted Moor who guards the treasure of the damsel's beauty. At the time of paying, he concedes the error without renouncing what he believed: he thought it was a castle, and not one of the worst.
Engañado he vivido hasta aquí -respondió don Quijote-, que en verdad que pensé que era castillo, y no malo, I have lived deceived until now, answered don Quixote, for in truth I thought it was a castle, and not a bad one.
Sancho Panza invokes the law of knights in order not to pay, and the guests put him in a blanket and toss him in the air in the yard.
The stage of the middle of the book begins in Chapter XXXII of Part One. The priest and the barber arrive with Cardenio and Dorothea, and the innkeeper, who has a trunk of books of chivalry, rejects the thesis that they are lies.
¡Como si yo no supiese cuántas son cinco y adónde me aprieta el zapato! [...] estando impreso con licencia de los señores del Consejo Real, como si ellos fueran gente que habían de dejar imprimir tanta mentira junta, as if I did not know how many are five and where my shoe pinches me! [...] being printed with license from the gentlemen of the Royal Council, as if they were people who would let so many lies be printed all together.
In Chapter XXXV of Part One, Sancho comes out of his master's room shouting that the gentleman is in the fiercest battle his eyes have ever seen, and the priest, interrupted in reading The Curious Impertinent, discovers that they are wineskins of red wine slashed open by a man who is asleep.
Acudid, señores, presto y socorred a mi señor, que anda envuelto en la más reñida y trabada batalla que mis ojos han visto, come, gentlemen, quickly, and help my master, who is embroiled in the fiercest and most desperate battle my eyes have ever seen.
In Chapter XXXVII of Part One, when the gentleman repeats that everything in the inn is enchantment, the squire, without theory, gives him the counter-proof of the body.
Todo lo creyera yo -respondió Sancho-, si también mi manteamiento fuera cosa dese jaez, mas no lo fue, sino real y verdaderamente; y vi yo que el ventero que aquí está hoy día tenía del un cabo de la manta, y me empujaba hacia el cielo con mucho donaire y brío, y con tanta risa como fuerza; y donde interviene conocerse las personas, tengo para mí, aunque simple y pecador, que no hay encantamento alguno, sino mucho molimiento y mucha mala ventura, I would believe it all, Sancho replied, if my blanketing too were a thing of that sort, but it was not, rather real and truly; and I saw that the innkeeper who is here today held one corner of the blanket, and was tossing me toward heaven with much grace and spirit, and with as much laughter as force; and where people are known, I hold for myself, though simple and a sinner, that there is no enchantment at all, but much bruising and much misfortune.
In Chapters XXXVIII of Part One to XLIII of Part One, the inn ceases to be a stage for jests and becomes a stage for recognitions: the Captive and his brother the judge, Zoraida, Don Luis and Doña Clara, the judge. The gentleman watches in silence and attributes everything to chivalric chimeras.
In Chapter XLIV of Part One and in Chapter XLV of Part One, the barber claims the basin and the packsaddle, and the hall turns into a tribunal, with a secret vote, from ear to ear.
El caso es, buen hombre, que ya yo estoy cansado de tomar tantos pareceres, porque veo que a ninguno pregunto lo que deseo saber que no me diga que es disparate el decir que ésta sea albarda de jumento, sino jaez de caballo, y aun de caballo castizo, the fact is, good man, that I am now tired of taking so many opinions, because I see that there is no one I ask what I wish to know who does not tell me that it is nonsense to say that this is a packsaddle of an ass, and not the harness of a horse, and even of a thoroughbred horse.
In Chapters XLVI of Part One and XLVII of Part One, everything dissolves into money, marriage, and peace, and the inn hands the gentleman over to the cage.
In Part Two, the place changes status. In Chapter XXIV of Part Two, when they reach an inn at nightfall, the text records Sancho's contentment at seeing his master take it for a real inn. In Chapter XXXI of Part Two, the Duke and Duchess receive him in a royal castle, and the narrator says that that was the first day he believed himself a true knight-errant, seeing himself treated as the books prescribe.
aquél fue el primer día que de todo en todo conoció y creyó ser caballero andante verdadero, y no fantástico, viéndose tratar del mesmo modo que él había leído se trataban los tales caballeros en los pasados siglos, that was the first day he fully knew and believed himself to be a true knight-errant, and not a fantastic one, seeing himself treated in the same way he had read such knights were treated in past centuries.
In Chapter LIX of Part Two, on catching sight of an inn, Don Quixote calls it an inn, contrary to his habit of calling every one a castle, and Sancho thanks heaven. It is there that the gentleman and the squire come upon the apocryphal book in the hands of two gentlemen.
What It Means
The inn is the place where Don Quixote's first madness, that of seeing a castle, ends up put to the test by ordinary life. At the venta everything is small and verifiable: the plank bed, the bill, the blanket, the wineskins, the right of lodging. The novel uses this smallness to do two things at once: it shows that the gentleman reads the world through the books, without budging, and it shows that the world, there, has a way to answer, through the mouths of those who charge, laugh, and toss. The inn of the middle of the book then becomes a kind of square in which the stories of others, the Curious Impertinent, the Captive, the judge, pass under the eyes of a madman who takes them for chivalry.
The symbol changes function in Part Two, and what changes is the gentleman, not the inn. In Part One, he needs inns to be castles in order to enter and ask for the investiture; in Part Two, the castle exists, it is the dukes', and there the inn ceases to be a castle. Two readings: Don Quixote learned from the blows that the venta is a venta and came to distinguish; or he no longer needs improvised castles because the dukes give him the setting the books prescribe. The text does not choose between the two, and only records Sancho's relief, who thanks heaven.
Relationships
- The work: Don Quixote.
- Standard themes: Appearance and Reality, Madness.
- Themes in the work: Appearance and Reality, Madness.
- Characters: Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Cardenio, Dorothea, the priest and the barber, the Captive, the Duke and Duchess.
- Neighboring symbols: Mambrino's helmet, disputed at the inn, and the cage, set up there.