The Theme in the Work
In the novel, the madness of Don Quixote has a stated cause, a rule of operation, diagnoses that do not coincide, and an end. The cause is reading, and the narrator recounts it in the first chapter as one recounts a disease of the brain. The rule is the book's: the gentleman does not see out of nothing, he accommodates what he sees to what he has read, and so contradiction never reaches him, because there is always an enchanter enemy at hand. The diagnoses are those of the people around him: the priest judges him cured or relapsed according to whether the conversation touches on chivalry, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco distinguishes the madman by force from the madman by choice, the son of Don Diego de Miranda calls him a mixed-up madman full of lucid intervals, and Sancho Panza takes him for a fool and, even so, serves him. The end is a disillusionment spoken in a will, but the book does not make the final sanity a victory without cost.
In Chapter I of Part One, the narrator explains the cause without circumlocution.
En resolución, él se enfrascó tanto en su letura, que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en claro, y los días de turbio en turbio; y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el celebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio, in short, he became so absorbed in his reading that his nights passed in reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk; and so, from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up, so that he came to lose his wits.
In Chapter V of Part One, fallen on the road, the gentleman knows who he is, and the answer he gives the neighbor who recognizes him shows that he knows also that he can be others.
Yo sé quién soy -respondió don Quijote-; y sé que puedo ser no sólo los que he dicho, sino todos los Doce Pares de Francia, y aun todos los Nueve de la Fama, I know who I am, answered don Quixote; and I know that I can be not only those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France, and even all the Nine Worthies.
In Chapter XXV of Part One, in the Sierra Morena, madness becomes a trade. He decides to go mad on purpose, in imitation of Amadis and Orlando, and the rule he gives Sancho is that gratuitousness is the merit.
que volverse loco un caballero andante con causa, ni grado ni gracias: el toque está desatinar sin ocasión y dar a entender a mi dama que si en seco hago esto, ¿qué hiciera en mojado?, for a knight-errant to go mad with cause earns neither merit nor thanks: the point is to rave without occasion and let my lady understand that if I do this dry, what would I not do wet?
In Chapter XXVI of Part One, alone, he weighs which of the two madnesses to imitate, and chooses the melancholy one out of loyalty to Dulcinea: he lacks Orlando's occasion, and a furious madness would presuppose an unfaithful lady.
Pero yo, ¿cómo puedo imitalle en las locuras, si no le imito en la ocasión dellas? [...] y haríale agravio manifiesto si, imaginando otra cosa della, me volviese loco de aquel género de locura de Roldán el furioso, but I, how can I imitate him in his madnesses if I do not imitate him in their occasion? [...] and I would do her manifest wrong if, imagining otherwise of her, I were to go mad with that kind of madness of Orlando the Furious.
In Chapter I of Part Two, on the first visit of the priest and the barber after the cage, the gentleman's sanity lasts as long as the conversation does not touch on chivalry, and the priest, who had agreed not to touch it, is the one who touches it, and sees him fall from the summit.
¡Dios te tenga de su mano, pobre don Quijote: que me parece que te despeñas de la alta cumbre de tu locura hasta el profundo abismo de tu simplicidad!, God hold you by the hand, poor don Quixote: it seems to me that you are hurling yourself from the high summit of your madness into the deep abyss of your simplicity!
In Chapter XV of Part Two, the bachelor, defeated in the wood, formulates the distinction that he himself cannot apply to himself.
La diferencia que hay entre esos dos locos es que el que lo es por fuerza lo será siempre, y el que lo es de grado lo dejará de ser cuando quisiere, the difference between those two madmen is that the one who is so by force will always be so, and the one who is so by choice will cease to be so whenever he wishes.
In Chapter XVIII of Part Two, in Don Diego's house, the poet son returns to his father the diagnosis that closes the chapter.
No le sacarán del borrador de su locura cuantos médicos y buenos escribanos tiene el mundo: él es un entreverado loco, lleno de lúcidos intervalos, they will not draw him out of the rough draft of his madness, however many doctors and good scribes the world has: he is a mixed-up madman, full of lucid intervals.
In Chapter XXXIII of Part Two, in front of the duchess, it is Sancho who says what he thinks of his master and what he does with it.
yo tengo a mi señor don Quijote por loco rematado, puesto que algunas veces dice cosas que, a mi parecer, y aun de todos aquellos que le escuchan, son tan discretas y por tan buen carril encaminadas, que el mesmo Satanás no las podría decir mejores; pero, con todo esto, verdaderamente y sin escrúpulo, a mí se me ha asentado que es un mentecato. Pues, como yo tengo esto en el magín, me atrevo a hacerle creer lo que no lleva pies ni cabeza, como fue aquello de la respuesta de la carta, y lo de habrá seis o ocho días, que aún no está en historia; conviene a saber: lo del encanto de mi señora doña Dulcinea, que le he dado a entender que está encantada, no siendo más verdad que por los cerros de Úbeda, I take my lord don Quixote for a thoroughgoing madman, although sometimes he says things that, in my opinion, and in that of all who listen to him, are so discreet and so well directed that Satan himself could not say them better; but, for all that, truly and without scruple, it has settled in me that he is a fool. Now, since I have this in my mind, I dare to make him believe what has neither feet nor head, such as that business of the answer to the letter, and that of six or eight days ago, which is not yet in history; that is to say: the enchantment of my lady doña Dulcinea, whom I have given him to understand is enchanted, which is no more true than the hills of Úbeda.
In Chapter LXV of Part Two, when the bachelor reveals himself, Don Antonio Moreno, the host in Barcelona, reproaches him for wanting to make sane the most amusing madman in the world.
Dios os perdone el agravio que habéis hecho a todo el mundo en querer volver cuerdo al más gracioso loco que hay en él! ¿No veis, señor, que no podrá llegar el provecho que cause la cordura de don Quijote a lo que llega el gusto que da con sus desvaríos, God forgive you the wrong you have done to the whole world in wanting to make sane the most amusing madman in it! Do you not see, sir, that the benefit that don Quixote's sanity can bring will never reach the pleasure he gives with his ravings?
In Chapter LXXIV of Part Two, on his deathbed, the gentleman says that he has his wits, free and clear, and puts the blame on reading.
Yo tengo juicio ya, libre y claro, sin las sombras caliginosas de la ignorancia, que sobre él me pusieron mi amarga y continua leyenda de los detestables libros de las caballerías. Ya conozco sus disparates y sus embelecos, y no me pesa sino que este desengaño ha llegado tan tarde, que no me deja tiempo para hacer alguna recompensa, leyendo otros que sean luz del alma, I now have judgment, free and clear, without the murky shadows of ignorance that my bitter and continual reading of the detestable books of chivalry cast over it. I now know their nonsense and their deceptions, and I regret only that this disillusionment has come so late that it leaves me no time to make some amends by reading others that may be the light of the soul.
And he asks that death not confirm the reputation that life gave him.
Yo me siento, sobrina, a punto de muerte; querría hacerla de tal modo, que diese a entender que no había sido mi vida tan mala que dejase renombre de loco, que, puesto que lo he sido, no querría confirmar esta verdad en mi muerte, I feel, niece, at the point of death; I would like to make it in such a way as to show that my life was not so bad that it should leave the name of a madman, for, though I have been one, I would not want to confirm this truth in my death.
The word "madness" covers in the book two things that the text distinguishes without naming either. One is vision: the gentleman does not choose to see giants where there are windmills, and Sancho's correction passes through him like the wind through the sails. The other is the conduct he chooses in cold blood, the penance of Chapter XXV of Part One, in which he decides to go mad, calculates the effect on the lady, and gives Sancho three days to watch the spectacle. Between the two, the bachelor's distinction in Chapter XV of Part Two (madman by force, madman by choice) does not work: he is both things at once, and whoever labels him is left not knowing where to place the border. Two readings: the book shows a madness that is contaminated by will and makes use of it, and that is what makes it a character; or it shows will taking the place of madness when madness tires, and the good Alonso Quijano of the end is the same man without the artifice.
Who Embodies It
Don Quixote is the madness that the book exposes most: he justifies it, chooses it, defends it, and in the end recognizes it. In Chapter XXV of Part One, the gratuitousness of the penance is what makes it meritorious; in Chapter LXXIV of Part Two, the final lucidity makes him ask Sancho's pardon for having led him into the error that there are knights-errant, and it is Sancho who begs him not to die.
no se muera vuestra merced, señor mío, sino tome mi consejo y viva muchos años, porque la mayor locura que puede hacer un hombre en esta vida es dejarse morir, sin más ni más, sin que nadie le mate, ni otras manos le acaben que las de la melancolía [...] vámonos al campo vestidos de pastores, como tenemos concertado: quizá tras de alguna mata hallaremos a la señora doña Dulcinea desencantada, que no haya más que ver, do not die, your worship, my lord, but take my advice and live many years, because the greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die, just like that, without anyone killing him, or any other hands finishing him but those of melancholy [...] let us go out to the countryside dressed as shepherds, as we have agreed: perhaps behind some bush we will find lady doña Dulcinea disenchanted, and there will be nothing more to see.
Cardenio is the other madman of the Sierra Morena, and his is a madness of disappointed love, with fits. In Chapter XXIV of Part One, the gentleman offers him help, but interrupts the story when he hears mention of Amadis, and when Cardenio, in a fit, says that Queen Madásima lived as a concubine with Master Elisabat, the gentleman defends the queen with such wrath that the narrator comments on the case.
¡Estraño caso; que así volvió por ella como si verdaderamente fuera su verdadera y natural señora: tal le tenían sus descomulgados libros!, a strange case, that he took her part as if she were truly his true and natural lady: so possessed had his excommunicated books left him!
Sansón Carrasco is the madman by choice whom the book unmasks. In Chapter LXV of Part Two, he tells Don Antonio Moreno that the plan to bring the gentleman back to the village was born of pity.
Sabed, señor, que a mí me llaman el bachiller Sansón Carrasco; soy del mesmo lugar de don Quijote de la Mancha, cuya locura y sandez mueve a que le tengamos lástima todos cuantos le conocemos, y entre los que más se la han tenido he sido yo; y, creyendo que está su salud en su reposo y en que se esté en su tierra y en su casa, di traza para hacerle estar en ella, know, sir, that they call me the bachelor Sansón Carrasco; I am from the same village as don Quixote of La Mancha, whose madness and foolishness move all of us who know him to pity him, and among those who have pitied him most I have been; and, believing that his health lies in his rest and in his staying in his own land and in his own house, I devised a plan to make him stay in it.
And in Chapter LXXIV of Part Two, it is he who places on the grave an epitaph that closes with the formula of dying sane and living mad.
Yace aquí el Hidalgo fuerte / que a tanto estremo llegó / de valiente, que se advierte / que la muerte no triunfó / de su vida con su muerte. / Tuvo a todo el mundo en poco; / fue el espantajo y el coco / del mundo, en tal coyuntura, / que acreditó su ventura / morir cuerdo y vivir loco, here lies the strong Gentleman / who reached such an extreme / of valor that it is noted / that death did not triumph / over his life with his death. / He held the whole world cheap; / he was the scarecrow and the bogeyman / of the world, in such a juncture, / that it vouched for his fortune / to die sane and live mad.
Where It Appears
- Part One, Chapter I: The gentleman loses his wits from reading and sells land to buy books.
- Part One, Chapter V: Fallen, he recites the ballad of the Marquis of Mantua and answers the neighbor that he knows who he is.
- Part One, Chapter XXIV: Cardenio, in a fit, knocks the gentleman down with stones for having defended Queen Madásima.
- Part One, Chapter XXV: The gentleman decides to go mad without occasion, in imitation of Amadis and Orlando.
- Part One, Chapter XXVI: Between imitating Orlando or Amadis, the gentleman chooses Amadis's melancholy madness, because he does not want to offend Dulcinea by supposing her unfaithful, like Angelica.
- Part Two, Chapter I: The priest tests the cure and sees him hurl himself from the summit of madness.
- Part Two, Chapter XV: The bachelor Sansón Carrasco, defeated, distinguishes the madman by force, who will always be so, from the madman by choice, who will cease to be so whenever he wishes.
- Part Two, Chapter XVIII: Don Diego's son calls him a mixed-up madman full of lucid intervals.
- Part Two, Chapter XXXIII: Sancho tells the duchess that he takes his master for a thoroughgoing madman and that he deceived him with Dulcinea's enchantment.
- Part Two, Chapter XXXVI: In a letter to his wife, Sancho calls his master a sane madman and an amusing fool.
- Part Two, Chapter LXV: Don Antonio Moreno reproaches the bachelor for wanting to make sane the most amusing madman in the world.
- Part Two, Chapter LXXIV: The gentleman says that he now has his wits, asks that death not confirm the reputation of madman, and dies as Alonso Quijano the Good.
Where the Readings Diverge
The gentleman's madness is read in two ways that the book does not decide. One is the Romantic, which sees in it the greatness of one who is defeated by the world for being better than it. Erich Auerbach refutes it: he reads Dulcinea del Toboso as a comic joke and calls it an act of violence to consider this madness symbolically or tragically.
At the end of the essay, Auerbach extends to Don Quixote's entire madness the verdict he had given to the scene of the enchanted Dulcinea.But to consider this madness symbolically or tragically, that I find an act of violence. It is possible to introduce it through interpretation, but it is not in the text.
Otto Maria Carpeaux observes that the universal importance of the book is owed in part to a misunderstanding.
Don Quixote is a work of universal importance, though owing that importance in part, as so often happens, to a misunderstanding.
Another reading sees the book change temperature like a symphony: it begins deeply ironic and grows ever more bitter until a most sorrowful ending, and madness accompanies this passage.
The two readings disagree about what to do with the ending. Whoever reads Chapter LXXIV of Part Two as the truth of the book, the sanity that undoes the madness, must pass over Sancho, who does not want his master to die and calls him back to the shepherd's field, and over the gentleman's sentence that he does not want to confirm in his death the reputation of madman. Whoever reads the ending as the defeat of a great man must pass over the disillusionment that the gentleman says came too late. What remains standing is the reaction of the three friends: they believe at first that it is a new madness, and only come to believe when the gentleman's reasons prove so well spoken and so Christian that they remove their doubt, and one of the reasons they have for believing that he is dying is the ease with which he returned from mad to sane.