Don Quixote is the story of a country gentleman, almost fifty years old, who is so obsessed with reading books of chivalry that he drives himself mad.
Therefore, he decides to become a knight errant who driven by the love of his lady and the desire to increase his fame, to serve his country and to right wrongs, sallies forth, in the company of his loyal squire, Sancho Panza, in quest of adventures on behalf of the distressed.
With the appearance of Sancho, Cervantes introduces one of the highlights of the novel, the dialogue between antithetical characters from which affection and friendship develops. Literary critic Harold Bloom remarks that: “Cervantes instructs us how to talk to one another. […] Don Quixote and Sancho Panza change and mature by listening to one another, and their friendship is the most persuasive in all literature.” (p.1) The dialogue between the main characters of the novel, allows what Salvador de Madariaga calls the “quixotization” of Sancho and the “sanchification” of Don Quixote, in other words, “connected by the same spirit, they gradually become closer to each other.” (p.127)
The friendship between Don Quixote and Sancho begins as one of “utility” (to use Aristotelian terminology), that between a knight who needs a squire and a poor peasant who needs a job. Later in the novel, it becomes a “friendship of pleasure,” because the two characters enjoy each other company and conversation. But when the novel ends, it had become what for Aristotle would be a “perfect friendship,” that which Harold Bloom aptly described as “two great natures in full communion of each other.” (p.1) And in words of the priest: “It seems as if both were made from the same mold.” (II, 2; 470) In other words, a friendship based on a shared sense of what is good and true (in Aristotelian terms), reciprocated goodwill, and on willing the good of the other, according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Good friends accept each other as they are, qualities and defects included. This is why Sancho describes Don Quixote in the following way: “There’s nothing of the scoundrel in him; […] [he is] as innocent as a baby; he doesn’t know how to harm anybody, he can only do good to everybody, and there’s no malice in him: a child could convince him it’s night in the middle of the day, and because, he’s simple I love him with all my heart and couldn’t leave him no matter how many crazy things he does.” (II, 13; 536) It is also why Don Quixote describes Sancho to the dukes like this: “ I want your lordship and ladyship to understand that Sancho Panza is one of the most amusing squires who ever served a knight errant; at times his simpleness is so clever that deciding if he is simple or clever is cause of no small pleasure; his slyness condemns him for a rogue, and his thoughtlessness confirms him as a simpleton; he doubts everything, and he believes everything; when I think that he is about to plunge headlong into foolishness, he comes out with perceptions that raise him to the skies. In short, I would not trade him for any other squire even if I were given a city to do so.” (II, 32; 674)
Nevertheless, a good friend accepts his friend as he is, but provides him with good advice when necessary. This is why for C.S. Lewis, friendship is a school of virtue. (p.57) Sancho Panza, throughout the novel, is revealed as a basically good man, sometimes prudent, and with great affection for his donkey. He is a good husband and father and loved by his wife and children. He seems to have a reasonably good Christian formation since he remembers his priest’s sermons. In addition, he has a great deal of common sense and practical wisdom that he communicates through proverbs. Hence, there is a lot that Sancho can teach his master. We know that Don Quixote, due to his madness, distorts reality, for him, inns are castles, herds of sheep are armies and windmills are giants. In each of these situations, Sancho is the one who tries to show his master his error. In one instance, near the end of the novel, Don Quixote, defeated and depressed, sees two boys arguing about a cricked cage. One says to the other: “You won’t see it in all the days of your life.” (II, 73;929) This is seen by Don Quixote as a bad omen related to Dulcinea. Also, he sees a hare racing across the field, followed by grey-hounds and hunters, which take refuge between the feet of the donkey; he interprets this as another evil omen. Sancho, immediately, corrects his master because he “heard the priest in [his] village say that it isn’t right for sensible Christians to heed this kind of nonsense, and even your grace has told me the same thing, letting me know that Christians who pay attention to omens were fools.” (II, 73; 930) I concur with José Ramón Ayllón: “Cervantes, who had a deep knowledge of human nature […] places at the side of Don Quixote a squire, full of affection and common sense, who knows how to listen to his master and takes him seriously, while he corrects him with simplicity and wit. Psychologist, psychiatrist and illiterate teacher by chance, Sancho Panza plays his multiple roles successfully and achieves Don Quixote’s cure.” (p.33) Nevertheless, Sancho is only the secondary cause of this, since at the end of the novel, Alonso Quixano himself, attributes his cure to God: “Blessed be Almighty God who has done such great good for me! His mercies have no limit, and the sins of men do not curtail or hinder them.” (II, 74; 935)
It is important to understand that Don Quixote is “mad in patches, full of lucid intervals.” According to all the other characters he encounters, including the narrator, the Don is only mad in areas concerning “books of chivalry.” In everything else, he shows intelligence, wisdom, depth of knowledge, and goodness. Concerning Don Quixote’s goodness, I agree with Jaime Fernandez’s remark: “What is relevant for the reader is that a good man dies, a man who became mad and committed himself wholeheartedly to do good to others. The means (to resurrect knights-errant) were mistaken and he rejects them, but he cannot reject the essence of his engagement, his goodness. Doing good is everlasting.” (p.22) Don Quixote is some sort of professor of ethics or moral theology and Sancho is his disciple/friend who is a fast learner. Famous is the advice that Don Quixote gave Sancho before the latter left to become governor of an island. (II, 42) “First, my son, you must fear God, because in fearing him lies wisdom.” (II, 42; 730) Prudence is a necessary virtue for a politician. “Second, you must look at who you are and make an effort to know yourself, you will not puff yourself up like the frog who wanted to be the equal of the ox.” (II, 42; 730) Certainly, arrogance is one of the worst vices that a governor may have. Third, he advices him to be merciful in the application of the law, “because although all the attributes of God are equal, in our view mercy is more brilliant and splendid than justice.” (II, 42; 732)
Finally, he advices Sancho to be temperate in eating and drinking. (II, 43; 733) Sancho governs with common sense and wisdom and he leaves his office as poor as he entered (not like many politicians), but the most important thing is that his experience as governor gave him more self-knowledge.
As the novel progresses, Don Quixote becomes more aware that Sancho is not only his squire, but a true friend, he increasingly refers to him with expressions of affection such as: “friend,” “son,” “friend and guide.” In addition, in a letter that he writes to governor Sancho, in the farewell, he writes: “Your friend, Don Quixote of La Mancha.” (II, 51; 795)
Since the beginning of the novel, Don Quixote considers himself a Christian knight, one of those who: “are ministers of God on earth, the arms by which His justice is put into effect on earth.” (I, 13; 88-89). He was always guided by Christian hope in the life to come. Nevertheless, it is his friendship with Sancho which helps him realize that one should not expect of things that are relative (fame, lady and earthly justice), the Absolute, which can only be achieved in a transcendent horizon, a world beyond this life, in which, he would be welcomed, finally, by the Mercy of God.
According to C.S. Lewis: “true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to be a real friend.” (p.61) Hence, at a deeper level, Cervantes aspires to a “perfect friendship” with the reader. A reader and a poet, Rubén Darío, recognizes him as a faithful and true friend:
In all my days of troubled loneliness
And fretted grief Cervantes is to me
A faithful friend, and none so true as he,
That brings me precious gifts of quietness.
[…] He speaks as runs a brook, so amorous
And very gentle is this Christian knight,
Even undaunted. And I love him thus. (p.132)
Cervantes is thus capable of moving the reader from beauty to goodness and finally to truth. Otto Bird (1914-2009), the founder of the Program of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame, in his book, Seeking a Center: My Life as a Great Bookie, testifies:
Recollecting now those books that I read almost sixty years ago, reconsidering their effect upon me at that time, I do not think it an exaggeration to claim that Don Quixote was the most influential. In ways that seem puzzling and obscure, that book persuaded me that I too should become a Catholic and to that extent at least follow that great knight of faith. It may seem odd that Don Quixote, who is often taken as no more than a figure of fun and of ridicule, should ever inspire anyone to become a Catholic. (p.18)
Thus, Cervantes is capable of persuading Otto Bird or any other reader, by facilitating an encounter and a friendship with Christ, our true Friend who declared: “I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15: 14)
In conclusion, Don Quixote is a novel on friendship at four different levels: 1) the development of the “perfect friendship” between Don Quixote and Sancho, 2) the participation of the reader in such a friendship, 3) Cervantes’s desire to achieve a “perfect friendship” with the reader by facilitating his encounter with the Summum Bonum, God and 4) finally, the friendship of the reader with God.
Egberto Bermúdez
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, I-II, Question 26, Article 4.
Translated by Alfred Freddoso.
https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm
Ayllón, José Ramón. Tal vez soñar: La filosofía en la gran literatura.
Barcelona: Ariel, 2009
Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Book 8, parts 3 and 11, and Book 9,
Part 6, translated by W.D. Ross.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html
Bird, Otto. Seeking a Center: My Life as a Great Bookie. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991.
Bloom, Harold. Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Philadelphia: Chelsea, 2001.
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman. New YorK: HarperCollins, 2003.
Darío, Rubén. Poesía. Barcelona: Planeta, 1987.
Fernández, Jaime. Invitación al Quijote. Madrid: Lunwerg, 2004.
Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves. New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1988.
Madariaga, Salvador de. Guía del lector del “Quijote”: Ensayo Psicológico sobre el “Quijote”.
Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1967.
