[Don Quixote…][1] was, perhaps, the most perfect literary expression of the drama of the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age—written by an author who knew himself to be more experienced in suffering than in song: Miguel de Cervantes.[2]
His Don Quixote begins as a farce, a crude mockery that is far from being a work of the imagination or a piece of light literature. The humorous auto-da-fé in the sixth chapter, in which the pastor and the barber burn the books of the unfortunate knight, is a very authentic gesture: the world of the Middle Ages is cast out, the door is barred against its reentry; it belongs now irrevocably to the past. In the person of Don Quixote, a new age mocks the old one. The knight becomes a fool: awakened from the dreams of yesterday, a new generation faces reality without disguise and without adornment. In the lighthearted ridicule of the first chapter, there is reflected something of the change, of the self-assurance, of a new age that has forgotten its dreams, has discovered reality and is proud of having done so. But, as the novel progresses, something strange happens to the author. He begins gradually to love his foolish knight. This cannot certainly, be explained simply by the fact that he was offended by the mockery of a literary thief who turned his noble fool into a lowly clown, although it may well have been the figure of the false Don Quixote that first made him fully aware that his fool had a noble soul; that the foolishness of consecrating his life to the protection of the weak and the defense of truth and right had is own greatness. Behind the foolishness, Cervantes discovers the simplicity. “He can do evil to no one but rather does good to everyone, and there is no guile in him.” [3] What a noble foolishness Don Quixote chooses as his vocation: “To be pure in his thoughts, modest in his words, sincere in his actions, patient in adversity, merciful toward those in need and, finally, a crusader for truth even if the defense of it should cost him his life.” [4] The foolish deeds have become a lovable game behind which may be seen the purity of his heart—indeed, the center of his foolishness, as we are now aware, is identical with the strangeness of the good in a world whose realism has nothing but scorn for one who accepts truth as reality and risks his life for it. The arrogant certainty with which Cervantes burned his bridges behind him and laughed at an earlier age has become a nostalgia for what was lost. This is not a return to the world of the romances of chivalry but a consciousness of what must not be lost and a realization of man’s peril, which increases whenever, in the burning of the past, he loses the totality of himself.
Joseph Ratzinger
[1] Joseph Ratzinger in Principles of Catholic Theology. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987, 392-393.
[2] For the quotations from Don Quixote, I have used the German translation by Ludwig Braunfels in the edition published by the Deutsches Bücherbund (Stuttgart-Hamburg, n.d.); quotation is on 61.
[3] Ibid., 637.
[4] Ibid., 678.
