What will the future say about the arts of the 21st century?

As I talked about my favourite centuries, one person said his was the 20th century.

That’s a good answer. Just cinema and photography are good reasons to pick the 20th century. Explosive.

In music, plenty of things were happening—I myself like jazz—I love John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, etc. But most importantly, technology forever changed music listening. 

In literature, on this side of the Atlantic, the Modernists—especially Joyce, Proust, Woolf, T. S. Eliot—changed fiction and poetry. American literature peaked in the 20th century: Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, J. D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, etc. Russian literature was no longer the Golden Age but still had great writers—I love Life and Fate. The 20th century was glorious for many countries around the world: France had Proust and many others; Japan had Soseki, Kawabata, and Akutagawa; Bohemia had Kafka; Czech literature had Milan Kundera; Austria had Robert Musil; Norway had Knut Hamsun; Colombia had Gabriel García Márquez; Argentina had Jorge Luis Borges; Yiddish literature had Isaac Bashevis Singer; Canada got Alice Munro (rest in peace); etc.  

South Vietnam also had a great burst of creativity in a very short span of time, sadly not much known internationally. My mum mentions Nhã Ca, Túy Hồng, Nguyễn Thị Ng.H, Nguyễn Thị Hoàng, Nguyễn Thị Thụy Vũ, Dương Nghiễm Mậu, Nguyễn Hương, etc. in prose fiction; Du Tử Lê, Vũ Hoàng Chương, Thanh Tâm Tuyền, Trần Dạ Từ, Nguyễn Tất Nhiên, Đinh Hùng, Trầm Tử Thiêng, etc. in poetry. I would add Bùi Giáng, one of my favourite poets. 

20th century literature was so rich. It just so happens that I feel more at home in the 19th century, that writers such as Tolstoy and Chekhov mean a lot more to me personally.

It’s the same with the visual arts. The 20th century had lots of art movements: Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Postmodernism, Photorealism, and so on—there are also performance art, installation art, butoh, etc. but I only like a couple of artists, like Egon Schiele and Picasso. 20th century art generally doesn’t speak to me, especially since Postmodernism, conceptual art, and performance art. Also not a fan of camp and kitsch. 

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(A piece by Jeff Koons) 

So what will the arts in the 21st century be like? What will people in the future say about this century? 

It is impossible to say what will happen in the arts, with the emergence of AI. Will it be an explosion like the Industrial Revolution? Will it change everything like the invention of cameras and music recordings? 

Or will it swallow us all, and destroy everything? 

If we talk about the arts of 2000-2024, I don’t read much contemporary fiction and can’t comment on it—some of it is safe and ideology-driven and there are harmful trends such as sensitivity readers, but I think there are plenty of great talents around. I love Alice Munro, for instance. 

The field I know the best is cinema, and generally I prefer films of the 50s-70s to contemporary films, at least when it comes to American cinema. I do like some recent films: Ballad of a White Cow (Iran), Anatomy of a Fall (France), Shoplifters (Japan), The Zone of Interest (English director), The Taste of Things (France), The Father (French director), etc. Hollywood, on the other hand, is dominated by superhero movies, franchises, and remakes, and I often dislike recent highly acclaimed American films.

I expect people in the future will say that 21st century cinema was brilliant and full of wonderful things in other countries—Japan, France, a few places in Europe, perhaps South Korea, perhaps Iran—but not in the US.

In theatre, nothing seems to be happening. The 20th century had Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett doing crazy things, and there were plenty of great playwrights—the current scene pales in comparison. I’m ignorant, but I guess people who know more than me would probably say that there’s a decline in theatre—London theatres, apart from Shakespeare productions, are dominated by musical adaptations of popular films and rewritten versions of Chekhov. 

The art scene is even bleaker and more depressing. I had followed art pages and gone to contemporary art exhibitions for years, in different countries in Europe, before deciding, after a visit to Wellcome Collection last year, that I would no longer bother to keep up with it. And having decided so, I still went to Saatchi Gallery and a few months ago saw the contemporary section at Tate Britain, so I can say I do have a good idea of what’s going on in the art scene, and it’s largely rubbish. Look at the glorious 17th century! Look at the great artists of the late 19th, early 20th century! Then look at contemporary art—it’s embarrassing. 

What’s going on in music? I have no idea. I’ve got the impression that there are lots of different things, different genres, different styles, but pop music also dominates everything? 

The 21st century however will be very, very different because of AI.

What do you think? 

My favourite centuries

(Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco de Zurbarán, one of my favourite paintings at National Gallery, London)

For a long time, my favourite century has been the 19^th century. British novels were glorious: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Vanity Fair, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Wilkie Collins, the Sherlock Holmes stories, etc. Romantic and Victorian poetry had many great names: John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, John Clare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, etc.

Russian literature had its Golden Age in the 19^th century: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Leskov, Chekhov, etc. (the only one here I haven’t read is Pushkin—humiliating, I know).

American literature didn’t peak till the 20^th century—I think you would agree—but Moby Dick is one of my favourite novels.

As for French literature, I haven’t read much—two Flaubert novels, one Balzac, one Zola—but they had those three novelists, plus Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Jules Verne, George Sand, Guy de Maupassant…

Vietnam’s most important literary work, Truyện Kiều, is also from the 19^th century.

When I first got into serious literature, in my teens, many of my favourite writers were from the 20^th century—Kafka, Nabokov, Salinger, Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Marquez, and so on—but over the years, the writers who have had lasting impact and come to mean the most to me are mostly 19^th century British and Russian writers. It feels like my period, so to speak.

Most of my favourite painters, as it happens, are also from the 19^th century: Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, William Turner, John Singer Sargent, etc.

Anyway, today I was at the National Gallery in London again—this year is the 200^th anniversary of the gallery—and on my way to the Rembrandt paintings, I found myself in the room of the Spanish Golden Age—so far something of indifference but now a subject of interest, thanks to Don Quixote. And then I thought, how glorious the 17^th century was! English theatre at the turn of the 17^th century was largely defined by Shakespeare, but there were also John Webster, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, etc. English poetry at this time had John Milton, John Donne, George Herbert, John Dryden, etc. Francis Bacon and Samuel Pepys are two other important figures, and The Pilgrim’s Progress is also from the 17^th century, which I recently discovered had been translated into even more languages than The Communist Manifesto, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Don Quixote.

The 17th century was also a magnificent period in Spain, part of the Golden Age: especially with Cervantes in literature, creating “the first modern novel”; Lope de Vega in theatre; Velázquez, Zurbarán, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in painting, etc. Apparently it was also a great period for Spanish sculpture, architecture, and music, though I don’t know much about these.

The same century was the Golden Age for Dutch painting—my favourites are Rembrandt and Vermeer—they also had Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Aert de Gelder, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Ambrosius Bosschaert, Willem van Aelst, Jan Weenix, etc. Flemish art had Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, etc.

What else? 17^th century in France was called Grand Siècle, though I’m a pleb—I only know about Molière, Racine, Madame de La Fayette, and Descartes. Italy had Caravaggio (I saw “The Last Caravaggio” exhibition at the National Gallery today). Japan had Basho and Chikamatsu Monzaemon. What else did I miss?

The 17th century increasingly fascinates me, especially now that I’m a fan of Shakespeare and Cervantes.

What are your favourite centuries? And why?

Update: My friend Himadri's blog post in response.

Don Quixote: “There’s much to be said as to whether or not the histories of knights-errant are fictional or not”

1/ Part 2 is even greater than Part 1. 

As written in the previous blog post, in Part 2, Cervantes plays more with the form, with unreliable narrators, with the Benengeli manuscript conceit. It is as though Cervantes, when he started writing Don Quixote, had the material and didn’t know what to do with it, so he played around and attempted different things, but by the time he got to Part 2, he had figured it out.

We see a similar thing with the characterisation—Cervantes had Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in rough outlines, but it took him some time to find their voices, their manners of speaking, especially for Sancho.

I love that scene where Pancho Panza tells someone else about his love for Don Quixote. Don Quixote is, in many ways, a madman, and the two of them are very different—we can see this very clearly at the wedding banquet, when the idealistic knight sides with Basilio and the pragmatic squire thinks it’s right for Quiteria marry the rich Camacho—but we can see why they have love for each other, and we love them both. 

The thing I find especially fascinating about the novel is that, at the most basic level, it’s about a madman who thinks chivalry romances are real, thinks fictional characters, such as Amadis de Gaula, are real, and wants to be a knight errant himself; but Cervantes has created these larger-than-life characters who feel so utterly real and who seem to exist beyond the novel itself. One cannot imagine Anna outside Anna Karenina, Natasha and Andrei and Pierre outside War and Peace, but one can imagine Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the streets.

There is a Don Quixote Museum in Castilla–La Mancha, as though he’s real. There’s even a Dulcinea del Toboso House-Museum, when she doesn’t even exist in the novel itself. 

Cervantes raises interesting questions about our relationship with fictional characters. After all, in London there’s a Sherlock Holmes Museum, and people queue to take photos next to the 9 ¾ platform at Kings Cross. 

The quote in the post title comes from P.2, ch.16, said by the knight (translated by Tom Lathrop). 

2/ I like this speech from Sancho: 

““In truth, señor,” responded Sancho, “you don’t have to depend on the fleshless one. I mean Death, who eats lambs as well as sheep, and I’ve heard our priest say that she treads with equal feet in the high towers of kings as she does the humble huts of the poor. This lady has more power than reluctance, and she’s not at all squeamish. She eats everything and fills her saddlebags with people of all ages and rank. She’s not a reaper who takes siestas, because she reaps all the time, and she cuts dry grass as well as green, and it seems that she doesn’t chew, but just gorges and swallows everything placed before her, because she has the hunger of a dog, and they never stop eating. And though she has no stomach, she still swells up, and thirsts for the lives of all living creatures, just like a person would drink a jug of cold water.”” (P.2, ch.20) 

3/ Look at the moment when Don Quixote is pulled out of the Cave of Montesinos: 

“… But Don Quixote said nothing in response, and when they had taken him completely out, they saw that his eyes were closed, revealing that he was asleep. They stretched him out on the ground and untied him, yet with all this he didn’t wake up. But they turned him from side to side and shook him for a good while until he came to, stretching as if he’d been woken out of a very deep and heavy slumber. Looking all around as if he were distressed, he said: “May God forgive you, my friends, for you’ve plucked me from the most delicious and agreeable life and spectacle that any human being has ever seen or lived. Now I finally understand that all of the joys of this life are just shadows and dreams, or wither like a wildflower. Oh, unfortunate Montesinos! Oh, badly wounded Durandarte! Oh, unfortunate Belerma! Oh, tearful Guadiana and you unfortunate daughters of Ruidera, whose waters are the tears that your beautiful eyes cried!”” (P.2, ch.22) 

Where does the idea of life as a dream first come from?

Anyway, that moment made me think about Bottom’s soliloquy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: 

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom. And I will sing it in the latter end of a play before the duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.” 

Don Quixote is such a rich, complex work of literature. I must delve into the writings about Cervantes’s book. 

4/ Cervantes plays some dazzling game with the layers of narrators in Don Quixote: 

“The person who translated this great history from the original that its first author, Cide Hamete Benengeli, wrote, says that when he got to the chapter about the adventure of the Cave of Montesinos, he found in the margin and in Hamete’s own handwriting, these words:

I cannot convince or persuade myself that what the previous chapter relates about what happened to the brave don Quixote really happened exactly as written. The reason is that all the other adventures met with so far have been possible and credible; but I can find no way I can accept this one about the cave as true because it’s so far beyond the bounds of reason. […] If this adventure seems apocryphal, I’m not to blame; I write it without confirming it as either true or false…” (P.2, ch.24) 

5/ Here is what Dostoyevsky wrote about Don Quixote: 

“I don’t know what is now being taught in courses of literature, but a knowledge of this most splendid and sad of all books created by human genius would certainly elevate the soul of a young person with a great idea, give rise to profound questions in his heart, and work toward diverting his mind from worship of the eternal and foolish idol of mediocrity, self-satisfied conceit, and cheap prudence. Man will not forget to take this saddest of all books with him to God’s last judgment. He will point to the most profound and fateful mystery of humans and humankind that the book conveys.”

Read the full thing here.

Much as I love Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky is a much more insightful reader and critic (Tolstoy’s comments on other writers were just revealing about himself).

Don Quixote: “mixing one truth with a thousand lies”

1/ I love Cervantes’s wit.

Quite early on in Part 2, he doesn’t just have Don Quixote and Sancho Panza talk about existence of Part 1, but he also writes a scene where another character, Sansón, discuss its faults, such as the insertion of the Anselmo-Lotario-Camilla story. 

The funniest bit is when Sansón says: “… it seems to me that there will be no nation or language that will not have its own translation.” (P.2, ch.3) 

Not very modest, is Miguel? But Don Quixote has indeed turned out to be one of the most translated books in the world. 

I also like that Cervantes plays around with the form, so his novel feels more modern than many novels that came out in the 19th or 20th century. For example, in Part 1, he creates the conceit that the story of Don Quixote is written by a Moor named Cide Mahamate Benengeli, then the manuscript is found by an unnamed narrator (the joke, of course, is that that’s Cervantes) and then translated; the story moves between Benengeli’s narrative voice and Cervantes’s, but Cervantes the author doesn’t make much use of that conceit. In Part 2, he plays around more with it and has the translator commenting on the writing of Cide Mahamate Benengeli, and the comments are reported, in indirect speech, by Cervantes the narrator. 

Cervantes plays more with the concept of unreliable narrators. For example:

“He also put a cape of good gray material on. First of all, he washed his head and face with five—or maybe six (because there’s a difference of opinion about the number)—buckets of water, and even with that, the water was still the color of whey, thanks to the gluttony of Sancho and the purchase of his black cottage cheese that made his master so white.” (P.2, ch.18) 

(translated by Tom Lathrop) 

And he goes further—Don Quixote says: 

““… I fear that in the history they say is circulating about my deeds, if by chance the author was an enchanter who is my enemy, he may have written one thing for another, mixing one truth with a thousand lies, and amusing himself by telling idle tales that are not related to the truth of the history. Oh, envy, root of infinite wickedness and destroyer of virtue! All vices, Sancho, take along with them a bit of pleasure, but envy brings only disgust, animosity, and rage.”

“That’s what I say, too,” responded Sancho, “and I think that this legend or history that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco has seen must have dragged my honor through the dirt, as they say, from pillar to post, here and there, sweeping the streets with it…”” (P.2, ch.8)

The Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of Part 2 are not the same as the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of Part 1: they’re now conscious they have been in a book, and will be in another. 

The other characters may also be different in that they may know the two of them from the text of Part 1: there’s an episode, for example, in which Don Quixote meets a reader who mirrors his actions and echoes his language. 

2/ Shakespeare regularly compares life to the stage, Cervantes also makes the same comparison in the novel—I like that conversation between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: 

“… “Well, the same thing,” said Don Quixote, “that happens in plays happens in life—some are emperors, others popes, and all the characters that there are in a play. But when the end comes, which is when life ends, Death takes away all the clothing that differentiates them and they become equal in the grave.”

“A fine comparison,” said Sancho, “although not so new that I haven’t heard it many, many times, like the business of the game of chess—while it’s being played, each piece has its particular function, and when the game is over, they’re all mixed up and jumbled together, and they’re put into a bag, which is like finishing one’s life in the grave.”” (P.2, ch.12) 

Same bag. 

Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end. 

3/ Again on the concept of unreliable narrators: 

“And it should be said that when the author got to this point in this true history, he exclaims: “Oh, strong and beyond all exaggeration dauntless Don Quixote de La Mancha, mirror in which all of the valiant men in the world may see themselves, a second and new Manuel de León, who was the glory and honor of Spanish knights! What words can I use to describe this so frightening deed, or with what words can I make future ages believe it, or what praise is there that will not be fitting, no matter how much exaggeration is used? You on foot, alone, intrepid, heroic, with a single sword—and not one of those really sharp ones from Toledo—with a none too shiny or clean steel shield, are waiting for the two fiercest lions that were ever born in the African jungles. Let your own deeds serve as praise, you brave Manchegan—for here I’ll leave your deeds at their height, lacking the words to describe them.”

Here the exclamation of the author ends and he continues, getting back to the thread of his story, saying:…” (P.2, ch.17) 

This is the episode with the lions.

This passage makes me wonder if (the conceit is that) Cide Mahamate Benengeli writes the book in a different tone—earnest, like the chivalry romances—then the story is retold ironically by the unnamed narrator (Cervantes). 

4/ It seems to me that many of my favourite novels are either about everything (Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Tale of Genji, Hong lou meng…) or about an obsession (Wuthering Heights, Lolita, Kokoro, Rebecca…). 

Moby Dick is both.

Don Quixote is also both. 

In P.2, ch.18, there’s a fascinating conversation where Don Quixote talks about the vast knowledge and virtues of knights errant. He’s obsessed with knights errant like Ishmael’s obsessed with whales. 

Among the bluebells

It's been a while since I posted photos of myself on the blog, but yesterday I got some nice photos among the bluebells, so why not? 

Location: Kings Woods, London. 

15 years

I have just realised that today is exactly 15 years since my mum and I left Vietnam.

Haven't returned since. Most likely can't return now.

Soon I will have spent more than half my life away.

April is the cruellest month. 

PS: In 8 days, 30/4, is the 49th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. 

April is the cruellest month

April is to me full of sad associations. 

Last year, I was going through a difficult time. So I went through one Chekhov volume after another, in the translations by Ronald Wilks and Ann Dunnigan and Constance Garnett. Out of Constance Garnett’s 13 volumes, I read 8. At such a time, Chekhov brought me comfort and consolation. At such a time, I felt closer to Chekhov than any other prose writer, even more than Tolstoy and Jane Austen.

But now, somehow I’m not in the mood for Chekhov, for the pessimism and the unhappy people in his works. Perhaps it’s tiresome after a while to keep reading about people wasting their lives and losing their chances of happiness. Or perhaps it’s simply that Chekhov makes me more pessimistic, when Tolstoy or Shakespeare doesn’t have on me such an effect.

Is there something to Joseph Epstein’s idea about literature and faith in God? 

Anyway, I’ve been reading Isaac Bashevis Singer. I realised at the end of 2023 that I hadn’t read many books by Jewish writers—how Jewish is Kafka? how Jewish is Proust?—so I’ve been reading Isaac Babel and Isaac Bashevis Singer and Primo Levi and now, between the 2 parts of Don Quixote, am back to Singer’s Collected Stories. It’s odd—at the beginning of the book, 2-3 months ago, I thought he was very good but couldn’t help thinking “so what?”, intending to write a blog post examining the idea of relatability in literature—but now I’m thoroughly enjoying his stories.

Singer’s short stories, I guess, might be roughly divided into 2 groups: the Polish, folklore-like stories, full of devils and dybbuks (like “The Destruction of Kreshev”, “The Last Demon”, “Henne Fire”, “A Crown of Feathers”, etc.) and the American, more realistic stories, usually with a Yiddish writer as the narrator (like “A Friend of Kafka”, “A Day in Coney Island”, “The Cabalist of East Broadway”, “A Quotation from Klopstock”, “Old Love”, “The Yearning Heifer”, etc.). But the realistic New York-based stories can sometimes be filled with ghosts, like “The Cafeteria”, and sometimes a folkloric story may be built on a horrifying historical event, such as “The Last Demon” is, one gradually realises, about the Holocaust.  

But what do I like about Isaac Bashevis Singer? He’s a fantastic storyteller. I love his rich imagination, his prose, his striking metaphors and imagery. I love his warmth and humour. I love the compassion he has for all his characters. 

So I’m spending the cruellest month with Isaac Bashevis Singer. 

Don Quixote: “my master Don Quixote de La Mancha is about as enchanted as my mother is”

1/ As I’m reading for the first time such a rich, complex book, full of layers and meaning, I don’t expect to write anything particularly insightful—I’m mostly jotting down my observations. 

There are lots of interesting bits in the book. For example, there’s a bit when Don Quixote stops a bunch of merchants on the road and tells them to confess that “there’s no more beautiful a maiden in the world than the empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso”: 

“… One of them, who was something of a jokester, and very witty, said to him: “Señor knight, we don’t know who this good lady you’re talking about is. Show her to us, and if she’s as beautiful as you declare, we’ll confess the truth you’ve asked of us, with pleasure and without any compunction.”

“If I were to show her to you,” replied Don Quixote, “what good would there be in confessing such an obvious truth? The important thing is for you to believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it, without having seen her. If not, you’ll be in battle with me, monstrous and arrogant people. You can attack one at a time, as the laws of chivalry have ordered, or all at once, as is the custom and wicked practice of people of your breed. Here I stand, waiting for you, confident that I have right on my side.”” (P.1, ch.4) 

Now you might say Don Quixote is a madman and these things are meant to be nothing but funny, but this is interesting, no? Don’t people sometimes confess things they don’t know and haven’t seen? 

Now look at this passage, when Don Quixote’s about to do penances in the mountains: 

““It seems to me, señor,” said Sancho, “that those knights were motivated and had reasons to perform these foolish acts and penances, but what reason does your grace have to go crazy? What lady rejected you? What evidence did you find that proves that your lady Dulcinea del Toboso has committed some childish nonsense with a Moor or a Christian?”

““That’s the point,” responded Don Quixote, “and that’s the beauty of my plan. If a knight goes crazy for a reason, there is no thanks or value attached to it. The thing is to go crazy without a reason, and to make my lady understand that if I do this when dry, what will I do when drenched?…”” (P.1, ch.25) 

That looks like a crucial passage for understanding the novel. 

The quote in the headline, said by Sancho Panza, comes from P.1, ch.47. 

2/ In 2020, I wrote a blog post saying that there were 2 kinds of big novels (excluding Moby Dick, a different kind of beast altogether). 

“The 1st type is the multiple-strand novel, which is essentially several novels put together. An example is Anna Karenina, in which we have the Anna strand and the Levin strand. Some characters belong to both sets of characters, such as Kitty or Oblonsky, but the Anna plot and the Levin plot are separate.”

Other examples are Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Little Dorrit, Life and Fate… 

The 2nd type is “the one-big-story novel. War and Peace has 5 families and about 500-600 characters—they are all inter-connected and their lives are intertwined.”

Other examples are The Tale of Genji, Hong lou meng… Vanity Fair, Bleak House, The Brothers Karamazov… fit into this group but they’re more like one long story rather than one big story, as they have a small set of characters. 

I didn’t know at the time till Tom (Wuthering Expectations blog) told me, but I can see now that Don Quixote is the 3rd type: the adventure novel in which the main characters move from one place to another and meet new sets of characters. 

3/ There are, throughout Don Quixote, discussions between the characters about chivalry romances, and there are two long ones at the end of Part 1—between the priest and the canon, then between the canon and Don Quixote. 

The canon says to the priest: 

““… And if you tell me that those books were written as fiction so their authors don’t have to pay strict attention to the fine points, or the way things really are, I’d respond that fiction is better the more it resembles the truth, and it’s more delightful the more it has of what is truthful and possible. Fictional tales must suit the understanding of the reader and be written in such a way that impossible things seem possible, excesses are smoothed over, and the mind is kept in suspense, so that they astonish, stimulate, delight, and entertain us in such a way that admiration and pleasure go together; and the person who flees from credibility and imitation—which is what perfect writing consists of—cannot accomplish this.”” (P.1, ch.47) 

Does Cervantes think this? I wonder. In the main plot, he satirises chivalry romances as he shows what happens when an unequipped and deluded man such as Don Quixote goes into the real world, trying to save people and bring justice. But his subplots are fantastical like romances: the captive’s tale is an example; the story of Luscinda, Cardenio, Dorotea, and Don Fernando is good but resolved in an unconvincing, fairytale-like way, and so on.  

The funny part is that when the canon goes on a rant about the improbable, ridiculous, nonsensical things in chivalry romances and asks “What imagination—unless it’s one that is barbarian and uncultured—can be entertained reading [them]?”, I can’t help thinking about today’s superhero and action movies: 

““… These plays that one sees nowadays—the ones that are purely fictional, as well as those based on history—all, or most of them, are acknowledged to be pure garbage, without rhyme or reason, yet they’re relished by the common folk, who think they’re good when they’re so far from being so; and the authors who write them and the actors who play in them say that they have to be that way because that’s what the public wants. […] And although I’ve tried to persuade producers on occasion that they’re making a mistake, and that they would attract more people and become more famous if they put on plays that follow the rules, instead of these nonsensical ones, they’re so attached to their opinion and so obstinate that there is no reasoning or proof that will convince them otherwise…”” (P.1, ch.48) 

That sounds like Hollywood producers today, continually pumping out nonsensical garbage because they think “that’s what the public wants”. 

Don Quixote mounts a good defence of chivalry romances though, mixing fiction and fact. 

4/ It amuses me though to read the priest’s rant against plays: 

““You’ve touched upon a subject, señor canon,” said the priest, “that has aroused in me an old dislike that I have for the plays that are put on nowadays […] those that are put on nowadays are mirrors of nonsense, models of foolishness, and images of bawdiness. What greater nonsense can there be for a character to be in diapers in the first scene of act one, and in the second act come out as a bearded man? And what greater stupidity can there be than to represent a valiant old man, a cowardly youth, an eloquent lackey, a counselor-page, a handyman king, or a dishwashing princess?

“What can I say about how much attention they pay to the locales in which actions can or could happen? I’ve seen a play whose first act began in Europe, the second act in Asia, the third act ended in Africa, and if there had been four acts, the last doubtless would have been set in America, and all four corners of the earth would have been accounted for. And if the main thing in drama is that it’s supposed to imitate real life, how is it possible for it to satisfy an average intellect, if when we have a play that is supposed to take place during the time of Pippin and Charlemagne, the main character is Heraclius, who is seen entering Jerusalem bearing the Cross and winning the Holy Sepulcher, as Godefroy de Bouillon did, when there were infinite years between one event and the other? And what about those plays based on pure fiction that mix in historical facts, as well as things that happened in the lives of people at different times, and none of it believable, but rather filled with errors that are wholly inexcusable?...”” (ibid.)  

I have never read the plays of Lope de Vega or Cervantes himself, but all these complaints fit Shakespeare’s plays—the priest sounds like Tolstoy whining about the bawdiness, improbabilities, and lack of realism in Shakespeare. 

5/ In the last blog post, I mentioned that all the (named) female characters were beautiful: Luscinda, Dorotea, Zoraida, and Camilla in the inserted story. 

I forgot about the shepherdess Marcela, whose beauty led to the death of Grisóstomo.

After the last blog post, we encounter 2 more beautiful women: Clara de Viedma (niece of Ruy Perez, the captive) and Leandra (the one who falls for the cad Vicente de la Rosa). 

Cervantes is biased against uggos. 

I have now finished reading Part 1 of Don Quixote, after about 3 weeks. Wonderful book. 

Let’s hope I have some more interesting things to say when I read Part 2. 

Don Quixote: “… it’s all made up, and fiction, created by idle minds”

1/ As I’m reading Don Quixote, it may be a good idea to examine the long-held view that Don Quixote is the first modern novel, and the recent claim that the first modern novel is The Tale of Genji from the 11th century. 

(Lots of people actually call The Tale of Genji the first novel, but it obviously wasn’t—there were ancient Greek novels). 

Personally, I have never bought the counter-argument that The Tale of Genji is a monogatari and the novel is a Western concept. The novel is a flexible form: Don Quixote, Clarissa, Tristram Shandy, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Bleak House, Ulysses, As I Lay Dying, One Hundred Years of Solitude… — very different in form and structure—are all novels.

The Oxford Dictionary defines the novel as “a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.” The Britannica definition is “an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.” By these definitions, The Tale of Genji is undoubtedly a novel. It’s not an epic or heroic narrative. 

And if the modern novel is defined by psychological depth, in which characters are individualised, and characterised by thoughts as well as actions, The Tale of Genji too meets the condition. I’m starting this discussion, which I’m probably too ignorant to handle, not to say that East Asians beat Europeans, but to argue that the novel as a form developed independently along different paths around the world. 

Don Quixote is more modern though: there are multiple narrators, perhaps unreliable narrators; there are first-person narrators as well as third-person narrators; there are stories within the story; Cervantes reminds the readers that we are reading fiction (even before the metafiction in Part 2), etc.  

The quote in the headline comes from P.1, ch.32, said by the priest to the innkeeper about chivalry romances. 

2/ I think Shakespeare would have liked the story of Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla in Don Quixote. It handles some of his favourite themes: male friendship, a woman’s purity, love, jealousy, betrayal, manipulation, pretence… It’s a story within the story of Don Quixote, but within it, the characters put on an act for an audience (Anselmo) as though performing onstage: when Camilla, knowing that her husband Anselmo is watching through a keyhole, speaks out loud to herself like a heroine in a tragedy, she is mimicking—but Cervantes is mocking or at least referencing—soliloquies in theatre. 

Anselmo asking Lotario to help him test Camilla’s loyalty reminds me of Posthumus’s wager with Iachimo about Imogen’s fidelity in Cymbeline. 

I also like the complex layers of Don Quixote: we follow Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, with the narrator sometimes interrupting to remind us of the other narrator Cide Mahamate Benengeli; Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet Cardenio, we get the Cardenio story and then get interrupted, and we get back to the main plot; at some point, the narrative leaves the main characters and follows the priest and the barber, who meet Cardenio, and he tells his story; the priest, the barber, and Cardenio then meet Dorotea, who tells her story; then Cardenio and Dorotea—so far subplots—join the main plot as they meet Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; but interestingly, they join the main plot by deceiving the knight and his squire and make up a story about Dorotea being Princess Micomicona; Cervantes then interrupts the main plot, giving us the story of Anselmo, Lotario, and Camilla; the inserted story is then interrupted by the main plot, as Sancho Panza runs in and yells that Don Quixote is fighting a giant; then the narrative returns to the Anselmo story; when it’s finished, new characters arrive, and now the plot of Cardenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando, and Dorotea gets resolved; and so on. You get the idea. 

What I’m saying is that Don Quixote has constant movements, constant interruptions, constant digressions. 

3/ I note that Don Quixote goes out in the world in armour seeking adventures and gets nothing but trouble and beatings, but some of the people he encounters have had adventures (like Ruy Perez, the captive) or colourful, dramatic experiences (Cardenio, Dorotea). 

Interestingly enough, Ruy Perez’s story must be inspired by Cervantes’s own experience as a soldier “sold into slavery in Algiers, the centre of the Christian slave traffic in the Muslim world.” Shakespeare’s life was rather boring in comparison. 

My Twitter friend Alok Ranjan has mentioned that he likes the interplay of Romance and Realism in Don Quixote, so I’ve been thinking about the differences: the main plot of Don Quixote is Realism, as he, inspired by chivalry romances, goes into the real world and gets beaten up; the subplots tend to be Romance, defined by Oxford English Dictionary as “a fictitious narrative, usually in prose, in which the settings or the events depicted are remote from everyday life, or in which sensational or exciting events or adventures form the central theme; a book”, or defined by Britannica as “sometimes marked by strange or unexpected incidents and developments.” 

At the same time, where do you draw the line? Isn’t Cervantes’s life full of adventures and strange incidents, like a romance?  

4/ I’ve noticed that so far, all the important female characters are beautiful, extremely beautiful: Luscinda, Dorotea, Zoraida. In the inserted story, Camilla is also beautiful. 

What about the ugly women, Miguel?  

5/ In my last blog post, I complained about Tom Lathrop’s translation, but except for a couple of odd words, I generally enjoy this edition. Generally speaking, the language is not really modernised, and it is funny. 

Some readers complain about the longueurs in Don Quixote, but I’ve enjoyed all of it so far.

Wonderful book! 

Don Quixote: “For the love of God, señor mío, don’t force me to see Your Grace naked!”

1/ The line above comes from P.1, ch.25 of Tom Lathrop’s translation.

I’ve been very much enjoying Don Quixote, laughing in public like a lunatic.

Cervantes is ingenious—he constantly plays around and subverts your expectations—for example, Sancho Panza tells a story and Don Quixote interrupts it, violating the rule Sancho has mentioned, and the story is cut off; Don Quixote later does the same thing with Cardenio, cutting off the story and you think it’s over, but later on, the story is picked up again. 

2/ Is Don Quixote mad? Or does he pretend to be insane? 

I will not attempt to have an interpretation at this point of the novel, but I’d like to draw your attention to a moment of madness—though this be madness, yet there’s method in it: 

““… So, it’s enough for me to think and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and chaste; her lineage matters little, since no one is going to investigate her background to give her an honorary degree—the only thing that matters is that I believe she’s the greatest princess in the world. […] To sum up, I make myself believe that everything I say about her is the absolute truth, neither more nor less, and I portray her in my imagination as I like her, so that in beauty and rank, Helen cannot match her, nor can Lucretia come near, nor any other of the famous women of ages past: Greek, barbarian, or Roman. Let anyone say what he wants—even if uninformed people criticize me, I’ll not be condemned by those who are discerning.”” (ibid.) 

Yes, his professions of love are mad. Yes, he plays the role of a knight errant doing everything for his beloved. But isn’t this what people do in love, just more extreme? Much of Proust is about the narrator fantasising, reinventing the women he loves. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra mythologises Antony, past the size of dreaming. 

““… It’s true that not all poets who praise ladies under fictitious names actually have these women as lovers. Do you think that the Amaryllises, the Phyllises, the Sylvias, the Dianas, the Galateas, the Alidas, and others who fill books, ballads, barbershops, and theaters, were really women of flesh and blood and really belonged to those who praise and praised them? No, certainly not, because most of them are fictional, and serve only to give a subject for their poems, and so that they themselves might be taken for lovers, and worthy to be so.” (ibid.) 

Do Shakespeare’s Fair Youth and Dark Lady exist? Not necessarily. 

I like the contrast between Don Quixote pining for the imagined Dulcinea and Cardenio driven mad by his love for Luscinda. 

3/ You notice that I’ve referenced Shakespeare a few times in my blog post so far. 

Imagine how upset I felt, reading the Cardenio story in Don Quixote and thinking about the Shakespeare play we lost! It’s not hard to see why the story of Cardenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando, and Dorotea appeals to Shakespeare and the Jacobean playwrights: the plot is full of twists and turns, and it has some of Shakespeare’s favourite themes and plot devices (disguise/ cross-dressing, lust, deceit, “star-crossed lovers”, and so on). I know that at this point it would have been a collaboration—the play’s probably more Fletcher than Shakespeare—but even the boy’s weakest plays like Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, or Pericles, have good and interesting stuff in them.

I should read more about the perception of Cervantes among Shakespeare’s contemporaries—so far, I have come across a Don Quixote reference in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist and what looked like one in John Webster’s The White Devil. 

On a side note, I have just discovered that there are lunatics out there who think that Shakespeare and Cervantes were the same person and that person was Francis Bacon. Marvelous! I love the idea that Bacon, apart from being a philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, and jurist, and writing I don’t know how many books of philosophy and other subjects, also wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays and Don Quixote. More energy than Joyce Carol Oates. 

4/ I note that if many of Shakespeare’s characters are actors (almost every play has some form of disguise, acting, and pretence) and some are playwrights/ directors, manipulating others and driving the plot (like Iago in Othello or the Duke in Measure for Measure), many of Cervantes’s characters are storytellers: Don Quixote is one, turning his life into a chivalry romance; his niece and housekeeper make up a story after burning his books; Sancho Panza lies to him or plays along with his fantasies; the priest and Dorotea make up an elaborate story, improvising along the way, to lure Don Quixote out of the mountains and get him back home, and so on.

5/ Generally speaking, I enjoy Tom Lathrop’s translation—the book is very, very funny, and there are lots of helpful notes at the back. 

But once in a while, some modern phrasing gets on my nerves and takes me out of the book. I don’t mean that an English translation of Don Quixote should be in Shakespearean English, but words and phrases such as “boyfriend”, “girlfriend”, “a certain delicious je ne sais quoi”… stick out like a sore thumb in a 17th century novel, like “my ex” in Ignat Avsey’s translation of The Brothers Karamazov. Even the word “crazy”, which Lathrop employs rather often throughout the book, feels out of place, even though I have checked the etymology and it traces back to the early 17th century—perhaps I’m being irrational, but the word “crazy” is now so ubiquitous that it feels anachronistic and less appropriate in Don Quixote than “deranged”, “demented”, “lunatic”, “insane”, even “mad”. 

Lathrop’s language generally isn’t modern though. Most of the time, it feels fine—he doesn’t go for a “contemporary English” approach as Anthony Briggs does in his translation of War and Peace.