Don Quixote's Profession

by Mark van Doren

Essay

99 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Mark van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938 and he was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.

Reviews

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim book contains a set of three lectures Van Doren delivered at Emory University in 1956. In a wry and genial manner, Van Doren makes the case that Don Quixote is one of the greatest books ever written.
Of the Don, Van Doren claims, “He is that rare thing in literature, a completely created character. He is so real that we cannot be sure we understand him.” Even someone who hasn’t read the book, but seen illustrations, knows Cervantes has paired him with an unlikely squire, Sancho Panza, hardly less memorable than the Don. Van Doren shows how the relationship evolves from master and servant to two friends who love each other.
Van Doren argues, based on Don Quixote’s moments of lucidity and the sagacity of his speeches, that, contrary to the repeated assertion in the book that he is mad, he is, on the contrary, aware of what he is doing. In this reading, the Don’s knight-errantry was a hoax meant to entertain and edify the world. When Don Quixote saw that he’d failed in this, he abandoned the hoax (473).
Similarly, Cervantes misdirects us about Sancho Panza. He is illiterate and seems to have only his next meal and a good night’s sleep in mind. Yet when given a chance to govern a town, he displays a native insight into human nature, to the astonishment of those around him, watching for him to fail.
Van Doren characterizes Don Quixote as two interconnected series: adventures and conversations. It is the adventures that stick in the popular imagination. Van Doren asserts, however, that more is “lost by ignoring the speaker” than the deeds.
Van Doren concludes that Don Quixote “is the most perfect knight that ever lived; the only one, in fact, we can believe.” Rather than achieving his avowed aim of destroying the literature of knight-errantry through satire, Cervantes has saved it. He produced “the one treatment of the subject that can be read forever.”

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Van Doren's comments on the relationship of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. They see the same things but consider them differently. Each has a world of his own which the other must accept, not approve, but certainly accept as if it had as much right to exist as one's own. They quarrel, they fall out, they call each other mad. Yet "the mutual love increases until they are, as others say, one man". Sancho kept on being himself, thus confounding his lord at every turn. And that is why his master loved him in the end. The fun they have is the clearest proof that Sancho is not stupid and the Don is not insane.
Cervantes offers up almost endless plays, hoaxes, and illusions meant to show how silly Quixote is. But they only serve to make him more of who he is. What is more real: him in his armor or those who would make sport of him?
In the end, the Don decides that there is nothing to do but go home..."the world refused to be entertained, or the earth edified; it remained just what it was, with him alone in it and quite absurd, a strolling player whom no one paid admission to see. Or worse yet, what if he had fallen victim to his part...to the point of believing that heaven could be built on earth. That would be no better than blasphemy... The soul does not put on armor, ride horses, and strike innocent people down. It ...does not do, but be."
Life is a comedy. Cervantes is funny. "Perhaps it is life we should honor, looking at it plainly and looking then at one another; and grinning as we do."

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughtful exploration of one of the most iconic characters in all literature, in the form of three essays as part of a lecture series given by Van Doren. I was so taken by Cervantes' novel, I'm guessing this will be the first of many reads to plumb its depths!