Janet Haven

Back in the fall, American historian David McCullough gave a guest lecture at the Central European University here in Budapest. Although I missed the lecture, regrettably, several of my friends attended and came away bearing a message from the Professor: read Don Quixote. Don Q. is the ultimate everyman, the first (and many believe, last) word in dreamy bumbling; he is interred in what is widely considered the original "modern" novel. Professor McCullough reminded his audience that John Adams carried a copy of the great DQ in his saddlebag as he travelled a not-yet-United States before the Revolutionary War.

On conferring among ourselves, Friends and I discovered that within our group of five over-educated individuals, only one had read DQ previously, and she had read it in Hungarian -- but was game to move on to English. We each obtained a copy of Edith Grossman's recent translation of Don, apparently regarded among Quixotists as the very, very best rendering of 16th century colloquial Spanish into snappy-but-not-too-modern-sounding English. Our DQ group, comprised of a refugee from the publishing biz, a movie theatre mogul, a professor of Jewish Studies, two professional antiquers, and me, meets every few weeks over dinner to discuss a chunk of reading. We're about a third of the way through the book at this point -- which, if you haven't hefted it lately, is a real doorstop, even in paperback.

For me, the modernity of Don Quixote has been surprising. The book is unswerving in its comic violence and vulgarity -- even though I read far and wide, I still have a bias that somehow older books are more, well, genteel -- too much Thomas Hardy, presumably. DQ's main characters fart, shit, and fondle their way across southern Spain; in the name of chivalry, they engage in pointless battles with hapless travellers that result in lopped ears, cracked ribs, showers of blood, and occasional comas. After each incident, Sancho Panza, the faithful valet, ties Don Q. back into the saddle on his long-suffering horse, and follows on to the next confrontation. Sound familiar? I'm guessing that the experience of reading the book for, i.e., John Adams, was not an uplifting stroll through contemporary literature; rather, it was the reality show of the era, something akin to a bored businessman's entertainment in a Holiday Inn: he tunes into "Jackass" on MTV before crashing for the night.

Which brings me to the question: why does Professor McCullough recommend to all his audiences that they run, not walk, to pick up a copy of DQ? My experience in reading the book is similiar to the first time I saw Egon Schiele's paintings. Schiele was part of the Viennese Expressionist movement of the early 20th century; he died young, at 28, during the flu epidemic following World War I. His incredible legacy of paintings, many of which are at the Ludwig Museum in Vienna, are shocking in their violence and modernity; to me, Schiele's work seems to predict both the zeitgeist and the major art movements of the 20th century. How did he know? Or more to the point, do modern museum-goers think of Schiele when they visit a contemporary installation at the Tate, and muse that it's all been done before?

Back to Don Quixote, and why Professor M. suggests it to his audiences. As a historian, he must regularly encounter the patterns of history, in political action, popular culture, religion, philosophy. In ploughing through DQ, I can't help but think that he recommends the book as a historical lesson in patterns of culture, in encouraging the discovery that we, in the 21st century, aren't so far off in taste or interests from a Spanish readership of 1605. Or maybe he wants readers to experience a sense of Cervantes' predictive powers in both defining and parodying a modern world, as I did standing in front of Schiele's paintings in Vienna.