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HIS EVALUATION OF OTHER ARTISTS
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616)
"There are the conventional interpretations of Don Quixote: longing for feudalism and chivalry, that is to say, longing for an irrecoverable past, for the past in a period in which monarchy¾in other words, the economy of bourgeoisie¾began to be dominant. Don Quixote longs for this chivalric past, this lost paradise, while Sancho represents the reason and logic of the bourgeoisie and the realism of the period. Cervantes wanted to display the difficulty of the return to the past and mocked those who longed for that return. In this respect, Don Quixote is a kind of miserable person who pursues the impossible and also a funny madman. [...] I do not think that Don Quixote longs only for the past. He is a man who generally longs for truth, justice, and beauty. This is both his powerful and his weak side. The reason is that, in general, there is no beautiful, true or good in terms of their absolute meaning. On the other hand, because of the social conditions, people always longed for the more beautiful, the more just and the more true. Don Quixote is a powerful man because he is a man of action. He is a man of struggle. He fights for what he believes. This is why it is not Don Quixote but Sancho who is laughable, when his reason and logic are compared to Sancho's who represents the reason and logic of the bourgeoisie. In the case of Sancho, the starting point of the action is personal interest. He follows along after Don Quixote since he wants to become wealthy, become the governor of a province. Therefore, when you finish the book, you like Don Quixote but you do not like Sancho. The bourgeoisie itself and its publications also caused Don Quixote to be displayed as a funny man or a madman. After the bourgeoisie deposed the monarch and came to possess absolute power over the society, it regarded its own era as the absolute, the constant and the truest, the most beautiful and the most reasonable. Thus the bourgeoisie detested those who were in search for the more beautiful, and the truer, and it became startled by and afraid of the idealist and designated the figure of Don Quixote as a figure of irony and attributed this role to all who did not fit its own reason and logic and the conditions of the era, or particularly to those who wanted to change these conditions. In this period and in a number of circles, this is also a motive in considering Don Quixote as laughable, funny and partially mad. The character of Don Quixote in the book is not, of course, normal. But, there is a Don Quixote that steps out of the book and he is extremely normal. The Don Quixote that is inside the book is abnormal because, as I have said above, he is in search for the impossible. But the Don Quixote that steps out of the book and thus out of the subject of the book, who is in search for the better, the more beautiful, who does not accept as the absolute the reason and logic of the bourgeoisie, its considerations and psychology, the Don Quixote who struggles to this end, who is set into action, has nothing to do with abnormality. Thus, it is impossible to like him when one considers not the story, his fight against the windmill, etc., but the fact that he, after his fifties, struggles, sets off on journeys, etc., for something he finds beautiful and true. Therefore I strongly believe that these things I have enumerated above have a great role in the sense that he is still alive and will be alive throughout the history of humanity. Also, the technique, the story and the essence of the book are such that, as it were, they are like Chaplin's films. A child may enjoy them just as an adult does; the same is valid for an illiterate or an educated person, a bourgeois or a socialist. Did Cervantes think of all I have said while writing Don Quixote? I do not think so. But, since he has lived in a very interesting era, he carried the seal of that era, i.e., the seal of a revolutionary period and thus he sealed it in his book, too."
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