Don Quijote: The Impossible Truth
Don Quijote de la Mancha is the impossible truth: the book is a fiction, a lie, and yet it is true. Truer than a non-fiction biography of Cervantes. We would only read such a bio because we love our mad knight-errant and his earthy squire, Sancho Panza. The novel tells us much more about the real Cervantes than any bio could every do: valet, soldier, ransomed by pirates, soldier, tax collector, convict (jailed for discrepancies in the accounts while tax collector), poet, playwright, and the first modern novelist.
Don Quijote tells us more. Our author, driven mad by the books he read, believed in truth, justice, honor and love then broke his head against the wall of reality and became deeply disillusioned but found a way to parody his idealism and do it honor at the same time. Cervantes idealism and realism are represented by his two characters: Sancho Panza and Don Quijote. The picture I have on my page shows a portrait of Cervantes made up of another picture of the knight-errant and his squire (a metapainting). Cervantes was given a choice: idealism or realism and he chose both.
Whenever you have a binary choice there are actually five possibilities, not two: A, B, both, neither or all of the above. Is the great novel true or false? Both: it is fiction but true to Cervantes’ experience, very true for the modern experience. (As for the modern experience, I can only really speak of my own. I am driven idealistically to look for truth, an impossible task, a Quixotic quest.) Neither, it’s not false, nor is it true. All of the above.
For more on Don Qujote (or Don Quixote as we spell it in English), see How to Sound like an Author of Great Reading, Learning and Eloquence: A Quixotic Preface and Who Wrote Don Quixote?
[...] may be truer than a truthful account (as I tried to show in Don Quixote: The Impossible Truth). In Cervantes’ Quixote we read: “And if it should be answered that the authors of such [...]
La Mancha: The Stain of Truth | Metablog on Metafiction
2 Mar 10 at 7:27 pm
“Don Quijote de la Mancha is the impossible truth: the book is a fiction, a lie, and yet it is true. Truer than a non-fiction biography of Cervantes.”
Is this statement a.)True or b.)False?
Possibilities:
(a) is Correct: The book Don Quijote is truer than the biography. Yet there are many truths in the biography that someone could determine by reading the book. One could count all the truths in each to see which has more.
(b) is Correct The biography is truer than the book. If you count the number of truths in each you will probably find more in the biography. However the biography might not convey some of the truths about Cervantes as well as the book.
Both (a) and (b) are correct: They both correct in some aspects. The book conveys some truths the biography cannot convey very well. The biography probably has a greater number of truths.
Neither (a) nor (b) are correct: They are both wrong in some ways.
Final Answer That I Choose: (All of the Above)
…..Dan
p.s. With this type of thinking can you every pick anything but “All of the Above” :)
Dan E. Richardson
6 Mar 10 at 4:59 pm
[...] “history” and its so-called truthfulness in Don Qujote. (Read more about it in my post, Don Quixote: The Impossible Truth and La Mancha: The Stain of Truth.) Laurence Sterne showed in Tristram Shandy how difficult it is [...]
The Conventions of Unconventionality: An Overview of Metafiction | Once I Metablog on Metafiction
29 May 10 at 9:49 am