Quixote

This year is the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote.

Let's take a moment to think about that.

(Via Red)

Simon Jenkins in the Times of London writes about Cervantes' novel, often called the first novel of all:

I have no quarrel with Einstein. The mobsters of Big Science have declared him master of the Universe. His brain was measured and his shoes embalmed. Women wrote him letters wanting to have his babies. His thoughts are installed in Newton’s temple and not found wanting. Einstein is cool.

But if Einstein had not existed, physics would sooner or later have invented him. I am sure of that. His theory of relativity was an understanding of nature. It lay over the cosmic horizon, awaiting discovery by the first genius to pass its way. Einstein was its Columbus.

Not so Miguel de Cervantes. He surveyed the landscape of post-medieval Europe and asked, but where is Man? He grasped at valour, love, loyalty, triumph and mortification and, like his contemporary, Shakespeare, compressed them in a human frame. He told a tale like no other man. If Cervantes had not existed, he could not have been invented. There would be a hole in the tapestry of Europe

And of the whole west.

Don Quixote is supposedly the most popular novel in history. The Don was worshipped by Sterne, Goethe, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Kafka and Melville. Two years ago his saga was voted the best novel of all time by the world’s “hundred top writers”.

Ah, them again.

Still, I can't argue. Quixote is to the novel, and to western literature, what Bach was to western music; the standard that all those that came after aped, transcended, tried to peck away at, admired.

Millions have come to regard Quixote as a friend for life. Like Cervantes, they have slaved in the galleys at Lepanto and emerged with only their dreams to live for. Like Quixote they have hoped beyond hope and loved beyond love. All of us sometimes see windmills as giants, and giants as windmills. Everyone has a knight errant within them, guiding his lance and turning the most humble career into a noble crusade. Like Quixote we long to leap on life’s stage, to warm Mimi’s frozen hand or stay Othello’s dagger. We imagine that frump in the Tube as the matchless Dulcinea, at least until Tottenham Court Road.

And so tomorrow when I walk through the screen designs for the Accounts Payable Report Page, I'll do that little bit to push back the forces of darkness and barbarism from the world of cost accounting software; the human spirit will leap just that tiny bit in response.

Re-read the whole thing. I think I will, now.

Posted by Mitch at January 28, 2005 05:05 AM | TrackBack