{"id":45036,"date":"2026-01-25T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/?p=45036"},"modified":"2026-01-24T18:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T23:54:15","slug":"why-cervantes-don-quixote-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/reviews\/why-cervantes-don-quixote-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Cervantes\u2019 Don Quixote<\/em> Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pedro Blas Gonzalez<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plainness, Sancho, for all affectation is bad<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>Llaneza, Sancho, que toda afectaci\u00f3n es mala<\/span><\/i>).<\/span><\/p>\n

– <\/b>Miguel de Cervantes, <\/b>Don Quixote<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

M<\/span>iguel de Cervantes addresses perennial concerns about human nature and reality, the snare of confusing appearance with reality, man\u2019s quest for love, and reflections on life and death with a timeless, melancholic embrace of beauty. Cervantes makes the passage of time and man\u2019s often overzealous regard for the <\/span>world<\/span><\/i> a picaresque, devil-may-care, animated puppet theater. This is true of his shorter <\/span>Novelas Ejemplares<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>Exemplary Novels<\/span><\/i>); <\/span>Don Quixote<\/span><\/i> displays Cervantes\u2019 philosophical and literary perspicuity and acumen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don Quixote<\/span><\/i> makes life the protagonist. The affirmation of life is truly Don Quixote\u2019s quest. The venerable knight-errant seeks <\/span>more than life <\/span><\/i>from his life. He is a man who does not want to squander the time that he is allotted to live, thus concocts a plan that aims to squeeze from life nectar that is sweeter than life itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Granted, the affirmation of life and the quest to demand more than life from the immediacy of lived experience can at times exhaust itself in disappointment and disenchantment. That is a risk that people who seek more than life from life must recognize and appropriate. Don Quixote is cognizant of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>o embrace more than life, Alonso Quijano, a homely man who is enamored of reading and learning, especially books of chivalry, must transform himself into Don Quixote, the \u201cingenious hidalgo from La Mancha.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Quijano becomes aware that his life has become the object of heightened thought and reflection, something he had never considered before. <\/span>Don Quixote<\/span><\/i> turns the novelty and exploration of the La Mancha region of Spain into an existential justification of life. It is a significant detail of Cervantes\u2019 literary masterpiece that Quijano is a man close to fifty years of age and not a budding young romantic, though the author informs readers that he is \u201cof a robust constitution.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Don Quixote\u2019s strong will\u2014his robust Spanish constitution and temperament\u2014is the fuel that animates his trek through the dusty open plains of La Mancha. His mature age has prepared Don Quixote for a <\/span>life-plan <\/span><\/i>that, while it may appear idealistic to readers, equips the knight-errant-to-be with the wisdom of lived experience and knowledge of the human condition that carries him and Sancho Panza through their seemingly endless array of thorny situations. Don Quixote\u2019s wisdom, which is strengthened by Sancho\u2019s quick wit and proverbs, which become more pronounced as the novel develops, enables both men to return home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alonso Quijano, who is soon to transform himself into Don Quixote, plans to do battle with the scoundrels that bring unhappiness to righteous people, right the \u201cwrongs\u201d of the world, and other contingencies that the region of La Mancha throws at him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La Mancha symbolizes the world for the venerable knight-errant. Don Quixote\u2019s exploration of the arid plateau that is Spain\u2019s La Mancha region unites Cervantes\u2019 love of books and reading and the life of the mind with the author\u2019s worldly experience. We cannot forget that Miguel de Cervantes was a worldly man. As Cervantes writes, \u201cHe who reads much and travels much, sees much and knows much (\u201cEl que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho\u201d).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

D<\/span>on Quixote<\/span><\/i> exemplifies Cervantes\u2019 awe and wonder. The Spanish author embraces the immediacy and translucence that is human existence, a sentiment that William Blake puts on display in <\/span>Auguries of Innocence<\/span><\/i>: \u201cTo see a world in a grain of sand \/ And a heaven in a wild flower \/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand \/ And eternity in an hour.\u201d The reflective Don Quixote devises a life plan, an existential concept that many subsequent Spanish thinkers explore, including Miguel de Unamuno and Jos\u00e9 Ortega y Gasset.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To want more than life from life is equivalent to desiring a justification for life; Don Quixote is marred by the tension between life, as lived experience, and our capacity for self-reflection. We must not confuse the capacity for existential self-reflection with mere reason. Reason alone does not satiate Don Quixote\u2019s attitude toward life. Reason does not assuage the existential inquietude that Don Quixote desires to satisfy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fighting windmills and seeking an imaginary romance with a girl who lives nearby, Aldonza Lorenzo, whom the knight-errant names Dulcinea del Toboso, fuels Don Quixote\u2019s passion. Fighting windmills and assuaging Dulcinea\u2019s unrequited love only make up a few items of Don Quixote\u2019s animated prospectus of what it means for him to live his life as a waking dream.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Life as dream, that is, reality as suspended animation that courageous and imaginative people can discern, is a major theme in <\/span>Don Quixote<\/span><\/i>. We encounter this theme in other Spanish writers and thinkers, including Lope de Vega, Baltasar Graci\u00e1n, Calderon de La Barca, and in Spain\u2019s most gifted romantic poets. While <\/span>Don Quixote<\/span><\/i> is a poetic and lyrical novel about life as illusion, it is also a playful work that is prescient about the human condition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

C<\/span>ervantes was a worldly man who lost the use of his left hand in 1571 in the Battle of Lepanto, was imprisoned by pirates in Algiers from 1575 to 1580, and worked as a commissary for the Spanish Armada between 1587 and 1588.<\/span><\/p>\n

Miguel de Cervantes had as full a life as any writer or thinker can accommodate, live through, and retain the necessary vitality and mental clarity to commit to paper. Cervantes\u2019 quest to joust with life makes his Spanish temperament shine through the literary conventions he developed, including his penchant for telling stories within stories and for turning the author into a participant in the action of the novel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cervantes was a writer, poet, and thinker. This is perhaps the most astounding aspect of his writing and life that befuddles readers and biographers alike, especially in late postmodernism, when \u201cspecialization\u201d has such chic appeal for pampered, would-be writers and thinkers. The lyrical quality of <\/span>Don Quixote<\/span><\/i> highlights Cervantes\u2019 poetic temperament as a novelist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being a writer and a practical man of the world, Cervantes exploits the vagaries and intricacies of life and thought. Though this is not an enviable task that most writers care to cultivate. As a thinker, Cervantes is a stoic Catholic. Setting his sight on the life of the soul, the Spanish author treats the here-and-now with guarded, even comical, disinterest. This makes him patient and perspicuous about the ways of the world and man. Though idealistic in life and love, Don Quixote does not suffer fools, as far as his relationship with other people is concerned. Don Quixote is savvy about what to expect from people.<\/span><\/p>\n

W<\/span>hen Don Quixote sets out to right the wrongs of the world, he takes with him a loyal farmer who lives nearby. His name is Sancho Panza. Don Quixote convinces the pudgy man that \u201cpanza\u201d means belly in Spanish, and he should go with him because together they will live a life of adventure. Sancho Panza becomes convinced that he should accompany Don Quixote after the knight-errant promises his future companion and squire-to-be that Sancho Panza will come into the possession of an island of which he will be governor: \u201cIn the meanwhile Don Quixote was bringing his powers of persuasion to bear upon a farmer who lived near by, a good man\u2014if this title may be applied to one who is poor\u2014but with very few wits in his head.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides becoming Don Quixote\u2019s loyal companion, Sancho Panza is a central witness to Don Quixote\u2019s exploits. It is Sancho Panza who keeps Don Quixote from falling into greater and graver dangers. Sancho Panza, who is supposed to be Don Quixote\u2019s apprentice in the ways of life and the world, his sounding board for the knight errant\u2019s timeless and life-affirming proverbs, turns out to be a quick understudy. In the second half of the novel, it is Sancho Panza who advises Don Quixote with his elaborate and witty proverbs. Don Quixote is so impressed with Sancho Panza\u2019s witticisms that he tells his squire to use his proverbs sparingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don Quixote\u2019s <\/span><\/i>deathbed scene is one of the most profound and perspicuous life-as-dream dialogues that literature has ever attained. Through Don Quixote, the knight-errant, readers glimpse life with the clarity that the passage of time brings to the lives of poets, thoughtful thinkers, and other seers. Not the least of these is Sancho Panza, who delivers timeless wisdom to Don Quixote about the meaning of human existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Pedro Blas Gonz\u00e1lez<\/b> is a professor of philosophy at Barry University.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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“Don Quixote<\/em> makes life the protagonist. The affirmation of life is truly Don Quixote\u2019s quest. The venerable knight-errant seeks more than life<\/em> from his life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":45037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,65,69],"tags":[97,120],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/81kIVgGfcL._SY385_.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45036"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45039,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45036\/revisions\/45039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirkcenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}