The MancQuixotians blog: A Don Quixote Virtual Reading Group
Manchester, July 2013
‘GASP!’
Readers: that is the sound of a surprised husband…
We are in St Peter’s Church, sitting in the first row, while Sir Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston (River Song for those Dr Who fans among you) are, let’s say, getting quite amorous with each other, at approximately 4 cms from where we are sitting.
I am mesmerised by the fact that I am able to see the back of Sir Kenneth’s left ear (the usual kind: a bit translucent, since you ask), while my husband is fairly flustered by the convincing tryst between Lady Macbeth and her other half. Hey, they are actors; they are supposed to make us suspend our disbelief! After the play, my husband remarks: ‘I wouldn’t say that they were breaking the fourth wall, but they were leaning very heavily against it’. The play is amazing: they walk on mud, and we are indoors! They fight with swords, and sparks fly! It rains! It is all so fast and dangerous! Sir Ken cries real tears when speaking the ‘sound and fury’ words as if he was the first one, ever, to utter them! A grown-up man says ‘minions’ earnestly!
Seeing a play, seeing this play, is exhilarating. I studied it, in Spanish, during my school days in Madrid; I have tried reading it in English before watching the performance, but work things have got in the way. After watching it, I make the point of carrying on reading my English, annotated, prologued edition. But, alas, there is always other urgent stuff to do.
Manchester, October 2015
The Dean of Humanities posts his first monthly message of the academic year. He quotes Dante. This makes me strangely cross, since I do love Dante (aeons ago, I got to read La divina commedia in a Spanish version for children, and I am still suitably freaked out by the guys whose eyes had been sown-up with iron thread [Purgatorio, xiii, above]; no amount of scholarly versions dealt with afterwards have ever managed to erase this –you might call it traumatic — impression). I believe that my reaction might have been caused my own literary immersion, though: I’ll have you know that we are living in Cervantean times, you and I. 2015 saw the commemoration of the 400 anniversary of the second part of Don Quijote (1615), and in turn 2016 commemorates the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ death.
In the spur of the moment, I reply to the Dean –somehow thinking that he might never, ever, get to read my message (?) — offering two quotes from the book, or, as I put it
“crucial ideas beautifully expressed, from the archi-famous:
‘Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it’
to the perhaps less well-known but equally ready-witted:
‘If someone achieves eminence in letters, it costs him time, loss of sleep, hunger, nakedness, headaches, indigestion, and other things associated with it’.”
At 8:45 pm of the same day, the Dean replies:
“It’s a long time since I read Cervantes and I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to revisit him. But I like the quotations — and can certainly identify with the latter one. No doubt you can too!
Best wishes,
Keith
Sent from my iPad”
Clearly, the Dean has promptly and courteously told me that he has other, more important stuff to do than to read Don Quixote (by the way, this is the usual way of referring to the book in English, which also preserves the 17c Spanish spelling of the character’s name).
Manchester, 24 December 2015
I am at my friends’ joint Christmas and birthday party. It is all very cheery, with lovely food, great company, and all-round high spirits. While demolishing a plate of delicious salmon, I get to talk to my friend’s uncle, who has worked on chemistry-related issues all his life. Now retired, he keeps track of the innovations in the field and he is telling me about the latest top-of-the-range mass spectrometers, prodigious machines which have the capacity to detect a drop of any substance diluted in the equivalent of an Olympic pool full of water. We also talk about chemicals and public health, and about scientific developments in Spain during the last 30 years. My friend’s uncle asks me about my job. I tell him that I work on Spanish Early Modern Literature and that I teach Cervantes. To which he enthusiastically replies: ‘Don Quijote! My favourite book!’
Manchester, March 2016
With kamikaze-like bravery, one of my modernist colleagues spontaneously and openly confesses — in a group setting! — that they have never read Don Quijote. I perceive a mixture of self-consciousness and mild regret, with a tinge of defiance, in this acknowledgment. Well, it is never too late, I guess…
These four vignettes play themselves out in my brain, and they do puzzle me. How come that it is the sciences-related person the one who seems to have kept intact the pleasure element of the act of reading, and has ventured so far away from his field with gusto? Why can’t the historian find the time and opportunity to read Spanish Literature, the Spanish Literature person do the same with English Literature, or the specialist in modernism tackle an Early Modern book? Beyond the overwhelming fact, of course, that there are always more urgent things to do?
BOOM!
Idea!
While I cannot answer these general questions, nor retrace the circumstances which lead each and every one of us to read this or that book, but not others, I do have a personal certainty: had there been –or had I known about — a Macbeth reading group of any kind in summer 2013, i.e., any sort of collective endeavour to go through the book before or after the iconic performance at the Manchester International Festival 2013, I would have joined, and I would have magicked out some time. And I would have, in all likelihood, reached the end of the book then; and now I would feel pretty good about it, and I would be able to entwine the written words with my increasingly tenuous memories of that performance I enjoyed so much.
So, what about this?: I will be promoting a University of Manchester-wide Don Quixote virtual reading group, starting on the 23 April of this year of 2016. This is the commonly accepted date of the twin deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare –and of the fascinating author Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. In reality, there is no chronological coincidence whatsoever between Miguel and William’s deaths: on the one hand, Cervantes died on the 22 April and was buried the day after, according to a Spanish custom still in place nowadays; on the other, England was still following the Julian calendar at the time –while Spain was already using the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, Shakespeare actually died on the 3rd May of 1616. The 23 April suits us very well, though: it is World Book and Copyright Day — it is also the Day of Sant Jordi in Catalunya, where women give books to men, and men give red roses to women (no trace of a hint here).
How can you join this Don Quixote virtual reading group? You have two channels: this blog and the twitter handle @UoMQuixotians. I will be glad to see your tweets and to answer any questions as we advance in the reading of the book. It does not matter that you are not familiar with the book at all, or that you are too familiar with it; it does not matter whether you can read it all or join only for some chapters; what matters is that you set foot in the book, so to speak; where your steps will take you is indeed part of the adventure. We will also have one meetup, early in 2017 (more details will follow soon).
Here is an online English version (part 1 and part 2 of the novel); this is the annotated online Spanish version. I know that there is quite a number of Spanish-speaking colleagues at the University; they are of course most welcome to read either version.
For those of you who prefer the material pleasure of the printed paper: the above is a good English version, which is also available as an e-book, and this one below in Spanish is also good:
Have a look, dip your toes, take a step! I hereby commit myself to be reading Macbeth at the same time…
See you (virtually) again soon!
Until then, tell us at @UoMQuixotians: when did you hear or read about Don Quijote for the first time ever?
