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By Root 613 0

descending to the cave, Don Quixote parodies the journey to the underworld of Odysseus and Aeneas. Having been lowered by a rope tied around him, the Knight is hauled up less than an hour later, apparently in deep slumber. He insists that he has sojourned below for several days and describes a surrealistic world, for which the wicked enchanter Merlin is responsible. In a crystal palace, the celebrated knight Durandarte lies in a rather vociferous state of death, while his beloved, Belerma, marches by in tears, with his heart in her hands. We scarcely can apprehend this before it turns into outrageous comedy. The enchanted Dulcinea, supposedly the glory sought by Don Quixote’s quest, manifests as a peasant girl, accompanied by two other girls, her friends. Seeing the Knight, the immortal Dulcinea runs off yet sends an emissary to her lover, requesting immediate financial aid:

but of all the grievous things I saw and noted, the one that caused me most sorrow was that as Montesinos was saying these words to me, one of the companions of the unfortunate Dulcinea approached me from the side, without my seeing her, and with her eyes full of tears, in a low, troubled voice, she said to me:

“My lady Dulcinea of Toboso kisses the hands of your grace, and implores your grace to let her know how you are; and, because she is in great need, she also entreats your grace most earnestly to be so kind as to lend her, accepting as security this new cotton underskirt that I have here, half a dozen reales or whatever amount your grace may have, and she gives her word to return them to you very soon.”

I was astounded and amazed at this message, and turning to Señor Montesinos, I asked:

“Is it possible, Señor Montesinos, that distinguished persons who are enchanted suffer from need?” To which he responded:

“Your grace can believe me, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, that what is called need is found everywhere, and extends to all places, and reaches everyone, and does not excuse even those who are enchanted; and since Señora Dulcinea of Toboso has sent someone to ask you for six reales, and the pledge is good, it seems, then you must give them to her, for she undoubtedly is in very great difficulty.”

“Her security, I shall not take,” I responded, “nor shall I give her what she asks, because I have no more than four reales.”

I gave these to her (they were the ones that you, Sancho, gave me the other day so that I could give alms to the poor whom I met along the road)…

This curious blend of the sublime and the bathetic does not come again until Kafka, another pupil of Cervantes, would compose stories like “The Hunter Gracchus” and “A Country Doctor.” To Kafka, Don Quixote was Sancho Panza’s daemon or genius, projected by the shrewd Sancho into a book of adventure unto death:

Without making any boast of it, Sancho Panza succeeded in the course of years, by devouring a great number of romances of chivalry and adventure in the evening and night hours, in so diverting from him his demon, whom he later called Don Quixote, that his demon thereupon set out in perfect freedom on the maddest exploits, which, however, for the lack of a preordained object, which should have been Sancho Panza himself, harmed nobody. A free man, Sancho Panza philosophically followed Don Quixote on his crusades, perhaps out of a sense of responsibility, and had of them a great and edifying entertainment to the end of his days.

In Kafka’s marvelous interpretation, the authentic object of the Knight’s quest is Sancho Panza himself, who as an auditor refuses to believe Don Quixote’s account of the cave. So I circle back to my question: Does the Knight believe his own story? It makes little sense to answer either “yes” or “no,” so the question must be wrong. We cannot know what Don Quixote and Hamlet believe, since they do not share in our limitations. Don Quixote knows who he is, even as the Hamlet of act V comes to know what can be known.

Cervantes stations his Knight quite close to us, while Hamlet always is remote and requires mediation. Ortega y Gasset remarks of