November 10, 2005
Don Quixote: World’s most famous unread book gets 400 year celebration
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is one of those books that everybody has heard of but almost nobody has read. Of course, it is more than 1,000 pages long, not to mention being very old. In fact, it’s 400 years old this year.
That’s why the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Division of the UW’s Romance Languages Department is staging an extended celebration of Don Quixote Dec. 1-3 on campus. Starting with students reading from the book and ending with a guitar concert, the program promises to show participants why the story has endured so long.
“The book really looks intimidating,” said Donald Gilbert-Santamaria, the Spanish and Portuguese Studies professor who is coordinating the program. “But it’s funny, and it’s episodic. You can almost open the book at random and read a story that’s maybe 20 pages long and you’ll get a good feel for the book.”
Many of us know Don Quixote from the musical Man of La Mancha, but Gilbert-Santamaria says that story bears only a surface resemblance to the original. Cervantes, he said, was writing a book that simultaneously imitates and makes fun of a number of literary traditions. Foremost among these is the chivalric tradition. Thus, Cervantes’ protagonist goes crazy and thinks he’s a knight involved in adventures right out of that tradition.
Moreover, Gilbert-Santamaria said, many have argued that Cervantes invented the novel in Don Quixote. “One of the things he invented is communicating with a lot of different audiences at once. So he has this prologue where he says you have to make the sad laugh and keep the simple minded entertained. And for those who want something more profound, you have to give them something to think about as well. The novel functions on a lot of different levels,” he said.
The first part of Don Quixote (Quijote in Spanish) was originally published in 1605; the second part followed 10 years later. In Spain and Latin America, it holds the place that Shakespeare holds in the English speaking world, and is universally read by high school students. In this country it’s not on the high school list, but no university Spanish program worth its salt would be without a class on Don Quixote. Gilbert-Santamaria was slated to teach the book this fall, which is why his department chair, Tony Geist, suggested some kind of Quixote celebration to him last January.
“It started out as a modest kind of thing — some scholars talking at a roundtable,” Gilbert-Santamaria said. “But then I found out that the Simpson Center for the Humanities offers funding for public events. It sort of took on a life of its own after that.”
The Simpson Center signed on as a co-sponsor, and then other things started falling into place. Book-It, a local theater company that had done a production of Don Quixote this fall, offered to do an abridged performance; a guitarist who was coming to campus for a concert offered to dedicate his program to Don Quixote; a well known Cervantes scholar agreed to give the keynote speech.
And the students in Gilbert-Santamaria’s class on Don Quixote (reading the book in Spanish!) are involved as well. One of his requirements for the class was that each student give a presentation on the novel. He told them that the three best presentations would win a prize, but didn’t tell them what the prize would be.
The prize, as it turns out, is to go on the radio to discuss their presentations. Gilbert-Santamaria’s colleague Maria Gillman coordinates a 10-minute feature that is part of a weekly program, “Viva Mexico.” The program runs on the local Mexican Consulate’s Spanish language station, Radio Sol, 1360 AM. Gilbert-Santamaria and the three students will each do a program this month to promote the Quixote celebration. “Viva Mexico” runs from 10 to 11 a.m. Monday mornings.
Students from the class will also kick off the celebration reading English translations of stories from the novel. “I told them to be faithful to the story but to be creative in their translations,” Gilbert-Santamaria said.
Book-It’s one-hour performance of excerpts from their production of Don Quixote takes place the following night. Gilbert-Santamaria saw the original production and said it was the most successful adaptation of the work that he has seen. “They made Cervantes a character, which I thought was a good choice because throughout the novel there’s this question of what is the relationship between the author and his creation,” he said.
The co-authors of the Book-It adaptation will be part of a roundtable on the following day. A second roundtable will feature scholars talking about reading the book through history.
Gilbert-Santamaria says he hopes the program will provoke attendees to read at least part of the book. “Don Quixote is the one text that everybody knows about outside of Spanish studies, so it’s kind of a nice way to reach out to the community,” he said. “Cervantes’ novel has the ability to transcend the moment in which it was written. We want to remove the veil of intimidation from what is perceived as a literary text.”
Program Schedule
The Living Art of Miguel de Cervantes:
A Public Celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the Quijote
Thursday, Dec. 1
Student reading, 7:30 p.m., 120 Communications
Friday, Dec. 2
Book-It production of Don Quixote, 7:30 p.m., Ethnic Cultural Theater
Saturday, Dec. 3
Roundtable focusing on the business of reading Don Quixote, both in historical terms and as a matter of teaching. George Shipley, UW; Ed Baker, University of Florida; Eric Mayer, Central Washington University and Harry Velez Quinones, University of Puget Sound; 10:30 a.m., 226 Communications.
Roundtable focusing on the adaptation of Don Quixote to other media. Anne Ludlum and David Quiksall, Book It; Ernesto Alorda, Seattle Opera; and Francesc de Soler, Spanish guitarist; 1:30 p.m., 226 Communications.
Keynote speech: “In Search of a Lost Symmetry: the Morisco Presence in Cervantes’ Spanish and Portuguese,” by Carroll Johnson, UCLA, 3:30 p.m., 120 Communications.
Concert dedicated to Don Quixote by guitarist Francesc de Soler, 7 p.m., HUB Auditorium.
Tickets are required for the Book-It performance and the Soler concert and can be purchased at the HUB Ticket Office, 206-543-2277. Tickets are $10 for the play; prices vary for the concert.
