Towards a True and Better Vision
Readers of Don Quixote,1 the book often hailed as the “first modern novel,” will know that the mad knight’s adventures stem from the reading of chivalric stories of idealized heroism, sacrifice, and courtly love. Quixote mistakes himself for an actual knight, gets himself a squire, and travels a sixteenth century Spain in search of adventures worthy of “his lady,” Dulcinea of Toboso. When I read Don Quixote this past fall, I noticed how repeatedly Quixote regards Dulcinea, and how central she is in his romantic, deluded mental landscape. She is the purest of all feminine gems, ideal, unattainable, and virtuous, like Botticelli’s Venus looking graciously down on a world that can never truly possess her. She is the final object of his desire and the end of his quest; Dulcinea is everything.
I also noticed that Don Quixote’s devotion to an idealized female figure was not an outlier in my readings over the past year. The Italian poet Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy,2 practices a similar idealization over his beloved, Beatrice. Comparing these two characters caused me to wonder about the pitfalls and potentials of their respective ideals. Why do they idealize these women? Is it virtuous or vicious? Or a bit of both?
Dante’s paradisal vision at the end of the Comedy cures him of his erotic idealization, as well as the initial lack of vision he had at the beginning of the Inferno, and that a comparable transformation happens to Don Quixote at the end of his life. Both characters “come back to themselves,” not by cynically abandoning the ideal, but gaining a new and truer one. They both begin to “see” for the first time. The cure for unbounded romanticism, then, is not banal “realism,” but a properly situated vision of the world, and what it is meant to be. A Christian vision of the cosmos, which Dante celebrates in his poem, provides us a framework for thinking realistically and hopefully about our lives, evading both nihilistic despair and false optimism. The endeavor of literature, furthermore, can either serve romantic idolatries, hopeless nihilism, or deepen our appreciation for the actual and enhance our vision of hope amidst tragedy. Both The Divine Comedy and Don Quixote serve the latter; they temper and correct our deluded fantasies but embolden our hopes. They cure our wounded idealism and defeated cynicism by giving us a better vision of what truly is.
Don Quixote and the Pitfalls (and Potentials) of Romantic Idealism
The books of chivalry that Don Quixote consumes unto his own delusion serve as perfect examples of exaggerated, romantic idealism. Mocking such literature is among the main reasons Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. He wanted to parody the chivalric romances that were so popular in his day, thus exposing their absurdity. Don Quixote is so enraptured with this kind of literature that it comes to define his worldview—literally. He doesn’t just imagine a romantic, knightly world. He sees it. Inns are castles, windmills are giants, peasants are vagabonds. His vision of the world has been so influenced by his reading that he is completely out of touch with reality. The others in his life, like his housekeeper, niece, and the local priest, are concerned over his delusions at the get go, and scour the knight’s library after his first departure from his homestead. I find this part of the book fascinating. The priest, who seems dedicated, like Cervantes himself, to ridding the library of its ridiculous share of books of chivalry, ends up keeping many of the volumes, even the ones that appear as romanticized as the rest of the collection. Apparently, the priest, who we think is the most dogmatically opposed to books of chivalry for their corrupting effects, seems to have some hidden appreciation for these books. For instance, in chapter six, the priest, barber, housekeeper, and niece are perusing Don Quixote’s library when they come upon History of the Famous Knight Tirant lo Blanc. Instead of consigning the book to the flames, the priest exclaims,
Let me have it, friend, for I state here and now that in it I have found a wealth of pleasure and a gold mine of amusement. Here is Quirieleison of Montalban, that valiant knight, and his brother Tomas of Montalban, and the knight Fonseca, not to mention the battle that brave Tirant waged against the Alani, and the witticisms of the damsel Placerdemivida…(p. 50)
And so on and so forth. I was thinking of a contemporary comparison to make with this passage and thought of some highbrow academic at Harvard or Princeton who has set himself above the “mainstream” culture, and yet, has a guilty pleasure for the Marvel movies. I can imagine the priest today hesitating to throw away the Avengers franchise because it’s given him such a “gold mine of amusement.” In this scene, the priest goes on such a tangent about this particular volume that for a moment it’s easy to confuse him with Quixote’s own ramblings. What are we to make of this? Maybe Cervantes is warning us of being too suspicious of this kind of literature or warning us not to deny our appetite for stories of “chivalry.” Maybe he is showing us that debunking stupid books isn’t accomplished by pretending we’re too good for them, or by pretending we have no need for story at all. It’s easy to forego reading what we enjoy and instead consume the “right” books, the stuff we “should” read because that’s what’s currently in vogue. Cervantes complicates our understanding of these books through the priest, but this doesn’t mean we are supposed to blindly commend such works either. We might practice the same suspicion towards modern day vampire romance sagas, erotic novels, blockbuster thriller fiction, the millions of other books that aim merely for pleasure and not meaningful substance.
In reference to modern America’s addiction to pleasure, Dr. Anna Lembke speaks of her own addiction to erotic novels in her book Dopamine Nation;3
When I finished Twilight, I ripped through every vampire romance I could get my hands on, and then moved on to werewolves, fairies, witches, necromancers, time travelers, soothsayers, mind readers, fire wielders, fortune-tellers, gem workers… At some point, tame love stories no longer satisfied, so I searched out increasingly graphic and erotic renditions of the classic boy-meets-girl fantasy.
This may be an imperfect comparison to make, but Lembke does seem to illustrate Don Quixote’s escalating obsession for chivalric romances. He, like Lembke, is increasingly dissatisfied, and needs more intensity with every new book he reads to the point that he must somehow become the fiction. Admittedly, I experienced something similar with the release of the recent Spider-Man: No Way Home film, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya. I watched the movie three times in theaters, asked for Spider-Man merchandise for Christmas, and found my idle thoughts revolving around the web slinger until I actually “suited up” in my red long johns and had friends photograph me dangling in the doorway. This is an embarrassing anecdote, but it goes to show how we are all susceptible to Don Quixote’s madness, and that furthermore, how such obsessions have innocent foundations. We were meant to be passionate, so to speak. It’s in our nature to need an object of “worship” to provide life with meaning, life, and direction. The problem with my obsession with Spider-Man is not that the superhero isn’t awesome (he is) but that, sadly, he doesn’t exist, and even if he did, doesn’t deserve my utmost devotion. Admiration, perhaps, but not devotion.
Despite their attempts to purge the library, Don Quixote embarks on a second sally into the Spanish landscape in search of adventures alongside his faithful (and fascinating) squire, Sancho Panza. Don Quixote and Sancho’s many conversations comprise the meat of the novel, and it’s in these we discover how important Dulcinea is to the knight’s purpose and desire. Every knight needs a damsel to perform honorable feats for, and Don Quixote is no exception. In chapter eight of the Second Part, Don Quixote and Sancho are searching for the honorable lady so she can give the knight her blessing. Don Quixote says,
I shall receive the blessing and approval of the peerless Dulcinea, and with this approval I believe and am certain that I shall finish and bring to a happy conclusion every dangerous adventure, for nothing in this life makes knights errant more valiant than finding themselves favored by their ladies. (p. 503)
Dulcinea’s approval and blessing is the fuel that fires Don Quixote’s valiant mission of knight errantry. Without her, Don Quixote lacks the object of devotion he needs to make all his adventures worthwhile. What makes these scenes so hilarious, of course, are Sancho’s responses. He says,
Well, the truth is, Senor, that when I saw the sun of my lady Dulcinea of Toboso, it wasn’t bright enough to send out any rays, and it must have been that since her grace was sifting that wheat I told you about, the dust she raised made something like a cloud in front of her face and darkened it. (p. 504)
Sancho is the character who reliably tells us what is happening, anchoring us in the drabness of ordinary life, only to have Don Quixote chide him for his lack of insight and reaffirm his own idealistic notions of Dulcinea. In this scenario, he makes the following rebuttal:
Do you still persist, Sancho, in saying, thinking, believing, and insisting that my lady Dulcinea was sifting wheat, when that is a task and a practice far removed from everything that is done and should be done by highborn persons, who are created and intended for other practices and pastimes, which reveal their rank even at a distance?
To Don Quixote, Dulcinea belongs to royalty, and doing something as ordinary as sifting wheat is way below her paygrade. It doesn’t help that Don Quixote thinks that even the ordinary objects and people he encounters have been enchanted with malicious intent. Sancho is in an impossible situation. He doesn’t see what his master sees and must converse with Don Quixote to get a grip on what he’s thinking. Sancho, of course, has his own delusions, but of another variant than Don Quixote’s. The two of them proceed to have a fascinating conversation about knight errantry and Christian ascetism. Sancho reasons that it would be more honorable to be a Christian saint than a knight errant, which Don Quixote agrees with, despite keeping his commitment that “we cannot all be friars, and God brings His children to heaven by many paths: chivalry is a religion, and there are sainted knights in Glory” (p. 508).
So now we have it in the words of Don Quixote himself: knight errantry is its own religion, upholds its own ideals, and has its own method of achieving honor and immortality. Although Don Quixote never rejects Christianity, his practice of knight errantry isn’t specifically Christian although it espouses many Scriptural virtues. Don Quixote is being guided by an ideal, that, though not at odds with traditional Christianity, is more of a cultural expression than it is a universal truth. This leads me to consider the idea presented us to us by Harold Bloom in the introduction of Edith Grossman’s translation, who writes, “Against Auden I set Miguel de Unamuno, my favorite critic of Don Quixote. For Unamano, Alonso Quixano is the Christian saint, while Don Quixote is the originator of the actual Spanish religion: Quixotism.”
Don Quixote has such a devotion to knight errantry and his Lady Dulcinea of Toboso that we never doubt his commitments or convictions. He’s a knight, and always acts accordingly. For this, I somewhat admire the ridiculous Quixote. He’s an example of what it means to have faith: acting as if your beliefs are true. How often do I act in accordance with what I say I believe? Sadly, not often enough. I’m often more swayed by peer pressure and fear than by my commitments and values, some of which may not be popular with the status quo. Don Quixote regards no human opinion except Dulcinea’s, and even though he’s constantly being mocked and beaten, at least he’s steadfast. With Quixote, we have someone so “head over heels” with a vision of the world and his place in it that he becomes a sort of model. Yes, he’s absurd, but honestly, so are we. Yes, he needs his vision regulated, but who doesn’t? He comes back to himself when he is in touch with his mortality, recalling his limitations and vulnerability as a created human being.
Dante’s Journey and the Rediscovery of Hope
While in Don Quixote, our sorrowful knight needs his vision to be tempered by reality, the fictional Dante seems to be at the other end of the spectrum at the beginning of the Comedy, where we find the poet “lost in a dark wood” in the middle of his life, not knowing where he is or where to go. The poet is not gallivanting with a squire in search of adventures. On the contrary, he looks to be almost at the verge of a death of despair. He lacks vision, guidance, or hope. Far from getting a squire to accompany him on his pilgrimage, Dante is given the Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid and Dante’s literary hero. Much could be said here about the significance of their pairing, but the message is simple: Dante is lost, and needs help. He needs vision. Here, we see the flipside of idealism: despair. Don Quixote’s alternative title is “Knight of the Sorrowful Face,” which may seem odd to us given the knight’s unbounded sense of confidence. But, given the mockery, beatings, and various misfortunes he and Sancho undergo during their adventures, it causes one to wonder if Don Quixote knows deep down that his vision of the world is deluded, or at least that it’s to blame for all his pain. He never gets the blessing of Dulcinea, and for all its hilarity, Don Quixote is profoundly tragic.
There may be a similar dynamic at play in The Divine Comedy. We know that the actual poet Dante saw his beloved Beatrice when he was a child, and devoted sonnets in her honor in his earlier work Vitae Nova. Beatrice is Dante’s focal point, a vehicle through which the Divine communicates. But, she dies. And we find the fictional Dante wandering alone and desperate years later in his life, having “lost the path that does not stray.” I find Dante a relatable figure in these opening lines. He is an example of someone who, once enchanted and in love, has settled for a life of routine drudgery. He is melancholy and resigned, going through the motions of an adult life gone sour with unrealized dreams and desires. The poem is about a lost person rediscovering the object of his pilgrimage—discovering, perhaps for the first time, his first love. Yet even in that dark forest where Dante begins his long journey, he is given some indication of direction and hope:
The time was the beginning of the morning;
The sun was rising now in fellowship
With the same stars that had escorted it
When Divine Love first moved those things of beauty.(Canto 1, ll. 37-40)
We get these hints of hope throughout the poem, and good thing, too. It’s tough going in the Inferno. The farther down into the depths we go with Dante and Virgil, the more doubtful we become in reaching a place of redemption. The poem doesn’t start out hopeful and gets predictably worse as it continues.
Beatrice doesn’t appear to Dante until the end of Purgatorio, where Virgil, the honorable pagan, must return to limbo with his fellow classicists. It’s implied that Beatrice is the new guide—the one who will usher Dante into the presence of God and his saints. We find, however, that her greeting is a harsh one. Speaking of Dante, she laments at the top of Mount Purgatory:
When, from flesh to spirit, I
Had risen, and my goodness and my beauty
Had grown, I was less dear to him, less welcome:
He turned his footsteps toward an untrue path;
He followed counterfeits of goodness, which
Will never pay in full what they have promised.(Canto 30, ll. 127-133)
These are some of my favorite lines of the entire poem and summarize in large part what I’ve been trying to purport. Dante begins to stray “from the true path” after Beatrice dies, despite her being even more glorious in her postmortem condition. To me, this indicates that his hope and desire in life never truly extended beyond Beatrice. Like Dulcinea, she was the end of Dante’s quest. When she died, his own purpose for living also died. We might assume, based on the passage above, that Beatrice is simply jealous for Dante’s attention and is scorning his lack of devotion to her. This seems hardly fair, however, and it’s clear later in her rebuke that something far greater is at stake than a human relationship. Beatrice goes on to say,
In the desire for me
That was directing you to love the Good
Beyond which there’s no thing to draw our longing,
What chains were strung, what ditches dug across
Your path that, once you’d come upon them, caused
Your loss of any hope of moving forward?(Canto 31, ll. 22-27)
We discover here that Beatrice was never meant to be Dante’s stopping point. Dante’s desire for her was good, but it had a higher and better purpose. Now, Beatrice is asking him, “What happened? Why did you fall off the wagon?” We might say that Dante’s erotic desire for Beatrice was supposed to be the vehicle by which Dante enters the realm of agape. Agape love is the ultimate destination, despite the goodness of eros. We’re given this understanding at the end of Paradiso, after Dante has travelled up the various spheres of Heaven where he encounters the saints and experiences the joyousness that characterizes the kingdom of God. We’ve come a long way from the abysmal depths of the Inferno. Here, Dante’s erotic love for Beatrice is tempered and ordered by the vision of the Triune God. Here, he reaches the end of all his desires. Here, he is “handed off” from Beatrice and finds the Person where every longing heart is satisfied:
And I, who now was nearing Him who is
The end of all desires, as I ought,
Lifted my longing to its ardent limit.(Canto 33, ll. 46-48)
Dante has reached the place beyond which there is nothing to satisfy him. This is it—the end of the road that started in darkness.
So, we start with a Dante lost in the woods, and end with a Dante enraptured with a stunningly beautiful vision that, supposedly, lies at the heart of reality. What is the vision? God, existing in a Tri-Personal unity, is real, and not only real, but overflowing with joy. This relational, unbounded joy, borne from divine love, is what’s ultimately true. It’s this vision of joy that enables us to escape both the romantic idealism of Don Quixote and the corresponding despair of the aimless Dante.
Contemporary Culture and the Art of Fiction
I hope I’ve succeeded in showing how both Dante and Don Quixote are examples of wounded idealism in these selected passages featuring their idealized beloveds, and how they both are restored to “right vision” at the end of their journeys, even though the final scenes of their respective tomes look different. The romanticism of the mad knight and the melancholy of the disillusioned poet are two sides of the same coin. It’s not so much that they need balance between the two extremes, but that they need a new framework for understanding themselves and the world they inhabit. Now, I’d like to ask: how can literary art clarify, deepen, and enrich our “visions” of the world? How can it potentially delude us? Or perhaps a more existential way to phrase the question is to ask how literature like Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy help us think about our own mortality?
At the end of his life, Don Quixote repents of his chivalric excursions and wishes he had devoted the last years of his life to more venerable pursuits. It’s a tragic but heartwarming episode. After 900 pages of thinking he’s a knight and that the world is full of ghouls, dragons, and giants to slay, the modest Spanish gentleman comes back to himself and reprimands all the books of chivalry he once took for gospel truth. We find that his melancholy “at being defeated” and “unsatisfied longing to see Dulcinea free and disenchanted” is the cause of his illness. In other words, his wounded idealism is overwhelming him with a world-weary sadness. He looks a lot like Dante at the beginning of the Comedy. He’s lost his beloved, and never fulfilled the ideals he’s long dreamed of. And in this condition, he falls asleep on his deathbed “for more than six hours at stretch, so long that his housekeeper and his niece thought he would never open his eyes again” (p. 935). We don’t get insight into what he dreamed, or if he received some sort of vision during his long nap, but whatever the case, he wakes up in his right mind and thanks God, declaring, “Blessed be Almighty God who has done such great good for me! His mercies have no limit, and the sins of men do not curtail or hinder them.”
Don Quixote, now Alonso Quixada once again, is no longer depressed upon his waking. None of his former ramblings of knight errantry, honorable feats, or the peerless Dulcinea return. Regardless of how much I enjoy the ridiculous knight Don Quixote, I experienced a sincere affection and admiration for this man rightly restored, and wholeheartedly agree with Miguel de Unamano. This ordinary Spanish landowner is the true Christian saint. He goes on to inform his friends of his restoration:
I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha but Alonso Quixano, once called the Good because of my virtuous life. Now I am the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and all the infinite horde of his lineage; now all the profane histories of knight errantry are hateful to me; now I recognize my foolishness and the danger I was in because I read them; now, by God’s mercy, I have learned from my experience and despise them.
Alonso Quixano has had an epiphany akin to Dante’s, his wounded idealism corrected and redeemed into rightful trust in God, and he dies in peace as a man beloved by his friends and family. It is at Don Quixote’s deathbed, where he goes back to being “Alonso Quixano,” that he becomes the Christian saint with a rightly ordered vision of himself and the world. At the end, Don Quixote says this to his niece:
My judgment is restored, free and clear of the dark shadows of ignorance imposed on it by my grievous and constant reading of detestable books of chivalry. I now recognize their absurdities and deceptions, and my sole regret is that this realization has come so late it does not leave me time to compensate by reading other books that can be a light to the soul. (p. 935)
This is a critical passage, because it introduces a sort of paradox that Cervantes ingeniously crafted throughout the book. This is a book making fun of other books. It uses the structure of the chivalric romance to make its point, but, because it is a satire, is intended to transcend the genre it’s mocking to become something worthy on its own terms. We may be supposed to suspect chivalric romances of their absurd idealism and pomposity, but, lest we be tempted to dismiss literature itself as a pointless and even harmful endeavor, Cervantes gives us this quote from our restored hero to assure us of fiction’s value. Alonso Quixano doesn’t say he wishes he had never read any books. Instead, he regrets how much time he spent reading the wrong books. Cervantes can justify his own craft even while parodying chivalric romances.
In the end, it is his “gentle disposition” and “kind treatment of others,” not acts of “heroism,” that grant this iconic character true honor and glory. In ending the novel this way, I think Cervantes justifies ordinary life as a viable way to live a virtuous life. It reminds me of a passage from 2nd Thessalonians in the New Testament, which reads,
But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not in any need. (2 Thess. 4:10-12, NASB)
Alonso Quixano fits the description in this verse at the beginning of the novel. He’s an ordinary man who owns an estate, makes a good living, and pulls his own weight. Likewise, the vision of Paradise in The Divine Comedy is filled with ordinary men and women; they are not necessarily superheroes of the faith but flawed human beings who choose to be obedient to the will of God. It’s the people who demand to be the heroes of their own story who end up in Hell, caught in a never-ending cycle of self-absorption and deception. The joy of the Trinity permeates the created order, providing a hope beyond understanding but which remains cognizant to darkness and suffering in the world. There is reason to hope, but also a lot of work still to be done.
In the 21st century, are we more tempted to despair or idealism? What mythic stories do we tell ourselves to cope with our insignificance in the cosmos? And what role does fiction play in ordering how we see the world and regard each other? I think the dilemma is ongoing in western culture. We swing between the poles of ecstasy and despair, but never learn the walk the narrow path of joy and sorrow. Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy still have much to teach the modern world.
In a culture so ideologically divided, and so influenced by materialism, scientism, and nihilism, it comes as no surprise that we often lack patience for literature and the arts. In his book Art & Faith: A Theology of Making,4 Makoto Fujimara argues that we live in a utilitarian, industrialized culture that values only the use of things instead of their intrinsic value. He writes,
Could it be that what is deemed marginal, what is ‘useless’ in our terms, is most essential for God and is the bedrock, the essence, of our culture? Could it be that our affinity for the utilitarian pragmatism of the Industrial Revolution created a blind spot in our culture that not only overlooks great art, but if purity of expression is compromised could also lead us to reject the essence of the gospel? (p. 17)
Fujimara notes that the utilitarian way of seeing the world has infiltrated parts of the American church, too. In evangelicalism’s focus on theological correctness and victory in the “culture wars,” little space for artistic expression remains. The technological, industrial, and wholly “practical” vision of the world is the dominant lens through which westerners view the world. If I can’t use it for an observable result, it’s meaningless. Pleasure matters more than joy, and status more than character. Politics is our real religion, and “religion” is mostly privatized.
It’s in this moral climate that fiction is in danger of being seen as irrelevant and pointless but is in fact more important than ever. We may theoretically understand the value of the arts, but in our technical and fast paced society, lack the patience to slow down and consider what the great books and works of art before us might have to say to us.
Here I want to be cautious, however. I have enjoyed reading and writing for most of my life, and can’t imagine myself without the influence of music, art, poetry, and fiction. But I would never want to claim that reading fiction alone is somehow the answer to all the problems of the modern world. I do think reading is important, healthy, and has its own kind of pleasure (why read if it isn’t delightful?), but know that ultimately, there’s only so much it can do for us. Understanding the limitations of art is just as important as considering its potential. As George Saunders writes, “We shouldn’t overestimate or unduly glorify what fiction does.”5
With that being said, clearly it does something. As an aspiring fictionist myself, I hope the work is justifiable! Cervantes certainly seemed to think so, or else he wouldn’t have written such a tome like Don Quixote. Again, Alonso Quixana doesn’t dismiss the need for good books. He only disavows the ones that led him astray. In his own words, books can be a “light for the soul.” What I’ve tried to do here is put a selection of passages in conversation with each other and see if any new meaning or insight might result. The problem with romantic idealism is that it tends to gloss over the sad realities and disappointments human life naturally entails. It tries to thwart mortality though heroism and misses the opportunity to be relatable to its audience in any meaningful way. It isn’t real. On the flipside, despair, nihilism, and the meaningless outlook of materialistic utilitarianism is simply wounded idealism—the sorrow of unrealized dreams and hopes. There are countless examples of books, movies, paintings, and songs that embody both these faulty visions of the world. Therefore, like the dying Alonso Quixana, we need to be in touch with our mortality and vulnerability. To be otherwise is to be deluded and blind. But both he and Dante are practitioners of a deeper vision of the cosmos. They both come to realize that hope is no fool’s errand. They know death is real but are confident that God is breathing new life into creation and has a plan to restore them. As Fujimara writes further, “A theology toward New Creation makes an audacious argument that mercy and the creation of beauty are the foundational essence for how we, fallen human beings, can participate in the sacred creation of the New” (p. 28).
If literature can point me in that glorious direction, then I’m all in.
1 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by Edith Grossman. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY. 2003.
2 Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Bantam Dell, Random House, Inc. New York, NY. 1980.
3 Is Our Addiction to Pleasure Destroying Us? | Institute for Family Studies (ifstudies.org)
4 Fujimara, Makoto. Art and Faith: A Theology of Making. Yale University Press. New Haven & London. 2020.
5 Saunders, George. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. Random House. New York, NY. 2021. p. 382.