Starting Part II

I’m very excited so far about the first part of Part II of DQ. It’s a domestic scene so far with DQ back at home but everything’s changed irrevocably…as promised at the end of Part I. Would we/I read on otherwise? At the end of Part I as well we hear about the parchments detailing “the knight’s exploits…and the burial of this same Don Quixote, together with various epitaphs and eulogies on his life and habits” and we read samples of these sonnets and epitaphs (the ones not too worm-eaten). Is it odd to read of the characters’ deaths only halfway through the book?

In the dedication of the second part, Cervantes talks about the readers’ longing for more of Don Quixote and in the prologue he rails about the piracy and the false second part published to exploit and capitalize on the success of the first part. Did readers demand this? Or was Don Quixote, Part I, a “trend” some smart marketer hoped to use to his advantage? And originality, possession, ownership? Is this part of the discussion?

Cervantes does a version of throwing down the gauntlet in the prologue by displaying “restraint and modesty” even as he challenges the “false” author of the false second part. Is he also a Don Quixote playing out a fantasy of author-errantry? Cervantes argues that virtue will win favour, that his own second part will ring true because of its stylistic and literary similiarity to the first part. And yet so much of what we’ve/I’ve read already consists of stories cobbled together, told by other characters, written by other authors and compiled here in one place. Are these the multiplicities full of potential that D& G talk about? Should our concern then be with the too easy designation of madness assigned to Don Quixote (and Sancho, by association)? Or is there no need for concern as somehow Cervantes permits and enables readers to admire Don Quixote and I think admiration has something to do with looking and reflection…Mirar=to look, to look at, to watch. Mirador/miradora=spectator, Mirar de traves=to squint. All this makes it necessary, even essential for me to read on…