Quixote too, like all those beings, created by God or by genius, who in one point at least attain the absolute, has a secret; and this secret he has at last revealed to me, whose fidelity had been proven in the many quixotic vigils of my youth.[1]
Don Quixote is not mad. He does not go mad in spite of himself. He belongs to the common type of the Brutuses and the Hamlets: he pretends that he is mad. He fashions an extravagant career for himself in order that he may escape the deadly monotony of Argamasilla. In the invention of his difficulties and misfortunes he is quite without fear, because he knows that he is the moving agent, conscious of what he is doing, and ready at any time to put on the brake or turn aside. That is why he is neither tragic nor desperate. His whole adventure is a deliberate amusement. He may well be serene, for he alone knows the truth of the game, and his soul has no room for veritable anguish.
Don Quixote is not in earnest.
II
In order to see clearly into so grievous a mystery, we must dismiss the ostensible evidence of the book itself.
- ↑ As long ago as 1911 I had come to realize that Don Quixote was not mad, and had said that “the structure of his mind and life was perfectly normal” (L’altra metà, p. 134), but I did not then insist on the true nature of his apparent madness.
