The forest of a large work may conceal its trees.  The following remarks on a chapter of Don Quixote (1.21), developed some years ago from discussions with Susan Holcomb, are meant to encourage readers and writers to seek much in little.

  1. “There’s no proverb that’s not true,” opines Q, coining a self-referential saying which makes one positive of two negatives. There’s no rank as to truth among proverbs, for all are drawn from the same experience, which is one, and mother of the many branches of knowledge, as men are sprung from Eve.  (When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?)  Yet Q at once distinguishes “When one door closes, another opens”: one saying, two doors; two states of one door.
  1. From afar there comes an ambiguous gleam, gold or brass, helmet or basin. As helmet, knight’s headpiece or mere mass of gold; as basin, for blood or water.  (The equivocal basin is as old as Homer.)
  1. His basin shining for half a league, the barber rides from the greater toward the lesser village to meet two men, one for bleeding, the other for shaving. (With a knife he relieves men of excess.)  He meets them.  For with Q’s tale of bloody deeds, and the blood that assures their reward, and the love that continues that blood, his brain-pan is filled and poured out like a basin (which as helmet is prized like the organs of generation, explains Q).  As for S, he ought to shave every two days at least, or what he is will shine forth at a musket-shot.
  1. The barber inverts the basin, Q only interprets this. It keeps off showers of rain, and of stone (1.22).  Though smashed to pieces with hammering Q (Pasamonte la hizo pedazos, 1.22), later it turns out to be only dented (toda abollada, 1.25); so S anticipates its resurrection, and will witness to its war service (1.44).
  1. Like a royal Greek at Troy, Q could not rescue his ill-defended S, maltreated behind a wall (1.17); though now he revises the injury to jest, it is not forgotten by the bad Christian. After failure again at the fulling mills, Q would hammer the mocking soul to wipe out his shame; but a sacrificial donkey-rider has been granted him, a pagan to beat and drive off in the way of Charles Martel (Hammer, martillo) at Tours.  (S refers to Mambrino as “that Martino.”)  The pious deed wins him “his halo, the brass helmet, [that] glows through the [next] chapter” (Nabokov), a sign of redemption.
  1. S is like stolen Helen, wife lost to Troy, less than Dulcinea, wife of Q’s soul. S admires the donkey’s trappings, could not need them more if they were for his own person; King Q will dress him in finery.  Like a wife, S should be silent; like a wife, he is not.
  1. Q tells S the romance of everyknight, self-referential if he is such; but the tale applied splits into doubt, for there is a question of blood. What if a knight should be something less than royal?
  1. How will Q merit the princess? Deeds are not enough.  By blood; by love; by force.  Some from low beginnings rise step by step (de grado en grado) to be great lords; don’t ask as a favor (de grado) what you can take by force.  Q ignobly abandoned S, then made much of empty sounds; S may love him, yet would not still his tongue about either affair; only force remained, which Q turned upon the barber, seizing his crown.
  1. Candidate for nobility S has an unexpected history: an old Christian, summoner of a brotherhood, a month at court. No wonder fine clothes will suit him.  Adorning him, Q aims to maintain the vision that made the brass basin a helmet of gold—to bring S along with him.  But having donned the basin, Q thinks like a barber: S must be shaved.  The barber will follow after, declares S; having elevated him, Q trails like a grandee’s groom.  At last S, in charge of the barber business, assigns him the task of becoming king.
  1. Helmet is to basin as star-ypointing pyramid to pyramid upside down.