I've started the second half of Don Quixote. In the first chapters the characters talk about the first half's reception. (How Meta!) And there are some interesting cultural discussions.
As you can see, I like all the novel's ultralong sentences!
"The niece and housekeeper were present at this conversation, and they never tired of giving thanks to God at seeing their lord and master with all his wits; the priest, however, changing his earlier intention, which was not to touch on chivalric matters, wanted a more thorough test of whether or not Don Quixote's recovery was false or true, and so he gradually began to recount new of the court, and among other things, he said it was thought certain that the Turk would come down with a powerful fleet, but no one new his plans or where the huge cloud would burst; this fear, which has on the alert almost every year, had now affected all of Christendom, and His Majesty had fortified the coasts of Naples and Sicily and the island of Malta."
"The chaplain agreed, visited the madman, spoke to him for more than an hour, and in all that time the madman never made a confused or foolish statement; rather, he spoke so judiciously that the chaplain was obliged to believe that the madman was sane; one of the things the madman told him was that the superintendent bore him ill will because he did not want to lose the gifts his relatives gave him for saying he was still mad, though with periods of lucidity; the greatest obstacle for him in his misfortune was his wealth, because in order to enjoy it, his enemies were deceptive and denied the mercy Our Lord had shown by turning him from a beast back into a man."
"No longer does anyone ride out of this forest and into those mountains, and from there tread upon a bare and desolate beach, the sea most often stormy and tempestuous, and find along the shore a small boat without oars, sail, mast, or any kind of rigging, and with intrepid heart climb in and give himself over to the implacable waves of the deepest ocean, which first raise him up to heaven and then toss him into the abyss; and, with his breast turned to the insurmountable strom, when he least expects it he finds himself more than three leaps out of the boat onto a distant unknown land, and there things occur that are worthy of being written not on parchment, but bronze."
"There is another error," responded Don Quixote, "into which many have fallen: they do not believe that such knights ever existed in the world, and with a variety of people and on different occasions, I have often attempted to bring this common misconception into the light of truth; sometimes I have not succeeded in my intention, and at other times I have, supporting it on the shoulders of truth, and this truth is so certain I can almost say I have seen Amadis of Gaul with my own eyes: tall, with a pale face and nicely trimmed black beard and a gaze both gentle and severe, he was a man of few words, slow to anger and quick to put aside wrath; and just as I have depicted Amadis, I could, I believe, portray and describe all the knights errant who wander through all the histories in the world, because it is my understanding that they were just as their histories recount, and by means of the deeds they performed and the circumstances in which they lived, and by using sound philosophy, one can deduce their features, their natures, and their stature."
"So far it's been nothing but child's play, but if your grace wants to know all the slander they're saying about you, I'll bring somebody here who will tell you everything and not leave out a crumb; last night Bartolome Carrasco's son, who's been studying at Salamanca, came home with his bachelor's degree, and I went to welcome him home and he told me that the history of your grace is already in books, and it's called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha; and he says that in it they mention me, Sancho Panza, by name, and my lady Dulcinea of Toboso, and other things that happened when we were alone, so that I crossed myself in feat at how the historian who wrote them could have known about them."
"All this is true, Senor Don Quixote," said Carrasco, "but I should like those censurers to be more merciful and less severe and not pay so much attention to the motes in the bright sun of the work they criticize, for if aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus [even blind Homer nods], they should consider how often he was awake to give a brilliant light to his work with the least amount of shadow possible; and it well may be that what seem defects to them are birthmarks that often increase the beauty of the face where they appear; and so I say that whoever prints a book exposes himself to great danger, since it is utterly impossible to write in a way that will satisfy and please everyone who reads it."
"As for what Senor Sanson said about people wanting to know who stole my donkey, and how, and when, I can answer by saying that on the same night we were running from the Holy Brotherhood, and entered the Sierra Morena after the misadventurous adventure of the galley slaves, and of the dead man being carried to Segovia, my master and I rode into a stand of trees where my master rested on his lance, and I on my donkey, and battered and tired from our recent skirmishes, we began to sleep as if we were lying on four featherbeds; I was so sound asleep that whoever the thief was could come up to me, and put me on four stakes that he propped under the four sides of my packsaddle, and leave me mounted on them, and take my donkey our from under me without my even knowing it."
"I spent them for myself, and my wife, and my children, and they are the reason my wife patiently puts up with my traveling highways and byways in the service of my master, Don Quixote; if after so much time I came back home without a blanca and without my donkey, a black future would be waiting for me; if there's any more to know about me, here I am, and I'll answer the king himself in person, and nobody has any reason to worry about whether I kept them or didn't keep them, spent them or didn't spend them; if the beatings I got on these journeys were paid for in money, even if they didn't cost more than four maravedis a piece, another hundred escudos wouldn't pay for half of them; so let each man put his hand over his own heart and not start judging white as black and black as white; each of us is as God made him, and often much worse."
"No sooner had Sancho said these words than the sound of Rocinante neighing reached their ears; Don Quixote took this as a very good omen and resolved that in three or four days he would undertake another sally, and after declaring his intention to the bachelor, he asked his advice as to the direction he should take on his journey; the bachelor responded that in his opinion, he ought to go to the kingdom of Aragon and the city of Zaragosa, where in a few days they would be holding solemn jousts for the Festival of San Jorge, and there he could win fame vanquishing all the knights in the world.
"I, Senor Sanson, don't plan to win fame as a valiant man but as the best and most loyal squire who ever served a knight errant; and if my master, Don Quixote, as a reward for my many good services, wants to give me one of the many insulas that his grace says are to be found out there, I'll be very happy to accept it; and if he doesn't give it to me, I'm a human being, and a man shouldn't live depending on anybody but God; besides, bread will taste as good, and maybe even better, whether I'm a governor or not; for all I know, in those governorships the devil could have set a snare for me that will make me stumble and fall and knock out all my teeth."
"The bachelor responded that although he was not one of the famous poets of Spain, who as people said, did not number more than three and a half, he would be sure to write the lines, although he found a great difficulty in their composition because the number of letters in her name was seventeen, and if he made four Castilian stanzas of four octosyllabic lines each, there would be one letter too many, and if he made the stanzas of five octosyllabic lines each, the ones called decimas or redondillas, there would be three letters too few; despite this, however he would attempt to somehow shrink one letter so that the name Dulcinea of Toboso would fit into four Castilian stanzas."
"Look, Teresa," responded Sancho, "I'm happy because I've decided to serve my master, Don Quixote, again, for he wants to leave a third time to seek adventures; and I'll leave with him again, because of my need and the hope, which makes me happy, of thinking that I may find another hundred escudos like the ones that have already been spent, thought it makes me sad to have to leave you and my children; and if it was God's will to give me food with my feet dry and in my own house, not leading me through wastelands and crossroads, He could do it at very little cost and just by wanting it, then of course my happiness would be firmer and truer, for what I feel now is mixed with the sorrow of leaving you; and so, I was right to say that I would be delighted, if it was God's will, not to be happy."
"Look, my friend," responded Don Quixote, "not all knights can be courtiers, and not all courtiers can or should be knights errant; there has to be some of each in the world, and although we are all knights, there is a vast difference between us; courtiers, without leaving their chambers or passing beyond the threshold of the court, travel the entire world by looking at a map, not spending a blanca or suffering heat or cold, hunger or thirst; but we the true knights errant, measure the earth with our own feet, exposed to the sun, the cold, the wind, and the inclemencies of heaven, both night and day, on foot and on horseback; and we know our enemies not only in portraits but in their actual persons, and no matter the danger and regardless of the occasion we do battle with them, not worrying about trifles or the laws governing duels: whether one combatant has or does not have a shorter lance or sword, or has on his person a relic, or some hidden deception, or if the sun is to be apportioned or slashed to bits, and other ceremonies of this nature that are used in private duels between individuals, which you do not know about, but I do. And you should also know something else: the good knight errant may see ten giants whose heads not only touch the clouds but go above them, each with legs that are two immense towers and whose arms resemble the masts of large and powerful ships, each eye like a huge mill wheel burning hotter than a glass furnace, yet he must not be afraid in the slightest, but with a gallant air and an intrepid heart he must charge and attack them and, if possible, defeat and rout them in an instant, even if they are armed with the shells of a certain fish that are, they say, harder than diamonds, and instead of swords they carry sharp knives of Damascene steel, or clubs studded with steel spikes, which I have seem more than a few times."
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