And many passages in his history show that he did not
look with much confidence to the immediate success of his design to
restore knight-errantry. And what did it matter to him so long as thus
he lived and immortalized himself? And he must have surmised, and did in
fact surmise, that his work would have another and higher efficacy, and
that was that it would ferment in the minds of all those who in a pious
spirit read of his exploits.
Don Quixote made himself ridiculous; but did he know the most tragic
ridicule of all, the inward ridicule, the ridiculousness of a man's self
to himself, in the eyes of his own soul? Imagine Don Quixote's
battlefield to be his own soul; imagine him to be fighting in his soul
to save the Middle Ages from the Renaissance, to preserve the treasure
of his infancy; imagine him an inward Don Quixote, with a Sancho, at his
side, inward and heroical too--and tell me if you find anything comic in
the tragedy.
And what has Don Quixote left, do you ask? I answer, he has left
himself, and a man, a living and eternal man, is worth all theories and
all philosophies. Other peoples have left chiefly institutions, books;
we have left souls; St. Teresa is worth any institution, any _Critique
of Pure Reason_.
But Don Quixote was converted. Yes--and died, poor soul. But the other,
the real Don Quixote, he who remained on earth and lives amongst us,
animating us with his spirit--this Don Quixote was not converted, this
Don Quixote continues to incite us to make ourselves ridiculous, this
Don Quixote must never die.
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