12/21/10 Re-reading a classic
My choice is Don Quixote. Only because there was a phrase I heard someone say once about Quixote's horse, and I wanted to check it out for possible inclusion in a poem I'm writing. I have a vague memory of reading this novel in high school, the black and white paperback cover with the inky smear of a pair of riders with a blotchy windmill in the background. I know I didn't understand it well, and probably didn't finish it back then.
But it's so nice to come to a piece of literature after so many years, and to understand the feelings in it, the odd satire, the comfort with a life lived fully, the understanding of the complexity of human emotions and morality and actions. So nice to come to the work having endured so much of the stuff of life, to have survived such complexity oneself, to be on one's own quest. Re-reads are easy. Literature is easy. And complex.
Rocinante--a vehicle for an idealist--was the comment I once heard. But I don't find Quixote idealistic so much as clearly off his tree, an off-kilter parody of an idealist more than a sincere depiction. To ride Rocinante is to be completely out of touch, in danger of harming one's self, and of serving as a ridiculous joke or a berzerk hazard to others.
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