A Healthy Culture Remains In Dialogue With The Past
By Lee Oser
I take a “healthy culture” to mean one in which the relationship between books enjoys a certain autonomy. In the minds of readers, books enter conversation with each other in many languages and many ways. Such conversations go beyond the question of “influence.” The relationship between “Hamlet” and “Don Quixote” is not one of influence. Nor does it boil down to one or two key ingredients, for instance, “madness” or “the Fool.” We may choose to compare Hamlet’s madness to Quixote’s, and we will find much to discover, from the old humoral psychology (remember Galen?) to skeins of biblical allusion to the early modern self. The history of Europe underlies “Hamlet” and “Don Quixote,” both published early in the seventeenth century. Coincidentally, Shakespeare and Cervantes died in the same year, 1616. It is likely that Shakespeare read the 1612 English translation of “Don Quixote” (Part One), though at such a late date it cannot have had much impact on his career.
In its subtler aspects, though, the relationship between Hamlet and Don Quixote goes “off the grid.” It cannot be grasped in terms of historical circumstances. The facts of scholarship are helpful, but only as guides operating under strict limitations, like Dante’s Virgil. In this sense, the relationship between “Hamlet” and “Don Quixote” is representative of great literature in any genre or discipline: it leads the attentive reader to startling new insights, to the moment where the usual critical machinery falters. For serious readers, this relationship proves too fine for the mental mills by which we gaze on contemporary art and life. It leads us, individually and socially, into dialogue with ourselves.