Masterpieces of Spanish Literature: Borges and Don Quixote

Jorge Luis Borges and the Absurd Maze of Reality

Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer, is considered the greatest author of the 20th century. For Spanish literature, the world is an absurd maze because man passes to his destiny unable to reach his true objective. The stories he proposes are subtle mind games, inviting us to complex exercises of fantasy and abysmal metaphysical problems.

Ultimately, the key issue in the best stories of Borges is, then, the mysterious ambiguity, even the incomprehensibility of the reality that surrounds us and where we are so comfortably installed. But it is also impossible that the world is a symbol, an infinite system whose key we have never possessed or have forgotten. Hence, Borges refers to reality as if it were a strange jigsaw puzzle that no one could solve, which perhaps contains clues of possible explanations.

And if so, let's ask what the world is beyond the hidden explanation in The Aleph, probably the most significant portrait of the entire work of Borges. The key question we try to respond to could be this: does it make sense, the inconceivable, that this whole universe is concentrated in a secret and conjectural object? Where does Borges drag us with his fantasies?

Don Quixote: The Eternal Clash of Ideals and Reality

Don Quixote was written from the perspective of a man of sixty years of age. Cervantes aims to criticize the books of chivalry: he places the action in La Mancha, and the hero is a mad hidalgo. But it is more than a mockery of knights-errant; it is the expression of an altruistic feeling to end injustice and help the needy, representing the eternal clash between the great ideals of man and the harsh, surrounding, miserable reality. Don Quixote asks nothing in return; he only does it for the love and recognition of Dulcinea del Toboso, who is disguised as a peasant by scoundrels and rogues.

Reality is vulgar; you have to decorate it and idealize it. We are all limited beings, but the quixotic ideal means dedication to a just cause without expecting anything in return and not forcing anyone's will (not making others be as you want them to be). This unwavering ideal stumbles at every step, but in each circumstance, Don Quixote always resorts to his ideal, despite facing whatever happens:

• Beatings
• Mockery
• Ingratitude

In such situations, Cervantes resorts to irony, a not-too-cruel smile, and a subtle, refined sense of humor. Losing one's madness and illusions is the same as dying: Don Quixote dies when he becomes sane. Sancho, the more foolish he seems, the more he feels infected by the ideals of his Señor.

The perspective of someone who does not dare to say that things are "just so" gives us some clues, though nobody, not even Cervantes, is entitled to say that the truth is "this". The creation of this complex story, a work of genius ahead of its time, is, above all, a hugely entertaining novel. It is a literary work that offers a complete social landscape of Spain at the end of the 16th century, a time and a people deeply influenced by Renaissance humanism.