Nabokov would have preferred to write about something else. At Harvard, he was forced to include “Don Quixote” in a literature survey course. These lectures are the result. He never taught the book again.

A strange feature of the book is its violence. Ears are cut off, teeth are knocked out, shoulders are smashed – vomitings, batterings, bludgeonings are standard fare. There is much blood here. One on side, we see Don Quixote as a loveable innocent, a well intentioned rogue, but on the other side his innocence is hurting many others. Does that bother us, and how does it affect our ideas about the good intentions of Quixote?

Two scenes in the book show the consequences of even the best intentions. Andrés is a boy being beaten by his master when Quixote stumbles upon them. Quixote tells the master to stop the flogging and to pay the boy his full wages. After Quixote leaves the master beats Andrés all the more because of Quixote, with each blow mocking Quixote. Later when Andrés sees Quixote, he tells the Knight never to help him again or to come to his aid, even if he is being torn to pieces. In the second scene Quixote attacks a funeral procession, believing that in the hearse “lay the body of some knight either slain or dangerously wounded, the revenge of whose misfortune was reserved for [Quixote´s] prevailing arm.” Chapter 20. In the attack Quixote breaks the leg of a young priest, who says that he does not understand how Quixote as a knight-errant, ‘“can call that to right and relieve men, when you break their legs. You’ve made crooked that which was right and straight before; and Heaven knows whether it can ever be set right as long as I live. Instead of relieving the injured, I fear you have injured me past relief; and while you seek adventures, you have made me meet with a very great misadventure.’ ‘All things,’ replied Don Quixote, ‘are not blessed alike with a prosperous event.’” Thus, the good intentions of Quixote have a way of bruising those around him, and Quixote basically says that luck and chance happeneth to them all.

When Cervantes wrote the book (1604-1614), religion was in turmoil. The Catholic Church as a body had been badly bruised. The Protestant Reformation, a response to the abuses of the Church, was established and continuing, and the responding Counter Reformation of the Catholic Church was an attempt to re-squeeze Spain. Simultaneously, society was becoming more secularized, as the ancient Church lost the grip that it had held during the Dark and Middle Ages. (Though there was a strong Islamic culture in southern Spain in the 16th and 17th century because of the Moorish influence from northern Africa – which influence we often see in “Don Quixote” – Spain was still predominantly a Catholic country.) The Church and all it comprises were very much on the minds of early 17th century Spaniards. It is possible to read the book as Cervantes, a Catholic caught in the midst of the changes, putting in his two pesos worth. He could be suggesting either that (i) the good intentions of whatever organization, church, state or otherwise, cannot justify harsh results, or (ii) the ways of God can’t be fully understood by man.

In the first interpretation above Quixote may be a symbol of a power that cannot be understood except through the painful, and apparently random, knocks we receive from it. This interpretation seems to tear-down faith.

In the second interpretation above Quixote may be a symbol of our search to understand the ways of God. In this interpretation we may struggle in the search, but any difficulty should be understood as a limit on our present abilities to see the big (real) picture and not as an indictment of higher powers. This interpretation seeks the limits of theodicy – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy – which concerns itself with explaining or justifying the ways of God to man. Why, as God is omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent, are people born into terrible poverty and misery, why are there natural disasters, , what purpose does disease serve, why does evil exist? In effect Quixote may personify the question: Why can´t the Knight bless events with a happy result/Why if God is well intentioned and powerful do bruises, to individuals or the church body, happen? Maybe Cervantes tells us through Quixote that in spite of explanations (such as man’s free agency, etc) ultimately it cannot be fully understood by man. Just like we can´t fully grasp what is happening in Quixote´s brain. This interpretation seems to build-up faith – or at least not tear it down.