Simon Leys: The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays

This attitude is unconsciously pervading our general view of literature. As a result, we tend to forget that until recently most literary masterpieces were designed as popular entertainment. From Rabelais, Shakespeare and Molière in the classical age, down to the literary giants of the nineteenth century — Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Dickens, Thackeray — the main concern of the great literary creators was not so much to win the approval of the sophisticated connoisseurs (which, after all, is still a relatively easy trick) as to touch the man in the street, to make him laugh, to make him cry, which is a much more difficult task.

The notion of “literary classic” has a solemn ring about it. But Don Quixote , which is the classic par excellence , was written for a flatly practical purpose: to amuse the largest possible number of readers, in order to make a lot of money for the author (who needed it badly). Besides, Cervantes himself hardly fits the lofty image most people have in mind when they think of inspired writers who create immortal masterpieces: originally a soldier of fortune, he was wounded in action and remained a cripple; captured by pirates, he was sold as a slave in North Africa; when, after long years of captivity, he was finally able to return to Spain, it was only to fall into dire poverty; he was sent to jail several times; his life was a harrowing struggle for survival. He repeatedly attempted — always without success — to earn money with his pen: theatrical plays, pastoral novels. Most of these works have disappeared and the little that remains is not particularly impressive.

It was only at the very end of his career — he was already fifty-eight — with Don Quixote in 1605 that he finally hit the jackpot: the book was at once a runaway best-seller. And Cervantes died just one year after the publication of the second and final part of his book (1615). Since Don Quixote was rightly hailed as one of the greatest works of fiction of any age, in any language, it is interesting to note that it was also — quite literally — a pot-boiler concocted by a hopeless old hack, at the very end of his tether.

Furthermore, when we consider what set off Cervantes’s imagination, our puzzlement increases: he had intended his entire book as a machine de guerre directed against a very peculiar target — the literature of chivalry and knight errantry, a genre which had been in fashion for a while. This literary crusade now appears utterly irrelevant, but for Cervantes it was an important cause that mobilised the best of his intellectual energy; in fact, the relentless pursuit of this rather idle quarrel provided the very backbone of his entire narrative. As we all know, the overall structure of Don Quixote is very simple: the basic premise of the story is set in the first few pages of Chapter One, and the thousand pages that follow simply represent its applications to diverse situations — hundreds of variations on one theme.

Is it necessary to recall this premise here? Don Quixote, who is a kind, wise and learned country gentleman with little money and much leisure (always a dangerous combination for an imaginative person), develops an extraordinary addiction to the literature of chivalry. In Cervantes’s own words:

This gentleman in the times when he had nothing to do — as was the case for most of the year — gave himself to the reading of books of knight errantry; which he loved and enjoyed so much that he almost entirely forgot his hunting, and even the care of his estate. So odd and foolish, indeed, did he grow on this subject that he sold many acres of corn-land to buy these books of chivalry to read… [In the end], he so buried himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits.

As a consequence, he then decided to turn himself into a knight errant — and out he went into the vast world, in the hope of illustrating his name for all time with noble and valiant deeds. But the problem, of course, was that knights errant belonged to another age, long vanished. In the ruthless modern world, his obstinate quest for honour and glory was a grotesque anachronism. The conflict between his lofty vision and a trivial reality could only lead to an endless series of preposterous mishaps; most of the time, he ended up as the victim of cruel and elaborate practical jokes. In the very end, however, he finally wakes up from his dream, and realises that, all along, what he had chased with such absurd heroism was a ludicrous illusion. This discovery is his ultimate defeat. And he literally dies from a broken heart.

The death of Don Quixote in the last chapter is the climax of the entire book. I would challenge any reader, however tough and insensitive, to read these pages without shedding a tear. And yet, even at that crucial juncture, Cervantes is still pursuing his old obsession, and once again he finds the need to score a few more cheap points at the expense of some obscure books of chivalry. The intrusion of this futile polemic at that very moment is utterly anti-climactic — but then Cervantes has a perverse habit of ruining his own best effects, a practice that has infuriated many readers and critics (I shall return to this a little later). What I wish to underline here is simply this: it is bizarre to observe how a literary masterpiece which was to exert such universal appeal — transcending all barriers of language, culture and time — could, from the start, have been entirely predicated upon such a narrow, tedious and pointless literary quarrel. In order to appreciate fully the oddity of this situation, one should try to transpose it into modern terms: it is as if, for instance, Patrick White (let us say) were to have devoted his greatest creative effort to the single-minded debunking of some trash fiction published in Women’s Weekly or New Idea .

But this, in turn, raises an interesting question. A little while ago, out of the blue, I inadvertently caught some critical flak for venturing to suggest in a nationally broadcast lecture (among a few other heresies) the notion (quite banal in fact) that creative literature, inasmuch as it is artistically valid, can carry no message. This view is not new, by the way, and should be self-evident. Hemingway, whom I quoted, had expressed it best to a journalist who was questioning him on “the messages” of his novels. He very sensibly replied: “There are no messages in my novels. When I want to send a message, I go to the post office.”

Some critics reacted indignantly to my statement: “What? No messages in the masterpieces of world literature? And what about Dante’s Divine Comedy ? What about Milton’s Paradise Lost ?” Even more to the point, they could have added: “And what about Cervantes’s Don Quixote ?”

Of course, many poets and novelists think that they have messages to communicate, and most of the time they passionately believe in the momentous significance of their messages. But quite frequently these messages are far less important than their authors originally assumed. Sometimes they prove to be actually mistaken, or downright silly or even obnoxious. And often, after a while, they become simply irrelevant, whereas the works themselves, if they have genuine literary merit, acquire a life of their own, revealing their true, long-lasting meaning to later generations; but of this deeper meaning, the author himself was hardly aware. Most of Dante’s most fervent readers today care very little for medieval theology; and virtually none of Don Quixote ’s modern admirers have ever read — let alone heard the names of — most of the books of chivalry that Cervantes attacked with such fierce passion.