The Famous Don Quixote of La Mancha

In any event, recalling that the valiant Amadís had not been content with simply calling himself Amadís but had added the name of his kingdom and realm in order to bring it fame, and was known as Amadís of Gaul, he too, like a good knight, wanted to add the name of his birthplace to his own, and he called himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, thereby, to his mind, clearly stating his lineage and country and honoring it by making it part of his title.

Like everything Don Quixote does, his choice of name is earnestly absurd. First, there's "Quixote," which means something like "shinguard"—not to mention a version of his real name, "Quesada"—"cheesy." But then, after eight days of thinking, he decides that his name will not be complete unless it also indicates his birthplace—La Mancha.

In the footnotes to her translation of the Quixote, Edith Grossman dryly points out that "La Mancha was not one of the noble medieval kingdoms associated with knighthood." In fact, La Mancha wasn't a medieval kingdom associated with anything, since no such kingdom existed. This, and the fact that the region never produced any knights, just allows Cervantes to make more jokes—like this one from his introduction: "the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha...is thought by all the residents of the district of Montiel to have been the most chaste lover and most valiant knight seen in those environs for many years." Montiel is a tiny peasant town in La Mancha, where there's no reason that any knight, valiant or otherwise, should ever have been seen. This is Don Quixote's "home turf."

It's also important to note that mancha means "stain" in Spanish. This is a joke about the region all by itself, but also, for Cervantes, another layer of verbal play—all together, his title character is called "Sir Shinguard of the Stain." (A good time to remember that Don Quixote spends most of Chapter 1 trying to clean off his great-grandfather's old armor, including the quijotes, because they are—of course—"stained with rust"). Don Quixote's chosen name thus identifies him both with an inconsequential territory and with shabby armor—a double reminder of his absurdity.

Yesterday, though, I was sitting on a train for two hours going through La Mancha, and it became clear why this place is an especially appropriate home for Don Quixote. The region's name actually comes from the Arabic al-Mansha, which means "dry land" or "wilderness." And, from my window on the train, that's pretty much what I could see:



Of course, Cervantes uses this desolate landscape as an opportunity for more jokes—like when Don Quixote and Sancho start paddling down a stream, and Don Quixote suddenly announces,

we shall shortly emerge onto a calm sea... But we must have emerged already, and traveled at least seven hundred or eight hundred leagues; if I had an astrolabe here and could calculate the height of the pole, I could tell you how far we have traveled, although either I know very little, or we have already passed, or will soon pass, the equinoctial line.

Sancho is quick to correct him, pointing out that they have in fact only travelled two yards. But the humor is heightened by the fact that La Mancha is entirely landlocked; Don Quixote confuses a sea of burnt ground for a sea of water.

But it also might be worthwhile to consider theoretical readings of La Mancha that go beyond the comical. The landscape in which Don Quixote is set—from which the hero takes his name—is barren; it has, like the canon of chivalry, "dried up." What's more, La Mancha is largely flat—almost freakishly flat in some places, unlike anywhere else in Spain. Combined with a lack of water, this uniform surface might suggest a quality of nothingness—a feeling of being in no-place, a place that does not distinguish itself with landmarks. But the reciprocal of nowhere is everywhere, and each of these contains the possibility of the other—in other words, no-place, like a blank canvas, can quickly become any-place; it only needs to be overwritten with meaning. This is what Don Quixote is capable of.

The flatscape of La Mancha.

Unlike La Mancha, the Quixote is anything but flat. Cervantes piles up meaning after meaning, each in conflict with the others in a multidimensional twisting of language, imagination, and "reality." The text repeatedly steps outside itself, asserting and questioning and undermining, to such an extent that to seek its "core" or "foundation" is a fool's errand. Its textual surface is constantly shifting and changing footing—nothing so predictable as La Mancha. Don Quixote's landscape is therefore also a ruse. If we are fooled by it, we can designate the hero as a madman, who has taken flight from the level plane of reality into an impossible world, an unsupported fantasy. But on the other hand, we will have confined ourselves to this nearly-lifeless "dry land" that Don Quixote has left behind. Our refuge from this flatness is construction—like the operations of Don Quixote's mind. Reality is what we make.

But how can we maintain the idea of constructed reality alongside our present need—in our political reality—to insist on the truth? In the face of overwhelming disinformation, what kinds of things can remain open, and what must be nailed down? nailed down, as it were, into the ground of La Mancha—? Don't know yet.