Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:54:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Molinos quijotescos
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Original-recipient: rfc822;[log in to unmask]

Well, a good writer can be good at using imagery, sounds (rhythm, consonant and vowel combinations, etc.), ideas, psychology, symbolism, etc.  Cervantes was good at all of these things, and he was indeed very good at using imagery, that is, at presenting striking visual situations.  This is fundamental to the narrative art, and a great many writers who are considered very good novelists are nowhere near as good as Cervantes was in this regard.  His situations are visually memorable.  So the selection of the windmills makes great sense.  Even today one is enchanted by the view of windmills on a field.  Finally, the verticality and size of the windmills, with their moving arms, can imaginatively correspond to giants indeed on the Manchegan horizon.  One could add the symbolism of wind in the head associated with madness and so forth as I believe one colleague has already done.  Or one could add that a force of nature,, wind, animates the windmills, in a display of irresistible force that anyone who has encountered a force of nature, from wind to waters to fire can appreciate.  Nature is under certain circumstances irresistible.  So battling these machines that are as close to nature as a machine can be makes DQ's attempt even more foolhardy, more....Quixotic.   But this would only be the icing on the cake.  The windmills episode is basically memorable because it is visually memorable.  As a painter I am sure Theo will agree with this.  Dario Fernandez-Morera, Northwestern University.