Read to Live

 

Enchantment

"'There's some extraordinary things in books,' said the mariner." - H. G. Wells (1)

I have found in my current rereading of Don Quixote that an extraordinary challenge was understanding Don Quixote's character - trying to come to terms with the thematic relevance when he demonstrates in a serious way the odd, at times ludicrous nature of his behavior. I am referring to what is often called enchantment.

Early in Cervantes' novel the effect of reading "Chivalric Romances" is described with the curious result of the "enchantment" of the hidalgo, Don Quixote of La Mancha. “In short he became so immersed in his books that he spent the night reading from dusk to dawn, and the days from dawn to dusk, until at last, from little sleeping and much reading, his brain dried up, and he came to lose his wits.” The idea that reading could result in the imaginative adventures of Don Quixote is so fantastic that it seems only appropriate to label it enchantment.

Henry David Thoreau put it differently when, in his chapter entitled “Reading” in Walden he wrote:

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”(2)

Certainly Don Quixote's life entered a new era after he “immersed” himself in Chivalric romances.

I remember one book that led me to stay awake from dusk to dawn when I was but a youth. My reading of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo kept me awake as I read about his near death experience in the Chateau d'If prison, his escape, and his new life as he took vengeance on his enemies. But to this day the most memorable scene in that book for me was Edmond Dantes' education reading books in the prison under the tutelage of the Abbe Faria who would ultimately save his life. This was not only a formative moment in my reading life but also a dramatic example of Thoreau's observation on the power of reading.

Cervantes' example is echoed throughout literature in the centuries following his creation at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Some of my favorite moments include the several examples throughout the novels of Charles Dickens, not only when he echoes the relationship of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in The Pickwick Papers as the book shows Mr. Pickwick hiring Sam Weller as his personal servant, but more importantly – for the theme of being enchanted by books – when he describes the library of books devoured by young David Copperfield:

“It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it.

It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did.”(3)

The examples abound in my recent reading as well, where the enchantment of reading was significant in the literary lives of both Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary, perhaps contributing in no small part to their tragic endings. The best way I have found to handle the effect of reading literature is to relish the enchantment and try your best to find a way to relate it to your life. Gustave Flaubert, in particular, can be called upon for good advice in that regard when he encouraged his friend, Mademoiselle de Chantepie with the words:

“Read to live!”(4)

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Notes:

1. Wells, H. G. The Invisible Man. New York: Everyman's Library, 2010 (1897), p. 153.

2. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: Time, Inc., 1962 (1854), p. 105.

3. Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004 (1850), p. 66.

4. Manguel, Alberto. The Traveler, The Tower, and the Worm. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, p. 111.