"There are some
people who wear themselves out learning and discovering things that, once
learned and discovered, don't matter one bit for our comprehension and
retention."- Don Quixote, Vol 2 Ch. 22
This is an interesting
moment in the Quixote. They are talking to a pseudo-scholar who is compiling a
book of "who did what first." This college graduate is referred to as
the cousin (primo) of a scholar they met earlier. Primo, of course, also means
first! Sancho makes fun of the fake humanist and asks him who was the first man
to scratch his nose, and tells him, "it must have been out father
Adam." Then Sancho stumps the pedant by asking him "Who was the first
acrobat?" Why, Lucifer, of course. Most Cervantes scholars think this is a
sardonic interpretation of the decadence inherent to the compilation of data
for its own sake, an accumulation that is then allowed to pass for erudition.
But I think this chapter is really about originality. The scholar's knowledge
of firsts is not only useless but mere compilation. Sancho's questions and
answers are creative and original compared to those of the scholar, and of course, the squire's examples are closer to the original creation! Cervantes
is also critiquing the use of "formulas" for composition, such as
those used by his arch-rival Lope de Vega. If nothing else, the Quixote is
unpredictably original.
