Meditations on Quixote: Translated from the Spanish by Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín Introduction and Notes by Julían Marías

By José Ortega y Gasset and trs.) Gasset, José Ortega y (Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín

Book Overview

"""One of the essential experiences, the greatest perhaps, is Cervantes. . . . Alas! If only we knew with certainty the secret of Cervantes' style, of his manner of approaching things, we would have found out everything.""In Meditations on Quixote, Jos Ortega y Gasset presents a powerful case for integrating literature into experience. Through a series of ""essays in intellectual love,"" Ortega explores the aim of philosophy: to carry a given fact (a person, a book, a landscape, an error, a sorrow) by the shortest route to its fullest significance. He then considers how literature, specifically Cervantes, contributes to realizing this aim.Arguing that ""we are all heroes in some measure,"" that ""heroism lies dormant everywhere as a possibility,"" and that ""the will to be oneself is heroism,"" Ortega urges us to integrate the possible into our conception of the real. He presents Quixote as a profound book, full of references and allusions to the universal meaning of life, a book that presents with maximum intensity the particular mode of human existence that is peculiarly Spanish. A call to his fellow Spaniards to join him in forging a new Spain, Ortega's Meditations on Quixote is also an invitation to his fellow humans to take up the challenge of literature, opening our minds and seeking all-embracing connections with the world and its people."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252068955
• ISBN13: 9780252068959
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

The Idealized Windmill

A mucho good book; filled with a sharp, sensitive, wisdom that is constantly searching for the light on the surface, through the depths of the forgotten and ignored....rare like all great things.

Insightful Observations

Meditations on Quixote is the first major work Jose Ortega y Gasset published in Spain; as such, the reader will stumble across several infant notions that were later subjected to major philosophical treatments by Ortega. Naturally, therefore, this book is often passed over and dismissed. However, I believe it holds within its pages a very mature, coherent argument. It should be noted that Don Quixote is not actually the central focus of these meditations. Rather, Ortega only delves into Cervantes's great novel during the second half of the book (the "first" meditation), using that knight of rueful countenance to clarify his analysis. I will not attempt to explain the philosophy presented in this book, as I feel there is a reason it takes hundreds of pages to express these concepts. It is such with all philosophy; think of it as a food - I can compress all the contents of a five-star dinner into a dense pill and give that to you, but it would not serve justice to the original pieces. Having said that, I can certainly relay (as another reviewer has) the famous expression "I am myself and my circumstance." Ortega puts significance into what this "circumstance" is composed of, mentally dividing the material things in life and their deeper meaning, explaining that this deeper meaning is just as real as the material surface. He then leads into the concept of man as a hero via his own will ("the will to be oneself is heroism"), focusing on Don Quixote, and modern literature in general (as opposed the ideal epics of old), as examples. Julián Marías makes interesting notes throughout. Recommended!