Maybe the Real Mental Stability was the Friends We Made Along the Way

Mental Illness plays a prevalent role in Don Quixote. In fact, it’s the catalyst of the entire plot. Don Quixote’s delusions fuel his mad quest across Spain. Even though he is a danger to himself and others, his adventures and the friends we made along the way make for a touching story. I genuinely think the Monty-Python-esque humor of the misadventures of the Don is hilarious. This entire novel is very slapstick and chaotic and I love it.



However, I know from personal experience that watching people you love struggling with psychosis and delusions is difficult. It's hard to care for them when their mental illness makes them believe they don't actually need help. As rambunctious and silly this story is, it's hard not to see the underlying cause of his misadventures, which is that he can't separate his fantasies from reality. Mental illness, in real life, is far more often debilitating and heartbreaking than as charming as it is portrayed in Don Q. How did this read to you? Was this something on your mind as you were reading? Why or why not? What are your thoughts on the contrast between the genuinely hilarious or heart-warming moments in Don Quixote and the underlying cause behind it?

Self-Pity and Pining: Introspection of Unrequited Love

Something I took particular note of within this block of reading was the portrayals of unrequited love. This is a popular theme in literature, fueled significantly by the great Petrarch, whose groundbreaking work in self-pity was our pleasure to read in this course. Petrarch is one of my personal favorites, as his mix of irrational obsession and torturous self-inflicted misery is somehow utterly compelling. His work has left a lasting impression on me, to the point where I dressed as his Laura for Halloween one year (nerdy, yes, but also cool??).

Noblewoman Laura de Noves, thought by some
to be the real-life counterpart of Petrarch's muse.
Image from Wikipedia.

If my memory from past study serves me correctly, he also is credited with initiating the juxtaposition of fire and ice to describe the layers of love, particularly that which is not returned, wherein fire symbolizes the intensity of the speaker's love and ice indicates his isolation in realizing it is ultimately ill-placed. We see Petrarch's stylistic preference for fire in Sonnet 90, within the lines, "My soul dry kindling, waiting for her flame, / and could I help it I was set ablaze?" (1549). These lines designate Laura as the source of a great heat that develops within Petrarch, a metaphoric way of relating the powerful passion he feels for her.

Petrarch's legacy carries through in the continued popularity of the unrequited love theme. We even see this in Don Quixote. The irrationality of one caught in such a state is captured wonderfully in Chapter 31. Sancho tells Don Quixote of his "encounter" with Dulcinea del Toboso. With each description of her that contradicts Don Quixote's idealized view of her, he finds a new way to rationalize it so that it again fits in with the woman he wants her to be. For example, when Sancho hilariously recounts that, from Dulcinea del Toboso, he "did perceive a little odor," Don Quixote insists that Sancho mistook his own scent for hers (1718). The ferocity of unrequited love and its compartmentalization into extremes makes it so that the lover often forms the object of his affection into a glorified, largely inaccurate figure (the "up on a pedestal" framework).

Because I think this is such an intriguing concept, I'd love to hear of any other examples of unrequited love you may have encountered, whether in literature, film, pop culture, etc. How do you think the concept has developed over time since the precedent Petrarch established??