Cervantes and Me

The Da Vinci Code is a big deal here, and we are looking forward to talking about it with students when the movie comes in May. So I read it. I had decided not to post any of my many irritations with it (didn’t want my blog to be too negative). But then last night I came across a passage in Don Quixote that summed up a large part of what bugged me about Dan Brown’s book:

"…although the play is based on fictitious actions, historical veracity is claimed for it, and bits and pieces of other histories involving different people and periods are mixed in, and without any attempt at verisimilitude, either, but with obvious mistakes that are quite inexcusable. And what’s worst of all is that there are people ignorant enough to say that this is sheer perfection…

…all this works to the detriment of truth and to the prejudice of history…"

Thank you, Cervantes, for saying it better than I could have (even if I did have to look up verisimilitude).

My other big issue with the book is Brown’s view of truth. The people who believe in truth strongly enough to want others to know about it are generally either misguided (the church) or downright evil (the Teacher). The heroes are the ones who know the real “truth”, but are content to keep it safe and secret knowing that, “Hey, we’re entering the Age of Aquarius, so it’ll all work out in the end.”

On a more positive note, I went to see Pride and Prejudice (in English—woo hoo hoo!) with some friends the other night. Here’s another Cervantes quote that sums it up for me…

"...The audience that has gone to see an ingenious and well-crafted play comes out at the end cheered by its jests, instructed by its truths, amazed at its action, wiser thanks to its speeches, warned by its roguery, shrewder for its examples, incensed against vice and enamored of virtue; for a good play will provoke all these reactions in anyone who watches it…"

I won’t be going to see The Da Vinci Code in theaters, but they can keep remaking Pride and Prejudice every couple years, and I’ll be there.