Meditaciones Del Quijote by José Ortega y Gasset
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Like the varnish on a painting, the critic aspires to put literary objects in a purer atmosphere, the high mountain air, where the colors are more vibrant and the perspective more ample.
Ortega published this, his first book, in 1914 when he was 31 years old. It was meant to be only the opening salvo of a continuous barrage. According to his plan, this book was to be followed by nine other “Meditations”: on Azorín, Pío Baroja, the aesthetics of The Poem of the Cid, a parallel analysis of Lope de Vega and Goethe, among others. But, like so many youthful plans, this ambitious scheme was soon abandoned and this brief essay now stands alone.
As is the custom, Ortega fashions himself a follower of Cervantes; but he distinguishes his “quijotismo” by asserting that he worships, not the character Don Quixote, but the book. Ortega sees in this novel a repudiation of an earlier form of literature. By having his titular character rattle his brains by reading romantic tales of knights and adventure, only to go out into the world and make a fool of himself, Cervantes condemned all literature based on unusual people and events, replacing it with the literature of realism.
This is most dramatically portrayed in the episodes involving Maese Pedro, a picaresque character whom Quixote frees in the first part, and who returns in the second part to put on a puppet show for our hero. Unable to distinguish the puppets from his reality, the knight promptly charges and destroys them. This little episode demonstrates that romantic characters, such as Maese Pedro, reside in an imaginative space clearly delineated from the reality we know; but for Don Quixote imagination and reality are one seamless blend.
Apart from this discussion of the novel, Ortega roams far and wide in this essay, comparing Mediterranean and German cultures, discussing the epic form and Charles Darwin, and also including a germ of his later philosophy: “I am myself and my circumstances.” This collection also includes a long essay on Pío Baroja, which I could not properly appreciate since I have yet to read any of Baroja’s novels.
Ortega is his usual charming self. His prose is fluid and clean; his sentences sparkle with epigrams. He scatters his thoughts here and there with youthful zeal, not properly developing, clarifying, or defending any of them, but pushing joyfully on to the next point. I have heard some people describe Ortega as “dense,” but to me he is remarkably readable. Indeed I would describe Ortega as more of an intellectual essayist than a disciplined thinker. And the more I read of him, the more I am impressed.
Lotz in Translation 
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