Mirrors not only duplicate realities or create labyrinthine possibilities, but more importantly for us, they reflect back our own visage. 3 Unsurprisingly, this is a game of mirrors on and off the page. The passionate scout Miguel de Unamuno sets us on track, while José Ortega y Gasset's philosophic skills corner the fantastic literary prey (Ortega hereafter), and Jorge Luis Borges finally looses his hounding thoughts on novel and novelist to get us within range.
To better hunt down the elusive game we pursue, we recruit three able, insightful companions who sequentially and ever more discriminately support our endeavor. While infinitely easier than Pierre Menard's outlandish task of rewriting portions of the Quixote anew, it still is intimidating. We are setting out on a Quixotean intellectual hunt in lands richly populated by irony and paradox. The aim is to track Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote for literary, philosophic, and existential insights that may coalesce into revealing self-reflections to bring us, readers, a sporting chance to bag some Socratic self-knowledge. The melancholy yet proud Don Quijote, astride Rocinante lance pointed at us, defiantly asks: " Quickly, state your purpose! " Given his short temper, it is best not to dillydally. While such behavioral changes pique our curiosity and demand impossible rational explanations-after all, to our eyes they are irrational already-ours is a different target here. We know that by the time of his transformation inside and out his stalking ability was no match for his rhetorical talent for knightly self-promotion and hunger for adventure. We don't know whether Quijano was a good shot with bow, crossbow, or maybe harquebus. This piece of seemingly biographical trivia actually highlights how consumed by his books the hidalgo is: he gives up a cherished pastime for a fool's knightly dream. Part I, Chapter III 2 Don Quixote's narrator states that Alonso Quijano comes to enjoy reading high and low tales of knighthood better than hunting. Hunting for Adventures No vio la hora don Quijote de verse a caballo y salir buscando las aventuras.
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