Giovanni Papini, journalist, essayist, novelist, writer, poet, literary critic and philosopher, was a controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century and the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism.
Due to his ideological choices, Papini’s work was almost forgotten after his death, although it was later re-evaluated and appreciated again: in 1975, Jorge Luis Borges called him an “undeservedly forgotten” author.
In 1913 he published his essay Ventiquattro cervelli (“Four and Twenty Minds”), in which he reviewed, with a critical slant and with great philosophical scrutiny, the life and works of great personalities of history and literature such as Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Da Vinci, George Berkeley, Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and, finally, himself!
From Four and Twenty Minds, translated into English in 1922 by Ernest Hatch Wilkins, we have drawn the study Don Quixote, which today we propose to modern readers, a short essay dedicated to the adventurous and epic literary protagonist of the most famous novel by Miguel de Cervantes, widely regarded as the greatest Spanish writer.
According to Papini, «Don Quixote is not mad. He does not go mad in spite of himself. He belongs to the common type of the Brutuses and the Hamlets: he pretends that he is mad. He fashions an extravagant career for himself in order that he may escape the deadly monotony of Argamasilla. In the invention of his difficulties and misfortunes he is quite without fear, because he knows that he is the moving agent, conscious of what he is doing, and ready at any time to put on the brake or turn aside. That is why he is neither tragic nor desperate. His whole adventure is a deliberate amusement. He may well be serene, for he alone knows the truth of the game, and his soul has no room for veritable anguish. Don Quixote is not in earnest».
