From ch 25 of part 1 of Don Quixote:
“Well, Sancho, by the same oath you swore before, I swear to you,” said Don Quixote, “that you have the dimmest wits that any squire in the world has or ever had. Is it possible that in all the time you have traveled with me you have not yet noticed that all things having to do with knights errant appear to be chimerical, foolish, senseless, and turned inside out? And not because they really are, but because hordes of enchanters always walk among us and alter and change everything and turn things into whatever they please, according to whether they wish to favor us or destroy us; and so, what seems to you a barber’s basin seems to me the helmet of Mambrino, and will seem another thing to someone else.
My Borgesian imagining of the day – a reading where Quixote’s claim here is taken seriously. We cease understanding the novel as satirical work by Cervantes and view it instead as the mocking product of enchanters determined to warp a true romance of the knight’s deeds. In order to restore events to their true form the reader must inhabit Quixote’s perspective – since the great cruelty of the enchanters was in leaving him able to see and speak the truth while altering everything around him. In essence, we must quixotize ourselves through the novel just as Quixote had transformed himself through his own reading. Only when we too take the flocks of sheep in ch.19 as the armies of Alifanfaron and Pentapolin have we escaped their spell and restored the text.
This may also tread somewhat into the spirit of Unamuno’s Life of Don Quixote and Sancho.
Extracts 