Prescient timing, Jansy. I’m just reading, for the first time, VN’s “Lectures on Don Quixote” (Harvest/HBJ, 1983). On the master’s birthday, I ponder his ‘Apologia pro sua Vita,’ which, of course, is not saying ‘Sorry!’
“Now, tragedy wears better than comedy. Drama endures in amber; the guffaw is dispelled in space and time. The nameless thrill of art is certainly closer to the manly shudder of sacred awe, or to the moist smile of feminine comparison, than it is to the casual chuckle; and of course in that line there is something still better than the roar of pain or the roar of laughter — and that is the supreme purr, of pleasure produced by the impact of sensuous thought -- sensuous thought — which is another term for authentic art.”
Those who simply dismiss VN as ‘anti-Cervantes,’ should note the sentence that follows his ‘definition’ of authentic art:
“Of this there is in our book [Don Quixote] a small but infinitely precious supply.”
Stan Kelly-Bootle