THE CHARACTER OR THE AUTHOR? THE BATTLE OF DON QUIXOTE, SCHWEIK AND…, SHAKESPEARE TO THE READER
Abstract
The character or the author is a debate that sometimes leans on the power of the reader and sometimes on the power of the author to describe the power of a work. But what distinguishes a work represented by the character, and what can distinguish another work represented by the author? When we say that the work is represented by the character, it is not about the idea thrown by Roland Barthes in his essay ‘the death of the author’, nor from Foucault’s question ‘who cares who speaks’, but about the case when the character manages to ‘walk on its own’, thus transforming him into an explanatory dictionary for phenomena. And, in the case of Don Quixote and Schweik, it all has to do with their ‘ability’ to be judged by the reader without the ‘presence’ of the author. Meanwhile Shakespeare’s characters, often extremely significant to some of the most disturbing phenomena in human life, such as betrayal, the desire for power or the desire for wealth, cannot be separated from the author by the reader. Why? According to the author of this work, this difference between Don Quixote, Schweik and Shakespeare is not due to the small number of characters of Cervantes and Hashek and the large number of those of Shakespeare. But Don Quixote and Schweik’s naive portrayal causes readers to dare to judge these characters by themselves. That is why the biggest misunderstandings happen with Schweik and Don Quixote, whereas Shakespeare is the painter of ‘betrayal’, ‘power’ and ‘wealth’ - three things we owe to the ability of thinking. Therefore, Shakespeare's ‘wisdom of the characters’ needs someone to introduce them. And the reader needs the author in order to believe this ‘character wisdom’.
Keywords: Don Quixote, Schweik, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hashek, characters, readers, the author, etc.
References
Ortega Y Gasset Jose: Meditations on Quixote, W. W. Norton & Company, published June 1983.
Bloom, Harold: Shakespeare - Invention of The Human, London: Fourth Estate LTD, March 1999.
Sontag, Susan: Against Interpretation, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966.
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