Don Quixote: Tramping To The "Beat"?

I [am not] a madman trying to make people believe me sane; I am merely striving to make the world understand the delusion under which it labours in not renewing within itself those most happy days when the order of knight-errantry carried all before it” – Don Quixote

“The only people for me are the mad ones” – Jack Kerouac

In reading Dharma Bums I found the references to Don Quixote interesting. While having read a fair amount of work from Beat writers (usual suspects: Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder, and Kerouac), I haven’t learned about them in the context of the Beat Movement. Thinking of the potential parallels between the figures of Ray Smith and Don Quixote helped my understanding of beatitude. What follows is my (humble) attempt at making some connections between the two as “beatific” figures.

Both Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote detail the journeys of two men disenchanted by the artifices and illusions of the modern(izing) world before them. Don Quixote is viewed as a madman for enacting the defunct ideals of knighthood in seventeenth century war-torn Spain, while Ray Smith appears as a peripatetic social misfit intent on hitchhiking to a higher spiritual learning in post-WWII America. Both are without much money (what little DQ has he quickly gives away), without a stable shelter (both are happy to sleep in nature), embody a simple sweetness to those they meet, and seem content with rejecting the standards of their respective times.

As Ray travels throughout the country, he seems to touch those around him, almost as if spreading the “Dharma" word. Some, like Beaudry, realize they “really [aren’t] free” (129) insofar as they are indentured to the capitalist system of mainstream America. Don Quixote embodies this, too. Like the Chinese fortune in the novel, both Ray Smith and Don Quixote "feed others" (182) an alternative vision to life in the modern/militarized world.

At one point, Ray refers to himself as a "Don Quixote of tenderness” (123) and views compassion as the “heart of Buddhism” (132). Similarly, Don Quixote creates an imaginary world to escape the devastation of modern warfare, and teaches others to always defer to compassion, especially to the downtrodden in society. Both are marginal figures of their time and have a "bottom-up vision of society" (Wilson 7). This allows them to live a humble life of compassion and asceticism.

Kerouac wrote in a letter to Ginsberg saying “[all] living creatures are Don Quixote […] since living is an illusion” (Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg: The Letters). This makes me think of the point in the novel when Kerouac writes that "there's nothing in the world but the mind itself" (12). If life is an illusion, then one can alter/edit/rewrite/manipulate it at any time. In other words, one can access the beatific vision of "making the world new" (Wilson 63). Don Quixote had the temerity to create his own kool-aid reality (think: Brautigan) even at the risk of being branded as “mad” (think: Ginsberg’s Howl). Moreover, Don Quixote's journey allowed a way for others to meaningfully engage with him (think: Ray/Japhy), in his world, on his terms. In this way, he was able to alter his reality, as well as the reality of others. Don Quixote may not have been a Beat, but I think he reflects a certain sense of beatitude that is pretty valuable.