Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: Chapter One, Paragraph 2

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself upto reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that heal most entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.

TIM-ELVIS' OBSERVATIONS ON THIS PARAGRAPH:

Paragraph two is longer than paragraph one. Apparently Cervantes did not believe in adding interest to his writing by breaking up the sentences into smaller, easier to digest chunks of chewable prose. His syntax has not improved since the first paragraph, but he has thrown in a few semi-colons to spice things up a bit. Some would call this a comma splice, but let's not nitpick. I am going to dive right into my interpretation of each sentence.

First sentence of the second paragraph: The narrator starts right off by referring to the main character introduced in the first paragraph. Basically he points out that the guy is kind of a slacker. He doesn't work so you kind of have to figure he inherited his property. He lounges around reading books about chivalry (the code of knights that includes bravery, courtesy, honor, and gallantry toward women). He was so into these books that he had to sell off some of his property to buy more. That is apparently all he did.

Second sentence of the second paragraph: He really liked stuff written by a man named Feliciano de Silva. Apparently he thought the guy was a good, clear writer yet he developed fanciful and self-indulgent plots. He really liked the guys stuff when he wrote about some knight hitting on damsel using really lame lines like "the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflected so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty." Give me a break.

Third sentence of the second paragraph: I like this sentence. Apparently the poor schmuck really got his knickers in a twist trying to figure out what convoluted lines like that actually meant. The narrator implies at this point that, even a brilliant philosopher such as Aristotle couldn't have made sense out of that drivel.

Fourth sentence of the second paragraph: The main character didn't really buy the fight scenes in the stuff he was reading because the number of wounds inflicted would have left lots of scars. Well, duh.

Fifth and final sentence of the second paragraph of the first chapter: Our main character did like the way the books ended with the promise of a yet another adventure (or sequel...I think we now know where the Friday the 13th movies got their inspiration). Apparently even though he like the way the books ended he still had the urge rewrite them himself. But he was always being distracted from doing so by other thoughts (can you say Attention Deficit Disorder...).

Wow, that's the end of the second paragraph. Did I mention there are 51 chapters in part one? Each chapter has about ten paragraphs. We should zip right through part one of the book in about a year and a half. At some point, we may want to pick up the pace and read two paragraphs a day. I'll leave that up to readers. Just let me know.