Day 12 (November 29) Part II, Chapter I

“He dreamt of three balloons which he had inflated and released into the air: two were big and one was small. He wanted to catch the small one and blow it up to match the others.”

One has to laugh so as not to cry at this moment. Poor captured Father Quixote—if only we were still on the road with him and Sancho. 

Even with the horrible Bishop, Father Quixote could carry a conversation in which laughter leads to deeper truth. This chapter is as delicious as Beckett.

“‘So I am a prisoner,’ he thought, ‘Like Cervantes.’”

It is interesting that, for once, Father Quixote does not compare himself to his ancestor (Don Quixote also lost freedom momentarily in the original novel) but to the author who created that fictional ancestor. It feels as though Father Quixote begins to cross a border and enters a new realm: fiction no longer distracts or saves.