Chapter VIII of Part 1 of Don Quixote is titled ” Of the valourous Don Quixote’s success in the dreadful and never before imagined Adventure of the Windmills, with other events worthy of happy record.”  I admire a chapter with a name like that.

Cervantes describes the original encounter between Don Quixote and the windmills with humor:

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.

“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.”

“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.”

Collected here are images of Don Quixote tilting at his imaginary enemies, the windmills.

The image of a knight charging windmills is clearly one that has captured our imagination for hundreds of years.  Even in comics and cartoons:

I showed these photos to my friend, who made two very interesting observations.

“The most famous Don Quixote image of all time – Picasso – no windmills.”

“The best-known telling of the story – at least in America?”

I answered.  “The musical.  I saw it with Richard Kiley at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in December, 1968.”

“Bingo.  And – no songs about windmills, right?”

He had a point.  But what about all these paintings and drawings?