A series of lectures about the famous novel by Cervantes “Don Quixote” , read by the greatest Russian-American writer of the twentieth century Vladimir Nabokov at Harvard University in 1952 and published posthumously in a separate book in 1983 complements lecture courses on Russian and foreign literature , prepared by him earlier for students of Wellesley College and Cornell University . Always happy to challenge conventional wisdom and battered truths, Nabokov-lecturer presented the work of Cervantes as a "rude old book" Totally "relentless Spanish cruelty" , and its title character - not only as a victim of mockery and humiliation from the hostile world but also as a target for hidden reader ridicule. This is ,. by Nabokov, in the perception of subsequent generations, Don Quixote outgrew the role of the pathetic Helpless Joke , Originally published by , and became a symbol of sublime and holy madness , the personification of noble solitude , Selfless Valor and True Humanism , The book itself turned into a “well-balanced and bizarre myth” about the relationship between appearance and reality. Astute, meticulous and defiantly biased researcher, Nabokov masterfully overthrows and at the same time convincingly confirms the cultural reputation of Don Quixote “the knight of the sad image”, which has developed over four and a half centuries.