Sancho Pansa autorem Don Kichota

Abstract

Franz Kafka’s literary legacy includes a brief but remarkably original text that shifts attention away from the authorship of Miguel de Cervantes’ most celebrated work and toward the ontological status of its protagonist, Don Quixote. Entitled The Truth About Sancho Panza by its editor Max Brod, this parable engages with the metafictional possibilities already present in Cervantes’ novel. By describing himself as the “stepfather” rather than the creator of Don Quixote, Cervantes opens a space for speculation about the true origin of the character. This invites a range of interpretive possibilities, which may be explored either from within the fictional world itself, through the creation of fiction within fiction, or from an external perspective that blurs the boundary between fiction and reality. Kafka adopts the former approach, suggesting that Don Quixote is, in fact, a creation of Sancho Panza. Through a close reading of Kafka’s text in dialogue with Cervantes’ novel, this article examines the literary and philosophical implications of this provocative hypothesis. It argues that Kafka’s reinterpretation is not merely a playful exercise in literary imagination but a hermeneutically grounded reading that finds significant support in the narrative structure and thematic concerns of Don Quixote.