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Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes, Edith Grossman
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eBook - ePub
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes, Edith Grossman
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About This Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, in an expanded P.S. edition
Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in English until you've read this masterful translation.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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Topic
LittératureSubtopic
ClassiquesSecond Part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha
By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Author of the First Part
Dedication
Dedicated to Don Pedro Fernández de Castro, Count of Lemos, Andrade, and Villalba, Marquis of Sarria, Gentleman-in-waiting to His Majesty, Commander of the jurisdiction of Peñafiel and La Zarza, member of the Order of Alcántara, Viceroy, Governor, and Captain General of the Kingdom of Naples, and President of the Supreme Council of Italy.
To the Count of Lemos1
SOME DAYS AGO, when I sent Your Excellency my plays, printed before they were performed, I said, if I remember correctly, that Don Quixote had his spurs ready to make the journey to kiss Your Excellency’s hands, and now I say that he is wearing them, and is on his way, and if he arrives, it seems to me I will have performed a service for Your Excellency, because I have been urged on every side to send him forth in order to alleviate the loathing and disgust caused by another Don Quixote who has traveled the world in the disguise of a second part,2 and the person who has shown the deepest interest has been the great Emperor of China, who, not more than a month ago, sent an emissary with a letter for me in the Chinese language, asking, or I should say begging, me to send the knight to him, because he wanted to establish a college in which the Castilian language would be read, and the book he wanted the students to read was the history of Don Quixote. He further said that he wanted me to be the rector of the college.
I asked the bearer of the letter if His Majesty had given him anything that would help me to defray my expenses. He replied that it had not even occurred to him.
“Well, brother,” I responded, “you can go back to your China, covering your ten leagues a day, or twenty, or whatever you prefer; because my health is not good enough for me to undertake so long a journey, and not only am I ailing but I am lacking in funds, and emperor for emperor and monarch for monarch, in Naples I have the great Count of Lemos, who, without all the provisos of colleges and rectorships, sustains me and protects me and does me more good turns than I could ever desire.”
With this I took my leave of him, and with this I take my leave now, offering to Your Excellency The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda, a book that I will complete in four months, Deo volente, and it will be either the worst or best ever composed in our language, I mean, of those written for diversion; I must say I regret having said the worst, because in the opinion of my friends it is bound to reach the extremes of possible goodness. May Your Excellency enjoy all the good health we wish for you; Persiles will soon be ready to kiss your hands, and I, your feet, being, as I am, the servant of Your Excellency. In Madrid, the last day of October, 1615.
Prologue to the Reader
LORD SAVE ME, how impatiently you must be waiting for this prologue, illustrious or perhaps plebeian reader, believing you will find in it reprisals, quarrels, and vituperations hurled at the author of the second Don Quixote. I mean the one sired in Tordesillas, they say, and born in Tarragona!1 But the truth is I will not give you that pleasure, for although offenses awaken rage in the most humble hearts, in mine this rule must find its exception. You would like me to call him an ass, a fool, an insolent dolt, but the thought has not even entered my mind: let his sin be his punishment, let him eat it with his bread, and let that be an end to it. What I do mind, however, is that he accuses me of being old and one-handed, as if it had been in my power to stop time and halt its passage, or as if I had been wounded in some tavern and not at the greatest event ever seen in past or present times, or that future times can ever hope to see. If my wounds do not shine in the eyes of those who see them, they are, at least, esteemed by those who know where they were acquired; it seems better for a soldier to be dead in combat than safe in flight, and I believe this so firmly that even if I could achieve the impossible now, I would rather have taken part in that prodigious battle than to be free of wounds and not to have been there. The wounds on a soldier’s face and bosom are stars that guide others to the heaven of honor and the desire to win glory, and it should be noted that one writes not with gray hairs but with the understanding, which generally improves with the years.
I am also sorry that he calls me envious and, as if I were an ignorant man, explains to me what envy is, but the fact is that of the two kinds of envy, I know only the one that is holy, noble, and well-intentioned; and this being so, I do not need to persecute any priest, especially one who is a familiar of the Holy Office;2 if he said this in defense of the person on whose behalf he appears to have said it, he was entirely deceived, for I revere that person’s genius and admire his works and continual and virtuous diligence. But I do thank this worthy author for saying that although my novels are more satiric than exemplary, they are good, which they could not be if they were not good in every respect.
I think you will say that I am showing great restraint and am keeping well within the bounds of modesty, knowing that one must not add afflictions to the afflicted, and the affliction of this gentleman is undoubtedly very great, for he does not dare to appear openly in the light of day but hides his name and conceals his birthplace, as if he had committed some terrible act of treason against the crown. If you ever happen to meet him, tell him for me that I do not consider myself offended, for I know very well what the temptations of the devil are, and one of the greatest is to give a man the idea that he can compose and publish a book and thereby win as much fame as fortune, as much fortune as fame; in confirmation of this, I should like you, using all your wit and charm, to tell him this story:
In Sevilla there was a madman who had the strangest, most comical notion that any madman ever had. What he did was to make a tube out of a reed that he sharpened at one end, and then he would catch a dog on the street, or somewhere else, hold down one of its hind legs with his foot, lift the other with his hand, fit the tube into the right place, and blow until he had made the animal as round as a ball, and then, holding it up, he would give the dog two little pats on the belly and let it go, saying to the onlookers, and there were always a good number of them:
“Now do your graces think it’s an easy job to blow up a dog?” Now does your grace think it’s an easy job to write a book?
And if that story does not please him, my dear reader, you can tell him this one, which is also about a madman and a dog:
In Córdoba there was a madman who was in the habit of carrying on his head a slab of marble, or a stone of no small weight, and when he came across an unwary dog, he would go up to the animal and drop the weight straight down on it. The dog would go into a panic and, barking and howling, run up three streets without stopping. Now, one of the dogs he dropped the weight on happened to belong to a haberdasher and was much loved by its owner. The stone came down, hit the dog on the head, and the battered animal began to yelp and howl; its master saw and heard this, and he seized a measuring stick, came after the madman, and beat him to within an inch of his life, and with each blow he said:
“You miserable thief, you dog, why did you hurt my hound? Didn’t you see, cruel man, that my dog was a hound?”
And repeating the word hound over and over again, he beat and pummeled the madman. Chastised, the madman withdrew and was not seen on the street for more than a month, but at the end of this time he returned with the same mad idea and an even heavier weight. He would go up to a dog, stare at it long and hard, and not wanting or daring to drop the stone, he would say:
“This is a hound: watch out!”
In fact, all the dogs he encountered, even if they were mastiffs or little lapdogs, he called hounds, and so he never dropped a stone on one again. Perhaps something similar may happen to this storyteller, who will not dare ever again to set his great talent loose among books, which, when they are bad, are harder than boulders.
Tell him, too, that his threat to deprive me of profits with his book is something I do not care about at all, for in the words of the famous interlude La Perendenga,3 I say long live my Lord High Mayor, and the peace of Christ be with you all. Long live the great Count of Lemos, whose well-known Christianity and liberality keep me standing in spite of all the blows struck by my bad fortune, and long live the supreme charity of His Eminence of Toledo, Don Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas,4 even if there were no more printing presses in the world, and even if more books were published against me than there are letters in the verses of Mingo Revulgo.5 These two princes have not received adulation from me, or flattery, but moved only by their own goodness, they have undertaken to favor me with kindness, and for this I consider myself luckier and richer than if fortune had brought me to the heights by any ordinary means. A poor man may have honor, but not a villain; need may cloud nobility, but not hide it completely; if virtue sheds her light, even along the crags and cracks of poverty, it will be esteemed by high, noble spirits, and so be favored.
Say no more to him, and I do not wish to say more to you except to tell you to consider that this second part of Don Quixote, which I offer to you now, is cut by the same artisan and from the same cloth as the first, and in it I give you a somewhat expanded Don Quixote who is, at the end, dead and buried, so that no one will dare tell more tales about him, for the ones told in the past are enough, and it is also enough that an honorable man has recounted his clever follies and does not want to take them up again; for abundance, even of things that are good, makes people esteem them less, and scarcity, even of bad things, lends a certain value. I forgot to tell you to expect the Persiles, which I am finishing now, and the second part of Galatea.6
Chapter I
Regarding what transpired when the priest and the barber discussed his illness with Don Quixote
Cide Hamete Benengeli tells us in the second part of this history, which recounts the third sally of Don Quixote, that the priest and the barber did not see the knight for almost a month in order not to restore and bring back to his mind events of the past, but this did not stop them from visiting his niece and housekeeper, charging them to be sure to pamper him and give him food to eat that would strengthen and fortify his heart and brain, the source, as they had good reason to think, of all his misfortunes. The two women said that they already were doing so, and would continue to do so, as willingly and carefully as possible, because they could see that there were moments when their lord and master gave signs of being in his right mind; this made the priest and the barber extremely happy, for then it seemed to them that they had done the right thing by bringing him home, enchanted, in the oxcart, as recounted in the final chapter of the first part of this great and accurate history. And so they decided to visit him and see his improvement for themselves, although they considered a complete cure almost impossible, and they agreed not to make any mention at all of knight errantry so as not to run the risk of reopening his wounds, which were still so fresh.
In short, they visited him and found him sitting up in bed, dressed in the green flannel vest he wore under his armor, and a red Toledan cap, and looking so dry and gaunt that he seemed to be a mummy. They received a warm welcome, they asked after his health, and he accounted for himself and the state of his health with very good judgment and in very elegant words, and in the course of their conversation they began to discuss what is called reason of state and ways of governing, correcting this abuse and condemning that one, reforming one custom and eliminating another, each one of the three becoming a new legislator, a modern Lycurgus, a latter-day Solon,1 and they so transformed the nation that it seemed as if they had placed it in the forge and taken out a new one, and Don Quixote spoke with so much intelligence regarding all the subjects they touched upon that his two examiners thought there was no doubt that he was completely well and his sanity restored.
The niece and housekeeper were present at this conversation, and they never tired of giving thanks to God at seeing their lord and master with all his wits; the priest, however, changing his earlier intention, which was not to touch on chivalric matters, wanted a more thorough test of whether or not Don Quixote’s recovery was false or true, and so he gradually began to recount news of the court, and among other things, he said it was thought certain that the Turk would come down with a powerful fleet, but no one knew his plans or where the huge cloud would burst; this fear, which has us on the alert almost every year, had now affected all of Christendom, and His Majesty had fortified the coasts of Naples and Sicily and the island of Malta. To which Don Quixote responded:
“His Majesty has behaved like a most prudent warrior by fortifying his states in good time so that the enemy will not find them unprepared, but if he were to take my advice, I would counsel him to take a precautionary measure that His Majesty is very far from considering at present.”
As soon as the priest heard this, he said to himself:
“May God hold you in his hand, my poor Don Quixote, for it seems to me you have leaped from the high peak of your madness into the profound abyss of your foolishness!”
But the barber, who had already had the same thought as the priest, asked Don Quixote to tell him the precautionary measure he thought it would be good to undertake; perhaps it might be put on the list of the...