Don Quixote

Miguel Cervantes

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781416599661
• eBook ISBN: 9781501137341
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. An immediate success upon its publication and widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha, a middle-aged Spanish gentleman who, obsessed with the chivalrous ideals found in romantic books, decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked. Accompanied by his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, he travels throughout sixteenth century Spain seeking glory and grand adventure. Along the way the duo meet a dazzling assortment of characters whose diverse beliefs and perspectives reveal how reality and imagination are frequently indistinguishable.This edition includes:
-A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information
-A chronology of the author's life and work
-A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
-An outline of key themes and plot points to help guide the reader's own interpretations
-Detailed explanatory notes
-Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
-Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
-A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience
-Reader-friendly font size

PART I

PREFACE TO THE READER

Idle reader, without an oath thou mayest believe, that I wish this book, as the child of my understanding, were the most beautiful, sprightly and discreet production that ever was conceived. But, it was not in my power to contravene the order of nature, in consequence of which, every creature procreates its own resemblance: what therefore could be engendered in my barren, ill-cultivated genius, but a dry, meager offspring, wayward, capricious and full of whimsical notions peculiar to his own imagination, as if produced in a prison, which is the feat of inconvenience, and the habitation of every dismal sound. Quiet, solitude, pleasant fields, serene weather, purling streams, and tranquillity of mind, contribute so much to the fecundity even of the most barren genius, that it will bring forth productions so fair as to awaken the admiration and delight of mankind.

A man who is so unfortunate as to have an ugly child, destitute of every grace and favourable endowment, may be so hood-winked by paternal tenderness, that he cannot perceive his defects; but, on the contrary, looks upon every blemish as a beauty, and recounts to his friends every instance of his folly as a sample of his wit: but I, who, tho’ seemingly the parent, am no other than the step-father of Don Quixote, will not sail with the stream of custom, nor like some others, supplicate the gentle reader, with the tears in my eyes, to pardon or conceal the faults which thou mayest spy in this production. Thou art neither its father nor kinsman; hast thy own soul in thy own body, and a will as free as the finest; thou art in thy own house, of which I hold thee as absolute master as the king of his revenue; and thou knowest the common saying, Under my cloak the king is a joke. These considerations free and exempt thee from all manner of restraint and obligation; so that thou mayest fully and frankly declare thy opinion of this history, without fear of calumny for thy censure, and without hope of recompense for thy approbation.

I wished only to present thee with the performance, clean, neat and naked, without the ornament of a preface, and unencumbered with an innumerable catalogue of such sonnets, epigrams and commendatory verses, as are generally prefixed to the productions of the present age; for, I can assure thee, that although the composition of the book hath cost me some trouble, I have found more difficulty in writing this preface, which is now under thy inspection: diverse and sundry times did I seize the pen, and as often laid it aside, for want of knowing what to say; and during this uneasy state of suspence, while I was one day ruminating on the subject, with the paper before me, the quill behind my ear, my elbow fixed on the table, and my cheek leaning on my hand; a friend of mine, who possesses a great fund of humour, and an excellent understanding, suddenly entered the apartment, and finding me in this musing posture, asked the cause of my being so contemplative. As I had no occasion to conceal the nature of my perplexity, I told him I was studying a preface for the history of Don Quixote; a task which I found so difficult, that I was resolved to desist, and even suppress the adventures of such a noble cavalier: for, you may easily suppose how much I must be confounded at the animadversions of that ancient lawgiver the vulgar, and when it shall see me, after so many years that I have slept in silence and oblivion, produce, in my old age, a performance as dry as a rush, barren of invention, meager in style, beggarly in conceit, and utterly destitute of wit and erudition; without quotations in the margin, or annotations at the end; as we see in other books, let them be never so fabulous and profane: indeed they are generally so stuffed with apothegms from Aristotle, Plato, and the whole body of philosophers, that they excite the admiration of the readers, who look upon such authors as men of unbounded knowledge, eloquence and erudition. When they bring a citation from the holy scripture, one would take them for so many St. Thomas’s, and other doctors of the church; herein observing such ingenious decorum, that in one line they will represent a frantic lover, and in the very next begin with a godly sermon, from which the Christian readers, and even the hearers receive much comfort and edification. Now, my book must appear without all these advantages; for, I can neither quote in the margin, nor note in the end: nor do I know what authors I have imitated, that I may, like the rest of my brethren, prefix them to the work in alphabetical order, beginning with Aristotle, and ending in Xenophon, Zoilus or Zeuxis,¹ though one was a back-biter, and the other a painter. My history must likewise be published without poems at the beginning, at least without sonnets written by dukes, marquisses, counts, bishops, ladies, and celebrated poets: although, should I make the demand, I know two or three good natured friends, who would oblige me with such verses as should not be equalled by the most famous poetry in Spain.

In a word, my good friend, said I, señor Don Quixote shall be buried in the archives of La Mancha, until heaven shall provide some person to adorn him with those decorations he seems to want; for, I find myself altogether unequal to the task, through insufficiency and want of learning; and because I am naturally too bashful and indolent, to go in quest of authors to say, what I myself can say as well without their assistance. Hence arose my thoughtfulness and meditation, which you will not wonder at, now that you have heard the cause. My friend having listened attentively to my remonstrance, flapped his forehead with the palm of his hand, and bursting into a loud laugh: “ ‘Fore God! brother, said he, I am now undeceived of an error, in which I have lived during the whole term of our acquaintance; for, I always looked upon you as a person of prudence and discretion; but now, I see, you are as far from that character, as heaven is distant from the earth. What! is it possible that such a trifling inconvenience, so easily remedied, should have power to mortify and perplex a genius like yours, brought to such maturity, and so well calculated to demolish and surmount much greater difficulties? in good faith this does not proceed from want of ability, but from excessive indolence, that impedes the exercise of reason. If you would be convinced of the truth of what I allege, give me the hearing, and, in the twinkling of an eye, all your difficulties shall vanish, and a remedy be prescribed for all those defects which, you say, perplex your understanding, and deter you from ushering to the light, your history of the renowned Don Quixote, the luminary and sole mirrour of knight-errantry.” Hearing this declaration, I desired he would tell me in what manner he proposed to fill up the vacuity of my apprehension, to diffuse light, and reduce to order the chaos of my confusion; and he replied, “Your first objection, namely the want of sonnets, epigrams and commendatory verses from persons of rank and gravity, may be obviated by your taking the trouble to compose them yourself, and then you may christen them by any name you shall think proper to choose, fathering them upon Prester John of the Indies, or the emperor of Trebisond, who, I am well informed, were very famous poets; and even should this intelligence be untrue, and a few pedants and bachelors of arts should back-bite and grumble at your conduct, you need not value them three farthings; for, although they convict you of a lie, they cannot cut off the hand that wrote it.

“With regard to the practice of quoting, in the margin, such books and authors as have furnished you with sentences and sayings for the embellishment of your history, you have nothing to do, but to season the work with some Latin maxims, which your own memory will suggest, or a little industry in searching, easily obtain: for example, in treating of freedom and captivity, you may say, Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro;² and quote Horace, or whom you please, in the margin. If the power of death happens to be your subject, you have at hand, Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabemas regumque iurres.³ And in expatiating upon that love and friendship which God commands us to entertain even for our enemies, you may have recourse to the holy scripture, though you should have never so little curiosity, and say, in the very words of God himself, Ego autem dico vobis, diligite inimicos vestros.⁴ In explaining the nature of malevolence, you may again extract from the Gospel, De corde exeunt cogitationes malae.⁵ And the instability of friends may be aptly illustrated by this distich of Cato, Donee eris felix, multos numerabis amicos; tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.⁶ By these, and other such scraps of Latin, you may pass for an able grammarian; a character of no small honour and advantage in these days. And as to the annotations at the end of the book, you may safely furnish them in this manner: when you chance to write about giants, be sure to mention Goliah, and this name alone, which costs you nothing, will afford a grand annotation, couched in these words: ‘The giant Golias, or Goliat, was a Philistine, whom the shepherd David slew with a stone from a sling, in the valley of Terebinthus, as it is written in such a chapter of the book of Kings.’

“If you have a mind to display your erudition and knowledge of cosmography, take an opportunity to introduce the river Tagus into your history, and this will supply you with another famous annotation, thus expressed: ‘The river Tagus, so called from a king of Spain, takes its rise in such a place, and is lost in the sea, after having kissed the walls of the famous city of Lisbon; and is said to have golden sands, etc.’ If you treat of robbers, I will relate the story of Cacus, which I have by rote. If of harlots, the bishop of Mondoneda will lend you a Lamia, a Lais, and a Flora, and such a note will greatly redound to your credit. When you write of cruelty, Ovid will surrender his Medea. When you mention wizards and enchanters, you will find a Calypso in Homer, and a Circe in Virgil. If you have occasion to speak of valiant captains, Julius Caesar stands ready drawn in his own Commentaries; and from Plutarch you may extract a thousand Alexanders. If your theme be love, and you have but two ounces of the Tuscan tongue, you will light upon León Hebreo, who will fill up the measure of your desire: and if you do not choose to travel into foreign countries, you have at home Fonseca’s treatise, On the love of God, in which all that you, or the most ingenious critic, can desire, is fully deciphered and discussed. In a word, there is nothing more to be done, than to procure a number of these names, and hint at their particular stories in your text; and leave to me the task of making annotations and quotations, with which I’ll engage, on pain of death, to fill up all the margins, besides four whole sheets at the end of the book. Let us now proceed to the citation of authors, so frequent in other books, and so little used in your performance: the remedy is obvious and easy: take the trouble to find a book that quotes the whole tribe alphabetically, as you observed, from Alpha to Omega, and transfer them into your book; and though the absurdity should appear never so glaring, as there is no necessity for using such names, it will signify nothing. Nay, perhaps, some reader will be weak enough to believe you have actually availed yourself of all those authors, in the simple and sincere history you have composed; and if such a large catalogue of writers should answer no other purpose, it may serve at first sight to give some authority to the production: nor will any person take the trouble to examine, whether you have or have not followed those originals, because he can reap no benefit from his labour. But, if I am not mistaken, your book needs none of those embellishments in which you say it is defective; for, it is one continued satire upon books of chivalry, a subject which Aristotle never investigated, St. Basil never mentioned, and Cicero never explained. The punctuality of truth, and the observations of astrology, fall not within the fabulous relation of our adventures; to the description of which, neither the proportions of geometry, nor the confirmation of rhetorical arguments, are of the least importance; nor hath it any connection with preaching, or mingling divine truths with human imagination; a mixture which no Christian’s fancy should conceive. It only seeks to avail itself of imitation, and the more perfect this is, the more entertaining the book will be: now, as your sole aim in writing, is to invalidate the authority, and ridicule the absurdity of those books of chivalry, which have, as it were, fascinated the eyes and judgment of the world, and in particular of the vulgar, you have no occasion to go a begging maxims from philosophers, exhortations from holy writ, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints; your business is, with plain, significant, well chosen and elegant words, to render your periods sonorous, and your style entertaining; to give spirit and expression to all your descriptions, and communicate your ideas without obscurity and confusion. You must endeavour to write in such a manner as to convert melancholy into mirth, increase good humour, entertain the ignorant, excite the admiration of the learned, escape the contempt of gravity, and attract applause from persons of ingenuity and taste. Finally, let your aim be levelled against that ill-founded bulwark of idle books of chivalry, abhorred by many, but applauded by more, which if you can batter down, you will have achieved no inconsiderable exploit.”

I listened to my friend’s advice in profound silence, and his remarks made such impression upon my mind, that I admitted them without hesitation or dispute, and resolved that they should appear instead of a preface. Thou wilt, therefore, gentle reader, perceive his discretion, and my good luck in finding such a counsellor in such an emergency; nor wilt thou be sorry to receive, thus genuine and undisguised, the history of the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, who, in the opinion of all the people that live in the district of Montiel, was the most virtuous and valiant knight who had appeared for many years in that neighbourhood. I shall not pretend to enhance the merit of having introduced thee to such a famous and honourable cavalier; but I expect thanks for having made thee acquainted with Sancho Panza, in whom I think are united all the squirish graces, which we find scattered through the whole tribe of vain books written on the subject of chivalry. So, praying that God will give thee health, without forgetting such an humble creature as me, I bid thee heartily farewell.

Book I I Of the quality and amusements ofthe renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha.

IN A CERTAIN corner of La Mancha, the name of which I do not choose to remember, there lately lived one of those country gentlemen, who adorn their halls with a rusty lance and worm-eaten target, and ride forth on the skeleton of a horse, to course with a sort of a starved greyhound.

Three fourths of his income were scarce sufficient to afford a dish of hodge-podge, in which the mutton bore no proportion to the beef, for dinner; a plate of salmagundy, commonly at supper; gripes and grumblings¹ on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and the addition of a pigeon or some such thing on the Lord’s-day. The remaining part of his revenue was consumed in the purchase of a fine black suit, with velvet breeches and slippers of the same, for holy-days; and a coat of home-spun, which he wore in honour of his country, during the rest of the week.

He maintained a female housekeeper turned of forty, a niece of about half that age, and a trusty young fellow, fit for field and market, who could turn his hand to anything, either to saddle the horse or handle the hoe.

Our squire, who bordered upon fifty, was of a tough constitution, extremely meager, and hard-featured, an early riser, and in point of exercise, another Nimrod. He is said to have gone by the name of Quixada, or Quesada, (for in this particular, the authors who mention that circumstance, disagree) though from the most probable conjectures, we may conclude, that he was called by the significant name of Quixada; but this is of small importance to the history, in the course of which it will be sufficient if we swerve not farther from the truth.

Be it known, therefore, that this said honest gentleman at his leisure hours, which engrossed the greatest part of the year, addicted himself to the reading of books of chivalry, which he perused with such rapture and application, that he not only forgot the pleasures of the chase, but also utterly neglected the management of his estate: nay to such a pass did his curiosity and madness, in this particular, drive him, that he sold many good acres of terra firma, to purchase books of knight-errantry, with which he furnished his library to the utmost of his power; but, none of them pleased him so much, as those that were written by the famous Feliciano de Silva, whom he admired as the pearl of all authors, for the brilliancy of his prose, and the beautiful perplexity of his expression. How was he transported, when he read those amorous complaints, and doughty challenges, that so often occur in his works.

“The reason of the unreasonable usage my reason has met with, so unreasons my reason, that I have reason to complain of your beauty”: and how did he enjoy the following flower of composition! “The high Heaven of your divinity, which with stars divinely fortifies your beauty, and renders you meritorious of that merit, which by your highness is merited!”

The poor gentleman lost his senses, in poring over, and attempting to discover the meaning of these and other such rhapsodies, which Aristotle himself would not be able to unravel, were he to rise from the dead for that purpose only. He could not comprehend the probability of those direful wounds, given and received by Don Beli-anís,² whose face, and whole carcass, must have remained quite covered with marks and scars, even allowing him to have been cured by the most expert surgeons of the age in which he lived.

He, notwithstanding, bestowed great commendations on the author, who concludes his book with the promise of finishing that interminable adventure; and was more than once inclined to seize the quill, with a view of performing what was left undone; nay, he would have actually accomplished the affair, and published it accordingly, had not reflections of greater moment employed his imagination, and diverted him from the execution of that design.

Diverse and obstinate were the disputes he maintained against the parson of the parish, (a man of some learning, who had taken his degrees at Siguenza,) on that puzzling question, whether Palmerín of England, or Amadís of Gaul, was the most illustrious knight-errant: but master Nicolás, who acted as barber to the village, affirmed, that none of them equalled the Knight of the Sun, or indeed could be compared to him in any degree, except Don Galaor, brother of Amadís of Gaul; for his disposition was adapted to all emergencies; he was neither such a precise, nor such a puling coxcomb as his brother; and in point of valour, his equal at least.

So eager and entangled was our hidalgo³ in this kind of history, that he would often read from morning to night, and from night to morning again, without interruption; till at last, the moisture of his brain being quite exhausted with indefatigable watching and study, he fairly lost his wits: all that he had read of quarrels, enchantments, batties, challenges, wounds, tortures, amorous complaints, and other improbable conceits, took full possession of his fancy; and he believed all those romantic exploits so implicitly, that in his op...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Introduction
• Chronology of Miguel de Cervantes’s Life and Work
• Historical Context of ‘Don Quixote’
• Note on this Translation
• Don Quixote
• Part I
• Part II
• Interpretive Notes
• Critical Excerpts
• Questions for Discussion
• Suggestions for the Interested Reader
• Notes
• Copyright