Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (152 page)

—M
ILAN
K
UNDERA

“
Don Quixote
is greater today than he was in Cervantes’s womb. [He] looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through [his] sheer vitality…. He stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant. The parody has become a paragon.”

—V
LADIMIR
N
ABOKOV

“I…commend Edith Grossman’s version for the extraordinarily high quality of her prose…. Reading [Grossman’s] amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes’ darkening vision is an entrance into further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake.”

—H
AROLD
B
LOOM

“Ms. Grossman…has provided a Quixote that is agile, playful, formal and wry…. What she renders splendidly is the book’s very heart.”

—
New York Times

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4. Complutum was the Roman name for Alcalá de Henares, Cervantes’s birthplace.

14 The deeds of these two knights, who were cousins, are narrated in chapter 25 of the
Crónica de Juan II (The Chronicle of Juan II
).

4 Sancho confuses
almohada,
the Spanish for “pillow” or “cushion,” and Almohade, the name of the Islamic dynasty that ruled North Africa and Spain in the twelfth century.

2 Martín de Riquer points out that the
History of the Fair Magalona, Daughter of the King of Naples, and Pierres, Son of the Count of Provence
(Burgos, 1519) a Provençal novel translated and adapted into almost every European language, has no reference to such a horse, though one does appear in other narrations of this type.

1 This parodies a celebrated statement attributed to Duguesclin (also known as Beltrán del Claquín), a French knight of the fourteenth century who came to Spain with an army of mercenaries to assist Enrique de Trastámara in his war with Pedro el Cruel: “I depose no king, I impose no king, but I shall help my lord.”

1 Cervantes creates a wordplay that cannot be duplicated in English. It is based on
loco
(“crazy” or “mad”) and the possibilities of “dis
loc
ated” (
des
loc
ado
).

20. The first, by Bernardo de la Vega, was published in 1591; the second, by Bernardo González de Bobadilla, was published in 1587; the third, by Bartolomé López de Encino, was published in 1586.

4.
Panza
means “belly” or “paunch.”

5. Presumably through an oversight on the part of Cervantes, Sancho’s wife has several other names, including Mari Gutiérrez, Juana Panza, Teresa Cascajo, and Teresa Panza.

5. Mentioned in a twelfth-century chanson de geste that was translated into Spanish prose in 1525 and became very popular, the balm could heal the wounds of anyone who drank it.

2. The reference is to Tulia, the wife, not the daughter, of the Roman king Tarquinus the Proud.

5. A figure who appeared in ballads and in a novel of chivalry published in 1498.

6. Don Quixote begins his description with ancient and foreign references; in the second half of his evocation, beginning with “In this other host…” he alludes, for the most part, to Iberian rivers.

3. A term used to describe those who had no Jewish or Muslim ancestors, as opposed to more recent converts (the “New Christians); being an “Old Christian” was considered a significant attribute following the forced conversions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

7. A ritual in which cardinals change their hoods on Easter Sunday.

16. “Farewell” in Latin.

3. A traditional expression that means “I don’t want things that can cause trouble.”

6. The hippogryph, a winged horse, and Frontino, the horse of Ruggiero, Bradamante’s lover, appear in Ariosto’s
Orlando furioso;
Frontino is also mentioned by Boiardo in
Orlando innamorato
.

3. A ruse allegedly used by Gypsies to make their animals run faster.

1 As Martín de Riquer points out, Leonela says “us” because she was complicit in their affair.

2 Martín de Riquer indicates that Dorotea uses this term mockingly.

7 Cervantes, who was not an officer, apparently joined the fleet in Messina on September 2, 1571; it set sail on September 16, and the battle of Lepanto, the definitive defeat of the Turks by the Christian alliance, took place on October 7.

4 Hasán Bajá, king of Algiers between 1577 and 1578, was born in Venice in 1545; he was captured by the Turks, renounced Christianity, and led the Turkish landings at Cadaqués and Alicante; Cervantes met him during his own captivity.

4 In this context, the word means a Moor who knew a Romance language.

2 The phrase is based on the one used when the excommunicated return to the Church. The Latin that follows is equivalent to “as it was in the beginning.”

1 “The tailor who wasn’t paid” is the first part of a proverb (the second part usually is not cited) that roughly translates as “The tailor wasn’t paid, and had to supply his own braid,” meaning that one can lose twice: by not being paid a fee for a service and by not being reimbursed for the expenses incurred in performing the service.

3 Gonzalo Fernández was the Great Captain, so called for his military exploits during the reign of the Catholic Sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella.

1 Penitents in Spain, for example those still seen today in Holy Week processions, and those brought before the tribunals of the Inquisition, wore sheets and hoods that bear an unfortunate resemblance to the outfits of the Ku Klux Klan.

4 The Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Cervantes’s protector.

2 The ordinary clothing of the clergy and of scholars; the term is used here mockingly, as if it were the habit of one of the great military orders, such as the order of Santiago (St. James).

6 The housekeeper, mentioned a few sentences down, clearly comes in now, too, but because of an oversight or an error, by Cervantes or his printer, she is not alluded to here.

4 It was the custom in universities to write on the walls, in red paint, the names of those who had been awarded professorships.

6 Cranes were supposed to post sentinels at night, when the rest of the flock was sleeping, and during the day, when they were feeding. All of these concepts regarding animals were fairly commonplace.

4 Augustus exiled Ovid to these islands in the Black Sea.

3 A village near Madrid.

2 The reference is to the expert swordsman whom they met on the road at the beginning of chapter XIX and who obviously accompanied them throughout the episode of Camacho’s wedding.

12 A monastery near Naples that is visible from the sea and invoked by mariners.

10 The episode was mentioned in chapter V of the first part.

2 The characters and story are taken from Spanish ballads. Gaiferos, Charlemagne’s nephew, was about to marry Charlemagne’s daughter Melisendra, when she was captured by Moors. For some reason Gaiferos spends seven years in Paris, not thinking of her, until Charlemagne persuades him to free her. Roland lends him weapons and a horse, Gaiferos reaches Sansueña, where Melisendra is being held by King Almanzor, and sees her at a window. He rescues her and they flee, pursued so closely by the Moors that Gaiferos has to dismount and do battle with them; he is victorious, and he and Melisendra return to Paris in triumph.

4 This was a nickname given to the Andalusian town of Espartinas because, as the story goes, a clock was needed for the church tower, and the priest sent away to Sevilla for a “nice little pregnant female clock” (
reloja
is the nonexistent feminine form of
reloj,
or “clock”) so that the baby clocks could subsequently be sold. The same story was also told about other towns.

2 An adage that means “Life is full of surprises.”

2 This is an allusion to death.

3 The original proverb is “Straw and hay and hunger’s away” (
De paja y de heno, el vientre lleno
).

5 A wizard, the supposed chronicler of the Knight of Phoebus.

1
Lobo
is “wolf,” and
lobuna
is “wolflike”; in the next phrase,
zorro
is “fox,” and
zorruna
is “foxlike.”

9 The constellation of the Pleiades.

3 Cervantes uses a phrase,
dar pantalia,
whose exact significance is not clear. It can mean either polishing or repairing shoes (Shelton translates it as “cobble,” but the contemporary French and Italian versions differ).

7 The story, in fact, dates back to the popular life of the saints called
The Golden Legend (Legenda aurea
) by the Italian Dominican Iacopo da Varazze (1228?–1298).

1 There were, at the time, two Asturian provinces: Asturias de Oviedo and Asturias de Santillana.

2 Aranjuez is a royal palace famous for its fountains;
fuente
is the word for both “fountain” and “issue,” which allows the wordplay.

1 The phrase is based on a proverb: “When you have a good day, put it in the house,” which is roughly equivalent to “Make hay while the sun shines.”

4 A person of Muslim descent, living in territory controlled by Christians, who had ostensibly, and often forcibly, been converted to Christianity.

1 Vireno abandoned Olimpia in Ariosto’s
Orlando furioso;
Aeneas abandoned Dido in Virgil’s
Aeneid.

10 A hunter who came upon Diana when she was bathing; she turned him into a stag, and he was then torn to pieces by his own dogs.

11 This is the Catalan word for “thieves,” used here as an insult.

6 Martín de Riquer points out that the book has not been identified and that in Italian the title would be
Le Bagattelle,
not
Le Bagatele.
There has been speculation that this might be an anagram for
Le Galatee,
by Giovanni della Casa, which was translated into Spanish in 1585 by Dr. Domingo Becerra, who was a prisoner in Algiers at the same time as Cervantes.

5 The Spanish word for “priest” that is used here is
cura.

1 The earliest Greek poets, including Orpheus, were allegedly from Thrace.

3 The sun, in Greek mythology.

3 An embroidered cloth or tapestry, bearing a knight’s coat of arms, that was draped over pack mules.

8. Published anonymously, it has two parts, which appeared in 1521 and 1526, respectively.

9. An unfaithful prose translation of Boiardo’s
Orlando innamorato
(
Roland in Love
), it was published in three parts in 1533, 1536, and 1550, respectively. The first two are attributed to López de Santa Catalina and the third to Pedro de Reynosa.