Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (155 page)

3 The reference is to Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne, the daughter of the river god Peneus.

1 According to Martín de Riquer, Sancho invents the word both as a sarcastic comment on Don Quixote’s misperception and in order not to contradict Don Quixote openly.

1 Certificates were issued by the trade guilds to indicate a member’s skill.

2 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was not unusual for innkeepers to belong to the Holy Brotherhood; the staff was a symbol of authority derived from the king.

3 The dispute, which became proverbial, was described by Ariosto in
Orlando furioso.

4 Traditionally, the disputed items in Agramante’s camp were a sword, a horse, and a shield emblazoned with an eagle; the helmet is an invention of Don Quixote’s.

1 In the first edition, this is the first indication that Sancho has recovered his donkey.

3 The allusion is to Apollo pursuing Daphne, as well as to the sun crossing the sky and passing various constellations.

4 The name is based on the verb
mentir,
“to lie.”

1 It was a mark of great dishonor for a knight to ride in so humble a vehicle; in medieval tales, for example, Lancelot incurred great shame by riding in an oxcart.

2 “Catholic” is used by Sancho metaphorically to mean “trustworthy” or “legitimate,” much as we would use “kosher” today; Don Quixote responds to the literal meaning of the word.

3 This is the title of one of the novellas in Cervantes’s collection,
Novelas ejemplares
(
Exemplary Novels
), which was published in 1613, eight years after the first part of
Don Quixote.

4 A treatise on logic, written by Gaspar Cardillo de Villalpando and used as a text at the University of Alcalá.

5 A kind of sensual, supposedly decadent writing associated with the ancient Ionian city of Miletus.

6 Sinon persuaded the Trojans to admit the wooden horse, filled with Greek soldiers, into their city, thereby causing the defeat of Troy. According to some accounts, he was a Greek who allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the Trojans; according to others, he was a Trojan in the service of the Greeks.

7 Euryalus was well-known for his friendship with Nisus. They accompanied Aeneas to Italy following the Trojan War and were killed in battle.

8 Zopyrus proved his loyalty to Darius during a revolt by the Babylonians: he mutilated himself severely, then went over to the Babylonian side, claiming to be a victim of Persian cruelty; he gained their confidence, was made leader of their armies, and eventually betrayed Babylon to Darius.

2 The reference is to Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, who tended to write in the classical style of the early Renaissance (clearly favored by Cervantes) in contrast to the more effusive complexities of the Baroque that were popular in the theater of the time.

3
La ingratitud vengada,
by Lope de Vega.

4
Numancia,
by Miguel de Cervantes.

5
El mercader amante,
by Gaspar de Aguilar.

6
La enemiga favorable,
by Francisco Agustín Tárrega.

7 At the time Cervantes wrote this, the classical rules of drama were not followed anywhere in Europe, at least not in Italy, France, or England. Martín de Riquer wonders if Cervantes might actually have been thinking of prescriptive treatises that were widely published but adhered to by no playwright of significance.

8 The description is of Lope de Vega, who wrote hundreds of
comedias;
the exact number is not known, but a legendary two thousand plays have been attributed to him (not to mention numerous works in other genres). He and Cervantes, his senior by some fifteen years, had a highly competitive relationship. Lope apparently took great offense at this passage.

1 Viriato led a Lusitanian (Portuguese) rebellion against the Romans.

2 Count Fernán González declared the independence of Castilla from the Moors in the tenth century.

4 Diego García de Paredes was a military hero who fought with Gonzalo Fernández.

5 Pérez de Vargas, a historical figure mentioned in chapter VIII, broke his sword in battle, then tore a branch from an oak tree and used it to kill countless Moors.

6 Garcilaso de la Vega, not to be confused with the Renaissance poet of the same name, fought in the war to capture Granada from the Moors.

7 Don Manuel de León entered a lion’s cage to recover a glove that a lady had thrown inside in order to test his courage. When he returned the glove, he slapped her for endangering the life of a knight on a whim.

8 The two anecdotes appear in a history of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers (
La historia del emperador Carlomagno y los doce pares de Francia
) published in Alcalá in 1589.

9 A book entitled
Crónica del nobre caballero Guarino Mesquino
was cited by Juan de Valdés, an important humanist of the early sixteenth century, as being very poorly written and even more absurd than other novels of chivalry.

10 A figure associated with the Lancelot story who passed into popular ballads and became part of the folk tradition in Spain.

11 The Provençal story of Pierres de Provence and the beautiful Magalona was extremely popular in the sixteenth century; its Spanish translation was published in 1519.

12 These lines were cited previously, in chapter IX.

13 A Castilian knight of Portuguese descent who served under Juan II.

15 Don Fernando de Guevara was also cited in the
Crónica de Juan II.

16 In 1434, with the permission of Juan II, Suero Quiñones, for the love of his lady, jousted with sixty-eight challenging knights at what is called the Honorable Pass.

17 An encounter that was also cited in the
Crónica de Juan II.

18 Turpin is the fictitious author of a chronicle about Charlemagne.

1 This detail seems comically incongruous, yet picking one’s teeth after a meal was so common during the Renaissance that it was employed as a kind of trope for the necessary deceptions of genteel poverty, for example in
Lazarillo de Tormes,
when the hungry gentleman walks down the street wielding a toothpick to indicate that he has eaten.

1 In the first edition, the character is called Rosa twice and Roca once; subsequent editions, including many modern ones, call him Roca; in the first English, French, and Italian translations, which are cited by Martín de Riquer, Shelton calls him “Vincente of the Rose,” Oudin calls him “Vincent de la Roque,” and Franciosini calls him “Vincenzio della Rosa.”

2 The identities of these two men are not known; according to Martín de Riquer, it is possible that the manuscript read “Garci Lasso,” who was cited earlier, in chapter XLIX, with García de Paredes.

3 In Spanish, as in many other languages, varying degrees of deference, distance, familiarity, intimacy, and significant class distinctions can be shown by the form of address, either second or third person, singular or plural.

4 Arcadia was a region of the Peloponnesus where classical and Renaissance authors frequently located their pastoral novels; two important works of this extremely popular genre, by Sannazaro and Lope de Vega, were entitled
La Arcadia,
and Cervantes himself published a pastoral novel called
La Galatea.

2 Only seventeen days had passed since Don Quixote’s second sally.

3 As indicated in an earlier note in chapter VII, there is a good amount of variation in the name of Sancho’s wife.

4 These are the horses of Orlando and Reinaldos de Montalbán. It should be noted that this sonnet, the kind called
caudato
in Italian, has an extra tercet.

5 The line, from
Orlando furioso,
should read,
Forse altri canterà con miglior plettro
(“Perhaps another will sing in a better style”), and is cited by Cervantes in the first chapter of the second part of the novel.

1 Don Pedro Fernández Ruiz de Castro (1576–1622), seventh count of Lemos, was the viceroy of Naples from 1610 to 1616. He was patron to several writers, including Cervantes, who dedicated to him the
Novelas ejemplares
(
Exemplary Novels
) in 1613, the
Comedias y entremeses (Plays and Interludes
) in 1615, the second part of
Don Quixote
, also in 1615, and
Persiles y Sigismunda
(a “Byzantine” novel) in 1616, five days before Cervantes’s death.

2 In 1614, what is generally known as the “false
Quixote
” appeared in Tarragona. Its title was
The Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha;
its author has never been identified, though the book was published under the name of “Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, a native of the town of Tordesillas.” Cervantes apparently learned of its publication as he was writing chapter LIX of the authentic second part.

1 Despite his disclaimer, in his prologue Cervantes obviously is responding to the prologue of the “false
Quixote.
” The “greatest event” to which Cervantes refers is the battle of Lepanto, where he was wounded.

2 An allusion to Lope de Vega; according to Avellaneda’s prologue, Lope was unjustly attacked by Cervantes in the first part of
Don Quixote;
the protestations that follow here are pointedly disingenuous, for despite his being a priest, Lope de Vega’s dissolute private life was common knowledge.

3 There seems to be no information about this work, which has probably been lost; there is speculation that an interlude called
La Perendeca
, published in 1663 by Agustín Moreto, may be an adaptation of the one Cervantes had in mind.

5 A satirical work in verse written during the reign of Enrique IV (1454–1474), it was widely circulated and immensely popular.

6 This was never published, and if Cervantes in fact wrote it, the work has been lost.

1 Famous legislators of ancient Sparta and Athens, respectively.

2 The reference is to a well-known popular tale.

3 The second line, in Italian, closes part I of
Don Quixote.

4 The first poet is Luis Barahona de Soto, who wrote
Las lágrimas de Angélica
(
The Tears of Angelica
); the second is Lope de Vega, who wrote
La hermosura de Angélica (The Beauty of Angelica
).

5 Subsequent to the publication of part II, both Góngora and Quevedo wrote satires of the epic of Charlemagne, including the love of Roland and Angelica, which had been so popular in the early Renaissance.

1 The honorific
don
or
doña
was supposed to be used only with specific ranks of nobility, though many people added the title to their names without having any right to it.

2 See note 6, chapter IX, part I, for a discussion of the Moorish “author’s” name.

1
Sansón
is the Spanish equivalent of Samson.

3 Part I had been printed three times in Madrid (twice in 1605, once in 1608), twice in Lisbon (1605), twice in Valencia (1605), twice in Brussels (1607, 1611), and once in Milan (1610) when Cervantes probably wrote these lines. It did not appear in Barcelona until 1617 (when the first and second parts were printed together for the first time) or in Antwerp until 1673 (it is assumed that Cervantes wrote Antwerp instead of Brussels). All of these editions are in Spanish; the first translation of the book (into English, by Thomas Shelton) appeared in London in 1612.

4 Alonso de Madrigal, bishop of Avila, an immensely prolific writer of the fifteenth century.

5 A line from Horace’s
Ars poetica:
“From time to time even Homer nods.”

6 “The number of fools is infinite.”

1 This incident appears in Ariosto’s
Orlando furioso.

2 The medieval battle cry of Spanish Christians engaged in combat with Muslims.

3 In Cervantes’s day, the
redondilla
was a five-line stanza, and the
décima
was composed of two
redondillas
.

1 The original, by Cide Hamete Benengeli, is in Arabic. In part I, a translator was hired in the market in Toledo; his translation is the history of Don Quixote described by the bachelor in part II.

2 Teresa has the proverb backward. It should be “Where kings go laws follow.”

3 The allusion is to a ballad about Doña Urraca’s desire to go wandering.

1 “Apportioning the sun” (
partir el sol
) was the arrangement of combatants in a tourney so that the sun would not shine in anyone’s eyes; “slashing to bits” is Cervantine wordplay.

2 The stigmatizing hood and robe that those accused by the Inquisition were obliged to wear.

3 A kind of black stone that once was used to test the purity of gold or silver by rubbing the stone with the metal and analyzing the streak left behind.

4 Garcilaso de la Vega (1503–1536), the great Renaissance poet, perfected the Petrarchan style in Spanish.

1 The housekeeper’s statement is based on her confusing
aventura
(“adventure”) with
ventura
(“happiness,” “luck,” and “fortune” are the relevant meanings). I’ve translated
ventura
as “venture” in order to establish the connection with “adventure,” though a better word would probably be “fortune.”