Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (157 page)

1 A duenna was an older woman of good family, usually a widow, in the service of a noblewoman. She wore a long headdress and wimple, something like a nun’s, which distinguished her from other, usually younger, ladies-in-waiting.

2 A gesture of contempt or derision made by placing the thumb between the forefinger and middle finger or under the upper front teeth.

3 A military-religious order founded in the twelfth century; Santiago (St. James) is the patron saint of Spain.

4 A galley ship sank in the port of La Herradura, near Vélez Málaga, in 1562, and more than four thousand people drowned.

1 These were artists of Greek antiquity.

2 The word in Spanish,
jirón,
has several meanings and can also signify a heraldic figure called a “gyron,” a triangular shape that extends from the border to the center of a coat of arms. The allusion is to Dulcinea’s noble blood.

3 A major figure in an important early ballad cycle, Florinda, La Cava, the daughter of Count Don Julián, had an illicit and disastrous love affair with King Don Rodrigo; according to legend, the ensuing betrayals and acts of vengeance precipitated the Moorish invasion of 711.

1 An allusion to the throne won by El Cid in Valencia.

4 A very fine cloth formerly woven in Segovia.

5 As indicated earlier, Wamba was a Visigothic king of Spain (672–680).

6 The phrase means “no matter how fine.” Brocade of three piles was of the very best quality; in chapter X, Sancho exaggerated by referring to brocade of ten piles.

7 The proverb says, “You don’t need here, boy, here, boy, with an old dog” (
A perro viejo no hay tus, tus
).

8 An idiomatic way of saying “trust and confidence.” The phrase that follows is Sancho’s variation on this and means just the opposite.

9 “Dead in the flower of his youth,” a line from a poem by Angelo Poliziano dedicated to Micael Verino, a poet who died at the age of seventeen, during the age of the Medicis. Verino was famous for his Latin couplets, which were very widely known.

1 This is a variation on the adage about a good wife.

2 A card game.

3 The Spanish reads
cazas ni cazos,
a nonsensical wordplay based on
caza,
“the hunt,” and
cazo,
“ladle,” which seem to be the feminine and masculine forms of the same word but are not.

4 Hernán Núñez Pinciano, who compiled a famous collection of proverbs (
Refranes y proverbios
) published in 1555.

1 The name given to those who carried torches or candles in religious processions.

2 A sheer silk fabric.

3 The god of the underworld, associated with Pluto, Orcus, and Hades.

4 Don Quixote addresses Sancho in a more distant, formal way throughout this paragraph. As always, it indicates extreme anger.

5 A formula in the liturgy (
abrenuncio
) used to renounce Satan. Since Merlin is supposed to be the child of the devil, the phrase is strangely appropriate, even though Sancho mispronounces it (
abernuncio
).

1 This last statement (“and be advised…are worth nothing”) was suppressed by the Inquisition in some editions following the
Indice expurgatorio
of 1632.

2 A person who was whipped publicly was displayed to the crowd mounted on a jackass.

3 An allusion to the proverb “God grant that it’s oregano and not caraway,” which expresses the fear that things may not turn out as hoped.

1 Sancho hears the name Trifaldi as
tres faldas,
or “three skirts,” leading to his comments on skirts and trains.

2 Sancho’s statement is taken from a story about a beardless man, frequently teased because he lacked facial hair, who said, “We have a mustache on our soul; the other kind doesn’t matter to us.”

3 According to Martín de Riquer, the name Candaya is probably fictional; Trapobana was the old name for Ceylon; Cape Comorín is to the south of Hindustan.

4
Maguncia
is the Spanish name for the German city Mainz;
Antonomasia
is a rhetorical figure in which a title is used instead of a name (calling a judge “Your Honor”) or a proper name instead of a common noun (calling a womanizer “Don Juan”);
Archipiela
seems to be related to
archipiélago,
or “archipelago.”

5 The lines, in Spanish translation, are by the Italian poet Serafino dell’Aquila (1466–1500).

6 These lines are by Commander Escrivá, a fifteenth-century poet from Valencia, whose work was greatly admired by many writers of the Golden Age.

7 This was in the first edition. Martín de Riquer believes it is an intentional corruption of Ariadne, for comic purposes.

8 The last two references in the list were poetic commonplaces.

1 “Farewell,” in Latin.

2 A line from Virgil’s
Aeneid
(II, 6 and 8): “Who, hearing this, can hold back his tears?”

1 The phrase in Spanish (
…más oliscan a terceras, habiendo dejado de ser primas…
) is based on wordplay that contrasts
terceras
(“go-betweens” or “panders”) and
primas
(in this case, “principal party to a love affair”). The humor lies in the connection of the former term to “third” and the latter term to “first.”

3
Clavileño,
like
Rocinante,
is a composite name, made up of
clavi
from
clavija
(“peg”) and
leño
(“wood”).

1 Sancho mentions this same Neapolitan monastery during the adventure of the Cave of Montesinos, when he blesses Don Quixote before his descent (chapter XXII).

2 A place where the Holy Brotherhood executed criminals.

3 The reference is to the myth of Phaëthon.

4 A reference to an actual person, Dr. Eugenio Torralba, tried by the Inquisition of Cuenca in 1531, about whom it was said that he flew through the air on a reed.

5 The name of a Roman prison.

6 Charles, duke of Bourbon (1490–1527), fighting in the armies of Charles V of Spain, was killed during the sack of Rome.

7
Magallanes,
the Spanish for Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, is used for comic effect to indicate Sancho’s ignorance of courtly tales and the names of their protagonists.

8 In this phrase Cervantes takes advantage of two meanings of
arrullador:
“cooing” and “wooing.” I have translated it as “suitor,” hoping that the idea of billing and cooing is implicit in the word.

10 The wordplay here does not translate into English.
Cabrón
is both “male goat” and “cuckold”; the sign of the cuckold is horns, as in “the horns of the moon” in the next sentence.

1 A formula indicating complete agreement with another person’s opinions.

2 The cross that is placed at the beginning of the alphabet in a child’s primer.

3 The author of a book of aphorisms,
Disticha Catonis,
which was so popular a text in schools that primers were called “Catos.”

4 Don Quixote’s advice to Sancho is one of the most famous passages in the novel. Martín de Riquer notes the difficulty of determining Cervantes’s exact sources, although he states that the general influence of Erasmus is evident, and he also cites a handful of books on good government, both classical and Renaissance, available in Spanish at the time. Whatever the sources, Don Quixote’s remarks to the future governor are clearly the polar opposite of Machiavelli’s counsel to the prince.

5 An allusion to a fable by Phaedrus, a Latin fabulist of the first century who wrote in the style of Aesop.

6 This is based on a proverb: “I don’t want it, I don’t want it, just toss it into my hood.”

1 This is the first half of a proverb: “When your father’s the magistrate, you’re safe when you go to trial.”

1 Juan de Mena (1411–1456), probably the most historically significant courtly poet of the fifteenth century.

2 St. Paul, Corinthians 1.

4 The image of the impoverished gentleman who picks his teeth so that everyone will think he has eaten appeared in the anonymous
Lazarillo de Tormes
(1554), the first picaresque novel.

5 The allusion is to a pearl that belonged to the Spanish monarchy. Since it had no equal, it was called
La Sola,
“the Only One.”

6 According to legend, the place on the Capitoline Hill where Nero stood as he watched Rome burn.

1 The invocation is to the sun, whose rays make it necessary to move decanters around in a bucket of snow to keep them cool.

2 These are some appellations of Apollo, god of the sun.

3 A phrase from Aristotle’s
Physics,
II, 2.

4 The name of the ínsula and the village, and the fact that Sancho did nothing to merit the governorship, are based on the root word
barato,
“cheap.”

5 In other words, he has been admitted to the tailors guild. He asks to be excused because, at the time, tailors were held in exceptionally bad repute.

6 The judge’s staff of office was used to take sworn testimony.

8 This story appears in
Norte de los Estados,
by Fr. Francisco de Osuna (Burgos, 1550).

1 A medicinal preparation for treating wounds devised in the sixteenth century by Aparicio de Zubia.

1 The physician’s medical theorizing is based on the idea of the four cardinal humors.

2 A parody of the aphorism
Omnis saturatio mala, panis autem pessima
(i.e., “bread” instead of “partridges”).

3 A traditional Spanish stew that includes chickpeas, ham, and chicken in addition to the usual meats and vegetables ordinarily found in a stew.

4 “By no means!” in Latin.

5
Recio
can mean “vigorous,” “violent,” or “difficult”;
agüero
is “omen”
tirteafuera
is roughly equivalent to “get the hell out.”

6 “Evil omen.”

7 Basques were frequently appointed as secretaries because of their reputation for loyalty.

8 The root
perl-
is related to “pearl”; the term Cervantes uses for “palsied” or “paralyzed” is
perlático,
allowing for the wordplay in these lines.

2 People from the northern mountains were considered to be noble because, compared to other Spaniards, they had relatively few Jewish or Moorish forebears in their family backgrounds.

3 If one came across a distinguished person in the street, it was a sign of respect (though it more often indicated self-interested flattery) to leave one’s own route and accompany him.

4 Since there was no earlier indication of the lady’s rank, Martín de Riquer believes that the printer confused this noblewoman with Doña Rodríguez’s current employer.

5 An incision cut into the body to allow the discharge of harmful substances.

1 A dish of chopped meat flavored with salt, pepper, vinegar, onion, and sometimes oil and anchovies.

2 As indicated earlier, this is a traditional Spanish stew;
podrida
literally means “rotten” or “putrid.”

3 The identity of Andradilla is not known. A note in Shelton’s translation identifies him as “Some famous cheater in Spain,” but, as Martín de Riquer says, this clarifies nothing.

4 A battle game played on horseback with canes instead of lances.

5 It was a commonplace, when people suffered a misfortune, to say that it helped reduce the number of sins they would have to atone for.

1 Frequently, among the lower classes, a wife was called by the feminine form of her husband’s given name.

3 This was a way of publicly insulting a woman.

4 A saying that seems to mean “A person cannot do more than give you what he has.”

5 A Castilian dry measure, approximately 4.6 liters and roughly equivalent to a peck.

6 “…says how crude, how crude,” a proverb aimed at the poor who prosper and then scorn their old friends.

7 “St. Augustine places that in doubt,” a phrase used by students in doctrinal controversies.

8 A phrase quoted in chapter XXV; it is based on John 10:38: “…though ye believe not me, believe the works.”

9 A courteous formula for inviting someone to eat with you.

1 “Be a friend to Plato, but a better friend to the truth.”

2 A dry measure roughly equivalent to 1.6 bushels in Spain.

2 A phrase that alludes to the Final Judgment, suggesting punishment for sin; in English we would say, figuratively, that something we disapprove of is a “sin” or a “crime.”

3 A village in the present-day province of Teruel.

1 Currently a literary term for “summer” (
verano
); when the year was divided into three seasons,
estío
was the season that began at the vernal equinox and ended at the autumnal equinox.

2 Blazing pots filled with pitch and other flammable material, which were thrown at the enemy.