Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (75 page)

Epitaph

The numbskull who so bravely draped La Mancha

with more rich spoils than Jason brought to Crete,

the mind that deemed the pointed vane to be

needed when something blunter would be meet,

the arm whose mighty pow’r extends so far

that from Cathay to Italian Gaeta’s shore

came the most awesome muse, the most aware

who e’er graved verses on a plaque of bronze,

he who left each Amadís behind,

who turned his mighty back on Galaor

and vanquished all in valor and in love,

causing ev’ry Belianis to fall mute,

who mounted Rocinante and went erring,

lies here beneath this cold and marble stone.

In Laudem Dulcineae of Toboso Sonnet

She with the homely face of a kitchen wench,

her bosom high, her gestures fierce and martial,

is Dulcinea, queen of all Toboso,

beloved of the mighty Don Quixote.

For her sake he climbed every rugged peak

of the great Sierra, and trod the countryside

from famed Montiel to the green and grassy plain

of Aranjuez, on foot, weary, in pain.

The fault was Rocinante’s. Oh, harsh the fate

of this Manchegan lady and her knight,

errant and unvanquished! In tender youth

she left her beauty behind her when she died,

and he, though his name’s inscribed in snowy marble,

could not escape the piercing toils of love.

Sonnet

Upon the proud and gleaming diamond throne

where mighty Mars leaves footprints marked in blood,

the mad Manchegan plants his noble banner

that flutters still with strength so rare and strange,

and there he hangs his arms, the sharp-edged steel

that devastates and cleaves and cuts in twain.

New feats of arms! But art must now invent

a new style for this newest paladin.

And if Gaul boasts and brags of Amadís

whose brave descendants glory brought to Greece

and spread her fame and triumph far and wide,

today in the chamber where Bellona reigns

she crowns the brave Quixote, and for his sake

La Mancha’s honored more than Greece or Gaul.

Ne’er may these glories bear oblivion’s stain,

for even Rocinante, in gallantry,

surpasses Brilladoro and Bayardo.
⁴

Sonnet

This is Sancho Panza, in body small

but great in valor, a miracle most strange!

He was, I swear and certify to you

The simplest squire the world has ever seen.

A hair’s breadth away from being a count,

but insolence and insult, a miser’s world,

a greedy time, conspired all against him,

for a donkey ne’er is spared that injury.

He rode that ass, and pardon the expression,

a gentle squire behind an even gentler

horse named Rocinante, and his master.

Oh, how we mortals wait and hope in vain!

At first how sweet the promise, then bitterly

it vanishes in shadow, smoke, and dream.

Epitaph

Here lies the famous knight

errant and badly bruised

and borne by Rocinante

down many a primrose path.

Sancho Panza the simple

lies here, too, beside him,

the squire most loyal and true

who ever plied the trade.

Epitaph

Here rests the fair Dulcinea;

once rosy-fleshed and plump,

now turned to dust and ashes

by fearful, hideous death.

She came of unsullied stock,

with a hint of nobility;

the pure passion of great Quixote,

and the glory of her home.

Forsi altro canterà con miglior plectio.
⁵

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.

S
OME 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.

Your Excellency’s servant,
M
IGUEL DE
C
ERVANTES
S
AAVEDRA

L
ORD 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