Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is really two books. The first, published in 1605, was so successful that a second volume was written and published ten years later, in part as a response to a plague of unauthorised sequels, which the author cleverly references in his work.
Many English translations are available, but I read the book in that made by Charles Jervas, which appeared posthumously in 1742 and has been known ever since as the "Jarvis"” translation owing to a printer's error.
Most of the famous bits (Don Quixote "tilting at windmills", for example) come in the first part, but some people prefer the second part for its more philosophical and quizzical flavour. Whichever way you look at it, Don Quixote is a romp and a triumph for its author.
By creating a character who is utterly blind when it comes to his passion (knight errantry) while being rational, clear-minded and often wise about anything else, Cervantes not only holds a mirror up to each of his readers, he does it in such a way that each of those readers will gladly take the mirror and turn it on others, the better to see their foibles and irrationalities.
Throughout literary history there have always been double-acts – Achilles and Patroclus, Aeneas and Achates, Dante and Virgil, Falstaff and Prince Hal – but I'm not sure there was ever a partnership as unheroic as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The delineation between the two characters is of the utmost importance. If both were crazy, then the joke would wear thin very quickly. By making Sancho a man with some common sense but virtually no acuity – a man who knows that his master is a basket case and yet lets himself be gulled out of that knowledge – the author creates the archetype of all the interesting fools that followed, from the cinematic Dr. Watson through Oliver Hardy to Baldrick.
Cervantes himself described a good book as a complete body of fable through one of his characters. It is a fitting epithet for a monumental achievement.
"Fables should be suited to the reader's understanding, and so contrived, that, by facilitating the impossible, lowering the vast, and keeping the mind in suspense, they may at once surprise, delight, amuse, and entertain, in such sort that admiration and pleasure may be united, and go hand in hand: all which cannot be performed by him who pays no regard to probability and imitation, in which the perfection of writing consists. I have never yet seen any book of chivalry, which makes a complete body of fable with all its members, so that the middle corresponds to the beginning, and the end to the beginning and middle: on the contrary, they are composed of so many members that the authors seem rather to design a chimera or monster, than to intend a well-proportioned figure. Besides all this, their style is harsh, their exploits incredible, their amours lascivious, their civility impertinent, their battles tedious, their reasonings foolish, and their voyages extravagant; and, lastly, they are devoid of all ingenious artifice, and therefore deserve to be banished the (sic) Christian commonwealth, as an unprofitable race of people."
Many English translations are available, but I read the book in that made by Charles Jervas, which appeared posthumously in 1742 and has been known ever since as the "Jarvis"” translation owing to a printer's error.
Most of the famous bits (Don Quixote "tilting at windmills", for example) come in the first part, but some people prefer the second part for its more philosophical and quizzical flavour. Whichever way you look at it, Don Quixote is a romp and a triumph for its author.
By creating a character who is utterly blind when it comes to his passion (knight errantry) while being rational, clear-minded and often wise about anything else, Cervantes not only holds a mirror up to each of his readers, he does it in such a way that each of those readers will gladly take the mirror and turn it on others, the better to see their foibles and irrationalities.
Throughout literary history there have always been double-acts – Achilles and Patroclus, Aeneas and Achates, Dante and Virgil, Falstaff and Prince Hal – but I'm not sure there was ever a partnership as unheroic as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
The delineation between the two characters is of the utmost importance. If both were crazy, then the joke would wear thin very quickly. By making Sancho a man with some common sense but virtually no acuity – a man who knows that his master is a basket case and yet lets himself be gulled out of that knowledge – the author creates the archetype of all the interesting fools that followed, from the cinematic Dr. Watson through Oliver Hardy to Baldrick.
Cervantes himself described a good book as a complete body of fable through one of his characters. It is a fitting epithet for a monumental achievement.
"Fables should be suited to the reader's understanding, and so contrived, that, by facilitating the impossible, lowering the vast, and keeping the mind in suspense, they may at once surprise, delight, amuse, and entertain, in such sort that admiration and pleasure may be united, and go hand in hand: all which cannot be performed by him who pays no regard to probability and imitation, in which the perfection of writing consists. I have never yet seen any book of chivalry, which makes a complete body of fable with all its members, so that the middle corresponds to the beginning, and the end to the beginning and middle: on the contrary, they are composed of so many members that the authors seem rather to design a chimera or monster, than to intend a well-proportioned figure. Besides all this, their style is harsh, their exploits incredible, their amours lascivious, their civility impertinent, their battles tedious, their reasonings foolish, and their voyages extravagant; and, lastly, they are devoid of all ingenious artifice, and therefore deserve to be banished the (sic) Christian commonwealth, as an unprofitable race of people."
6 comments:
welcome back the real Ulaca
"I have never yet seen any book of chivalry....."
Perhaps at that time it was true. But Sydney Carton surely fits the bill. ATOTC not a funny book though, I'll grant ya.
If you read carefully, you'll see that's a quotation from the book!
"Simple Heraldry" written and illustrated by Sir Iain Moncreiffe and Don Pottinger, published in 1953, is hugely funny and accurate, using cartoons to explain armigerous families.
I am sure the "real" Ulaca is always ready to stand up for you, Mrs. Po.
Thanks for the recommendation, Gunlaw. Together with types of cocktails, heraldry is always my weakest round in pub quizzes, 'though, thankfully, HK setters generally avoid it.
Post a Comment