EDITOR’S NOTE
“I hope your Don Quixote will not be too portable, i.e., that not too much of it will be cut.” Such was the advice of a friend to the editor of the present volume. In the case of a work like this there is certainly cause for apprehension when a condensation of any sort is undertaken. Don Quixote is not only the first and greatest novel, it is also one of the longest ever written—half a million words or more. One hardly expects to find the same high level of creative achievement maintained throughout in a tale of that length; there are bound to be weaker and sometimes more or less irrelevant passages which it would seem might well be dispensed with; but when one gets down to the actual business of deciding what is to go and what is to be retained, one discovers that the problem is by no means an easy one.
Take, for example, the interpolated novelas in Part I. What is to be done with them? Cervantes has frequently been criticized in the past for having included them. He appears to have done so out of a lack of confidence in the new form, the new type of hero and story that he was inventing, feeling that the adventures of the knight and his squire would not in themselves be sufficient to sustain the interest. For this reason he deemed it best to introduce a few episodes of a more conventional kind, modeled after the Italian novella or the pastoral romance that was so popular at the time. His earliest readers, however, did not bear out the author’s judgment; they wanted more of Don Quixote and Sancho and were willing to do without the novelettes, a lesson which Cervantes took to heart when he came to write Part II (see Part II,Chapter III).
And yet if one looks closely one will perceive that even in such passages as these something new has been added. By way of illustration, the tale commonly known in English as “The Curious Impertinent” may be regarded as a rather boring and distracting imitation of the Italians that had better have been omitted since it bears no relation to the plot of the novel as a whole; but is this the truth?
The eighteenth-century German Romantics did not feel that way about it; for them “El Curioso Impertinente” was a miniature Don Quixote, dealing with the same metaphysical theme: the audacious attempt to penetrate the wall of illusion (appearances) and bring down to earth the heaven of the ideal, the ultimate real. And there is the contemporary French Cervantist Jean Cassou, who declares that this story “for narrative power and psychological depth is one of the marvels of universal art” (see his paper, “An Introduction to Cervantes,” in Cervantes Across the Centuries, pp. 3-31).
The fact of the matter is that, putting aside all metaphysical considerations and speaking only from the psychological point of view, this interlude strikes a modern note that is not sounded by any of Cervantes’ predecessors in the field of fiction. Is an editor justifced, then, in leaving it out? I believe that he is, if he takes into account the taste in the matter that most readers have manifested, especially those that prefer the broader, rollicking humor of Part I to the more subtle and profound second part; they are likely to view the story as a somewhat irritating intrusion that merely holds up the action. Perhaps, after all, this is an item for the connoisseur or the student who would plumb the depths of Cervantes’ mind and art.
In any event, this will serve to give an idea of the kind of problem with which the editor has had to deal. Not all are as difficult as the one just cited, but each calls for careful thought, and the Cervantes lover, steeped in Don Quixote, will understandably be loath to see any portion of the book omitted.
By way of contrast, take the romance in the latter chapters of Part I, which involves the two pairs of lovers. It is more than a little trite and bookish in flavor with complications that are finally resolved in a highly unconvincing deus ex machina fashion. This entire episode could, Ithink, be dropped without loss if it were not so interwoven with the main plot. I have accordingly condensed it insofar as possible, keeping only so much of it as was necessary.
The incident (also in Part I) of the shepherd who died of unrequited love may appear at first sight simply to be a working over of the Arcadian theme for the sake of relief as the author conceived it, but in the speech which the “cruel” maid delivers from the mountainside (Chapter xiv) anyone familiar with the pastoral novel of the period will at once recognize a difference. Here again is the modern attitude, later to be expressed by Madame de La Fayette and later still by Ibsen, Shaw, and others: the right of woman to call her soul her own. For this reason I have retained Marcela’s allocution as well as Antonio’s ballad (Chapter xi), which occurs in the same episode and is one of the best examples of Cervantes’ versification to be found in the Don Quixote. The rest of the passage has been summarized.
The captive’s story (Part I,Chapters XXXIX-XLI) I have kept, but condensed, not only for its autobiographic interest but because it happens to be a good story—I can almost see Hollywood doing it—and affords an unusual picture of the life of the times. On the other hand, I have had no scruple about deleting the goatherd’s meandering tale at the end of Part I.
It is when an editor bent upon condensation comes to the magnificent second part that his troubles really begin. Cervantes is now no longer feeling his way as he often does in Part I. There is a great deal that he wants to say, he knows what it is, and in spite of his apparent discursiveness and divagations he hews to the line—at least until Chapter LIX is reached, from which point on he is distracted by thoughts of Avellaneda and the latter’s spurious sequel. In the first fifty-eight chapters there is scarcely an incident that may be said to be irrelevant to the author’s broad design, and selection becomes an increasingly arduous and perilous task.
It is, nevertheless, one that must be accomplished somehow; and I found that the best way to set about it was to decide first of all upon those passages that, for the sake of the major theme, must at all costs be retained. The account of Sancho and his “government” is one of these, the visit to the Cave of Montesinos is another. Then there are such well-known and delightful incidents as the conversation between Sancho Panza and his wife Teresa with regard to their daughter’s becoming a countess (Chapter v) and the “flight” of Don Quixote and Sancho on the “winged” steed Clavileño (Chapter XLI)—these, obviously, are not to be sacrificed.
If anything in Part II is to be omitted or curtailed, it would seem that it might be the account of the cruel and foolish jokes that are played on Don Quixote by the ducal pair who are his hosts; though even here one must leave enough to show the author’s intent. Some of the adventures resembling those in Part I, such as that of the Parliament of Death (Chapter xi) and the enchanted bark (Chapter XXIX), are also less essential, but the encounter with the lions (Chapter XVII) and the braying adventure (Chapter xxv) are quite too good to lose.
The expanded episode of Camacho’s wedding (Chapters XIX-XXI) is another that to my way of thinking is of minor interest and importance. As for the meeting between the Knight of the Mournful Countenance and the Knight of the Green-colored Greatcoat (Chapters XVI-XVIII), it has a certain historical-sociological interest as depicting the good burgher, l’honnête homme, of the period in confrontation with the visionary idealist, but, again, it possibly is better left to the one who would delve more deeply into the meaningof the tale.
Meanwhile, in both parts of the book, some of the best things to be met with are those indescribably droll conversations between master and man on the subject of knighthood, and the inclusion of these chapters is, I assume, not open to question. In general, I have been at pains to preserve the views which Cervantes puts into the mouth of Don Quixote but which we may take to be his own, on poetry, the novel, the theater of his day, the life of a man of letters, the nature of human existence and what we call the real, and the destiny of man in a world of illusion.
What I have tried to do, in short, for readers of the Portable is to present not so much an “abridged” as an essential version of Don Quixote, one that aims at giving insofar as possible all that is best, most significant, and indispensable in this, one of the richest works in our entire cultural patrimony. An abridgment too often means a mutilation, and that was what I wished to avoid. Above all, I have sought to preserve the line of the story, which is a good deal more than plot and which runs all the way through it from beginning to end. If I have accomplished this objective, I shall feel that I have not wholly failed in my task.
The text here presented is taken from my version of the complete Don Quixote, published by The Viking Press in 1949. It is based upon the first Spanish editions of 1605 (Part I) and 1615 (Part II),as reproduced in the Obras Completas of Cervantes edited by Rudolph Schevill and Adolfo Bonilla (Don Quixote de la Mancha, Tomos I-IV, Madrid, 1928-41). For the other editors, commentators, lexicographers, etc., whom I have consulted —specialmention should be made. of Francisco Rodriguez Marín—the interested student may be referred to the Introduction which I wrote for the full work, in which I set forth the considerations which led me to feel that a new rendering was needed and stated the principles by which I was governed in my attempt.
As a translator I have endeavored always to steer a middle course between an affectedly archaic style and an offensively modern one, feeling as I did that either would be a betrayal of the author. I have done my best to follow Cervantes’ precept, “Toda afectación es mala” —“All affectation is bad.” It is chiefly in connection with the punctuation, paragraphing, dialogue transitions, and, to a degree, the sentence structure that I have taken certain liberties in consonance with the spirit of the text, which I deemed necessary in the interest of a higher fidelity to my author.
As to the notes, which appear at the end of this volume, they are not intended for scholars or special students but for the general reading public. For this reason they have been held down to a minimum, and I have tried to keep them as concise as possible. No attempt has been made to trace all the references and parallels to the literature of chivalry; instead, my concern has been with the aspects of daily life in Cervantes’ time, with folk customs, traditions, proverbs, and the like.
For the benefit of those who may find them to be of help I have inserted subtitles of my own here and there to mark the broad divisions of the story. The chapter titles, in full or condensed, are Cervantes’. And for readers who may wish to refer to the complete text, in my own or some other translation or in the original Spanish, I have indicated the chapter numbers in connection with each passage. Where omissions have been made, this is also indicated and a summary of the omitted portions given.