Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

O famous knight, never sufficiently praised, to you, both valiant and wise, O Don Quixote, the splendor of La Mancha and star of Spain, that for the peerless lady Dulcinea to regain and recover her first state, your squire, Sancho, needs to give himself three thousand and three hundred blows upon both of his broad buttocks, robust and large, bared to the whip, and struck in such a way that they turn red, and smart, and give him pain. This is the decision of all the authors of her misfortune, woe, and alteration,

By some chance is my flesh made of bronze, or does it matter to me if she’s disenchanted or not? What basket of linen, shirts, scarves, gaiters, though I don’t use them, does she bring with her to soften me? Nothing but one insult after another, though she must know the proverb that says that a jackass loaded down with gold climbs the mountain fast, and gifts can break boulders, and God helps those who help themselves, and a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. And then my master, who should have coddled me and flattered me so I’d turn as soft as wool and carded cotton, says that if he catches me he’ll tie me naked to a tree and double the number of lashes; these noble folk so full of pity should remember that they’re not only asking a squire to whip himself, but a governor; like they say, ‘That’s the finishing touch.’

“No doubt she must have died,” said Sancho. “Of course!” responded Trifaldín. “In Candaya we don’t bury the living, only the dead.”

“Then with that promise, my good Sancho, I am comforted, and I believe you will keep it, because in fact, although a simpleton, you are a veridical man.” “Vertical or horizontal,” said Sancho, “I’ll keep my word.”

First, my son, you must fear God, because in fearing Him lies wisdom, and if you are wise, you cannot err in anything. Second, you must look at who you are and make an effort to know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge one can imagine. When you know yourself, you will not puff yourself up like the frog who wanted to be the equal of the ox,5 and if you can do this, the fact that you kept pigs at home will be like the ugly feet beneath the peacock’s tail of your foolishness.”

Determine with intelligence the worth of your position, and if it allows you to give your servants livery, let it be modest and useful rather than showy and splendid, and divide it between your servants and the poor: I mean that if you are going to dress six pages, dress three of them and three poor men, and in this way you will have pages both in heaven and on the ground; this unusual manner of giving livery cannot be understood by the vainglorious. Do not eat garlic or onions lest their smell reveal your peasant origins. Walk slowly; speak calmly, but not in a way that makes it seem you are listening to yourself, for all affectation is wrong. Eat sparingly at midday and even less for supper, for the health of the entire body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in your drinking, remembering that too much wine cannot keep either a secret or a promise. Be careful, Sancho, not to chew with your mouth full or to eructate in front of anyone.”

“O, sinner that I am!” responded Don Quixote. “How bad it seems in governors not to be able to read or write! Because you must know, Sancho, that a man not knowing how to read, or being left-handed, means one of two things: either he was the child of parents who were too poor and lowborn, or he was so mischievous and badly behaved himself that he could not absorb good habits or good instruction. This is a great fault in you, and I would like you at least to learn to sign your name.”

“That Sancho is not you,” said Don Quixote, “because not only are you not golden silence, you are foolish speech and stubborn persistence, but even so I should like to know which four proverbs came to mind just now that were so to the point, because I have been searching my mind, and I have a good one, and I cannot think of a single proverb.” “Which ones could be better,” said Sancho, “than ‘Never put your thumbs between two wisdom teeth’ and ‘There’s no answer to get out of my house and what do you want with my wife’ and ‘Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s bad luck for the pitcher’? They’re all just fine. Because nobody should take on his governor or the person in authority because he’ll come out of it hurt, like the man who puts his finger between two wisdom teeth, and if they’re not wisdom teeth but just plain molars, it doesn’t matter; and there’s no reply to what the governor says, like the ‘Leave my house and what do you want with my wife.’ As for the stone and the pitcher, even a blind man can see that. So whoever sees the mote in somebody else’s eye has to see the beam in his own, so that nobody can say about him: ‘The dead woman was frightened by the one with her throat cut.’ And your grace knows very well that the fool knows more in his own house than the wise man does in somebody else’s.”

“It must be eaten, Señor Governor, according to the traditions and customs of other ínsulas where there are governors. I, Señor, am a physician, and on this ínsula I am paid to tend to its governors, and I care for their health much more than I do my own, studying day and night, and observing the governor’s constitution and temperament in order to successfully cure him if he should fall ill; and the principal thing I do is to be present at his dinners and suppers, and allow him to eat what seems appropriate to me, and to take away what I imagine will do him harm and be injurious to his stomach; and so I ordered the dish of fruit removed because it was too damp, and the other dish as well because it was too hot and had a good number of spices, which increase thirst, and if one drinks too much, one destroys and consumes the radical humor, which is to say, life.”1 “So that means that the dish of roasted partridges over there, nicely seasoned, it seems to me, won’t do me any harm.” To which the physician responded: “The governor will not eat them as long as I am alive.” “But why?” said Sancho. And the physician responded: “Because our master Hippocrates, the polestar and light of medicine, says in one of his aphorisms: Omnis saturatio mala, perdicis autem pessima. Which means: ‘A full stomach is bad, but a stomach full of partridges is very bad.’”2 “If that’s true,” said Sancho, “then see, Señor Doctor, which of the dishes on this table will do me the most good and which the l...

Evil is welcome if it comes alone.”

“That couldn’t have been the reason,” said Sancho, “but he must have been paying attention to the proverb that says: ‘For giving and keeping you need some brains.’”

A wise Christian should not try to guess what heaven intends to do.

“May God forgive him,” said Sancho. “He should have left me in my corner and forgotten about me, because you shouldn’t play music unless you know how, and St. Peter’s just fine in Rome.”

gives you your bread?” “I depose no king, I impose no king,” responded Sancho, “but I’ll help myself, for I’m my own lord.

“Señor Roque, the beginning of health lies in knowing the disease, and in the patient’s willingness to take the medicines the doctor prescribes; your grace is ill, you know your ailment, and heaven, or I should say God, who is our physician, will treat you with the medicines that will cure you, and which tend to cure gradually, not suddenly and miraculously; furthermore, intelligent sinners are closer to reforming than simpleminded ones, and since your grace has demonstrated prudence in your speech, you need only be brave and wait for the illness of your conscience to be healed; if your grace wishes to save time and put yourself without difficulty on the road to salvation, come with me, and I shall teach you how to be a knight errant, a profession in which one undergoes so many trials and misfortunes that, if deemed to be penance, they would bring you to heaven in the wink of an eye.”

Night fell; they returned home, where there was a soirée of ladies, for Don Antonio’s wife, who was wellborn, good-natured, beautiful, and clever, had invited her friends to come and honor their guest and enjoy his incomparable madness. A number of ladies attended, a splendid supper was served, and the soirée began when it was almost ten o’clock. Among the ladies there were two with mischievous and jocund tastes, and although very respectable, they were somewhat brash in devising amusing but harmless jokes. They were so insistent on Don Quixote’s dancing with them that they exhausted him, not only in body but in spirit. Don Quixote was a remarkable sight: tall, scrawny, lean, sallow, wearing tight-fitting clothes, awkward, and not at all graceful. The young ladies entreated him on the sly, and he, also on the sly, rejected them, but finding himself hard-pressed by their entreaties, he raised his voice and said: “Fugite, partes adversae!4 Leave me in peace, unwelcome thoughts. Señoras, control your desires, for she who is queen of mine, the peerless Dulcinea of Toboso, does not allow any but her own to subdue and defeat me.”

“Unlucky for you, Señor Master, when you started dancing! Do you think all brave men are dancers and all knights errant spin around? I say that if you think so, you’re mistaken; there are men who’d dare to kill a giant before they’d prance around. If you’d been stamping your heels and toes, I’d have taken your place, because I’m a wonderful stamper, but as for dancing, I don’t know anything about it.”

He moved on and saw that they were also correcting another book, and when he asked its title, they responded that it was called the Second Part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by somebody from Tordesillas.9 “I have already heard of this book,” said Don Quixote, “and by my conscience, the truth is I thought it had already been burned and turned to ashes for its insolence; but its day of reckoning will come, as it does to every pig,10 for feigned histories are good and enjoyable the closer they are to the truth or the appearance of truth, and as for true ones, the truer they are, the better.”

I would say that Don Quixote should never be cured, because when he regains his health we lose not only his amusing words and actions, but those of his squire, Sancho Panza, any one of which could cheer melancholy itself.

They did not embrace each other, because where there is great love, generally there is not excessive boldness.

“Your grace is right,” responded Sancho, “because according to wise men, you shouldn’t blame the packsaddle for the donkey’s mistake, and since your grace is to blame for what happened, you should punish yourself and not turn your anger against your battered and bloody arms, or the gentle Rocinante, or my tender feet by wanting them to walk more than is fair.”

“Señor,” responded Sancho, “if you want to know the truth, I’m not convinced that lashing my backside has anything to do with disenchanting the enchanted, because it would be like saying, ‘If you have a headache, put some ointment on your knees.’

I’d swear, at least, that in all the histories about knight errantry that your grace has read, you’ve never seen a disenchantment by flogging;

“It seems to me,” responded Sancho, “that your grace is like the pot calling the kettle black. You reprove me for saying proverbs, and your grace strings them together two at a time.”

“Look, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “I say proverbs when they are appropriate, and when I say them they fit like the rings on your fingers, but you drag them in by the hair, and pull them along, and do not guide them, and if I remember correctly, I have already told you that proverbs are brief maxims derived from the experience and speculation of wise men in the past, and if the proverb is not to the point, it is not a maxim, it is nonsense. But let us leave this for now, and since night is approaching, let us withdraw some distance from the king’s highway, and spend the night there, and God alone knows what tomorrow will bring.”

Don Quixote fulfilled his obligations to nature by sleeping his first sleep,1 but not giving way to his second, unlike Sancho, who never had a second sleep because his sleep lasted from nightfall until morning, proving he had a strong constitution and few cares.

“I only understand that while I’m sleeping I have no fear, or hope, or trouble, or glory; blessed be whoever invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thought, the food that satisfies hunger, the water that quenches thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools down ardor, and, finally, the general coin with which all things are bought, the scale and balance that make the shepherd equal to the king, and the simple man equal to the wise. There is only one defect in sleep, or so I’ve heard, and it is that it resembles death, for there is very little difference between a man who is sleeping and a man who is dead.”

“I have never heard you speak, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “as elegantly as now, which leads me to recognize the truth of the proverb that you like to quote: ‘It is not where you were born but who your friends are now that counts.’”

“Ah, confound it, Señor!” replied Sancho. “Now I’m not the one stringing proverbs together; they also drop two by two from your grace’s mouth better than they do from mine, but between my proverbs and yours there must be this difference: your grace’s come at the right time, while mine are out of place, but in fact they’re all proverbs.”

“What can this mean? In this house all is courtesy and good manners, but for those who have been defeated, good becomes bad, and bad becomes even worse.”

“This seems like one dirty trick on top of another, and not honey on hotcakes. How nice it would be after pinches, slaps, and pinpricks to have a few lashes. Why not just take a big stone and tie it around my neck and put me in a well, and I won’t mind it too much since I have to be a laughingstock in order to solve other people’s problems. Let me alone; if not, I swear I’ll knock down and destroy everything, and I don’t care what happens.”

“And mine,” added Sancho, “for I’ve never seen in all my life a lace-maker who’s died for love; maidens who are occupied think more about finishing their tasks than about love. At least that’s true for me, because when I’m busy digging I never think about my better half, I mean my Teresa Panza, and I love her more than my eyelashes.”

“By God, Señor,” responded Sancho, “considering how I plan to whip myself, a house would be as good as a field, but even so, I’d like it to be under the trees, because they seem like companions and help me to bear this burden wonderfully well.”

“I can believe that,” said Sancho at this point, “because saying amusing things is not for everybody, and the Sancho your grace is talking about, Señor, must be a great scoundrel, a dullard, and a thief all at the same time, because I’m the real Sancho Panza, and I have more amusing things to say than there are rainstorms; and if you don’t think so, your grace can put it to the test, and follow after me for at least a year, and then you’ll see whether or not amusing things drop off me at every step, so many of them that without my knowing what I’ve said most of the time, I make everybody who hears me laugh; and the real Don Quixote of La Mancha, the one who’s famous, valiant, intelligent, and enamored, the righter of wrongs, the defender of wards and orphans, the protector of widows, a ladykiller with maidens, the one whose only lady is the peerless Dulcinea of Toboso, he is this gentleman here present, my master; every other Don Quixote and any other Sancho Panza are a trick and a dream.”

To which the housekeeper added: “And there in the countryside will your grace be able to endure the heat of summer, the night air of winter, the howling of the wolves? No, certainly not; this is work for strong, hard men who’ve been brought up to the life almost from the time they’re in swaddling clothes. No matter how bad it is, it’s better to be a knight errant than a shepherd. Look, Señor, take my advice; I’m giving it to you not when I’m full of bread and wine, but when I’m fasting, and based on what I’ve learned in my fifty years: stay in your house, tend to your estate, go to confession often, favor the poor, and let it be on my soul if that does you any harm.”

“The mercies, Niece,” responded Don Quixote, “are those that God has shown to me at this very instant, and as I said, my sins do not hinder them. My judgment is restored, free and clear of the dark shadows of ignorance imposed on it by my grievous and constant reading of detestable books of chivalry. I now recognize their absurdities and deceptions, and my sole regret is that this realization has come so late it does not leave me time to compensate by reading other books that can be a light to the soul. I feel, Niece, that I am about to die; I should like to do so in a manner that would make it clear that my life was not so wicked that I left behind a reputation for being a madman, for although I have been one, I should not like to confirm this truth in my death. Dear girl, call my good friends for me: the priest, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, and the barber Master Nicolás, for I wish to confess and make my will.”

Item: it is my will that if Antonia Quixana, my niece, wishes to marry, she marry a man regarding whom it has first been determined that he does not know anything about books of chivalry; and in the event it is discovered that he does know about them, and despite this my niece still wishes to marry him, she must lose all that I have left her, which can then be distributed by my executors in pious works, as they see fit.

In brief, Don Quixote’s end came after he had received all the sacraments and had execrated books of chivalry with many effective words. The scribe happened to be present, and he said he had never read in any book of chivalry of a knight errant dying in his bed in so tranquil and Christian a manner as Don Quixote, who, surrounded by the sympathy and tears of those present, gave up the ghost, I mean to say, he died.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor’s prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.

chosen to translate the work, establishing her reputation. “A lot of translation has to do with how much English you know,” she says. “When I started on Cholera it seemed to me that the echo behind García Márquez’s writing, and the echo behind almost everyone who writes in Spanish, is Cervantes. But in English there isn’t a model in prose that operates in the way Cervantes does in Spanish. So I decided to use a kind of a nineteenth-century voice by way of William Faulkner.

Whatever the case, demand is limited. “Philip Roth once said there are only 4,000 readers in the U.S., and once you’ve sold a book to each one of them, you’re done, that’s the end of it. He was exaggerating, but basically that’s the situation . . . and translated literature doesn’t do better than English-language literature.”