Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

fiction has disrupted the order of reality.

We can celebrate the Knight’s endless valor, but not his literalization of the romance of chivalry.

A fiction, believed in even though you know it is a fiction, can be validated only by sheer will.

I am by nature too lazy and slothful to go looking for authors to say what I know how to say without them.

La Manch-

He spoke highly of the giant Morgante because, although he belonged to the race of giants, all of them haughty and lacking in courtesy, he alone was amiable and well-behaved.

perforce the adaptation of this ancient ballad of Lancelot to our present purpose has been the cause of your learning my name before the time was ripe;

“If I were to show her to you,” replied Don Quixote, “where would the virtue be in your confessing so obvious a truth? The significance lies in not seeing her and believing, confessing, affirming, swearing, and defending that truth;

And the first one that Master Nicolás handed him was The Four Books of Amadís of Gaul,1 and the priest said: “This one seems to be a mystery, because I have heard that this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain,2 and all the rest found their origin and inspiration here, and so it seems to me that as the proponent of the doctrine of so harmful a sect, we should, without any excuses, condemn it to the flames.” “No, Señor,” said the barber, “for I’ve also heard that it is the best of all the books of this kind ever written, and as a unique example of the art, it should be pardoned.”

here we would pardon the captain if he had not brought it to Spain and translated it into Castilian, for he took away a good deal of its original value, which is what all who attempt to translate books of poetry into another language will do as well: no matter the care they use and the skill they show,

“Your grace should send them to be burned, just like all the rest, because it’s very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing, and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease.”

“This Cervantes has been a good friend of mine for many years, and I know that he is better versed in misfortunes than in verses.

But the difficulty in all this is that at this very point and juncture, the author of the history leaves the battle pending, apologizing because he found nothing else written about the feats of Don Quixote other than what he has already recounted.

If any objection can be raised regarding the truth of this one, it can only be that its author was Arabic, since the people of that nation are very prone to telling falsehoods, but because they are such great enemies of ours, it can be assumed that he has given us too little rather than too much.

“I shall tell you, Sancho, that it is a question of honor for knights errant not to eat for a month, and when they do eat, it is whatever they find near at hand, and you would know the truth of this if you had read as many histories as I; although there are many of them, in none have I found it written that knights errant ever ate, unless perhaps at some sumptuous banquet offered in their honor; the rest of the time they all but fasted.

it pleased his master to sleep outdoors, for it seemed to him that each time this occurred it was another act of certification that helped to prove his claim to knighthood.

In that blessed age all things were owned in common; no one, for his daily sustenance, needed to do more than lift his hand and pluck it from the sturdy oaks that so liberally invited him to share their sweet and flavorsome fruit.

“Have your graces not read,” responded Don Quixote, “the annals and histories of England, in which are recounted the famous deeds of King Arthur, whom, in our Castilian ballads, we continuously call King Artús? According to an ancient and widespread tradition throughout the kingdom of Great Britain, this king did not die but, through the art of enchantment, was turned into a crow and in time will return to rule

and recover his kingdom and scepter;

there is also a recounting of the love between Sir Lancelot of the Lake and Queen Guinevere, their intermediary and confidante being the highly honored Duenna Quintañona,

I know, with the natural understanding that God has given me, that everything beautiful is lovable, but I cannot grasp why, simply because it is loved, the thing loved for its beauty is obliged to love the one who loves it.

“I don’t know how you can speak of righting wrongs,” said the bachelor, “for you have certainly wronged me and broken my leg, which won’t ever be right again; and in rectifying my injuries, you have injured me so much that I’ll go on being injured for the rest of my life; it was a great misadventure for me to run across a man who is seeking adventures.”

priests—who rarely permit themselves to go hungry—carried

of his honorable resolve to resuscitate and return to the world the lost and dying order of knight errantry,

the great kingdom of Micomicón,

“I shall not raise myself, my lord,” responded the damsel in distress, “if thy courtesy doth not first grant me the boon I beg of thee.”

At this moment Don Quixote came out, leaning on his branch, or lance, and wearing all his armor, the helmet of Mambrino, though battered, on his head, and his shield on his arm. Don Fernando and the others marveled at the strange appearance of Don Quixote, his dry, sallow face that was at least half a league long, his ill-matched weapons, and his solemn demeanor; they remained silent, waiting to see what he would say, and he, very gravely and serenely, turned his eyes

The only one who held his own with him was a Spanish soldier named something de Saavedra,5 who did things that will be remembered by those people for many years, and all to gain his liberty, yet his master never beat him, or ordered anyone else to beat him, or said an unkind word to him; for the most minor of all the things he did we were afraid he would be impaled, and more than once he feared the same thing; if I had the time, I would tell you something of what that soldier did, which would entertain and amaze you much more than this recounting of my history.

do not think she has been moved to change her religion because she believes yours is superior to ours, but only because she knows that in your country there is more lewd behavior than in ours.’

If one were to reply that those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing. Fictional tales must engage the minds of those who read them, and by restraining exaggeration and moderating impossibility, they enthrall the spirit and thereby astonish, captivate, delight, and entertain, allowing wonder and joy to move together at the same pace; none of these things can be accomplished by fleeing verisimilitude and mimesis, which together constitute perfection in writing.

I have seen no book of chivalry that creates a complete tale, a body with all its members intact, so that the middle corresponds to the beginning, and the end to the beginning and the middle; instead, they are composed with so many members that the intention seems to be to shape a chimera or a monster rather than to create a well-proportioned figure.

And if, following your natural inclination, you still wish to read books about great chivalric deeds, read Judges in Holy Scripture, and there you will find magnificent truths and deeds both remarkable and real.

Who will go so far as to say that the history of Guarino Mezquino is false,9 and the search for the Holy Grail, and that the loves of Don Tristan and Queen Iseult, and those of Guinevere and Lancelot, are apocryphal, even though there are persons who can almost remember having seen the Duenna Quintañona,10 who was the greatest pourer of wine in Great Britain?

There it seems to him that the sky is more translucent and the sun shines with a new clarity; before him lies a peaceful grove of trees so green and leafy, their verdure brings joy to his eyes, while his ears are charmed by the sweet, untutored song of the infinite number of small, brightly colored birds that fly among the intricate branches.

Now does your grace think it’s an easy job to write a book?

I am not at all convinced that this crowd of knights errant to whom your grace, Señor Don Quixote, has referred, were really and truly persons of flesh and blood who lived in the world; rather, I imagine they are all fiction, fable, falsehood—dreams told by men when they are awake, or, I should say, half-asleep.”

the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.”

And that must be how my history is: a commentary will be necessary in order to understand it.”

“There is no book so bad,” said the bachelor, “that it does not have something good in it.”

“All this is true, Señor Don Quixote,” said Carrasco, “but I should like those censurers to be more merciful and less severe and not pay so much attention to the motes in the bright sun of the work they criticize, for if aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus,5 they should consider how often he was awake to give a brilliant light to his work with the least amount of shadow possible; and it well may be that what seem defects to them are birthmarks that often increase the beauty of the face where they appear; and so I say that whoever prints a book exposes himself to great danger, since it is utterly impossible to write in a way that will satisfy and please everyone who reads it.”

The best sauce in the world is hunger, and since poor people have plenty of that, they always eat with great pleasure.

I do not think it is wise to force them to study one thing or another, although persuading them to do so would not be harmful; and when there is no need to study pane lucrando,1 if the student is so fortunate that heaven has endowed him with parents who can spare him that, it would be my opinion that they should allow him to pursue the area of knowledge to which they can see he is inclined; although poetry is less useful than pleasurable, it is not one of those that dishonors the one who knows it.

all the ancient poets wrote in their mother tongues, and they did not look for foreign languages in order to declare the nobility of their ideas.

But let the knight errant search all the corners of the world; let him enter into the most intricate labyrinths; attempt the impossible at each step he takes; resist in empty wastelands the burning rays of the sun in summer, and in winter the harsh rigors of freezing winds; let him not be dismayed by lions, or frightened by monsters, or terrified by dragons; searching for these and attacking those and vanquishing them all are his principal and true endeavors.

Here the author depicts all the details of Don Diego’s house, portraying for us what the house of a wealthy gentleman farmer contains, but the translator of this history decided to pass over these and other similar minutiae in silence, because they did not accord with the principal purpose of the history, whose strength lies more in its truth than in cold digressions.

“It seems to me that your grace has spent time in school: what sciences have you studied?” “The science of knight errantry,” responded Don Quixote, “which is as good as poetry, and perhaps even a little better.”

here he lies, enchanted, as I and many others are enchanted, by Merlin, the French enchanter who was, people say, the son of the devil; and what I believe is that he was not the son of the devil but knew, as they say, a point or two more than the devil. How and why he enchanted us no one knows, but that will be revealed with the passage of time, and is not too far off now, I imagine.

if you open your eyes you will see him—you have that great knight about whom the wise Merlin has made so many prophecies: I mean Don Quixote of La Mancha,

‘I cannot believe, nor can I persuade myself, that everything written in the preceding chapter actually happened in its entirety to the valiant Don Quixote: the reason is that all the adventures up to this point have been possible and plausible, but with regard to this one in the cave, I can find no way to consider it true since it goes so far beyond the limits of reason.

he asks that his work not be scorned but praised, not for what he has written but for what he has omitted from his writing.