February 22, 2006

Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes (trans. by Edith Grossman)
Harper Penennial, 2005
Paperback, 992 pages, $16.95

Don Quixote
By Miguel de Cervantes (trans. by John Rutherford)
Penguin Books, 2003
Paperback, 1,032 pages, $10

By JOHN SISCOE
Contributing Writer

Don Quixote de la Mancha, the first great European novel, is an undisputed classic of world literature. It has remained in print for 400 years and has been translated into more than 100 languages. Aside from its literary prestige and influence, it has inspired scores of paintings, sculptures, musical works, plays, and films. Its two protagonists, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, are two of the most well-known and loved characters in literature.

And yet, when out of a sense of cultural duty, simple curiosity, or a desire to be amused we actually sit down to read Don Quixote, a curious thing is likely to happen. Within a few pages we grow increasingly baffled, bored, and even repelled. After a while we place the novel on the shelf — never, in most cases, to touch it again.

What we’d expected was a comedy about a man who, imagining himself a knight-errant, goes around Spain righting wrongs and getting into trouble. And it’s true that Don Quixote is that, but only in the sense that King Lear is about an obnoxious old man who misjudges his daughters. In fact, Don Quixote is a complex and ambitious work that eludes summary. It is, among many other things, an elaborate satire on chivalric tales, an extended series of philosophical meditations, an unrivalled portrait of Spain in the late 16th century, and a sustained examination of human cruelty. Cervantes incorporates pastorals, romances, ballads, literary criticism, and fantasy into this sprawling grab-bag of a novel, where the romantic and the bawdy, the idealistic, and the idiotic jostle against one another. Our puzzlement with Don Quixote stems in part from vertigo: the book is a great deal more then we had bargained for.

The complexity and range of Don Quixote make it a daunting task for the translator. In English we’ve had some excellent efforts, beginning with Sir Thomas Shelton’s marvelous translation of 1612 and Tobias Smolletl’s lively Quixote of 1755. The 20th century saw three distinctive and first-rate versions by Samuel Putnum, J.M. Cohen, and Walter Starkie.

The surprising and very good news is that all these versions have now been surpassed by the recent translations of John Rutherford and Edith Grossman. Each has delivered a Quixote in lively and idiomatic English that is as close to Cervante’s original as is possible. Grossman’s version has gotten more press, but that’s because her publishers took the trouble to pay for it. The truth is that both translations are equally fine.

If you want to give Cervante’s masterpiece a first (or another) try, but can’t decide which version to pick, read the same passage in both translations and let your ear be the judge. Whatever your choice, you can’t lose. I tried this with five passages before ending up with Rutherford. Good luck on the journey if you take it — it’s quite a ride. n