Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote

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DON QUIXOTE
by Miguel de Cervantes
Translated by John Ormsby
Volume I., Part 1.
Chapters 1-3
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
I: ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION
It was with considerable reluctance that I abandoned in favour of the present
undertaking what had long been a favourite project: that of a new edition of
Shelton's "Don Quixote," which has now become a somewhat scarce book. There
are some—and I confess myself to be one—for whom Shelton's racy old version,
with all its defects, has a charm that no modern translation, however skilful or
correct, could possess. Shelton had the inestimable advantage of belonging to the
same generation as Cervantes; "Don Quixote" had to him a vitality that only a
contemporary could feel; it cost him no dramatic effort to see things as Cervantes
saw them; there is no anachronism in his language; he put the Spanish of
Cervantes into the English of Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself most likely knew
the book; he may have carried it home with him in his saddle-bags to Stratford on
one of his last journeys, and under the mulberry tree at New Place joined hands
with a kindred genius in its pages.
But it was soon made plain to me that to hope for even a moderate popularity
for Shelton was vain. His fine old crusted English would, no doubt, be relished by
a minority, but it would be only by a minority. His warmest admirers must admit
that he is not a satisfactory representative of Cervantes. His translation of the
First Part was very hastily made and was never revised by him. It has all the
freshness and vigour, but also a full measure of the faults, of a hasty production.
It is often very literal—barbarously literal frequently—but just as often very loose.
He had evidently a good colloquial knowledge of Spanish, but apparently not
much more. It never seems to occur to him that the same translation of a word
will not suit in every case.
It is often said that we have no satisfactory translation of "Don Quixote." To
those who are familiar with the original, it savours of truism or platitude to say
so, for in truth there can be no thoroughly satisfactory translation of "Don
Quixote" into English or any other language. It is not that the Spanish idioms are
so utterly unmanageable, or that the untranslatable words, numerous enough no
doubt, are so superabundant, but rather that the sententious terseness to which
the humour of the book owes its flavour is peculiar to Spanish, and can at best be
only distantly imitated in any other tongue.
The history of our English translations of "Don Quixote" is instructive. Shelton's,
the first in any language, was made, apparently, about 1608, but not published
till 1612. This of course was only the First Part. It has been asserted that the
Second, published in 1620, is not the work of Shelton, but there is nothing to
support the assertion save the fact that it has less spirit, less of what we generally
understand by "go," about it than the first, which would be only natural if the first
were the work of a young man writing currente calamo, and the second that of a
middle-aged man writing for a bookseller. On the other hand, it is closer and more
literal, the style is the same, the very same translations, or mistranslations, occur
in it, and it is extremely unlikely that a new translator would, by suppressing his
name, have allowed Shelton to carry off the credit.
In 1687 John Phillips, Milton's nephew, produced a "Don Quixote" "made
English," he says, "according to the humour of our modern language." His
"Quixote" is not so much a translation as a travesty, and a travesty that for
coarseness, vulgarity, and buffoonery is almost unexampled even in the literature
of that day.
Ned Ward's "Life and Notable Adventures of Don Quixote, merrily translated
into Hudibrastic Verse" (1700), can scarcely be reckoned a translation, but it
serves to show the light in which "Don Quixote" was regarded at the time.
A further illustration may be found in the version published in 1712 by Peter
Motteux, who had then recently combined tea-dealing with literature. It is
described as "translated from the original by several hands," but if so all Spanish
flavour has entirely evaporated under the manipulation of the several hands. The
flavour that it has, on the other hand, is distinctly Franco-cockney. Anyone who
compares it carefully with the original will have little doubt that it is a concoction
from Shelton and the French of Filleau de Saint Martin, eked out by borrowings
from Phillips, whose mode of treatment it adopts. It is, to be sure, more decent
and decorous, but it treats "Don Quixote" in the same fashion as a comic book
that cannot be made too comic.
To attempt to improve the humour of "Don Quixote" by an infusion of cockney
flippancy and facetiousness, as Motteux's operators did, is not merely an
impertinence like larding a sirloin of prize beef, but an absolute falsification of the
spirit of the book, and it is a proof of the uncritical way in which "Don Quixote" is
generally read that this worse than worthless translation—worthless as failing to
represent, worse than worthless as misrepresenting—should have been favoured
as it has been.
It had the effect, however, of bringing out a translation undertaken and
executed in a very different spirit, that of Charles Jervas, the portrait painter, and
friend of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. Jervas has been allowed little credit for
his work, indeed it may be said none, for it is known to the world in general as
Jarvis's. It was not published until after his death, and the printers gave the name
according to the current pronunciation of the day. It has been the most freely
used and the most freely abused of all the translations. It has seen far more
editions than any other, it is admitted on all hands to be by far the most faithful,
and yet nobody seems to have a good word to say for it or for its author. Jervas no
doubt prejudiced readers against himself in his preface, where among many true
words about Shelton, Stevens, and Motteux, he rashly and unjustly charges
Shelton with having translated not from the Spanish, but from the Italian version
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