Next up on the agenda, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha).
I picked up a used copy at the "Dawn Treader Book Shop" in Ann Arbor this past Wednesday. It is a 1950 Modern Library College Editions translation with an introduction by Henry Grattan Doyle. He writes about this; "Of common human experience Cervantes had more than his share, and out of his experience wrought the book that you are about to enjoy, in one of its raciest translations, though not, unfortunately, always its most accurate one. That distinction belongs to others than Peter Motteux...but perhaps because this version is so much closer in spirit and language to the time of Cervantes himself, one may hope that those who read it will savor its language and style as they might not savor closer and more reliable translations of later times..."
I say, bravo Mr. Doyle, I like you very much.
With that in mind, I am currently just at the brink of chapter (?) VI: Of the Pleasant and Curious Scrutiny which the Curate and the Barber Made of the Library of Our Ingenious Gentleman, and, I am thinking that I am finding Mr. Quixote endearing, though I feel that any usual character with his characteristics (childishly naiive/completely nuts) would be disturbing in any other context. I am going to go ahead and follow Doyle's lead and believe that it is because of Cervantes' encouraging and nurturing voice that makes me cheer for this lunatic disturbing the peace of normal country folk (That, and I absolutely love the idea of his equine BFF: "...he concluded to call him Rozinante; a Name, in his Opinion, lofty, sounding, and significant of what he had been before, and also of what he was now; in a Word, a Horse before or above all the vulgar Breed of Horses in the World"). Look it up, I dare you. It's absolutely darling, and you will want to buy a pony and name it such.
