Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (electric book reader TXT) 📕

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Don Quixote is a novel that doesn’t need much introduction. Not only is it widely considered the greatest Spanish literary work of all time, one of the greatest literary works in history, and a cornerstone of the Western literary canon, it’s also considered one of the first—if not the first—modern novels.

This Standard Ebooks edition is believed to be the first ebook edition of Don Quixote to feature a full transcription of translator John Ormsby’s nearly 1,000 footnotes. Ormsby as an annotator deftly explains obscure passages, gives background on the life and times of 1600s Spain, references decisions from other contemporary translators, and doesn’t hold back from sharing his views on the genius—and flaws—of Cervantes’ greatest work.

The story is of the eponymous Don Quixote, a country noble who, in his old age, reads too many chivalric romances and goes mad. After convincing his grubby servant, Sancho Panza, to join him as his squire, he embarks on an absurd and comic quest to do good and right wrongs.

Today Don Quixote’s two volumes are published as a single work, but their publication came ten years apart. Cervantes saw great success with the publication of his first volume, and appeared to have little desire to write a second volume until a different author wrote a spurious, inferior sequel. This kicked Cervantes into gear and he wrote volume two, a more serious and philosophical volume than the largely comic first volume.

Despite being written in 1605 and translated in 1885, Don Quixote contains a surprising amount of slapstick laughs—even for the modern reader—and narrative devices still seen in today’s fiction, including meta-narratives, frame narratives, and metafiction. Many scenes (like Quixote’s attack on the windmills) and characters (like Sancho Panza and Lothario) are so famous that they’re ingrained in our collective culture.

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Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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redondillas. ↩

I.e. The old ballad, so often quoted. ↩

The first of three stanzas in redondillas by the Comendador Escriva, an old poet, some of whose verses appear in the Canciotiero of Fernando de Castillo (1511). The lines seem to have been extremely popular. Lope wrote a gloss upon them, and Calderón introduced them into two of his plays. From the use to which Cervantes puts them in this passage he does not seem to have admired them as much as his contemporaries. To his temperament, very likely, this sighing after death savoured of affectation. Probably to his robuster philosophy life was to be lived so long as it was left to us, and death met manfully when it came. ↩

See this note. ↩

I.e. desert islands⁠—a phrase from the Flores of Torquemada. ↩

Tibar, a river of Arabia. Panchaia, a district of Arabia Felix.

“Totaqae thuriferis Panchaia pinguis arenis.”

—⁠Virgil, Georgics II, 139

↩

For the story of Pierres and Magalona, see Part I, Chapter XLIX. ↩

Clavo, a nail or spike; leño, a log. ↩

Proverb 180. ↩

Proverb 86. ↩

We were told before that the peg was in the forehead, a very inconvenient position for the rider. In the magic horse in the Arabian Nights it was in the neck. In the case of Chaucer’s “Stede of bras,” to guide him⁠—

“Ye moten trill a pin stont in his ere.”

↩

Proverbs 222, 236. ↩

Proverb 206. ↩

Sancho in the original mistakes his master’s veridico for a diminutive of verde, green, and replies, “I’m not green but brown, but even if I was a mixture I’d keep my word.” ↩

Peralvillo, a small town near Ciudad Real, where the Holy Brotherhood used to execute their prisoners. ↩

Dr. Eugenio Torralva, tried in 1528 at Cuenca on various charges of dealing in magic. One was that he claimed to have made the journey from Madrid to Rome in one night riding on a stick. “Bourbon” is the Duke who was killed at the taking of Rome by the Imperialists in May 1527. ↩

Sancho in his trouble confuses Magalona with the great Portuguese navigator. ↩

I.e. the Pleiades. ↩

Literally, “saying nothing to nobody.” ↩

The cross prefixed to the alphabet in schoolbooks: no saber el Cristus, is to know nothing at all. ↩

I.e. Dionysius Cato, author of the Disticha. ↩

In allusion to the fable that the peacock’s pride in his tail is tempered when he contemplates his ugly feet. In Spanish the expanded tail of the peacock is called his wheel⁠—rueda. ↩

Proverb 213. ↩

Proverb 38. An allusion to the popular joke against the begging friars, who were said to make a pretence of refusing gifts; hinting, however, that they might be thrown into their hood. ↩

Suetonius: Julius Caesar, Chapter 45. ↩

Proverb 3. ↩

Proverb 54. ↩

That curious sixteenth-century manual of the manners of good society, the Gaiateo Español of Lucas Gracian Dantisco, very probably suggested this hint. ↩

Proverbs 41, 74, 200, and 71. ↩

Proverb 45. ↩

Proverb 234. ↩

Proverb 77. ↩

Proverb 146. ↩

Proverb 8. Seguro va a juicio⁠—“goes into court with an easy mind.” ↩

Proverb 124. ↩

Proverb 87. There is some uncertainty about this proverb; whether it is “his house is sweet to him,” or, “his house knows it,” or, “his hunting (caza) is successful.” In the text of the early editions it is in the first form. Hartzenbusch prefers the last. ↩

Proverb 205. ↩

Proverbs 139, 221, and 16. ↩

Proverb 214. Possibly a corruption of santo⁠—“holy;” another, and perhaps the older and more correct form, has “sage,” “prudent.” Garay gives it as in the text. ↩

Proverbs 142, 42, 34. ↩

Proverbs 140, 143, 43. ↩

Proverb 92. ↩

The original bringing a charge of misinterpretation against its translator, is a confusion of ideas that it would not be easy to match. With regard to Cid Hamete’s apology, see the Translator’s Preface. [This version of Don Quixote contains a different version of the Translator’s Preface that doesn’t include this reference. —⁠Ed.] ↩

There is, in fact, some difference of opinion as to the meaning of the phrase. The Academy Dictionary gives “instantly”⁠—“on the spot;” Covarrubias “suddenly.” ↩

“O Vida segura la mansa pobreza,
Dadiva santa desagradecida.”

—⁠Juan de Mena, El Laberinto, copla 227

I suspect there is a touch of malice in the words “the great Cordovan poet.” To hear any other poet but Góngora so described would have made a Góngorist foam at the mouth. ↩

Cid Hamete has mixed up two passages⁠—1 Cor. 7:30, and 2 Cor. 6:10. ↩

The straits of the starving hidalgo were a favourite theme with the novelists and dramatists of the time. The difference of the treatment of the subject by the three great humourists, Mendoza in Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes here, and Quevedo in the Gran Tacaño, is very striking.