don quixote

 

as i'm currently on annual leave one of my reading projects is, finally, to have a reasonably close read of don quixote. i did read it years ago but didn't much get into it so i'm approaching it with only a vague familiarity. i kicked off with the motteux but, initially, the language put me off a bit so i ordered the grossman, on the grounds i already had some of her translations particularly of poetry in spanish from the golden age. the grossman is super readable and has more accessible footnotes. that said, once i hit my stride i absolutely fell in love with the motteux translation, finding it akin to a bawdy, blustery, semi drunk 17th century mate telling you a shaggy dog story. i couldn't recommend it to a non first language english speaker (or most english speakers!) as it's very of it's time, lexically dense and idiomatic, but, that aside, it's just fabulous.

as for the spanish version. i'd love to tell you that my spanish was good enough to cope with cervantes' original but that hope, courtesy of grossman's translation of poetry from that time, is absolutely a vain one! trapiello's updated version still isn't easy for me to get through but still a great workout for my spanish (altho i just can read it as quickly or keep up with the other two books). tonally, it feels much more in common with grossman's version but suffers from being much less annotated.

for notes on translations i haven't done better than this site, which is absolutely worth an extended browse.

why then, am i liking it so much? for me, it's because it feels like it speaks directly to the reader (esp the motteux version). it's full of asides, tangents, self awareness, fourth wall breaking (i love the book burning scene where they advise burning the poetry books because, as if errantry isn't bad enough, the don could be become a poet! lol). further, while i don't want to use the word dull, a lot of modern fiction seems to pale in comparison and i find myself wanting to go back to lawrence sterne, james hogg etc as, even now, they feel miles ahead of their time despite being written hundreds of years ago. i even found myself nodding along to the idea of reading schopenhauer's four immortal romances.

in some ways i'm glad i never really read this as a young person altho i also wish i had, had enjoyed it, and could've have watched myself grow along side it as i read it over the years. but, as is the way, it seems to have arrived at just the right time. i see so much in it. form a literary perspective, ahab, austen and many more.

here's the lad mcevoy with his tips on reading it. i actually think the podcast version is better but it was done before he got his recording issues sorted out so, if that sort of thing matters to you, it's unfortunately almost unlistenable.