Week 10, no less, in which the identities of many marchers and their monkeys may be revealed — and yes, Part II! Congrats to you not-so-few, you justly proud, you still-marching marchers. I’m really delighted with how many people are hanging in there and with the rich spate of comments from this past week. I’m sure some folks are a bit behind (I’m about 20 pages shy of the mark my own self), but, call me a delusional marcher errant, it feels like this remaining crew is gonna make it through.
Besides the Part II-ness of it all, I had a personal DM-related milestone this last week: suddenly both my kids are old enough that I can take them with me to the coffee shop for 20-30 minutes of mellow time — just enough to read a chapter or two of the ole DQ, while they sip their lemonade and draw. And the days are long. And life is good. Next Wednesday: Let’s catch our breath at the end of Chapter XIII: (aka page 538, Grossman), where two squires appear to be loaded, and we’re just about to learn — finally! — “what befell the Knight of the Wood and the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.”
14 comments for “The Don Quixote Deathmarch, Week 10”
So-Called Bill
June 1, 2006 at 1:01 pm
So I found myself in the basement of large library in Wheaton, Maryland the other day with a few minutes to kill, and bethinking myself of Rodney’s comments about the clunkiness of the Grossman translation, I decided to pick up a 50-cent copy of J.M. Cohen’s Penguin translation, vintage 1950. Thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned:
• In his introduction, Cohen is fairly dismissive of the interpolated novels, encouraging the less ambitious reader to skip all except the captive’s story in favor of moving as quickly as possible to Part II, of which he says: “There is no doubt at all that the book improves as it progresses; the second part, published ten years after the first, is by far and away the richer and subtler.” So all you struggling Deathmarchers take heart: the worst is over, and the best yet to come.
• Speaking of which, I’ve already gotten through Chapter 3 of Part II, in which Cervantes himself addresses all the criticisms of Part I, from the inclusion of extraneous matter to the various continuity errors. Forget “modern,” this self-commentary strikes me as positively postmodern.
• Cohen is also critical of the book’s pastoral episodes, saying “These too-eloquent shepherds and goatherds, carving their mistresses’ names on the bark of cork trees and composing poems in their honour, are certainly to our present-day taste the weak spot of the book.”
• In Cohen’s translation “The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious” is “The Tale of Foolish Curiosity”; the “Knight of the Sorrowful Face” is the “Knight of the Sad Countenance”; and “perhaps another will sing in a better style” is “someone perhaps will sing to a better lyre.” Which do you prefer?
I’ve read a bit of Cohen’s version and found just slightly more readable, though not all that much different. I’ll try to report any further variations that I find.
Two more small things: In the prologue, where Grossman says “hound,” Cohen says “pointer”. Later, where Grossman says “like a tailor on the night before a holiday,” Cohen says “like a tailor on Easter eve”; I don’t know which is more accurate, but the latter is certainly more evocative.
Also also, my favorite line of the Prologue, for obvious reasons: “One writes not with gray hairs but with understanding, which generally improves with the years.”
I used to hang out in Wheaton too (in my DC days).
You have to love the fact that the plot of the second book starts with the revelation that someone has written about DQ. How will he respond to chivalric romance/nonsense now that he is a player? Of course, it’s hard to say if he will be able to tell the truth from the fanciful affectations.
Crossing over into the Second Part feels momentous. I want to set my watch an hour ahead or throw confetti out the window. I am dipping into Nabokov between chapters and came across a thought-provoking quote I’d like to share:
“The explication of the curious difference of critical attitudes toward [Don Quixote and Sancho Panza] lies, I suspect, in the fact that all readers can be separated into Don Quixotes and Sancho Panzas. When I find a library copy of Schevill’s book passages marked, thickly and slovenly, with blue ink and when the inkmarked passage is, “Cervantes gives a realistic picture of the midde class something or other,” then I know for sure whether the reader is a Sancho or a Quixote.”
On reading this, I thought: 1. of the episode of Absolutely Fabulous when Patsy proclaims that people can be divided into two categories: thoroughbreds and donkeys and Edie, obviously feeling cut, gives Patsy a hurt look while donkeys’ ears suddenly sprout from her head; 2. is it better to be a Don or a Sancho? I think Nabokov would say a Don (I think he saw Sancho readers as full of silly arm-chair socialism).
Well, I don’t think this is true of us at all. . .but hey maybe I’m in denial.
The extended RaptorMage family has decreed that the RaptorMage’s kid sister’s birthday (number 44 in a series) will be celebrated on Sunday the Fourth at two o’clock in (drum roll): Alameda. Robert Crown Memorial Beach, to be specific. So you have (lessee…) 40 hours to evacuate the island.
I hope it doesn’t sound partonizing to make the observation that the quality of the comments being posted has markedly improved since our detour to the Dairy Queen a few weeks ago.
The Prologue to the Reader of the Second Part brings to mind my recent attendance at a local appearance by Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked. Published in 1995, Wicked presents a different perspective on the fictional characters created by L. Frank Baum in The Wizard of Oz. The question I got to ask Maguire was “If Mr. Baum were living today, what do you think he would say about Wicked?” I guess I was thinking of what Cervantes had to say about the so-called “Avellanda version” of a sequel to the original Don Quixote.
What do you think? Without the original author’s consent, under what circumstances does another author have a right to create a new work using the original author’s characters?
I consider the Old Man’s question an easy one: the circumstance is the passage of time. Only when copyright has expired does anyone have the right to play in another author’s sandbox; but once it has expired, the doors are wide open, and I am glad there are no limits other than the personal choices of subsequent authors.
(I certainly wish that copyright would expire more quickly in the U.S. than it does. I believe that twenty years from publication would be plenty to allow authors to profit from their creations. But that wasn’t the question.)
Squires and Knights and Damsels: Of course there’s deception afoot when one loaded Squire meets the other loaded squire, and everyone is again not as he or she seems. On the plus side, I’ve lost my obsessive irritation with the blanket toss and am now cranky about the fact that DQ and SP still can’t see through everyone’s obvious disguises and deceptions! I know I should behave in a more literaryish manner amid this august company of marchers (and Wheaton researchers) and accept Cervantes’ conceits and deceits, but the whole Squire X posing as Jimmy Durante (ha-cha-cha-cha) made me lose sleep. (Can we have group when the march is over?)
I have to say that I am enjoying the funhouse mirrors of the first couple of chapters of part 2. First the priest repeats the theme of the man who was recklessly curious (the title I prefer)(although I really found the story irritating) when, after satisfying himself that there was no doubt that DQ “was completely well and his sanity restored,” had to ask just one more question. Then we go on to Don Quixote and Sancho discussing with the bachelor the translation of the account written by the Moor of their previous adventures–an interesting dance, and, well, I’m enjoying Sancho a lot at the moment. What does that mean about me?
Big scare tonight when I tried to log on and found I was unable to connect to the Internet. Oh cruel technology, you nearly defeat my impossible mug dreams, even as Cervantes himself has so far been unable to thwart me. Thank goodness Mrs. Magoo (not her real name, she refused to take mine) knows something about computers!
I must say I am intrigued by the references to different authors and different books. There is Cervantes, Cide, Grossman at times has a voice. and Cervantes references translators. There is the first part of this book, the letter to Count of Lemos, the second part of the book, the “false” second part of the book, and the notion that a book about DQ has been written even before he begins his third sally.
Does all have a clever and modern feel, like Woody Allen breaking from the scene and talking to the camera.
I’m caught up for the first time in weeks! Part II feels a little like Rocinante on a gentle downward trot so far, though I’m shocked to look at my bookmark and see there’s an entire “normal� sized book left to go.
I’m with Computilo and Mr. Magoo in finding those scenes where Cervantes breaks camera, or calls attention to the artifice of his whole enterprise with transparent deceptions and disguises, the most interesting (and irritating) parts of the book. Thin gruel to nourish you through nearly 1,000 pages, but it does seem like this larger meditation about fiction and what it’s good for is what got C. up in the morning to do his 500 words. And part of what it’s good for seems to be pulling the wool over other people’s eyes, with the suggestion that social divisions like knight/squire, literate/illiterate, highborn/common, Christian/Moor just may be the biggest wool pulling of all. Or have I said that already? 🙂
One drag on the book for me is that it’s really about people talking—telling stories—without a whole lot of movement. It’s like Cervantes gives you just enough plot to rig up these set pieces where someone relates his history, or makes a noble speech, or stumbles over elevated Spanish (Sancho, you know who you are). But very little actually happens.
Speaking of speeches, anyone else notice how often women get the best ones? Teresa Panza on p. 488 is up there with Marcela, Camila, Grimelda, and Dorotea (remember *them*?) in being literate, sharp, and totally right-on. And this in a book that’s, well, not exactly 21st century in its take on the fairer sex. What’s up? For me, all adds to the pervading sense that things are never quite what they seem.
Part II feels like the dessert, the reward, for slogging through Part I. All the “meta” stuff, the breaking of the fourth wall, as others have commented, is to me the best part early on in this half. That plus the DQ/Sancho verbal sparring, which I really could listen to all day.
About Teresa and Sancho’s conversation, I enjoyed the turnabout, where Sancho becomes the romantic/heroic one, out of touch with the day to day reality of earthly life, while Teresa is the down-to-earth Sancho type. Not unlike a few marriages I have seen (including Ozzie and Harriet, Dagwood and Blondie) or been a part of…
So I found myself in the basement of large library in Wheaton, Maryland the other day with a few minutes to kill, and bethinking myself of Rodney’s comments about the clunkiness of the Grossman translation, I decided to pick up a 50-cent copy of J.M. Cohen’s Penguin translation, vintage 1950. Thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned:
• In his introduction, Cohen is fairly dismissive of the interpolated novels, encouraging the less ambitious reader to skip all except the captive’s story in favor of moving as quickly as possible to Part II, of which he says: “There is no doubt at all that the book improves as it progresses; the second part, published ten years after the first, is by far and away the richer and subtler.” So all you struggling Deathmarchers take heart: the worst is over, and the best yet to come.
• Speaking of which, I’ve already gotten through Chapter 3 of Part II, in which Cervantes himself addresses all the criticisms of Part I, from the inclusion of extraneous matter to the various continuity errors. Forget “modern,” this self-commentary strikes me as positively postmodern.
• Cohen is also critical of the book’s pastoral episodes, saying “These too-eloquent shepherds and goatherds, carving their mistresses’ names on the bark of cork trees and composing poems in their honour, are certainly to our present-day taste the weak spot of the book.”
• In Cohen’s translation “The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious” is “The Tale of Foolish Curiosity”; the “Knight of the Sorrowful Face” is the “Knight of the Sad Countenance”; and “perhaps another will sing in a better style” is “someone perhaps will sing to a better lyre.” Which do you prefer?
I’ve read a bit of Cohen’s version and found just slightly more readable, though not all that much different. I’ll try to report any further variations that I find.
Two more small things: In the prologue, where Grossman says “hound,” Cohen says “pointer”. Later, where Grossman says “like a tailor on the night before a holiday,” Cohen says “like a tailor on Easter eve”; I don’t know which is more accurate, but the latter is certainly more evocative.
Also also, my favorite line of the Prologue, for obvious reasons: “One writes not with gray hairs but with understanding, which generally improves with the years.”
You had me at “Wheaton, Maryland.”
Ha ha ha ha ha <–kidding.
But seriously, I like the Grossman verbiage, even the footnotes. <–not kidding.
I used to hang out in Wheaton too (in my DC days).
You have to love the fact that the plot of the second book starts with the revelation that someone has written about DQ. How will he respond to chivalric romance/nonsense now that he is a player? Of course, it’s hard to say if he will be able to tell the truth from the fanciful affectations.
Crossing over into the Second Part feels momentous. I want to set my watch an hour ahead or throw confetti out the window. I am dipping into Nabokov between chapters and came across a thought-provoking quote I’d like to share:
“The explication of the curious difference of critical attitudes toward [Don Quixote and Sancho Panza] lies, I suspect, in the fact that all readers can be separated into Don Quixotes and Sancho Panzas. When I find a library copy of Schevill’s book passages marked, thickly and slovenly, with blue ink and when the inkmarked passage is, “Cervantes gives a realistic picture of the midde class something or other,” then I know for sure whether the reader is a Sancho or a Quixote.”
On reading this, I thought: 1. of the episode of Absolutely Fabulous when Patsy proclaims that people can be divided into two categories: thoroughbreds and donkeys and Edie, obviously feeling cut, gives Patsy a hurt look while donkeys’ ears suddenly sprout from her head; 2. is it better to be a Don or a Sancho? I think Nabokov would say a Don (I think he saw Sancho readers as full of silly arm-chair socialism).
Well, I don’t think this is true of us at all. . .but hey maybe I’m in denial.
The extended RaptorMage family has decreed that the RaptorMage’s kid sister’s birthday (number 44 in a series) will be celebrated on Sunday the Fourth at two o’clock in (drum roll): Alameda. Robert Crown Memorial Beach, to be specific. So you have (lessee…) 40 hours to evacuate the island.
I hope it doesn’t sound partonizing to make the observation that the quality of the comments being posted has markedly improved since our detour to the Dairy Queen a few weeks ago.
The Prologue to the Reader of the Second Part brings to mind my recent attendance at a local appearance by Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked. Published in 1995, Wicked presents a different perspective on the fictional characters created by L. Frank Baum in The Wizard of Oz. The question I got to ask Maguire was “If Mr. Baum were living today, what do you think he would say about Wicked?” I guess I was thinking of what Cervantes had to say about the so-called “Avellanda version” of a sequel to the original Don Quixote.
What do you think? Without the original author’s consent, under what circumstances does another author have a right to create a new work using the original author’s characters?
I consider the Old Man’s question an easy one: the circumstance is the passage of time. Only when copyright has expired does anyone have the right to play in another author’s sandbox; but once it has expired, the doors are wide open, and I am glad there are no limits other than the personal choices of subsequent authors.
(I certainly wish that copyright would expire more quickly in the U.S. than it does. I believe that twenty years from publication would be plenty to allow authors to profit from their creations. But that wasn’t the question.)
Squires and Knights and Damsels: Of course there’s deception afoot when one loaded Squire meets the other loaded squire, and everyone is again not as he or she seems. On the plus side, I’ve lost my obsessive irritation with the blanket toss and am now cranky about the fact that DQ and SP still can’t see through everyone’s obvious disguises and deceptions! I know I should behave in a more literaryish manner amid this august company of marchers (and Wheaton researchers) and accept Cervantes’ conceits and deceits, but the whole Squire X posing as Jimmy Durante (ha-cha-cha-cha) made me lose sleep. (Can we have group when the march is over?)
I have to say that I am enjoying the funhouse mirrors of the first couple of chapters of part 2. First the priest repeats the theme of the man who was recklessly curious (the title I prefer)(although I really found the story irritating) when, after satisfying himself that there was no doubt that DQ “was completely well and his sanity restored,” had to ask just one more question. Then we go on to Don Quixote and Sancho discussing with the bachelor the translation of the account written by the Moor of their previous adventures–an interesting dance, and, well, I’m enjoying Sancho a lot at the moment. What does that mean about me?
Big scare tonight when I tried to log on and found I was unable to connect to the Internet. Oh cruel technology, you nearly defeat my impossible mug dreams, even as Cervantes himself has so far been unable to thwart me. Thank goodness Mrs. Magoo (not her real name, she refused to take mine) knows something about computers!
I must say I am intrigued by the references to different authors and different books. There is Cervantes, Cide, Grossman at times has a voice. and Cervantes references translators. There is the first part of this book, the letter to Count of Lemos, the second part of the book, the “false” second part of the book, and the notion that a book about DQ has been written even before he begins his third sally.
Does all have a clever and modern feel, like Woody Allen breaking from the scene and talking to the camera.
I’m caught up for the first time in weeks! Part II feels a little like Rocinante on a gentle downward trot so far, though I’m shocked to look at my bookmark and see there’s an entire “normal� sized book left to go.
I’m with Computilo and Mr. Magoo in finding those scenes where Cervantes breaks camera, or calls attention to the artifice of his whole enterprise with transparent deceptions and disguises, the most interesting (and irritating) parts of the book. Thin gruel to nourish you through nearly 1,000 pages, but it does seem like this larger meditation about fiction and what it’s good for is what got C. up in the morning to do his 500 words. And part of what it’s good for seems to be pulling the wool over other people’s eyes, with the suggestion that social divisions like knight/squire, literate/illiterate, highborn/common, Christian/Moor just may be the biggest wool pulling of all. Or have I said that already? 🙂
One drag on the book for me is that it’s really about people talking—telling stories—without a whole lot of movement. It’s like Cervantes gives you just enough plot to rig up these set pieces where someone relates his history, or makes a noble speech, or stumbles over elevated Spanish (Sancho, you know who you are). But very little actually happens.
Speaking of speeches, anyone else notice how often women get the best ones? Teresa Panza on p. 488 is up there with Marcela, Camila, Grimelda, and Dorotea (remember *them*?) in being literate, sharp, and totally right-on. And this in a book that’s, well, not exactly 21st century in its take on the fairer sex. What’s up? For me, all adds to the pervading sense that things are never quite what they seem.
Part II feels like the dessert, the reward, for slogging through Part I. All the “meta” stuff, the breaking of the fourth wall, as others have commented, is to me the best part early on in this half. That plus the DQ/Sancho verbal sparring, which I really could listen to all day.
About Teresa and Sancho’s conversation, I enjoyed the turnabout, where Sancho becomes the romantic/heroic one, out of touch with the day to day reality of earthly life, while Teresa is the down-to-earth Sancho type. Not unlike a few marriages I have seen (including Ozzie and Harriet, Dagwood and Blondie) or been a part of…