Introduction

It might seem preposterous to suggest that the fanciful adventures of Don Quixote are far richer in English than in Spanish, but the proof of it is mathematical. For en español there is only one knight-errant, but in Shakespeare’s tongue there are a myriad—as many as there have been full-length translations of the novel since the first one, by Thomas Shelton. Of course, this multiplicity is not the sole property of Cervantes; any classic that is rendered more than once into another tongue becomes two, three, four. . . . How many different Macbeths are there in French, Raskolnikovs in Italian, Cyranos in German? But the works in which they appear cannot equal Don Quixote in fecundity in English, for, with the exception of the Iliad, no book has been more often “Saxonized,” to use Dr. Johnson’s adjective. Between Shelton’s renditions of part 1 in 1612 and part 2 eight years later to Burton Raffel’s version at the end of the twentieth century, diplomats, army captains, novelists, Greek scholars, and professional translators have made the book available—though not always fully accessible—to readers in England and the United States.

Indeed, James Fitzmaurice-Kelly once persuasively argued that the British were the first in a “foreign country to mention Don Quixote, the first to translate the book, the first . . . in Europe to present it decently garbed in its native tongue, the first to provide a biography of him [Cervantes], the first to publish a commentary on [the novel], and the first to issue a critical edition of the text.” He also argued that the first notice of Cervantes’ book in the original came from the Brussels edition of 1607, which, he trusted, had crossed the Channel in no time at all. Unquestionably, references to the knight’s odyssey have been ubiquitous in English from the eighteenth century on; they show up in the works of Jonson, Fielding, Dr. Johnson himself, Addison and Steele, Sterne, Irving, Cotton Mather, Thomas Morton, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, Graham Greene, Naipaul, and Rushdie, among thousands of others. And then there is the inevitable question about the Bard: did he too read the novel? The answer is the subject of some controversy, for while Shakespeare knew little Spanish, Shelton’s translation became available a few years before he died, within days of Cervantes’ own demise.

To me, what is genuinely intriguing is not the scope of Don Quixote’s echoes— classics are factories of esteem and imitation—but the different “originals” through which British and American authors have seized on him. That is, for one who lacks firsthand knowledge of a given language, a translation in one’s own language becomes the original. Each of the almost two dozen full-scale translations of Cervantes’ work is, obviously, a product of its own time; as a result, it emphasizes and deemphasizes different aspects of the adventure. Moreover, each renditioner has the work of his predecessors at his disposal, both to inspire him and to pillage. Take, for instance, the following original quotation and four translations, listed chronologically, of the lines in part 1, chapter 38, in which the protagonist discusses the difference between military and literary affairs:

Cervantes (1605):

Estoy por decir que en el alma me pesa de haber tomado este ejercicio de caballero andante en edad tan detestable como es esta en que ahora vivimos; porque a mí ningún peligro me pone miedo, todavía me pone recelo pensar si la pólvora y el estaño me han de quitar la ocasión de hacerme famoso y conocido por el valor de mi brazo y filos de mi espada, por todo lo descubierto de la tierra. Pero haga el cielo lo que fuese servido.

Motteux (1700):

I could almost say I am sorry at my Heart for having taken upon me this profession of a Knight-Errant, in so detestable an Age; for tho’ no Danger daunts me, yet it affects me to think, whether Powder or Lead may not deprive me of the Opportunity of Becoming Famous, and making myself known throughout the World by the Strength of my Arm and Dint...