Don Quichotte por Miguel de Cervantès (review)

Volume 33.2 (2013) 223 Reviews that bring alive the world of Cervantes. Garcés and Wilson received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities through its Collaborative Research Grant program, and this volume honors this program ’s goals of supporting work that combines scholarly rigor with public accessibility. No matter how many sources Google books and Hathi Trust make available in digital scans, we still have much to do as specialists in terms of preparing readable translations, suggesting analytical frameworks for interpretation , and affirming the broad cultural relevance of early-modern Spanish studies. This collaboration offers a compelling example. Here too, University of Notre Dame Press deserves congratulations for making the attractive edition affordable. Imagine how many books could thus gain new life and offer historical context for pressing issues of our time. Huarte de San Juan anyone? Elizabeth R. Wright University of Georgia wrighte@uga.edu Miguel de Cervantès. Don Quichotte. Ed. et trad. Jean-Raymond Fanlo. Paris: Livre de Poche, 2008. 1250 pp. ISBN: 978-2-253-13134-2 Although this is actually part of a two-volume set that includes the Nouvelles exemplaires, I will not review the Nouvelles. The Quichotte is a wonderful translation , both for the serious student of literature who happens not to know Spanish (i.e., the person who will pay attention to the footnotes), and for the man in the street (i.e., the person who couldn’t care less about the footnotes). But why in the world would a member of the Cervantes Society of America—and by this I mean you—be interested in this, or any, French translation? First of all, for me at least, it’s fun. Because I know the Spanish text so well—and so do you—you can pick up the book practically anywhere and understand almost everything, never going to dictionary. Here are some examples. The first one is from part two, chapter seventy-four (and I use quotation marks instead of the dash that the text uses): “Ah, ne mourez pas, cher maître!” répondit Sancho tout en pleurs. “Suivez, mon conseil et vivez de longues années! Parce que la plus grande folie que peut faire un homme dans cette vie, c’est de se laisser mourir come ça, 224 Cervantes Reviews sans que personne le tue, sans être achevé par d’autres mains que celles de la mélancolie.” (2.74:1174) Not only do you understand everything, but you are reminded of things that you forgot from the time when you took French class: the partitive (de longues années), the use of de before se laisser, how the negative precedes the verb without ne (sans que personne le tue). It’s like riding a bicycle. Here is another quote, from part one, chapter twenty-two where Don Quixote frees the galley slaves: “Il appartient à ceux qui sont bien nés de reconnaître les bien-faits, et un des péchés qui offensent le plus Dieu est l’ingratitude. Je le dis, messieurs, parce que vous avez vu par expérience manifeste celui que vous avez reçu de moi, en paiement duquel je voudrais, et c’est ma volonté, que chargé de cette chaîne que j’ai ôtée de vos cous, que vous preniez aussitôt la route pour vous rendre à la cité du Toboso, pour vous présenter à ma dame Dulcinée du Toboso[.]” (1.22:317) Not only do you learn proper forms of the relative pronoun (celui, duquel), but there is an interesting footnote after bien-faits (“Proverbe: «Les bien-nés sont reconnaissants»”[1.22:317n3]). Well, I never knew that before. And this leads me to my second reason for reading this translation: the wealth of new information from footnotes. Maybe it is the French perspective , or maybe it’s because Jean-Raymond Fanlo is just a clever person that he has found such fascinating information. At the beginning of part two, chapter thirty-five, he has a footnote to explain pénitant porte-torche:«Disciplinantes de luz» par opposition aux «discplinantes de sangre» qui se flagellaient ” (2.35:909n1). Well, I didn’t know...