Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [208]
“What is more,” replied the gentleman, “I know the sonnets my brother wrote.”
“Then your grace should recite them,” said the captive, “for I am certain you can say them better than I.”
“I would be happy to,” responded the gentleman. “The one to the Goletta says:
CHAPTER XL
In which the history of the captive continues
SONNET
O blissful souls, who from the mortal veil
freed and unconfined, flew from this low earth,
borne on the wings of brave and virtuous deeds
to the highest, holiest spheres of glorious heav’n,
ablaze with fury and with righteous zeal,
and summoning all your honor and your strength,
you colored the ocean and the sandy ground
with your own blood, and with the enemy’s;
you lost your lives before you lost the valor
of your weary, battling arms; in death,
though you are vanquished, victory is yours.
Your mortal, melancholy fall, between
the ramparts and the attacking horde, brings you
fame in this world, blessed glory in the next.”
“That is how I remember it, too,” said the captive.
“And the one to the fort, if I remember correctly,” said the gentleman, “reads like this:
SONNET
Up from this sterile, devastated ground,
these scattered clods of earth, these ruined stones,
the saintly souls of three thousand warriors
rose, immortal, to their glorious home,
after wielding, in vain, the emboldened might
of their courageous arms until, at last,
the exhausted few, too few to resist,
gave up their lives to the enemy’s sharp blade.
This is ground that has been the constant home
of a thousand sad, heroic memories
in times long gone and in the present day.
From its hard bosom no more righteous souls
have risen to the shining gates of heaven,
nor has it held the bodies of braver men.”
They liked the sonnets, the captive was glad to hear the news about his comrade, and, continuing with his story, he said:
“Having conquered the Goletta and the fort, the Turks ordered the Goletta to be dismantled, because it had been so damaged there was nothing left to raze, and in order to do this more quickly and easily, they mined it in three places; they could not blow up what had seemed its weakest part, that is, the old walls, but what was left standing of the new fortifications built by El Fratín1 came down easily. Then the fleet returned to Constantinople, triumphant and victorious, and a few months after that my master, Uchalí, died;2 he was called Uchalí Fartax—in the Turkish language it means “the Renegade with Scabies”—which is, in fact, what he was, for it is customary among the Turks to name people for some fault or virtue that they have, and this is because they have only four family names, and these come from the Ottoman house;3 the rest, as I have said, take their first and second names from physical defects or character traits. And this man with scabies rowed in the galleys as a slave of the Great Lord for fourteen years, and when he was past the age of thirty-four he became a renegade because of his fury at a Turk who slapped him while he was rowing: in order to take his revenge, he abandoned his faith; his valor was so great that, without using the vile and devious means that most of the Great Turk’s favorites employ in order to succeed, he became king of Algiers and then admiral of the sea, which is the third position in that empire. He came from Calabria, and morally he was a good man who treated his captives very humanely; he had three thousand of them, and after his death they were divided, according to the terms of his will, between the Great Turk, who is the heir of everyone who dies and shares in the inheritance with the dead man’s children, and his renegades; I was passed along to a Venetian renegade who had been a cabin boy when he was captured by Uchalí, who was very fond of the boy and pampered him a good deal, yet he became the cruelest renegade anyone has ever seen. His name was Azán Agá, and he became very rich,