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for this enterprise, O king,

is reserved only for me.

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; he knew how to act, and I to write; the two of us alone are one, despite and regardless of the false Tordesillan writer who dared, or will dare, to write with a coarse and badly designed ostrich feather about the exploits of my valorous knight, for it is not a burden for his shoulders or a subject for his cold creativity; and you will warn him, if you ever happen to meet him, to let the weary and crumbling bones of Don Quixote rest in the grave, and not attempt, contrary to all the statutes of death, to carry them off to Castilla la Vieja,2 removing him from the tomb where he really and truly lies, incapable of undertaking a third journey or a new sally; for to mock the many undertaken by so many knights errant, the two he made were enough, and they have brought delight and pleasure to everyone who knows of them, in these kingdoms as well as those abroad. And with this you will fulfill your Christian duty, by giving good counsel to those who do not wish you well, and I shall be pleased and proud to have been the first who completely enjoyed the fruits of his writing, just as he wished, for my only desire has been to have people reject and despise the false and nonsensical histories of the books of chivalry, which are already stumbling over the history of my true Don Quixote, and will undoubtedly fall to the ground. Vale.”

About the Author and the Translator

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor’s prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.

EDITH GROSSMAN is the distinguished prize-winning translator of major works by leading contemporary Hispanic writers, including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Alvaro Mutis, and Mayra Montero. Her new translation of Don Quixote is Edith Grossman’s excursion into the classic literature of an earlier time, a natural kind of progression in reverse. Now she employs her many years’ experience translating modern classics to bring us an elegantly contemporary translation of Don Quixote.

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PRAISE FOR

Don Quixote

“Cervantes is the founder of the Modern Era…. The novelist need answer to no one but Cervantes. Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being, and yet, in our memory, what character is more alive?”

—MILAN KUNDERA

“Don Quixote is greater today than he was in Cervantes’s womb. [He] looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through [his] sheer vitality…. He stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant. The parody has become a paragon.”

—VLADIMIR NABOKOV

“I…commend Edith Grossman’s version for the extraordinarily high quality of her prose…. Reading [Grossman’s] amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes’ darkening vision is an entrance into further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake.”

—HAROLD BLOOM

“Ms. Grossman…has provided a Quixote that is agile, playful, formal and wry…. What she renders splendidly is the book’s very heart.”

—New York Times

Copyright

DON QUIXOTE. Copyright © 2003 by Edith Grossman; introduction copyright © 2003 by Harold Bloom. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive,