Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [560]
5 The lines, in Spanish translation, are by the Italian poet Serafino dell’Aquila (1466–1500).
6 These lines are by Commander Escrivá, a fifteenth-century poet from Valencia, whose work was greatly admired by many writers of the Golden Age.
7 This was in the first edition. Martín de Riquer believes it is an intentional corruption of Ariadne, for comic purposes.
8 The last two references in the list were poetic commonplaces.
1 “Farewell,” in Latin.
2 A line from Virgil’s Aeneid (II, 6 and 8): “Who, hearing this, can hold back his tears?”
1 The phrase in Spanish (…más oliscan a terceras, habiendo dejado de ser primas…) is based on wordplay that contrasts terceras (“go-betweens” or “panders”) and primas (in this case, “principal party to a love affair”). The humor lies in the connection of the former term to “third” and the latter term to “first.”
3 Clavileño, like Rocinante, is a composite name, made up of clavifrom clavija (“peg”) and leño (“wood”).
1 Sancho mentions this same Neapolitan monastery during the adventure of the Cave of Montesinos, when he blesses Don Quixote before his descent (chapter XXII).
2 A place where the Holy Brotherhood executed criminals.
3 The reference is to the myth of Phaëthon.
4 A reference to an actual person, Dr. Eugenio Torralba, tried by the Inquisition of Cuenca in 1531, about whom it was said that he flew through the air on a reed.
5 The name of a Roman prison.
6 Charles, duke of Bourbon (1490–1527), fighting in the armies of Charles V of Spain, was killed during the sack of Rome.
7 Magallanes, the Spanish for Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, is used for comic effect to indicate Sancho’s ignorance of courtly tales and the names of their protagonists.
8 In this phrase Cervantes takes advantage of two meanings of arrullador: “cooing” and “wooing.” I have translated it as “suitor,” hoping that the idea of billing and cooing is implicit in the word.
10 The wordplay here does not translate into English. Cabrónis both “male goat” and “cuckold”; the sign of the cuckold is horns, as in “the horns of the moon” in the next sentence.
1 A formula indicating complete agreement with another person’s opinions.
2 The cross that is placed at the beginning of the alphabet in a child’s primer.
3 The author of a book of aphorisms, Disticha Catonis, which was so popular a text in schools that primers were called “Catos.”
4 Don Quixote’s advice to Sancho is one of the most famous passages in the novel. Martín de Riquer notes the difficulty of determining Cervantes’s exact sources, although he states that the general influence of Erasmus is evident, and he also cites a handful of books on good government, both classical and Renaissance, available in Spanish at the time. Whatever the sources, Don Quixote’s remarks to the future governor are clearly the polar opposite of Machiavelli’s counsel to the prince.
5 An allusion to a fable by Phaedrus, a Latin fabulist of the first century who wrote in the style of Aesop.
6 This is based on a proverb: “I don’t want it, I don’t want it, just toss it into my hood.”
1 This is the first half of a proverb: “When your father’s the magistrate, you’re safe when you go to trial.”
1 Juan de Mena (1411–1456), probably the most historically significant courtly poet of the fifteenth century.
2 St. Paul, Corinthians 1.
4 The image of the impoverished gentleman who picks his teeth so that everyone will think he has eaten appeared in the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), the first picaresque novel.
5 The allusion is to a pearl that belonged to the Spanish monarchy. Since it had no equal, it was called La Sola, “the Only One.”
6 According to legend, the place on the Capitoline Hill where Nero stood as he watched Rome burn.
1 The invocation