Tobias Smollet, Author of Don Quixote

Tobias Smollett, Author of Don Quixote



“Fame is a form of incomprehension—perhaps the worst,” wrote Jorge Luis Borges in “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote.” It should not be surprising then that the most famous novel of all time is one of the most misunderstood classics of world literature. I’m always outraged when I hear people state, “I read it as a child.” It is possible that an extremely precocious child could read the novel in its entirety, but Don Quixote is not a novel for children. It is one of the bloodiest, most graphically violent, shamelessly sexual, and sadistic novels ever written. Nabokov was not entirely in the wrong for disliking the novel for its appalling violence and cruelty. (Parents who allow their children to read Don Quixote should be arrested for putting at high risk the mental health of their offspring).

Don Quixote is also the best-known least read book of all time. I’ve met hundreds of people who have started it, but never finished it. It’s even all right for an American novelist as prominent and honored as Jonathan Franzen to confess that: “I have started Moby-Dick … Don Quixote, without coming anywhere near finishing them.” In the English-speaking world when I mention the novel in conversation, many people immediately will say, “I love Man of La Mancha;” some even begin to hum a bar or two of the infectious “To Dream the Impossible Dream.”

As befits a work of such importance, there are hundreds of translations of Don Quixote in all known languages, and close to twenty into English—most of them mediocre, but a few of them exceptional works in their own right. When I meet English-born speakers who say to me: “I read it in Spanish and it should never be read in translation,” I know they haven’t read it or didn’t understand much of it. With malevolent satisfaction, I remind these people that Borges (who was obsessed with the novel) said once that he loved it when he read it in English as a child but found it disappointing when he read it as an adult in the original. I should point out, though, that Borges, like his immortal creation, Pierre Menard, had the “ironic habit of propagating ideas that were the exact opposite of those he himself held.”

Still, to read the novel in Spanish (despite Cervantes’s modernity—he’s the first meta-fictional novelist) is a daunting task. The man who practically invented Castilian (the language we know as Spanish) used thousands of words whose meaning time has obscured. Without the aid of profuse footnotes, it is exceedingly hard for most Spanish readers nowadays to grasp their meaning. When Edith Grossman’s magnificent new translation appeared in the United States, I mentioned it to a poet friend during a visit to Spain. His comment: “Now she should translate it into Spanish so we can understand it.”

How often we forget that the novel itself, Cervantes claims, is a translation into Castilian of the work of the Moor Cid Hamet Benengeli, who is often referred to as “a liar.” I have read and studied Don Quixote in its original language, but I’ve always taught Tobias Smollet’s translation, which first appeared in 1755. Smollet must have identified with Cervantes and his hero on many levels. His own novels are influenced by the episodic and picaresque nature of Cervantes’s work. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, his vicious and hilarious satire of English society in the XVIII century, owes a great debt to Cervantes’s masterwork, right down to its ramshackle structure. In an act of further madness and identification, Smollett wrote Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, a rewriting of Don Quixote, set in England.

Salman Rushdie wrote that Cervantes was lucky to find a translator whose “rambunctious personality” ideally matches that of the author. And Cervantes was nothing if not irreverent. Smollet takes other extraordinary liberties with the novel. For example, he does away with all the sonnets that introduce the narrative (even though the one spoken by Don Quixote’s horse, Rocinante, is among the most delightful things Cervantes ever wrote.) In many places, Smollet cuts and adds as he pleases; his own footnotes are masterpieces of irony, playful mimicry of style, and erudition: “Here Don Quixote seems to have been too scrupulous for, tho’ no squire was permitted to engage with a knight on horseback, yet they were allowed, and even enjoined, to assist their masters when they were unhorsed or in danger, by mounting them on fresh steeds, supplying them with arms, and warding off the blows that were aimed at them. Davy Gam, at the battle of Agincourt, lost his life defending Henry V. of England, and St. Severin met with the same fate in warding off the blows that were aimed at Francis I of France, in the battle of Paris.”

There are scholars who claim that Tobias Smollet did not know Spanish, that he must have translated the novel from the French. I’m more impressed with how, following Pierre Menard’s method of writing Don Quixote, Smollet almost became Miguel de Cervantes. He joined the English navy and participated in an epochal battle of his time. He was a surgeon mate on HSM Cumberland, during the Battle of Cartagena in 1741, which turned out to be one of the greatest defeats the mighty English navy ever suffered. Cervantes himself, as is well-known, was a soldier in the Battle of Lepanto, where he lost the use of his left arm. Eventually, the life of the author and translator intersected: Cervantes had petitioned the court of Phillip II to grant him a job in the Colombian port of Cartagena where, after suffering as many defeats as his mad knight, and as Smollet himself, the novelist hoped to have a fresh start.

Tobias Smollett is not only the most audacious and ingenious translator of Don Quixote; we should honor him as being one of its first Pierre Menards. Of all the books I’ve read in translation, it is one of the very few that seems to me to be as great as the original.

Jaime Manrique


Published PEN America 14 2011

Don Quixote on the Decoration of the Soul

The following are the "First Series of Instructions" which Don Quixote gives his squire, Sancho Panza, before Sancho leaves to become governor of the imaginary Barataria island. Great posts and offices of state, Don Quixote says, are a profound "gulph" of confusion.

The instructions appear so late in Book II that some readers of Don Quixote overlook these words of wisdom. Though Don Quixote is giving these instructions to Sancho, I can't help but think that he's also addressing the readers of the novel.

Translation by Tobias Smollett

"In the first place, O my son, you are to fear God: the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; and, if you are wise you cannot err.

"Secondly, you must always remember who you are, and endeavour to know yourself; a study of all others the most difficult. This self-knowledge will hinder you from blowing yourself up like the frog, in order to rival the size of the ox: if, therefore, you succeed in this learning, the consideration of thy having been a swineherd, will, like the peacock's ugly feet, be a check upon thy folly and pride." "I own I once kept hogs, when I was a boy," said Sancho; "but, after I grew up, I apprehended, that matter is not of great consequence; for, all governors are not descended from the kingly race." "No, sure," answered the knight; "and, for that reason, those who are not of noble extraction, ought to sweeten the gravity of their function, with mildness and affability; which, being prudently conducted, will screen them from those malicious murmurs that no station can escape. Rejoice, Sancho, in the lowness of your pedigree, and make no scruple of owning yourself descended from peasants: for, no body will endeavour to make you blush for that of which they see you are not ashamed: and value yourself more upon being a virtuous man of low degree, than upon being a proud sinner of noble birth: innumerable are those, who, from an humble stock, have risen to the pontifical and imperatorial dignity; a truth which I could prove by so many examples that you would not have patience to hear them.

"Take notice, Sancho, if you choose virtue for your medium, and pique yourself upon performing worthy actions, you will have no cause to envy noblemen and princes; for, blood is heredity, but virtue is acquired; consequently, this last has an intrinsic value which the other does not possess.

"This being the case, as undoubtedly it is, if peradventure any one of your relations should come to visit you in your island, you must not discountenance and affront him, but, on the contrary, let him be kindly received and entertained; and, in so doing, you will act comfortably to the will of heaven, which is displeased at seeing its own handywork despised; and, perform your duty to the well concerted rights of nature.

"If you send for your wife, and, indeed, those who are concerned in governing, ought not to be long without their helpmates, take pains in teaching, improving, and civilizing her: for, all that a sagacious governor can acquire, is very often lost and squandered by a foolish, rustic wife.

"If, perchance, you should become a widower, (a circumstance that may possibly happen) and have it in your power to make a more advantageous match, you must not choose such a yokefellow as will server for an angling hook, fishing rod, or equivocating hood: for, verily, I say unto thee, all that a judge's wife receives must be accounted for at the general clearance, by the husband, who will repay fourfold after death, what he made no reckoning of during life.

"Never conduct yourself by the law of your own arbitrary opinion, which is generally the case with those ignorant people who presume upon their own self-sufficiency.

"Let the tears of the poor find more compassion in thy breast, tho' not more justice, than the informations of the rich.

"Endeavour to investigate the truth from among the promises and presents of the opulent, as well as from the sighs and importunities of the needy.

"When equity can, and ought to take place, inflict not the whole rigour of the law upon the delinquent; for, severity is not more respected than compassion, in the character of a judge.

"If ever you suffer the rod of justice to be bent a little, let it not be warped, by the weight of corruption, but the vowels of mercy.

"If ever you should have an opportunity to judge the process of your enemy, recall your attention from the injury you have received, and fix it wholly upon the truth of the case.

"In another man's cause, be not blinded by private affection; for, the errors thus committed are generally incurable; or, if they admit of remedy, it will be greatly at the expense of your fortune and credit.

"If a beautiful woman should come to demand justice, withdraw your eyes from her tears, and your hearing from her sighs, and deliberate at a distance upon the substance of her demand, unless you have a mind that your reason should be overwhelmed by her complaint, and your virtue buried in her sighs.

"Abuse not him in word whom you are resolved to chastise in deed: for, to such a wretch, the pain of the punishment will be sufficient, without the addition of reproach.

"In judging the delinquents who shall fall under your jurisdiction, consider the miserable object Man, subject to the infirmities of our depraved nature; and, as much as lies in your power, without injury to the contrary party, display your clemency and compassion: for, although all the attributes of God are equally excellent, that of mercy has a better effect in our eye, and strikes with greater luster than justice.

"If you observe, and conduct yourself by these rules and precepts, Sancho, your days will be long upon the face of the earth: your fame will be eternal, your reward complete, and your felicity unutterable: your children will be married according to your wish; they and their descendants will enjoy titles; you shall live in peace and friendship will all mankind: when your course of life is run, death will overtake you in an happy and mature old age, and your eyes will be shut by the tender and delicate hands of your posterity; in the third or fourth generation.

"The remarks I have hitherto made, are documents touching the decoration of your soul; and, now you will listen to those that regard the ornaments of the body."

Note by Don Jaime: And these ornaments of the body are so wonderful indeed that they deserve a new chapter.

Don Quixote

I woke up; it was the hour
of nocturnal terrors. My head
still on my pillow—in the unsettling
darkness of my room—I thought:
“I’m old.”

I couldn’t
go back to sleep.
I slipped my bony toes
in my slippers
ragged and thread-bare
like the life I’d lived.
Like so many nights
of late, I wrapped a blanket
around my shivering frame
opened the door of my room
and slipped out of the hushed house.

Outside, the ground
was damp, the night
abloom with stars
screaming silently
as they fell toward
God knows where—but certainly
far from my barren fields.
From the barn
an owl’s gold stare
questioned me. Not my presence
in the lateness of the night--
but my entire existence.

Spring was near, I could feel
the ground turning under my feet.
Then a second thought occurred to me:
“Soon I’ll be dead; soon my flabby
flesh, my brittle bones, my dried up brain
will be enriching the soil-- the earth
will be my roof, daisies my constellations.”

“No, this cannot be the end,” I heard
myself say. “There has to be more
to life than all the stories I’ve read
everything I haven’t seen or felt
the hardness of my cold bed.”

It was then the idea came
to me: I must take
to the open road
to redress the grievances,
rectify the wrongs, amend
the errors, and reform
the abuses in the world.
“Before it gets too late,” I added,
“I have to find love.”

It took a few days to prepare
before I rode away
on my Rocinante, my neighbor Sancho
for my squire, and the lady Dulcinea
del Toboso as the compass
of my loveless heart.

The rest of the story is well-known.
But what has never been
written about before
was that instant when I woke up
in my frigid bed, stepped out in
the chilly dawn, and felt
worms stirring the ground under me
reminding me I
had one more spring to live
and it was my duty to live it.

Published in Cimarron Review, 2007