For years, I had read about this splendor of a novel, this Gargantua of writerliness, this exquisite philosophical depiction.
And so, it was with enthusiasm that I awaited the release of the new recording — gargantuan itself, at 40 hours on 35 CDs — of the new translation of the venerable “Don Quixote.”
This “timeless masterpiece” by Miguel de Cervantes, “beloved for centuries,” “a literary landmark that no person should miss” was spiffed up and made a bit more modern by translator Edith Grossman. Then, the folks at Recorded Books let narrator George Guidall loose on it. (For $79.99, it could be yours!)
It finally arrived, and I became a listener errant, imbibing the glorious tale of the knight errant, as he followed his quest to right all wrongs, defend all beautiful women . . . and vex to no end his exasperated servant, Sancho Panza.
Guidall is masterful to begin with, and for this he outdid himself. His performance poked fun at the poor knight, but somehow without disrespect.
Guidall’s Quixote had a smattering of W.C. Fields on a soapbox. The Don was grandly self-confident, unyielding to anything so mundane as common sense. His Panza was a sidekick very much like the little kid in the story about the emperor’s new clothes, trying to clear Quixote’s sight — that’s just a windmill, he’d point out in baffled amazement — but not even that could dent Panza’s loyalty.
Guidall’s rendering of these two mismatched buffoons charmed me immediately. And, of course, both Quixote’s grandiloquent speeches and Panza’s mutterings had ponderable truths in them as well as funny nonsense.
Still, the going was rough. It took nearly an hour just to wade through the preliminaries. Finally, we meet Quixote and he launches his misguided career astride a bedraggled steed with cobbled-together armor and an old pot of some sort for a helmet.
They would free prisoners, only to have the men turn on them and beat them. They would attack flocks of sheep and get into outrageous situations of mistaken identity in darkened inns.
All the mishaps were fun and funny for a while, but nothing seemed to develop. Clearly Cervantes, who composed the novel in debtor’s prison, had some time on his hands. I began to wonder who could have been so gung-ho about this? I decided it was published in an era when storytelling was big. I could just see some upscale 16th Century family gathered for the evening, one person reading by the light of the single candle. They’d do one chapter a night, and it would transform a whole dreary winter. If some of the scenes seemed repetitious or overly drawn-out, well, is that so different from TV sitcoms today?
At least the language of the translation is more modern. Grossman removed all the “begats” and such, which would just get in the way today. Curious about how it would compare with an older rendition — and, truth to tell, hoping to moving things along a bit by skimming the print version — I went to the library and checked out a translation by 18th Century novelist Tobias Smollet. I got my exercise for the day just carrying the thing to the car: 846 pages it was.
And gadzooks, but it was impenetrable. I decided the most beneficial thing to do was to get a little more exercise by lugging it back to the library. I needed Grossman and Guidall.
But in the end, alas — or, rather, before the end — the novel turned out to be my own windmill. Forgive me, oh beauteous Dulcinea. I gave up.
I know that Quixote himself got up after one of the mill’s sails felled him, and he went on to further battle. But he also almost immediately lost half an ear and a few molars. Isn’t there a lesson in that, as well?
I still don’t think the novel is just for the literati, scholars and the merely curious with a lot of time on their hands. But perhaps it needs to be taken in doses. Certainly, if it’s a broccoli novel in an age of potato chip culture, it needs to be given a certain latitude and embraced with a generous spirit.
