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Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

#82: April - May 2010 (Fiction)
bleachededen

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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I've only read Goethe's poetry, although one of these days I would like to read The Sorrows of Young Werther. I've read that after this was written, there was an increase in the teen/young people's suicide rate, and of course there is a beautiful opera based on it, but I always hesitate because of the translation issue. When I buy poetry by foreign authors, I always buy the bilingual edition, so my Goethe has English and German, Beckett has English and French, and Lorca has English and Spanish, etc. Even though I don't speak any of these languages, I can read them with correct pronunciation, and can pick out certain words, and I try to look for things that might tell me about alliteration, rhyme, meter, etc. The Lorca is always fun to read in Spanish, because his lines are so simple (but beautiful), that often once I've read the English, I can pick out most of the meaning in Spanish (I've learned a bit of French throughout my life, and since all romance languages are fairly similar, Spanish isn't too hard to pick up when the English is right beside it). I haven't read Goethe for a while, but I do remember reading the German as well as the English, becoming excited when I could pick out words I recognized from such things as Schubert's lieder and Mozart's opera arias, words like mädchen, which I know means girl or maiden (you can see the German in the word "maiden" itself -- I also have a deep love for linguistics and etymology and the history of language in general), and nacht, of course, is night, ich is I, liebe is love, etc. I do like being able to pick these things out, and have been thinking lately of trying to learn to be able to speak French fluently, and to possibly find employment in a linguistic area...but I digress.

Although I wouldn't be able to read Don Quixote in Spanish, I'd like to be able to take a look at it, to get a sense of some of the things Grossman points out in her footnotes, such as the translator's name being close to the word eggplant, or Sancho's misuse of words in Spanish that don't translate into English. Oh, how I wish to be bi, tri, or even quatro-lingual!

Le sigh.
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DWill

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Robert Tulip wrote:. I don't get the 'unreadability' claim, as it is mostly like a sit-com, as Suzanne said. You can take it as a breezy story, but the underlying power is in the cultural satire.
The unreadibility "claim" (actually an aesthetic judgment with which anyone can disagree) was based on the ratio of fresh, vital content to the novel's length. The inserted tales tend not to move the plot along, and the plot of the Don and Sancho can be repetitious and a bit tedious. I would just say the novel is readable in large part, so, as I said, I was just making mischief with this unreadibility post.
This made me think of the doyen of unreadability, TS Eliot, with poems such as The Wasteland that are incomprehensible without commentary. By contrast, one review of Grossman's translation said she even overdid it with her minimal footnotes since the book is so easy to read.
Yet here I would go the opposite way and say "The Wasteland" is not unreadable without commentary. We can get the drift without torturing ourselves with Eliot's quoting, and there is great original poetry in it.
What is your basis for claiming that earlier readings were unconcerned about ideas?
My basis is just a guess that, throughout the ages, people valued DQ for its humour and entertaining adventures. Why did the fictional book DQ (the one that was reported to have been published by the Moorish writer) appeal to the (fictional) audience? For its ideas? No, it was truly a popular book.
Last edited by DWill on Mon Apr 19, 2010 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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I began reading Don a few years ago and bailed somewhere around the 150page mark...it was unreadable to me - not because of structure or language or any of that, but because all of the tales have been retold so many times that I felt I had already read the book...
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Certainly for modern readers the book is too long and has too many digressiions.

Also, the first half, for me, gets somewhat tedious, in spite of the humour. It is the second half - the philosphoical half - that makes the book great. Here we experience two characters that are affected by the outside world and each other, and then evolve and change.

When I reread Don Quixote I read the first hundred pages or so, then skip to the second half.

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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I liked Randy's reminder about the philosophical part of the book. I read the older translation 30 years ago and it is the overarching philosophies and principles presented in DQ that I remember all these years later. I am still at the beginning of this newer one and hope to knock off a bit today.

I certainly do not feel either translation is unreadable. I does not read like a Michael Crichton, but certainly holds my attention. I would be curious to compare the 2 translations. I may dig my old one out and compare a few passages. Has anyone done this?
jan
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giselle

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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Perhaps this book is unreadable and it is certainly long. But I'm in no hurry. And maybe it depends how you read it. I'm reading it as episodes, just a few at a time, like one might watch episodes of a sitcom, where you know the characters and the general story line and you sit down and watch what will happen in a particular episode. Then I can sit back and reflect on the episodes to see if they mean anything to me beyond the narrative. This might be a simple minded approach but as the books go by I think the accumulation of episodes will help me form some thoughts about broader meanings. I found the famous windmill episode to be short and quite uninteresting but other episodes, like the destruction of DQ's books of chivalry, to be lengthy and detailed and really explore the meaning of books and authority.
bleachededen

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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It's interesting to note that Don Quixote's most famous adventure (the adventure of the windmills) is the shortest adventure in the entire book.

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it is interesting.
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DWill

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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giselle wrote:Perhaps this book is unreadable and it is certainly long. But I'm in no hurry. And maybe it depends how you read it. I'm reading it as episodes, just a few at a time, like one might watch episodes of a sitcom, where you know the characters and the general story line and you sit down and watch what will happen in a particular episode. Then I can sit back and reflect on the episodes to see if they mean anything to me beyond the narrative. This might be a simple minded approach but as the books go by I think the accumulation of episodes will help me form some thoughts about broader meanings. I found the famous windmill episode to be short and quite uninteresting but other episodes, like the destruction of DQ's books of chivalry, to be lengthy and detailed and really explore the meaning of books and authority.
I think you touch on a good point, which is the reader's expectations, the reader's habits, and how these change through time and can alter the view we have of a "classic" book. You may be reading this more as Cervantes' original audience did.
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giselle

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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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bleachededen wrote:It's interesting to note that Don Quixote's most famous adventure (the adventure of the windmills) is the shortest adventure in the entire book.

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it is interesting.
DWill wrote:
giselle wrote:Perhaps this book is unreadable and it is certainly long. But I'm in no hurry. And maybe it depends how you read it. I'm reading it as episodes, just a few at a time, like one might watch episodes of a sitcom, where you know the characters and the general story line and you sit down and watch what will happen in a particular episode. Then I can sit back and reflect on the episodes to see if they mean anything to me beyond the narrative. This might be a simple minded approach but as the books go by I think the accumulation of episodes will help me form some thoughts about broader meanings. I found the famous windmill episode to be short and quite uninteresting but other episodes, like the destruction of DQ's books of chivalry, to be lengthy and detailed and really explore the meaning of books and authority.
I think you touch on a good point, which is the reader's expectations, the reader's habits, and how these change through time and can alter the view we have of a "classic" book. You may be reading this more as Cervantes' original audience did.
Who was Cervantes' audience? I doubt it was 21C north americans. I also expect that Cervantes went to his grave not knowing that his book would be a 'classic'. I'm not sure what literacy rates were in Spain or Europe in the 1600's but I will venture to guess they were pretty low, so the educated population were Cervantes readers and audience. But stories like DQ's adventures were told orally among the masses. Perhaps, in the transition to a largely literate society, works like this became more accessible not only because more people could read but because the episodes or adventures are really little stand alone stories and, for a slow reader, can be read and understood in a fairly short period of time. They remind me of comic book episodes. This version of DQ does not have illustrations, but I can just about see such illustrations as I read.

I noticed that Cervantes repeats his characters' names more often than necessary at times, giving me the impression that he wanted to be clear about who was involved in a particular adventure because the reader may not have the benefit of the previous story or the overall flow of the book. Just speculation, of course, based on zero research but that's my impression.
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Re: Is Don Quixote Unreadable?

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I have to say, I am enjoying this book. I have never attempted to read Don Quixote before and it is nice to know that this translation is well done. The translation can make a huge difference. I think that if it were the wrong translation it may be unreadable. It would be great to read it in Spanish someday.

Don Quixote is such an endearing character. Yet, at the same time, I find myself feeling sorry for him. I have just started the book so I am interested to see where it goes. He seems to be so trusting of others and willing to believe that everyone lives by honor. This belief seems to get Quixote and other people he comes across into trouble sometimes. :(
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