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Volume 5, Number 1 - Fall 2006
Quixote
Transloator Lends Her Voice to P&S Fundraiser
by Patricia
Andres
Edith Grossman spent two years listening to the author of a 400-year-old novel, trying to figure out what Miguel de Cervantes really meant in each line of Don Quixote. Her critically acclaimed 2003 translation “brought the work over into English,” she says. “You need to translate into the language you dream in.”
Grossman read from Quixote and discussed the art of translating at a People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos fundraiser May 7, hosted by Micawber Brooks of Princeton. “A Night with the Knight” celebrated just why literature deserves a central place in the lives of all people.
As Grossman read from the book—not only the first modern novel, but a layered work about literature itself—listeners were reminded of stories’ power to change consciousness.
“Have you ever figured out how much literary knowledge comes from translation?” asked People & Stories treasurer Russell Marks, who introduced Grossman. “Translation removes the cover from the well.”
Grossman explained how she uncovered Quixote. While translators of contemporary works can resolve questions by consulting with the author, Grossman stopped short of “channeling” a long-dead writer and instead learned to “speak in harmony” with Cervantes.
With the help of a 16th-century dictionary, Grossman’s task was to “hear” Cervantes as he sounded to his contemporaries, then to find the equivalent for current readers of English. Because Cervantes was a master of the Spanish of his time—which, she explained, has remained more constant than English over the centuries—Grossman did not need to revert to an anachronistic voice. In the process of translation, she discovered that Cervantes would be “fun to hang out with.”
Before reading an early episode from Book I of Quixote, Grossman talked about the impact of literature on perception. Rather than dwelling on discrepancies between the so-called “real” and “ideal” as mirrored in Don Quixote’s consciousness, Grossman pointed out the ways Cervantes’ prose represents Quixote’s entire way of thinking—indeed, his way of being in the world, saturated with the rhythms, tones, flourish and figures of 15th-century chivalric tales.
In a comic scene, when Quixote mistakes an inn for a castle and fallen women for damsels in distress, he says, “Flee not, dear ladies, fear no villainous act from me; for the order of chivalry which I profess does not countenance or permit such deeds to be committed against any person. Least of all highborn maidens such as yourselves.”
Without any judgment about Quixote’s state of mind, Grossman focused on the way Cervantes’ prose glides seamlessly between the narrator’s contemporary diction and the self-consciously literary quality of the knight’s exclamations and interior monologues.
After the formal presentation, listeners gathered around Grossman, asking questions about the translation process and about Don Quixote. Grossman, who has translated more than 30 works of fiction and non-fiction, including some by Gabriel García Márquez, said wryly that “Márquez called me to say, ‘Now you’re two-timing me with Cervantes.’” She noted that her translation of Don Quixote was among the top ten Amazon.com selections at one point this spring, raising the question of what it is about the knight and his story that modern readers crave.
In reflecting on Grossman’s presentation, I am reminded of the ways readers negotiate texts in People & Stories/ Gente y Cuentos. We are true to the words on the page while “bringing the text over” into meaningful relationship with readers’ own frames of reference—a translation of sorts. I am reminded, too, of the ways that characters and events in the stories can become part of our own story, changing our way of being in the world.
When we read, Grossman pointed out, we get involved in stories and forget they aren’t real. “But,” she added, “they are real.”
People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos thanks the friends and sponsors who
made the May 7 event so successful, including the following corporate
sponsors:
Glenmede Trust Company
Eastridge Design
Mason, Griffin & Pierson, P.C.
Public Service Electric & Gas
Princeton University Press
Emily’s Café and Catering
Paul. G. Saunders, CFS
Seltzer Rees Inc.
Hillier Architecture
Peyton Associates Realtors
Synergy Express Center, Inc.
DiSimone Orthodontics
Honda of Princeton
Lear & Pannepacker, LLP
Visonary Economic Solutions, LLC