More of wot I have read…

Don Quixote by Cervantes (translated by P A Motteux)

This was one of the most difficult reads I have ever had. It has taken me months to plough through this translation (which I now find out is perhaps not one of the better ones). Having been written so long ago 1600’s and in Spanish it is very different in style to that of modern novels. Also since the translation itself is hundreds of years old, the references are also dated and at times hard to follow. In addition to the style and structure being quite difficult to grasp, the story arc is strange and hard to follow. There are many interesting and funny passages hidden away in amongst the more challenging paragraphs, but I am not sure they alone make the ordeal worthwhile. This sort of book can make one feel a total dunce.


‘Cervante’s tale of the deranged gentleman who turns knight-errant, tilts at windmills and battles with sheep in the service of the lady of his dreams, Dulcinea del Toboso, has fascinated generations of readers, and inspired other creative artists such as Flaubert, Picasso and Richard Strauss. The tall, thin knight and his short, fat squire, Sancho Panza, have found their way into films, cartoons and even computer games. Supposedly intended as a parody of the most popular escapist fiction of the day, the ‘books of chivalry’, this precursor of the modern novel broadened and deepened into a sophisticated, comic account of the contradictions of human nature.

On his ‘heroic’ journey Don Quixote meets characters of every class and condition, from the prostitute Maritornes, who is commended for her Christian charity, to the Knight of the Green Coat, who seems to embody some of the constraints of virtue.

Cervantes’ greatest work can be enjoyed on many levels, all suffused with a subtle irony that reaches out to encompass the reader, and does not leave the author outside its circle.

Peter Motteux’s fine eighteenth-century translation, acknowledged as one of the best, brilliantly succeeds in communicating the spirit of the original Spanish’.