I love books. When I come to the end of a book, I write on the last page the date, time and where I was when I finished reading it. I love collecting and cataloging books. Readers of this column are welcome to visit my 6,000 volume library at the Cemanahuac Educational Community in Cuernavaca.
A book caught my eye at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City. It had a wonderful illustration of Miguel Cervantes on the cover. The book was sealed in plastic but I judged it by its cover and bought it. Now, some people may have been disappointed by the content, but I was delighted. Inside was a detailed listing of every edition of Don Quixote owned by the museum.
Cervantes’ novel remains Spain’s major language masterpiece. Some call it the first modern novel of Western culture. U.S. literary critic Lionel Trilling asserts that “just as all philosophy can be seen as an answer to Plato, it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”
“The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” (“El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha”) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an instant hit when it was published in Spain in 1605. Pirated versions were made shortly after. Copies were shipped to the New World. Editions were soon printed in Italian, English and French.
At close to a thousand pages, reading Don Quixote is daunting. I must admit I have never read it. But this could be the year. Should I read it in the original Spanish, or in one of the recent English translations? Carlos Fuentes really liked the translation by Edith Grossman. He wrote in his New York Times book review “This ‘Don Quixote’ can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th-century novel.” Sounds good to me.
According to the Franz Mayer library director, Myriam Velázquez Martínez, “with the exception of the Bible, Don Quixote is the world’s most translated and published book.”
The Franz Mayer Museum prides itself in holding the western hemisphere’s largest collection of Don Quixote editions. Mayer himself collected 739 editions in 14 languages. Since his death, the museum’s acquisitions have taken the total up to 800 editions in 18 languages. Their publication dates span from 1605 to 2014.
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of its publication, the museum opens the exhibit “Somewhere in La Mancha – The Quixote: Fourth Centenary of the Second Part” Tuesday. Let me explain. “Somewhere in La Mancha – The Quixote: Fourth Centenary of the Second Part,” will be on display in the Franz Mayer Museum’s library for the rest of this year, Tuesdays-Sundays (closed Mondays) through Dec. 31 at 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
After the publication of the book in 1605, Cervantes made a vague promise to write a second part. He hadn’t gotten around to completing it when in 1614, a book called “Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda of Tordesillas was published. Avellaneda taunted Cervantes in his introduction, which got Cervantes fired up enough to finish his version, which was printed in 1615. The version of Don Quixote you read now has both parts one and two.
Don Quixote captures the imagination of most everyone who has ever heard its basic theme. An idealist gentleman of little financial means, Don Quixote (Alonzo Quixano) incessantly reads romantic novellas. He leaves reality behind and begins a quest to right the wrongs and injustices of the world, as he perceives them.
Its influence has been such that even those who have not read the book are familiar with common words or phrases in English making reference to Don Quixote. The expression “tilts at windmills,” can capture the increasing reality of the 21st century’s 99 percent trying to battle the powerful 1 percent, only to be met with ridicule, silence or simply being brushed off. “Quixotic” entered the English vocabulary to refer to something unrealistic and impractical, accurately describing Cervantes’ woebegone hero.
Who hasn’t lived for at least a while in the magical thinking world of Don Quixote and “dreamed the impossible dream”? I know I have in the past, do in the present and will in the future.
Cervantes’ novel remains Spain’s major language masterpiece. Some call it the first modern novel of Western culture. U.S. literary critic Lionel Trilling asserts that “just as all philosophy can be seen as an answer to Plato, it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”
At close to a thousand pages, reading Don Quixote is daunting. I must admit I have never read it. But this could be the year. Should I read it in the original Spanish, or in one of the recent English translations? Carlos Fuentes really liked the translation by Edith Grossman. He wrote in his New York Times book review “This ‘Don Quixote’ can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th-century novel.” Sounds good to me.
I know where I will be when I read the last page. Sitting in the central courtyard of the Franz Mayer Museum, housed in a former convent and hospital across the street from Alameda Park, looking at one of the most beautiful gardens in downtown Mexico City.
“Somewhere in La Mancha – The Quixote: Fourth Centenary of the Second Part,” will be on display in the Franz Mayer Museum’s library for the rest of this year, Tuesdays-Sundays (closed Mondays) through Dec. 31 at 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Parking is available in a building adjacent to the museum. The Bellas Artes metro station is a block away. Save some time for a meal, or coffee and dessert in the museum’s cafeteria.
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