Essay on the Principles of Translation (Tytler)/Chapter 12
CHAP. XII.
There is perhaps no book to which it is more difficult to do perfect justice in a translation than the Don Quixote of Cervantes. This difficulty arises from the extreme frequency of its idiomatic phrases. As the Spanish language is in itself highly idiomatical, even the narrative part of the book is on that account difficult; but the colloquial part is studiously filled with idioms, as one of the principal characters continually expresses himself in proverbs. Of this work there have been many English translations, executed, as may be supposed, with various degrees of merit. The two best of these, in my opinion, are the translations of Motteux and Smollet, both of them writers eminently well qualified for the task they undertook. It will not be foreign to the purpose of this Essay, if I shall here make a short comparative estimate of the merit of these translations[1].
Smollet inherited from nature a strong sense of ridicule, a great fund of original humour, and a happy versatility of talent, by which he could accommodate his style to almost every species of writing. He could adopt alternately the solemn, the lively, the sarcastic, the burlesque, and the vulgar. To these qualifications he joined an inventive genius, and a vigorous imagination. As he possessed talents equal to the composition of original works of the same species with the novel of Cervantes; so it is not perhaps possible to conceive a writer more completely qualified to give a perfect translation of that novel.
Motteux, with no great abilities as an original writer, appears to me to have been endowed with a strong perception of the ridiculous in human character; a just discernment of the weaknesses and follies of mankind. He seems likewise to have had a great command of the various styles which are accommodated to the expression both of grave burlesque, and of low humour. Inferior to Smollet in inventive genius, he seems to have equalled him in every quality which was essentially requisite to a translator of Don Quixote. It may therefore be supposed, that the contest between them will be nearly equal, and the question of preference very difficult to be decided. It would have been so, had Smollet confided in his own strength, and bestowed on his task that time and labour which the length and difficulty of the work required: but Smollet too often wrote in such circumstances, that dispatch was his primary object. He found various English translations at hand, which he judged might save him the labour of a new composition. Jarvis could give him faithfully the sense of his author; and it was necessary, only to polish his asperities, and lighten his heavy and aukward phraseology. To contend with Motteux, Smollet found it necessary to assume the armour of Jarvis. This author had purposely avoided, through the whole of his work, the smallest coincidence of expression with Motteux, whom, with equal presumption and injustice, he accuses in his preface of having "taken his version wholly from the French[2]." We find, therefore, both in the translation of Jarvis and in that of Smollet, which is little else than an improved edition of the former, that there is a studied rejection of the phraseology of Motteux. Now, Motteux, though he has frequently assumed too great a licence, both in adding to and retrenching from the ideas of his original, has upon the whole a very high degree of merit as a translator. In the adoption of corresponding idioms he has been eminently fortunate, and, as in these there is no great latitude, he has in general preoccupied the appropriated phrases; so that a succeeding translator, who proceeded on the rule of invariably rejecting his phraseology, must have, in general, altered for the worse. Such, I have said, was the rule laid down by Jarvis, and by his copist and improver, Smollet, who by thus absurdly rejecting what his own judgement and taste must have approved, has produced a composition decidedly inferior, on the whole, to that of Motteux. While I justify the opinion I have now given, by comparing several passages of both translations, I shall readily allow full credit to the performance of Smollet, where-ever I find that there is a real superiority to the work of his rival translator.
After Don Quixote's unfortunate encounter with the Yanguesian carriers, in which the Knight, Sancho, and Rozinante, were all most grievously mauled, his faithful squire lays his master across his ass, and conducts him to the nearest inn, where a miserable bed is made up for him in a garret. Cervantes then proceeds as follows:
En esta maldita cama se accostó Don Quixote: y luego la ventera y su hija le emplastáron de arriba abaxo, alumbrandoles Maritornes: que asi se llamaba la Asturiana. Y como al vizmalle, viese la ventera tan acardenalado á partes á Don Quixote, dixo que aquello mas parecian golpes que caida. No fuéron golpes, dixo Sancho, sino que la pen̄a tenia muchos picos y tropezones, y que cada uno habia hecho su cardinal, y tambien le dixo: haga vuestra merced, sen̄ora, de manera que queden algunas estopas, que no faltará quien las haya menester, que tambien me duclen á mí un poco los lomos. Desa manera, respondió la ventera, tambien debistes deos de caer? No caí, dico Sancho Panza, sino que del sobresalto que tome de ver caer á mi amo, de tal manera me duele á mi el cuerpo, que me parece que me ban dado mil palos.
Translation by Motteux.
"In this ungracious bed was the Knight laid to rest his belaboured carcase; and presently the hostess and her daughter anointed and plastered him all over, while Maritornes, (for that was the name of the Asturian wench), held the candle. The hostess, while she greased him, wondering to see him so bruised all over, I fancy, said she, those bumps look much more like a dry beating than a fall. 'Twas no dry beating, mistress, I promise you, quoth Sancho; but the rock had I know not how many cragged ends and knobs, and every one of them gave my master a token of its kindness. And by the way, forsooth, continued he, I beseech you save a little of that same tow and ointment for me too, for I don't know what's the matter with my back, but I fancy I stand mainly in want of a little greasing too. What, I suppose you fell too, quoth the landlady. Not I, quoth Sancho, but the very fright that I took to see my master tumble down the rock, has so wrought upon my body, that I am as sore as if I had been sadly mawled."
Translation by Smollet.
"In this wretched bed Don Quixote having laid himself down, was anointed from head to foot by the good woman and her daughter, while Maritornes (that was the Asturian's name) stood hard by, holding a light. The landlady, in the course of her application, perceiving the Knight's whole body black and blue, observed, that those marks seemed rather the effects of drubbing than of a fall; but Sancho affirmed she was mistaken, and that the marks in question were occasioned by the knobs and corners of the rocks among which he fell. And now, I think of it, said he, pray, Madam, manage matters so as to leave a little of your ointment, for it will be needed, I'll assure you: my own loins are none of the soundest at present. What, did you fall too, said she? I can't say I did, answered the squire; but I was so infected by seeing my master tumble, that my whole body akes, as much as if I had been cudgelled without mercy."
Of these two translations, it will hardly be denied that Motteux's is both easier in point of style, and conveys more forcibly the humour of the dialogue in the original. A few contrasted phrases will shew clearly the superiority of the former.
Motteux. "In this ungracious bed was the Knight laid to rest his belaboured carcase."
Smollet. "In this wretched bed Don Quixote having laid himself down."
Motteux. "While Maritornes (for that was the name of the Asturian wench) held the candle."
Smollet. "While Maritornes (that was the Asturian's name) stood hard by, holding a light."
Motteux. "The hostess, while she greased him."
Smollet. "The landlady, in the course of her application."
Motteux. "I fancy, said she, those bumps look much more like a dry beating than a fall."
Smollet. "Observed, that those marks seemed rather the effect of drubbing than of a fall."
Motteux. "'Twas no dry beating, mistress, I promise you, quoth Sancho."
Smollet. "But Sancho affirmed she was in a mistake."
Motteux. "And, by the way, forsooth, continued he, I beseech you save a little of that same tow and ointment for me; for I don't know what's the matter with my back, but I fancy I stand mainly in need of a little greasing too."
Smollet. "And now, I think of it, said he, pray, Madam, manage matters so as to leave a little of your ointment, for it will be needed, I'll assure you: my own loins are none of the soundest at present."
Motteux. "What, I suppose you fell too, quoth the landlady? Not I, quoth Sancho, but the very fright," &c.
Smollet. "What, did you fall too, said she? I can't say I did, answered the squire; but I was so infected, &c.
There is not only more ease of expression and force of humour in Motteux's translation of the above passages than in Smollet's, but greater fidelity to the original. In one part, no fueron golpes, Smollet has improperly changed the first person for the third, or the colloquial style for the narrative, which materially weakens the spirit of the passage. Cada uno habia hecho su cardenal is most happily translated by Motteux, "every one of them gave him a token of its kindness;" but in Smollet's version, this spirited clause of the sentence evaporates altogether.—Algunas estopas is more faithfully rendered by Motteux than by Smollet. In the latter part of the passage, when the hostess jeeringly says to Sancho, Desa manera tambien debistes vos de caer? the squire, impatient to wipe off that sly insinuation against the veracity of his story, hastily answers, No cai. To this Motteux has done ample justice, "Not I, quoth Sancho." But Smollet, instead of the arch effrontery which the author meant to mark by this answer, gives a tame apologetic air to the squire's reply, "I can't say I did, answered the squire." Don Quix. par. 1. cap. 16.
Don Quixote and Sancho, travelling in the night through a desert valley, have their ears assailed at once by a combination of the most horrible sounds, the roaring of cataracts, clanking of chains, and loud strokes repeated at regular intervals; all which persuade the Knight, that his courage is immediately to be tried in a most perilous adventure. Under this impression, he felicitates himself on the immortal renown he is about to acquire, and, brandishing his lance, thus addresses Sancho, whose joints are quaking with affright:
Asi que aprieta un poco las cinchas a Rocinante, y quédate a Dios, y asperame aqui hasta tres dias, no mas, en los quales si no volviere, puedes tú volverte á nuestra aldea, y desde alli, por hacerme merced y buena obra, irás al Toboso, donde dirás al incomparable sen̄ora mia Dulcinea, que su cautivo caballero murió por acometer cosas, que le hiciesen digno de poder llamarse suyo. Don Quix. par. 1. cap. 20.
Translation by Motteux.
"Come, girth Rozinante straiter, and then Providence protect thee: Thou may'st stay for me here; but if I do not return in three days, go back to our village, and from thence, for my sake, to Toboso, where thou shalt say to my incomparable lady Dulcinea, that her faithful knight fell a sacrifice to love and honour, while he attempted things that might have made him worthy to be called her adorer?"
Translation by Smollet.
"Therefore straiten Rozinante's girth, recommend thyself to God, and wait for me in this place, three days at farthest ; within which time if I come not back, thou mayest return to our village, and, as the last favour and service done to me, go from thence to Toboso, and inform my incomparable mistress Dulcinea, that her captive knight died in attempting things that might render him worthy to be called her lover."
On comparing these two translations, that of Smollet appears to me to have better preserved the ludicrous solemnity of the original. This is particularly observable in the beginning of the sentence, where there is a most humorous association of two counsels very opposite in their nature, the recommending himself to God, and girding Rozinante. In the request, "and as the last favour and service done to me, go from thence to Toboso;" the translations of Smollet and Motteux are, perhaps, nearly equal in point of solemnity, but the simplicity of the original is better preserved by Smollet[3].
Sancho, after endeavouring in vain to dissuade his master from engaging in this perilous adventure, takes advantage of the darkness to tie Rozinante's legs together, and thus to prevent him from stirring from the spot; which being done, to divert the Knight's impatience under this supposed enchantment, he proceeds to tell him, in his usual strain of rustic buffoonery, a long story of a cock and a bull, which thus begins: "Erase que se era, el bien que viniere para todos sea, y el mal para quien lo fuere á buscar; y advierta vuestra merced, senor mio, que el principio que los antiguos dieron a sus consejas, no fue así como quiera, que fue una sentencia de Caton Zonzorino Romano que dice, y el mal para quien lo fueré á buscar." Ibid.
In this passage, the chief difficulties that occur to the translator are, first, the beginning, which seems to be a customary prologue to a nursery-tale among the Spaniards, which must therefore be translated by a corresponding phraseology in English; and secondly, the blunder of Caton Zonzorino. Both these are, I think, most happily hit off by Motteux.
"In the days of yore, when it was as it was, good betide us all, and evil to him that evil seeks. And here, Sir, you are to take notice, that they of old did not begin their tales in an ordinary way; for 'twas a saying of a wise man, whom they call'd Cato the Roman Tonsor, that said, Evil to him that evil seeks." Smollet thus translates the passage: "There was, so there was; the good that shall fall betide us all; and he that seeks evil may meet with the devil. Your worship may take notice, that the beginning of ancient tales is not just what came into the head of the teller: no, they always began with some saying of Cato, the censor of Rome, like this, of "He that seeks evil may meet with the devil."
The beginning of the story, thus translated, has neither any meaning in itself, nor does it resemble the usual preface of a foolish tale. Instead of Caton Zonzorino, a blunder which apologises for the mention of Cato by such an ignorant clown as Sancho, we find the blunder rectified by Smollet, and Cato dignified with his proper epithet of the Censor. This is a manifest impropriety in the last translator, for which no other cause can be assigned, than that his predecessor had preoccupied the blunder of Cato the Tonsor, which, though not a translation of Zonzorino, (the purblind), was yet a very happy parallelism.
In the course of the same cock-and-bull story, Sancho thus proceeds: "Asi que, yendo dias y viniendo dias, el diablo que no duerme y que todo lo an̄asca, hizo de manera, que el amor que el pastor tenia á su pastora se volviese en omecillo y mala voluntad, y la causa fué segun malas lenguas, una cierta cantidad de zelillos que ella le dió, tales que pasaban de la raya, y llegaban á lo vedado, y fue tanto lo que el pastor la aborreció de alli adelante, que por no verla se quiso ausentar de aquella tierra, é irse donde sus ojos no la viesen jamas: la Toralva, que se vió desden̄ada del Lope, luego le quiso bien mas que nunca le habia querido. Ibid.
Translation by Motteux.
"Well, but, as you know, days come and go, and time and straw makes medlars ripe; so it happened, that after several days coming and going, the devil, who seldom lies dead in a ditch, but will have a finger in every pye, so brought it about, that the shepherd fell out with his sweetheart, insomuch that the love he bore her turned into dudgeon and ill-will; and the cause was, by report of some mischievous tale-carriers, that bore no good-will to either party, for that the shepherd thought her no better than she should be, a little loose i' the hilts, &c[4]. Thereupon being grievous in the dumps about it, and now bitterly hating her, he e'en resolved to leave that country to get out of her sight: for now, as every dog has his day, the wench perceiving he came no longer a suitering to her, but rather toss'd his nose at her and shunn'd her, she began to love him, and doat upon him like any thing."
I believe it will be allowed, that the above translation not only conveys the complete sense and spirit of the original, but that it greatly improves upon its humour. When Smollet came to translate this passage, he must have severely felt the hardship of that law he had imposed on himself, of invariably rejecting the expressions of Motteux; who had in this instance been eminently fortunate. It will not therefore surprise us, if we find the new translator to have here failed as remarkably as his predecessor has succeeded.
Translation by Smollet.
"And so, in process of time, the devil, who never sleeps, but wants to have a finger in every pye, managed matters in such a manner, that the shepherd's love for the shepherdess was turned into malice and deadly hate: and the cause, according to evil tongues, was a certain quantity of small jealousies she gave him, exceeding all bounds of measure. And such was the abhorrence the shepherd conceived for her, that, in order to avoid the sight of her, he resolved to absent himself from his own country, and go where he should never set eyes on her again. Toralvo finding herself despised by Lope, began to love him more than ever."
Smollet, conscious that in the above passage Motteux had given the best possible free translation, and that he had supplanted him in the choice of corresponding idioms, seems to have piqued himself on a rigid adherence to the very letter of his original. The only English idiom, being a plagiarism from Motteux, "wants to have a finger in every pye," seems to have been adopted from absolute necessity: the Spanish phrase would not bear a literal version, and no other idiom was to be found but that which Motteux had preoccupied.
From an inflexible adherence to the same law, of invariably rejecting the phraseology of Motteux, we find in every page of this new translation numberless changes for the worse:
Se que no mira de mal ojo á la mochacha.
"I have observed he calls a sheep's eye at the wench." Motteux.
"I can perceive he has no dislike to the girl." Smollet.
Teresa me pusieron en el bautismo, nombre mondo y escueto, sin anadiduras, ni cortopizas, ni arrequives de Dones ni Donas.
"I was christened plain Teresa, without any fiddle-faddle, or addition of Madam, or Your Ladyship." Motteux.
"Teresa was I christened, a bare and simple name, without the addition, garniture, and embroidery of Don or Donna." Smollet.
Sigue tu cuento, Sancho.
"Go on with thy story, Sancho." Motteux.
"Follow thy story, Sancho." Smollet.
Yo confieso que he andado algo risucn̄o en demasía.
"I confess I carried the jest too far." Motteux.
"I see I have exceeded a little in my pleasantry." Smollet.
De mis vin̄as vengo, no se nada, no soy amigo de saber vidas agenas.
"I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge; it's no bread and butter of mine: Every man for himself, and God for us all, say I." Motteux.
"I prune my own vine, and I know nothing about thine. I never meddle with other people's concerns." Smollet.
Y advierta que ya tengo edad para dar consejos. Quien bien tiene, y mal escoge, por bien que se enoja, no se venga.
"Come, Master, I have hair enough in my beard to make a counsellor: he that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay." Motteux.
"Take notice that I am of an age to give good counsels. He that hath good in his view, and yet will not evil eschew, his folly deserveth to rue." Smollet. Rather than adopt the corresponding proverb given by Motteux, Smollet chuses, in this instance, and in many others, to make a proverb for himself, by giving a literal version of the original in a sort of doggrel rhime.
Vive Roque, que es la sen̄ora nuestra ama mas ligera que an alcotan, y que puede ensen̄ar al mas diestro Cordobes o Mexicano.
"By the Lord Harry, quoth Sancho, our Lady Mistress is as nimble as an eel. Let me be hang'd, if I don't think she might teach the best jockey in Cordova or Mexico to mount ahorseback." Motteux.
"By St Roque, cried Sancho, my Lady Mistress is as light as a hawk[5], and can teach the most dexterous horseman to ride." Smollet.
The chapter which treats of the puppet-show, is well translated both by Motteux and Smollet. But the discourse of the boy who explains the story of the piece, in Motteux's translation, appears somewhat more consonant to the phraseology commonly used on such occasions:—"Now, gentlemen, in the next place, mark that personage that peeps out there with a crown on his head, and a sceptre in his hand: That's the Emperor Charlemain.—Mind how the Emperor turns his back upon him.—Don't you see that Moor;—hear what a smack he gives on her sweet lips,—and see how she spits, and wipes her mouth with her white smock-sleeve. See how she takes on, and tears her hair for very madness, as if it was to blame for this affront.—Now mind what a din and hurly-burly there is." Motteux. This jargon appears to me to be more characteristic of the speaker than the following: "And that personage who now appears with a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand, is the Emperor Charlemagne.—Behold how the Emperor turns about and walks off—Don't you see that Moor;—Now mind how he prints a kiss in the very middle of her lips, and with what eagerness she spits, and wipes them with the sleeve of her shift, lamenting aloud, and tearing for anger her beautiful hair, as if it had been guilty of the transgression[6]."
In the same scene of the puppet-show, the scraps of the old Moorish ballad are translated by Motteux with a corresponding naïveté of expression, which it seems to me impossible to exceed:
Jugando está á las tablas Don Gayféros,
Que ya de Melisendra está olvidado.
"Now Gayferos the live-long day,
"Oh, errant shame! at draughts doth play;
"And, as at court most husbands do,
"Forgets his lady fair and true. Motteux.
"Now Gayferos at tables playing,
"Of Melisendra thinks no more." Smollet.
Caballero, si á Francia ides,
Por Gayféros preguntad.
"Quoth Melisendra, if perchance,
"Sir Traveller, you go for France,
"For pity's sake, ask, when you're there,
"For Gayferos, my husband dear." Motteux.
"Sir Knight, if you to France do go,
"For Gayferos inquire." Smollet.
How miserably does the new translator sink in the above comparison! Yet Smollet was a good poet, and most of the verse translations interspersed through this work are executed with ability. It is on this head that Motteux has assumed to himself the greatest licence. He has very presumptuously mutilated the poetry of Cervantes, by leaving out many entire stanzas from the larger compositions, and suppressing some of the smaller altogether: Yet the translation of those parts which he has retained, is possessed of much poetical merit; and in particular, those verses which are of a graver call, are, in my opinion, superior to those of his rival. The song in the first volume, which in the original is intitled Cancion de Grisóstomo, and which Motteux has intitled, The Despairing Lover, is greatly abridged by the suppression of more than one half of the stanzas in the original; but the translation, so far as it goes, is highly poetical. The translation of this song by Smollet, though inferior as a poem, is, perhaps, more valuable on the whole, because more complete. There is, however, only a single passage in which he maintains with Motteux a contest which is nearly equal:
O thou, whose cruelty and hate,
The tortures of my breast proclaim,
Behold, how willingly to fate
I offer this devoted frame.
If thou, when I am past all pain,
Shouldst think my fall deserves a tear,
Let not one single drop distain
Those eyes, so killing and so clear.
No! rather let thy mirth display
The joys that in thy bosom flow:
Ah! need I bid that heart be gay,
Which always triumph'd in my woe. Smollet.
It will be allowed that there is much merit in these lines, and that the last stanza in particular is eminently beautiful and delicate. Yet there is in my opinion an equal vein of poetry, and more passion, in the corresponding verses of Motteux:
O thou, by whose destructive hate
I'm hurry'd to this doleful fate,
When I'm no more, thy pity spare!
I dread thy tears; oh, spare them then—
But, oh! I rave, I was too vain—
My death can never cost a tear! Motteux.
In the song of Cardenio, there is a happy combination of tenderness of expression with ingenious thought; the versification is likewise of a peculiar structure, the second line forming an echo to the first. This song has been translated in a corresponding measure both by Motteux and Smollet; but by the latter with far inferior merit.
Quien menoscaba mis bienes?
Desdenes.
Y quien aumenta mis duelos?
Los zelos.
Y quien prueba mi paciencia?
Ausencia.
De ese modo en mì dolencia
Ningun remedio se alcanza
Pues me matan la esperanza
Desdenes, Zelos y Ausencia.
Quien me causa este dolor?
Amor.
Y quien mi gloria repuna?
Fortuna.
Y quien consiente mi duelo?
El Cielo.
De ese modo yo rezelo,
Morir deste mal extran̄o
Pues se aunan en mì dan̄o
Amor, Fortuna y el Cielo.
Quien mejorará mi suerte
La Muerte.
Y el bien de amor, quiets le alcanza?
Mudanza.
Y sus males quien los cura?
Locura.
De ese modo no es cordura
Querer curar la pasion;
Quando los remedios son
Muerte, Mudanza, y Locura.
CARDENIO's SONG, by Motteux.
What makes me languish and complain?
O, 'tis Disdain!
What yet more fiercely tortures me?
'Tis Jealousy.
How have I my patience lost?
By Absence crost.
Then Hope, farewell, there's no relief;
I sink beneath oppressing grief;
Nor can a wretch, without despair,
Scorn, Jealousy, and Absence, bear.
What in my breast this anguish drove?
Intruding Love.
Who could such mighty ills create?
Blind Fortune's hate.
What cruel powers my fate approve?
The Powers above.
Then let me bear, and cease to moan;
'Tis glorious thus to be undone:
When there invade, who dares oppose?
Heaven, Love, and Fortune are my foes.
Where shall I find a speedy cure,
Oh! Death is sure,
No milder means to set me free?
Inconstancy.
Can nothing else my pains assuage?
Distracting rage.
What, die or change? Lucinda lose?
O let me rather madness chuse!
But judge, ye gods, what we endure,
When death or madness are a cure!
In the last four lines, Motteux has used more liberty with the thought of the original than is allowable for a translator. It must be owned, however, that he has much improved it.
CARDENIO's SONG, by Smollet.
Ah! what inspires my woful strain?
Unkind Disdain
Ah! what augments my misery?
Fell Jealousy!
Or say what hath my patience worn?
An absent lover's scorn!
The torments then that I endure
No mortal remedy can cure:
For every languid hope is slain
By Absence, Jealousy, Disdain.
From Love, my unrelenting foe,
These sorrows flow:
My infant glory's overthrown
By Fortune's frown.
Confirm'd in this my wretched state
By the decrees of fate,
In death alone I hope release
From this compounded dire disease,
Whose cruel pangs to aggravate,
Fortune and Love conspire with Fate!
Ah! what will mitigate my doom?
The silent tomb.
Ah! what retrieve departed joy?
Inconstancy!
Or say, can ought but frenzy bear
This tempest of despair!
All other efforts then are vain
To cure this foul-tormenting pain,
That owns no other remedy
Than madness, death, inconstancy.
"The torments then that I endure—no mortal remedy can cure." Who ever heard of a mortal remedy? or who could expect to be cured by it? In the next line, the epithet of languid is injudiciously given to Hope in this place; for a languid or a languishing hope was already dying, and needed not so powerful a host of murderers to slay it, as Absence, Jealousy, and Disdain.—In short, the latter translation appears to me to be on the whole of much inferior merit to the former. I have remarked, that Motteux excels his rival chiefly in the translation of those poems that are of a graver cast. But perhaps he is censurable for having thrown too much gravity into the poems that are interspersed in this work, as Smollet is blameable on the opposite account, of having given them too much the air of burlesque. In the song which Don Quixote composed while he was doing penance in the Sierra-Morena, beginning Arboles, Yerbas y Plantas, every stanza of which ends with Del Toboso, the author intended, that the composition should be quite characteristic of its author, a ludicrous compound of gravity and absurdity. In the translation of Motteux there is perhaps too much gravity; but Smollet has rendered the composition altogether burlesque. The same remark is applicable to the song of Antonio, beginning Yo sé, Olalla, que me adoras, and to many of the other poems.
On the whole, I am inclined to think, that the version of Motteux is by far the best we have yet seen of the Novel of Cervantes; and that if corrected in its licentious abbreviations and enlargements, and in some other particulars which I have noticed in the course of this comparison, we should have nothing to desire superior to it in the way of translation.
- ↑ The translation published by Motteux bears, in the title-page, that it is the work of several hands; but as of these Mr Motteux was the principal, and revised and corrected the parts that were translated by others, which indeed we have no means of discriminating from his own, I shall, in the following comparison, speak of him as the author of the whole work.
- ↑ The only French translation of Don Quixote I have ever seen, is that to which in subjoined a continuation of the Knight's adventures, in two supplemental volumes, by Le Sage. This translation has undergone numberless editions, and is therefore, I presume, the best; perhaps indeed the only one, except a very old version, which is mentioned in the preface, as being quite literal, and very antiquated in its style. It is therefore to be presumed, that when Jarvis accuses Motteux of having taken his version entirely from the French, he refers to that translation above mentioned to which Le Sage has given a supplement. If this be the case, we may confidently affirm, that Jarvis has done Motteux the greatest injustice. On comparing his translation with the French, there is a discrepancy so absolute and universal, that there does not arise the smallest suspicion that he had ever seen that version. Let any passage be compared ad apperturam libri; as, for example, the following:
"De simples huttes tenoient lieu de maisons, et de palais aux habitants de la terre; les arbres se defaisant d'eax-memes de leurs écorces, leur fournissoient de quoi couvrir leurs cabanes, et se garantir de l'intempérie des saisons."
"The tough and strenuous cork-trees did of themselves, and without other art than their native liberality, dismiss and impart their broad, light bark, which served to cover those lowly huts, propped up with rough-hewn stakes, that were first built as a shelter against the inclemencies of the air." Motteux.
"La beaute n'étoit point un avantage dangereux aux jeunes filles; elles alloient librement partout, etalant sans artifice et sans dessein tous les présents que leur avoit fait la Nature, sans se cacher davantage, qu' autant que l'honnêteté commune à tous les siecles l'a toujours demandé."
"Then was the time, when innocent beautiful young shepherdesses went tripping over the hills and vales, their lovely hair sometimes plaited, sometimes loose and flowing, clad in no other vestment but what was necessary to cover decently what modesty would always have concealed." Motteux.
It will not, I believe, be asserted that this version of Motteux bears any traces of being copied from the French, which is quite licentious and paraphrastical. But when we subjoin the original, we shall perceive, that he has given a very just and easy translation of the Spanish.
Los valientes alcornoques despedian de sí, sin otro artificio que el de su cortesia, sus anchas y livianas cortezas, sin que se commençaron á cubrir las casas, sobre rusticas estacas sustentadas, no mas que para defensa de las inclemencias del cielo.Entonces sí, que andaban las simples y hermosas zagalejas de valle en valle, y de otero en otero, en trenza y en cabello, sin mas vestidos as aquellos que eran menester para cubrir honestamente lo que la honestidad quiere. - ↑ Perhaps a parody was here intended of the famous epitaph of Simonides, on the brave Spartans who fell at Thermopylæ:
Ω ξειν, αγγειλον Λακεδαιμονιοις, οτι τηδε
Κειμεθα τοις κεινων ρημασι πειθομενοι."O stranger, carry back the news to Lacedemon, that we died here to prove our obedience to her laws." This, it will be observed, may be translated, or at least closely imitated, in the very words of Cervantes; diras—que su caballero murió por acometer cosas que le hiciesen digno de poder llamarse suyo.
- ↑ One expression is omitted which is a little too gross.
- ↑ Mas ligera que un alcotan is more literally translated by Smollet than by Motteux; but if Smollet piqued himself on fidelity, why was Codobes o Mexicano omitted?
- ↑ Smollet has here mistaken the sense of the original, como si ellos tuvieran la culpa del maleficio: She did not blame the hair for being guilty of the transgression or offence, but for being the cause of the Moor's transgression, or, as Motteux has properly translated it, "this affront." In another part of the same chapter, Smollet has likewise mistaken the sense of the original. When the boy remarks, that the Moors don't observe much form or ceremony in their judicial trials, Don Quixote contradicts him, and tells him there must always be a regular process and examination of evidence to prove matters of fact, "para sacar una verdad en "limpio, menester son muchas pruebas y repruebas." Smollet applies this observation of the Knight to the boy's long-winded story, and translates the passage, "There is not so much proof and counter proof required to bring truth to light." In both these passages Smollet has departed from his prototype, Jarvis.