Idle reader: thou mayest believe me without any oath that I
would this book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest,
gayest, and cleverest that could be imagined. But I could not
counteract Nature's law that everything shall beget its like; and
what, then, could this sterile, illtilled wit of mine beget but the
story of a dry, shrivelled, whimsical offspring, full of thoughts
of all sorts and such as never came into any other imagination—just
what might be begotten in a prison, where every misery is lodged
and every doleful sound makes its dwelling? Tranquillity, a
cheerful retreat, pleasant fields, bright skies, murmuring brooks,
peace of mind, these are the things that go far to make even the
most barren muses fertile, and bring into the world births that
fill it with wonder and delight. Sometimes when a father has an
ugly, loutish son, the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes
that he does not see his defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts
and charms of mind and body, and talks of them to his friends as
wit and grace. I, however—for though I pass for the father, I am
but the stepfather to "Don Quixote"—have no desire to go with the
current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest reader, almost with
tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects
thou wilt perceive in this child of mine. Thou art neither its
kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free
as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own house and
master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the
common saying, "Under my cloak I kill the king;" all which exempts
and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou
canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused
for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it.
My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and
unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable
muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are
commonly put at the beginning of books. For I can tell thee, though
composing it cost me some labour, I found none greater than the
making of this Preface thou art now reading. Many times did I take
up my pen to write it, and many did I lay it down again, not
knowing what to write. One of these times, as I was pondering with
the paper before me, a pen in my ear, my elbow on the desk, and my
cheek in my hand, thinking of what I should say, there came in
unexpectedly a certain lively, clever friend of mine, who, seeing
me so deep in thought, asked the reason; to which I, making no
mystery of it, answered that I was thinking of the Preface I had to
make for the story of "Don Quixote," which so troubled me that I
had a mind not to make any at all, nor even publish the
achievements of so noble a knight.
"For, how could you expect me not to feel uneasy about what that
ancient lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me,
after slumbering so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming
out now with all my years upon my back, and with a book as dry as a
rush, devoid of invention, meagre in style, poor in thoughts,
wholly wanting in learning and wisdom, without quotations in the
margin or annotations at the end, after the fashion of other books
I see, which, though all fables and profanity, are so full of
maxims from Aristotle, and Plato, and the whole herd of
philosophers, that they fill the readers with amazement and
convince them that the authors are men of learning, erudition, and
eloquence. And then, when they quote the Holy Scriptures!—anyone
would say they are St. Thomases or other doctors of the Church,
observing as they do a decorum so ingenious that in one sentence
they describe a distracted lover and in the next deliver a devout
little sermon that it is a pleasure and a treat to hear and read.
Of all this there will be nothing in my book, for I have nothing to
quote in the margin or to note at the end, and still less do I know
what authors I follow in it, to place them at the beginning, as all
do, under the letters A, B, C, beginning with Aristotle and ending
with Xenophon, or Zoilus, or Zeuxis, though one was a slanderer and
the other a painter. Also my book must do without sonnets at the
beginning, at least sonnets whose authors are dukes, marquises,
counts, bishops, ladies, or famous poets. Though if I were to ask
two or three obliging friends, I know they would give me them, and
such as the productions of those that have the highest reputation
in our Spain could not equal.
"In short, my friend," I continued, "I am determined that Senor
Don Quixote shall remain buried in the archives of his own La
Mancha until Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those
things he stands in need of; because I find myself, through my
shallowness and want of learning, unequal to supplying them, and
because I am by nature shy and careless about hunting for authors
to say what I myself can say without them. Hence the cogitation and
abstraction you found me in, and reason enough, what you have heard
from me."
Hearing this, my friend, giving himself a slap on the forehead
and breaking into a hearty laugh, exclaimed, "Before God, Brother,
now am I disabused of an error in which I have been living all this
long time I have known you, all through which I have taken you to
be shrewd and sensible in all you do; but now I see you are as far
from that as the heaven is from the earth. It is possible that
things of so little moment and so easy to set right can occupy and
perplex a ripe wit like yours, fit to break through and crush far
greater obstacles? By my faith, this comes, not of any want of
ability, but of too much indolence and too little knowledge of
life. Do you want to know if I am telling the truth? Well, then,
attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and shutting of
an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all those
deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing
before the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light
and mirror of all knight-errantry."
"Say on," said I, listening to his talk; "how do you propose to
make up for my diffidence, and reduce to order this chaos of
perplexity I am in?"
To which he made answer, "Your first difficulty about the
sonnets, epigrams, or complimentary verses which you want for the
beginning, and which ought to be by persons of importance and rank,
can be removed if you yourself take a little trouble to make them;
you can afterwards baptise them, and put any name you like to them,
fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of
Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to have been famous
poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or bachelors
should attack you and question the fact, never care two maravedis
for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot cut
off the hand you wrote it with.
"As to references in the margin to the books and authors from
whom you take the aphorisms and sayings you put into your story, it
is only contriving to fit in nicely any sentences or scraps of
Latin you may happen to have by heart, or at any rate that will not
give you much trouble to look up; so as, when you speak of freedom
and captivity, to insert
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro;
and then refer in the margin to Horace, or whoever said it; or,
if you allude to the power of death, to come in with—
Pallida mors Aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque
turres.
"If it be friendship and the love God bids us bear to our enemy,
go at once to the Holy Scriptures, which you can do with a very
small amount of research, and quote no less than the words of God
himself: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you
speak of evil thoughts, turn to the Gospel: De corde exeunt
cogitationes malae. If of the fickleness of friends, there is Cato,
who will give you his distich:
Donec eris felix multos numerabis amicos, Tempora si fuerint
nubila, solus eris.
"With these and such like bits of Latin they will take you for a
grammarian at all events, and that now-a-days is no small honour
and profit.
"With regard to adding annotations at the end of the book, you
may safely do it in this way. If you mention any giant in your book
contrive that it shall be the giant Goliath, and with this alone,
which will cost you almost nothing, you have a grand note, for you
can put—The giant Golias or Goliath was a Philistine whom the
shepherd David slew by a mighty stone-cast in the Terebinth valley,
as is related in the Book of Kings—in the chapter where you find it
written.
"Next, to prove yourself a man of erudition in polite literature
and cosmography, manage that the river Tagus shall be named in your
story, and there you are at once with another famous annotation,
setting forth—The river Tagus was so called after a King of Spain:
it has its source in such and such a place and falls into the
ocean, kissing the walls of the famous city of Lisbon, and it is a
common belief that it has golden sands, etc. If you should have
anything to do with robbers, I will give you the story of Cacus,
for I have it by heart; if with loose women, there is the Bishop of
Mondonedo, who will give you the loan of Lamia, Laida, and Flora,
any reference to whom will bring you great credit; if with
hard-hearted ones, Ovid will furnish you with Medea; if with
witches or enchantresses, Homer has Calypso, and Virgil Circe; if
with valiant captains, Julius Caesar himself will lend you himself
in his own 'Commentaries,' and Plutarch will give you a thousand
Alexanders. If you should deal with love, with two ounces you may
know of Tuscan you can go to Leon the Hebrew, who will supply you
to your heart's content; or if you should not care to go to foreign
countries you have at home Fonseca's 'Of the Love of God,' in which
is condensed all that you or the most imaginative mind can want on
the subject. In short, all you have to do is to manage to quote
these names, or refer to these stories I have mentioned, and leave
it to me to insert the annotations and quotations, and I swear by
all that's good to fill your margins and use up four sheets at the
end of the book.
"Now let us come to those references to authors which other
books have, and you want for yours. The remedy for this is very
simple: You have only to look out for some book that quotes them
all, from A to Z as you say yourself, and then insert the very same
alphabet in your book, and though the imposition may be plain to
see, because you have so little need to borrow from them, that is
no matter; there will probably be some simple enough to believe
that you have made use of them all in this plain, artless story of
yours. At any rate, if it answers no other purpose, this long
catalogue of authors will serve to give a surprising look of
authority to your book. Besides, no one will trouble himself to
verify whether you have followed them or whether you have not,
being no way concerned in it; especially as, if I mistake not, this
book of yours has no need of any one of those things you say it
wants, for it is, from beginning to end, an attack upon the books
of chivalry, of which Aristotle never dreamt, nor St. Basil said a
word, nor Cicero had any knowledge; nor do the niceties of truth
nor the observations of astrology come within the range of its
fanciful vagaries; nor have geometrical measurements or refutations
of the arguments used in rhetoric anything to do with it; nor does
it mean to preach to anybody, mixing up things human and divine, a
sort of motley in which no Christian understanding should dress
itself. It has only to avail itself of truth to nature in its
composition, and the more perfect the imitation the better the work
will be. And as this piece of yours aims at nothing more than to
destroy the authority and influence which books of chivalry have in
the world and with the public, there is no need for you to go
a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy
Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles
from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction
run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and
well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your
power, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or
obscurity. Strive, too, that in reading your story the melancholy
may be moved to laughter, and the merry made merrier still; that
the simple shall not be wearied, that the judicious shall admire
the invention, that the grave shall not despise it, nor the wise
fail to praise it. Finally, keep your aim fixed on the destruction
of that ill-founded edifice of the books of chivalry, hated by some
and praised by many more; for if you succeed in this you will have
achieved no small success."
In profound silence I listened to what my friend said, and his
observations made such an impression on me that, without attempting
to question them, I admitted their soundness, and out of them I
determined to make this Preface; wherein, gentle reader, thou wilt
perceive my friend's good sense, my good fortune in finding such an
adviser in such a time of need, and what thou hast gained in
receiving, without addition or alteration, the story of the famous
Don Quixote of La Mancha, who is held by all the inhabitants of the
district of the Campo de Montiel to have been the chastest lover
and the bravest knight that has for many years been seen in that
neighbourhood. I have no desire to magnify the service I render
thee in making thee acquainted with so renowned and honoured a
knight, but I do desire thy thanks for the acquaintance thou wilt
make with the famous Sancho Panza, his squire, in whom, to my
thinking, I have given thee condensed all the squirely drolleries
that are scattered through the swarm of the vain books of chivalry.
And so—may God give thee health, and not forget me. Vale.