I read the Edith Grossman translation, which includes all 12 tales/ novellas.
1/ “The Novel of the Little Gypsy Girl”:
This one is all right. I was thinking why did wiki count it among the more realistic tales of the collection, considering the contrived plot and improbable coincidence, and then remembered that these elements were common in Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte. The moral standards as seen in the ending are rather dubious—murder is murder, even if done for honour, no? 17th century Spain was strange. Fun read though.
I will not reveal what the improbable coincidence is—I will be a good girl and spoil nothing—but one detail reminds me of The Winter’s Tale and makes me wonder about the 17th century’s ideas of nobility, of nature vs nurture.
2/ “The Novel of the Generous Lover”:
This one, like “The Captive’s Tale” in Don Quixote, seems to be inspired by Cervantes’s experience as a slave in Algiers. It’s basically a Romance, with lots of twists and turns and a fantastical story, with a beautiful woman and lustful men and slave drivers and schemes and shipwrecks, but me likey. These stories make me wonder, what distinguishes a short story from a tale? I can’t explain why this one feels more like a tale than a short story. In some sense, the tales in Exemplary Novels feel like One Thousand and One Nights— just without the frame story.
3/ “The Novel of Rinconete and Cortadillo”:
Whilst the two previous tales have no elements of comedy, this one has some funny bits. You can also see that Cervantes is fascinated by the act of renaming, of reinventing ourselves: in Don Quixote, Alonso Quixano adopts the new identity of Don Quixote, then he gets nicknamed The Woebegone Knight in Part 1 but reinvents himself as The Knight of the Lions in Part 2, and at the end, gets reborn as Alonso Quixano the Good; in “The Novel of the Little Gypsy Girl”, Don Juan de Cárcamo (or Don Juanico) falls in love with Preciosa the little gypsy, so he becomes a gypsy and calls himself Andrés Caballero; in this story, two boys meet and work together as thieves, then get “baptised” in the gang under new names—Rincón (the card sharp) becomes Rinconette and Cortaldo (the cutpurse) becomes Cortadillo.
One complaint I have is that Rincón and Cortaldo are not quite distinguishable from each other—they’re quite blurred together like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But Cervantes does paint the world of gangsters and prostitutes in very vivid colours, and the story is captivating.
4/ “The Novel of the English Spanishwoman”:
This one begins in a promising way: “Among the spoils the English carried away from the city of Cádiz, Clotaldo, an English gentleman and captain of a squadron of ships, took to London a girl approximately seven years old…” The girl, Isabella, is raised as a Catholic and the family are secret Catholics. Clotaldo’s son Ricaredo has been in love with Isabella since he was 18 and she was 12 (ew) but his parents want him to marry some Scottish girl and she doesn’t dare to go against their will—she’s a dependent, which is reminiscent of Sonya in War and Peace—but Cervantes’s story is not War and Peace and moves in a different direction, which is interesting.
However, this story has too much plot—it becomes more and more ludicrous—Cervantes seemingly wants to outdo Romances in imbecility and preposterousness. If anything, “The Novel of the English Spanishwoman” shines a different light on Don Quixote, confirming my impression that Cervantes didn’t hate Romances, even if he set out to kill off the genre when he started writing Don Quixote.
I was going to read the whole book or at least take a break after 6 tales, but now I’m out of breath following all the twists and turns in this one, I’m going to go read something else for a bit.
The second and third tales are very good.
I read the Grossman translation of Don Quixote; when I reread the novel I want to try a different translation ( though I like the Grossman fine). I have an old Penguin paperback translated by J.M. Cohen, so that will probably be the one.
ReplyDeleteWhen you reread in languages you don't speak, do you try different translations or do you stick to the first one you read? It can make a difference sometimes. (I've read Anna Karenina twice - the first was the Pevear/Volokohnsky and the second was the Constance Garnett, which I wound up preferring.)
I try different translations if I can afford it.
DeleteSo for Anna Karenina, my first read was Aylmer and Louise Maude, my second read was Rosamund Bartlett. I like both, slightly prefer the second because of the prose.
For War and Peace, my first read was Anthony Briggs, my second read was Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker. I vastly prefer the second, for lots of reasons, and only recommend the second. In fact, I go around telling people not to get Anthony Briggs, haha.
When I was reading Hong lou meng, I was reading it in the Vietnamese translation but also looked at the English one by David Hawke, and noticed rather interesting differences which I pointed out in my blog posts.
I should add that on Twitter, I'm known as a Pevear & Volokhonsky hater, as I don't like their clunky prose, their approach to translation, and the heavy promotion. I also don't like that they keep pumping out translations of books that have been translated a million times, whereas someone like Robert Chandler for instance was introducing Anglophone readers to Vasily Grossman.
DeleteI have the Briggs War and Peace but haven't read it - the P&V is the one I've read. How wretched are we who must rely on translators - every edition of every translation of whoever is covered with blurbs saying "At last someone has finally gotten the musical essence of Author X into English blah blah blah" - you know what I mean. (There are a bunch on my Briggs War and Peace.) If I could judge the truth of those statements, I wouldn't need a translator!
ReplyDeleteHahhaha yeah, I know what you mean.
DeleteI don't like the Anthony Briggs one because 1/ it's too modernised 2/ he removes all the French passages 3/ he removes all the feminine endings in Russian names.