Shakespeare wasn’t the only 400th-aniversary boy. Cervantes’ big gift came a few years ago, in the form of a bright new translation of Don Quixote by Edith Grossman.
I was struck by how different the two halves of the story are. The first part is elegantly framed, with the ironies and paradoxes neatly folded in.
But in the second half they burst out of the frame. It becomes unnervingly topical: an exploration of fame, of all ultramodern experiences.
The Don is no longer an incomprehensible lunatic, but the famous lunatic everybody has heard about. The Duke and Duchess, and every other literate (or literate-adjacent) person he and Sancho encounter are delighted to meet the celebrities in person. They are all fans, in the modern sense. They want Quixote and Sancho to behave like the characters in the novel, and create elaborate hoaxes in order to insure the desired responses.
Hence, what in the first part were the Don’s fantasies of being famous and lionized, become, in the second part, true. The difference is that the fame and lionization are derived from amusement and astonishment, rather than admiration and respect. But still, it’s better to be fussed over by a Duchess in her palace than clobbered by ruffians on the road.
At this point it becomes not merely the first novel, but the first meditation on this thing that has taken over the world.
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