C2 · Part Two, Chapter 3
Children leaf through it: the novel reads its own reviews
At the start of Part Two, don Quixote learns that a book about him has been published, and the student Sansón Carrasco tells him how it has been received. It is the first time a character in a novel hears his own reviews. The grammar is a set of balanced series, the kind of praise that is made to be remembered.
The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it
Miguel de Cervantes, Part Two, Chapter 3. Unadapted.
Eso no —respondió Sansón—, porque es tan clara, que no hay cosa que dificultar en ella: los niños la manosean, los mozos la leen, los hombres la entienden y los viejos la celebran; y, finalmente, es tan trillada y tan leída y tan sabida de todo género de gentes, que, apenas han visto algún rocín flaco, cuando dicen: "allí va Rocinante". Y los que más se han dado a su letura son los pajes: no hay antecámara de señor donde no se halle un Don Quijote: unos le toman si otros le dejan; éstos le embisten y aquéllos le piden.
Not that, replied Sansón, because it is so clear that there is nothing difficult in it. Children leaf through it, young people read it, grown men understand it and old men celebrate it. In short, it is so thumbed and so read and so known by every kind of person that they have hardly seen some skinny nag when they say: there goes Rocinante. And the ones most given to reading it are the pages. There is no lord's antechamber where you will not find a Don Quixote. Some pick it up when others put it down. These pounce on it and those ask for it.
The same thing in Spanish as it is written today
Read the two side by side. What has changed between them is the syllabus of this level.
Eso no, respondió Sansón, porque es tan clara que no hay nada difícil en ella: los niños la hojean, los jóvenes la leen, los adultos la entienden y los viejos la celebran. En fin, está tan manoseada, tan leída y tan sabida por toda clase de gente que, en cuanto ven un caballo flaco, dicen: ahí va Rocinante. Y los que más se han aficionado a leerla son los pajes: no hay antesala de gran señor donde no haya un Quijote. Unos lo cogen cuando otros lo dejan, estos se lanzan sobre él y aquellos lo piden.
What changed, form by form
| In the text | Today | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Eso no | eso no | Sansón is answering don Quixote, who has just said the book will need a commentary to be understood. |
| dificultar | encontrar difícil | Dificultar with a direct object, meaning to find something hard. Today it means to make something hard. |
| manosean | hojean, manosean | To handle, to paw. Children do not read it, they handle it. |
| mozos | jóvenes | Mozo for a young man. Still used, and in some places it means a waiter. |
| trillada | manoseada, muy conocida | Trillar is to thresh grain. A well threshed book, and a camino trillado is still a beaten track. |
| apenas ... cuando | en cuanto | Apenas and cuando as a pair, for no sooner ... than. |
| se han dado a su letura | se han aficionado a leerla | Darse a algo, to give oneself over to it. And letura for lectura. |
| un Don Quijote | un Quijote | The title as a common noun for a copy of the book. Spaniards still say un Quijote. |
| unos le toman si otros le dejan | unos lo cogen cuando otros lo dejan | Si in the sense of when, and le for the book. |
| éstos ... aquéllos | estos ... aquellos | The two demonstratives used as a pair, these and those. |
The syntax
The first series is the one Spaniards remember: los niños la manosean, los mozos la leen, los hombres la entienden y los viejos la celebran. Four ages of life, four verbs, each clause built exactly like the one before, with y before the last. Then a second series with tan, tan trillada y tan leída y tan sabida, and a third in pairs of demonstratives, unos ... otros, éstos ... aquéllos. Sansón is showing off his schooling. The praise is rhetoric, and it is meant to sound like rhetoric.
What a Spanish reader hears
Two jokes are stacked here. The first is that the character is told about his own book, inside the second volume of that book, and wants to know whether it is accurate. The second is that the praise is exactly true: by 1615 Part One really was a best seller, reprinted and translated, and Rocinante really had become a word for a thin horse. Cervantes lets a fictional student report the real success of the real book, and from here on fiction and world cannot be pulled apart.
Where the course prepares you for this
- Talking about books and what gets publishedLesson 57Their story is in print