Level C2 · Part One, Chapter 9
Cide Hamete: the novel that pretends to be a translation
Nine chapters in, the story stops and the narrator explains that he found the rest of it in a bundle of Arabic papers in a market in Toledo. Everything after this page is officially a translation of a manuscript by a Moorish historian, and the narrator keeps reminding you that Moors lie. This is where the modern novel starts.
The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it
Miguel de Cervantes, Part One, Chapter 9. Public domain, and not adapted, shortened or modernised in any way.
Estando yo un día en el Alcaná de Toledo, llegó un muchacho a vender unos cartapacios y papeles viejos a un sedero; y, como yo soy aficionado a leer, aunque sean los papeles rotos de las calles, llevado desta mi natural inclinación, tomé un cartapacio de los que el muchacho vendía, y vile con caracteres que conocí ser arábigos.
One day when I was in the Alcaná market in Toledo, a boy came to sell some notebooks and old papers to a silk dealer, and since I am fond of reading even torn papers in the street, carried along by this natural inclination of mine I took one of the notebooks the boy was selling, and I saw it was in characters I recognised as Arabic.
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.
Estando yo un día en el Alcaná de Toledo, llegó un chico a venderle unos cuadernos y papeles viejos a un comerciante de seda; y, como a mí me gusta leer aunque sean papeles rotos de la calle, llevado por esta inclinación natural mía, cogí uno de los cuadernos que vendía el chico y vi que estaba escrito con caracteres que reconocí como árabes.
What changed, form by form
| In the text | Today | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Estando yo un día | un día, estando yo | An absolute gerund with its own subject, opening the sentence. |
| desta | de esta | De plus esta run together, as everywhere in the book. |
| vile | lo vi | Enclitic pronoun on a preterite, and le for lo. |
| conocí ser arábigos | reconocí que eran árabes | An infinitive clause after a verb of perception. |
| cartapacio | cuaderno | A bundle of papers or a notebook. |
| sedero | comerciante de seda | The silk trade of Toledo, and a real street. |
The syntax
The sentence is held together by two non finite constructions, Estando yo and llevado desta inclinación, which is how Cervantes keeps a long period moving without piling up subordinates. Modern Spanish still allows both and uses them far less.
What a Spanish reader hears
From here on the book has three authors: Cide Hamete who wrote it, a morisco who translates it, and a narrator who edits it and openly distrusts the other two. So when a later chapter says the history relates, it is quoting a source that does not exist, and when the narrator warns that its author was a Moor and therefore given to lying, he is undermining his own book on purpose. Nothing in the novel is told straight after this page, and that is the invention everybody has copied since.
Where the course prepares you for this
- Talking about books and what gets publishedLesson 57Their Story Is in Print