Level C1 · Part One, Chapter 25
Deliberate archaism: the letter to Dulcinea
Here the old words are not the period, they are the character. Don Quixote writes a love letter in a Spanish that nobody spoke in 1605, and Cervantes piles on ferido, fermosura, maguer, asaz and cuita until the page is a costume. It also has two future subjunctives, which is the tense that only survives today in legal Spanish.
The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it
Miguel de Cervantes, Part One, Chapter 25. Public domain, and not adapted, shortened or modernised in any way.
El ferido de punta de ausencia y el llagado de las telas del corazón, dulcísima Dulcinea del Toboso, te envía la salud que él no tiene. Si tu fermosura me desprecia, si tu valor no es en mi pro, si tus desdenes son en mi afincamiento, maguer que yo sea asaz de sufrido, mal podré sostenerme en esta cuita, que, además de ser fuerte, es muy duradera.
He who is wounded by the point of absence and cut through the fabric of the heart, sweetest Dulcinea del Toboso, sends you the health he does not have himself. If your beauty scorns me, if your worth is not on my side, if your disdain is my undoing, then although I am a man of much endurance, I shall hardly bear up under this affliction, which besides being severe is very long lasting.
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.
El herido por la ausencia y llagado en lo más hondo del corazón, dulcísima Dulcinea del Toboso, te envía la salud que él no tiene. Si tu hermosura me desprecia, si tu valor no está de mi parte, si tus desdenes me hunden, aunque yo sea muy sufrido, mal podré sostenerme en esta pena, que además de ser fuerte es muy duradera.
What changed, form by form
| In the text | Today | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| ferido | herido | Old f- for modern h-, the clearest single marker of archaic Spanish. |
| fermosura | hermosura | The same change again, and in the same sentence, which is not an accident. |
| maguer que | aunque | Already archaic in 1605 and completely dead now. |
| asaz | bastante, muy | A quantity word from the older language. |
| cuita | pena, aflicción | Distress. Survives only in poetry and in cuitado. |
| en mi pro | a mi favor | Pro as a noun. Left behind in en pro de. |
| afincamiento | apuro, ruina | A pressing or a ruin. Gone from the language. |
The syntax
Three si clauses stacked in front of the main verb, all in the indicative because they are being put as real, and then the concession with maguer que taking a subjunctive, sea. The subject of the whole letter is a description rather than a name: el ferido, el llagado, and the reader has to hold it until te envía arrives.
What a Spanish reader hears
Every archaism here is chosen. Cervantes is not writing old Spanish, he is writing a man who writes old Spanish, and the difference is the whole novel. Notice also that this masterpiece of courtly prose will be delivered by Sancho, who cannot read, from memory, and who loses the notebook.
Where the course prepares you for this
- Writing a letter: tú and usted on paperLesson 41The letter to Dulcinea