History

A Question for AI

A Question for AI

It is hard
to shed the skin
the skin once shed
can never
be worn again

Yesterday
is gone
today
slips slowly by

Tomorrow
always comes
but never arrives

Who and what am I
this child
who thrives on sorrow
and on a sadness

that grinds
those bones to dust
and soft silk ash

Tell me
if you know
what will arrive
for this child
tomorrow
if and when
it comes

Comment:

Moo is so happy when I don’t allow Ryan to persuade me to invite AI to paint my thoughts in pictures. “AI?” said Moo. “Have I got a painting for you!” And he showed me the AI Google Monster with its radio active fallout. “Nice,” I said. “I like the look and feel of that.” It looks like a two-eyed cricket bowling machine. It bowls Googlies out of the right eye and Chinamen out of the left one. Alas, we are no longer allowed to use the term Chinaman as it has been labelled ‘disrespectful’.

But what is a Googly? A Googly is an off-break bowled by a right-handed bowler with a leg break action. And a Chinaman is the reverse – a leg break delivered by a left arm bowler with an off-break action. Complicated? You bet it is. But AI and Google have demystified the mysteries of right and left arm wrist spin. Or have they?

It is one thing to know what they are – definition – but another to spot them as they leave the bowler’s hand, and yet another to play them as they whir through the air, then pitch and viciously spin. Of course, just to keep you up to date with Dennis Compton’s Three Card Trick, a top spinner, bowled with exactly the same action will come straight on and not turn at all.

It is hard to spot the spin when the ball is leaving the bowler’s hand, and the spin, once spun, can never be spun again! I am glad we sorted all that out. Oh sweet mysteries of the cricketer’s life. I once asked a top batsman how he spotted the difference between a leg- break, a googly and a top spinner. “I watch which way the stitches are moving when the ball leaves the bowler’s hand.” You need really good eye sight to do that. The Eggs Box, sorry, that’s the Two Ronnies, the X-Box will never do that for you.

But who is Dennis Compton and what is his three card trick? Good question. Dennis Compton, aka The Brylcream Boy, was one of England’s best ever batsman. You can look him up in the 1947 Wisden. Genuine paper pages, crackling as you turn them, much nicer than the metallic voice of AI. Compton was notorious for running out his partners with his three card trick – “Yes! No! Wait!” What do you mean, you don’t understand a word of what I am talking about? You’ve read Jabberwocky, haven’t you? Yes? No? Wait … if you haven’t read it you must do so. Immediately – but not if the slithy toves are gyring and gimbling in the wabe. Go Google it – and when you find it remember to sing “oh frabjous day, calloo, callay” as you chortle in your joy.

Translation Theory

Ryan and Don Roger

15

Translation Theory
(revised 3 May 2026)

            In DQI, IX, Cervantes, in his role of first-person narrator, goes to the Alcana in Toledo, where he discovers an Arabic manuscript containing the adventures of Don Quixote. The first eight chapters of our novel contain no mention of a translator. Suddenly one appears. The narrator buys the manuscript, finds a translator, takes the translator to his house, and in six weeks receives a translation, from Arabic into Spanish, of the novel. Question – does the translation contain Chapters 1-8, already written by Cervantes, or not? Alas, we do not know. Is the translation accurate? We do not know that either, for the original Arabic manuscript is a literary illusion and does not exist.

            However, we do know that Cervantes writes that ‘reading a translation is like looking at the reverse side of a tapestry’. Speaking of the Italian poet, Boiardo, the priest, in DQI, 6, says “If I find him here speaking in any language but his own I shall show him no respect. But if he speaks his own tongue, I will wear him next to my heart.” The priest continues, “That is what happens with all authors who translate poetry into other languages. However much care they take, and however much skill they show, they can never make their translations as good as the original.”

            Of course, with no original for the Quixote, there can be no translation theory. So, let us try to construct one. In the course of my own work, I have studied various translations of Quevedo’s poem Miré los muros de la patria mía. I will use them to see how translations can function, and what happens when we look at the reverse side of the tapestry. First, Quevedo’s poem in the original Spanish. Then a direct, line by line translation of it, for those who do not read Spanish.

Miré los muros de la patria mía,
si un tiempo fuertes, ya desmoronados,
de la carrera de la edad cansados,
por quien caduca ya su valentía.

Salíme al campo, vi que el sol bebía
los arroyos del yelo desatados,
y del monte quejosos los ganados,
que con sus sombras hurtó su luz al día.

Entré en mi casa; vi que, amancillada,
de anciana habitación era despojos;
mi báculo más corvo y menos fuerte;

vencida de la edad sentí mi espada.
Y no hallé cosa en que poner los ojos
que no fuese recuerdo de la muerte.

            I looked at the walls of my fatherland, (line 1) if once strong, now crumbling, (line 2) from the passing of age tired, (line 3) which wears out their bravery. (line 4) I went out to the field, saw that the sun was drinking (line 5) the streams from the ice untied, (line 6) and of the hill complaining the herds, (line 7) whose shadows stole the light of day. (line 8) I entered my house; I saw that, stained, (line 9) of an ancient habitation it was the spoils; (line 10) my cane more curved and less strong; (line 11) conquered by age I sensed my sword. (line 12) And I didn’t find a thing on which to turn my eyes (line 13) that was not a reminder of death. (line 14).

            This very literal translation, with all its inaccuracies and its inability to express the hidden cultural depths of the original, is totally unpoetic and inadequate, compared to the genius of the original version. Other prose translations have been offered by J. M. Cohen and Elías Rivers, and they are much more accurate – and much better (!), than mine.

            Brave poetic translations, also at times somewhat distant from the original, have been published by Robert Lowell, David Gitlitz, and Griswald Morley / Charles Cobb revising the version of John Masefield. Alas, I do not have permission to replicate their versions. However, I called the translations ‘inadequate’, but they aren’t really they are just the best we can do. Robert Lowell, himself an outstanding poet, gave us much more than a translation. He gave us what I like to think of as a recreation, a new poem based upon the old original. Translations and re-creations, two very different kettles of fish! I offer you here two of my own efforts at recreating the poem!

1

I looked at the defenses of my native land:
empty silos, bombs and rockets melted down.
“Put your faith,” the TV said, “in diplomacy,
not in the metal walls of flying ships.” I went

outside. Cattle were lowing against the falling
temperature, tails to the wind. Steam
rose from their flanks, then was scattered
like an overnight dream of ghosts. Inside,

on the sink, a shrivelled tea bag, dried up stains;
my trusty coffee pot, rusty on the stove,
was chipped and raw at the rim. I took

my shot gun in my hand. Its crooked barrels
served me as a walking-stick. As I limped
around, my mother’s photo spoke to me of death.

2
I’ve got something to say, so here’s what I’ll do
I’ll write it out in rap with a rhythm just for you.
I once saw a town with a very small wall
that’s so fallen down it’s no wall at all.
It’s old and it’s rotten and it cannot last
like a runner on the track who’s run too fast
at the start of the race, and he’s run out of breath,
so he’s hit that wall, and he feels like death.
And there’s cattle lowing and the sun’s in the sky
but it’s winter time, so the sun’s not high,
and the shadows are long, and the wind’s getting cold,
and it’s all about a man who’s growing old.
He looks around his house and all he sees
are dead people’s faces and living memories.
He’s trapped on the ground floor, can’t climb stairs,
everything he touches he’ll leave to his heirs.
There’s a pain in his side, and he can’t catch his breath,
and all that he sees, reminds him of death!

            A rap sonnet (14 lines) containing nine pairs of rhymed couplets (18 lines)? The good Don Francisco de Quevedo will be turning in his grave and his still-warm ashes will once again be burning with love for Lisi and the joy of being alive, in one form or another, in spite of the River Styx, which the flame of his love could swim and not be lost forever.

            So, when looking at translation theory, what can we set down? First, it is very difficult to capture the full cultural meaning of the original because each word has an associative field that differs in each language. The associative field is the word itself, with all its secondary meanings and concepts. Mi espada / my sword is an excellent example. Quevedo, in spite of his infirmities, was a master swordsman. His sword remained unconquered, save by age itself. We no longer walk around with swords sheathed at our sides. The meaning, therefore, in all its sadness and profundity, cannot be captured by our translation skills. The words just do not have the weight.

            The grammatical structures, inversion of words, for example, cannot easily be reproduced in English translation.  Line 3 – from the passing of age tired – just doesn’t sound right. And yet, it is curiously accurate – but not English. Oh dear. Line 6 – the streams from the ice untied – Line 7 – of the hill complaining the herds – Line 10 – of an ancient habitation it was the spoils – no, sorry, these inversions just do not function in English.

            In addition, the rhythm and the syllable count of each line of the original is lost in translation. Whatever you say about it, the rhythm of my rap sonnet emphasizes the importance of beat and tempo. Great fun to read aloud, and when reading it to an audience, watch their faces and then their feet. I have actually seen some listeners tap-dancing during my reading! And the scowls of those who cannot believe the impertinence of a translator who translates into rap music the classical lines of a poetic genius. Finally, the rhyme scheme will almost always defeat the would-be translator who approaches it as a target, while never quite mastering the reproductive technique, other than approximation. The structure of Quevedo’s original rhyme scheme is 14 hendecasyllabic (eleven syllable) lines rhyming abba / abba / cde / cde.  This is all very difficult to reproduce in English with its eternal iambic pentameter. Therefore, we must be satisfied, like it or not, with the reverse side of the tapestry, as Cervantes calls it.

Inquisitor

Cracked heart-shaped rock with ancient carvings in a sandy desert
A cracked heart-shaped stone with carvings lies cracked in a desert landscape.

Inquisitor

He told me to read,
and plucked my left eye from its orbit;
he slashed the glowing globe of the other.
Knowledge leaked out: loose threads dangling,
the reverse side of a tapestry.

He told me to speak,
and squeezed dry dust between my teeth.
I spouted a diet of Catechism and Confession.

He emptied my mind of poetry and history.
He destroyed the myths of my people.
He filled me with fantasies from a far off land.
I live in a desert where people die of thirst,
yet he talked to me of a man walking on water.

On all sides, as stubborn as stucco,
the prison walls listened, and learned.

I counted the years with feeble scratches:
one, four, two, three;
for an hour, each day, the sun shone on my face;
for an hour, at night, the moon kept me company.
Broken worlds lay shattered inside me.
Dust gathered in my people’s ancient dictionary.

My heart was a weathered stone
withering within my chest.
It longed for the witch doctor’s magic,
for the healing slash of wind and rain.

The Inquisitor told me to write down our history:
I wrote how his church had come to save us.

Orality and Literacy – Words – Spoken or written?

Ryan and Don Roger

13

Orality and Literacy
Words
Spoken or Written?

            We asked our AI friends what the rate of illiteracy was in Spain in 1605, the date of publication of DQI. According to them – Based on historical trends, the illiteracy rate in Spain in 1605 was extremely high, likely exceeding 90% to 95% of the general population. While exact nationwide surveys did not exist in 1605, historical insights from the period indicate that during the 16th and 17th centuries, the ability to read and write was generally restricted to elites, clergy, and urban professionals. Furthermore, female illiteracy was significantly higher, with hardly any women possessing writing skills during this era. And, in addition, literacy was slightly higher in major cities like Madrid or in northern Spain, while the rural south suffered from much higher illiteracy rates. Based on these insights it is easy conclude that well under 10% of the population in Cervantes’s time knew how to read and write.

            In Don Quixote, Cervantes reveals to us a rural society which is basically illiterate. Most of the multitude of characters can neither read nor write. Throughout the woven interplay of the novel, Cervantes juxtaposes the illusion of the literate nymphs and shepherds who come into the woods to dance and play with the reality of the goatherds, shepherds, and horse wranglers, like the Yanguesans (DQI, XV / 15) who, totally illiterate, work the woods for a living. This contrast is a theme of the times and can be clearly seen in the paintings of Velásquez. One has only to think of The Water Seller, The Old Lady Frying Eggs, The Topers, The Court Dwarves, and Vulcan’s Forge, to name a few paintings that illustrate the clash of youth, age, class.

            The question of learning is an interesting one, explored in depth by Walter J. Ong in Orality and Literacy (1982). Learning in an oral society is done by word of mouth. One method of handing down knowledge is the proverb, its wisdom passed down from generation to generation. Sancho Panza, totally illiterate, is famous for his stringing together of proverb after proverb. He is the prime example of what one might call oral sagacity. Don Quixote, on the other hand, amazes us at first with his mastery of the ballads and the major exploits of knights errant in the novels of chivalry that he recites and imitates at will, and later with his mastery of such themes as the Golden Age and Arms and Letters. 

As Ong points out, the presence of writing changes totally the ways in which people think and learn. The word, once spoken, can never be recalled. But, when the word is written down it can be redacted, erased, changed, crossed out. More, the immediate transference of ideas from person to person in the oral exchange of conversation is totally different from the thoughtful exchange of written letters and ideas. In the latter, one trains oneself to think before you ink. That thought process can then be transferred back to the thinking process, both by literate and illiterate people. In this way, the processing of thought changes. And that is what happens to Sancho Panza in DQII.

The question of authority arises here. In an oral society, authority rests with the older members, who have lived long, and understand much, and a great deal of it preserved in proverbs. In a literate society, the authority resides in the written word, especially when it is tested and approved by the Inquisition (in the case of Spain) and royal permission. In a literate society, those who have studied a subject become the authority in that subject. I know professors who never again took a course or opened their books after they attained their doctorates. The PhD gave them the right to be an authority and to know it all. I also know professors who never stopped learning, who continued reading, and publishing, and taking courses, and building their initial knowledge base into a life long learning process.

Is knowledge static? I certainly hope not. As T. S. Eliot writes in Burnt Norton, “Words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, will not stay still.” The lapidarian truth of the folkloric proverb softens as change surges around us. The authorities of the sixties, when I was in graduate school, faded gradually, and new names, new theories, new doctrines replaced them. We started to explore these ideas in 5 – Book Burnings and 6 – Censorship. With the proliferation of knowledge via the internet and the intrusion of an abundance of AI into our lives, this question of authority – what is true and what is false – must form a part of our current thought and teaching and learning methodology. How do we distinguish truth from fiction, real news from fake news?

In an oral society, with no writing, your word is your bond. Think of the cowboy movies – “White man speak with forked tongue.” Now make the appropriate gesture from the many Cowboy and Indian movies you have seen. White man wants it in writing. For the red man, his word is his bond, sealed maybe, with a slash of the knife across the wrist – blood brothers. We have entered a world with different cultures and expectations. Now ask yourself, how many written treaties has the white man broken across the centuries. Is his word, written or spoken, truly his bond? I guess it depends upon the courts and the lawyers.

            “My word is as good as my bond,” 007 aka James Bond aka Sean Connery aka Daniel Craig aka Pierce Brosnan aka Roger Moore aka 3M-007. How many levels of different linguistic reality, at the intertextual level, can you count in that delightful sentence? Just think about it. And tell me, if you are an authority on the subject, who is the real James Bond! Meanwhile, remember that The Olde Order Changeth Lest One Good Custom Should Corrupt The World. Now, could that be Tennyson, Idylls of the King, or is it a quote from The Wycliffe Star? You are the authority. You choose!

Past Glories Restored

Ryan and Don Roger

10

Past Glories Restored

            What is it about madmen like Don Quixote that they find it hard to live in the present and always want to see themselves restore past glories however impossible it is to do so? The search for the beauty and peacefulness of the past is always with us. Many seek the perfection of the Garden of Eden, but wise men know that Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden by an angel with a fiery sword, never to return.

            Jorge Manrique (1440-1479) begins his Coplas por la Muerte de su padre with the statement that “a nuestro parescer, cualquier tiempo passado fué mejor.” / It seems to us that any past time was better. Why do poets and madmen always look back to the past, all too often with a view to recreating that which can never be recreated?

            François Villon (1431 – 1463?) asks, in his famous refrain to La Ballade des Dames de Jadis – “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!” / Where are last year’s snows! Indeed, the theme of ubi sunt / where is – where are is a constant throughout literature. And where is last year’s snow? Can you tell me? It certainly isn’t in our aquifer. I didn’t even use the snowblower last year. Tell me, where did the snow go? I live in Canada, and we didn’t see it. So where did it go?

            Marcel Proust (1871-1922) searched for those lost times in his novel À la recherche du temps perdu. This can be translated directly as In Search of Lost Time. It also occurs, more poetically as Remembrance of Things Past. Unfortunately, the word Remembrance rather cancels out the idea of Search, not to mention the twin ideas of recalling and re-establishing. However, in the case of the madman, Don Quixote, it can be argued that all those meanings are correct. But what exactly does Don Quixote want to restore?

            Above all, Don Quixote wishes to restore the lost age of knight errantry. He is besotted by the fantasy tales of these knights errant and believes that he can be one himself and restore their glory with the force of his arm alone.  In DQI, II/2, The knight addresses the ‘ladies of easy virtue’ at the inn in these terms: “I beg you, ladies, not to fly, nor to fear any outrage; for it ill fits or suits the order of chivalry which I profess to injure anyone, least of all maidens of such rank as your appearance proclaims you to be.’ His language, which was unintelligible to them, made them laugh more. So, knights errant protect women, especially damsels in trouble, and women of easy virtue. That is one of their most important tasks.

            In DQI, IV/4, our knight meets the boy, Andrés, who is being whipped by his master, the farmer. Don Quixote stops the thrashing and makes the man promise to pay the boy the wages that are owed him. The farmer promises to do so, but when Don Quixote leaves, he ties Andrés to a tree and whips him so soundly ‘that he laves him for dead.’ Protect the innocent, then, is another task, one at which Don Quixote fails miserably, as we will see later.

            In addition to restoring the high ideals of the ancient order of knights errant, Don Quixote also wishes to keep the words and deeds of the ancient romances / ballads alive, and this he does throughout the book. His constant quoting of passages and deeds from the books of chivalry, those that have driven him mad, serves to keep them alive. As we said earlier, you can burn the individual books, and destroy them, but you cannot destroy the ideas they contain. Don Quixote, in his constant and lively embodiment of those books serves to keep them, and their ideals and ideas, vibrant in the eyes and the minds of the readers.

            Cervantes, perhaps a wiser man than many, restructures the theme by rejecting it – no hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño / there are no birds in last year’s nests. However, as we shall see, it doesn’t stop Don Quixote the madman, from searching for the glories of past times and from fighting for them in an effort to restore them.

And don’t forget Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), who perished in WWI – “Ni temps passés ni les amours reviennent / sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.” “Nor past times nor past loves return / beneath Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine.”

Comment:

We don’t need a comment really except that The Olde Order Changeth Lest One Good Custom Should Corrupt the World. Interpret that as you will. And as Moo says to Ryan in the presence of Don Roger – “Hey, Ryan, look at all those changes in my painting.”

Distancing and Narrative Layers

Winding dirt path through misty forested mountains with conifer trees
A winding dirt path stretches through mist-covered forested mountains at dawn.

Image generated by AI

Ryan and Don Roger

8

Distancing and Narrative Layers

            In DQI, VIII/8, the author suspends the narration, leaving Don Quixote and the Basque with their swords in the air, frozen in time. The cliff-hanger, as it is often called, is not unknown in literary fiction, and yes, most normal human beings will want to know how this battle ends. However, read on – “But the unfortunate thing is that the author of this history left the battle in suspense at this critical point, with the excuse that he could find no more records of Don Quixote’s exploits than those recorded here.” Enter the second author – “It is true that the second author of this work would not believe that such a curious history could have been consigned to oblivion …” Would you believe it? We now have two authors a first one and a second one. So, would the real author stand up please?”

            Before he does, we have another little diversion. DQI, I-VIII/8 is only the first part of Don Quixote. We read at the beginning of DQI, IX/9 that “In the first part of this history, we left the valiant Basque and the famous Don Quixote with naked swords aloft …” So, logically, DQI now has two parts – DQI, Part One and DQI Part Two. Clearly, we are dealing with a novel that is writing itself, constructing itself, and changing itself as it creates, re-creates, and rethinks itself. More, “our delightful history stopped short and remained mutilated, our author [singular] failing to inform us where to find the missing part. This caused me great annoyance.” Fascinating. Please tell me, if you know, who is this me? It is a me who cannot understand the lack of a conclusion to the story he is reading. Indeed, he must now go seeking the sage who wrote this story, for all of these stories – historical records – chronicles – archives – journals – registers now forgotten – must have had a sage enchanter who recorded them.

            And this is how that sage was found. The first-person narrator “I” visited the Alcana in Toledo. There he bought a parchment book written in Arabic. He finds a translator who, on reading the book, starts to laugh at the mention of Lady Dulcinea, “the gest hand at salting pork in La Mancha.” This parchment becomes these books, and at the beginning he found the following: “History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arabic historian.” The first-person narrator then took the Arabic translator to his own house and there, in less than six weeks, he translated the history from Arabic into Spanish.

            The Ariadne’s thread that will lead us through this labyrinth goes like this. Cervantes (author), becomes Cervantes (first-person narrator), becomes Cervantes (commentator), who offers us the translator’s version, of the History of Don Quixote that was originally written in Arabic. Clearly a series of barriers between the author and his creation have been built. Everything is now deniable. And doubly so, since “if any objection can be made against the truth of this history, it can only be that its narrator was an Arab – men of that nation being ready liars.” And note that both Cide Hamete and the translator are Arabs – a double dose of distancing to protect our noble author from the long arm of the Inquisition.  

Censorship

Person in a black hoodie with face covered and mouth taped shut at sunset.
A hooded figure stands with a taped mouth in this powerful depiction of silenced expression.

Image generated by AI

Ryan and Don Roger

6

Censorship

            Censorship plays an important part in many societies and can take multiple forms. The Spanish Inquisition, for example, along with book burning, played a powerful role in the printing industry. Every book had to be examined and approved by a member of the Inquisition. Political correctness is itself a form of censorship. It encourages people to think about what they say and how they are saying it. Many sorts of political correctness arise from the feminist movement that began to question the male domination of the English language. Actors and actresses became actors. In cricket, wicket-keepers, bowlers, and fielders passed the linguistic test, but batsmen and batswomen became batters. I sincerely hope that glove men, for wicket-keepers, do not turn into glove persons.

            Nowadays, some people feel that the correction of language has gone too far and this has resulted in the anti-woke movement, as it is called. This rejects both the correction, and the hyper-correction, of what some people call imbalances in language, culture, and society. I will self-censor myself, rather than being censored by another person or persons, and refrain from what I personally feel about these ideas. Here, I merely point out that they exist.

            Lazarillo de Tormes, for example, was heavily censored by the Spanish Inquisition. All anti-clerical references in the original edition, and there were many of them, were removed. The resultant volume, heavily redacted and much smaller, became known as Lazarillo Castigado / Lazarillo chastised.

            To the best of my knowledge, the only piece removed from Don Quixote was the episode in which he made a rosary from the tail of his shirt, by tying ten small knots in it, and one large one. Since the shirt tail was used for many purposes, including wiping oneself, the censor thought this idea was indecent. Cervantes replaced the shirt tail with ten acorns and a chestnut in later editions.

He also managed to escape censure by placing all his questionable statements in the mouth of a mad man. Whenever an anti-clerical comment was made, readers (and listeners, for in those days, not everybody could read), chuckled at the enormity of the statement and rejoiced in the fact that only a madman could say such things.

            Together with censorship comes correction. Thus Sancho, who is illiterate and can neither read nor write, is also unable to spell. In this fashion, he offers a series of incorrect pronunciations and phonetic equivalents that Don Quixote joyfully and carefully corrects. We see this in other characters too. In DQI, VII or 7, the devil named by the housekeeper, becomes ‘the sage Muñaton’ in the mouth of the niece. Don Quixote changes this to ‘Freston’. The housekeeper continues with ‘Freston’ or ‘Friton’ and adds “I know only that his name ended in ton.”

            In our modern society, I see an enormous change taking place. Where I was educated by reading books, many books in my case, today’s younger generation teach themselves via AI and Chat. They watch videos. Watch TV. Text on cell phones. They listen to multiple podcasts. All this is audio-visual, little of it is written down. As a result, essays I received from my students were filled with phonetic spellings of words that they had heard, but not seen in written form. In addition, schools are no longer teaching cursive. My grand-daughter can print. She can neither read nor write joined letters. However, she can text faster with her two thumbs than I can with my index finger! The new generations have entered an electronic world that is totally alien to me.

            Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who shall guard the guards? Who shall police the police? Who shall program the programmers? And with what shall they program them? A long time ago, the BBC in England banned Sesame Street because it was too simplistic. Today, Sesame Street equivalents rule. So, let us extend our questions – “Who shall censor the censors?”

            Sometimes, it takes a madman to do it, in our case, a madman called Don Quixote! He, in his madness, encourages us, nay (or as Rocinante might say ‘neigh!’), he forces us to re-examine our links to language, to reality, to illusion. Reading his text, we learn to ask questions of the world around us. How many of our realities are illusions? How many of our illusions are corruptions of reality? How many times has Don Quixote been banned by figures in authority because of its attacks on authority?

            Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who shall guard the guards? Who shall program the programmers? “Who shall censor the censors?” And who will protect us if we speak truth to authority, and authority doesn’t like the truths we offer? The author of Lazarillo remains anonymous. Cervantes distanced his words from himself and put them in the mouth of a madman. Other people have taken evasive action in other ways.

The alternative – stay silent and bleat with the sheep – “Four legs good! Two legs bad!” And when the Mastiffs with their spiked collars come for us, we can always, like the sheep, change our chant. “Four legs bad! Two legs good!” After all, all sheep are equal, even when some sheep are more equal than others, and all of us can imagine we are animals on George Orwell’s Animal Farm – and then we can say what we want and nobody will listen, nobody will pay attention, and nobody will understand. And remember, somebody, somewhere will want Animal Farm banned. And 1984.

Book Burnings

Hooded figures holding torches surround a bonfire of burning books and scrolls.
A group of cloaked figures stands in a dimly lit stone courtyard as they burn ancient scrolls and books in a large central fire.

Image generated by AI


Ryan and Don Roger

5

Book Burnings

            In 1492, the Spanish Jews were given the choice of conversion to Catholicism or of being expelled from Spain. Many chose to leave. Those who converted, and remained, were kept under constant supervision. In an effort to stamp out their faith, their books were condemned to the flames by the Spanish Inquisition. A similar burning of the books in Don Quixote’s library occurs in DQI, 6. Is book burning effective? Some people think so. Other people aren’t so sure.

            The Spanish conquest of Mexico, led by Hernán Cortés, concluded on August 13, 1521, when Spanish forces and their native Tlaxcalan allies captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and emperor Cuauhtémoc, marking the end of the Aztec Empire and the beginning of Spanish colonial rule. The country was then called New Spain. 

Mexico is famous for its codices. These are fan-fold picture histories, drawn on vellum covered with gesso, of tribal conquests, social norms, tables of the gods, in fact a whole cultural and historical record of pre-Hispanic Mexico. The Zouche-Nuttal codex, for example, sets out the conquests of Ocho Venado / Eight Deer, nicknamed Garra de Tigre / Tiger Claw, a Mixtec warrior, who lived between 1063 and 1115. Five of the Mixtec codices survive. Many, many more were burned. The cover of the Vindobonensis shows the burn marks where some daring person pulled the codex from the flames and saved it. Without such saved codices, we would have much less knowledge of pre-Hispanic Mexico.

            Why is this anecdote important? Because prior to the invention of printing, in 1474, manuscripts were written by hand. Yes, some were copied, but many copies were single and unique. Burn the manuscript, destroy the knowledge it contains. Post 1474, with the printing of multiple copies of books, the individual book might be destroyed, but some books would survive from the printing sequence. Apply this to Don Quixote’s library and we note several things. First, Don Quixote’s copies are destroyed. Second, other copies of his books survive elsewhere. In addition, although Don Quixote’s books are burned the ideas in those books survive in the knight’s head and he lives by their rules. Those ideas are spread throughout the history of his adventures to everybody with whom he comes in contact. Conclusion – you can destroy the books. You cannot destroy the ideas that those books contained.

            Ray Bradbury, in Farhenheit 451, describes the burning of books in his dystopian novel. 451F incidentally is the temperature at which paper burns. The books are burnt in Bradbury’s world, but the book people survive. The book people are those who memorize their books and are able to quote them from memory and pass them on orally to other people.

            And people protect their books. How? By placing them in small rooms within their houses and walling up those rooms so that the books could not be found. This happens in DQI, VI – 6. Don Quixote awakes, goes to find his library, but it has disappeared. The housekeeper swears that a sage enchanter descended on a dragon and the library vanished in a puff of smoke. Don Quixote believes the metatheatrical lie and acts as if it were the truth. He then bemoans the fact that he is pursued by malignant sorcerers. These evil enchanters will pursue him throughout the novel whenever he wakes up from his illusions and is faced by reality. Clearly, the sage enchanters have robbed him of his moment of glory (illusion) and reduced him to sorry (the truth).

            Curiously enough, a 16th Century walled-up library was found in a house in Barcarrota, Spain not so long ago. The books were hidden, probably from the Inquisition, so that their owner could escape prosecution. The discovery sheds light on how individuals hid literature from the Inquisition during the 16th century in Spain. It also illustrates how closely Cervantes followed the reality of his times when writing the Quixote.

            You can destroy books. But it is very difficult to destroy the ideas they contain. In this fashion, although the burning of that one book ends the life of that particular volume, it rarely ends the life of the ideas contained within its covers. We might not recognize the names of the characters that Don Quixote quotes from his memory of those histories, but many of the people who encounter the knight during his adventures know them and remember them. Amadis of Gaul is never dead, not when his name lives on. The same is true of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur is said to fstill be alive and can be seen in the shape of a White Crow, bran gwen, in Welsh. And even Walt Disney knew, and profited from, the legend of the sword in the stone.

We will also see, as we continue our journey, that in the same way that tall oaks grow out of small acorns, large parts of later events found in the Quixote already have their seeds sown in these early chapters. Metatheatre, illusion and reality, authorship and censorship, truth and falsehood, waking events and dream sequences – and that is just the start.

From Stage to Page

An unrolled parchment scroll showing a sunset windmill sketch on a wooden desk with a quill and inkwell.
A beautifully detailed scroll depicting windmills at sunset rests on a classic wooden desk alongside traditional writing tools.

Image generated by AI.

Ryan and Don Roger

4

Stage to Page

            So many questions – so much to say. Let us begin by stating that Cervantes is one of the most original novelists the world has known. Then we can continue by stating that, in spite of that, like Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, aka Molière, he is not above borrowing his material from other writers. When Molière was asked where he found sources for his plays, he replied “Je les prends où je les trouve.” Cervantes might well have said the same thing.

            The source of the first sortie of Don Quixote is a short play, an entremés, called El Entremés de los Romances. These short, entertaining pieces were often installed between acts of a longer pay to keep the audience amused during the breaks. In this particular one, an old man thinks he is a knight and travels forth quoting the old border ballads and ballads of chivalry as if they were historical truth. Mind you, some of them were, or pretty close to it, especially those that carried news of the reconquest, but not all of them were true by a long way. The old man goes too far with his chivalry, gets a beating, and comes back home, draped over his horse which is led by a neighbor. Sound familiar?

            In classical rhetoric, imitation – imitatio in Latin – was the highest compliment one could pay to another author as it meant he was worth imitating. Today, imitation is considered more a scourge to be avoided, although if you follow the crime and spy shows on TV you will know that the same, or very similar, incidents recur again and again, played out in different stories by different actors.

            So, Cervantes starts out by imitating an older stage play and turning it from a play into a short story. This is creativity, beyond imitation, in itself. In this theory, the first story is in fact a short story, meant originally to stand on its own. This is not my theory, incidentally, I have borrowed it from my own teacher, Geoffrey L. Stagg, the man who introduced me to the scientific study of the Quixote. Stagg took as his evidence the first edition of the book in which he discovered an anomaly. The last sentence of Chapter Five ends in a comma (in the original, and certainly not in my translation by J. M. Cohen. I first read this book in 1965 – 61 years later, it is held together by glue and Scotch tape, a bit like Don Quixote’s helmet and armour!). To continue, the first word of Chapter Six begins with a lower-case letter, as if that word were joined to the last in the previous chapter. The heading of Chapter Six also runs smoothly into that first word as if they were joined. This suggested that in fact the two chapters had been united in a single story and had later been separated as the idea of turning the story into a novel dawned on the author.

            But who is the author of Don Quixote? Miguel de Cervantes, obviously. But who is the narrator of the story? In the first sentence, this first person narrator states ‘a village in la Mancha that I do not wish to name – de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme in the original Spanish. AI helps us out here. I quote – “Miguel de Cervantes was likely imprisoned in Argamasilla de Alba (specifically in the Cueva de Medrano) around the turn of the 17th century due to disputes arising from his work as a tax collector, or potentially a local dispute with a nobleman. This confinement, stemming from financial irregularities or local drama, is traditionally believed to be where he began writing Don Quixote.”

No wonder Cervantes, the initial narrator, does not wish to name that particular town. A little later, in an effort to embrace the readers and draw them into the text, the narrator uses the first-person plural- our text, followed by we make take it … we do not depart.

We will return to the narrative structure of the novel on many occasions. For the moment, we will leave the matter there. In narrative structure, the real Cervantes is the author. Cervantes, named or unnamed, is the narrator and becomes a part of the narration. I should add that the 1605 version of Don Quixote contains many short stories, that have nothing, or very little to do, with Don Quixote himself. We will return to these intercalated novels, as they are called, when we meet them later in the text.

The Numbers Game

Ryan and Don Roger

3

The Numbers Game

            The numbering of the chapters in Don Quixote is also interesting. While Part I and Part II often retain the Latin numbering, the chapters themselves can be found both with Latin Numbers and standard numbers.

            Latin numbers are based on six letters I, V, X, L, C, D and M. Each has its own value. I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, l = 50, C = 100, D = 500, M = 1000. Most have us have seen Roman numerals on clocks and we are familiar with the numbers from 1-12. I, II, III, IV (4, that is to say one before five), V, VI (6, that is to say one after five), VII, VIII, IX (9, that is to say one before ten), X, XI (11, that is to say one after ten), XII.

            This paradigm governs Latin numbers. XV = 15, XX = 20, XXX = 30, XL (ten before fifty) = 40, L = 50, LX (ten after fifty) = 60, LXX = 70, LXXX = 80, XC (ten before one hundred) = 90, C = 100, CX = 110. The date of my writing this MMXXVI (2026). You will have noticed similar numerical configurations on books and old movies.

            The ancient Celtic numbering system was based on the digits of hands and feet. Counting sheep, for example, or goats, shepherds and goatherds would count up to twenty on their toes and fingers. Then they would carve a notch in a piece of wood. To keep score was to score the notch.

            Something similar happens in Basque jai alai, the happy game.  The scorers score in groups of IIII which they then made into 5 with a line through the numbers IIII. Four groups of 5 made 20 and the 21st notch won the game. That scoring method may have changed, but it is certainly how I learned to score the game in the Basque country (Spain) back in the 1950’s. Curiously, modern French shows the vestigial remains of this – quatre-vingts. Welsh shows a somewhat similar diversity because the Welsh word for twenty is ugain – although it’s technically not the only one, with the alternative dau ddeg (literally two tens) becoming more and more common. A case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

            And we must never forget the old sterling system of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island. £. S. D. aka pounds shillings and pence. 4 farthings = one penny, 12 pennies = one shilling, 20 shillings = one pound.

Our good friends on AI came to our aid with this one. I quote – The pre-decimal British currency system, known as £sd (librae, solidi, denarii), consisted of 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound (£), totaling 240 pence per pound. Used until Decimal Day on February 15, 1971, this system featured various denominations, including farthings, sixpences, florins, half-crowns, and crowns. What about a guinea you ask? Well. That was £1 and 1 shilling. Hence the auctioneer’s delight.

            “What am I bid”?       >         “£20.”             >          “Guineas!”

Our trusted friends on AI sum it up this way – “A guinea was a British gold coin minted between 1663 and 1814, officially valued at 21 shillings (£1.05 in decimal currency) from 1717 onwards. It was the first machine-struck gold coin in Britain, typically worth slightly more than one pound. While no longer in circulation, it is still used in horse racing and some luxury auctions to represent £1.05.”

Luxury auctions – I love that phrase. And here we must leave our luxurious description of, and adventures into, numbers in Don Quixote! Just look where the journey has led us. And remember, in the same way that Cervantes inserted short stories, both spoken and read, that digressed from the main narrative, we can also insert such mental rants and ramblings into our own narrative. And we shall continue to do.

Here’s one, for example. How do you count goats in Wales? Click on these links for two examples. Counting the Goats traditional and Counting the Goats modern. Of course, wrth gwrs, the simplest method of all is to count their legs and divide by four! Try doing that with Latin numerals!