Читать книгу Galatea - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Страница 7

In view of the dying man's words it is exceptionally difficult to believe that not a line of this sequel was actually written. It is equally difficult to believe that, if the Galatea existed in a fragmentary state, the widow, the daughter, the son-in-law, the patron, the publisher, the personal friends, the countless admirers of the most illustrious and most popular novelist in all the Spains, should have failed to print it. We cannot even venture to guess what the facts of the case really were. From Cervantes's repeated declarations it would seem probable that he left a considerable amount of literary manuscript almost ready for the Licenser. With the exception of Persiles y Sigismunda, every shred of every work that he mentions as being in preparation has vanished. It would be strange if this befell an author of secondary rank: it is incomprehensible when we consider Cervantes's unique position, recognized in and out of Spain. All we know is this: that, on Cervantes's lips, con brevedad might mean—in fact, did mean—more than thirty years, and that the sequel to the Galatea, though promised on five separate occasions, never appeared. Providence would seem to have decreed against the completion of many Spanish pastorals. Montemôr's Diana, the sequels to it by Pérez and Gil Polo, all remained unfinished: the Galatea is unfinished, too. It is possible, but unlikely, that the world has been defrauded of a masterpiece. Yet, unsuited as was the pastoral genre to the exercise of Cervantes's individual genius, we should eagerly desire to study his treatment of the old theme in the maturity of his genius and with the consciousness that his splendid reputation was at stake. He might perhaps have given us an anticipation in prose of Lope de Vega's play, La Arcadia,[90] a brilliant, poetic parody after Cervantes's own heart. Fate has ruled against us, and

The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower

Unfinished must remain.[91]

The pastorals lived on for many years in Spain[92] and out of it; but Don Quixote, the Novelas exemplares, Guzmán de Alfarache, and the growing crowd of picaresque realistic tales had so completely supplanted them in popular favour that Cervantes himself could scarcely have worked the miracle of restoring their former vogue among his countrymen.

Sr. D. Ramón León Máinez,[93] whose honourable enthusiasm for all that relates to Cervantes forbids his admitting that there are spots on his sun, considers the Galatea to be the best of pastorals, and other whole-hearted admirers (such as August and Friedrich von Schlegel)[94] have said as much. This, however, is not the general verdict of those who have read the Galatea from beginning to end, and really such readers are not many. Prescott[95] cautiously observes that it is "a beautiful specimen of an insipid class." Hazlitt, who may be taken as the honest representative of a numerous constituency, confesses that he does not know the book, and offers an ingenious apology for his remissness. Cervantes, he declares, claims the highest honour which can belong to any author—"that of being the inventor of a new style of writing." But, after this ingratiating prelude, he continues:—"I have never read his Galatea, nor his Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, though I have often meant to do it, and I hope to do so yet. Perhaps there is a reason lurking at the bottom of this dilatoriness. I am quite sure that the reading of these works could not make me think higher of the author of Don Quixote, and it might, for a moment or two, make me think less." And no doubt it might: just as the reading of Hours of Idleness, of Zastrozzi, and of Clotilde de Lusignan ou le beau Juif might, for a moment or two, make us think less of the authors of Don Juan, of Epipsychidion, and of Eugénie Grandet.

The Galatea survives as the first timorous experiment of a daring genius. It had no great vogue in Spain, and it is a mistake to say that "seven editions were called for in the author's lifetime."[96] At least, bibliographers know that, if they were called for, they certainly did not appear. As a matter of fact the book was only twice reprinted while Cervantes was alive, and, as neither of these editions was published in Spain, it is possible that he was unaware of their existence. In 1590 the Galatea was reproduced at Lisbon, expurgated of all heathenish allusions by Frey Bertholameu Ferreyra, acting for the Portuguese Inquisition; and this incomplete Portuguese reprint helped to make the pastoral known outside the Peninsula. It so happened that César Oudin, a teacher of Spanish at Paris—where he had already (1608) reprinted the Curioso impertinente,[97]—travelled through Spain and Portugal during 1610, and in the course of his journey he unsuccessfully endeavoured to obtain a copy of the Alcalá Galatea. He had to be content with a copy of the mutilated Lisbon edition, and this he reprinted in 1611 at Paris,[98] probably with an eye to using it as a text-book for his French pupils who were passing through an acute crisis of the pastoral fever. M. Jourdain had not yet put his embarrassing question to his music and dancing masters:—"Pourquoi toujours des bergers?" At all events, there is some evidence to prove that the Galatea was popular in fashionable Parisian circles while Cervantes still lived. In his Aprobación to the Second Part of Don Quixote, the Licenciado Francisco Márquez Torres records that when, on February 25, 1615, he visited the French embassy, he was beset by members of the Envoy's suite[99] who, taking fire at the mention of Cervantes's name, belauded the First Part of Don Quixote, the Novelas exemplares, and the Galatea—which one of them knew almost by heart.[100] It is unlikely that the author himself knew much of the Galatea by heart; but at about this period Honoré d'Urfé[101] had restored the vogue of pastoralism in France, and Márquez Torres's ecstatic Frenchman (if he really existed) only shewed the tendency to exaggeration characteristic of recent converts. He was, very possibly, among the last of the elect in Madrid. One edition—some say two editions—of the Galatea appeared posthumously in 1617: two more editions (provincial, like their immediate predecessor or predecessors) were issued in 1618. Then the dust of a hundred years settled down on all copies of the forgotten book. Three reprints during the eighteenth century, ten reprints during the nineteenth century, satisfied the public demand.[102]

The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries did not produce a single translation of the Galatea.[103] But in 1783 appeared a French adaptation of this pastoral by the once famous Chevalier Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian,[104] who compressed the six books of the original into three, added a fourth book of his own in which he married Elicio to Galatea, and so contrived a happy ending. "Il florianise tant soit peu toutes choses," says Sainte-Beuve[105] drily. In this delicate, perfumed, powder-and-patch arrangement by the idyllic woman-beater[106] and Captain of Dragoons, Cervantes's novel became astonishingly popular. Edition after edition was struck off from the French presses, and the work was read all over Europe in translations: three in German, two in Italian, three in English, two in Portuguese, one in Greek. Odder still, in this form, the book made its way home again and, just as certain Spaniards who had forgotten Guillén de Castro enjoyed Juan Bautista Diamante's translation (1658) of Corneille's Cid, so three editions go to prove that, a century and a half later, certain other Spaniards who had forgotten Cervantes enjoyed Casiano Pellicer's translation (1797) of Florian's Galatée.[107] And there was more to follow next year. Cándido María Trigueros[108] showed himself worthy of his Christian name by bettering Florian's example: he laid violent hands on Cervantes, suppressed here, amplified there, purged the book of its verses, and supplied a still happier ending—on a monumental scale—by incontinently marrying ten lucky shepherds to ten lovely shepherdesses. One cannot help wondering what Cervantes would have thought of this astounding performance. It was too much for the Spanish public, and Trigueros turned to do better work in adapting old plays to the modern stage. The taste for Arcadianism died away at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Artificial pastorals have, indeed, not yet recovered from a polite but deadly note published in the preface to Obermann: "Le genre pastoral, le genre descriptif out beaucoup d'expressions rebattues, dont les moins tolérables, à mon avis, sont les figures employées quelques millions de fois et qui, dès la première, affaiblissent l'objet qu'elles prétendaient agrandir." Such expressions, continues the writer, are l'émail des prés, l'azur des cieux, le cristal des eaux, les lis et les roses de son teint, les gages de son amour, l'innocence du hameau, des torrens s'échapperènt de ses yeux—"et tant d'autres que je ne veux pas condamner exclusivement, mais que j'aime mieux ne pas rencontrer." Sénancour was perhaps thinking more particularly of Florian at the moment, but his criticism applies also to Cervantes's first book.

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It was not till 1830 that the first genuine translation of the Galatea appeared, and this German version was followed by two others in the same language. These stood alone till 1867[109] when it occurred to a droll, strange man named Gordon Willoughby James Gyll (or James Willoughby Gordon Gill),[110] to publish an English rendering of Cervantes's pastoral in which, as he thought, "the rural characters are nicely defined; modesty and grace with simplicity prevailing." Gyll, who wrongly imagined that he was the first to translate [Pg li][Pg lii] the Galatea, seems to have been specially attracted by Cervantes's verses,—a compliment which the author would have enjoyed all the more on learning from his admirer that these "compositions are cast in lyrics and iambics, without being quite of a dithyrambic character, furnishing relief to the prose, and evincing the skill and tendency of the bard in all effusions relative to love, the master-passion of our existence, without which all would be arid and disappointing to the eagle spirit of the child of song." After this opening you know what to expect. And you get it—three hundred and forty-nine pages of it! Gyll never writes of parts, but of "portions"; rather than leave a place, he will "evacuate" it; nothing will induce him to return if he can "revert"; he prefers "scintillations" to gleams, "perturbators" to disturbers, "cogitation" to thought, and "exculpations" to excuses. Gyll's English, as may be judged from the specimens just quoted, is almost as eccentric as the English of Mohindronauth Mookerjee in his Memoir of the late Honourable Justice Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee, and it is much less amusing. His effrontery is beyond description. He knew nothing of Cervantes whom he actually believed to be a contemporary of Floridablanca in the eighteenth century.[111] He almost implies that he has read Cervantes's lost Filena, though he admits that it "is now rarely found." His ignorance of Spanish is illimitable. How he can have presumed to translate from it passes all understanding. He misinterprets the easiest phrases, and he follows the simple plan of translating each word by the first rough equivalent that he finds given in some poor dictionary. It would be waste of time to criticize the inflated prose and detestable verse which combine [Pg liii][Pg liv] to make Gyll's rendering the worst in the world. Two specimens will suffice to show what Gyll can do when he gives his mind to it. At the very opening of the First Book, he reveals his powers:—"But the perspicacity of Galatea detected in the motions of his countenance what Elicio contained in his soul, and she evinced such condescension that the words of the enamoured shepherd congealed in his mouth, though it appeared to him that he had done an injury to her, even to treat of what might not have the semblance of rectitude." This is Gyll as a master of prose. Gyll, the lyric poet, is even richer in artistic surprises. Take, for instance, the closing stanzas of Lauso's song at the beginning of the Fifth Book:—

In this extraordinary agony,

The feelings entertained go but for dumb

Seeing that love defies,

And I am cast in the midst of the fierce fire.

Cold water I abhor

Were it not for my eyes,

Which fire augments and spoils

In this amorous forge.

I wish not or seek water,

Or from annoyance supplicate relief.

Begin would all my good,

My ills would finish all,

If fate should so ordain,

That my sincere trust in life,

Silenca[112] would assure, Sighs assure it. My eyes do thoroughly me inform Me weeping in this truth. Pen, tongue, will In this inflexible reason me confirm.

These examples speak for themselves.[113] Cervantes was not indeed a very great poet; but his verses are often graceful and melodious, and it would have afflicted him sorely to see his lines travestied in this miserable fashion. It is inexplicable that such absolute nonsense should be published. But it is a singular testimony to the public interest in all concerning Cervantes that, in default of anything better, this discreditable version should have been read, and even reprinted.

[Pg lvi][Pg lvii]

For the present edition a new translation has been prepared. It proceeds on the one sound principle of translating from the original as faithfully as possible, without either omission or addition. The task of rendering the Galatea into English is less trying, and therefore less tempting, than the task of rendering Don Quixote or the Novelas exemplares; but the Galatea offers numerous difficulties, and it will be found that these have been very satisfactorily overcome by Dr. Oelsner and Mr. A. Baker Welford. They have the distinction of producing the first really adequate translation of the Galatea in any language.

JAS. FITZMAURICE-KELLY.

February, 1903.