Don Quixote

[Scott Badger]

>From JF:
> >From Martin Amis's 1986 Atlantic Monthly article on _Don
> Quixote_ translated
> by Tobias Smollett (reproduced in The War Against Cliché):

I just finished Smollett's translation a couple days ago and though I can't
disagree with Amis' statement, "[a]n anthology, an agglomeration, it simply
accrues.  The question 'What happens next?' has no meaning, because there is
no next in _Don Quixote's_ world: there is only more.", isn't that part of
the satirization of the quest motif?...Kinda' like Slothrop. This reader,
for one, was sad to see it end, and I don't think I've ever laughed out loud
as much reading any other book.

I know Nabakov had some interest in DQ but I haven't had a chance to read
_Lectures on Don Quixote_ yet (it's on my santa list). I was struck, though,
by the similarities between the relationships of Cervantes/Smollett and
Shade/Botkin. Not to mention, the parallels between Quixote and Botkin, a
translation meant to be a transcription and a transcription that may be a
translation, as well as all the devices (interrogation of Author, Narrative,
History, Truth, Destiny) we've come to know and love among the usual cast of
authors that come up around here. Anyone know whether Nabakov used a
translation, and if so, which one?

Scott Badger