It is certain my Don Quixote was in two small, stout15 volumes not much bigger each than my Goldsmith’s ‘Greece’, bound in a sort of law-calf, well fitted to withstand the wear they were destined16 to undergo. The translation was, of course, the old-fashioned version of Jervas, which, whether it was a closely faithful version or not, was honest eighteenth~century English, and reported faithfully enough the spirit of the original. If it had any literary influence with me the influence must have been good. But I cannot make out that I was sensible of the literature; it was the forever enchanting17 story that I enjoyed. I exulted18 in the boundless19 freedom of the design; the open air of that immense scene, where adventure followed adventure with the natural sequence of life, and the days and the nights were not long enough for the events that thronged20 them, amidst the fields and woods, the streams and hills, the highways and byways, hostelries and hovels, prisons and palaces, which were the setting of that matchless history. I took it as simply as I took everything else in the world about me. It was full of meaning that I could not grasp, and there were significances of the kind that literature unhappily abounds21 in, but they were lost upon my innocence22. I did not know whether it was well written or not; I never thought about that; it was simply there in its vast entirety, its inexhaustible opulence23, and I was rich in it beyond the dreams of avarice24.
My father must have told us that night about Cervantes as well as about his ‘Don Quixote’, for I seem to have known from the beginning that he was once a slave in Algiers, and that he had lost a hand in battle, and I loved him with a sort of personal affection, as if he were still living and he could somehow return my love. His name and nature endeared the Spanish name and nature to me, so that they were always my romance, and to this day I cannot meet a Spanish man without clothing him in something of the honor and worship I lavished25 upon Cervantes when I was a child. While I was in the full flush of this ardor26 there came to see our school, one day, a Mexican gentleman who was studying the American system of education; a mild, fat, saffron man, whom I could almost have died to please for Cervantes’ and Don Quixote’s sake, because I knew he spoke27 their tongue. But he smiled upon us all, and I had no chance to distinguish myself from the rest by any act of devotion before the blessed vision faded, though for long afterwards, in impassioned reveries, I accosted28 him and claimed him kindred because of my fealty29, and because I would have been Spanish if I could.
I would not have had the boy-world about me know anything of these fond dreams; but it was my tastes alone, my passions, which were alien there; in everything else I was as much a citizen as any boy who had never heard of Don Quixote. But I believe that I carried the book about with me most of the time, so as not to lose any chance moment of reading it. Even in the blank of certain years, when I added little other reading to my store, I must still have been reading it. This was after we had removed from the town where the earlier years of my boyhood were passed, and I had barely adjusted myself to the strange environment when one of my uncles asked me to come with him and learn the drug business, in the place, forty miles away, where he practised medicine. We made the long journey, longer than any I have made since, in the stage-coach of those days, and we arrived at his house about twilight30, he glad to get home, and I sick to death with yearning31 for the home I had left. I do not know how it was that in this state, when all the world was one hopeless blackness around me, I should have got my ‘Don Quixote’ out of my bag; I seem to have had it with me as an essential part of my equipment for my new career. Perhaps I had been asked to show it, with the notion of beguiling32 me from my misery33; perhaps I was myself trying to drown my sorrows in it. But anyhow I have before me now the vision of my sweet young aunt and her young sister looking over her shoulder, as they stood together on the lawn in the summer evening light. My aunt held my Don Quixote open in one hand, while she clasped with the other the child she carried on her arm. She looked at the book, and then from time to time she looked at me, very kindly34 but very curiously35, with a faint smile, so that as I stood there, inwardly writhing36 in my bashfulness, I had the sense that in her eyes I was a queer boy. She returned the book without comment, after some questions, and I took it off to my room, where the confidential37 friend of Cervantes cried himself to sleep.
In the morning I rose up and told them I could not stand it, and I was going home. Nothing they could say availed, and my uncle went down to the stage-office with me and took my passage back.
The horror of cholera38 was then in the land; and we heard in the stage~office that a man lay dead of it in the hotel overhead. But my uncle led me to his drugstore, where the stage was to call for me, and made me taste a little camphor; with this prophylactic39, Cervantes and I somehow got home together alive.
The reading of ‘Don Quixote’ went on throughout my boyhood, so that I cannot recall any distinctive40 period of it when I was not, more or less, reading that book. In a boy’s way I knew it well when I was ten, and a few years ago, when I was fifty, I took it up in the admirable new version of Ormsby, and found it so full of myself and of my own irrevocable past that I did not find it very gay. But I made a great many discoveries in it; things I had not dreamt of were there, and must always have been there, and other things wore a new face, and made a new effect upon me. I had my doubts, my reserves, where once I had given it my whole heart without question, and yet in what formed the greatness of the book it seemed to me greater than ever. I believe that its free and simple design, where event follows event without the fettering41 control of intrigue42, but where all grows naturally out of character and conditions, is the supreme43 form of fiction; and I cannot help thinking that if we ever have a great American novel it must be built upon some such large and noble lines. As for the central figure, Don Quixote himself, in his dignity and generosity44, his unselfish ideals, and his fearless devotion to them, he is always heroic and beautiful; and I was glad to find in my latest look at his history that I had truly conceived of him at first, and had felt the sublimity45 of his nature. I did not want to laugh at him so much, and I could not laugh at all any more at some of the things done to him. Once they seemed funny, but now only cruel, and even stupid, so that it was strange to realize his qualities and indignities46 as both flowing from the same mind. But in my mature experience, which threw a broader light on the fable47, I was happy to keep my old love of an author who had been almost personally, dear to me.
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1 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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2 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
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3 apprentice | |
n.学徒,徒弟 | |
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4 mishaps | |
n.轻微的事故,小的意外( mishap的名词复数 ) | |
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5 knight | |
n.骑士,武士;爵士 | |
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6 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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7 chivalry | |
n.骑士气概,侠义;(男人)对女人彬彬有礼,献殷勤 | |
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8 ridicule | |
v.讥讽,挖苦;n.嘲弄 | |
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9 plunge | |
v.跳入,(使)投入,(使)陷入;猛冲 | |
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10 random | |
adj.随机的;任意的;n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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11 pranks | |
n.玩笑,恶作剧( prank的名词复数 ) | |
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12 enchanted | |
adj. 被施魔法的,陶醉的,入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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13 delightful | |
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的 | |
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14 appreciable | |
adj.明显的,可见的,可估量的,可觉察的 | |
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16 destined | |
adj.命中注定的;(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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17 enchanting | |
a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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18 exulted | |
狂喜,欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19 boundless | |
adj.无限的;无边无际的;巨大的 | |
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20 thronged | |
v.成群,挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21 abounds | |
v.大量存在,充满,富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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22 innocence | |
n.无罪;天真;无害 | |
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23 opulence | |
n.财富,富裕 | |
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24 avarice | |
n.贪婪;贪心 | |
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25 lavished | |
v.过分给予,滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26 ardor | |
n.热情,狂热 | |
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27 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
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28 accosted | |
v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 );跟…搭讪;(乞丐等)上前向…乞讨;(妓女等)勾搭 | |
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29 fealty | |
n.忠贞,忠节 | |
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30 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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31 yearning | |
a.渴望的;向往的;怀念的 | |
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32 beguiling | |
adj.欺骗的,诱人的v.欺骗( beguile的现在分词 );使陶醉;使高兴;消磨(时间等) | |
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33 misery | |
n.痛苦,苦恼,苦难;悲惨的境遇,贫苦 | |
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34 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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35 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
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36 writhing | |
(因极度痛苦而)扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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37 confidential | |
adj.秘(机)密的,表示信任的,担任机密工作的 | |
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38 cholera | |
n.霍乱 | |
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39 prophylactic | |
adj.预防疾病的;n.预防疾病 | |
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40 distinctive | |
adj.特别的,有特色的,与众不同的 | |
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41 fettering | |
v.给…上脚镣,束缚( fetter的现在分词 ) | |
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42 intrigue | |
vt.激起兴趣,迷住;vi.耍阴谋;n.阴谋,密谋 | |
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43 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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44 generosity | |
n.大度,慷慨,慷慨的行为 | |
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45 sublimity | |
崇高,庄严,气质高尚 | |
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46 indignities | |
n.侮辱,轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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47 fable | |
n.寓言;童话;神话 | |
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