eReading

Author of Don Quixote, Cervantes wrote Journey to Parnassus in 1614, about four years before he died. I’ve wanted to read this book for the last year or more. I had search antiquarian bookstores online but discovered the only translation of it was in 1883, and they wanted, if memory serves, about $200 for it. But I kept thinking about it and searching for it once in a while. To my surprise, about a month ago, I stumbled on it on Google Books. They had scanned it in from the library at the University of Michigan, where I was a student, long, long ago! What a thrill finding it. I’ve had to process the copy a little to get it to load on the 4×6 inch screen, but better than my laptop. And worth the effort. It allowed me really to be drawn much deeper into his imaginative world….

Cervantes uses the journey motif in a fascinating, humorous way to survey and lambast or applaud Spanish poets of his day or earlier. Somewhat similar to Czeslaw Milosz’s A Treatise on Poetry and other such works. Ultimately, though, it’s a self-serving work, as the genre is, and therefore of a lesser order. Nevertheless, it’s a fine work that ought to be better known in the English reading world.

The text is bilingual which allowed me to dip into the Spanish a little, which I enjoyed. 

Frederick Glaysher

Tags: Cervantes, Czeslaw Milosz's A Treatise on Poetry, Don Quixote, Journey to Parnassus