From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
12.2 (1992): 154-55.
Copyright © 1992, The Cervantes Society of America
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The story of Cervantes's Entremeses is
somewhat poignant. They appeared one year before his death, the last work
he would publish in his life of permanent poverty. And yet, as Griswold Morley
noted, that unique sixty-eight year old hidalgo “chuckled to
himself as he wrote” those pieces of farce and slapstick. We know that
the entremeses definitely accredited to him were eight (six in prose,
two in seven-syllable blank verse). Between 1919 and 1948, a few of them
received an occasional English version, usually published in literary journals.
Morley listed those translations in The Interludes of Cervantes (1948),
a work with which he also became the first to have translated all eight.
His book, bilingual, is the basic one and, like nearly all Cervantes scholars,
he based it on the Bonilla-Schevill Obras completas de Cervantes (Madrid,
1914-41). There is also another translation by Edwin Honig, The Interludes
of Cervantes (New York, 1964), at present unavailable. The new translation
by Listerman will be most welcome, the more so since Morley's, although reprinted
in 1969, is quite hard to find.
A comparison between the two existing complete
translation works is necessary. Listerman states in his very interesting
introduction that his edition is the only one to contain, besides the plays
themselves, “the frontispiece, the Prologue and the Dedication by Cervantes
in his 1615 book” (12). But what should interest us most is how Morley
and Listerman try to strike a level of appropriate diction in an evidently
difficult translation task. Cervantes's Entremeses are basically plays
of lower-class types who display wit. Morley tried “to convey Cervantes'
exact meaning” by striking “a mean between current slang and standard
book English” (vi). His work was said to be the product of an academic
mind, but it was faithful to the original. Listerman, on the other hand,
seeks to render the plays into modern English. His is not a bilingual edition,
no doubt because his aims are different. He hopes that his English version
will “serve to stimulate and encourage actual performance” (12).
To allow readers to judge, a typical passage, quoted from the Spanish original
and the two English translations, should suffice:
| JUEZ. | Resoluto veniz! Dezid las quatro causas. | |
| CIRUJANO. | La primera, porque no la puedo ver mas que a todos los diablos; la segunda, por lo que ella sabe; la tercera, por lo que yo me callo; la quarta, porque no me lleuen los demonios quando desta vida vaya, si he de durar en su compañia hasta mi muerte | |
| PROCURADOR. | Bastantissamente ha prouado su intencion! (Cervantes, El juez de los divorcios, Morley 14) | |
| JUDGE. | You know your mind! State the four causes. | |
| DOCTOR. | First, because I can't bear the sight of her more than all the devils in hell; second, for a reason she knows; third, for one |
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| that I don't care to tell; fourth, because I hope demons may fly away with me when I die, if I will remain in her company for the rest of my life. | ||
| PROSECUTING ATTORNEY. | He has proved his case to the utmost sufficiency! | |
| (Morley 15) | ||
| JUDGE: | Approach the bench. State the four cases. | |
| SURGEON: | Well, first off, I'd rather look at the devil than her. Secondly, for the reason she knows very well. The third, I think I'll keep quiet. The fourth reason is that I'll have to spend the rest of my life with her, if the devil doesn't take me. | |
| ATTORNEY: | All right already. You have made your point. | |
| (Listerman 32) |
Other comparisons are equally interesting.
Morley's work offers very accurate notes but no bibliography, no doubt because
his was a pioneer study. Listerman's notes are as good, and he adds a
bibliography of thirty-six entries, most of them posterior to 1970. Both
translators preface their works with a brief but adequate background to the
interludes, and both show an equal enthusiasm for their work. And it is also
curious to examine how these interpreters of Cervantes handle the problem
of translating unknown expressions. Morley honestly confesses that some
seventeenth-century expressions have no known meaning. Thus, “caballo
de ginebra,” “que engaño en mas va que en besarla
durmiendo” and “el embuste del llovista” (his notes 10, 18,
24) went translated as honest guesses, a policy Listerman apparently endorses,
since his equivalents are quite the same.
We are thus in possession of a new complete
English translation of the Entremeses. In informative background and
notes, both works mentioned are quite similar and if one may be somewhat
incomplete in a specific case, it is complemented by the other. Given the
choice, I prefer the 1948 work, if only because it keeps closer to the original
(when rendering the subjunctive and the reflexive forms, thus maintaining
the old flavor, for one thing). But the decision between academic use and
stage performance should determine the choice.
Often we see Cervantes's theater dismissed
with no more than a passing mention. Here we are given the chance to observe
another facet of his genius.
| EVELIO ECHEVARRÍA |
| Colorado State University |
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| Fred Jehle jehle@ipfw.edu | Publications of the CSA | H–Cervantes |
| URL: http://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/articf92/echevari.htm | ||