They would have formed an interestingly contrasting pair of character studies: while Grossman was very elegantly attired in a trouser suit and silk scarf, Wiley loomed darkly in a broad-brimmed hat and bolo. Punctuated by exclamations of warm applause, Hoyem, the founder and director of Arion Press, presented us with an account of the press’s establishment in 1974, its commitment to printing as a craft, and the surely unparalleled achievements of publishing illustrated editions of Moby-Dick, Ulysses, and even the Bible.Īs Hoyem spoke, Grossman and Wiley sat enthroned on two sumptuously upholstered chairs, as though they might have been waiting for Velázquez to make their portraits. The river feeds into an ocean.įittingly then, the Spanish Institute has created an exhibit for the Arion Press edition of Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote, which was illustrated by Wiley. The Quixote Delta has proved fertile ground for world literature, branching off into numerous tributaries, irrigating any number of national traditions and, finally, trickling down into the work of some of the most singular figures in world literature, from Nabokov to Borges, Fielding to Garcia Marquez.īut doesn’t quixotic threaten to swamp Quixote? Aren’t these words, which get coined in tribute to an author or a book, almost always treacherous? Can all the possibilities and implications of a character, or even-more ambitiously-a life’s work, be contained within the semantic boundaries of just one word? We think of Orwellian as adjectival shorthand for a state apparatus of terror and surveillance, but what if we also took it to mean window-pane clarity of expression or even a marked aversion to the poetry of Stephen Spender? In the same way, Don Quixote is not only a cautionary tale about the perils of idealism: among other things, it is also the first great book about books, a visionary parable about the responsibilities of reading and writing fiction that arrived early on in the age of printing. Wiley to explain the book’s riverine significance. In the inevitable absence of Miguel de Cervantes, it was left to the book’s most recent English translator, Edith Grossman, the publisher, Andrew Hoyem, and the artist, William T. Don Quixote de la Mancha is the first modern novel, and two weeks ago I found myself on the Upper East Side, at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, tracing the word part of the way toward its origin.

What does it mean to be “quixotic” today? Are street-corner preachers quixotic? Is Bono? What about film directors who dementedly pursue the unlikely grail of adapting a difficult book for the screen? The word endures because its source endures.

Don quijote de la mancha book