I've started reading Cervantes, Don Quixote. Published in 1605
it has been translated from the Spainish and has a definitely modern
tone of humor. How much of this modernism is a result of the
transaltion, I do not know.Â
Here are some quotes:
Don Quixote, from reading tales of knight-hood, has become bewitched by and his life has become an imitation of, these tales.
"O
Dulcinea, my princess! Sovereign of this captive heart! Grievious
wrong hast thou done me by dismissing me and by cruelly forbiding me
by decree to appear in thy beauteous presense. I pray thee, sweet lady,
to remember this poor enslaved heart, which for love of thee suffers so
many pangs."
To such words he added a sequuence of other
foolish notions all in the manner of those that his books had taught
him, imitating their language as nearly as he could.
1
Here, after his lady is
insulted, Don Quixote charges, with his horse, the taunters. However,
his decrepit horse falls and both he and the horse end up on the
ground. The taunters escape. Don Quixote yells after them;Â
"Flee not, cowardly rabble! Wait, slavish herd! It is not my fault, but the fault of my horse, that I am stretched here."
2
As I said, I've just started reading it and it is very long, 1000 + pages.
1Don Quixote, Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Signet Cassics®, February 2001, pg. 63
2
Don Quixote, Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Signet Cassics®, February 2001, pg. 79