Don Quixote A New Translation by Edith Grossman Miguel de Cervantes
In the author’s prologue to what is now called part I of Don
Quixote (part II appeared ten years later, in 1615, following the
publication of a continuation of the knight’s adventures written by
someone using the pseudonym “Avellaneda”), Cervantes said this
about his book and the need to write a preface for it:
I wanted only to offer it to you plain and bare, unadorned by a
prologue or the endless catalogue of sonnets, epigrams, and
laudatory poems that are usually placed at the beginning of books.
For I can tell you that although it cost me some effort to compose,
none seemed greater than creating the preface you are now
reading. I picked up my pen many times to write it, and many
times I put it down again because I did not know what to write; and
once, when I was baffled, with the paper in front of me, my pen
behind my ear, my elbow propped on the writing table and my
cheek resting in my hand, pondering what I would say, a friend of
mine ... came in, and seeing me so perplexed he asked the reason,
and I ... said I was thinking about the prologue I had to write for
the history of Don Quixote ....