Jim Swarthout’s Reviews > Don Quixote > Status Update

the devil’s sly, and he puts things under our feet that make us stumble and fall,
and we don’t know how or why

"if he, despite that discouragement, wished to persist against all hope and sail into the wind, why be surprised if he drowned in the middle of the gulf of his folly? "

In all this, certain death cannot be fled/
but I—O wondrous miracle!—I live on/
jealous, absent, disdained, and certain of/
suspicions that fell me, forgotten/
for whom I burn with ever hotter flame,/
and in so much torment I can never see/
even the shadow of hope that, in despair,/
I do not attempt to find; rather, to carry/
my woe to the furthest extreme, I vow/
eternally to live bereft of hope."

Oh, Señor!” said the niece. “Your grace should send them to be burned, just like all the rest, because it’s very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing, and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease.”