María Rosa Lojo, author of Awaiting the Green Morning.

This page features the translation work of Brett Alan Sanders. For more information on Brett's translation, feel free to contact him.

Don Quixote on the Ecology

(originally appeared in The Quill & Ink, November 2006)

by Juan Montalvo

from chapter 16 and the beginning of chapter 17 of the
Ecuadorian’s posthumous work (Barcelona: 1898) called
Capítulos que se le olvidaron a Cervantes
(Chapters That Slipped Cervantes’s Memory)

As Don Quixote was saying this, he cast a glance to one side of the road and saw a man, rather well on in years, who was having two beautiful cypresses hewn down from a group that offered dark, fresh shade for a good distance around. He stopped and asked him why he was having such beautiful trees demolished, in an instant destroying the work for which nature had required so many years.

“I’m demolishing them,” the old man responded, “because they produce nothing and pointlessly occupy the estate. These and the rest, which are no fewer than fourteen, I’m bringing down.”

“Might there be a way,” Don Quixote replied, “to avoid this slaughter? If the value of these cypresses incites you, I’ll pay you for them. Then they may remain standing.”

“That would go part and parcel with selling the land, which isn’t what I have in mind,” the owner said. “Rather I am clearing it. Not so much to take advantage of these trees, which aren’t worth a great deal, as to give the land itself over to farming.”

“Cut, they are worth nothing,” the knight replied. “Alive and beautiful as they are, they are worth more than the pyramids of Egypt. And thus I entreat and strongly urge you to consider whether it’s not better for you to change your resolution and make a gift to Mother Nature, who takes pleasure in her children’s shade.”

“All shade is harmful,” the bloodthirsty old man argued. “Shade gives me nothing. Rather it takes from me what this estate could yield. Today I’m leaving it as bare as the palm of my hand. I’ll plow it right away, I’ll sow lettuce and cabbage. And from now, just as soon as you return this way, Your Worship is invited to the banquet.”

“Cease all jesting, since that’s not why I’ve come,” Don Quixote said. “For the last time, I express and ask for what is already expressed and asked for. And take your lettuce somewhere else.”

“Elegant performance,” the man responded. And despite his age, because in his day he had been something of a roughneck; or perhaps Don Quixote’s figure, along with his pretensions, moved him to make himself ridiculous: “Elegant notification. And in the event that I don’t go along with that, does Your Worship plan to threaten me with your lance?”

“In your own words!” Don Quixote replied, charging then at the old man. Who by way of defense let himself fall, feet in the air, from the stone on which he was seated. “Concur,” the knight shouted, holding him in check with his lance, “that these trees remain uninjured. Offer, promise, and even swear not to touch hem nor a hair of their beards.”

“I submit to however much Your Worship should command,” the wag responded, seeing how that menacing point glistened. “Come on, friends! Leave me those trees standing. And don’t offend them with another blow of the ax, since that’s this good knight’s will.”

There was nothing more urgent than to save life, and afterwards establish what amends should be made. But the knight-errant spurred on his steed and took off without adding a word. While at the same time the vanquished was sluggishly picking himself up, hurling epithets against the madman who had put him in that position. Then Don Quixote returned and said: “Those grooves or wounds in the cypresses can be fatal to them. Fill them at once with wax, and spread a layer of moist soil over it so that there won’t be any risk of their withering and dying.”

At that time two horsemen were arriving on either side of a carriage pulled by four proud mules richly harnessed and wearing very tall plumes on their headstalls. It was not possible for someone like Don Quixote to allow anyone to continue on their way without some inquiry, much less a procession that smelled so much like an adventure. He planted himself in the middle of the road and said to the postillion: “Good man, stop and respond point by point. Who are these who are coming this way? From where are they coming? To where and to what purpose are they going?”

“It is the Most Illustrious Bishop of Jaén,” the postillion responded. “He is coming from Madrid and going to his diocese.”

“Welcome,” the knight responded. “Now advise the Most Illustrious Bishop of Jaén that Don Quixote of La Mancha wishes to take with him some of his episcopal blessings.”

“Who is it?” they asked from within the carriage.

“The knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who wishes to greet the Lord Bishop,” responded one of the men on horse.

“Don Quixote of La Mancha? I know him. The famous knight whose history makes the rounds of the world. Well, I would be glad to see him. Tell him that, if it pleases him, he approach the carriage door.”

Don Quixote dismounted then and did what the prelate wished, greeting him with a bow.

“Is Your Worship, Sir Knight, the same Don Quixote of La Mancha whose deeds the historian Cid Hamete Benengeli has praised to the clouds?”

“I doubt that there be two knights of that name,” Don Quixote responded with great assurance. “As for he who dared assert to me that he had conquered a certain Don Quixote in singular battle, I already proved to him that he was deceived, not to say lying.”

“That audacious individual was the Knight of the Forest,” said the Bishop. “What is Your Worship doing in these environs? We thought you to be in Trebizond, and have even heard that you had crossed over to the island of Lipadusa to engage in combat with whomever might possess the sword Durindana.”

“Should I have notice of that famous sword,” Don Quixote responded, “I will cross over, not only to Lipadusa, but to Estotilán and Norumbeca. And to win it I will go arm to arm with King Gradasso, and even with that bewitched Don Orlando.”

“Once that bewitched Don Orlando is subdued by Your Worship,” said the Bishop in his turn, “what obstacle will there be to your taking from him, not only his sword, but also his lady? In this way, Angelica the Fair will come as it were to supplant Lady Dulcinea.”

“No, Sir,” Don Quixote responded. “Durindana and nothing else will I take from him. Nor what should I do with that affected, fickle damsel? Who takes off when it catches her fancy with some Moorish jackanapes, as inexperienced in war as in love? In speaking so, Your Most Illustrious Grace, you sully the reputations of champions like Orlando the Bewitched and Rinaldo of Montalbán.”

“If it doesn’t anger Your Worship,” the Bishop answered, “I repeat my question. What business brings Your Worship through these environs?”

“I am going in search of adventures,” Don Quixote responded. “If chance hadn’t guided me this way, just now a deed would have been done that no knight-errant would tolerate. Your Most Illustrious Lordship should leave his gig. Come see with your own eyes whether my profession matters to the world. And whether those of us who follow it lose our time and win our fame at little cost.”

The Bishop got out, considering whether some crime might really have been attempted there, and whether even now it was possible to prevent some misfortune.

“Does Your Most Illustrious Grace behold this small forest whose dark green trees rise in the shape of pyramids and spread forth over the ground this dense, inviting shade? In truth I tell you that there was not going to remain branch on branch, because if I had not arrived to save them from the destroying ax, this inhuman being would have cut them all to the earth.”

The Biblical form of speech used by Don Quixote seemed good to the Bishop. Understanding the situation perfectly, and to humor the knight, he expressed that such an outrage greatly displeased him. And he joined him in extolling the inhumanity of one who had thus wanted to kill those beautiful giants of creation. Perhaps the prelate was speaking in good faith too, since every heart where noble sentiments dwells has hidden connections with nature.

A tree that has lingeringly received the mysterious virtue of the centuries, along with the recondite essence of the earth, is an object that instills an almost religious respect and love. Yet there are those who in an instant destroy the work of two hundred years to take advantage of the puny circumference that a tree makes useless with its shade. To greed nothing is sacred. If the Phoenix bird were to fall into his hands, he would eat it or sell it. What does not produce, the speculator does not want. To the miserly soul, beauty is a chimera. A fool with neither light in his mind nor music in his heart does not attain the ability to enjoy it, nor does his soul possess the requisites that are needed in order for the wonders of the universe to make an impression on it. Only the thoughtful man whose deity has him continually aware, marveling at the Omnipotent’s works and becoming mad about Nature’s graces, ever kneels before the Parnassus.

* * *

Whether for fear of the one or respect for the other, the old man apologized as best he could and confirmed his promise to not carry forward a work that he had in no way considered to merit censure.

“And why wouldn’t it?” said the Bishop. “If you didn’t have an imperative need, it wasn’t at all Christian thus to destroy, purely for the sake of it, such a beautiful effect of our Mother Earth’s virtue.”

“It seems to me,” Don Quixote said in his turn, “that the Gentiles were on many occasions more pious than we. That veneration of theirs for the sacred forests reveals a whole world of religion in their soul. The woods of Delphi, the forest of Dodona, were temples for them.”

“Your Worship shouldn’t claim authority for the Gentiles,” said the Bishop in his turn. “The patriarchs of the ancient law rendered almost divine honors to trees. Abraham planted a cypress, a cedar, and a pine, which by the work of Heaven became a single tree. Consequently that tree was looked upon as a wonder and a thing truly destined for the Divinity. Therefore it was cut down for Solomon’s temple. And what does Your Worship say about the famous oak beneath whose shade that very patriarch of whom I’ve just spoken pitched his campaign tents? The people bowed before it, and they made pilgrimage to the plains of Mamre to see that witness of such great things.”

“I have read,” responded Don Quixote, “that the Japanese, despite being barbarians, respect trees as much as their gods. They plant them everywhere and with them give shade to the roads. Because of that it’s a pleasure to stroll, beneath those regions’ blazing sun, along those fresh, green routes.”

“Among some peoples,” the Bishop said, “those who destroy certain birds are rigorously punished. As in England, where no one can kill eagle, crane, nor raven. Small wonder if the Japanese punish the killer of a tree.”

“If it’s not permitted to kill ravens in England,” Don Quixote answered fervently, “it’s not out of respect for that animal but so as not, through wounding one of them, to injure King Arthur, who now moves through the world under a spell put on him by his sister, the enchantress Morgan le Fay, and who in due time must return to his real shape and rule over the English. For it was never her intention, when she put the spell on him, to annihilate so great a king and valorous a knight, but perhaps to free him from some danger, and make the days race past him until the time should be accomplished for returning him to his own being and person. Your Lordship knows that this can be done without difficulty, or time can do nothing against those who are under an enchantment. A thousand years pass, and still they emerge with not a white hair nor wrinkle more than when the enchantment was worked upon them.”

Translator’s Note on Names

Principal aspect of Don Quixote’s pleasing madness, as exhibited plainly at the end of this excerpt (as in the brief moment earlier when the Bishop makes unhappy reference to the fickle Angelica in the same breath as the knight’s idealized Lady Dulcinea), is his unquestioning belief in the characters and places of chivalric myth. Vital to Monsalvo’s essayistic imitation (as to Cervantes’s novelistic original) is the parodic profusion of unlikely (and essentially untranslatable) names. While names like Arthur, Morgan le Fay, Gradasso, and Orlando; Delphi, Dodona, Mamre, and Trebizond are if not always recognizable at least verifiable, others, like Lipadusa, Estotilán, and Norumbeca appear to be fanciful. The Spanish Trapisonda is definitively Trebizond, the former Byzantine empire, and is commonly named in the chivalric romances and thrice in the original Quixote. Less clear is Lipadusa, though perhaps it echoes the Phillipine city of Lipá or the Lipari islands in the vecinity of Sicily; or more likely, as Eva Gillies suggests to me in a personal communication, the almost certainly territorial family name Lampedusa, of the 20 th-century Sicilian author of The Leopard: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Estotilán, for its part, might play off of the Spanish demonstrative pronoun estotro (this other: if not to This Place, perhaps to This Other). Norumbeca, finally, does ring somewhat of the Spanish Noruega, for Norway.