Spanish fiction -- Translations into English; Spanish poetry -- Translations into English
The _Galatea_ survives as the first timorous experiment of a daring
genius. It had no great vogue in Spain, and it is a mistake to say
that "seven editions were called for in the author's lifetime."[96]
At least, bibliographers know that, if they were called for, they
certainly did not appear. As a matter of fact the book was only twice
reprinted while Cervantes was alive, and, as neither of these editions
was published in Spain, it is possible that he was unaware of their
existence. In 1590 the _Galatea_ was reproduced at Lisbon, expurgated
of all heathenish allusions by Frey Bertholameu Ferreyra, acting for
the Portuguese Inquisition; and this incomplete Portuguese reprint
helped to make the pastoral known outside the Peninsula. It so happened
that César Oudin, a teacher of Spanish at Paris--where he had already
(1608) reprinted the _Curioso impertinente_,[97]--travelled through
Spain and Portugal during 1610, and in the course of his journey he
unsuccessfully endeavoured to obtain a copy of the Alcalá _Galatea_.
He had to be content with a copy of the mutilated Lisbon edition, and
this he reprinted in 1611 at Paris,[98] probably with an eye to using
it as a text-book for his French pupils who were passing through an
acute crisis of the pastoral fever. M. Jourdain had not yet put his
embarrassing question to his music and dancing masters:--"Pourquoi
toujours des bergers?" At all events, there is some evidence to prove
that the _Galatea_ was popular in fashionable Parisian circles while
Cervantes still lived. In his _Aprobación_ to the Second Part of _Don
Quixote_, the Licenciado Francisco Márquez Torres records that when,
on February 25, 1615, he visited the French embassy, he was beset
by members of the Envoy's suite[99] who, taking fire at the mention
of Cervantes's name, belauded the First Part of _Don Quixote_, the
_Novelas exemplares_, and the _Galatea_--which one of them knew almost
by heart.[100] It is unlikely that the author himself knew much of
the _Galatea_ by heart; but at about this period Honoré d'Urfé[101]
had restored the vogue of pastoralism in France, and Márquez Torres's
ecstatic Frenchman (if he really existed) only shewed the tendency to
exaggeration characteristic of recent converts. He was, very possibly,
among the last of the elect in Madrid. One edition--some say two
editions--of the _Galatea_ appeared posthumously in 1617: two more
editions (provincial, like their immediate predecessor or predecessors)
were issued in 1618. Then the dust of a hundred years settled down on
all copies of the forgotten book. Three reprints during the eighteenth
century, ten reprints during the nineteenth century, satisfied the
public demand.[102]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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