(Is there a recorded version anywhere, though?) I would LOVE to see it performed, but that seems highly unlikely. The English left me feeling ambivalent towards it (turning it into prose is a travesty), but after conquering the Spanish, I find I like “El burlador de Sevilla” much better. Assuming the section hadn’t been omitted, of course.) Thank goodness for online translation dictionaries! (I will admit, the English translation did at least give me a go by to help with some of the trickier places. I feel like that’s taking poetic license a bit far! So all this to say, instead of reading through the Spanish for a general sense of the language and sounds of the original, instead I found myself trying to understand the entire thing.
But on top of that, lines were reassigned to different speakers, sections were left out and an entire passage (a lengthy three-page monologue) was dramatically condensed and reassigned to a different speaker in a different act and there were even brand-new lines of dialogue added†. ( Though Grossman proves it very doable.) Of course, it turns out that I’m a reader that wants the translation to at least follow the from of the original. Fair enough, translation of poetry is understandably difficult. First, it was in prose rather than making any attempt to match the poetry of the original. Turns out, the English translation I have* is…lacking. The English read quickly enough, although I found myself with nothing to say about the play. It was an easy enough decision–I had both on hand, hand-me-downs from an aunt who once-upon-a-time was a Spanish teacher (before moving on to other things). At first it seemed it would work out well: similar to my method of reading The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance, I decided read an English translation followed by the Spanish. You know how sometimes you decide to do something that seems like a really good idea at the time, but in execution turns out to be not so great? Yeah, that would be my brilliant idea to read “El burlador de Sevilla” in Spanish. My edition from Diez Comedias del Siglo de Oro, 2nd edition
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