Recently, I went to Laie in search of a copy of Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Platero y yo (1914) for my nine-year-old niece. I asked for an edition aimed at children, meaning illustrated, and I was offered instead an adapted edition. Scandalized that someone had dared touch the original, I bought her a beautiful edition commemorating the 100th anniversary of its original publication… with illustrations. Platero y yo, as everyone knows, is not a book for children but the poetical language is perfectly accessible, and, in fact, I bought my niece the book on the basis of her dad’s good memories of reading it as a child. It worked, she loved it (well, except the ending, too sad of course).

Next thing I know, the internet is full of comments on the RAE’s new edition for secondary school students of Miguel de Cervantes’ El Quijote –and edition adapted by Arturo Pérez Reverte, one of RAE’s members and, of course, a well-known author himself. RAE itself announces that in this way they finally fulfil the ‘Real Orden’ of 12 October 1912, commissioning this institution to produce a ‘popular’ edition and one for schools, apart from the critical edition (this was issued in 2004, edited by Francisco Rico). Obviously, I’m not the first to note that in 1912 Spain was a mostly illiterate country, which may have made these other editions necessary. But today??

During his presentation of the new edition in Mexico, Arturo Pérez Reverte took the chance to berate, precisely, the “illiterate Ministers” of Culture and Education that have eliminated El Quijote from the compulsory school curriculum in at least six Spanish Castilian-speaking countries. He called for a return of Cervantes’ masterpiece to all school systems in this linguistic area, on the habitual grounds that the book guarantees a much needed education in the shared language and in the values needed for today’s life. I marvel how far Matthew Arnold’s shadow extends, even in countries culturally alien to his preaching. Claiming that a book published in 1605 (1615, the sequel) is essential to face life in 2014 is odd, to say the least. And that the person making this claim is the local equivalent of Ken Follett and not of Harold Bloom is even stranger.

What has Pérez Reverte done to El Quijote? As RAE informs (I guess this is his own text), he has streamlined the narration, pushing to the margins the digressions and the interpolated tales (whether to footnotes, appendixes, or links I’m not sure). As if this were Frankenstein’s creature, the RAE’s press note refers to the “special attention devoted to the cleanliness of the stitches” used to conceal the cuts in the original. Chapters have been re-numbered and fused together… an operation accompanied by the truly cheeky claim that the integrity of the text has been respected. Now fancy Javier Mariscal adding colour to Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ on the grounds that it’s muted tones bore contemporary audiences and you get what Pérez Reverte has done.

Juan Ángel Juristo, absolutely indignant, claims that RAE has simply and plainly “expurgated” Cervantes (http://www.cuartopoder.es/detrasdelsol/la-rae-publica-una-edicion-manipulada-del-quijote/5849). He mentions as an example to follow Tales from Shakespeare, the popular versions for children of the plays that Charles (and his sister Mary!) Lamb published in 1807. If you are to adapt a text for children, his point is, do it openly, and don’t pretend that you’re still offering the original, an argument I subscribe even though I think that adaptations are valid only in very particular circumstances. If young scholars are bored by El Quijote we need to learn why, he concludes, and not mutilate the book.

I was myself one of the scholars bored to death when aged 15 by El Quijote. Reading it put me off Spanish Literature for many years, as I was reading at the same time the much more exciting work by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and similar English classics. When I asked my current students of Victorian Literature how they would solve the problem of making El Quijote attractive to teenagers, they suggested inviting young students to read just some chapters and let them decide when to read the whole book. Checking this morning how the teaching of Literature is organised in Catalonia, I have come across a document indicating that this is what local teachers do (I mean in the itineraries for ‘Humanities and Socials Sciences’ and ‘Arts’ of ‘Batxillerat’). The same applies to the Catalan classic Tirant lo Blanch (1490).

Logically, the additional problem to be considered is the kind of literacy possessed by current teenagers, who may be absolutely proficient in following complex videogames or TV series but poor readers (a problem I believe made worse by young adult fiction). El Quijote was not written with teenagers in mind and it is possible best read in a more mature phase of life, when the reader approaches it with a much bigger cultural baggage. The concern, however, is that unless young readers are force-fed El Quijote they will never read it; likewise, I myself face the problem of having to force my second-year students to read Victorian Literature in the original language when most are not ready at all. Reading just chapters is not the solution at a university level, and adapted versions are totally out of the question. Pérez Reverte’s monstrosity exposes a problem which has no easy solution. In the end, as I know very well, students simply choose to read complete books, a segment or a summary…

As for RAE, instead of contributing to launching a dubious edition which may bring money to its coffers (and to Santillana, the publishing house) but no prestige, it should embark on a much needed project to guide readers beyond their teenage years. To begin with, since Rico’s critical edition is freely available online (http://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/clasicos/quijote/), RAE should develop a hipertextual digital resource (which might also appeal to teenage readers).

Actually, I would engage those teenage readers in producing the hypertext… and let Arturo Pérez Reverte continue to write his novels. May they never be compulsory reading…

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