{"id":380,"date":"2010-11-18T17:50:54","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T21:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=380"},"modified":"2013-08-28T19:00:22","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T23:00:22","slug":"analects-of-the-core-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2010\/11\/18\/analects-of-the-core-51\/","title":{"rendered":"Analects of the Core: Cervantes on truth in history"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cover<\/a>

Cover of the 2003 Penguin Classics edition<\/p><\/div>\n

-A lo que yo imagino\u2014dijo don Quijote\u2014, no hay historia humana en el mundo que no tenga sus altibajos, especialmente las que tratan de caballer\u00edas, las cuales nunca pueden estar llenas de pr\u00f3speros sucesos.<\/p>\n

-Con todo eso\u2014respondi\u00f3 el bachiller\u2014, dicen algunos que han le\u00eddo la historia que se holgaran se les hubiera olvidado a los autores della algunos de los infinitos palos que en diferentes encuentros dieron al se\u00f1or don Quijote.<\/p>\n

-Ah\u00ed entra la verdad de la historia\u2014dijo Sancho.<\/p>\n

-Tambi\u00e9n pudieran callarlos por equidad\u2014dijo don Quijote\u2014, pues las acciones que ni mudan ni alteran la verdad de la historia no hay para qu\u00e9 escribirlas, si han de redundar en menosprecio del se\u00f1or de la historia. A fee que no fue tan piadoso Eneas como Virgilio le pinta, ni tan prudente Ulises como le describe Homero.<\/p>\n

-As\u00ed es\u2014replic\u00f3 Sans\u00f3n\u2014, pero uno es escribir como poeta y otro como historiador: el poeta puede contar, o cantar las cosas, no como fueron, sino como deb\u00edan ser; y el historiador las ha de escribir, no como deb\u00edan ser, sino como fueron, sin a\u00f1adir ni quitar a la verdad cosa alguna.<\/p>\n

\u2018I suppose,\u2019 added Don Quixote, \u2018that every history that has ever been written has its ups and its downs, especially those that deal with chivalric exploits, for they cannot recount successful adventures alone.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018For all that,\u2019 the young graduate replied, \u2018some of those who\u2019ve read the history say that they\u2019d have been happier if its authors had overlooked some of the countless beatings that Don Quixote received in various confrontations.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s where the truth of the history comes in,\u2019 said Sancho.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018But they could, in all fairness, have kept quiet about them,\u2019 said Don Quixote, \u2018because there is no need to narrate actions that do not alter or undermine the truth of the history, if they are going to result in the discrediting of the hero. I am sure that Aeneas was not as pious as Virgil depicts him, now was Ulysses as prudent as Homer says.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s true,\u2019 Sanson replied, \u2018but it\u2019s one thing to write as a poet and quite another to write as a historian: the poet can narrate or sing events not as they were but as they should have been, and the historian must record them not as they should have been but as they were, without adding anything to the truth or taking anything away from it.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

– from pp. 504-5, Part II, Chapter III, in Don Quixote<\/em><\/a> by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra<\/a>, translated by John Rutherford (Spanish text from Project Gutenberg<\/a>). Today’s analect was suggested by Kalani Hoe McDaniel, Core ’10, CAS ’12<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

-A lo que yo imagino\u2014dijo don Quijote\u2014, no hay historia humana en el mundo que no tenga sus altibajos, especialmente las que tratan de caballer\u00edas, las cuales nunca pueden estar llenas de pr\u00f3speros sucesos. -Con todo eso\u2014respondi\u00f3 el bachiller\u2014, dicen algunos que han le\u00eddo la historia que se holgaran se les hubiera olvidado a los […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3691],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2943,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/2943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}