Marcela at Chrysostom’s Funeral

A new translation and versification of Marcela's funeral oration from Don Quixote.

A few weeks ago I published a translation of Marcela’s funeral oration, along with some background about the piece and my love for it. As I mentioned there, I conceived early on of creating a verse translation of the same, but of course, such work would take longer.

But lo, I have finished! and a lot sooner than I had first thought I would. After getting several verses down in terza rima, it became the sort of thing I would beaver at just before bed, so that I progressed steadily and am now able to present you the work.

I decided not to versify Don Quixote’s response to Marcela’s speech, but as I think it important to how one understands the speech, I’ve included those paragraphs here as I had translated them originally.

In Cervantes’ original, the speech is not versified, which is only remarkable because Ambrosio’s song which accuses Marcela of being a wild beast, a veritable basilisk, a cruel woman, is indeed versified as fashionably as possible.

This works very well in the original. The Quixote is, of course, concerned with taking the wind out of the sails of blow-hards, so that Ambrosio’s fine verses end up seeming flat and silly once Marcela is done with what is effectively a philosophical discourse (as mentioned in the previous publication, rather Aristotelian).

That being said, I like that this provides a little balance. If Grisóstomo deserves a song for what we learn is his ugliness, Marcela deserves a song for her beauty.

In case you are not familiar with this episode of the Quixote, I include my introduction from the last post:

In Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, Marcela is a divinely beautiful shepherdess who lives alone in the woods, of her own free will. Well, sort of her own free will. She has been driven to choose this life by the unrelenting pursuit of her beauty by the men of her region, who desire her with the courtliest of love; nonetheless, she is perfectly happy.

The reader finds himself at the funeral of Grisóstomo, the “love-struck” (read “lust-struck” or “self-struck”) shepherd who killed himself after being rejected by Marcela. All of Marcela’s pursuers/suitors, present at this burial set in the bucolic hills, are driven by a Girardian mimetic desire for her, and so they naturally blame her for the death of their friend/rival; she has killed him by her cruelty in rejecting a love he was helpless to control. Yes, this is incel rage.

They must scapegoat her: their desire is not for Marcela the woman, but rather for the desire of their rivals, which is to possess the most beautiful woman in the world.

In her discourse, Marcela lays all of this bare.

Translated and versified from Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 14, by Joffre Swait. Text of the epilogue also translated by Joffre Swait.


Marcela at Chrysostom’s Funeral
Este miserable a quien tu crueldad quitó la vida

I come, oh Ambrosius, for none of the reasons you claim,
but to return for my own sake and make 
well known how out of bounds you slander my fame. 

You all have blamed me for the death and heartache
of Chrysostom; and so, all you I beseech
to grant me attention, for Heaven’s heavy sake.

I shall instruct your minds, by my brief speech,
on beauty and good, if you to discretion aspire.
Heaven made me, in beauty unimpeached,

so shapely that, impotent to resist its fire, 
you love me as my shapeliness impels,
and by this love you show and say and desire 

that I be obligated to love you as well.
By the natural reason God gave man I know, 
that all which is beautiful must love compel;

Yet how, if a man on object his love should bestow, 
be that which is loved for its beauty thus constrained
to love that which to love had first made show?

What’s more, it may be that the lover of beauty be stained
By ugliness, and as that which is ugly of hate
Is worthy, they are most wicked who make the refrain:

“I desire you for your beauty and further state
That you must love me though I ugly be.”
Two beauties indeed on a single course may mate,

And run beside each other equally.
But their desires will not equally run;
To love is not the fate of every beauty.

For some gladden the sight and do not shun 
Their own wills; for if all beauties would fall 
in love and surrender themselves, a wild run 

of confused and unpath’d wills would them befall:
not knowing of what they be ignorant,
And down what road their object might them call.

Because, as beautiful subjects are infinite 
in number, so would their desires be.
And, as has been said most eloquent, 

true love is not split, but voluntary.
Being that this is so, as I believe,
why do you by force desire me

give up my will, obliged, you conceive, 
by no more than that you say you love me so,
and if I love not you, then you I bereave?

If, as heaven’s light beheld me below 
and made me shapely, it had made me hideous, 
would it be fair for my complaints to flow 

and cry in tones, like yours, mean and piteous?
Consider that I did not choose the form 
I have, which heaven gave me by the grace of Jesus, 

I did not ask nor even choose this charm.
And just as the viper does not deserve to be blamed 
for venomous bite, even for death or harm, 

for nature has given it to her unashamed,
nor do I deserve words of spite
for being beautifully shaped and framed.

For beauty in an honest woman is like
a distant fire or a sharp brand,
which only burns or cuts one who might

dare to approach and lay upon them his hand.
The virtues, and honor, are adornments for the soul. 
The body lacking them from beauty is banned.

If honesty is one among the whole
set of virtues that most adorns the body,
beautifies the soul, and both extols,

why must the one who is loved for her beauty 
lose it, simply for being the object of one 
who, by his own whim, in the crudity

of all his strength and industry seeks to shun
and separate her from her honesty, 
to leave her, from the set of virtues, none?

In order to be able to live free 
As I was born, the fields’ solitude I chose;
My company in these mountains is the trees;

my mirrors, the water that in these ravines flows; 
with trees and waters I communicate 
my thoughts and beauty, and we mutually grow.

I am the sword set away at a distance great,
I am a lovely fire who needs not be touched.
I may be left to be in my blessed state.

Those whom I have by sight with love struck,
I pray I have disabused by my words,
that they, not I, will have demurred and blushed.

If desires are sustained by hopes, I aver
that I have given none to Chrysostom, 
it could well be said that that which spurred

the man to his death was his brazen dome,
that his stubbornness killed him well before 
my cruelty would have buried him in the loam.

And if it were said that because his thoughts at their core
were honest, I was obliged to turn and requite,
I reply, that when in this same place he swore

the goodness of his intention, uncovered right
in that spot where now is dug his grave, I said
that my part was to live far from man’s sight,

in perpetual solitude, the soil my bed,
that only the earth would harvest my beauty’s fruit;
if he, by all his dissembling wishes were led 

to stubborn be beyond hope, to circumvolute
against the wind, so what if he throttle and drown
his own flesh halfway across life’s route?

If I had entertained him, I had let down
the truth, if I had pleased him it had been against
my best intended purpose, reputation, and renown.

Betraying my disabusal, insisting incensed,
he despaired without ever being hated; now look and see
if the blame for his sorrows should at my feet be dispensed!

If you were deceived, lodge your suit or plea. 
If pledges were not delivered, make known your despair. 
If I promised you, publish for all to see.

Let the one I called on confess the affair,
let the one I let in boast of it to us all.
But he to whom I did not promise, nor cared

either to deceive or admit, should not call
me cruel nor killer of men, as it has not pleased
heaven that I should love by destiny’s thrall,

and to think I’d love by choice is ill-conceived.
Oh let this general disabusal serve 
to relieve those who perceive they be aggrieved!

Each of those who solicit me (what nerve!)
for the satisfaction of their appetites
and advantage should modestly get what they deserve.

Let it be known that those I do not requite,
if they die, as they say, for me, they die not as disgraced
or jealous men, for I’ve pledged no man my plight.

Let he who calls me basilisk or debased 
leave me, as a harmful and evil beast; 
may he not serve me who calls me ingrate; 

may the one who calls me unknowable as the East
never know me; may he who thinks me cruel, 
a beastly ingrate, not follow this basilisk unleashed.

This cruel unknowable woman shall not be ruled
or seek to serve nor know such a one,
nor follow one so capable of being self-fooled.

His own flagrant desire killed Chrysostom.
Why should my pious dealings and modest bearing 
be blamed for his impatient incontinent run?

If I preserve my cleanness in the sharing
of my company with these trees, 
why should he want me, all other loves forswearing,

to surrender that purity to him, to him only please?
I, as you all know, have my own riches;
I covet no others; in my condition of ease 

I am free, and have no taste for submission; 
I neither love nor hate anyone;
I do not deceive, nor have ambition 

to one mock, another tease, another shun. 
The honest talk of the shepherds thrills, 
and my care for my goats is all I need for fun.

My desires have as their end these hills, 
and if they step out from here it is to ponder 
the sky’s beauty, steps which the soul fill
as it walks the path to its first home in wonder.


And in saying this, without wanting to hear any kind of response, she turned her back through the narrowest cleft of a mountain that was nearby, leaving all those who were there as much astonished by her discretion as her beauty.

And some (from among those who were wounded by the mighty arrow of the light of her fair eyes) made as if they desired to follow after her, without taking in the enlightening disabusal they had heard.

Upon seeing this, it seemed to Don Quixote that here it would become him to use his knighthood well, succoring a damsel in distress, and he put his hand upon the hilt of his sword, saying in a loud and intelligible voice:

– No person, of whatever estate or condition he be, shall dare to follow the lovely Marcela, under pain of falling under my furious indignation. She has shown with clear and sufficient reasons that little or no fault has she in the death of Chrysostom, and how far from her it be to condescend to the wishes of any of her lovers; for this cause it would be just that, rather than be followed and pursued, she be honored and esteemed by all the good folk of the world, for it is manifest that in this world she is alone in living with such devout and honest intent.