El Buscapié
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
9781465652065
200 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In presenting the Buscapié to the English public, it may not be superfluous, first to explain the title of this literary curiosity, and next to offer a few observations relative to its nature and origin. The title Buscapié seems to have been suggested by one of those quaint conceits common to the Spanish writers of the sixteenth century. The word etymologically considered, is compounded of busca (seek; from the verb buscar to seek), and pie(foot); and it signifies in the Spanish language a squib or cracker, which, being thrown down in the streets by boys and mischievous persons, rolls about and gets between the feet of passers-by. Towards the close of the Work itself Cervantes thus explains his reason for selecting this title. “I call this little book Buscapié,” he says, “to show to those who seek the foot with which the ingenious Knight of La Mancha limps, that he does not limp with either, but that he goes firmly and steadily on both, and is ready to challenge the grumbling critics who buzz about like wasps.” Everyone acquainted with Spanish literature has regretted the disappearance and supposed total loss of this little Work, which was known to have been written by Cervantes after the publication of the First Part of Don Quixote. Whether or not this production ever was submitted to the press by its author is exceedingly doubtful; but, be that as it may, no printed copy of it has been extant for the space of two centuries. Though manuscript copies were supposed to exist among the hidden treasures of the Biblioteca Real in Madrid, or in the unexplored recesses of Simancas, yet the Buscapié has always been alluded to by writers on Spanish literature as a thing inaccessible and known only by tradition. Great interest was consequently excited a short time ago, by the announcement that a copy of the Buscapié had been discovered in Cádiz. It was found among some old books and manuscripts, sold by auction, previously to which they had been the property of an advocate named Don Pascual de Gándara, who resided in the neighbouring town of San Fernando. Some writers on Spanish literature have hazarded the conjecture that the Buscapié was a sort of key to Don Quixote, and that in it were indicated, if not named, the persons whom Cervantes is supposed to have satirized in his celebrated romance. But such is not the fact. The Buscapié is a vindication of Don Quixote against the unjust critical censure with which that Work was assailed on the appearance of its First Part, which was published in 1604. In the same year there is reason to believe that Cervantes wrote the Buscapié. The manuscript copy of this little Work, recently discovered in Cádiz, is in the scriptory character commonly in use about the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries.
