DUCHAPLNÝ ŠĽACHTIC DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA: KONTEXT VZNIKU PRVEJ SLOVENSKEJ ADAPTÁCIE CERVANTESOVHO ROMÁNU „EL INGENIOSO HIDALGO DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA“

The study reviews the first Slovak adaptation of Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote. It maps the route of this novel on its way towards Slovak and Hungarian audiences, pinpointing the specifics of its reception in the 19th century in the context of national literatures. Despite the fact that the first complete Slovak translation of the novel appeared only in 1950, the novel Bendegucz, Gyula Kolompos und Pista Kurtaforint published by Ján Chalupka in 1841 indicates a much earlier presence and significance of this topic. The first Hungarian translation of the novel from the Spanish original by Vilmos Győry appeared between the years 1873 and 1876. It achieved importance in the Slovak context as well, considering that the translation by the Slovak translator Ján Rovnan ml. (Milo Urban) from 1926 has some significant similarities with the Hungarian translation, particularly in the translation of aphorisms, but also in calling the knight Don Quixote “The Sad Face”. Because the differences between these two texts are, however, so comprehensive, it is not possible to prove that the Slovak text was based on the Hungarian. One of the following Hungarian adaptations based on Győry’s translation, the one by Vilmos Huszár published in 1900, however, bears a very strong resemblance to the Slovak version of 1926 and their concordance can be considered a confirmation of the hypothesis that the first Slovak adaptation of Cervantes’s novel was indeed created as a second-hand translation of the Hungarian adaptation for the young people.