n searching of lost footsteps: two readers of Don Quijote from the 19th century

Abstract

The article presents the results of a preliminary research on Fran Zakrajšek (1835–1903) and Silverio de Baguer (1838–1927), contextualizing them within the framework of the Slovene literary history. Contemporaries and both residents of Gorizia who moved in different cultural and national circles, they nevertheless had a common interest: Cervantes’s Quijote. The oldest edition of Don Quixote in Castilian currently present in Slovenia is located in the library of France Bevk in Nova Gorica and dates from 1671. The library acquired it in 1955 and recently we have know that the book was a part of the Silverio de Baguer museum in Dobrovo (Dobra). The first translation of Don Quixote is the work of Fran Zakrajšek and was published in Goriški letnik (Yearbook of Gorizia) in 1864, also in Gorizia.