From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
10.2 (1990): 95-100.
Copyright © 1990, The Cervantes Society of America
A New First: An Illustration of Don Quixote as “Le Capitaine
de Carnaval”, Leipsig, 1614
otice of an interesting
print engraved in 1613 showing Don Quixote and other members of his
carnaval entourage has appeared in Johannes Hartau's Don Quijote
in der kunst (Berlin, Gebr. Mann verlag, 1987,14, 16-17). The often mentioned
engraved titles to the Paris 1618 DQ II translation by François de
Rosset and the London 1620 second edition of Shelton's Part I now lose precedence
as the “first” and “second” known graphic representations
of our knight and squire. A newcomer steps forward into the spotlight to
attract our attention. My article “More
on the sadness of Don Quixote: the first known Quixote illustration,
Paris, 1618 (Cervantes IX, 1 [Spring,
1989] 75-83) must now be amended, which I do readily, but can also be
appended, which I do with no little delight, for I find in this illustration
another earlier seventeenth century representation which helps bolster
the thesis that even at a time when Cervantes's novel was being “received
with laughter”, there was still acceptance by some of the idea of Don
Quixote himself as sad.
The German engraving is found in a book by
Tobias Hübner entitled Cartel, Auffzuge, Vers and Abrisse
. . . published by Henning
95
in Leipsig in 1614. The engraving is by Andreas Bretschneider and bears,
as noted above, the date 1613. The print, a copy of which appears in two
sections in Hartau's book, shows seven rather grotesque figures dressed in
exaggerated, festive, carnival costumes and appearing in procession. The
group is led by “El enano” who announces the coming of the knight
by blowing his horn; next comes “El cura” who carries a windmill;
next “El barbero” who carries a barrel (perhaps representing the
wine spilling episode in I, 35); then “La sin vor (par) Dulcinea del
Toboso” depicted probably as the ugly peasant girl chosen by Sancho
to represent Dulcinea; next comes “El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote
de la Mancha, Cavallero de la Triste Figura”, mounted; next Sancho
Pança, mounted on his donkey; lastly, “La Linda Maritornes”.
These characters are simply clownish figures of fun and derision as seen
in scenes of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, to be laughed at and even taunted
by merry onlookers. Don Quixote appears with a huge ruff collar and plumed
hat, carrying a lance and shield. The remarkable feature about him is that
his head is lowered upon his chest (or onto his huge collar) in gloom,
and his face with eyes somewhat closed, once again, as in the image of Paris
1618, bears a look of sadness. So that we may not mistake this look
for any other, the artist reminds us that this is “El Cavallero de la
Triste Figura” —not with an “ill favoured” or a “beat
up” face, but with an unhappy one.
The appearance of a sad face on Don Quixote
in 1613 is all the more notable since Part II has yet to appear, and it is
in Part II, especially after chapter 58, as I have pointed out in another
article (“The Three Deaths of Don
Quixote,” Cervantes, IX, 2, Fall
1989), that Don Quixote's sadness becomes most pronounced. Bretschneider,
perhaps without good reason, decided to take literally, as others must
have been doing, the expression “El caballero de la Triste
Figura”. In doing so he chose to represent Don Quixote with a sad face.
This is not necessarily incongruous. The truism that it is human to laugh
at the plight of others stands today as it did in the seventeenth century.
Yet there are always those —among these we can consider now a witness
on the order of the artist Bretschneider— who though they are able to
laugh along with the boisterous crowd, through the laughter can still quietly,
perhaps regretfully, take notice of the plight of the sufferer, and maybe
even share his suffering to some degree. It may not be so much a case of
the “burladores burlados” as it is of the “burladores
arrepentidos”. Cervantes himself notes this in the
cat-scratching episode (II, 46) and in Sancho's suffering after the invasion
of his “isle” (II, 53). In each case the mockers, having gone a
bit too far with their pranks, regret the outcome of their actions. The Romantics
who cried for Don Quixote in the nineteenth century are simply to be included
among those supersensitive humans who, despite the laughter, preferred to
dwell on the sadness noted, and then to sympathize, and even empathize with
the suffering knight.
I shall not reiterate here the objections I
have voiced in addressing those who have insisted that Cervantes's novel
is simply funny and that it was the author's intention to make it so. One
cannot ignore Cervantes's originally expressed intentions (Prologue, I) and
his final statement (II, 74) in which he once again attempts to deflate the
value of the chivalric romances. However, this final statement I find to
be mechanical and unconvincing, with the bitterness expressed directed more
at Avellaneda than at the romances. It seems obvious that the author, toward
the end of his work, does recognize the true worth of his character
—particularly when his character is contrasted to the Don Quixote portrayed
by his rival, Avellaneda— and though he keeps up the appearance of parody
and satire, allows Don Quixote finally to die of melancholy, an admission
—perhaps reluctant or even out of place— I have suggested, of the
tacit acceptance of Don Quixote's idealism. Our protagonist, as Don Quixote
or Alonso Quixano, though he has accepted the fact that knights errant have
never existed, still seems to pine for the Golden Age. His figure, though
taken by the carnival crowd as one for derision, even in the seventeenth
century, we can now re-declare, was also one that could be and was by some
taken as sad. The image which appears in the title-page of the Paris 1618
II reiterates this. From this base of sadness there ultimately and logically
developed the figure of the symbolic, praiseworthy knight errant.
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