From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
14.1 (1994): 102-06.
Copyright © 1994, The Cervantes Society of America
| REVIEW |
|
With courage and conviction, Félix
Martínez-Bonati takes on nearly the entire establishment of Cervantists
from Menéndez Pelayo and Rodríguez Marín to Ortega y
Gasset, Américo Castro, and most Cervantine scholars of today. Not
that this is a broadside attack, nor is it an inimical one. With a nod toward
those aspects with which critics have provided him with food for thought,
Martínez-Bonati makes it politely and definitely clear that the proper
reading of Don Quixote has not yet been achieved. His aim is nothing
less than to “consider some very generalized points of confusion that
obstruct the correct understanding of the Cervantine text” (4). If his
theses are valid, he declares, his reading “is the original reading,
that of an educated contemporary of Cervantes. At the same time it is the
best reading, forever prescribed by the text and its pertinent circumstances.
Though it seems boastful, this is a modest claim” (231).
Cervantists may be surprised to learn that
there is no “pensamiento de Cervantes” in Don Quixote, that
is, “the thought of the Quixote is not the thought of Cervantes'
(xiv); that “the philosophy (including the literary theory) present
in the Cervantine work is insignificant” (20); that “the question
whether the Quixote is the first modern novel, the prototype of the
genre, cannot be answered in the affirmative” (64); that the
|
|
||
| 14.1 (1994) | Review | 103 |
|
|
||
“Cervantine discourse (except in occasional speeches by Don Quixote)
is never like the chivalric, not even when it introduces familiar motifs
from books of chivalry” (75); that “the explicit theme of the evil
of books of chivalry in the Quixote has to be understood as a superficial
motif” (16).
At times the author gets caught up in the web
of his own complexity. Referring to instances such as the reaction of Don
Fernando and others to Dorotea's story (“they wished it had lasted longer,
such was the charm with which Dorotea described her sad experiences”)
and Don Fernando's reaction to the captive's tale (“we should be glad
if we could hear it all over again”), Martínez-Bonati calls our
attention to “these duplicities of a meta-poetic dimension,”
“transregional speech acts” (71), and “dislocated literary
commentary” (259). Although I cannot disagree with him, is all this
nomenclature really necessary? Does it not suffice to say that the characters,
suffering from the boredom of their (admittedly literary) existence, find
interest in the travails of others, much as devotees of escapist fiction,
mystery stories, and horror movies are wont to do? And do such reactions
of supposedly rational people not mirror the protagonist's own inability
to separate art and reality? Is this evident point made any clearer by the
labels cited above?
Martínez-Bonati attributes to Cervantes
the “supreme solution to [the] Aristotelian norm of the absolute
beginning” by presenting Anselmo's case (“El curioso
impertinente”) as without cause. Anselmo's “tragic error is
unmotivated; nevertheless, to a penetrating intuition it is part of the
unfathomable order of nature” (206). It sounds very erudite, yet I suggest
a much simpler explanation. There is a cause, and it is the obsession
with the loss of honor because of the possible actions of one's wife, the
essence of much of the Golden Age comedia. Cervantes' position regarding
the Lopean presentation of this theme is well known. Anselmo's irrational
behavior is in reality the product of his rational reductio ad absurdum
of this concern. And we find it purposefully exaggerated in other psychotic
cases in Cervantine writings, notably in El celoso extremeño
and El viejo celoso. But this would argue for Cervantes' thought to
be found in his literary creations, something Martínez-Bonati rejects
(although at one point he does indulge in biographical conjecture, admitting
that he has gone “beyond the limits that I have set for myself”
[212]).
We read of “the rigorous silence that
is maintained in the work with respect to Don Quixote's past
. . . . All that we know of him and the others is what
has occurred in these few months of his insanity. There are no recollections
or narrative anticipations that go beyond this circumscription” (97).
Yet we are then given a list of details —isolated to be sure— that
do give us slight glimpses into the protagonist's past, such as his having
seen Aldonza Lorenzo and his boyhood fondness for the theater. But such
instances, says Martínez-Bonati, are related “in the modality
of uncertainty” (97), by which is meant a qualifier like (“according
to what is understood”). I leave aside the cumbersome nature of such
phraseology, just as the author leaves aside other hints about the protagonist's
past, such as the reference
|
|
||
| 104 | JOHN G. WEIGER | Cervantes |
|
|
||
to his paternal grandmother and his declaration to have descended from the
Quixana family (I.49), in which no uncertainty is suggested, though it is
true that these are statements by Don Quixote himself (which apparently is
what disqualifies his assertion that he has not seen Aldonza as many as four
times). But my quarrel is not with the veracity or uncertainty of these details.
The fact is that such qualifiers abound in the Quixote, yet
Martínez-Bonati cites them only in references to the protagonist's
past or future in order to make the point that such exceptions to the norm
(of limiting the time frame to the events recounted in the book) “stand
out and even surprise us, thereby confirming this design of almost chronicle-like
closure” (97). I am not sure what is meant by “almost
chronicle-like,” but although I agree with the general thrust of the
argument here, the use of the “modality of uncertainty” to make
the simple point is irrelevant unless all the many other statements like
“as far as what is believed” are similarly scrutinized.
Joaquín Casalduero treats the two parts
of Don Quixote as two distinct works, we are told, in support of which
Martínez-Bonati cites Casalduero's use of “‘the 1605
Quixote’ and ‘the 1615 Quixote’”(93). What
are we to conclude then, when Martínez-Bonati himself refers to “the
1605 book,” “the 1605 Quixote,” and the “1605
work” (106-107)? Clearly, Martínez-Bonati does not treat the
two parts as distinct works. Though it is not inaccurate to say that Casalduero
does, the use of these locutions, as in the cases of “modality of
uncertainty,” amounts to the accommodation of a text to support a point
of view.
Martínez-Bonati confuses the role of
the narrator. At one point he speaks of the “parodical posture of
‘historian’ assumed by the fictional narrator” (6), thereby
confusing the narrator and the fictional historian, Cide Hamete. He later
corrects this view by declaring what most Cervantists understand quite well,
namely that the narrator “is in no perceptible respect ‘an Arabic
historian,’ and there is not even a formal reason to call him Cide Hamete,
since he quotes Cide Hamete's words as those of another person” (101-02).
At another point he refers to Don Quixote's interment at the end of Part
I, mentioned by the same narrator who “makes the writer Cervantes a
friend of the Curate, so that Don Quixote becomes a contemporary of the
narrator” (81), erroneously equating the fictive narrator with the author
of the 1585 Galatea. (It is the inclusion of the historical Cervantes
as a friend of the fictional curate that is at issue here. The narrator is
not the author —fictive or historical— alluded to by the priest.
The irony lies in the book's inclusion in Don Quixote's library; the narrator
here serves only to narrate that “fact.”) It is also confusing,
at least to me, how it is the narrator who “makes [Don Quixote]
learn about the publication and translation” of Cide Hamete's volume
one. At other times, Martínez-Bonati refers to the narrator as the
“narrator-author.”
Although he concedes that there is some
inconsistent evolution in the characters, Martínez-Bonati allows himself
to be taken in by the fictive translator's interjections in II.5. Granted
that Sancho has not been transformed
|
|
||
| 14.1 (1994) | Review | 105 |
|
|
||
from peasant to solon, his constant contact with Don Quixote's stories cannot
help but have their effect. We already see in Part I how Don Quixote's narrative
not only captured Sancho's imagination but, parallel to Don Quixote's own
path to madness, the story made Sancho so oblivious to his own circumstances
that he forgot he had a wife and family (I.21). And in I.29, Sancho is perfectly
prepared to believe that his master can kill the giant that has aggrieved
Princess Micomicona, though he does not believe that Don Quixote can deal
with phantoms. (Not to be missed is Sancho's use of “desfaga” here.)
Yet Martínez-Bonati insists that “the characters of the protagonists
remain essentially unchanged to the end: chivalric madness and pedestrian
good sense” (268; emphasis mine), though elsewhere he allows that
“Don Quixote and Sancho change considerably and inverisimilarly in physical
aspect and in personality during the course of the work” (102). Why
is it so difficult to believe that in a private conversation with his wife
months later, Sancho will mimic his master's way of talking? And, as he himself
says in that chapter, much of what he says is not of his own invention,
“for all that I mean to say are the judgments of the reverend father
who preached in this town the past Lent,” an explanation he also uses
for one of his “Solomonic” judgments as governor. And if we are
to credit the “translator” here, the entire chapter is apocryphal,
yet in the very next chapter the narrator refers to Sancho's wife as Teresa
Cascajo, as she had insisted in that “apocryphal” chapter.
Martínez-Bonati is a fine reader of
detail. He notes, for instance, that during the dialogues in Don Diego de
Miranda's home, the narrow focus is centered on the foreground, leaving Don
Diego's wife completely out of vision. If most of us are aware of this, how
many will also have noticed that the range of vision, “with no explanation,
. . . even excludes Sancho” (100)? What this reviewer misses,
however, is Martínez-Bonati's explanation of this exclusion. Similarly,
reference is made to passages of “silent irony,” and we are told
that “there is a good example in I.21” (101). Cervantists may be
expected to recall this chapter's content, but why not simply tell us? If
there is a reason to bring such matters to our attention, why are we not
given the benefit of the author's insight? And why is it necessary to tell
us, when citing a passage from Genesis, that Abraham was “at that time
called Abram” (205)? On the other hand, the author is very clear when
he explains why Don Quixote disappears by going to sleep immediately upon
his return to the inn following his stay in the Sierra Morena: not for
psychological reasons pertaining to his character but for “metapoetic
reasons” (235). That is, he would simply be in the way of the conclusion
of the stories that find their denouement at the inn. Here Martínez-Bonati
criticizes Howard Mancing's reading as “out of place.” (On an earlier
occasion, he similarly labels Mancing's assumption about the characterization
of the priest “out of place” [87].) The same argument regarding
Don Quixote's disappearance at the inn is presented elsewhere in the volume
to refute E.C. Riley's “one-dimensional” and “mistaken”
reading (58). Martínez-Bonati's argument is coherent, particularly
given the perspective applied to
|
|
||
| 106 | JOHN G. WEIGER | Cervantes |
|
|
||
his analysis, but it is unfortunate that at times the tone of such disagreements
takes on the appearance of condescension: The volume ends with a nod to
“contemporary Cervantes scholarship, which owes a great deal to both
Riley and Mancing” (235). Indeed.
This book is not intended to be a series of
interpretations of the episodes of Don Quixote. The author's purpose
is the study of the work's poetics. And he is at his best when he is analyzing
not the plot but the anatomy of Don Quixote, not its characterization
but its poetic architecture, not its psychological depictions but its response
to poetological (the author's word) and phenomenological analysis. It is
not an easy book to read, partly because of its heavy reliance on nomenclature,
partly because of its complex sentences that are often marred by parenthetical
commentary that tends to divert the reader's focus. Nonetheless, it is an
important book.
“Don Quixote” and the Poetics
of the Novel is a thought-provoking study. Despite some of the shortcomings
that I perceive in it, it merits careful study by Cervantists. Much of its
material is original and challenges the assumptions and presumptions of
distinguished scholars in some of the most often cited works on Don
Quixote. Whether one agrees or disagrees with its theses, its reading
is rewarding and forces a rethinking. This is, after all, the purpose of
scholarship.
| JOHN G. WEIGER |
| University of Vermont |
|
|
Prepared with the help of Sue Dirrim |
|
| Fred Jehle jehle@ipfw.edu | Publications of the CSA | H–Cervantes |
| URL: http://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/artics94/weiger.htm | ||