From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
6.2 (1986): 123-40.
Copyright © 1986, The Cervantes Society of America
Don Quijote with Roque Guinart: The Case for an Ironic
Reading
N THE HISTORY
of illustrations of Don Quijote, a popular subject has been the Catalan
bandit, Roque Guinart, whom Don Quijote and Sancho meet on the way to Barcelona
(Part II, 60-61). The most famous of the Romantic illustrators, Gustave
Doré depicts Roque with a plumed hat, wrapped in a huge black cape
and holding the point of his sword to the neck of a terrified underling.
Don Quijote stands impassively among the crowd of onlookers, while Sancho
cowers behind his master. In many ways, this engraving is emblematic of the
critical attitude toward these chapters. Roque has been treated as an immensely
dramatic figure, larger-than-life, fierce, yet attractive. By contrast, Don
Quijote appears passive, withdrawn, and eclipsed by the outlaw. In addition
to the grand scale of events described in these chapters, the sweep of Roque's
gestures was to be magnified by reverberations from other texts, so that
generations of critics have been particularly vulnerable to Roque's attractions
and resistant to the ironies which qualify his heroic stature. This study
is offered as a case for a “corrective” reading —one which
attempts to resist the seductiveness of the bandit figure. Rather than
reinforcing the myth of Roque Guinart, I believe that the ironic narrative
indicates that all who come in contact with Roque, and the bandit himself,
are the victims of his myth. But since the text does not replace an idealized
illusion with a degraded one, my task is not to negate Roque's attractiveness,
but rather to reveal the ambiguities of the ironic context.
As Theophile Gautier remarked in his Voyage
en Espagne (1854)
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“bandits are easily elevated into
heroes.”1 In different societies and
in different periods, their deeds have been translated into narrative through
popular song as well as the written text. In his cross-cultural study of
banditry, British historian Eric Hobsbawn has attempted to define the nature
of popular support for bandits, which extends in some cases to heroic admiration.
Hobsbawn defines social bandits as peasant outlaws who remain within peasant
society and are regarded by their people “as men to be admired, helped
and supported.” With their dangerous and anti-authoritarian mode of
behavior, bandits frequently provide ideal models upon whom the more constrained
members of society project real dissatisfactions as well as subconscious
rebellions. The social bandit must maintain sufficient sympathy among his
fellow countrymen in order to survive. To the extent that the bandit's hostility
to outside authority evokes a responsive chord in the peasant population,
and to the extent that the bandit does not become an excessively heavy economic
burden on his fellow countrymen, he can count on their active or passive
protection. Although banditry seldom represents a coherent program of social
revolution, it can function as a form of social protest, proving that poor
men need not be passive and meek.2
This historical admixture of solidarity and
rebellion, and of violence pragmatically tempered by courtesy, which has
always lent itself to poetization, made the bandit a popular figure on the
Golden Age stage. The stage bandits, men and women, were frequently passionate
and noble characters who had turned to banditry to avenge an affront to their
honor. In a now famous article, A. A. Parker analyzes the peculiarly Spanish
type of the bandit-saint, a character who incarnated the precept that “the
greatest sinners make the greatest saints.” In plays such as Tirso's
El condenado por desconfiado and Mira de Amescua's El esclavo del
demonio, the bandits are seen to possess the vitality and heroic energy
necessary for sainthood to a greater degree than more timid and passive
characters. Their capacity for repentance and salvation is heightened because
of their innate courage and intensity. This sentiment is expressed in the
lines from Zabaleta's bandit play, Osar morir da la vida: “Cierto
que aun para ser
1 Cited
by Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the
Age of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper, 1973), I,
745.
2 Bandits
(New York: Delacorte, 1969), pp. 13-23, 48 et passim.
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santo / el coraje es provechoso; / que los tibios nunca aciertan / ni a ser
santos ni demonios.”3
So well-represented is the bandit during the
Romantic period that German literary historians have special terms
—Rauberromantik and Rauberromane— for the phenomenon.
Exalting somewhat different characteristics, the Romantics also transformed
the outlaw into a transcendental hero. The bandit represented to them the
alienated and rebellious idealist whose exceptional sensibility made him
ill-suited for ordinary society.
From popular ballad heroes and bandit-saints
to Schiller's Karl Moor and Mérimée's José Navarro,
the bandit has proved a vivid and highly symbolic
image.4 Through a kind of mirage intertextuality,
Roque Guinart has kept critical company with these romantic bandits (sensu
latu) and has appropriated some of their
characteristics.5 The fact is that romantic
epithets attributed to Roque are numerous —“hombre de acción,
valiente, noble, justiciero a lo romántico y jefe con excepcionales
dotes de mando”; “tragic and real, not burlesque”, and “an
enlightened ruler of a mini-state, endowed with
liberality.”6
Perhaps the most far-reaching in his inter-textual
reading of Roque was Unamuno, who saw in him not only the precursor of the
3
“Santos y bandoleros en el teatro del Siglo de Oro,” Arbor
13 (1949), 395-416. The verses from Zabaleta are cited by Parker, p. 401.
4 See Hobsbawn's
chapter, “The Bandit as Symbol.”
5 Carlos Varo
writes, “Roque es un caballero. Es el precursor de esas estampas
románticas del bandolero galán y del asesino
aristócrata.” See Génesis y evolución del
“Quijote” (Madrid: Alcalá, 1968), p. 515, emphasis
mine.
A. J. Close's book The Romantic Approach
to “Don Quijote,” demonstrates in a systematic and thorough
fashion the extent to which Romantic concepts have shaped the critical tradition
of Don Quijote. In the discussion of these chapters, I feel we could
well heed Close's admonition to pay attention to the burlesque aspects of
the text, but here I am concerned in addition with the influence of the Romantic
conception of banditry —as transcendental
protest— on Cervantes criticism. A related phenomenon
is discussed by Antonio Giménez in “El mito romántico
del bandolero andaluz,” CHA 383 (1982), 272-96. Giménez
describes the way in which Romantic literary models of bandits shaped the
perceptions of nineteenth-century writers in their accounts of travels in
Spain. The bandit was an indispensable element in a nineteenth-century travelogue
from Spain, so that some writers felt disappointed when they did not actually
have a face-to-face encounter with a dashing bandit.
6 Martín
de Riquer, Aproximación al “Quijote” (Barcelona:
Teide, 1967), p. 159; Luis Andrés Murillo, The Golden Dial
(Oxford: Dolphin, 1975), p. 153; Karl Ludwig Selig, “The Ricote
Episode in Don Quijote: Observations on Literary Refractions,”
RHM 38 (1974-75), 75.
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Romantic bandit, but also the emblem of the thief who died on the cross next
to Christ. Unamuno hears in Roque's words the echoes of the Pauline lament,
“no hago el bien que quiero, sino el mal que no quiero hago, miserable
hombre de mí.” In Unamuno's criticism, we see with special clarity
the convergence of the Romantic with the Golden Age tradition of the
bandit-saint. Roque is better than he himself believes, Unamuno writes, since
he possesses the spiritual humility which can bring about his salvation.
Unamuno in fact alludes to Tirso de Molina's bandit-saint Enrico in El
condenado por desconfiado who was saved after a life of crime by his
deathbed contrition (p. 349). In short, the Roque episode provided Unamuno
with the occasion for a meditation on the greater importance of intentions
over acts, of hope over fear of punishment, and of individual salvation over
social order. The bandit thus symbolized the agonized protagonist of Unamuno's
highly individualistic form of Christianity —spiritually humble, but
struggling against a sense of
fatalism.7
Joaquín Casalduero also reads the Roque
Guinart chapters against this dual Romantic and Golden Age tradition. For
Casalduero, the bandit is primarily a baroque foil to Don Quijote —the
deformed image of the ideal Knight. Both characters are similar in their
courage, fairness and courtesy, but Don Quijote is motivated by love, and
Roque by revenge. But as an expression of the baroque sensibility, Roque
also manifests the faith that God will deliver him from life as labyrinth.
Although it cannot be said that Casalduero adulates Roque, his interpretation
can still be considered “romantic” in the sense that Roque is seen
as the valiant spirit deformed by his passion for revenge. Through Casalduero's
zeitgeist approach, Roque is both an anti-hero and theological emblem
of the sufficiency of Grace.8
More recently, Karl Ludwig Selig has given
a highly favorable interpretation of Roque Guinart of a decidedly romantic
cast.9 Selig writes that Roque displays “his
personal code (his Lebenskodex) and his
7 Vida
de Don Quijote y Sancho según Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Salamanca:
Almáraz, 1905), pp. 340-352. As David Gies has pointed out, the
bandit-saint tradition was very much entwined with Spanish Romanticism. See
“José Zorilla and the Betrayal of Spanish Romanticism,”
RJ 31 (1980), 339-46.
8 Sentido
y forma del “Quijote” (Madrid: Insula, 1966), pp. 355-56).
9 “Don
Quijote II/60-61: Some Observations on Roque Guinart,” in Medieval,
Renaissance and Folklore Studies in Honor of John Esten Keller, ed. Joseph
R. Jones (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1980), pp. 273-280.
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utopian spirit” with an “exemplary act of magnanimity” toward
the travellers he robs. By his interest in Don Quijote, “Roque reveals
a great spirit of humanity and an appreciation of art, a work of art, which
is the representation of an order” (p. 278). Selig concludes, “Even
if one allows for certain ironies . . . the text . . .
is a statement and plea pertaining to a person, a very special person, and
his condition, his isolation and solitude in a rather unstable and precarious
and distrustful world” (p. 279).
Finally, Silvia Lorente-Murphy and Roslyn M.
Frank have stressed the theme of political rebellion and social utopianism,
seeing Roque as a social bandit who uses highway robbery as a means of
redistributing wealth to the most needy. Unlike Don Quijote, Roque is motivated
by immediate social issues: “Roque está tratando de ‘enmendar
entuertos’ que realmente
existen.”10
For these representative critics, Roque is
associated with various key Romantic concepts. He is seen to possess the
generous spirit of the Romantic hero, his transcendental Angst, his
desire for justice, and appreciation of art. At the same time, because of
his isolation and persecution, and his struggle against despair, he brings
to light the alienating imperfection of a society ill-suited to a unique
individual. But with this focus on the bandit as a symbolic hero, significant
textual ironies have been minimized —ironies which revolve around the
way Roque perceives himself and is perceived by others.
The evolving modern understanding of Cervantic
irony implies more than satire or refined ridicule. As Luis Murillo has written,
“The first step in the recognition of this meaning [of irony] is to
perceive that the refinement of [Cervantes'] manner conceals an ulterior
aim which is both intellective and humane, critical but also benevolent and
amiable toward the objects of his
dissimulation.”11 In the analysis of
textual irony in this episode, I have found D. C. Muecke's definitions
particularly useful in describing an ironic style which is both
“intellective and humane.”12 According
to Muecke, the object of irony is
10 See
p. 109 in “Roque Guinard [sic] y la justicia distributiva en el
Quijote” AC 20 (1982), 103-11.
11 “Cervantic
Irony in Don Quijote: The Problem for Literary Criticism,” in
Homenaje a Rodríguez-Moñino (Madrid:
Castalia, 1966), II, 21-27.
12 The Compass
of Irony (London: Methuen, 1969, rpt. 1980). Also see John J. Allen,
Don Quixote: Hero or Fool? Part II (Gainesville: University of Florida
Humanities Monograph No. 46, 1979) for an extended study of irony in Don
Quijote in relation to Muecke's concepts.
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the proposition, belief, attitude, person, institution or social system which
is censured or shown to be ludicrously incongruous or inappropriate. The
victims of irony are those who are “confidently” unaware
of the incongruity in their attitudes or situation (pp. 34-35). Separating
objects from victims allows us to see more clearly how the effects of irony
are achieved without degrading the characters. In this episode, Don Quijote
and Roque appear primarily as ironic victims; Cervantes ridicules their confident
blindness and obstinate innocence, but does not demolish our sense of them
as unique personalities.
The first note of irony is introduced by the
narrator as the bandits appear on the scene and begin to strip and search
Sancho for valuables: “Acudieron los bandoleros a espulgar al rucio,
y a no dejarle ninguna cosa de cuantas en las alforjas y la maleta traía;
y avínole bien a Sancho que en una ventrera que tenía ceñida
venían los escudos del duque y los que había sacado de su tierra,
y, con todo eso, aquella buena gente le escardara y le mirara hasta lo que
entre el cuero y la carne tuviera escondido, si no llegara en aquella sazón
su capitán.”13 By referring to
the bandits as “buena gente,” Cervantes is of course using one
of the most traditional forms of irony, antiphrasis, here in order to blame
with praise. The Cervantean variation on antiphrasis occurs with the substitution
of two “legitimate” albeit lowly activities —delousing and
weeding— for the illegitimate activity they are in fact engaged in
—committing a robbery. This euphemistic substitution of the legitimate
for the illegitimate becomes an ironic leitmotif of the episode. There
are no ironic victims in the text at this point. But as the narrator communicates
his dissimulated criticism of the bandits to the implied reader, narrator
and reader form a cohesive “group who understand.” The ironic victims
therefore exist, hypothetically, as an imperceptive audience. Alternatively,
we could say that the narrator, with his pretense that the bandits are engaged
in normal and useful work, sets himself up as
pseudo-victim.14
Roque first addresses Don Quijote to console
and reassure him
13 Don
Quijote II, 493-94. All citations are to the edition of Luis Andrés
Murillo, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols. (Madrid:
Castalia, 1978).
14 Muecke describes
the pseudo-victim as follows: “the ironist pretends to hold the views
he is denying and endeavors to give to his pretence every appearance
of plausibility. He presents himself, perhaps, as an earnest simple fellow
who says in all innocence what everyone else knows to be absurd” (p.
51).
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after his capture: “No estéis tan triste, buen hombre, porque
no habéis caído en las manos de algún cruel Osiris,
sino en las de Roque Guinart, que tienen más de compasivas que de
rigurosas” (p. 495). With these words Roque does indeed show himself
to be more compassionate than cruel, but he also shows himself to be rather
vague about his mythological references. Roque has confused Osiris with Busiris,
the legendary tyrant of Sicily. The object of irony is Roque's presumption
and his ignorance. Roque, the ironic victim, is confidently unaware that
his expansive self-introduction has been undercut by a malapropism.
Once Roque realizes he is dealing with the
famous madman, he is delighted, and like many other characters in Part II,
plays with him by imitating him stylistically: “Valeroso caballero,
no os despachéis ni tengáis a siniestra fortuna esta en que
os halláis; que podía ser que en estos tropiezos vuestra torcida
suerte se enderezase; que el cielo, por estraños y nunca vistos rodeos,
de los hombres no imaginados, suele levantar los caídos y enriquecer
los pobres” (496). Although the critics have pointed out Roque's compassion
in consoling Don Quijote, they have missed the playfulness of his tone and
the irony in his variation on the Biblical Magnificat
—“destronó a los poderosos y exaltó a los
humildes.” The Jehovah of the Psalms does indeed “raise up the
poor and fallen,” but Roque specifies that the poor are
“enriched.” Roque's emphasis is on the economic, and bearing in
mind his particular profession, we are prompted to think of the particularly
rapid changes in economic fortune which are brought about by the “strange
and circuitous ways” of highway robbery. The ironic object is the
proposition that the highwayman's change in fortune is similar to the exaltation
of the Biblical downtrodden and poor in spirit. Don Quijote, the ironic victim,
is nonetheless consoled, and is about to thank Roque when the arrival of
Claudia Jerónima interrupts their conversation.
The story of the young woman who has killed
her fiancé, mistakenly believing him to have abandoned her, abruptly
changes the tone of the passage. There is an operatic theatricality to the
episode, with its compressed plot and sudden disjunctures, its
“recitatives” and “cantus
interruptus.”15 Don Quijote is
“eclipsed” by Roque as the bandit “man of action” comes
forward to protect
15 See
Selig's remarks on the rhythm of repeated interruptions during this episode
in his “Observations on Roque Guinart.”
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Claudia Jerónima from the consequences of her tragic mistake. Roque,
furthermore, responds with pathos to the spectacle of human suffering:
“Tales y tan tristes eran las quejas de Claudia, que sacaron las
lágrimas de los ojos de Roque, no acostumbrados a verterlas en ninguna
ocasión” (p. 499).
Irony is left behind (along with Sancho and
Don Quijote) during this operatic interlude. But when Roque returns to camp
he finds Don Quijote, mounted on Rocinante, preaching to his men:
“haciéndoles una plática en que les persuadía dejasen
aquel modo de vivir tan peligroso así para el alma como para el cuerpo;
pero como los más eran gascones, gente rústica y desbaratada,
no les entraba bien la plática de don Quijote” (p. 499). The
ironic object here is not the substance of Don Quijote's address, but the
incompatibility between address and addressee. (Don Quijote's speech before
the goatherds on the Golden Age is similarly inappropriate.) The ironic victim
here is, of course, Don Quijote, who is confidently unaware that his audience
is temperamentally and linguistically incapable of comprehending his
message.
Next, Roque orders that all the booty from
the most recent robberies be collected and divided up evenly among his men:
Y haciendo brevemente el tanteo, volviendo lo no repartible y reduciéndolo
a dineros, lo repartió por toda su compañía, con tanta
legalidad y prudencia, que no pasó un punto ni defraudó nada
de la justicia distributiva. Hecho esto, con lo cual todos quedaron contentos,
satisfechos y pagados, dijo Roque a don Quijote:
—Si no se guardase esta puntualidad con
éstos, no se podría vivir con ellos.
A lo que dijo Sancho:
—Según lo que aquí he visto,
es tan buena la justicia que es necesaria que se use aun entre los mesmos
ladrones. (P. 500)
The key term in this passage is justicia
distributiva. As Silvia Lorente-Murphy and Roslyn Frank have pointed
out, the concept of justicia distributiva, Aristotelian in origin,
refers to the distribution of goods and rewards by secular authority. But
the authors have missed the point that the irony here derives from the
incongruity of using a legal term in this context. Whereas it is true that
Roque divides the spoils evenly, there is nothing “legal”
or “just” about the source of this wealth, or Roque's authority
in distributing it. Furthermore, as Roque himself confesses to Don Quijote,
his impartiality is motivated by expedience rather than any ideal of justice.
When Sancho explicitly recovers the irony, Roque's men, who clearly do not
appreciate being
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referred to in uneuphemistic terms, express their displeasure by nearly opening
his skull. Sancho resolves to resist any further temptation to ironize.
The ironists in this passage are primarily
the narrator, who again creates verbal irony of the euphemistic type, and
secondarily Sancho, who perceives and comments on the situational irony.
The ironic object is the bandit activity —the even if not
equitable distribution of booty— and the ironic victims the bandits
themselves who are at first unaware of, then violently resistant to appreciating
the irony of their situation.
The following passage presents a remarkable
juxtaposition of pathos and irony. Roque begins by confiding in Don Quijote,
stating that in spite of his good inclinations, he feels trapped in a life
of outlawry by the cycle of vengeance and feuding: “y como un abismo
llama a otro y un pecado a otro pecado, hanse eslabonado las venganzas de
manera que no sólo las mías, pero las ajenas tomo a mi cargo;
pero Dios es servido de que, aunque me veo en la mitad del laberinto de mis
confusiones, no pierdo la esperanza de salir dél a puerto seguro”
(p. 501). Don Quijote is astounded at such well-reasoned arguments:
“Admirado quedó don Quijote de oír hablar a Roque tan
buenas y concertadas razones, porque él se pensaba que entre los de
oficios semejantes, de robar, matar y saltear no podía haber
alguno que tuviese buen discurso” (p. 501, my emphasis). The narrator's
attribution of the incongruous phrase oficio de robar to Don Quijote's
line of thinking calls to mind the knight's encounter with the galley slaves
of I, 22. When he had learned that one of the criminals had been condemned
to the galleys for pandering, Don Quijote had proceeded to give a speech
in which he described the alcahuete's profession as “oficio de
discretos y necesarísimo en la república bien ordenada”
(p. 269). In both cases, there is a peculiar disjuncture in his perception
of social delinquency. On the one hand, he seems fully aware of the delinquents'
crimes, but on the other hand, he seems willing to see their course of action
as an “oficio” —a legitimate office in life. In the case of
the galley slaves, Don Quijote's orientation toward the criminals is distorted
by his need for them to play a particular role in his own drama. Thus, just
as the galley slaves served Don Quijote's desire to find victims in need
of succor, Roque serves his desire to find a co-caballero. As his
response to Roque makes clear, Don Quijote considers that only a slight
adjustment is required to transform Roque from a “caballero salteador”
to a “caballero andante.” Here, as in the galley slaves episode,
Don Quijote's
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sympathy toward the criminals is not so much the result of idealism or even
naiveté, as it is of a selective filtering to suit his own needs.
The speech in which Don Quijote consoles Roque
and offers hope for his salvation is an excellent example of what Anthony
Close has called Don Quijote's sophistry —“where eloquent
ratio-cination disguises, the more effectively to betray, an irrational
thesis.”16 Don Quijote begins with a
syllogism based on an analogy between physical and spiritual health:
“Señor Roque, el principio de la salud está en conocer
la enfermedad y en querer tomar el enfermo las medicinas que el médico
le ordena: vuestra merced está enfermo, conoce su dolencia, y el cielo,
o Dios, por mejor decir, que es nuestro médico, le aplicará
medicinas que le sanen, las cuales suelen sanar poco a poco y no de repente
y por milagro” (p. 501). Don Quijote continues with what may well be
an allusion to the de auxiliis, the debate between the Dominicans
and Molinists over predestination and free will. Don Quijote first appears
to be taking the side of the Molinists, who argued that all human beings
are endowed with equal and sufficient grace, and emphasized the importance
of will in attaining salvation. He holds out to Roque the hope for gradual
recovery if the bandit will only apply his intelligence and “good
courage” toward his spiritual redemption. But having successfully executed
the syllogism, the mad knight appends to it an absurd coda which quickly
diffuses the seriousness of a sensitive controversy: “y si vuestra merced
quiere ahorrar camino y ponerse con facilidad en el de su salvación,
véngase conmigo, que yo le enseñaré a ser caballero
andante, donde se pasan tantos trabajos y desventuras, que, tomándolas
por penitencia, en dos paletas le pondrán en el cielo” (p. 502).
Again, in identifying the ironic object, we must be careful not to confuse
what Don Quijote says with how he says it. I don't believe we can say with
any degree of certainty whether Cervantes is being ironic at the expense
of the Molinists or the Dominicans —he was bold enough in alluding to
the controversy at all, since Pope Paul V had officially silenced the debate
in 1607. The ironic objects are Don Quijote's logical inconsistency and the
proposition that knight errantry is a viable profession, much less a short-cut
to heaven. The ironic victim, once more, is Don Quijote, who fails to see
the irrelevance of the conclusion to his arguments. Cervantes treats the
issue of spiritual conversion here in a realistically inconclusive manner.
Roque's fate is problematic; his
16 “Don
Quixote's Sophistry and Wisdom,” BHS 55 (1978), 111.
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capacity for heroism, for controlling his violence, for repentance and salvation
are absolutely of the moment —unknowable and
unresolved.17
The philosophical discussion is interrupted
once again as Roque is informed that his men have captured more travellers
—two infantry soldiers from Naples, two pilgrims, a Regent's wife and
her retinue of servants. Roque treats the travellers courteously —and
takes only part of the money from the Regent's wife, and from the infantry
captains. Having collected 140 escudos, he gives two each to his sixty men,
and divides the remaining 20 between the pilgrims and Sancho. The relieved
travellers are effusive in their praise of the bandit leader: “Infinitas
y bien dichas fueron las razones con que los capitanes agradecieron a Roque
su cortesía y liberalidad que por tal la tuvieron, en
dejarles su mismo dinero. La señora doña Guiomar de
Quiñones se quiso arrojar del coche para besar los pies y las manos
del gran Roque” (p. 503, emphasis mine). And when Roque gives them a
letter of safe-conduct addressed to his bandit chiefs, the travellers are
overwhelmed: “admirados de su nobleza, de su gallarda disposición
y estraño proceder, teniéndole más por un Alejandro
Magno que por ladrón conocido” (pp. 503-04).
It is interesting that this section has produced
some of the most extravagant claims for Roque as the Utopian champion of
the redistribution of wealth. For example, Lorente-Murphy and Frank write,
“recauda bienes de entre los que más tienen y los reparte entre
los más necesitados. En este sentido, Roque Guinart está
invirtiendo [el proceso legal establecido] de manera que sea más
proporcional en cuanto al trabajo y necesidades de cada individuo y no en
cuanto a su rango social” (p.
110).18 It should be observed, however, that
Roque's “redistribution of wealth” is
accomplished here more with an eye for drama than for social justice. Sancho
is the fortunate recipient of his ten escudos, “porque pueda decir bien
de esta aventura.” Furthermore, Roque collects 13% of the Regenta's
money, and 20% of the infantry captains' funds —scarcely a progressive
taxation policy, much less a revolutionary one. Once again, the ironic victims
have been obscured by a romanticized vision of “the generous bandit,”
in
17 As
an indication of the irresolution of this issue, contrast Unamuno's and
Casalduero's interpretations of Roque's
spirituality —for Unamuno, Roque is handicapped by his fatalism; for
Casalduero Roque's most positive quality is his
trust in God's benevolence.
18 Francisco
Olmos García in Cervantes en su época (Madrid: Aguilera,
1968) also holds this view of Roque.
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spite of the fact that the irony is explicitly recovered by the narrator,
who emphasizes his divergence from the perception of the travelers with the
words, “que por tal la tuvieron.” The mention of Alexander the
Great echoes back to the previous burlesque mythological reference to
“Busiris,” and to the very beginning of the chapter, where Don
Quijote had compared himself, in a similarly grandiose fashion, to Alexander
the Great. The mythological phrase is not meant to elevate Roque, but to
point out the naiveté of those who would do so.
The incident ends on a jarringly violent note.
When one of his men complains that Roque's charitable behavior toward the
travellers has been purchased at their expense, Roque responds by drawing
his sword and nearly splitting the fellow's head in two. His explanation:
“Desta manera castigo yo a los deslenguados y atrevidos” (p. 504).
This is the incident illustrated in the Doré engraving discussed at
the beginning of this article.
It is difficult to believe that this incident
supports the idea of Roque as the “enlightened ruler of a mini-state
(Selig, “The Ricote Episode,” p. 75). Rather, it undercuts Roque's
own assertion that he is “by nature merciful and well-meaning.”
Roque was the product and exemplar of the endemic violence of seventeenth-century
Catalonia. He may have been less brutal than the norm, but neither his
self-dramatizing gallantry nor his victims' misplaced admiration for him
can disguise the fact that violence is an intrinsic part of his personality.
In short, the killing of the impertinent bandit is not a final romantic flourish
to the portrait of Roque the “justiciero,” but rather a stunning
and sobering moment of disillusionment. As if to strengthen his point, Cervantes
begins the next chapter by recapitulating the danger and anxieties of the
bandit's life —he trusts no one, and lives in constant fear of the
authorities as well as of his own men.
In short, these chapters offer us an extended
example of Cervantean euphemistic irony. Here, the narrator substitutes a
softened term with positive or inoffensive connotations for a negatively
marked explicit term. But he does so not in order to spare the delicate
sensibilities of his reader, but rather to exploit, for the delectation of
his audience, the incongruity between the two terms. To be an ironic victim
in these chapters is to accept the eupheme, be it caballero, capitán,
limosnero, or Alejandro Magno, and to forget the cacopheme
—ladrón conocido. Roque's theatrical gestures and rhetoric
by and large succeed in eliciting the desired euphemistic substitution
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from his victim-audience, Don Quijote being his most inspired interpreter.
On the other hand, bandit headquarters is a dangerous place for stubborn
“literalists” like Sancho and the impertinent bandit.
The Roque chapters belong to that part of the
text which was written with Cervantes' knowledge of Avellaneda's spurious
continuation. Avellaneda's appropriation of Don Quijote may well have reinforced
Cervantes' determination to produce a historically verisimilar text. Roque
Guinart is one of the figures of Part II who are representative of the historical
moment of 1614. Therefore, the textual and extra-textual are inevitably linked,
and the question of an ironic interpretation must be addressed at both
levels.
Modern historians have provided us with extensive
studies of the political and economic crisis of Catalonia during the Filipine
period.19 But in spite of the wealth of primary
and secondary sources, it is by no means obvious which extra-textual evidence
is relevant. The chapters have been read in the light of a
“non-conformist” Cervantes who, by sympathizing with the rebellious
bandits, implies his disaffection with the status
quo.20 But if we take Cervantes' portrayal
of Roque as problematic, what then becomes of our reading of the political
implications of the text?
Perhaps it is presumptuous to expect from Cervantes
a coherent political stance on banditry. Even with the benefit of 400 years
of hindsight, modern historians admit that the phenomenon was extremely complex.
Catalan banditry, it appears, was caused by endemic clan rivalry as much
as by the current crisis, which added the destablizing factors of inflation,
under-employment, and an influx of refugees from Southern France. Nor did
bandits form a coherent social group, since they drew from adventurers and
nobles, ex-soldiers, and refugees, as well as the rural and urban
poor.21 To the
19 See
J. H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of
Spain (1598-1640) (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1963); Pierre Vilar,
La Catalogne dans l'Espagne moderne: Recherches sur les fondements
économiques des structures nationales, Bibliothéque
générale de l'école pratique des hautes études
(Paris: SEVPEN, 1962), I, 579-84; 621-25.
20 Cf. Murillo,
who notes, “El bandolerismo . . . había adquirido un
matiz de rebeldía política y era asunto que preocupaba a muchos,
por lo que interesa la actitud tan favorable con que Cervantes retrata al
más famoso de los bandoleros” (Don Quijote II, 505, note
27).
21 For Catalan
banditry see Juan Reglá Campistol, Bandolers, pirates i hugonots
a la Catalunya del segle XVI (Barcelona: Ed Selecta, 1969) and El
[p. 136] bandolerisme catala, Vol. I:
La Historia (Barcelona: Ediciones Ayma, 1962); Vilar, La catalogne,
pp. 581-84; Victoria Sau, El Catalán: un bandolerismo espagol
(Barcelona: Aura, 1973); and Elliott, pp. 49-112, et passim.
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extent that the text offers any “interpretation” of banditry, I
believe it is more ethnic than socio-political. The Catalans, in a way consistent
with contemporary descriptions, are presented as prone to feuding and obsessed
by jealousy and the desire for revenge. For example, Francisco Manuel de
Melo in his Historia de los movimientos, separación y guerra de
Cataluña en tiempos de Felipe IV (1645) writes that the Catalans
are “por la mayor parte hombres de durísimo natural” and
“en las injurias muestran gran sentimiento y por eso son inclinados
a venganza.”22
The novel depicts the Gascons still more
unfavorably, as coarse, violent and treacherous. Again, this corresponds
to contemporary description. In 1614, Fray José Serrano wrote to the
King: “De las cuatro partes de los bandoleros que perturban la paz
pública deste Principado, las tres son de gascones y gente fronteriza
de Francia. De manera que atajándose estas invasiones de gascones,
queda remediada la mayor y más principal parte de nuestro daño;
así porque los bandoleros de la tierra serán muchos menos,
como también porque las atrocidades más inhumanas que de ordinario
se hacen son hechuras de los
gascones.”23 Furthermore, the presence
of Gascons in Roque's band may indirectly relate the phenomenon of banditry
to a religious issue. Many of the Gascons who swelled the ranks of the bandits
were refugees of religious wars, who, it was feared, posed a spiritual as
well as a physical threat to Catholic Catalonia. By 1615, the Bishop of Vic,
writing to the vice-chancellor of Aragon, described Catalonia as on the brink
of heresy and revolt: “Among [the bandits] are many heretics from France
who go round disseminating their errors, and we are afraid that a new sect
will arise, and rebellion follow in its wake. If you think this exaggerated,
remember the beginnings of Mahomet and Tamburlane, of the Turks and many
others.”24 Although, through the character
of Ricote, Cervantes does directly confront the issue of the expulsion of
the Moriscos, he is reticent in
22 Cited
by Unamuno, p. 351.
23 Cited by
Luis G. Manegat, La Barcelona de Cervantes (Buenos Aires: Plaza y
Janes, 1964), p. 137.
24 Cited by
Elliot in English translation, p. 117. Also see Juan Reglá who cites
a number of documents from the last decades of the 16th century
[p. 137] which voice complaints of the religious
atrocities committed by Huguenot bandits (Bandolers, pp. 80-84).
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these chapters about the religious problem posed by the Gascons. It is, of
course, possible to find irony in this silence —in the implicit comparison
between the two “religious policies” of the Crown— the official
neglect on the Gascon issue stands in contrast to the zealous expulsion of
the Moriscos, which, Cervantes saw, was enormously costly in human terms.
Cervantes may have been implying that the government was fighting the religious
battle on the wrong front.25 In any case,
it is extremely risky to read beyond the text in search of a programmatic
political target. At best we can point to an awareness of situational irony
—the spectacle of a patriotic though partially assimilated Christian
like Ricote returning secretly from exile to his homeland, or the incongruity
of a Molinist/Dominican debate between a bandit and a madman which occurs
in the presence of uncomprehending refugees from religious wars.
It is undeniable, however, that significant
extra-textual ironies do revolve around the figure of Roque himself, the
historical Perot Rocaguinarda (1582-1645?). He had become in his own lifetime
a popular and quasi-literary figure —literate priests wrote sonnets
about him, and, at a time when bandits were known to wreak devastating damage
to life and property, Roque was a marvel because of his relative moderation.
A contemporary document affirmed, “Este Roca Guinart es el bandolero
más cortés que ha habido en muchos años; no se prestaba
a claudicaciones, ni deshonraba, ni tocaba a las iglesias, y Dios le
ayudó.”26 One of the stories
which circulated tells how, after dining at an inn with his band of twenty-two
men, Roque actually paid the bill of sixty reales! On another occasion,
although the bandits did not pay for their meal, Roque prevented his men
from filling their saddle bags with additional
wine.27 We have no way of knowing if such
stories inspired the irony of the robbery victims' extravagant
25 It
is Juan Reglá's conclusion that the bandit/Huguenot alliance did indeed
represent a “fifth column” in terms of Phillip II's struggle against
the Protestants (Bandolers, p. 82). He adds: “la continua
pressió dels hugonots pel Pirineu, combinada amb la guerra civil que
els bandolers mantienen sempre encesa a Catalunya, eren un sínmptoma
bel elequent de les debilitats del monarca de l'Escorial dins la seva
própia casa” (p. 84).
26 Cited by
Manegat, p. 139.
27 Cited by
Lorenzo Riber, “Al margen de un capítulo de Don Quijote,
BRAE 27 (1947-8), 87-89.
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praise of Roque, but Cervantes did apparently appreciate certain ironies
inherent in the popular admiration of a highwayman who was less brutal than
might be expected.
We also know that Catalan nobles and magistrates
were frequently allied with bandits because of long-standing clan loyalties,
and because of clashes between their ancient privileges and the authority
exerted by the Castilian administration in its attempt to control banditry
in the province. This alliance between bandits and noblemen —so prejudicial
to the efforts of the Crown— is alluded to by the friendship between
Roque and Don Antonio Moreno —Don Quijote's host in
Barcelona.28
Also significant is the fact that at the time
of the composition of Part Two, Roque had received an official pardon and
was serving a term of 10 years as infantry captain in Naples. The Castilian
government, unsuccessful in its efforts to control Catalan bandits, had found
it much more expedient to pay them a salary and station them in trouble-spots
in the Empire.29
Cervantes shows us Roque anachronistically
at the height of his bandit career, robbing two infantry captains from Naples.
It is here that we can hypothesize a political object for Cervantes' irony:
the ineffectiveness of the government in protecting its highways and citizens,
and its hypocrisy in promoting former enemies of the state into defenders
of the empire. As Unamuno observed in Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho,
the state, in order to maintain justice, institutionalizes violence. With
characteristic paradox Unamuno writes, “La justicia y el orden nacieron
en el mundo para mantener la violencia y el desorden. Con razón ha
dicho un pensador que de los primeros bandoleros a sueldo surgió la
guardia civil” (p. 344). Here we see that the Crown, in the particular
form of alternative service it provided for Roque, in effect legitimized
the de facto institution of Catalan
28 The
historical Roca Guinarda was a friend of Don Alexandre d'Alentorn, Diputat
Militar from 1614-17, and perennial thorn in the side of the royal administration
of the Duque de Albuquerque. See Elliott, pp. 76, 120.
29 There are
a number of accounts of situations in which Roque, aided by popular support
of an entire town, thwarted and even routed the government troops sent to
pursue him. The pardon was signed in 1611, at the beginning of the viceregency
of Francisco Hurtado de Mendoza. See Manegat, 131-49. I have been unable
to consult the rare biography by Lluís Soler y Teròl, Perot
Roca Guinarda, historiá d'aquest bandoler (Manrèsa: Imp.
de Sant Josep, 1909.
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banditry. By exposing the disjuncture between humanistic values and the exercise
of arms, Roque Guinart might be called the prime exemplar of the
“anti-humanismo de las armas.”
In short, I believe that Roque Guinart as a
historical figure primarily provided Cervantes with the opportunity to localize
his text with an atmosphere of contemporary regional and ethnic
color.30 As a focal point for political irony,
I do not believe that these chapters exalt the bandits as rebels. It seems
more likely that the irony alludes to the administrative inadequacies of
the Crown —its inconsistent religious policies, its failure to break
up the alliance between bandits and a disaffected local nobility, and its
cynical solution to endemic banditry. At a more encompassing level, the episode
may reflect a general disillusionment with the ideal of military service
in a modern state.
The question why Roque Guinart should have
inspired such encomia remains. We have seen that the intrinsic
“romanticism” of the bandit reinforced by the images of the Golden
Age bandit-saint and transcendental bandit of the 19th century has resulted
in an anachronistic intertextuality.
But there are undeniably ways in which the
text itself at times predisposes the reader toward Roque. First of all, Roque
treats Don Quijote and Sancho well —he is indeed courteous and generous
toward the protagonists who have already captured the reader's affection.
In comparison with the Duke and Duchess, or Don Antonio Moreno, Roque's
“use” of Don Quijote's madness is gentle.
Secondly, Roque has been a sympathetic observer
of the tragic story of Doña Claudia. Before the spectacle of the lovers'
suffering, Roque sheds tears. Selig has called this an “emblematic act
indicative of humanity and hope” (“Don Quijote II, 60”,
p. 276), and perhaps it
30 I
believe that these terms —local color and contemporaneity— describe
the primary function of the reference to Roque in La cueva de Salamanca,
when the student remarks, “robáronme los lacayos o compañeros
de Roque Guinarde, en Cataluña, porque él estaba ausente; que,
a estar allí, no consintiera que se me hicera agravio, porque es muy
cortés y comedido, y además limosnero” (Entremeses,
ed. Eugenio Asensio [Madrid: Castalia, 1970], p. 189). As Asensio writes
in his introduction to this edition, Cervantes adapted the folkloric tradition
of his sources, making its situations and characters more contemporary and
hispanic: “El nigromante ficticio pertenece al repertorio cómico
internacional. Para darle un barniz castizo, Cervantes le hace salmantino,
supuesto maestro de las artes enseñadas en la mágica cueva,
y le envuelve en una red de referencias contemporáneas: Roque Guinart,
el baile de Escarramán, gesto apicarado” (pp. 22-23). Furthermore,
I would argue that an admittedly favorable reference to the bandit made by
a fictional character in this entremés does not preclude Cervantes'
ironic treatment of the same figure in another artistic context.
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provides his real link to Don Quijote, or rather to Alonso Quijano el bueno.
Behind the facade of self-dramatization, we are allowed a glimpse of a more
authentic self, compassionate and humane.
Finally, Roque expresses his anxieties and
regrets to Don Quijote with engaging honesty. In fact, Roque is sympathetic,
not when he is most “active,” but when he is most
“reactive” —when he responds to the plight of others, and
when he momentarily contemplates the restlessness of his present life.
But we should be able to recognize all this
—recognize, as Cervantes did, the attractiveness of this figure—
without falling into the trap of transforming him into a mythogem. The preceding
arguments are sure to have the ring of an attack on the Romantic approach
to Don Quijote —that continuing critical tendency to exalt the symbolic
at the expense of the burlesque elements of the text. But I have tried to
proceed with the awareness that the anti-Romantic approach also has its blind
spots. What might disparagingly be called a symbolic reading also could be
perceived as an attempt to articulate thematic correlations, or to read the
microtext as part of the macrotext. If my reading of the Roque episode
contributes anything to the ongoing debate between the Romantic and Neoclassical
schools of Cervantes criticism, it is that it reminds us that the burlesque
is a persistent but by no means consistent element in the composition of
Part II. Roque is clearly not the Alejandro Magno of the Regent's wife, nor
the potential caballero andante Don Quijote sees in him, nor the tragic
hero of the “Romantic” critics. As a historical and fictional figure,
his personality was such that he elicited totally inappropriate projections
and idealizations. Attention to textual ironies allows us to see the burlesque
in Roque which has been obscured by his Romantic encomiasts.
We should also be aware that although Roque
is an ironic figure in the chapters we have been discussing, he is a minor
character in a long novel which is drawing to a close. As such, the
restless and inconclusive movement of his life stands in contrast to the
trajectory of the main character —Don Quijote's homeward journey of
self-mastery. Like Don Quijote, Roque experiences moments of self-awareness
which transcend the limitations of his deforming role. Through these he becomes
more than the sum of his ludicrous projections. The sketch of his humanity
gains suggestiveness because of his thematic association with Don Quijote.
In other words, an ironic reading need not be purchased at the expense of
our response to Don Quijote as a novel —as a narration of the
lives of fictional characters who convince us of their humanity.
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