From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
8 special issue (1988): 149-58.
Copyright © 1988, The Cervantes Society of America
Emblematic Aspects of Cervantes' Narrative Prose
HE VAST
EXTENT to which emblem books captured the imagination and attention
of Renaissance Europe was long ignored by most modern critics. The long hiatus
between the work of Henry Green (1870) and that of Rosemary Freeman
(1948),1 demonstrates the long lack of interest
in the emblematic approach to the study of literature. It was not until Mario
Praz's comprehensive bibliographical work2
that critics awoke to the existence of the many editions, translations and
commentaries of Alciati's original Emblematum Liber of 1531. This,
along with new evidence of the emblem books' wide readership led to the
recognition that they were not simply a vogue or secondary cultural phenomenon
—but rather that emblem books were depositories of aesthetic theories
and an important element of the visual and literary culture of the
Renaissance.3
Despite the fact that Juan de Horozco's
Emblemas morales of 1589
1 Henry
Green, Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers (London: Trubner, 1870);
Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (London: Chatto and Windus,
1948).
2 Mario Praz,
Studies in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Imagery (Rome: Edizioni
di storia e letteratura, 1964).
3 Robert J. Clements,
Picta Poesis: Literary and Humanistic Theory in Renaissance Emblem Books
(Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1960); see also Peter M. Daly,
Emblem Theory (Nendeln: KTO Press, 1979) and Literature in the
Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels Between the Emblem and Literature
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Toronto; Buffalo: University
of Toronto Press, 1979).
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firmly established the emblem as a tradition in Spain, and that various studies
have been dedicated to the origin and development of Spanish emblem
books,4 an examination of Cervantes criticism
discloses that no major attempt has been made to interpret his prose fiction
in the light of emblematics.
In recent years, articles by Selig and
Riley5 have noted emblematic features in some
episodes of Cervantes' prose narrative which point not only to his awareness
of this dual-natured genre but also to its influence on his structure and
composition. Their articles may be taken as points of departure for a
consideration of the relationship between the emblem and Cervantes' narrative
prose.
It is well known that the emblem is a three
part structure consisting of words, pictures, and words: (1) a short motto
or inscriptio introduces the emblem, (2) a device or pictura
depicts objects, persons, events, and actions, and (3) the subscriptio
provides an explanation in prose or verse quotation. Emphasis is on the
contribution of the individual parts to a total unity and the projection
of a single idea.
In passing, one observes that following Plato,
Aristotle, Cicero, and Horace, in the Renaissance sight was considered to
be the most important of the senses. Alciati had stated in his Emblem 4 that
the purpose of the emblematist was to “commit to the mind by placing
before the eyes.”6 Spanish theorists
also recognized the primacy of the visual faculty and its direct access to
“memoria,” “entendimiento,” and “voluntad.”
And through the Canon Cervantes states in Part I of Don Quixote that
“the enjoyment the mind feels must come from the beauty and harmony
which it perceives or contemplates in the things that the eye or the imagination
brings before it.”7 Some primacy must,
therefore, be accorded to the emblematic pictura, not only because
it is the res picta (or visual motif) which constitutes the
4 Giuseppina
Ledda, Contributo allo studio della letteratura emblematica in Spagna,
1549-1613 (Universitá de Pisa, 1970); Philip Lloyd-Bostock, “A
Study of Emblematic Theory and Practice in Spain between 1580 and 1680,”
Dissertation, University of Oxford, 1979; Aquilino Sánchez Pérez,
La literatura emblemática española: siglos XVI y XVII
(Madrid: Sociedad General Española de Librería, 1977).
5 Karl-Ludwig
Selig, “The Battle of the Sheep: Don Quixote I, xviii,”
Revista Hispánica Moderna, 38 (1974-75), 64-72; “Don
Quixote II, 16-17: Don Quixote and the Lions,” in Homenaje a
Ana María Barrenechea (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1984), 327-32;
Edward C. Riley, “Symbolism in Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter
73,” Journal of Hispanic Philology, 3 (1979), 161-74.
6 Clements, p.
92.
7 Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra, Don Quixote, ed. Joseph R. Jones (New York, London: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1981), p. 373.
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fundamental res significans (or intended meaning), but because it
is what the reader perceives first.
Yet another point to remember when considering
the pictura is that during the Renaissance there persisted the allegorical
habit which invested the material world with a spiritual significance beyond
its literal meaning. This symbolic view of the world survived in the conception
and interpretation of the emblem. However, as a genre both literary and pictorial
the emblem depended not only upon this symbolic way of thinking, but particularly
upon a close relationship between the arts of poetry and painting. The creative
interaction between poetry and the visual arts expressed in the Horatian
concept of ut pictura poesis contributed both to its origin and
development. It was Alciati, in fact, who brought about the definite union
of pictura and poesis.
The creative process of the emblem books demanded
that the emblematists pay attention to visual images that would contribute
to the realization of their intended purpose. Spanish emblematists tended
to use existing picturae, or sometimes left to the presses the
responsibility of their inclusion. There was, however, a reserve of pictorial
emblems since the demands the genre made on the printing houses were new
and difficult to solve. Practical consideration in the printing industry
encouraged borrowing of illustrative plates and woodcuts, and it was the
economical common practice to reuse them.
Cervantes used some of these picturae
to engage his readers' attention and to ready them for the reception of a
moral lesson or a literary issue, and he availed himself of the rich illustrative
material contained in the emblem to support his own subscriptio. The
collections printed during his lifetime were mainly of a serious and moralizing
nature, but emblem writers were as concerned as Cervantes with the aesthetics
of the period, and many of their views were consonant with Cervantes' own
perception of the function and aim of literature.
A reexamination of some episodes of Don
Quixote in the light of the emblem reveals qualities associated with
this genre in Cervantes' verbal art. There is an emblematic relation between
the visual images and Don Quixote's actions. A case in point is Part I, Chapter
18, the episode of the battle of the sheep. As Don Quixote proceeds on his
quest for adventures, Cervantes creates a scene which borrows a visual image
from the emblem tradition. The image of the “Insani Gladius” is
Emblem 175 in Alciati's original work, and it appears again in Bernardino
Daza's translation in the vernacular as “La espada en
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manos del loco”8 (fig.
1). The image alludes to the myth of Ajax who was driven to madness when
Achilles' arms were awarded to Odysseus as a prize for bravery. Thinking
they were Greeks, the deranged Ajax first slaughtered a flock of sheep and
then, discovering his error, he turned his sword against himself.
But Don Quixote is ruled by a different sort
of madness. We are told that he charges into battle with “spirit and
intrepidity” but he is restrained from further action as he rationalizes
that “the malignant spirit had turned the squadrons of enemy into flocks
of sheep.”9 Despite his initial aggressive
impulse, reason reigns over Don Quixote's actions. The moral lesson implied
in Alciati's original emblem is that man should restrain his anger and temerity.
This is clear in Diego López's translation: “El que hace esto
hace más que si solo venciera a un ejército de enemigos, porque
ninguna victoria hay más insigne, ni mayor, ni más provechosa
que aquella que alcanza el hombre de sí mismo cuando refrenando la
ira, y cólera, viene a quedar
victorioso.”10 In Don Quixote's journey
from irrationality to reason, this adventure is one stepping stone towards
self-knowledge for he has not departed from “el camino de la
razón.”
This episode concerns the moral life of Don
Quixote; however, there are others which demonstrate how Cervantes uses the
emblem to serve his purposes in the novel. Don Quixote as an “Insani
Gladius,” or mad warrior with raised sword, also appears in the episode
of the “vizcaíno,” where the narrative is halted and the
visual image is introduced. Cervantes uses the fiction of a lost manuscript
to fix this image in the readers' mind. Indeed, we may safely say that Don
Quixote's very existence as a character and the recovery and identification
of the manuscript which contains his “historia” is aided by Cervantes'
conveniently placed visual clue. But the very fact that a visual image is
chosen to help reestablish the narrative says something about how the verbal
and visual registers are inextricably bound in Cervantes' mind and in the
creation of the novel. Until this moment, Cervantes' narrative has focused
on the description of Don Quixote's imagination and expectations as he prepares
himself for a life as a knight errant. The episode of the windmills is a
well
8 Bernardino
Daza Pinciano, Los Emblemas de Alciato traducidos en Rhimas
Españolas (Lyon, 1549).
9 Cervantes,
p. 123.
10 Diego
López, Declaración Magistral sobre las Emblemas de Andrés
Alciato, 1655 (Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1973), p. 601.
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developed antecedent of this scene with the “vizcaíno,”
for it is not only Don Quixote's madness but his urgency to initiate his
valiant deeds which impel him to act. In this scene with the
“vizcaíno,” Don Quixote is, at last, encountering a foe,
though an unsuspecting one. Cervantes is, in effect, creating an emblematic
frontispiece for his novel, since in the Renaissance the inclusion of these
visual images was not only to illustrate but “to translate into the
form of pictorial art the author's intellectual and literary
concepts.”11 What this particular
pictura presents is a fundamental theme of the novel: the interaction
of literature and life, and what follows is Don Quixote's attempt to reconcile
his self-image with the real world. What may have been regarded as a comic
image has a serious intention, for it contributes to the author's stated
purpose: “to cause mankind to abhor the false and foolish tales of the
books of chivalry.”12 Curiously enough,
more than a decade before the publication of the first part of the
Quixote, the Spanish emblematist Juan de Horozco had expressed the
same reservations about the chivalrous literature entertaining the public
of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by noting that the ancients
took the head of the octopus to symbolize such literature: “La vana
poesía como de caballerías y amores, que aún entonces
se usaba pintaron por la cabeza del pulpo que al gusto es muy sabrosa, y
después causa terribles sueños y da mucho
desasosiego.”13
Another instance in which the emblem can explain
what might at first seem a strange adventure is the episode of Clavileño
during Don Quixote's stay in the Duke's palace. The image of Don Quixote
on the supposed flying horse would have reminded Cervantes' contemporaries
of the myth of Bellerophon and his winged horse Pegasus, a story illustrated
by Alciati's Emblem 14 “Consilio, et Chimaeran superari.” It later
appears in Daza's translation as “Que con consejo se vencen los más
fuertes y engañadores” (fig. 2). Bellerophon's
encounter with the monster Chimaera is brought about by the love-smitten
and rejected wife of the King, and by Bellerophon's desire not to be disloyal
to one who has treated him hospitably. This adventure is more subtle than
others for Don Quixote is, in fact, encountering the eroticism present in
the novels
11 Margery
Corbett, The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title Page in England
(London, Boston: Routledge K. Paul, 1979), p. 47.
12 Cervantes,
p. 830.
13 Juan de Horozco,
Emblemas morales (Segovia, 1591), f. 77.
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of chivalry which so much pleased Maritornes, but which was considered by
Cervantes to be one of the worst qualities of the literature written for
the mass public. In Part I the Canon had criticized the novel of chivalry
for its amorality: “And then what shall we say of the ease with which
a born queen or empress will fall into the arms of some unknown wandering
knight,”14 he states. This is precisely
the role which the damsel Altisidora is urged to play at the insistence of
Don Quixote's hosts. Her advances and active pursuit of Don Quixote reintroduce
the theme of sexual morality stated before in the episode at the inn where
the skirmish with Maritornes took place. Here Don Quixote had fantasized
that the daughter of the lord of the castle had fallen in love with him.
Taking the fantasy to be a fact he “began to feel uneasy and to consider
the perilous risk which his virtue was about to
encounter.”15 Don Quixote resolves to
be faithful to his lady Dulcinea, but in the episode in the Duke's house,
he is not in control of the situation. Don Quixote is disturbed by Altisidora's
wooing which fills him with a certain anxiety expressed by phrases full of
concern about what he perceives may be a possible “assault upon his
chastity.” When the visual image of the emblem is placed in this context
Don Quixote is seen as a man fighting temptation: “Who knows but this
privacy, this opportunity, this silence, may awaken my sleeping desires and
lead me in these latter years to fall where I have never
stumbled?”16 And though in her last
song to the departing Don Quixote she disassociates herself from the evil
image of the “dragon,” and describes herself as a “tender
young lamb,” Altisidora is indeed the Chimaera, the monster representing
“tantos vicios y tantos malos pensamientos, con que el mundo nos
acomete,”17 and only a wise and prudent
man can overcome them. The image of Don Quixote on Clavileño is a
pictorial representation of the verbally presented situation which slowly
unfolds; it is simultaneously anchored in myth and in Don Quixote's reality.
Diego López supports this interpretation when in his commentary to
this emblem he writes: “Más dificultoso le fuera a Bellerofón
librarte de las manos de esta mujer que vencer la
Chimera.”18
The episode of Don Quixote and the omens may
well provide a
14 Cervantes,
p. 373.
15 Cervantes,
p. 108.
16 Cervantes,
p. 686.
17 López,
p. 85.
18 Ibid.
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final instance of the usefulness of an emblematic interpretation in elucidating
Cervantes' theory of the novel. In the penultimate chapter of the novel,
as he enters his village, Quixote is frozen in an image, seemingly drained
of vital power, as he stands holding a hunted hare and a cricket cage. As
in the case of the scene with “vizcaíno,” the narrative
is briefly halted while Cervantes composes a visual image before our very
eyes. Riley's statement that “the entire scene or part of it could comprise
an emblem”19 leaves ample room for further
speculation, and one cannot but wonder if Cervantes did not purposely exploit
the pictorial quality of these scene to make a visual statement of considerable
importance.
Don Quixote is presented as intruding upon
the scene of a hunt which one associates with the love chase since its symbolism
is present in the Spanish literary tradition. The hare, as Riley notes, has
numerous symbolical associations, predominantly of femininity. And though
he states that each object stands for a symbolic substitute for Dulcinea,
he admits that his “hopes of discovering emblematic or iconographic
meaning in the picture . . . have not been
realized.”20 However, in the emblematic
tradition the crickets, which presumably once occupied the empty cage in
the episode, are symbols of bad or minor poets, while the hare is associated
with the “open,” since it is an animal that lives in the open.
Hence, Cervantes may be stating in emblematic form a major literary concern.
We know that the first part of Don Quixote enjoyed enormous popularity
during Cervantes' lifetime, but that he also experienced the publication
of Avellaneda's spurious second part. In light of this, Chapter 73 may well
be a narrative turning point in Don Quixote: Cervantes is perhaps
aware that, if left in the open—that is, in the hands of free and
unrestrained minor poets—his hero's fate will not rest in the hands
of his creator. One may hypothesize, therefore, that Cervantes might be
emblematically expressing his desire not to leave his novel open-ended once
again. Consequently, he returns Don Quixote to his place of origin prior
to his peaceful death.
These episodes briefly illustrate that Cervantes
likely used the tradition of the emblem to state visually his purposes in
the novel. Employing a genre which was in vogue during his own time, he presented
to his readers both abstract moral qualities and virtues and
19 Riley,
p. 169.
20 Ibid.
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literary issues in a visual language understood by all. The pictorial quality
of these episodes invites us to try to recapture the ability to read his
work emblematically and to discover deeper meanings in his images. In this
sense, the widely read emblem books offer us a unique resource for the
elucidation of all of Cervantes' literary creations.
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Prepared with
the help of Myrna Douglas |
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