From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
12.1 (1992): 73-92.
Copyright © 1992, The Cervantes Society of America
Readers, Authors, and Characters in Don
Quijote
on Quijote, a novel
saturated with figures who assume the multiple literary roles of characters,
readers, and authors or narrators, is “in many ways a lesson in
reading.”1 Filling his book with characters
and narrators who are literary in essence and often conscious of being so,
Cervantes implies in his text the extratextual Reader, to whom he directs
aesthetic and ethical lessons about how one should respond to literature
and to other people.2 In this study I will
consider the most interesting doubly literary figures, their functions within
Don Quijote, and how their literariness affects the reading of the
novel as a whole.
1 Ruth
El Saffar, Distance and Control in Don Quixote: A Study in Narrative
Technique, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures,
no. 147 (Chapel Hill: U.N.C. Department of Romance Languages, 1975), 117.
2 Although I
am aware of Parr's scheme of narrators/authors and readers (see James A.
Parr, Don Quixote: An Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (Newark, Delaware:
Juan de la Cuesta, 1988)), here I am interested in what he calls the “Real
Reader,” the actual person who sits and reads Cervantes's novel. Hereafter
I refer to this reader as “the Reader” to distinguish him/her from
the readers within Don Quijote.
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There are several types of character-reader-authors
in Don Quijote. The quintessential, although unique example is, of
course, Don Quijote, an extremely avid reader who through his words and
imagination transforms himself into the protagonist and author of his own
living chivalric romance. There are numerous characters who follow Don Quijote's
example to a certain extent, playing literary roles and often occupying and/or
manipulating the novel of his adventures. Before discussing these figures
individually, I will give an idea of their general characteristics. There
are some characters (Cardenio and Dorotea, for example) who, like Don
Quijote, are the protagonists and narrators of their own
historias, with the important difference that their historias
are based not on imagination, but on
truth.3 Most of the other characters I will
discuss (especially the Priest, the Barber, and the Duques) are readers
both in the literal sense of the word, in that they like to read or listen
to stories, and in the figurative sense, in that they derive pleasure from
observing, listening to, and interpreting, or reading, other people's
lives. These characters share the curious tendency to respond to other people
as they respond to books and stories, often reducing others to literary objects
and then making themselves the authors of others' historias. The third
group of literary figures consists of the narrators of Don Quijote,
who are also readers and characters, especially in Part Two, where as
character-readers they appear to misread both the text and its protagonists.
I will discuss the characters more or less in the order in which they appear
in the novel, with the exception of the narrators, whom I will consider at
the end, since they most directly affect the Reader's reading of Don
Quijote.
Don Quijote is considered insane because of
his transformation from a reader to a protagonist-author of chivalric romances,
but ironically, what he does is actually only an exaggerated case of what
nearly all of the characters in Cervantes's novel do. Alonso Quijano is a
naïve reader; he doesn't distinguish
3 Since
there is no word in the English language that means both “story”
and “history,” I will use the Spanish
“historia”when I mean both these words at the same time
and when I wish to preserve the ambiguity of the Spanish term. For a discussion
of this term and the difficulties of the notions of story and history, see
Bruce W. Wardropper, “Don Quixote: Story or History?” Modern
Philology 63 (1965): 1-11; rpt. in Ruth El Saffar, Critical Essays
on Cervantes (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986), 80-94.
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between reality or history and fiction and immerses himself too much in his
reading:
[S]e enfrascó tanto en su letura, que se le pasaban las noches leyendo
de claro en claro, y los días de turbio en turbio; y así, del
poco dormir y del mucho leer se le secó el celebro, de manera que
vino a perder el juicio. (I, 73)4
Alonso Quijano doesn't maintain the appropriate distance between life and
literature and consequently becomes incapable of distinguishing between fiction
and reality. Not satisfied with experiencing adventures vicariously, through
reading, he enters into the world of fiction, transforming himself from a
passive reader of chivalric adventures into Don Quijote, the author and
protagonist of his own adventures. With the power of language and of his
imagination, Alonso Quijano frees himself from everyday existence and creates
for himself another reality and a new (although imitated) identity.
When Don Quijote begins his career as knight
errant, his imagination is powerful, though untested. He is good at transforming
the real world into one more appropriate to the romance he wishes to live.
As a sort of living novel, he attracts many readers, that is, other characters
who derive pleasure from watching him and laughing at him. Often the attraction
of the Quixotic world is so strong that many of his readers can't distance
themselves from it. Like Don Quijote, they cross the border between reality
and fiction and enter into the fantastic Quixotic world, allowing themselves
to be transformed into characters in his novel. Thus, at first Don Quijote
has the power to be not only his own author, but also the creator and author
of other characters.
The first episode in which other people become
characters in Don Quijote's adventures occurs on his first sally, when he
goes to the inn and imposes his fantastic reality on the people there. In
his imagination and with his words, he transforms the inn into a castle,
the prostitutes into damsels, and the innkeeper into a knight, so that everything
is concordant with the world of knight-errantry. Don Quijote needs other
people to participate in his adventure, and his “incited” nature
incites them to do what
4 This
and all subsequent quotations from Don Quijote are from El ingenioso
hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. by Luis Andrés Murillo (Madrid:
Castalia, 1987).
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he wants.5 Having realized that he has not
yet been knighted, he asks the innkeeper to knight him, which he agrees to
do “por tener que reír aquella noche” (I, 88). Thus, the
people at the inn play the roles Don Quijote has assigned them, and they
perform the ceremony just as he wishes.
Although in the inn the protagonist Don Quijote
has wounded a muleteer, as author he has done no harm. Nevertheless, immediately
afterwards he begins to include in his adventures people who do not wish
to participate. He interferes in other people's lives and forces them to
do what his plot requires, which often causes great pain both to them and
to himself. What happens in the “adventure” of Andrés
exemplifies many Quixotic adventures. When Don Quijote demands that
Andrés's “gentleman” master untie and pay the boy, in his
imagination he has completed a successful adventure. But he has actually
worsened the boy's situation through his attempt to manipulate the master;
after Don Quijote leaves, Andrés is whipped more than he would have
been had Don Quijote never come on the scene. Don Quijote is later punished
for this misdeed, for in the following adventure he receives a very painful
beating from a muleteer.
On his second sally, Don Quijote continues
as author-protagonist of his own adventures, subjecting innocent people to
his plot and educating Sancho to perform the role of squire errant. However,
unfortunately for Don Quijote, many of the people whom they meet “are
irresistibly drawn to invent situations in which they can enjoy, and
temporarily participate in, Don Quixote's madness” (El Saffar 23 [emphasis
mine]). Such characters are not content with simply observing or participating
in Quixotic adventures, but wish to become inventors or authors of them.
As I will show below, this phenomenon occurs increasingly often as the novel
progresses, and Don Quijote loses progressively more control over his own
historia, as other characters usurp his power.
5 Stephen
Gilman, in Galdós and the Art of the European Novel: 1867-1887
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981), explains that Américo Castro
uses the term “incitation” to mean “the conscious
incorporation of excitement” (162). In The Novel According
to Cervantes (Berkeley: University of California Press,1989), Gilman
says that “incited” characters are “far more intensely alive
in both the active and passive voices than we are . . .” (35);
they have a certain “inner richness.” All references in the text
to Gilman are to The Novel According to Cervantes.
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In spite of their disapproval of his literary
behavior, Don Quijote's “friends,” the Priest and the Barber, also
play the multiple roles of character, reader, and author. Furthermore, the
Priest is not a very good reader in practice. Although he agrees with the
Canon of Toledo that the best books “deleitan y enseñan
juntamente” (I, 564), whenever he hears or reads stories, he speaks
only of the pleasure they give him, never of what he has
learned.6 Also, the Priest and the Barber,
the supposedly discreet intellectuals, share with many other characters of
Don Quijote the tendency to regard other people as they regard stories,
that is, as means toward their own entertainment. They often consider others
almost not as people, but as stories that exist to be told for their pleasure.
The Priest and the Barber demonstrate these attitudes when they meet Cardenio
in the Sierra Morena. First they hear him singing his lament, which makes
them feel “admiración y contento” (I, 330). When they find
out it is Cardenio who is singing, they are very interested in hearing his
story: “[L]os dos, que no deseaban otra cosa que saber de su mesma boca
la causa de su daño, le rogaron se la contase” (I, 332). Cardenio
tells them his whole historia, and the response of his listeners (or
readers) is, of course, pleasure; the Priest says that “no sólo
no se cansaban en oírle, sino que les daba mucho gusto las menudencias
que contaba” (I, 338).
The pleasure the Priest and the Barber derive
from reading other people's lives is even more obvious in the scene in which
they meet Dorotea. Here they move from taking pleasure in story to a kind
of voyeurism; they enjoy reading not only her historia, but also her
body.7 After hearing a voice saying it wants
to remain hidden, the two, along with Cardenio, want to know who is speaking.
When they see Dorotea (who is dressed as a boy), instead of speaking with
her, they approach her quietly and hide behind some rocks to watch the erotic
“mozo” washing “his” feet in the brook. Thus,
they go from vicarious reading of others to voyeurism, also a kind of reading.
Dorotea's beauty awakes in the men “más admiración y
. . . más deseo de saber
6 See
Alban Forcione, Cervantes, Aristotle and the “Persiles”
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970), chapter III, for an analysis of the literary
discussion between Don Quijote and the Canon.
7 Here I am indebted
to Salvador J. Fajardo's detailed and perceptive reading of this scene in
“The Unveiling of Dorotea or the Reader
as Voyeur,” Cervantes 4 (1984),
89-108; especially 89-97.
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quién [es]”(I, 346), and after coming out from his hiding place
and confronting Dorotea, the Priest asks her to tell her
historia.
The fact that the Priest and the Barber react
to Cardenio and Dorotea as if they were stories more than people is surprising,
but what is even more striking is that Cervantes himself presents them as
such. These two narrator-protagonists of the stories of their lives are
“the repositor[ies], the embodiment[s] of . . .
tale[s]” (Fajardo 92), read not only by other characters,
but through these characters, by the Reader. Both Cardenio and Dorotea tell
their histories as stories; they are the storytellers, and the others, their
audience, gather around to listen.
Dorotea, who is less desperate than Cardenio,
is able to remain distant enough from her own story to be able to consider
it as a work of art.8 As Stephen Gilman points
out, Dorotea is very conscious of being a storyteller. After Cardenio's
interruption, she resumes telling her historia by saying, “lo
que en mi cuento pasa fue . . .” (I, 352 [emphasis
mine]). Furthermore, she demonstrates artistic control over her
historia in her delivery, style, and use of various literary devices
(Gilman 168). Dorotea “fabricates (or at least arranges) her story
imaginatively, admires it as she repeats it aloud, and proceeds to try to
live it” (Gilman 169). Gilman also argues that Cardenio and Dorotea
are characters not only of their own historias, but also in real life;
even in their everyday lives, they behave as theatrically as Don Quijote
does in his “insane” attempts to replicate a chivalric romance.
Their conduct, fashioned according to the rules of nobility and honor, a
sort of national role-playing stimulated by the national theater, makes their
historias almost as unbelievable as chivalric romances are. Dorotea
becomes a literary character on yet another level when she plays the role
of Princess Micomicona. Dorotea, “borrowed tacitly from the theater,”
and Micomicona, “imitated verbally from the romances of chivalry,”
are “equally artificial and absurd” (Gilman 175).
Having examined the Priest and the Barber as
readers, I would now like to look at how they play the literary roles of
author and character. These two men are the first characters who become authors
in order to manipulate Don Quijote. Although their primary motive is to cure
or normalize him, they also wish
8 In this
paragraph I rely heavily on Gilman's discussion of Cardenio and Dorotea (The
Novel According to Cervantes, 157-177).
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to benefit from the program they have designed to “reducirle a mejor
vida” (I, 328) and cannot resist creating a situation that will entertain
them.9 The Priest and the Barber manipulate
Don Quijote not through discourse, but through fiction: through a drama that
will appeal to his sense of chivalry. Their first plan is that the Priest
play the role of a damsel in distress and the Barber play her squire, but
when they tell their plot to Dorotea, they agree that she ought to be the
damsel, Princess Micomicona. Dorotea is more suited to the role and knows
how to play it, since she has read many chivalric romances. The three join
forces and impose a plot on Don Quijote, composing for him a fixed role that
he must play. Don Quijote's role is active, but not creative, for the ending
of the play is already written in Micomicona's father's prophecy, and Don
Quijote is obliged by the plot not to enter into any other adventure until
he kills the giant and restores to Micomicona her kingdom. Dorotea, on the
other hand, plays the more creative role, telling the
“verdadera” historia of the life of her character
immediately after having told the verdadera historia of her
real life. Although the Priest, the Barber, and Dorotea consider themselves
superior to the “loco” Don Quijote and the “simple” Sancho
Panza, these “discreet” people must abandon their positions as
observers or readers exterior to the fictional world of chivalric romances
in order to enter into the Quixotic world, thus transforming themselves into
fictional characters and unconsciously participating in Quixotism. Since
it is through literary means that Don Quijote is returned to a normal life,
his return becomes a sort of spectacle that provides what literature provides
for most of Cervantes's characters: pleasure (el gusto). The authors
and actors inevitably end up as spectators of their own drama, and especially
of the reactions of the “loco y simple” Don Quijote and Sancho,
which make everyone laugh.
Intending to write the final chapter of the
historia of Don Quijote, the Priest and the Barber depose him from
the position of author; they rob him of the authority over his own narrative.
After the drama of Micomicona, Don Quijote becomes more and more passive,
and as he has to respond to other people's creations,
9 This
is reminiscent of what Foucault calls “the repressive hypothesis”
in The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurley (New York: Random House, 1980).
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his own imaginative and creative forces diminish accordingly. Although he
is limited by the drama of Micomicona, his position within it is not so bad.
It seems at first that he will have the opportunity to do what all heroes
of chivalric romances do: kill a giant and rescue a damsel. But maintaining
the illusion of the drama turns out to be too complicated for the players,
and Don Quijote's author-readers end up entrapping him literally, bringing
him home in an “enchanted” state, completely passive and dehumanized.
These “friends” of Don Quijote have committed the ethical error
of reducing another person to a literary figure, a puppet, an object of ridicule,
a means toward their own pleasure. Their error is the result of the Quixotic
aesthetic error of not distinguishing appropriately between fiction and reality.
Ethically, however, the Priest's and Barber's error is far worse than that
of Don Quijote. Don Quijote also wishes to novelize others, but in his case
it is in order to transport them to his own level of reality, not to put
them in one inferior to his own.
The pattern of presenting the narration and
reception of historias and dramas, along with several characters who
play the literary roles of reader, author, and character, occurs repeatedly
throughout Don Quijote, from the most interior level, that of the
interpolated novella, “El curioso impertinente,” to the most exterior,
that of the narrators, which I will discuss below. In the case of “El
curioso impertinente,” the Reader of Don Quijote observes from
a superior position the narration and reception of a story read aloud by
the Priest, at the same time the character-readers/listeners are observing
the performance and reception of dramas within the fictional story they are
reading. At the beginning of the novella, Anselmo composes a drama in which
his friend, Lotario, plays the role of seducer so that he can observe the
reaction of his wife, Camila. But when the fiction becomes reality, and Lotario
actually does become Camila's lover, Camila and Lotario become the authors.
They plot a counter-drama, in which Camila will be the protagonist, thus
forcing Anselmo to assume the role of naïve reader. Ultimately, Anselmo
becomes the victim of the very plot he has set in motion and had hoped to
control. He has been impertinente in trying to orchestrate a drama
in which the characters are real people. The important aesthetic and ethical
lessons of Don Quijote, that one should not confuse the boundaries
between reality and fiction, novelize other people, nor try to become the
author of other people's lives, are presented directly to the characters
of Don Quijote in
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“El curioso impertinente.” However, the characters of Don
Quijote read “El curioso impertinente” for pleasure, not for
edification, and they learn nothing from their
reading.10
The inclusion of the publication of Part One
of Don Quijote in Part Two adds yet another complication to the pattern
of characters, readers, and authors. In Part Two, many of the characters
are readers of others not only in the figurative sense of being listeners,
observers, or voyeurs, but in that they have actually read Part One of the
adventures of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. Thus, they consider the protagonists
not as real people whom they may sometimes treat as fictional characters,
but as literary/historical characters come to life. Further, “rather
than being unaware, or taken by surprise by Don Quixote's madness
. . . [they] tend to anticipate and exploit for their own entertainment
his [and Sancho's] credulity” (El Saffar 82). Such characters have
preconceptions about what Don Quijote and Sancho are like and treat them
as the objects of ridicule they believe them be from their reading of Part
One. These new character-readers, like some in Part One of Don Quijote,
are not satisfied with reading Don Quijote, but also insist on becoming his
authors.
As I mentioned above, Don Quijote loses
progressively more control over his own narrative throughout the course of
the novel. In Part Two even the supposedly simple Sancho becomes the author
of a Quixotic adventure and by doing so exerts a certain control over his
master. In order to avoid revealing his lie about the letter to Dulcinea,
Sancho deceives Don Quijote. He convinces him that the peasant girl mounted
on a donkey is Dulcinea by transforming reality with words, as he has seen
his master do so many times. In spite of the fact that Sancho does not follow
literary conventions very well (for example, he says the girl has pearly
eyes instead of pearly teeth), Don Quijote believes him. But since Don Quijote's
imagination is already weak, he cannot transform the peasant girl into Dulcinea.
After this “enchantment” of Dulcinea, Don Quijote loses even more
control, not only over his narrative, but even over his own ideal.
10 For
more on the relationship between the characters of the Quijote and
“El curioso impertinente,” see J. B. Avalle-Arce, “‘El
curioso’ y ‘el capitán,’ “ Deslindes
Cervantinos (Madrid: Edhigar, 1961). Also pertinent is El Saffar's discussion
of the analogies between this novella and the rest of the novel, in Distance
and Control, especially 68-79.
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When he realizes that he cannot disenchant his ideal woman, his raison
d'être, Don Quijote's melancholy deepens and his spirits fall. In this
episode, Sancho assumes a position superior to that of Don Quijote and laughs
at his naïveté, but he does not maintain this feeling of superiority
nor insist on dominating him. As we will see below, when Don Quijote and
Sancho meet the Duques, the squire quickly returns to the Quixotic
level of reality.
Sansón Carrasco is the first reader
of Part One of Don Quijote to appear in Part Two. After consulting
the Priest and the Barber, Carrasco proposes to normalize Don Quijote by
conquering him according to the rules of chivalry. For this reason, he enters
into the Quixotic world as author and character of a chivalric adventure.
According to Carrasco's plot, his character, the Knight of the Mirrors, will
easily conquer Don Quijote and then force him to return home. Carrasco plays
the role of a knight errant well enough, but fails as an author. As he learns
most painfully, Don Quijote and Rocinante are not just of literature, but
rather of very real flesh and bone. Since his characters exist in the real
world and not just in the closed world of fiction, Carrasco cannot maintain
control over everything that happens in his “adventure,” and in
the end, he is beaten, wounded, and conquered.
After his defeat, Sansón Carrasco becomes
even more a part of the Quixotic world. He doesn't react as if losing the
battle were simply the end of a fictional adventure, but resolves to seek
actual revenge. The second time Carrasco enters into battle with Don Quijote
(as the Knight of the White Moon), he conquers him and forces him to retire
from knight errantry for one year. By conquering Don Quijote in a
“mock” battle, Carrasco gains control over him and then uses his
power to bring his adventures and historia to their ends. The obligation
to retire so depresses Don Quijote that it contributes greatly to the cause
of his death.
As we have seen, throughout Don Quijote
Cervantes places his characters in various literary situations, portraying
most of them as bad readers and authors who commit various aesthetic and
ethical errors. But it is the Duques whom he portrays as the worst
characters of Don Quijote: the worst readers and authors, the
“villains.” The Duques' attitude toward reading is similar
to that of most of Don Quijote's characters. They derive great pleasure
from reading books, and they hope that Don Quijote and Sancho will provide
them with as much entertainment as literature does:
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[L]os dos, por haber leído la primera parte desta historia y haber
entendido por ella el disparatado humor de don Quijote, con grandísimo
gusto y con deseo de conocerle le atendían, con el prosupuesto de
seguirle el humor y conceder con él en cuanto les dijese, tratándole
como a caballero andante los días que con ellos se detuviese, con
todas las ceremonias acostumbradas en los libros de caballerías, que
ellos habían leído, y aun les eran muy aficionados (II, 270).
The Duques are especially dangerous
reader-authors, since they have either misread Part One of Don Quijote
or have understood it and chosen to disregard their understanding for the
sake of entertainment. Thus, they prove to be extremely vicious authors of
adventures for Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. The Duques seem to think they
understand the protagonists from having read the first part of their
historia, but their reading is not consistent with the true natures
of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. According to their reading, the two are
one-dimensional, like Avellaneda's characters. They consider Sancho to be
simple, his master, loco. It is true that Cervantes's characters
are this way in the beginning of Don Quijote, but Sancho soon becomes
simple-discreto and Don Quijote, loco-cuerdo. The Duques
are not aware of or do not take into account the complexity the protagonists
have gained even in the latter chapters of Part One. Thus, in their attempt
to make a continuation of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha,
they commit the same artistic error that, according to Cervantes, Avellaneda
commits in the false Quijote; they fail to show understanding of their
characters.
In addition to misreading Part One, the
Duques err in failing to distinguish appropriately between reality
and fiction, more than almost any other character-reader-author. Like the
Priest, the Barber, and Sansón Carrasco, the Duques want to
become the authors of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza and manipulate them. However,
unlike Don Quijote's friends, the “nobles” have absolutely no good
motive for doing so. While the Priest, the Barber, et al. want to create
episodes that are pleasurable, but will also end his crazy adventures, the
Duques want only to prolong his adventures for the sake of their own
entertainment. They make no distinction between literary/historical characters
and actual people. They consider Don Quijote and Sancho simply as literary
figures, whose adventures, like books, will lead to la risa, la
admiración, y el gusto.
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The Duques' failure to distinguish between
reality and fiction leads not only to their committing the ethical error
of mistreating other people, but also to a serious defect in their artistic
creation. Like Sansón Carrasco, they think they can manipulate every
aspect of their narrative. However, the truth is that they cannot maintain
absolute control, since elements of reality interfere with their plot. Their
narrative does not take place within the closed world of literature, but
rather is superimposed over reality. Moreover, there are times when they
cannot completely mask the real world. Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, doña
Rodríguez, Tosilos, and the other “characters” of the dramas
of the Duques are human beings whose reactions cannot always be
anticipated or controlled.
Because of their aesthetic and ethical errors
of misreading, of not recognizing the difference between literature and life,
and of novelizing others, the Duques, believing themselves to be discreet,
are actually fools. Furthermore, sometimes they almost transform themselves
into characters of their own dramas and enter into the world of their fiction,
forgetting that their plays are only
plays.11 As the Duques make fun of
Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, Cervantes satirizes them, and the Reader
laughs not at the objects of ridicule, but at the ridiculers themselves.
After reading the adventures composed by the Duques, the Reader agrees
with the Duke's chaplain's judgment of them: “Por el hábito que
tengo, que estoy por decir que es tan sandio vuestra excelencia como estos
pecadores. ¡Mirad si no han de ser ellos locos, pues los cuerdos canonizan
sus locuras!” (II, 284). And although Cide Hamete Benengeli's opinion
of Don Quijote and Sancho does not seem accurate, his reading of the
Duques seems quite astute: “[eran] tan locos los burladores como
los burlados, y . . . no estaban los duques dos dedos de parecer
tontos, pues tanto ahínco ponían en burlarse de dos tontos”
(II,564-565).
We meet the Duques for the first time
as bad readers, who objectify others and read solely for pleasure. Soon they
also become authors and begin to use their socio-economic position to manipulate
Don Quijote and Sancho. During her conversation with Sancho (II, Ch. 33),
the Duchess derives great pleasure from hearing him tell his version of the
historia of his adventures
11 See
El Saffar's Distance and Control for a detailed discussion about authors
losing control due to their lack of distance from their creations.
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with Don Quijote. But she also intervenes and imposes on Sancho her reading
of the historia, assuming a hermeneutical function almost like that
of the confessor.12 The Duchess interprets
his story, and on the basis of her interpretation, produces the
“true” story, which is, of course, fictional. She convinces Sancho,
who wants to win her favor, to reject his own reading of his life and to
substitute hers. She tells him:
. . . real y verdaderamente yo sé de buena parte que la
villana . . . era y es Dulcinea del Toboso, y que el buen Sancho,
pensando ser el engañador, es el engañado (II, 301).
The Duchess also interprets for Sancho what happened in the cave of Montesinos:
Deste suceso se puede inferir que pues el gran don Quijote dice que vio
allí a la mesma labradora que Sancho vio a la salida del Toboso, sin
duda es Dulcinea, y que andan por aquí los encantadores muy listos
y demasiadamente curiosos (II,301-302).
The Duques are authors as well as spectators
of various spectacular but not very clever adventures, from which they derive
great pleasure, laughing at the disparates of Don Quijote and Sancho
Panza. The discreet Reader sees that in addition to being very cruel, the
Duques are not very artistic authors. What they compose is farcical,
with emphasis on the spectacular and on the pain of the protagonists. This
makes the Reader feel compassion for Don Quijote and Sancho and disdain for
the Duques. These character-reader-authors entrap Don Quijote both
in actuality and within their fictional plots. They impede the progress of
his adventures, forcing him to participate in a series of rather unimaginative
episodes in which he is nothing but an object of ridicule and has no opportunity
to succeed. In the Duques' plots, Don Quijote is restricted to reacting
to the situation they present him, and the conclusions of these
“adventures” are always anticlimactic. For example, instead of
having the opportunity to feign a battle with the giant Malambruno, Don Quijote
is allowed only to ride a wooden horse, after which it is announced that
the adventure has ended “con sólo intentarla” (II,
352).
12 In
The History of Sexuality, pp. 66-67, Foucault discusses the hermeneutic
function of the confessor. The “truth” is produced through the
relationship between the person who confesses and the confessor, and the
confessor has the power to “constitute a discourse of truth on the basis
of [the] decipherment” of the confession.
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The Duques fail especially in their
grand drama of the government of Sancho. While they intend to laugh at the
foolishness of the apparently simple Sancho, what happens is that Sancho
governs with discretion, justice, and compassion; he is a better ruler than
the “nobles” are. The Duques have been foolish, and Sancho,
discreet. Their joke fails because it is based on a serious misreading of
Sancho's character. Instead of leaving the island ridiculed and humiliated,
Sancho departs with proven wisdom and enhanced self-knowledge.
Because he has learned, among other things,
that he will be happier ruling at home than governing an island, Sancho Panza
emerges as the triumphant character of Don Quijote. He wins in dependence
from the Duques, from Don Quijote, and from false ideals. And most
importantly, he gains the freedom to become both his own author and his own
reader or interpreter. Sancho abandons the Duques' plot and decides
for himself to return home. Because of his experiences as governor and his
consciousness of being a character from a famous book, Sancho “acquires
. . . a new self-awareness and is capable of observing and describing
himself as though he were another
person.”13 This capacity to read himself
well is especially evident when he and Don Quijote encounter characters who
misunderstand them because of their familiarity with the false
Quijote. For example, when he talks with don Alvaro Tarfe, a friend
of Avellaneda's Don Quijote, Sancho distinguishes himself from the false
Sancho:
. . . el decir gracias no es para todos, y ese Sancho que vuestra
merced dice, señor gentilhombre, debe de ser algún grandísimo
bellaco, frión y ladrón juntamente; que el verdadero Sancho
Panza soy yo, que tengo más gracias que llovidas; y si no, haga vuestra
merced la experiencia, y ándese tras de mí, por lo menos un
año, y verá que se me caen a cada paso, y tales y tantas, que
sin saber yo las más veces lo que me digo, hago reír a cuantos
me escuchan . . . (II, 577).
As we have seen, Cervantes repeatedly shows
the presentation and reception of stories and dramas on the level of Don
Quijote's story, as well as on the more interior level of the interpolated
novella, “El curioso impertinente.” He repeats this pattern yet
again on the outermost level of the novel, the
13 Edward
C. Riley, Cervantes' Theory of the Novel (London: Oxford UP, 1962),
203-204.
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diegetic level, which communicates most directly with the Reader. Thus, not
only are the characters of Don Quijote readers and narrators/authors,
but also the narrators function as characters and readers. They become characters
in their own narration or in that of other narrators, and like the other
important characters of Don Quijote, they are readers and interpreters
both of the story and of other characters.
Of course, every narrator of any story is a
kind of reader/interpreter and character, but in Don Quijote Cervantes
reveals his narrators as such, thus showing the Reader “how
. . . fictions masquerading as histories are put together by laying
bare their inner workings,”14 both within
the story of Don Quijote's adventures and on its diegetic level. In both
parts of Don Quijote, but especially in Part Two, the narrators impose
themselves on the story, frequently interrupting and commenting on it. By
calling attention to the artifice of the narrative, Cervantes “recalls
us to our condition as readers” (Fajardo 97). He forces us to
maintain a certain distance from the story, thus teaching us, “while
absorbed in the entrancing flow of narration, to take the configuration of
the whole into account” (Gilman 13-14). This interruption, along with
the representation of so many readers and narrator/authors within the story,
forces the Reader to disengage herself (or himself) from the adventure of
the moment and to think instead of the novel as a whole and of the nature
of the various elements that contribute to the experience of reading
it.15 It makes her conscious of the fact
that the narrators are also readers and interpreters of the text and of the
characters, that they tell not necessarily the truth, but rather their
conceptions of it, and that sometimes they may even lie. This teaches the
Reader not to rely absolutely on any narrator and to think and judge for
herself. By saturating Don Quijote with figures who play the literary
roles of fictional character, reader, and author, Cervantes makes his text,
its narration, and reading itself as much the subjects of his novel as is
the historia of Don Quijote and the other
characters.
As George Haley points out, Maese Pedro's puppet
show most vividly dramatizes “the interplay of story, teller and
14 George
Haley, “The Narrator in Don Quijote: Maese Pedro's Puppet
Show,” in El Saffar, Critical Essays on Cervantes, 109-110
(originally in MLN 80 [1965]): 145-65.
15 In order
to avoid repeating “he or she,” etc., I refer hereafter to the
Reader alternately as “he” or “she.”
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reader” (97) that occurs when one reads Don Quijote. It is a
microcosm of the novel, and its relationship to the Reader is very much like
that of “El curioso impertinente” to its readers; each shows its
readers a process of narration and reception very similar to what they are
experiencing outside of the story (which is, in the case of the Reader, reading).
As in Don Quijote itself, in the puppet show the roles of author and
narrator and their manipulation of the narrative are dramatized, revealed.
The difference is that in the case of the story of Melisendra and don Gaiferos,
Cervantes can also dramatize the role of the reader or spectator, while in
Don Quijote, he can only imply the Reader, and through this
implication, direct him to consider his own reading.
In the performance of the puppet show, the
Reader sees the dramatization of the roles of author, narrator, and reader
from a superior position. Maese Pedro, the author, remains backstage throughout
most of the drama. Nevertheless, his control over both the narrator and the
narration is revealed when he directs his assistant:
Muchacho, no te metas en dibujos, sino haz lo que ese señor te manda,
que será lo más acertado; sigue tu canto llano, y no te metas
en contrapuntos, que se suelen quebrar de sotiles (II, 242).
Llaneza, muchacho; no te encumbres, que toda afectación es mala (II,
243).
Furthermore, as even Don Quijote observes, the narrator does not limit himself
to telling the story objectively, but rather intervenes to interpret it.
Thus, the version of the story presented is his own version; the story is
filtered through the narrator before reaching the reader, whether he interrupts
the story or not. He chooses which details to include and presents the characters
according to his own interpretation. In addition, “[t]he assistant also
indulges in the purely personal aside that allows the spectator to see clearly
where the narrator's sympathy lies and to be influenced in his reaction
accordingly. His personal commentary twice threatens to turn into long-winded
digression . . .” (Haley 101). Objecting to this superfluous
commentary, Don Quijote shows himself to be a discreet reader, not willing
to accept everything the narrator says. While Don Quijote can maintain his
distance from the narrator, from the story itself he cannot. Characteristically,
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he does not distinguish between literature and life, and he again tries to
transgress the boundary between the world of fiction and that of reality,
this time not just spiritually, but physically. Needless to say, this is
impossible. Attempting to participate in art, he destroys it, ruining (or
“killing”) the puppets, friends and enemies alike. With this episode,
“an analogue with implications that concern . . . [the] reading
of the whole novel” (Haley 109), Cervantes advises his Reader, once
again, to read with discretion.
There are so many cases in which the narrators
of Don Quijote play the roles of readers and characters both implicitly
and explicitly that a discussion of this subject could fill an entire book.
Therefore, I will concentrate only on the fascinating complication of Part
Two, when the narrators reveal themselves to be bad readers of the characters
and/or of the text itself.16 Like the
character-readers of Part Two, the narrators judge Don Quijote and Sancho
according to their readings of Part One, which seem to be as mistaken as
that of the Duques. They try to impose their erroneous or deceitful
readings on the Reader, as the Duchess does to Sancho, but unlike Sancho,
the Reader has already received a long lesson on how to read and should resist
the narrators' authority. Besides adding to this lesson, the narrators'
misreading serves to underscore the development of the protagonists' characters,
which is evidence of the superiority of Cervantes's art over that of his
character-authors and of Avellaneda. Also, by revealing his personal attitudes
toward the characters and his reactions to the story, each narrator becomes
an object of his own narration, or of that of “superior” narrative
presences.
Perhaps the most explicit case in which a narrative
voice judges Part Two of Don Quijote according to its (mis)reading
of Part One occurs in Chapter II.5. The translator says that he considers
this chapter apocryphal “porque en él habla Sancho Panza con
otro estilo del que se podía prometer de su corto ingenio, y dice
cosas tan sutiles, que no tiene por posible que él las supiese
. . . “ (II, 73). But the discreet Reader does not doubt that
Sancho can speak grandiloquently and with discretion, for as
16 Especially
in Part Two, it is often difficult to be certain when a particular narrator
is misreading Don Quijote's adventures and when he is intentionally giving
an ironic or deceitful reading. Whether the narrators are actually misreading
the situations and characters or intentionally giving ironic (mis)readings,
I will call their readings “misreadings,” since at any rate they
at least appear to be misreadings.
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Sancho shows in Part One, he has learned a great deal from Don Quijote and
from his own experiences. His lamentation in the last chapter of Part One,
¡Oh flor de la caballería, que con solo un garrotazo acabaste
la carrera de tus bien gastados años! ¡Oh honra de tu linaje,
honor y gloria de toda la Mancha, y aun de todo el mundo, el cual faltando
tú en él, quedará lleno de malhechores, sin temor de
ser castigados de sus malas fechorías! . . . (I, 601),
makes us laugh, but we don't think it “apocryphal.” The narrators
truly seem to be ignorant when they don't recognize changes in Don Quijote
and Sancho Panza. Don Quijote himself is more perceptive than they are, for
he says to his squire, “Cada día Sancho . . . te vas
haciendo menos simple y más discreto” (II, 121). Even the narrative
voice that maintains the greatest distance from the story, the
supernarrator,17 appears not to recognize
changes in the protagonists. For example, in the epigraph to Chapter II.18,
He writes,“De to que sucedió a don Quijote en el castillo
o casa del Caballero del Verde Gabán . . . “ (emphasis
mine), even though in Part Two, Don Quijote transforms very few things with
his words and never imagines that an inn is a castle.
While the attitude of the Reader toward Don
Quijote evolves from mockery to compassion, the attitudes of the polyphony
of narrative voices remain static. This alienates the Reader from the narrators
and thus seems to further increase her compassion for Don Quijote. In Part
One, the Reader shared the narrators' ironic point of view toward Don Quijote
and allied herself with them. But once she is alienated from the narrators,
the Reader tends to identify with Don Quijote. In part because of the narrators'
misreading and abuse of Don Quijote and Sancho, the Reader's alliance with
them becomes almost unconscionable, which further confirms her identification
with the protagonists.
The supreme presence of Don Quijote,
Cervantes, orchestrating all of the narrative voices, guides the Reader toward
this new stance vis-à-vis the narrators and
characters.18 Mancing
17 See
Parr, especially pp. 11-12.
18 See Howard
Mancing, “Cide Hamete Benengeli vs.
Miguel de Cervantes: The Metafictional Dialectic of Don
Quijote,” Cervantes 1 (1981):
63-81 and John J. Allen, “The Narrators, the Reader and don
Quijote,” MLN 91 (1976): 201-212, for more on Cervantes's
alienation and redirection of the reader.
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observes that “Cervantes, who most directly influences the reader's
perceptions of all the characters (including Cide Hamete), implicitly stands
relatively close to his protagonist[s] and draws attention to the insensitive,
unperceptive, lying author[s]” (80). He compiles a rather long list,
citing various instances of Cide Hamete's (or the narrative voices')
imperception, insensitivity, and deceit. The most notable case is when a
narrative voice, probably the supernarrator, tells the Reader how he is to
react to the events that follow:
Deja, lector amable, ir en paz y en hora buena al buen Sancho, y espera dos
fanegas de risa, que te ha de causar el saber cómo se portó
en su cargo, y en tanto, atiende a saber lo que le pasó a su amo aquella
noche; que si con ello no rieres, por lo menos desplegarás los labios
con risa de jimia, porque los sucesos de don Quijote, o se han de celebrar
con admiración, o con risa (II, 368).
The problem is that this is not the reaction
of the discreet Reader, but of the indiscreet and cruel character-readers.
The scenes that follow are not consistent with this narrator's reading of
them. The discreet Reader does not laugh at the “temeroso espanto cencerril
y gatuno que recibió don Quijote” (II, 382), because it is not
very clever and causes Don Quijote great pain. Nor does he laugh at how Sancho
behaves in his new position. Sancho governs his island very well, and his
goodness and discretion do not surprise the perceptive Reader. The Reader
laughs not at Sancho's simplicity, but at his discreción graciosa
and at the burladores burlados.
By constructing a pattern of narration and
reception that resounds from the innermost level of the text to the outermost,
Cervantes implies in his text the Reader, to whom he directs the ethical
and aesthetic lessons that almost all his characters refuse or fail to learn.
Borges makes some very intriguing suggestions for the continuation of this
pattern of character-reader-author that appears so frequently in Don Quijote:
Ese juego de extrañas ambigüedades culmina en la segunda parte;
los protagonistas han leído la primera, los protagonistas del
Quijote son, asimismo, lectores del Quijote. Aquí es
inevitable recordar el caso de Shakespeare, que incluye en el escenario de
Hamlet otro escenario, donde se representa una tragedia, que es más
o menos la de Hamlet . . . ¿Por qué nos inquieta que
Don Quijote sea lector del Quijote, y Hamlet,
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espectador de Hamlet? Creo haber dado con la causa: tales inversiones
sugieren que si los caracteres de una ficción pueden ser lectores
o espectadores, nosotros, sus lectores, o espectadores, podemos ser
ficticios.19
I agree that the metafictional nature of Don Quijote may imply this
to the 20th-century reader, but I am more inclined to say that this
autonovelization is precisely what Cervantes wants his readers not
to do. With his complicated narrative scheme and the repeated dramatization
of the narration and reception of historias, Cervantes urges his Reader
not to react to his novel as his fictional readers react to historias.
He wants us to respond not only with pleasure, but also with understanding,
and not to enter and participate in the world of fiction, but to experience
it from a superior position, to maintain a certain aesthetic distance, so
that we are conscious of the reading of the narrators and readers within
Don Quijote as well as of our own
reading.20
| STATE UNIVERSITY OF
NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON |
19 Jorge
Luis Borges, “Magias parciales del Quijote,” Prosa
Completa (Barcelona: Bruguera, 1980), 174-75.
20 I would like
to thank Professors Thomas A. O'Connor and Salvador J. Fajardo for their
encouragement and for advising me in the revision of this paper.
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Digitized with
the help of Contessa Marion |
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