REFLECTIONS

Don Quixote
or the Critique of Reading

Reproduced by permission o f Institute de Investigaciones Esikticas.

Pencil sketch by Pelegrin Clavk, 1840, for an oil painting

entitled El ingenioso hildago Don Quixote.

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 REFLECTIONS: FUENTES

Don Quixote is to Spaniards what Shakespeare's plays are to

the English-speaking world. As it happened, Miguel de Cer-
vantes Saavedra published his rich comic tale of the Knight of
La Mancha in 1605, the year that Macbeth and King Lear first
appeared in England. Cervantes' grasp of the complexity and
tragedy of Spain helped to make him the first modern novelist
in any language. Here a distinguished Mexican writer, Carlos
Fuentes, a former Wilson Center Fellow, describes Cervantes'
Spain and suggests that Cervantes' genius offers us "what
amounts to a new way of reading in the world" and a new
way of looking at the multiple faces of reality.

by Carlos Fuentes

There is a common saying in Spain ary swell of the Counter Reforma-

that Cervantes and Columbus re- tion: Campanella, Montaigne, Tasso,
semble each other in that both died and Descartes, not to mention the
without clearly perceiving the im- most dramatic example of them all,
portance of their discoveries. Co- Galileo.
lumbus thought he had reached the There is a grain of truth in both
Far East by traveling a westward assertions. Most great novels are not
course; Cervantes believed he had written on perfectly developed blue-
merely written a satire on the epics prints. Whatever the a prioris of the
of chivalry. Neither ever realized novelist, they tend to be drowned as
that they had landed on the new the work itself achieves its own au-
continents of space (America) and tonomy and takes off on its own
fiction (the modem novel). flight. This is equally true of Cer-
This extreme view of a naive Cer- vantes, Stendhal, or Dostoyevsky.
vantes finds its mirror image in the One could also contend that the de-
equally extreme view that, in fact, clared satirical intentions in Don
the author of Don Quixote was a Quixote are ironical in nature, only a
consummate hypocrite, constantly facet of the multiple game of mir-
disguising his barbs against the rors the author promptly establishes
Church and the established order when, after Don Quixote's first out-
under the folly of the hidalgo's* ing, Cervantes casts a dubious light
acts, while all the time professing on the whole problem of the author-
public allegiance to the faith and its ship of the book. Is it conceivable
institutions. According to this school that Cervantes, after writing the first
of thought, Cervantes was no less a few chapters of the book, suddenly
hypocrite than all the other authors came on what was to be its
and thinkers caught in the reaction- essence-the critique of reading-
*A hidalgo is a member of the minor Spanish
without including (or excluding) the
nobility. satire of the epic of chivalry in his

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REFLECTIONS: FUENTES

broader intentions, and let it subsist of his jumbled numbers; the old,
as the naive principle that would poor, and unhappy author of an
guide the whole novel? immensely popular novel conceived
Certainly, too, Cervantes was a behind bars and on whose meager
man of his age, not a thinker or royalties he was hardly able to pay
scholar but, mostly, a self-taught, his debts-surely, this man was
voracious reader who was quite aware of the historical and cultural
aware, at the late stage of his life context of late 16th- and early 17th-
when he wrote his masterpiece, and century Europe, and particularly so
after a peculiarly sad and intense of the realities of Spain as the prime
existence, of the realities of his bastion of the Counter Reformation.
times. The failed physician's son, Irony, more than naivete; aware-
from childhood a wanderer of the ness, more than hypocrisy. But be-
Spanish land in his family's wake, yond all these categories (and per-
certainly the fleeting disciple of the haps containing all of them), there is
Spanish Erasmist Juan Lopez de the writer of Don Quixote, the foun-
Hoyos; uncertainly, a student at the der of the modem European novel;
hallowed halls of Salamanca; the and there is the existence of Don
youthful composer of courtly verse Quixote as an aesthetic fact that
that brought him to the attention of profoundly altered the traditions of
the court of Philip I1 and then to reading in relation to the culture
Rome in the retinue of the Cardinal that preceded Cervantes, the culture
Acquaviva; the cardinal's valet he lived in, and the culture that fol-
turned soldier at the "glorious hour" lowed him.
of Lepanto, where he lost the use of
a hand in the decisive naval combat Armor and Rags
against the Turkish fleet; the captive In the Exemplary Novels, Cervantes
of the Moors in Algiers during five was an early writer of picaresque
long years; the harassed commis- tales and, of course, a reader of the
sioner of provisions for the invinci- novels of chivalry that were then all
ble Armada, who demanded too the craze. Caught between the shin-
much from the Andalusian clerics ing armor of Amadls de Gaula and
and was excommunicated for his the rags and ruses of Lazarillo de
troubles; the incompetent tax collec- Torrnes, Cervantes introduced them
tor who landed twice in jail because to each other. The epic hero is Don

Carlos Fuentes, 48, is one of Latin America's best-known and most

widely translated writers. He was born in Panama City. The well-
traveled son of a Mexican diplomat, he went into government service
after study at universities in Mexico City and Geneva. In 1959, he
began to devote himself full-time to writing. His fifth novel, A Change
of Skin, was awarded the Biblioteca Brwe Prize (1967) in Barcelona
-- but was subsequently banned in Spain; his latest novel, Terra Nostra
(1976), won the $40,000 R6mulo Gallegos Prize in Caracas last August.
He was named Mexico's ambassador to France in 1975; he resigned
last spring and plans to teach in the United States. His essay is drawn
from a lecture written at the Wilson Center and published by the
Institute o f Latin American Studies, the University o f Texas at Austin.

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Quixote, the earthy picaro* is San- because he is the first novelist to

cho Panza. Don Quixote lives in a root the critique of creation within
remote past, his brain addled by the the pages of his own creation, Don
reading of too many chivalric Quixote. And this critique of creation
novels; Sancho Panza lives in the is, as we shall see, a critique of the
immediate present, his only worries very act of reading.
those of day-to-day survival: What
will we eat? Where will we sleep? A Man Divided
Thanks to this meeting of genius, It is a thrilling experience to read
Cervantes was able to go beyond the this book with the knowledge that it
consecration of the past and the was written during the childhood of
consecration of the present to grap- the printing press, in an age when a
ple with the problem of the fusion of reading public was rising in Europe,
past and present. In his hands, the and the unique reading of unique
novel became a critical operation. volumes, laboriously handwritten by
The past (Don Quixote's illusion of monks and destined for the eyes of a
himself as a knight errant of old) privileged few, was becoming an
illuminates the present (the concrete anachronism defeated by the trium-
world of inns and roads, muleteers phant coincidence of critical
and scullery maids); and the present thought, capitalist expansion, and
(the harsh life of men and women religious reform. It is a thrilling ex-
struggling to survive in a cruel, un- perience to read it today, when the
just, and shabby world) illuminates very act of reading has been con-
the past (Don Quixote's ideals of jus- demned to the dust heap of history
tice, freedom, and a golden age of by the gloomy prophets of the elec-
abundance and equality). tronic millennium, with a goodly as-
sist from the writers of the unreada-
No Illusions ble, the nonlanguage of the adman,
Cervantes' genius is that he trans- the acronymic beeps of the bureau-
lates these opposites into literary crat, and the unquestioning cliches
terms, surpassing and suffusing the of the sensational best seller.
extremes of the epic of chivalry and Cervantes, in truth, did not suffer
the chronicle of realism with a par- from a situation comparable to that
ticularly acute conflict of verbal ges- of our own time, but neither did he
tation. He has, in this sense, no illu- benefit from the winds of renovation
sions. What he is doing he is doing that created modem Europe. He was
with words and words alone. But he supremely aware both of the energy,
realizes that words, in his world, are the flux, and the contradictions of
the only possible place where worlds the Renaissance and of the inertia,
can meet. Thus, the gestation of lan- rigidity, and false security of the
guage becomes a central reality of Counter Reformation. It was his lot
the novel. The tense struggle be- to be born in the Spain of Philip 11,
tween the past and the present, be- the very bastion of orthodoxy, but
tween renovation and the tribute perhaps only a Spaniard of his age
due to the preceding form, is could have written Don Quixote.
squarely faced by Cervantes in Don In Don Quixote, Cervantes is im-
Quixote. And he solves this conflict mersed in an extraordinary cultural
and rises above its contradictions struggle-an unparalleled critical
'Adventurer, rogue. operation to save the best of Spain

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from the worst of Spain, the living hold in Spain, Granada, fell to the
features of the medieval order from first unified Spanish monarchy,
the features Cervantes considers Catholic Ferdinand of Aragon and
worthy only of decent burial, the Isabella of Castile.* Ferdinand and
promises of the Renaissance from its Isabella had decided to sever the
pitfalls. Arab heritage from the culture that
I will go further into these mat- they saw only in the light of their
ters, of great importance for the un- own political necessity, which was
derstanding of Don Quixote. Permit unity-a unity that superseded all
me, at this stage, to say only that considerations. It was a fragile unity
the outcome of Cervantes' mighty since it went against the grain of the
struggle was a book of infinite levels extreme fractiousness of the
of interpretation, the first novel that medieval kingdoms and the extreme
can be read from multiple points of regionalism (upheld to this very day)
view because it does not refuse its of Catalonians, Basques, Asturians,
own contradictions but makes them Galicians, Castilians, and Aragonese.
the stuff of the intensity of its writ-
ing. Victim and executioner of his The Cost of Unity
own book, a man divided between To Ferdinand and Isabella, the
the moribund and a nascent order, Catholic religion and the purity of
educated in the culture of the blood were the absolute measures of
Counter Reformation and thus the unity. The Catholic Queen admitted
child of a culture eccentric to the that she had been the cause "of
mainstream of 16th-century Europe, great calamities and much havoc in
yet very much aware of it, but also a towns, provinces, and kingdoms"
child of the Renaissance and thus, in but "only out of love for Christ and
many ways, alien to the official cul- His Holy Mother." The "Faith" came
ture of Hapsburg Spain, Cervantes is to excuse all acts of political expe-
in more than one aspect similar to diency. And the law came to define
James Joyce. Cervantes, in the early true Spaniards as "the old Chris-
morning of the modem age, invents tians, clean of all evil race or stain."
a new way of reading; Joyce, at its This immediately shed suspicion,
hour of dusk, invents a new way of not only on the Arab heritage but on
writing. Both draw support for their the Jewish culture of Spain and led
monumental works from epics of the to the expulsion of the Jews, also in
past. And both, the author who 1492. In 1475, out of a total popula-
opens and the author who closes the tion of 7 million, there were in
adventure of the modem European Spain but half a million Jews and
novel-cervantes Alpha and Joyce
Omega-are highly charged with the
+
conversos. Yet more than one-third
of the urban population was of
fruitful doubts and contradictions of Jewish stock. The result was that
their eccentric societies. one year after the edict of expulsion
of the Jews, the municipal rents in
Ferdinand and Isabella
Seville dropped by one-third, and
The year 1492 is the watershed of Barcelona, deprived of her
Spanish history. After nine centuries
of confrontation, coexistence, and in- *The final expulsion of the Moors would be
tegration of the Christian and Mus- decreed by Philip 111 in 1609.
lim cultures, the last Arab strong- ?Jews converted to Christianity.

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Woodcut, Don Quixote,from the Lisbon 1605 edition.

bourgeoisie, almost wholly Jewish, Christian and Moorish kingdoms,

saw its municipal bank go bankrupt. the almojarifes, or finance adminis-
The combined expulsion of Jews trators, for the sundry kings who in-
and Muslims meant that Spain, in cessantly repeated that, without
effect, deprived itself of the talents their Jewish bureaucracy, the royal
and services it would later sorely finances would crumble. They
need to maintain its imperial stat- served as ambassadors, public ser-
ure. The Jews were the doctors and vants, and administrators of the
surgeons of Spain, to a degree that royal patrimony. In fact, they took
Charles V, in the 1530s, congratu- upon themselves what the Spanish
lated a student of the University of nobility would not deign to accom-
Alcala on being "the first hidalgo of plish, considering it beneath their
Castile to become a medical man." dignity as hidalgos.
The Jews were the only tax collec-
.tors and the principal taxpayers of Cultural Trauma
the realm. They were the bankers, The mutilation imposed on Spain
the merchants, the moneylenders, by the Catholic kings and sustained
and the spearhead of the nascent by their successors was not only an
capitalist class in Spain. They had economic catastrophe. It also sired a
been, throughout the Middle Ages, historical and cultural trauma from
the intermediaries between the which Spain has never wholly re-

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REFLECTIONS: FUENTES

covered. The singularity of Spain permanent claim to the land. Also,

derives from the fact that she is the medieval Spain had too many
only nation in the West where three twilight zones and buffer kingdoms
distinct faiths and cultures, the where the Christian nobility was
Christian, the Jewish, and the Mus- under the protection of the Moors,
lim, cross-fertilized themselves for or vice versa. These weaknesses and
over nine centuries. the lack of any unified central au-
thority made it possible for civil
Rising Expectations power and local institutions to de-
It is thanks to the Jewish intel- velop through charters of local au-
lectuals that the Spanish language it- tonomy granted to cities and vil-
self became fixed and achieved liter- lages, freedoms consecrated within
ary dignity. Both aspects come to- many urban communities, indepen-
gether, as is well known, in the vast dent judiciary authorities, and a
scholarly undertaking patronized by continuing revolution of rising ex-
King Alfonso X, the Wise, in the pectations spearheaded by the
13th century. The purpose was to set commercial and cultural centers of
down the knowledge of the times; ,its Christian Spain, notably Barcelona
sum total would be an encyclopedia with its overwhelmingly Jewish
avant la lettre. But the extraordinary bourgeoisie. There was social poros-
fact is that the Castilian king had ity. The serf could slowly but surely
to rely on Jewish scholars to do the ascend to the status of the burgher.
job. It was of equal significance that
this Jewish brain trust insisted that A Modem Revolution
the work be written in Spanish and As long as the Catholic kings did
not, as was then the scholarly not interrupt this political process,
custom, in Latin. Why? Because the cities went along with their uni-
Latin was the language of Christen- tarian purposes. But when the
dom. The Spanish Jews wanted Hapsburg prince, Charles I of Spain
knowledge to be diffused in the lan- (better known by his title as Holy
guage common to all Spaniards- Roman Emperor, Charles V), ac-
Christians, Jews, and conversos ceded to power in 1517 as the heir of
alike. From their work at the court the mad Queen Juana and her de-
of Alfonso came the future prose of ceased husband Philip the Fair, the
Spain. Two centuries after Alfonso, urban communities saw their free-
it was still the Jews who were using doms menaced in several ways.
the vulgar tongue in commenting on There was an element of xeno-
the Bible, in writing philosophy, and phobia. Charles was a Fleming who
in the study of astronomy. It can be could not even speak Spanish, but
said that the Jews fixed and made what the comunidades* rightly saw
current the use of Spanish in Spain. was that Charles's policy was to fur-
At the same time, within the ther centralization without respect
Christian realms of Spain, a particu- to the civil rights of the cities and
lar phenomenon was taking place. the local institutions. The citizens'
Feudalism was comparatively weak drive towards constitutionalism was
in Spain because the constant shift- pitted against Charles's conception
ing of frontiers during the protracted of absolutism as reproduction, and
wars of the Reconquista made it dif- *Urban communities functioning under
ficult for the nobility to stake a medieval charters.

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extension, of the medieval im- functionaries: a ston to the harass-

perium. ment of converted Jews; no taxation
The civil war that ensued has without representation; a refusal to
justly been called by Jose Maravall pay extraordinary tributes. The de-
"the first modern revolution in feat of the comunero forces at Villa-
Spain and probably in Europe," in lar in 1521 dealt a further, crushing
fact, the forerunner of the English blow to the forces working for a
and French Revolutions. The human modem, democratic, humane Spain.
composition of the revolt speaks for I t is against this historical
itself: a few urban noblemen; a complexity-the mutilation of the
greater number of mayors, alder- Arab and Jewish cultures, the defeat
men, and judges; quite a few lesser of local democratic forces, the royal
clergymen (canons, abbots, arch- absolutism of the Hapsburgs, the
deacons, deans); a sprinkling of uni- power of the Inquisition, the im-
versity teachers (most of them of poverishment of middle-Spain, the
Erasmian persuasion); a great rigidity of Counter Reformation
number of doctors, physicists, dogma, and the growing swell of
lawyers, and bachelors of arts; an post-Renaissance contradictions,
even greater number of merchants, doubts, and affirmations-that we
moneychangers, public notaries, and must place the life of Miguel de Cer-
pharmacists; and an overwhelming vantes and the gestation of his mas-
majority of storeowners, innkeepers, terpiece, Don Quixote.
silversmiths, jewelers, ironmongers,
butchers, hatmakers, cobblers, tai- Faith and Reason
lors, barbers, and carpenters. Caught between the flood tide of
the Renaissance and the ebb tide of
The Rebels' Demands the Counter Reformation, Cervantes
If this reads like the cast of Don clings to the one plank that can keep
Quixote, a conclusion can quickly be him afloat: Erasmus of Rotterdam.
drawn. Cervantes deals with the The vast influence of Erasmus in
very men who defied the absolutism Spain is hardly fortuitous. He was
of the Hapsburgs and fought for the correctly seen to be the Renaissance
development of civil rights. But man struggling to conciliate the ver-
what is, in Cervantes, a silent major- ities of faith and reason, and the
ity was, in 1520, a very outspoken reasons of the old and the new.
and defiantly active one, for what The influence of Erasmian thought
the people of Spain could no longer on Cervantes can be clearly per-
express in 1605 they had fought for ceived in three themes common to
in 1520. The demands of the com- the philosopher and the novelist: the
uneros* were for a democratic order. duality of truth, the illusion of ap-
I do not hesitate in using the word. pearances, and the praise of folly.
It appears constantly in the written Erasmus reflects the Renaissance
demands of the rebels. It is inherent dualism: understanding may be dif-
in what they fought for: the suppres- ferent from believing. But reason
sion of political and administrative must be wary of judging from exter-
posts held in perpetuity; the control nal appearances: "All things human
of the responsibilities of public have two aspects, much as the
Silenes of Alcibiades, who had two
Rebelling townspeople. utterly opposed faces; and thus,

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what at first sight looked like death, squire doubts, and each man's ap-
when closely observed was life" (In pearance is diversified, obscured,
Praise of Folly). And he goes on to and opposed by the other's reality. If
say: "The reality of things . . . de- Sancho is the real man, then he is,
pends solely on opinion. Everything nevertheless, a participant in Don
in life is so diverse, so opposed, so Quixote's world of pure illusion; but
obscure, that we cannot be assured if Don Quixote is the illusory man,
of any truth." then he is, nevertheless, a partici-
Erasmus promptly gives his rea- pant in Sancho's world of pure real-
soning a comic inflection, when he ity.
smilingly points out that Jupiter
must disguise himself as a "poor "Words, Words, Words"
little man" in order to procreate How do the spiritual realities re-
little Jupiters. Comic debunkingthus flected on by Erasmus translate into
serves the unorthodox vision of the the realm of literature? Perhaps
double truth, and it is evident that Hamlet is the first character to stop
Cervantes opts for this Aesopian in his tracks and mutter three
short cut in creating the figures of minuscule and infinite words that
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, for suddenly open a void between the
the former speaks the language of certain truths of the Middle Ages
universals and the latter that of par- and the uncertain reason of the
ticulars; the knight believes, the brave new world of modernity.

Etching, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by George Cruikshank, 1885.

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 REFLECTIONS: FUENTES

These words are simply "Words, ically, to the univocal reading of the
words, words . . ." and they both texts and attempts to translate this
shake and spear us because they are reading into a reality that has be-
the words of a fictional character re- come multiple, equivocal, ambigu-
flecting on the very substance of his ous. But because he possesses his
being. Hamlet knows he is written reading, Don Quixote possesses his
and represented on a stage, whereas identity: that of the knight errant,
old Polonius comes and goes in agi- that of the ancient epic hero.
tation, intrigues, counsels, and de-
ports himself as if the world of the The Shelter of Books
theater truly were the real world. So, at the immediate level of read-
Words become acts, the verb be- ing, Don Quixote is the master of the
comes a sword, and Polonius is previous readings that withered his
pierced by Hamlet's sword: the brain. But at a second level of read-
sword of literature. Words, words, ing, he becomes the master of the
words, mutters Hamlet, and he does words contained in the verbal uni-
not say it pejoratively. He is simply verse of the book titled Don Quixote.
indicating, without too many illu- He ceases to be a reader of the
sions, the existence of a thing called novels of chivalry and becomes the
literature-a new literature that has actor of his own epic adventures. As
ceased to be a transparent reading there was no rupture between his
of the divine Verb or the established reading of the books and his faith in
social order but is yet unable to be- what they said, so now there is no
come a sign reflecting a new human divorce between the acts and the
order as coherent or indubitable as words of his adventures. Because we
the religious and social orders of the read it but do not see it, we shall
past. never know what it is that the
goodly gentleman puts on his head:
Knight of the Faith the fabled helm of Mambrino or a
All is possible. All is in doubt. vulgar barber's basin. The first
Only an old hidalgo from the barren doubt assails us. Is Quixote right?
plain of La Mancha in the central Has he discovered the legendary
plateau of Castile continues to helmet, while everyone else, blind
adhere to the codes of certainty. For and ignorant, sees only the basin?
him, nothing is in doubt and all is Within this verbal sphere, Don
possible. In the new world of Quixote is at first invincible. San-
criticism, Don Quixote is a knight of cho's empiricism, from this verbal
the faith. This faith comes from his point of view, is useless, because
reading, and his reading is a mad- Don Quixote, each time he fails,
ness. (The Spanish words for reading immediately re-establishes his liter-
and madness convey this association ary discourse, undiscouraged-the
much more strongly. Reading is lec- words always identical to the real-
tura; madness is locura.) ity, the reality but a prolongation of
Like the necrophilic monarch se- the words he has read before and
cluded at El Escorial, Don Quixote now enacts. He explains away his
both pawns and pledges his life to disasters with the words of his pre-
the restoration of the world of uni- vious, epic readings and resumes his
fied certainty. He pawns and pledges career within the world of the words
himself, both physically and symbol- that belong to him.

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We know that only reality con- velment, "along with our lady Dul-
fronts the mad readings of Don cinea del Toboso, and many other
Quixote. But he does not know it, things that happened to us alone, so
and this ignorance (or this faith) es- that I crossed myself in fright trying
tablishes a third level of reading in to imagine how the historian who
the novel. "Look your mercy," San- wrote them came to know them."
cho constantly says, "Look you that Things that happened to us alone.
what we see there are not giants, Before, only God could know them.
but only windmills." But Don Quix- Now, any reader who can pay the
ote does not see. Don Quixote reads cover price for a copy of Don Qui-
and his reading says that those are xote can also find out. The reader
giants. thus becomes akin to God. Now, the
Don Quixote, each time he fails, dukes can prepare their cruel farces
finds refuge in his readings. And because they have read the first part
sheltered by his books, he will go on of the novel Don Quixote. Now, Don
seeing armies where there are only Quixote, the reader, is read.
sheep without losing the reason of
his readings. He will be faithful unto Reality Vanquished
them, because he does not conceive On entering the second part of
any other licit way of reading. The the novel, Don Quixote also finds
synonymity of reading, madness, out that he has been the subject of
truth, and life in Don Quixote be- an apocryphal novel written by one
comes strikingly apparent when he Avellaneda to cash in on the popu-
demands of the merchants he meets larity of Cervantes' book. The signs
on the road that they confess the of Don Quixote's singular identity
beauty of Dulcinea without ever suddenly seem to multiply. Don
having seen her, for "the important Quixote criticizes Avellaneda's ver-
thing is that without having seen sion. But the existence of another
her you should believe, confess, book about himself makes him
swear. and defend it." This it is an change his route and go to Bar-
act of faith. Don Quixote's fabulous celona so as to "bring out into the
adventures are ignited by an over- public light the lies of this modem
whelming purpose: What is read and historian so that people will see that
what is lived must coincide anew, I am not the Don Quixote he says I
without the doubts and oscillations am."
between faith and reason introduced This is surely the first time in lit-
by the Renaissance. erature that a character knows that
he is being written about at the
"They Mention Me!" same time that he lives his fictional
But the very next level of reading adventures. This new level of read-
in the novel Don Quixote starts to ing is crucial to determine those
undermine this illusion. In his third that follow. Don Quixote ceases to
outing. Don Quixote finds out, support himself on previous epics
through news that the bachelor San- and starts to support himself on his
son Carrasco has transmitted to own epic. But his epic is no epic,
Sancho, that there exists a book and it is at this point that Cervantes
called The Most Ingenious Hidalgo invents the modern novel. Don
Don Quixote de la Mancha. "They Quixote, the reader, knows he is
mention me," Sancho says in mar- read, something that Achilles surely

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01946 by Random House Inc. Reprinted by permission o f the publisher.

Drawing, Don Quixote by Salvador Dali, 1946.

never knew. And he knows that the readers who read him, and, like
destiny of Don Quixote the man has them, forced to recreate "Don Qui-
becomes inseparable from the des- xote" in his own imagination. A
tiny of Don Quixote the book, some- double victim of the act of reading,
thing that Ulysses never knew in re- Don Quixote loses his senses twice.
lation to The Odyssey. His integrity First, when he reads. Then, when he
as a hero of old, safely niched in his is read. Because now, instead of hav-
previous, univocal, and denotative ing to prove the existence of the
epic reading, is shattered, not by the heroes of old, he is up against a
galley slaves or scullery maids who much, much tougher challenge: He
laugh at him, not by the sticks and must prove his own existence.
stones he must weather in the inns And this leads us to a further level
he takes to be castles or the grazing of reading. A voracious, insomniac
fields he takes to be battlegrounds. reader of epics that he obsessively
His faith in his epical readings ena- wants to carry over to reality, Don
bles him to bear all the battering of Quixote fails miserably in this, his
reality. But now his integrity is an- original purpose. But as soon as he
nulled by the readings he is submit- becomes an object of reading, he be-
ted to. gins to vanquish reality, to contami-
It is these readings that transform nate it with his mad reading-not
Don Quixote, the caricature of the the reading of the novels of chivalry,
ancient hero, into the first modem but the actual reading of the novel
hero, observed from multiple angles, Don Quixote. And this new reading
scrutinized by multiple eyes that do transforms the world, for the world,
not share his faith in the codes of more and more, begins to resemble
chivalry, assimilated by the very the world contained in the pages of

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the novel Don Quixote. final option: to be in the sadness of

So Cervantes need not write a reality or to be in the reality of
political manifesto to denounce the literature-this literature, the one
evils of his age and of all ages; he Cervantes has invented, not the old
need not resort to Aesopian lan- literature of univocal coincidence
guage; he need not radically break that Don Quixote sprang from.
with the strictures of the traditional Dostoyevsky calls Cervantes' novel
epic in order to surpass it. He "the saddest book of them all"; in it,
dialectically merges the epic thesis the Russian novelist found the inspi-
and the realistic antithesis to ration for the figure of the "good
achieve, within the very life and man," the idiot Prince Mushkin. As
logic and necessity of his own book, the novel ends, the knight of the
the novelistic synthesis. faith has truly earned his sorrowful
As the world comes to resemble countenance. For, Dostoyevsky adds,
him more and more, Don Quixote, Don Quixote suffers from a disease,
more and more, loses the illusion of "the nostalgia of realism."
his own being. He has been the ci-
pher of the act of reading: a black- Another Life
ink question mark, much as Picasso This phrase must give us pause.
was to draw him. By the time he What realism are we talking about?
reaches the castle of the dukes, Don The realism of impossible adven-
Quixote sees that the castle is ac- tures with magicians, chivalrous
tually a castle, whereas, before, he knights errant, and frightful giants?
could imagine he saw a castle in the Exactly so. Before, everything that
humblest inn of the Castilian was written was true, even if it were
wayside. a fantasy. "For Aristotle," explains
Ortega y Gasset, "the centaur is a
The Saddest Book
possibility; not so for us, since biol-
Thrust into history, Don Quixote ogy will not tolerate it."
is deprived of all opportunity for And this is what Don Quixote feels
imaginative action. He meets one such intense nostalgia for: this
Roque Guinart, an authentic robber, realism without inner contradic-
alive in the time of Cervantes. This tions. What shatters the monolith of
Guinart, totally inscribed in history, the old realism Don Quixote yearns
was a thief and contrabandist of for are the plural readings, the illicit
silver cargoes from the Indies and readings to which he is subjected.
a secret agent of the French Don Quixote recovers his reason.
Huguenots at the time of the St. And this, for a man of his ilk, is the
Bartholomew's Night massacre. supreme folly. It is suicide. When he
Next to him and his tangible his- accepts conventional "reality," Don
toricity, as when he sees (but does Quixote, like Hamlet, is condemned
not partake in) a naval battle off to death. But Don Quixote, thanks to
Barcelona, Don Quixote has become the critical reading invented by Cer-
asimple witness to real events and vantes in the act of founding the
real characters. Cervantes gives modern novel, will go on living an-
these chapters a strange aura of other life. He is left with no resource
sadness and disillusionment. The old but to prove his own existence, not
hidaglo, forever deprived of his epic in the univocal reading that gave
reading of the world, must face his him his original being, but in the

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multiple readings that deprived him such, but merely paper ghosts. Only
of it. Don Quixote loses the life of when freed from his r e a d i n g s ~ b u t
his nostalgic, coincidental reality captured by the readings that mul-
but goes on living, forever, in his tiply the levels of the novel on an
book and only in his book. infinite scale-only alone in the very
center of his authentic, fictional real-
Truth in Art ity can Don Quixote exclaim:
This is why Don Quixote is the
most Spanish of all novels. Its very Believe in me! My feats are true, the
essence is defined by loss, impossi- windmills are giants, the herds of sheep
are armies, the inns are castles, and there
bility, a burning quest for identity, a is in the world no lady more beautiful
sad awareness of all that could have than the Empress of La Mancha, the un-
been and never was, and, in reaction rivaled Dulcinea del Toboso! Believe in
to this deprivation, an assertion of me!
total existence in a realm of the
imagination, where all that in real- Reality may laugh or weep on
ity cannot be, finds, precisely be- hearing such words. But reality is
cause of this factual negation, the invaded by them, loses its own de-
most intense level of truth. Because fined frontiers, feels itself displaced,
the history of Spain has been what transfigured by another reality made
it has been, its art has been what of words and paper. Where are the
history has denied Spain. Art brings limits between Dunsinane Castle
truth to the lies of history. and Birnham Wood? Where the
This is what Dostoyevsky meant frontiers that bind the moor where
when he called Don Quixote a novel Lear and his fool live on that cold
where truth is saved by a lie. The night of madness? Where, in fact,
Russian author's profound observa- does Don Quixote's fantastic Cave of
tion goes well beyond the relation- Montesinos end and reality begin?
ship of a nation's art to its history.
Dostoyevsky is speaking of the The Knight's Lady
broader relationship between reality The power of Don Quixote's image
and imagination. There is a fascinat- as a madman who constantly con-
ing moment in Don Quixote when fuses reality with imagination has
the Knight of the Sorrowful Counte- made many a reader and commen-
nance arrives in Barcelona and for- tator forget what I consider an es-
ever breaks the bindings of the illu- sential passage of the book. In Chap-
sion of reality. He does what Achil- ter XXV of the first part of the
les, Aeneas, or Sir Lancelot could novel, Don Quixote decides to do
never do: He visits a printing shop. penance, dressed only in his night-
He enters the very place where his shirt, in the craggy cliffs of the
adventures become an object, a tan- Sierra Morena. He asks Sancho to go
gible product. Don Quixote is thus off to the village of El Toboso and
.. sent by Cervantes to his only reality: inform the knight's lady Dulcinea of
the reality of fiction. the great deeds and sufferings with
The act of reading, in this manner, which he honors her. Since Sancho
is both the starting point and the knows of no highly placed lady
last stop on Don Quixote's route. called Dulcinea in the miserable
Neither the reality of what he read hamlet of El Toboso he inquires fur-
nor the reality of what he lived were ther. Don Quixote, at this extraordi-

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REFLECTIONS: FUENTES

Pablo Picasso, Picasso, Spadem, 1977. All rights resewed.

Lithograph, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Pablo Picasso, 1955.

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nary moment, reveals that he knows from an oppression that perverts

the truth. Dulcinea, he says, is no both.
other than the peasant girl Aldonza It is through this ethical stance
Lorenzo; it is she Sancho must look that Cervantes struggles to bridge
for. This provokes gales of laughter the old and new worlds. If his
in the roguish squire; he knows Al- critique of reading is a negation of
donza well. She is common, strong the rigid and oppressive features of
as a bull, dirty, can bellow to the the Middle Ages, it is also an affir-
peasants from the church tower and mation of ancient values that must
be heard,a league away; she's a good be lost in the transition to the mod-
one at exchanging pleasantries and, ern world. But if Don Quixote is also
in fact, is a bit of a whore. an affirmation of the modem values
Don Quixote's response is one of of the pluralistic point of view, Cer-
the most moving declarations of love vantes does not surrender to mod-
ever written. He knows who and ernity either. It is a t this junction
what Dulcinea really is; yet he loves that his moral and literary vision
her, and, because he loves her, she is fuses into a whole. For if reality has
worth as much as "the most noble become plurivocal, literature will re-
princess in all the world." He ad- flect it only to the extent, that it
mits that his imagination has trans- forces reality to submit itself to
formed the peasant girl Aldonza into plural readings and to multiple vi-
the noble lady Dulcinea. But is not sions from variable perspectives.
this the essence of love, to transform Precisely in the name of the polyva-
the loved one into something in- lence of the real, literature creates
comparable, unique, set above all reality, adds to reality, ceases to be
considerations of wealth or poverty, a verbal correspondence to verities
distinction or commonness? "Thus, immovable, or anterior to reality.
it is enough that I think and believe Literature, this new printed reality,
that Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful speaks of the things of the world;
and honest; the question of class is but literature, in itself, is a new
of no consequence. . . . I paint her in thing in the world.
my imagination as I desire her. . . . Through his paper character Don
And let the world think what it Quixote, who integrates the values
wants." of the past with those of the present,
Cervantes translates the great
Bridge Between Worlds themes of the centerless universe
In Don Quixote, the values of the and of individualism triumphant,
age of chivalry acquire, through yet awed and orphaned, to the plane
love, a democratic resonance; and of literature, where they become the
the values of the democratic life ac- axis of a new reality. There will be
quire the resonance of nobility. Don no more tragedy and no more epic,
Quixote refuses both the cruel power because there is no longer a restor-
of the mighty and the herd instinct able ancestral order or a universe
of the lowly. His vision of humanity univocal in its normativeness. There
is not based on the lowest common will be multiple layers of reality.
denominator but on the highest It so happens that the rogue, con-
achievement possible. His contep- victed galley slave, and false pup-
tion of love and justice saves both peteer Gines de Pasamonte, alias
the oppressors and the oppressed Ginesillo de Parapilla, alias Master

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Pedro, is writing a book about his Mallarm6 will one day say, "A
own life. "Is the book finished?" asks book neither begins nor ends; at the
Don Quixote. And Gin& answers, most, it feigns to. . . ."
"How can it be, if my life isn't over Cervantes wrote the first open
yet?" novel as if he had read Mallarm&.
Who writes books and who reads He proposes, through the critique of
them? Cervantes asks. Who is the reading that seems to start with the
author of Don Quixote? Is it a cer- hidalgo's reading of the epics of
tain Cervantes, more versed in grief chivalry and seems to end with the
than in verse, whose Galatea has reader's realization that all reality is
been read by the priest who multileveled, the critique of creation
scrutinizes Don Quixote's library, within creation. Don Quixote's time-
bums the books he dislikes in an less and, at the same time, im-
immediate auto-da-fe, and then seals mediate quality derives from the na-
off the hidalgo's library with brick ture of its internal poetics. It is a
and mortar, making him believe it is split poem that converts its own
the work of magicians? Or is it a genesis into an act of fiction. It is
certain de Saavedra, mentioned with the poetry of poetry (or the fiction of
admiration because of the acts he fiction), singing the birth of the
accomplished, "and all of them for poem, and narrating the origin of
the purpose of achieving freedom"? the very fiction we are reading.

Engraving, from the 1865 Gaspary y Roig edition o f Don Quixote.

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