THE NOVEL AND MOORISH CULTURE :

CIDE HAMETE'AUTHOR' OF DON QUIXOTE

A THESIS PRESENTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY ABBES BAHOUS,

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX, AUGUST 1990.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Professor J. Gordon BROTHERSTON for his supervision and guidance. I am also grateful to Abdelhak EL-KEBIR and Leon BURNETT for technical assistance as well as Dorothy GIBSON for her encouragements and Fatima, Amine and Mariem for their patience.

Abbes BAHOUS

TO THE MEMORY OF AMERICO CASTRO, MICHEL FOUCAULT, AND ALBERT CAMUS.

TO MAHFOUD BENANTEUR AND ELIZABETH LEWIS

CONTENTS

SUMMARY .......................................... p. 1

INTRODUCTION: ...................................... p. 4

CHAPTER ONE: Cide Hamete: His Functions in Don Quixote and their relevance for Literary History ............................... p. 12

CHAPTER TWO: 'Don Quixote in Algiers': Moorish Culture and Autobiography in Don Quixote ........... p. 47

A. Moorish Culture in Don Quixote. B. Cervantes in Algiers: Reflections in Don Quixote.

CHAPTER THREE: Toledo, Literary History and the Renaissance ................................ p. 82

A. Toledo and Translation. B. Moorish Europe, Literary History and the Renaissance.

CHAPTER FOUR: Moorish literature in Translation and its relation to West European Literature(12th-17th) ............................. p. 101

A. Moorish Literature in Translation(12th-17th). B. Some Moorish and West European Interactions. 1. The Case of El Cavallero Cifar. 2. The Magamat and the Picaresque: the forgotten plcaro.

CHAPTER FIVE: Don Quixote and the Novel........ p. 130

A. Don Quixote and the Epic: Lukäcs's'epic theory' reconsidered. B. Don Quixote and the Romance. C. Don Quixote and the Maqamat/Picaresque. D. Don Quixote and Historiography.

CHAPTER SIX: Authorship/Pseudoauthorship, Translation and Don Quixote ...................... p. 163

A. Cide Hamete and Cervantes: The Formalists' and Other Views of Authorship/Pseudoauthorship in Literary History. B. Cide Hamete, Don Quixote, and Translation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................... p. 193

1

SUMMARY

The present study takes Don Quixote as what it claims to be: the

translation of a work by the Moorish author-historian Cide Hamete whom

Cervantes interposes between himself and his reader. Approaching Don

Quixote from this angle raises several key issues; the Moorish background

to the book, including Cervantes's own captivity in Algiers; the role of the

Morisco translator, Toledo and the actual history of translation from Arabic;

the question of genre and Don Quixote's precedents, as a novel, in the

Arabic tradition; and finally the theoretical aspect of authorship as pseudo-

translation.

Properly considered, Cide Hamete brings out two hitherto unnoticed

or unsuspected aspects of Cervantes's narrative. These are to what degree

Moorish culture contributed to the birth of the 'first modern novel'(this is

developed in detail in the first chapter), and the nature of its

historiographical background.

Attention is paid first of all to Cervantes's knowledge of Moorish

culture, in particular his direct experience of it when a captive in

Algiers(1575-80), which makes it possible to detect detail in Don Quixote.

Algiers and the character Saavedra recur quite often throughout most of

Cervantes's works(chapter 2).

2

Then the matter of Toledo as an important translation centre during

the Middle Ages and the concept of European Renaissance with respect to

literary history are also re-assessed in the light of Cide Hamete's role in Don

Quixote and that of the often-forgotten Morisco-translator(chapter 3). West

European translations of Arabic texts from the 12th century up to

Cervantes's time are also examined as crucial literary and cultural events.

Moreover, the thesis attempts to plot salient interactions between the

European picaresque in general and the Arabic, thereby establishing a

bridge between the Arabic narrative in question and Don Quixote. One case

is the Cifar, a 13th-14th century romance, supposedly translated from the

Chaldean (Arabic that is) of some anonymous Oriental author. This work

reveals striking similarities with Don Quixote in that both contain numerous

Moorish cultural elements. At the same time, both the Cifar and Don

Quixote announce themselves as 'translations' out of Arabic 'texts'

discovered in Toledo (chapter 4).

On this basis, an enquiry is made into how Don Quixote relates to

the epic, the romance, picaresque stories and Moorish historiography,

which reveals that it combines genres, and may be considered a multigenre

work that derives mainly from the romance, the picaresque and

historiography. Don Quixote owes very little to the epic, contrary to

Lukäcs's claim since it was born as a reaction to the romance-picaresque

tradition. Finally, the implications of the whole study for literary and

translation theory are brought out, along with the full consequences of the

idea that Europe's first novel claims to be a translation from Arabic. This is

discussed in the last chapter where the question of pseudoauthorship is

3

debated in the light of Cide Hamete's functions as author-qua-author of Don

Quixote and of the traditional author in the role of scribe or secretary.

4

INTRODUCTION

The first modern novel, Cervantes's Don Quixote announces itself as a

translation from the Arabic of the Moorish historian and writer Cide Hamete

Benengeli. Given the functions and importance of Cide Hamete Benengeli in

the novel, this claim should not be taken lightly. He opens twenty chapters

and closes eleven others, while he appears in the narrative, directly or

indirectly seventy-two times (in fifty chapters). Also, he appears as soon as

the Manchegan Archives story runs out (1,8), taking the telling over from then

on to the end, and so is responsible for one hundred and eighteen chapters,

out of a total of one hundred and twenty-six. As a historian, he will prove very

meticulous and artful, combining detail, humour, and 'objectivity'. He also

stands aside from 'his writing', often putting his own version of the truth in

question, and is capable of using 'dirty' language alongside the lofty and the

sacred. At another level, Cide Hamete enables Cervantes to create chapters in

the narrative via formulae such as 'en fin, su segunda parte... comenzaba desta

manera... (1,9), 'mas no le avino como el pensaba, segün... desta verdadera

historia, dando aqui fin la segunda parte'(end of 1,14), or 'cuenta el sabio Cide

Hamete Benengeli que asi como Don Quijote... '(beginning of 1,15), etc. In

short, Cide Hamete is crucial for Don Quixote, and hence should be given

special attention whenever we deal with this narrative. Contrary to what

several Cervantine scholars have thought or suggested so far, this was in line

rather with the tradition represented first and foremost by Americo Castro .

Castro's seminal works on Moorish Spain and Moorish culture in Don

Quixote are: Espana en su historia(1948), La realidad histörica de

Espana(1954), Hacia Cervantes(1957), and Espanolidad y Europeizacion

del QuUote(1960). He has been followed by S. Bencheneb and

C. Marcilly(1966) who go on to develop their own line when discussing the

role of Benengeli in Don Quixote. Acknowledging their debt to that great

5

scholar, especially his La realidad histörica de Espana, they nonetheless

brought a major contribution to the study of Don Quixote. Benengeli is no

longer seen as a mere narrator, character or pseudo-author, but plays a

substantial role in the shaping of the narrative in his quality as historian, and in

breaking the traditional framework of the romanesque. Their shortcoming was

to stop at these important claims instead of going further, for instance by

contrasting Don Quixote to the romance or the picaresque(1).

For his part E. C. Riley(1961) regarded Benengeli as a fabulous liar,

and remarked that Cervantes's treatment of fiction and history in Don Quixote

pointed to the same conclusion. Moreover, he saw the discrediting as

appropriate to Cervantes's view that the novel should not be believed literally.

Although Riley did not enquire much into Benengeli's functions in the

narrative, he succeeded in concluding that history and fiction are basically one.

In 1973, he wrote that about ninety five per cent of the work is attributed to

'the mysterious Moor named Cide Hamete Benengeli', working out three

versions of Don Quixote. First, the narrative is a 'historical account of Don

Quixote's career; second, it is only 'Avellaneda's sequel to Cervantes's Part

One', and finally a third version in which he saw 'the flattering and

romanticized account which Don Quixote believes is being written about him

and his adventures'. Riley then characterized each of these versions, stating

that the first one 'tells the truth', i. e. the Moor's work, that the second was

'unhistorical, or even false', while the third one was a 'distortion of the facts'.

Stopping at these observations, Riley added that the Moor creates 'an illusion

of historicity', realizing though that only the Moor's version was acceptable(2).

But it is basically in his most recent work(1986), that Riley shows greater

insight, producing an important and adequate account of Don Quixote in its

relation to romance on the one hand, and to Arabic on the other. He writes for

instance that,

6

more important is the pretence that the manuscript of the bulk of Don Quixote was in Arabic, and most important of all the attribution of the 'history' to the Moorish chronicler, sage and magician, Cide Hamete Benengeli: both devices common to the romances of chivalry(3).

However, other critics do not see the importance of Cide Hamete or Moorish

culture in Don Quixote. W. C. Booth is chronologically the first critic to have

paid attention to Benengeli. Writing in 1952, he regarded all works as having

an implied author, narrator, or'author' who intrudes. Yet, he did not attempt to

analyze the Moorish historian's functions in the text, and saw him rather as the

one who 'makes the most important intrusion into the narrative', becoming in

the end an author in performing'in public the tasks which most writers perform

behind the scenes'. This idea still held in 1961( The Rhetoric of Fiction)(4).

On the other hand, R. S. Willis(1953) did indeed note that Benengeli's words

begin 'ironically to resemble the Word', seeing the Moorish historian as

'omniscient', and his historia as'both undivided and all-inclusive'. His attempt

to analyze Benengeli's role is praiseworthy, he being one of the few critics to

point to one major aspect, that which through 'dice la historia' and its variants

involves Moorish historiography and story-telling. However, he did not go

beyond this remark , and stopped short as soon as he reached what he called

the tension between historia and novel(5). In this same group,

R. Predmore(1967) circumscribed Benengeli's function to that which enables

Cervantes to increase 'credibility of his work', and like R. S. Willis before him,

saw him as an 'intruding narrator', no more(6). Two years later,

F. W. Locke(1969) still viewed the Moorish historian as a mere auctorial

device, an ancient convention only, he said. For him, the 'real' author of Don

Quixote is 'God, the great sabio who writes the life of each of us', reflecting

the Borgesian view(cf. Tlön)(7).

Ruth El-Saffar(1975) believed that Don Quixote needs the Moor and

vice-versa. For her, Benengeli is a total character, though she added, it is the

7

'hidden, implied author who can be seen to have absolute artistic control'. In

1980, she would simplistically write that Benengeli is Don Quixote

himself(8). In the same year, J. J. Allen realized that the Moor bears after all 'the

bulk of the novel', but only as a character in the world of Don Quixote(9).

Finally, R. M. Flores(1982) joined this host of Cervantine scholars, by stating

that the moor as a historian assumes his role better that 'a series of unnamed

authors and hearsays', and is there mainly to 'discredit the apocryphal Don

Quixote of Avellaneda's without making him appear a last minute

solution'(10).

To this last claim comes the question; how could Cervantes have

thought of Avellaneda's apocryphal version when he first wrote Part One of

Don Quixote? Benengeli appears already in 1,8, and is also anticipated in 1,2,

that is from the very beginning of the narrative, so Benengeli has little or even

nothing to do with Avellaneda, if we consider Part One to start with. It is true

that the Moor's role increases greatly in the second part, due probably to that

apocryphal version of Avellaneda. However, the Moor is not 'a last minute

solution' nor is he invented for that matter to counterbalance Avellaneda's.

Benengeli's functions reveal two aspects of this narrative: Moorish

culture and historiography behind the first modern novel. Given Don

Quixote's place in the history of the novel and given Cervantes's claim about

its being a translation of an Arabic 'source' and the consequences of that claim

for literary history, the role of Cide Hamete as author of an Arabic text

translated into Castilian proves fruitful both for a reassessment of the history

of the novel and for translation studies. Don Quixote ceases to be recounted

on the basis of the Manchegan archives as early as chapter 8(Part One), while

Don Quixote is awaiting a chronicler-historian as early as chapter 2:

Oh, tu, sabio encantador, gienquieras que seas, a quien ha de tocar el ser cronista desta peregrina historia, rue&ote que no to olvides de mi buen Rocinante, companero eterno mio en todos mis caminos y carreras 1(1,2)

8

Thus a chronicler-historian (so far) will come forward to narrate for us, and to

write down(for Don Quixote's sake) the knight-errant's deeds through lands

and ordeals. But it is in chapter 8 that the story runs out; Cervantes finds the

Arabic 'original' in Toledo, much as the anonymous author of Libro del

Caballero Cifar, obtains its translation into Castilian thanks to the Morisco-

translator(10), and carries on the actual writing of the story/historia. However,

the chronicler-historian, given the 'original' text, happens to be a Moorish

writer-historian. This also is of great relevance for literary history, if only

because Moorish historiography had its own characteristics and qualities,

beginning from the eighth century(11).

Few scholars have actually paid attention to Benengeli as 'author' of

this narrative, even though the Moorish writer-historian holds great interest

for literary theory as well as history. Americo Castro and Claudio Guillen have

been of great and invaluable guidance in this respect. Castro's explorations of

Spanish literature and Spain's Moorish heritage are central. For instance, he

insisted that the Moors be included in Spanish national history as such since

they enriched Spain civilization and literature, including Don Quixote

itself(12). As for Claudio Guillen, he has, for instance, brilliantly argued for a

rethinking of comparative studies by discussing, among others, the hegemony

of Euro-centric literary and aesthetic norms at the expense of more universal

ones. His studies of the Moorish tale, namely El Abencerraje as an important

moment in the history of Spanish literature, the picaresque as a preliminary

'founding' moment of the novel, and Don Quixote as a countergenre to the

picaresque are simply revolutionary in the sense that, combined, they displace

the 'epic' relationship to the novel and give more weight to Moorish

contributions in literary history(13).

Given his functions in the narrative, Cide Hamete is considered

'author' of Don Quixote, displacing the notion of authorship(14). Here

9

authorship is seen as the authority in the text and behind the actual

enunciation. This authorship, or co-authorship if you will, also signifies a more

accented Moorish cultural presence in Don Quixote, and hence in the history

of the novel. It is also argued below, that Don Quixote is historiographical

precisely because of its Moorish 'authorship', countering thus the claim that the

novel originates from the epic; that its relation to romance and travel literature

is substantial and substantiated herewith, and that finally, the novel derives

mainly from romance - picaresque - (historiography)travel literature. Further,

since Benengeli is 'author' or 'co-author', and since Don Quixote is of Arabic

'origins' with Cervantes playing the role of transcriber of a translation , translation studies should therefore enable us to unmask such notions as

originality and authorship. Because it is proposed as a version of Cide

Hamete's 'original' while being the first modern novel, Don Quixote also

points up pseudotranslation as a key and device in literary practice.

10

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION.

1. S. BENCHENEB & C. MARCILLY, 'Qui etait Cide Hamete Benengeli? ', in Melanges Jean Sarrailh, 1966, pp. 97-116.

2. E. C. RILEY, 'Three Versions of Don Quixote', MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, 68,1973, pp. 809-819. See also his Cervantes's Theory of the Novel, 1961, 'Who's Who in Don Quixote or an Approach to the Problem of Identity', MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, 81,1966, pp. 113-130.

3. E. C. RILEY, Don Quixote, 1986, p. 38.

4. W. C. BOOTH, 'The Self-conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristam Shandy', PMLA, 67,1952, pp. 163-85. ------------ The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961.

5. R. S. WILLIS, The Phantom Chapters of the Quijote, 1953.

6. R. L. PREDMORE, The World of Don Quixote, 1967.

7. F. W. LOCKE, 'El sabio encantador: The Author of Don Quixote', SYMPOSIUM, 23,1969, pp. 46-61.

8. R. EL-SAFFAR, Distance and Control in Don Quixote, 1975. --------------- 'Cervantes and the Games of Illusion', in Cervantes and the Renaissance, ed. M. D. McGaha, 1980, pp. 141-156.

9. J. J. ALLEN, 'Don Quixote and the origins of the Novel', in Cervantes and the Renaissance, op. cit, pp. 125-140.

10. R. M. FLORES, 'The Role of Cide Hamete in Don Quixote', BULLETIN OF HISPANIC STUDIES, 59,1982, pp. 3-14.

11. See for instance R. M. WALKER, 'The Genesis of El Libro del Caballero Cifar', MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, 62,1967, pp. 61-69. On the translation of Don Quixote from the Arabic of Cide Hamete in Toledo, see P. WERRIE, 'L'ecole des traducteurs de Tolede', BABEL, 15/4,1969, pp. 202- 212.

12. See for instance F. ROSENTHAL, A History of Muslim Historiography, 1968, P. K. HITTI, History of the Arabs, 1937.

13. A. CASTRO, The Structure of Spanish History, 1954(1948). I am most indebted to Americo CASTRO for the elaboration of this work. His renowned El pensamiento de Cervantes (1925) has been overshadowed by his later developments and change of outlook at Spain's history and culture. This change, so to speak, occurred approximately at the close of the 1940's. He died in 1972 at the age of eighty-seven. Among his works, I shall list the following:

(1948)Espana en su historia, Cristianos, moros yjudios, Buenos Aires. English Translation: The Structure of Spanish History, Princeton, 1954.

(1954)La realidad historica de Espana, Mexico. Italian translation: La Spagna nella sua realth storica, Sansoni, 1955. German translation: Spanien, Vision and Wirklichkeit, 1957. French translation: Realite de l'Espagne; Histoire et Valeurs, Paris, 1963.

11

(1957)Hacia Cervantes, Madrid, second revised edition, 1960.

(1958)Origen, ser y existir de los espanoles, Madrid.

(1960)Espanolidad y Europeizacion del Quijote, Mexico.

(1961)De la Edad conflictiva. El drama de la honra en Espana y en su literatura, Madrid, second revised edition, 1963. French translation: Le drame de 1'honneur dans la vie et la litterature espagnoles du XVIeme siecle, Paris, 1965. Italian and German translations came out in 1965 too.

(1965)La realidad historica de Espana, Mexico, revised edition with a new introduction.

Professor Americo Castro died in 1972 at the age of eighty-seven.

14. C. GUILLEN, Literature as System, 1971. See also his 'Literary Change and Multiple Duration', COMPARATIVE LITERARY STUDIES, 14, 1977, pp. 100-18.

15. See M. FOUCAULT, 'What is an Author? ', in Textual Strategies, J. V. HARARI(ed), 1980(1979), pp. 141-60, and L'archeologie du savoir, 1969.

12

CHAPTER ONE

Cide Hamete: His Functions in Don Quixote and their Relevance for Literary History.

We may wonder why, it was Spain, the most traditionalistic culture of Western Europe that first perfected the novel.

Harry Levin, The Gates of Horn, 1963.

Don Quixote, Spain's 'epic' novel is, we know, presented as a work

written by a Moor, Cide Hamete Benengeli, sabio' and 'historiador'. Thus

Cervantes simply transcribes into Castilian, via a Morisco-translator, what is

said to be an Arabic text. This narrative holds a special place in the history of

the novel. The sheer amount of works dealing with the Quixote are a

monumental testimony, from criticism to literary history and theory. But little

importance has been given to the 'original 'author, Cide Hamete, and if he has

received attention, it would often be en passant. What are the functions of the

Moorish 'author' in the text, and what are the reasons that led Cervantes to

'invent' Cide Hamete, 'historiador' and 'escudrinador'? These are the questions

that interest us, at least from the point of view of literary history.

It is known that the chivalric romances followed what may be termed a

'translation tradition' whereby any fame-seeking romance was supposed to be

translated from the Greek, Latin or Arabic/Chaldean. Over a period of some

300 years, from around 1300 to 1604-15, four texts published in Castilian

announced themselves as translations from the Arabic/Chaldean:

1. Libro del Caballero Cifar(1299-1335), as written in Chaldean by an anonymous author.

2. Lepolemo o el Caballero de la Cruz(1521), by Alonso de Salazar, as written by Xarton in Arabic.

3. La Verdadera Historia del Rey Don Rodrigo(1592) by Miguel de Luna, as written by Abentariq (or Abulcacim Tarif) in Arabic.

4. Historia de los vandos de los Zegries y Abencerrajes(1595), by Gins Perez de Hita, as written by Ibn Hamin in Arabic.

13

These works centre on Christian and Moorish chivalry, and the 'hatred'

and passion felt by the former for the latter's traditions, the different but not

alien other, and above all on the possible friendship and coexistence between

the two neighbours of the mare nostrum. This sort of 'new humanism' inspired

many authors and had as a paradigm the story of Abencerrage (Ibn-Sarraj,

'son of the saddle-maker', 1550-60), the legend of the noble Moor which

remained popular until the beginning of the nineteenth century, bringing in its

trail several narratives, the last of which was Chateaubriand's Les aventures

du dernier Abencerage(1826)(1).

El Abenceraje, referred to as a 'novela morisca', whose authorship is

still disputed (Montemayor? ), merits some preliminary attention. It is

contained in Montemayor's Diana, a pastoral romance, the first in Spanish

according to D. B. Randall, which very soon acquired a place among the most

popular stories of its time, inspiring a dozen or so Spanish imitations and two

sequels, one by the Valencian Gil Polo(1564) and another by Alonso Perez of

Salamanca(1564). There appears in Diana, the story of Abencerratje o

Historia de Abindarraez y Jarifa (from 'sharifa', 'noble' (lady) in Arabic),

and has been celebrated by the same Randall in the following terms:

The first, best, and most popular example of the so-called novela morisca, a minor genre whose semi- or pseudo-historical background is the colourful and heroic conflict between the Spanish Christians and the Moors(2).

As early as the fourteenth century, Iberian culture was already, prior to

its European counterparts, 'bathing' in 'realism'; but not until the sixteenth

century did realism really become a practice as such, i. e. more of a day-to-day

historical realism(3). Of the four texts purportedly translated from Arabic,

Hita's Historia(1595) stands out since it is near-contemporary to Don

Quixote. This work whose first part appeared in 1595 under the title of

Historia de los vandos de los Zegries y Abencerrajes, and the second part

14

as Segunda Parte de las Guerras Civiles(1604), is also called 'Moorish

novel'. Hita describes it as a translation from the Arabic of Ibn Hamin, relates

the last events of Moorish Granada at the close of the fifteenth century. It is

partly historical, partly fictional; more interesting is the fact that its historical

aspect overrides the fictional side, thrusting it into the 'historical novel'

category. Although this type of narrative is not altogether 'Moorish', it is not

surprising then to learn that the historical novel dominates Arabic romance

literature(4). Up to Cervantes's time, 'translation' writings (i. e works

supposedly based on translations or translations per se) were basically the

only ones available; this had to stop at some point or change. Cervantes will

carry out the task by 'inventing' a Moorish author-historian in line with that

same tradition, but all the same allotting his 'historiador' unprecedented

functions.

Instead of being a mere 'narrador intruso'(5), Benengeli takes up the

role of both 'author' and 'pseudo-narrator' in a fashion essential for a move

from mythopoeia to realism. Following Claudio Guillen who believes that any

life narrated by its own subject will remain incomplete and fail to achieve

artistic status, I think that the role ascribed to Cide Hamete, like those pseudo-

narrators of the Arabic Magamat who play the role of author-narrators(see

below), is precisely that which, via its third person distanciation, expresses a

consciousness that is 'intrinsic to the sequence of events'(6). Only such an

author-narrator can make possible the writing of poetry or history. Thus, Don

Quixote as recounted to us by Cide Hamete imitates or rather emulates the

structural as well as the presentational characteristics of history as factual

narration. It is therefore of great relevance, following the argument on pseudo-

narrators and author-narrators, to consider Don Quixote from the point of

view of pseudo-translation, but not as analyzed and defined by Gideon

Toury(7).

15

Throughout history, the idea of the writer acting as or using a pseudo-

translator has been much utilized but rarely assessed as such; moreover its

relevance to literary history has been ignored. I have mentioned some early

Spanish 'pseudo-translations' above, and it would be possible to name many.

What interests us here is the function of such pseudo-translation(s) in literary

history, and that of Cervantes's Benengeli. Thus, the notion of pseudo-

translating seems well ingrained in literature, or at least the tradition, but has

yet to be located historically. From what we know, it started in the West with

the first of the four listed above, that is just at the height of the Toledan

'effervescence'. This 'mystification' of authorship has in fact gained the status

of literary fact in Spanish literature as early as the fourteenth century and as

late as the seventeenth with Don Quixote. But as Toury writes, it has been

resumed in nineteenth-century-Germany with Papa Hamlet written in

German but supposedly translated from the Norwegian; in fact, Toury

forgets that Voltaire's Zadig and Candide for instance precede Papa Hamlet

by one century(8). From the point of view of literary history, and of literary

evolution as such, the use of fictitious authors and translations, and the need

for the 'real' author to invent them is, writes Toury

often a convenient way, sometimes one of the only ways open to writers, to introduce innovation into a literary system, especially when this system is resistant to deviations from canonical models and norms(9).

It is not surprising at all to observe that in chapters 47 and 48 of Part

One, Cervantes seizes the opportunity to criticize the 'canon' of Toledo by

discussing and showing its weaknesses. For him, the books of chivalry which

he seemingly wishes to destroy(10), are not true because of the lack of

verisimilitude and historical veracity. Ironically, says Toury, this same Papa

Hamlet came to be regarded as 'one of the most important forerunners of the

German brand of naturalism'(my italics). Therefore, a writer who wishes to

16

act as a pseudo-translator has to invest some efforts towards his goal, not only in finding (or carving) the appropriate niche for his text (from the point of view of the current constellation of the literature in question), but also in the persuasive formation and formulation of the text itself(11).

Acting as a pseudo-translator, via the Morisco-translator as mediator

between him and the Arabic 'original', Cervantes does indeed 'invest' some

efforts towards his aim, that of parodying the chivalric romances and that of

'countering' the 'genero' which has to be surpassed(Cervantes's reference to

Lazarillo de Tormes in 1,22), by giving full credit and weight to his Moorish

'author'. For that, Moorish historiography and 'realism' do to some extent help

him carve, to use Toury's terms, a 'niche for his text' within both a tradition

and a perspective, and to formulate his text in a manner hitherto unknown in

Spanish literature. Pseudo-translations (non-factual translations) then are in a

position, a highly privileged one should I say, to give us valuable information

as to the shared conceptions of a given community as regards the

characteristics of genuine translations on the one hand, and their function in

literary evolution under that cover on the other. Moreover, the demarcation-

line between pseudo-translation and translation proper is a very thin one,

unmasked only by the relative characteristics of a given literature, available or

unavailable in the translated text. To be more specific, the demarcation-line

between Don Quixote as a pseudo-translation and Don Quixote as a

translation per se can only be drawn if the supposed Arabic 'original' contains

some genuine Arabic literary conventions and other elements made visible in

Spanish(then possibly labelled a pseudo-translation) or if the Spanish text

offers certain similarities to some Arabic text(known) or even unknown, that

is if the Spanish text may sound Arabic once translated into Arabic despite its

'Spanishness'. The possibility of Don Quixote, despite literary-historical and

ideological reticence, bearing some Arabic literary conventions can be

profitably explored when demonstrable echoes between itself as a text and a

'potentially-existing' Arabic source are materialized. In other words, the text

17

and only the text and its characteristics will unmask its author: author or

pseudo-author? But this very question leads us to ask another one: what is an

author- pseudo-author? Cervantes appears to play the role of both author and

pseudo-author. Where he displays 'genuine' Spanish literary traits (can they

really be Spanish if the term 'Spanish' is too restrictive? ) in the 'tradition' of

say, Salazar, Luna, Hita, etc., he assumes authorship (in the conventional

sense that is), and where he displays Moorish traits, he assumes the role of a

translator, i. e. pseudo-author.

But let us start our discussion of Cide Hamete's functions in the

narrative by trying to see how Cervantes first describes him, at least as regards

his 'identity': 'Aräbigo y Manchego'(I, 22). This seems to recall Perez de Hita's

Moorish 'authorship' in his Guerras Civiles de Granada:

... cuyo autor de vista fue un moro llamado Aben Hamin, natural de Granada(italics mine).

Cervantes's description contains at first glance a duality which may seem

problematic, but is I think, not so problematic. Moors in Spain considered

themselves Moslems and Spaniards. Everything Moorish enjoyed pride of

place, and Spaniards(non-Moslem) even imitated them in various fields as the

great scholar Amdrico Castro explains in his brilliant work. In addition to

that, Cervantes here stresses the question of their identity, trying to show(via

the stories of Ricote and Zoraida's father) both the Moriscos's right to remain

in their country and the efforts of the Church to proselytize them: does

Benengeli not swear, for instance, like 'un cat6lico'? (II, 27). As a humanist

who had much experience in life - the wars against Turkey, against the

Algerians, his 'love' for the Moorish aristocratic lady, jail, escape to freedom

to Oran, etc. - he acquired some sense of life and a certain ascetic view of the

world. He certainly resented the Moriscos's departure, or at least appears to do

so in Don Quixote(12), putting for that matter the following words into

Ricote's mouth:

18

Doquiera que estamos lloramos por Espana, que, en fin, nacimos en ella, y es nuestra patria natural... y en Berberiä y todas las partes de Africa, donde esperäbamos ser recibidos, acogidos y regala- dos... tenemos de volver a Espana... que es dulce el amor de la patria(II, 54).

Cide Hamete Benengeli is then a Spaniard, as much as Ricote and the often

forgotten Morisco-translator. But what does his name really mean? Cide or

Cid has already been explained by Don Quixote as meaning 'Lord', 'Sire'(1I, 3);

Hamete is a distortion of 'Ahmed'(praise) usually used in this form among the

Turks (in Turkey and Algeria of the 'Regency'); and Benengeli, contrary to

what G. Stagg and others have concocted (including Sancho and his

'aubergines', II, 3)(13) can be decoded: 'ben' (from 'ibn', i. e. 'son') is a typical

Maghrebine form following the kunya tradition of the East, and 'engeli', the

Arabic for Gospel ('ingil). As to the final 'i' of 'engeli', it is merely

grammatical and anyone familiar with Arabic grammar will understand it(14).

Hence the meaning of the Moor's name:

a) The Lord of Praise. e, son of the Gospel, or

b) Praise the Lord, Son of the Gospel(15).

Given this reading, how may it be related to Cervantes's background

which has been much disputed and will certainly be? For Marthe Robert,

Benengeli is a transfuge juif auquel eüt ete trop risque d'attribuer la paternite de l'ouvrage... le faux auteur arabe nest pas seulement lä pour le pittoresque , mais pour couvrir le vrai dcrivain juif (italics mine, 16).

For Dominique Aubier, and because Cervantes mentions 'lentils' on Fridays,

the sadness of Don Quixote on Saturdays and 'pigeons' on Sundays, in

addition to a Zoharic reading of the text, he can only be a Jew(17). Such

claims are based on no serious scientific investigation; and had Cervantes

used a 'Jewish author', it is unlikely any of them would have seen 'le vrai

ecrivain arabe' under the Jewish cover. Scholars like A. Castro and J.

Fitzmaurice-Kelly are less speculative. Cervantes was a

19

Spaniard and a good Catholic. Under the pseudo-Moorish name lies the real

Catholic ('son of the Gospel'), and history can in its turn help us out. All

captives in Algiers were easily identified, either as Christians or Jews, but as

is known, all of them were Christians. Jews held a more privileged position,

for in Islam, though both Jews and Christians were and are referred to as

People of the Book(. L Gk t, Ahl-al-Kitab) and should enjoy respect and

consideration, it was the Jews who were preferred both for their Abrahamic

'code' and the similarity of their customs with those of Islam. Moreover,

historians tell us that all captives were Christian Europeans (Spanish,

Italian, etc. ) and that a strong Jewish community prospered in Algiers(18).

So much for Cervantes's background; what about the reason which led

him to invent such a Moorish name? The Moriscos were expelled between

1609 and 1614, that is right between Part One(1604-5) and Two(1615). The

problem was still fresh, and Cervantes seems to give the subject much

importance. First, we should always bear in mind that it was thanks to the

Morisco-translator, at least we are told so, that he was able to get the story.

Fictive as it may seem, Cervantes stresses their usefulness as translators of a

certain civilization that had already given Spain much(see below). Second, his

Don Quixote is written by Benengeli, a Moor from La Mancha. Again,

Cervantes brings to the fore the Moors' culture, the benefit as it were Spain

would get from them if it behaved in a more humanitarian, tolerant way by

accepting them as Spaniards: 'Aräbigo y Manchego'. Cervantes is a humanist,

a man with great sensitivity, a Spaniard already prepared and predisposed for

a new look at the Moriscos, and Spain's own history(19), though his Quixote

at times shows signs of 'inspired perversity' as Castro is reported to have

said(20). In Don Quixote, Cide Hamete does not appear at once. Rather, like

a much awaited character on the stage, or shall I say, like the six 'lost'

characters of Pirandello, awaiting their author, he takes some time to make his

20

first appearance(I, 9), despite Don Quixote's impatience. Up to this stage,

Cervantes is relating his story as based on the archives of La Mancha, the

propio original. The story runs out in 1,8, and from the very beginning to this

chapter, the story is, like so many before, a chivalric romance tout court. From

the moment the Moorish 'author' and historian steps in, it turns into a

juxtaposition of romance and novel(21). By creating Benengeli, Moorish

historian and biographer, Cervantes goes further than simply following a

tradition as many critics have apparently believed. Of course, he is following

Hita's and others' 'authorship' tradition as it were, but the question that arises is

this: why a Moor, historian/ biographer and sabio-escudrinador all at once?

Why does he give him such an outstanding importance when no previous

Spanish writer or rather pseudo-translation gave its 'pseudo-narrator' such

preeminence? In so doing, Cervantes develops a precedent towards unforeseen

consequences.

The first thing to note is the sheer number of chapters where Benengeli

appears, either directly or indirectly: nearly fifty chapters. In Part One, he is

mentioned five times by name and six others indirectly through 'dice la

historia', 'nuestra historia', sabio', etc. (see table, columns A and B). In Part

Two, he takes on enormous proportions: he is mentioned thirty-two times by

name(including the cases where he is mentioned more than once in the same

chapter), and thirty-two times indirectly (see column B). In addition to this,

Benengeli opens twenty chapters, either directly or indirectly (column c), and

closes eleven others, directly or via 'dice la historia' etc. It is then clear that

Benengeli's presence is somewhat restrained in the first part of the narrative

(ten times only) while it increases or becomes more felt throughout the second

part (he opens and closes twenty-seven chapters), more than a third of the

whole part, while he is present in forty chapters (columns A and B). We can

also notice that Benengeli 'disappears' from the scene as soon as the subject

21

of the story is related to war, battles, captives, etc. (he is absent in 38,39,40,41

of part One for instance), absent too in 'sensitive' matters like the galley-

slave's story and the discussion on religion(II, 63), and present in cases like

Ricote's(II, 54) in order to strengthen the Moriscos' case. Cide Hamete thus

appears in chapter-stories that demand a 'detached' author, that is to say, an

'objective' author, while matters that bear a somewhat 'delicate' issue are

related by the characters themselves. But it is his presence and interventions in

some key-chapters that demand more attention, which will now bring us to

Benengeli's role and functions proper.

It is not simply how often Cide Hamete appears or the number of

chapters he appears in that matters; it is also the place and quality of his

intervention. His first appearance(I, 9) introduces him to the reader as the

author of the Arabic 'original' of Don Quixote, immediately after we are told

that the story has run out,

... y en aquel punto tan dudoso par6 y qued6 destroncada tan sabrosa historia, sin que nos diese su autor d6nde se podria hallar lo que delta faltaba(I, 9),

followed immediately by Cide Hamete's appearance and the Toledan

'business'(for it is business after all Cervantes pays the merchant half a real

and the translator fifty pounds of raisins and three bushels of wheat).

Cervantes recognizes the parchment as written in Arabic(he is not then

wholly unfamiliar with Arabic script), and asks the Morisco-translator to

render the text into Castilian in Cervantes's house (as in the Toledan epoch)

who does the job in less than six weeks(notice the number six as in Genesis).

Now, Don Quixote's adventures can resume, but this time, under the pen of a

Moorish historian. Yet Cervantes wishes to make things clear from the start: if

any objection can be made against the Moorish author and his 'true

history'(story? ), it can only be that he is a Moor(a'liar'), and that because the

Moors are taken as Spain's enemies, Benengeli will fall short of the truth

22

rather than exaggerate. Indeed, from the start, the reader is made to treat this

'true' history with caution because its author is a 'liar', i. e. treat it as fiction

only. And it is here that Cervantes's narrative will properly begin, carrying in

itself the tension of truth and 'fiction', history and creativity(imagination),

romance and novel, a series of episodes whose sole link is Don Quixote and

whose sole 'author' is Benengeli, Moorish historian(22). Moreover, dialogue

proper, intensified and diversified will occur after 1,9, that is after Cide's

entrance on the stage. Some 'limited' dialogue occurs in the first chapters(2-8)

but will only reach its intensity much later. It is rather cumbersome to go

through all of Benengeli's interventions; the most relevant ones will be

discussed below.

It is clear that the first function of Cide Hamete is to enable Cervantes

to move from one chapter to another, very smoothly, in a manner quite close

to that of Sheherazade in the One Thousand and One Nights . Here, the

narrator stops her stories short, just before they end, either by introducing a

new one or by introducing a new character, who will carry on the tale. This

keeps her alive. Her story-telling epitomizes the mingling of life and death:

the end of every story is tantamount to death, hence her urgent need to 'invent'

a new one to remain alive, or to put it metaphorically, to come back to life

again(23). Cide Hamete's first function seems to fulfill this need for

Cervantes to start a new chapter in order to give his narrative more

homogeneity, create a smooth transition, and at the same time give the work

full weight. Cervantes's story needs continuation; it has come to a halt. The

Toledan 'story' enables him to continue:

En fin, su segunda parte, siguiendo la traduccion, comenzaba desta manera: Puestas y levantadas en alto... (my italics, 1,9).

At this stage, Cide Hamete steps in, starting his role as author, and peeps out

exactly when the story, or the boxed-story, runs out, thus keeping the flow of

stories and chapters 'running' smoothly:

23

Mas no le avino como el pensaba, segün... desta verdadera historia, dando aqui fin la segunda parte(end of 1,14),

followed immediately by the entrance of the Moorish historian-narrator on the

stage:

Cuenta el sabio Cide Hamete Benengeli que asi como Don Quijote... (beg. of 1,15).

Other examples abound in the text(see Column E). Similar strategies are also

rife in the One Thousand and One Nights:

It is related that... (beginning) ... and he related as follows: -... (end),

or the ending for instance of the 'Story of the Second Sheikh and the Two

Black Hounds':

Upon this, the third Sheikh, the owner of the mule, said to the Genie, as to me, break not my heart if I relate to thee nothing more than this: -

followed by another story(chapter? ) whose narrator had previously been

introduced. Each story-ending is clearly the beginning of another. The readers

of Don Quixote and Cervantes(as a reader) turn into the King(Shahzaman) in

the Arabic stories, and Benengeli, into Sheherazade. The latter is fully

responsible for both stories and their quality on the one hand(we are told from

the start that she excells in story-telling) and her own life on the other.

Benengeli's second function is his responsibility as 'author' for both

Don Quixote as a artistic piece and Cervantes's reputation as a writer. We

know the rivalry that arose between him and such writers as Lope de

Vega(1562-1635), Mateo Aleman(1550? -1609) and others, and his strong desire for fame(24). Thus, in case of failure, Benengeli is to blame, not Cervantes(25). Benengeli's function then is also that of a critic - via his

responsibility of the total work - of chivalric romances and so enables

Cervantes to strike at their claimed veracity and at the genre itself. Through

Cide, Cervantes will turn into a reader-critic of his own work, and having used Benengeli, realizes that he can also use him to criticize the genre romance

24

without appearing a staunch opponent of both his predecessors and the literary

canons. It is Cide Hamete who recounts the adventures of Don Quixote, and

by the same token argues against the falsehood of the chivalric romances and

their fantastic deeds and other 'miracles' which Cervantes 'wishes' to destroy

through parody and irony. Since they lack verisimilitude, fall short of reality

and the possible, Cervantes will offer, in a counterattack, via the Moorish

'historiador', instances of crude 'realism' as in the chapter on the Toledan

canon:

... le ha venido gana y voluntad de hacer aguas...?

... ya, ya to entiendo, Sancho.... y aün ahora la tengo... (italics mine, 1,48).

This urination at the end of such an important chapter is tantamount to

a 'urination' on the Toledan 'canon' itself, which Cervantes concretizes here

thanks to Benengeli's historia(26). Consequently, Cide Hamete, a Moor, is

easy to blame for a possible lese-majestd. This mask, like several others will

permit Cervantes to carry out his scheme: destroy the chivalric romances and

move from mere 'history' to narrative fiction and, establish a new 'genre'. At

this stage, Don Quixote displays a clear function, that of countergenre, which

Alastair Fowler sees as a counterstatement.

In his view, and taking his cue from that brilliant scholar Claudio

Guillen, early picaresque for instance is itself a countergenre to the chivalric

romance as is the latter to the epic(27). But, and once again, it is Cide Hamete,

as 'historiador muy curioso y muy puntual en todas las cosas(I, 16), as 'sabio y

atentado historiador'(I, 27) who carries out the task. Claudio Guillen sees Don

Quixote as having emerged in a period of unwritten poetics (borrowed from

Renato Poggioli) and, because genres depend heavily upon each other, Don

Quixote emerges as a new genre by being 'expandable', i. e. expanded from the

chivalric romance and the picaresque, and by inciting the questioning of

literary works. If as Marcel Bataillon writes, Lazarillo de Tormes was 'un

25

commencement absolu'(28), Cervantes's narrative came to birth as a response

to the challenge of the new-born picaresque. Claudio Guillen defines a

countergenre as that which assimilates and surpasses a genre or the genre it

counters(29).

According to R. S. Willis, authors before Cervantes were free to present

their stories('histories') in any textual order. Cervantes then changes this once

and for all by creating chapters via Cide Hamete as we have seen. But what

Willis does not seem to realize is Benengeli's role in this drastic change. It is

he who 'changed this once and for all, and in so doing created the modern

novel'(30). This idea of Willis refers to Cervantes, but should, I believe, be

applied to Cide Hamete. There are numerous reasons for this.

R. M. Flores and F. W. Locke(31) believe that Cervantes did not think of

the Moorish' author' from the start, but rather adds him once he has reached

chapters 8 and 9 of part One. Hence, in his attempt to psychologize the

composition of the work writes Locke, the discovery of the Arabic manuscript

becomes not only likely but necessary. All he has to do is carry on with

Benengeli (Locke and Flores). But the chronicler, a point which both of them

do not see, who is much needed can be anyone, and as early as chapter 2(Part

One) contrary to what both claim, that is from chapters 8 and 9 only:

lOh, tü, sabio encantador, quienquiera que seas... 1(1,2)

As we can see, from chapter 2 already, a historian-biographer-chronicler will

therefore come forward, very soon it seems, to record Don Quixote's deeds

and relate to us the whole 'true history'. And it is precisely a Moorish

historian-biographer who will take up the task. Miguel de Unamuno sees Cide

Hamete both as a 'most exact biographer', and one that answers Don Quixote's

needs(32). Through his praise of Benengeli's talent and love of detail and

precision,

... aclara las dudas, resuelve los argumentos (11,40)

26

Puntualisimo escudrinador de los ätomos desta verdadera historia (11,50)

Cervantes criticizes, with a Moorish mask, the chivalric models, their

lack of historical truth or lack of 'realism', and in general their vagueness.

Moreover, he also strikes at a particular genre that had attained fame prior to

his work:

-Si Haman, respondi6 Gines... que soy Gines de pasamonte, cuya vida estä escrita por estos pulgares. - Dice verdad, dijo el comisario, que el mismo ha escrito su historia...

-Es tan bueno, respondi6 Gines, que mal aiio para Lazarillo de Torures, y para todos cuantos de aquel gdnero se han escrito 0 escribieren: lo que le se decir a voace, es que trata verdades tan lindas y tan doflosas, que no puede haber mentiras que se le igualen (italics mine, 1,22)

And it is Benengeli who relates this:

Cuenta Cide Hamete Benen eli, autor arabigo y manchego, en esta gravisima, altisonante, minima, dulce e imaginada historia, que... (beg. of 1,22).

Here Cide Hamete assumes a greater role, for as a Moorish historian,

known for his talent in historiography and biography, for his minute

descriptions and eloquence, he is in an excellent position to criticize these

models. What Cervantes seems to say is this: Moorish historians have a

reputation for description, detail, and objectivity (this last element though

considered suspiciously in the West was nonetheless strong in Islamic culture

- does not our 'historiador' praise Allah: Blessed be Allah! ' repeating it three

times? (II, 8); all he says is true, and what precedes this work of his(and mine)

is 'false'. In Islamic biographies and histories, each event is related in the

words of contemporaries, those who have lived and experienced the events in

a manner that reminds us of Benengeli as biographer-chronicler of Don

Quixote's deeds as they take place, and transmitted to the author, the final

narrator, through a chain of reporters(33).

Muslim biographies began around the eighth century, the first of

which being Sirat Rasül Allah(The

Life of The Messenger of Allah), written by M. Ibn-Ishaq(d. 767). Formal

27 historical composition based on legends, genealogies, traditions and narratives

appeared in the same century: '-rL. - W

Siyar Mulük-al a jam (The Lives of the (alien) Persian Kings) by Ibn-Mugaffa ,

being an outstanding example. Franz Rosenthal, the great Arabist, sees this art as a I ..

self-contained intellectual growth, while he understands V tarikh (history,

historiography) as etymologically meaning both 'date' and 'era'. Historiography as

seen by the prominent geographer-historian of Islam, Al Mas'udi (d. 956/7), was

factual information and not speculative research, although it was at times fused with

philosophy. The Khabar history, the oldest form of Muslim historiography was,

writes Rosenthal,

a direct continuation of the battle-day narratives... the well-rounded description of a single event(34),

bearing some features akin to those of story-telling. It would start with the following

opening : Cý> Ha-

ddathant fulän (X recounted to me) carrying in its very beginning the dilemma of

both 'story' and 'discourse'. From the tenth century onward, the narrative of this

khabar history would at times be introduced by another formula: L_., U_

_-) Wa Una asabab (and the reason for it was) referring to a particular event.

Rosenthal is most illuminating here:

The character of the habar(history) as a self-contained unit is stressed by the chain of transmitters which precedes each habar and which is omitted in order to achieve brevity or to remove the appearance of scholarly austerity(35)

Cervantes adopts more or less the same strategy; he will forget naming

Benengeli quite often so as to avoid burdening the narrative with his ghost-like

author. But it is mostly the characteristics, in artistic terms, of the khabar that draw

our attention. It retained, writes Rosenthal, the presence of poetical insertions, and

to find a historical work free of poetical quotations is very rare indeed(36).

28

Don Quixote, too, is full of poetical quotations(column F): about 13 times in

Part One and 22 in Part Two. Most striking is the fact though the whole story

is supposed to have been penned by Cide Hamete, these poetical insertions

occur in some 35 chapters where Benengeli is mentioned by name seven times

only. I think, that because most of the poetry involved refers to Spain as a

Christian-European culture, Cide Hamete's absence and presence have two

functions: presence to show that a Moorish writer-historian has some

knowledge of Spanish ballads and other Christian cultural components, and

absence where Cervantes needs' distanciation', non-authorial control(37).

We must now relegate Cervantes's claim, through Don Quixote or

Sancho, of Moors being a nation of liars' to the next point, and concentrate on

Benengeli's role as historian in a manner of, say, Al-Mas'udi, and Cervantes's

desire to break once and for all the aristotelian 'debate' on the demarcations

between poetry and history. After Cide Hamete's second function as author

and critic, a third function now emerges, that of historiador escudrinador and

the type of changes he brings to the novel as a genre. Indeed, Benengeli

enables Cervantes to introduce both 'exactitude' (objectivity) through

verisimilitude and the ambiguous play of concrete reality(38) that destroys the

traditional framework of the romanesque universe and thus revolutionize the

novel. For not only does the Moorish historian describe the world as he sees

it, but also individual characters, that is types (in its literary sense) as well as

thoughts. Hence his description by Cervantes:

Pinta los pensamientos, descubre las imaginaciones(II, 40) responde a las täcitas, aclara las dudas(II, 40) Esto dice Cide Hamete, fil6sofo mahom6tico(II, 53) Puntualisimo escudrinador(II, 50) sabio y atentado historador(I, 27) Cide Hamete promete de contar con la puntualidad y verdad que suele contar las cosas desta historia, por minimas que sean(II, 47) (italics mine).

29

Indeed, Cervantes's choice of a Moorish historian is far from being fortuitous;

his 'quien quiera que seas'(I, 2) cannot be anyone. Cide Hamete's exactness,

love of detail(los ätomos, aclara las dudas, por minimas que Sean) and human

curiosity is characteristic of Muslim historians; there is ample evidence for

this.

All biographers of the Prophet show extreme care for detail and

exactness(39). Al-Mas'udi is noted for his descriptions and exactness, while he

also was the first Muslim historian to mention windmills in Sijistän(40). He

was a fine describer of events and men, for which his C- t. Q Mu-

rüj al-dhahab (French translation as Les prairies d'or, 1861) is much

celebrated. In the words of I. Goldziher, he narrated

in an attractive style made lively with fascinating and pleasant stories and appropriate characterizations (italics mine, 41).

Ibn-Khaldün (1332-1406), the'founder of sociology'(42) is also noted for his

history and descriptions of the Berbers, Muslim Spain, a detailed history of

the Maghreb and a philosophy of history. The Muslim writer is, according to

Grunebaum, a keen observer of emotions, has a'sober realism', and above

all, strong 'powers of accurate observation... and... exactitude'(43). R. Landau,

for his part sees the Moors as gifted and talented concerning types, making it

their task to be as precise as possible(44). It is this question of type that should

now draw our attention, for it is it that brought about the most drastic changes

to the traditional romance and thus introduced a new 'genre'.

Disagreeing with Auerbach who believes that realism cannot be

satirical, comical, didactic, moralistic or idyllic, R. Wellek thinks that only

Lukäcs produced a coherent and acceptable theory of realism: 'objectivity' and

'reality' fused together, in which didacticism is implicit(45). And because of

the implicit presence of didacticism in the tension between objective

30

representation or rather between description and prescription, truth and

instruction, the notion or concept of type becomes of utmost relevance and

importance for the theory and practice of realism. The question of type then

enables us to formulate and elaborate that of universality and individuality (or

particularity). Lukacs, for instance saw the form of a literary work as

reflecting the form of the real world. But form here is totally different from,

say, that of the Russian Formalists. His use of this term is based on Hegel's

concept of form, i. e. the aesthetic shape given to content via technical devices

or features like narrative time and the interaction of the characters as well as

the situations in which these characters evolve. Hence form becomes, in his

view, almost identical to content(46). Thus the question of type has a central

role in his reflection model, drawn out of a focus on realist literature only.

However, as shall be discussed below, it surely is crucial for any approach to

novel-writing(47). In this very question of type-creation as it were, Benengeli

succeeds beautifully, while his arabesques(to use Lukäcs's term) do not

necessarily disturb the impression of reality(48).

Ibn-Tufail (1106-1185), though not a historian, is more of a

philosopher-novelist. His

Risälat Hay Ben Yagdhän(The Romance (Story) of Hay Ben Yaqdhan) is

probably the best example concerning ambiguity. In addition to his

descriptions, details and story-telling, he admits two versions of the child's

birth at the start of the narrative, and leaves it to the reader to decide. Much

more, he seems to have invested in the hero Hay 'an air of autonomy perhaps

unnequated in the history of the novel' and places him as 'the depository of the

theme of fluctuating reality'(49). Though Fitzmaurice-Kelly sees this work as

a neo-platonic, pantheistic romance in which religious and philosophical

truths are only two forms of the same thing, P. K. Hitti discussing the overall

contribution and influence of Arabic prose on Spanish(and therefore on

31

Western literature), believes that such works as Ibn-Tufail's, the Maqamat

and others have

helped liberate Western imagination from a narrow, rigid discipline circumscribed by convention. The rich fantasy of Spanish literature betrays Arabic models, as does the wit of Cervantes's Don Quixote, whose author was once prisoner in Algiers(50).

Cervantes's presence through Benengeli's voice becomes part of the

narrative as does Benengeli's through Cervantes's. This in turn coincides with

certain characteristics of Arabic literature, namely the Magamat and The

Romance(Story) of Hay Ben Yagdhän. The former is narrated by a pseudo-

narrator(Al-Harith for instance in Hariri's work, while the latter is narrated

by the narrator on the one hand and the grown-up child on the other. This

reminds us of the Spanish picaresque where the same characteristics are

reflected.

Taking our cue from Scholes and Kellogg, we can now consider Don

Quixote 11,3, where a lively discussion takes place between Don Quixote,

Sancho and Sanson Carrasco. Don Quixote is disturbed at the thought that the

author 'era moro, segün aquel nombre de Cide, y de los moros no se podia

esperar verdad alguna, porque todos son embelecadores, falsarios y

quimeristas'. We are already prepared, via such diatribe, to believe that the

Moors and hence Cide Hamete are liars by 'nature', and that as a historian,

Benengeli will undoubtedly report only part of the truth, while he surely and

'naturally' will add some falsehoods. As both historian and writer, Benengeli

epitomizes, thanks to his 'lies', the author par excellence(51). But let us now

turn to the discussion between Sanson and Sancho over the distinction

between poetry and history. Thus Sanson concludes:

... pero uno es escribir como poeta, y otro como historiador: el poeta puede contar o can tar las cosas no como fueron, sino como debian ser; y el historiador las ha de escribir no como debian ser, lino como fue- ron, sin anadir ni quitar a la verdad cosa alguna(italics mine, 11,3, ).

32

According to the above-named scholars, this distinction is a 'crucial

one to the whole conception of the book'(52). But what we should not forget

before going any further, is that Sanson's vital distinction between poetry and

history follows the discussion on Benengeli as historian. The Moor has just

opened chapters I and 2(Part Two) and Sancho(much like Don Quixote) is

worried about his seriousness and exactness in fact-recording. Therefore, this

distinction is directly related to the Moorish historian's capabilities as a

'specialist'. This is one of Cervantes's obsessions: he insists on the veracity of

the narrative through Benengeli(53), but at other times insists on the writer's

freedom to create; hence Sanson's 'el poeta puede contar o cantar... sino Como

debian ser', i. e. as the writer would like things to be. Cervantes here plays the

role of, or is the poet, while Benengeli is the historian. It is the fusion of both

'authors'(both 'genres' shall we say for the moment) that gives the narrative its

value as a novel(54). For Scholes and Kellogg, Cervantes's work stands

between that of the historian and that of the poet, between empirical and

fictional narrative. It is indeed this synthesis that permitted the emergence of

the novel: the use of Moorish historiography and 'realism' fused with Spanish

or West European 'fantasy'. On this Castro wrote:

Let me repeat here that this and nothing else is the key to the so-called Spanish "realism "(55),

relaying so to speak H. A. R. Gibb who wrote:

Whether or not these romances were based in 'part on Arabic originals is immaterial; the important fact is that they achieved a synthesis of Moorish and Spanish culture, which formed a turning point in the history of Modern European literature. It was the birthday of the modern novel(italics mine, 56).

Though not as precise about the fusion of historiography and 'poetry'

in the emergence of the novel as examplified by Don Quixote, Schlegel and

Bakhtin remark that

the novel results from the admixture of all the genres that existed before(57),

33

while Schlegel affirms that

in the novel ... there are historical parts, rhetorical parts, parts in dialogues... Poems in all genres, lyrical, epic, didactic, as well as romances, are scattered... (58).

But it is a Canadian scholar who will sustain this idea. Northrop Frye believes

that the novel tends to 'expand into a fictional approach to history'(59),

preceding Scholes and Kellogg, though with much less verve. Thus, it is the

histor, role ascribed to Cide Hamete, that can best introduce 'conflicting

version in his search for the truth of fact'(60). Benengeli can be seen as an

ideal device, a 'historian but an Arab historian and therefore an untrustworthy

one'(61). Of course Benengeli is not untrustworthy as such, but only because

he is a Moor, a 'falsario-embelecador-quimerista', a play that proves

ingenuous. Cervantes has undoubtedly found a genial idea. Benengeli is at

once histor and eye-witness on the one hand, and a liar on the other. The first

two notions are well encrusted in Islamic historiography, while that of

'falsehood' is a Cervantine trouvaille which enables him to conflate an

empirical and fictional mode of narration. History can thus be seen as the

novel that had been, while the novel can be seen as the history that might or

could have happened.

It is in the second part of the narrative that two particular chapters

carry some great significance both for Cervantes's 'theory of the novel'(62)

and for the Moorish historian's role. In Dulcinea Enchanted(II, 1O),

Cervantes relates that the ' autor desta grande historia' when about to recount

this chapter-story, thinks it better to pass it over in silence for fear of disbelief.

Finally, he takes courage and, still full of remonstrances and misgivings,

decides to narrate truthfully 'sin aiiadir ni quitar a la historia un ätomo de la

verdad sin darsele nada por las objectiones que podfan ponerle de mentiroso. '

Elsewhere, in chapter 24(Part Two), Cervantes again brings back the same

34

device, that Cide Hamete thinks it apocryphal, and in so doing, cast strong

doubts on his narrative, but ultimately refuses to disbelieve it. From now on,

truth and falsehood amalgamate('history' and 'poetry') and Benengeli, the

Moor-liar by 'nature' as the Don says, will represent falsehood more than truth,

despite his talent and his quality as'puntualisimo escudrinador'. However, we

should not overlook Cervantes's tactics, especially here. Fiction, as a product

of both imagination('fantasy') and real life(fact-recording), as an art where the

' real' and the 'unreal' merge, finds in these two episodes its first model, at least

in Western literature. For as Michel Zeraffa writes, the mediocre writer will

either idealize the real or present it as it is(63). From this moment on, this

ambiguity, this amalgamation or fusion of truth and falsehood will create a

divide, a free space that will separate the characters, the author, and the

reader. It is at this stage of the narrative, that the very notion of fiction gets an

answer... and raises a question mark. Benengeli's bewilderment is that of

Cervantes, and this element of perplexity brings about another dimension.

The characters he has created seem to take some distance from him, as if

trying to assert themselves(in a manner close to the nouveau roman), while

the artist looking freer steps back to contemplate his own creation.

Thus, the histor as enquirer(though Homer used it without a clear

meaning of history as we now understand it) is no longer the trustworthy,

omniscient narrator; he is doubtful even in his position as primary narrator.

First, by showing Cide Hamete's hesitation as to whether he shall or shall not

recount the contents of both episodes, Cervantes brings out the increasing

distance both in time and in textual space between the events 'witnessed' by

the eye-witness narrator(Benengeli), and the supposed time of narration,

which then will enable him to 'regulate the quality of irony in the narrative'.

Second, it places Benengeli, histor, as the unreliable or semi-reliable narrator,

in a manner quite different from that of the ancient narrative; or to be more

35

precise, it places him as the product of both empiricism and irony. Cide

Hamete as histor-enquirer is, at this stage neither a character as such nor the

author himself. He is, to use Scholes and Kellogg's terms, a 'persona, a

projection of the author's empirical virtues'(64). Thirdly, it makes the reader

share or participate in the act of creation itself by trying to find out his own

version of the truth as the Montesinos episode reveals:

Tü, lector, pues eres, prudente, juzga lo que to pareciere, que yo no debo ni puedo mäs, puesto que se tiene por cierto... (11,24).

Through this play, the Moorish historian detaches himself as a trustworthy

historian-recorder, but remains the 'author' of what follows nonetheless. Let us

see why.

First, in Islamic historiography, the author is only the final narrator-

recorder. In Don Quixote, the propio original is anonymous, and it is

Benengeli who gives it its final shape, producing the last version, in the

tradition and manner of Muslim historiographers and biographers, as

discussed above. This is basically one of Pierre Macherey's arguments on the

writer as final recorder of an already existing'copy'(here the propio original),

and also one of the results the Formalists happened to arrive at(65). Both see

the writer as a craftsman or worker 'combining' and/or 'fabricating' already

existing material with the intention of 'making'(producing) a given text.

Hence, 'originality' as an essential quality of the literary work simply

disappears, for it is a myth. Gerard Genette shares a similar view. In his

opinion, the writer is merely a'secretaire', merely he who puts down what we

see and read: 'l'auteur visible est un secretaire, une pure fiction'(66).

Second, Cide Hamete is discredited by Don Quixote, Sancho, etc. as a

'liar' only because of his supposedly 'natural' propensity to lie. Benengeli's

'lies' and behaviour are the qualities of a Moorish writer. L. Massignon for

example, writes that Islamic theology and philosophy see the world as made

36

of puppets, God being, so to speak, the 'guignol puppeteer'. He also sees

Islamic art as having 'un cote de fantaisie volontairement irreelle'(67), a view

equally shared by James Burke and Americo Castro for instance. Imagination

as such is not altogether accepted in Islamic theology, nor is 'realism' in its

acception of reality-depiction. The Muslim mind's outlet is that of painting a

'real' world not as it is exactly, but rather the way a miroir brise operates, the

production of a sort of mixture of reality and fantasy, for such a blend can

only be human and not divine, echoing some contemporary views of fiction

such as Michel Zeraffa's:

pourtant ce miroir n'est pas une invention (une'creation') du romancier: it reflete le reel... Le miroir romanesque apparalt au contraire

brisd... (italics mine, 68).

The propio original containing the whole 'truth' resembles the

Word/World, the realm of God; it is remote, elusive and somewhat

mythical(69). Cide Hamete's declaration or rather his confession in the

Montesinos episode is indeed, the sort of conclusion the reader of fiction will

reach : the writer is not omniscient, or a magician, but only an artist. What he

knows is limited, doubtful and should therefore be treated with great care(70).

In this, Cervantes succeeds by'destroying' the myth of the chivalric romances

with their depictions and tales of Hellenistic-type heroes and omniscient

authors.

Concomitant with the function discussed above, is Benengeli's fourth

function, given Cervantes's worries about the notorious sequel of the Quixote

published by avellaneda, and related to us by Cervantes himself in the

prologue(Part Two). Though he does not seek vengeance against the'author of

the second Quixote', born at Tarragona but begotten at Tordesillas, Cide

Hamete will enable him to disclaim any non-Benengelian (not non-Moorish)

Quixote except this one. The treatment of the question of authorship that best

stimulates the mind comes from Michel Foucault. Authorship, he writes,

37

enables its author to eliminate plagiarism and to assert his 'originality'(cf.

Avellaneda's sequel of Don Quixote as written in Arabic by another Moorish

author, this time named Alisolän(Ali-sole(ly)? ) and other incidents of the

same nature around the close of the sixteenth century)(71). But on the other

hand, it impedes the freedom of ideas, by allocating a certain idea or ideas to a

particular writer (full appropriation of ideas). Morover, as Foucault has

shown, authorship is clearly an ideological fabrication whereby particular

literary values are established and erected as universal standards (Shakespeare

in England or Moliere in France are literary monuments in their countries, yet

seen quite differently elsewhere), or as Claudio Guillen, again sees it, whereby

supranational values and modes are erected as ultimate values, inscribing

some form of dominance(72). Ideology, through criticism as a tool will then

construct the author-function and the author as such, by systematically

eliminating all other 'scribes' who do not fall into their 'categories'. It appears

that authorship, as exemplified by Don Quixote and the Moorish 'author', is a

functional principle by which the free composition, decomposition and

recomposition of fiction for instance, are strictly regulated(73). That is why

Cervantes often repeats (to whoever will listen) that his narrative is not only

'original' but also the Arabic work of the Moorish'sabio' and'historiador' Cide

Hamete Benengeli, 'aräbigo y manchego', sole author of EI ingenioso hidalgo

Don Quijote de la Mancha:

para mi sola naciö Don Quijote, y yo para el; el supo obrar, y yo escribir; solos los dos somos para en uno (11,74).

This statement, uttered by Cide Hamete and hence Cervantes, is highlighted at

the concluding words of the second part of the narrative(1614-5), issued no

doubt as a warning to any future 'plagiarists' of Avellaneda's type.

Having, I hope, satisfactorily argued the role and functions of Cide Hamete in

Don Quixote and their importance for literary history, it is equally interesting

38

to see now Don Quixote's and Cervantes's relation to Moorish culture in

general and Algiers in particular.

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41

(*)LEGEND A. The chapters where Cide Hamete is mentioned by name.

B. The chapters where Cide hamete is mentioned indirectly, via dice la historia, nuestra historia, cuenta la historia, etc.

C. The chapters which Cide Hamete opens, either directly(by name) or indirectly.

D. The chapters which Cide Hamete closes, either directly or indirectly.

E. Examples of chapters, the end of which is either closed by Cide Hamete, dice la historia and its variants, or by the characters themselves, thus introducing new chapters, as compared to similar strategies in the One Thousand and One Nights.

F. The chapters which contain poetic quotations, as compared to Islamic historiography and its use of poetry.

42

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE

1. C. GUILLEN, Literature as System, 1971, pp. 159-217. Both GUILLEN and D. B. RANDALL(The Golden Tapestry, 1963) discuss Montemayor's(? ) work, while Villegas's version does not draw much attention, for as is known 'no writer who included it in his works claimed its authorship': see The Abencerraje and the Beautiful Jarifa, F. LOPEZ ESTRADA & J. ESTEN KELLER(eds), 1964, p. 13.

2. D. B. RANDALL, op. cit.

3. O. BORGERS, 'Le picaresque: realisme et fiction', in LETTRES ROMANES, XIV-XV, 1960-1, pp. 295-305,23-38, and 135-48.

4. F. ROSENTHAL, A History of Muslim Historiography, 1968, pp. 186-93.

5. R. S. WILLIS, The Phantom Chapters of the Quljote, 1953, and R. L. PREDMORE, The World of Don Quixote, 1967. Cide Hamete is 'intruso' in Part One only, but full 'author' as from Part Two, 1 contrary to what both claimed.

6. C. GUILLEN, op. cit, pp. 150-60.

7. G. TOURY, 'Translation, Literary Translation and Pseudotranslation', in COMPARATIVE CRITICISM, vol. 6,1984, pp. 73-85. I am not as much concerned with Cervantes as 'counterfeiter' for instance, as I am with Don Quixote as a pseudotranslation and with the Morisco-translator as pseudotranslator-mediator and, above all, Cide Hamete as pseudoauthor.

8. Voltaire's Zadig(1747) displays similar features to Papa Hamlet and El Caballero Cifar for that matter. It is presented as first written in Chaldean then in Arabic 'pour amuser le celebre Sultan Ouloug-beg'. Voltaire adds that it was written in Arabic during the time when the Arabs were writing down the One Thousand and One Nights. Moreover, and it is Voltaire who says it, 'Zadig' in Arabic means 'le juste'(from sadaq, sadq), while the 'Epistle dedicatory to Sultana Sheera' opens with the following: 'The 18th of the month Schewal, in the 837th year of the Hegirah'(schewal is an Islamic month and hegirah the Arabic term for the Arabic term for exodus, from Muhammad's flight to Medina, c. 622 A. D. ). Candide(1758-9) announces itself as a translation from the German of Mr le Docteur Ralph in whose pocket additional notes were found when he died in 1759. One may also add Voltaire's Le Taureau Blanc(1774) as translated from the Syriac by 'Mr Mamaki' and Histoire de Jenni as rendered from the English of 'Mr Sherloc by Mr de la Caille'.

9. G. TOURY, op. cit.

10. I believe alongside Salvador de MADARIAGA that it is hard to 'believe that the first impulse to which we owe such a splendid creation was merely critical, and of no great importance'. See his Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology, 1961, p. 36.

11. G. TOURY, op. cit.

12. That Cervantes shows signs of 'anti-Moorishness' here and there in some of his writngs is tenable, but not enough to disrupt his humanism. After all, it is not easy to forget one's experience in jail and in battle. But what is certain is

43

that his Don Quixote, contrary to what he writes elsewhere(El trato de Argel, etc. ) does not contain that sort of feeling. On the contrary, it is a critique of Spain's 'crusading attitude' as chapters II, 26(Puppet-Showman), 1,21 or better still 11,73 reveal: 'the one that conquers today may be conquered tomorrow'(II, 73). Cf A. CASTRO, Espanolidad y Europeizacion del Quiljote, 1960. For his part, I. WILLIAMS writes that'Cervantes says nothing about the edict of expulsion except that it was justified from an administrative point of view. Yet he presents it in such a way that it appears, not only to us, but also to the characters in the novel, as humanly unacceptable'(my italics). See his The Idea of the Novel in Europe, 1600-1800,1978, p. 24, and more recently, E. C. RILEY, Don Quixote, 1986, pp. 101ff, and E. SOLA, Un Mediterräneo de piratas: corsarios, renegados y cautivos, 1988, pp. 267ff ('A pesar de su ortodoxia religiose de continuo manifestada, no menos importancia tiene su actitud tolerante, respetuosa, con el musulmän').

13. G. STAGG, 'El Sabio Cide Hamete Venengeli', in BULLETIN OF HISPANIC STUDIES, XXXIII, 1956, pp. 218-25, and C. A. SOONS, 'Cide Hamete Benengeli: His Significance for Don Qu(jote', in MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, 54,1959, PP. 351-7. The first sees Benengeli as a 'marabout'(holy person) from Algiers, discovering 'that his name might well have been Sid Ahmed Alubedi', while the second translates the name literally and finds 'pumpkin', and the story in the cartapacio 'may be falsehood, made up "out of his head"', linking pumpkin as he does with the 'head of Merlin Cocai... '

14. The final 'i' of Ben-engeli is what is called kasra. There are three vowels in Arabic which are used as diacritics in various positions: . There are three vowels in Arabic which are used as diacritics in various positions: dhamma(equivalent to 'u' in English, fatha(= 'a' in French) and kasra('e' in English or'i' in French) which is the case of the final 'il of Benengeli.

15. C. MARCILLY and S. BENCHENEB, 'Qui 6tait Cide Hamete Benengeli? ', in MELANGES JEAN SARRAILH, 1966, pp. 97-116, to whom I am indebted for some of the points made here.

16. M. ROBERT, Roman des origines et origines du roman, 1972, p. 219.

17. D. AUBIER, Don Quichotte, prophete d'IsraE1,1966, pp. 54-125.

18. See for instance W. BYRON, Cervantes: A Biography, 1979, A. CASTRO, La realidad historica de Espana, 1954, and A. C. HESS, The Forgotten Frontier, 1978, pp. 174-5: Algerian Jews as 'prosperous and well- established'.

19. See for instance A. CASTRO, Hacia Cervantes, 1957, and A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, 'Cervantes y los moriscos', in BOLETIN DE LA ACADEMIA ESPANOLA, vol. 27,1947-8, pp. 107-22. See also E. SOLA, op. cit, pp. 267ff.

20. E. AUERBACH, Mimesis, 1968(1946), pp. 334-58. Because Don Quixote is 'perverse', Cervantes somehow shows 'how quixotic and foolhardy' wars and crusades are. See W. M. WATT, Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe, 1972, p. 54.

21. P. HULME, Reflexive Fiction: The Study of a Cervantine tradition in Spanish and Spanish American Narrative, Ph. D dissertation, University of Essex, 1976, p. 174. HULME saw it as neither romance nor novel; it contains,

44

he wrote, both 'novel and romance'. My view is similar only as to the juxtaposition of both, but differs on Benengeli's functions and contributions to the text as a novel, something he did not have the opportunity to study.

22. 'There is no such thing as a fictive narrator which, as is obviously presumed, would be conceived of as a projection of the author', K. HAMBURGER, The Logic of Literature, 1973(1957), p. 139. Benengeli is Cervantes's own projection of how a writer should be, and that he chose a Moorish historian-writer is clear enough. By choosing a 'narrator' from the world of Islam, he is showing the path for narrative-writing on the one hand, and 'objectivity' on the other, in the tradition of Muslim historiographers, travellers, etc. as well as Hariri, who in his Magamat makes his 'narrator' Al- Harith describe and discuss various scenes and issues in the manner of the early picaresque(see Chapter 4 below).

23. See also M. FOUCAULT, 'What is an Author? ', in Textual Strategies, ed. J. V. HARARI, 1980(1979), pp. 141-60, and T. TODOROV, Poetique de la prose, 1971, pp. 78-81.

24. See for instance J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, A History of Spanish Literature, 1898, pp. 228-67, and W. BYRON, op. cit., pp. 90-123.

25. W. BYRON, op. cit, pp. 90-123 and 206-7. A word must be said here. No one has ever thought of the opposite; in case of success (not of failure), would Benengeli get the credit?

26. It is indeed Cide Hamete who destroys the myth of the romances through his 'detached authorship', and displays instances of 'crude realism' as in I, 48(see also Chapter 2).

27. A. FOWLER, Kinds of Literature, 1982, pp. 174-6. For his part, W. L. REED calls it 'counterfiction'. See his An Exemplary History of the Novel: The Quixotic Versus the Picaresque, 1981, pp. 71-92.

28. M. BATAILLON, Le roman picaresque, 1931, p. 3.

29. C. GUILLEN, op. cit, p. 146.

30. R. S. WILLIS, op. cit, p. 15.

31. R. M. FLORES, 'The Role of Cide Hamete Benengeli in Don Quixote', BULLETIN OF HISPANIC STUDIES, vol. 59,1982, pp. 2-14, and F. W. LOCKE, 'EI Sabio Encantador: The Author of Don Quixote', SYMPOSIUM, vol. 23,1969, pp. 46-61.

32. M. de UNAMUNO, Our Lord Don Quixote: The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, vol. 3,1967, p. 338.

33. P. K. HITTI, History of the Arabs, 1951(1937), p. 394. See also Chapter 2.

34. F. ROSENTHAL, op. cit, p. 66.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid, p. 67.

45

37. See R. EL-SAFFAR, Distance and Control in Don Quixote, 1975.

38. C. MARCILLY & S. BENCHENEB, op. cit.

39. See for instance A. CASTRO, The Structure of Spanish History, 1954, pp. 256-95, P. K. HITTI, op. cit, pp. 385-95, and R. LANDAU, Islam and the Arabs, 1958, pp. 190-208.

40. Hitti who mentions it in his work(op. cit. ) does not, unfortunately, go further, for such a fact should have been stressed since Don Quixote is after all 'known' because of Don Quixote's confusion of windmills with giants, and above all because much has been said about windmills as a topical invention (for more on this, see Chapter 6).

41. I. GOLDZIHER, A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature, 1966, p. 125.

42. R. LANDAU, op. cit, pp. 204-7.

43. G. E. Von GRUNEBAUM, Islam, 1969(1955), pp. 20-97.

44. R. LANDAU, op. cit, pp. 197-207.

45. R. WELLEK, Concepts of Criticism, 1963, pp. 222-46.

46. A. JEFFERSON & D. ROBEY, Modern Literary Theory, 1982, pp. 139- 62.

47. J. BERNSTEIN, The Philosophy of the Novel, 1984.

48. K. HAMBURGER, op. cit.

49. R. L. PREDMORE, op. cit, pp. 15-6. This idea of his concerns Don Quixote and Cervantes, but I see it equally suitable for Hay and Ibn Tufail.

50. P. K. HITTI, op. cit, p. 559. This is a serious matter, for the theme of Algiers fills Cervantes's works. For more on this, see Chapter 2).

51. See for instance G. ALMANSI, The Writer as Liar, 1975, pp. 19-62.

52. R. SCHOLES & R. KELLOGG, The Nature of Narrative, 1966, p. 253.

53. It is not the fact of Don Quixote being a 'translation' that 'strikes at the claimed veracity' (cf. P. HULME, op. cit, p. 86) but rather Benengeli's own disavowals through chapters 10 and 24 of Part II.

54. R. EL-SAFFAR, Romance to Novel, 1974, p. 2.

55. A. CASTRO, The Structure of Spanish History, op. cit, p. 258.

56. H. A. R. GIBB, 'Literature', in The Legacy of Islam, Sir Thomas ARNOLD & A. GUILLAUME(eds), 1931, pp. 192-99.

57. See T. TODOROV, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, Theory and History of Literature, vol. 3,1984(1981), p. 86.

58. Quoted by T. TODOROV, ibid.

46

59. N. FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957, p. 306.

60. R. SCHOLES & R. KELLOGG, op. cit, p. 243.

61. Ibid, pp. 243-66.

62. E. C. RILEY, Cervantes's Theory of the Novel, 1964.

63. M. ZERAFFA, Roman et soci6t6,1971, pp. 11-13.

64. R. SCHOLES & R. KELLOGG, op. cit, pp. 264-6.

65. See for instance P. MACHEREY, Pour une th6orie de la production litt6raire, 1966, B. EICHENBAUM, 'Sur la th6orie dc la prose', in Theorie de la litt6rature, ed. T. TODOROV, 1965, pp. 197-211, T. BENNETT, Formalism and Marxism, 1979, pp. 3-92, and in the early 60's, R. BARTHES, Critique et v6rit6,1966.

66. G. GENETTE, Figures I, 1966, p. 127.

67. L. MASSIGNON, 'Les mdthodes de realisations artistiques des peuples de l'Islam', SYRIA, vol. ll, 1921, pp. 47-53.

68. M. ZERAFFA,, op. cit, p. 38. See also, E. C. RILEY, Don Quixote, op. cit, p. 165.

69. R. S. WILLIS, op. cit, pp. 99-100.

70. Here, Cervantes demonstrates, via Benengeli as 'liar', that literary works - and therefore chivalric romances- should not be believed blindly. See also, G. ALMANSI, op. cit.

71. B. WARDROPPER, 'Don Quixote: Story or History? ', MODERN PHILOLOGY, vol. LXIII, 1,1965, pp. 1-11.

72. C. GUILLEN, op. cit, p. 114.

73. M. FOUCAULT, op. cit.

47

CHAPTER TWO: 'Don Quixote in Algiers': Moorish Culture and Autobiography in Don Quixote.

SECTION A: Moorish Culture in Don Quixote.

A question that may be asked from the onset is Cervantes's relation to

Moorish culture. Americo Castro, for instance, points to some illuminating

aspects of Don Quixote in connection with Islamic culture(1). This

connection is quite new, since no scholar prior to him has touched upon this

aspect of the narrative or made a thorough study of it, and thereby displaces

some old views that saw in Don Quixote a mere knight-errant, parodying

chivalric heroes, etc. One of Castro's ideas is the all-importance and power of

reading, and the danger of books as imbedded in this novel. In suggesting this,

and in so doing, he opens a new line which few have followed.

The Koran, 'reading' in Arabic, was revealed to Muhammad gradually

over a timespan of some twenty years, 'descending' onto him with this first

verse entitled the Blood Clots, which Castro actually also mentions as part of

his argument which will be assessed as follows. This verse begins with this

appeal to the mind:

Recite (read) in the name of your Lord who created, created man from clots of blood! Recite (read)! Your Lord is the most Bountiful One, who by the pen taught man what he did not know (italics and brackets mine, Koran, 96: 1, (2))

Being thus the first revelation by Allah to Muhammad, it clearly

stresses and spells out the primacy or rather the priority of reading over

speech, of reading/writing over speech. This echoes the Old Testament, but

puts more emphasis on reading. The very name of the Muslim Koran means

that which is to be read or simply reading(3) and implies the idea of book, to

be compared for instance with the term 'Bible' (from biblos, i. e. book) and to

the notion of Scriptures (Ecritures) which in itself implies reading. The point is that the order is reversed by the Koran: reading entails the existence of a

48

book, whereas the name Bible signifies, and thus implies, first the existence

of a or several books, to be read of course. In other words, Islam focuses here

on reading, for writing is already there, before it, in the words of Allah,

presumably unmediated, as Gustave E. von Grunebaum explains:

The vindication of the matchless literary position of Revelation was more important to Islam than to Christianity because only the Muslim possessed the unmediated word of God. The Christian had his scriptures in translation and had not been taught to look upon the original as actual discourse in the Lord's tongue. Besides, the Bible could not escape being judged against the Graeco-Roman literary tradition while the Koran stood out in Arabic literature as an unprecedented phenomenon for the critical valuation of which no standard existed(italics mine, 4).

We can see these problems of relationship between script and speech

echoed by Jacques Derrida's unmasking of Saussure's preference for speech

over writing, leaving writing as only 'cc supplement' as J. J. Rousseau saw it(5).

Let us then dwell for a moment on the philosophy of the r kal-

am in Islamic theology and metaphysics. The term kalam, literally 'speech' or

'word', is used as an equivalent of the Greek logos in its various acceptions:

'word', 'reason' and 'argument' as Averroes for instance would use it. It is

equally used as meaning any branch of learning. Later, kalam as 'speech' or

'discourse' developed in order to enable Muslim scholars- via the Koranic text,

logic and argumentation - to comprehend and grasp the universe and God. It is

then a human branch of learning, that which tries to 'discourse' on the

universe, Man and God, but also used as a reference to (or meaning of) the

'divine word'. In this, the Islamic concept of kalam merges with that of

mantiq (logic) both of which, like logos refer to 'speech' or

'discourse'. On the other hand, the Koran presents itself, besides the meaning

of 'reading', as 'word', 'wisdom' and 'knowledge' in its overall self-conception

of a pre-existent Koran(6). Thus, speech is human, writing is divine; it is the

written logos, the sign that is divine. When Michel Foucault sees Don Quixote

as hero of the same, and above all as a sign(7), he comes rather close to the

49

Islamic notion of the reader embodying the'sign', i. e. the word of God both as

it is written in the Koran and as it is contained in all writings.

In the One Thousand and One Nights, Kamaralzaman (Qamar-al-

zaman), who is to be wed to a lady chosen by his father, refuses to marry at

all, for he has just read about women's treacherous behaviour and other

related matters. His readings made him stubbornly reject his father's wish (he

has no other reason) and incur his wrath. He is thus put into jail because of his

refusal, due to his readings that is, and only a dream will save him. The

importance of books and reading in Islamic culture has been stressed by

several scholars(8), but deserves perhaps more emphasis here. I shall try to

analyze Don Quixote's relation to Moorish culture, by systematically isolating

the most relevant and noteworthy Moorish elements in the text and discuss

them in some detail.

Americo Castro's major contributions to our understanding of

Cervantes's narrative and thought lies in his decision to leave off his Western

view of Don Quixote, and espouse thereafter an Oriental one, for as he writes,

para un europeo plenamente articulado con la tradiclon greco- occidental, un libro es un libro y un hombre es un hombre; no puede ocurrirsele, por tanto, forjar la realidad "centaurica" del "libro- hombreado" o del "hombre-libreado" como un fen6meno normal y sin toques de magic o de alegoria(9).

This drastic change toward an altogether different view enables him to move

further and see books as a living reality in Moorish culture:

Sentir los libros como realidad viva animada, comunicable e incilante es un fenömeno humano de tradicfon oriental, estrechamente ligado con la creencia de ser la palabra contenido y transmisor de una revelacfon. La idea de la religion en libros sagrados es oriental y no occidental ... limitemonos a recordar el papel, del libro como realidad humana dentro de la literatura drabe (italics mine, 1O).

Moreover, and in order to substantiate his claim, Castro quotes the first

Koranic revelation mentioned above and the Arab historian Al-Mas'udi

50

(d. 956/7) at length(11). For him, there is no doubt that Don Quixote is

permeated by this Oriental view of the book as a potential danger, and the

reader-sign as exemplified by Kamaralzaman's story, to a degree unseen in

the rest of European literature:

La tradic(on oriental de la vida espanola hizo posible que el tema de la lectura de los libros, como fuente de bienes y de males, existiese en la vida espanola y penetrara mäs tarde en las päginas del Quijote en una forma que no hallamos en la literatura del resto de Europa sino muy rara vez (italics mine, 12).

Books, literature as sources of evil can also be associated with the

Mu'tazilites (eighth century onward) and their doctrine of God as the source of

good, and evil emanating only from humans and their actions, including

writing(13). Cervantes, via the priest echoes a similar view:

El cual aün todavia dormia. Pidi6 las Haves a la sobrina, del aposento donde estaban los libros autores del dano(italics mine, I, 6).

Through such instances and others (1,1; 11,22,11,62, etc. ), Don

Quixote appears to be the roman dun liseur as Thibaudet writes, stemming

from a liseur de romans(14). Dominique Aubier on the other hand, identifies

Don Quixote's obsession with books and reading with Judaism. Because of the

Spanish touchiness about the Quixote he writes, no hazardous interpretation

can be made, for

aucune autre litterature n'offre un heros de fiction capable ä la fois de faire rire et de mettre le peuple ä la devotion ou au combat(italics mine, 15).

Such is the case, he adds, of another nation: Israel. This view differs

widely from the two major ones on this question. The first sees Don Quixote

as parodying chivalric books via Cide Hamete as historian and his insistence

on bookishness. The second, i. e. Castro's, views Cervantes's narrative from an

Islamic angle, that is based on the Koran and Moorish literature on the one

hand, and a close reading of the text on the other. In this, Castro is not

51

not alone(16). Aubier's view of this narrative does not illuminate us; on the

contrary, it blurs the borderline between the Jewish-Islamic connections and

gives Don Quixote a far more bellicose aspect than has hitherto been

suggested(17). This said, we should now move on to other Moorish cultural

elements in the narrative.

Cervantes quite often employs as an indirect reference to Benengeli,

the expression dice la historia. This is clearly of Moorish origin, as Willis for

instance has shown. Following the isnad technique or chain of transmitters,

Cervantes uses it to substantiate his claim of the veracity of his historia as

recounted by the Moorish historian. In fact, dice la historia where writes

Willis, at each occasion the flow of the Cervantine text is interrupted, opens

Moorish historiographical works and other narratives, and is the equivalent of k it %

the Arabic 4QW_, ý' taqulu al-gis,,; yaq- ýýý

ulu al-tarikh,, >,, j s yarwi al-tarikh, etc. (respectively, 'the story has it `ý 1

AI

that... ', 'history says', 'history recounts'). Hence J

gala... (says the narrator

or historian) is no mere stereotype but rather an I'

important traditional function

concludes Willis(18), precisely that of the ýJ isnad technique and the

function of they)y rawi or narrator-transmitter in narrating events, etc. This

formula, repeatedly utilized by Cervantes is related to the Vida del Qutjote

which Benengeli recounts; and it is precisely a life of type of narrative that

Moorish authors were fond of. Agreeing with Castro who writes that the idea

or notion of vida was necessary 'para la innovacfon novelistica motivada por

el QuUote'(19), I believe it is another instance of Moorish cultural

penetration. Moorish narratives 'tell' or narrate the flux of events among

which the lives of men and women stream along, just as the Spanish 'Vida de',

with its pseudo- or semi-autobiographical aspect does. It gives indeed an

impression of veracity, of being true to life, by trying to reproduce a faithful

chronology and account of events and behaviours. Siyar al-

N-

52

muluk al-a'jam (The Lives of the Alien [Persian] Kings) written or

compiled by Ibn-Muqaffa' (c. 8thcentury), Sirat Rasul Allah (The Life of the

Messenger of Allah) by Muhammad Ibn-Ishaq (d. 767), and

Siratu 'Antar (The Life [and Aventures] of Antar) by an unknown or still

disputed author(20) are ample evidence.

Other Arabic formulae are also used in Don Quixote. Very often,

Cervantes makes use of them at the beginning or the end of chapters, and at

times in the chapter:

... comenz6 a decir desta manera: -... (end of 1,38)

... donde les sucedi6 lo que se contarä en el capltulo venidero(end of 11,28)

Estando en esto, comenzo a dar voces Don Quijote, diciendo: - ... (beginning of 1,7)

Estando en esto, Rego otro mozo de los que les traian... (beginning of 1,12)

En esto hizo su aparicion el brebaje, y comenz6... (middle of 1,17)

En esto comenz6 a Rover un poco, y quisiera Sancho... (beginning of 1,21)

Estando en esto, el ventero, que estaba a la puerta de la vents, dijo: - ... (beginning of 1,36)

(italics mine)

Both desta manera and related in the coming chapter fill the text and

can easily be connected to such Arabic formulae: kama yali (as

follows) and ?\"`ký fi-al-qisati attaliya (in the following story or

chapter) as some instances in the One Thousand and One Nights can show:

... and he related as follows: -...

... and the Christian related as follows: -...

Other examples from this text can show striking similarities with

Cervantes's formulae. But it is, above all, his repeated use of en esto that

strikes most. Aubier mentions it but does not, unfortunately, dwell on it(21).

This formula is mostly used in Part One, enabling Cervantes to open a new

53

chapter without 'roughness'. This formula, the equivalent of upon this

(sometimes translated wrongly as 'at this point' by J. M. Cohen, 1950), has its

double in Arabic and was very often used in Moorish story-telling. Let us take

a few examples from the above-named Arabic text:

Upon this, the third sheikh... (end of the Story of the Second Sheikh and the Two Black Hounds)

Upon this the fisherman accepted... (mid. of the Story of the Fisherman)(my italics)

It is astonishing to realize that the formula en esto is generously used

in Part One alongside Benengeli's rare presence (ten times only). But in Part

Two, Benengeli's presence and formulae such as dice la historia, nuestra

historia or cuenta la historia replace it. One must not forget that Cervantes

wrote this part some ten years later. This timespan cannot explain the change.

On the other hand, the sequel written by Avellaneda could well be the key.

For in using the latter formulae, Cervantes gives far more authority to

Benengeli than he does in Part One. Moreover, the major difference between

the use of en esto in Don Quixote and that of the One Thousand and One

Nights lies in the former being used at the beginning of chapters, while the

latter is basically used in the middle or at the end of the stories. This is of

course an important contrast between the two, but seems relevant in the sense

that similarities are not the sole indicators of 'influence'. Often, writers do not

'imitate' as blindly as it can be, but rather adulterate or improve upon the

model. What is simply meant here is that, as in the case of countergenre,

similarities are not always helpful.

At the level of syntax, and contrary to various claims that for instance

'Spanish grammar remained unaffected by Arabic'(22), Arabic syntax is found

in Don Quixote, according to the discoveries of Snyder Gehman. He has

recently noted that the Arabic relative pronoun can be found not only in

Cervantes's text, but also in the much older Poema de mfo Cid. The relative

54

clause of the accusative case can be observed in Don Quixote. However, and

strangely enough, this construction occurs from chapter 8 of Part One

onwards, that is exactly when Cide Hamete steps in. There are two types,

writes Snyder Gehman. In the first case, a relative clause immediately follows

an indefinite noun without the use of a relative pronoun. Let us give an

example:

yasrakhu

l ;r. jý marartu bi-tiflin

(I passed by a boy who was shouting). This type, as

Snyder Gehman has noted, does not occur in Don Quixote. But it is the

second type, the uninflected relative which is supplemented by a resumptive

or tautological personal pronoun, that occurs in it. To take Snyder Gehman's

own example:

al sariq alladhi qatalahu ibni (the thief, who my son

killed him= the thief whom my son killed). After this example of the

accusative, let us take one in the genitive: C Qýal-tabibu

ibnuhu 'indi (the physician who his son is

at my house= the physician whose son is at my house). Most of the examples

available in Don Quixote are in the accusative case, adds Snyder Gehman,

providing full evidence from the text. A few examples will suffice(for more,

see table below):

Los brazos largos que los suelen tener algunos (1,8) Otra desgracicj que Sancho la tuvo por la peor(1,19)

(instances in the accusative).

Un delinquente, que esta en sü lengua su vida o su muerte(II, 22)

(instance of the genitive).

And Snyder Gehman concludes that:

the influence of Arabic syntax, however, on the relative pronoun with the resumptive or tautological personal pronoun has not received consideration. Although this principle has not been carried out everywhere in the Cid and Don Quijote, the Arabic syntax has left its traces in various passages(23).

55

Cervantes tells us, at the every beginning of his narrative, that the

name of the 'hero' is problematic but nevertheless somewhere between

quexana and quesada/quixada. In my opinion, the name quesada in particular

is an instance of pseudomorphosis(24), and is intimately related to the Arabic

qasd (intention, way, road, purpose, resolution), 3$ qasada (intend, seek,

move towards); hency qasida (ode/elegy) as 'purpose', etc. (25). Thus,

quesada, i. e. Don Quixote, is quite close to the idea of knight-errantry, for

after all, as that eminent specialist of the Middle Ages wrote,

Islam too developed an ideal of knighthood, which exhibits "striking coincidences" with that of the Christian West (italics mine, 26).

This is what had to be said concerning certain Moorish literary aspects into

which was incorporated an apparently unimportant term quesada. However,

more Moorish cultural elements can be extracted from the text.

Americo Castro dealt with several Moorish characteristics of Don

Quixote. It is perhaps profitable to discuss them again here and as a starting

point towards other areas of the same nature. The first item to open the

discussion with is the notion of hidalgo. Castro wrote that the term was built

following an Arabic pattern, and he said, is another instance of seudomorfosis

(see note 24). In Arabic, expressions such as CJ %J rajul khayr

(man of good deeds, hombre de bien that is), ("'' , )bint( L$bayt

(daughter or girl of a good (noble) house) are quite common. Hence, hija

d'algo (son of 'something', i. e. 'nobleman') is strikingly similar in form to the

Arabic wald hram (literally, son of 'sin'), used

for thugs, thieves or as is common, for illegitimate children (cf. hi de

malicia)(27). It is noteworthy, at this stage, to make clear, as did Americo

Castro, that . t, ibn/bint or bent do not necessarily always imply or mean 'son

of, 'daughter of, but also that/he/she/who, and that as A. Castro explained,

hijodalgo (hidalgo) cannot thus be understood if one sticks to the Latino-

Roman

56

terminology or background. On the contrary, it can only be grasped if one

switches from this to an Oriental explanation:

hijo d'algo no sea explicable dentro del marco latino-romanico(28).

Another major point brought up by Castro is the notion of honra

(feeling of honour, to be contrasted with honor). The latter is an absolute or is

absolutely; the former, on the contrary, belongs to that who acts and

reacts(29). Cervantes, in El Trato de Argel for instance, compares two

'honras', the Muslim and the Christian(Spanish), and writes that the Christian

refuses to take the oar for instance while in the sea, whereas the Muslim takes

pride in taking it whatever his rank may be. Hence, the Islamic idea that a

person is worth by what he is, not his environment or heritage. Here, I shall

paraphrase a famous Arab proverb: the child is worth what he does, not what

his father did(30). Moreover, the very title of that celebrated novela morisca,

El Abencerraje y Jarifa deals with noble deeds and noble people; and

therefore, the very fact that the Moorish lady is named Jarifa (Arabic for

'noble' or 'honrosa')(31) is not to be taken lightly. Thus, when Cervantes

writes that Don Quixote comes from a 'well-known house', he seems to echo

an Arabic equivalent: " ' ý° V As fulan min

bayt('aila) ma'ruf(a)(32). Finally, and carrying this discussion of honra, I will

again draw on Castro's findings to illustrate this further. Dulcinea comes from

El Toboso, which happened to be inhabited by a great number of Moors.

Then, the very fact of claiming that she came from a noble family or was

'wellborn' and thus belonged to a noble lineage of El Toboso strikes at this

very claim. Here, Cervantes's sarcasm takes a greater proportion than

elsewhere(cfwhen he has Don Quixote, Sancho, etc. discuss the question of

Old Christians, 'purity of blood', etc. )(33). At this stage, and in order not to

burden this work with more of Castro's points, I shall send the reader back to

Castro's works(34).

57

Another scholar, Gonzalez Palencia pointed out to Sancho's proverbs

and other instances, and believed that some of the tales of the Disciplina

Clericalis (12th century), of Arabic or Oriental origin (see below) reappeared

later in El Conde Lucanor(1342), and in Don Quixote(10-12, Part One) as

for example 'el de las cabras, que Sancho conto a Don Quijote la noche de los

batanes'(35).

As to Leo Spitzer, he indicated some intriguing connections with

Moorish culture (unaware of it though); in other words, what he raised could

be related to Moorish culture. He remarked for instance that it is'vanity which

ultimately induces townsmen to sally forth and do battle with their

deriders'(36), but did not go any further. In chapter 27 (Part two), Don

Quixote and Sancho pursue their journey, having so far travelled for two days

without meeting anyone or anything worth mentioning (by Cide Hamete that

is). As Don Quixote is climbing up a slope, he hears a commotion of drums,

trumpets and musketry. Some two hundred men, we are told, armed with

various sorts of weaponry (spears, crossbows, etc. ) are on their way to wage

battle against another village, that which has mocked them 'more than was

reasonable or neighbourly'. Here, the reader should be referred to the 14th-

century Moorish sociologist, Ibn-khaldun (1332-1406) who in his

Mugaddimah (Prolegomena) discussed the notion of 'asabiya (kinship or

clanism): the blood and tribal feelings of the nomads which welds them

together and strengthens their position vis-a-vis the townsfolk. It is, he says, a

cyclical phenomenon; the tribesmen, feeling inferior and 'derided' by the

town, decide to seize power. Once done, they become alienated and corrupted

by urban life (civilization) and will fall into the same situation as that of those

they themselves criticized. Hence, another tribe will wage war against them

and seize power, etc. (37). And it is none other than Cide Hamete who relates

this chapter:

58

Cide Hamete Benengeli, the chronicler of this great history, introduces the present chapter with these words: 'I swear as a Catholic Christian.. '(I1,27)

However, and I am not suggesting it for one moment, this aspect

should in no way imply that Cervantes knew of this sociologist. What is

meant is that given that Ibn-Khaldun lived in Moorish Spain, and that his

work was later known there, being in fact based upon his factual observations

of Muslim society from Baghdad to Spain, it is likely that what is recorded

here in this chapter is in fact the remnants of a modus vivendi inherited from

the Moors(38). After all, the previous chapter of the puppet-showman

concerns itself with Moors and battles against them:

Now turn your eyes, sirs, to that tower yonder, which is supposed to be one of the towers of the castle of Saragossa, now called the Aljaferia. The lady appearing on that balcony dressed in the Moorish fashion is the peerless Melisendra... Do you observe that Moor stealing up on tiptoe...? Now the city is drowned in peals of bells ringing from all the towers of the mosques. 'That is not right', said Don Quixote, '... for they do not use bells among the Moors'(II, 26)

and the chapter ends beautifully, like so many others, in the fashion of

Sheherazade:

... where we leave them, for this is a fitting opportunity for relating other matters pertinent to the telling of this famous history,

that is the historia as written and told by Cide Hamete in Arabic. But Leo

Spitzer's most noteworthy remark, based on Castro's work, is the use of 'dirty'

language in Don Quixote. For this he quotes Sancho's hacer aguas (to

urinate) from chapter 1,48 ('The Canon of Toledo'), which I shall fully quote

instead:

... pregunt6, hablando con acatamiento, j si acaso despu6s que vuestra merced va enjaulado y, a su parecer encantado en esta jaula, le ha venido gana y voluntad de hacer aguas mayores o menores, como suele decirse ?- No entiendo eso de hacer aguas, Sancho; aclärate mäs si quieres que te responda derechamente... - Pues en la escuela destetan a los muchachos con ello... - Ya, ya te entiendo, Sancho !... y aün ahora la tengo... (italics mine)

59

Let us then try to see its Moorish relation. El-Boukhari or Al-Bukhari

recounts in his Les traditions islamiques(translated in 1903) that

Muhammad once felt an urge for defecation and went out. El-Boukhari

followed him only to be asked to fetch him three stones to wipe himself. As

the companion found only two stones instead of the required three, he had but

to find an alternative. He then brought him a piece of dung with the two

stones, to which Muhammad replying by saying: 'ca c'est une ordure'(39).

This is an instance of supreme modesty and humility examplified by the

symbol of Islam, the prophet himself. Another instance, that of the story told

by the Muslim Spaniard Ibn-Hazm of Cordova(994-1064) about Harun Al-

Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad, deserves to be related here. The latter, being very

thirsty asked for a glass of water, and the ascetic Ibn-Al-Samak judiciously

asked him in his turn the price he would have paid for such a glass. 'All my

empire! ' was Harun's answer. 'And if you should not be able to pass this water

from your body... what would you give to be free of such an affliction? ' his

companion insisted. 'The whole of my kingdom', answered the Caliph. And

the former to conclude: '... are you so proud of possessing a realm that is worth

less than a urination and less than a sip of water? '(italics mine, 40). Basing his

argument on such and other instances, Castro arrives at the conclusion that

without the Muslims the Spaniards would not have mixed the clean with the

dirty:

Cervantes, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and many others had no compunction about mixing the noblest and the basest aspects of man together. Without the example of the Moslems they would not have done this(italics mine, 41).

This blunt 'realism' occurred, it should be recalled, as from the seventh

century l Other examples abound in Arabic literature.

60

These instances suffice to make the point, and it is worth noting here

that this very expression hacer aguas is used nowadays in the rural areas of

the maghreb: tayyar al-ma (literally, 'to pass water', 'to spray water'). But

before closing the discussion on this passage of Don Quixote, a final remark

can be made. Sancho's use of 'dirty' language, and above all Don Quixote's act

(he understands what this expression finally means, and decides or rather feels

an urge for unrinating) happens in one of the most 'sacred' chapters, namely

that of 'The Canon of Toledo', carried out by 'vuestra merced' after having

discussed or mentioned literature, drama, authors themselves... and Theseus!

This could be interpreted as tantamount to a 'urination' on what has been

reviewed, and perhaps on the literary canons themselves. It is not possible to

examine all the Moorish connections in this narrative; this can later be done at

leisure. There is, nevertheless, a last word to say and a final point to make in

this part of the work: the notion of 'armas y letras' in Don Quixote.

In Part 11,6, 'one of the most important chapters in this whole History'

as entitled, Don Quixote makes a notable speech on Arms and Letters, starting

with Amadis of Gaul. Then he comes to mention the'Ottoman house' since it

serves 'as an example' for those who 'have risen from humble origins to their

present greatness'. This belongs, he says, to the first of the four kinds of

pedigrees. In it, he includes himself precisely by excluding himself. He thinks

that the poor gentleman possesses no other means or way of showing that he

is a gentleman except by being virtuous, affable, etc. Then he goes on to

discuss the 'two roads' he knows of, that can take men to honour and riches:

Letters and Arms. And he makes it clear, at first, that he is of the second

choice (Arms), precisely that which, as a means, led the Ottomans to stand

'now at the height we see it'. Secondly, he quotes a Castilian poet while

discussing the matter of Arms, not Letters. But in doing so, he combines both,

61

something which implicitly lacks in the Ottoman house as he calls it. I now

wish to connect this idea to Moorish culture.

Writing on this, Balzac's significant sentence echoes a rather widely

accepted idea, the joining of the pen and the sword:

Ce qu'il a commence par Tepee (Napoleon), je l'acheverai par la plume(italics mine, 42).

Curtius discusses this notion in European literature from the Middle

Ages onwards. He examines the cases of such writers as Boiardo in Orlando

Innamorato, I, 18,41-5, where he says, one can read'one of the most brilliant

passages... on arms and studies'. The theme, he adds, reappears in

Ariosto(XX, 1-2), in Pantagruel(ch. 8), and Don Quixote (1,38; 11,6). But it is

in Spain, he affirms, that the combination of the sword with studies was best

realized:

Nowhere else has the combination of the life of the Muses and the life of the Warrior ever been so brilliantly realized as in Spain's period of florescence in the 16th and 17th centuries - it suffices to call to mind Garcilaso, Cervantes, Lope , and Calderon. All were poets who also served in wars(43).

This theme was therefore widely known in Spain in particular, where it was

quite often treated in literature.

In his Espanolidad y Europeizacion del QuLjote, Castro

demonstrates how Don Quixote as a character was manipulated in literary

historiography, and'europeanized', when he was basically Hispano-Moorish:

Hay en Europa mäs elementos mägico-orientales que en Espana, en donde lo "oriental" no fue cultura venida de fuera, sino cosa propia, usada o rechazada segün hacia al caso... una Espana... que en su presente y en su pasado pretendemos que sea una porci6n de Occidente, y nada mäs... Pero se olvida que los espanoles eran tan cristiano-europeos como islämico-asiaticos e hispano-hebreos... (44)

62

Again, and in 1,38, entitled 'Don Quixote's curious Discourse on Arms

and Letters', Don Quixote makes a choice, or shall I say, gives precedence to

the profession of arms over that of studies. This he balances as we have seen

above (11,6). This change of attitude stems from the fact that this chapter

occurs between the Algiers chapters (1,37-42), and also because it was written

some ten years before.

This notion, then, of arms and studies is also a Moorish 'literary'

characteristic, perhaps too Moorish in that it was too much an idea(l) of Arab

poets. Consider the following verses by Abu-Tammam (c. 805-45), which can

help demonstrate what I mean:

-The sword is truer in tidings than(any) writings: in its edge is the boundary between earnestness and sport.

-(Swords) white as to their blades, not (books) black as to their pages - in their broad sides(texts) lies the removing of doubt and uncertainties;

-And knowledge(resides) in the flames of the lances flashing between the two massed armies... (45)

of which the second verse is described by Arberry as 'brilliant', for the Arabic

'matn signifies the broad side of a sword and also the text of a book'(46). Al-

Mutannabi(915-965) is of course the master of such combination of arms and

studies, alongside Antar-ibn-Shaddad, especially in these lines:

-I know the steed, the night and the desert, the sword, the lance, the paper and the pen (my translation, 47).

In an Arabic scholarly work, Nuri Hammudi Al-Qaysi gives a detailed

account of the question. But more interestingly, he seems to converge with

Juan Vernet on another matter: horse-naming. Don Quixote's mount is called

Rocinante, a name 'which seemed to him grand and sonorous, and to express

the common horse before arriving at his present state: the first and foremost of

all hacks in the world'(I, 1). Among the names used in Arabic, I will cite a few:

63

(, X5; P (,

> dahis (whitlow, felon); Al-kamit (dumb), and f

above all .` Abjar (obese, corpulent), Antara's famous

mount. In fact, Antar-ibn-Shaddad is to the Arabs what Renaud de Montauban

is to Europe(48). J. Vernet has rightly compared both knights, but also their

coursers, Abjar and Bayard, noting the homophony between them(49).

64

SECTION B: Cervantes in Algiers: Reflections in Don Quixote.

The literary and historical behind Cervantes's writing need to be

examined from the onset. His literary background is rather unclear. His rivalry

with some Spanish writers such as Montemayor, author of Diana and Lope de

Vega encouraged him to continue writing though he had no reputation after 30

years of literary struggle, as Entwistle puts it. Thus Cervantes failed as a

dramatist while his main rival, Lope de Vega failed as a novelist, and by the

early seventeenth century,

Cervantes had not yet proved himself as a novelist and there is little evidence that before Don Quixote he even saw it as his literary vocation(50).

Unsure of himself on the literary level, he tried his hand at almost every

literary genre, in vain.

E. C. Riley selects nine works published between 1492 and 1605

'which were both influential in Europe and bestsellers at home'. These are

works of prose fiction or semi-fiction, writes Riley. On the other hand, his list

converges with Keith Whinnom's own list of eight works that the latter

established in 1980:

1. La Celestina, by F. de Rojas.

2. Libro dureo de Marco Aurelio, by Antonio de Guevara.

3. Guzman de Alfarache, by Mateo Alemän.

4. Guerras civiles de Granada, Part I, by Gines Perez de Hita.

5. La Diana, by Jorge de Montemayor.

6. Don Quixote, Part 1, by Cervantes, 1604-5.

7. Amadis de Gaula(books I-IV), reworked by Rodriguez de Montalvo.

8. Cäreel de amor, by Diego de San Pedro.

Out of these eight works, at least three deal with the Moorish world and the

65

picaresque universe (3,4 and 5) if we exclude Don Quixote for the moment.

This means that Cervantes was familiar with most, if not all the contemporary

or near-contemporary fiction(51). The remainder involves sentimental

romances (Cartel de amor) or didactic works such as La Celestina and

Libro äureo de Marco Aurelio. Riley's ninth work that is not mentioned in

Whinnom's list is the other famous picaresque narrative: Lazarillo de

Torures. And Riley concludes that romance, and more particularly the

chivalric, was the most popular type of fiction at the time. Thus, it is against

the background of this succds fou of the chivalric romances and that of the

picaresque that Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote(52). Therefore, writes

Riley, Cervantes

could not have written Don Quixote at all without a keen sense of the difference, and the relationship between what we now think of as "romance" and "novel", although he did not know any such terms(53).

However, and though Riley maintains that Cervantes's literary

background and prose fiction apprenticeship can be found in the romance,

several picaresque narratives also came out before 1605 and which were

known to Cervantes:

1. Guzman de Alfarache, Part I, by M. Alemän, 1599.

2. Sequel to Guzman de Alfarache, Part I, by Juan Martf, 1602.

3. Guzman de Alfarache, Part II, by M. Alemän, 1604.

4. El buscön, by Quevedo, c. 1604.

5. La pfcara Justina, by L. de Ubeda, c. 1604.

That, as C. Guillen noted in 1971, Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote at a time

when the picaresque narrative was growing is now undoutedly clear.

Cervantes's work before 1575 amounts virtually to nothing. During

his captivity in Algiers (1575-1580), he wrote Epistle to Mateo Väsquez

(1577). His other works include Galatea (1585), Don Qu(jote (1604-15),

66

Las novelas ejemplares(1613), and Persiles y Sigismunda (1617, post-

humous). He also wrote some seven plays between 1585 and 1615 (see Table

2), as well as several comedies and interludes. It must be noted at once that

almost all his work appeared after his release from captivity in Algiers, as this

will prove more fruitful than anything he had experienced before. What did

Cervantes write before his captivity in Algiers ? Some poems and nothing

more, and that at the age of twenty-two. His Epistle to Mateo Väsquez(1577)

cannot but have been written in Algiers. And it is after he has regained his

freedom from the Algerians that Cervantes, now aged thirty-three, begins a

literary career worthy of that name.

In other words, the bulk of his literary production has been achieved at

a certain age, and after a particular experience, which in the words of

Salvador de Madariaga, proved fortunate and fertile:

This misfortune... turned out to be the most fertile experience of his life(italics min, 54).

And it is worth stressing here that the theme of captivity, Algiers as a

place of renegades, conversions, mystery, etc., and Moors/turks in general will

be reflected in a great deal of his writings. In this respect, and in order to

clarify some of the points put forward, Algiers should be considered both as a

town and as the symbol of the Moorish Barbary Coast.

In his lengthy biography of Cervantes, W. Byron relates some of

Cervantes's experiences, above all Algiers which concerns us here. Being at

the head of a 'nation of cavaliers', King Charles V (1517-1556) will try to take

his nation towards some sort of grandeur. His expedition against Algiers

(1541) will prove a disaster, and he will die, leaving Spain still in search of

ideals and victories. Under Philip II (1556-1598), Cervantes will join the navy

in a battle at Lepanto (1571) against the Turks, where the Spaniards have the

67

upper-hand bringing along Cervantes's arm injury. In 1575, he was captured

by the Algerian Corsairs off the shores of the West Mediterranean, and was

taken in captivity to Algiers alongside most of the personel of the ship El Sol.

This was normal practice in those years (cf. French Course for this sea-

practice). However, he remained free to circulate and mix with the locals,

though still a captive among the 25,000 Christians, out of which seventy or

so are thought to have been intellectuals or at least educated(55). In his

Algerian prison, he would conceive Don Quixote, an allegory - among so

many other things - of the foolhardy and ridiculous enterprises against the

Moors, as W. M. Watt affirms speaking about the Crusades (though it is, I

think, the same thing):

It is all the more amazing when one considers how quixotic and foolhardy the whole series of enterprises was (italics mine, 56).

Another scholar, no less brilliant than Watt, Madariaga, asks the following

question:

And who can doubt but that the seed of Don Quixote was planted in the spirit of Cervantes while he was a captive in Algiers? (italics mine, 5

It is, after all, Cervantes himself who writes in the prologue (Part I)

that his book was 'engendered (conceived) in prison, where every discomfort

has its seat and every dismal its habitation'(58). For Fitzmaurice-Kelly,

however, Don Quixote may have been written in jail in Argamasilla (around

1591 or later), which is known for sure to be his native town(59), and which,

he writes, Cervantes wishes to forget: 'En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo

nombre no quiero acordarme... '; this is also confirmed by D. Clemencfn(60).

W. J. Entwistle affirms that Algiers, captivity and the Moors run

through most of Cervantes's work, for after all, continues Entwistle, Cervantes

resembled Don Quixote or rather the opposite, while his 'biography', he adds,

68

'is subordinate to his writings'(61). In Algiers, Cervantes would find a school

of life, of bravery, hardship, misery, cruelty and so many other human defects

and qualities. Despite it all, he remained very brave and proud during the

whole five years of captivity. Then freedom came in 1580, related to us in

Don Quixote:

porque jamäs me desempar6 la esperanza de tener libertad... S61o libr6 bien con 61 un soldado espanol, llamado tal de Saavedra, al cual... amäs le di6 palo, ni se lo mand6 dar, ni le dijo mala palabra... (I, 40)

and Cervantes left Algiers with poems and a sum of memories on which he

would draw for his writings to come, as W. Byron noted(62). But he would

return to that Moorish land, to Oran precisely, as he was sent there on a short

mission. On this Entwistle writes that it was there that he 'gathered material

for his vivid representation of an attack on the Oran forts in The Gallant

Spaniard'. Thus, continues Entwistle, Cervantes's Algerian experience

served to give substance and life to his work until his studies in the picaresque brought his realism to its zenith(63).

Lepanto, and then Algiers in particular had repercussions upon his

work. This explains the numerous battles that run through his writings, with

countless references to Algiers, the Barbary Coast (which he calls Berberla).

This, adds Entwistle, makes Cervantes seem in possession of a 'fantastic

memory' and a certain 'knowledge of Muslim life acquired in Algiers'(64). Let

us finally quote two more scholars, B. Wardropper and J. Oliver Asfn on the

matter. The first, in his 'Cervantes and Education', pinpoints the question:

Out of this protracted desengano of the Algerian years came the experience which would be converted into the truth expressed in much of Cervantes's fiction - not just the disenchanted sonnet on Philip II's catafalque, but Don Quixote, the Novelas Fjemplares, and even the explicitly religious Persiles... A kind of learning went on in Cervantes's mind in Algiers which could not have been obtained from a university(italics mine, 65).

69

For his part, Jaime Oliver Asin believes most of the names in Don Quixote to

be true (Zoraida, Hadji Morato, etc. ) while agreeing on the major point: the

importance of Algiers as a key to Cervantes's work(66). After his dearly paid

release in 1580, Cervantes produced a good number of plays, novelas and

Don Quixote (1585-1615), though he remained unproductive between the

time of his release and his first two published plays, Numantia (1585) and El

Trato de Argel (1585).

Let us now examine his works and their relation to Algiers, the Moors

and 'Barbary' in general.

I. Epistle to Mateo Vasquez, in which Mateo Vasquez de Leca, son of a

pseudo-aristocratic Corsican adventurer Ambrogino de Leca and a fellow-

citizen lady-captive in Algiers, described by some of Cervantes's rivals as a

'Moorish dog'(67), at some point urges King Philip II to invade Algiers and

free the twenty thousand or so Christian captives:

May the insolence with which this miserable outpost continually seeks to do you outrage awaken a great fury in your royal breast... In number they are many, but slight in power, exposed, ill-armed, with no strong wall nor rock for their defense... The mere knowledge of your coming will terrify this enemy folk, which already foresees itself as broken and lost ... (italics mine, 68)

This is of course an indirect reference to Algiers but was, it should be

noted, written in Algiers and cannot therefore but be connected to this

place(69).

II. Plays:

1. La casa de los zelos, Act III:

Angelica: ... Presto estos campos con marcial ruydo retumbarän, y con horror y espanto boluera las espaldas la christiana

a la gente agarena y africana... Queda Libia desierta, sin un moro... que del moro espanol y el africano

70

seas el miedo y la total ruyna... etc. (italics mine)

2. Los baiios de Argel: The title amply suffices to indicate the theme.

3. La gran Sultana: A play about renegades, Moors, etc.

4. El gallardo Espanol: The same theme as above.

... conmigo ! Que dira el moro? Diga to que el mas quisiere, que la guerra pide y quiere, y della ninguno ignoro... Mahoma, ya que el amor en mis dichas no consciente... Xarife soy de tu casta... ... A este christiano Cautiv6 tu esquadra ayer junto a Oran... (Act I)

and many references to Muhammad, the Moors, including names such as Ali,

Arlaxa, Cebrian, Nacor, and 'strangely' enough a Spanish character named

... Don Fernando de Saavedra !

5. La cueva de Salamanca, in which two students, who intend to see Italy

and 'watch' the wars that are raging between Christians and Moors cannot in

the end afford it. Instead, they simply buy a picture of Algiers, and go begging

alms as though they have just returned from captivity in Algiers.

6. Numantia (El Cerco de Numancia), much less than the above-mentioned

plays, but contains some allusions and references to the same themes

nonetheless. The characters Sipion (Sipio the African as he is famously

known) is Roman for sure, but not'Iugurta' (Jugurta or Jughurta, the Berber

King of Numidia, then a province of the Roman Empire).

7. El Trato de Argel, as again the title indicates, plus a host of Moorish

characters such as Zahara, Mami, Fatima, Azan, etc., with two remarks to be

made here. There is again(70) another 'Sayavedra, soldado cautivo' (Cervantes

himself) and 'Azan' is none other than Hassan, ruler of Algiers in Cervantes's

time. R. Schevill and A. Bonilla aptly write that

71

EI trato de Argel es uno de los documentos mäs interesantes para la biografta de su autor durante el periodo del cautiverio de este en Argel. Constituye la primera de aquella serie de producciones que contienen detalles autobiogräficos de importancia, como La Galatea(V), Los banos de Argel, la historia del cautivo en el Quijote, La Espanola inglesa, EI Amante liberal, El Licenciado Vidriera, El Gallardo espanol, La Gran Sultuna, y el Persiles (III)(italics mine, 71).

III. Novelas:

1. La Galatea (Book V), where Cervantes writes:

... y passamos tan cerca de Berberta, que los recien derribados muros de la Goleta se descubrian, y las antiguas' ruynas de Cartago... y mas que Bran todos los mejores de Argel... de Arnautmami, su general... (italics mine)

2. La ilustre fregona:

Pero toda esta dulzura que he pintado tiene un amargo acfbar que la amarga... sin el temor de que en un instante los trasladen de Zahara a Berberta ... (italics mine, 72).

3. Persiles (III): Zenotia, a Moorish girl is depicted as a symbol of the

'powers of darkness', etc. (73), and finally Don Quixote, where these themes

(captivity, Algiers, moors/Turks/Christians) also come back (see Table 3). Let

us now turn to Don Quixote, the object of this work and analyze in some

detail some of its 'Algerian' vocabulary and onomastics.

Surprisingly enough, Cervantes's mentioning of some Moorish cultural

elements opens up with a first reference to the symbol of that culture,

Muhammad, who is described as having or being himself an'idolo... que era de

oro, segun dice la historia'(I, 1), at the very beginning of the narrative. This is

of course untrue, for in Islam idols are strictly prohibited; the story of the

Prophet, like Moses before him, destroying all the idols in Mecca is well

known. On the other hand, D. Clemencfn, while commenting on this

particular point, acknowledges that

entre los mahometanos no hay fdolos, antes al contrario, estä prohibida toda clase de imägenes, como los estaba a los hebreos por la ley de Moises(74).

72

But Cervantes does not stop here; rather, he carries on the reference to

Muhammad a few chapters further: '... y con todo esto no mäs verdadera que

los milagros de Mahoma'(I, 5).

It seems that Cervantes is, at this very stage, taking cover. Since he

cannot openly criticize some Christian beliefs, via the stories of the marquis

of Mantua or chivalric romances and their 'Christian' deeds in general, a

certain strategy as it were is necessary. Hence his choice of Muhammad and

his later'attacks' on the Jews and the Moors alike. His best choice to pass his

ideas 'unscathed' is through the much 'hated' religion: Islam and its

mouthpiece, Muhammad. We know that Muhammad never performed any

miracle as such (the story of the cave-entrance where he hid, being by miracle

blocked by a huge cobweb and a pigeon nest are not regarded by Muslims as

his own deed but Allah's). In fact, it is Jesus Christ who did. Moreover,

chivalric books openly boasted some fantastic 'miracles' which Cervantes now

wishes to destroy through parody and irony, some of his means being Islamic

references. The latter, besides the all-pervasive Benengeli and Muhammad's

mentioning in another chapter(1,18) and elsewhere, pave the way, above all,

for the coming of the Moorish historiador and sabio. Among the noteworthy

Moorish lexis, one in particular draws attention: 'Alifanfaron'(I, 18). Ali is an

Islamic name (in fact, the hero of Shiite Islam) and 'fanfaron' (boaster), a

reference to the chivalric romances and their boastful attitudes(75).

In this chapter, Sancho is having a conversation with Don Quixote

during which the latter says he wishes that luck would help him have the very

sword Amadis wore when he was named the Knight of the Burning Sword,

being of the best ever worn by any knight in the world. At this point, Don

Quixote 'sees' two armies coming towards them, one being led by this

'Alifanfaron', lord of the great island of Taprobana, the second being

73

'Alifanfaron's enemy, that of the King of the Guaramantas, Pentapolin of the

Naked Arm, etc. Cervantes uses this within a very 'credible' frame, that of the

history of Roman Africa (Numidians, Guaramantes) as well as alluding to the

enmity between the Guaramantes (historically, Berbers of what was then

called Libya) and Ali's people, that is the Arabs/Muslims (Cervantes is here

'smiling' at history and its contradictory moments).

However, it is only from 1,37 on that Moorish names (apart from

Benengeli) enter the scene with full strength: Zoraida, Muley Hamet, Muley

Hamida, Hassan Aga, Uchali Fartax, Hadji Morato, and Lela Marien. All

these names are genuine as opposed to the made-up 'Alifanfaron' for instance,

and some of them are even historical. Hassan Agha ruled Algiers during the

16th century, and Euldj Ali (French spelling of Cervantes's 'Uchali') was one

of the chief Corsairs of Algiers around the end of the same century. Moreover,

Don Quixote is rife with Algerian features. After coming across the

Numidians, Berbers of the roman period, Cervantes takes us to Algiers with

its 'Tagarino' (now Les Tagarins), a place said to have been the nest of the

Corsairs, to 'Sargel' (Cherchell), an area west of Algiers. This place is in fact

the direction he took during his attempt to escape to Oran. 'Lela Marien' is

obviously the Arabic title for the virgin Mary (Lalla Mariam), meaning

literally Lady Mary. 'Alfeniquen' is another pseudomorphosis of the Arabic

Vý al fu: igiyun (the Phoenicians), Zoraida being clear

enough(76). 'Cava rumia' or'Roman Lady's Cave' is in fact known as

Qbar-arrumia in Algerian and 'Le Tombeau de la

Chretienne'(an awkward translation though). Don Quixote's Arabic

vocabulary is in fact rather simple, raging from 'macange'(makkanch , an

Algerian word for 'nothing', 'not available') or 'fartax'(Jartas, bald) to juma'

(from al jumu'a, Friday), etc. The rest of the words used can be easily

74

identified as well as those discussed by Don Quixote and Sancho in 11,67, for

which Clemencin's'Comentario' will prove sufficient.

75

TABLE 1

Number of chapters where the Arabic relative pronoun is used (1)

1,8 19 22 23 24 25 26 27 30 33 34 35 36 37 38 40 41 43

II, 1 2 5 7 8 9 10 11 16 17 19 21 22 23 25 31 32 35 40 44 45 48 49

11,50 51 52 54 59 60 62 64 68 70 71 72 74

----------------------------------------------------

1. According to the discoveries made by Henry Snyder Gehman, 'Arabic syntax of the relative pronoun in Poema de mio Cid and Don Quixote', HISPANIC REVIEW, 50/1,1982, pp. 53-60.

76

TABLE 2

Title/ Genre: date Algiers/Moors in

Poetry:

Epistle to Mateo Vasquez:

Plays:

Numantia

El Trato de Argel

La casa de los zelos

Los Barios de Argel

La Gran Sultana

El Gallardo Espafiol

La Cueva de Salamanca

NOVELAS:

Galatea

La Ilustre Fregona

El Amante Liberal

Don Quijote

1 577

1585

1585

1615

1615

1615

1615

1615

indirectly related to Algiers

partly

throughout

Act III

throughout

throughout

Act I

partly

1585 Book V

1613 throughout

1613 throughout

1604-15 throughout ----------------------------------------------------

TABLE 3

Reference /Allusion to Islamic culture and places in Don Quixote (excluding Cide Hamete)

Part Ones 5 9 16 17 18 29 30 37 39 40 41 42 43 51

Part Two, 5 6 17 26 34 40 44 54 58 63 64

67

77

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO

1. A. CASTRO, 'La palabra escrita y el Quijote', Hacia Cervantes, 1960(1957), pp. 292-324. On Cervantes and Algiers, see CASTRO's Espanolidad y Europeizacion del Quijote, 1960, and the very recent work by E. SOLA, Un Mediterräneo de piratas: corsarios, renegados y cautivos, 1988, pp. 267ff.

2. THE KORAN, translated by N. J. DAWOOD, fourth revised edition, 1974.

3. See for instance, M. BRETT & W. FORMAN, The Moors: Islam in the West, 1980, pp. 59-60.

4. G. E. Von GRUNEBAUM, A Tenth-Century Document of Arabic Literary Theory and Criticism, 1950, pp. XIV-XV.

5. J. DERRIDA, De la grammatologie, 1967.

6. H. A. WOLFSON, The Philosophy of the Kaläm, 1976, pp. 1-20 and passim. See also A. CASTRO, op. cit., where he writes: "No es un azar que en arabe una misma palabra sinifique 'herir' y 'conversar con alguien' (kaldn(? ), kallam), y que kalima sea 'verbo, logos divino". On the other hand, E. W. SAID points to an eleventh-century Cordoban school led by Ibn-Hazm and others, and their thought raised - among other things - 'a notion that essentially puts a line of demarcation between Islamic ideas and the Judeo-Christian textual traditions. ' Drawing on R. ARNALDEZ's Grammaire et theologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue, 1956, SAID continues: 'By contrast (with the Bible) the Koran is the result of a unique event, the "descent" into wordliness of a text, whose language and form are thereafter to be viewed as stable, complete, unchanging... Hence... according to Ibn Hazm, (the Koran) is a text controlled by two paradigmatic imperatives, iqra: read, or recite, and qul: tell. ' See his 'The Text, the World, the Critic', in Textual Strategies, ed. J. V. HARARI, 1980(1979), pp. 161-188.

7. M. FOUCAULT, The Order of Things, 1970(1966), pp. 46-77.

8. A. CASTRO, op. cit, and La realidad historica de Espana, 1962(1954). See also P. K. HITTI, History of the Arabs, 1951(1937), pp. 563-4.

9. A. CASTRO, Hacia Cervantes, op. cit, pp. 292-324.

10. Ibid, pp. 308-9.

11. A. CASTRO, The Structure of Spanish History (Espana en su historia, 1948), 1954.

12. A. CASTRO, Hacia Cervantes, op. cit, p. 310.

13. See for this matter, and as an instance, H. A. WOLFSON, op. cit, pp. 579- 89.

14. Quoted by M. I. GERHARDT, Don QuLjote: la vie et les livres, 1955, p. 2.

15. D. AUBIER, Don Quichotte prophete d'IsraEl, 1966, p. 12.

78

16. On the relationship between Don Quixote and Moorish culture, see for instance S. de MADARIAGA, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology, 1961(revised edition), esp. pp. 16-19, P. K. HITTI, op. cit, pp. 559- 64, A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, Historia de la literatura Aräbigo- Espanola, 1945(1928), esp. pp. 334-5, and H. A. R. GIBB's 'Literature', in The Legacy of Islam, Sir T. ARNOLD & A. GUILLAUME(eds), 1931, esp. pp. 196-9.

17. See for instance W. BYRON, Cervantes: A Biography, 1979.

18. R. S. WILLIS, The Phantom Chapters of the Qujjote, 1953, p. 101.

19. A. CASTRO, La realidad historica de Espana, 1962(1954), p. XXVII.

20. R. A. NICHOLSON, A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907, pp. 349- 459.

21. D. AUBIER, op. cit.

22. H. SNYDER GEHMAN, 'Arabic syntax of the relative pronoun in Poema de mfo Cid and Don Quixote', HISPANIC REVIEW, 50/1,1982, pp. 53- 60.

23. Ibid.

24. On what is called pseudomorphosis, see CASTRO's The Structure of Spanish History, op. cit, and Collected Studies in Honour of Americo Castro's 80th year, ed. M. P. HORNICK, 1965, where the editor stated that O. Spengler's 'mineralogical concept' of pseudomorphosis was applied to history. He then proposed to apply the term historical pseudomorphosis to those cases in which an alien culture lies so massively over the land that another culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails to develop its own self-consciousness' (Introduction, pp. 7-20).

25. I. GOLDZIHER, A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature, 1966, p. 10. See also M. BRETT & W. FORMAN, op. cit, p. 74 where they write: 'qasida has the meaning of travelling towards a goal. '

26. E. CURTIUS, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 1953(1948), p. 537.

27. A. CASTRO, La realidad historica de Espana, op. cit., pp. 219-23.

28. Ibid, p. 220.

29. A. CASTRO, Le drame de l'honneur dans la vie et la littfrature espagnoles du XVl me si6cle, 1965(1961), pp. 27-57.

30. Ibid, p. 86. The Arabic proverb I quoted literally means: 'is not a youth he who says my father was, but he who says here I am! '

31. Ibid, pp. 122-3.

32. Ibid, pp. 127-8 and A. CASTRO, The Structure of Spanish History, op. cit, p. 100.

79

33. See B. LOUPIAS, 'En marge d'un recensement des moriscos de la "villa de el Toboso" ', BULLETIN HISPANIQUE, 78,1976, pp. 74-96.

34. See for instance A. CASTRO, 1948,1954,1957, op. cit.

35. A. GONZÄLEZ PALENCIA, op. cit, pp. 334-5.

36. L. SPITZER, 'Linguistic Perpectivism in the Don Quijote', in Linguistics and Literary History, 1962(1948), pp. 41-85.

37. IBN-KHALDUN, The Mugaddimah: An Introduction to History, translated by F. Rosenthal, second edition, 1967(1958). See also R. A. NICHOLSON, op. cit, pp. 438ff, who claims that Ibn Khaldun went to Spain in 1362 and stayed there for a while.

38. A. CASTRO, La realidad historica de Espana, op. cit. and The Structure of Spanish History, op. cit.

39. A. CASTRO, The Structure of Spanish History, op. cit, p. 250.

40. Ibid, p. 250.

41. Ibid, p. 251.

42. Quoted by E. CURTIUS, op. cit, p. 179.

43. Ibid, pp. 178-9.

44. A. CASTRO, Espanolidad y Europeizacion del QuUote, 1960, pp. XXX-XXXIII.

45. A. J. ARBERRY, Arabic Poetry(bilingual edition), 1965, pp. 50-1.

46. Ibid, p. 51.

47. M. BRETT & W. FORMAN, op. cit. write that, for instance, 'Swordsmanship and pensmanship is also Moorish', p. 82.

48. Siratu 'Antar (The Romance of Antar or The Life and Adventures of Antar) deals with the poet Antar and his heroism. However, it is supposed to have been written by Asma'i(? ). Antar was compared by R. A. NICHOLSON, to'the bedouin Achilles', op. cit, pp. 103-115 and pp. 459ff.

49. See N. H. AL-QAYSI, Chivalry in pre-Islamic Poetry(Arabic edition), 1964, and J. VERNET, Ce que la culture doit aux Arabes d'Espagne, 1985(1978), pp. 282-3. 50. E. C. RILEY, Don Quixote, 1986, p. 3.

51. Ibid., pp. 9 if.

52. See E. C. RIley, op. cit and C. GUILLEN, Literature as System, 1971.

53. E. C. RILEY, op. cit., p. 10.

54. S. de MADARIAGA, op. cit, p. 16.

55. W. BYRON, op. cit, p. 207.

80

56. M. W. WATT, Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe, 1972, p. 54. For his part the historian J. H. ELLIOTT, writes that 'it was in this atmosphere of desengano, of national disillusionment, that Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote', in Imperial Spain, 1469-1716,1963, p. 294, while W. BYRON, op. cit. writes: 'Don Quixote is among other things an allegory on the futility of Spanish imperial dreams'(my italics, p. 21).

57. S de MADARIAGA, op. cit, p. 17. See also A. LASSEL, 'Mundo Musulman en Miguel de Cervantes', LANGUES ET LITTERATURES, N° 1, Universite d'Alger, 1986, pp. 93-104, where she writes: 'A partir de su regreso a la patria, ya sera Cervantes el escritor', after his release from Algiers that is.

58. M. de CERVANTES, Don Quixote, translated by J. M. COHEN, 1950.

59. J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, A History of Spanish Literature, 1898, pp. 227-8.

60. D. CLEMENCIN, 'Comentario', in Don Qujjote de Ja Mancha, Edicion IV Centenario, 1947, p. 1012 where he writes: 'Cervantes no nombro este lugar, pero no se duda que es Argamasilla de Alba. '

61. W. J. ENTWISTLE, Cervantes, 1940, pp 39-40 and p. 147sq.

62. W. BYRON, op. cit, p. 247.

63. W. J. ENTWISTLE, op. cit, pp. 24-6.

64. Ibid., p. 24.

65. B. WARDROPPER, 'Cervantes and Education', in Cervantes and the Renaissance, ed M. D. MCGAHA, 1980 pp. 178-93.

66. J. OLIVER ASIN, 'La hija de Hadji Morato', BOLETIN DE LA ACADEMIA ESPANOLA, vol. XXVII, 1947-8, pp. 245-339. See also W. J. ENTWISTLE, op. cit. and W. BYRON, op. cit.

67. W. BYRON, op. cit, writes that 'rivals (of Cervantes) would sneer at Mateo as "Moorish dog" ', p. 5O.

68. Quoted by W. BYRON, op. cit, p. 215. In fact he relates it directly to Algiers.

69. See F. BRAUDEL, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II, vol. I, 1972(1949), p. 49.

70. For Cervantes's use of his own name in some of his works, see for instance BYRON's lengthy biography, op. cit., W. J. ENTWISTLE, op. cit. and the very recent work by E. SOLA, op. cit., pp. 267ff.

71. M. de CERVANTES, Comedias y Entrerneses, tomo VI, (Introduccion), ed. R. SCHEVILL and A. BONILLA, 1922, p. 29.

72. M. de CERVANTES, Dos Novelas Fjemplares, ed. A. BURNS & J. GIBBS, 1971, p. 88.

81

73. W. BYRON, op. cit, p. 54. For more of this see BYRON, and for the theme of captivity as embodied in the novel in question, see W. J. ENTWISTLE, op. cit. and A. K. FORCIONE, Cervantes's Christian Romance: A Study of Persiles y Sigismungda, 1972, pp. 162-3. 74. D. CLEMENCIN, op. cit, p. 1018.

75. In Islamic 'mythology', Ali represents the hero par excellence, being known for his matchless bravery and sword-fighting.

40 76. D. CLEMENCIN, op. cit, p. 1355.

82

CHAPTER THREE: TOLEDO, LITERARY HISTORY, AND THE RENAISSANCE.

SECTION A: Toledo and Translation

Toledo, Moorish from 715, only four years after the Moors' arrival in

the peninsula, to 1085 when reconquered by Alfonso VI, retained its former

prestige until well into the 16th century(1). By 720, the Moors had seized

Cordoba, Toledo, Medina, Saragossa and all of the southern part of Spain

from the 'Visigoths, barbarians-in residence' as James Burke writes(2). By

932, Spain 'was the jewel in the crown of Islam' adds Burke. However, when

reconquered, Toledo underwent an 'intellectual plunder' which 'brought the

scholars of northern Europe like moths to a candle'(3), continuing to receive a

huge immigration from across the Pyrenees and along the coastline through

Barcelona. Spain became thus the greatest cultural place in Western Europe

thanks to the Moors and the Arabic-speaking Jews(4). Another population too

contributed to the passing of Arabic civilization during the Moorish presence

and much later : the Mozarabs, who knew not only the Visigothic chivalric

narratives but also those of the Moors(5), as well as the all-pervasive

Moriscos. The importance of Toledo is such that it cannot be ignored, either

in the history of Western civilization or for that matter by literary history, for

as J. Vernet writes, Toledo was the'heritiere de toute la science'(6).

What draws attention in Don Quixote is this Toledan street (1,9) as an

ex-market or Moorish suq, where we can imagine (or historically reconstruct)

Moorish writers, thinkers, translators and others, and among them Cervantes

with his 'ambulant' translator, either at the corner of the street or about to

leave hurriedly with his companion for home. For that was the custom in pre-

and post-conquista Spain, as J. Burke tells us, where students and other curious

minds from various parts of Western Europe flocked to visit Toledo and

attend lectures at Salamanca university(7). The latter drew hundreds of

83

scholars from the neighbouring countries coming to learn Muslim science and

literature. As early as the 9th century, a great amount of literature and science

had already come over to Moorish Spain from Baghdad, capital of the Muslim

Empire, whose main patron was Al-Ma'mun(813-833). Under his patronage,

serious translation from Syriac and Greek began, among which the

translations of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq(809-873) who also collected manuscripts of

both scientific and philosophical works, organizing as well the Baghdad-based

translation activity. Among his major works of translation, one can cite the

medical work of Hippocrates and Galen, The Republic, Laws and Timaeus

of Plato, the logical works of Aristotle, the mathematical works of Euclid,

Archimedes and others. What is now certain is that these renderings into

Arabic were produced by a team rather than by himself(8). Some time later,

Moorish Spain played its full part too. The works of AI-Farabi(d. 950) and Ibn

Sina or Avicenna(d. 1037) in philosophy for instance made Spain, and later

Europe, familiar with what has been called 'essentially a form of neo-

platonism'(9). But it was thanks to the works of Avicenna and Al-Ghazali

(Algazel, d. 1111) that Aristotelian logic was accepted both among Muslim

rationalists and Spanish scholars. In Spain, Ibn Baja (Avempace, d. 1138), Ibn

Tufail (Abubacer, d. 1185) and the more familiar Ibn Roshd (Averroes,

d. 1198) played an even greater role. The latter, more known in the West than

any other Muslim thinker, was a great commentator of Aristotle.

But the first concern here is not Moorish learning as 'transferred' from

Ancient Greece via Syriac and Arab bilinguals (Arabic and Greek), but rather

European translations of Moorish works. Translation of Arabic texts started in

the 9th century, the first important scholar-translator(to be) to study Arabic

being Gerbert of Aurillac. But more important was Toledo's role after its

reconquest(1085), a fact that commands attention. Muslims and Arabic-

speaking Jews remained in this town, and Raimundo, founder of the 'School

84

of Toledo' (it was not a school as such) both organized it and encouraged

scholars to come there. After Gerbert of Aurillac comes another important

translator-scholar (or scholar-translator), the Englishman Adelard of Bath who

acquired 'rationalism and the secular, investigative approach typical of Arab

natural science'(10). Others include Robert of Chester, Raymond of Marseille

and Michael the Scot to name but a few. For his part, Dominic Gundisalvi had

Arabic-speaking collaborators (in a manner quite similar to that of Cervantes

as recounted in Don Quixote), and with Ibn-Dawud (Avendeath, a Jew) and

John of Seville got this translation activity under way, dealing with 'the

mountain of manuscripts coming in from all over the newly conquered

regions of Spain'(11). And

by the thirteenth century there was a vigorous intellectual movement in Western Europe, capable of assimilating all the Arabs had learned in science and philosophy and of moving on to fresh discoveries(my italics, 12).

Millas Vallicrosa, the Spanish literary historian believes that Spanish Arabist

translations started in the 10th century and went on until the 13th(13). Among

Arabic texts of prime importance comes the Koran which was a salient

feature of the Toledan 'school' as shall be shown in the next chapter.

Navarro-Ledesma sees Toledo as, he writes, the 'glory of Spain and

inspiration of its cities', a city of 'rich women', of Moorish sages 'who could

cure or poison', of 'image makers who paint and sculpture interminable

stories', of writers 'who refine and subtilize the language' (italics mine, 14).

He also maintains that in order to fully understand Cervantes (he calls him

Miguel), one should know the city of Toledo very well:

Those who have not lived in Toledo cannot understand, one half of Miguel's spirit, just as those who have not been to Seville cannot grasp the other half(15).

This may shed some light on what follows.

85

Cervantes does indeed tell us about the origins of his Don Quixote,

the cartapacios which he bought from a shop in Toledo. His choice of this

town is quite intriguing; he even locates for us the street where the deal is

settled, as Angel Gonzalez Palencia reports:

En el Alcana de Toledo, que antes era el mercado de los Altares o drogueros, situ6 Cervantes la escena de la compra de los cartapacios en que constaba la Historia de Don Quijote por Cide Hamete Benengeli(16).

Gonzalez Palencia's information about the street is further detailed, and one is

struck by his precision. He believes that all the shops of the street belonged in

the past to a Moorish lady (Navarro-Ledesma's 'rich women') 'D. a Fatima,

mora, criada de la reina Dona Juana, mujer de Enrique W. Thus, Cervantes

knew the Alcana street quite well and it was not very difficult to find a

Morisco aljamiado to read and translate the Arabic 'text' for him. Gonzalez

Palencia then concludes that this Morisco-translator frequented the street and

was known by the Toledans(17). However, what G. Palencia does not say is

that this Arabic 'text' never existed. His claim cannot hold without an Arabic

text, supposedly the original of Don Quixote, and as it does not exist, his

argument concerning the Morisco-translator and Toledo is only valid within

Toledo's historical framework. For there was of course the custom of hiring a

Morisco-translator in those days as several scholars have demonstrated . However, no one has so far noted the Morisco-translator's role in Don

Quixote as such on the one hand and the recurrent mention of Toledo in

Cervantes's works on the other.

The interest now is in Toledo, the Morisco-translator and Don

Quixote. As has been shown above, Toledo as a place of learning and above

all, of translation is no mere joke'(18) on Cervantes' part: it carries an immense significance and relevance in the work. He undoubtedly knew the

86

town, its place and prestige in Spanish cultural history as well as its

translation tradition and glorious past. By stressing and linking the origin of

Don Quixote to Toledo, he is emphasizing above all the value of the Arabic

'document' and its Toledan quality. Thus, he is not, like other Spanish writers,

writing mere 'stories' but rather a historia, that is 'working' on precise

documents, starting from Spain's most prestigious town. If Don Quixote

belongs to a Moorish author and sabio encantador , Cide Hamete, it then can

only be found or traced back to the most intellectual place of Moorish Spain.

However, Cervantes is not the first Spanish writer to claim the finding of

Arabic documents or the founding of his narrative on Arabic fragments. The

author of El Libro Del Cavallero Cifar (see below), supposedly a Toledan

priest claims to have found an Arabic (he uses the term Chaldean) text and

rendered it into Castilian . Such assertions have hitherto been neglected or

taken as ironical criticisms of this long translation tradition. Cervantes then

stresses at the same time, and by the same token, his country's intellectual

indebtedness to the Moors: here is a book, a historia of Don Quixote's deeds,

translated from the Arabic by a Morisco-translator from Toledo.

It must be stressed that Toledo is no mere 'fictional' invention, but

rather a recurrent motif in Cervantes' works ( see table 1 below). It comes

back eight times in Don Quixote(I) and four times in Don Quixote(II). But

that is not all. In his other works, Toledo is mentioned five times in La

Gitanilla, while La fuerza de la sangre, Riconete y Cortadillo and La

ilustre fregona are set in Toledo; in other words, half of his Novelas

Ejemplares. Secondly, it should also be stressed that Don Quixote(I and II)

appeared after the notorious Limpieza de sangre edicts(1449), preceded by

anti-Jewish riots in Toledo, and followed much later by that of the Limpieza

de fd in 1547 (Cervantes' birth). In between, the Spanish Inquisition was

firmly established, around 1481(19). Does not Cervantes make Cide Hamete

87

swear like a 'Christian Catholic'(I1,27) ? And does Zoraida not convert to

Christianity, by rejecting her name and adopting the glorious name of

Maria(I, 37-42)? Cervantes makes quite a few references to this situation :

1,37,40,41,45,47; 11,8,11,54, etc. Hence Spain's substitute for political unity

and its Catholic mask. The latter is strongly foregrounded in Don Quixote

whose author therefore criticizes sharply but subtly this particular aspect of

his country's history in parallel with demonstrating his sympathies towards the

Moriscos and the Jews throughout the text(II, 8, etc. ) as Emilio Sola has very

recently shown(20).

What comes out of this Toledan link, is also the contributions of the

Moriscos to Spain's rich past in general, and those of the Morisco-translators

in particular. To say that Cervantes is simply parodying previous chivalric

romances with their Moorish historians is to ignore that he was the first writer

to obtain his historia via a Morisco-translator(21). I shall try to show, in the

next chapter, the role of Muhammad of Toledo in translating some Islamic

texts with Robert of Chester and Herman of Dalmatia, and that of Xerixi for

instance in 'commenting' Al-Hariri's Maqamat, around the early 13th century.

Here, I consider 'commenting' a text for a readership that cannot read the

original as equivalent to translating. It is thus this Toledan past which should

be reappraised vis-a-vis literary history and the Renaissance, or to put it

differently, it is the so-called 'Arab detour'(22) that bridges both the Classical

and the Modern worlds. In table 2 below, I have shown that the reference to

translating occurs some ten times compared to twelve for Toledo. What

strikes us most, apart from the recurrence of Toledo and translating, is that

the chapters in which Don Quixote discusses 'literary theory' are either set in

Toledo (1,47,48) or put in the mouth of Cide Hamete(II, 3). Having already

discussed the second in the first chapter, I shall discuss the first case.

88

After meeting a 'Canon of Toledo', Don Quixote falls into a

conversation with him on knight-errantry. The Canon, knowing 'more about

books of chivalry than about Villalpando's Logic', asks him to recount

whatever he pleases. The Canon then mentions chivalry, enchantment,

Milesian fables which are extravagant tales with the aim to amaze but not to

instruct, being so to speak the opposite of Moral fables which please, delight

and instruct. He concludes by regarding chivalry books as only 'an

opportunity' for the author to show 'his talent for the epic, the lyric, the tragic

and the comic', for he adds 'the epic may be written in prose as well as in

verse'(I, 47). We are then set; the Canon is personified in order to suggest the

author's own view on literary matters such as Milesian fables, the epic, and

the romances as a melting-pot of epic, lyric, tragic and comic. But so far, the

Canon has not suggested or claimed any 'theory' or 'canons'. We are not sure

who is really speaking here: Cervantes or the Canon? Is it truly the ideas of

the time as regards writing, chivalry books, etc., or simply Cervantes' view?

However, the priest answers the Canon by agreeing with him. After which the

latter says he was 'tempted to write a book of chivalry, observing all the

points I have mentioned', but stopped short. To which the priest answers by

denouncing the miracles and falsehoods of chivalry books, arguing for a

writing that takes into account truth and history.

But it is the comic ending of this chapter that deserves more attention.

After this rather lofty discussion on writing, drama, poetry, fables, romances,

etc. set in Toledo, animated by three major voices (priest, Canon, Don

Quixote) Cervantes, ironically, makes Sancho ask Don Quixote whether he

feels like urinating. Don Quixote does not seem to understand, and finally

urinates. It is strange that no scholar has related this 'dirty' language and

scene(23) to the fact that it happens in the chapter where it is question of

literature and of chivalry books. This cannot be taken lightly, for Cervantes

89

could well have placed this 'urination' story elsewhere. At any rate, it is

therefore in Toledo and from Toledo that the Canon displays his rules, and in

short, an aesthetics of writing.

W. M. Watt has noted with great detail, that when reconquered Toledo

continued to play an 'important role in the intellectual history of Europe'(24),

that is well after 1085. His work, alongside J. Vernet's(1978) are excellent

monographs. I am clearly not going to repeat here what has already been

discussed at some length. To deal with such an immense and obstacle-ridden

field as that of Moorish contributions in the Renaissance is not my task.

Rather, I shall seek to connect Toledo as a centre of Moorish learning and of

translation with the Renaissance vis-a-vis literary history, since I am after all

interested in translations out of the Arabic in relation to Cide Hamete's

functions in Don Quixote and the question of the novel. For instance, the

impact of Ibn Tufail's work on the Enlightenment was considerable. This

narrative was rightly regarded as that which made possible the link between

the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, i. e. the accord between faith and

reason, as P. M. Holt, Lambton and Lewis wrote(25). Prior to this, but in other

areas of human knowledge, Arabic learning helped Europe before and during

the Renaissance acquire much of what it needed to emerge intellectually.

J. Burke touched on that in his recent work(1985).

90

TABLE 1

TITLE OF WORK

La fuerza de la sangre

La Gitanilla

Rinconete y Cortadillo

La Ilustre Fregona

Don Quixote

DATE REFERENCE TO TOLEDO

1613 Set in Toledo

1613 5 times

1613 Set in Toledo

1613 Set(largely)

1605-15 I: 3 , 4,9,16,22, 47,48,49.

II: 17,19,37,72.

--------------------------------------------------------------

TABLE 2

Reference to translator/tion in Don Quixote

Part One: 6 9

Part Two: 3 5 24 27 39 44 62

91

SECTION B: MOORISH EUROPE, LITERARY HISTORY AND THE RENAISSANCE

It is essential to start this part with some preliminary views on

Moorish heritage and the seemingly hot debate it has engendered for the last

one hundred years or so. The relation between this Moorish heritage and

Toledo is obvious enough, due to the town's role and fame as a translation

center. This will lead us to see a certain Moorish influence on Western

literature on the one hand, and the relationship between Moorish learning and

the Renaissance on the other.

I. Writing between 1898 and 1926(26), J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly believed

that Europe did indeed owe a debt to the Moors, but he added, it was one that

'Spanish picaresque novels and comedies have more than paid'(27). In many

of his scholarly works, he seemed to oscillate between a restrictive acceptance

of Moorish contributions to Western literary achievements and a refusal pure

and simple as I shall try to show. Asserting in his somewhat stark style that 'to

the Goths Spain owes nothing but eclipse and ruin', he added a few pages

further, concerning Spanish poetry:

... this Arab myth is but a bad dream of yesterday, a nightmare following upon an indigested perusal of the Thousand and One Nights(my italics, 28).

Throughout his study, he maintained this balanced view, but at times

digressed completely, as the following and final example will show, revealing

in him an example of eurocentricity:

Judah (one of Dante's masters) ranks among the great immortals of the world, and no Arab is fit to loosen the thong of his sandal(my italics, 29).

As a literary historian, writing most of his work before World War I, he was

definitely averse to a possible Moorish excellence, and cannot therefore be

relied upon for any serious investigation. Angel Gonzälez Palencia writing in

92

1928, showed the path with his Historia de la literatura aräbigo-espanola

by clearly demonstrating how much Spanish literature owed the Moors, and

by systematically studying every literary case worthy of attention(30). A few

decades later, from 1948 onwards, when E. R. Curtius wrote his monumental

work, a new brand of literary historians and comparatists will emerge, such as

the eminent scholar Americo Castro and W. M. Watt. Alongside them, other

scholars like Paul Werrie and James Burke, to name but a few, have paid

attention to the role and place of Toledo in the transmission of Moorish

learning and translations from the Greek and Latin(very few of the latter in

fact). All conclude that Moorish contributions should be reassessed.

E. R. Curtius, to begin with him, striking deep into literary history,

asserted in an all-embracing view, that 'we need a new discipline of medieval

studies, upon the broadest foundation', because he added, the 'wealth and

originality of the Siglo de Oro would be incomprehensible historically'

without including the 'Islamic Middle Ages'(31). In other words, it is crucial

and essential that we study Islamic medieval literary achievements if we are to

fully comprehend the development of Western literature. But it is certainly

Americo Castro, the first scholar I know of, who has tried to link for instance

the Siglo de Oro to Moorish culture as well as relating some of the textual and

cultural aspects of Don Quixote to that same culture around the 1950's. W. M.

Watt's reevaluation of Islamic culture and Arabic literature, starting with or from Toledo, took place between 1960 and 1972. His most noted work is

undoubtedly Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe, in which he said that

his main aim was to give Islamic culture and its role in the formation of

cultural and literary Europe a fairer place than it has hitherto been given:

(for) our cultural indebtedness to Islam, however, we Europeans have a blind spot. We sometimes belittle the extent and importance of Islamic influence in our heritage, and sometimes overlook it altogether(my italics, 32).

93

To claim as many have done, including Fitmauricc-Kelly, that the literature of

Europe owes very little to the Moors, or to put it in another way, a small debt

only falls rather short of the truth, for as W. M. Watt again wrote, 'to try to

cover it over and deny it is a mark of false pride'(33).

More recently, Maria Rosa Menocal has written on what she calls

'pride and prejudice in Medieval studies'. For her, European versus Moorish,

Spanish versus Arabic are neither accurate nor fruitful for medieval studies.

For to segregate, as she writes, European culture and languages from Arabic

culture and language with respect to the Middle Ages is simply preposterous,

if only because of the place of Toledo in European intellectual history, and the

importance of Arabic as a key language then. The Arabist theory, i. e. Arabic

influence on European literature was a rather popular idea well until the

middle of the 19th century, that is when Romance studies were properly

launched. After that, it became taboo, since it did not fit in the colonialist

views of some European powers. Hence,

a European sense of self emerged in the nineteenth century, which was also the height of the colonialist period, and the prevailin*, attitudes precluded, consciously or subconsciously, any possibility of "indebtedness" to the Arabic world(34).

But it was also at the very beginning of romance studies (mid-

nineteenth century) that an 'unthinkable' idea was expanding, as M. R.

Menocal explains:

it was highly unthinkable for most Europeans to imagine, let alone explore or defend, a view of the "European" as being culturally subservient to the "Arab"(35).

This view or attitude has not changed much, or perhaps it is now with such

scholars as A. Castro, W. M. Watt, N. Daniel, J. Burke, J. Vernet, etc. But it is

quite a hard task, given the enormity of width of the subjects involved, and the

clash of cultural egos, as M. R. Menocal writes:

94

Our attitudes about the possibility of interaction in literary history are not favorable(36).

This work is about this very possibility of interaction in literary history: the

possibility that Moorish culture and literature had a share in the emergence of

the first modern novel.

H. There was therefore a void which the translators filled with works

written in Arabic. This means that the Renaissance could not have possibly

sprung from a re-reading of the Classical heritage without the Moors. This re-

reading occurred because a bridge was established via Islamic learning and

translations out of the Greek or Syriac. And it is impossible to understand the

Classical heritage without the Middle Ages, a point which E. Curtius did not

tire of making. If as Douglas Bush wrote, 'Classical Renaissance had three

stages: discovery, assimilation, and re-expression'(37), it then helps much in

this discussion, to see briefly what the three stages actually were, by locating

some examples. Discovery of the Classical World via Spain, Italy and

Constantinople has already been pointed out tirelessly, but with less emphasis

on translation(s) than on the fact itself. In this, E. Curtius and later J. Vernet

are most pertinent. According to Curtius, individual cultural movements may

be independent of one another, but they may also be 'connected

genealogically'. Likewise, we can see a certain historical continuum from the

Greeks to the modern era, via Spain and the Ottomans. In this sense, the

notion of interculturality and indeed of interliterarity may well be correct. The

same Curtius further sharpened his view by stating that' if Europe is an entity

which participates in two cultures, the Antique-Mediterranean and the

modern-Western, this is also true of its literature'(38). But he saw the

literature of modern Europe also inseparable from, and intermingled with that

of the mare nostrum (the mare nostrum not as belonging to Rome, but that

which belongs to both shores, North and South). For him, literary creation is

95

subject to other laws than mere artistic creation, meaning history and time, for

he added, the 'literature of the past can always be active in that of the

present'(39), joined here by another scholar, R. Weimann some thirty years

later(40). Following Curtius to the utmost conclusion means that the notion of

interliterarity seems stronger, more precise and more embracing than the oft-

flung notion of intertextuality which does not clearly delineate or delimitate

the boundaries between national and supranational literatures. European

literature can therefore only be seen as a whole, and its study can only

'proceed historically' as he wrote.

Against literary history per se, Curtius advocated the decomposition

and the laying bare of the structures of European literature, to be done only

from 'a comparative perusal of literatures'(41). In his discussion of the Latin

Middle Ages, he came up with an intriguing concept, quite relevant to this

work: transfertur (is transferred), which he believed had given rise to that of

translatio (transference), and was, he added, 'basic for medieval historical

theory'(my italics, 42). What does that mean? He argued that the renewal of

Charlemagne's empire required or meant a transfer(al) of the Roman imperium

to another people via the implied formula translatio imperii, and its

subsequent coordinating strategy, translatio studii (transfer of learning which

culminated in the actual transfer of learning from Athens and Rome to the

Franks). The main interest in this use of the terms translatio imperii, studii is

the idea of actual transfer, that is in this case, the appropriation of learning

which can only, and could have only been done via translation as already

noted in the Toledan case. It is ironical or even an irony of history (writers

like A. Camus or T. S. Eliot skipped Muslim Spain to go directly back to

Latin or Hellinistic literatures and history) that almost no serious mention, let

alone investigation, is made concerning the contributions of Moorish Spain to

European literary history. Some attempts have been made, but are too general

96

to have any lasting impact. Others have touched upon the question rather

timidly, tepidly, and quite unsatisfactorily, as C. Guillen rightly noted, much

in line with Curtius(43).

W. Renaissance literary criticism meant (or at least tried) to set itself

the target of reestablishing the aesthetic foundations of literature by

reaffirming the lessons drawn from Hellenistic cultural achievements. Thus

for Plato, much appreciated and later depreciated, poetry was three removes

from the truth , in that

a) the artist only imitates b) an imitation of life, c) of an idea in the mind of God.

The decisive justification of poetry, after its distrust by Plato, Thomas

Aquinas and others came through Aristotle's Poetics 'thanks to a Moor called

Abu Baschar who translated it from the Syriac into Arabic around 935'(44).

Two centuries later, Ibn Rushd (Averrocs) a native of Spain, 'aräbigo y

Cordobes' (cf. Cide Hamete, 'aräbigo y manchego', I, 22) wrote an abridged

version of it which was to be translated into Latin by Hermann in the 13th

century, and again by Mantinus of Tortosa in Spain in the 14th century. Later

on, it was translated from Latin into Italian by Bernardo Segni in 1549, and

when Bernardo Tasso discovered it, he said angrily: 'it was buried for a long

time in the obscure shadow of ignorance'(45).

It was only from the mid-sixteenth century onwards that Aristotelian influence

made itself felt; hence Cervantes's famous 'el poeta puede contar o

cantar'(II, 3), again summed up by Casalvetro who saw poetry as imaginative

history that could rival history. The latter narrates what has happened, and the

former what has never taken place but could possibly happen(46). In fact, it

was Tasso who came up with an interesting view. He believed that the

marvellous and the verisimilar should cohabit in a perfect epic which should

97

have a subject-matter neither too ancient nor too modern; that is, neither

known only too well (which may thwart fantasy or fanciful play) nor ancient

and thus requiring the introduction of some strange and alien customs or

manners.

The Classical theory of literary production, wrote Harold Ogden

White, encouraged imitation, dissuaded or impeded independent fabrication,

and saw the 'stuff of literature as common property, coming rather close to

Foucault's analysis of authorship. However, this did not mean or imply that

imitation would be regarded as self-sufficient. On the contrary, individual

talent, i. e. originality should be laid down and sealed by careful choice and

use of models, reinterpretation and assimilation of 'borrowed' material, and

finally by improving on these. But more interestingly, it viewed and

considered adaptations, i. e. translations of foreign works new works, that is

original, and saw the introducers of new genres as inventors(47). In this

respect, Cervantes's Don Quixote has enabled us to see Moorish Toledo and

Literary History on the one hand and genre theory at work on the other. We

should now relate Toledo as a great medieval translation centre to Moorish

literature and culture.

98

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE

1. W. M. WATT, Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe, 1972, p. 27.

2. J. BURKE, The Day the Universe Changed, 1985, p. 37.

3. Ibid., p. 40.

4. Sarton quoted by J. VERNET, Ce que la culture dolt aux Arabes d'Espagne, 1985 (Madrid, 1978), p. 38.

5. J. VERNET, op. cit.

6. Ibid., p. 189. See also C. H. HASKINS, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 1927 (1924), pp. 3-19.

7. J. BURKE, op. cit, p. 41, contrary to the CHANSON DE ROLAND's opening on Christianity versus Muhammad and Apollo, which is a sequel of Christian-Muslim antagonism prevailing then.

8. P. WERRIE, 'L'6cole de traducteurs de Tol6de', BABEL, 15/4,1969, pp. 202-212.

9. W. M. WATT, op. cit, p. 41.

10. See for instance J. H. ELLIOTT, Imperial Spain, 1649-1716,1963, and W. BYRON, Cervantes, A Biography, 1979.

11. J. BURKE, op. cit, p. 40.

12. Ibid.

13. W. M. WATT, op. cit. See also C. H. HASKINS, op. cit, p. 19.

14. P. WERRIE, op. cit.

15. P. NAVARRO-LEDESMA, Cervantes, the Man and the Genius, 1973, p. 254.

16. Ibid. i 17. A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, 'Cervantes y los moriscos', BOLETIN DE

LA ACADEMIA ESPANOLA, vol. XXVI1,1947-8, p. 110.

18. That Cervantes attributes the paternity of his Don Quixote to Cide Hamete has been called a 'joke' by several scholars, namely P. K. HITTI, History of the Arabs, 1951 (1937), p. 559, and C. A. SOONS, 'Cide Hamete Benengeli: His significance for Don Quiljote', MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, vol. 54,1959, pp. 351-357.

19. A. D. DEYERMOND, The Middle Ages, 1971, p. 153. See also J. H. ELLIOTT, op. cit, p. 96.

20. E. SOLA, Un Mediterräneo de piratas: corsarios, renegados y cautivos, 1988, pp. 267 If.

99

21. See for instance J. BURKE, op. cit. His B. B. C series shows more vividly and most strikingly the custom of hiring a Morisco-translator for translation work, which his book does not unfortunately discuss. See also A. BURNS & J. GIBBS, Dos novelas ejemplares: Riconete y Cortadillo, La ilustre fregona, 1971, p. 36, P. G. THERY, Tolede, grande ville de la Renaissance, 1944, C. H. HASKINS, op. cit, pp. 11 if, J. VERNET, op. cit, pp. 109 ff, and P. WERRIE, op. cit.

22. E. ROSEN, 'Renaissance science as seen by Burckhardt and his successors', in The Renaissance, A Reconsideration of the Theories and Interpretations of the Age, T. HELTON(ed), 1964, pp. 77-103.

23. See L. SPITZER, Linguistics and Literary History, 1962(1948), pp. 41- 85.

24. W. M. WATT, op. cit, p. 27.

25. P. M. HOLT, A. K. S. LAMBTON & B. LEWIS, The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2,1970, p. 860.

26. His major works are: A History of Spanish Literature, 1898. Miguel de Cervantes: a memoir, 1913. A New History of Spanish Literature, 1926.

In the first work, and after some 'recognition' of Moorish works and their connections to Spanish ones, he clearly shows some sort of chauvinism and contempt for things Moorish. I shall quote him again: 'On literature the pretended "Arab influence", if it exists at all, is nowise comparable to that of Spanish Jews, who can boast that Judah ben Samuel the Levite lives as one of Dante's masters'(p. 14). He also wrote that' the sole literary legacy bequeathed to Spain by the Arabs was their alphabet'(p. 19); this of course is utterly false. For a complete picture of the question, see W. M. WATT, op. cit, J. VERNET, op. cit, J. BURKE, op. cit, and of course the great scholar and historian A. CASTRO.

27. J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, 1898, p. 16.

28. Ibid, pp. 7-15.

29. Ibid, p. 14. J. VERNET, op. cit. has amply shown Dante's debt to Arabo- Islamic sources.

30. A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, Historia de la literatura aräbigo- espanola, 1945 (1928).

31. E. R. CURTIUS, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 1953 (1948), pp. 268 sq and 537 sq.

32. W. M. WATT, op. cit, p. 2.

33. Ibid, p. 2.

34. M. Rosa MENOCAL, 'Pride and Prejudice in Medieval Studies: European and Oriental', HISPANIC REVIEW, 53/1,1985, pp. 61-78.

35. Ibid.

100

36. Ibid.

37. D. BUSH, Preface to Renaissance Literature, 1966, p. 4.

38. E. R. CURTIUS, op. cit, pp. 6-9.

39. Ibid, p. 15.

40. R. WEIMANN, Structure and Society in Literary History, Studies in the History and Theory of Historical Criticism, 1976, pp. 18-56.

41. E. R. CURTIUS, op. cit, p. 15.

42. Ibid, pp. 28-9. See also J. C. CARRON, 'Imitation and Intertextuality in the Renaissaance', NEW LITERARY HISTORY, Vol. 19/3, Spring 1988, pp. 565-79.

i 43. C. GUILLEN, Literature as System, 1971, pp. 114 sq and 402 sq.

44. J. E. SPINGARN, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, vol. 1, 1957 (1908), pp. 7-15.

45. Ibid, p. 16.

46. Quoted by J. E. SPINGARN, op. cit, p. 17.

47. H. O. WHITE, Plagiarism and Imitation during the English Renaissance, 1965 (1935), p. 3.

101

CHAPTER FOUR: Moorish Literature in translation and its relation to West European Literature (12th-17th)

SECTION A: Moorish literature in Translation(12th-17th).

Translations of Arabic literature into Western languages, notably

Latin, English and French began in the 12th century. A culmination was

reached by the 17th century, when the first modern novel was published.

What concerns us here is Muslim literature in West European translations,

starting first with Muslim texts integral to worship such as the Koran, the

Hadith and the Agidah.

The first striking aspect in all these translations is the number of

religious texts involved; three, two of which are fundamental (the Koran and

the Hadith), and the number of translations of these texts. For instance, the

Koran was first translated into Latin in 1143 by Robert of Ketton, sometimes

called Robert of Chester, in Toledo, with the collaboration of a mysterious

Muhammad of Toledo, a co-translator as it were and whom we shall meet

quite often. Although this version seems to have been the first in Latin, there

is also John of Seville's , called John of Luna, between 1135 and 1153.

Because it has been impossible to locate the precise date, most historians

agree on Robert of Ketton's as being the first(1). Again, the Koran drew more

and more attention and was translated some sixty years later, in 1210 by Mark

of Toledo into Latin, in Toledo again. In the 14th century, it was once more

rendered, this time into Catalan, by Pierre IV du Punyalet(1319-1387), though

the date remains unknown(2). Another version appeared in the 15th century,

rendered into Latin-Castilian alongside the Arabic original(trilingual) by Jean

de Segovie(John of Segovia)(1400-1458). This version closes all translations

of the Koran up to the 17th century. With the Koran, the Hadith ( or

Muhammad's teachings ) comes in the second place of importance, first

102

translated into Latin in 1143 by the same Robert of Ketton with the

collaboration of Muhammad of Toledo. This text was given the title of

Fabulae Saracenorum. Two other religious texts were also translated around

the mid-eleventh century: Kitab Nasab Rasul Allah( by Sa'id Ibn 'Umar),

translated as Liber Generationis Mahumet by Herman of Dalmatia with

Muhammad of Toledo around 1143, and Aqidah by Ibn Tumart(1130) ,

translated by Herman of Carinthia (or Mark of Toledo ? ). both were rendered

into Latin, in Toledo. In some of these translations, Peter the Venerable(1094-

1156), Abbot of Cluny in Burgundy played a rather important role(3).

Another area, that of literature calls more attention since it is, after all,

Arabic literature stricto sensu in West European translations which concerns

us here. A major text , often mentioned in critical and historical works, is the

Disciplina Clericalis, first written in Arabic by Huesca Pedro Alfonso (Petrus

Alfonsus) in the 12th century, rendered into Latin by the author himself, who

was an Arabic-speaking Jew(4). This work, however, resembles in many ways

some others written later in West Europe, namely the Conde Lucanor by

Juan Manuel (1282-1347) and the Decameron by Boccaccio (1313-1375).

Another important text, a collection of tales known as Kalilah wa Dimnah

was translated as Directorium Vitae Humanae by Juan de Capua in the late

13th century into Latin, while its first version was rendered into Castilian in

1251 by Alfonso X. Several scholars have pointed out the similarities between

this text and such works as Libro de los Meravelles by Lulio, El Conde

Lucanor by Juan Manuel, Libro de los Gatos and Libro de los ejemplos by

Sanchez de Vercial(5). El Sindebar or Sendebar was rendered into Castilian

in 1253 by Fadrique(Alfonso X's brother) as Engannos e Assayamientos de

los Mogieres, followed later by versions in Latin, French, Italian, English,

German and Catalan(6). Kitab al ru'ya (by Muhammad Ibn Sirin, 654-728)

103

was translated as Livre des songes by Leon Tuscus in 1581, with a German

version later(1607). However, a Latin translation appeared in 1176 for the

first time(7). The famous and popular One Thousand and One Nights was

partially translated, probably before the 15th century(8). One more important

narrative should now be discussed, the Magamat, in so far as it shall prove

crucial to the understanding of both Don Quixote as the first novel and the

picaresque tradition in general.

Al-Hariri (1054-1122) wrote his Magamat at the turn of the 11th

century or thereabout. Very soon , the popularity of his work made way

throughout the Muslim world, including Spain. There, on the Iberian shores,

the Magamat found pride of place among scholars like Yusuf al-Sarcosti (of

Estercuel? ) and Okayl or Ocail of Granada who both imitated this work and

commented it, sometime in the early 13th century, in Castilian. Around the

same period roughly, Al-Xerixi/Charichi (d. 1222), of Jerez that is, wrote his

comments on Al-Hariri's work, remaining thus the most appreciated

commentator, though the importance of such comments remains to be written

down. The obvious similarities between this Arabic narrative and the

picaresque are too relevant for the history of narrative writing to be ignored.

As can be seen, several Arabic texts have been re-enunciated in West

European languages, and have had thus a certain impact on Western literature.

The relationships between Arabic literature and literary history are

both real and crucial for the understanding of literary history on a

'supernational scale', to borrow R. Wellek and A. Warren's terms(9), and for the

right place Moorish contributions should acquire concerning the development

of certain genres. Several scholars have already shown the path by pointing

out the parallels between, say, the Maqamat and the picaresque, and even

between Hay Ben Yaqdhan and Robinson Crusoe(10). However, these

104

studies are still little known, and have had hitherto no substantial echo among

literary historians. The task then is monumental, for the logical implications

of this type entails to some degree the re-writing of European literary history

pure and simple. When A. A. Parker writes for instance that 'the history of the

modem European novel should be rewritten'(11), he has in mind a revision

that would replace the picaresque in its true place, but certainly not the Arabic

picaresque(12). If the picaresque should now regain the place it should have

had in the history of the novel, so should the Arabic Magamat, Risalat Hay

Ben Yagdh(n and the One Thousand and One Nights.

Scholars of C. Guilldn's calibre have questioned both Western literary

history and comparative studies; the reasons are that the former is confined

merely to the Western world, while this same world imposes its norms and

aesthetic appreciations on the other cultures. For him, it is a paradox of literary study that despite the conspicuous growth of Orientalism since the early nineteenth century, and the persistent reliance of literary criticism on literary history, these Greco-Roman modes continue to be assigned some sort of "ultimate" value by numerous writers...! do not doubt... that the search for universals will be a central task for future literary studies... (and) will depend on the assimilation of a great deal of knowledge concerning the non-Western literatures, or to put it in academic terms, on the work of comparative scholars who have been trained as Orientalists... (13)

In other words, literary history has so far neglected other literatures when

dealing with the questions of origins and genres, and has stubbornly remained

so. And it is, he says, the task of comparatists, especially those with some

knowledge of Oriental literature, to bring forth new horizons for a fuller

literary history, for literary history as a synthesis(14).

Thus literary history as seen by C. Guillen and R. Wellek and

A. Warren still awaits its mentor. Before paving the way for a comparison

between the Maqamat and the picaresque, I now wish to go a few centuries

105

back, that is precisely to the Libro del Caballero Cifar, for two main

reasons. First, it is considered the first Spanish chivalric romance, something

which is of great relevance for the present work, and secondly because it

contains several Moorish cultural and literary aspects. However, given the

enormity of the task involved in dealing with each of them specifically, and

also for reasons of time and academic limitations, I shall confine myself to

those scholarly works in which these are discussed in greater detail.

TABLE

ARABIC TEXTS IN WEST EUROPEAN TRANSLATIONS(12TH-17THCENTURY)

------------------------------------------------------------ Title of work, : Title in : Date : language: Place of Author, date : translation .. : translation

: (translators) ...

KORAN : BY ROBERT OF . : KETTON WITH . : COLLAB. OF MUHAM-:

: MAD OF TOLEDO : 1143 : LATIN : TOLEDO

............................................................ KORAN : JOHN OF SEVILLE :

: (ALSO CALLED

: OF LUNA) 1135-53 : LATIN ;?

............................................................ KORAN ; MARK OF TOLEDO : 1210 : LATIN : TOLEDO

............................................................ KORAN : PIERRE IV DU

: PUNYALET(1319- : 87) 7: CATALAN: ?

............................................................ KORAN : JOHN OF SEGO-

: VIA (1400-58) :? : LATIN-

: CAST. - : ARABIC: ? : ARABIC:

............................................................ KORAN : T. BUCHMANN(CAL- : 1542 : LATIN : BASEL

: LED BIBLIANDER) : WITH J. HERBST : (CALLED OPORINUS:

............................................................ HADITH(AL) : FABULAE SARACE-

: NORUM, BY ROBERT : : OF KETTON WITH . : MUHAMMAD OF TO-

LEDO : 1143 : LATIN : TOLEDO

............................................................ MASA'IL IBN : DOCTRINA MAHUMET: ABI ABDILLAH : BY HERMAN OF DAL-

: MATIA, WITH MUH-

: AMMAD OF TOLEDO : 1143 : LATIN : TOLEDO KITAS NASAB : LIBRR GENERA- RASUL ALLAH : TIONIS MAHUMET, BY SA' ID IBN : BY HERMAN OF 'UMAR : DALMATIA, WITH

: MUH. OF TOLEDO : 1143 : LATIN : TOLEDO

............................................................ AQIDAH : BY HERMAN OF . BY IBN TUMART : CARINTHIA (1130) : 1213 : LATIN : TOLEDO

............................................................ ADAB-AL-FALA- : EL LIBRO DE LOS: USIFA, BY HUNAIN: BUENOS PROVER- : IBN ISHAQ(808-: BIOS, B Y? : 1199-1252: HEBREW 73) :& CASTILIAN: ?

............................................................ HUESCA PEDRO : DISCIPLINA CLE- IN ARABIC(? ), : RICALIS, BY AU- FROM , : THOR : 12TH CENT. : LATIN :?

............................................................

KITAB AL- RU' YA, BY IBN : BY LEON TUS- SIRIN(654-728): CUS : 1176 : LATIN :?

: BY ? -------: 1581 : FRENCH: ?

: BY ? : 1607 : GERMAN: ?

............................................................ PROVERBS, BY : LOS BOCADOS DE AL-MUBASHIR : ORO, OR BONIUM, (1048-9) : BY ? : 1247 : CASTILIAN: TOLEDO

............................................................ MAQAMAT :' IMITATIONS', BY : BY AL-HARIRI : YUSUF AL-SARCOSTI (1054-1122) . : BEG 13TH: CASTI- : ESTERCUEL

: CENTURY : LIAN ?

: COMMENTS ON, BY : AL-XERIXI(D. 1222: BEG 13TH : CASTI-: JEREZ

: CENTURY : LIAN .

: COMMENTS ON, BY : OCAIL OF GRANA- : DA : 13TH : CAST.? : GRANADA

............................................................

KALILA WA DI-: DIRECTORIUM RNA, BY IBN : VITAE XUMANAE MUQAFFA' : BY ALFONSO X : 1251 : CAST. : TOLEDO

: DIRECTORIUM VI- : TAE HUMANAE, BY : JUAN DE CAPUA : 1270 : LATIN .?

: BY ? : 1313 : BY ? : 1480 : BY ? : 1493 : BY ? : 1548 : BY ? : 1548 : BY ? : 1570 : BY ? : 1623

: LATIN ?

: GERMAN .?

: CAST. ?

: ITALIAN: ?

: FRENCH :? : ENGLISH: ?

: DUTCH :?

............................................................

EL-SINDIBAR : ENGANNOS E ASSA-: OR SENDEBAR : YAMIENTOS DE LOS:

: MOGIERES, BY FA- : : DRIQUE(ALFONSO

. : X'S BROTHER) : 1253 : CAST. : TOLEDO

: BY ?,? : LATIN :? ? : FRENCH ,?

: BY ?,? : ITALIAN: ?

: BY ?,? : ENGLISH: ?

: BY ?? : CATALAN: ?

: BY ?,? : GERMAN ,?

............................................................

KITAB AL MI'-: (THE BOOK OF

RAJ : ASCENSION) (1), :

: BY BONAVENTURA : : DI SIENA : 13TH ? : ITALIAN :?

............................................................

RISALAT KAY : BY MOSES NARPO-: 1349 : HEBREW :? BEN YAQDKAN : NI(BONI)

BY IBN TUFAIL:

: PRILOSOPRUS

: AUTODIDACTUS

: BY E. POCKOCIO

: BY SPINOZA(? )

AND ANON.

: BY G. KEITH

: BY G. ACHWELL // // : BY S. OCKLEY

: 1671 : LATIN : OXFORD

: 1672 : DUTCH :? : 1674 : ENGLISH: LONDON

: 1686 : ENGLISH: LONDON

: 1708 : ENGLISH: LONDON(2)

............................................................

THE BOOK OF 1001 NIGHTS : PARTIAL TRANS-

: LATION(3) : PROB. 15T11: : CENTURY : CASTILIAN: ?

" ........................................................... 1. M. R. Menocal, 'Pride and Prejudice in Medieval Studies: European and Oriental', HISPANIC REVIEW, 53/1,1985, pp. 61-78, where she too relates Dante's Divine Comedy to Islamic sources, and notably this Arabic work.

2. Though we are dealing with translations out of the Arabic up to the 17th century, S. Ockley's 1708 translation is quite important since it

was the last English version before the appearance of Robinson Crusoe (1719).

3. See Juan Vernet, Ce que Is culture doit aux Arabes d'espagne, 1985 (Madrid, 1978), and E. Merimee, A History of Spanish Literature, 1931,

who wrote that some of the Arabian Nights stories were in Spain around the early 16th century, to be shortly afterwards re-enunciated in one of Lope de Vega's works.

109

SECTION B: Some Moorish and West European Interactions.

1. The Case of El Cavaballero Cifar (1299-1335):

The well-known Libro Del Caballero Cifar(or Zifar at times), the

first Spanish chivalric romance in the words of Ernest Merimee(15) was

written by an anonymous author between 1299 and 1335, announcing itself as

a translation from the Chaldean. According to several scholars, namely

R. M. Walker and A. Gonzalez Palencia, Chaldean at the time meant Arabic

nothing less(16). Following the discoveries made by C. P. Wagner,

R. M. Walker and others, this particular narrative appears to have undergone

some Arabic 'influence'. Indeed, the Cifar bears clear Arabic resonances, both

in its title and in some of its cultural and literary aspects. First, Cifar/Zifar, a

metamorphosis, or better still, a pseudomorphosis, can be related to the Arabic

safara (to travel) and safar (travel, adventure): that is, in a Europeanized form,

a knight-errant(17). A. Gonzalez Palencia can here substantiate this claim; he

writes that 'Cifar' is the Arabic 'viajero', echoed later by such scholars as

R. M. Walker . Walker and J. B. Trend, who respectively write that Cifar is the Arabic

,, i 4u'safar', Caballero Cifar as 'in fact el caballero andante', and that Cifar is

the Arabic safar, caballero Cifar meaning 'knight-errant'(18). By now, the title

of this chivalric romance should be connected to Arabic without a single

doubt.

At the level of onomastics, A. Gonzalez Palencia affirms that Grima'su

mujer, nombre corriente entre las mujeres musulmanas' is indeed Arabic,

while J. B. Trend agrees that 'Grima is a pseudomorphosis of Karima'(19). But

it is R. M. Walker, following the path of C. P. Wagner, who will definitely

establish this Arabic connection with much more evidence from the text. In

his article, he shows, besides the obvious title, that such names as Tared (el

rey) for instance derive from the Arabic L >>}i tarada, atrada (to expel,

110

banish). King Tared, we know, had been banished from his kingdom; in fact,

he simply lost it 'por sus malas costumbres'. Abu Ubeyt (from Abu 'Ubaid),

Gamel (caballero) fromJL . jamäl (a current Arabic name meaning 'beauty'),

Fares, from the Arabic faris (horse-rider) are all of Arabic

origins. Also, such place names as sin ( from the Arabic sin, China), Gharba

(from 1... ) gharb, i. e. 'west', or from gharib, 'strange'), and Alcinde ( from

al-sind, the Indus) are also part of this pervasive Arabic influence on the

Cifar(20).

On the other hand, some Arabic literary conventions have crept in the

narrative. First, 'dice el cuento', 'dice la historia' or 'cuenta la historia', used in

thirty chapters, means that the formula, for sure an Arabic one, had long been

utilized in Spain(see Chapter 5 below). At any rate, this shows that it was

deeply rooted in Spanish writing, some three hundred years or so before

Cervantes would use it in Don Quixote. It should also be noted here, that the

author of the Cifar employed the formula 'dice el trasladador' and 'dice el

filosofo" as alternatives for the above-mentioned ones(21). Though

R. M. Walker did not pay any attention to this formula, he nonetheless showed

that the use of the expression gertas or ciertas some 346 times (see table)

corresponds to the use of 6ý inna in Arabic (formula used for

affirmation, persuasion):

The use of an emphatic particle to introduce a speech is widespread in Semitic languages. We know it best, perhaps, in the Biblical verily I say unto you, but it is equally common elsewhere. The Arabic emphatic particle 'inna is mostly used to introduce an affirmative statement or after gala (=dixo) to introduce a noun clause. The use of Verlas in the Zifar, as we have seen, clearly corresponds to the use of 'inna in Arabic(22).

111

Moreover, and having pointed out to onomastics in general as well as the title

and the use of ciertas/certas, in their relation to Arabic, R. M. Walker

concludes that in fact,

there is much more in the author's assertion that his work was originally Arabic than has hitherto been allowed(23).

Such words can find a favorable echo with respect to what will follow

concerning Don Quixote.

Two more similarities with Don Quixote and Cervantes should now

be added. The first one was mentioned by Menendez y Pelayo as well as

Mdrimee, the latter seeing El Ribaldo, Cifar's squire as the 'ancestor and

prototype of Sancho Panza'(24). In another work, R. M. Walker starts by

mentioning what previous scholarship has discovered. The similarity, he

writes, between Ribaldo and Sancho lies in that both are peasants instead of

the typical chivalric squires, and that both display peasant culture. They are

astute, practical, somewhat dishonest, down-to-earth and full of humour. Also,

both express themselves most of the time through proverbs, the latter being so

to speak the vehicle of popular wisdom(25). Having therefore asked himself

the question of Cervantes's relation to the Cifar, R. M. Walker concludes that

given the date of the last known edition of the narrative(1529), Cervantes is

likely, he says, to have known the Cifar before he wrote his Don

Quixote(26). As to the final similarity, this time with Cervantes in person,

R. M. Walker's fascinating work comes into play again. He believes that ample

evidence exists indeed to show that,

the author had strong connections with Toledo, for long a centre of contact between the Christian and the Moslem and Judaic worlds, and that it is therefore reasonable to assume that he would have had some acquaintance with Semitic literature, even if only in Latin or Castilian translations(my italics, 27).

112

We have seen that Cervantes's Don Quixote presents in many ways

similar aspects. It announces itself as a translation from the Arabic of Cide

Hamete Benengeli, whose text was discovered in Toledo, a place that

Cervantes knew and where he found a bilingual translator. This can explain,

to some extent, both Don Quixote and Toledo as a translation centre in the

Middle Ages.

ARABIC FORMULAE IN THE CIFAR

NUMBER OF CHAPTERS A:

Chapters 1-10 15

S

: Chap. 1,2,5,6 11 11-20 17 :

21-30 14 : 31-40 19 : 41-50 14 : 51-60 24 61-70 18 : 71-80 7 81-90 5

51

: 82,89 97 110 118 124,126,130 132,135

91-100 20 : 101-110 20 111-120 20 : 121-130 12 : 131-140 6: 141-150 8 151-160 12 161-170 11 171-180 7 181-190 22 191-200 8 201-210 15 211-220 5 221-229 8

197,200 203 212 226,228,229

----------------------------------------------------

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A. Number of times when ciertas or certas are used.

B. Chapters where dice la historia cuenta la historic, dice el cuento are used.

Note: R. M. Walker(op. cit. ) found 346 occasions where giertas or certas are used. My findings are slightly different: 307 times only. Yet, R. M. Walker did not mention the Arabic formula dice la historia, etc.

155 161,169,170 173,174

114

2. THE MAQAMAT AND THE PICARESQUE: The Forgotten Picaro.

The Arabic maqama (pl. magamat) originated sometime between

the ninth and the tenth centuries, starting and developing from the qasida. The

reasons of its emergence remain unclear though, and it is not known to what

cultural need it responded(28). However, R. Blachr re believes that the

magamat came at a time when Arabic literature was accelerating its tendency

to mundanity. Hence, this genre came as a reaction to the growing mundanity

and pedantry of the ruling class. Thus, the urban centres of Baghdad, for

instance, then gathered flocks of tramps, thieves and other social outcasts,

living off all sorts of work done for and around the rich dwellings of the

rulers. According to the same Blachere,

cette pegre vit naturellement d'exp6dients, de rapines, de coups de main. D'apres ce qu'on en sait, it est difficile de ne pas songer ä la truanderie du Moyen Age A Paris... Cette truanderie s'est donne, des cc moment, sous des influences religieuses, un certain code d'honneur qui fera d'elle des compagnies de "redresseurs de torts"(29).

Moreover, the members of this association of outcasts gave themselves the

name oij fityan (lads). At this stage, it is hard not to think of the ptcaro as

they would soon be part and parcel of Arabic literature(30).

Badi' Azaman Al-Hamadani (967-1008) is known as the precursor

of this genre, a short narrative in rhymed prose which recounts the adventures,

deeds, resourcefulness, cunning and eloquence of a cavalier-hero. The most

popular maqamat in the West are Assemblies of Harirl, translated into

English by Thomas Chenery in 1867, followed by F. Steingass's translation of

the last twenty-four assemblies in 1898 (out of fifty in all).

115

Writing on the romance and its evolution, Ben Edwin Perry comes to

mention the Maqamat, comparing them to the Menippean satire:

the nearest in kind to the Satyricon, in... form, and... use of a long rogue story in the first person... is the Arabic form of literature known as Maqamat... (31).

In writing this, Perry has particular reasons. Let us see why. Al-Hariri's

Magamat, like those of his predecessor Al-Hamadani whom he wished to

follow and perhaps outdo(32), are independent of each other, in a paratactic

way, without a clear or obvious enough inner logic. This resembles much

Petronius's Satyricon, writes Perry, as does the sole narrator in both works:

Al-Harith and Encolpius. And wherever both move and wander, they meet a

similar cunning and unscrupulous rogue-poet: Abu-Zayd and Eumolpus.

Finally, both works seem to have been invented mainly for the display of

poetic talent and eloquence(33). But what strikes Perry, besides their

similarities, is the fact that 'the two forms have no historical connection with

each other, nor with the Menippean satire... (as) widely separated

constellations in the broad heavens of literary history'. However, Perry

believes that neither the Satyricon nor the maqama resembles the Menippean

satire, simply because neither of them is satire. On the other hand, he writes

that the mixing of poetry and prose in the magama is rightly Oriental not

Greek, just what the Menippean satire does since its 'inventor' Menippus

himself was Syrian(34). In other words, the Maqamat reveal a Menippean

form, but are not satire.

Julia Kristeva, writing on the Menippean satire has something

different to say. Starting with her claim that all the great polyphonic novels

inherit the carnivalesque Menippean structure - and she hastily includes

Cervantes among Rabelais, Swift, Sade, Balzac, Lautreamont, Dostoievsky,

Joyce, Kafka - she goes on to affirm that

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1'histoire du roman menipp6en est aussi 1'histoire de la lutte contre le Christianisme et sa repr6sentation(35).

Thus, she continues, the epic and the carnivalesque will be the two currents

(or mainstreams) which will form the European rdcit by outdoing each other

according to epochs and authors. According to her, 'le ferment du roman

europeen' is constituted by two genres situated within the carnival line:

Socratic dialogue and Menippean satire(36). Thus the crypto-Kristevian view

is that Socratic dialogue and the Menippean satire are behind the novel. Let us

first examine the Maqamat.

In the maqama, the story is narrated by a narrator as we have seen,

but to be more precise a pseudo-narrator (Al-Harith in Al-Hariri's work) in

the same way Cide Hamete operates in Don Quixote as will be shown in

detail. Of equal importance is the 'polyphonic' aspect of the work, since a

number of voices arise here and there as Slatter Gittes has noticeably written.

Writing on the Magamat, though within a much wider context, she depicts

them as containing eye-witness reporting, commentaries on travel, jokes,

maxims, serious and humourous sections, all of which, she adds, are

independent entities connected only by the continuing presence of the narrator

and the hero, by a number of voices(37). This type of structure can also be

seen in such works as Don Quixote for instance; for this work is a series of

disconnected stories connected only by the presence of the same'hero' or'hero

of the same' as Foucault wrote(38). An example from Hariri's Magamat will

surely prove itself necessary. Abu-Zayd, the hero, is often (if not always) ill-

dressed, full of genius and learning, using artifices quite unashamedly and

unscrupulously to his own purposes, indulging in reckless spending of the

money he extorts by sheer wit or mere deceit: in short, a real picaro. The story

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or rather the stories of this hero are presented as true in the same way the

Spaniards have done much later, following this very tradition. The adventures

and deeds of Abu-Zayd, the witty and unscrupulous cavalier-hero are little

connected with each other, placed in various spots, sometimes as far as Cairo

and Baghdad, though Basra remains the main place. This reminds us of Don

Quixote's peregrinations through la Mancha and as far north as Saragossa and

Barcelona.

From another angle, the maqama can be defined more precisely. A.

Kilito sees it as originating from the word maqam (place where one stands)

later to mean 'discourse', 'rdcit', for the tradition was that tales and stories were

recounted to a group of listeners while the reciter stood or alternatively sat

down while the audience stood. The maqama takes then the shape of

'discourse' when the author 'donne la parole, sur le mode fictif, ä un oü ä

plusieurs personnages'(39). On the other hand, the maqama should not be

seen, writes Kilito, as hikaya (story) but as 'imitation', for both are

interchangeable. After all, the hero meets not only the narrator Al-Harith but

the writer himself. Indeed, we are told that Al-Hariri meets the hero before

writing his narrative; hence, the hero escapes from the world of fiction only to

stumble over his author. Again, this can be compared to Don Quixote whose

deeds can no longer be recounted. Cervantes, while in Toledo, finds the

Arabic text written by Cide Hamete, which then enables him to continue

narrating Don Quixote's life and deeds. On the other hand, we know from

11,48 that Cide Hamete does indeed meet Don Quixote. More strikingly, Abu-

Zayd is a hero-liar, sending this quality back to the author Al-Hariri as Kilito

has rightly observed(40), while the author in person repeatedly denounces the

lies of his 'hero', something reminiscent of what happens between Cide

Hamete and Don Quixote in 1,9 for instance. Let us then take one maqama

118

from the fifty written by Al-Hariri, and discuss some of the claims and ideas

put forward.

119

Al-Härith, son of Hammam, related: In the prime of my life that has

fleeted, I had a leaning towards intercourse with the people of the hair-tents,

so that I might take after their high-mettled spirits and their Arab tongues. So

I bestirred myself with the alertness of one not lacking in industry, and began

to roam through low-lands and high-lands, until I had got together a string of

those that groan (i. e., camels), along with a flock of those that bleat (i. e.,

sheep). Then I betook myself to some Arabs, (fit to be) lieutenants of kings,

sons of speech (saws). They gave me a home with them in safest vicinity, and turned (blunted) from me the edge of any (hostile) tooth. No care alighted

upon me while I was with them, no arrow struck (the smoothness) of my rock,

until one night, bright with full-moon-sheen, there strayed from me a she-

camel profuse of milk-flow. Then my heart suffered me not to forbear the

quest of her, and to throw her halter upon her hump (allowing her to wander at

will). So I sprang upon a swift-paced steed, planting a trembling lance between thigh and stirrup, and fared forth all the night, scouring the desert,

and exploring every copse and treeless place, until the morning dawn unfurled its ensigns, when the crier calls to prayer and to salvation. Then I alighted from my beast for the acquittance of the written ordinance, after which I

bestrode him again, trying his mettle to the utmost. While I was coursing along, I saw no trace but I tracked it, no ridge but I mounted it, no valley but I

fared across it, no rider but I questioned him; but withal my toil was bootless,

and its gang to the watering-place found no (way of) return, until the heat

waxed blinding, and the scorching noon-day sun would have distracted Ghaylan from his (beloved) Mayyah. Now the day was longer than the

shadow of the spear, and hotter than the tears of the bereft mother, and I made sure that, unless I sought shelter from the glow, and rested myself with slumber, excessive weariness would throw me prostrate with sickness-nay, Sha'ub (the severer) would cling to me. Hence I bent my way towards a Sarhah tree, abounding in branches, with boughs thickly leaved, that I might sleep my noon-tide, till to the brink of sun-down; but by Allah, scarcely had

my breath fetched air and my horse rested, when I beheld one coming from the left, in the garb of a wayfarer, who resorted to my place of resort, making straight for the spot I had chosen. Then I grudged his wending wither I had

wended, and took refuge with Allah from the annoy of any sudden intruder. But then, again, I hoped that he might chance to be a bringer of news, or approve himself a guide (to my lost one). And when he came nigh my tree, and had all but reached my binding-place, I found it was our learned friend

120

(Shaykh) of Seruj, wearing his wallet by way of belt, and his travelling gear

under his arm. Then he accosted me with friendliness, and made me forget my loss, and I inquired of him, whence he hailed just then and how he fared

within and without. Forthwith, without a word of demur, he recited on the

spur of the moment: "Say to him, who would look into the inward state of my affair, thou shalt

meet at my hands with all honour and regard. I am roving from land to land, a

night-traveller from one trackless desert to the other. The chase yields me food, the sandal is my riding-beast, all my equipment the wallet and the ferruled staff. If I chance to alight in a city, my abode is the garret of the hostelry, and my boon-companion a scroll. There is nothing mine, that I miss

when it is gone, or fret about when the vicissitudes (wiles) of time rob me thereof; Save that I pass my night free from concern, and my mind has

severed partnership with sorrow. I sleep at night the fill of my eyelids and my heart is cool of burning grief and anxiety; I reck not from what cup I sip, and sip again, or what is the sweetness that comes from the bitter-sweet;

No, not I, though I allow me not abasement to become an easy road to bounties; For if an object of desire dons the raiement of shame, out on him who courts a gift, And whenever a wretch inclines to baseness, my nature shrinks from his fashion and inclining. Death for me, no base deed, mount the bier liefer, than embark in villainy. " Then he raised his glance to me, and said: "For some purpose did Kosayr cut off his nose. " So I told him the tale of my strayed camel, and what I had

endured this day and the by-gone night; and he said: "Leave concerning thyself about things departed, or pining for that which has perished; regret not what is gone, though it were a river of gold; nor incline to him who veers from

thee, and kindles the fire of thy anguish, though he were the son of thy loin, or the own brother of thy soul. " Then he added: "Hast thou a mind to a noon-day nap, and to abstain from talk? For forsooth our bodies are (as it were) jaded

camels for fatigue, and the heat is all aglow; whereas there is nothing to furbish up the mind, and to enliven the languid, like sleep at noon while the blaze fiercest, especially (most so) in the two months, when the skin of the camels shrivels through excessive thirst. " I replied: "As thou wilt, I have no wish to thwart thee. " Thereupon he made the ground his bed, and fell a- dozing, nay, soon he gave evidence that he was fast asleep. But I sat leaning

on my elbow, to keep watch, and not to succumb to slumber; however,

121

drowsiness overpowered me, after our tongues were bridled, and I recovered

not myself, until night had crept in, and the stars began to twinkle, when lo,

there was no friend of Seruj, and, alas, no saddle-beast, so that I passed a night

such as Nabighah sings of, pregnant with the grief of Jacob, while I was battling against my sullenness, and vying with the stars in wakefulness. Now I

bethought me that I had henceforth to fare on foot, now in what wise I should

retrace my homeward way; until, at the smile of mor, there appeared to me on the horizon a rider, ambling over the plain with the stride of the ostrich. So I

signalled to him with my garment, hoping that he would turn in my direction.

He however, heeded not my signal, nor took he compassion on my anxiety, trotting on at his leisure and smiting my entrails with the arrow of his

contempt. Then I hastened in his track, to ask him for a mount behind him,

though I should have to put up with his superciliousness. But when I reached him, by dint of hard running, and cast my eye on him with a sweeping glance, I found that my camel was his riding-beast, and what I had lost he had picked up. Then I belied me not in dragging him from her hunch, and tussling with him for the end of her halter, calling out: "I am her master; it is I from whom she has strayed; to me belongs her colt and her milk! " But he took to abusing and shouting, and he waxed impudent, and would not be abashed; and while he assaulted and relented in turns, now acting the lion, now cowering, behold,

there came upon us Abu Zayd, clad in the leopard's skin, rushing along with the rush of the furious torrent. Then I feared, that (the brightness of) his full

moon would equal (that of) his sun, after which I would join the two-

gatherers, never to be seen again, and become a (mere) tale after the

substance. So I saw no help but to remind him of former bonds, and yesterday's misdeed, and conjured him by Allah, (asking) if he came to make good my wrong, or to encompass my utter ruin. He however said: "God forfend that I should despatch one whom I have wounded, or follow up the Simoon of my day with a deadly night-blast. Rather have I come to find out the truth of thy state, and to be a right hand to thy left. " Thereupon my anxiety was allayed, and my suspiciousness subsided. I made him aware of my milch camel, and of the cloak of insolence that my mate had assumed, when he

glanced at him as the lion of the ticket glances at his prey. Then he pointed his lance against him, swearing by Him who kindles the morning, that if he made not away with the swiftness of the fly, and contented himself with escape as the best part of his booty, he would pierce his neck-vein with the spear, and make his offspring and friends mourn for him. Forthwith the fellow let go the halter of the camel, and ran apace, taking to his heels in hottest haste. Abu

122

Zayd said to me: "Seize her and mount her hump, for of the two boons, booty

and witness for the faith, she is one, and one woe is easier to bear than two. "

Said Al-Harith, son of Hammam: Then I was at loss, whether to

rebuke Abu Zayd, or thank him, and how to balance the benefit received from

him, against the damage endured. But it was as if someone had whispered to

him the secret of my breast, or he had divined what stirred in my heart, for he

accosted me with open brow, and indicted with a glib tongue:

O brother mine who bears up with my injury better than my brethren and own kinsfolk, If my yesterday has harmed thee, my to-day has brought thee joy. So forgive that for the sake of this, and spare me both thanks and blame. " Then he added: "I am hasty and thou art sluggish, how then should we agree? " Wherewith he turned away to cleave the ground, urging his steed to career, aye, what a career! But I tarried not to take seat on my beast, and return to my homestead, and after hap and mishap reached my tent-village.

(Twenty-seventh assembly, from Assemblies of Al-Hariri, translated

by F. Steingass, 1898)

1La

In this maqama, Al-Harith, the narrator or rather the pseudonarrator

relates one of the stories of our cavalier-hero, the witty and cunning Abu

Zayd. Al-Harith's camel went astray one night; he sets out on horseback in her

search. After a night and half a day of thorough search, and when the sun of

noon grows high, he feels the need to find a shelter under a tree. When he

does so, he perceives a wanderer near that same place. When the stranger

approaches, he recognizes him as Abu Zayd. He welcomes him and so forgets

his camel for a while. After asking Al-Harith the reason of his presence in

this lonely place, and being informed of the camel's story, he demands

permission to take a nap. Abu Zayd falls asleep and soon does Al-Harith.

When the latter wakes up at dusk, he realizes that Abu Zayd has gone with the

horse. Finally, the next morning, Al-Harith sees a camel-rider, waves his

garment in his direction. It is Abu Zayd riding the lost camel, and after some

violent altercations, Al-Harith recovers his camel, but loses his horse. Abu

Zayd is indeed the Arabic prototype of the ptcaro. Walter Allen defines the

picaresque as

any novel in which the hero takes a journey whose course plunges him into all sorts, conditions and classes of men(42),

while A. A. Parker defines the p(caro as 'rogue, roguish'; hence the picaresque

novels are traditionally 'romances of roguery'(43). Abu Zayd is a 'delinquent'

(Parker's term) who survives thanks to his cunning, wit and unscrupulousness.

And when Aboul Hussein and C. Pellat write that'le prototype du ptcaro, par

exemple, doit etre recherche dans la litterature arabe'(44), we know what they

have in mind: the magama. The Spanish literary historian, Angel Gonzalez

Palencia also affirms that

es sorprendente el parecido que tal tipo literario presenta con los de la novela picaresca, asunto que merece estudio(45).

124

The Spanish picaresque is known to have begun with the first yet

anonymous prototype, Lazarillo de Tormes in 1554, followed by Guzman

de Alfarache by Mateo Aleman (1547-1614? ) published in two separate

moments, 1599 for Part One and 1604 for Part Two. Having established

realism as the norm for later novels, it was immediately followed by

Cervantes's Don Quixote (Part One) in 1605. The affinities between the

picaresque and the magama are obvious enough. A parallel can be drawn

between, say, Lazarillo and Abu Zayd, between the narrator in the picaresque

and Al-Harith, between the cunning, wit and stratagems of both 'heroes',

between the wandering of the young Lazarillo, or for that matter Don Quixote

and Abu Zayd, even between Cide Hamete as narrator and Al-Harith(46). And

when the great historian, P. K. Hitti writes that 'early Spanish and Italian tales

of the realistic or the picaresque type display clear affinities with the Arabic

maqamat(my italics, 47), he again strengthens this long forgotten claim(48).

In the preface to his work, Al-Hariri says that the composition of the

text was a major task which he thought was beyond his capacities, and which

he had undertaken unwillingly(49). But like Cervantes in the prologue to Don

Quixote (with a five-century gap), he seems to know what to expect from his

work. After all, Abu Zayd's boasting represents in many ways the 'author's

estimate of the compositions which he places in the mouth of his hero', as Al-

Hariri's translator, Thomas Chenery writes. Hence, despite this masked

modesty, he aimed at surpassing his 'master' Al-Hamadani, of whom he

speaks at length in the prologue, and as again the same Chenery writes,

'believed himself to have surpassed his model'(50). This of course recalls the

discussion between Don Quixote and Ginds dc Pasamonte:

125

- es tan bueno, respondio Gines, que mal ano para "Lazarillo de Tormes", y para todos cuentos de aquel gdnero se han escrito o escribieren ... (my italics, 1,22).

If this is the case of some 'influence' of the Magamat on the Spanish

picaresque and their 'echoes' in Don Quixote, how did these Arabic

narratives reach Moorish Spain?

We know from several historians that the Maqamat were known in Moorish

Spain as from Charichi's time (he who comes from Jerez, d. 1222), but because

of the lack of more 'preuves textuelles, il fallait penser ä une transmission

orale par le canal des Morisques'(51). Juan Vernet and A. Kilito also confirm

that the Maqamat were known in Spain in Cherichi's time(52). But the place

which played a crucial role in the transmission of Arabic literature to Europe

was undoubtedly Toledo, Uritiere de toute la science arabe', and which,

J. Vernet adds, 'fut consideree comme 1'endroit adequat pour les etudier(53).

But Toledo alone does not suffice, for the need for Arabic speakers was vital.

The Moriscos would then fill the gap, along some learned Arabic-speaking

Jews. Moreover, these Moriscos knew not only the chivalric narratives of the

Wisigoths but also those of the Arabs(54).

126

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR

1. See J. KRITZECK, Peter the Venerable and Islam, 1964, P. Werrie, 'L'ecole des traducteurs de Tolede', BABEL, 15/4,1969, pp. 202-212.

2. J. VERNET, Ce que la culture doit aux Arabes d'Espagne, 1985 (1978), pp. 186-7.

3. See J. KRITZECK, op. cit, pp. 11-62, J. VERNET, op. cit, pp. 186-7, and W. M. WATT, Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe, 1972, pp. 73-77.

4. This work, probably from the Arabic of Hunain Ibn Ishaq, is much discussed by several scholars. See for instance, J. FITZMAURICE- KELLY, A History of Spanish Literature, 1898, p. 16, and D. METLITZKI, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England, 1977.

5. See for instance J. FIT, ZMAURICE-KELLY, op. cit, D. METLITZKI, op. cit, A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, Historia de la literatura aräbio-espaiiola, 1928.

i 6. J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY, op. cit. and A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, op. cit.

7. J. VERNET, op. cit.

8. Ibid.

9. R. WELLEK & A. WARREN, Theory of Literature, 1963 (1949), p. 50. Literary history as known does not include the Arabic detour, nor does it for that matter touch upon non-Western literatures, especially the Moorish one in Moorish Europe. It is indeed strange, that despite the substantial contributions of Spanish literature to those of Europe- from France and Britain to Russia- no literary historian has, to my knowledge, clearly spelled out these Moorish contributions. This should have been done long ago. When H. LEVIN for instance asked why it was Spain that gave the' world' the first modern novel, he did not provide an answer. See his Gates of Horn, 1963, p. 41. On the other hand, the need for a larger or wider scope for literary history is felt more and more and is indeed necessary, after R. WELLEK & A. WARREN's appeal as well as that of C. GUILLI N in his Literature as System, 1971, W. M. WATT, op. cit, and J. VERNET, op. cit.

10. See for instance A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, op. cit, P. K. HITTI, History of the Arabs, 1937, J. VERNET, op. cit, and lately Hasan MAHMUD 'ABBAS, Hay Ben Yagdhan and Robinson Crusoe: A Comparative Study (Arabic edition), 1983.

11. A. A. PARKER, Literature and the Delinquent: The Picaresque Novel in Spain and Europe, 1599.1753,1967, p. 137.

127

12. That there is an Arabic picaresque should no longer be doubted. What remains to be done is to bring the Maqamat into the forum of literary history alongside the picaresque as it is known in Europe.

13. C. GUILLEN, op. cit, p. 174.

14. R. WELLEK & A. WARREN, op. cit, p. 50.

15. E. MERIMEE, A History of Spanish Literature, 1931, p. 75. But his claim that it is 'the first genuinely Spanish novel' (p. 76) is less certain. Not only is the Cifar not 'genuinely Spanish'; it is also far from being a novel.

16. Chaldean has usually been identified with Arabic. Yet, there is one exception. Michelant, we are told, connects it to... Greek. See C. P. WAGNER, 'The Sources of El Cavallero Cifar', REVUE HISPAIJIQUE, 10,1903, pp. 5-104 (esp. note 2, p. 11), and also A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, op. cit.

i 17. See A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, op. cit, p. 345, J. B. TREND, 'Spain and Portugal', in The Legacy of Islam, eds Sir Thomas ARNOLD & A. GUILLAUME, 1931, pp. 1-39, and R. M. WALKER, 'The Genesis of El Libro Del Cavallero Zifar', MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW, vol. 62,1967, pp. 61-69.

18. R. M. WALKER, op. cit. and J. B. TREND, op. cit.

19. J. B. TREND, op. cit, p. 37 and A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, op. cit, pp. 316-7.

20. For more details see R. M. WALKER, op. cit.

21. This is very similar to what Cervantes does in Don Quixote, while the term 'filosofo' should be connected to Cervantes' naming of Cide as 'filosofo mahometano'(II, 53).

22. R. M. WALKER, op. cit, pp. 63-4.

23. Ibid, p. 69. ii 24. E. MERIMEE, op. cit, p. 75.

25. R. M. WALKER, 'Did Cervantes know the Cavallero Zifar? ', BULLETIN OF HISPANIC STUDIES, 49,1972, pp. 120-127.

26. Ibid.

27. R. M. WALKER, 'The Genesis of El Libro Del Cavallero Zifar', op. cit.

28. A. KILITO, Les s6ances, ricits et codes culturels chez Hamadhani et Hariri, 1983, p. 12.

29. R. BLACHERE, 'Introduction', in Al-Hamadani, choix de Maqamat, 1957, pp. 1-53.

30. Ibid.

128

31. B. E. PERRY, The Ancient Romances, 1967, p. 206.

32. T. CHENERY, The Assemblies of Al-Hariri, vol. 1,1867, G. STEINGASS, The Assemblies of AI-Hariri, vol. 2,1898 , and W. J. PRENDERGAST, The Maqamat, 1915.

33. T. CHENERY, 'Introduction', op. cit., and K. SLATTER GITTES, 'The Canterbury Tales and the Arabic Frame Tradition', PMLA, 98/2, 1983, pp. 237-251.

34. B. E. PERRY, op. cit.

35. J. KRISTEVA, Semiotik6,1969.

36. Ibid.

37. K. SLATTER GITTES, op. cit.

38. R. S. WILLIS, The Phantom Chapters of Don Qutjote, 1953, T. CHENERY, op. cit, p. 37, and M. FOUCAULT, The Order of Things, 1970 (1966).

39. A. Kilito, op. cit.

40. Ibid.

41. A. H. HIAM et C. PELLAT, Sheherazade personnage litteraire, 1976.

42. W. ALLEN, The English Novel, 1958, p. 32.

43. A. A. PARKER, op. cit.

44. A. H. HIAM et C. PELLAT, op. cit.

45. A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA, op. cit.

46. See K. SLATTER GITTES, op. cit, B. E. PERRY, op. cit. and T. CHENERY, op. cit.

47. P. K. HI'ITI, op. cit.

48. To my knowledge, no one has taken this claim seriously, in the elaboration of a serious, 'supernational' literary history or for that matter, in the history of the novel.

49. See Prologue, in T. CHENERY, op. cit.

50. Ibid, and Cervantes vis-a-vis Lazarillo de Tormes, see C. GUILLEN, op. cit., and recently, W. L. REED, An Exemplary History of the Novel: The Quixotic Versus the Picaresque, 1981.

10, 51. M. ASIN PALACIOS, quoted by J. VERNET, op. cit, p. 351.

52. J. VERNET, op. cit, and A. KILITO, op. cit.

129

53. J. VERNET, op. cit, and also in this respect, W. M. WATT, op. cit.

54. Ibid.

130

CHAPTER FIVE: DON QUIXOTE AND THE NOVEL

Don Quixote has often, if not always, been related to the epic, a die-

hard Renaissance product, but rarely so to the picaresque or the chivalric

romance. E. C. Riley has recently shown that while the chivalric romance had

in fact historically dominated other romances (sentimental, pastoral,

Moorish), it had almost never obtained the attention it commanded in

connection with Don Quixote as the first modern novel(1). The'epic theory'

is not very convincing even though several references and allusions to it are

made in Don Quixote, being so to speak the product of Euro-Classicism.

J. Bernstein has recently shown the limits of this theory as epitomized by

Lukäcs's work(2). Though there are grounds for holding that the origins of the

novel stem from romance and/or the picaresque, the latter have little to do

with the epic. On the contrary, I shall try to show that although, as is now

being held, the novel owes much to chivalric romance and picaresque, it

owes much more to travel literature/historiography and Arabic narrative-

writing such as Moorish historical narratives and the Maqamat. This point

has recently been defended and ingeniously substantiated by P. G. Adams

whose timely work, along with Watson's pave the way for theoretical changes

as regards the history of the novel(3).

131

SECTION A: Don Quixote and the epic: Lukäcs 's 'epic theory' reconsidered.

In his The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode sees the history of the

novel as the history of forms rejected or modified, either by parody, manifesto

or simply neglect. One of his main arguments is that literature is 'history', with

a beginning and an end, as say Fielding would call his book a 'history' rather

than a 'life'(4). Here, a major difference can be drawn between history as

narrative, as narrative of events and processes (but not history as

recapitulation) and epic as provider and carrier of chronicity; the latter joins

history as recapitulation, for both deal with chronicity. On the other hand,

history was the provider of significance, and this is of utmost relevance and

importance when it comes to discuss the origins of the novel. Let us then see

what F. Kermode has to say about history:

History, so considered, is a fictive substitute for authority and tradition, a maker of concords between past, present, and future, a provider of significance to mere chronicity. Everything is relevant if its relevance can be invented, even the scattered informations of the morning newspaper. The novel imitates historiography in this: anything can take its important place in the concord, a beerpull in a Joycean pub, a long-legged Indian wasp (my italics, 5).

The epic, in its verse form, language and spirit, including the chanson

de geste for instance, reflected some sort of 'history' and 'national' feeling(6).

As it developed and became, to borrow G. Jackson's term, more 'refined' or

sophisticated, the sense of history diminished. Once written down, it became

more like a work of literature than a historical document. In its

interconnection with romance, the result took the shape of some sort of

neglect of the historical aspect and more use of what GJackson calls

'pseudohistory'(7). Let us take a clear example. The Cantar de m% Cid is

seen as the 'Spanish national epic', yet it has nothing whatsoever to do with

the picaresque or Don Quixote for that matter. Still there is one more point to

132

note: the transition from epic to romance, something too often neglected,

especially by Lukacs. On this, W. P. Ker is most pertinent :

No later change in the forms of fiction is more than the twelfth-century revolution, from which all the late forms and constitutions of romance and novel are in some degree or other derived(my italics, 8).

Thus, and it should be stressed, one of the first conditions of progress

in novel-writing was the author's freedom to reflect and select his material

and ideas beyond and away from the too limited and somehow old region of

epic tradition, adds Ker, precisely around the 12th century, as in Parzival.

These twelfth-century romance-writers chose their subject-matter in a fashion

similar to modern writers, with no relation whatsoever with epic prescriptions:

in short, they were, as W. P. Ker put it:

very much like their descendants of say the seventeenth century, as in Cervantes or Shakespeare... (as well) as... in most things the antithesis to Homer, in narrative(9).

It is now clear that romance both as genre and as it is structured, differs

widely from the epic on which that scholar Lukäcs talks at length, and to

whom I now turn.

Lukäcs's aesthetics of the novel is based on two premises: epic and

totality. He views the novel as a form of die grosse Epik (The Great Epic), a

reference to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , as Hegel did before him in his

Aesthetics(1O). For Lukäcs, modern man and modern life have destroyed the

meaning of Greek life, which was total or a totality that was all-inclusive, and

outside which there is nor could there be a higher reality(11). In short, modern

man is not at ease, or at home with or in the world, as, say, Homer's men and

women were. Hence, the literary form that best expresses this 'transcendental

homelessness', as Lukäcs writes, is the novel. He then draws a distinction

between two forms of totality: 'extensive totality' of life and 'intensive

totality' of essence. Thus the epic and the novel, he goes on to write, give form

133

to the extensive totality of life, while the drama gives form to the intensive

totality of essence. In other words, both the epic and the novel deal with 'total

life', while the drama is concerned with essence. Now, the question that

should be asked, alongside G. H. R. Parkinson is, what has the novel got to do

with totality ? Parkinson's own answer is that totality remains an aim, an ideal,

and I would say that it is a rather vague concept and of little contribution to

the novel problematic(12).

First, the novel is not 'the epic of an age where the extensive totality is

no longer sensuously given'(13), nor does it seek to discover and construct a

totality of life now mysteriously hidden. The novel seeks, if it seeks anything,

fragments of life, instants of existence, and therefore deals mostly with slices

of life ('tranches de vie'), whether we speak of Camus's L'etranger or of

Kafka's Trial. To write that the hero of the epic is the community as an

organic totality, echoing Hegel(14), while the hero of the novel is an

individual who arises from enstrangement thus becoming a 'problematic

individual' is of no great relevance to a possible comprehension of the novel

and/or of novel-writing. The individual has always been problematic in the

sense of 'searching oneself within the self, vis-a-vis the others and the world

(truth, etc. ) since Gilgamesh up to the present times with, say, Meursault in

L'etranger or Don Quixote earlier despite a structural distinction in terms of

value systems between the individual and the social. And if the heroes of the

novel have tended to appear as or to becomes seekers(15), they were simply

'following' a previous tradition, for this has also been the case for quite a few

heroes before the emergence of the novel, even in the Arabic Magamat.

Hence, for Lukäcs, what the hero discovers is that life offers no more than a

glimpse of meaning, or put differently, what the novel offers and expresses is

an insight into existence, and that meaning can never wholly penetrate reality.

Thus, he adds, irony becomes an obligation as it were, one of the typical

134

features of the novel. Moreover, Lukacs writes that the novel contains a 'self-

transcendence' of subjectivity, which means that the novelist sees the

distinction between subject and object as abstract and limited. He seems then

to suggest that the novelist has 'some kind of intimation of the Hegelian idea

that subject and object are really one'(16), and that aloneness, i. e. the feeling

of being'forsaken by God'(Lukäcs's own terms) is typical of the novel-form in

general. To substantiate his claim, he turns to Don Quixote whom he sees as a

hero, and who because he seems to think that what ought to be must be, falls

into what Lukäcs sees as the narrowness of the soul as a certain manifestation

of human solitude. Hence, it is no surprise that he selects Don Quixote as the

prototype for his study of the novel, or rather as the paradigm of this kind of

novel, but does not select it as the novel tout court(17). His emphasis lies on

the hero of Cervantes's narrative, not the text itself. After all, Don Quixote as

studied by Lukäcs appears to be related mostly to a type of psychological

novel and placed within the history of the human psyche rather than to the

precursor of the novel. In his view, the novel is by definition realistic, in the

sense of 'reproducing the concrete, extensive reality of historical

existence'(18), and like Hegel, Goethe, Schiller and the duo Marx/Engels, he

maintains a strong nostalgia for Ancient Greece in which he sees a human

fulfillment which in many ways should be restored(19). In other words, the

novel is the product of the epic which now cannot be written as in Homer's

time, or is simply the'modem epic', something rather hard to go along with.

It is a 'common strategy' writes J. Bernstein 'to place the novel against

the background of earlier narrative forms, above all, the Homeric epic'(20),

Lukäcs being the best example. This has led many scholars interested in the

'origins ' of the novel to disagree with him, namely N. Frye , F. Kermode,

P. V. Zima and others(21). First, the epic is oral though its orality does not end

where the boundary of a 'tradition of writing' begins ,a tradition, writes

135

J. Bernstein, from which the novel is excluded(22). Secondly, the Homeric

texts are known to be anonymous, something to be remembered for the

following reason.

In reading them, there is no point in trying to comprehend whether we

are dealing with a reliable or unreliable narrator; this in the epic context is

simply remote. Lukäcs's historicist approach led him to travel back to the epic

text, a world that cannot supposedly be interpreted and is both homogeneous

and undifferentiated. However, his conception of the ancient epic'functions to

distinguish the novel from everything that preceded it' instead of

'distinguishing the epic from everything that followed it'(23). One way of

disagreeing with Lukäcs would be to join Pierre Valery Zima in saying that

the novel in the first place 'rely ve de la culture du signe'(24), thus going back

to the idea often forgotten that the epic belongs to an oral tradition. As to the

question of irony and the novel, he seems to have borrowed or rather accepted

it uncritically from F. Schlegel(25). First, his view that irony constitutes the

'normative mentality of the novel' is not very convincing. That irony is often

or always present in the novel can hardly be denied, but it is not the normative

mentality, for how can we then explain the presence of irony in the Arabic

Magamat, namely those of Al-Hariri, or for that matter in some of the

picaresque narratives such as Guzman de Alfarache and Lazarillo de

Tormes ? Secondly, he claims that irony contributes toward the'objectivity of

the novel' while this 'objectivity' in the case of Don Quixote was provided by

Moorish historiography and culture. Third and last, ironic consciousness

supposedly the 'highest freedom that can be achieved in a world without God'

seems untenable, or to borrow Bernstein's more subtle phrase, the 'least

convincing'(26). In Don Quixote there is some form of ironic consciousness,

precisely in Don Quixote's awareness and self-gratifying injudicious remarks,

136

but in a world definitely with God(27). A brief turn to Don Quixote and

Lukacs's'epic theory' is now necessary.

As 'written' in Arabic and in Toledo, by Cide Hamete, historiador and

escudrinador puntual, Don Quixote is, we shall see later, part of a

'translation' tradition or, say, pseudotranslation, such as Rabelais's Gargantua

or Voltaire's Zadig. What looks faulty in this 'epic theory' is this: Cervantes's

narrative is not merely a parody of chivalric models(28) but also a parody of

Arabic models too. On the other hand, Cervantes's 'realism', contrary to what

Bernstein claims, cannot be regarded as the 'result of Don Quixote's parodic

reductions'(29). On the contrary, it owes much to its focus on the creation of

types in, say, the manner of Al-Hariri or Mas'udi, and its use of specific

language and narrating techniques similar to those of Arab historiographers

and Magamat writers. Just as Arab narrative-writing is basically

historiographical, so is Don Quixote as announced in chapter 2 of Part One:

Quidn duda, sino que en los venideros tiempos, cuando salga a luz la verdadera historia de mis famosos hechos, que el sabio que los escribiere no ponga... (my italics)

Thus a historian will write of Don Quixote's deeds, giving the

narrative the form of a historic verdadera ( true history or story) although

several references and allusions to the epic (Amadis, etc. ) are made in the text.

But we are told, the 'enchanter' or sabio could be anyone:

jOh, tü, sabio encantador, quienquiera que seas, a quien ha de tocar el ser cronista desta peregrina historia...!

And it is in chapter 8 that the story based on the Manchegan archives ends,

followed by the Toledan story, the discovery of the Arabic cartapacio, its

purchase and translation into Castilian by a morisco-aljamiado(30). From

then on, Don Quixote will take the shape of an 'Arabic narrative' in Castilian

translation penned by Cide Hamete, its 'original' author, relayed later by

137

Cervantes, through a chain of transmitters or narrators. Thus Lukäcs's 'epic

theory' as applied to Don Quixote does not hold.

138

SECTION B: Don Quixote and Romance.

There is no intention, here, to go as far back as Ancient Greece,

though I shall touch upon it here and there, in order to discuss the rise of

romance. The reason is that the history of prose narratives is a long and

complex one, from the early Greeks to medieval times. It is so far accepted

that prose narratives, namely Greek romances were found before Christ and

developed around the second and third century A. D. with Xenophon and

others. But it is medieval romance in connection with the rise of the

picaresque and later the modern novel, that draws attention. It was only from

the start of the 14th century that Spanish romances began to flourish, though

there existed French romances as early as the 13th century, one good example

being Lancelot-Graal which was rendered into Spanish soon afterwards. But

despite this one century-long gap between the two areas, it was in Iberia, with

the Libro del Caballero Cifar, that the first romance worthy of that name

appeared. Attempting a history of the novel in his Esthetique et theorie du

roman, M. Bakhtin goes as far back as Apuleius's Golden Ass, omitting as he

does to pass by Spanish territory(31). Although written in a totally different

perspective from Bakhtin's, P. G. Walsh's work takes us back to Roman times,

claiming that there was a Roman novel, epitomized by Petronius's Satyricon

and Apuleius's Golden Ass(32). However, I believe alongside such scholars

as Claudio Guillen and Harry Levin that it was in and from Spain that later

literary developments of great importance would spark off what is now known

as the novel. One way of making this point clear is to start with a diachronic

analysis of the Spanish'novel'.

The Spanish pastoral romance to begin with, can be dated back to the

16th century with the appearance of Arcadia by Sannazaro in 1502. But it

was Jorge de Montemayor's Diana, published at the very end of the

139

century(1599) that can be called the first Spanish pastoral romance, in the

words of D. B. Randall(33). This same scholar sees Diana as the precursor of

Don Quixote. Robert Southey for his part believes that the pastoral romance,

including this one, is as artfully structured as the chivalric romances(34). One

of the reasons for thinking so is that Diana contains a Moorish tale,

Abencerraje (discussed briefly above). On the other hand, Andrew V. Ettin

sees the latter as used to content certain needs, among which the embodiment

of ideals and satisfactions, ways of life and attitudes, nature and human

values. For him, one of the major functions of the pastoral is 'to express a

distinction between experiences'. Thus, the pastoral world might, he adds,

'occasion a defense or a condemnation of the ordinary way of life'(35). And

because it is all the most difficult to call a work 'pastoral or even indicate the

appearance of pastoral elements in it', he goes on, it is only possible to say 'in

what respects the material is'. The pastoral is, he concludes, a genre and a

mode(36). Don Quixote, it can be seen, contains numerous pastoral features

throughout, namely in such scenes as those involving the shepherdess

Marcela(I, 13), Dulcinea(II, 8,9,10), etc. However, these pastoral aspects are

rather submerged by other ones, notably the chivalric.

Spanish writers of chivalric romances flourished at a time when this

sort of literature was rather popular and caught the imagination of the readers

since they often, if not always, dealt with great chivalric deeds, lengthy and

weary battles against the Moors for instance, and other events usually related

to Christianity(37). These romances with their chivalry, in itself a new

hitherto neglected element in the history of the novel, claimed to be historical

or rather masqueraded as history, something which Cervantes later parodies in

Don Quixote. Hence, it appears that the romance was simply considered as

the genre historia; the latter being in fact deeply ingrained in the literary

tradition of the country and elsewhere in Western Europe. The early romance

140

of Moorish Spain was known to its readers as Latinus only to be contrasted

with Arabic, which language and culture knew the former as Al-lathini(38).

Romance as a genre is thus characterized by conventions, motifs and

archetypes, while some of its motifs can be described as follows: the

existence of the mysterious challenge or call, the first sight of the beloved, the

lonely journey across hostile territory and the fight against the foe, either

humans or monsters. What is interesting here is that it is this sort of

experience that creates these conventions because it cannot be told otherwise.

Form as it were submits to the subject-matter, and therefore the same sort of

experience re-creates the same conventions as John Stevens explains(39).

And Don Quixote, as we shall see later, re-creates several of these. Stevens

for instance thinks that romance is permanent and does not end say, in the

late Renaissance, whereas Percy G. Adams sees a clear demarcation line

between romance and novel. The former affirms that romance was 'diluted

into history', while being rather doubtful as to when and to what 'degree any

particular romance-writer thought he was writing history'(40). What looks

tenable is that Don Quixote as a novel borrowed several of its qualities from

romance. Let us see how.

Contrary to J. Stevens, P. G. Adams is quite adamant concerning the

romance-novel relationship. Asking himself the question 'where does the

novel start and the romance stop ? ', he begins by putting into question 'the

Auerbach-Watt mimetic approach which has for a generation dominated

English-language criticism of prose fiction and has led to a false separation of

that fiction into two opposing genres, the "adult" novel overshadowing-wing

the "childish" romance(41). What is noteworthy in Adams's work is the

connection he makes between romance, travel literature and the novel. For

him the novel borrowed substantially from travel narratives or from the

histories and geographies that depended on them. One such good instance , he

141

writes, is Defoe's The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the famous

Captain Singleton(1720) and Of Captain Misson(1728), both of which

include'pirate stories', to use Adams's terms. Ending his argument, he affirms

the existence of a close relationship between the hero who journeys in fiction

and the protagonist of travel literature, in addition to what he sees as the 'close

structural similarities in the two forms'(42).

Romance, writes Gillian Beer, tends to use and re-use known and

popular stories at length, thereby reassuring the reader and the writer through

its familiarity. This scholar sees this kind of literature as too often and

exclusively associated with medieval times, and affirms that'as is known goes

actually far beyond that time, that is the twelfth-century Europe'. The term

romance in the early Middle Ages meant the new vernacular of the regions in

question, i. e. all the languages derived from Latin, in contradistinction to

Latin itself. Hence, enromancier, romancar, romanz meant to translate.

Translated into the vernacular from the Arabic, Don Quixote for instance

imitates romance stricto sensu. On the other hand, the term romance also

signified 'to compose' in the vernacular, while the work itself was given the

name romanz, roman, romance, romanzo(43). Later the meaning extended to

include the qualities of this vernacular literature, while in French writes

G. Beer, romant or roman, 'courtly romance in verse', rather meant 'popular

book'. She claims at first that the romance is European in form only to add the

disclaimer that

although I have claimed that the romance is a European form, from the time of the Crusades, its achievement has been affected by the culture of the East... particularly by the Arabian Nights(my italics, 44).

From another angle one can see that romance deals with matters of conduct

made explicit by the social status of the knight who rises up from a lower

position to that of a person with high moral and often religious duties. Here,

142

Christianity and the Crusades have a special effect on these duties(45), an

aspect not to be dismissed when dealing with Don Quixote. But let us dwell

for one more moment on the early romance.

In neo-classical theory, entanglement (French entrelacement), and the

multiplicity of episodes characterized the romance(46), for all the latter does

is to compile adventure upon adventure, adds fights and love-stories here and

there and finishes with disasters. Thus in the romance, names come to play a

certain role, or have a special function, more often than not a generic one. It

must be said that Ian Watt's claim that naming proper started with Defoe is

rather unconvincing. One has only to read such romances as the Cifar to

realize that, apart from, say, earlier Arabic narratives. If, on the other hand,

writes B. E. Perry, Greek romance was written in the 'basic structural pattern of

narration, which is also that of historiography, biography, and epic'(47),

Brunetiere also writes in a similar direction by confirming the relation of

romance to historiography. The Byzantine epic and romance, B. E. Perry adds,

begin with the chanson de geste, basically dealing with wars against Muslims

of the Eastern part of the Empire, centering on a major hero-warrior, Digenes

Akritas in the tenth century(48). A connection can be made with another

romance. Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach for instance, shows 'the deep

penetration of fragments of Eastern knowledge even among those who were

not formally concerned with learning', W. T. H. Jackson tells us(49). This

romance, unlike the other Grail stories, fuses heroism with the love of God as

the last of earthly inspirations; this is also reminiscent of the twelfth-century

Arabic The Story of Hay Ben Yagdhän(5O). Interestingly enough, this same

Parzival much like other narratives is said to have been corrected from the

French Chretien of Troyes with the help of Kyot of provence'who has offered

us the true story' from the Arabic(51). This could perhaps suffice to explain

the creeping influence of Arabic or Eastern culture in the Parzival.

143

The distinction between novel and romance will later become a matter

of balance of attention, for if the novel seems to be more preoccupied with

representation and interpretation of a certain world, the romance is more

concerned with making the hidden dreams of that world apparent. Because

romance is always concerned with the realization of particular desires, it thus

takes several forms: the pastoral, the heroic, the mysterious, the exotic and the

passionate. But it is the distinction first of all between romance tout court and

the chivalric narrative on the one hand, and that between romance and epic on

the other that is of prime concern here. As Ortega y Gasset reminds us, the

'novel' of chivalry lacked one major trait of the epic, that is the 'belief in the

reality of what is told'(52), for the essential aspect of the romance in general is

that its experiences are idealistic. In general, one can say that the romance

developed during the 12th and mostly during the 13th century, while the

chivalric narrative came out of it. While the epic is far older, it cannot be said

that it is connected to the medieval romance, despite what Perry writes:

'romance and epic are basically the same genre'(53).

The main differences between romance and epic are elsewhere. If the

epic reflected its link or relation with collective or community feelings and

history, it took a different path from that of romance. In general, the epic

tended to become or appear more like literary pieces than historical

documents. E. Vinaver, for instance, thinks that while romance writers valued

the coherent ordering of material, they avoided any 'regression' or 'repetition

of the "epic" kind'(54). Moreover, the theme of romance is usually

homogeneous and orderly, much more so than that of the epic. Yet the

essential novelty of the romance lies not much in its breaking away from the

medieval view of literary art as in its use of the psychological aspects of

medieval man(55). The other difference between romance and epic is that the

144

former conveys some notion of mystery, fantasy, while the latter suggests

bravery, 'weight and solidity'(56). In fact, this solidity has nothing to do with

aesthetic appreciation, but rather much to do with historical valuation. The

epic's relation with history is not always easy to draw though several scholars

have suggested that it is quite real. On the other hand, 17th and 18th-century

critics already noted the distinction between epic and romance, but were too

extreme in seeing them as opposite and mutually exclusive forms. W. P. Ker

thinks that romance should be included in epic, while Bossu we are told, sees

romance as one of the constituent elements of epic as well as one of its

'enemies'(57). On the contrary, E. C. Riley is quite categorical. In his view,

romance is autonomous, something that is being now 'more readily

recognized'(58). In The Secular Scripture, N. Frye writes that when the novel

was established in the 18th century, it found a reading public quite familiar

with prose romance. In his opinion, the novel was 'a realistic displacement of

romance'. Don Quixote is thus seen as 'the supreme example of the realistic

parody of romance-which signalized the death of one kind of fiction and the

birth of another kind'(59).

If, following the much earlier N. Frye, medieval romance has elements

of both epic and allegory(60), it certainly developed away from them.

Because the 'chivalric is as sharply opposed to the picaresque as the pastoral

romance to the worldly novella'(61), this contradistinction between the first

two types should now be further elaborated for a better grasp of Cervantes's

rich narrative.

145

SECTION C: Don Quixote and the Picaresque/Magamat.

Lazarillo de Tormes, which appeared anonymously in 1554, has

decidedly initiated the picaro tradition in Europe, followed by Guzmän de

Alfarache written by Mateo Alemän around the years 1599-1604. With these

two narratives, the idealistic 'novel' declined only to disappear a few years

later. A. A. Parker writes that after these two texts, realism became the norm of

the Spanish novel, and that after Don Quixote was published in 1604-5(Part

One), no pastoral narrative was published after 1608. What is actually

intriguing is the short-lived picaresque tradition, for the last one worthy of

that label, Estebanillo Gonzalez, came out in 1646. And it is in the rest of

Europe that this tradition survived, well until Defoe and Smollett's times(62).

Thus, a genetically unknown genre, writes Robert Alter, starts a genuine

picaresque tradition, expanding well beyond the shores of Renaissance

Spain(63). Obviously, very few European scholars have hitherto made the link

between the Spanish picaresque and the Arabic Maqamat(64).

Don Quixote, I have argued so far, developed away from the epic,

borrowing from romance, and can be considered the last of the Spanish

chivalric novels. However, it also borrowed from the picaresque novels and

tradition, being for that matter contemporary to Guzman de Alfarache whose

first part appeared in 1599, five or six years only before Don Quixote (Part

One). The picaresque type concerns a boy or young man who lives off other

people's money and belongings, goes begging and uses his wit to come out of

difficult situations. The picaro then symbolizes the summit of human

hypocrisy; this comes out most evidently in Guzman and the Magamat.

When Don Quixote travels through lands and places, he shows several

features of the picaro, especially in such scenes as that where he walks out of

the inn with a toothpick as though he ate his fill. On the other hand, and

146

because 'le picaro etant la negation vivante de cet honneur externe'(65), Don

Quixote reverses that completely by precisely putting up a face where honra

and caballeria take the prime value. Thus Don Quixote embodies both the

picaresque and its negation; or to put it differently, imitates the picaresque (to

some degree) and counters it by reacting against it.

As is known, the picaresque arose as a reaction to romance, by

depicting a non-idealistic life where

the hero takes a journey whose course plunges him into all sorts, conditions, and classes of men(66).

If the picaresque is an antiromance, it is also a mixed mode, to borrow Wicks's

phrase. Hence, genres arise as a reaction to previous genres: the picaresque

versus romance, and the 'novel' versus the picaresque. Don Quixote as the

first modem novel, writes Wicks, is a

good example of mixture... It is in many ways the funnel through which pre-novelistic narrative types filter into the mixture that will culminate in what we call the novel(67).

This is also shared by D. B. Randall who writes :

The elements of the pastoral romance, as well as those of the picaresque, Moorish tale, and chivalric romance, were absorbed and transmuted in the Spanish narrative which came to England next(68).

The Magamat, as already noted, are very similar to the picaresque.

First, they deal with a cavalier-hero who travels extensively, living off others'

foods and money, cunningly extorting things from them. Second, the stories

are always narrated by a pseudo-narrator, AI-Harith for instance in Hariri's

work. Abu Zayd, the Arab plcaro is witty, knowledgeable, hypocritical, and

full of stratagems. The Spanish plcaro is basically identical: 'evil living',

vicious, deceitful, dishonourable and shameless(69). Having already made the

link between the two picaresque traditions, the Arabic being by far older, I

now wish, bearing in mind this very point, to relate Don Quixote to both of

them, though literary history ignores the older picaresque tradition.

147

Don Quixote (1604/5-1615) appeared at a time when the picaresque

narrative was popular and holding firm ground, or at worst establishing itself

firmly. But it also came, bearing in itself several features of the picaresque, as

a response to the challenge of this same picaresque as C. Guillen has shown.

What C. Guillen calls countergenre is basically what the Formalists had

already noted. But his is more systematized since no one before him, to my

knowledge, has ever applied it to the picaresque-Don Quixote relationship. In

his eyes, genres are by definition expandable since they incite the questioning

of literary works. On the other hand a countergenre assimilates and surpasses

a genre or the genre it counters. Don Quixote can thus be seen as a

countergenre to the picaresque, a counterstatement as Alastair Fowler calls it,

or counterfiction writes W. J. Reed(70). A literary key in fact, which

Cervantes in person puts in the mouth of Gines de Pasamonte, will surely

help:

-... y si la mia quiere saber, sepa que soy Gin6s de Pasamonte, cuya vida esta escrita por estos pulgares. -Dice verdad, dijo el comisario, que 61 mismo ha escrito su historia...

-Es tan bueno, respondio Gines, que mal ano para Lazarillo de Torures, y para todos cuantos de aquel gdnero se han escrito 0 escribieren... (I, 22)

Like Cervantes, we guess, Ginds is determined to equal and even surpass this

gdnero for which Lazarillo de Tormes stands. Ginds who writes down his

life or whose life in fact was written down by somebody else, is much like

Don Quixote whose life is written down by Cide Hamete. Moreover, Ginds

challenges in principle all the genres that exist or shall be written (se han

escrito o escribieren). In this, Ginds or rather Cervantes will succeed, as

would be later shown. Don Quixote is in fact more than anti-picaresque as it

were. It is the combination of several narrative types: epic, pastoral, chivalric,

picaresque. But because it imitates or emulates the structural and

presentational qualities of history, and because of the Moorish histor, this

148

narrative can perhaps unfold other dimensions hitherto unseen or simply

ignored by literary historians other than C. Guillen's type.

149

SECTION D: Don Quixote and Historiography.

In Ancient Greece, Asclepiades of Myrlea saw three types or

categories of narrative(71). In fact, prose narratives were not regarded as

plasmata (fiction) but rather and simply as pseudes historia (false history).

Don Quixote, we are told from the onset, is a verdadera historia, a sort of

alethes historia, whose author is Cide Hamete, sabio and historiador, arbbigo

y manchego(II, 22). But in reality, both author(Cervantes) and readers

regarded it as pseudohistory, and as from chapter 9 of Part 1, a

pseudotranslation. For Alastair Fowler, fictional narratives were indeed

presented as Histories, Adventures or Memoirs(72), while in Spain, the long

narrative was not called romance but historic, cronica or simply libro(73).

We should not perhaps forget that Don Quixote is a book about adventures by

land, which if one looks at S. Trenker's definition of romance closely, can shed

more light on, or even, answer the problematic:

the genus romance is composed materially of conventional adventures by land and sea and structurally consists of an accumulation of episodes each forming a narrative unity and whose sole link is the same hero(74).

Indeed, Don Quixote is, apart from land adventures, structurally a

suite or series of stories linked only by the presence of the same hero. But I

would rather agree with A. Fowler's and P. G. Adams's views. The latter aptly

writes:

the novel borrowed so many of its details from travel narratives or from the histories and geographies that depended on them(75).

To sustain his argument, P. G. Adams focuses on 'pirate and slave' literature,

namely Defoe's adventure-voyages that include 'pirate fictions', written

between 1720 and 1728. Thus, as he affirms, 'slaves and pirates were popular

in travel literature long before Robinson Crusoe... even before Don

Quixote'(76). What is certain then is that such stories which 'incidentally'

150

involve two precursor novels, started only from the mid-sixteenth century

when Algiers began its ascension in the Mediterranean as the leading corsair

power, a matter later known as Course, i. e. corsair rivalry over the region,

involving such nations as France, England, Spain, etc. Indeed, the Barbary

Corsairs, as P. G. Adams has noted,

seem to have fueled hosts of narratives in English, French, Italian and Spanish(my italics, 77).

There was, to put it more elaborately, a 'Barbary tradition' concerning

a particular type of literature or travel literature tout court, in which Algiers

among the Barbary Coast nests had a very special place, as P. G. Adams

acknowledges(78). To say now that the novel is merely related to travel

literature is a semi-truth, for in fact, following the same scholar, the

most obvious tie between travel literature and the novel is this "Romance" journey structure(79).

The matter of journeying as a structural component is one of the key ties with

the novel, for there seems to exist a close relationship between the hero who

sets forth in fiction and the 'hero' of travel literature(80). This is characteristic

of the memoir-narrative too.

Memoir-novels are usually entitled histories, which then meant

stories. Alternatively, another term was used: The Life of, Vida de, i. e.

biography, much as what the term ingenioso implies. In some memoir-

narratives, titles included such terms as life and adventures. Daniel Defoe

could be a good example. He wrote for instance, The Life and Strange

Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, written by

himself. While the pseudo-memoir can be recounted both in the first and third

persons, the memoir-novel is recounted by an observer, an omniscient

narrator, or a historian(81). Moreover, the memoir-novel is episodic much as

the picaresque or the Quixotic. While the latter is hostile to romance and the

151

heroic(epic), while it claims to represent the real and shows the two

protagonists encountering 'funny' adventures during their peregrinations, the

former is the model of travel literature(82). By the same token, this reveals the

picaresque and Don Quixote as memoir-novels. Much of, to give it its full

title, El ingenioso hildalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha indeed recalls the

memoir-novel, especially the first eight chapters: 'en un lugar de la Mancha de

cuyo nombre no me acordarme... '(I, 1). By the end of chapter 8, the first'

author's ' memory stops short, and Cide's Arabic text will resume the telling:

we move, therefore, from memory to text, from the memoir-type to the

historiographical.

As in Don Quixote with its knight-errant, the traveler in travel

literature is a kind of knight-errant too(83). In addition to his peregrinations

through lands, despite the 'hostile' creatures, and undergoing all the miserable

and unforeseen mishaps or misfortunes, he usually 'survives' it all. Likewise,

the picaro is a traveler too. In other words, the knight-errant of the romance,

the picaro-traveler and the traveler of travel literature is the same continuous

idea, a continuum: travel as a form of gaining knowledge, i. e. history, and

travel as topos. On the other hand, Don Quixote's name, qualified as

ingenioso, and to compare with his deeds, is to realize that he will peregrinate,

from la Mancha and his native village to Barcelona, and back again to his

village, where he dies. This is peculiar to travel literature and historiography.

Ibn Batuta's narratives for instance (1324-54) reveal his extensive travels

throughout the world. In fact he wrote his travels after his return to Tangiers,

via Spain, where he died(84). In sum, and as Jean-Yves Tadib has recently

noted, Don Quixote is a roman d'aventures. For as he writes, the adventure

novel is,

un genre litteraire, donc; un sous-genre du roman, ä moins qu'au contraire le roman d'aventures n'engendre, ne soutienne, ne fasse etre toutes les espkes de roman(my italics, 85).

152

In other words, the novel originates from the adventure (travel) narrative , for

the novel as fiction, as fictionalized history is measured and governed by

truth, which the very idea of travel seeks to gain. But history itself is in many

ways fiction(86). Don Quixote pretends to be a historia much as the memoir

pretends to be a real one. History has always merged facts with fiction, and

though pseudohistory is certainly used in epics, it is equally used in romance

and memoir-novels. After all, writing itself is a kind of travel, is history

too(87).

Thus, Don Quixote being a narrative that includes 'pirate' stories,

romance journeying and pieces of travel literature, should now be discussed in

the light of what has been said so far in relation to the Anglo-American

tradition's position as to the historiographical origins of the novel.

Let us see how Ian Watt for instance considers the question of the

origins of the novel, the novel per se and Don Quixote. His criteria have led

to one major consequence: Robinson Crusoe is regarded as the first founding

moment of the novel. Ian Watt started his discussion with a sound question: 'is

the novel a new literary form ? ', and assuming, as he wrote, that it was 'begun

by Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding', he went on to ask himself, how does it

differ from the prose fiction of the past for instance ? Thus the 'realism' of the

novels of Defoe and the others is 'closely associated with the fact that Moll

Flanders is a thief, Pamela a hypocrite, and Tom Jones a fornicator'. Basing

his study mainly and only on English novels, Watt went on to write down his

criteria, to be summed up as follows:

1. The primary criterion of the novel is its 'truth to individual experience', an experience which is always unique and therefore new. Hence, he wrote, 'Defoe and Richardson are the first writers in our literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend, or previous literature'(my italics).

153

2. Characterization and presentation of background, i. e. individualization and detailed presentation of the environment.

3. Individual identity and its relation with the 'epistemological status of proper names', and in literature 'this function of proper names was first fully established in the novel'.

4. Time and personal identity, that is as N. Frye is said to have written, 'the alliance of time and Western man', as opposed to previous literary traditions with timeless stories. Thus the novel is also distinguished from previous literature by its use of past experience as the cause of present action: this makes its plot'original', added Watt.

5. 'Space is the necessary correlative of time', i. e. 'verisimilitude. '

6. Technical characteristics.

As a concluding remark on the novel, Watt wrote that the novel had been

based 'on originality, on the novel; and it is therefore well named'(my italics,

88). Now, are any of these criteria lacking in Don Quixote ? The answer is

simply none. But Watt seemed to ignore it, and concentrated rather on

Robinson Crusoe, seeing it as the 'first novel', supposedly the first 'European

novel' as well as the first 'novel in the world'(89). How does then Anglo-

American criticism see Don Quixote if it is not a novel?

The Anglo-American tradition explores the relation between art and

life, while, it is known, the Formalists see them as mutual opposites. On the

other hand, while originality plays an important role in Anglo-American

criticism, it does not have a place in Formalism, only if it means a 'reworking

of the available devices' and not by a personal vision(90). However, Anglo-

American criticism sees form and technique as crucial (similar to the

Formalists), but only in the making of an artistic piece created to convey

meaning. As a consequence of these views, Anglo-American criticism

subordinates questions of order and manner of presentation (the formalist

syuzhet) to those of realism. But in areas of literary evolution for example,

they are 'far less interested in literary innovation than the Formalists'(91).

Now, let us take Watt's criteria one by one and apply them to Don Quixote.

154

The first criterion is adjunct to this: 'Defoe... did not take (their) plots from

mythology, history, legend, or previous literature'. I shall try to refute this

point by first point out that Don Quixote deals with living humans and their

individual 'truths' much as Robinson Crusoe's 'individual truth'. On the other

hand, while Don Quixote lives between reality and dream, between the real

and the unreal, while he belongs to a world of things reified and a world of

idea(l), Robinson Crusoe lives in a world of exotic renown, the mysterious

lands and the black natives, one of whom is amusingly enough named'Friday',

the Islamic holy day. In that sense, and taking Watt's own phrase, it is actually

Don Quixote that gives the reader some 'truth to individual experience', not

Robinson Crusoe, for if there were any 'truth' at all to be believed, it must be

that which comes out from the text, not from the story. After all Defoe's

experience, like some of Cervantes's own with the Barbary Corsairs, come out

in his other narratives just as Cervantes did in his plays and novelas

ejemplares. In fact both Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe have a

connection with 'previous literature', since both can be related to Arabic

literature. Moreover, Robinson Crusoe is history, since parts of it, as well as

The Adventures, and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton(1720) and

Of Captain Misson(1728) include pirate fictions, to borrow Adams's phrase,

and are linked to history, that is the Barbary Corsairs' deeds at a particular

time, including Defoe's time. He too was captured by the North-Africans(92).

The second criterion concerns characterization and presentation of background. In Don Quixote Cervantes depicts the environment in a more

talented way and style than Defoe (Chapters 1,2 of Part One, etc. ). A vivid, full picture of the places Don Quixote and Sancho visit offers itself, and the

characters are described by the author who can even know their

'pensamientos' in order to write down the 'atomos desta verdadera historia'.

The third one concerns individual identity and proper names as established

155

'first in the novel' (Watt). This is incorrect, for naming and its relation to the

'epistemological status of proper names' and its function per se was

established not only before Defoe, but also before what we now call the novel,

namely in Arabic literature and before. As to the question of identity, Don

Quixote does not lack it. Sancho and Don Quixote, for instance, tell us what

they think and how they see things. Their selves and thoughts come out to the

open, enabling the reader to discover their personalities(93). The fourth point

is related to the question of time and personal identity, in opposition to

'previous literary tradition' and 'timeless stories'(Watt). Now, time as a

'historical' moment for the beings that move around us in Don Quixote and as

a lived moment, can easily be seen in this narrative, from the beginning to the

end when the Don dies. On the contrary, Robinson Crusoe is 'timeless'(94).

As to the question of plot and originality, it is perhaps new if one looks

at the novel's premises of value (gold, labour), though Marthe Robert does not

see it that way:

The worst misunderstanding in this case is to base interpretation of the novel on a belief in the realistic dimensions of the plot. The novel can be understood only in terms of the different versions that are cleverly cast by their last author to underline the fictional nature of the actions(95).

Marthe Robert seems, therefore, to privilege those narratives with various

versions or some sort of ambiguity, taking Don Quixote as a paradigm. In

fact, Robinson Crusoe is in several ways, a book on savages and white lords,

a pre-colonial novel par excellence, or again in M. Robert's eyes,

tout ä cote du roman classique de 1'enfance... bien pres encore du conte de fees(96).

The last two criteria are obvious enough to deserve any comments here,

having already been discussed above. In short, Don Quixote is a novel, and

156

certainly not that 'of course, a novel can be excavated from the bulk of Don

Quixote', as J. Bernstein wrote(97).

As seen within the Anglo-American tradition, Don Quixote takes the

name of a collection of stories, no more. If historiography is behind the novel

they believe(98), then it is Robinson Crusoe that takes the honour of being

the precursor novel. It shall be argued in greater detail that Don Quixote too

is historiographical, and for reasons to be discussed below, namely the

functions of the Moorish historian, it is it and only it that deserves that honour

as several scholars have acknowledged. In fact, E. C. Riley has most

recently(1986) written that Don Quixote is historiographical since it is based

on the assumption that fiction is history, something that had been used before

Cervantes and after, eg. Robinson Crusoe(99).

157

TABLE

(Ref. to Amadis of Gaul) Ref. to novela morisca, pastoral

& picaresque

Part One 1

5

13

15

20

24

25

26

27

49

50

52

Part Two 1

6

34

38

44

Part One 5

6

22

25

74

158

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE

1. E. C. RILEY, Don Quixote, 1986, pp. 10ff.

2. J. BERNSTEIN, The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukacs, Marxism and the Dialectics of Form, 1984.

3. P. G. ADAMS, Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel, 1983, G. WATSON, The Story of the Novel, 1979.

4. F. KERMODE, The Sense of an Ending, 1967, pp. 129-130 and p. 51sq. This comes close to the Formalists'idea of a genre emerging as a parody of, or as a countergenre. See for instance, EICHENBAUM's 'La theorie de la methode formelle', in Theorie de la ltterature, ed. T. TODOROV, 1965, pp. 31-75, and C. GUILLEN, Literature as System, 1971, pp. 135-158. Cf. Don Quixote as historia and Lazarillo de Tormes as vida.

5. Ibid, p. 56.

6. W. T. H. JACKSON, The Literature of the Middle Ages, 1960, p. 72.

7. Ibid, p. 72.

8. W. P. KER, Epic and Romance, 1908 (1897), p. 399. On the other hand, Maria Tymoczko has recently shown how translation actually took part in this twelfth-century revolution, especially in the shift from epic to romance. See her 'Translation as a Force for Literary revolution in the Twelfth-Century Shift from Epic to Romance', NEW COMPARISON, N. 1, Summer 1986, pp. 7-27.

9. Ibid, pp. 400-402.

10. G. W. F. HEGEL, Aesthetics, vol. 1, translated by T. M. Knox, 1975.

11. G. H. R. PARKINSON, Georg Lukäcs, 1977, p. 25.

12. See for instance P. V. ZIMA, Pour une sociologic du texte litteraire, 1978, pp. 350-1.

13. G. LUKACS, The Theory of the Novel, 1971, pp. 41-56.

14. G. W. F. HEGEL, op. cit, pp. 476ff.

15. G. H. R. PARKINSON, op. cit, p. 26.

16. Ibid, p. 27.

17. See for instance, F. JAMESON, The Political Unconscious, 1981.

18. R. PASCAL, 'Georg Lukäcs: The Concept of Totality', in Georg Lukäcs, the man, his work, his ideas, ed. G. H. R. PARKINSON, 1970, pp. 147-171.

19. Ibid.

20. J. BERNSTEIN, op. cit, p. 44.

159

21. For instance, N. FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957, F. KERMODE, op. cit, P. V. ZIMA, op. cit, I. WATT, The Rise of the Novel, 1957, and J. BERNSTEIN, op. cit.

22. J. BERNSTEIN, op. cit, p. 49. Bernstein also believes that the passage from an oral society to a cult of writing is the passage from mythos to logos (p. 74).

23. Ibid, pp. 51-75.

24. P. V. ZIMA, op. cit, pp. 366ff.

25. J. BERNSTEIN, op. cit, pp. 186-9.

26. Ibid, pp. 185ff.

27. Cervantes's text is filled with religious ordinances and belief in the (Christian) God.

28. This is too simplistic as we saw in Chapter 1. See also E. C. RILEY, op. cit. and P. G. ADAMS, op. cit.

29. J. BERNSTEIN, op. cit, p. 155. On the other hand, ZIMA (op. cit., pp. 226-7) writes that 'une analyse du roman Don Quichotte nest valable que si elle est guidec par ]a question de savoir quels nouveaux procddds narratifs sont introduits pour rendre possible la parodie'(my emphasis).

30. See Chapter 3 for more details on Toledo and Arabic literature translated between the 12th and 17th centuries. See also H. LEVIN, Contexts of Criticism, 1958, p. 94, where he writes that Cervantes assumes the role of an 'editor' while the translator'who renders the Spanish work into Arabic' should be accounted for. Thus , he adds, the text'stands at three removes from ourselves'.

31. M. BAKHTIN, Esthetique et theorie du roman, 1978(Moscou, 1975). His 'theory' is based on the assumption that the Golden Ass is a novel, something which P. G. WALSH also shares(note 32). On the other hand, his 'polyphony' trouvaille does not take into account 'foreign' genres such as the Maqamat discussed in Chapter 4. The question of the carnival approach to the novel centers only on Rabelais's work, and ignores other novels such as Don Quixote, which after all does not fit into his carnival pattern. Finally Bakhtin ignores or forgets to include the picaresque as one of the key elements in the development of the novel. For him, this genre 'fonctionne selon le chronotope du roman d'aventures et de moeurs'(p. 310), though he realizes that 'Dans Don Quichotte, le croisement parodique du chronotope du "monde etranger et merveilleux" des romans dc chevalerie, avec "la grande route du monde familier" du roman picaresque, est fort caracteristique'(p. 310). For a critique of some of Bakhtin's ideas, see P. V. ZIMA, op. cit., pp. 362ff.

32. P. G. WALSH, The Roman Novel, 1970.

33. D. B. RANDALL, The Golden Tapestry, 1963, pp. 69-72.

34. Cited by D. B. RANDALL, op. cit, p. 72.

35. A. V. ETTIN, Literature and the Pastoral, 1984, p. 56.

36. Ibid, pp. 56-74.

160

37. See for instance, J. STEVENS, Medieval Romance, 1973, W. T. H. JACKSON, op. cit, and E. VINAVER, Form and Meaning in Medieval Romance, 1966.

38. R. WRIGHT, Late Latin and Early Romance, 1982, p. 16sq and 156sq.

39. J. STEVENS, op. cit, pp. 15-16.

40. Ibid, pp. 229-231.

41. P. G. ADAMS, op. cit, pp. 106-161.

42. Ibid.

43. G. BEER, The Romance, 1970, pp. 4-5.

44. Ibid, p. 6.

45. W. T. H. JACKSON, op. cit, p. 93.

46. G. BEER, op. cit, p. 4. See also A. FOWLER, Kinds of Literature, 1985(1982), p. 90.

47. B. E. PERRY, The Ancient Romances, 1967, pp. 31-103.

48. Ibid.

49. W. T. H. JACKSON, op. cit, p. 27.

50. Ibid, p. 100. See also P. G. ADAMS, op. cit, p. 130. Concerning this Moorish narrative, ADAMS goes further and compares it to Robinson Crusoe by writing thus: 'It may be, however, that the legend most likely to have been an influence on Robinson Crusoe was that of Hayy-ibn-Yagzan. Originally in Arabic of the twelfth century and, in its best form, by Ibn-Tufail, this often-told story relate how the boy Hayy was sent to an idyllic deserted island in the South Indian Sea, how he grew up and conquered nature, and how he was later joined by his father, who taught him to speak as Robinson taught Friday... This story was first translated into English in Defoe's lifetime-and then twice again before Robinson Crusoe was writtcn'(my emphasis).

51. C. BROOKE, The Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 1969, pp. l lsq and 179sq.

52. Cited by R. M. TORRANCE, The Comic Hero, 1978, p. 151.

53. B. E. PERRY, op. cit, p. 45. Ortega y Gasset states the opposite: 'The novel and the epic are poles apart', quoted by P. G. ADAMS, op. cit, p. 23.

54. E. VINAVER, 'From Epic to Romance', BULLETIN OF THE JOHNS RYLAND LIBRARY, vol. XLVI, 1964, pp. 476-503

55. Ibid.

56. W. P. KER, op. cit, p. 5.

161

57. Ibid, pp. 24-42.

58. E. C. RILEY, op. cit, pp. 10-12.

59. N. FRYE, The Secular Scripture, 1976, pp. 38-39. M. MCKEON sees it as counter-romance or antiromance. See his The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740,1987, pp. 273ff.

60. N. FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957.

61. R. M. TORRANCE, op. cit, pp. 149-150.

62. A. A. PARKER, Literature and the Delinquent, 1967, pp. 6-27.

63. R. ALTER, Rogue's Progress, 1964, p. VII. i

64. Those who did so are C. PELLAT & HIAM, B. E. PERRY, A. GONZALEZ PALENCIA and a few others. Their works have passed unnoticed.

65. M. BATAILLON, 'Les Nouveaux Chretiens dans 1'essor du roman picaresque', NEOPHILOLOGUS, 48,1964, pp. 283-298.

66. W. ALLEN,, The English Novel, 1958, p. 32.

67. U. WICKS, 'The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach', PMLA, 89,1974, pp. 240-249.

68. D. B. RANDALL, op. cit, p. 83.

69. A. A. PARKER, op. cit, pp. 4ff.

70. C. GUILLIN, op. cit, pp. 135-158, A. FOWLER, Kinds of Literature, 1982 and W. L. REED, An Exemplary History of the Novel: The Quixotic Versus the Picaresque, 1981. See also E. W. SAID, Beginnings, 1975, pp. 20-22.

71. See M. HADAS, Ancilla to Classical Reading, 1954, pp. 45-6.

72. A. FOWLER, op. cit, p. 93.

73. This is also true of Arabic literature. Long narratives were called 'kitab..: (as in Kitab alf layla wa layla, i. e. The Book of the Thousand and One Nights), tarikh (historia), sirat... (Story of, Life of, Romance of, or Chronicle). It is worth adding here, that the Arabic term now used for novel is simply riwaya (from rawa, rawi, respectively relate/recount, reciter/teller).

74. S. TRENKER, The Greek Novella in the Classical Period, 1958, p. 58.

75. P. G. ADAMS, op. cit, p. 110.

76. Ibid, pp. 115-125.

77. Ibid, pp. 126-127.

162

78. Ibid, pp. 137-145. See also J. B. TREND(ed. ), Spanish Short-Stories of the Sixteenth Century, 1928, p. VIII, where he writes: 'even Algiers and the coast of Barbary' became for Cervantes 'tinged with romance', and the great French historian, F. BRAUDEL, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., 1972-3.

79. P. G. ADAMS, op. cit, pp. 15O-151.

80. Ibid, p. 161. See also M. MCKEON, op. cit, pp. 100ff.

81. G. WATSON, op. cit, p. 22.

82. P. G. ADAMS, pp. 198ff. See also M. BAKHTIN, op. cit, p. 310, and G. WATSON, op. cit, pp. 26ff.

83. Ibid, p. 194.

84. P. G. ADAMS, op. cit, pp. 48ff.

85. J. Y. TADIE, Le roman d'aventures, 1982, p. 23sq and pp. 205-6.

86. See for instance P. HERNADI, 'Clio's Cousins: Historiography as Translation, Fiction, and Criticism', NEW LITERARY HISTORY, VII/2, Winter 1976, pp. 247-257.

87. J. DERRIDA, L'ecriture et la difference, 1967, p. 337 and M. FOUCAULT, L'archeologie du savoir, 1969.

88. I. WATT, The Rise of the Novel, 1957, pp. 9-24.

89. E. C. RILEY, 'Who's Who in Don Quixote or An Approach to the Problem of Identity', MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, 81,1966, pp. 113-130.

90. A. JEFFERSON & D. ROBEY, Modern Literary Theory, 1982, p. 24.

91. Ibid, pp. 72-75.

92. J. CARRUTH, 'Introduction', Robinson Crusoe, 1974.

93. See for example M. ROBERT, The Old and the New, 1977(1963), pp. 1- 34.

94. M. ROBERT, Roman des origines et origines du roman, 1972.

95. M. ROBERT, The Old and the New, op. cit, pp. 50-51.

96. M. ROBERT, Roman des origines et origines du roman, op. cit, p. 133.

97. J. BERNSTEIN, op. cit, p. 154. We can also 'excavate' a novel from the One Thousand and One Nights, since it too contains numerous novelistic features. On this see T. TODOROV, Theorie de la prose, 1971, and M. I GERHARDT, The Art of Story-telling, 1963.

98. N. FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism, op. cit.

99. E. C. RILEY, Don Quixote, op. cit, pp. 161-162.

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CHAPTER SIX: Authorship/Pseudoauthorship, Translation and Don Quixote.

SECTION A: Cide Hamete and Cervantes: The Formalists' and Other Views of Authorship/Pseudoauthorship in Literary History.

Given the place of Don Quixote in the history of the novel, and the

importance of the Moorish narrator-author-historian, Cide Hamete in Don

Quixote, it is fruitful to consider now the Formalist viewpoint on authorship

in literary history. From the first, a clear distinction should be made between

two 'Formalisms': the Russian and the Czech. If for the former the question of

literary history is peripheral or at worst negligeable, it is of crucial importance

for the Czech. The latter brought about a way of examining the text

'historically', something which several other 'schools' had previously failed to

do(1). However, the propositions of the Russians Tynjanov and Eichenbaum

for the theory of literary history are worth discussing here.

They saw that literary history needed the study of other questions and

areas previously neglected by literary historians, such as the 'grounds for the

reception and assimilation of foreign models, translated literature as an

integral part of a given national literature; and above all, the study of

contemporary literature as a desirable complement and corrective to the

historicist perspective'(2). Tynjanov developed what he called 'fonction

constructive' and defined it thus:

j'appelle fonction constructive d'un 616ment de l'oeuvre litteraire comme systeme, sa possibilit6 d'entrcr en correlation avec d'autres 6l6ments du meme syst6me et par consequent avec le systi me entier(3).

He argued for a 'reconsideration' of the question of 'influence', for as he wrote,

there are after all 'des faits de convergence, de coincidence', something which Claudio Guillen would echo later(4). On the other hand, for Eichenbaum the

work of art is no longer seen as an autonomous element within literature but

rather as created in parallel and in opposition to any other model:

164

toute oeuvre d'art est crUe en parallele et en opposition a un modCle quelconque(T. L., 50).

Hence, the new work of art or rather the new form emerges, not as generally

held to express a new content or subject-matter, but to replace the old form

that has become obsolete or has lost its aesthetic characteristics (T. L., 50).

Thus Don Quixote for instance is seen, in the words of the same Eichenbaum,

as:

un chainon intermediaire entre le recueil de nouvelles (type Decameron) et le roman ä un seul hdros construit ä 1'aide du proc6d6 "d'enfilage" motivd par un voyage (T. L., 53),

although the parts of this novel are not entirely welded together. Eichenbaum

believed that the novel is a syncretic form, that which comes from a fusion of

'1'histoire, du recit de voyages'(T. L., 202). This echoes P. G. Adams's view of

the novel as basically emerging from travel literature and historiography.

Contrary to Lukäcs's 'epic theory', as discussed above, the Formalists

saw literary evolution as a dialectical succession of forms; no form is thus

absolutely autonomous or self-determined(ated) . Rather, it is a particular

form (genre) that leads to another. New forms emerge, not because the world

or man has been forsaken by God(5), but simply because writers have decided

that a particular form should be 'forsaken'. By defamiliarizing the

conventions and practices of previous traditions, literature becomes a 'practice

of transformation'(6). Consequently, literariness lies not in the text but in the

intertextual relations between the texts, and is the function which the text

fulfills. Literature thus renews itself by plundering other works, or better, by

depleting them of some devices:

there are stages when the genre, once utilized as an entirely serious or 'high' one, undergoes regeneration, coming out in parodic or comic form... (7)

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Once again and contrary to Lukäcs's 'reflection theory', the Formalists saw all

literary forms as equally and necessarily significations of reality, just as they

saw a given literary tradition as an'active construction'(8). In other words, and

to take the same example, the pair Don Quixote/Sancho can be seen as a

device of 'defamiliarization' in relation to the canons of chivalric romance,

while the narrative itself may represent or signify a particular reality in

Cervantes's time(9).

We have seen Cide Hamete's functions and interventions as well as

Moorish culture and literature in the narrative. In this case, a crucial device in

the study of literary history 'as a synthesis, literary history on a supernational

scale' which in fact should be re-written(10). And it is precisely that formalist

notion of literature as system which makes possible the discourse on the

relations between socio-economico-political history and literary history.

Given this, any genre study that concerns Don Quixote will have to take into

account Spain's history, its long Moorish past and the relation between this

state of affairs on the one hand and its literature on the other. Since theories of

genres should consider the latter as systems, for they arc systems after all,

genre and system 'reinforce and perpetuate each other'(11). Hence for the

Formalists literary history entails a distinction between automatized and

perceptible forms, while literariness becomes the result of the distortion of

automatized and canonized components since they constitute a given tradition.

Remaining with Don Quixote, since it is central to this discussion, I

would now like to discuss Benengeli as a 'device' as well as his functions and

'foregrounded' position. Before discussing these terms and their implications,

it is necessary to comment on another notion: defamiliarization. This notion is

opposed to that of automization, since any text includes passive or automized

elements that are subservient to the defamiliarizing, i. e. 'foregrounded'

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elements. Hence, defamiliarization and foregrounding appear to be one same

notion. The term 'foregrounding' was developed by Tynjanov as a

consequence of his view that literature was a system composed of interrelated

and interacting components that help differentiate between dominant and

automatized factors(T. L., 120-37). And because the very notion of

'foregrounding' within a literary work 'forms the basis of genre studies and

more particularly literary history'(12), Cide Hamete's role as histor takes great

significance for literary history.

Cide Hamete as 'author' of Don Quixote, as the writer whose Arabic

'text' was found in a Toledan shop by Cervantes, and whose work was

translated by a Morisco in exchange of a few reals and a few bushels of

wheat, recounts the story or stories from 1,9. Claudio Guillen differentiates

between history as narrative and history as recapitulation, and it is this

difference that shows Don Quixote as a 'historical narrative'; for it is

historiography, i. e the art of writing history-narratives that shall now be

discussed., while Adorno's idea of 'foreign borrowings and technical

innovations' is helpful(13). Don Quixote as recounted by Cide Hamete

emulates the structural and presentational qualities of history; thus a

rapprochement between literature and history takes place, but history as a

type of narrative, not as recapitulation of events past. Moreover, the book was

published at a time when literature, travel and history were to a great extent

intertwined(14). Thus, and in addition, Don Quixote was born as a reaction to

the growing importance and place of the new-born picaresque which like

other narratives use both 'le procede d'encadrement' and the 'pseudo-

narrator'(15).

Now because the Formalists have no place for 'authorship', what

follows takes dramatic proportions: If Cervantes is simply ignored or at best

167

dismissed as author, the text will remain the sole interlocutor without the

mediation of the'real' author. What we know from the text is that it is narrated

by Benengeli, and it is he who becomes its genuine speaking reciter-author.

Cervantes then turns into a mere 'craftsman', the combinateur who is

everywhere in literature as Michel Serres wrote(16), though his name wholly

dominates the title page. In addition, we have seen that for the Formalists the

notion of foregrounding within a piece of art forms the basis of literary history

and more particularly genre studies. I have argued above that while

'parodying' chivalric romances and their use of 'translated' material, Cervantes

gives unprecedented importance and a role of uncalculated consequences to

his Moorish author.

On the other hand both Shlovsky and Eichenbaum sustain that the 'renovation

of literature was frequently affected by writers having recourse to the literary

devices of earlier and often neglected literary traditions. ' Is this not what

occurred in Don Quixote? Did Cervantes not borrow from the chivalric

romance, the epic, the picaresque, historiography? Hence, they add, the line

'of literary influence runs not from father to son but from grandfather or from

uncle to nephew'(17). This of course reminds us, agreeably, of what Cervantes

wrote in his prologue to Don Quixote (Part 1): 'Pero yo, aunque parezco

padre, soy padrastro de Don Qu(jote. ' In other words, Cervantes's Don

Quixote is the 'child' of another man; Cervantes having simply 'adopted' the

child. This may not sound strange if we take into account, with more

seriousness, all the facts written down in Don Quixote concerning this

particular point as well as others. After all, this opening hint coincides well

with the role that father plays in the narrative: Cide Hamete Benengeli, whose

text was originally Arabic and translated into Castilian.

Writing on authorship, W. C. Booth distinguishes 'between the author

and his implied image', so as to avoid 'pointless and unverifiable talk about

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such qualities as «sincerity» or «seriousness» in the author. ' Cide Hamete is

thus seen, as one of the few great narrators in the fiction of the modern age.

He is, to paraphrase Booth, a dramatized and self-conscious narrator, aware of

being an author. For Booth, the term 'implied author' means the 'author's

second self (18). Cide Hamete, therefore, appears as the 'implied author' if we

take it that he reflects Cervantes's 'second self. For is there, one can ask, any

verifiable distance between such a powerful, self-conscious, omniscient

narrator and the 'implied author'? Cide Hamete can be Cervantes's 'second

self just as he can be his 'alter ego'(Booth's and Foucault's terms respectively).

In fact, one is more interested in what Cide Hamete represents than in what he

actually is. Thus, Cervantes's double image, Cide Hamete that is, reveals him

as aware of Moorish historiography and literature which Spanish culture had

in due time well absorbed.

For G. Genette, the first author is the one who tells/recounts the first

eight chapters of Don Quixote, but is heterodiegetic in that he does not

participate in the story. On the other hand, a narrator-author of Cide Hamete's

type appears to be above the story he narrates; he is then, to borrow Genette's

term, extradiegetic. Yet, he also is, as in the instances where he is addressed

directly by others, intradiegetic. And, because he takes part in the story in

several forms and ways, he is homodiegetic. The first conclusion one can

draw from this is that Cide Hamete is homodiegetic, intradiegetic and

extradiegetic, that is schematically, part of the story(actor), inside it and

above it. However, to claim as Genette does, that'the narratee is, by definition

situated at the same level as the narrator' is somehow faulty(19). Cide

Hamete's position as first narrator-author surpasses that of, say, Sancho. After

all, it is Cide Hamete who has 'written' the story even if he meets Sancho and

others. This happened to Hariri too, in his Magamat.

169

Northrop Frye makes a difference between, say, the Koran as a

recorded text, and Muhammad as the one who did the actual 'secretarial

recording'. This can be paralleled to Cervantes who did the same job in Don

Quixote. Since it is known that Muhammad did not actually write the Koran,

he then is not its author. However, he is responsible for its existence as a text,

much as Cervantes is for Don Quixote. Both are responsible for the

dissemination of these texts. The notion of 'author' is, writes N. Frye, a

metaphor only. Likewise, Homer's epics are not 'a unity of authorship' but

reflect a plurality, a multiplicity of authors. Therefore, the author is not the

one who writes, scripturalizes, but the one who tells, recounts, says, and

epilogues, as in, say, the Old Testament, the Koran, the Authorized

Version, and Homer's epics. On the other hand, Apocryphal writings have

existed before Christ, as N. Frye tells us:

There is a body of writings, apart from the Apocrypha and dating mostly from the last century or so before Christ, which are called Pseudoepigrapha(20).

Hence, if it is Cide Hamete who recounts, his text as knowledge, as

heritage, exists according to Cervantes, in Toledo precisely. It is of course a

pseudotext much as Cervantes is a pseudoepigrapher, i. e. pseudowriter. But

how can he then be the author of a pseudotext? The true author of a

pseudotext is the one who actually tells it, that is Cide Hamete, while

Cervantes is the pseudoauthor. Much like pseudonymous and anonymous

authorship, pseudoauthorship reveals one thing: the author is the first person

who uncovers the story and writes it down; the one who delivers the secret,

being as it were the 'legendary figure lost in the mists of time'(21). First, it is

Cide Hamete who uncovers the story, being the one who has written it down

in Arabic, much as the one(s) of the Manchegan Archives. The latter cover(s)

the story from 1,1 to 1,8 only, while Cide Hamete does from 1,9 till the end,

that is 118 chapters(out of a total of 126). Secondly, Don Quixote's first

170

author (or authors) is anonymous (from 1,1 to 1,8). As from 1,9, its authorship

is spelled out: Cide Hamete. But this could also be 'pseudonymous'.

But it is, once again, M. Foucault who can best provide a thorough

discussion of authorship and writing. I have already discussed some of

Foucault's ideas concerning 'originality' and how criticism as an ideological

tool constructs the author-image. He writes that the author's name (eg.

Cervantes) performs a certain role as regards narrative discourse, assuring

therefore a 'classificatory function'. Such a name then helps to group together

a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from others, and

finally contrast them to others. Thus Foucault adds, the author's name is not

'located in the fiction of the work'; it lies elsewhere(22). Hence he writes,

Western Civilization has endowed some discourses with an 'author' and

deprived others of it. There is no such thing as an author per se before

criticism has done its job, that is before the writer has been read, studied,

analyzed and classified. Thus, authorship is not immanent to the text but only

adjunct to it. Don Quixote is narrated by Cide Hamete, a Moorish writer-

historian, using the 'I' and the 'he'. However, and though there are several

narrators (the first 'author' of the Manchegan Archives, Cide Hamete) it is, in

the final analysis, Cide Hamete who overshadows the whole telling and

structuring of the narrative. He intervenes whenever he feels the need to do so

and organizes the narrator's appearances (does he not open several chapters, introduce characters, ? ). Thus he appears as the author of Don Quixote. On

this matter, let us mobolize Foucault once more:

It would be just as wrong to equate the author with the real writer as to equate him with the fictitious speaker; the author-function is carried out and operates in the scission itself, in this division and this distance(23).

In Foucaultian terms, Cide Hamete would be the real writer and

Cervantes the author (meaning legitimate/legal attribution). But as writer (or

171

author in the usual sense), Cide Hamete legitimately deserves this title if we

analyze the text closely, if we follow what Derrida wrote: 'il n'y a pas de hors-

texte'(24), including the legal author. The narrative discourse that is being

gradually unfolded in Don Quixote uncovers Moorish historiographical

characteristics and techniques, therefore placing Cide Hamete as the 'founder

of(novelistic) discursivity', much as Sheherazade is. He is, to quote Foucault

again, the 'fundamental and indirect author' of Don Quixote(25). In

Foucaultian philosophy, Cervantes takes the name of immediate author

(cf. Booth). Yet this immediate authorship does not precede the work; it comes

into being, is constructed post-hoc. The text is, comes first; then comes the

'author', while the writer exists immanently in the text, and therefore comes

before the text:

il ne faut pas renvoyer le discours ä la lointaine presence de l'origine; il faut le traiter dans son instance(26).

Thus in its 'instancy', or if you will, immediacy, Don Quixote is authored by

Cide Hamete. On the other hand, the name Edgar Allan Poe, for instance,

does not refer in the same manner to his English translations of Mallarme as

to his poetry or tales. This name is usually, 'normally' related to his English

writings, not to his translations. Likewise, Cervantes and Don Quixote is not

the same operation as, say, Cervantes and his plays or novelas

ejemplares(27). All definitions of what a work (opus) is, needs an operation

that selects via interpretations, much as criticism or for that matter, translation

does.

In its composition, the narrator's discourse integrates all the other

enunciations. In Don Quixote, the enunciation occurring in Castilian, is being

transformed, that is translated, via Cide Hamete, into an Arabic one, that is

Arabic in form. But the reverse is also true. The Arabic 'original', too, was

transformed, i. e. translated into a Castilian narrative. Though Don Quixote is

172

a 'reported discourse' within a narrative, this reported discourse turns out to be

the narrative itself(28). Thus, as 'author', Cide Hamete erases the boundaries

between history and fiction as narratives, and by the same token erases those

between the historian as writer, as translator of events(29) and the writer of

fiction as translator of history and imagination(30). In fact, it is Cide Hamete

who is the real author of Don Quixote as a novel, while Cervantes is the

author of Don Quixote qua-text:

Mais il existe dgalement un autre type, oil la dominante du discours est transf6r6e au discours rapport6, qui devient, de ce fait, plus fort et plus actif que le contexte narratif qui 1'encadre, qui se met en quelque sorte, ä r6sorber ce dernier... Dans les oeuvres litt6raires, cela se manifeste souvent, au niveau de la composition, par l'apparition d'un "narrateur" remplagant l'auteur proprement dit. Son discours est tout aussi individual is6... (3 1)

The narrator of Benengeli's type not only replaces the author, but also

swallows the whole narrative, as Bakhtin wrote.

It is crucial to insist here on the all-importance of what Foucault calls

the relationship of the dnoncds between themselves, even if they escape, elude

the author's consciousness(32). In other words, what Don Quixote as a text

says, reveals, shows, should not be related to the author's consciousness, but

treated as such, for what it is. Hence Don Quixote and its relationship with

Moorish historiography and travel literature, and with previous narrative

discourses. As a culture and history, as a space where 'discursive events' had

spread out, Moorish Spain has been the territory of both Don Quixote and

Cide on the one hand, and Cervantes on the other(33). Thus Cervantes

appears to be the author of an author's text, that is a 'meta-author'. The

enunciation of Don Quixote is Benengelian, for the text and its hero are

Manchegan much as Cide Hamete is (1,22). It is he who enunciates Don

Quixote as a narrative discourse. However, this very enunciation of Cide's

173

can be restarted or re-evoked by anyone, including Cervantes, its translator-

editor(34).

With his qualities (observant, meticulous, etc. ) and narrative

techniques, Cide Hamete transforms the story as historical narrative into a

fictional one. It is he who signs the opening and the epilogue qua-epilogos. As

historian, Cide Hamete was not invented (Le 'found' for the first time); rather,

he was invested, because of what he represents and is, with invention, that is

with romanesque invention. It is he who has invented the novel. As a Moorish

writer-historian(35) and as a Spaniard (Le 'hybrid'), he constructs the narrative

a sa guise. He is not constructed, fabricated, but is rather called up, invoked,

utilized and mobilized for the task of writing Don Quixote, the Don Quixote-

origo. The two enunciations that confront each other between 1,1 and 1,8

finally coalesce in 1,9. After that, Cide's dominates the two that have become

one by 1,9 until the end, until what may be called 'la cloture de la

representation'(36).

The concept 'author' should be related to that of Authority, since

author, auctor (founder) imply that precisely. Also, these terms imply what

E. Said has called the 'right of possession'(37). H. Meschonnic, N. Fryc and

A. Fowler have shown that it was because of the need to delineate Bible

Authority, that such terms as auctor, scriptor, commentator, and compilator

were created(38). This leads us to say that there is no beginning to (literary)

writing, or an end to a book, as Derrida has shown(39). Any writing thus is a transformation of readings, that is re-writing and/or counter-writing other

writings, as the case of Don Quixote clearly shows, though it has its own

textual frame and limits. After all, as Foucault has noted, literature as we now

understand it(with its authors and their 'originality') is a recent category

which, if applied to Medieval literature for instance, has to be used only

174

through a retrospective hypothesis. This hypothesis should take into

consideration all the questions of 'authorship', writing, and 'originality' that

prevailed at the time(40).

Don Quixote, whose author is Cervantes, is a work, that is a thing, an

object. But as 'written'/recounted by Cide Hamete, it takes the form of a text,

is a text, i. e. a process, a signifying practice(41). The text, therefore, continues

to live in its own right as soon as it has detached itself from its author. Don

Quixote thus lives in its own right, but with Cide Hamete deeply

incorporated, that is in the corpus. Cervantes, however, is apposed (appositio)

to the work; he is not in the text. Writing thus is an intricate fabrication, and

because it is so, it cannot be mastered by the writer-author. On the contrary, it

always escapes him, signalling its meta-physical, interscriptural proprieties:

aucune vigilance de l'auteur ne peut arriver ä dominer cc systCme extremement complexe de renvois(42).

And it is precisely these renvois, which Cide Hamete 'writes' out, that

paradoxically write Cervantes off qua-author. Since Don Quixote is after all a

story of a knight, a story being written as it takes place with its romance-like

atmosphere and picaresque-like travels, it is Cide Hamete who writes as

things happen, while Cervantes's 'writing' having come late, is

anachronistic(43). This 'anachronism', to use Levesque's term, can be further

detailed. In Don Quixote, there are two prologues, one for Part One and the

second for Part two. It is both prologues, and the prologues solely that enable

or give a chance to Cervantes to introduce himself as actual author, that is as

scribe. But, as for exergues, postfaces, etc., they are marginal, they are as it

were paratexts. They often/always come after the text is, aposteriori. Thus,

and in this sense, they may be called 'hors-textes' or are'hors-texte'.

Finally writing is, following Derrida, the stage of history, the stage

where history takes place and unfolds, the play of the world, the place where

the world is expressed. History thus is incarnated, embodied, via writing;

175

history and writing are mutually necessary, are inseparable. Hence all writing

is history, and history is writing(44). And because writing is so, 'seul le conte

est reel', that is the story, the content as we know it, as we have it. The book,

the story is real, present. The writer then is absent, much as in historiography.

The events are known, assimilated; the writer-historian forgotten, absent.

Thus Cervantes as actual writer, scribe, scriptor, is absent. Only Don Quixote,

as a story, a living one, recounted by Cide Hamete remains present, that is

Don Quixote with Cide Hamete as historiador, escudriniador and sabio.

There is no such thing as author, write Deleuze and Guattari in Mille

plateaux. The author is not even an object of the book. The book is, by what

makes it: material made up in diverse ways. Hence, attributing a book to an

author is to neglect in the first place what has been done by this very material,

these matters and the exteriority of their relationships. Don Quixote, the

material of which is romance, picaresque, pastoral, Moorish tale, Moorish

historiography, and travel literature, penned by Cide Hamete, make what

Deleuze and Guattari call the book, what the book is. Since the book, any

book, they say, is an 'agencement', that is an ordering of material

(cf. Formalism), it is therefore unattributable, including Cervantes that is.

Because the book is a multiplicity, it cannot therefore be attributed to the

individuality of the 'author'. Hence, for them, authorship and text/book are

antinomical(45). This view is also shared by Noam Chomsky. He sees writing

as alchemical (mental chemistry), since it is the combination of ideas,

material, which when fusing together become one. Yet, and because of this, it

is indeed difficult to find out the 'elementary ideas' which are/were at the

origin of the new notions, of the new'text'(46). Consequently, there is no such

thing as an 'original' text or an 'original author': 'il n'y a pas plus de morale

originelle qu'il n'y a de texte originel'(47).

176

The essential thing to do then, is to 'quantify writing' (to borrow

Deleuze and Guattari's terms), since the book is always 'deterritorialized' only

to be 'reterritorialized' once again. This is done via two things: reading and

transmission/translation(48). The authority as it may seem, that of the text, is

provisional, while the origin of the text is a trace. But since it is a trace, where

can one find its source? the answer is that the source, the origin, the 'truth' and

its place are or lie in the discourse contained in the text. Therefore, since Don

Quixote is a mixture of several materials (romance, picaresque, etc. ), since it

is told by Cide Hamete and 'written' in Arabic, since it is 'translated into

Castilian by the Toledan Morisco-translator, it is then transformed into an

'original', i. e. a presence doubled with an attribution, Cervantes as author. This

Castilian 'original' text and this authorship are thus the result or product of the

transformation which took place, from the alchemical mixtures to the

'agencement' to Cide Hamete as recounter-author to Cervantes as final scribe.

It is this Don Quixote that is the'place of truth'(49).

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SECTION B: Cide Hamete, Don Quixote, and Translation.

1. The Translator and Translation in Don Quixote.

In Don Quixote, 1,9, Cervantes tells us how he found the Arabic

historia in Toledo which he bought and had translated by a Morisco-

aljamiado. This is not, however, the first occasion where translation is

mentioned. Already in 1,6, the question of translation is brought to the fore,

when the priest and the barber enter into conversation in Don Quixote's

library. If the barber has, he says, Boiardo in Italian without being in fact able

to read him, the priest will show no respect if he does not'speak any language

but his own'. In other words, Boiardo must be read in Italian or not at all,

since adds the priest, the Italian poet is better where he should be, i. e. in Italy

and in Italian:

-y aqul le perdonäramos at senor Capitän que no le hubiera traldo a Espana y hecho castellano; que le quit6 mucho de su natural valor, y lo mesmo harän todos aquellos que los libros de verso quisieren volver en otra lengua: que, por mucho cuidado que pongan y habilidad que mustren, jamäs llegarän al punto que ellos tienen en su primer nacimiento(I, 6).

The third time where translation is mentioned in the first part is 1,40. The

captive, that is Cervantes(50), could not read an important paper written in

Arabic(this is exactly what happens to him in Don Quixote when he finds the

Arabic parchment in Toledo and hires a Morisco-translator). However, he

managed to find in the person of the Murcian renegade (a bilingual) the much

needed translator. This he does, only to insist on one thing: where the pater

says'lela Marien' (Arabic for 'Lady Mary'), the captive should read 'Our Lady

the Virgin Mary'. This apparently anodine passage is nonetheless revealing.

What is implied here is that in both the Castilian and Arabic cultures, there are

similar 'beliefs' although they might look different or antagonistic at first

glance. After all, this very point is being recounted by Cide Hamete who has

written the historia in Arabic(51).

178

In Part 2, translation comes back again, this time as early as chapter 3,

where Cervantes, via Sampson, praises Cide Hamete as well as the Morisco-

translator. But it is here that the translator is recognized as such,

acknowledged for the job done, and hence 'blessed thrice'. We are then far

from the priest's belief that translations cannot be'good'(I, 6). He is thus given

as much credit as the usually-credited Benengeli, for enabling Sampson and

the like to read it in Castilian. In fact, he receives here much more credit than

the moorish 'author', since he and only he has enabled the group to read it in

their own tongue. However, and though no parallel is drawn between Arabic

and Castilian, the implication of Sampson's utterance on seeing Don Quixote

reveals Cervantes's thought and obsession: to put on equal footing Castilian

and other languages, namely Greek, Latin, and German(II, 16). In addition,

and in this same chapter, the 'vulgar' Castilian-written Don Quixote

translated from the Arabicshall one day, it is said, entertain mankind. But to

achieve this, it should be translated in several languages of the world.

Cervantes, via Sampson again, remains optimistic, for there shall not be any

nation into whose tongue it will not be translated. Paradoxically, it is the

Castilian, 'vulgar' tongue that will be rendered into several languages,

including the ones mentioned above. But in order to provide a text, a story

worth translating into these languages, it should be an 'original', great work in

the first place. And again, replying to Don Quixote, the same Sampson

believes that a blending of such nature and calibre, being a 'cooperation'

between Moor and Christian, can only be a great work:

... porque el moro en su lengua y el cristiano cn la suya, tuvieron cuidado de pintarnos muy al vivo la gallardfa de vuesa merccd, el Animo grande en acometer los peligros, la paciencia en las adversidades... (II, 3).

But what is worth noting here, is that these discussions on translation, writing,

and on the combined 'wits' of Moor and Christian are followed, within the

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same chapter that is, by Sampson's speech on history and poetry (it is one

thing to write as a poet, and another as a historian), obviously referring to

Cide Hamete as writer-historian;

Besides his 'co-authorship', the translator, as a character, in/of Don

Quixote is deeply incorporated into the narrative. His function is to enable

Cervantes to control the narrative from the powerful, omniscient writer-

historian, as in 11,5, where he intervenes to 'correct' or bring information

concerning Sancho's 'second speech', considered apocryphal by the translator,

written down as such in the body of the narrative. The same sort of incursion

occurs in 11,24 where the translator intervenes to explain the apocryphal

chapter(Montesinos' cave) as related by Cide Hamete. Once the explanation is

over, but still carried out by Benengeli, the translator's voice fades away, only

to hover around. We know it will soon come back, and it does in 11,27. Here,

Cide Hamete has just opened the chapter by swearing 'as a Catholic

Christian', on which the translator notes that the historian's swearing as a

Catholic should be accepted, although he was a Moor.

Although the translator's function is to restore 'truth' from time to time,

his clarification takes, here, enormous proportions. It is he who writes/says

whether the 'original' story penned by Cide Hamete is 'logical' or not, coherent

or not. Since he hasCtranslated it for Cervantes, he is in a better position to

'clarify', 'correct' or add. In other words, he is the one who has possession of,

and priority over the Arabic 'text'. Yet, his function is also to create an

atmosphere of credibility and objectivity, by intervening in particular

passages, as in 11,44. Here, an allusion is made to the translator who has

rendered it in Castilian, giving both Cervantes and Benengeli the opportunity

to criticize themselves, if only in the eyes of the readers, by putting him in

utter responsibility as to the extrapolated stories and other

'inconsistencies'(52). Again, he appears and disappears swiftly. But it is

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perhaps in 11,62 that he is more acutely present, though absent, as Don

Quixote discusses the problems of translation with a gentleman from

Barcelona.

In Barcelona, Don Quixote comes across the first printing house of the

town (11,62), and falls into a discussion with the translator of an Italian work,

Le Bagatelle(53), related to us once again by the Moorish historian-cum-

narrator-cum-author, Cide Hamete. Moreover, the knight compares translation

between the vernaculars to viewing Flemish tapestries from the wrong side,

that is rather obscure pictures(54). He thus establishes, concerning translating,

a clear distinction between 'queenly' languages (Greek and Latin) and those

which are 'easy' (vernacular that is), forgetting to mention Arabic, though the

Arabic 'original' once into Castilian 'will entertain mankind'(II, 3). This

deference to 'classical' languages like Greek or Latin is rather surprising since

Don Quixote's deeds and conversation are, after all, being recorded in the

'vulgar' Castilian, but nonetheless 'originally' in Arabic. However, the

relationship between what Don Quixote calls 'queenly' languages and

vernaculars raises a question of the same nature, notably that between Don

Quixote as written in Castilian, and Arabic, since it is purportedly announced

as 'written' in Arabic by Cide Hamete, 'Arabigo y Manchego'(I, 22). The

Arabic 'text', supposedly the 'metatext', as 'father' or 'stepfather'(Prologue, l)

stands as a perpetual reminder that in fact the classicizing of the Renaissance,

in terms of aesthetics and languages for instance, had served and would serve

other purposes than those intended. After all, in mentioning Arabic words

such as albogues, etc., Don Quixote will give a list of Arabic words beginning

with 'al' and ending with T. This happens five chapters further (II, 67). To

bring 'queenly' things back to Greece or Rome is valid enough, but certainly

not without the now-accepted or consacrated formula: Moorish 'detour', of

which Don Quixote itself is a part(55).

181

Within the framework of translation studies in general and

pseudotranslation in particular, these reconsiderations must be stressed again

for various reasons, and for their relevance to a literary history that transcends

inherited chauvinisms.

182

TABLE

Reference to translator/tion

1,6: Translating poetry as 'impossible' (says the niest)

1,9: Don Quixote as translated from the Arabic, in Toledo

1,40: The Murcian renegade as translator. He translates out of the Arabic for the Captive, i. e. Cervantes.

11,3: The translator of Don Quixote is 'blessed, thrice' for having done the job. Don Quixote will be translated into the world's tongues.

II, 5: Translator opens this chapter. Considers it'apocryphal' . II, 24: Translator opens chapter. Considers the previous chapter 'apocryphal'.

II, 27: Translator notes that Cide can be'accepted' as swearing like a'Catholic Christian'.

II, 39: The Countess relates to Don Quixote and Sancho the story of the post with some Syriac words which had to be translated into Candayesque and then into Castilian.

II, 44: Translator intervenes, says he did not translate the chapter as it was written in Arabic.

II, 62: Don Quixote on translation: Translation as tapestry; languages, ctc. though there are exceptions, eg. Cristobal's and Jaureguis translations.

183

2. Pseudotranslation and Literary History: Cide Hamete and Don Quixote.

Gideon Toury's work on pseudotranslation reveals itself both fruitful

and misleading in that it focuses on Papa Hamlet, written in the nineteenth

century, forgetting thereby previous ones, such as Gargantua (1534), Zaire

(1732), Zadig (1747-8) and Candide(1758-9). Though difficult to trace and

date, pseudotranslations can be located mainly in Spain (13th century

onwards), France (16th-18th), and Germany (19th). The function(s) of these

pseudotranslations within their national literatures on the one hand, and within

West European literary history, and hence of the genres involved on the other,

remain(s) to be written down.

Don Quixote has been examined from that angle, that is as a

pseudotranslation in the sense of non-factual translation, trying to show the

functions of Cide Hamete both as 'pseudoauthor' and 'author', by stressing

that Don Quixote as a narrative starts after 1,8, under the pen of the Moorish

writer-historian. However, what was left undealt with, for methodological

reasons, was the logical outcome of the findings mentioned above.

Taking our cue from what preceded concerning pseudotranslation, and

from the duo Watson and Adams's views on the origins of the novel, I now

wish to move on to literary history, not literary history as a synthesis, but as

cultural egocentrism(56). In discussing Don Quixote's place in the history of

the novel, I discussed Lukäcs's 'epic theory', passing by romance and

picaresque. What was not touched upon was a combined argument involving

the Maqamat and Don Quixote 'written' in Arabic by Benengeli. We should

now examine the Moorish elements in Don Quixote as the first modern novel.

i. Novel as Metagenre:

We have observed that Cervantes's Don Quixote as 'narrated-written'

by the Moorish writer-historian carries within itself the tensions of poetry and

history, romance and novel. As we have seen above, it also encompasses epic,

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romance, the picaresque and historiography. Although it does not embody

them in that order, it nonetheless works its way out in the following order:

epic-romance-picaresque-travel narrative (historiography)-novel (post-hoc).

In other words, what Cervantes set out to do, was to do away with the

Amadises (1,1), first with the help of a historian, any historian (1,2), and also

by referring to them now and again with the eyes/prism of the Moorish

historian (1,9 forward). In so doing, he drew the reader's and the critic's

attention on the lack of 'truth' or verisimilitude (11,3,47,48,74) that these

romances and therefore 'epics' were disseminating. If romances of chivalry

and 'epics' are referred to quite often, it is only to see them wither away in Part

II, that is when the narrative as written by Benengeli qua-historiador takes a

better shape and this same role is taken up more markedly. The reference to

the novels picaresca and the pastoral/novela morisca (cf. Abinderraez and

Diana, above) is quite judicious, because less present, i. e. briefly referred to.

In other words, if on the one hand the Amadises are more present than the

Abinderraezes and the Lazarillos, it is only to ridicule the former (11,74), and

carve for itself pride of place among the latter (1,22). After all, by organizing

his work in this fashion, Cervantes tells us that after the romance which he

wishes to ridicule, it is the picaresque which he aims at surpassing (1,22).

The reference to Amadis is more frequent, thus clearly targeted as the

'genre' that lacks truth and veracity. Hence the need of a historian to displace

it as a popular but 'unworthy' genre. Secondly, the genre that should be

outsmarted is no longer the epic or romance, but clearly spelled out, the

novela picaresca, namely Lazarillo de Torures as Cide Hamete tells us in

1,22. I am of the opinion that Cervantes is not simply parodying these

romances, or re-writing an epic in prose (1,47), but moving from the epic-

romance-novela to history as narrative recounted by the Moorish historian

Cide Hamete. After all, the reference to the word epic occurs once in 1,47, just

at the end of Part One which contains fifty-four chapters, and also just before

185

the Canon of Toledo (1,48). Yet, and this has hardly been noticed, Benengeli's

role increases manifold as from Part II, especially after 11,3 and the discussion

on poetry versus history. What I am driving at is that Cervantes has given

Benengeli more freedom in taking control of the second part only to base his

narrative on historiography, and hence reveal the idealism and fantasies of

such romances (eg. when Sancho discusses the windmills and the killing of

giants).

ii. However, it must be noted that the business of the windmills as a

novum repertum is mentioned, strangely enough, as early as 1,8, for it is

precisely then that the story runs out and Cide steps in (1,9). This important

aspect of the narrative must be detailed though. P. K. Hitti has already noted

that, besides his care for detail and exactness, the Arab historian-traveler, Al-

Mas'udi was the first Muslim historian to mention windmills in Asia Minor, as

early as the tenth century. As a novel, Don Quixote is, among other things,

related to this same novum repertum because the hero confuses windmills

with giants, and because these windmills are in fact a harsh industrial

intrusion in the world of Don Quixote. As a topical invention, they are added

as it were to the world of romance, only to change romance as genre:

Genres change when new topics are added to their repertoires. Sometimes the topics are entirely novel... Cervantes' modern windmill was similarly a novum repertum so far as romance was concerned(57).

How can Al-Mas'udi's discovery of the windmills be related to Cervantes's

Spain? Another Muslim historian-geographer, Al-Istakhri (mid-tenth century)

would later mention them in his work, while his disciple Ibn-Hawqal (f1.943-

77) would travel as far as Spain in order to revise the maps and text of his

geography(58). More recently, the Spanish historian Juan Vernet has also

noted it. The windmills, he writes, originated in Central Asia as the Muslim

Tabari had affirmed in his Annals. Known in Arabic as tahuna

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(giving Spanish its 'tahona'), they were known in Iberia as early as the 10th

century, via the Moors. It is therefore only after the Iberians' acquaintance

with them, especially the Tarragonese, that the rest of Europe later

appropriated them: Italy (1237), England (1270), Holland (1274)(60).

Secondly, as we saw, Don Quixote contains numerous Arabic cultural

components as well as Arabic literary conventions and syntax. Thirdly, as

historian, Cide Hamete is considered Spaniard (Aräbigo y Manchego, 1,22).

Therefore, he can write on Spanish romances and other West European

narratives. If he were not, how could he then narrate the whole story with

these romances included? If Cervantes aimed at achieving verisimilitude,

looking for 'truth', etc., why then give 'authorship' to the Moor? As historian, it

is he who, via his exactness and search for detail and veracity, demolishes the

worlds of romance and heroic pomp.

Romance and epic are mentioned from 1,1 to 1,7, that is just before

Benengeli's entrance on the stage. Yet, and though several references arc still

made to them right until the end of the narrative, the difference I would like to

make is this. If before the Moorish historian's arrival, it was simply a

deferential reference, with Benengeli as historian it takes the form of irony,

precisely because Cervantes started off with the aim of parodying them, that

is, with the goal of countering them, using false imitation (parodia). But in so

doing, Cervantes went further; he created a 'hero' with picaresque

characteristics, a chivalric picaro so to speak, one who comes out of the inn

picking his teeth though he has not eaten a single thing (11,44). And it is in this

chapter that Cide attacks poverty, praising charity, humility, faith, etc.,

including an attack on those hypocrites, those knights who eat poorly behind

four walls, and come out picking their teeth, for which, it is said, Don Quixote

remains thoughtful because concerned. This is also an element of the Arabic

Magamat. Don Quixote, so it is, is not a knight-errant or ever was: he is a

187

true picaro in chivalric dress(60). The fourth remark is that Cide Hamete is

not like the historians of previous romances in at least two main things: the

number of chapters he appears in, and the quality and type of interventions he

makes. These two things make him totally different from other

pseudohistorians. And if an objection can be made here in that Cervantes

simply re-used what other writers had already done, i. e. 'false' authors, the

answer would be a question: why then give Cide Hamete such preeminence in

the work?

Having discussed both notions of authorship and pseudoauthorship,

one may finally say that, as he acts and narrates, Cide Hamete, as

pseudoauthor, is more than a device used in travel or memoir literature.

Writers of this type of narratives certainly needed both a place to write about

and a historian or chronicler to act as eye-witness, since the author could not

fulfill the task of field-reporting, and hence of 'objective' writing. Though both

P. G. Adams and G. Watson have brilliantly demonstrated that, Cide Hamete is

more than a pseudoauthor; he is what he represents first and foremost,

Moorish culture and literature enacted(61).

iii. As we have seen above, the functions of Cide Hamete as

pseudoauthor in Don Quixote as a pseudotranslation from the Arabic reveal

several points either discarded or simply ignored by literary historians.

Because Don Quixote is recounted by him and scripturalized by Cervantes

(considering that writing is the actual telling and hence enunciation of the

story), it reveals that the author is simply the last recorder or last narrator, in

itself an Islamic cultural aspect as shown above. It also shows the correct

Anglo-American view that the novel is originally historiographical. Thirdly, it

shows that the 'epic theory' was incorrect, at least with respect to Don

Quixote, whose author had in fact experienced a historia so to speak, in

188

Algiers, much as Daniel Defoe had actually done. That the two major

precursor novels are in fact related to both North-Africa and Moorish culture

should give us more thought, and hence more intellectual enthusiasm as to the

rich interaction in literary history and literary studies, between the Moorish

and West European worlds.

Finally, Don Quixote as the first modern novel appears to derive from

a successive combination of romance- picaresque- travel literature

(historiography); indeed, a combination of several genres as the Formalists

have long ago said. In fact more based on historiography than anything else,

as Cide Hamete's functions have proved. Moreover, as the first modern novel,

Don Quixote is not only recounted/'written' by Cide Hamete, Arab and writer.

historian, but also written down in Castilian 'thanks to' a translator, a point

too often forgotten. Thus the first modern novel is indebted to two interrelated

constellations: the Moorish world with its historiography, Maqamat, and the

all-pervasive One Thousand and One Nights, and to translation, that is the

Toledan translation tradition. Thus translation studies should enable us to

plunge back into literary history and even, as in this case, genre theory. It

remains to be seen what other scholarly works on other pseudotranslations

(Cifar, Lepolemo, Zadig, etc. ) will one day reveal to literary studies.

189

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX

1. F. W. GALAN, Historic Structures: The Prague School Project, 1928- 46,1985(1984), pp. 2-3.

2. Ibid, pp. 22-3.

3. TYNJANOV, 'De l'6volution littdraire', Theorie de la litt6rature, T. TODOROV(ed), 1965, pp. 120-137. Hereafter T. L.

4. See C. GUILLEN, Literature as System, 1971, pp. 39-47.

5. G. LUKACS, The Theory of the Novel, 1971, p. 104, where he writes: 'Thus the first great novel of world literature(? ) stands at the beginning of the time when the Christian God began to forsake the world; when man became lonely..:

6. T. BENNETT, Formalism and Marxism, 1979, pp. 55-6.

7. B. EICHENBAUM, 'O'Henry and the Theory of the Short Story', in Readings in Russian Poetics, K. POMORSKA &L MATEJKA(eds), 1971, p. 236. See also T. BENNETT, op. cit, p. 61.

8. T. BENNETT, op. cit, p-68-

9. See for instance W. ENTWISTLE, Cervantes, 1940, and W. BYRON, Cervantes: A Biography, 1979, p. 21. The latter writes, for instance, that Don Quixote signifies (and not reflects) 'among other things an allegory on the futility of Spanish imperial dreams'. Hence and because it is seen by BYRON as an allegory, it can only be signified not reflected. On the other hand, T. BENNETT, op. cit, writes that Althusser does not see literature as a 'secondary reflection of something else, but as a real social force' (pp. 39-42) coming close to the Formalists.

10. R. WELLEK & A. WARREN, Theory of Literature, 1949, pp. 5Off

11. C. GUILLEN, op. cit, pp. 377-85.

12. A. JEFFERSON and D. ROBEY, Modern Literary Theory, 1982, p. 23.

13. C. GUILLEN, op. cit, pp. 39-42 and pp. 467ff.

14. Ibid, pp. 156 If.

15. See for instance, CHLOVSKI(SHLOVSKY), in Theorie de La ltterature, op. cit, pp. 170-96, G. WATSON, The Story of the Novel, 1979.

16. M. SERRES, Hermes III: La traduction, 1974, pp. 17-26. See also P. MACHEREY, Pour une theorie de la production littiraire, 1966, T. TODOROV(ed), op. cit, R. BARTHES, Critique et verite, 1966.

17. T. BENNETT, op. cit, pp. 61-2.

18. W. C. BOOTH, The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961.

19. G. GENNETTE, Figures III, 1972.

190

20. N. FRYE, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, 1983(1981), p. 202.

21. Ibid, p. 204.

22. Foucault writes that the author's name lies or rather is 'located in the break that founds a certain discursive construct and its very particular mode of being', 'What is an Author? ', in Textual Strategies, J. V. HARARI(ed), 1980(1979), pp. 141-60.

23. Ibid, p. 152.

24. Quoted by C. NORRIS, Deconstruction, 1982, p. 41.

25. M. Foucault, op. cit, p. 157.

26. M. FOUCAULT, L'arch6ologie du savoir, 1969, p. 37.

27. Ibid, p. 35. This question of the author's relationship with part of his work(as criticism sees him) and not with the rest of his work should also be related to what ENTWISTLE wrote in 1940: There is, he said, an 'immense amount of Cervantine writing which no one willingly reads'(p. 3). He then raised a major question: 'How is it that the author of Don Quixote is also the author of the Galatea and so many mediocre copies of verse? '(my italics, p. 3). Asking'is his genius an accident ? ', he quoted M6rim6e : 'Let us not hesitate to say it:... Don Quixote is an accident, a lucky stroke, a flash of genius, a miracle in the literary life of Cervantes. Before that date he had attempted almost all genres-failed and... (had) a mediocre success... he had never clearly realized the immense superiority of his masterpiece'(my emphasis, p. 3). Although Entwistle did not agree, he nonetheless wrote: 'his genius is unequal in all his writings'(my italics, p. 5).

28. See for instance M. BAKHTINE, Le Marxisme et la philosophie du langage, 1977(1929), pp. 162ff.

29. P. HERNADI, 'Clio's Cousins: Historiography as Translation, Fiction, and Criticism', NEW LITERARY HISTORY, 'V1142,1976, pp. 247-57.

30. See for instance J. DERRIDA, L'6criture et la diff6rence, 1967, p. 337.

31. M. BAKHTINE, op. cit, p. 169.

32. M. FOUCAULT, L'arch6ologie du savoir, op. cit, p. 41.

33. See for instance M. FOUCAULT, ibid, pp. 41 if.

34. Ibid, p. 138.

35. See for instance P. HERNADI, op. cit, P. G. ADAMS, Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel, 1983, and WATSON, G., op. cit.

36. Though Derrida's phrase was used for Artaud and his theatre of cruelty, the idea behind and as I use it leads us to see Cide as the one who represents, does the representing, while Cervantes continues the representation by precisely 'translating'; or to quote Derrida , 'il est fatal que la representation continue', op. cit, p. 368.

191

37. E. W. SAID, Beginnings, op. cit.

38. H. MESCHONNIC, 'Poetique de la traduction', in Pour la poetique II, 1973, pp. 305-454, N. FRYE, op. cit, and A. FOWLER, Kinds of Literature, 1982.

39. J. DERRIDA, Positions, 1972, pp. 23sq, 31sq, 86sq.

40. M. FOUCAULT, L'archeologie du savoir, 1969, p. 33.

41. R. BARTRES, 'Theory of the Text', in Untying the Text, R. YOUNG(ed), 1981, pp. 31-47.

42. C. LEVESQUE, L'etrangete du texte: essal sur Nietzsche, Freud, Blanchot et Derrida, 1978, p. 113.

43. Ibid., p. 123.

44. See J. DERRIDA, L'ecriture et In difference, op. cit, p. 337, M. FOUCAULT, L'archfologie du savoir, op. cit, P. HERNADI, op. cit. and G. DELEUZE & F. GATTARI, Mille Plateaux, 1980.

45. G. DELEUZE & F. GATTARI, op. cit, pp. 9-10.

46. N. CHOMSKY, Regles et representations, 1985( 1980).

47. C. LEVESQUE, op. cit.

48. See G. DELEUZE & F. GATTARI, op. cit, pp. 9-35.

49. G. C. SPIVAK, 'Translator's Preface', in Of Grammatology, 1976(1967).

50. On the captive in Don Quixote as being Cervantes in person, see W. ENTWISTLE, Cervantes, 1940, W. BYRON, Cervantes :A Biography, 1979. This is what he will later do when he 'finds' the Arabic 'document' in Toledo.

51. On this, R. DOZY wrote: 'Le vdritable rdcit arabe (of the Crönica del Cid that is) fourmille de phrases chrdtiennes interpoldes, et ou la ldgende catholique de Cardegne (ainsi que dans la General) est attribude ä un Arabe valencien. Cette supposition devient fort probable quand on voit Cide Hamete commencer un chapitre par ces paroles: "Je jure comme chrdtien catholique"', in Recherches sur 1'histoire et la littdrature de l'Espagne pendant le Moyen-Age, 1881, vol. 2, p. 51-

52. See for instance E. WELT TRAHAN, 'The Arabic Translator in Don Quixote: His Master's Voice and Victim', in Translation Perspectives, Selected Papers, 1982-3, ed. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, 1984, pp. 71-85.

53. Cervantes's reference to this 'fictional' title has not drawn any attention. Yet, it could be connected to Socrate Chrestien's idea that: 'Art, Science, Prose et Vers sont differentes especes d'vn mesme genre, et ce Genre se nomme Bagatelles en la langue de la Cour', quoted by J. E. SPINGARN, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, 1605.1650, vol. 1,1957 (1908), p. XXV. That Cervantes refers to this can be strengthened by the idea that he was, in Don Quixote, trying to 'eliminate' all previous genres: epic, romance,

192

Moorish novel, picaresque, and this one (11,62), coming at the end of the narrative. Also, the word 'bagatelle' means 'trifle, from the Italian bagatella (1547).

54. See for instance, M. EDWARDS, Towards a Christian Poetics, 1984, pp. 162ff.

55. See P. K. HITTI, History of the Arabs, 1951(1937), pp. 559ff, H. A. R. GIBB, in The Legacy of Islam,. Sir T. ARNOLD & A. GUILLAUME(eds), 1931,

_ pp. 180-209, F. UDINA MARTORELL, 'Les documents arabes aux

archives de la Couronne d'Aragon ä Barcelone et l'influence culturelle arabe sur l'Espagne catalane', in Actes du 1er Congr6s d'6tudes des cultures m6diterran6ennes d'influence arabo-berb e, M. GALLEY(ed), 1973, pp. 50-57. In this paper, he wrote: 'La contribution arabe ä la culture hispanique est un fait md6niable... une veritable osmose se produisit entre la culture arabe et la culture autochtone' (my italics).

56. R. WELLEK & A. WARREN, op. cit.

57. A. FOWLER, op. cit, p. 170.

58. On this see P. K. HITTI, op. cit, pp. 384ff, J. VERNET, Ce que la culture dolt aux Arabes d'Espagne, 1985(1978), pp. 237ff.

59. J. VERNET, op. cit, pp. 237ff.

60. D. B. RANDALL, The Golden Tapestry, 1963, and P. G. ADAMS, op. cit.

61. On the pseudoauthor and travel literature/historiography, see G. WATSON, op. cit and P. G. ADAMS, op. cit.

193

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