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The Pertinence of El Curioso Impertinente

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Bruce W. Wardropper
Bruce W. Wardropper*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University, Columbus 10
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Extract

Cervantine criticism is divided on the question whether El curioso impertinente is relevant to the total context of Don Quixote. Américo Castro, writing in 1925, compiled a list—which he declared to be “not exhaustive”—of six critics who were opposed to the interpolation of the short story, and five who welcomed its inclusion. He himself created a tie by accepting El curioso impertinente as a further exemplification of the theme of error and its consequences; the tale, that is, was seen to reinforce the thematic structure of Don Quixote as Castro then interpreted it. Since the making of this classic summary of opinion a stalemate has reigned; no significant contribution to our understanding of the problem has been made. Some random examples from later commentators will establish this point.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1957 , pp. 587 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

1 El pensamiento de Cervantes (Madrid, 1925), pp. 121–123.

page 587 1a As I mail the final version of this article I discover in the current bibliography of the last issue of NRFH to hand (x, 124) its namesake, written by Julian Marias: “La pertinencia del Curioso impertinente,” Revista (Barcelona), 1954, núm. 100.

2 “Quelques mots sur la genese de El curioso impertinente,” Revue de I'Enseignement des Langues Vivantes, xliii (1926), 258–263; “Plot, Tale and Episode in Don Quixote,” Melanges Jeanroy (Paris, 1928), p. 316, n. 2; “Unconventional Behavior in the Novelas interccdadas in Don Quijote,” Library Chron. Univ. Texas, III (1948), 69–74.

3 It would, perhaps, be accurate to say that Casalduero takes it for granted that El curioso impertinente is integrated into the Quijote de 1605; he does not explain this assumption. See Sentido y forma del Quijote (Madrid, 1949), pp. 145–152, 199–200. A recent article by Sister Marie Thomas—“Extraneous Episodes in Don Quijote,” Hisp., xxxvi (1953), 305–309—contributes nothing new.

4 S. G. Morley, in a reader's comment, states: “to me the insertion of extraneous tales is merely a custom inherited from the chivalrous and pastoral novels, and requires no special motivation.” My point is simply that an inserted tale must not be prejudged “extraneous.” If, after sympathetic study, the critic cannot satisfy himself that the tale is relevant, he may be justified in supposing it to be wholly extraneous. Too often statements like Morley's are the result of critical inertia. I think, for example, that I have been able to prone the relevance of most of the short stories in one pastoral novel, Montemayor's Diana (SP, xlviii, 1951, 126–144). I do not maintain that in every chivalric or pastoral novel every tale fits into an overall pattern. I merely plead—for the sake of understanding, and in protest against Morley's critical defeatism—for my prejudice rather than his. Since Raymond J. Willis' model demonstration of the consciousness of Cervantes' art in Don Quixote (Phantom Chapters of the Quijote, New York, 1953), my initial assumption that El curioso imperlinente might have something to do with the main plot of the novel seems to me entirely justified.

5 R. L. Predmore, in another reader's comment, takes me to task for refusing to establish a point which is basic to my argument. It would take a book to do justice to the problem. Why Cervantes mystifies is less evident than the fact that he does. A few words on the fact will have to suffice.

Cervantes adopts contradictory attitudes. For example, he says: “no hay refrán que no sea verdadero.” This statement implies Malara's justification: “no hay refrán que no sea verdadero, porque lo que dice todo el pueblo no es de burla.” Yet Cervantes also notes: “no soy tan firágil que me deje ir con la corriente del vulgo, las más veces enganado” (cited from Castro, pp. 194, 211). Such inconsistencies may be simply normal human failures to think straight. But add them to the deliberate mystification in literary tradition, and one begins to wonder. Lucian, for instance, in the preamble to his fantastic Vera Historia (which I suspect Cervantes had in mind when he insisted that Don Quixote was a verdadera historia) writes: “Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something to posterity, I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood —but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect—that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full defence against all imputations. My subject is, then, what I have neither seen, experienced, nor been told, what neither exists nor could conceivably do so. I humbly solicit my readers' incredulity” (The Works of Lucian, trans. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, Oxford, 1905, II, 137—italics mine). Francis G. Allinson (Lucian, Satirist and Artist, Boston, 1926, p. 159) observes: “In the introduction to Don Quixote Cervantes gives a nearer parallel to Lucian's How to Write History and to the opening of the True Story than he does in the body of the work itself, with its special crusade against a creed of chivalry outworn, but even here we feel the Lucianic touch in the esoteric satire directed against braggarts and liars.” Allinson is no student of Don Quixote (and he should have translated Lucian's title as True History), but he dimly sees the connection. I would say that in Cervantes' novel we have, not “esoteric satire” against liars, but mystification, or mixtification, about the boundaries of lie and truth, a technique suggested by Lucian, though not worked out by him.

6 Quotations from Don Quixote are taken from the 4-vol. ed. by Schevill-Bonilla (Madrid, 1928–41).

7 It matters very little whether Cervantes heard or imagined such criticism. The essential thing is that the objections to his tales occurred to him as conceivable. A sensitive man might feel, or even resent, possible criticism as much as actual criticism.

8 That Cervantes realized the ambiguity of the word “pertinente” is evident from a discussion between the Barber and Don Quixote at the beginning of Pt. II. Don Quixote is posing as an arbitrista. The Barber observes that his plan should be added to the list of “los muchos aduertimientos impertinentes que se suelen dar a los principes. ‘El mio, senor rapador,’ dixo don Quixote, ‘no sera impertinente, sino perteneciente’ ” (III, 37).

9 This idea is Lucianesque. “For history, I say again, has this and this only for its own; if a man will start upon it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else” (Quomodo historia conscribenda sit, trans, cit., II, 128–129).

10 Cide Hamete, the historian who cannot resist poetry, belongs to a type of historian satirized by Lucian: “Another thing these gentlemen seem not to know' is that poetry and history offer different wares, and have their separate rules. Poetry enjoys unrestricted freedom; it has but one law—the poet's fancy… But, if history adopts such servile arts, it is nothing but poetry without the wings… It is surely a great, a superlative weakness, this inability to distinguish history from poetry; what, bedizen history, like her sister, with tale and eulogy and their attendant exaggerations?” (Quomodo, II, 113). I suggest that Cide Hamete begins by being a grotesque historian of this description, but because Cervantes' work transcends the initial parody the Moor succeeds in doing what Lucian says is impossible: dignifying (comic) history with poetry (that is, with art).

11 The “history” is of course fiction, despite Cervantes' protestations to the contrary. I refer to the historical style as understood by Cervantes and his contemporaries. It is hardly necessary to point out that the Cervantine terms historia and artificio correspond to the Aristotelian vertiente histórica and vertiente poética as explained by Américo Castro.

12 Cervantes' statement is not only difficult, but inconvenient. It would be a pleasure to organize my whole argument about 2 sharply differentiated poles. But Cervantes' thought is subtle. The poles exist, but, as in a horseshoe magnet, close together. Even this inconvenient statement seems to derive from a reservation of the subtle Lucian Lucian, as we have seen, is pleading in his Quomodo for the rigid separation of history and poetry. Even so, he notes at one point in his discussion—just like Cervantes—that “the historian's spirit should not be without a touch of the poetical; it needs, like poetry, to employ impressive and exalted tones” (II, 130).

13 Ruiz de Alarcón ends his fanciful historical play No hay mat que por bien no venga with a reference to “esta verdadera historia” (Cuatro comedias, ed. Hill-Harlan, New York, 1941, p. 275), and Calderón ends his honor play A secreto agravio secreta venganza with the words: “Esta es verdadera historia / del gran don Lope de Almeida, / dando con su admiratión / fin a la tragicomedia” (Obras completes, ed. L. Astrana Marin, Madrid, 1951, I, 323).

14 Ch. xxxii of Pt. I—the one which immediately precedes the beginning of El curioso impertinente —deals with this problem. The innkeeper, of whom it is said: “Poco le falta a nuestro huesped para hazer la segunda parte de don Quixote,” is so confused that he must be told by the Priest that his beloved books of chivalry “son mentirosos y están Ilenos de disparates y deuaneos. Y este del Gran Capitan es historia verdadera ” (II, 85, 83–84). He remains unconvinced: “!Bueno es que quiera darme vuestra merced a entender que todo aquello que estos buenos libros dizen sea disparates y mentiras, estando impresso con licencia de los senores del Consejo Real, como si ellos fueran gente que auian de dexar imprimir tanta mentira junta, y tantas batallas y tantos encantamentos, que quitan el juyzio!” (II, 86—all italics mine).

15 The reference is to Leo Spitzer, Die Literarisierung des Lebens in Lopes Dorotea (Bonn, 1932).

16 See José F. Montesinos, “Cadalso o la noche cerrada,” Cruz y Raya (April 1934), pp. 43–67.

17 A few random examples of this doubting-Thomas manner of experiencing truth will serve to show how prevalent the theme is. All are taken from Vol. III of the Schevill-Bonilla ed.: “tocar con la mano” (pp. 41,167, 452); “ver con los ojos y tocar con las manos” (pp. 123, 176, 297); “tocar las apariencias con la mano” (p. 146); “ver con los ojos” (pp. 189, 200, 227, 362); “tomar el pulso” (pp. 227, 261, 342, 447); “tentar la herida” (p. 270); “tentar la cabeza y los pechos” (p. 287); “tantear” (p. 456).

18 See R. Menéndez Pidal, “Lope de Vega: El Arte Nuevo y la nueva biograffa,” RFE, xxii (1935), 337–398.

19 For a tentative interpretation see MP, III (1955), 217–221. This article may serve also as a further illustration of the mystification process.

20 The episode of Camacho's wedding, for example, is highly artificial, and—one might add—artificially attached to the history of Don Quixote. For the sake of completeness it must be admitted that “artistic elements” find their way into the historia, e.g., the Discourse on the Golden Age. Cervantes reveals an artistic approach to the whole Don Quixote in occasional phrases like “el buen concierto de la historia” (IV, 122). And of course the pretense that the story of Don Quixote's adventures is a true history is itself an artificio. More significant, however, are the obvious contrasts and links between the areas of nature and art: Sancho's tale of the goatherds (I, 266–270) is contrasted with the art story of Cardenio (I, 335); El curioso impertinente is connected to the main plot by the si quien soy theme or the phrase “costosa experiencia” (II, 96 [Anselmo]; II, 162 [the Priest, speaking of Anselmo]; II, 168 [Dorotea, speaking of Don Fernando]).

21 Richard L. Predmore, “El problema de la realidad en el Quijote,” NRFE, VII (1953), 489–498, has demonstrated convincingly that Cervantes does not accept dual standards of truth. Repeatedly he intervenes in his narrative with a clear indication—“y asi era la verdad”—to prevent the reader from confusing right and wrong.

22 In spite of my reservations about the word debate it can hardly be avoided in reference to the dialectical nature of Don Quixote.

23 The tales were evidently omitted by Cervantes' first readers: “Muchos, lleuados de la atencion que piden las hazanas de don Quixote, no la darian a las nouelas, y passarian por ellas” (IV, 64).

24 This subject is discussed at length in the chapter immediately preceding El curioso impertinente (Pt. I, Cap. xxxii).

25 A good example of a belief founded on nonsense is Don Quixote's assumption that others will recognize the pre-eminence of Dulcinea's beauty without having seen her. As he says to the Toledan merchants, “la importancia está en que, sin verla, lo aueis de creer, confessar, afirmar, jurar y defender” (I, 84).

26 In the 20th century D. H. Lawrence speaks of the “confusion and false feeling” brought by “idealists” into the “clear issue” of a flogging: see his commentary on Dana's Two Years Before the Mast in Studies in Classic American Literature (New York, 1953), p. 132. Edward M. Wilson, “Edmund Gayton, Don Quixote, Andres, and Juan Haldudo,” CL, II (1950), 64–72, observes that those who pity Andres fail to respond as the 17thcentury reader would.

27 Asclepiades of Myrlea distinguished 3 categories of literary truth: “alelhes historia o ” ‘true history,’ for what is literally true; pseudes historia or ‘false history’ for what is wholly' imaginary; and plasmata, hos genomena or ‘fiction,’ ‘as might happen,’ for imaginative writing… The plasma must have a core of actual history; the treatment of this history’ might be imaginative, but it must preserve historical verisimilitude and convey edification… But there have at all times been critics like Solon, who would countenance no liberties with truth and insist that a given writing must belong to one or the other of the first two categories: if it was not completely true it must be wholly false and hence utterly rejected. In later antiquity this attitude was characteristic of the Latin Fathers of the Church“ (Moses Hadas, Ancilla to Classical Reading, New York, 1954, pp. 45–46). Hadas points out that in the later Byzantine novels (imitated, we might add, by Cervantes by authority of El Pinciano) ”probability in incident and character is so far disregarded that the production can no longer be regarded as plasma, but must be classified as ‘false history.’ But apparently ‘false history’ was usually indicated to be such… whereas the novels are represented as true. The novels, then, represent a final abdication of truth in creative literature. That is in fact the great weakness of these novels, and of other imaginative productions of later antiquity“ (p. 47—italics mine). Cervantes' literary Byzantinism immersed him in this controversy about fictional truth. His thoughts on the subject appear in Don Quixote and elsewhere. It is my belief that in this, as in the other debates, he did not reach a solution which he felt to be completely satisfactory. But he seems to have inclined to the position of Solon and the Fathers.

28 The formula “asi era la verdad,” mentioned in n. 12 above is another important direction indicator.

29 Cf. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ed. C. F. Harrold (New York, 1947), p. 19 “we [scil. all men] were bound to be more or less sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated scale of assent, viz. according as the probabilities attaching to a professed fact were brought home to us, and as the case might be, to entertain about it a pious belief, or a pious opinion, or a religious conjecture, or at least, a tolerance of such belief, or opinion or conjecture in others.”