SOBRE DON QUIJOTE
[Notas (pues no ha quedado otra cosa) del guión de la conferencia
pronunciada por el autor en Londres el 20 de febrero de 1818. La conferencia,
que fue la octava del ciclo (con el que puso fin Coleridge a su actividad de conferenciante),
aparece así sumariada en el syllabus de la serie: “De la vida y obra de
Cervantes, pero especialmente de su Don Quijote. Mostrar que el ridículo del
caballero andante ha sido sólo un objeto secundario en el espíritu del autor, y
no la causa principal del deleite que la obra continúa produciendo a los
hombres de todos los países, cualesquiera que sean sus costumbres e ideas.”]
Don Quijote no estaba encadenado a la tierra por la
miseria ni estaba aprisionado por los abrazos de la riqueza; de modo que, con
la sobriedad propia de su pueblo, como español, tenía demasiado poco y a la vez
en exceso para hallarse obligado a pensar en ello. Asimismo, su edad, los
cincuenta años, bien puede suponerse que impedirían a su mente caer en la
tentación de cualquiera de las pasiones inferiores; en tanto que sus
costumbres, de gran madrugador y vehemente deportista, eran tales como para
conservar su cuerpo enjuto en duradera servidumbre a su voluntad y, con todo,
por acción de la esperanza que acompaña a la busca, no sólo le permitía sino
que ayudaba a su fantasía a forjar lo que quisiera.
La flacura y las facciones acentuadas son felices
exponentes del exceso que había en él (Don Quijote) de lo formativo o
imaginativo, contrastando con la rotundidad rolliza de Sancho y su receptividad
de las impresiones externas.
Don Quijote finalmente llega a convertirse en un
hombre que ha perdido el juicio; su entendimiento se halla trastornado; y de
ahí, sin la menor desfiguración a la verdad de la naturaleza, sin perder el
menor rasgo de individualidad personal, que se convierta en una sustancial
alegoría viviente o personificación de la razón y el sentido moral, despojado
del juicio y el entendimiento. Sancho es a la inversa. Es el sentido común sin
razón ni imaginación; y Cervantes no sólo muestra la excelencia y poder de la
razón en Don Quijote, sino que tanto en él como en Sancho muestra los males que
resultan de la separación de los dos elementos principales de la acción
intelectual y moral sana. Juntadlos a él y su amo, y formarán un intelecto
perfecto; pero están separados y sin vínculo, y de ahí que, necesitando cada
uno del otro para su propia integridad, cada uno domine a veces al otro. Pues
el sentido común, aunque puede ver la inaplicabilidad práctica de los dictados
de la imaginación o de la razón abstracta, no puede menos de someterse a ellos.
Estos dos personajes poseen el mundo y alternativa y
recíprocamente son el engañador y el engañado. Personificarlos, combinando lo
permanente con lo individual, constituye una de las mayores creaciones del
genio, y casi únicamente ha sido logrado por Cervantes y Shakespeare.
P. I. Cap. III. — Los grandes elogios que Don
Quijote hace de sí mismo —“¡El más
valeroso andante!”—; pero no es su figura misma la que tiene en el
pensamiento, sino al ídolo de su imaginación, al ser imaginario que está
representando. Y este hecho, el de que se trata por completo de una tercera
persona, le disculpa de la acusación de vanidad egoísta, que de otro modo sería
inevitable.
Cap. IV. — Los mercaderes de Toledo.
“Y cuando
llegaron a trecho que se pudieron ver y oír, levantó Don Quijote la voz y con
ademán arrogante dijo:
—Todo el mundo
se tenga, si todo el mundo no confiesa que no hay en el mundo todo, etc.”
Nótese la presunción que sigue a la satisfacción de
sí mismo en el último acto. Mientras aquél era un honrado intento de reparar un
verdadero entuerto, ésta es una determinación arbitraria de imponer a todos sus
semejantes un ideal de Brissotine o Rousseau.
Esta historia tan divertida concluye, para compasión
de los hombres sensatos, con un cabal molimiento de las costillas del idealista
por el mozo de muías, la canalla. ¡Y feliz de ti, pobre caballero, de que la
canalla estaba en contra tuya! Pues de haber estado contigo, por un quítame
allá esas pajas te hubieran cortado la cabeza.
Cap. X. — “—Pero
dime por tu vida: ¿has visto más valeroso caballero que yo en todo lo
descubierto de la tierra? ¿Has leído en historias otro que tenga ni haya tenido
más bríos en acometer, más aliento en perseverar, más destreza en el herir, ni
más maña en el derribar?
—La verdad sea
—respondió Sancho— que yo no he leído ninguna historia jamás porque ni sé leer
ni escrebir; mas lo que osaré apostar es que más atrevido amo que vuestra
merced yo no le he servido en todos los días de mi vida, etc.”
Este requerimiento a Sancho, y la respuesta de
Sancho, son de un humorismo exquisito. Es imposible dejar de pensar en los
boletines y proclamas franceses. Observad la necesidad que nos domina de
sentirnos halagados, de volar lo más alto posible en lo abstracto, y con qué
constancia la imaginación es restituida al suelo de nuestra baja humanidad.
Cap. XI. — El discurso ante los cabreros: “Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos,
etc.”
Nótese el ritmo y la admirable belleza y sabiduría
que tienen los juicios en sí mismos, pero también la total falta de juicio en
Don Quijote al dirigirlos a semejante auditorio.
Cap. XVIII. — “Más
bueno era vuestra merced —dijo Sancho— para predicador que para caballero
andante”.
Justamente. Ésta es la verdadera moraleja.
Cap. XXII. — La aventura de los galeotes. Pienso que
éste es el único episodio en que Cervantes hace a un lado la máscara de su
héroe y habla por sí mismo.
Cap. XXIV. — Cardenio es el loco de la pasión que encuentra
y derrota fácilmente, por un momento, al loco de la imaginación. Y nótese el
contagio de la locura de cualquier clase, al interrumpir Don Quijote la
narración de Cardenio.
Cap. XXV. — ¡El asombroso crepúsculo de la mente! Y
obsérvese el coraje de Cervantes al atreverse a presentarlo y confiar en una
distante posteridad para la apreciación de su fidelidad a la naturaleza.
P. II. Cap. XLI. — El relato que hace Sancho de lo
que ha visto yendo en Clavileño es, a su modo, una contraparte a las aventuras
de Don Quijote en la cueva de Montesinos. Esta última es la única imputación al
carácter moral del caballero; Cervantes sólo da un ejemplo del fracaso de la
veracidad ante los deseos vehementes que siente la imaginación por algo real y externo; sin esto, la descripción
no hubiera sido completa; y, sin embargo, está tan bien llevado que el lector
no queda con la desagradable sensación de que Don Quijote ha contado una
mentira. Es evidente que él apenas sabe si fue un sueño o no; y por eso va
hacia el encantador para averiguar la verdadera naturaleza de la aventura.
Cervantes fue el inventor de las novelas entre los
españoles, y en su Persiles y Sigismunda
los ingleses pueden hallar el germen de su Robín- son Crusoe. Para él, el mundo
era un drama. Sus pensamientos, a pesar de la pobreza y la enfermedad,
perpetuaron en él los sentimientos de la juventud. Describía sólo lo que
conocía y había observado, pero conocía y había observado mucho, en verdad; y
su imaginación siempre estaba pronta a adaptar y modificar el mundo de su
experiencia. Hizo fábulas de amor exquisito, pero con una virtud inmaculada.
Traducción de Enrique Luis Revol
Revista Sur, diciembre de 1947.
DON QUIXOTE
Don Quixote was
neither fettered to the earth by want, nor holden in its embraces by wealth
;—of which, with the temperance natural to his country, as a Spaniard, he had
both far too little, and somewhat too much, to be under any necessity of
thinking about it. His age too, fifty, may be well supposed to prevent his mind
from being tempted out of itself by any of the lower passions ;—while his
habits, as a very early riser and a keen sportsman, were such as kept his spare
body in serviceable subjection to his will, and yet by the play of hope that
accompanies pursuit, not only permitted, but assisted, his fancy in shaping
what it would. Nor must we omit his meagreness and entire featureliness, face
and frame, which Cervantes gives us at once : “It is said that his surname was
Quixada or Ouesada,” &c. —even in this trifle showing an exquisite judgment
; —just once insinuating the association of lantern-jaws
into the reader’s mind, yet not retaining it obtrusively like the names in old
farces and in the Pilgrim’s Progress,—but taking for the regular appellative
one which had the no meaning of a proper name in real life, and which yet was
capable of recalling a number of very different, but all pertinent,
recollections, as old armour, the precious metals hidden in the ore, &c.
Don Quixote’s leanness and featureliness are happy exponents of the excess of
the formative or imaginative in him, contrasted with Sancho’s plump rotundity,
and recipiency of external impression.
He has no knowledge of
the sciences or scientific arts which give to the meanest portions of matter an
intellectual interest, and which enable the mind to decypher in the world of
the senses the invisible agency—that alone, of which the world’s phenomena are
the effects and manifestations,—and thus, as in a mirror, to contemplate its
own reflex, its life in the powers, its imagination in the symbolic forms, its
moral instincts in the final causes, and its reason in the laws of material
nature : but—estranged from all the motives to observation from
self-interest—the persons that surround him too few and too familiar to enter
into any connection with his thoughts, or to require any adaptation of his
conduct to their particular characters or relations to himself—his judgment
lies fallow, with nothing to excite, nothing to employ it. Yet,—and here is the
point, where genius even of the most perfect kind, allotted but to few in the course
of many ages, does not preclude the necessity in part, and in part
counterbalance the craving by sanity of judgment, without which genius either
cannot be, or cannot at least manifest itself,—the dependency of our nature
asks for some confirmation from without, though it be only from the shadows of
other men’s fictions.
Too uninformed, and
with too narrow a sphere of power and opportunity to rise into the scientific
artist, or to be himself a patron of art, and with too deep a principle and too
much innocence to become a mere projector, Don Quixote has recourse to romances
:—
His curiosity and extravagant fondness herein
arrived at that pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books
of knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on of that kind ! C. I.
The more remote these
romances were from the language of common life, the more akin on that very
account were they to the shapeless dreams and strivings of his own mind a mind,
which possessed not the highest order of genius which lives in an atmosphere of
power over mankind, but that minor kind which, in its restlessness, seeks for a
vivid representative of its own wishes, and substitutes the movements of that
objective puppet for an exercise of actual power in and by itself. The more
wild and improbable these romances were, the more were they akin to his will,
which had been in the habit of acting as an unlimited monarch over the
creations of his fancy ! Hence observe how the startling of the remaining
common sense, like a glimmering before its death, in the notice of the
impossible-improbable of Don Belianis, is dismissed by Don Quixote as
impertinent :—
He had some doubt as to the dreadful wounds
which Don Belianis gave and received : for he imagined, that notwithstanding
the most expert surgeons had cured him, his face and whole body must still be
full of seams and scars. Nevertheless he commended in his author the concluding
his book with a promise of that unfinishable adventure ! C. I.
Hence also his first
intention to turn author ; but who, with such a restless struggle within him,
could content himself with writing in a remote village among apathists and
ignorants ? During his colloquies with the village priest and the barber
surgeon, in which the fervour of critical controversy feeds the passion and gives
reality to its object—what more natural than that the mental striving should
become an eddy ?—madness may perhaps be defined as the circling in a stream
which should be progressive and adaptive : Don Quixote grows at length to be a
man out of his wits ; his understanding is deranged ; and hence without the
least deviation from the truth of nature, without losing the least trait of
personal individuality, he becomes a substantial living allegory, or
personification of the reason and the moral sense, divested of the judgment and
the understanding. Sancho is the converse. He is the common sense without
reason or imagination ; and Cervantes not only shows the excellence and power
of reason in Don Quixote, but in both him and Sancho the mischiefs resulting from
a severance of the two main constituents of sound intellectual and moral
action. Put him and his master together, and they form a perfect intellect ;
but they are separated and without cement; and hence each having a need of the
other for its own completeness, each has at times a mastery over the other. For
the common sense, although it may see the practical inapplicability of the
dictates of the imagination or abstract reason, yet cannot help submitting to
them. These two characters possess the world, alternately and interchangeably
the cheater and the cheated. To impersonate them, and to combine the permanent
with the individual, is one of the highest creations of genius, and has been
achieved by Cervantes and Shakspeare, almost alone.
Observations on particular
passages,
B. I. c. I. But not
altogether approving of his having broken it to pieces with so much ease, to
secure himself from the like danger for the future, he made it over again,
fencing it with small bars of iron within, in such a manner, that he rested- satisfied. of its strength ;
and without caring to make a fresh experiment on it, he approved and looked
upon it as a most excellent helmet.
His not trying his
improved scull-cap is an exquisite trait of human character, founded on the
oppugnancy of the soul in such a state to any disturbance by doubt of its own
broodings. Even the long deliberation about his horse’s name is full of meaning
;—for in these day-dreams the greater part of the history passes and is carried
on in words, which look forward to other words as what will be said of them.
Ib. Near the place
where he lived, there dwelt a very comely country lass, with whom he had
formerly been in love ; though, as it is supposed, she never knew it, nor
troubled herself about it.
The nascent love for
the country lass, but without any attempt at utterance, or an opportunity of
knowing her, except as the hint—the OTI ESTI—of
the inward imagination, is happily conceived in both parts ;—first, as
confirmative of the shrinking back of the mind on itself, and its dread of
having a cherished image destroyed by its own judgment; and secondly, as
showing how necessarily love is the passion of novels. Novels are to love as
fairy tales to dreams. I never knew but two men of taste and feeling who could not
understand why I was delighted with the Arabian Nights’ Tales, and they were
likewise the only persons in my knowledge who scarcely remembered having ever
dreamed.
Magic and war—itself a
magic—are the day-dreams of childhood ; love is the day-dream of youth and
early manhood.
C. 2. “Scarcely
had ruddy Phoebus spread the golden tresses of his beauteous hair over the face
of the wide and spacious earth ; and scarcely had the little painted birds,
with the sweet and mellifluous harmony of their forked tongues, saluted the
approach of rosy Aurora, who, quitting the soft couch of her jealous husband,
disclosed herself to mortals through the gates of the Mauchegan horizon ; when
the renowned Don Quixote,” &c.
How happily already is
the abstraction from the senses, from observation, and the consequent confusion
of the judgment, marked in this description ! The knight is describing objects
immediate to his senses and sensations without borrowing a single trait from
either. Would it be difficult to find parallel descriptions in Dryden’s plays
and in those of his successors ?
C. 3. The host is here
happily conceived as one who from his past life as a sharper, was capable of
entering into and humouring the knight, and so perfectly in character, that he
precludes a considerable source of improbability in the future narrative, by
enforcing upon Don Quixote the necessity of taking money with him.
C. 3. “Ho,
there, whoever thou art, rash knight, that approachest to touch the arms of the
most valorous adventurer that ever girded sword,” &c.
Don Quixote’s high
eulogiums on himself—“ the most valorous adventurer ! ”—but it is not himself
that he has before him, but the idol of his imagination, the imaginary being
whom he is acting. And this, that it is entirely a third person, excuses his
heart from the otherwise inevitable charge of selfish vanity ; and so by
madness itself he preserves our esteem, and renders those actions natural by
which he, the first person, deserves it.
C. 4. Andres and his
master.
The manner in which
Don Quixote redressed this wrong, is a picture of the true revolutionary
passion in its first honest state, while it is yet only a bewilderment of the
understanding. You have a benevolence limitless in its prayers, which are in
fact aspirations towards omnipotence ; but between it and beneficence the
bridge of judgment—that is, of measurement of personal power—intervenes, and
must be passed. Otherwise you will be bruised by the leap into the chasm, or be
drowned in the revolutionary river, and drag others with you to the same fate.
C. 4. Merchants of
Toledo.
When they were come so
near as to be seen and heard, Don Quixote raised his voice, and with arrogant
air cried out : “Let the whole world
stand! if the whole world does not confess that there is not in the whole world
a damsel more beautiful than,” &c.
Now mark the
presumption which follows the self-complacency of the last act! That was an
honest attempt to redress a real wrong ; this is an arbitrary determination to
enforce a Brissotine or Rousseau’s ideal on all his fellow creatures.
Let the whole world stand!
‘If there had been any experience in proof of
the excellence of our code, where would be our superiority in this enlightened
age? ’
“No! the business is that without seeing her,
you believe, confess, affirm, swear, and maintain it ; and if not, I challenge
you all to battle.”
Next see the
persecution and fury excited by opposition however moderate! The only words
listened to are those, that without their context and their conditionals, and
transformed into positive assertions, might give some shadow of excuse for the
violence shown! This rich story ends, to the compassion of the men in their
senses, in a sound rib- roasting of the idealist by the muleteer, the mob. And
happy for thee, poor knight ! that the mob were against thee! For had they been with thee, by the change of the
moon and of them, thy head would have been off.
C. 5. first part (Probably
this should be ch. 4, last part.] —The idealist recollects the causes that had
been accessory to the reverse and attempts to remove them —too late. He is
beaten and disgraced.
C. 6. This chapter on
Don Quixote’s library proves that the author did not wish to destroy the
romances, but to cause them to be read as romances —that is, for their merits
as poetry.
C. 7. Among other
things, Don Quixote told him, he should dispose himself to go with him
willingly ;—for some time or other such an adventure might present, that an
island might be won, in the turn of a hand, and he be left governor thereof.
At length the promises
of the imaginative reason begin to act on the plump, sensual, honest common
sense accomplice, —but unhappily not in the same person, and without the copula of the judgment,—in hopes of the
substantial good things, of which the former contemplated only the glory and
the colours.
C.7. Sancho Panza went
riding upon his ass, like- any patriarch, with his wallet and leathern bottle,
and with a vehement desire to find himself governor of the island which his
master had promised him.
The first relief from
regular labour is so pleasant to poor Sancho!
C. 8. “I no gentleman! I swear by the great God,
thou best, as I am a Christian. Biscainer by land, gentleman by sea, gentleman
for the devil, and thou best : look then if thou hast any thing else to say.”
This Biscainer is an
excellent image of the prejudices and bigotry provoked by the idealism of a
speculator. This story happily detects the trick which our imagination plays in
the description of single combats : only change the preconception of the
magnificence of the combatants, and all is gone.
B.II. c. 2. “ Be pleased, my lord Don Quixote, to bestow
upon me the government of that island,” &c.
Sancho’s eagerness for
his government, the nascent lust of actual democracy, or isocracy!
C.2. “ But tell me, on your life, have you ever
seen a more valorous knight than I, upon the whole face of the known earth ?
Have you read in story of any other, who has, or ever had, more bravery in assailing,
more breath in holding out, more dexterity in wounding, or more address in
giving a fall ? ” —“ The truth is,” answered Sancho, “ that I never read any
history at all ; for I can neither read nor write ; but what I dare affirm is,
that I never served a bolder master,” &c.
This appeal to Sancho,
and Sancho’s answer are exquisitely humorous. It is impossible not to think of
the French bulletins and proclamations. Remark the necessity under which we are
of being sympathized with, fly as high into abstraction as we may, and how
constantly the imagination is recalled to the ground of our common humanity !
And note a little further on, the knight’s easy vaunting of his balsam, and his
quietly deferring the making and application of it.
C. 3. The speech
before the goatherds :
“Happy times and happy ages,” &c.
Note the rhythm of
this, and the admirable beauty and wisdom of the thoughts in themselves, but
the total want of judgment in Don Quixote’s addressing them to such an
audience.
B. III. c. 3. Don
Quixote’s balsam, and the vomiting and consequent relief ; an excellent hit at panacea nostrums, which cure the patient
by his being himself cured of the medicine by revolting nature.
C. 4. “Peace ! and have patience ; the day will
come,” &c. The perpetual promises of the imagination !
Ib. “Your Worship,” said Sancho, “ would make a
better preacher than knight errant!”
Exactly so. This is
the true moral.
C. 6. The uncommon
beauty of the description in the commencement of this chapter. In truth, the
whole of it seems to put all nature in its heights and its humiliations, before
us.
Ib. Sancho’s story of
the goats:
“Make account, he carried them all over,” said
Don Quixote, “and do not be going and coming in this manner; for at this rate,
you will not have done carrying them over in a twelvemonth.”
“How many are passed already? ” said Sancho, &c.
Observe the happy
contrast between the all-generalizing mind of the mad knight, and Sancho’s
all-particularizing memory. How admirable a symbol of the dependence of all copula on the higher powers of the mind,
with the single exception of the succession in time and the accidental
relations of space. Men of mere common sense have no theory or means of making
one fact more important or prominent than the rest ; if they lose one link, all
is lost. Compare Mrs. Quickly and the Tapster. And note also Sancho’s good
heart, when his master is about to leave him. Don Quixote’s conduct upon
discovering the fulling-hammers, proves he was meant to be in his senses.
Nothing can be better conceived than his fit of passion at Sancho’s laughing,
and his sophism of self-justification by the courage he had shown.
Sancho is by this time
cured, through experience, as far as his own errors are concerned ; yet still
is he lured on by the unconquerable awe of his master’s superiority, even when
he is cheating him.
C. 8. The adventure of
the Galley-slaves. I think this is the only passage of moment in which
Cervantes slips the mask of his hero, and speaks for himself.
C. 9. Don Quixote
desired to have it, and bade him take the money, and keep it for himself.
Sancho kissed his hands for the favour, &c.
Observe Sancho’s
eagerness to avail himself of the permission of his master, who, in the war
sports of knight- errantry, had, without any selfish dishonesty, overlooked the
meum and tuum. Sancho’s selfishness is modified by his involuntary goodness
of heart, and Don Quixote’s flighty goodness is debased by the involuntary or
unconscious selfishness of his vanity and self-applause.
C.10. Cardenio is the
madman of passion, who meets and easily overthrows for the moment the madman of
imagination. And note the contagion of madness of any kind, upon Don Quixote’s
interruption of Cardenio’s story.
C.11. Perhaps the best
specimen of Sancho’s prover- bializing is this:
“And I (Don Q.) say again, they lie, and will
lie two hundred times more, all who say, or think her so.” “ I neither say, nor
think so,” answered Sancho ; “let those who say it, eat the lie, and swallow it
with their bread : whether they were guilty or no, they have given an account
to God before now : I come from my vineyard, I know nothing ; I am no friend to
inquiring into other men’s lives ; for he
that buys and lies shall find the lie left in his purse behind ; besides,
naked was I born, and naked I remain ; I
neither win nor lose ; if they were guilty, what is that to me ? Many think to
find bacon, where there is not so much as a pin to hang it on : but who can hedge in the cuckoo ? Especially, do they spare God himself ? ”
lb. “And it is no great matter, if it be in
another hand ; for by what I remember, Dulcinea can neither write nor read,”
&c.
The wonderful twilight
of the mind! and mark Cervantes’s courage in daring to present it, and trust to
a distant posterity for an appreciation of its truth to nature.
P. II. B. III. c.9.1 [Part
II, ch. 41. This book division of Part II is not usual.] Sancho’s account of
what he had seen on Clavileño is a counterpart in his style to Don Quixote’s
adventures in the cave of Montesinos. This last is the only impeachment of the
knight’s moral character ; Cervantes just gives one instance of the veracity failing
before the strong cravings of the imagination for something real and external ;
the picture would not have been complete without this ; and yet it is so well
managed, that the reader has no unpleasant sense of Don Quixote having told a
lie. It is evident that he hardly knows whether it was a dream or not ; and
goes to the enchanter to inquire the real nature of the adventure.
SUMMARY ON CERVANTES
A Castilian of refined
manners ; a gentleman, true to religion, and true to honour.
A scholar and a soldier,
and fought under the banners of Don John of Austria, at Lepanto, lost his arm
and was captured.
Endured slavery not
only with fortitude, but with mirth ; and by the superiority of nature,
mastered and overawed his barbarian owner.
Finally ransomed, he resumed
his native destiny, the awful task of achieving fame ; and for that reason died
poor and a prisoner, while nobles and kings over their goblets of gold gave
relish to their pleasures by the charms of his divine genius. He was the
inventor of novels for the Spaniards, and in his Persilis and Sigismunda, the English may find the germ of their
Robinson Crusoe.
The world was a drama
to him. His own thoughts, in spite of poverty and sickness, perpetuated for him
the feelings of youth. He painted only what he knew and had looked into, but he
knew and had looked into much indeed ; and his imagination was ever at hand to
adapt and modify the world of his experience. Of
delicious love he fabled, yet with stainless virtue.
