—29→
University of Calgary
Although the debate concerning the content and the establishment of the literary canon could seem to interest only our time, Cervantes introduces the verb canonizar into the discussion of literary value in the Viaje del Parnaso (1614). The poem itself serves as the author's attempt to use a common Renaissance topos to proclaim his own literary worth while simultaneously poking fun at the very process of establishing hierarchies of literary value33. According to the fiction that serves both as the frame and the structure of the series of literary judgments of his own work and that of his contemporaries, Cervantes decides to flee from Madrid in order to seek refuge in Mount Parnassus, the home of Apollo and the muses. Carried forth on the horse of Fame, he arrives at Cartagena, where Mercury meets him with a list of poets from Apollo. Cervantes' task is to counsel Mercury concerning the literary merit of the poets named therein, so that the messenger can organize an army of good poets who will defend Parnassus from the —30→ assaulting band of bad poets. In the course of describing the journey from the gossip-filled corners of la corte to the elevated abode of Poetry, Cervantes delineates a series of maps relating sites of literary production in the text to the social structures by which literary value is categorized. The allegorical figures of good and bad poetry, as well as vainglory, encountered in Parnassus then serve to underline and undercut the social categorization of literature as high or low established by the maps of Madrid and the Mediterranean. In this manner, Cervantes embodies in the fantastic no-place of Mount Parnassus a counter-utopia illustrating the socio-historical trap of the author's own existence as an author who has enjoyed only popular success but has been denied the approval as a serious writer he has sought.
One element of this work open to ironic play is the doubling of
Cervantes, the author, with Cervantes, the narrator and protagonist. Elias L.
Rivers has noted the autobiographical content of the text, including the
«attempt on the part of the author to establish, by means of
self-deprecating irony and broadly satirical burlesque, a secure 'public image'
for himself as an author and critic of poetry34»
. Jean Canavaggio expands on this insight by
distinguishing between a rhetorical
yo, and an existential
yo, the second of which reveals itself
doubled behind the author-narrator and the narrator-protagonist that give shape
to the poem's discourse and action. Canavaggio notes:
|
... por un lado, una contaminación sistemática del espacio textual por el vivir cervantino; por otro lado, una trama mitológica y una estilización burlesca que interponen, entre este vivir y su traducción poética, un filtro, como si el autor quisiera no dejarse engañar por sus propios ensueños, previniéndose contra cualquier desencanto mediante la ironía y el humor35. |
Through this doubled identity of author and narrator, Cervantes promulgates and undermines his own authority as a writer worthy of being considered a master. As a result, Cervantes provides us with a poem that reveals canonization to be a historical process by juxtaposing various textual spaces that relate literary worth to social values. These fictional filters, evident in the maps and the figures of the text, extend beyond the burlesquing of idealized literary glory to —31→ provide a subtle critique of the cultural structures of value that lead to the canonization of any given writer36.
Cervantes' use of the verb
canonizar to describe the elevation of
a work and its author to an honored position reflects the contradictions and
ambiguities involved in pursuing such a reappraisal. In a manner that
corresponds to the fundamental ambivalence of praise as deceitful flattery or
just reward, the commentators of this text disagree on the meaning of
canonizar within the work. According
to Herrero García, it means
«justificar o dar por bueno algo que
no lo es», highlighting the fraud involved in passing off
a bad work as good37. In fact, Herrero García opts
for the secondary definition of the verb from the
Diccionario de autoridades based on the use
of
canonizar to refer to the deceitful
representation of evil deeds as good. On the other hand, Rodríguez
Marín defines
canonizar to mean «aplaudir
alguna cosa, o, mejor dicho, ...darla por
buena, ...aprobarla », a morally neutral definition that
highlights the process of elevating a work38. Another ironic doubling takes place within the text itself, as
the word is associated with the connotations signalled by both definitions.
Speaking of the invasion of Parnassus by «la
canalla de vergüenza poca»
(IV: v.
453), Apolo accuses them of wanting to «canonizar y dar renombre / Inmortal y divino a la
ignorancia»
(IV: vv. 455-456)39. Accordingly, successful
canonization depends upon the enterprise of masking bad literature as good,
that is to say, deception. Apolo attributes this pursuit of unmerited glory to
self-deception: «Que tanto puede la
afición que un hombre / Tiene a sí mismo, que ignorante siendo, /
De buen poeta quiere alcanzar nombre»
(IV: vv.
457-459). The ignorant writer cannot judge his own poetic ability, a
blindness which allows him to fool himself. One would suppose, then, that
Apollo, the god of the sun as well as poetry, could illuminate the shadows of
ignorance by educating the bad poets. This was, doubtlessly, the intention of
the many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers of
—32→
Parnassus poems who took advantage of the
topos to promulgate their own aesthetic as that of Apollo. But Cervantes'
situation is, as always, more problematic.
Two factors complicate Cervantes' conception of canonization.
First, the bad poets, those who deceive themselves, participate in the process
of
hacerse by attempting to win for
themselves fame and glory based on their literary production. They are the
children of their works, like Cervantes. As one sees in the author's
self-defense in this poem and in the use of the concept in other works such as
Don Quijote «self-making» is
presented as a means to escape the rigid and inflexible structure of honor as a
function of lineage, riches and courtly favor which left many Spaniards
marginalized from the centers of power40. Secondly, the very text of the
Viaje del Parnaso represents an attempt by
the author to canonize himself in addition to the other poets deemed worthy of
such a prize by Cervantes. One can, then, render others famous and honored by,
in the words of Rodríguez Marín,
approving their works. Proving the point
negatively, a ship of poets excluded by Cervantes arrives at the foot of Mount
Parnassus to accuse the author of malice: «-¡Oh tú -dijo-, traidor, que los poetas /
Canonizaste de la larga lista, / Por causas y por vías
indirectas!»
(IV: vv. 490-492). In his
praise of others, Cervantes compromises himself within the same process of
exclusion and earns, therefore, the label of traitor. «¿Dónde tenías, magancés, la
vista / Aguda de tu ingenio, que así ciego / Fuiste tan mentiroso
coronista?»
(IV: vv. 493-495). From the
point of view of the rejected poets, Cervantes is the one who suffers from
blindness, deceives his readers, and dishonors those poets marginalized by his
aesthetic. In fact, Cervantes finds himself accused of the abuse of his own
poetic creativity to deceive and harm: «Estas
quimeras, estas invenciones / Tuyas te han de salir al rostro un día, /
Si más no te mesuras y compones»
(IV: vv.
520-522). Throughout the rest of the work, the accusation torments the
protagonist, who continues hiding his own judgment of other poets behind the
fiction of Apollo's list. Why can't Cervantes free himself from the process of
social and literary exclusion from which he himself, poor, maimed, old, and
patronless, suffers? The clues indicating the nature of this trap can be found
in the maps of cultural and literary spaces contained in
—33→
the poem,
all of which relate social position, be it of nations or classes, to the use of
language to enlighten or deceive.
As the narrative of a trip, the
Viaje del Parnaso contains a cultural map of
the Mediterranean that reveals the relation between national identity and
literary value. One cannot ignore the orientation of the trip toward the Middle
East. The movement of the troops of Spanish poets toward Greece mirrors in
reverse the ancient topos of
translatio studii, the transferral of
the cultural heritage of classical antiquity. The victorious army will then
return to Spain, transporting to the West the cultural treasures they have
saved from the Oriental forces of barbarism. Thus, the voyage of these troops
from Madrid to Greece establishes the role of Spain as the protector of the
West41. But the army's trajectory also reflects the
historical movement of sixteenth-century Spanish troops toward the Middle East
against the Turkish armies, a war in which Cervantes participated as a young
man in the battle of Lepanto. Therefore, the poem does not only commemorate the
arrival of cultural and political empire in Spain, but also the defense of the
West against the feared invasion by the main power of the Middle East. One sees
the trace of this historical conflict in the characterization of the two bands
of poets battling for control of Parnassus. Cervantes calls the good poets
Catholics several times. Mercury announces that he comes in search of
«... la gente / Que sella con la blanca cruz el
pecho, / Porque en su fuerza su valor se aumente»
;
(I: vv. 310-312), clearly alluding to the Maltese Order, which in
the 16th century waged naval battle against the Turks42. In contrast, the
«malos» sin
against good poetry precisely by introducing Oriental elements into their
works. The band «[d]e romances moriscos una
sarta, / Cual si fuera de balas enramadas, / Llega con furia y con malicia
harta»
(VII: vv. 271-273). But their
Orientalism extends beyond mere content to the lack of stylistic clarity:
«Cada cual [es] como moro ataviado, / Con
más letras y cifras que una carta / De príncipe enemigo y
recatado»
(VII: vv. 267-269 [sic]).
According to Herrero García, the cipher refers to the symbol of his lady
worn by the Moorish knight, and his letter to the slogan that deciphered
—34→
allegorically the sign's secret meaning43. Thus, the bad poet carries with him so many slogans and
ciphers, so much confusion, that his poetry becomes illegible and thus useful
for deceit, just like the secret messages of an enemy. The antidote is clarity,
exemplified by the master of Italianate style, Garcilaso de la Vega. A
quotation of the first line of his famous sonnet, «Cuando me paro a contemplar mi
estado...»
(VII: v. 286) serves here to
decide the battle in favor of the
«buenos». Clarity
is intelligible, balanced, and famous, embracing the Latin connotations of the
word.
But neither is the map of the West that gives form to the battle
of Parnassus uniform. Revealing a cross-section of European and Spanish
society, the trajectory of the voyage intersects with the description of the
bad poets at several points in the text. Two hierarchies emerge, the first that
of the relative value of the Western nations and the second that of the
relative honor of classes. Although it is possible that the praise of the
Spanish poets might be ironic, the discourse of national pride certainly enters
into the poem. Mercury informs Cervantes that: «De Italia las riberas he barrido, / He visto las de
Francia, y no tocado, / Por venir sólo a España
dirigido»
(I: vv. 319-321). The return of
the ship laden with poets to Parnassus follows the same trajectory, again not
stopping in French ports. Greece continues to serve as the ancient seat of
culture, but finds itself in need of the protection Spain had already granted
to Italy. In an ironic reversal of the trajectory of
translatio studii, Spain pushes
Western culture eastward back toward the countries from which it originated
through its imperial expansion. The mission to rescue Mount Parnassus is
clearly described: «Y nuevo imperio y mando en
él fundasen»
(III: v. 75). One
cannot ignore, then, the affirmation of Spain as an imperial power latent in
this poem. The war cry of the poets is, after all, «¡Cierra, cierra!»
(III: v. 168), an echo of the medieval cry of the Reconquest,
«¡Santiago, y cierra,
España!» And Cervantes, as a poet and soldier,
participates in this imperial glory. Italy serves two functions: it is the site
of the Roman epic tradition, and forms part of the contemporary Hapsburg
empire. Various references to mythological figures and places lend the poet's
voyage a certain heroic touch. Upon passing through the Gulf of Gaeta,
Cervantes remembers Aeneas; upon passing through the strait of Messina, site of
the perilous reefs Scylla and Caribdis, Mercury remembers Ulysses; upon seeing
Vesuvius, Cervantes alludes to the
—35→
tombs of the epic writers,
Virgil and Sannazaro. The comic deflation of the Greek home of the muses so
often noted by critics gains impact as the reader's expectation of heroic
action, raised by the Italian references, proves hollow. Sixteenth-century
Italy is yet another place dominated by the Spaniards, so that the travellers
stop in its ports only to convene the Castillian poets and nobles residing
there. Indeed, Croce has suggested that the
Viaje del Parnaso expresses Cervantes'
disappointment upon not being sponsored by the Argensolas in their Neapolitan
court, resulting in their exclusion from the ship of poets44. Notable for its
celebration, rather than satire, of the Spanish imperial presence in Naples is
the description of the tourney celebrated on August 22, 1612, by nobles such as
the Conde de Lemos and the Duque de Nocera to commemorate the marriage of Ana
de Austria to Luis XIII, King of France45. The narrator
Cervantes, transported to Naples in a dream after the great battle, underlines
the transferral of Western empire and culture to Spain manifested in this
celebration of its royal family: «Volví
la vista al son: vi los mayores / Aparatos de fiesta que vio Roma / En sus
felices tiempos y mejores»
(VIII: vv.
295-297). Invention and imagination become the signs of imperial power
in spectacle.
The Spain delineated by Cervantes is perhaps an imperial space
closed to its enemies, but nonetheless divided from within.
El viaje del Parnaso presents us with a map
of the capital city that coordinates its literature with its social
structure46. The narrator Cervantes
decides to leave Madrid for Parnassus, participating, then, in the ancient
topos of retiring to the countryside from the obsequious bustle of the court.
Elias L. Rivers correctly notes that Cervantes' farewell apostrophe to Madrid
combines literary and rhetorical commonplaces, including a possible allusion to
Garcilaso's Second Eglogue, with quotidian references to sixteenth-century
Madrid47. It is
precisely this interweaving of the high and the low that must be unraveled in
order to appreciate the profound ironies informing the author's vision of the
city as a site of linguistic discourse and
—36→
literary production. At
first, Cervantes' departure takes the form of an elegy of Madrid, painting the
city with the same atmosphere of tranquility and abundance as that of
Parnassus: «Adiós, Madrid, adiós
tu Prado y fuentes, / Que manan néctar, lluevan
ambrosía»
(I: vv. 116-117). But
his leavetaking of Madrid becomes a descent from the bucolic Prado to infernal
circles that traces various historical sites where talk, in its most
manipulatively deceitful forms, takes place-gossip, slander, news, decadent
fiction, and flattery. The following tercet, «Adiós, conversaciones suficientes / A entretener un
pecho cuidadoso, / Y a dos mil desvalidos
pretendientes»
(I: vv. 118-120),
undercuts the foregoing pastoral image of the Prado by alluding to the
conversations of
pretendientes.
Conversación, defined by
Covarrubias as «la comunicación y
plática entre amigos48»
, echoes the image of
humanistic, disinterested interchange between friends and lovers, and alludes
to the Paseo del Prado's prominence in early modern Spain as the place to see
and be seen49.
Nonetheless, the reference to
pretendientes switches the cultural
code to the court, site of the gossiping and plotting of the unscrupulous
social climbers, whose favorite
mentidero was the palace's patio50.
Listing them in descending order from court to
vulgo, according to the class of
society that met there, Cervantes then continues to cite the locations in
Madrid of various
mentideros, or
places of gossip. The following tercet, «Adiós, sitio agradable y mentiroso, / Do fueron los
gigantes abrasados / Con el rayo de Júpiter
fogoso»
(I: vv. 121-123), has been
elucidated by Herrero García as referring to the Puerta de Guadalajara,
where excessive luminary lights burned down the entryway adorned by four
giants51. Significantly for my analysis, the Puerta de Guadalajara as
noted on Texeira's map of 1656 marks the corner in which the Calle Mayor meets
Platerías, «emporio y centro del
comercio y del paseo de las galas cortesanas en el siglo XVII, donde los
poderosos ruaban en coche, y los lindos y ociosos, pícaros y busconas,
se aglomeraban en aquella suerte de diario certamen de los lujos y las
lacerías de la corte52.»
The Puerta de Guadalajara serves,
then, as the lintel between court and
—37→
vulgo, where language, agreeably
adorned in flattery, works its deceitful powers to greater or lesser degrees of
success.
In the following two tercets the theater of the street and the
lies of individuals cede to the theater of the
comedia and the lies of tabloids:
«Adiós, teatros públicos,
honrados / Por la ignorancia, que ensalzada veo / En cien mil disparates
recitados»
(I: vv. 124-126). Proof of
Cervantes' power to evoke the image of the
mentidero is Rodríguez
Marín's assertion that the Puerta de Guadalajara tercet refers to the
mentidero de los comediantes, although
this subsequent tercet would more assuredly point toward the famous corner of
the Calle del León53. Cervantes besmirches once again the honor of the
comedia with accusations of its power
to promulgate ignorance and folly among the masses, and places the
corrales and their
mentidero below the court in his
mental map of the places of deception, perhaps because of its appeal to both
the upper and the lower classes54. Finally, Cervantes descends to the
mentidero de San Felipe, located at
the convent near the Casa de Correos on the other end of the Calle Mayor, where
popular tabloids publishing rumors, marvels and lies were already sold in the
sixteenth century: «Adiós, de San Felipe
el gran paseo / Donde si baja o sube el Turco galgo / Como en gaceta de Venecia
leo
(I: vv. 127-129)». As indicated in
El diablo cojuelo, this
mentidero was the gathering place of soldiers
awaiting the first news of Spain's latest military undertakings55. Like the public
corrales, however, this
mentidero marks the site where
disinformation is disseminated for sale -that is, to further the financial
interests of the new sector of professional publishers and writers. Finally,
then, Madrid represents death for Cervantes: «Adiós, hambre sotil de algún hidalgo; / Que,
por no verme ante tus puertas muerto, / Hoy de mi patria y de mí mismo
salgo»
(I: vv. 131-132). As an author
inclined neither toward the flattery of the palace nor the deception of the
ignorant masses, Cervantes, honor intact although suffering from hunger, leaves
his home to serve his goddess, Poetry. In the cultural map of Madrid provided
by Cervantes, there is literally no place for the writer who refuses to
prostitute himself to the court or the
vulgo.
The precise correlation between literary classification and
social classes is revealed in the narrator's vision of Mount Parnassus, a
no-place that ends up reproducing rather than transcending the literary
boundaries of Madrid. As Ellen D. Lokos has pointed out, «utopian
fantasy» often provides the satirist with an imaginary world by which to
critique reality, and thus Cervantes' trip to Parnassus only returns him to the
bitter battles of Madrid56. Just as the author finds
no place to reside in Madrid, he is granted no seat in the utopic home of the
muses. Cervantes' Parnassus thus serves as a critical utopia, according to
Louis Marin's terms, in its embodiment of the social contradictions informing
the poetic ideologies of Cervantes' time in the figures of Poetry and
Vainglory. As Louis Marín asserts, «[r]ather than being
confronted with a fixed system of ideological representation, utopia would
offer the mobility of a figure acting in a dialogical stage built by a complex
fable-producing discourse57»
. Cervantes provides just such a stage in the
apparitions of the allegorical figures, whose own significance is so
problematic that their interpretation, provided by various speakers, is neither
self-evident nor logically consistent, but rather given to ideological
contradiction and ambiguity. In order to appreciate the complexities of the
stage on which true Poetry appears, we must return to the crucial fourth
chapter of the
Viaje del Parnaso. Denied a seat and thus
relegated to the status of a minor poet, Cervantes launches into his apology
for the merit of his own work in prose and poetry. The proclamation of the
author's worth as a writer rings clearly in the defense of his own collected
works placed in the structural center of the poem, an apology which would seem
quite successful given its frequent repetition by the author's critics and
admirers. Mentioning his principal works by name and evaluating their
respective merits, Cervantes proclaims his own worth before Apollo himself. His
plays «tuvieron de lo grave y de lo
afable»
(IV: v. 21);
Don Quijote was a «pasatiempo al pecho melancólico y
mohíno»
(IV: vv. 22-23); his
Novelas ejemplares opened «un camino por do la lengua castellana puede mostrar con
propiedad un desatino»
(IV: vv. 25-27).
His works also reflect his personal virtues, or rather, his lack of vices such
as flattering adulation, the use of satire for personal attacks, and the
manipulation of fiction to deceive readers. Significantly, these same literary
virtues are recommended by Apollo in the
—39→
Adjunta al Parnaso, thus revealing how
Cervantes often couched literary precept in satire58. In reference to his
mental map of the
mentideros madrileños, he
states that «[n]unca pongo los pies por do
camina / La mentira, la fraude y el engaño, / De la santa virtud total
ruina»
(IV: vv. 60-62). His principal
virtue, however, is that of inventiveness, although it too could be used for
deceit, as the rejected poet studied above accuses. «Yo soy aquel que en la invención excede / A muchos;
y al que falta en esta parte, / Es fuerza que su fama falta
quede»
(IV: vv. 28-30). According to his
own literary self-portrait, Cervantes the author should enjoy fame due to his
abundant creativity, an assessment echoed by Mercury in his use of the phrase
«raro inventor»
to
praise and cajole the narrator (I: vv. 218, 223).
Inventiva is, according to Juan de la
Cueva, the literary quality that distinguishes the poet from the historian, and
thus serves as the basis for Cervantes' self-assertion that he is indeed a
worthy poet59.
Nevertheless, literary value often appears in this work to issue
from social rather than aesthetic functions. Apollo responds to the writer's
self-assessment with an exhortation to personal virtue: «La virtud es un manto con que tapa / Y cubre su indecencia
la estrecheza, / Que esenta y libre de la envidia
escapa»
(IV: vv. 91-93). Nonetheless,
virtue is here presented as the lack of a social vice, that of envying those
who enjoy higher social status through riches, nobility, or fame, if not also
talent. Apollo's ambivalence toward the question of an author's social value
extends to the consideration of poetic self-promotion. Apollo praises Cervantes
for being a self-made man: «Tú mismo te
has forjado tu ventura, / Y yo te he visto alguna vez con
ella»
(IV: vv. 79-80), but nonetheless
denies him a seat. As Ellen D. Lokos has shown, Apollo's statement harkens to
the inscription «Quisque suae Fortunae Faber» of Ripa's allegory of
Fortuna, thus deepening the irony of the author's complaint against the
fickleness of fortune and literary publics60. The resentful
Cervantes mutters in response: «Incliné
al gran consejo la cabeza: / Quedéme en pie; que no hay asiento bueno, /
Si el favor no le labra o la riqueza»
(IV: vv.
94-96). The poet's status depends upon either social protection by a
noble or the possession of Quevedo's «don
poderoso»
, money. In yet another ironic doubling of
voice, the author's resentment of the more fortunate finds expression in the
mouth of Apollo himself in the
Adjunta al monte Parnaso, in which the Greek
god
—40→
laments the poverty and lack of social status suffered by
poets. In fact, as Rodríguez Marín has amply documented, the mere
exercise of writing poetry threatened one's honor, given the difficulty of
rising above the base and mediocre multitudes. Moreover, the lack of
approbation from the unappreciative public, including the nobles, added to the
lack of pecuniary reward for one's literary output, regardless of its
worth61.
Immediately after defending his own literary production,
Cervantes sees the figure of true Poetry, adorned in elegance and wisdom, but
fails to recognize her. «-Descubres
-respondió [Apolo]- tu bobería; / Que ha que la tratas infinitos
años, / Y no conoces que es la Poesía»
(IV: vv. 151-153). It is impossible not to note the irony that
marks Apollo's comment, since Cervantes has just defended his own literary
worth. Insisting that he has only seen Poetry dressed «en paños pobres»
(IV: v. 154), Cervantes quickly defends himself against the god's
barb by referring once again to the topos of poetic poverty. Mercury then
describes true Poetry by emphasizing her gravity, elegance, and discretion, and
hastens to add that «siempre con vestidura
rozagante / se muestra en cualquier acto que se halla, cuando a su
profesión es importante»
(IV: vv. 163-165
[sic])62. From this description, of course, it follows that
Cervantes may not have had contact with true Poetry, who withholds herself from
the masses. «Nunca se inclina o sirve a la
canalla / Trovadora, maligna y trafalmeja, / Que en los que más ignora
menos calla»
(IV: vv. 166-168). With this
tercet Mercury begins to define the bounds of true Poetry, who does not inspire
malicious or vacuously arrogant (trafalmeja)
verse. Of more curiosity is the exclusion of the
trovadores, whose numbers are counted
among the
canalla and to whom I shall return.
Mercury contrasts true Poetry with another figure, the other Poetry,
«falsa, ansiosa, torpe y vieja, / Amiga de
sonaja y morteruelo, / Que ni tabanco ni taberna deja»
(IV: vv. 169-171). This figure of false Poetry stands for a
specific cultural space, that of the street, the gaming house, and the tavern.
In addition, the instruments heard in this space, the timbrel and bladder, are
popular rhythm instruments, and are associated with a loud and raucous sound.
In the next tercet the god expands the space of false Poetry to include that of
—41→
weddings and baptisms, popular celebrations: «No se alza dos, ni aun un coto del suelo; / Grande amiga
de bodas y bautismos»
, (IV: vv. 172-173).
The fact that bad Poetry has its roots in the
pueblo differentiates it from true
Poetry, which enjoys a more elevated stature. «Larga de mano»
, bad Poetry is
generous to all; «corta de
cerbelo»
, it springs from irrationality (IV:
v.174)63. Bad Poetry's
speech is similarly halting and incomprehensible as it flows forth from fits of
madness: «Tómanla por momentos
parasismos; / No acierta a pronunciar, y si pronuncia, / Absurdos hace y forma
solecismos»
(IV: vv. 174-176 [sic]).
Finally, bad Poetry suffers from the intoxication of Bacchus: «Baco donde ella está su gusto anuncia, / Y ella
derrama en coplas el poleo, / Con fray veredas, y el mastranzo y
juncia»
(IV: vv. 177-179)64. In short, bad Poetry, which
reigns in the neighborhoods and villages of the vulgar masses and speaks in an
irrational, intoxicated, and even deceptive voice, belongs to popular, if not
carnivalesque culture.
It is, of course, difficult to attribute this denunciation of
carnivalesque poetry to the author of
Don Quijote without appealing to irony65. In order to
understand the fundamental ambivalence of this work regarding the judgments
involved in canonization, we must compare the figures of good and bad Poetry
with that of Vainglory, who opens up another textual space in which to view the
ideological contradictions at play. The menacing figure of Vainglory, a woman
whose body, inflated by nothing more than air, rises to the moon, throws the
whole world into shadow in a dream related by Cervantes. As he awakes, an
unknown voice speaks into his ear the significance of this monster: «Esta que hasta los cielos se encarama, / Preñada
(sin saber cómo) del viento, / Es hija del Deseo y de la
Fama»
(VI: vv. 175-177). Vainglory is
accompanied by Adulation and Lying, the same vices that give shape to
Cervantes' map of
—42→
the
mentideros of Madrid. The traditional
moral of the emblem of Vainglory, as communicated by the stranger to Cervantes,
is that glory passes like the wind. But this anonymous voice begins his
discourse with a description of the cultural marvels created by the vain desire
for fame.
| (VI: vv. 157-162) | ||
Normally, one would attribute the creation
and preservation of such monuments to the desire to win fame, a positive value
which deceives and cheats death in its eternal propagation of the creator's
name. But for this unidentified speaker, there is no doubt that the daughter of
fame, Vainglory, is the source of these undertakings: «Esta fue la ocasión y el instrumento, / El todo y
parte de que el mundo viese / No siete maravillas, sino
ciento»
(VI: vv. 178-180). Her children,
engendered by the wind, are not only the seven wonders of the ancient world,
but also the many human marvels.
An orthodox Catholic interpretation of
this figure would insist upon the vanity of all human undertakings. In fact,
one critic believes Cervantes to have used the statue representing mundane
glory that appeared to Nebuchadnezzar in the second chapter of Daniel as a
model for Vainglory66. In the first chapter the narrator Cervantes, after walking many
leagues, finally finds a mount, «[l]os humos de
la fama»
(v. 47). Thus, Fame, like
Vainglory, consists of wind, destiny, and desire, and leads from one error to
the other.
|
| (I: vv. 55-60) | ||
In fact, Cervantes' parody of the allegorical figures of Fame and other ideals, as well as the very image of a literary war through such —43→ humorous touches as the use of books instead of bullets and the bathing of the poets' genitalia in the fountains of inspiration, is one of the more salient aspects of the poem. There is even a reference to Pegasus, another figure of Fame whose hoof opened a literary font on Mount Parnassus, which links him to Rocinante, Don Quijote's broken-down nag67. This doubled strategy of simultaneously elevating and undercutting important concepts marks the author's own ambivalent stance toward fame and canonization as revealed in the Viaje del Parnaso. The artifacts to which Vainglory gives birth are products of the classical world and the elevated culture of the Renaissance. Therefore, good Poetry does not escape from being stained by association with vacuousness and vanity, but rather suffers the same indignity as bad Poetry.
Nonetheless, Cervantes' text does not allow us to accept such a
simple resolution of the contradictions presented by the various allegorical
figures given that Apollo's war cry continues to promote the defense of good
Poetry and the value of fame. Indeed, Francisco Márquez Villanueva notes
that the narrator's vision of the figure of true Poetry constitutes the only
positive experience of the journey, whereas Dominick Finello argues that the
Adjunta al Parnaso represents an attempt by
Cervantes to reconcile the ideal properties of good Poetry with the imperfect
qualities of the flesh-and-blood poets68. When Cervantes awakes from his sleep, he hears the god's
invocation that the poets enter into battle against
«los malos»: «Haced famosa y memorable prueba / De vuestro gran valor en
este hecho / Que a su castigo y vuestra gloria os
lleva»
(VI: vv. 277-279 [sic]). The
battle this poem relates is, after all, an attempt to grant fame to Cervantes
and the poets fighting at his side, and therefore not so different in intent
from Don Quijote's own goal to immortalize himself through the valor of his
deeds. In spite of all the irony, the poem does contain an impassioned defense
of Cervantes' various works as worthy of fame. Canonization, although it might
be achieved through deception, should result from the triumph of an author's
fame based on the merit of his work. This is the utopic element of the poets'
struggle to win Mount Parnassus -they prove (hacer
prueba) their worth, which will then be published abroad through
fame. Thus,
—44→
Cervantes'
Viaje del Parnaso puts forth, on the ideal
level, the exact correlation between fame and merit69.
Nonetheless, just as Cervantes clearly sees the impotence of Don
Quijote's outdated ideals, which leads Maravall to refer to
Don Quijote as
counterutopic, so does he glimpse the
ambiguities of canonization as a process taking place not on Mount Parnassus,
but in Madrid. Vicente Gaos rightly observes that the
Viaje del Parnaso, like
Don Quijote, is not merely a satire, but
rather «un pequeño
Quijote en verso encaminado a hacer
patente que el hombre suele juzgarse por encima de sus propios méritos,
de qué modo le arrastra su quimérico concepto de sí mismo,
hasta qué punto sus aspiraciones, deseos y sueños sobrepasan la
posibilidad real que tiene de satisfacerlos70»
. Cervantes himself hints at the
tension inherent in the process of proclaiming one's own worth by including and
excluding writers around him when the poet rejected at the end of the fourth
chapter cries accusingly: «Que, si este agravio
no me turba el tino, / Siete trovistas desde aquí diviso / A quien
suelen llamar de torbellino»
(IV: vv.
514-516).
Trovadores, as indicated by the use of
the antiquated term, speak for and from the spaces of the
pueblo, transformed in the city into
the
mentideros, whereas
trovistas de repente produce verse off
the cuff, in a manner which would preclude the careful artifice and studious
content of true Poetry71. This voice of the rejected author clearly affirms that
Cervantes' band of «good» poets may not be so exclusive after all.
In fact, the resentment of exclusion expressed by the fictional voice of the
rejected poet echoes the voice of the author Cervantes, who may be seen to
double and refract his own existential self even further than noted by
Canavaggio in the haunting accusations of those he omits from Apollo's select
band. After all, he himself complained of exclusion upon taking leave of
Madrid.
Wandering between and interweaving the various ideological
discourses and maps of the literary and social contexts that inform his attempt
to canonize himself, Cervantes reveals them in the maps and figures of his
journey to Mount Parnassus. Steven Hutchinson has written of Cervantes' novels
that «the soul's continual motion propelled by desire is a condition,
perhaps
the condition, of being in the world;
perfect repose has no place here72»
. This movement of desire «figures the social
context into the landscape and into the process of movement: hence the indirect
routes, the difficulties, obstructions, deviations, favorable and contrary
forces, and so on73»
. In the
Viaje del Parnaso, Cervantes, then, narrates
his own journey, propelled by the desire for fame. Yet the spaces traced by his
route are utopic (without place) -he finds no place in
Madrid and no seat in Mount Parnassus. The «good» literature of his
time follows the canon of classical antiquity, relocated from Greece and Italy
to Spain via the
translatio studii et imperii. Although
some of his works find inspiration in the classical canon (particularly
Persiles), his most famous work is
Don Quijote, a parody of a fantastic genre, a
satire of the delusions of an
hidalgo, a portrait of various
characters from the lower classes, and a popular success. His literary place
within the literary map he provides us of Madrid would then seem to be among
the masses in the
mentideros. Excluded from the court
and wishing to eschew the manipulative and unlettered use of fiction in these
same
mentideros, Cervantes presents himself
as a displaced figure in the
Viaje del Parnaso, who will earn his fame by
his literary merit, rather than through adulation or lying. Yet Fame itself is
a vacuous figure, related to the vice of vainglory as well as the social,
rather than personal, merits of courtly favor and wealth. Cervantes himself
realizes the paradoxical nature of his self-portrait as a famed, honorable
author when he characterizes himself as a «cisne en las canas, y en la voz un ronco / Y negro
cuervo»
(I: vv. 103-104). In the great
battle of Mount Parnassus, the swan is the sign of the good poets and the crow
that of the bad poets. The very word canon in its Greek origin refers to the
schematic model -or map, if one will- of the perfect human figure, based on
—46→
the harmony and equilibrium of the parts to the whole74.
Of course, this figure is young, masculine, strong, and noble. Cervantes does not conform to this canon as a man or a poet. Unlike the ambiguous presentation of canonization created by Cervantes in the Viaje del Parnaso, the critics, artists, and editors who did succeed in canonizing the author a century after his death did not glimpse the gap between Cervantes' work and person and the neoclassical aesthetic they used to elevate him. The first de luxe edition of Don Quijote, published in London in 1738 in Spanish, contains an allegorical frontispiece designed by John Vanderbank and engraved by John Vandergucht based on the Viaje del Parnaso75. Cervantes appears semi-nude in the foreground as the strong, young, and perfect -in short, classical- figure of Hercules. Atop Mount Parnassus the author Cervantes, dressed as a gentleman, fights against the marvellous monsters of chivalric romance. Don Quijote appears purified of its burlesque and carnivalesque content as a satirical classic, as the figure of Cervantes transformed into Hercules defeats the degenerate literature of the street and the tavern. The dominant map of canonization, that of the trip to ancient Greece, excels in the historical process of the elevation of Cervantes as an author of «classics».