—[86]→ —87→
Stanford University
«In every class of letters we should include a joke whenever the subject-matter permits». This apparently very modern narratorial stance was actually espoused by Erasmus in one of his early pedagogical works, the 1522 essay «De conscribendis epistolis» [On the Writing of Letters]. Moreover, Erasmus continues, «The first consideration is that the joke should be timely, gentlemanly, and mindful of propriety. If it is skilfully used, it often carries more weight than a serious speech»109. In his Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes seems to have taken Erasmus's suggestion to the letter, as it were.
Specifically, in chapter fifty of Part Two of his novel, the narrator assures his readers that the letters that Teresa Panza has just dictated «de su mismo caletre» and sent to her husband and to the duchess, «no son de las peores que en esta grande historia —88→ se ponen»110. One cannot help but be amused by this manifest irony, since the correspondence conducted between Sancho, Teresa Panza, and the duchess produces one of the most comical moments of the novel. Aside from a plainly domestic sketch of the Panza family, these letters also provide a generous sprinkling of rusticated courtly gossip (the so-called «nuevas de corte») which serves, among other things, to respond in kind to the duchess' practical jokes. Moreover, and this generates my subsequent argument, they are intimately linked to the phenomenon of the burlesque epistle (la epístola bufonesca) and its literary function.
The literary role and negotiation of this type of letter culminated during the Renaissance period immediately prior to the publication of Part Two of Don Quijote111. From the fifteenth century on, the so-called «familiar letter» enjoyed full literary generic status since the «carta mensajera», or news letter, was conceived from the beginning as both an artistic and public artifact112. It was adopted around that time by the official and extra-official court fools in residence in Spanish Renaissance courts. It was they who established the premises for this ludic component of «fool literature». The better known among these authors were the Secretary to the Catholic Monarchs, Fernando —89→ del Pulgar -whose Letters represent the first collection of epistles published in a modern tongue113- the physician Francisco López de Villalobos; Don Francesillo de Zúñiga, author of the outlandish Crónica burlesca del Emperador Carlos V; and Antonio de Guevara, official preacher in the same court and mischievous fabricator of the history of Marco Aurelio.
The first of these authors, Fernando del Pulgar, offers an apology of the genre in one of his letters. In it he defends the inclusion of jests among the truths of the familiar letter, explaining that the decorum of the «familiar style» allows this. At the same time he highlights his own situation as court fool:
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Reprehendésme asimismo de «alvardán», porque escrivo algunas vezes cosas jocosas; y ciertamente, señor encubierto, vós decís verdad. Pero yo vi aquellos nobles y magníficos varones marqués de Santillana don Iñigo López de Mendoça y don Diego Hurtado de Mendoça su fijo, duque del Infantadgo, y a Fernand Pérez de Guzmán, señor de Batres, y a otros notables varones escrevir mensajeras de mucha dotrina interponiendo en ellas algunas cosas de burlas que davan sal a las veras. Leed, si os plaze las epístolas familiares de Tulio que enbiava a Marco Marcello y a Lelio Lucio y a Ticio y a Lelio Valerio y a Curión y a otros muchos, y fallarés interpuestas asaz burlas en las veras. Y aun Plauto y Terencio no me paresce que son reprehendidos porque interpusieron cosas jocosas en su escritura. No creáis que traigo yo este enxemplo porque presuma compararme a ninguno de éstos; pero ellos para quien eran y yo para quien só ¿porqué no me dexarés vós, acusador amigo, alvardanear lo que sopiere sin injuria de ninguno, pues dello me fallo bien y vós no mal? Con todo eso os digo que si vós, señor encubierto, fallardes que jamás excriviese un renglón de burlas dó no oviese catorce de veras, quiero yo quedar por el alvardán que vós me juzgáis114. |
During the sixteenth century there is a tremendous growth in the social practice of correspondence and the printing of books that incorporate letters as a means of communication115. The fictional epistle and the epistolary novel appear in Spain during the first decades of the century. Tangentially, one ought —90→ to note that early in the same century there was a parallel growth of the vernacular prose letter in Italy. The letters of well-known satirists like Pietro Aretino contained the popular everyday experiences that were normally relegated to the short novel and to comedy116. If the problems of the letter as dialogue, figure of compromise, speech act, reported text and, ultimately, simulacrum of communication were similar in the Mediterranean world of the period, the transplantation of this communicative interaction to something known as literature was, in practice, somewhat different in the Iberian peninsula.
As Claudio Guillén has pointed out, the letter in Spain was an instrument for the liberation of the critical imagination, either in poetry or in prose. In the literature of the peninsula, the people who wrote these letters were not real persons like Aretino in Italy, but instead fictional characters who pretend to be real. Alongside Lazarillo de Tormes we have the case of Don Quijote and his fictive companions. In Spain, moreover, the epistles «serve to criticize obliquely, or transcend, the limiting environment of social and personal life»117.
Guillén adds, however, that what the Italian Aretino and the Spaniard Guevara had in common was indiscretion. «Gossip, rumors, and fresh news abound about persons and events external to the relationship between the correspondents. What is more important, the reader is an accomplice»118. Ultimately, and above all, the burlesque letter is a public genre since the jokes it contains need an audience in order to function as such. As he would do with other genres and subgenres that he used and transformed in his novel, in the second part of the Quijote, Cervantes utilizes this literary mode, adapting it to his narrative purposes119.
—91→In chapter thirty-six Sancho Panza sends the first letter to his wife from the ducal palace, before embarking on his governorship. His epistle is a string of proverbs, of news about his adventures, of simplicities, and of sly irony. He soon admits to his foolishness when telling Teresa that «Don Quijote, mi amo, según he oido decir en esta tierra, es un loco cuerdo y un mentecato gracioso, y que yo no le voy en zaga». And this after telling her that along with the letter he is sending a green hunting suit that the duchess gave him, so that Teresa might refashion it into courtly garb (saya y cuerpos) for their daughter Sanchica. It should be noted here that in the small intertext created by the letters there is nothing gratuitous, just as there are no symbolic voids in both parts of the Quijote. Indeed, as Francisco Márquez Villanueva has aptly demonstrated, the color green was emblematic of buffoonish madness at that time since it was the color typically preferred by the court fool120. Therefore, Sancho symbolically passes on the green-colored garment, and along with it his folly, to his family.
In effect, Sancho acts and writes in accordance with the role of court fool that he has assumed in the palace, crouched at the duchess' hardly benevolent feet. The rogue insinuates that if the disenchantment of Dulcinea, a woman whom he identifies openly with Aldonza Lorenzo, depends on him, she will never be disenchanted. Or, in his own words, «quedará desencantada como la madre que la parió». The squire is totally blinded by the idea of the island that awaits his governorship, to which he goes «con grandísimo deseo de hacer dineros». Sancho, just as the court fools who preceded him, expects to prosper and become rich at court. His constant preoccupation with money is duly noted by the duchess, who chides him for his greed.
Since by this time in the novel Sancho's adherence to every aspect of materiality has been well established, Cervantes chooses to textualize yet another level of identification for an audience who knows Sancho well. The squire thus displays the rustic's traditional and folkloric love for his donkey as well as a —92→ certain asinine nature by sending Dapple's regards to Teresa121. However, Sancho demonstrates above all else a basic good heart and faithfulness to Dapple when he assures Teresa that he wouldn't leave his mount behind «aunque [le] llevaran a ser Gran Turco». Good (and practical) peasant that he is, Sancho will never abandon his dear donkey, itself an equine symbol of innocence122.
I have already mentioned that the familiar letter has been conceived from its inception as a public artifact. The official recipient of the letter is a mere figure through whom the letter reaches a greater diffusion among those who listen joyfully to its reading in public. Following the same scheme, the burlesque epistle is not only public, but rather its nature of courtly diversion makes reading it aloud in public an act of pure buffoonish entertainment.123 In accordance with this oral public imperative, Sancho s letter is read by the duchess, who criticizes and judges it, and then passes it along to the duke, «de que recibió grandísimo contento». The other letters are also read aloud, and are unanimously savored and celebrated by the public. Teresa Panza's letters to her husband and the duchess in chapter fifty-two are, in turn, «solenizadas, reídas, estimadas y admiradas».
Even though the duchess does not distance herself from the tradition upon which I have been commenting, neither does she —93→ deviate (through Cervantes) from the norms recommended by writers of treatises on the epistolary art. In this regard it is relevant to keep in mind that a tradition of rhetorical rules can be glimpsed between the lines of the burlesque letter and that this tradition is what, in the final analysis, is being mocked. The ars dictaminas or dictandi of the eleventh century is a necessary precursor for the greater context under which the burlesque letter can be examined. Curtius has studied the position of this art of writing within the development of rhetoric, and asserts that it grew out of the necessity of administrative procedure to provide formulaic models for letters and official documents. When it went from theory to practice its growth was unprecedented, to the point that, Curtius continues, one can detect an attempt to subordinate all rhetoric to the art of epistolary style. Cervantes, never one to adhere blindly or humorlessly to literary dictums or any other control of the construction of narrative, may well have wanted to comment on such strictures. As Curtius asserts, adopting the epistolary style «imports both an adaptation to contemporary needs and a conscious turning away from the traditional curriculum of rhetoric. A new name [ars dictaminas] was required to show that the new art was something modern»124.
But of course, Cervantes knew well that if he was to be judged at all, such objections would have to come from his flouting of more contemporary conventions of style. If the notion of progressive control of a letter's contents is to be analyzed, Vives is one whose epistolary criteria come to mind. In his «De conscribendis epistolis», Juan Luis Vives indicates that a letter sent to an inferior should be written «con cariñosa afabilidad, que no parezca que hablas desde un lugar elevado, sino en un plano de igualdad, y ello aunque escribas a los de ínfima condición social»125. Vives then provides suggestions regarding the style and language appropriate for the festive familiar letter. As these are reflections of a conversation between absent friends, they —94→ should be free of all ostentation, written in pure but simple language, with «elegancia desafeitada»126. Echoing Pulgar, Vives does not banish from the genre a fair amount of textual enrichment through witticisms and jests, nevertheless, he warns that «de estas festivas jocosidades debe estar ausente toda truhanería y no han de ser sórdidas ni escabrosas... Deben presidir estos juegos la elegancia, la urbanidad, el aticismo, las gracias donde las risas tienen su morada, que producen admiración y sabroso entretenimiento»127.
On the surface, the duchess appears to adopt this scheme of «affectionate affability» that Vives prescribes. In the letter that she writes to Teresa Panza in chapter fifty, the duchess treats her with due fondness, calling her «Amiga Teresa» in the salutation and taking her leave as «su amiga que bien le quiere». However, her letter barely conceals a desire to mercilessly poke fun at the Panzas. Her ironic comment that «tal me haga a mí Dios como Sancho gobierna» is launched in order to underscore the ridiculous imposture of Sancho Panza as governor of a fabulous island. But as we the readers well appreciate, if the Panzine Salomonic governorship does anything at all, it serves to make evident the duke and duchess' poor leadership. The duchess would, in fact, become more just and serious were she to approximate the type of government Sancho practices during his island reign. All this, of course, is the classic inversion of fool literature, wherein the grandee ends up as victim and the truth which nobody dares mention finally emerges.
Of the same ilk is the coarse proverb that the duchess turns into a tasteless joke when she sends Teresa the coral necklace: «quien te da el hueso, no te querría ver muerta». Where have the urbanity and witticism that Vives prescribes disappeared to here?128 Within this framework, the duchess also reveals her own cultural impoverishment and vulgar demeanor when she says to Teresa that if she needs anything, «no tiene que hacer más que boquear, que su boca será medida».
—95→The detail of the gift of the necklace is not without precedent. In his manual Estilo and formulario de cartas familiares (1600), Gerónimo Paulo de Manzanares provides models of letters which correspond, among other situations, to the sending or receipt of presents and gifts129. In the same manner, an obvious antecedent of the request for the acorns can be found among the letters of Antonio de Guevara's Marco Aurelio, in the pedestrian request for green almonds and walnuts for Faustina. Along with the same letter the emperor sends a garment for the addressee and a skirt for his wife130. Guevara, master and great model for the familiar letter in Spanish, writes one to Alonso de Albornoz in which he admonishes him for not answering his last letter. In it he explains how «no está la baxeza en el escrebir ni responder a personas baxas, sino en querer o hacer cosas feas»131. This is precisely the error that the duchess incurs in Cervantes. With her letter she establishes an atmosphere of equivocal familiarity that poorly conceals a desire to entertain the court at the expense of her rustic inferiors. Of course, this is also Cervantes's way of subverting the subgenre of the literary epistle. Nevertheless, since subversion is the norm for the textual components of his novel, the specificity of burlesquing the normative aspects of letter-writing is of greater concern for my argument.
If the letters discussed so far contain traces of the burlesque epistle, the remaining ones by Teresa Panza that appear in chapter fifty-two are brief masterpieces of the genre. The first one, sent to the duchess, begins with a curious message on the envelope that ultimately places the addressee in textual anonymity: «Carta para mi señora la duquesa tal, de no sé dónde». One should note in this regard that each of the numerous treatises on letters published throughout the sixteenth century contains a rich compendium of model letters on various themes. The first among these works is Gaspar de Texeda's Este es el estilo de escribir cartas mensajeras, compuesto por un cortesano (Zaragoza, 1547). —96→ There is a second part of this work, entitled Cosa nueva. Segundo libro de cartas mensajeras, en estilo cortesano, a infinitos propósitos. Con las diferencias de cortesías y sobre escriptos que se usan (Valladolid, 1552). The first section of this last part, «Aviso para cartas. Lo que se usa en títulos: cortesías y sobreescriptos», contains a series of models to be followed according to the category of the author and recipient. The appropriate forms of address for the category of Teresa Panza writing to the duchess, that is, «de criado a deudo o señor», would be honorifics such as «Ilustrísima...» or «Muy ilustre señora». Nevertheless, revisionist and humorist that he is, Cervantes has Teresa opt for «Carta para mi señora la duquesa tal, de no sé donde». Actually, she is calling her a sort of «Fulana de tal», from Who Knows Where132. On the other hand Teresa insists on the social distance that separates them by using «su criada» as her letter's closing formula. Here the recipient or reader of this type of manipulation of the «text within a text» convention is faced with ambiguity regarding the social hierarchies represented.
The proper form of address used in the familiar letter was determined by the social standing of the recipient. Carelessness in this regard was a grave error and sometimes the source of great offense. All correspondents, from the Pope down through princes and the nobility, demanded their own exclusive form of address. Teresa Panza's daring salutation, which falls somewhere between familiar and terribly insulting, fits perfectly within the parameters of the burlesque genre. And, as is well known, the buffoon was granted abundant freedom of expression, since his inherent state of indignitas exempted him from any responsibility for what he said133. Of course this freedom of —97→ expression was relative and the situation of the court fool was always precarious. Don Francesillo de Zúñiga, for example, suffered the consequences of the loss of favor and protection of the king when he was stabbed to death by a courtier supposedly offended by Don Francesillo's remarks.
Returning to the body of Teresa's letter, she will display a wide range of hyperbolic salutations such as «vuestra pomposidad», «vuestra señoría», «señora de mi alma», «vuesa excelencia», «vuesa alteza», and «vuestra grandeza» (the last of these humorously translated by Ormsby as «Your High and Mightiness»). We, the readers, are witnessing a totally buffoonish act. Shielding herself with her own rusticity and ignorance, Teresa Panza creates a letter-joke that in reality serves no other purpose than to pull the duchess' leg. Teresa repeats what we readers already know -that Sancho is deemed by his neighbors to be a fool and incapable of governing anything other than a herd of goats. And what can be said about Teresa and her pretensions as governor's wife? Mrs. Panza dreams about moving to the court in order to «tenderse en un coche... oronda y pomposa» with her daughter Sanchica. Indeed, this is a peasant's odd perception of life at court that undoubtedly reflects the duchess' own situation. In effect, Teresa Panza is responding to the duchess' ill-intentioned mocking of country life (the traditional and conventional «alabanza de aldea») with an extremely subtle disdain of city life («menosprecio de corte»).
Teresa then responds to the duchess' request for acorns with ingenuous wit by notifying her that even though none had been harvested in her village that year, she herself had gathered and selected about half a peck of the largest ones. By sending her the acorns, which at the time were related to fatness and stupidity as well as to pigs, Teresa acknowledges the insinuation implicit in the duchess' request for this rustic delicacy134. At the same time, of course, she gets her revenge for the insult.
In this vein, another food offering which deserves mention here is the cheese that Teresa gives to the duchess' page and which he duly passes on to his mistress. While being an obvious rustic foodstuff and typical going away present to be expected —98→ from a peasant, cheese is not without its own symbolic meaning as the food appropriate for the insane135. Once again, an interpretation of Teresa's actions simply as natural generosity and gratitude must be attenuated by a consideration of the ambiguous symbology of fool literature.
The last letter in my sample is the one from Teresa to Sancho, which is opened and read aloud for the amusement of the court and, as a consequence, for the readers' own enjoyment. Regarding this orality, we all know that neither Teresa nor her husband Sancho is able to read or write. Therefore, the customary triad of sender-message-receiver in the epistolary text is placed in doubt since the letters dictated by the Panzas are mediated by the writing of others. In Sancho's case, for example, we do not know who writes his letter; in his wife's case, a young altar boy acts as scribe in exchange for a bread roll and two eggs. As a result, it is the mediation of the message that the readers have to decipher.
This last letter is also a comical assortment of warm expressions of affection and a not overly discrete transmission of provincial news136. Through the letter we see how the report of Sancho's governorship has been received in his home and village. It is a glimpse into the Panzas' domestic life and at the same time an elliptical means of conceptualizing the communication between a text and its readers. In the letter we find Teresa bursting with contentment at the news of Sancho's island and the possibility of her going to the court. She has even greater hopes of seeing Sancho appointed tax-collector, one of the most difficult and controversial occupations of the period. This in —99→ itself plays with the autobiographical consideration that the author of the novel also struggled as a tax-collector. But as Teresa points out, at least the person who holds this job has and manages money. The wife of the novice governor does not shy away from courtly greed. Indeed, one can ask what it is that these letters are really reporting, for there is no deviation from the unveiling of the whimsical negotiations that are a component of communication between different classes and rhetorics.
But there is more. In an ingenious parody of the «news of the court» genre, Teresa reports on daily events at home in the village, gossip, and other domestic news137. It is precisely this information that expands our knowledge of the Panzas and their milieu, and at the same time it reveals the clairvoyant Cervantine attitude of seeing how whatever is written is always in danger of becoming fossilized. That is to say that new news can readily become old news by the time a letter reaches its addressee. The burlesque letter, more than fixating, also serves to alienate a message, or to open it to new meanings. Moreover, the notion of the content of a letter or its proscribed propriety is implicitly challenged, and thereby the «codes» of the genre are, again, called into question. Villalobos himself, in the letter cited above, warns Jufre against excessive jest in his burlesque letters: «Ora mirad quánta fuerça teneys en vuestro officio, que tomamos aca por pasatiempo de mirar el gesto al que lee vuestra carta, porque haze tantos visages y locuras quantas vezes vos meays cada dia y quantas haceys luchar á la razon con el cuero y days con ella patas arriba» (10).
If Teresa's missives are going to be more concerned with «nuevas de aldea», it is expected that details about the scarcity of acorns will not take precedent over the lack of olives and —100→ vinegar as well as other matters that Teresa feels compelled to include in her text to Sancho. In her letter she relates the effect on their daughter of Sancho's appointment as governor as follows: «se le fueron las aguas sin sentirlo, de puro contento». Fluids -in all their varieties and importance- were deemed worthy of epistolary inclusion and attention. Villalobos, for example, both consoles and teases Jufre in his friend's absence by relating the wine situation at home:
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The Don Quijote letters that I have examined are much more than a mere addition to the novelistic conventions of the period. Through them the subtle tension of the episodes that take place in the ducal palace are communicated to the readers. This textual tension not only affects the correspondents but, of course, is also transmitted to the readers. The obvious use of a genre on the point of canonization is raised by Cervantes to a higher communicative plane, a telegraphic one perhaps. At the same time, the overwhelming prosaicness of these letters produces a sort of «colloquial» artistic level of enjoyment both among the listeners within the narration as well as among the readers. This proximity of the aesthetic pleasure derived from a letter's play between what it reveals and what it veils constitutes its appeal to this day.
Cervantes does expand the characterization of his creations through the intimacy communicated in their letters. But ultimately these are texts that base their art on pure jest. They are a witty exchange of double entendres and literary strategies with the purpose of bringing the grandees down to earth. This, of —101→ course, is the goal of all arte bufonesca. From this one can infer the letter's intimate link with the critical and social implications of fool literature, the literature of pure entertainment and laughter which, on the other hand, helps to situate Don Quijote at the center of literary modernity.