De Armas, Frederick A. Don Quixote among the Saracens: A Clash of Civilizations and Literary Genres.
Friedman, Edward H.
De Armas, Frederick A. Don Quixote among the Saracens: A Clash of
Civilizations and Literary Genres. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2011. 237
pp.
In Don Quixote among the Saracens, Frederick A. de Armas is
interested in matters of genre, a topic that he explores from an
impressive variety of perspectives. In the novel under scrutiny, Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra is, at the very least, co-protagonist of the
critical venture, for it is through the lens of the creator that the
processes--literary, socio-historical, political, and analytical--move
forward. At heart a playwright, Cervantes recognizes that conflict lies
at the heart of writing and of life, and, even as his narrative becomes
increasingly metafictional and self-referential, the real world is never
absent. Allegory, satire, critique, and introspection mark the
trajectory of Don Quixote, which may be called a representation of the
clash of cultures and of books. De Armas's latest contribution to
the corpus of criticism on Cervantes is, in every sense, a learned
study, informed by years of research, reading, and investigation of the
arts and their shifting and seemingly limitless frames. In examining
early modern Spain, de Armas recognizes the Islamic inflection within
the national character, based on centuries of contact and interaction.
Little seems more crucial to the equations formulated by the
society--and, correspondingly, to the literary production--of this time
than the issue of identity, in its multiple combinations, permutations,
and doublings. The movement of the study, as well as its referents, can
be located around phenomena that result from blending and from a failure
to blend, that is, from syntheses and disjunctions. The novel itself,
meaning Don Quixote and developing directions in narrative,
simultaneously draws from, plays with, and defies tradition.
De Armas proposes that Cervantes began with a general conception of
the parameters of his undertaking and that the knight's quest would
take him, among other places, into the territory of genre. Every section
seems to have a game plan with a particular system of interlocking
elements. The Sierra Morena, for example, would become a respite, a site
of mystery, and a place where story lines could connect and be woven
together, or "threaded." The complexity of the process allows
de Armas to bring together the strands of the plot and their
implications, and to introduce and correlate the visual arts,
aesthetics, history, theology, philosophy, onomastics, numerology, and
medicine. The thesis that Don Quixote is structured on series of
quaternities, on the levels of macrocosm and microcosm, is one of many
well-argued, encompassing, and ingenious arguments that relate to the
knight, to the text into which he is inscribed, and to authorial figures
real and implied. Cervantes would appear to follow the Pythagorean view
that everything is in a state of flux, as he constantly changes--and has
Don Quixote change--paths. This is not, as it were, the path of least
resistance, given that each new decision provides a conduit, and a need,
for greater complexity of signifier and signified. Almost nothing exists
in isolation; rather, the text depends on interrelations and, with some
regularity, on unusual or unexpected bedfellows, such as politics and
the pastoral genre. Even the easily accessible and the apparently
obvious can hide allusions that range from the distant world of
classical antiquity to the immediacy of the trials of the Spanish
nation, more often than not commingled. In the chapter titled
"Magic of the Defeated," de Armas analyzes Don Quixote's
words and actions from a Christian stance, and this permits him to
indicate how difference, alterity, and hybridity factor into the
narrative and ideological schemes of the novel. The errant knight is a
composite of pagan, medieval, epic, chivalric, and historical heroes
(and perhaps antiheroes), and the Muslim influence is a mediating
principle. At several points, de Armas sees Don Quixote as a stand-in
for Charles V, "consumed by illness but steeling himself onward,
hoping for a miracle" (93), but he is, as evoked in context, the
ailing emperor as portrayed by Titian. Details coincide and collide. The
intensity and virtuosity of composition run deep, yet so does
improvisation, which gives the elegant and polished performance an air
of incompleteness, or, one might submit, of calculated incompleteness.
De Armas looks at the form of the last section of Part 1 of Don
Quixote in terms of detective fiction, which has its origins in the
distant past. An ancient Persian tale, byzantine romance, Voltaire,
Edgar Allan Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle serve to illustrate
Cervantes's juxtaposition of mystery, characterization, monomania,
the monstrous, and the tapestry effect. De Armas labels the clustered
stories of Don Quixote "labyrinthine" (112), stemming from
Italian and Spanish tradition but, con perdon, going baroque. He notes
the irony of the protagonist's move from fugitive from justice to
sleuth, yet Don Quixote's detective work--filled with questions,
many of which remain unresolved--is interlaced with a high drama of
religion, race, politics, and selfawareness. The text and the
anachronistic knight are mutable, pleasant, and frequently hard to read.
The arrival at the inn of the captive and his brother the judge present
further adventures in storytelling and additional "wavers in
genre" (129), summoning classical and contemporary myths, together
with historical reality. A key paradox does not escape de Armas: in the
midst of narration by others, Don Quixote loses his voice, to a degree,
and he is redeemed only by the discourse of chivalry, which is his
target language.
In a crucial moment in I:26, Don Quixote associates himself with
the Saracen king Agramante of Boiardo's Orlando innamorato. De
Armas interrogates the confusing summoning of the Muslim enemy and
concludes that a significant truth is revealed to the attentive reader:
"The Christian knight is at home with the Saracens" (158). The
manner in which de Armas substantiates the hypothesis and justifies the
uniting of helmets, balsams, battles, and angst is skillful and
illuminating. A reference to the Pillars of Hercules in the Agramante
episode demonstrates closure and opening. The narrative of empire must
cede to the individual, although "the Other is within the
self" (161), and the story must reappropriate its linearity and end
with a return home, but, as always, with a twist. The twist here, with
the complicity of the Arab historian Cide Hamete Benengeli, is the magic
of the enchanted chariot that is perceived by the uninitiated as a cage.
Don Quixote is the enlightened protagonist, the tricksters are
themselves tricked (or deluded in their complacency), and the ride home
has a triumphant side. Linking Cide Hamete's motives and
cosmography, de Armas maintains that Don Quixote's melancholy is
guided by Saturn, the planet that grants wisdom through pain and
travails. The knight's journey has taken him beyond the normal
borders, into the plus ultra of Charles V's emblem. Don Quixote is
joined by a team of writers and narrators, and by critics who delve into
the profound regions of interpretation.
Two related adjectives might be applied to the study: exhaustive
and exhausting. Both are complimentary. De Armas's knowledge is
encyclopedic, and his readings are penetrating and engaging. This is a
work of considerable reflection, research, and breadth. It belies its
relatively compact size; it "feels" double the length. Don
Quixote and the Saracens is a tour de force of comparative approaches.
Its brilliance is not diminished by the fact that readers will establish
their own--and possibly contradictory--strategies through which to
comment on the novel, on genre, on ties with Muslim sensibility, and so
forth. De Armas inspires me--to cite but one instance--to reevaluate the
role of Cide Hamete Benengeli, since the historian is a far more
tangible presence in his reading than in mine. The richness of the book,
which covers only the 1605 Quixote, is indisputable. Fittingly, de
Armas, emulating Cervantes and the Velazquez of Las meninas, inserts
himself into the art object. Whether it is Cervantes's mind or his
own that ultimately projects the correspondences and correlations, de
Armas will likely leave his readers with strong responses, admiration,
and curiosity as to when a study of Part 2 can be expected.
EDWARD H. FRIEDMAN
Vanderbilt University
