Islamic Influence On Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"

Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"
Author(s): LUCE LPEZ-BARALT

Source: Islamic Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter 2006), pp. 579-593
Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad
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Islamic Studies 45:4
(2006) pp.
579-593
Islamic Influence
on
Spanish
Literature:
Benengeli's
Pen in Don
Quixote
LUCE
L?PEZ-BARALT
Introduction
Scholars of the literature and culture of
Spain
have
unavoidably
been struck
by
certain ironic
phrases,
almost
invariably
in
English,
?ke
"Spain
is
different." Another often-encountered
phrase
?this time in French?is less
ambiguous
and
more to
the
point: "L'Afrique
commence aux
Pyr?n?es."
This
latter dictum
pretends
to
make
explicit
what it is that
"distinguishes" Spain
from the
rest of
Europe,
what it is that makes
Spain
so
"different."
These statements are
often
spoken
so as to
sound
pejorative, slightly
contemptuous,
in order
to
underscore the fact that the "Westernness" of
Spain,
with its
strong
admixture of Semitic
ingredients,
is
highly
debatable.
The
problem
of the "Westernness"
(or
relative
"Easternness")
of
Spain,
a
problem
felt with
singular passion
and
even
anguish by Spaniards
and non
Spaniards
alike,
has
spawned
one
of the most critical controversies
during
the
entire twentieth
century
in
Spain.
The
history
of this
country
?
an
"uncomfortable"
history,
as
Francisco
Marquez
Villanueva
has called it1
?
is
indeed
different,
for it follows
a course
inevitably
distinct from that of the
history
of the
rest
of
Europe
in the Middle
Ages.
It would be foolish not to
recognize
the
overwhelming changes wrought
on
emerging Spain by
the
Muslim invasion in 92/711
(which
led to
eight
centuries of Ufe shared with the
Arabs)
and
by
the secular
presence
of the brilliant Hebraic civilization
on
the
Peninsula,
which
was to
last until
879/1492,
when the
Spaniards expelled
the
Jews
from their ancient homeland. In that
same
year
Granada
was
conquered
and the New World discovered:
a momentous
year
indeed for the Peninsula.
As a
country,
Spain (and
it is Americo Castro whom
we
have to
thank
for
calling
our attention to this
fact)
was
formed
out of not
only
Western
cultural elements but Semitic elements
as
well. Christians lived in relative
1
"Sobre la occidentalidad cultural de
Espa?a" [On
the Cultural Westernness of
Spain"]
in
Relecciones de literatura medieval
(Seville: University
of
Seville,
1977),
167-168.
580
LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT
tolerance side
by
side with Muslims and
Jews throughout
the Middle
Ages,
in
spite
of the secular
war
of the so-called
Reconquest.
This
complex
and
long
drawn-out historical
process
must
inevitably
have
produced
a
cultural "cross
contamination"
or
"hybridization"
of the Western and Eastern elements
on
the Peninsula. To
assume
that the Christian inhabitants of the Peninsula
borrowed
nothing
from their
extraordinarily
refined and cultured Arab
neighbours
is to brand them
as
void of all intellectual
curiosity,
which
seems
to us
highly improbable.
It is essential that
one
keep
this in mind when
trying
to understand the
unexpected fecundity
of
a
literature
?
especially
in its
medieval and renaissance incarnations
?
in so
many ways
mysterious
and
original
in
comparison
to the
contemporary
literature of
Europe.
Thus the
phrase "Spain
is different" is
quite
true,
and
perfectly acceptable
?
so
long
as
it
is understood in
a
positive, laudatory
sense.
Ever since its
complex
cultural
beginnings, Spanish
literature has
clearly
manifested its mixed
breeding.
Consider the
irony
that the earliest
Spanish
poetry
takes the
shape
of
bilingual
lines
appearing
in refined
poems
in Arabic
and in Hebrew. These Mozarabic
kharjat
were
transcribed in Arabic
or
Hebrew
characters,
lacking
vowels,
and its reconstruction has been
quite
thorny
for both Eastern and Western
literary
critics. Its
very
existence is
ironic,
for
no
Spanish
scholar can read
or
"decipher"
them unless he can
read
Arabic
or
Hebrew
as
well. Few critics
deny,
on
the other
hand,
the Oriental
elements in Libro de buen
amor,
of
Juan
Ruiz
(d.
ca.
1350
ce)
whose aesthetic
ideal of
femininity
is
thoroughly
Arab. Small
wonder,
since the author
rhymes
in
perfect
dialectal Arabic the last stanza of
one
of his
high-spirited Spanish
poems. Mystical
literature is
no
exception. Miguel
As?n Palacios
(d. 1944)
has
convincingly
shown the
complex
relation between
Spanish
and Muslim
mysticism
in his
numerous
comparative
studies of
Hispano-Arabic
literature.
Following
in his
footsteps,
I have been able
to
document
more than
thirty
of
these shared
mystical symbols,
like St.
John
of the Cross'
symbolic nightingale
and wine of
ecstasy
and Therese of Avila's
seven
castles of the soul.
Cervantes and His Don
Quixote
In
many ways
Miguel
de Cervantes
(d. 1616), Spain's
foremost writer and the
creator of
Europe's
modern
novel,
sums
up
the cultural
ambiguity
of this
deeply complex "European"
literature. As a
soldier,
he
fought
the Muslims in
Lepanto
and afterwards
was
made
a
captive
in
Algiers
for five
years.
The two
volumes of Don
Quixote
were
written between 1605 and
1615,
encompassing
the
highly significative
date of
1609,
when the last Muslims of
Spain
were
ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON SPANISH LITERATURE: BENENGELPS PEN IN DON QUIXOTE
581
massively deported
to
exile.2
Ironically enough,
Cervantes
pretends
that the
real "author" of his famous novel is none
other than Cide Hamete
Benengeli,
a
mysterious
Moorish chronicler who is of
course a
fictitious historian. The fact
that Cervantes chose
a
Muslim
as
his
literary alter-ego
is of
course
quite
meaningful
and even
ironic in Renaissance
Spain,
with the
Inquisition
in full
force.
Cervantes is
quite knowledgeable
about Islamic Ufe and
customs,
and
insists
on
describing
the
peculiar
diet of Don
Quixote,
who
deplored eating
pork
Uke
a converso or recent convert to
Christianity.
His beloved Dulcinea
del
Toboso,
who
gaily (or
rather
desperately)
exhibits her
expertise
in
salting
pork,
is
just pretending
to
be an old Christian. The author knows well that El
Toboso
was a
small town made
up
of
mainly
converted
Moors,
and thus
Dulcinea's name is associated with "unclean blood" and with
a secret
Moorish
origin. Many
of these
literary
elements have been dealt with
by
critics like
Americo Castro
(d. 1972),
Francisco
M?rquez
Villanueva,
Michel
Moner,
Emilio
Sola,
Santiago L?pez
Navia,
Mar?a Antonia
Garc?s,
L.P.
Havery
and
Maria Rosa
Menocal,
to name
just
a
few. I would now
like
to
contribute to
this
ever-growing bibUography
with the
study
of
a
neglected symbol?
Cide
Hamete
Benengeli's
pen
?which wiU
yield important Uterary
secrets
when
approached
from
an
Islamic
point
of view.
Benengeli's
Pen
Miguel
de Cervantes closes the inverted chivalric
saga
of Don
Quijote
de la
Mancha
by giving
the final word
to
Cide Hamete
BenengeU's pen,
a
pen
that is
instructed to
speak autonomously,
without
a
hand to
guide
it,
while
hanging
by
a
wire from an
ordinary
kitchen rack. Cervantes' alter
ego,
the Islamic
"historian" Cide
Hamete,
left it there
at
the
very
end of the
novel,
which
is,
according
to Cervantes'
literary
trick,
Cide's
very
own
chronicle. A
dazzling
entelechy
without doubt
worthy
of
a
wise
conjurer,
this final scene is
so
incongruent
that it would
appear
to
be
an
unintentional trick.3 But Cervantes
himself advises
us
in the
Viaje
del Parnaso
\Journey
to
Parnassus]
(1614)
that
2
The work has been edited and translated several times ever
since its
part
I was
published
in
1905. The
very
first
English
translation of its
part
I
by
Thomas
Shelton,
a
contemporary
of
Miguel
de
Carvantes,
around
1608,
was
first
published
in 1612. In the
beginning
of 20th
century
it was
reprinted
as:
Miguel
de Carvantes
Saavedra,
Don
Quixote,
Part
I,
translated
by
Thomas
Shelton,
vol.
XIV,
The Harvard Classics
(New
York: P.F. Collier &
Son,
1909-14).
This version
is available at:
<http://www.bartleby.com/14/>.
A
complete English
translation
by John
Ormsby (d. 1895),
Don
Quixote (London: 1885),
is available
at:
<http://www.online-literature.
com/Cervantes/don-quixoto/
>
;
<
http://www. donquixote.com/enghsh.html
>.
3
Little has been written about this
hanging
pen.
See
Joaqu?n
Casalduero's brief treatment in his
study,
Sentido
y forma
del
Quijote (Madrid:
Insula,
1975),
400-401.
582
LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT
"extravagances"
born of his "narrow wit" have secret
resonances,
that
is,
hidden
meanings:
Nunca ?
disparidad
abre las
puertas
Mi corto
ingenio, y
h?llalas contino
De
par
en
par
la consonancia abiertas.
?C?mo puede agradar
un
desatino
Si no es
que
de
prop?sito
se
hace,
Mostr?ndole el donaire su
camino?
[My
narrow wit hath ne'er its
gates
unbound
To
things incongruous,
but welcomes these
Which
keep
within the
range
of reason's bound.
How can
Extravaganza hope
to
please,
Unless it hath
some aim and
purpose
to
meet,
Where humour leads the
way
with
sprighdy
ease?]4
Taking
Cervantes at his
word,
Francisco
M?rquez
Villanueva,
who has
solved
so
many
of the hidden
mysteries
of the
Quixote,
insists that the author
"ansia
ser
entendido
y
guarda
sus tesoros
para
el lector culto
y
avisado"
["yearns
to be understood and
keeps
his treasures for the educated and
sagacious
reader"].5
The
scene
of the
pen
suspended
in the air and born
exclusively
for the
"enrerprise" {empresa)
of
writing
the anachronistic
knight
errant's
story
constitutes
one
of those hidden
treasures
replete
with secret
codes.
If
we
read the
scene
from the cultural coordinates of Islam?those with
which Cervantes could have familiarized himself in his
years
of
captivity
in
Algiers
as
well
as
in
Spain
?the
prodigious
pen
that
prepared
the
Quixote
bears
a
close
relationship
to
aal-qalam"
[the Pen]
of the
Qur'?n (68: 1).
Cide's
pen,
necessarily
Arabic
given
the
lineage
of its
owner,
extols the fact that the
novel was
born
"para
mi sola"
[for
me
alone]
and that the
enterprise
of its
writing
was
apara
m? estaba
guardado"
[reserved
for
me
alone]
(2:
592-93;
940).6
In this
way,
Cervantes
pays
homage
to
the work's Islamic
context,
for this
4
Cervantes,
Journey
to
Parnassus,
ed. and
trans.
James
Y. Gibson
(London: 1883),
178-79,
cited
hereafter in the text
parenthetically.
5
Francisco
M?rquez
Villanueva,
Personajes y
temas del
Quijote (Madrid: Taurus,
1975),
147-48,
McCabe's translation.
6
The word for
pen
used in the
Spanish original
is the feminine
pluma,
and the word for
alone,
sola,
necessarily agrees
with
piuma
in
gender. Quotations
of Cervantes*
Quixote
are from El
ingenioso hidalgo
don
Quijote
de la
Mancha,
ed. Luis Andres
Murillo,
3 vols.
(Madrid: Castalia,
1978),
cited
parenthetically
in the text
by
volume and
page numbers;
trans.
J.
M.
Cohen,
The
Adventures
of
Don
Quixote (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex:
Penguin, 1950),
cited
parenthetically
in the text.
ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON SPANISH LITERATURE: BENENGEU'S PEN IN DON QUIXOTE
583
primordial
Arabic
pen,
associated with the sacred
writing
of God the Creator
and His
Supreme
Intellect,
inscribes the inexorable
destiny
of human
beings
on the "Well-Preserved Tablet"
(al-lawh al-mahfiiz),
also of
Qur'anic origin
(85: 21-22).
Looked
at from this
angle,
the final
scene
of the
Quixote
no
longer
seems
absurd but
begins
to
yield
up
its secret ironies.
Let
us
recall,
at the end of the
Quixote,
the "most
prudent"
Cide's
apostrophe
to
his
writing
instrument:
Aqu? quedar?s, colgada
de esta
espetera y
de este
hilo de
alambre,
ni s? si bien
cortada o mal
tajada p??ola
m?a,
adonde vivir?s
luengos siglos,
si
presuntuosos y
malandrines historiadores
no te
descuelgan
para profanarte.
Pero antes
que
a ti
lleguen,
les
puedes
advertir, y
decides en el
mejor
modo
que
pudieres:
"iTate, tate,
folloncicos!
De
ninguno
sea
tocada;
porque
esta
empresa,
buen
rey,
para
m? estaba
guardada.* (2: 592)
[Here you
shall
rest,
hanging
from this rack
by
this
copper wire, my
goose-quill.
Whether
you
are well
or
ill cut I know
not,
but
you
shall live
long ages there,
unless
presumptuous
and rascal historians take
you
down
to
profane
you.
But
before
they approach
you,
warn
them
as
best
you
are
able:
"Beware, beware, you scoundrels,
I
may
be touched
by
none:
This is a
deed, my worthy king,
Reserved for
me
alone."] (939)
The
pen brags
that:
Para mi sola naci? don
Quijote, y yo para ?l;
?l
supo
obrar
y yo escribir;
solos los
dos somos
para
en
uno,
a
despecho
y pesar
de! escritor
fingido
y
tordesillesco
que
se
atrevi?,
o se
ha de
atrever,
a
escribir con
pluma
de avestruz
grosera y
mal
deli?ada las haza?as de mi valeroso
caballero, porque
no es
carga
de sus
hombros
ni asunto de su
resfriado
ingenio. (2: 592-93)
[For
me
alone Don
Quixote
was
borri and I for him. His was
the
power
of
action,
mine of
writing. Only
we two are at
one,
despite
that fictitious and
Tordesillescan scribe who has
dared,
and
may
dare
again,
to
pen
the deeds of
my
valorious
knight
with his coarse and ill-trimmed ostrich feather. This is no
weight
for his
shoulders,
no task for his frozen
intellect.]
(940)
Cide's
pen
thus celebrates that the work
was
born itself alone and that the
584
LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT
"enterprise" (empresa)
?
or
"imprint" (impresa)
?
as is
curiously
said in various
editions? of its
writing
was
likewise
carefully
"reserved" for it
only.7
The text
is to remain sealed forever in such
a
way
that
no one can
"sacrilegiously"
resuscitate its characters and thus violate
a
destiny
cloistered
by
death:
...
a
quien
advertir?s,
si
acaso
llegas
a
conocerle, que deje reposar
en
la
sepultura
los cansados
y ya
podridos
huesos de don
Quijote,
y
no le
quiera
llevar,
contra
todos los fueros de la
muerte,
a
Castilla la
Vieja;
haci?ndole salir de la fuesa donde
real
y
verdaderamente
yace
tendido de
largo
a
largo, imposibilitado
de hacer
tercera
jornada
y
salida
nueva.
(2: 593)
[.
. .
and should
you
chance
to make his
acquaintance, you may
tell him to leave
Don
Quixote's weary
and
mouldering
bones
to rest in the
grave,
nor
seek,
against
all the
canons
of
death,
to
carry
him off to
Old
Castile,
or to
bring
him
out of the
tomb,
where he most
certainly
lies,
stretched at full
length
and
powerless
to make
a third
journey,
or to
embark
upon any
new
expedition.](940)
The Primordial Pen and the Unalterable
Destiny
What the
pen
has written is thus
final,
since to continue the work
now
is to
challenge
a
destiny
frozen forever. We
already
know that Cervantes here is
attacking
the slanderous Alonso Fernandez de
Avellaneda,
who has dared to
cast his
spurious sequel
of the
Quixote
into the
world,
the second book of Don
Quixote's
adventures
published
before Cervantes' own
Part
.
The coarse
and
ill-trimmed
pen
of the Tordesillescan author is
incapable
of
competing
with
the
all-powerful
Arabic
pen
of Cide Hamete.
And with
good
reason.
The
pen
that
hangs
in the air while it
brags
of its
sealed
writing,
as
mentioned
before,
yields
its best secrets
when
we
take into
account its Islamic
lineage.
Annemarie Schimmel
emphasizes
the
symbolic
meaning
of the Islamic
primordial pen:
A central theme of Koranic
mythology
is the
concept
of the Uwh
al-mahfuz
the
Weil-Preserved
Tablet,
on
which the destinies of
men
have been
engraved
since
the
beginning
of time.
...
the
primordial pen
has become
a
standard
expression
in Islamic
poetry
in
general
and in Sufism in
particular,
for
everything
that
happens
is written with this instrument and cannot be
changed.8
Arabs
express
this
inexorability
of
destiny
as
it is inscribed
by
the Pen
on
7
For further
commentary
on the variant editions
giving empresa,
see Martin de
Riquer's
annotated
edition,
Miguel
de Cervantes
Saavedra,
El
ingenioso hidalgo
don
Quijote
de la
Mancha,
2 vols.
(Buenos
Aires:
Kapeluz, 1973),
2: 555.
8
Annemarie
Schimmel,
Mystical
Dimensions
of
Islam
(Chapel
Hill,
NC:
University
of North
Carolina
Press,
1975),
414.
ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON SPANISH LITERATURE: BENENGELI'S PEN IN DON QUIXOTE
585
the Well-Preserved Tablet
using
the well-known
phrase
makt?by
which means
"it is written."9 The Arabic
root "k-t-b"
or
"kataba" associates the
meaning
"to
write" with "to
destine,"
so
that
an
Arab
?
and
we
recall that Cide Hamete is
one ?cannot think of
writing
or
of
a
pen
without
associating
the latter with
the establishment of
an
unalterable
destiny.10
"As it is
written,
so
shall it come
to
pass"
?
"estaba escrito
que
iba
a
pasar"
?we
Spanish-speaking
inheritors of
this venerable Islamic tradition still
say.
The wise historian Cide would thus
seem to warn
Avellaneda with
an
ominous makt?b: the
story
of Don
Quixote
has remained written and
no one
should desecrate the bones of his
tomb,
rewriting
them
against
"all the
canons
of death"
(940).
So common is the Muslim leitmotiv of this
pen
of
destiny
that I have
documented it
on more than
one
occasion in the
clandestinely
written codices
of the
Spanish
Moriscos,
who wrote in
aljamiado (Spanish
but
using
the
Arabic
script).11
Cervantes knew the Moriscos
at
first
hand,
for he
portrays
one
of them
frequenting
the Alcana
(or souk)
of Toledo
ready
to
translate old
Arabic
manuscripts. (One
of those
manuscripts, by
the
way,
contained the
very
adventures of Don
Quixote).
In MS 4955 of the Biblioteca Nacional de
Madrid,
a
gigantic
pen
of
light
writes its inexorable
message upon
the heavens
9
Commenting
on
the Surah "The Cow"
(S?rah al-Baqarah),
the
eleventh-century
Shi'ite
commentator Ab? 'All al-Fadl b. al-Hasan al-Tabarasi
(d. 548/1153)
states that
some
commentators
interpret
the word kutiba
("it
has been written" or
"ordered")
to mean "it has
been inscribed
on the Weil-Preserved Tablet
(al-Lawh al-Mahfuz)
which is the Mother of the
Book." M.
Ayoub,
The
Qur'?n
and Its
Interpreters (Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press,
1984),
1:186.
10
See
J.
M.
Cowan,
Arabic-English Dictionary (New
York:
Spoken Languages
Services,
1976),
812. The
pen
in Islamic culture is associated with this unavoidable
destiny
such that it is used
as
a
symbol
in
religious
and civil ceremonies
establishing permanent
contracts between individuals:
"The materials
required
for the
making
of the
pen
were
popularly
endowed with
symbols.
To
seal
a
marriage,
a
pen
of red
copper
was to be
used,
with the
writing
on
wax,
nor on
paper.
To
celebrate a
friendship,
a
pen
made of silver or from a stork's beak
was
employed."
Abdelkebir
Khatibi and Muhammed
Sijelmassi,
The
Splendour of
Islamic
Calligraphy (London:
Thames and
Hudson,
1966),
75.
11
The Moriscos
were
the Muslim converts to
Christianity
who remained in
Spain
after the 1492
Reconquest
of Granada. The
adjective Aljamiado
derives from
aljam?a (al-'ajamiyyah "foreign"),
the word the Moors used to mean
"Castilian,"
and which can also refer to Morisco
Spanish
writings penned
in Arabic characters. The codices of the
Aljamiado
Moriscos I refer
to are
of
this sort. References in
Aljamiado manuscripts
to the
concept
of the Pen of
Destiny
that writes
without ink and with
no
hand
guiding
it
appear
in
many places, including
the
legend
of "Kit?b
al-Anw?r"
(Book
of
Lights)
of Abu 1-Hasan al-Bakri. For a
critical edition of this
work,
see
Mar?a Luisa
Lugo,
"Hacia la edici?n cr?tica del Libro de las luces-,
leyenda aljamiada
sobre la
genealog?a
de Mahoma"
(under publication
in SIAL Editores of
Madrid).
References
to
the Pen
of
Destiny
also
appear
in the
following manuscripts:
Madrid,
Biblioteca de la Real Academia de
la Historia de
Madrid,
MS
T-17,
fol.
5r-v;
and MS
T-18,
fol.
23r; Madrid,
Biblioteca
Nacional,
MS
4955;
and
Madrid,
Biblioteca de
Palacio,
MS 325.
586
LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT
without the
guidance
of
a
hand. It is
a
magic
Saracen
pen,
obviously
related
to
Cide Hamete's autonomous
pen.12
The
writing
of this Primordial Pen is
implacable
because,
symbolically,
the ink with which it writes on
the Well-Preserved Tablet has dried. A had?th
of the
Prophet
Muhammad
says
that "the
pen
has
already
dried"
[qad jaffa
V
qalam].13
William Chittick
explores
the
meaning
of this well-known had?th:
"Thepen
has dried
concerning
what shall be." The
Pen,
identified
by
the
Prophet
(peace
be on
him)
himself with the Intellect
through
which creation takes
place,
has
already
inscribed
everything
that will
happen
from the
beginning
of
creation
to
its end.14 It is
precisely
because of this that no one
should take
up
the
supreme pen
again
to "rewrite" that which the
Supreme
God has
already
inscribed with
an
ink that has
already evaporated.
This
may
help
to
explain
why
Cide's
pen
of
destiny hangs
in the air on a
kitchen rack. Similar racks
were
used
to
dry
hams, beef,
and fruit in the kitchens of the
past.15 By having
12
Cf. Mar?a Luisa
Lugo,
see
.
10 above. For her
part,
Lilliana Ramos Collado recalls that the
marvellous
pen
?
this time of the
Roj
bird
?
also
appears
in Mil
y
una
noches,
at
least as R.
Cansinos Ass?ns indicates in the translation of Richard Burton. Burton also makes reference
?
and here I am
also
citing
Ramos Collado
?
to two other travellers with miraculous
pens:
Marco
Polo
(see
The Travels
of
Marco Polo
[New
York: Orion
Press,
1958])
and Friar
Cipolla,
a
character in Boccaccio's Decameron
(VI: 10)
who exhibits a
pen
of the
angel
Gabriel,
obtained
during
his
voyages
to the Near East. These
pens,
of clear Muslim
lineage,
are a
fantastic
reinterpretation
of the Islamic
symbol
which in the
Qur'?n
is not
associated with
any
living
creature but rather with the
writing
of God. See Lilliana Ramos
Collado,
"Proyectos
infames:
Breve
genealog?a borgeana
de un
ensayo
de
Foucault," N?mada,
2
(1995),
76-77.
Spanish
novelist
Juan Goytisolo
has also echoed the
Supreme
Pen,
with
which,
he
suggests,
he writes his
moving,
otherworldly
narrative La cuarentena. See
my essay
on
this
novel,
Luce
L?pez-Baralt,
"Narrar
despu?s
de morir: La cuarentena de
Juan Goyrisolo,"
Nueva Revista de
Filolog?a Hisp?nica,
43
(1995),
59-124.
13
"The
pen
has
already
dried
up,
which means
that
nothing
once
decreed and written
on
the
Well-Preserved Tablet can ever be
changed,"
cited in
Schimmel,
Mystical
Dimensions
of Islam,
197.
14
William
Chittick,
The
Sufi
Path
of
Love: The
SpiHtual Teachings of
Rumi
(Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press,
1993),
113. Like
Schimmel,
Chittick
emphasizes, however,
the
fact that
many
Muslims
loosely interpret
the ominous
writing
of this Pen of
Destiny.
"But an
unbiased look at
many
periods
of Islamic
history
shows no
signs
whatsoever of
a
fatalistic'
streak in the Moslem
peoples."
Ibid.
Thus,
the famous
poet
Rumi
argues:
"The true
interpretation
of The Pen has dried' is that
you
should
perform
the most
important
task. The
pen
has written:
keeping
with
every
work there is a
consequence
and
a
retribution.' If
you
walk
crookedly,
The Pen has dried:'
you
will receive crookedness. If
you
bring straightness,
you
will
reap felicity." Ibid.,
117.
15
Here we
may
be faced with another of Cervantes' ironic
jokes:
his Islamic
pen
is associated
with
no less than the
threatening
Old-Christian
ham,
which
no convert writer would want to
take down from its rack
to
appropriate.
All of this evokes
Quevedo's
well-known verses that
would
seem to
contextualize the
joke:
"te untare mis versos con
tocino,
Gongorilla, para que
no
me
los muerdas"
[I
will
grease my
verses
with
pork
fat,
Gorgorilla,
so
that
you
won't eat
them].
587
the fictitious author Cide
hang
up
his
pen,
Cervantes could be
indicating
to his
enemy
Avellaneda that he will not be
able,
against
the author's
will,
to
resuscitate Don
Quixote
de la
Mancha,
because the
prodigious
ink with which
he
was
written has
already
dried forever.16
Cide also admits with
humility
that the
pen
with which he has written
the
Quixote might
be either "well
or
ill cut"
(939).
Given the Arabic
literary
coordinates from which
we are
approaching
the
scene,
this
cryptic
commentary
ceases to seem
fortuitous. The Sufi
poets
complained,
as
Schimmel reminds
us,
"in hundreds of
variations,
that the
writing
of their
destiny
was
crooked,
because the Pen
was cut the
wrong
way."17
And,
for all
that Cide's
pen
might
be
"ill-trimmed,"
he boasts that the "ostrich
pen"
of his
literary
enemy
Avellaneda is cut even more
crudely.
In order
to show that the invective
against
Avellaneda has
significance
not
only
in
a
popular
Islamic
context,
but also in
a more
learned
theological
one,
it
is
important
to
examine the
Qur'?nic
version of this Primordial Pen that
traces its celestial
calligraphy
on
the Well-Preserved Tablet. If Cervantes had
the
curiosity
to
investigate
more
closely
the
popularized
leitmotiv of the
Creator-Pen,
then
perhaps
any
acquaintance
of his in
Algiers
would have been
able
to
explain
to him what the
Holy
Book of Revelation of the Muslims had
to
say
on
the
subject.18
It is hard
to
know the
range
of Cervantes' information
on
this
matter,
but it remains
unsettling
that the
Qur'?n
should constitute
one
of the most
useful
contexts for
understanding
Cide Hamete's
apostrophe
to his
Creator-Pen.
Surah
al-Qalam
The s?rah
(a
section
or
chapter
of the
Qur'?n)
of the
Qalam,
or
"Pen,"
begins
Sonnet
829,
Poes?a
original completa,
ed.
Jose
Manuel Blecua
(Barcelona:
Editorial
Planeta, 1990),
1094.
16
Cervantes
evidently
is
making
a
play
on
Quixote's place
of
origin,
La
Mancha,
which
literally
means
"the stain."
Thus,
Don
Quixote
is born from
a "stain of ink:" that is to
say,
from the
pen
of his author.
17
Schimmel,
Mystical
Dimmensions
of
Islam,
414.
18
James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
and Emilio Sola have
emphasized
Cervantes' relative
mobility
in
Algiers.
On his
daily
walks
through
the
Medina,
Cervantes could have familiarized himself with
expert
Arabic raconteurs: "While his
captors
found their
pleasure
in
watching
two
tatooed
Moors oiled from head to foot wrestle amid the clash of
cymbals
and of
drum,
he
may
have
stolen down to the
market-place
with his brother
Rodrigo,
and with Luis de Pedrosa?a native
of
Osuna,
whose father had been
a
friend of Cervantes'
grandfather,
the old-time
Corregidor
of
Osuna ?to hear the
r?w?,
Arab trouv?re" I.
James Fitzmaurice-Kelly,
The
Life of Miguel
de
Cervantes Saavedra:
Biographical, Literary,
and HistoHcal
Study (London: 1892),
50-51. Also
see
Emilio Sola and
Jos?
F. de la
Pe?a,
Cervantes
y
la Berber?a
(Madrid:
Fondo de Cultura
Economica,
1995).
588
LUCE
L?PEZ-BARALT
with
an
enigmatic
address: "N?n.
By
the Pen and what
they
inscribe;
thou art
not,
by
the
blessing
of
your Lord,
a man
possessed" (68: l).19
The s?rah of this
Pen of
Destiny
serves
the
Prophet
Muhammad
[peace
be
on
him]
as
solace,
because
already
the
nay-sayers
have
thought
him mad for
echoing
the divine
discourse. In
spurious writings
that offend the
indisputable
truth,
the
disbeliever "cries lies to this discourse" of the
all-encompassing
GocJ [written
by
the
Pen]
(68: 44).
The Divine Word
harshly
admonishes this
symbolic
traitor,
calling
him,
"mean
swearer,
backbiter,
going
about with
slander,
hinderer of
good, guilty
aggressor, coarse-grained,
moreover
ignoble" (68:
10
13).
It is
as
if
we are
listening
to Cervantes launch his invective
against
the
arrogant imposter,
Avellaneda,
who
publishes
his
"ignoble disloyal" writing
as
a
legitimate
continuation of Cide Hamete
Benengeli's
"true
story."
The
obsessive refrain "true
story" acquires
new
shades of
meaning against
the
Qur'?nic
context of the
pen, al-Qalam,
and its "authentic"
writing.
It thus
becomes
apparent
that thanks to this
one
mention of
a
pen
hanging
in the
air,
anyone
familiar with the
Qur'?n
would know that Cide is
obliquely alluding
to a
Supreme
Pen whose
writing disloyal
defamer intends
to
violate,
even
though
it is sealed for all
eternity
because its ink has
already evaporated.
The
Qur'?nic
s?rah continues with the
parable
of the
garden.
Here the
garden symbolically represents,
and the
Qur'?n
is clear about
this,
the
writing
or
Divine creation that the
ignoble
ones
have wanted to desecrate: "So leave
Me with him who cries lies
to
this discourse!"
(68: 44).
The unbelievers have
a
secret
plan
to
deprive
the
just
man
of his
rights,
and
they furtively
enter the
symbolic garden
at
night
in order to loot it. But when
they
arrive in the
orchard
they
discover that God has ruined
it,
thus
impeding
the offence that
the infidels had
planned
to
carry
out.
Similarly,
Cervantes finds himself
having
to
precipitate
the destruction of his
character,
Don
Quixote, accelerating
his
death in order
to
prevent
the further
misappropriation
of his
text,
already
once
violated
by
Avellaneda.20 These
unbelievers,
S?rah
al-Qalam
once
again
emphasizes,
have declared the
Prophet possessed,
for
transmitting
the sacred
writing.
But the words of Muhammad
are not
disconnected;
and
as
the
Qur'?n
assures
us,
they
are not
the
product
of
an
unleashed
madness,
but rather
a true
message
directed
to
humankind
(68: 52).
The Pen's admonition with which
19
This and all translarions into
English
from the
Qur'?n
are from Arthur
J. Arberry,
tr. The
Koran
Interpreted (London:
Oxford
University
Press,
1964),
cited
by
surah and verse
number,
20
On the almost
pityless
hurriedness with which Cervantes recounts the death of Alonso
Quijano, Jorge
Luis
Borges
comments,
"Cervantes
. . .
deja que
?ste se
vaya
de la vida de una
manera lateral
y casual,
al fin de una frase. Cervantes nos de con
indiferencia la tremenda
noticia"
[Cervantes
. . .
allows this character to lose his life in
a
peripheral
and casual manner at
the end of
a sentence. Cervantes treats the vital
news
with
indifference].
"An?lisis del ?ltimo
cap?tulo
del
Quijote,"
RUBA 2
[1956]: 36,
McCabe's translation.
589
this s?rah
opens
is
a
clear
challenge
to
every
possible
attack
on
the
authentic,
revealed text ?an
inviolable
garden
?written
by
the
Supreme
Pen.21 It is
tempting
to think that the
speech
of the Arabic historian to his
pen
in the
Quixote
is likewise far from
any
comic
or
sterile
insanity.
His
delirium,
as we
are
beginning
to
see,
is
only
one
of
appearance.
In
fact,
it transmits lucid
literary
secrets for the
prudent
reader who
cares to
unravel them with
patience
and
good
faith
?
and with
any
reasonable
amount of the Islamic
language
and
culture that he
or
she
might
possess.
On the other
hand,
Cide's
speaking
pen
boasts that the
writing
of the text
had been destined "for her alone"
[para
mi
sola].
The
Supreme
Pen and the
Well-Preserved Tablet constitute in Islam
an
inviolable
"spiritual marriage."
This Well-Preserved Tablet
or
allawh
al-mahf?z
of the
Qur'an (85: 21-22)
has
been reserved since
eternity
for this Celestial Pen
?
exactly
as
the
enterprise
or
imprint
of Cide's
pen
was
reserved
solely
for its creation.22
The Celestial Pen and the Weil-Preserved Tablet
The Celestial Pen and the
Tablet,
inseparably
wedded
to one
another in
Islamic
cosmology,
are,
as Laleh Bakhtiar reminds
us,
similar to another
primordial pair,
Adam and
Eve,
created
by
God.23
Muhy?
-D?n Muhammad
b. 'Ali Ibn 'Arab!
(d. 638/1240)
of Murcia
argues
in his al-Fut?h?t
alMakkiyyah
or
Meccan Revelations
(1: 139.4)
that the Pen is active in relation to
the Well
?
Preserved
Tablet,
but that it is
receptive
in relation to
God,
for whom it
serves
as a creative instrument.
Thus,
in the
same
way
that the Pen can be considered
21
See Abdullah Yusuf Ali's
commentary
on the first
verse
of the surah
al-Qalam (the "Pen'*)
in
The
Holy Qur'an:
Text, Translation,
and
Commentary (N.p.: McGregor
and
Werner,
1946),
1585.
22
It is worth
returning
here to the alternative version of the word
empresa ("enterprise")
found
in some editions of the
Quixote,
such
as
the
Kapeluz
edition annotated
by
Martin de
Riquer,
which uses
impresa ("imprint")
instead of
empresa.
It is hard
to know if this is
a
misprint
or a
conscious
manipulation
of the word
on the
part
of Cervantes.
Having
said
that, however,
it
makes
sense that
impresa
is meant
here,
that it was a
"writing"
or a
"printed
work,"
and not
just
the
empresa
or
"enterprise"
of its
writing,
that had been
jealously
reserved for Cide Hamete's
unequalled
pen.
Perhaps
Cervantes was
playing
two
meanings
of
empresa
off each other: the idea
of
an
enterprise
or
arduous action
valiantly
undertaken,
reserved for Cide's
pen,
and the idea of
an
"emblem"
or
enigmatic image denoting
some
quality,
often
accompanied
with
a letter
or
motto that renders its
meaning
more
intelligible.
See the discussion of this editorial and
interpretative question
in Helen Percas de
Ponseti,
Cervantes the Writer and Painter
of
"Don
Quijote" (Columbia: University
of Missouri
Press,
1988),
62-64.
23
Laleh
Bakhtiar,
Sufi Expressions of
the
Mythic Quest (London:
Thames and
Hudson, 1976),
28.
Sachiko Murata has
commented, "Just
as the human world needed
an
Adam and
Eve,
so
also the
cosmos as a
whole needed
a
spiritual
Adam and
a
spiritual
Eve
?
Pen and Tablet
?
to
bring
the
heavens, earth,
and
everything
between the two into existence."
Idem,
The Tao
of
Islam: A
Sourcebook
on Gender Relations in Islamic
Thought (Albany:
State
University
of New York
Press,
1992),
154.
590
LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT
a
passive
"Tablet" in relation
to
God?a
yin principle
?
the Weil-Preserved
Tablet
can be considered
a "Pen"
?a
yang principie?in
relation to the
created world that lies below it.24
Curiously,
Cervantes echoes this
same
duality
when
referring
to his instrument of scribal creation. At times it is
masculine
or
phallic
?a
sharp
sword in the
Viaje
del Parnaso
?
at other times
feminine and maternal
?as
when the author boasts of his Novelas
Ejemplares
{Exemplary Novels)
that "mi
ingenio
las
engendr?
y
las
pari?
mi
pluma" [my
intellect conceived them and
my pen gave
birth to
them].25
Perhaps
this dual nature
of the
Qur'?nic
and Cervantine
supreme pens
can
help
us
further
clarify
the
enigma
of Cide's
pen
that
hangs,
without
apparent
reason,
from
a
wire tied to a
rack. We
already
know that Cide could
have
put
the ink of his
supreme pen
out to
dry.
But,
at
the
same
time and with
his habitual
irony,
Cervantes could also be
alluding
to
another thematic motif
in Islam: that the Primordial Pen of God serves as an
intermediary
between
the
Supreme
Creator and his "written"
creation,
because it is "tied
to,"
or
because it "ties
together,"
both
cosmologica! poles.
The
Supreme
Pen,
as
has
been
pointed
out,
simultaneously
looks
to God and
to
the created
cosmos
that
lies below it. The face turned toward God the creator is
receptive,
while the
face turned toward the lower levels of creation ?the world that rises from the
celestial
calligraphy?is
active. The
pen,
as
Murata
explains,
is an
isthmus,
a
bridge
or a
connecting
thread between
two
poles.26 Perhaps
the wise historian
Cide, upon
hanging
his
prodigious
pen
from
a
wire,
is
indicating
to us
with
a
complicit
smile that his bird's feather
(the quill pen)
is the
symbolic
intermediary
between the
Creator-Intellect,
the author
Cervantes,
and his
written
creation,
the
story
of Don
Quijote
de la Mancha.27 It is true that the
24
See
Bakhtiar,
Sufi Expressions,
163. "The Well-Preserved Tablet
?
and I am
still
quoting
Ibn
*
Arabi ?is
green
because it has a
dual
relationship
to the created world. It has
a
luminous
relationship
when
we
consider that it looks toward the
Supreme Intellect,
and
an
obscure
relationship
when
we
consider that it is also turned toward the dust and the ocean of the created
world. The Tablet is
green
because of this delicate and
prodigious
mix."
Murata*
Tao
of
Islam,
as
cited in
Bakhtiar,
Sufi Expressions,
163. In Islam it is
easy
to assume that the Well-Preserved
Tablet
or
the Tabula
Smaragdina (The
Emerald
Tablet),
as
it has been called
by Henry
Corbin,
is
symbolically
made of emerald. This is how it is described in innumerable
legends
that the
Morisco
Aljamiado
texts of the sixteenth
century
still echo. See H.
Corbin,
L'Homme de lumiere
dans le
soufisme
iranien: Le soldi dans le coeur
(Paris:
?ditions
Presence,
1971);
and Luce
L?pez
Baralt,
"La visio
smaragdina
de san
Juan
de la Cruz: acerca
de las esmeraldas trascendidas
que
encontr?
en el interior de su alma iluminada* in Martha Elena
Venier,
ed. Literatura de la Edad
Media al
siglo
XVIII,
Varia
Ling??stica y
Literaria: 50 a?os del CELL
(Mexico: Colegio
de
Mexico,
1997),
2: 131-47.
25
Cervantes,
Novelas
ejemplares,
ed.
Julio Rodriguez-Luis (Madrid:
Taurus,
1983),
1:91.
(the
emphasis
is
mine).
26
Murata,
The Tao
of
Islam,
165.
27
In
Arabic,
'aqala,
the root of the term for Intellect
('aql),
is also the root for "tether"
(Hq?lj,
a
591
wire of Cide's
pen,
that ties the
writing
of the "true
story"
to the
privileged
intellect of its
original
owner,
shines with
a
spark
more
modest than that of
the
ray
of
light
associated with the
Supreme
Pen of Arabic and
aljamiado
legends.
But then
again,
the brass
or
tin of the barber's basin
gleamed
more
humbly
than the
gold
of Mambrino's actual helmet.
Cide could also be
obliquely suggesting
that his
writing
is
duly
"tied" to
the
powerful
wit of its
author,
who knows how to
control it
perfectly, just
as
Maese Pedro controls his marionettes in the second
part
of the
novel,
and that
the verbal delirium of the Arabic historian therefore is
only
apparent.
With
his
enigmatic scriptio ligata,
Cervantes offers
an
Islamic version of the
myth
of
Theseus's cord. Ariadne's
thread,
now
of
wire,
is not
completely
Western. For
it
ironically
evokes the brilliance of the
symbolic
cord of
light
that sustains the
mediating
pen
between the invisible
Supreme
Intellect and the fictional world
that this Intellect has
begotten.
Cervantes uses a
pen
that is more
Islamic than
Western,
and Aristotle
(d.
322
Be),
Saint Basil
(d.
379
ce),
and Cicero
(d.
43
BC)
could
hardly
have echoed the
prodigious writing
of
an
Arabic historian.28
Let us
call attention to one
last curious coincidence. In
Islam,
the
Supreme
Pen,
the ink with which it
writes,
and the Weil-Preserved Tablet
are
all identified with an
angel.
Or,
as
the sixth Shrite imam
(leader) Ja'far al-S?diq
(d. 148/765)
reminds
us,
a
procession
of
angels
who,
as
delegates
of the
Supreme
Maker, carry
out the creative work of God in
a
scale that
gradually
descends
to
the material level.29
The Arabic Name of
Benengeli
These
angels,
who under God's command are involved in the
Writing,
lead
us
to
consider the Arabic
name
of Cide Hamete
Benengeli,
which is articulated in
a
particularly suggestive
manner
in the context of the Islamic
scriptural
cosmology
that
we
have been
exploring.
The name of the
presumed
"Arabic"
author of the
Quixote,
as
it is
known,
has
given
rise
to numerous
decodings
on
the
part
of critics,30 Without
discarding
any
of
them,
it seems most relevant
to
rope
or
cord used to tie a
horse. On the
symbolism
of
rope
in
Cervantes,
something
that merits
further
study,
see
Helena Percas de
Ponseri,
Cervantes
y
su
concepto
del arte: Estudio cr?tico de
algunos aspectos y
episodios
del
"Quijote,
"
2 vols.
(Madrid:
Gredos,
1975),
2: 487ff.
281
am,
of
course,
alluding
here
to
the
prologue
to the first
part
of the
Quixote
in which
Cervantes assures us
that these classical authors of the West did not comment at
all
on
chivalric
novels because
they
did not know of them.
29
Murara,
The Tao
of
Islam,
154.
30
See,
for
instance,
the annotated editions of the
Quixote
of
Diego
Clemencin
(Madrid: 1833),
vol.
1;
and F.
Rodr?guez
Mar?n
(Madrid:
Arias,
1947);
as
well
as
Leopoldo Eguflaz
y Yanguas's
essay,
"Notas
etimol?gicas
a
El
ingenioso hidalgo
don
Quijote"
in
Homenaje
a
Men?dez
y
Pelayo
(Madrid: 1899),
121-42.
592
LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT
note
here the
recent
hypothesis put
forth
by Julio
Baena. Baena
emphasizes
the
phonetic
rule that Cervantes
frequently
uses
in his invention of names:
"Para
Sancho,
Benengeli
no
significa,
sino
que
suena,
a
'berenjena'"
[For
Sancho,
Benengeli
does
not mean
"berenjena" (or eggplant);
instead,
it sounds
like
"berenjena"].
And Baena concludes that
to one
who focuses
on
sound
over
meaning, "Ben-Engeli
suena a
Hijo
de
Angel,
por
m?s
que
etimol?gicamente
no
lo
signifique" [Ben-Engeli
sounds like
Hijo
de
Angel ("angel's son"), although
that is not its
etymological meaning.]
Because of
this,
Baena associates the
symbolic
Arab
hijo
de
?ngel
with
a
demiurge
or
charmer
"capaz
de
traspasar
las
paredes
y
hasta las
mentes
para
escudri?ar los
pensamientos" [capable
of
passing through
the walls and into minds in order
to scrutinize their
thoughts].31
The word
berenjena,
of distant Sanskrit and Persian
origin,
appears
in
Arabic
as
b?danj?n
or
b?dinj?n,
but its variant in the dialects of
Algeria,
Morocco,
and Muslim
Spain
is
b?dinj?l
so that it is
pronounced
almost like
b?dinjel}1 B?dinj?l?,
with the final i of the Arabic
genitive
case,
would thus
mean "relative
to," "of,"
or
"coming
from" the
berenjena ("eggplant")
or,
in
other
words,
that it has been
aberenjenado ("aubergenized").
It is
likely
that
Cervantes heard these various
phonetic
versions
on
his walks
through Algiers'
squares
or even
among
the
Spanish
Moriscos he seemed to know
so
well,
since
what echoes in his
ear
and
permits
the immediate association of Cide with
berenjena
is the word
b?dinj?l?
of the
Hispano-Maghrebi
dialects,
rather than
the classical Arabic word. Cide
has,
in
effect,
a name
that could
phonetically
be associated in
Spanish
?as
Julio
Baena asserts?with
Ben-Engeli
or
hijo
del
angel ("angel's son").
Cide Hamete is
thus,
for
powerful phonetic
reasons,
b?dinj?l-?,
that
is,
"of the
angel/eggplant lineage."
Is Cervantes
insinuating
that
his Cide Hamete
Ben-Engeli
or
B?dinj?l?
is
an
intermediary Pen-Angel
suspended by
an
ordinary
but
resplendent
wire between the
Supreme
Maker
?
Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra ?and the
story
of Don
Quijote
de la Mancha?
Whatever the
case
may be,
it is
important
to
recall that Cervantes also had
an
angel's
name ?or
better
said,
that of
an
archangel,
Michael ?and this left him
inexorably
related to his Muslim
alterego.
I
intentionally
associate here the
name
of Cervantes
Tyith
the
supreme
Creator,
since he would
seem to have the last word in this
plentiful
work in
which he
so
frequently disputes
with Cide Hamete the
authorship
of the text.
31
Julio
Baena,
"Modos del hacedor de nombres cervantino: el
significado
de Cide Hamere
Benengeli,"
Indiana
Journal of Hispanic
Studies,
2
(1994),
55,
58.
32
Dubler
explains
this in
passing,
without
associating
at
any
moment this
Algerian
or
Hispano
Maghrebi
variance with Don
Quixote.
C?sar
Dubler,
"Sobre la
berenjena,"
Al-Andalus,
7
(1942),
378.
593
We
are,
ironically,
faced with
a
work
created,
like that of the God of Islamic
cosmology, by
different interventions
or
intermediary "angels"
in the
genesis
of the verbal universe. But we
should
not
therefore
get
lost in the intricate
maze of this
vertiginous
text.
Cide's celestial
pen
is
strongly
tied
by
its wire to
an invisible
?
but
supreme
?creative hand. This
hand,
of
supreme
intellect
was,
all the
time,
that of
Miguel
de Cervantes. I
emphasize
this because the
hanging
pen
that converses in the first
person
and feminine
gender
?
"
para
mi
sola naci? don
Quijote"
[for
me
alone Don
Quixote
was
born]
?
slips,
without
warning,
into
a
masculine authorial voice: "Yo
quedar?
satisfecho
y
ufano de
haber sido el
primero que
goz?
el fruto de
sus
escritos
enteramente,
como
deseaba"
[I
shall be
proud
and satisfied
to
have been the first author to
enjoy
the
pleasure
of
witnessing
the full effect of his
own
writing] (2:
593;
940).
The final
speech
with which the work closes allows
us to
identify
this
authorial voice with Cervantes. Cide
never
spoke
of
condemning
the
memory
of books of
chivalry; engaging
in
literary
critism of
a
European genre surely
foreign
to him would have been of little interest to a
Muslim historian. To
Cervantes, however,
it would have indeed
mattered,
for he had
already
announced in the
prologue
to the first
part
of the
Quixote
his
dismantling
critical
project:
"todo ?l
es una
invectiva contra los libros de caballer?as"
[the
whole of it is
an
invective
against
books of
chivalry] (1:
57;
29).
The
fictionalized writer of the
prologue
now
repeats
this invective
so that we
recognize
that it is Cervantes himself who has decided to take the last word of
the text and "tie" it
securely
to
his
most
personal
creative talent. It is he as
supreme
maker who rises to
the
top
of the creational
hierarchy
of his
writing,
above the Arab historian Cide and all of the
passages
in which he
disputes
Cide's
authorship
of the
text,
above the
symbolic angels
who
carry
the work
of God to the material
level,
above the
secretly
held
"enterprise"
of
"imprint,"
above the
pen
of
destiny
that
hangs
with its sacred ink
put
out to
dry
so
that
no one
dare desecrate the
story
"against
all the
canons
of death." The
Mancha,
or
ink
stain,
from which Don
Quixote proceeds
is therefore
unrepeatable.
"Forst altro canter?
con
miglior plectio" [Maybe
someone
will
sing
with
a
better
plectrum (inspiration)],
Cervantes had
announced,
with his
enigmatic
modesty,
at
the end of the first
part
of his work
(1: 608).
But he
was
mistaken:
the best
plectrum
was
his,
this
supreme pen,
angelic
and
Arabic,
with which
he knew
to write this vast and
richly complex
novel. And that is
why
at the
end of the work he
reappropriates
his
pen
and
hangs
it from
a
rack,
putting
its
ink out to
dry,
so
that
no one
may
ever
again
desecrate,
with treacherous
intentions and
an
ignoble
pen,
the
true
story
of Don
Quijote
de la Mancha.
$

Islamic Influence On Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"

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