From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
1.1-2 (1981): 116-18.
Copyright © 1981, The Cervantes Society of America
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. Viaje del Parnaso.
Critical edition, introduction, and notes by Vicente Gaos. Madrid: Castalia,
1974. 205 pp. + índice de láminas.
Hardly a year after the appearance
of the Suma cervantina, Vicente Gaos published an edition of the
Viaje del Parnaso (Madrid, 1974) as Volume 57 in the “Clásicos
Castalia” series and as Volume I of Cervantes' Poesías
completas. This project had been anticipated four years earlier by Gaos'
anthology of Cervantes' Poesías (Madrid, 1970) published in
the Taurus “Temas de España” series. The first part of his
introduction to the Castalia volume, the part entitled “Cervantes,
poeta” (pp. 7-24), is in fact a verbatim reprint of his introduction
to the Taurus volume (pp. 9-18), with a few additional paragraphs inserted
and several lengthy footnotes added.
“Cervantes, poeta” is concerned with
a somewhat sterile debate about whether Cervantes was really a poet or not,
and, if so, whether major or minor. Gaos recognizes that Ricardo Rojas' study
of Cervantes' poetry is the most complete one; he values more highly the
comments of Gerardo Diego and of Luis Cernuda. He considers that Cervantes'
poetic vocation was sincere, even though he may not have been a “poeta
nato.” Cervantes' comments on his own poetry, especially those made
in the Viaje, are seen as ambiguous: at times ironically modest, at
times ironically proud. Gaos reaches conclusions in words such as these:
“La poesía de Cervantes es, en efecto, suya, y con ello queda
expresada la imposibilidad absoluta de que sea mediocre” (p. 14).
“Realmente, el verso le venía estrecho, no podía encajar
en él la libertad de su espíritu, su dilatado genio universal.
¿Fue, por eso, mal poeta? Conforme: todo lo malo que podía ser
. . . , siendo Cervantes” (p. 24). These words make one
wonder whether the debate is not purely rhetorical.
The second part of the introduction (pp. 24-37)
is a more useful commentary upon the Viaje del Parnaso itself. Gaos
rightly rejects comparisons with the Canto de Calíope and with
Lope's Laurel de Apolo: Cervantes' real intention, he says, was not
to write literary criticism (p. 29), but rather to write “una
autobiografía reivindicadora” (p. 30). The satirical theme of
the poem is man's vanity in general, and the vainglory of poets in particular
(p. 31). Gaos focusses most clearly, not upon the mock-heroic epic poem as
a genre, but upon one particular aspect of this genre: the parody of classical
mythology. “Cervantes, nuevo Luciano, se regocija presentándonos
unos dioses apeados de su majestuoso pedestal, trasmutados en seres corrientes
y molientes, a más de anacrónicos, pues su atuendo, costumbres
y lenguaje son los de los españoles vulgares de la época”
(p. 32). And here he cites some of Ortega's perceptive remarks upon the absence,
and shame-faced presence, of
116
“Bacchus” in Velázquez' Los borrachos. This is a
most suggestive rapprochement.
I do think, however, that this parallel between
Velázquez and Cervantes needs to be refined. The mode of Los
borrachos is not the burlesque mode of the Viaje, but the realistic
mode of the Quijote: in a painting of drunken peasants we see a refined
young man playing the part of Bacchus, just as in the Marcela episode, among
goatherds, we find a literary young lady playing the part of an idealistic
shepherdess. That is, the “ground” of the action is realistic,
while the mythic is present only as self-conscious play-acting against this
background. in the Viaje, on the other hand, there is no solidly realistic
ground at all: the basic action is fantastic, pseudo-epic, with
“real” gods who, nevertheless, do talk in the idiom of ordinary
Spaniards from early 17th-century Madrid. The two genres, though complementary,
are diametrically opposed to one another.
According to a “Nota previa” (p.
43), Gaos bases his edition upon the princeps (1614), noting his
emendations and his variants with respect to the editions of Bonilla (1922)
and Rodríguez Marín (1935). A quick check of the first few
pages reveals that his textual standards are none too rigorous. Some details
are minor, such as silently expanding and abbreviating the titles of the
“Dedicatoria” and “Prólogo al Lector.” More serious
is the reproduction of Agustín de Casanate's Latin epigram (six elegiac
distychs) without a translation and with misprints such as
instead of
.
In the preliminary sonnet “El Autor a su pluma,” line 12 begins
“y adorne”: Gaos' erraturn “y adonde” makes the syntax
impossible. In Cap. I, 6, a dieresis is needed: “hüir” instead
of “huir.” In general the punctuation is comparable to that of
Rodríguez Marín. Occasionally, however, the punctuation of
the princeps is better than that of any of these three modern editions.
For example, Cap. IV. 58-60:
| Tuue, tengo, y tendrê los pensamientos, |
(Merced al cielo
 a tal
bien me inclina) |
| De toda adulación libres y essentos. |
Bonilla, Rodríguez Marín and Gaos all omit the parentheses
and do not replace them with exclamation points. Thus Gaos:
| Tuve, tengo y tendré los pensamientos, |
| merced al cielo que a tal bien me inclina, |
| de toda adulación libres y exentos. |
In conclusion, the Rodríguez Marín
edition continues to be the best so far, with extensive notes and appendices.
But since this edition, like the Rojas and the Bonilla editions, has long
been out of print, it is useful to have an edition available; and the Gaos
edition is a much handier volume, with briefer, more manageable notes at
the foot of the page. It also contains an interesting new appendix (pp. 192-205)
entitled “Poética de Cervantes,” which consists of comments
upon poetry taken from the Galatea, the Quijote, the Novelas
ejemplares, the Persiles, and the Laberinto de amor, comments
which supplement in relevant ways the Viaje del Parnaso and its
Adjunta.
|
| 118 |
ELIAS L. RIVERS |
Cervantes |
|
This appendix contains Preciosa's dialog with
the page-boy about what it means to be a poet. It is significant that the
Gitanilla has been the object of three poetic studies, in addition
to the Selig item listed in the Suma cervantina:
Walter Pabst, “Die zweifache Präsenz des Dichters in der Novelle
La Gitanilla,” in Das literarische Werk von Miguel de
Cervantes (Berlin, 1968), pp. 61-70.
Georges Güntert, “La gitanilla y la poética de
Cervantes,” BRAE, 52 (1972), 107-34.
Joseph B. Spieker, “Preciosa y poesía: Sobre el concepto cervantino
de la poesía y la estructura de La gitanilla,”
Explicación de Textos Literarios, 4 (1975), 213-20.
| ELIAS L. RIVERS |
| SUNY at Stony Brook |