From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
3.2 (1983): 135-47.
Copyright © 1983, The Cervantes Society of America
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete y
Cortadillo
| |
Y sin más detenerse, saltaron [Rincón
y Cortado] de las mulas y se fueron con ellos, dejando al harriero agraviado
y enojado, y a la ventera admirada de la buena crianza de los pícaros:
que les había estado oyendo su plática, sin que ellos advirtiesen
en ello; y cuando dijo al harriero que les había oído decir
que los naipes que traían eran falsos, se pelaba las barbas, y quisiera
ir a la venta tras ellos a cobrar su hacienda, porque decía que era
grandísima afrenta y caso de menos valer que dos muchachos hubiesen
engañado a un hombrazo tan grande como
él.1
|
HE EVOCATION
OF admiratio in the reader, intimately related to the Horatian
dictum that literature “delight and instruct,” is a primary aim
of Spain's Golden Age writers of fiction. E. C. Riley points out that Cervantes
often promotes admiratio by creating an appreciative audience within
the text with whom the reader will
identify.2 According to Riley, Cervantes owes
his characters' “literary self-consciousness” to the Italian
novella and the pastoral novel, where some characters become the audiences
for the stories of others. The lyrical nature of the pastoral novel enhances
the rapport among author, reader, and characters by producing a “communion
of emotions” (p. 33).
1 Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra, Rinconete y Cortadillo, in Novelas
ejemplares, I, ed. Francisco Rodríguez Marín (Madrid: La
Lectura, 1928), 144-45. All further references to the work will be to this
edition.
2 Cervantes's
Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), pp. 90-91.
135
Although Cervantes' Rinconete y Cortadillo
is frequently associated with the picaresque genre, Thomas R. Hart has recently
shown that this Exemplary Novel is, in a fundamental respect,
pastoral.3 The plot-pattern involves a temporary
escape to a refuge apart from ordinary society, where a type of catharsis
takes place. Throughout the story, a “sense of distance” (p. 287)
separates Rinconete and Cortadillo from the group they visit. Just as the
aristocrat disguised as shepherd is common to the bucolic interlude, the
boys easily slip into and out of roles as circumstances demand. They are
endowed with a perspective that gives them the intellectual and moral advantage
over the unselfconscious members of Monipodio's fixed society. “The
time the two boys spend with Monipodio,” Hart suggests, “may be
seen as another version of the sojourn in the pastoral oasis
. . .” (p. 287).
Like the pastoral, then, Rinconete y
Cortadillo bestows a critical attitude on the reader. Yet along with
surveillance, enjoyment and participation are so fundamental to the work
that the critical disposition of the observer is somewhat compromised. The
gap between the boys and Monipodio's gang grows so crucially narrow at times
that the telescoping pastoral vision begins to turn back on itself. Cervantes
circulates the narrative point of view to produce a simultaneous distancing
from and identification with the characters that accommodate a wide range
of commentary. Rinconete y Cortadillo is social satire, in its ridicule
at least of Seville. It infiltrates a stylized landscape to become a literary
double agent, in its appropriation of the conventions of the pastoral novel
to (fondly) mock the conventions of the pastoral novel.
The presence of the spectator (and often
storyteller) in Cervantes' works is frequently as significant as the events
witnessed. Although no character within Rinconete actually narrates
the text, several appear whose handling of their observer-status is thematic.
The reader follows the action through the eyes of a series of intermediaries
whose collusion in the events produces a most felicitous conflict of
interests.
Aside from the anonymous narrator, the first
observers in the novela are Rincón and Cortado themselves,
who listen to each other's stories. Unwittingly, they also disclose themselves
to the innkeeper's
3
“Versions of Pastoral in Three Novelas ejemplares,”
BHS, 58 (1981), esp. 287-88.
|
| 3 (1983) |
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete |
137 |
|
wife, standing nearby. She hears of the boys' intent to cheat the muleteer
with the fiction of an honest card game, but keeps silent until afterwards,
noting the “buena crianza de los pícaros.” Ironically, the
favorable judgment of them is passed by an accessory to their dishonesty:
the woman tacitly condones their behavior by allowing them to victimize the
muleteer. She briefly winks at the scheme for her own amusement.
Later, in Seville, the pattern repeats itself.
The boys' dishonesty is again noted by a spectator of whom they are not aware.
This time Cortado confounds the sacristan, pinching his purse and his
handkerchief. Rincón has seen the whole thing from a distance, but
someone else has watched them both: “abajo estaba otro mozo de la
esportilla, que vio todo lo que había pasado y cómo Cortado
daba el pañuelo a Rincón . . .” (p. 155). Either
Ganchoso has an exceedingly short memory, or he, too is an accessory, not
only to the theft but to the cover-up afterwards. During Monipodio's inquiry
he claims ignorance of the crime.4
Roughly the first third of Rinconete y Cortadillo
is spent establishing the primary narrative point of view, that through which
the reader —as the definitive observer— watches the events. His
spectacles are the boys themselves, who become spectators in tandem when
they enter the Casa de Monipodio. Amused, they watch the activities of the
ruffian group. That the boys in their turn fail to denounce the confraternity
of criminals and remain as members for several months implicates Rincón
and Cortado in the organized crime. Although they refrain mentally from
completely immersing themselves in that life, they consort in the fiction
of the pious brotherhood.
In fact, at the outset of the novela,
their transgressions have already separated Rincón and Cortado from
the respectable communities of Madrid and Toledo. They live, like the picaro,
on the fringe of society. Although ragged and dirty, the boys address each
other with comic elegance as “señor gentilhombre” and
“señor caballero” (p. 136). They gild their delinquency
in grandiloquence; for his thievery Rincón departed “desterrado
por cuatro años de la Corte” (pp. 139-40), while “un espía
doble” (p. 142) betrayed to the magistrate of Toledo Cortado's practice
of disemboweling purses. This
4 This
is possibly one of several oversights by Cervantes in the novela.
Cf. José Luis Varela, “Sobre el realismo cervantino en
Rinconete,” Atlántida, 6 (1968), 447a-48b.
wordplay inflates a high burlesque which is immediately deflated
—part-way— by their own curiously equivocal recognition of it.
Rincón declares: “pues ya nos conocemos, no hay para qué
aquesas grandezas ni altiveces: confesemos llanamente que no teníamos
blanca, ni aun zapatos” (p. 143). Oddly, Cortado's reciprocal confession
simultaneously accepts and rejects the suggestion; he agrees with pretentious
formality to leave off the pretense: “Sea así, . . .
y pues nuestra amistad, como vuesa merced, señor Rincón, ha
dicho, ha de ser perpetua, comencémosla con santas y loables
ceremonias” (p. 143). The manner of speaking flagrantly undermines the
message. Cortado is so taken with this play-acting that he drags his feet
about leaving it behind, even knowing its absurdity.
The boys refrain from stealing from their traveling
companions on the way to Seville not because it would be wrong, but “por
no perder la ocasión tan buena del viaje de Sevilla, donde ellos
tenían grande deseo de verse” (p. 145). Their moral detachment
disinclines them to pass judgment on what they see in the city. Aligned with
their perspective, we similarly forbear. The assumption of perspective is
facilitated by our sympathy for them, itself in part a function of their
age: although the boys are scoundrels, their condition is not yet indelible;
their petty crimes seem a youthful lark. But our affinity for them is not
entirely innocent: we take a sort of cathartic pleasure in their craftiness,
just as we cheer on the clever adulteress over her doltish husband in an
entremés; just as the innkeeper's wife enjoys the swindle of
the muleteer. As manipulators, Rincón and Cortado belong among the
“satanic surrogate poets” of the Cervantine world described by
Alban K. Forcione and Patricia
Kenworthy.5
Appropriately enough, the boys focus throughout
the novela on the use and misuse of language. Their own relationship
commences in the parlance of the court. Then Rincón and Cortado stumble
over the vocabulary of germanía before their initiation: their
guide (in a strange mix of ceremony and slang) greets them asking,
—Díganme, señores galanes:
¿voacedes son de mala entrada, o no?
5 Forcione, Cervantes, Aristotle
and the Persiles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), esp.
pp. 303-43; Kenworthy, “The Character of Lorenza and the Moral of Cervantes'
El viejo celoso,” B Com, 31 (1979), 105-07.
|
| 3 (1983) |
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete |
139 |
|
—No entendemos esa razón, señor
galán —respondió Rincón.
—¿Que no entrevan, señores
murcios? —respondió el otro.
—No somos de Teba ni de Murcia —dijo
Cortado—: si otra cosa quiere, dígala; si no, váyase con
Dios.
—¿No lo entienden?—dijo el
mozo—. Pues ya se lo daré a entender, y a beber, con una cuchara
de plata: quiero decir, señores, si son vuesas mercedes ladrones
. . . (155-56).
The boys are soon correcting Ganchoso's own deformations of standard Castilian,
such as “solomico” (“Sodomita querrá decir vuesa
merced” [p. 161]). From this point on they draw attention to the gangsters'
malapropisms by repeating them, or simply register mentally the mistakes
they hear in the patio. At the end of the story, the narrator re-emphasizes
the language by reviewing the mistakes.
The attention to language contributes to the
atmosphere of parody. Ruth S. El Saffar notes that the boys' reactions to
the mistakes of the other characters “draw the reader's interest away
from the words' meaning towards a focus on their surface. The verbal play
also makes Monipodio's world appear less real —more like an artistic
creation to be judged and criticized on the basis of its surface
flaws.”6 As a result, the members of
the confraternity are caricatures. “Nada menos realista,” declares
José Luis Varela, “que Rinconete” (p. 447a). The
types themselves —thieves, prostitutes, cutthroats— are real, but
the words they utter are completely out of place.
On account of the abundance of religious
terminology, Varela believes Rinconete specifically ridicules the
religious community:
El gremio de Monipodio aparece aludido doce veces como Cofradía, Hermandad
o Confraternidad; la voz Dios aparece diecinueve veces, . . . se
cita o invoca a la Virgen, a San Miguel, San Blas, [etc.] . . .
; términos del mundo eclesiástico son noviciado,
congregación, ministro, ordenanzas, contrayente, iglesia, confesión,
excomunión, confirmación, orden, jubileo, rosarios, hábitos,
misas, quiries, gaudeamus, candelicas a los santos, padre, bendición
(pp. 442b-43a).
However, this aspect of the satire is developed
only in the first few scenes at the patio. Inhabited by an array of bizarre
comic types, the Casa de Monipodio is a microcosm and parody of legitimate
6 Novel
to Romance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 37.
society, a cracked mirror showing the “seamy
side”7 from an absurd angle. Furthermore,
the brotherhood ministers to a cross-section of “respectable” Seville:
caen debajo de nuestros bienhechores el procurador que nos defiende, el guro
que nos avisa, el verdugo que nos tiene lástima, el que, cuando uno
de nosotros va huyendo por la calle y detrás le van dando voces:
“¡Al ladrón, al ladrón! ¡Deténganle,
deténganle!,” se pone en medio, y se opone al raudal de los que
le siguen, diciendo: “¡Déjenle al cuitado; que harta mala
ventura lleva!” “¡Allá se lo haya; castíguele
su pecado!” Son también bienhechoras nuestras las socorridas
que de su sudor nos socorren, ansí en la trena como en las guras,
y también lo son nuestros padres y madres, que nos echan al mundo,
y el escribano, que si anda de buena, no hay delito que sea culpa, ni culpa
a quien se dé mucha pena . . . (pp. 168-9).
Late in the patio scene Monipodio appropriates
the language of the business and law communities. His organization functions
with written ledgers, and according to the caveat emptor principle.
One gentleman learns as the client that he is at the mercy of the gangsters'
twisted interpretation of contracts. Having engaged the organization to slice
up the face of a merchant, he complains that the service has been carried
out on the intended victim's servant. In the subsequent litigation, Chiquiznaque
justifies the substitution with some nimble manipulation of the common law
that “quien bien quiere a Beltrán, bien quiere a su can”:
—Pues ¿no es lo mismo . . .
decir: “Quien mal quiere a Beltrán, mal quiere a su can”?
Y así, Beltrán es el mercader, voacé le quiere mal,
su lacayo es su can, y dando al can, se da a Beltrán, y la deuda queda
líquida y trae aparejada ejecución: por eso no hay más
sino pagar luego sin apercibimiento de remate (pp. 206-07).
Here Monipodio presides as judge. As is to be expected, he finds in favor
of his own big business, in language financial and judicial.
It is no coincidence that Rincón and
Cortado were themselves forced to leave Madrid and Toledo for offenses against
the religious and economic communities: one pocketed the proceeds from
pronouncing bulls while the other abused his trade by cutting purses. The
difference is that Castile's justice prosecuted the culprits. Insofar
7 Cf.
Bruce W. Wardropper's application of the term in “El trastorno de la
moral en el Lazarillo,” NRFH, 15 (1961), 441-47.
|
| 3 (1983) |
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete |
141 |
|
as their judicial systems work, then, Madrid and Toledo per se are
exempted from the satire. Cervantes singles out Seville, which not only tolerates
but colludes with its criminals. In Seville, Rincón and Cortado, join
their element. The boys' misdeeds are generically the same as the crimes
of the germanía. We who smile and wink at their conduct are,
like Seville, implicated.
The social satire is therefore potentially
just as broad as its readership, although Cervantes specifically lampoons
the religious, business, and judicial communities of Seville. But the satire
is literary as well as social firstly in the very general sense that it is
anti-heroic. This type of fiction, related to the picaresque as a child of
the Counter Reformation, springs in part from the desire to show the folly
of earlier idealistic genres, especially the romances of chivalry and the
pastoral. Alexander A. Parker suggests that such books as Pedro Malón
de Chaide's La conversión de la Magdalena (1588) belong among
“the religious writings of the last thirty years of the sixteenth century
[which] are the influence that . . . can alone explain the transition
from idealism to realism in the
novel.”8 The preface of La
conversión contains an indignant attack on Montemayor's
Diana, whose tales of worldly love might lead young girls
astray.9
Like La conversión, the picaresque
novel must show human nature at its nadir in order to depict the potential
for spiritual redemption in even the most depraved among us. According to
Parker, the picaresque novel (including Rinconete) arose “as
a reaction to the romances —not as satire or parody, but as a deliberate
alternative, a ‘truthful’ literature in response to the explicit
demands of the Counter Reformation” (p. 22). The picaresque and its
close relative Rinconete, then, express literary theory to the extent
that a tradition comments on earlier literature by departing from it.
This hybrid of picaresque characters in a pastoral
plot-pattern is, therefore, a literary reaction, at the least to the
idealizations in character and setting of the romances. However, the response
may in fact be quite specific. The Renaissance pastoral customarily follows
a series of conventions culled from the classical tradition. Pioneered by
8
Literature and the Delinquent (Edinburgh: University Press, 1967),
p. 21.
9
“¿Qué ha de hacer la doncellita que apenas sabe andar y
trae una Diana en la faltriquera? . . . ¿Cómo
dirá Pater noster en las Horas, la que acaba de sepultar a
Píramo y Tisbe en Diana? . . .” (Vol. I, ed.
P. Félix García [Madrid: “La Lectura,” 1930], p.
60.
Theocritus and Virgil, the pastoral was revived and refined by Italian poets
like Sannazaro and Tasso, and popularized in Spain by Garcilaso. Montemayor
wrote Spain's prototype pastoral novel, Los siete libros de la Diana,
in the mid-sixteenth century. In his footsteps the young Cervantes himself
followed with La Galatea in 1585. Close to twenty years
later,10 nearly every standard pastoral motif
appears, slightly askew, in the patio of the Casa de Monipodio. The plot-pattern
and sense of distance are the entrée into a burlesque of the pastoral's
ideal landscape.
One of the most immediately striking and
unrealistic aspects of life in the Casa is its benign atmosphere. Monipodio's
gang is a model of harmony; no jealousy mars the occasion when Rincón
and Cortado receive the leader's favor. On the contrary, everybody rejoices
at their good sense and discretion as Cortado promises to maintain secrecy
against all odds:
—¡Alto, no es menester más!
—dijo a esta sazón Monipodio—. Digo que sola esta razón
me convence, me obliga, me persuade y me fuerza a que desde luego asentéis
por cofrades mayores, y que se os sobrelleve el año del noviciado.
—Yo soy dese parecer —dijo uno de
los bravos.
Y a una voz lo confirmaron todos presentes,
que toda la plática habían estado escuchando, y pidieron a
Monipodio que desde luego les concediese y permitiese gozar de las inmunidades
de su cofradía, porque su presencia agradable y su buena plática
lo merecía todo (pp. 173-74).
The incongruity of concord and hospitality
in such a setting is a key source of humor. Monipodio's group is a sort of
utopian society bound by a social contract which is a self-contained code
of ethics. Richard L. Predmore points out that the members live “fieles
a ciertas normas. Estas normas en sí son buenas; lo grotesco es querer
aplicarlas a la vida criminal.”11 Actually,
the values of friendship, love, harmony, and devotion are professed by
“legitimate” society; Predmore observes that these people truly
adhere to their ideals insofar as they understand them. In their lack of
hypocrisy the gangsters more
10 In
the “Discurso preliminar” to his edition of Rinconete (Madrid:
Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 1920), p. 169, Rodríguez
Marín supports a date of composition as early as 1601 or 1602. The
Novelas ejemplares were published in 1613.
11
“Rinconete y Cortadillo: Realismo, carácter picaresco,
alegría,” Insula, 23, núm. 254 (January, 1968),
18a.
|
| 3 (1983) |
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete |
143 |
|
nearly resemble their idealistic literary predecessors than they do the two-faced
characters of the picaresque novel.
The locus amoenus here is the antithesis
of the garden or meadow where the pastoral usually takes place. The action
occurs “en una casa no muy buena, sino de muy mala apariencia”
(p. 162), an enclosure shutting out springtime and light. But like the pastoral,
this “oasis” implies an outside world, from which it is an escape.
When intruders threaten, the “pastores” scatter. The description
calls to mind a rural rather than urban setting: “Nunca disparado arcabuz
a deshora, ni trueno repentino, espantó así a banda de descuidadas
palomas como puso en alboroto y espanto a toda aquella recogida
compañía y buena gente la nueva de la venida del Alcalde de
la Justicia” (pp. 203-04).
This perversion of the ideal community is peopled
by appropriately repulsive characters. Instead of paragons of beauty and
virtue, the members of the group are precisely the opposite. Their leader
Monipodio is dark and foreboding, not “young, ruddy of looks, of golden
tongue,”12 but an ugly middle-aged man
who “representaba el más rústico y disforme bárbaro
del mundo” (p. 165). Although Juliana la Cariharta considers herself
an innocent “paloma duende” (p. 195), she and la Gananciosa are
to the boys “afeitados los rostros, llenos de color los labios y de
abayalde los pechos, cubiertas con medios mantos de anascote, llenas de desenfado
y desvergüenza: señales claras por donde en viéndolas
Rinconete y Cortadillo, conocieron que eran de la casa llana” (p.
178).
In Ovid's version of the Golden Age,
| . . . Earth, untroubled, |
| Unharried by hoe or plowshare, brought forth all |
| That men had need for, and those men were happy, |
| Gathering berries from the mountain sides, |
| Cherries, or blackcaps, and the edible
acorns.13 |
Hart points out that in La gitanilla, another Exemplary Novel
with the pastoral plot-pattern, “the gypsies can easily content themselves
with what they have because they do not hesitate to steal whatever they
12
Theocritus, “Idyll VIII,” in The Idylls of Theocritus in English
Verse, tr. W. Douglas P. Hill (Eton, Windsor: Shakespeare Head Press,
1959), p. 37.
13
Metamorphoses, tr. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1955), Book I, p. 6.
want.” This “illustrates very nicely the ironic displacement which
Cervantes introduces into his treatment of one of the central themes of
traditional pastoral, the importance of being contented with what one has”
(p. 286). The same principle applies in Rinconete; Monipodio's society
too finds an abundance of supplies, although here nature yields her fruits
in city streets rather than meadows and mountain sides.
The sentimental themes are also typically pastoral.
The subject of the pastoral is love, and the heart of the narrative at the
patio is a raucous love story, the romantic spat between the prostitute Juliana
and her pimp Repolido. In the central scene, Juliana plays the part of the
distressed shepherdess. Her “dulce lamentar” goes as follows:
—¡La justicia de Dios y del Rey venga
sobre aquel ladrón desuellacaras, sobre aquel pícaro lendroso,
que le he quitado más veces de la horca que tiene pelos en las barbas!
¡Desdichada de mí! ¡Mirad por quién he perdido y
gastado mi mocedad y la flor de mis años, sino por un bellaco desalmado,
facineroso e incorregible! (p. 186).
She complains of mistreatment by her lover, who at least has had the delicacy
to beat her in another locus amoenus, in the field “detrás
de la güerta del Rey, . . . entre unos olivares” (p.
188).
A dialogue on the nature of love follows, between
the girl and her friend la Gananciosa, who assures her,
“a lo que se quiere bien se castiga; y cuando estos bellacones nos dan,
y azotan, y acocean, entonces nos adoran; . . . y lloraría
[Repolido] de pena de ver cuál te había puesto; que estos tales
hombres, y en tales casos, no han cometido la culpa cuando les viene el
arrepentimiento; y tú verás, hermana, si no viene a buscarte
antes que de aquí nos vamos, y a pedirte perdón de todo lo
pasado, rindiéndosete como un cordero” (pp. 189-90).
This is reminiscent of the “complaint and consolation” pattern
of La Diana noted by Bruce W.
Wardropper.14 La Cariharta soon realizes
that “con cuan malo es, le quiero más que a las telas de mi
corazón, y hanme vuelto el alma al cuerpo las razones que en su abono
ha dicho mi amiga la Gananciosa . . .” (p . 190). She coquettishly
plays hard-to-get when Repolido arrives, although finally the ideal of friendship
14 “The
Diana of Montemayor: Revaluation and Interpretation,” SP,
48 (1951), 132.
|
| 3 (1983) |
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete |
145 |
|
prevails —Monipodio admonishes: “Nunca los amigos han de dar enojo
a los amigos, ni hacer burla de los amigos, y más cuando veen que
se enojan los amigos” (p. 199).
Other traditionally pastoral motifs adorn the
scene. just as idealized shepherds have typically sylvan names, those of
Rincón and Cortado are altered to fit their new role. La Pipota even
recites the carpe diem theme in her advice to the youngsters:
“Holgaos, hijos, ahora que tenéis tiempo: que vendrá la
vejez, y lloraréis en ella los ratos que perdistes en la mocedad,
como yo los lloro” (p. 184).
The sine qua non of any pastoral is
poetry and song. In the Casa de Monipodio, la Gananciosa comforts Juliana
by suggesting that they write Repolido un papel en coplas, que le amargue”
(p. 190). The plan is heartily endorsed by Monipodio, who volunteers his
secretarial skills, adding, “aunque no soy nada poeta, todavía,
si el hombre se arremanga, se atreverá a hacer dos millares de coplas
en daca las pajas; y cuando no salieren como deben, yo tengo un barbero amigo,
gran poeta, que nos hinchará las medidas a todas horas . . .”
(p. 191). The shepherd as poet is of course the cornerstone of pastoral
literature.
The gangsters' affinity for music matches their
enthusiasm for poetry, although they lack the oaten flute prized by their
bucolic counterparts:
la Escalanta, quitándose un chapín, comenzó a tañer
en él como en un pandero; la Gananciosa tomó una escoba de
palma, nueva, que allí se halló acaso, y rascándola,
hizo un son que, aunque ronco y áspero, se concertaba con el del
chapín. Monipodio rompió un plato y hizo dos tejoletas, que,
puestas entre los dedos y repicadas con gran ligereza, llevaba el contrapunto
al chapín y a la escoba (pp. 199-200).
Maniferro adds a classical touch as he garbles references to Orpheus, Eurydice,
and Arion, proudly contending that “ni el Negrofeo, que sacó
a la Arauz del infierno, ni el Marión que subió sobre un
delfín y salió del mar como si viniera caballero sobre una
mula de alquiler” (p. 201), among others, could top their music-making.
As in Montemayor's Diana, where the shepherds “tañían
sus instrumentos tan suavemente que junto con las divinas voces no parecieron
sino música celestial,”15 the
gathering enjoys the “voz sutil y quebradiza” (p. 201)
15 Los
siete libros de la Diana, ed. Francisco López-Estrada (Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe, 1970), pp. 71-72.
of la Escalanta. Her song is followed by those of compatriots in an abbreviated
version of the singing contest, which concludes with Juliana's plaintive
| “Detente, enojado, no me azotes más; |
| Que si bien lo miras, a tus carnes das” (p. 202). |
Whether or not Cervantes is taking direct aim
at the pastoral or simply participating in the literary response to that
type of literature, Rinconete y Cortadillo is a compendium a lo
grotesco of conventions also found in the Eglogas of Garcilaso,
Montemayor's Diana, and his own Galatea. In fact, a major source
of Rinconete's light-heartedness is its refusal to take itself seriously.
Cervantes' own repeated recourse to idealization —from novel, to
Exemplary Novel, to romance— takes the venom out of the sting.
By the same token, our identification with the delinquent boys inclines us
to judge them benevolently; we are all, ultimately, of one flesh.
If the picaresque novel's serious undertone
is absent, its moral concern, which always finally reforms the protagonist,
remains. The word “picaro” appears twice in the novela;
once at the inn, applied by the innkeeper's wife to Rincón and Cortado;
and once at the Casa de Monipodio in Juliana's reference to Repolido. The
inn is merely a temporary stopping-place while the patio is a permanent refuge.
That which they witness at the Casa de Monipodio holds up to Rincón
and Cortado their own potential depravity. The boys learn to recognize their
own folly by seeing a fully-grown version of it in others. Eventually they
will renounce the underworld of Monipodio, and by implication, Seville:
finalmente, exageraba [Rinconete] cuán descuidada justicia había
en aquella tan famosa ciudad de Sevilla, pues casi al descubierto vivía
en ella gente tan perniciosa y tan contraria a la misma naturaleza, y propuso
en sí de aconsejar a su compañero no durasen mucho en aquella
vida tan perdida y tan mala, tan inquieta, y tan libre y disoluta (pp. 217-18).
This time, the boys will leave voluntarily. They in their turn become honest
judges who finally exile from their own lives the corruption of Monipodio
and Seville.
This delayed repudiation after participation
is schematic to Rinconete y Cortadillo. Although the reader cathartically
enjoys the antics of the boys and their “foster family,” he redeems
himself by
|
| 3 (1983) |
The Critical Attitude in Rinconete |
147 |
|
accepting the exemplary conclusion.16 The
reader (and the boys) leave behind the other observers, the innkeeper's wife
and Ganchoso, whose submerged perspectives bind them to the fiction. The
reader can love the characters without wholeheartedly embracing their morals.
The author can condemn the city in which he lived and suffered for a time
while exalting the rectitude of the rest of his homeland. At the same time,
Cervantes allows himself to have a piece of bucolic cake, and critique it,
too.
16 Varela
rightly notes the resemblance of the scene at the Casa de Monipodio to a
typical Cervantine entremés (p. 444a). However, if the
entremés is as Eugenio Asensio states “vacaciones
morales” (Itinerario del entremés [Madrid: Gredos, 1965],
p. 34), the Exemplary Novel like Spain's Golden Age comedy usually
ends with society's order restored. Wardropper explains that the spectators
at the theater enjoy the “abdication . . . of social
responsibility” vicariously.
But from all truancy there must be a return to normal life. And in
this return to normality the audience finds a second source of gratification.
It is comforted when it sees the truants resume their proper places in a
divinely ordained social hierarchy, in a world right-side-up
. . . . As the Spanish theoreticians put it, comedy
cleanses the soul of its passions . . . . (“Lope
de Vega's Urban Comedy,” Hispanófila Especial, núm.
1 [1974], pp. 56-57).