From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
10.2 (1990): 73-93.
Copyright © 1990, The Cervantes Society of America
Genre and Creativity in Rinconete y Cortadillo
major theme of Rinconete
y Cortadillo is creativity in its many guises. This may seem a heavy
interpretive burden to impose on two scruffy sharpers astray in roguedom,
yet literary characters need not wear a halo to embody their creator's aesthetic
ideals. The apparent gap between theme and its fictitious incarnations is
no real problem in Rinconete y Cortadillo. What does pose a problem
is Cervantes' sovereign graciousness, his bestowal of maximum authority on
his subjects. The author hides his own creativity behind that of his characters,
three of whom —Rinconete, Cortadillo and Monipodio— create an identity,
a language, a métier and a society for themselves. During this process,
it would seem that Cervantes is happiest in the wings, invisibly nudging
his characters on and off the stage, pointing them in the direction of the
spotlight, and raising or lowering the curtain at the right moment.
It is misleading, however, to place the author
in a position subordinate to that of his players, to leave him stranded in
backstage darkness forever. At the end of the performance, the wily Cervantes
reasserts his authority, claims credit for the success of his undertaking,
and whispers its moral to those alert enough to hear it: the moral is the
spectacle itself.
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This moral is determined by a pattern that
emerges from the initial encounter between Rinconete and Cortadillo. The
pattern threads its way into the story and ends by dominating it completely.
It is spun from the four aspects of creative activity I just mentioned: identity,
language, métier and society. Rinconete y Cortadillo resembles
a tapestry whose cartoon, in miniature, is woven into one of its corners.
But this magnification of theme is not the only source of interest in the
story. Cervantes has his characters invent new structures for themselves,
channeling their vitality into the civilizing mold of new circumstance. More
important, Cervantes himself invents a new structure for new circumstance.
The latter is the theme of creation, and its structural support is the fusion
of two genres, theater and prose fiction, into a seamless whole.
Rinconete y Cortadillo opens with a
tableau: two adolescents, anywhere from fourteen to seventeen years old and
anonymous, are minutely described with regard to their clothes and hands.
The reader, however, is struck by what Cervantes chooses not to reveal.
As the boys' creator, he could easily tell us their names, their exact age,
the color of their eyes and hair, their height and weight. His reticence
in this respect contrasts with the precise setting into which he thrusts
the boys. But perhaps it is not a question of reticence at all. A playwright
may specify costume and setting, but would hesitate to preordain the exact
age and physiognomy of his actors. Cervantes proceeds very much like a
playwright. He also lets his characters speak and act on their own behalf.
The static first paragraph of Rinconete y Cortadillo is more like
a prologue than anything else: the story really begins when the two heroes
awaken to themselves, stir, and break into
conversation.1 Throughout the ensuing dialogue,
Cervantes constructs the barest narrative scaffolding for the reader, a discreet
reminder that Rinconete y Cortadillo is a story and not a play: “the
oldest said,” “the smaller one replied,” “the bigger
asked,” “the
1 Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra, Rinconete y Cortadillo, ed. Josefa A. Zamudio
de Predan and María Hortensia Lacau (Buenos Aires: Editorial Kapelusz,
1965). This fine edition is based on the 1914 “Clásicos
Castellanos” edition of Francisco Rodríguez Marín.
Carlos Blanco Aguinaga makes this point with
reference to Cipión y Berganza as well as to Rinconete y
Cortadillo. See his article, “Cervantes y la picaresca. Notas sobre
dos tipos de realismo.” NRFH, XI (1957), 334 and 338.
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smaller answered.” Not once does he disclose the names of his protagonists
with a “Pedro said” or a “Diego replied.” Cervantes'
tact is such that he declines to give this information until his characters
do so, until, in their own good time, Pedro and Diego identify themselves.
The reader learns their names after an interval of vaguely restive maneuvering
during which the boys size each other up. These alignments, culminating in
mutual self-identification, are a model of diplomacy. Indeed, the reader
is left slightly agog at the boys' precocity.
Underlining this precocity is the linguistic
inventiveness of Rinconete and Cortadillo. They transfer a verbal code —the
formulae of courteous address— from an adult context to an adolescent
one: “De qué tierra es vuesa merced, señor gentilhombre
. . . ?”; “Mi tierra, señor
caballero. . . .” They also use expressions and turns
of phrase that one would guess had been learnt by rote: “esta miserable
vida;” “Todo eso es muy bueno, útil y provechoso.”
But it is not their style to learn by rote. Rinconete and Cortadillo are
too gifted verbally to parrot anyone. Moreover, they take pride in their
verbal superiority, which adds to their
self-confidence.2 From the beginning, they
brave the contingencies of life as necessary evils, as a tax on self-expression
and independence.
Absolute freedom, as the cliché would
have it, weighs heavily, and so Rinconete and Cortadillo decide to collaborate.
Having drawn each other out and recognized their knavish compatibility, they
now form a pact. According to Rinconete, an inscrutable design has brought
them together: “. . . imagino que no sin misterio nos ha juntado
aquí la suerte, y pienso que habemos de ser, déste hasta el
último día de nuestra vida, verdaderos amigos” (p.
4).3 By way of substantiating this prophecy,
the boys
2 In the
words of Vidriera: “. . . lo que menos ha menester la farsa
es personas bien nacidas; galanes sí, gentiles hombres y de expeditas
lenguas.” The last qualification is exquisitely apt in the case of Rinconete
and Cortadillo.
3 Blanco Aguinaga
states that Rinconete and Cortadillo have come together by chance:
“. . . se encuentran al acaso.” I disagree. The meeting
is as portentous, in the original sense of the word, as the sudden gift of
speech so mysteriously awarded Cipión and Berganza. In both instances
the author himself takes full credit for these “fateful” events.
Rinconete's “. . . imagino que no sin misterio nos ha juntado
aquí la suerte . . . ” is accompanied by a wink of
complicity that Cervantes directs to the reader. See “Cervantes y la
picaresca,” 337.
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embrace. It is the physical and highly theatrical expression of their pledge
of fidelity. The rite occurs —and here Cervantes is an astute
psychologist— only after Rinconete derides Cortadillo's highflown account
of his escape from Toledo and proposes a change of verbal style: “Eso
se borre . . .; y pues ya nos conocemos, no hay para qué
aquesas grandezas ni altiveces: confesemos llanamente que no teníamos
blanca, ni aun zapatos” (p. 6). The boys thus tacitly agree to drop
their linguistic disguise when alone together. They shall wear it only when
performing for the world, which they are now ready to face.
Each boy is now an ally of the other. They
form a society. As is the case with most societies, theirs will derive its
strength from the union of private commitment and public ceremonial, of covert
promise and overt proof.
The outsiders have become the insiders in a
rehearsal of the entire Monipodio episode. Monipodio's clan —an alliance
of mutual interests— is simply a variation on this scene, and the
“saintly and praiseworthy ceremonies” to which Diego refers as
he goes forth to embrace Pedro are the prehistory of the whole Seville adventure.
Similarly, Monipodio's courtyard is the full-grown descendant of the “porch
or lean-to” of the Molinillo inn.
Rinconete and Cortadillo must prove their
friendship in dramatic form. Their first encounter with the world
—represented by a muleteer from whom they win some money— gives
them their chance. The promise of lasting friendship and the ritual embrace
are consecrated here in practical terms.
The bravery of the lads in defense of their
winnings and the lucky arrival of peacemakers —men on horseback on the
way to Seville— prevent a drubbing at the hands of the muleteer. At
once Rinconete and Cortadillo accept an invitation from the horsemen to go
to Seville and depart right away. But Cervantes provides a coda to the episode.
The innkeeper's wife, we learn, had overheard the conversation between Rinconete
and Cortadillo and been amazed at “the good breeding of the
picaroons.” Her amazement no doubt stems from their verbal skills, a
reaction that mirrors our own. Cervantes tries to spark in the reader a sense
of wonder at the boys' flair, a joyful connivance in their mischievousness.
He succeeds. In this respect, Rinconete y Cortadillo is akin to
Alarcón's La verdad sospechosa, where García's spontaneous
and poetic lies prove not so much deplorable as irresistible. In the presence
of such
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inventive spirits, all conventional notions of morality are beside the
point.
On the way to Seville, the boys resist the
temptation to rifle their benefactor's luggage with admirable self-control.
However, at the gates of the city Cortadillo's resistance collapses:
“. . . no se pudo contener Cortado de no cortar la valija
o maleta que a las ancas traía un francés de la camarada; y
así, con el de sus cachas le dio tan larga y profunda herida, que
se parecían patentemente las entrañas, y sutilmente le sacó
dos camisas buenas, un reloj de sol y un librillo de memorias
. . .” (pp. 7-8).
Can one “justify” this ingratitude?
I believe so: the justification is psychological and aesthetic. That Cortadillo
could not contain himself signals instinctive as opposed to premeditated
behavior. Furthermore, the victim of his theft is not so much the owner of
the satchel as the satchel itself, which Cervantes anthropomorphizes in a
way that both recalls Lazarillo and foreshadows Dickens and Galdós.
Finally, and most important, Cortadillo has gone about his work
“subtly.” The adverb suggests artistry. In short, Cortadillo was
obliged to meet an artistic challenge and did so.
A similar challenge presents itself in Seville
after Cortadillo lifts a purse of money from a sacristan. Cortadillo
“comforts” the disconsolate sacristan with a brief sermon worthy
of Pecksniff, and such is his joy in his linguistic superiority that he misuses
a word for the sheer fun of it. He says, “. . . no quisiera
yo ser el llevador de tal bolsa, porque si es que vuesa merced tiene alguna
orden sacra, parecermehía a mí que había cometido
algún incesto, o sacrilegio” (p. 11). By now the reader is unwilling
to believe that Cortadillo can ignore the meaning of “incesto.”
In feigning ignorance, Cortadillo is acting out a rôle within a rôle,
and his poor interlocutor is therefore twice deceived. Or rather thrice,
since Cortadillo had deftly robbed him of his purse just a while before.
The verbal dismembering of the sacristan is a kind of finishing touch, masterful
in its cheeky gratuitousness. And as if to settle once and for all the boys'
lack of venality, Cervantes prolongs the scene with a brilliant appendage:
he describes how, all in a sweat, the sacristan wipes his face with a
lace-trimmed handkerchief which Cortadillo no sooner sees than marks for
his own. Its theft is the key to the boys' mentality in that it symbolizes
the artistic temperament that must express itself at all costs. Once more,
we are beyond
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mere covetousness.4 We forgive Cortadillo
his prank because it connotes intellectual superiority and because Cervantes
betrays such a rich complacency in the telling:
. . . y habiéndose ido el sacristán, Cortado le
siguió y le alcanzó en las Gradas donde le llamó y le
retiró a una parte, y allí le comenzó a decir tantos
disparates, al modo de lo que llaman bernardinas, cerca del hurto y hallazgo
de su bolsa, dándole buenas esperanzas, sin concluir jamás
razón que comenzase, que el pobre sacristán estaba embelesado
escuchándole; y como no acababa de entender lo que le decía,
hacía que le replicase la razón dos o tres veces. Estábale
mirando Cortado a la cara atentamente y no quitaba los ojos de sus ojos;
el sacristán le miraba de la misma manera, estando colgado de sus
palabras. Este tan grande embelasamiento dio lugar a Cortado que concluyese
su obra, y sutilmente le sacó el pañuelo de la faldriquera,
y despidiéndose dél, le dijo que a la tarde procurase de verle
en aquel mismo lugar . . . (pp. 12-13).
The key words in this passage are
“embelesado,” “embelesamiento,” and “sutilmente.”
Cortadillo's victory is all the more decisive because it relies not on any
tool of previous manufacture, any secret weapon, so to speak. Instead, it
sparkles with impromptu inventiveness, with the ability to hypnotize by force
and magic of personality. The victory encompasses Cortadillo's whole being
rather than any acquired mechanical skill. The adverb “sutilmente”
had already been used by Cervantes to describe Cortadillo's disembowelment
of the Frenchman's luggage: “. . . sutilmente le sacó
dos camisas buenas. . . . These three words
—“embelesado,” “embelesamiento” and
“sutilmente”— relate to the act of creation and to the effect
that a work of art may produce on the spectator or reader. If asked what
sort of creation, I would answer “theater.”
Rinconete y Cortadillo teems with spectators
as well as actors or, to be more exact, with doubles: actor-spectators. We
might recall the innkeeper's wife who overhears Rinconete and Cortadillo
chatting at the inn. Similarly, Cervantes now provides a witness (a spectator)
to the handkerchief sleight-of-hand. He is a
4 Cervantes
was not interested in the material success of his two heroes. They are never
shown enjoying the monetary fruits of their labors. When they return the
sacristan's purse, not a maravedí is missing. Even when they eat,
they do so in the communal setting of Monipodio's patio.
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young apprentice in Monipodio's mafia and will introduce Rinconete and Cortadillo
to Monipodio himself.
To anticipate one of the conclusions of this
study: Cervantes' creation of two youthful protagonists, each of whom serves
as audience for the other, is theatrical in its very conception. When we
read the following: “. . . se consoló algo el
sacristán, y se despidió de Cortado, el cual se vino donde
estaba Rincón, que todo to había visto un poco apartado dél
. . .” (p. 13), it is understood that Rinconete approves and
applauds his friend's action. This interplay makes theater of the entire
story. The boys have a panache and independence that disarm the reader because
they “perform” for one another. Any question of moral sanction
or condemnation is secondary at best. Hence the extraordinary
three-dimensionality of Rinconete y Cortadillo: we readers are
eavesdroppers too, very much like spectators in a theater.
This explains the importance of ceremony in
the story. Unlike the picaroon, who confronts, alone, a paratactic world
of infinite length and breadth, Rinconete and Cortadillo have been placed
within a structurally hypotactic “given.” Their initial encounter,
as we have seen, is a feeling out, a probe, an attempt to find a common soil
in which their relationship might flourish. There is never any doubt about
the soundness of this relationship, pre-ordained by fate. Shrewd beyond their
years, they recognize the advantages of alliance. Alliance, in this case,
may be defined as empirically-oriented adventure, adventure which blossoms
when Monipodio's scout, having descried Cortadillo's theft of the handkerchief,
makes his entrance on scene. (The very mechanics of entrances and exits that
usually govern the structure of a play, are nicely calculated throughout
Rinconete y Cortadillo.)
The approach of Monipodio's scout, Ganchuelo,
is not unlike that of Rinconete to Cortadillo at the beginning of the story.
It too is an offer of fraternity in which “gracias . . .
secretas,” when revealed, will cement a
friendship.5
Ganchuelo's revelations come immediately and
they are tantalizing, whetting the lads' curiosity. Always alive to opportunity,
5 Recall
the following exchange between Rinconete and Cortadillo: “. . .
si yo no me engaño y el ojo no me miente, otras gracias tiene vuesa
merced secretas, y no las quiere manifestar.
—Sí tengo —respondió el pequeño—, pero
no son para en público, como vuesa merced ha muy bien apuntado”
(3).
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their intellect is quick to glean new knowledge. They have come to Seville
as settlers as well as plunderers and will have to make peace with at least
some of their neighbors. The same series of dualities that marked their first
meeting —independence and interdependence, secrecy and candor, experiment
and discovery— characterize their initiation into Monipodio's empire.
They detect in this empire a blend of sophistication and naiveté that
similarly informs their own relationship. This recognition is testimony to
their good sense. Rinconete and Cortadillo are supreme realists.
Here, as in so many other works, Cervantes
creates people who thrive on complexity. Their personalities are gregarious
and expansive. Only rarely, as in the case of Tomás Rodaja after his
metamorphosis, do we find in Cervantes a character that shirks life. It would
not be an exaggeration to call Tomás the reductio ad absurdum of
the picaroon: a fragile, monomaniacal victim of fear and estrangement.
One might almost call Rinconete and Cortadillo
apprentices, or votaries of the ancient notion of imitatio. Their
eagerness to pay homage to Monipodio marks an advance in the reader's opinion
of them. Verbal and physical dexterity count for little beside self-knowledge,
which they have in abundance. For Cervantes, self-knowledge can only result
from communion with the world. In opening the world to Rinconete and Cortadillo,
he assures their success in human terms. At the same time, he allows them
to keep their essential selves in reserve, taking pains to indicate that
no single interpretation of the world is definitive. Rinconete and Cortadillo
may choose to join Monipodio's organization but may also choose to break
with it. This, in fact, is what Rinconete contemplates doing at the end of
the tale. The remarkable thing is that severance (more hypothetical than
real) never suggests hardship, disgrace, orphanhood or solitude. Octavio
Paz's “double meaning of solitude —rupture with one world and the
effort to create another,” may be true of the individual but is not
true of the brotherhood.6 Rinconete and Cortadillo
constitute a brotherhood. They enjoy exemplary social health because they
never extricate themselves from society in absolute terms. They will always
be friends to one another. Furthermore, if we imagine every inner circle
as the symbolic double
6 Octavio
Paz, El laberinto de la soledad (México: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1967), 184.
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of some other inner circle, we can easily project the future lives of Rinconete
and Cortadillo: their trajectory will be a set of variations on the initial
theme of friendship. (Note that their friendship has been preordained by
a higher power —the author's). Since they enjoy the privilege of exclusivity
ab initio, from the first pages of the story, they needn't see the
world in terms of rupture and reintegration. The problem simply does not
exist in these terms. In fact, the world will always come to them, for they
comprise an inner circle. It is no accident that Monipodio's emissary addresses
both lads in his first contact with them: “Díganme,
señores galanes: ¿voacedes son de mala entrada o no?” (p.
13).
The emissary is an agent, a liaison officer,
and an educator of sorts. His identity is at the service of his function
(we only learn his name, Ganchuelo, as an afterthought later on). This function
involves the presentation of one autonomous circle to another: Rinconete
and Cortadillo are to meet Monipodio and his entourage. Cervantes handles
the protocol as delicately as if he were describing a meeting of potentially
fractious clans during a border war, and he succeeds, in this intermediary
stage, in settling the superiority of Rinconete and Cortadillo once and for
all.
For one thing, the boys are invited to accompany
Ganchuelo to Monipodio's headquarters. The world, predictably, has come to
them. Moreover, during their briefing in underworld mores they never relinquish
their attitude of wry amusement. They remain detached, are not “taken
in.” Rinconete and Cortadillo see what Monipodio's emissary does not:
that his world is only one aspect of the world at large. He, on the other
hand, lacks this critical perspective. His allegiance to Monipodio is
wholehearted, while theirs is tangential, oblique, and provisional. To be
sure, he is their teacher, but his knowledge is merely picturesque. He clarifies
but does not convert. And, more important, his verbal intelligence is limited
to the acts of translating and defining. Rinconete and Cortadillo take up
where he leaves off: his translations and definitions are grist for their
sense of irony.7
Rinconete and Cortadillo savor only that which
they can re-elaborate in ironic terms. Like anthropologists who have
7 Thomas
R. Hart is correct in saying that in Rinconete y Cortadillo, as is
so often the case with Cervantes, “differences in attitudes towards
language and style serve as a key to differences in moral attitude.”
See his excellent study, “Versions of Pastoral in three Novelas
ejemplares.” BHS, LVIII (1981), 287.
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stumbled on an unrecorded tribe, they find in Monipodio's organization an
uncharted island of aberrant wisdom and piquant usage. The startling data
conveyed to them in matter-of-fact fashion must be verified in person. One
can almost hear the boys ask themselves: “Is the fellow serious? Can
he be so dull-witted as to miss the comedy in all this?” It is one thing
to take a verbal code seriously —Rinconete and Cortadillo can hardly
disapprove of that— but a topsy-turvy code of values is another
matter.
As it happens, Rinconete and Cortadillo master
both codes before even meeting Monipodio. As I said before, their superiority
is established without question in this key interview with Monipodio's
emissary.8 On the verbal level, the tables
are turned when Ganchuelo mispronounces a key word: “¿No es peor
ser hereje, o renegado, o matar a su padre y madre, o ser solomico?”
To which Rinconete replies: “—Sodomita querrá decir vuesa
merced” (p. 16). We have come full circle. The educator has been transformed
into the dunce. The fearsome tribal scout has been disarmed, exposed as a
child playing adult games. It was brilliant of Cervantes to subject the word
“sodomita” to the young man's garbled tongue. By mauling the word,
Ganchuelo manifests his ignorance as to its meaning. Rinconete's correct
pronunciation enshrines him as a man of the world, far more knowledgeable
about the seamier side of life than Ganchuelo, the self-styled
“veteran.” (In this respect, Ganchuelo is typical of Monipodio
& Co.: all the criminals are like children because their malapropisms
nullify their ferocity.)9
8 It is
a key episode because its mechanics of verbal comedy and its diplomatic caution
are an exact replica of the first meeting between Rinconete and Cortadillo,
as well as the subsequent meeting of the boys with Monipodio. (By
“replica” I mean the repetition of a formal pattern.) Of this episode
Ronald G. Keightley says: “In all respects . . . this passage
faces both ways and constitutes an unmistakable turning-point in the novella's
structure.” See his important essay, “The Narrative Structure of
Rinconete y Cortadillo” in R. B. Tate, ed., Essays on Narrative
Fiction in the Iberian Peninsula in Honour of Frank Pierce. (Oxford:
The Dolphin Book Co., 1982), 42.
9 Galdós,
who so thoroughly absorbed Cervantes' style and sense of irony, saw to it
that Fortunata always remained something of a child in the reader's mind
by virtue of her linguistic awkwardness. Her verbal lapses seem to annul
her moral ones.
For some pertinent remarks about the
“infantile world” of Rinconete y Cortadillo, see Joaquín
Casalduero, Sentido y forma de las Novelas ejemplares (Madrid: Gredos,
1962), 114.
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As for Monipodio's code of values, it is the
object of Cortadillo's tongue-in-cheek remark: “. . . muero
por verme con el señor Monipodio, de quien tantas virtudes se
cuentan” (p. 16). Cortadillo's perspective is the same as Cervantes':
that of spectator.
Rinconete and Cortadillo are brought to Monipodio's
house, and told to wait in the patio. The anticipatory paragraphs leading
to Monipodio's entrance are a clever piece of
stagecraft.10 Having begun with the setting
—the patio and its adjoining chapel— Cervantes then populates the
same by means of a series of verbs in the preterite. It is as if he were
convening his troupe: “. . . entraron . . . entraron
. . . entró . . . se juntaron . . .
Llegaron . . .” (p. 17). Rinconete and Cortadillo are momentarily
lost to view, off to one side. But they regain their bulk and
10 On
a memorable page of El pensamiento de Cervantes, Américo Castro
evokes this hushed introit and its theatrical (one might almost say
congregational) effect: “¿Asistimos a una representación
de ‘La Chauve-souris’?” Of Monipodio's entrance, he says:
“Todo esto es profundamente espectacular, y están sabiamente
dispuestos los efectos de primero y último término.” Castro
observes that Cervantes handles Rinconete and Cortadillo “como figuras
de retablo,” interesting because they are “espectacularmente
tratados.” See El pensamiento de Cervantes (Barcelona: Noguer,
1972), 232-33.
Castro then cites the passage in Cipión
y Berganza where Cipión distinguishes between plot and style in
the short story: some stories are inherently engaging and need little stylistic
embellishment; others, less plotworthy, require a more graphic and gesticulatory
style to make them pleasurable.
One way or the other, Cervantes felt that every
story needs a dose of theatrics. Here, I believe, is the point of contact
between the two categories of story mentioned in Cipión y
Berganza (and later glossed by Ortega y Gasset in Meditaciones del
Quijote). Plot and style fail if they do not make us see. The
artist, of course, must arrange for us to see certain things in certain ways.
Castro is incredulous that anyone could take Rinconete y Cortadillo
for a mere copy of reality, a slice of life arbitrarily transposed to paper.
Cervantes was anything but arbitrary. He was fully conscious of what he wanted
to achieve in Rinconete y Cortadillo. In his revision of the first
draft of the story, he unerringly struck an episode that clashed with the
rest: the physical testing of Rinconete's courage by a smack on the face.
The smack might happen in “real life,” but is jarring in the context
of Rinconete y Cortadillo. Rinconete's superiority is intellectual,
not physical. The patio's violence is an attitude and a posture, not a
documentary truth. Monipodio's tribal rites are based on verbal diplomacy
and conciliation rather than brute force. Finally, the surprise blow on
Rinconete's face is melodramatic and unplayable: theater of the wrong
kind.
Casalduero has also observed a theatrical air
in certain passages of Rinconete y Cortadillo: see Sentido y
forma, 105, 110-11 and 112.
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substance the moment two ruffians, whose bizarre dress and demeanor give
visual evidence of their calling, break the prevailing silence by asking
Rinconete and Cortadillo if they belong to the brotherhood. With this verbal
initiative, this societal bond that shatters the mock-awesome, mock-sacrosanct
spell of the place, Monipodio is free to make his appearance. It is all expertly
timed and beautifully symmetrical: the two older rogues address the two younger
ones, the heirs approach the benjamins, at the very moment in which the founder
of the clan and the symbol of its perpetuation comes to oversee a rite
de passage. Everyone in the patio bows low to Monipodio except for the
two bravos, who like peevish adolescents half-heartedly doff their hats to
him and go to the opposite end of the patio. This slightly rebellious attitude
on the part of the toughs, wherein psychological tension is inferred by means
of gesture and physical displacement, testifies to Cervantes' knowledge of
group dynamics as well as to his sense of the theater. Indeed, a Freudian
would be delighted by the conspiracy against “father” Monipodio
that is tacitly implied by the “sons'” joint restlessness.
A masterful description of Monipodio is part
of the vignette just described. I shall only quote a portion:
Parecía de edad de cuarenta y cinco a cuarenta y seis años,
alto de cuerpo, moreno de rostro, cejijunto, barbinegro y muy espeso; los
ojos, hundidos. Venía en camisa, y por la abertura de delante
descubría un bosque: tanto era el vello que tenía en el
pecho. . . . las manos eran cortas, pelosas, y los dedos gordos,
y las uñas hembras y remachadas; las piernas no se le parecían;
pero los pies eran descomunales, de anchos y juanetudos. En efeto, él
representaba el más rústico y disforme bárbaro del mundo
(p. 18).
Until this point in the story we have had no full-length view of any character.
Earlier, Cervantes had emphasized dress, age, and gesture rather than physical
traits. He now makes amends, so to speak, by highlighting Monipodio's stature,
face, chest, and feet. Everything about the man is exuberant, disproportionate
and out of scale. Where the other characters don disguises and assume various
attitudes —student garb, eyeglasses, outlandish genuflections,
swagger— it is Monipodio's nature and nakedness that unrestrainedly
burst forth upon the reader's sensibility. He is “rustic and massive,”
primeval in the midst of artifice. Ironically, this “barbarian”
has engineered a social order that is most
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delicately attuned to human psychology and to political reality. We must
discover the source of his authority.
Monipodio rules in part by natural right. His
physique is the repository of the strengths and energies that one associates
with many patriarchal figures. But wed to this natural right is the divine
right of the guardian angel, the arbiter of destinies, the mediator between
the patio and the outside world. His authority derives from his power and
the equitable dispensing of this power. His despotism, in short, is tempered
by law, and the law is accessible to all members of the family. In this respect,
Monipodio resembles the cadi of El amante liberal. Cervantes' admiration
for the prompt and personal disposition of uncodified justice, spurning all
legalism and the pettifoggery it encourages, suffuses his portrayal of Monipodio
to the latter's advantage. Monipodio's methods are unorthodox but no less
estimable for that: they reflect a benign and judicious nature.
At first blush, Monipodio's “Record of
Knifings to be Given This Week” (along with his other services) hardly
seems “benign” or “judicious.” But these memoranda are
only an account of duties to be discharged, a bookkeeping, rather than a
depicting, of crimes. They are a shopping list, a ledger of punctilios. They
also list commissions and not initiatives, which is to say that Monipodio's
moral sphere of influence ends at the door of his patio. The outside world
is the purview of corrupt police and of “gentlemen” who pay in
advance to have enemy faces slashed. However, the main reason why Monipodio
is absolved of all evil is that in a metaphorical sense he shares with Rinconete
and Cortadillo an artistically exploitive view of the world.
The world is there for the taking, but the
taking requires skill. A chaos, it awaits the hand of the artisan to give
it a form and a contour. Having first disciplined his own nature, Monipodio
has the moral suasion —universally acknowledged by the others—
to discipline their unruly natures. This subordination of nature to
law is high comedy of a most rarefied stamp. The members of Monipodio's gang
are not so much criminals as compromisers: innocents.
Monipodio's ultimate gift to his domain is
the gift of art. His reward to Rinconete and Cortadillo for their surrendering
the sacristan's purse is the lace-trimmed handkerchief that Cortadillo had
filched in a burst of virtuosity. Art, discipline, and morality (that which
is good) are thus indissolubly united. All of
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Monipodio's efforts as peacemaker, mediator, and diplomat, as well as the
rituals and bylaws that bolster these efforts, are designed to gratify his
professional conscience and further his renown as a master thief.
With superb irony, Monipodio's rule of law
promotes his own self-fulfillment because it forestalls the distracting eruptions
of social upheaval. What better way for Cervantes to make the point than
by presenting a troupe of actors, each of whom steals the spotlight, only
to melt back into the ensemble once his or her time (or tantrum) is up? And
what better way to convey the fragility of this rule of law and the
“eternal vigilance” that its maintenance requires than to interrupt
the performance with a spate of alarms? These prove to be false alarms, to
be sure, but the company takes no chances before the all clear is heard.
Organization and vigilance have been entrusted
to Monipodio. He has also been charged to invigorate the company with new
players, to placate temperaments, and to ensure the success of the enterprise.
He is the behind-the-scene puppeteer/impresario, the surrogate
creator.11
Just as Rinconete and Cortadillo observe and
applaud each other's antics, so each member of Monipodio's troupe is at once
an actor and a spectator. We, of course, constitute yet another audience,
a step removed from the play within a play. We were in the same position
earlier, watching, in retrospect, the innkeeper's wife as she overheard the
lads at the Molinillo inn.
Essentially, what we see during the unfolding
of Rinconete y Cortadillo, the spectacle itself, is the incorporation
of individual human beings into larger units governed by law. The practical
equivalent of this government by law, its workaday proof, is
friendship.12 I said earlier, with respect
to Rinconete and Cortadillo,
11 Aden
W. Hayes has written very persuasively about Monipodio's creation of a personal
reality through linguistic means. See his “Narrative ‘Errors’
in Rinconete y Cortadillo.” BHS, LVIII (1981), 13-20.
12 Law and
friendship are also paired in La Gitanilla. During his initiation
into the gypsy world, don Juan de Cárcamo/Andrés Caballero
is informed of his obligations by an elder statesman of the gypsy band. Foremost
among these is obedience to the law of friendship: “Nosotros guardamos
inviolablemente la ley de la amistad: ninguno solicita la prenda del otro;
libres vivimos de la amarga pestilencia de los celos. Entre nosotros, aunque
hay muchos incestos, no hay ningún adulterio; y cuando le hay en la
mujer propia, o alguna bellaquería en la amiga, no vamos a la justicia
a pedir castigo: nosotros somos los jueces y los verdugos de nuestras esposas
o amigas. . . .”
[P. 87] Whether
or not we endorse this law or the consequences of its subversion is immaterial:
in the gypsy society of La Gitanilla, freedom could not survive
promiscuity. Anarchic lust would threaten the collective security of the
tribe. Once again, nature must be disciplined in order to protect an ethos
whose cast is primarily aesthetic. To Andrés' professed ignorance
of the arts of thievery, the old gypsy says: “—Calla, hijo
. . . que aquí te industriaremos de manera que salgas un
águila en el oficio; y cuando le sepas, has de gustar dél de
modo que te comas las manos tras él. ¡Ya es cosa de burla salir
vacío por la mañana y volver cargado a la noche al rancho!”
This delight and pride in a job well done could easily have been expressed
by Monipodio himself. Indeed, the gypsy tribe as a whole has much in common
with Monipodio's. It too is a “cofradía”which offers an
alternative to the rancid and inhibiting “Iglesia, o mar, o casa
real.” It too values secrecy, excels in revelry, ritual, and misdemeanor.
The fifteen-year-old Preciosa is the feminine counterpart of Rinconete and
Cortadillo. She is precocious, dazzlingly verbal, and full of self-confidence
and self-knowledge. Note too that Preciosa's artistry bespeaks aristocratic
birth. Her “natural” genius for balladry and dance is awarded
sacramental dignity by the author, who marries her off to a fellow
aristocrat.
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that “their trajectory will be a set of variations on the theme of
friendship.”13 It was also stated that
Monipodio's organization is an outgrowth of the boys' ritual embrace at the
start of the tale. However, there are two major differences between the bonds
forged by Rinconete and Cortadillo and those which tie the lads to Monipodio
later in the story. Both differences emerge from Rinconete's statement,
“. . . imagino que no sin misterio nos ha juntado aquí
la suerte, y pienso que habemos de ser, déste hasta el último
día de nuestra vida, verdaderos amigos” (p. 4). According to
Rinconete, his meeting Cortadillo is not fortuitous. It is an auspice, and
their union obeys a higher will than their own. The union is also permanent.
The porch of the Molinillo inn is consecrated ground as Monipodio's patio
never
13 The
meridian variation has Repolido make his peace with Chiquiznaque and Maniferro.
Says Repolido:
“—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.
—No hay aquí amigo
—respondió Maniferro— que quiera enojar ni hacer burla de
otro amigo; y pues todos somos amigos, dense las manos los amigos.
A esto dijo Monipodio:
—Todos voacedes han hablado como buenos
amigos, y como tales amigos, se den las manos de amigos.” (p. 33).
The manic beat of “amigos” gives to this passage an incantatory
or catechistic flavor. The tribal dance and songfest that follows is a joyful
taking of communion.
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is (except for the author who created it). And Rinconete's eschatological
projection in time hallows the relationship with Cortadillo as Monipodio's
short-term holding actions —sentries, daily scares, and weekly drubbing
lists— never can. A precedent for departure is set early in the story,
when both lads tell how they left home after learning to exploit their father's
professions. (With few exceptions, every motif in the first half of the story
recurs in the second half.) The patio thus seems a byway or detour. Or an
extended visit to the theater.
As we know, Rinconete and Cortadillo are never
“taken in” by Monipodio. They do, however, linger in the company
for a few months. At the end, Cervantes can hardly bear to see his heroes
bid farewell to the “barbarous, uncouth, and impious” ringleader.
In a story where so much is acted out before our very eyes, Cervantes' reluctance
to show this farewell to Monipodio is significant, as if weaning Rinconete
and Cortadillo from Monipodio were as poignant a decision as snatching a
youngster from the tunny fisheries of Zahara (La ilustre fregona).
Cervantes shuns this prerogative. Instead, he gives Rinconete and Cortadillo
to the good stepfather for a time, and pledges to resurrect the whole cast,
with further adventures, from the limbo where he now stores it:
(Rinconete) propuso en sí de aconsejar a su compañero no durasen
mucho en aquella vida tan perdida y tan mala, tan inquieta, tan libre y disoluta.
Pero, con todo esto, llevado de sus pocos años y de su poca experiencia,
pasó con ella adelante algunos meses, en los cuales le sucedieron
cosas que piden más luenga escritura, y así, se deja para otra
ocasión contar su vida y milagros, con los de su maestro Monipodio,
y otros sucesos de aquellos de la infame academia, que todos serán
de grande consideración, y que podrán servir de ejemplo y aviso
a los que los leyeren (p. 42).
From Rinconete's point of view, Monipodio's
patio can never be a permanent home, because a home requires a spiritual
commitment as well as an intellectual one. Even as a spectator, Rinconete
will soon tire of the patio's theatricality. He will move on to something
more challenging. But in the final paragraph of Rinconete y Cortadillo,
Cervantes' own demands on art take precedence over his hero's demands on
life. He permits Rinconete to leave the patio in theory, but in fact freezes
him to the spot by having him recapitulate the goings-on therein. Cervantes
thus
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allows Rinconete to assume the rôle of
creator.14 This is not a usurpation on
Rinconete's part, but rather an act of generosity on Cervantes'. What is
more, Rinconete's “summing up” —we must remember that he is
literate— is an imposition of literary discipline in every way comparable
to Monipodio's enforcement of social discipline among his followers. This
is why Rinconete occupies the foreground at the end of the tale while Cortadillo
hovers on the fringe of the reader's memory. In a shift of angle from a
traditional third-person narrative to the style indirect libre, Cervantes
slips the last drops of his story through the filter of Rinconete's sensibility:
“. . . dábale gran risa . . .”;
“. . . le cayó en gracia . . .”;
“. . . le admiraba . . .”; “. . .
reíase . . .”; “No menos le suspendía
. . . “; “Consideraba . . .”;
“. . . exageraba . . .”; “. . .
le sucedieron cosas . . .” (p.
42).15
In terms of his sensibility Rinconete briefly
achieves parity with Cervantes, with the latter's consent and blessing. He
also wins equality with Monipodio as a creation of mythic stature:
“. . . se deja para otra ocasión contar su vida y milagros,
con los de su maestro Monipodio. . . .” Rinconete's life,
mounted within its hagiographic catapult, may even surpass his master's in
interest someday. As a literary subject he is bound to the patio for life:
he will always be known as “Rinconete” and not “Pedro de
Rincón.” For it is here in the patio where Rinconete, Cervantes'
proxy, learns to harness experience through reflection, just as his mentor,
Monipodio, has learnt to tame nature through law. Cervantes could not bring
himself to abandon these human embodiments of self-knowledge and
self-discipline.
Perhaps Cervantes felt that authority is as
vital an aspect of creativity as any other. Monipodio's authority allows
his troupe to act with some degree of civility and thus guarantees its survival.
On Rinconete's authority Cortadillo leads a more stable
14 On
Don Quixote as creator of himself and his story, see E. C. Riley,
Cervantes's Theory of the Novel (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1962)
37-39 and 64-67. See also Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, “Don Quijote, o
la vida como obra de arte.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 242
(February, 1970), 247-80, and Ruth El Saffar, Distance and Control in
“Don Quixote,” North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages
and Literatures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).
15 It is curious
to note that in his relationship to Cortadillo, Rinconete is more often than
not the observer rather than the agent of chicanery. This is true of the
packsaddle, purse and handkerchief incidents. It is as if Rinconete were,
like Monipodio, the guiding spirit behind the enterprise, and Cortadillo
its executor.
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life than any he had known since leaving home, and will emerge someday from
Monipodio's enclave into a complex world of moral choice. Cervantes' authority,
of course, is rooted in his confidence as a storyteller. He persuades us
to believe in him at every step along the way. His ability to gauge and
manipulate our emotions is so great that he can afford the luxury of having
a youngster speak for him. Cervantes knew that he and Rinconete and the reader
share so deep an attachment, that all reactions to the events just chronicled
are sure to be shared as well. Furthermore, he can no sooner bid lasting
farewell to his readers than he can to Rinconete at the end of the story.
The anonymity of his following is dispelled by its very existence.
Despite this, the paragraph that commemorates
an emotional link between Cervantes, Rinconete, and the reader also transcends
it. One of the parties —Rinconete— moves aside to let Cervantes
and the reader clasp hands. Actually, Rinconete is given a gentle shove.
The force that does the shoving is the same one that Rinconete had employed,
first against the emissary and then against Monipodio: verbal irony. I quote
from the last paragraph:
No menos le suspendía la obediencia y respeto que todos tenían
a Monipodio, siendo un hombre bárbaro, rústico y desalmado.
Consideraba lo que había leído en su libro de memoria, y los
ejercicios en que todos se ocupaban; finalmente, exageraba 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, tan
libre y disoluta (p. 42).
Cervantes twits Rinconete's sanctimonious indignation with a fusillade of
adjectives that comically exaggerate this indignation. Rinconete's
censure is bloated, the facts of the case don't warrant such airs. “After
all,” the author seems to say, “I've described a world in which
lawlessness is not the exception but the rule. Transgressions of the law
are the law. Everyone, therefore, acts a role in the theater I call
Seville. Monipodio —that amiable brute— is my
metteur-en-scéne.”16
16 The
fuzzy line between “law” and “lawlessness,” at least
with regard to morals, was by no means unique to Seville. Describing law
enforcement in Holland during its Golden Age, Simon Schama refers to a
“moral pluralism [p. 91] in which
inconsistencies of principle were set aside . . . for the sake
of effective social management.” Schama brilliantly demonstrates how
“the world of virtue and vice lived in practice in a kind of symbiotic
interdependence —at least in port cities like Amsterdam and
Rotterdam.” See The Embarrassment of Riches. An Interpretation of
Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 468
and passim.
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We are left with the equation, theater equals
theater. The equation leaves no room for Rinconete's moral judgments because
he too —for all his spectator pretensions— is engulfed by the pageant.
This does not mean that Rinconete is morally disqualified, but it does mean
that his fulminations are a bit hypocritical. For his morality has always
been that of the artist who sacrifices respectability to the proddings of
his genius, or that of the magician whose pride in legerdemain is strong
enough to survive any scruples about gulling the public.
One critic, in denying to Rinconete y
Cortadillo any moralizing intent whatever, alleges that Cervantes'
condemnation of the Seville underworld is pro forma, a stratagem to
propitiate the reader. “The voice of art,” he adds, summons the
author back to Monipodio's world, which is inexhaustibly rich in novelistic
possibilities.17
I believe that Cervantes' condemnation is more
than a decorous feint, because he makes Rinconete do the condemning and then
invalidates Rinconete's words. In so doing, the author denounces any moral
restriction on the subject matter of art. He exposes the smugness and immaturity
of those who declare some of life's raw materials out of bounds to the
artist.
If Cervantes were a moralist in the usual sense,
his view of Monipodio's patio would resemble the frightening picture of urban
crime that Dickens draws in Oliver
Twist.18 But in a larger sense, there
is indeed a moral, if not a moralizing intent, in Rinconete y
Cortadillo. The work illustrates the redemptive quality of art. Monipodio
and the rest partake of the veneration that we bestow on a masterpiece.
Ultimately, this veneration is an act of obedience to the artist.
Cervantes the artist reveals himself through
his characters: in moral terms it is precisely as artists that Rinconete
and Cortadillo
17
Agustín G. de Amezúa y Mayo, Cervantes, creador de la novela
corta española (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, 1958), 3,105.
18 Ramón
Pérez de Ayala saw a connection between the two works in an article
published in ABC, Madrid, May 6, 1956. The piece is summarized in
Anales cervantinos, 6 (Madrid, 1957), 375.
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take on the challenge of life. First they captivate each other with an exchange
of adventures and professional secrets. This mutual seduction is then legitimized
by fiat, by a phrase in Cervantes' artistic credo: “. . .
imagino que no sin misterio nos ha juntado aquí la suerte, y pienso
que habemos de ser, déste hasta el último día de nuestra
vida, verdaderos amigos.”
The first part of this phrase is analogous
to Cervantes' declaration of artistic liberty in Don Quijote: “En
un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero
acordarme. . . .”19 These
statements differ, of course, in that Rinconete's is couched in terms of
Sophoclean irony: its full meaning eludes him. Impenetrable truths, to the
effect that “luck” has had nothing to do with his meeting Cortadillo,
and that his freedom is contingent on his creator's, are beyond Rinconete's
intuition. Yet both statements advert to the enigma of the artist's
accomplishment as well as to its prerequisite freedom: the pendular sweep
from secrecy to revelation and back again, the decision to allow one seed
to abort and another to germinate, the mystery, as well as the freedom, of
choice.
Rinconete y Cortadillo envelops these
mysteries in a coherent structure that easily divides into three parts: tableau,
action, and recapitulation or, if one prefers, prologue, spectacle, and critique.
This scheme suggests why Cervantes saw fit to fuse two genres —theater
and prose fiction— in a single work. Only by creating a spectacle in
which the actors seem to speak and move of their own accord, could he show
in situ that art is the conjurer of life. Only through recapitulation
and critique could he submerge the minute details of spectacle in a single
poetic tide, reclaim his delegated voices for himself, and on their behalf
and his own salute the reader with a promise of more to
come.20 And only by means of this final promise
could Cervantes balance out Part I of his story, the tableau/prologue. First
page and last constitute a symmetry of expectation, a sense of delight in
the artistic process that every reader has experienced on opening a work
of fiction: “Where is the author taking us? Which way will the story
go? What will the next installment be like?” There is literary
19 See
Leo Spitzer, “Perspectivismo lingüístico en el
Quijote,” in Lingüística e historia literaria
(Madrid: Gredos, 1961), 179.
20 Blanco Aguinaga
regards this opening toward the future as an invalidation of Rinconete's
moralizing. See his “Cervantes y la picaresca,” 338.
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magic in this, and a hint of that rude impatience and satisfaction that wed
the first storyteller to the first public. In the aesthetic sense, Rinconete
y Cortadillo is very much an “exemplary”
novel.21
21 Ruth
El Saffar, who was kind enough to read the first draft of this paper, states
that Monipodio's world resembles an “artistic creation” within
an allegory: “Rinconete y Cortadillo is an allegory of the author's
role.” In complete agreement, I would stress the link between self-mastery
and formal, aesthetic mastery within this allegorical construct. Cervantes'
position vis-à-vis his material is not unlike that of Rinconete,
Cortadillo and Monipodio to their world: all are innovators. Cervantes claimed
to be the first to write short novels in Spanish; Rinconete and Cortadillo
invent themselves and their livelihoods, and Monipodio finds a radical solution
to the incoherence and anarchy of the underworld by infusing its membership
with self-esteem. Security, continuity, and growth accrue to them all be
cause they combine innovation with structure. See Ruth El Saffar, Novel
to Romance. A Study of Cervantes's ‘Novelas ejemplares,’ (Baltimore
and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974),
37-39.
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