Literary Time in the "Cueva de Montesinos" Author(s): Harry Sieber Source: MLN, Vol. 86, No.

2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1971), pp. 268-273 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2907623 . Accessed: 23/09/2011 13:44
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in mini-form while the Captain is hiding in order to test the reaction of the brother: "Llamauase . . .Ruyperez de Viedma, y era natural de vn lugar de las montafiasde Leon" (p. 270). It may perhaps be even suggested that this almost magic formulaic phrase-a device of the art of telling a story-has also some relevance and to implicationsin trying explore one of the central and criticalproblems 6 of the book at large, that of " true history."
Columbia University KARL-LUDWIG SELIG

Literary Time in the " Cueva de Montesinos"

To say nowadays that Cervantes is a "poeta de la vida" is commonplace. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce has spoken seriously to this cliche and has explored its profound implicationsquite successfully.' I would prefer to look at Cervantes as a poet of life from another perspective and to make a perhaps too obvious statement: the closest parallel between Don Quijote and " vida " is death. The thrustof Don Quijote is toward death, as Jorge Luis Borges pointed out long ago.2 Cervantes closes the world of the novel with the deaths of Don Quijote and Alonso Quijano. The sense of an ending is complete and irrevocable in fictionand in life. However,it points to freedomfromtime,a freedom and then only in his dreams. The Don Quijote glimpsed momentarily, is of the tiesof human temporality an escape into an eternalduree severing -the Divine present-as Cervantes indicates several times in the novel. In Part II Don Quijote says " . .. a solo Dios esta reservado conocer los tiempos y los momentos,y para El no hay pasado ni porvenir; que todo es presente" (p. 726).3 And the narrator or translatorsays just before Sancho is driven fromhis "island ": Pensar que en esta vida las cosas della han de durar siempre en un estado, es pensar en lo escusado; antes parece que ella anda todo en
For this problem, see Bruce W. Wardropper, "Don Quixote: Story or History?,"Modern Philology, LXIII (1965-66), 1-11, and also the fine study, important for the methodological aspects of the problem, by Leo Braudy, Narrative Form in History and Fiction: Hume, Fielding & Gibbon (Princeton, 1970). 1 In Deslindes cervantinos (Madrid, 1961), Chapter 1: "Conocimiento y vida en Cervantes," pp. 15-80. 2 " Analisis del ultimo capitulo del Quijote," RUBA, 5a epoca, I (1956), 28-36. 3 All quotations from Don Quijote are based on Martin de Riquer's edition, Editorial Juventud (Barcelona, 1958). Page referenceswill be included in the text.
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redondo, digo, a la redonda: la primavera sigue al verano, el verano al estio, el estio al otofio,y el otofio al invierno,y el invierno a la primavera,y asi torna a andarse el tiempo con esta rueda continua; sola la vida humana corre a su finligera mas que el tiempo,sin esperar renovarsesi no es en la otra, que no tiene terminosque la limiten (pp. 922-923). Georges Poulet has also concisely described the time of God as consistingof a "plenitude, d'une simultaneite immense."4 The momentby-moment temporalityof human experience is "remplacee par l'immensitede la realite divine. A la place d'un temps v6cu parcelle par parcelle s'etend un monde sans divisions et sans parties, le monde de Dieu."5 Alonso Quijano, facing the boredom and routine passing of away of his life as an hidalgo, was taken over by the temporality the world of literature. But even as Don Quijote within that looking-glass of world, he cannot overcome the discontinuities "human" experience. His literarytime-consciousness its very nature defeats the temporal by he integration seeks. The times of God, death and the unconscious, from the point of are infiniteand immeasurable: time conview of human temporality, ceived withoutmotion or change is beyond human understanding.Even into a conceptionof time which sharessome of the characteristics glimpses of the eternal are rare, always chaotic and destructive. The primary reason for the general dread and confusion which accompany such a vision is that it questions one's own being in time. The only place occurs takes place in the " Cueva in Part II wheresuch a momentovertly de Montesinos" adventure. Only througha gradual unraveling of conof fused interpretations Don Quijote's vision does Cervantes explore its meaning. And even then,the reader leaves the novel with no sense of resolutionconcerningits truthor falsehood.6 Two recent studies have come to the same conclusion that Don Quijote's experience in the Cave of Montesinos is related directlyto the thematicstructureof Part II.7 While I agree substantiallywith their
4Le mesure de I'instant (Plon, 1968), p. 93. 5 Poulet, p. 93. 6See John J. Allen, Don Quixote: Hero or Fool? A Study in Narrative Technique (Gainesville, 1969), p. 27, and E. C. Riley, Cervantes's Theory of the Novel (Oxford, 1962), p 187: " It is useless to ask if what Quixote related was a dream, a wilful fabrication,or anything else. Cervantes never intended us to know." And I would add that knowing the truth or falsehood is not necessaryfor an understandingof this adventure. What is important is merely its existence in the novel where it is presented as a unique product of Don Quijote's consciousness. 7 Helena Percas Ponsetti, " La cueva de Montesinos," RHM, XXXIV (1968), 376.399, and Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce,"Don Quijote, o la vida como obra de arte," CHA, No. 242 (Feb., 1970), 247-280.

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argumentsand conclusions, I believe that an analysis of its temporal context,pointed out to us several times by Cervantes himself,will lead to another approach toward an interpretationof Don Quijote's consciousnessof time and to a fundamentalaspect of his madness. Cervantes refersseveral times to the passing of time in the world of the narrative. He uses the same technique as he does elsewherein the novel to establish an illusion of the linear clock-timeof history. The narratorindicates that at two o'clock in the afternoonthe primo, Sancho and Don Quijote arrive at the cave's entrance (p. 698). According to the narrator, Don Quijote staysin the cave " como media hora" (p. 700). Sancho refers to its interior as hell (p. 701), an implication that its location is beyond human space and time and one which Don Quijote promptlyrejects. He immediatelyasks for food, another referenceto the passed temporal intervalhe has been in the cave. Chapter 23 begins with anotherreference: " Las cuatro de la tarde serian,cuando el sol ...
di6 lugar a don Quijote para que . . . contase . . . lo que en la cueva de Montesinos habia visto .. ." (p. 702). By using " como " and " seria"

the narratoris conjecturing,and thus perversely implies that the exact his variousreactions time is unimportant.AfterDon Quijote finishes story ensue, nearly all of which refer to time: "Ram6n de Hoces fu6 ayer, y lo de Roncesvalles, . . ., ha muchos anos . ." (p. 704, emphasis here and following is mine); "Yo no se, sefior don Quijote, c6mo vuestra
merced en tan poco espacio de tiempo . . . haya visto tantas cosas y

hablado y respondido tanto" (p. 708); " Por otra parte, considero . . . que no pudo fabricar en tan breve espacio tan gran mAquina de dislo que te pareciere,que yo no debo ni puedo mas; puesto que se tienen por cierto que al tiempo de su fin y muerte dicen que se retrat6della, framed by temporal references. Even the incredulity of the inner audience is based on their own perceptionsof experiential time. Don Quijote's calculation, as everyone knows, is quite different:he believes that he has been in the cave for three days and nights (p. 708). Sancho is able to accept his figureby stating that enchantmentmanipulates time in strange ways and that "lo que a nosotros parece una hora, debe de parecer alla tres dias con sus noches" (p. 708).8 Juan Avalle-Arceattemptsto resolve this problem with the following statement: Todo el mundo recuerda que hay una discrepancia entre el tiempo que piensa Don Quijote haber pasado en la cueva (tres dias, segun own calculation one hourdoes not of 8 It shouldbe notedthateven Sancho's stated. coincidewithwhat the narrator previously
The entire adventure is parates; . . ." (p. 713). The translator concludes: "Tui, letor, . .. juzga

y dijo que 61 habia inventado . . ." (p. 713).

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sus cilculos), y lo que afirmaSancho, que s61o ha podido contar una hora. La autoridad de Bergson aclara el problema y resuelve la discrepancia,porque el hecho es que nos hallamos ante un ejemplo clasico de tempsy duree. Don Quijote y Sancho Panza se han topado en la encrucijada del tiempo cronol6gico y del tiempo psicologico. Para volver a la terminologiade Bergson: Sancho esta hablando de tiempo,que es una convenci6n arbitraria,que, en sentido radical, cae por fuera de nuestra experiencia,mientrasque Don Quijote esta hablando de duraci6n, que es lo que nuestrosubconscientealmacena para medir y categorizarnuestras experiencias.9 While Avalle-Arcecorrectly recognizes the implications of this adventure (Cervantes' exploration of the subconscious in literature), he has its oversimplified temporal context by applying Bergsonian terminology. He therebyrules out an understandingof literary time with which Cervantesis concerned in this episode. Let us suppose that literarytime stands between temps and duree, that it shares characteristics both of but consistsof neither. We might phrase it in Frank Kermode's terms (which,even though perhaps jerked violentlyout of context, turn out to be especially helpful): the temps is chronos (passing time), the duree is kairos (the duration of fulfillment; critical time; the time of timewith the term death,of the unconscious). Kermode describesliterary aevum, "a third order of duration,distinctfrom time and eternity. . in participating both the temporal and the eternal. It does not abolish time or spatialize it; it co-existswith time, and is a mode in which of say, is the time-order novels."l time in Don Quijote is the time of enchantment. The "litLiterary erary" characterswho appear in Don Quijote's vision (all come from the romances and ballads, except for Don Quijote and Dulcinea) are frozenin time by the enchanter Merlin. Montesinos describes one of cierto como ahora es de dia, que Durandarte acab6 los de su vida en mis brazos,y que despues de muertole saque el coraz6n con mis propias manos; . . .Pues siendo esto asi, y que realmente muri6 este caballero, cc6moahora se queja y sospira de cuando en cuando, como si estuviese vivo?" (p. 705). Durandarte is dead in termsof chronosbut very much alive in the duration of aevum. Dulcinea will remain perpetually but not eternally stated that at some future, ugly. In her case, it is specifically unknown time,her disenchantment become possible (pp. 710-711). may Montesinosis the "guarda mayor perpetua" (p. 703, my emphasis) of
Op. cit. (note 7), p. 266. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York, 1967), pp. 70-72.
10

things can be perpetual without being eternal ....

Aevum, you might

the stranger characteristics of this enchantment:

". . . es que se, tan

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. y con otros muchos de vuestros conocidos y

the vision-world.Durandarte tells Don Quijote that his fellow prisonersamigos, nos tiene aqui encantados el sabio Merlin ha muchos afnos;y aunque pasan de quinientos,no se ha muertoninguno de nosotros: ..." (p. 706). These charactersneither eat, drink or sleep; day and night follow one another without aging those who populate that world. The opposite of kairosis chronosin thiscontext,and thereare examples of its presence within the time of Don Quijote's vision. Even though the charactersare suspended in time, Don Quijote reports that fingernails, beards, hair, etc. grow as if the characterswere alive. Cervantes is playing with these outer edges of aevum where both the eternal and the temporal intermingle. Don Quijote is witnessinga temporal fragof mentation,a coming-apart his own internal world. Don Quijote's consciousness of time comes directly from literature and as such is simply a result of his reading too deeply. He has been consistsin his perception totallypossessedby the text. Part of his insanity of the "world" throughliterarytime. But there is somethingmore to his experience in the Cave of Montesinos. He seems to move beyond and outside himselfin seeking a fixed temporal perspectivefromwhich to reaffirm identity and self-possession.While in the vision he is his freefromthe timeof the world and is able to accomplishhis " impossible" task (Cervantes tells us so in the chapter title) without interruptions from outside his own consciousness. He glimpses the perpetuity of literarytime,sees himselfwithin it, and recoils fromthe vision of being and enchanted Dulcondemned to confronting perpetually a disfigured cinea. The lesson he learns is uttered upon emergingfrom the cave: " En efecto: ahora acabo de conocer que todos los contentosdesta vida pasan como sombra y suefio, o se marchitan como la flor del campo" of (p. 701). What he has experienced is a profoundunderstanding the of necessity chronos. He "knows" (conocer, not saber) the meaning of aevum: in effect, the vision serves as a memento mori in the literary world of perpetual duration,bringinghim back into the world to which he is inextricablyattached. The end of chronos is death, the eternal presence of God. Don Quijote's experience in the Cave of Montesinos points directly to the end of the novel and to death. His consciousnessreturnsfrom the literarytime of the world of Montesinos to the aevum of the novel itself. The final acceptance of himselfas Alonso Quijano "el Bueno" is an admissionthat his will cannot change or protractthe time of death. When he is apparently irretrievably lost in the cave, Sancho begins to weep just as he will when he discoversthat Don Quijote is dying at the end of the novel. Moreover,the temporal impingement fromoutside the cave (Sancho and the primo pull Don Quijote out with a rope) brings

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Don Quijote back from literary time just as the interruption of the act of reading forcesthe reader out of the literarytime of the novel. is The meaning of this time-shift clear: the death of Don Quijote implies the deaths of his readers. The only exit out of the time of our own lookworld is death. ing-glass Avalle-Arceis correctin one sense when he writesthat " Cervantesha abierto de par en par la puerta que conduce a la plena vida del subconsciente. La novedad de tal tipo de buceo en la literaturaoccidental es absoluta." 11 It might be put another way: Cervantes has explored of for the firsttime the literarytime-consciousness novel readers within a novel, firmly the madness of all readers with the madness of linking Don Quijote. Our reading too deeply makes us like Don Quijote. We become victimsof literary enchantment, subject to its temporalstructures chooses to as long as we believe in its magic-until the author-enchanter release us, or until the demands of life and society on leisure time to interveneto reclaim and redirectour consciousnesses the passing away of our own lives, toward an ending which is death.
The Johns Hopkins University HARRY SIEBER

On ReligiousParodyin the Buscon

of The moral and religious significance the Busc6n, and the relation of its central figureto societyhave been made clear by the important articles of A. A. Parker, T. E. May, and P. N. Dunn.' When the novel is read in the light of these articles, the importance of the element of religious parody becomes clear.2 Such parody is based upon religious, or rather, irreverent expressions,jokes and phrases, of which there are a large number in the Buscon, as there were in the language of the time, and in picaresque and low-lifewritingsince the Celestina and the Lazarillo, even though many of the common jokes in these
11 Op. cit. (note 7), p. 266. 1A. A. Parker, " The Psychologyof the ' Picaro' in El Buscon," MLR, XLII (1947), 58-69; T. E. May, "Good and Evil in the Buscon: A Survey," MLR, XLV (1950), 319-335; P. N. Dunn, " El individuo y la sociedad en La vida del Buscon," BHi, LII (1950), 375-396. See also A A. Parker, Literature and the Delinquent: The Picaresque Novel in Spain and Europe (Edinburgh, 1967). 2 H. Sieber in a recent review article," Some Recent Books on the Picaresque," MLN, LXXXIV (1969), 318-330, mentions "the religious language which pervades the novel." T. E. May also refers to religious parody in his article "A Narrative Conceit in La vida del Buscon," MLR, LXIV (1969), 327-333.