The Utopian Nexus in Don Quixote

5. Sancho Panza and the Material World

  77 5 Sancho Panza and the Material World The source of Don Quixote’s utopian vision has been seen to lie in the cultural imaginary of a privileged minority. In contrast to Don Quixote’s myth of a past golden age of austerity, the myth we associate with Sancho Panza, that of Cockaigne/Jauja (or Xauxa), has been seen instead to be projective, open to everyone, at least imaginatively, to have constituted part of the collective memory for centuries, and to compensate for what Sancho lacks, namely, food, money, and a life of leisure. We remember that the squire’s justification for following Don Quixote is the thought of possessing an island of abundant food and leisure. The memory of the coins he obtained from Cardenio’s suitcase (I:23) has encouraged him, he tells Tomé Cecial, and so “tempted and lured by a purse with a hundred ducados that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; . . . at every step I take I seem to touch it with my hand, and put my arms around it, and take it to my house, and hold mortgages, and collect rents, and live like a prince . . .” (II:8, 535) [“cebado y engañado de una bolsa con cien ducados que me hallé un día en el corazón de Sierra Morena . . . me parece que a cada paso le toco con la mano y me abrazo con él, y lo llevo a mi casa, y echo censos y fundo rentas, y vivo como un príncipe . . .” (729–30)]. Hermeneutically, the myth of Cockaigne becomes relevant to the typology of Sancho as it implicates the world of his desires and serves as counterpart to the world of Don Quixote. The myth’s compensatory allure, namely, the pleasure principle, is what also constitutes Sancho’s modus operandi throughout the novel. Sancho is described as indolent, a glutton whose name is synonymous with the love of food and drink. Don Quixote sums up his squire’s priorities with such statements as: 78   The Utopian Nexus in Don Quixote “I, Sancho, was born to live by dying, and you to die by eating” (II:59, 842) [“Yo, Sancho, nací para vivir muriendo, y tú para morir comiendo” (1107)]. Gullible, at least when his gluttony is engaged, Sancho is happiest when surrounded by culinary excesses like the “paradise” of Camacho ’s Wedding Feast, or when duped into believing in a “paradisal” ínsula of which he is to take possession. In discussing Sancho, we are not concerned with the squire’s possible literary antecedents, though much valuable and interesting work has been devoted to placing him in the tradition of literary buffoons. Nor are we going to trace his possible ancestry in folklore among, for example, such wise fools as the legendary Marcolf. Instead, we turn our attention to the “reversibility” (Molho’s adjective) of the two protagonists —one a loco-sabio (wise madman) and the other a tonto-listo (smart fool) which makes them such complicated characters. This reversibility rescues them from being literary buffoons, safeguards the book’s humor from becoming farcical, and prevents the readers from feeling superior even as they laugh at the antics of the two characters. The essential orality of Don Quixote, the elements of folklore that Cervantes uses, especially in his characterization of Sancho Panza, and the carnivalesque features of the novel have all been pointed out. Molho, however, is prescient in showing that the novel does not imitate any specific model of the comic rustic of literature or of folk tale, but incorporates, especially in the figure of Sancho Panza, a set of basic folkloric structural elements (231). These are the elements of the simpleton (bobo, tonto, simple), combined with the smart or clever man (listo). As a result, the character is given the added complexity of “reversibility.” The narrator first introduces Sancho to us as a simpleton, “a good man—if that title can be given to someone who is poor—but without much in the way of brains” (I:7) [“hombre de bien—si es que este título se puede dar al que es pobre—pero de muy poca sal en la mollera” (91)]. His own wife Teresa Panza describes the villagers’ view of Sancho to the Duchess: “ . . . in this village everybody takes my husband for a fool, and except for governing a herd of goats, they can’t imagine what governorship he’d be good for” (II:52, 801) [“ . . . en este pueblo todos...