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Chapter Five Persiles, or The Cervantine Art of Looking Down and Awry
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94 Chapter Five Persiles, or The Cervantine Art of Looking Down and Awry Painting Weeds and Shrubs The narrator of Persiles (3.2) notes, somewhat ironically, that the value of poetry depends solely on our estimation of it: “[La poesía] es habilidad que tanto vale cuanto se estima” (442).1 Assuming that we may apply this statement to all forms of literature , it looks as though Cervantes hit the nail right on the head when he previewed Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda in his dedication of the second part of Don Quixote to the count of Lemos. Thus, Cervantes’s appraisal of his latest work reads: “[Persiles] ha de ser o el más malo o el mejor que en nuestra lengua se haya compuesto, quiero decir de los de entretenimiento ” (Don Quijote 2: 28). Judging by the history of Persiles’s criticism, it is fair to say that Cervantes was right on both counts. While most Hispanists have traditionally regarded Persiles as the tasteless gibberish of a tragically senile Cervantes or as a failed imitation of Byzantine romances, some of today’s Golden Age scholars are beginning to re-examine the narrative under a new light (Ruth El Saffar, Diana de Armas Wilson, Julio Baena, and Amy Williamsen, among others). This new “poststructuralist” Persiles is emerging as the culmination of Cervantes’s lifework, or, at the very least, as one of his more complex, rich, and engaging literary endeavors. In my understanding of the text, I draw primarily from these and other contemporary critics who are contesting the classic interpretations of Joaquín Casalduero and J. B. Avalle-Arce (and to a certain extent Alban Forcione), while dispelling commonplace notions associated with the historiographic myth of the “other Cervantes,” i.e., the eccentric creator of literary monstrosities. My thesis is that Persiles is a counterutopian 95 Persiles: Looking Down and Awry narrative in the sense that Maravall gives the term in his interpretation of Don Quixote, that is, an anamorphic mirror that inverts or, at the very least, distorts the symbols of CounterReformation culture. Baena has done well in recognizing that the narrative style of Persiles fixes on “the absent element” of conventional aesthetics . But his effort to establish a close connection between Cervantes’s dissatisfaction with dominant representational codes and El Greco’s mysticism may have been misdirected. Baena writes: “De la misma manera que el Greco alargaba las figuras por insatisfacción con los paradigmas y cánones tanto de la naturaleza como de la estética en ella basada, ese uno sobrante del texto del Persiles […] se coloca casi en primer plano de la escena, en un escorzo, un intento de alcanzar el elemento siempre ausente de una totalidad” (72). Both El Greco and Cervantes react against canonical forms of representation , but they look in opposite directions. While El Greco looks up at the heavens in search of “the absent element,” in the case of the novelist—as Durán says of Cervantine irony— “the arrow that seemed to aim at the heavens turns around and comes down at our feet” (“la flecha que parecía apuntar hacia el cielo da la vuelta y cae a nuestros pies”; 59). We may connect this idea with the narrator’s remarks on the nature of literary and pictorial representation in 3.14: La historia, la poesía y la pintura simbolizan entre sí y se parecen tanto que, cuando escribes historia, pintas y, cuando pintas, compones. No siempre va en un mismo peso la historia , ni la pintura pinta cosas grandes y magníficas, ni la poesía conversa siempre por los cielos. Bajezas admite la historia; la pintura, hierbas y retamas en sus cuadros y, la poesía tal vez se realza contando cosas humildes. (578) These reflections show a sharp awareness of the close relationship that history (and/or storytelling), poetry, and painting maintain with each other. The notion goes well beyond traditional clichés by underscoring the fact that literary and artistic forms of representation share in the creation and propagation of common symbols: “simbolizan entre sí.”2 But what I find most interesting about this passage—at least from the standpoint of my own objectives in this chapter—is the idea that all [35.173.233.176] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:20 GMT) 96 Chapter Five three crafts (“habilidades” as Cervantes calls them) might actually enhance their value by allowing “bajezas” (“vile things or deeds”), “hierbas y retamas” (“weeds...