Cantar de Mio Cid (review)

When the second edition of Montaner's Cantar de Mio Cidwas presented in a blaze of publicity, the press were especially impressed by his use of video-microscope technology to read hitherto illegible words (e.g. El País, Friday 9 November 2007, p. 44). Since the words thus revealed were in the event the ones previously hypothesized, aficionados of the poem are more likely to be impressed by the huge increase since 1993 in the already lengthy commentary material; the whole has grown from 828 to 1177 pages. Much of this is necessary, due to the scholarship produced in the intervening years; the bibliography has doubled, from 42 pages to 85. There is a new 75-page section in the Introduction devoted to the physical manuscript itself (which the non-technical reader is advised to skip, in the footnote on p. ccliii); Montaner still dates this to the fourteenth century. There is unfortunately not a photo of even a single folio, so, as ever, we have to remain wholeheartedly grateful for the Burgos facsimile edition of 1988.

For Montaner continues to work at the depressingly interventionist end of the editorial spectrum. He tells us encouragingly that 'en la duda, es preferible mantener la lectura del códice único' (242, with reference to the spelling of a Deynain line 1161), but, even so, immediately afterwards he fails to follow this advice with reference to lines 1179 and 1182, changing ver loto verlosand avyento aviérespectively. In all three of these cases he even misreports the manuscript readings, as being a Deyna, verloand avién, so we cannot even work out the actual text from the notes (the first of these is adeyna). Thus, at times he claims not to be emending when in fact he is. For example, the note to line 1096 tells us that he is reproducing the manuscript reading, but that is vieand his edition gives us veyé; he makes the same claim in that note for lines 2773, where the manuscript in fact has vienand the edition has veyén, and 2438, where he does indeed reproduce viecorrectly (though with an added accent). The key to this apparent self-contradiction is that Montaner hardly ever finds himself 'en la duda'. His rationale for inverting lines 1085 and 1086, for example, is simply that 'es obvio' (240). Even such a drastic emendation as adding six extra words (244, to line 1246) leaves him in no doubt that what he is doing is restoring an omission rather than inventing an addition: 'se impone restituir la formula aquí empleada'; indeed, so sure is he of his own instincts that when he chooses to add the unattested words 'El Cid' to the manuscript version of line 3180 (278) he insultingly adds ' om. ms', as if Per Abbat should have known what Montaner would prefer the composer to have said.

This cavalier attitude to the text makes the use of the edition itself in detailed research inadvisable. The problems are compounded by preserving the first edition's confusing structure of presenting three different sets of ancillary material (in addition to the cosmically proportioned Introduction); the notes at the foot of the page, the critical apparatus after the text, and the 'notas complementa-rias' after that. Enlightenment for every line thus needs to be sought in three different places, a complication which deserved to be eased in a second edition. Thus it is still the case, for example, as it was in the first edition, that in line 1125 the manuscript's de(which all other editors reproduce correctly) is changed to a, because Montaner thinks that that is what ought to have been written; that the translation at the foot of the page (71) corresponds to this conjecturally emended sentence without any hint that it has been emended at all; that the comment in the apparatus criticus thoughtfully points out that everybody else is out of step...