In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

124 3 Staging Captivity: El trato de Argel Para borrar o mitigar la saña de lo real, buscaba lo soñado.1 —Jorge Luis Borges, “Un soldado de Urbina” AS WE SAW IN CHAPTER 2, the Información de Argel can be read in ways that transcend the social and legal dimensions of its twelve affidavits. This deposition may be viewed as a fundamental testimony that permits the survivor to continue living after his liberation. Testimony thus constitutes a historical event in itself, one that signals the beginning of a historical recovery that has a therapeutic effect for the survivor. Starting from this early testimony composed in Algiers, Cervantes proceeds to the creation of increasingly complex narratives emerging from his North African imprisonment , thus opening up through his art the possibility of speaking of the limit-experience of human bondage. This chapter explores the relation between drama and history and between speech and survival in Cervantes’s El trato de Argel [Life in Algiers], a play that bears witness to the sufferings of the Christian captives in Algiers. My reading is often filtered through Los baños de Argel [The Dungeons of Algiers], a subsequent drama by Cervantes that reworks most of the themes found in El trato. I study these plays side by side with the testimony of other captives across the centuries, such as Antonio de Sosa in sixteenthcentury Algiers and Primo Levi in twentieth-century Auschwitz. Sosa’s life as a captive in early modern Algiers and Levi’s survival in the Lager, as well as their writing of it afterward, may shed some light on Cervantes’s Algerian experiences. By examining the ways in which issues of biography and history are reinscribed and fundamentally reelaborated by Cervantes’s dramas, I propose to study the complex links between poetry and testimony , trauma and creation in the Spanish writer. “As a Child, I Was Fond of Plays” Cervantes’s dramatic vocation and enduring devotion to the theater are demonstrated throughout his life.2 He would be, in effect, the first to stage STAGING CAPTIVITY 125 in sixteenth-century Spain the ordeals of Barbary captives, among other innovations that make him a pioneer of Spanish drama. Speaking of Cervantes ’s indisputable penchant for the theater, Alberto Sánchez argues that “el cultivo del teatro fue su ocupación activa en algunas temporadas y su preocupación constante durante toda su vida” [the cultivation of the theater was his active occupation in some seasons and his constant preoccupation during his whole life].3 Evidence of this natural calling can be found throughout Cervantes’s fictions. In Don Quijote, El licenciado Vidriera [The Glass Graduate], Persiles, the prologue to his Ocho comedias, and in his play Pedro de Urdemalas, among other works, Cervantes develops a thorough critique of the Spanish theater of his time, one that spans from the foundation of this drama to the qualities a good actor should have.4 Cervantes certainly discovered a new way of connecting life and literature , dissimulating himself behind masks and delegating his powers to supposed narrators, such as Cide Hamete Benengeli. Even so, Cervantes does not always remain behind the scenes. In the famous episode where Don Quijote encounters the company of players, directed by Angulo el Malo— an itinerant company that travels from town to town staging the allegorical religious play Las Cortes de la Muerte [The Parliament of Death] —we may discover a clear reference to the thoughts and feelings of the author, expressed through the words of Don Quijote.5 Clearly, Don Quijote ’s words do not always coincide with those of Cervantes, but in this case their significance is illuminating: “Desde muchacho fui aficionado a la carátula y en mi mocedad se me iban los ojos tras la farándula” [As a child I was fond of plays and in my youth, I was a keen lover of the actor’s art] (DQ II, 11; emphasis mine). That this youth represents Cervantes himself is corroborated by a symmetrical passage, composed years later by the author (Sánchez, 15). The passage comes from Adjunta del Parnaso [Postscript to Parnassus], an attached appendix in prose to Viaje del Parnaso [Journey to Parnassus] (1614), which is, in turn, a festive mythological poem full of autobiographical references.6 In the scene mentioned above from Adjunta al Parnaso, false poet Pancracio de Roncesvalles asks the already famous novelist: “Y vuestra merced, señor Cervantes, ¿ha sido aficionado a la carátula? ¿Ha...

Share