Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 45 - 47 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Chapters 45 - 47

http://donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha

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Part IIChapters 45 - 47

Index

Lesson 38: “Justice, Sir Governor, justice...!” 6

Lesson 37: Sancho resolves three legal cases 4

Lesson 40: The conflict between Sancho and Recio 10

Lesson 41: Sancho defends the state 12

Lesson 39: Don Quijote sings a ballad to Altisidora 8

Chapters 45 - 47 review 15

Course activities 16

“Historically one of the best protections of the value of money against the inroads of political spending was the gold standard—the redemption of money in gold on demand. This put a check-rein on the politician.”

—Warren Randolph Burgess

4 Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha


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Sancho resolves three legal casesC hapter forty-five of DQ 2 relates three legal cases that SP must decide upon assuming power on the Isle of Barataria. The

symbolic continuity between these cases reveals Cervantes’s concern for the Habsburg inflationary monetary policy that was diminishing the purchasing power of the common coin of Castile. This destructive power of inflation is also the essential

meaning of the Adventure of the Cats in chapter forty-six. Finally, we shall see that chapter forty-seven is a summary, a meditation on political corruption in general, although again with particular emphasis on fiscal matters. As usual, the details make all of this complicated. Remember that DQ 2 is a political quagmire. At times, SP will display brilliance and moral rectitude, but the symbolisms and the ironies of his rule are problematic and ominous from beginning to end.

The narrator opens this sequence with a parodic apostrophe to Apollo that hints at the global reach of the Spanish Empire. This is followed by a description of the new governor’s formal investiture: “with much pomp they took him to the main cathedral and gave thanks to God, and then, with some ridiculous ceremonies, they gave him the keys to the city.” Adding to this mockery of political power, when SP sits on his throne, the narrator reminds us that the governor cannot read. SP contemplates writing on the wall opposite him: “and since he did not know how to read, he asked what those marks were painted there on the wall.” This refers to the doomed King Belshazzar in Daniel 5. Recall that the words Daniel reads for the Babylonian king are monetary weights and measures, which Daniel then interprets as verbs to mean that the king’s days have been “measured,” that he has been “weighed” and found “lacking,” and that his kingdom will be “divided” among his enemies. In other words, the allusion to Daniel via the writing on the wall across from SP is itself already an allusion to deceptive monetary policy as blasphemous rule.

In SP’s case, the writing is relatively harmless. The Duke’s majordomo reads: “Today, on such-and-such day of such-and-such month of the year such-and-such, Sir Don Sancho Panza took control of this isle, and may he enjoy it many years to come.” As elsewhere, humility is SP’s saving grace. He reacts against the idea that he should carry a title: “I have no Don, nor has anyone in my entire lineage ever had one.” So SP begins his rule by following DQ’s advice against the arrogance of hierarchical and ethnic privilege.

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Future value of a present sum of money:

F V = P V * ( 1 + i )



SP’s first case involves a tailor who cheats a peasant. There are two allusions to anti-Semitism here. First, the tailor apologizes for his profession (associated with Jews and conversos) and admits that the farmer’s haggles with him were motivated by “the poor reputation of tailors.” Second, the farmer gives the tailor some cloth and requests that he make him “a pointed cap,” which possibly alludes to the cap worn by victims of the Inquisition. However, the essence of the story involves the quantity of cloth used and the number of caps produced. The peasant keeps insisting that more caps be produced from the same amount of cloth and the tailor’s response is to produce a handful of tiny caps. Note how this tale reflects the effect of monetary inflation: the amount and quality of goods available for a given price depreciate to reflect the decreased purchasing power of an artificially weakened currency. You experience something similar when canned goods and candy bars get smaller instead of going up in price. SP rules that the peasant loses his cloth and that the tailor loses the cost of his labor. In other words, everyone loses when quantities and measures are changed. Cervantes takes a final jab at government in general when SP also rules that the tiny caps be donated to prisoners, who no doubt will find them useless.

SP’s second case continues the monetary theme of the first. Here we have a creditor and a debtor. The creditor wants his money back, but the debtor swears he has already paid him. One moral of this tale is that when you loan someone money, you should have a contract and witnesses; but the deeper point is that monetary deception favors debtors over creditors. This explains SP’s Solomon-like perception that the debtor is hiding the loaned money in his cane. The debtor swears by the cross on SP’s staff that he has returned the money to his creditor, but SP reasons that he makes this oath because before doing so he handed his cane to the creditor, thus technically returning the money.

But the mystery is actually deeper. Cervantes is criticizing the Habsburg Kings’ monetary shenanigans. The creditor lent the debtor gold coins, that is, not the more adulterated copper coins. The phrase used to describe the amount of the loan highlights the importance of pure money: “ten escudos of gold in gold” refers to gold coins valued at thirteen reales, as opposed to the more common escudo valued at eleven reales. The “escudo of gold” was rare precisely because it contained more gold, and so the episode indicates that Cervantes understood Gresham’s law, whereby good money disappears in the presence of bad money. Careful readers will also note that despite SP’s discovery of the hidden gold, the creditor still loses the time value of his money. So the moral is doubly complicated: when you loan someone money, you must attend to the composition of the coins used to pay you back, but you also need to charge interest. On one hand, the case illustrates Gresham’s law, because the better gold coins have been removed from circulation. On the other hand, the case criticizes laws against usury, because they favor debtors. In other words, also on trial here are the Habsburgs, who constantly debased coins to their benefit, and Catholic authorities, who clung to the old view that charging interest for a loan was immoral.

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“Justice,Sir Governor, justice...!”

C ervantes highlights gold as the major theme twice more in the transition between the second and third cases. First, according to the narrator, SP claims he solved the case of the evil debtor because “he had heard another case like this one told by his town priest,” an apparent allusion to

Jacobus de Voragine’s medieval collection of hagiographies, Legenda aurea, or The Golden Legend. Second, the third and final case begins with a reference to the Greek goddess Astrea, the last immortal to live among humans during the Golden Age. A woman drags a herder before SP and evokes Astrea: “Justice, Sir Governor, justice, and if I do not find it on earth, then I will go search for it in Heaven!” Astrea was sister to Dike, the goddess of Justice, and she ascended to the constellation Virgo to escape human wickedness: gold, justice, purity, and evil are themes; in other words, monetary policy once again.

Note also the two references to the “blood purity” theme we have seen elsewhere. The woman claims she has remained a virgin for twenty-three years by defending herself “against Moors and Christians” only to be raped by this swine herder. SP claims he will examine this man and find out “whether or not he has clean hands.” The swine herder claims that he paid her for the sex and that the woman extorts him for more money. Cervantes again mocks government generally, for this extortion began when the swine herder was on his way to pay his taxes. In the end, however, we return to the monetary theme. SP orders the man to pay the woman twenty ducados worth of silver that he carries in a small bag. Note the new monetary unit and the fact that the woman checks the quality of the money before leaving: “first she made sure the money in the purse was silver.”

After the prostitute departs, SP tells the man to go get his money back from her. When she drags the herder before the governor again, accusing him of trying to rob her moneybag, SP asks her if he succeeded. She says she was too strong for him; so SP concludes that there was no way the man could have raped her

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and orders her to return the money. This is funny, but it also contains two more references to the politics of money. First, when she brags about her strength, the whore anticipates the cat episode in DQ 2.46 and recalls the lion episode of DQ 2.17 (which was also about money): “You’ll have to throw other cats at my beard, not this miserable weakling! Pliers and hammers, clubs and chisels, would not be enough to pry it from my fingers, not even the claws of lions!” Second, when SP notes that “the strength of Hercules” is not enough to assault her, he alludes to the sign of Charles V found on the era’s coins. Finally, note how SP’s advice to the man is a sexualized metaphor for the importance of the gold standard, which keeps politicians from stealing the money of citizens: “My good man, go with God to your home with your money, and from now on, assuming you do not want to lose it, take care not to give into your desire to lie down with anyone” There is advice to the reader here. Do not be casual with your own money, and pay attention to instances of money in Cervantes’s text.

There’s something unsettling in the ironic relation between the two final cases. The founder of the Roman Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus, carried gold inside a cane in order to remind himself to keep his thoughts secret so as to avoid the wrath of the tyrant Tarquin. When Tarquin’s son raped Lucretia, Brutus rebelled. He and his allies swore to never again accept monarchical rule. Given that the man in the second case with gold in his cane is a fraud and given that the whore in the third case lies about her rape, Cervantes seems to mount an anti-republican allegory here: a kind of cynical endorsement of the Habsburg monarchy as the lesser of two evils. Cervantes’s perspectivism disallows easy answers.

The last words of chapter forty-five reveal Cervantes growing fond of his double narrative technique: “And let good Sancho await us here, for we are beckoned by his master, who is all agitated by Altisidora’s music.” Chapter forty-six is short but spectacular, one of my favorites. Cervantes begins with another zeugma constructed around the term “stitch,” meaning first “a temporal moment” and then “a stitch of sowing.” Altisidora has left our hero with thoughts in his head which “did not let him sleep nor relax even a stitch, which was compounded for him by the ones missing in his stockings.” Notice how this zeugma turns Cervantes’s text into a kind of tapestry that weaves together different stories. The next morning DQ dresses himself with SP’s “tall riding boots,” a green velvet cap, his scarlet cloak, his “cutting sword,” and his enormous rosary. He then parades arrogantly into the main gallery. Oddly, the narrator then reminds us that the Duchess has sent SP’s letter to his wife Teresa. The “woman question” again.

Altisodora pretends to faint (cf. Luscinda in DQ 1.27) and DQ confronts her: “I know what these happenings are all about.” DQ then tells Altisidora’s friend to place a lute in his room with which he will respond “to this damsel the best way that I can, for at the beginnings of love, quick disillusionments are usually a proven remedy.” Two aspects of this situation. First, DQ cites Ovid’s Remedia amoris in his plan to disillusion Altisidora and follows the medical treatises of the Renaissance that prescribed music for love-sick patients. Second, DQ has now reached a tragic low point according to his own value system: he has become one of those frivolous, arrogant, intriguing, and sexualized courtly knights whom he despises. On the other hand, note DQ’s depth and versatility. This episode seriously challenges our stereotype of DQ as a crazy militant knight. I bet you did not know that DQ could play the guitar and sing! Rambo has now become Elvis!



O f course, the Duke and Duchess have planned another comical trick for their guest. DQ’s preparation for his song is awkward. Instead of a lute, DQ finds a “vihuela” in his room, more akin to the modern Spanish guitar. But he takes this in stride. He tunes the guitar and actually spits

and clears his throat. DQ’s song is another ridiculous ballad with important information. First, he diagnoses the cause of Altisidora’s sickness. Ironically enough, just like DQ at the beginning of part one, and like the hidalgos of baroque literature, she suffers from too much free time, from what the ancients called “otium”: “Commonly, the forces of love / can unhinge souls, / using as their instrument / unregulated indolence.” Second, DQ recommends work and chastity as solutions. This includes a recognition that men like him, both types of knights, are fickle: “Knights errant / and those that inhabit courts / take their pleasure with free maidens, / but they marry the chaste.”

The song’s conclusion, although prosaic at times, is an excellent summary of the Neoplatonic vision of the mechanics of love in combination with DQ’s assertion of his loyalty to Dulcinea. True love marks the soul with an original image and subsequent lovers cannot wipe away this impression: “Love that is recently arrived, / which calls today and departs tomorrow, / leaves no images / truly marked upon the soul. / Paint over a painting / neither discloses nor displays, / and where there is an original beauty, / a second cannot take the trick. / Dulcinea of Toboso / there on my soul’s tabula rasa / is so painted / that she can never be removed.” The locus classicus of this vision of love is Plato’s Symposium, also known in Spanish as El banquete, or The Banquet.

Don Quijote singsa ballad to Altisidora

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Now come the cats. From above DQ’s window, the Duke and Duchess’s minions unfurl a rope covered with bells and, down this rope, they unleash an enormous sack of cats each with bells tied to their tails. Two or three cats enter DQ’s room through the bars “and darting from one place to another it seemed as though a legion of devils had been loosed in there.” As usual, DQ fights back against what he perceives as “evil enchanters,” stabbing at the cats with his sword. One cat latches onto DQ’s face and when the Duke tries to help him, DQ is adamant: “No one touch him! Leave me, one on one, with this demon, with this sorcerer, with this enchanter, and I will teach him, man to man, exactly who Don Quijote of La Mancha is!” The Duke and Duchess are ashamed of their prank –“they left feeling regretful about the harsh outcome of the prank”– and DQ needs five days in bed to recover. Cervantes then deftly cuts back to SP’s governorship.



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C hapter forty-six comically alluded to Neoplatonic love in DQ’s ballad to Altisidora. Chapter forty-seven alludes to Plato by opening with SP’s conflict with his court doctor, Pedro Recio de Agüero, who tries to control the governor’s diet. Given SP’s princely status, this medicinal theme is also Platonic. A well-ordered, harmonious republic is the goal of classical political

philosophy, and terms related medicine and health dominate books like Plato’s Republic. It’s easy to sympathize with SP, who simply wants to eat: “I’m starving to death, and to deny me food, even if it disagrees with Mister Doctor and he has more to say about it, is to take life from me rather than wish me a long one.” Recio is a medical version of the annoying ecclesiastic who confronted DQ at the ducal palace.

The conflict between SP and Recio is between gluttony and abstinence, echoing that between arrogance and humility. Symbols and puns suggest a lesson in political restraint. The doctor denies SP’s various dishes by tapping them with a “whalebone staff in his hand.” Derived from bristles in the mouths of baleen whales, I suspect this rod alludes to Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale because he refused to perform the Lord’s politics. Similarly, Recio objects strongly to a dish of partridges, which alludes to Juan Manuel’s political criticism of the Dean of Santiago in El Conde Lucanor. Finally, the term platonazo, or “big dish,” ironically hints at the importance of Plato’s notion that the ideal leader is humble.

Recio’s medical philosophy evinces “Occam’s razor,” a logical principle that states that all things being equal, simplicity should trump complexity: “simple medicines are preferred to compound ones, because with simple medicines there are mistakes one cannot make but which we can with compounds by confusing the quantities of the substances out of which they are composed.” In other words, all things being equal, a compound medicine risks being mixed wrong, resulting in poison. As the chapter progresses, Recio’s

The conflict between Sancho and Recio



concern for abstinence and simplicity seems to be the correct political lesson. SP’s explodes in a fit of tyrannical rage. SP, “burning with rage,” threatens to kill Recio: “I’ll take this chair I’m sitting in and I’ll smash it over your head.” This echoes DQ’s reference to the Cid’s violent reaction to the Pope in DQ 1.19. SP uses political language, recalling the Spanish custom of putting officials on trial at the end of their terms and justifying his violence as a Machiavellian matter of “reason of state”: “let them ask me about it during the review of my time in office, and I’ll justify my actions by saying that I did a service to God by killing a bad doctor who would have murdered the republic.”

Nevertheless, the episode reveals Cervantes’s “perspectivism,” his use of irony to question and problematize the reader’s acceptance of points of view that might appear rational at first. Right when SP has overstepped his power, behaving like a despot, a letter arrives from the Duke informing him that enemies plan to attack the island. A comical touch here is that SP cannot read the letter and has to ask: “Who here is my secretary?” When a Basque steps forward, SP says that “you could easily be secretary to the Emperor himself.” This “newborn secretary” now replaces Recio as an advisor who endorses the idea that during a crisis, such as war, rulers must act as despots. This, of course, is the age-old justification of imperialism. Now SP seems reasonably paranoid, and, ironically, he adopts the abstinence recommended by Recio. Moreover, like a Machiavellian prince, SP doubts the utility of religious orthodoxy, agreeing with his steward not to eat in order to avoid poison: “it was prepared by some nuns, and, as is often said, behind the cross lurks the devil.” SP sends the envoy back to the Duke, with regards to his master and an odd reminder to the Duchess not to forget to send his letter to Teresa.

“I’m starving to death, and to deny me food, even if it disagrees with Mister Doctor and he has more to say about it, is to take life from me rather than wish me a long one.”



J ustifications of absolutism in defense of the state have unintended consequences. When foreign policy concentrates power, we overlook domestic corruption. This is the lesson of the chapter’s conclusion. Just as SP starts worrying about spies and military attacks, a farmer arrives at court with a petition. A courtier claims the man is harmless: “he’s a harmless soul, and

either I know nothing or he’s as good as the bread of life.” The narrator confirms this –“from a thousand leagues away one could tell he was a good man with a good soul”–, and so does the man: “I’m married, tied the knot of peace before the Holy Roman Catholic Church.” But are narrators trustworthy in DQ? Is religious identity proof of moral rectitude? As if to confirm the unreliability of appearances, right after the man claims to be married, he notes that he is a widow. Moreover, his wife was killed by a bad doctor: “a bad doctor killed her.” Recall that doctors are metaphors for political advisors from Plato to Cervantes.

The farmer prefaces his petition with a tedious but hilarious description of his circumstances. His son is set to marry “a maiden named Clara Perlerina.” Proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; she’s bright in some ways, but horrific in others: “she’s like an Oriental pearl, and when looked at from the right side, she’s like a flower in the field; from the left, not so much because she lost her eye on that side when she got smallpox.” Her surname signals that she’s from a line of perláticos, or “sufferers of palsy,” that is, partial paralysis. It’s worse: she’s missing teeth, has multicolored lips, stoops such that her mouth touches her knees, and her hand is withered. She’s like a portrait by Picasso: “pardon me, Sir Governor, if I go into such detail when painting the parts of the woman who in the end is to be my daughter-in-law.” Recall DQ’s metaphor when declaring his eternal love for Dulcinea in the previous chapter. The girl makes an odd impression on the soul.

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“from a thousand leagues away one could tell he was a good man with a good soul”

Note how the farmer’s circumlocutions are a metaphor for how corruption works: appeals for help layered over with distractions. Once we feel sorry for Clara Perlerina, the farmer informs SP that his son is also a mess: “my son is possessed by the devil... and from having fallen into the fire once his face is as wrinkled as parchment and his eyes are a bit watery... but he has the constitution of an angel, and if it weren’t that he punches himself and beats himself up, he’d already be beatified.” His petition, then, is for SP to write a letter to convince Perlerina’s father to allow the marriage. Seems reasonable? Well, that’s not all: “One more request, if I may... although it shames me to say it... I say, sir, I would like your grace to give me three hundred or six hundred ducados to help with the dowry of my son the bachelor student.” SP is outraged, and again threatens to throw his chair at his interlocutor. Note how his reaction voices the logic of fiscal conservatism: “You son-of-a-bitch, scoundrel, painter of the very devil, you come at this hour to ask me for six hundred ducados? And just where would I have them, you stinking pest? And even if I did have them, why would I give them to you?... Tell me, you merciless bastard; I’ve not ruled for more than a day and a half, and you want me to already have six hundred ducados?” But a big irony arises. Since when does SP, who stole 100 escudos from Cardenio and dreamed of selling the citizens of Micomicón as slaves, care so much about the public treasury? The office makes the man, it would seem.

“my son is possessed by the devil... and from having fallen into the fire once his face is as wrinkled as parchment

and his eyes are a bit watery...”



Chapter 45 - 47 review

Chapter forty-five starts with ominous biblical “writing on the wall” and relates three cases involving citizens extracting the wealth of other citizens. Cervantes emphasizes odd measurements, a range of monetary units, and the mysterious qualities and locations of gold and silver. Regarding chapter forty-six, my monetary interpretation of the symbolism of felines cannot be the last word. Cervantes’s art cannot be reduced to a single meaning. For example, is there not something about the nature of women here? I once fell in love with a woman who told me: “I’m like a cat: I come around to see you, and then I go away for a while.” As another example, Mark Twain was a great student of Cervantes. One of the most famous episodes of Twain’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer involves a cat and the pain-killer that Aunt Polly prescribes for Tom to cure his love-sickness. Twain’s text suggests that there’s something about amorous melancholy and cruelty toward cats in the comedy of Cervantes’s novel. Finally, in the context of courtly medicine and princely diets, chapter forty-seven concludes by contemplating SP’s capacity for extreme anger –“Let’s leave Sancho with his rage.” Perhaps SP’s anger is justified when it comes to defending the state from external enemies and domestic graft. But I wonder what the Baratarians think.

Let’s review

Instructions:

Here, you will find an illustrationby Christopher Roelofs representingchapter 45 of the second part of DonQuijote de la Mancha by Miguel deCervantes.

Ask interesting questions, formulaterelevant comments, and, more thananything, respond to some of yourclassmates’ contributions:

Which characters appearin the image?

What is the symbolic significance of the shown elements, actions,and forms?

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Course activitiesPart IIChapters 45 - 47

Ilustration by Christopher Roelofs

UFM New Media productionUniversidad Francisco Marroquín

Project Management Stephanie FallaText Author Eric Clifford GrafCopy Editing Ainara Herrán Andrea M. Castelluccio Pedagogical Coordinator Lisa QuanIlustrations Gabriella Noriega Sergio Miranda Christopher RoelofsLayout Dagoberto GrajedaWebsite donquijote.ufm.edu/enDirection Calle Manuel F. Ayau (6ta Calle final), zona 10 Guatemala, Guatemala 01010Phone number (+502) 2338-7849

Guatemala, January 2017

This project has been possible thanks to a donationwe have received from John Templeton Foundation.

The opinions expressed by the author is his responsibility and donot necessarily reflect the John Templeton Foundation point ofview.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Copying, distribution and public communication is allowed,providing that the acknowledgement of the work is maintained and it is not used for business. If it is transformed or a secondary work is generated, it can only be distributed with an identical license.

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Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 45 - 47 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

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