Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"

Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"Author(s): LUCE LPEZ-BARALTSource: Islamic Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter 2006), pp. 579-593Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, IslamabadStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20839041 .Accessed: 14/05/2014 10:15

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Islamic Studies 45:4 (2006) pp. 579-593

Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in Don Quixote

LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT

Introduction

Scholars of the literature and culture of Spain have unavoidably been struck

by certain ironic phrases, almost invariably in English, ?ke "Spain is different." Another often-encountered phrase ?this time in French?is less

ambiguous and more to the point: "L'Afrique commence aux Pyr?n?es." This latter dictum pretends to make explicit what it is that "distinguishes" Spain from the rest of Europe, what it is that makes Spain so "different."

These statements are often spoken so as to sound pejorative, slightly contemptuous, in order to underscore the fact that the "Westernness" of

Spain, with its strong admixture of Semitic ingredients, is highly debatable. The problem of the "Westernness" (or relative "Easternness") of Spain, a

problem felt with singular passion and even anguish by Spaniards and non

Spaniards alike, has spawned one of the most critical controversies during the entire twentieth century in Spain. The history of this country

? an

"uncomfortable" history, as Francisco Marquez Villanueva has called it1 ? is

indeed different, for it follows a course inevitably distinct from that of the

history of the rest of Europe in the Middle Ages. It would be foolish not to

recognize the overwhelming changes wrought on emerging Spain by the Muslim invasion in 92/711 (which led to eight centuries of Ufe shared with the

Arabs) and by the secular presence of the brilliant Hebraic civilization on the Peninsula, which was to last until 879/1492, when the Spaniards expelled the

Jews from their ancient homeland. In that same year Granada was conquered and the New World discovered: a momentous year indeed for the Peninsula.

As a country, Spain (and it is Americo Castro whom we have to thank for calling our attention to this fact) was formed out of not only Western cultural elements but Semitic elements as well. Christians lived in relative

1 "Sobre la occidentalidad cultural de Espa?a" [On the Cultural Westernness of Spain"] in Relecciones de literatura medieval (Seville: University of Seville, 1977), 167-168.


580 LUCE L?PEZ-BARALT

tolerance side by side with Muslims and Jews throughout the Middle Ages, in

spite of the secular war of the so-called Reconquest. This complex and long drawn-out historical process must inevitably have produced a cultural "cross

contamination" or "hybridization" of the Western and Eastern elements on

the Peninsula. To assume that the Christian inhabitants of the Peninsula borrowed nothing from their extraordinarily refined and cultured Arab

neighbours is to brand them as void of all intellectual curiosity, which seems to us highly improbable. It is essential that one keep this in mind when trying to understand the unexpected fecundity of a literature

? especially in its

medieval and renaissance incarnations ? in so many ways mysterious and

original in comparison to the contemporary literature of Europe. Thus the

phrase "Spain is different" is quite true, and perfectly acceptable ? so long as it

is understood in a positive, laudatory sense.

Ever since its complex cultural beginnings, Spanish literature has clearly manifested its mixed breeding. Consider the irony that the earliest Spanish poetry takes the shape of bilingual lines appearing in refined poems in Arabic and in Hebrew. These Mozarabic kharjat were transcribed in Arabic or

Hebrew characters, lacking vowels, and its reconstruction has been quite thorny for both Eastern and Western literary critics. Its very existence is ironic, for no Spanish scholar can read or "decipher" them unless he can read

Arabic or Hebrew as well. Few critics deny, on the other hand, the Oriental elements in Libro de buen amor, of Juan Ruiz (d. ca. 1350 ce) whose aesthetic

ideal of femininity is thoroughly Arab. Small wonder, since the author rhymes in perfect dialectal Arabic the last stanza of one of his high-spirited Spanish poems. Mystical literature is no exception. Miguel As?n Palacios (d. 1944) has

convincingly shown the complex relation between Spanish and Muslim

mysticism in his numerous comparative studies of Hispano-Arabic literature.

Following in his footsteps, I have been able to document more than thirty of these shared mystical symbols, like St. John of the Cross' symbolic nightingale and wine of ecstasy and Therese of Avila's seven castles of the soul.

Cervantes and His Don Quixote

In many ways Miguel de Cervantes (d. 1616), Spain's foremost writer and the creator of Europe's modern novel, sums up the cultural ambiguity of this

deeply complex "European" literature. As a soldier, he fought the Muslims in

Lepanto and afterwards was made a captive in Algiers for five years. The two volumes of Don Quixote were written between 1605 and 1615, encompassing the highly significative date of 1609, when the last Muslims of Spain were


ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON SPANISH LITERATURE: BENENGELPS PEN IN DON QUIXOTE 581

massively deported to exile.2 Ironically enough, Cervantes pretends that the real "author" of his famous novel is none other than Cide Hamete Benengeli, a

mysterious Moorish chronicler who is of course a fictitious historian. The fact that Cervantes chose a Muslim as his literary alter-ego is of course quite

meaningful and even ironic in Renaissance Spain, with the Inquisition in full force.

Cervantes is quite knowledgeable about Islamic Ufe and customs, and insists on describing the peculiar diet of Don Quixote, who deplored eating pork Uke a converso or recent convert to Christianity. His beloved Dulcinea del Toboso, who gaily (or rather desperately) exhibits her expertise in salting pork, is just pretending to be an old Christian. The author knows well that El Toboso was a small town made up of mainly converted Moors, and thus Dulcinea's name is associated with "unclean blood" and with a secret Moorish

origin. Many of these literary elements have been dealt with by critics like Americo Castro (d. 1972), Francisco M?rquez Villanueva, Michel Moner, Emilio Sola, Santiago L?pez Navia, Mar?a Antonia Garc?s, L.P. Havery and Maria Rosa Menocal, to name just a few. I would now like to contribute to this ever-growing bibUography with the study of a neglected symbol? Cide

Hamete Benengeli's pen ?which wiU yield important Uterary secrets when

approached from an Islamic point of view.

Benengeli's Pen

Miguel de Cervantes closes the inverted chivalric saga of Don Quijote de la Mancha by giving the final word to Cide Hamete BenengeU's pen, a pen that is instructed to speak autonomously, without a hand to guide it, while hanging by a wire from an ordinary kitchen rack. Cervantes' alter ego, the Islamic "historian" Cide Hamete, left it there at the very end of the novel, which is, according to Cervantes' literary trick, Cide's very own chronicle. A dazzling entelechy without doubt worthy of a wise conjurer, this final scene is so

incongruent that it would appear to be an unintentional trick.3 But Cervantes himself advises us in the Viaje del Parnaso \Journey to Parnassus] (1614) that

2 The work has been edited and translated several times ever since its part I was published in 1905. The very first English translation of its part I by Thomas Shelton, a contemporary of

Miguel de Carvantes, around 1608, was first published in 1612. In the beginning of 20th century it was reprinted as: Miguel de Carvantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, Part I, translated by Thomas Shelton, vol. XIV, The Harvard Classics (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909-14). This version is available at: . A complete English translation by John

Ormsby (d. 1895), Don Quixote (London: 1885), is available at: ; < http://www. donquixote.com/enghsh.html >. 3 Little has been written about this hanging pen. See Joaqu?n Casalduero's brief treatment in his

study, Sentido y forma del Quijote (Madrid: Insula, 1975), 400-401.



"extravagances" born of his "narrow wit" have secret resonances, that is, hidden meanings:

Nunca ? disparidad abre las puertas Mi corto ingenio, y h?llalas contino De par en par la consonancia abiertas.

?C?mo puede agradar un desatino Si no es que de prop?sito se hace,

Mostr?ndole el donaire su camino?

[My narrow wit hath ne'er its gates unbound To things incongruous, but welcomes these Which keep within the range of reason's bound.

How can Extravaganza hope to please, Unless it hath some aim and purpose to meet, Where humour leads the way with sprighdy ease?]4

Taking Cervantes at his word, Francisco M?rquez Villanueva, who has solved so many of the hidden mysteries of the Quixote, insists that the author "ansia ser entendido y guarda sus tesoros para el lector culto y avisado"

["yearns to be understood and keeps his treasures for the educated and

sagacious reader"].5 The scene of the pen suspended in the air and born

exclusively for the "enrerprise" {empresa) of writing the anachronistic knight errant's story constitutes one of those hidden treasures replete with secret codes.

If we read the scene from the cultural coordinates of Islam?those with which Cervantes could have familiarized himself in his years of captivity in

Algiers as well as in Spain ?the prodigious pen that prepared the Quixote bears a close relationship to aal-qalam" [the Pen] of the Qur'?n (68: 1). Cide's pen, necessarily Arabic given the lineage of its owner, extols the fact that the novel was born "para mi sola" [for me alone] and that the enterprise of its

writing was apara m? estaba guardado" [reserved for me alone] (2: 592-93; 940).6 In this way, Cervantes pays homage to the work's Islamic context, for this

4 Cervantes, Journey to Parnassus, ed. and trans. James Y. Gibson (London: 1883), 178-79, cited

hereafter in the text parenthetically. 5 Francisco M?rquez Villanueva, Personajes y temas del Quijote (Madrid: Taurus, 1975), 147-48, McCabe's translation. 6 The word for pen used in the Spanish original is the feminine pluma, and the word for alone, sola, necessarily agrees with piuma in gender. Quotations of Cervantes* Quixote are from El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andres Murillo, 3 vols. (Madrid: Castalia, 1978), cited parenthetically in the text by volume and page numbers; trans. J. M. Cohen, The

Adventures of Don Quixote (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1950), cited parenthetically in the text.


ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON SPANISH LITERATURE: BENENGEU'S PEN IN DON QUIXOTE 583

primordial Arabic pen, associated with the sacred writing of God the Creator and His Supreme Intellect, inscribes the inexorable destiny of human beings on the "Well-Preserved Tablet" (al-lawh al-mahfiiz), also of Qur'anic origin (85: 21-22). Looked at from this angle, the final scene of the Quixote no longer seems absurd but begins to yield up its secret ironies.

Let us recall, at the end of the Quixote, the "most prudent" Cide's

apostrophe to his writing instrument:

Aqu? quedar?s, colgada de esta espetera y de este hilo de alambre, ni s? si bien cortada o mal tajada p??ola m?a, adonde vivir?s luengos siglos, si presuntuosos y

malandrines historiadores no te descuelgan para profanarte. Pero antes que a ti

lleguen, les puedes advertir, y decides en el mejor modo que pudieres:

"iTate, tate, folloncicos! De ninguno sea tocada;

porque esta empresa, buen rey, para m? estaba guardada.* (2: 592)

[Here you shall rest, hanging from this rack by this copper wire, my goose-quill. Whether you are well or ill cut I know not, but you shall live long ages there, unless presumptuous and rascal historians take you down to profane you. But before they approach you, warn them as best you are able:

"Beware, beware, you scoundrels, I may be touched by none:

This is a deed, my worthy king, Reserved for me alone."] (939)

The pen brags that:

Para mi sola naci? don Quijote, y yo para ?l; ?l supo obrar y yo escribir; solos los dos somos para en uno, a despecho y pesar de! escritor fingido y tordesillesco que se atrevi?, o se ha de atrever, a escribir con pluma de avestruz grosera y mal deli?ada las haza?as de mi valeroso caballero, porque no es carga de sus hombros ni asunto de su resfriado ingenio. (2: 592-93)

[For me alone Don Quixote was borri and I for him. His was the power of

action, mine of writing. Only we two are at one, despite that fictitious and Tordesillescan scribe who has dared, and may dare again, to pen the deeds of my valorious knight with his coarse and ill-trimmed ostrich feather. This is no

weight for his shoulders, no task for his frozen intellect.] (940)

Cide's pen thus celebrates that the work was born itself alone and that the



"enterprise" (empresa) ? or "imprint" (impresa)

? as is curiously said in various editions? of its writing was likewise carefully "reserved" for it only.7 The text is to remain sealed forever in such a way that no one can "sacrilegiously" resuscitate its characters and thus violate a destiny cloistered by death:

... a quien advertir?s, si acaso llegas a conocerle, que deje reposar en la sepultura los cansados y ya podridos huesos de don Quijote, y no le quiera llevar, contra

todos los fueros de la muerte, a Castilla la Vieja; haci?ndole salir de la fuesa donde real y verdaderamente yace tendido de largo a largo, imposibilitado de hacer tercera jornada y salida nueva. (2: 593)

[. . . and should you chance to make his acquaintance, you may tell him to leave Don Quixote's weary and mouldering bones to rest in the grave, nor seek,

against all the canons of death, to carry him off to Old Castile, or to bring him out of the tomb, where he most certainly lies, stretched at full length and

powerless to make a third journey, or to embark upon any new expedition.](940)

The Primordial Pen and the Unalterable Destiny What the pen has written is thus final, since to continue the work now is to

challenge a destiny frozen forever. We already know that Cervantes here is

attacking the slanderous Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, who has dared to cast his spurious sequel of the Quixote into the world, the second book of Don

Quixote's adventures published before Cervantes' own Part . The coarse and

ill-trimmed pen of the Tordesillescan author is incapable of competing with the all-powerful Arabic pen of Cide Hamete.

And with good reason. The pen that hangs in the air while it brags of its sealed writing, as mentioned before, yields its best secrets when we take into account its Islamic lineage. Annemarie Schimmel emphasizes the symbolic meaning of the Islamic primordial pen:

A central theme of Koranic mythology is the concept of the Uwh al-mahfuz the Weil-Preserved Tablet, on which the destinies of men have been engraved since the beginning of time. ... the primordial pen has become a standard expression in Islamic poetry in general and in Sufism in particular, for everything that

happens is written with this instrument and cannot be changed.8 Arabs express this inexorability of destiny as it is inscribed by the Pen on

7 For further commentary on the variant editions giving empresa, see Martin de Riquer's annotated edition, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Kapeluz, 1973), 2: 555. 8 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 414.


ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON SPANISH LITERATURE: BENENGELI'S PEN IN DON QUIXOTE 585

the Well-Preserved Tablet using the well-known phrase makt?by which means "it is written."9 The Arabic root "k-t-b" or "kataba" associates the meaning "to

write" with "to destine," so that an Arab ? and we recall that Cide Hamete is

one ?cannot think of writing or of a pen without associating the latter with the establishment of an unalterable destiny.10 "As it is written, so shall it come to pass"

? "estaba escrito que iba a pasar" ?we Spanish-speaking inheritors of this venerable Islamic tradition still say. The wise historian Cide would thus seem to warn Avellaneda with an ominous makt?b: the story of Don Quixote has remained written and no one should desecrate the bones of his tomb, rewriting them against "all the canons of death" (940).

So common is the Muslim leitmotiv of this pen of destiny that I have documented it on more than one occasion in the clandestinely written codices of the Spanish Moriscos, who wrote in aljamiado (Spanish but using the Arabic script).11 Cervantes knew the Moriscos at first hand, for he portrays one of them frequenting the Alcana (or souk) of Toledo ready to translate old Arabic manuscripts. (One of those manuscripts, by the way, contained the

very adventures of Don Quixote). In MS 4955 of the Biblioteca Nacional de

Madrid, a gigantic pen of light writes its inexorable message upon the heavens

9 Commenting on the Surah "The Cow" (S?rah al-Baqarah), the eleventh-century Shi'ite commentator Ab? 'All al-Fadl b. al-Hasan al-Tabarasi (d. 548/1153) states that some commentators interpret the word kutiba ("it has been written" or "ordered") to mean "it has been inscribed on the Weil-Preserved Tablet (al-Lawh al-Mahfuz) which is the Mother of the Book." M. Ayoub, The Qur'?n and Its Interpreters (Albany: State University of New York Press,

1984), 1:186. 10 See J. M. Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary (New York: Spoken Languages Services, 1976), 812. The pen in Islamic culture is associated with this unavoidable destiny such that it is used as a symbol in religious and civil ceremonies establishing permanent contracts between individuals: "The materials required for the making of the pen were popularly endowed with symbols. To seal a marriage, a pen of red copper was to be used, with the writing on wax, nor on paper. To celebrate a friendship, a pen made of silver or from a stork's beak was employed." Abdelkebir Khatibi and Muhammed Sijelmassi, The Splendour of Islamic Calligraphy (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1966), 75. 11 The Moriscos were the Muslim converts to Christianity who remained in Spain after the 1492

Reconquest of Granada. The adjective Aljamiado derives from aljam?a (al-'ajamiyyah "foreign"), the word the Moors used to mean "Castilian," and which can also refer to Morisco Spanish writings penned in Arabic characters. The codices of the Aljamiado Moriscos I refer to are of this sort. References in Aljamiado manuscripts to the concept of the Pen of Destiny that writes without ink and with no hand guiding it appear in many places, including the legend of "Kit?b al-Anw?r" (Book of Lights) of Abu 1-Hasan al-Bakri. For a critical edition of this work, see

Mar?a Luisa Lugo, "Hacia la edici?n cr?tica del Libro de las luces-, leyenda aljamiada sobre la

genealog?a de Mahoma" (under publication in SIAL Editores of Madrid). References to the Pen of Destiny also appear in the following manuscripts: Madrid, Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid, MS T-17, fol. 5r-v; and MS T-18, fol. 23r; Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional,

MS 4955; and Madrid, Biblioteca de Palacio, MS 325.



without the guidance of a hand. It is a magic Saracen pen, obviously related to Cide Hamete's autonomous pen.12

The writing of this Primordial Pen is implacable because, symbolically, the ink with which it writes on the Well-Preserved Tablet has dried. A had?th of the Prophet Muhammad says that "the pen has already dried" [qad jaffa V

qalam].13 William Chittick explores the meaning of this well-known had?th:

"Thepen has dried concerning what shall be." The Pen, identified by the Prophet (peace be on him) himself with the Intellect through which creation takes place, has already inscribed everything that will happen from the beginning of creation to its end.14 It is precisely because of this that no one should take up the supreme pen again to "rewrite" that which the Supreme God has already inscribed with an ink that has already evaporated. This may help to explain

why Cide's pen of destiny hangs in the air on a kitchen rack. Similar racks were used to dry hams, beef, and fruit in the kitchens of the past.15 By having

12 Cf. Mar?a Luisa Lugo, see . 10 above. For her part, Lilliana Ramos Collado recalls that the marvellous pen

? this time of the Roj bird ? also appears in Mil y una noches, at least as R.

Cansinos Ass?ns indicates in the translation of Richard Burton. Burton also makes reference ?

and here I am also citing Ramos Collado ? to two other travellers with miraculous pens: Marco

Polo (see The Travels of Marco Polo [New York: Orion Press, 1958]) and Friar Cipolla, a character in Boccaccio's Decameron (VI: 10) who exhibits a pen of the angel Gabriel, obtained during his voyages to the Near East. These pens, of clear Muslim lineage, are a fantastic

reinterpretation of the Islamic symbol which in the Qur'?n is not associated with any living creature but rather with the writing of God. See Lilliana Ramos Collado, "Proyectos infames: Breve genealog?a borgeana de un ensayo de Foucault," N?mada, 2 (1995), 76-77. Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo has also echoed the Supreme Pen, with which, he suggests, he writes his moving, otherworldly narrative La cuarentena. See my essay on this novel, Luce L?pez-Baralt, "Narrar

despu?s de morir: La cuarentena de Juan Goyrisolo," Nueva Revista de Filolog?a Hisp?nica, 43 (1995), 59-124. 13 "The pen has already dried up, which means that nothing once decreed and written on the

Well-Preserved Tablet can ever be changed," cited in Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 197. 14 William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The SpiHtual Teachings of Rumi (Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1993), 113. Like Schimmel, Chittick emphasizes, however, the fact that many Muslims loosely interpret the ominous writing of this Pen of Destiny. "But an unbiased look at many periods of Islamic history shows no signs whatsoever of a fatalistic' streak in the Moslem peoples." Ibid. Thus, the famous poet Rumi argues: "The true

interpretation of The Pen has dried' is that you should perform the most important task. The pen has written: keeping with every work there is a consequence and a retribution.' If you walk crookedly, The Pen has dried:' you will receive crookedness. If you bring straightness, you will reap felicity." Ibid., 117. 15 Here we may be faced with another of Cervantes' ironic jokes: his Islamic pen is associated with no less than the threatening Old-Christian ham, which no convert writer would want to take down from its rack to appropriate. All of this evokes Quevedo's well-known verses that would seem to contextualize the joke: "te untare mis versos con tocino, Gongorilla, para que no me los muerdas" [I will grease my verses with pork fat, Gorgorilla, so that you won't eat them].



the fictitious author Cide hang up his pen, Cervantes could be indicating to his

enemy Avellaneda that he will not be able, against the author's will, to resuscitate Don Quixote de la Mancha, because the prodigious ink with which he was written has already dried forever.16

Cide also admits with humility that the pen with which he has written the Quixote might be either "well or ill cut" (939). Given the Arabic literary coordinates from which we are approaching the scene, this cryptic commentary ceases to seem fortuitous. The Sufi poets complained, as

Schimmel reminds us, "in hundreds of variations, that the writing of their

destiny was crooked, because the Pen was cut the wrong way."17 And, for all that Cide's pen might be "ill-trimmed," he boasts that the "ostrich pen" of his

literary enemy Avellaneda is cut even more crudely. In order to show that the invective against Avellaneda has significance not

only in a popular Islamic context, but also in a more learned theological one, it is important to examine the Qur'?nic version of this Primordial Pen that traces its celestial calligraphy on the Well-Preserved Tablet. If Cervantes had the curiosity to investigate more closely the popularized leitmotiv of the Creator-Pen, then perhaps any acquaintance of his in Algiers would have been able to explain to him what the Holy Book of Revelation of the Muslims had to say on the subject.18 It is hard to know the range of Cervantes' information on this matter, but it remains unsettling that the Qur'?n should constitute one of the most useful contexts for understanding Cide Hamete's apostrophe to his Creator-Pen.

Surah al-Qalam The s?rah (a section or chapter of the Qur'?n) of the Qalam, or "Pen," begins

Sonnet 829, Poes?a original completa, ed. Jose Manuel Blecua (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1990), 1094. 16 Cervantes evidently is making a play on Quixote's place of origin, La Mancha, which literally

means "the stain." Thus, Don Quixote is born from a "stain of ink:" that is to say, from the pen of his author. 17 Schimmel, Mystical Dimmensions of Islam, 414. 18 James Fitzmaurice-Kelly and Emilio Sola have emphasized Cervantes' relative mobility in

Algiers. On his daily walks through the Medina, Cervantes could have familiarized himself with

expert Arabic raconteurs: "While his captors found their pleasure in watching two tatooed Moors oiled from head to foot wrestle amid the clash of cymbals and of drum, he may have stolen down to the market-place with his brother Rodrigo, and with Luis de Pedrosa?a native of Osuna, whose father had been a friend of Cervantes' grandfather, the old-time Corregidor of Osuna ?to hear the r?w?, Arab trouv?re" I. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, The Life of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Biographical, Literary, and HistoHcal Study (London: 1892), 50-51. Also see Emilio Sola and Jos? F. de la Pe?a, Cervantes y la Berber?a (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura

Economica, 1995).



with an enigmatic address: "N?n. By the Pen and what they inscribe; thou art not, by the blessing of your Lord, a man possessed" (68: l).19 The s?rah of this Pen of Destiny serves the Prophet Muhammad [peace be on him] as solace, because already the nay-sayers have thought him mad for echoing the divine discourse. In spurious writings that offend the indisputable truth, the disbeliever "cries lies to this discourse" of the all-encompassing GocJ [written by the Pen] (68: 44). The Divine Word harshly admonishes this symbolic traitor, calling him, "mean swearer, backbiter, going about with slander, hinderer of good, guilty aggressor, coarse-grained, moreover ignoble" (68: 10

13). It is as if we are listening to Cervantes launch his invective against the

arrogant imposter, Avellaneda, who publishes his "ignoble disloyal" writing as a legitimate continuation of Cide Hamete Benengeli's "true story." The obsessive refrain "true story" acquires new shades of meaning against the

Qur'?nic context of the pen, al-Qalam, and its "authentic" writing. It thus becomes apparent that thanks to this one mention of a pen hanging in the air, anyone familiar with the Qur'?n would know that Cide is obliquely alluding to a Supreme Pen whose writing disloyal defamer intends to violate, even

though it is sealed for all eternity because its ink has already evaporated. The Qur'?nic s?rah continues with the parable of the garden. Here the

garden symbolically represents, and the Qur'?n is clear about this, the writing or Divine creation that the ignoble ones have wanted to desecrate: "So leave Me with him who cries lies to this discourse!" (68: 44). The unbelievers have a secret plan to deprive the just man of his rights, and they furtively enter the

symbolic garden at night in order to loot it. But when they arrive in the orchard they discover that God has ruined it, thus impeding the offence that the infidels had planned to carry out. Similarly, Cervantes finds himself having to precipitate the destruction of his character, Don Quixote, accelerating his

death in order to prevent the further misappropriation of his text, already once violated by Avellaneda.20 These unbelievers, S?rah al-Qalam once again emphasizes, have declared the Prophet possessed, for transmitting the sacred

writing. But the words of Muhammad are not disconnected; and as the Qur'?n assures us, they are not the product of an unleashed madness, but rather a true

message directed to humankind (68: 52). The Pen's admonition with which

19 This and all translarions into English from the Qur'?n are from Arthur J. Arberry, tr. The Koran Interpreted (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), cited by surah and verse number, 20 On the almost pityless hurriedness with which Cervantes recounts the death of Alonso

Quijano, Jorge Luis Borges comments, "Cervantes . . . deja que ?ste se vaya de la vida de una manera lateral y casual, al fin de una frase. Cervantes nos de con indiferencia la tremenda noticia" [Cervantes . . . allows this character to lose his life in a peripheral and casual manner at the end of a sentence. Cervantes treats the vital news with indifference]. "An?lisis del ?ltimo

cap?tulo del Quijote," RUBA 2 [1956]: 36, McCabe's translation.



this s?rah opens is a clear challenge to every possible attack on the authentic, revealed text ?an inviolable garden ?written by the Supreme Pen.21 It is

tempting to think that the speech of the Arabic historian to his pen in the

Quixote is likewise far from any comic or sterile insanity. His delirium, as we are beginning to see, is only one of appearance. In fact, it transmits lucid

literary secrets for the prudent reader who cares to unravel them with patience and good faith

? and with any reasonable amount of the Islamic language and culture that he or she might possess.

On the other hand, Cide's speaking pen boasts that the writing of the text had been destined "for her alone" [para mi sola]. The Supreme Pen and the Well-Preserved Tablet constitute in Islam an inviolable "spiritual marriage." This Well-Preserved Tablet or allawh al-mahf?z of the Qur'an (85: 21-22) has been reserved since eternity for this Celestial Pen

? exactly as the enterprise or

imprint of Cide's pen was reserved solely for its creation.22

The Celestial Pen and the Weil-Preserved Tablet

The Celestial Pen and the Tablet, inseparably wedded to one another in Islamic cosmology, are, as Laleh Bakhtiar reminds us, similar to another

primordial pair, Adam and Eve, created by God.23 Muhy? -D?n Muhammad b. 'Ali Ibn 'Arab! (d. 638/1240) of Murcia argues in his al-Fut?h?t alMakkiyyah or Meccan Revelations (1: 139.4) that the Pen is active in relation to the Well

?

Preserved Tablet, but that it is receptive in relation to God, for whom it serves as a creative instrument. Thus, in the same way that the Pen can be considered

21 See Abdullah Yusuf Ali's commentary on the first verse of the surah al-Qalam (the "Pen'*) in The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation, and Commentary (N.p.: McGregor and Werner, 1946), 1585. 22 It is worth returning here to the alternative version of the word empresa ("enterprise") found in some editions of the Quixote, such as the Kapeluz edition annotated by Martin de Riquer,

which uses impresa ("imprint") instead of empresa. It is hard to know if this is a misprint or a conscious manipulation of the word on the part of Cervantes. Having said that, however, it

makes sense that impresa is meant here, that it was a "writing" or a "printed work," and not just the empresa or "enterprise" of its writing, that had been jealously reserved for Cide Hamete's

unequalled pen. Perhaps Cervantes was playing two meanings of empresa off each other: the idea of an enterprise or arduous action valiantly undertaken, reserved for Cide's pen, and the idea of an "emblem" or enigmatic image denoting some quality, often accompanied with a letter or motto that renders its meaning more intelligible. See the discussion of this editorial and

interpretative question in Helen Percas de Ponseti, Cervantes the Writer and Painter of "Don

Quijote" (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988), 62-64. 23 Laleh Bakhtiar, Sufi Expressions of the Mythic Quest (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 28. Sachiko Murata has commented, "Just as the human world needed an Adam and Eve, so also the cosmos as a whole needed a spiritual Adam and a spiritual Eve

? Pen and Tablet ? to bring the

heavens, earth, and everything between the two into existence." Idem, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relations in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York

Press, 1992), 154.



a passive "Tablet" in relation to God?a yin principle ? the Weil-Preserved

Tablet can be considered a "Pen" ?a yang principie?in relation to the created world that lies below it.24 Curiously, Cervantes echoes this same

duality when referring to his instrument of scribal creation. At times it is masculine or phallic ?a sharp sword in the Viaje del Parnaso

? at other times feminine and maternal ?as when the author boasts of his Novelas Ejemplares {Exemplary Novels) that "mi ingenio las engendr? y las pari? mi pluma" [my intellect conceived them and my pen gave birth to them].25

Perhaps this dual nature of the Qur'?nic and Cervantine supreme pens can help us further clarify the enigma of Cide's pen that hangs, without

apparent reason, from a wire tied to a rack. We already know that Cide could have put the ink of his supreme pen out to dry. But, at the same time and with his habitual irony, Cervantes could also be alluding to another thematic motif in Islam: that the Primordial Pen of God serves as an intermediary between the Supreme Creator and his "written" creation, because it is "tied to," or because it "ties together," both cosmologica! poles. The Supreme Pen, as has been pointed out, simultaneously looks to God and to the created cosmos that lies below it. The face turned toward God the creator is receptive, while the face turned toward the lower levels of creation ?the world that rises from the celestial calligraphy?is active. The pen, as Murata explains, is an isthmus, a

bridge or a connecting thread between two poles.26 Perhaps the wise historian Cide, upon hanging his prodigious pen from a wire, is indicating to us with a

complicit smile that his bird's feather (the quill pen) is the symbolic intermediary between the Creator-Intellect, the author Cervantes, and his

written creation, the story of Don Quijote de la Mancha.27 It is true that the

24 See Bakhtiar, Sufi Expressions, 163. "The Well-Preserved Tablet ? and I am still quoting Ibn *

Arabi ?is green because it has a dual relationship to the created world. It has a luminous

relationship when we consider that it looks toward the Supreme Intellect, and an obscure

relationship when we consider that it is also turned toward the dust and the ocean of the created world. The Tablet is green because of this delicate and prodigious mix." Murata* Tao of Islam, as cited in Bakhtiar, Sufi Expressions, 163. In Islam it is easy to assume that the Well-Preserved Tablet or the Tabula Smaragdina (The Emerald Tablet), as it has been called by Henry Corbin, is symbolically made of emerald. This is how it is described in innumerable legends that the

Morisco Aljamiado texts of the sixteenth century still echo. See H. Corbin, L'Homme de lumiere dans le soufisme iranien: Le soldi dans le coeur (Paris: ?ditions Presence, 1971); and Luce L?pez Baralt, "La visio smaragdina de san Juan de la Cruz: acerca de las esmeraldas trascendidas que encontr? en el interior de su alma iluminada* in Martha Elena Venier, ed. Literatura de la Edad

Media al siglo XVIII, Varia Ling??stica y Literaria: 50 a?os del CELL (Mexico: Colegio de Mexico, 1997), 2: 131-47. 25

Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, ed. Julio Rodriguez-Luis (Madrid: Taurus, 1983), 1:91. (the emphasis is mine). 26 Murata, The Tao of Islam, 165. 27 In Arabic, 'aqala, the root of the term for Intellect ('aql), is also the root for "tether" (Hq?lj, a



wire of Cide's pen, that ties the writing of the "true story" to the privileged intellect of its original owner, shines with a spark more modest than that of the ray of light associated with the Supreme Pen of Arabic and aljamiado legends. But then again, the brass or tin of the barber's basin gleamed more

humbly than the gold of Mambrino's actual helmet. Cide could also be obliquely suggesting that his writing is duly "tied" to

the powerful wit of its author, who knows how to control it perfectly, just as Maese Pedro controls his marionettes in the second part of the novel, and that the verbal delirium of the Arabic historian therefore is only apparent. With his enigmatic scriptio ligata, Cervantes offers an Islamic version of the myth of Theseus's cord. Ariadne's thread, now of wire, is not completely Western. For it ironically evokes the brilliance of the symbolic cord of light that sustains the

mediating pen between the invisible Supreme Intellect and the fictional world that this Intellect has begotten. Cervantes uses a pen that is more Islamic than

Western, and Aristotle (d. 322 Be), Saint Basil (d. 379 ce), and Cicero (d. 43 BC) could hardly have echoed the prodigious writing of an Arabic historian.28

Let us call attention to one last curious coincidence. In Islam, the

Supreme Pen, the ink with which it writes, and the Weil-Preserved Tablet are all identified with an angel. Or, as the sixth Shrite imam (leader) Ja'far al-S?diq (d. 148/765) reminds us, a procession of angels who, as delegates of the

Supreme Maker, carry out the creative work of God in a scale that gradually descends to the material level.29

The Arabic Name of Benengeli These angels, who under God's command are involved in the Writing, lead us to consider the Arabic name of Cide Hamete Benengeli, which is articulated in a particularly suggestive manner in the context of the Islamic scriptural cosmology that we have been exploring. The name of the presumed "Arabic" author of the Quixote, as it is known, has given rise to numerous decodings on the part of critics,30 Without discarding any of them, it seems most relevant to

rope or cord used to tie a horse. On the symbolism of rope in Cervantes, something that merits further study, see Helena Percas de Ponseri, Cervantes y su concepto del arte: Estudio cr?tico de

algunos aspectos y episodios del "Quijote, " 2 vols. (Madrid: Gredos, 1975), 2: 487ff.

281 am, of course, alluding here to the prologue to the first part of the Quixote in which Cervantes assures us that these classical authors of the West did not comment at all on chivalric novels because they did not know of them. 29 Murara, The Tao of Islam, 154. 30 See, for instance, the annotated editions of the Quixote of Diego Clemencin (Madrid: 1833),

vol. 1; and F. Rodr?guez Mar?n (Madrid: Arias, 1947); as well as Leopoldo Eguflaz y Yanguas's essay, "Notas etimol?gicas a El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote" in Homenaje a Men?dez y Pelayo (Madrid: 1899), 121-42.



note here the recent hypothesis put forth by Julio Baena. Baena emphasizes the phonetic rule that Cervantes frequently uses in his invention of names: "Para Sancho, Benengeli no significa, sino que suena, a 'berenjena'" [For

Sancho, Benengeli does not mean "berenjena" (or eggplant); instead, it sounds like "berenjena"]. And Baena concludes that to one who focuses on sound over

meaning, "Ben-Engeli suena a Hijo de Angel, por m?s que etimol?gicamente no lo signifique" [Ben-Engeli sounds like Hijo de Angel ("angel's son"), although that is not its etymological meaning.] Because of this, Baena associates the

symbolic Arab hijo de ?ngel with a demiurge or charmer "capaz de traspasar las

paredes y hasta las mentes para escudri?ar los pensamientos" [capable of

passing through the walls and into minds in order to scrutinize their

thoughts].31 The word berenjena, of distant Sanskrit and Persian origin, appears in

Arabic as b?danj?n or b?dinj?n, but its variant in the dialects of Algeria, Morocco, and Muslim Spain is b?dinj?l so that it is pronounced almost like

b?dinjel}1 B?dinj?l?, with the final i of the Arabic genitive case, would thus mean "relative to," "of," or "coming from" the berenjena ("eggplant") or, in

other words, that it has been aberenjenado ("aubergenized"). It is likely that Cervantes heard these various phonetic versions on his walks through Algiers' squares or even among the Spanish Moriscos he seemed to know so well, since

what echoes in his ear and permits the immediate association of Cide with

berenjena is the word b?dinj?l? of the Hispano-Maghrebi dialects, rather than the classical Arabic word. Cide has, in effect, a name that could phonetically be associated in Spanish ?as Julio Baena asserts?with Ben-Engeli or hijo del

angel ("angel's son"). Cide Hamete is thus, for powerful phonetic reasons, b?dinj?l-?, that is, "of the angel/eggplant lineage." Is Cervantes insinuating that his Cide Hamete Ben-Engeli or B?dinj?l? is an intermediary Pen-Angel suspended by an ordinary but resplendent wire between the Supreme Maker

?

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ?and the story of Don Quijote de la Mancha? Whatever the case may be, it is important to recall that Cervantes also had an

angel's name ?or better said, that of an archangel, Michael ?and this left him

inexorably related to his Muslim alterego. I intentionally associate here the name of Cervantes Tyith the supreme

Creator, since he would seem to have the last word in this plentiful work in which he so frequently disputes with Cide Hamete the authorship of the text.

31 Julio Baena, "Modos del hacedor de nombres cervantino: el significado de Cide Hamere

Benengeli," Indiana Journal of Hispanic Studies, 2 (1994), 55, 58. 32 Dubler explains this in passing, without associating at any moment this Algerian or Hispano Maghrebi variance with Don Quixote. C?sar Dubler, "Sobre la berenjena," Al-Andalus, 7 (1942), 378.



We are, ironically, faced with a work created, like that of the God of Islamic

cosmology, by different interventions or intermediary "angels" in the genesis of the verbal universe. But we should not therefore get lost in the intricate maze of this vertiginous text. Cide's celestial pen is strongly tied by its wire to an invisible ? but supreme ?creative hand. This hand, of supreme intellect was, all the time, that of Miguel de Cervantes. I emphasize this because the

hanging pen that converses in the first person and feminine gender ? " para mi

sola naci? don Quijote" [for me alone Don Quixote was born] ?

slips, without

warning, into a masculine authorial voice: "Yo quedar? satisfecho y ufano de haber sido el primero que goz? el fruto de sus escritos enteramente, como deseaba" [I shall be proud and satisfied to have been the first author to enjoy the pleasure of witnessing the full effect of his own writing] (2: 593; 940).

The final speech with which the work closes allows us to identify this authorial voice with Cervantes. Cide never spoke of condemning the memory of books of chivalry; engaging in literary critism of a European genre surely foreign to him would have been of little interest to a Muslim historian. To Cervantes, however, it would have indeed mattered, for he had already announced in the prologue to the first part of the Quixote his dismantling critical project: "todo ?l es una invectiva contra los libros de caballer?as" [the whole of it is an invective against books of chivalry] (1: 57; 29). The fictionalized writer of the prologue now repeats this invective so that we

recognize that it is Cervantes himself who has decided to take the last word of the text and "tie" it securely to his most personal creative talent. It is he as

supreme maker who rises to the top of the creational hierarchy of his writing, above the Arab historian Cide and all of the passages in which he disputes Cide's authorship of the text, above the symbolic angels who carry the work of God to the material level, above the secretly held "enterprise" of "imprint," above the pen of destiny that hangs with its sacred ink put out to dry so that no one dare desecrate the story "against all the canons of death." The Mancha, or ink stain, from which Don Quixote proceeds is therefore unrepeatable. "Forst altro canter? con miglior plectio" [Maybe someone will sing with a better

plectrum (inspiration)], Cervantes had announced, with his enigmatic modesty, at the end of the first part of his work (1: 608). But he was mistaken: the best plectrum was his, this supreme pen, angelic and Arabic, with which he knew to write this vast and richly complex novel. And that is why at the end of the work he reappropriates his pen and hangs it from a rack, putting its ink out to dry, so that no one may ever again desecrate, with treacherous

intentions and an ignoble pen, the true story of Don Quijote de la Mancha.

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Issue Table of ContentsIslamic Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter 2006), pp. 493-638Front MatterA Discourse and Linguistic Approach to Biblical and Qur'nicNarrative [pp. 493-517]Instructional Technology and Islamic Education: Intimation of IslamicCritical Pedagogy [pp. 519-557]Shh Wal Allh Dihlaw: A Traditionist's Perspective of GenderRelations [pp. 559-578]Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "DonQuixote" [pp. 579-593]DocumentsFaith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections: Text of PopeBenedict XVI's Lecture at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, 12 September2006 [pp. 595-604]Open Letter to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI [pp. 604-613]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 615-619]Review: untitled [pp. 620-622]Review: untitled [pp. 622-626]Review: untitled [pp. 627-628]Review: untitled [pp. 629-633]

Back Matter

Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"

Documents

Transcript of Islamic Influence on Spanish Literature: Benengeli's Pen in "Don Quixote"