Don Quixote: Pain, Space, and Artifice

Abstract

En el capitulo seis de la segunda parte, Don Quijote explica su rol en el mundo enfatizando el dolor que sufre. Contextualiza este dolor refiriendo alegoricamente a la cartografia. Este ensayo propone que la manera en que Don Quijote reacciona dolor crea una tension prefigurada en el prologo de 1605. Demuestro que esta tension entre la percepcion sensorial y la imaginacion guiada por artificio reaparece cuando el texto refiere explicitamente a la cartografia. La manera en que el artificio cartografico combina con el artificio literario sugiere que la explicacion alegorica de Don Quijote opera dentro del texto de una forma fundamental. La reaccion de empatia que el texto pide del lector posibilita su inclusion en una relacion que perturba la division tradicional entre ficcion e historia, entre cartografia y literatura y, en fin, entre el espacio cotidiano del lector y el espacio literario de Don Quijote. ********** EARLY IN PART TWO, Don Quixote describes his purpose by emphasizing the pain that he suffers as a wandering knight. He contextualizes this pain by referencing cartography. While courtiers se pasean por todo el mundo mirando un mapa, sin costarles blanca, ni padecer calor ni frio, hambre ni sed, knights-errant al sol, frio, aire, a las inclemencias del cielo, de noche y de dia, a pie y a caballo, medimos toda la tierra con nuestros mismos pies (2.6:589). Don Quixote presents himself, metaphorically, as a kind of surveyor who suffers out in the world. The purpose of this suffering is to create and sustain a larger order that is, in turn, represented cartographically by the maps that the cortesanos are able to enjoy in comfort. The cartographic allegory that Don Quixote employs brings the logic of maps together with the logic of his libros de caballerias. In this essay I will show how Cervantes's focus on the peculiarities of imagination and artifice in the context of interpreting literature prepares the reader to approach cartographic ideas in unique ways. The relationship that the protagonist offers above between pain and cartography is crucial for an understanding of the intersection of these two discourses in the novel. Cervantes suggests that maps, as nonfictional works of artifice, rely on both the imagination of their readers and the labors of those who maintain the integrity of the territories that are represented. For Don Quixote, however, the literary texts that he has read are also nonfictional. They too rely on the imagination of their readers and the labors of their heroes. Pain and imagination are intertwined in both representations. Don Quixote's allegorical statement of purpose also builds on the notion that there are commonalities between his suffering as a caballero andante and the suffering of other armed men: all require that their pain be relevant to a larger social or cultural order. This larger order was, in the case of the nonfictional men of arms referenced in the novel, the of Spain. (1) The literary fantasy that sustains Don Quixote's purpose in the world commingles, in this sense, with the powerful yet also tenuous idea of early modern nationhood. One, of course, is primarily shaped by the artifice of libros de caballerias, while the other is sustained by the artifice of cartography. Both, however, must be into existence. Indicating that the exists in the imagination--that it is shaped by cartography and sustained by political faith--does not diminish its importance. Precisely because of the fact that it is an imagined entity, the nation can be responsibly or irresponsibly. Cervantes aims, in this sense, not for the destabilization of the fantasy of nationhood, but rather for its fortification, for a vision of its contours that takes the suffering of armed men into account as one of its central sources of strength, legitimacy, and necessity. This is accomplished in an indirect manner because it also implies a critique: that the nation could be stronger than it is, and that, furthermore, its weaknesses ore particularly onerous for those who are asked to suffer greatly for it. …