The Plot Thins, but that's OK

Capítulo VII. De la segunda salida de nuestro buen caballero don Quijote de la Mancha

Chapter Seven. About the second departure of our good Knight, don Quijote of the Stain

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When it comes to action with Cervantes, the plot thins. This post suggests why.

We can summarize the action in Chapter seven in a sentence. DQ wakes up, looks in vain for his books and is mislead by his housekeeper and his niece about their disappearance; DQ then goes back to sleep, awakens, remains at home for a couple weeks, during which time, with promises of booty and prestige, he recruits Sancho Panza to accompany him; together, they make preparations for an adventure and slip away from the hacienda, without saying goodbye to anyone. 

Meanwhile, all of DQ's books have been burned, with the cruel, thieving conduct blamed on an invading devil.

The truncated space given to actions, I think, means that Cervantes is inviting the reader to reflect on human behavior. He lays a light touch on plot development, placing a subtle (that is, not explicit) emphasis on why people act as they do. 

Cervantes appears to believe that the why's of conduct are more complicated, more interesting than conduct, in itself. (I could be wrong, but so what? None other than Harold Bloom has this to say about DQ: "No critic's account of Cervantes's masterpiece agrees with, or even resembles, any other critic's impressions.")

Cervantes is about the motives which lie behind conduct. Conduct itself is, in Quijote, a prop, almost boring. How interesting is it, really, to watch a housekeeper collect up a pile of books and torch them?

The act of burning a book is simple, quick, final. Precious, irreplaceable combinations of words, bound in a defenseless package, are easily removed off the face of the earth. But the reasons for this conduct are far from simple. 

A motive is both intractable in revealing itself and subject to repetition. The rationale for an unkind act lends itself to horrible repetition. 

One hundred books burned requires one hundred wilful decisions.

Cervantes invites the reader to make what can be made of the resonances of the conduct, without much authorial hand-holding.

The poignancy of DQ's waking, looking in vain for his books, being lied to about their destruction . . . what are we to make of this? 

Here is what I make of it:

In few words, Cervantes has framed the torment of one with a mental illness, who is manipulated and abused by those closest to him. Confused and helpless to protect himself, the delusional DQ is condemned to the ministrations of false friends and superstitious caregivers. 

These who proclaim they are motivated only by the best interests of their victim, are in fact, merely looking for pretexts to indulge in self-congratulation. In Cervantes' telling, the repeated bad act repeatedly condemns gross prejudices and cherished, misapplied folk wisdom and religious platitude.

Chapter 7 is sprinkled with folk sayings, such as this one. (Did Cervantes invent these are overhear?)  

Muchos van por lana y vuelven trasquilados

'Many go for wool and return shorn'

A couple more dichos which are patently false in the context in which Cervantes places them:

lo que hoy se pierde, se gane mañana 

'what is lost today is won tomorrow'

- said by the prelate, who has just seen to the total destruction of DQ's library.

quizá quitando la causa cesaría el efecto

'removing the cause may end the effect, perhaps'

- applied to the walling off of the room, where DQ's books had been kept

Cervantes does drop in the occasional aphorism that is applicable, penning this one in homage to the lost books, victim of a literary inquisition:

pagan a las veces justos por pecadores 

'sometimes the just are punished instead of the sinners'

In the interests of confirming to themselves their pretended benevolence toward DQ, those in DQ's most intimate circle manipulate and abuse the helpless man, take his property, lie to him; they compound his delusions by adding to them.  

Cervantes handles book burning with wit. There is no harsh denunciation, only the deftly described humorous circumstance, the light touch of comedy.

Cervantes is trying to persuade and he knows this truth: 

if you entertain you are more likely to engage and enlarge your audience.  

In comedy lies the most potent persuasion, which is self-persuasion.  

Humor does not clobber the reader with a rhetorical club.

Cervantes' most important heirs in English are in that parade of subtle jokesters leading to Mark Twain and beyond.

The Grand Scrutiny of Quijote's Library

Capítulo VI. Del donoso y grande escrutinio que el Cura y el Barbero hicieron en la librería de nuestro ingenioso hidalgo

Chapter VI. Concerning the entertaining and important scrutiny the curate and the barber conducted in the library of our ingenious noble.
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While DQ slept, his 'friends' the priest and the barber discuss the pros and cons of burning his books, with rationales offered for consignment to the flames or for a reprieve for a title here and there. 

The escrutinio takes a while; DQ's library contained more than a hundred large volumes, along with a number of smaller ones. 

Here are the absurd reasons which the curate and the barber, the housekeeper and DQ's niece come up with to justify the burning of books. 

We even pass over the most obvious reason not to destroy the library - it does not belong to the destroyers.

- show no mercy, but look at the titles first

- the four volumes of Amadis de Gaula are the most influential of knight-errant books, so spare them or, as the barber put it: 

es el mejor de todos los libros que de este género se han compuesto, y así como a único en su arte se debe perdonar

- books written in imitation of Amadis ought to be burned, as imitations, as the priest intoned:

que no le ha de valer al hijo la bondad del padrethe merit of the father ought not be assigned to the son 

- two books by the same author? One might be truthful and the other a lie no, but we don't know which is which

en verdad que no sepa determinar cuál de los dos libros es más verdadero, o por decir mejor, menos mentiroso 

- stiff, dry style? Burn it! 

- a very old book? Burn it! 

- a book with the word "Cross" in the title? Trick of the devil, burn it! 

- books that may have influenced reputable Christian writers? Set them aside, so long as they are not translations 

- translations? - que habla en otra lengua que la suya, no le guardaré respeto alguno - to one who uses a language other than his own, I won't show the least respect.

- books about French affairs, set them aside, except titles disliked by the curate, as he put it: 

Digo, en efecto, que este libro y todos los que se hallaren que tratan destas cosas de Francia , se echen y depositen en un pozo seco, hasta que con más acuerdo se vea lo que se ha de hacer dellos, exceptuando a un Bernardo del Carpio , que anda por ahí y a otro llamado Roncesvalles , que éstos en llegando a mis manos, han de estar en las del ama, y dellas en las del fuego sin remisión alguna.

- the barber defers to the curate, as knowing which titles are true to the Faith

lo tuvo por bien y por cosa muy acertada, por entender que era el cura tan buen cristiano y tan amigo de la verdad, que no diría otra cosa por todas las del mundo.

- book with "olive" in the title is to be burned, but one by the same author but without "olive" and about England can be saved, since Alexander the Great saved a book similar to Homer, and besides, it is a witty book and a king of Portugal might be the author - 

Esa oliva se haga luego rajas y se queme, que aun no queden della las cenizas; y esa palma de Ingalaterra se guarde y se conserve como a cosa única, y se haga para ella otra caja como la que halló Alejandro en los despojos de Dario, que la diputó para guardar en ella las obras del poeta Homero . Este libro, señor compadre, tiene autoridad por dos cosas: la una porque él por sí es muy bueno, y la otra porque es fama que le compuso un discreto rey de Portugal.

- any titles we don't burn must be set aside, but not read by anyone -

compadre, en vuestra casa, mas no los dejéis leer a ninguno.

- what the Hell! Let's burn all the big volumes! as the barber instructs the housekeeper:  

mandó al ama que tomase todos los grandes y diese con ellos en el corral. 

         - wait, says the curate, here is a title I know.

¡Válame Dios!, dijo el cura dando una gran voz, ¿Que aquí esté Tirante el Blanco? Dádmele acá, compadre, que hago cuenta que he hallado en él un tesoro de contento y una mina de pasatiempos.

which has in it a big fight with a Mastiff plus witty sayings as well as commentary by a woman named Placerdemivida - my life's pleasure; we will hang on to this one. But 

que le echaran a galeras por todos los días de su vida. Llevadle a casa y leedle, y veréis que es verdad cuanto dél os he dicho. 

Enslave the author for writing it but take it home and read it and you will see what I mean -  

- what about small books of poetry? They have done no harm like the knight-errant books 

-Éstos no merecen ser quemados como los demás, porque no hacen ni harán el daño que los de caballerías han hecho

- but they might! What if DQ reads them and wants to be a shepherd or, worse, a poet? Right. Let's keep the poetry books but get rid of most of the poems in them

- toss out this one, keep that one 

- this absurd, droll book I will take home and read, as I like this sort of thing 

- give these to the "secular arm" of the ama and let's not bother to find out why, 'cause I am getting tired 

- keep this one, because I know the author 

- same for this one, even though the contents are so-so.

The curate and the barber came to Galatea, a title by Cervantes (his first, c 1585):

- I know this guy, more of reverses than verses and no conclusion; shut this book up in your house, don't let anyone read it and let's wait for volume two. (Cervantes' jokes here include: the poems are better than the stories; there would be no volume two to Galatea, but there would be, to DQ.)

Then three books of "Castelian heroic verse," the best of their kind, so keep them as rich treasures.

- the barber wanted to throw away the rest, as he was tired of the game but the curate saw one more he admired, so it was set aside.

Cervantes has laid out a long list of stupid reasons for burning books. If the reasons can be applied to contemporary circumstances, then the reasons are 'modern.' 

But hold on a minute.

The send-up of these 'modern' reasons, appeared in post-Tridentine Spain in 1605.

Employing  ridicule, Cervantes implies that ceremonial book-burning was accompanied by objections - even if no one dared to utter them, since to do so would risk escrutinio before the Inquisition.

Cervantes is probably not correctly classified as a 'modern' writer. At least, hold off for a bit with the categories, because Cervantes is crafting a story, which resonates not just in his own specific time and place.

From the point of view of rational decision-making, all of the the reasons offered for book-burning are absurd; this goes for even the occasional reprieve. 

Unless someone wants to argue that reasoning, i.e., reasonable objections to the burning of books did not occur in early 17th century Spain, then neither the ridiculous reasons nor the category of objections to book burning are, per se, 'modern' - they are simply objections.

I think it is a given that objections to book burning accompany the irrational decision to burn books, whenever a book is burned. 

Objections accompany the deed, just as do the reasons which justify the deed. These associations are as timeless as much as they can be said to be modern.

The event of the act is what matters to Cervantes; never mind the category - modern, medieval - assigned to the deed by whomever cares to parse the event into categories.

If Cervantes' concern was to object to book-burning in his own time, then why craft a fictional, that is, a metaphorical account? 

Cervantes, like all story tellers, is linking a past (not necessarily his own) with a future (not his either) by crafting imaginative present possibilities as links between past and future. 

Cervantes gets a lot of mileage from humor, in his depictions. Mark Twain is an important Cervantes heir.