—181→
Northern Arizona University
Readers who seek reason behind Don Quixote's madness will find
Higuera's exploration of love, imperialism and Christianity in
Don Quixote intriguing. This revised doctoral
dissertation («The Empire of Love: The Problem of Christian Politics in
Don Quixote»,University of Toronto,
1983) interprets Cervantes' novel as a critique of sixteenth-century, Spanish
political and theological ideology. Higuera argues that the knight's pursuit of
empire and glory, driven by «love for a higher being -the divinely
beautiful and all-powerful Dulcinea»
, discloses the greatness and the
insanity of Spanish imperialism as well as the ideological contradictions
inherent in Christian
caritas (1-2). By extension, Higuera
finds in
Don Quixote an Erasmian-style questioning of
the truthfulness of revealed texts, particularly the Bible.
Early in his preface, Higuera acknowledges an inspirational debt
to the late Allan Bloom (The Republic of Plato, Shakespeare's
Politics [with H. Jaffa],
The Closing of the American Mind). Higuera's
term, «Bloomian», seems apt in many ways to describe what some will
see as strengths and others as weaknesses in
Eros and Empire. Higuera targets «an
audience interested in political philosophy and theology as well as in
Don Quixote»
, but he excludes
«literary critics»
as a readership both difficult and
«unnecessary»
to satisfy (ix). The bibliography
includes many familiar benchmarks of Cervantine criticism before 1980, but it
does not recognize the critical dialog after that time or the contributions of
recent literary theory. The approach combines features of new-critical and
historical analysis, with the aim of interpreting Cervantes' intended meaning
relative to the intellectual currents in Spain and Europe in the
sixteenth-century. Bloom's disciplined faith in the value of reason seems to
inspire Higuera's meticulous reading of Cervantes' text against his background
sources and also his efforts to extract subtle nuances and make the text point
to a larger meaning. True to his mentor, Higuera works with the most canonical
sources in Western thought: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Vives,
Erasmus, Luther, Machiavelli.
Higuera further posits working assumptions essential for his
interpretation. First, he casts
Don Quixote against the background of an
ideologically «turbulent time»
marked by the Council of
Trent, the «neo-Thomistic revival»
, a «flourishing
of natural law theories on international relations»
, the development
—182→
of a «sophisticated philosophical understanding of
Christian love»
, Machiavellian
ragione di stato, Lutheranism, and
challenges to the historical accuracy of hagiographies and even the Bible, led
by scholars such as Erasmus and Vives (4). Second, while he concedes that
Cervantes may not have been a political theorist with a complete doctrine of
his own, Higuera insists that he was necessarily steeped in the political ideas
of his day and that he used his novel to field criticism of conventional
beliefs. He therefore expands the novel's satire of the books of chivalry to
include the features of the Christian world view they represent.
Higuera divides his study into four sections. The first (Chapters
1 & 2) examines Don Quixote's love for Dulcinea as the motivation for his
imperialism and as an analogy for the relation of the soul to God, based on
parallels between the books of chivalry, the Bible, and Catholic tradition.
Behind Don Quixote's love for Dulcinea (Chapter 1) Higuera finds the Classical
and Renaissance convention of the love of beauty as love for a beautiful woman,
the adoption of this concept by Dante, the Italian neo-Platonists, and the
Spanish Mystics to represent the relation of the soul to God, and its use in
chivalric literature as the inspiration for heroism. The books of chivalry
assume that a knight's inclinations to violence, courage, revenge, war, and
conquest of empire all naturally derive from devotion to a beautiful lady.
Thus, Don Quixote «believes that one can unite almost every intense
desire or impulse that a man like him can have and can achieve one object that
can satisfy them all, all at once -if one has truly been in love»
(21). Chapter 2 explores this notion of Don Quixote's
all-encompassing love as an allegory for the relation between the soul and God
as conceived by Christian theologians.
The second section (Chapters 3-5), examines contradictions in Don
Quixote's politics of empire and carries further the comparison between the mad
knight's ideas, the books of chivalry, and the Bible. In the early episodes of
the novel (e. g., the battle with the Bizcayan squire in I: 8-9), Don Quixote
exhibits impulses, particularly rage and vengefulness, supported by the books
of chivalry but contradictory to Christian love. Higuera's investigation of
vengeance and «just war» in Thomasian natural law and in
sixteenth-century theologians such as Erasmus, Vives, las Casas,
Sepúlveda, and Vitoria, shows that Don Quixote's vengefulness has no
rational, theological justification. Don Quixote's speeches on Arms and Letters
(I: 37-38) and the Golden Age (I: 11) (both addressed in Chapter 4) reveal that
he values the justice and peace of the Golden Age much less than he does the
military success and glory to be won in its restoration. His understanding of
the Bible (via the Books of Chivalry) has «rough antecedents among
Christian theologians and a certain plausibility in its own right»
(71), but Augustine and the Catholic tradition on the one hand and
Erasmus on the other both condemn this might-makes-right idea of political
order (66-67). In chapter 5, «Emperors and Robbers», the comparison
of Don Quixote with Reinaldos de Montalbán (from the books of chivalry)
and with Roque de Guinart (Don Quixote II:60) turns up characteristics which
link Don Quixote with Machiavelli's
ragione di stato. Cervantes' point,
Higuera argues, is that «the biblical portrayal of politics is
incoherent... it promises too much to men who feel called to be its heroes.
—183→
The result is incoherent aspirations: a project that combines
characteristics of humanist radical pacifism with universal imperialism and
ragione di stato»
(82).
In Chapters 6, 7 and 8, which he offers as «the
intellectual crux»
of his book (5), Higuera examines the
disintegration of Don Quixote's conception of love and his imperial enterprise.
Chapter 6 argues that the lowliness of Dulcinea's real-world counterpart,
Aldonza Lorenzo, undermines and finally destroys the knight's confidence in
love and heroism. After Don Quixote's penance in the Sierra Morena (I: 25-26)
and his vision in the Cave of Montesinos (II: 22-23), the theme culminates with
the Duke and Duchess' pageant (II: 34-35), where Dulcinea changes from a
superhuman being to a creature who evokes pity, self-mortification, and
penitence. Thus, «[t]he hoax presents Don Quixote and his heroic
project as superfluous to Dulcinea. Heroism is not condemned, it is simply
irrelevant to the most important issues of human life and fate»
(102-30). The theme of Dulcinea's duality compares to the
theological debate concerning the meekness of Christ versus the greatness and
power of God. Don Quixote's inability to coordinate his military activities
with Dulcinea's lowly alter ego reflects the «difficulties encountered
in reconciling the more martial aspect of the Bible and of Christian cultures
with Jesus who was born in a stable and eventually crucified»
(106). Higuera reads these episodes to suggest that man's end is
self-abnegation and penance, that he is offensive to God and unworthy, and that
all actions on earth fall short of pleasing Him. Under these circumstances,
ragione di stato has as much
justification as other political theories.
Under similar scrutiny, other aspects of Don Quixote's world view
self-destruct, with further implications for Christianity. In Chapter 7, the
inconsistencies in Don Quixote's concept of the ideal human society in his
speech on the Golden Age reflect corresponding contradictions in the Bible. New
Testament writers, Higuera contends, had an insufficient and confused
understanding of «human psychology»
and of «the
moral prerequisites and political dimension of healthy friendship and true
concord»
(120). Cervantes is telling us that here, as
with the theme of
caritas, the ancient philosophers,
particularly Aristotle, «saw more clearly»
(120). Higuera concludes: «... if one accepts the Bible
as authoritative and then in an effort to reconcile Reason and Revelation,
tries to reconcile it with what one thought of nature beforehand, one is led
into forced interpretation of the texts on the one hand and inconsistent
judgments of nature on the other»
(121).
In Chapter 8, Higuera uses Don Quixote's, Grisóstomo's and
Marcela's ideas of love to deconstruct the New Testament understanding that
love is the desire for «union and reciprocity»
(137). Though Don Quixote and Grisóstomo differ on
fundamental points, their attempt to unite earthly and ascendant loves stands
them in opposition to Marcela, in whom Higuera discerns Cervantes' own voice.
Marcela's speech contradicts not only Grisóstomo but also Christianity,
since she denies that love must be reciprocal and that beauty must
«subject the will»
(132-33). Grisóstomo
commits suicide because Marcela undoes his faith in the relation between the
beauty of the celestial order and the beauty of erotic love. Since heroism,
glory, and justice do not derive from love, the political and the erotic
dimensions of Don Quixote's love for Dulcinea cannot be
—184→
reconciled. Higuera concludes: «Thus in general (and this is a point
that can be applied but not restricted to the Bible) it is impossible to build
a rationally coherent and realistic system of politics, with a consistent and
comprehensive psychology... on the principle of erotic love, and this is so no
matter how exalted and comprehensively good one tries to make the object of
that love»
(136).
Higuera's final section (Chapters 9, 10, & 11), takes on the
narrative structure of the novel in an attempt to discover Cervantes' view of
the relationship between poetry, history, and revealed truth. Chapter 9
considers Cervantes' satire of the books of chivalry in light of the
theological debate over the historical truth of saints' lives and the Bible.
Behind Cervantes' treatment of the theme of truth and fiction in
Don Quixote, Higuera discerns the basic and
irreconcilable difference between Aristotelian and Christian views: the former
holds poetry as revelatory and thus higher than history, which is merely
circumstantial; the latter views history as equally true, since it is exemplary
as well as factual. In Chapter 10, Higuera's review of the narrative structure
leads to the conclusion that «Don Quixote is not
only a parody of clumsy fictional devices but also a parody of devices for
passing off myth and legend as history»
, a theme which necessarily
questions the veracity of sacred writing (167).
Chapter 11 pits Cid Hamete Benengeli against the gullible second
author. As a Muslim and an «enemy of Christianity and
Spain»
, Cide Hamete muddles history with fiction to confuse
Christians and delight his Arab audience. To support this profile of Cide
Hamete, from the ostensibly historical Captive's Tale Higuera extracts two
surprising ironies, which he reads as «hostile jokes» against
Christianity. First, in the novel, the Moorish girl Zoraida converts to
Christianity and follows the Captive to Spain to marry him; in contrast, her
historical counterpart actually married a notorious renegade king of Algiers.
Second, according to Higuera's calculation of the fictional chronology, at the
same moment when the Captive delivers his account of the Christian victory at
Lepanto, the Spanish Armada is being sunk in the English Channel (August 1588).
Higuera's Cide Hamete takes «malicious pleasure in the fact that in
the most historical episode in
Don Quixote, history does not bear out
either a miraculous conversion or the military triumph of Roman
Catholicism»
(172-73). Thus, Cide Hamete's manuscript is
a «semihistorical antichivalric and anti-Christian lampoon»
which «satirizes... weaknesses in Christian politics and
dogma»
(174), and which the gullible, second author
accepts as history. Higuera concludes that «Don
Quixote contains an Erasmian-style analysis of how sophisticated people
come to accept fable as fact through a combination of conscious fraud and
mental misunderstanding»
(181). If Erasmus hesitated to
apply fully this analysis to Biblical texts, Higuera sees no such hesitation
implied in
Don Quixote: «The existence of Cide
Hamete Benengeli calls into question the historical status of the whole
Bible»
(181).
Eros and Empire sets an ambitious objective. The theories of love and politics which Higuera selects for his backdrop are complex in themselves. To follow his gaze through the layers of Cervantine irony and the novel's narrative framing to the author's intended meaning requires imagination as well as reason.
—185→Higuera has made an admirable effort to render his argument clear and accessible: the text is free of errors and stylistically clean, and he provides frequent summaries at the beginnings and endings of chapters. Higuera's thoughtful attention to Cervantes' text pays off with some remarkable insights, particularly with respect to the contradictions in Don Quixote's own thought and that of other characters. The historical, ideological context he constructs for the novel is instructive and his description of Cide Hamete's role in the narrative structure is both insightful and provocative.
Higuera's quest for Cervantes' ideology, however, leads him to some questionable conclusions. Similar attempts have shown that Don Quixote played against almost any background seems unfailingly to generate meaning. One must ask if the inconsistencies in Christian thought which Higuera finds highlighted are Cervantes' intended targets for satire or merely present in Don Quixote's discourse as culturally inscribed ideas, and thus unintended victims of the novel's complex irony. Higuera's argument works better if readers accept his implicit assumption that there is Cervantine reason behind Don Quixote's madness. But they must also accept his choice of episodes from Don Quixote and of background texts. For example, references to other writings by Cervantes are limited to passing mention of La Galatea and La Numancia. Higuera's description of Cervantes' radical skepticism seems to contradict views expressed elsewhere in the author's writings -for example Cervantes' apparent pride in his military feats at Lepanto (in the Prologue to Part II of Don Quixote); and his statement regarding the moral, exemplary purpose of his fiction (in the Prologue to the Novelas ejemplares). The assumption that Cervantes had detailed knowledge of contemporary theological and political debates may be reasonable, but did Cervantes make the same assumption about his readers? If his implied reader is as vulnerable to deception as are his characters, the erudite message Higuera finds would surely elude him. The themes of revealed truth versus reason, the preference for the rational wisdom of the ancient philosophers, and of reason's critique of Christianity, seem perhaps more «Bloomian» than Cervantine. In Eros and Empire, Higuera invites us on a unique adventure into the labyrinth of Cervantes' great novel. Readers can decide for themselves how much of what Higuera sees gazing into the text is Cervantes' intention and how much is a reflection of Higuera (or Bloom) himself.