Web site: http://bigfoot.com/~daniel.eisenberg Email: [email protected] This article was first published in Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 31 (1984), 305-17. The text that follows is the revised English original that was used in preparing the translation published in my Estudios cervantinos (Barcelona: Sirmio, 1991), pp. 37–56. The edition of Cervantes’ works used was that of Schevill and Bonilla, citing volume, page, and line, followed by (for Don Quijote) the part and chapter. Cervantes and Tasso Reexamined Daniel Eisenberg It has been a principle of recent Cervantine scholarship that Cervantes knew and was influenced by Italian literary theory, in particular the debate about the romanzo or chivalric poem, of which Ariosto’s Orlando furioso is the most famous example; Alban Forcione alleges that Cervantes took from this debate ideas about how to improve the libro de caballerías.1 Of the participants in this controversy, Forcione claims that he had direct knowledge of,2 and was especially influenced by, the central writings of Torquato Tasso. As stated by William Entwistle, Cervantes was “a passionate admirer of…Tasso”;3 critical enthusiasm for the influence on Cervantes of Tasso’s lengthy discorsi on literary theory, untranslated until Tomás Tamayo de Vargas translated the Discursos sobre el poema heroico4 and unpublished in Spanish to this day, has been such that he has been fantasied “walking about with a single-volume copy of Tasso’s Tratado del poema heroico 1He explores this topic in Cervantes, Aristotle, and the “Persiles” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). I have commented, along somewhat different lines, on Cervantes’ purification of the libro de caballerías in “The Ideal Libro de caballerías: The Bernardo”, Chapter 2 of my A Study of “Don Quixote” (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1987). (An earlier version, “El Bernardo de Cervantes fue su libro de caballerías”, was published in Anales cervantinos, 21 [1983], 103-17.) 2“I am convinced that we are dealing with a case of direct influence” (p. 102, n.). 3Cervantes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 18. 4Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Historia de las ideas estéticas en España, edición nacional (Madrid: CSIC, 1962), II, 211. and Discurso del arte poética in his pocket”.5 It is undeniable that Cervantes and Tasso shared many views. Both accorded much importance to truth, history, and literary rules, though Tasso was more lenient than Cervantes; both rejected the use of the supernatural; both were interested in chivalry and chivalric literature, and in the effect of the latter on readers. We would not, however, claim that Cervantes owed his interest in chivalry to Tasso; no more would we assume that he took from him a rejection of the pagan miracular, so frequently censured by moralistic writers and by the church. In this article, I will argue that he did not take literary principles from Tasso either, and suggest that what knowledge he did have of Tasso’s theory was indirect. A consequence of this argumentation is the validation of E. C. Riley’s tentative, yet to my judgment more correct position: that to the extent that Cervantes’ literary ideas are the result of reading, and not his discussions of these then-common questions, his observa- tions, or his personal experiences as an author,6 the “decisive event” (Riley, p. 12) in the formation of Cervantes’ literary ideas was his reading of the Philosophía antigua poética (1596) of Alonso López Pinciano, who knew Tasso well. 7 The literary ideas themselves are difficult to study, and even more difficult to form firm conclusions about. Sixteenth-century literary theory, especially Italian literary theory, is so abundant that it is next to impossible for one person to read and assimilate all the texts Cervantes might have had access to, which of course is a much greater body of writing than what he in fact read. To trace the various ideas, to distinguish borrowing from coincidence, is equally 5Arturo Marasso, cited in Alban Forcione, “Cervantes, Tasso, and the Romanzi Polemic”, Revue de Littérature Comparée, 44 (1970), 433-43, at pp. 433-34. 6These four sources for his literary ideas were outlined by E. C. Riley, Cervantes’s Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 6. 7Joaquín Arce, Tasso y la poesía española (Barcelona: Planeta, 1973), says: “aun cuando no le cita ni una sola vez, es incuestionable que Alonso López Pinciano ha tenido muy en cuenta al italiano” (p. 88). The question of López Pinciano’s sources— a complex question—is largely unstudied, though Sanford Shepard has examined “Las huellas de Escalígero en la Philosophía antigua poética de Alonso López Pinciano”, Revista de Filología Española, 45 (1962), 311-17, and Judy B. McInnis, “Allegory, Mimesis, and the Italian Critical Tradition in Alonso López Pinciano’s Philosophía antigua poética”, Hispano-Italic Studies, 1 (1976), 9-22, offers some helpful comments on all of El Pinciano’s Italian predecessors. Antonio Vilanova, “Preceptistas de los siglos XVI y XVII”, in Historia general de las literaturas hispánicas, III, reprint with a new chapter (Barcelona: Vergara, 1969), 567-614, at p. 604, claims that besides Vida and Scaliger, whom he cites, López Pinciano “además de Robortelli y Castelvetro, conoce las poéticas del Minturno y de Fracastoro y sigue con especial preferencia los Discorsi del poema eroico de Torquato Tasso”. difficult, and in some cases impossible. I therefore take a different approach, and will study this question externally, examining Cervantes’ views about Italy, Italian literature, and Tasso’s poetry, by means of which to arrive at some conclusions about the influence of the latter’s literary ideas on him. Cervantes’ love for Italy is very evident. In the Persiles, “El licenciado Vidriera”, “La fuerza de la sangre”, in his desire to serve the Conde de Lemos in Naples, we see that he admired Italian cities, architecture, wine, food, abundance, and comfort. Yet missing in his attitude, as known to us, is any belief that Spain and Spaniards had anything to learn from the Italian people;8 the only Italians of any significance in Cervantes’ works are Rutilio, the dancing-master who tells his fantastic story in the first book of the Persiles, and the three Italian protagonists of “La señora Cornelia”, whose problems are solved through the intervention of Spaniards. Italy’s chief claim to greatness, as seen through Cervantes’ works, was that the center of the Catholic church was located in Rome, and Cervantes’ most eloquent praise (in the Parnaso, VIII; also “Licenciado Vidriera”, II, 81, 16-21) is for Naples, the Spanish capital. To any Spaniard of Cervantes’ day, Italy’s greatness would have seemed a thing of the past, while the glory of Spain, despised for so long,9 was in the present. Italy was pleasant, but it was soft and decadent.10 8The only Italian university mentioned in Cervantes’ works is that of Bologna, where there was and still is a Spanish college (“La señora Cornelia”, III, 69, 25-70, 3) and there is only a second-hand report of one Italian academy, where the topic of the day was one already discussed in Spain and on which the pilgrims have themselves much to say, “si podía aver amor sin zelos” (Persiles, II, 182, 23-31, III, 19). Although Don Quixote called Italian a “lengua fácil” (IV, 295, 18-19, II, 62), and Cervantes portrays himself as able to converse in that language (Parnaso, 117, 11-18, VIII), Cervantes’ fictional travelers have little interaction with Italians, and this is especially significant when we consider how much pleasant conversation there is in Cervantes’ works, and how he prided himself on having friends (Novelas ejemplares, I, 20, 7, Prologue). Cervantes twice makes the point that in Lucca the Spaniards are treated better than elsewhere (“Licenciado Vidriera”, II, 80, 6-9; Persiles, II, 184, 4-10, III, 19), implying that he had been treated less than cordially. 9In Ariosto, for example, the Spaniards are Saracens, allies of the infidels against the Christians. 10The following quotations are from the chapter on Tasso in Francesco de Sanctis’ History of Italian Literature, trans. Joan Redfern (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1931), Volume II: “The only exception [to European political progress] was Italy. Italians were not only not founding their patria, but had utterly lost their independence, their liberty, and the preëminent place that they had held till now in the world’s history” (p. 622). “Feeling for art was exhausted, and inspiration and spontaneity in composing and in judging were spoiled by reasonings founded on conceptions of criticism acknowledged by every one and looked upon as Holy Writ” What is also missing in Cervantes’ works, which deal more with literature than those of any other writer of his generation, is enthusiasm for Italian literature, without which an interest in Italian literary theory is unlikely. With the single, though significant, exception of Ariosto, there are found in Cervantes’ works few recollections, even fewer overt recollections, of Italian literature, in his day in frank decay.11 Where are the reminiscences of Petrarch’s lyrics, to compare with those of Garcilaso?12 Where those of Dante, the greatest author both of Italy and of Christian poetry?13 There is, in Cervantes, a constant celebration of Spanish literature, and Spanish authors. In the Parnaso we learn that they (p. 636). “In Italy there was no struggle because there was no conscience, that is to say, no convictions nor religious nor moral nor political passions” (p. 627). “In Italy it proved to be quite as difficult to restore faith as to restore morality. The only result was hypocrisy, the observance of forms apart from conscience. Sensible men took to dissembling in their talk and habits, and in public and private affairs: an immorality so profound that conscience was left powerless and the whole of life was robbed of its dignity” (pp.