Don Quixote, Unamuno and Gaston Baty, All U nited By Dulcinea Víctor García Ruiz University of Navarre Once upon a time there was a country called Spain, in which a civil war took place. The war ended in 1939 and many things did change in that country from then on. Sorne were political, sorne social, sorne theatrical. Right after the war the first state funded theater in Spain, the Teatro María Guerrero, headed by Luis Escobar was established. This theatre was to be followed very soon by the Teatro Español, also state funded. The attempts to start such theatres, that is, National Theatre, were old and had been many but the fact is that nothing of that sort occurred until the Franco regime. First 1 shall speak about the María Guerrero Theatre. The beginnings were tough mainly due to the lack of tradition of a "théátre d' art" as regards to the audience and the critics. But the first success did not take too long to arrive: it was a play called Dulcinea by Gaston Baty (1885-1952), a contemporary French man of theatre. The success was both critical and in terrns of audience. For the first time the María Guerrero went over a hundred perforrnances of one of Íts productions, and in those times one hundred perforrnances was the only label of real success. The prem¡¿~re took place on December 2, 1941. The success of Víctor Garc[a Dulcinea did a lot to affirm the prestige of a new style in Spanish theatre and in creating a new public in Madrid. But my focus here is different: what 1 want is to explore how Baty' s Dulcinea remakes sorne aspects of the imaginative world of Don Miguel de Cervantes. Gaston Baty was a well known director and playwright, far more concerned with staging than with the text itself. He was a member of the well-known "Cartel des Quatres" (with Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet and George Pitoeff) founded in 1926 under the spell of Jacques Copeau, the master of them aH. They all tried to counteract the cornmercial theatre and strengthen artistic creativity and the art of acting. Dulcinea has two parts and eight scenes in aH. The first part portrays freely the episodes in the "venta", the humiliation of Don Quixote when arriving back in a cage to his home town and his death. Baty, familiar with Spanish Golden Age literature, skilfully brings in characters and the atmosphere of Lazarillo. Rinconete y Cortadillo, and La Celestina; apart from the Don Quixote, obviously. Baty displays his great expertise and the results are brilliant, it must be said. But the most striking "liberty" in Baty's play is the turning of Maritornes, the shameless and provocative servant in Quixote, into the ideal dame of the eccentric knight Alonso Quijano. Maritornes, the epi tome of the lecherous barmaid, rises to the rank of not only Aldonza, the country girl, but to Dulcinea, the lady of Don Quixote's dreams. The contrast, of course, is more than dramatic. As a matter of fact, the high point in the play comes when Don Quixote gives in to the pressure around him and yields and, as a proof of his no longer being insane, before dying says: "[Dulcinea] Does not exist..." (86). And then, right after the death 338 Don Quixate. Unamuna and Gastan Baty,All Uníted By Dulcinea of Don Quixote and his blasphemous words, the girl Maritomes­ Aldonza shows up and calls herself Dulcinea. This is the hinge of Baty's play. Let us take a little break and cast a glance on one of the most controversial and important books on Don Quíxote, The Lije of Don Quíxote and Sancho according lo Miguel de Unamuno, first published in 1905, and with many reprints afterwards. If Baty plays with the different aspects and characters of the Cervantine novel, we must acknowledge that the pathbreaker in this kínd of game was Unamuno. As he points out, bis first target was to erase the pedantic and merely matter-of-fact approach of the shortsighted and devout scholars of the Quixote, who thrived in his days. Miguel de Unamuno, in his redoutable style, was craving to wipe out aH false erudition and replace it with spirit. It seems to me that this inspiring outlook by Unamuno could be put down to three main points: nationalism, the quixotic faith and the very existence of Aldonza-Dulcinea. 1. Unamuno wrote that his Don Quixote and Sancho was an "essay in genuine Spanish Philosophy", or "Philosophy and Theology in the Spanish fashion" (9) l. To a French hispanist Unamuno wrote: "Cervantes found Don Quixote in the soul of the Spanish people and showed him to uso I have found him again and showed him again" (13). Unamuno writes elsewhere: "In 1605 Cervantes gave us the Bible of Spanish individualistic personal ism" (18). So, Don Quixote becomes the essence of the Spanish people. Thus, very much in the Romantic line of the "Generation of 98", Unamuno contributes to the nationalist revival of Spain in the early nineteen hundreds. I AH translations are my own. 339 Víctor García 2. The relationship between Quixote and Sancho is related with one of the major topics in Unamuno: the tension between faith and reason, realism and idealism, doubt and certainty. In fact, it is precisely in The life oi Don Quixote and Sancho that Unamuno displays for the first time the main ideas of his most influential essay Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos published sorne ten years later (1913). A few quotations from chapter 10 will help us clarify matters. Sancho makes up his mind to deceive his master making him believe that "any peasant woman, the fírst I come across, is my lady Dulcinea; and if he refuses to believe it 1 will swear it" (159). Strangely enough, we have lo consider that even though Sancho thinks his master is crazy and easy to deceive, and keen to mix things up, nevertheless Sancho lets himself dragged into the faith of Don Quíxote. Sancho would Uve, feel, act and depend upon the spell of an odd power which took hím and led him against what he saw and understood. Sancho's life was a slow self dedication to the power of the Quixotic faíth. And now the core of Unamuno's contradictory vision of faith: Sancho' s belief in Don Quixote was not a dead faith, not a deceitful faith, not based upon ignorance. On the contrary, it was a living and true faith, a faith nurtured by doubt. "Because those who do hesitate, are the only ones who do belíeve. Those who do not doubt or have temptatíons against their faith, those do not believe; because real faith is fuelled by doubt" (159). "Sancho was aware of the madness of his master, he knew the windmills were windmills and not giants, he was certain the coarse peasant woman he was to meet in the way out ofToboso was not Aldonza Lorenzo and much less Dulcinea. And nevertheless, he did believe bis master and in bis master. Eventually he himself did believe in Dulcinea and her 340 Don Unamuno and Gaston Dulcinea spell. This is faith -eries out Unamuno- Sancho, and not the one of those who believe a dogma even without understanding its immediate sense" (159). "In keeping up this struggle between heart and head, between feeling and understanding, in the former saying yes! while the latter says no! and vice versa, in this and not in reconciling the two opposite principIes, consists the saving and fruitful faith" (160), according to Unamuno. 3. Let's now come down to a crucial point: did Aldonza really exist? Who was she? Unamuno was extremely sharp when he underlined the connection of the fiasco of the meeting of Don Quixote with Dulcinea in the outskirts of El Toboso and in a few lines at the end of chapter one (1), Cervantes writes how thrilled he was, when he found someone given the name of Lady! It occurred, as it is believed, that in a hamlet near his there lived an extremely good looking peasant girl, although she never came to know or to guess i1. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and to her he considered it fitting to give the title of "Lady of his Thoughts" and, looking for a name akin to his own, he called her Dulcinea del Toboso, because she was a native of El Toboso. So, the fact is that Don Quixote was head over heels in love with a real peasant girl called Aldonza Lorenzo. Aldonza did exist. Being himself a squire, and being an honest man, Don Quixote knew that social differences were a gap that could not be bridged. That' s why Don Quixote never spoke to her and never let the secret come out of his heart. It is quite tempting to consider that all his compulsive reading was a sort of an outlet for this frustrated love. Aldonza not only exists, she may be the underlying trigger which sets off Don Quixote' s manía for knightly romance. 341 Víctor Gorda All of these stories, nevertheless, were packed full of lecherous lo ve affairs. Knights and dames, engaged in hot passions, were all but chaste. Don Quixote, poor thing! There is no other way around: Cervantes, who knew something about platonic love, has to idealize Don Quixote's love to the full, beyond all limits. Let us note that in Don Quixote there are three levels of love that can be singled out: first, the carnal coarse affair between Maritornes and the "arriero morisco" (the moorish mule driver): a base and purely sexual matter.