Morning Read:
Zoraida
¶ Nothing much today, just the two longish chapters of the second of the “exemplary” novels — about the abduction of Zoraida. At least to my ears, Cervantes does not tell a story as well as Boccaccio. Further complicating things, of course, is Cervantes’ desire to interpolate a few details of his own captivity — and even to wangle a cameo appearance.
…a Spanish soldier named something de Saavedra, who did things that will be remembered by those people for many years, and all to gain his liberety; yet his master never beat him , or ordered anyone else to beat him, or said an unkind word to him; for the most minor of all the things he did we were afraid he would be impaled, and more than once he feared the same thing; if I had the time, I would tell you something of what that soldier did, which would entertain and amaze you much more than this recounting of my history.
I’m relieved that Cervantes Saavedra doesn’t put that boast to the test.
In a New Yorker review in 1961, John Updike wrote,
Some novels might be fairly described as ruined parodies. The little dolls whittled in fun escape the author’s derision and take on life. Joseph Adnres and Northanger Abbey are examples. Don Quixote is the towering instance. Cervantes masterpiece lives not because it succeeds at parody but because it immensely fails.
It must be that I am not so sophisticated. I adore successful parodies, but books like Northanger Abbey awkward and vaguely embarrassing, like the appeals for charitable donations that actors sometimes make directly after their curtain calls. It’s not the giving money that I mind, but the little spiel that is felt to be necessary to inspire it, and that invariably jars with the sparkling or glittering show that has just come to an end.