Poetry and Myth: Reception of Don Quixote In the Poetry of the Silver Age F'rancisco Javier Díez de Revenga University of Murcia In the present study of Don Quixote in the Silver Age, we go back exactly a hundred years, i.e. to 1905, when Spain was celebrating the year of Don Quixote. We will examine the works of sorne Spanish poets who used the figure of Don Quixote in their verses making him their own personal myth. Poetry, as present in Don Quixote in Chapter XVI of Part n, in the memorable dialogue of our knight with Don Diego de Miranda ("Poetry, illustrious noble, in my opinion is like a soft young girl of tender age and very beautiful ... ") made Don Quixote in the fírst decades of the twentieth century an object of profound poetic reflections. They varied according to the ideology and thought of the poet who studied his figure - from Rubén DarÍo to Unamuno, from Antonio Machado to León Felipe, as we wiU see in the foIlowing pages. And from them to other writers and poets who pondered on Don Quixote in their prose and in their verses: Salinas, Cernuda, Dámaso Alonso, Aleixandre, and also Guillén and Gerardo Diego, who already in the post-war period, had included the ingenious knight in their poems. In 1905, in Madrid, Rubén Darlo published Cantos de vida y esperanza (Songs ojlife and hope), as Spain commemorated the third centenary of the publication of the First Part of Don Quixote.
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. F. Javier DÍEZ DE REVENGA. Poetry and Myth: Reception...
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At present we are doing the same: a hundred years of Cantos de vida y esperanza, four hundred of Don Quixote. It is interesting to dwell again on sorne aspects of Cervantism in Darío, and the reasons why the great Nicaraguan poet found the master of the universal novel so interesting, what aspects of his work drew his attention. 1905 produced the most important opportunity for Rubén to create his most relevant Cervantine poem, "Letanía de Nuestro Señor Don Quijote" (Litany of Our Lord Don Quixote), one of the most widely disseminated and cited works of the Quixote centenary. That has a trajectory similar to that of other famous books like Unamuno's Vida de don Quijote y Sancho (Lije of Don Quixote and Sancho), Azorin's La ruta de Don Quijote (The joumey of Don Quixote), both also published in 1905. Then there is Ortega y Gasset's Meditaciones del Quijote (Meditations of Don Quixote) and Ramiro de Maeztu's Don Quijote, Don Juan y La Celestina (Don Quixote, Don Juan and La Celestina). However Dario's contribution in verse is the most read and commented upon. In any case, the Don Quixote that Ruben pays homage to is singular, and adapts itself in those first years of the 20th Century, to this way of thinking and even to this ideology of the poet as there is in the stanzas a real social and ethical criticism of the establishment, of homages and deceptions. But, as is proved by the literary work of Darío, the interest in Cervantes had been there for a while and much before the celebrations of 1905. Cervantes was a model and a guide, and Quixote's figure was the object of meditation and deep reflection as a character who others had sacrificed, "the lord of the sad", a model and an example of righteous conduct in the midst of falsity, someone who rose aboye the human, to the sphere of the heroic and the mythical. In any case with regards to the Cervantism of Darío, the most interesting poem of the Cantos de vida y esperanza can be 308
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found in the "Letanía de Nuestro Señor Don Quijote", an exceptional and very successful evocation of the Manchegan, full of mythical and sentimental references in tune with the earlier manifestatÍons in Darío of the work of Cervantes, but also ful1y within the framework that we have indicated and which by 1905, acquires a tone of special intensity. The figure of Don Quixote evoked by Darío in the poem coincides with the earlier Cervantine representations in his poetry. Heroism and sadness would be the two elements that would best define the figure of Quixote, present even in the visions of Cervantes, with whom Darío confuses or fuses Quixote. Already in the first stanza, in which he once again uses the golden helmet of the earlier Cervantine poem ("crowned with the golden helmet of illusion", pp. 302-304), he gives us the figure of the ingenious knight as someone forged between fantasy and illusion incorporating words from Cervantes' own language ("with the shield on the arm, all fantasy, I and the lance ready, all heart") thus in the analysis of the hero a kind of revolutionary Quixote emerges, a Quixote against this and that, against líes and truth ("against certainties, against conscience I and against laws and against sciences, I against líes, against truth ..."). A revolutionary"s radical tendency is also noticed in the third stanza, where there is a very direct allusion to the possible centenary celebrations with which Ruben seems to be in liule in agreement. It must have been a very unique moment when these verses were heard, in the Ateneo in Madrid where this function of renderinghomage was being held, a moment that he uses to wish Don Quixote good health: "Salud, porque juzgo que hoy muy poca tienes, (Health beeause 1 feel that today you have very little I entre los aplausos o entre los desdenes (between applause and disdain), I y entre las coronas y los parabienes (and between praise and good wishes I y las tonterías 309
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de la multitud (and the stupidities of the multitude!" And further on: "soportas elogios, memorias, discursos, (you put up with praises, memories, speeches) I resistes certámenes, tarjetas, concursos, (you endure competitions, cards, contests I y, teniendo a Orfeo, tienes a orfeón (and, having Orpheus, you have a fan club!)".
Rubén, undoubtedly prefers a mythical Don Quixote, comparable to Roldán, shrouded in the fantasy as the names of Clavileño and Pegasus suggest. Although he also introduces a social and ethical angle in keeping with the Dacio of those years, who literally preaches when he assures that his litanies "hechas con las cosas de todos los días / y con otras que en lo misterioso vi. (are made with everyday things I and others that 1 saw in mysteries" Prom the sixth stanza onwards Rubén adopts the tone appropriate for a litany. He places sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas on the anaphoric base of the traditional "pray for us", that altemates with the Latín version "Pro nobis ora", in the middle of the seventh, to draw up the image of the worshippers on the basis of consecutive metaphors to defend himself against enemies ("que ridiculizan el ser de la Mancha, / el ser generoso y el ser español! (who ridicule the man of La Mancha, the generous one, the Spanish being"). The three stanzas naturally glamourise the mythical representation of the character, now evoked between two great myths: "j Tiembla la floresta de laurel del mundo, (The bay wood of the world trembles I y antes que tu hermano vago, Segismundo, (and before your errant brother Segismundo I el pálido Hamlet te ofrece una flor (the pale Hamlet offers you a flower)!". Ending with an concluding list of grievances, in an imaginative flourish of the best of Ruben of those years: "pues casi ya estamos sin savia, sin brote, (as we are already without sap and
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without shoots) / sin alma, sin vida, sin luz, sin Quijote (without soul, without life, without light without Quixote, / sin piel y sin alas, sin Sancho y sin Dios (without skin and without wings, without Sancho and without God)," This list continues in the following stanzas, pointing out the adversaries, among the supennen of Nietzsche and the Academies, intemally and extemally rhymed with insults and blasphemies so that there be no doubt about the value of these institutions. Asevere ethical and social reprimand in line with the thought and ideology of the last poems is included in Cantos de vida y esperanza, although in the case of Quixote the heroic and mythic dimension signfies its transcendence beyond human misery, From the point of view of the oration, the litany has gone from "ora pro nobís" to "liberan os, dómine", that structurally joins the ninth and tenth stanzas, Both joined in their subject matter to contain the narration or recounting of the enemies. Stanzas with the most emotive invocation are contained in the eleventh stanza, a glamourisation of the figure. With this the textual progress of the poem ends, as the twelfth and last is a complete repetition of the first stanza, such that the composition ends on a cyclical note: "Noble peregrino de los peregrinos, (Noble pilgrim of pilgrims)/ que santificaste todos los caminos, (who sanctified aH the roads/ con el paso augusto de tu heroicidad, (with the heroic march of your heroism) / contra las certezas, contra las conciencias (against certitudes, against consciences/ y contra las leyes y contra las ciencias, (and against the laws and against the sciences)/ contra la mentira, contra la verdad.. , (against lies, against truth)" Darío says that "The Litany of Our Lord Don Quixote" affinns "my deeply rooted idealism yet again, rny passion for the transcendent and the heroic." The figure of the symbolic knight is
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crowned with light and darkness. In this poem, there is an attempt at the smile of "humour" -as a memory of the important Cervantine creation - but behind this smile there is the face of human torture when faced with realities and these do not take on the fa
