Who He Is
Cide Hamete Benengeli is the Arab historian to whom the book attributes the history of Don Quixote, and the only narrator of the novel who has a name. He is born in ch. IX of Part One, when the narrator, who had been left without a source in the middle of a duel (ch. VIII of Part One), finds in a Toledo market some notebooks written in Arabic characters, looks for a Moor to read them, and pays him in raisins and wheat; what he translates is the history the narrator was looking for, and so Cide Hamete enters as a second-hand author, rendered by a translator paid in food. The book calls him an Arab and Manchegan author (ch. XXII of Part One) and, in Part Two, has him comment on his own history in margins, prefaces, and farewells (ch. XXIV of Part Two, ch. XLIV of Part Two, ch. LIII of Part Two, ch. LXXIV of Part Two). He wants to be believed and leaves the decision of what to believe to the reader; he fears not being believed and therefore says he writes as it happened, adding or taking away not a jot (ch. X of Part Two); he knows more than he shows and confesses that he cannot vouch for what is told of Montesinos's cave (ch. XXIV of Part Two); and he is the guarantor of a truth that the book places under suspicion from the start, because the narrator who finds him recalls that Arabs are held to be liars (ch. IX of Part One).
Trajectory
In ch. VIII of Part One, the narrator of 1605 interrupts the battle with the Biscayan with the swords raised and says that the source has run out:
Pero está el daño de todo esto que en este punto y término deja pendiente el autor desta historia esta batalla, disculpándose que no halló más escrito destas hazañas de don Quijote de las que deja referidas, but the harm in all of this is that at this point and term the author of this history leaves this battle pending, excusing himself for not having found more written about these exploits of Don Quixote than those he has recorded.
The cut comes at the peak of suspense and is justified by lack of a source, which is a confession: whoever tells depends on papers someone wrote before. In ch. IX of Part One the narrator picks up the thread, in the first person, and tells what it cost him:
Causóme esto mucha pesadumbre, porque el gusto de haber leído tan poco se volvía en disgusto, de pensar el mal camino que se ofrecía para hallar lo mucho que, a mi parecer, faltaba de tan sabroso cuento, this caused me much distress, because the pleasure of having read so little turned into displeasure, thinking of the poor road that offered itself for finding the much that, in my view, was missing from so savory a tale.
He speaks as a frustrated reader, who cannot accept that the story of so good a knight should have been left without a chronicler, when all the knights-errant had one or two sages who wrote down even their smallest thoughts. Then, in the Alcaná of Toledo, he finds the notebook, and the Moor who reads it begins to laugh when he opens it at random:
Está, como he dicho, aquí en el margen escrito esto: "Esta Dulcinea del Toboso, tantas veces en esta historia referida, dicen que tuvo la mejor mano para salar puercos que otra mujer de toda la Mancha, it is written here, as I have said, in the margin: "This Dulcinea del Toboso, so often mentioned in this history, they say had the best hand for salting pigs of any woman in all La Mancha."
The narrator hides his delight in order to pay half a real for the papers, and takes the Moor home, where in a month and a half he translates everything for two arrobas of raisins and two bushels of wheat. The title the Moor reads is what gives the author his name:
volviendo de improviso el arábigo en castellano, dijo que decía: Historia de don Quijote de la Mancha, escrita por Cide Hamete Benengeli, historiador arábigo, turning the Arabic into Castilian on the spot, he said it read: History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arab historian.
Cide Hamete is born in this way: an Arab author at second hand, rendered by a Moor paid in food, and it is this distance, rather than a direct witness, that the book chooses as the source of its truth. The narrator presents the source and at once points to the possible flaw:
Si a ésta se le puede poner alguna objeción cerca de su verdad, no podrá ser otra sino haber sido su autor arábigo, siendo muy propio de los de aquella nación ser mentirosos, if any objection can be raised regarding its truth, it cannot be any other than that its author was an Arab, it being very typical of those of that nation to be liars.
Then he corrects himself: since they were enemies of the Spaniards, the Arabs would be more inclined to omit praise than to exaggerate it, and the author seems to be silencing on purpose the praises of the knight. The text sustains two readings: that of a narrator who protects himself from the charge of credulity, and that of a humorist who makes the authority he invented trip at the first step. The definition of history that the narrator gives is a textbook one, and he uses it as a rule to demand from the Arab the praise that his knight lacked:
habiendo y debiendo ser los historiadores puntuales, verdaderos y no nada apasionados, y que ni el interés ni el miedo, el rancor ni la afición, no les hagan torcer del camino de la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depósito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir, historians being, as they must be, exact, truthful, and not at all passionate, so that neither interest nor fear, rancor nor affection, lead them astray from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, archive of deeds, witness of the past, example and warning of the present, forewarning of what is to come.
By demanding this of the Arab author, the narrator asks the reader to demand the same of him, and it is in this exchange, between demanding the truth and telling a tale of giants, that the book balances itself. In ch. XXII of Part One the voice of the historian opens the episode of the galley slaves, and in ch. LII of Part One the book of 1605 closes with a plea for credit that puts it on a par with the books of chivalry:
El cual autor no pide a los que la leyeren, en premio del inmenso trabajo que le costó inquerir y buscar todos los archivos manchegos, por sacarla a luz, sino que le den el mesmo crédito que suelen dar los discretos a los libros de caballerías, que tan validos andan en el mundo, which author asks of those who read it, as a reward for the immense labor it cost him to inquire into and search all the archives of La Mancha to bring it to light, nothing but that they give it the same credit the discerning usually give to books of chivalry, which go about so well regarded in the world.
The one who asks is the narrator who has just presented a lead box and Gothic parchments, the true props that Don Quixote required of books. It may be irony against the books, against the reader, or against the request itself.
In Part Two Cide Hamete begins to comment. In ch. III of Part Two, Don Quixote, on learning that the history exists, fears that its author is a Moor, and from Moors no truth is to be expected, since they are all embellishers, forgers, and dreamers. In ch. V of Part Two, the translator warns that he finds the chapter apocryphal, because Sancho speaks in a style and says things too subtle for his short wit, but he did not want to leave it out, in fulfillment of what his office owed him. In ch. VIII of Part Two, Cide Hamete opens the chapter by blessing Allah three times for seeing the two now in campaign, and asks readers to forget the past chivalries and fix their eyes on those to come. In ch. X of Part Two he warns that he would prefer to pass over the chapter in silence, for fear of not being believed, because the madnesses of Don Quixote there reach the end of the greatest that can be imagined and pass two crossbow shots beyond them; he wrote it as it was, because truth grows thin but does not break, and always floats over lies as oil floats over water. In ch. XXIV of Part Two, on the margin of Montesinos's cave, he leaves written in his own hand that he cannot persuade himself that everything happened as it was told:
No me puedo dar a entender, ni me puedo persuadir, que al valeroso don Quijote le pasase puntualmente todo lo que en el antecedente capítulo queda escrito [...] y si esta aventura parece apócrifa, yo no tengo la culpa; y así, sin afirmarla por falsa o verdadera, la escribo, I cannot make myself understand, nor can I persuade myself, that everything written in the preceding chapter happened to the valiant Don Quixote exactly as it is written [...] and if this adventure seems apocryphal, I am not to blame; and so, without affirming it as false or true, I write it.
The historian measures the cave by the yardstick of the earlier adventures, which seemed to him possible and plausible, and by that yardstick it has no entrance. He holds two things that do not fit together: the gentleman, the most truthful of gentlemen, would not lie even pierced with arrows, and would not have the time to fabricate so great a machine of nonsense. So he does not decide, and passes the task to the reader. He adds that it is held as certain that, on dying, the gentleman retracted and said he had invented it, and he leaves the rumor unconfirmed. In ch. XXVII of Part Two he swears as a Catholic Christian, and the translator explains that the Moor meant only that, just as a Christian who swears tells the truth, he tells the truth about who Master Pedro and the monkey were:
Este Ginés de Pasamonte, a quien don Quijote llamaba Ginesillo de Parapilla, fue el que hurtó a Sancho Panza el rucio [...] determinó pasarse al reino de Aragón y cubrirse el ojo izquierdo, acomodándose al oficio de titerero, this Ginés de Pasamonte, whom Don Quixote called Ginesillo de Parapilla, was the one who stole Sancho Panza's grey donkey [...] he resolved to go over to the kingdom of Aragon and cover his left eye, taking up the trade of puppeteer.
The chapter answers the critics of the printed book, who pointed out the grey donkey that reappears without explanation, and it attributes the omission to the printers and not to the author's memory. In ch. XXXVIII of Part Two, when he names the countess Trifaldi, he invokes Benengeli as witness to a thing the reader already knows to be fabricated, and explains it with the care of a genealogist:
y así dice Benengeli que fue verdad, y que de su propio apellido se llama la condesa Lobuna, a causa que se criaban en su condado muchos lobos, y que si como eran lobos fueran zorras, la llamaran la condesa Zorruna, por ser costumbre en aquellas partes tomar los señores la denominación de sus nombres de la cosa o cosas en que más sus estados abundan; empero esta condesa, por favorecer la novedad de su falda, dejó el Lobuna y tomó el Trifaldi, and so Benengeli says it was true, and that by her own surname she is called the Countess Lobuna, because many wolves were bred in her county, and that if, instead of wolves, they had been foxes, she would be called the Countess Zorruna, it being the custom in those parts for lords to take their names from the thing or things in which their estates most abound; but this countess, to favor the novelty of her skirt, dropped the Lobuna and took the Trifaldi.
The joke lies in the fact that the whole adventure is made of such pieces, the veil, the beard, the horse, and the name comes out of the costume. In ch. XL of Part Two the narrator thanks him for telling even the smallest details of the story. In ch. XLIV of Part Two, the chapter opens with a complaint that is made of the original itself:
y decía que el ir siempre atenido el entendimiento, la mano y la pluma a escribir de un solo sujeto y hablar por las bocas de pocas personas era un trabajo incomportable, cuyo fruto no redundaba en el de su autor [...] pide no se desprecie su trabajo, y se le den alabanzas, no por lo que escribe, sino por lo que ha dejado de escribir, and he said that to keep the understanding, the hand, and the pen always bound to writing about a single subject, and to speak through the mouths of few persons, was an unbearable labor, whose fruit did not redound to the benefit of its author [...] he asks that his labor not be despised, and that praise be given him, not for what he writes, but for what he has left unwritten.
Cide Hamete would have found dry and confined the story he had taken in hand, always about the gentleman and Sancho, and the interpreter did not translate it as he wrote it. The narrator answers a criticism the First Part received, that of the novellas that interrupted the story, and he answers by placing the defect in the narrowness of the theme, not in the novellas. In ch. LIII of Part Two, "Mohammedan philosopher," he opens the chapter with a reflection on time, which turns in a circle like the seasons:
sola la vida humana corre a su fin ligera más que el tiempo, sin esperar renovarse si no es en la otra, que no tiene términos que la limiten, only human life runs to its end lighter than time, without hope of renewal unless in the other, which has no limits to bound it.
The reflection, which many understood without the light of faith, only with natural light, comes before the night in which Sancho falls between two shields, and gives the mockery a bottom of vanity of things. In ch. LIX of Part Two, Don Juan, a guest at an inn who is reading the apocryphal book, formulates the rule of authorship:
si fuera posible, se había de mandar que ninguno fuera osado a tratar de las cosas del gran don Quijote, si no fuese Cide Hamete, su primer autor, bien así como mandó Alejandro que ninguno fuese osado a retratarle sino Apeles, if it were possible, it should be ordered that no one dare to deal with the affairs of the great Don Quixote, unless it were Cide Hamete, his first author, just as Alexander ordered that no one dare to portray him but Apelles.
Don Juan has read Part One, knows who the author is, and proposes an exclusive right of portraiture: only the one who drew the face may redraw it. In ch. LXII of Part Two, in a printing house in Barcelona, Don Quixote speaks of translation as a critic who knows the matter:
el traducir de una lengua en otra, como no sea de las reinas de las lenguas, griega y latina, es como quien mira los tapices flamencos por el revés, que, aunque se veen las figuras, son llenas de hilos que las escurecen, y no se veen con la lisura y tez de la haz, translating from one language into another, unless it be from the queens of languages, Greek and Latin, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the back, which, although the figures can be seen, are full of threads that darken them, and are not seen with the smoothness and sheen of the front.
In ch. LXX of Part Two, Cide Hamete gives his opinion of the dukes' prank:
Y dice más Cide Hamete: que tiene para sí ser tan locos los burladores como los burlados, y que no estaban los duques dos dedos de parecer tontos, pues tanto ahínco ponían en burlarse de dos tontos, and Cide Hamete further says: that he holds the mockers to be as mad as the mocked, and that the dukes were not two fingers from appearing foolish, since they put such zeal into mocking two fools.
Thus the hierarchy of the farce is leveled: what seemed a spectacle of nobles amusing themselves at the expense of two simpletons is, in his eyes, as demented as the mocked, because it spends torches, actors, and pageantry on a diversion. In ch. LXXIV of Part Two, after the will and the death of the gentleman, the priest asks the notary for a testimony so that no author other than Cide Hamete may falsely resurrect him. Cide Hamete hangs his pen on a kitchen hook and speaks to it:
Aquí quedarás, colgada desta espetera y deste hilo de alambre, ni sé si bien cortada o mal tajada péñola mía, adonde vivirás luengos siglos, si presuntuosos y malandrines historiadores no te descuelgan para profanarte, here you shall remain, hanging from this kitchen hook and this wire thread, I know not whether well-cut or badly carved pen of mine, where you will live long centuries, unless presumptuous and scoundrel historians take you down to profane you.
The first concern he expresses is that someone may touch it. The verb "profane" gives the pen the sacredness of an object of worship, but the place where it hangs, the kitchen hook, returns the whole to the common. Two readings: the irony of an author who knows the value of his work and playfully places it among utensils, or the pride of someone sure that no one else should write. The pen, finally, tells him the sentence that divides the office between character and author:
Para mí sola nació don Quijote, y yo para él; él supo obrar y yo escribir; solos los dos somos para en uno, a despecho y pesar del escritor fingido y tordesillesco, for me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; he knew how to act and I how to write; only the two of us are made for each other, in spite of and to the grief of the fictitious writer from Tordesillas.
Two readings: a declaration of love for the character, in which the author makes himself its sole guardian, or a clause of property, in the tone of notarial deeds. Cide Hamete says that his only wish was to make men weary of the feigned and absurd stories of the books of chivalry, which, next to the true ones of his Don Quixote, are already stumbling and will fall entirely.
Themes Embodied
Cide Hamete is the center of Language and Narration: the book puts the gentleman inside a document, the document inside a translator, and the translator inside a market. The chain of testimonies (author, translator, narrator, printer, reader) is the form the novel gives to the question of who controls fiction once everyone has read it. Each link can fail: the translator finds the chapter on Sancho and Teresa apocryphal (ch. V of Part Two), the printer loses the how of the donkey's theft (ch. XXVII of Part Two), and the interpreter does not translate the complaint of the original (ch. XLIV of Part Two).
In Appearance and Reality, Cide Hamete is the testimony that does not decide. In the cave of Montesinos the gentleman tells one thing, the monkey answers with a part false and a part plausible, and the historian hands the task back to the reader (ch. XXIV of Part Two, ch. XXV of Part Two). This refusal to decide is consistent with the rest of the book: the denial of reality, which the gentleman collects from the doctrine of the enchanters, the historian collects from the doctrine of uncertainty, and he leaves the two side by side.
The relation to Honor and Reputation lies in the exclusivity of authorship. In ch. LIX of Part Two, the book from Tordesillas is the rival who usurps the name, and Cide Hamete, through the mouth of a reader, is the only one who can portray the gentleman. The plea for forgiveness to the rival in the will (ch. LXXIV of Part Two), the hanging pen, and the threat to the continuers close the argument: the honor of the character and that of the author become one.
Divergent Readings
The book itself makes the Arab historian the object of two opposing readings, and neither is denied. The gentleman fears that, being an Arab, he lies (ch. III of Part Two). The narrator, in presenting him, mocks the prejudice: if there is an objection to the truth of the story, it is that its author is an Arab, and Arabs are liars, but the text demands of him precisely the praise that was missing (ch. IX of Part One). The reader decides whether the truth comes in spite of the Arab, or whether the lie was in the irony.
The two readings of the cave of Montesinos also remain without outcome. Cide Hamete says he cannot vouch for it (ch. XXIV of Part Two); the monkey of Master Pedro, which turns out to be Ginés de Pasamonte, says that part is false and part plausible (ch. XXV of Part Two); the gentleman, after the Clavileño, proposes to Sancho an exchange of lies (ch. XLI of Part Two); the enchanted head replies that there is everything (ch. LXII of Part Two).
The readings diverge on what Cide Hamete does. Whoever reads him as a mechanism of irony sees in the historian a device for refuting the authority of the books of chivalry with the weapons of their own authority: document, translator, margin, preface. Whoever reads him as a character sees, at the end of the book, when he hangs the pen and reserves the gentleman for himself, a declaration of affection. Against the first reading it is worth recalling that he is the first to doubt himself, on the margin of the cave; against the second, that the same pen is a warning of ownership, in the tone of notarial deeds (ch. XXIV of Part Two, ch. LXXIV of Part Two).
Relationships
- Don Quixote: the character the historian follows, and to whom the gentleman attributes the worst of sources, a Moor (ch. III of Part Two), and the only one to whom the dead gentleman belongs (ch. LXXIV of Part Two).
- Sancho Panza: the squire whose style the translator finds too subtle for his short wit (ch. V of Part Two), and who, in ch. XL of Part Two, demands of the historians what is missing from the accounts of his masters.
- Ginés de Pasamonte: the galley slave whom the historian explains to be Master Pedro (ch. XXVII of Part Two).
- The Duke and Duchess: the readers whose prank he judges to be as mad as its victims (ch. LXX of Part Two).
- Sansón Carrasco: the bachelor who promises to report the next edition of the book to him (ch. IV of Part Two).