Who He Is
Sansón Carrasco is the bachelor of Salamanca from Don Quixote's village: described in ch. III of Part Two as short of body and a great joker, of sallow complexion and very good understanding, about twenty-four years old, with a round face, a flat nose, and a large mouth, signs, the narrator says, of a mischievous disposition fond of wit and tricks. He enters the 1615 book as a reader of Part One, which is already circulating in print, and works through the rest of the book as the neighbor who wants to cure the gentleman of chivalry: he agrees with the priest and the barber that they will let him out and that he will appear to him on the road as a knight-errant, defeat him, and send him home (ch. XV of Part Two). In disguise he loses in ch. XIV of Part Two and wins in ch. LXIV of Part Two, and the cure he imposes works: Don Quixote returns to the village, falls ill, and dies as Alonso Quijano the Good (ch. LXXIV of Part Two). What he wants is his friend's good and, little by little, his own revenge as well; he fears the secret will undo him, and asks Don Antonio not to expose him (ch. LXV of Part Two); he knows poetry, chivalry, and village life, and is mistaken in thinking a man can be cured without taking away what sustains him.
Trajectory
In ch. III of Part Two, Sansón kneels before the gentleman and tells him he is one of the most famous knights-errant there have ever been. When Don Quixote asks whether it is true that there is a history of him, the bachelor answers with numbers:
tengo para mí que el día de hoy están impresos más de doce mil libros de la tal historia; si no, dígalo Portugal, Barcelona y Valencia, donde se han impreso; y aun hay fama que se está imprimiendo en Amberes, y a mí se me trasluce que no ha de haber nación ni lengua donde no se traduzga, I hold that today more than twelve thousand books of that history are in print; if not, let Portugal, Barcelona, and Valencia say so, where they have been printed; and there is even word that it is being printed in Antwerp, and it seems to me there will be no nation or language where it is not translated.
The number comes with the formula of a guess, and the list of cities gives it the look of proof. Carrasco says what the gentleman most wants to hear, that his name runs through the languages. Two readings: the flattery of a graduate who already sizes up the man before him, or the author's wink, since in the real world he saw the book being translated. When Don Quixote asks that the book spare him the blows, the bachelor answers with a distinction of the schools, of Aristotelian origin:
uno es escribir como poeta y otro como historiador: el poeta puede contar, o cantar las cosas, no como fueron, sino como debían ser; y el historiador las ha de escribir, no como debían ser, sino como fueron, sin añadir ni quitar a la verdad cosa alguna, to write as a poet is one thing, and as a historian another: the poet may recount, or sing, things not as they were, but as they should have been; and the historian must write them, not as they should have been, but as they were, adding or taking nothing from the truth.
The rule leaves the gentleman with no way out, because the book that tells of him declares itself history. Two readings: a neutral critic explaining a literary convention, or a graduate who uses rigor to put the gentleman against the wall. About Part One, he points out a flaw that Cervantes himself admits through the mouth of a reader:
su autor puso en ella una novela intitulada El curioso impertinente; no por mala ni por mal razonada, sino por no ser de aquel lugar, ni tiene que ver con la historia de su merced del señor don Quijote, its author put into it a novella entitled The Curious Impertinent, not because it is bad or badly reasoned, but because it does not belong to that place, nor has anything to do with the history of your grace, Señor Don Quixote.
In ch. IV of Part Two, when Sancho answers the bachelor's questions about the donkey, it is he who finds the error in the book:
No está en eso el yerro [...] sino en que, antes de haber parecido el jumento, dice el autor que iba a caballo Sancho en el mesmo rucio, the error is not in that [...] but in that, before the donkey appeared, the author says Sancho was riding on the same grey ass.
Sansón recommends to the gentleman the kingdom of Aragon and Zaragoza, where jousts will soon be held, to win fame over all the Aragonese knights. Then, to Sancho, who speaks to him of the insula, he warns:
los oficios mudan las costumbres, y podría ser que viéndoos gobernador no conociésedes a la madre que os parió, offices change customs, and it could be that, seeing you a governor, you would not recognize the mother who bore you.
The warning sums up in one phrase what Sancho's government is going to test, and Sancho answers that the office changes whoever was born among the mallows, not him. In ch. VII of Part Two, warned by the maidservant that the gentleman is going out again, the bachelor already has the plan arranged with the priest and the barber, and confirms what he read when he hears Sancho ask for a will with a codicil that cannot be "revolcar" ("overturned"), that is, revoked: he finds Sancho one of the most solemn madmen of the age and thinks two madmen like master and servant have never been seen in the world. He makes himself their oracle, sets the departure for three days later, offers them a borrowed helmet from a friend, darker with rust than bright with steel, and accompanies them for half a league.
In ch. XIV of Part Two, as the Knight of the Mirrors, he has a line that baits the hook through the two nerves that hurt the gentleman, the lady and the name:
porque el tal don Quijote que digo los ha vencido a todos; y, habiéndole yo vencido a él, su gloria, su fama y su honra se ha transferido y pasado a mi persona; y tanto el vencedor es más honrado, cuanto más el vencido es reputado, because that same Don Quixote I speak of has defeated them all; and, having defeated him, his glory, his fame, and his honor have been transferred and passed to my person; and the victor is the more honored, the more the vanquished is esteemed.
Don Quixote knocks him down, undoes the laces of the helmet, and sees the face, which the narrator describes with six synonyms:
Vio, dice la historia, el rostro mesmo, la misma figura, el mesmo aspecto, la misma fisonomía, la mesma efigie, la pespetiva mesma del bachiller Sansón Carrasco, he saw, says the history, the very face, the same figure, the same aspect, the same physiognomy, the same effigy, the very perspective of the bachelor Sansón Carrasco.
The vanquished keeps the deal by belittling his own lady with a humor that spares him from humbling himself:
Confieso -dijo el caído caballero- que vale más el zapato descosido y sucio de la señora Dulcinea del Toboso que las barbas mal peinadas, aunque limpias, de Casildea, I confess, said the fallen knight, that the torn and dirty shoe of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso is worth more than the badly combed, though clean, beard of Casildea.
The gentleman demands in exchange a clause of reciprocity: the vanquished must confess that the knight who won was not Don Quixote and that the victor, in turn, does not see in him the bachelor, but another who resembles him, put there by his enemies:
También habéis de confesar y creer -añadió don Quijote- que aquel caballero que vencistes no fue ni pudo ser don Quijote de la Mancha, sino otro que se le parecía, como yo confieso y creo que vos, aunque parecéis el bachiller Sansón Carrasco, no lo sois, sino otro que le parece, y que en su figura aquí me le han puesto mis enemigos, para que detenga y temple el ímpetu de mi cólera, y para que use blandamente de la gloria del vencimiento, you must also confess and believe, added Don Quixote, that the knight you defeated was not, nor could be, Don Quixote de la Mancha, but another who looked like him, as I confess and believe that you, although you appear to be the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, are not he, but another who resembles him, and that in his figure my enemies have placed him here before me, to restrain and temper the impetus of my wrath, and so that I may use the glory of victory gently.
In ch. XV of Part Two the narrator explains what the previous chapter left unsaid: the plan was to defeat the gentleman in single combat, taking him for an easy thing, with a pact that the vanquished would be at the victor's mercy and would return to the village, without leaving home for two years, or until ordered otherwise. Tomé Cecial, Sancho's compadre and neighbor, offered himself as squire, with a false nose for a mask. Already on the road back, asked who is the madder, the one who is so by force or the one who is so by will, Carrasco answers:
La diferencia que hay entre esos dos locos es que el que lo es por fuerza lo será siempre, y el que lo es de grado lo dejará de ser cuando quisiere, the difference between those two madmen is that the one who is so by force will always be so, and the one who is so by choice will stop being so when he wishes.
The distinction is clean and applies to all three: the gentleman is mad by force, the squire and Carrasco himself are mad by choice. Whoever says it has just given himself the reason to abandon the enterprise, and he is the one who will not abandon it:
no me llevará ahora a buscarle el deseo de que cobre su juicio, sino el de la venganza; que el dolor grande de mis costillas no me deja hacer más piadosos discursos, it is not now the desire that he regain his judgment that will drive me to seek him out, but that of vengeance; for the great pain in my ribs does not let me make more pious speeches.
The plan began as a remedy for a friend and ends as a personal grievance, and Carrasco admits it without circumlocution: the battered body decides what reasoning had decided otherwise. Two readings: the confession of a man carried away by pain, or, from the start, a cure in which a young scholar had something to prove, and the blow only tore off the mask. In ch. L of Part Two, at Teresa's house, he is the one who doubts the news of the governorship, and applies to the page the gentleman's rule, to touch appearances:
pensamos que ésta es una de las cosas de don Quijote, nuestro compatrioto, que todas piensa que son hechas por encantamento; y así, estoy por decir que quiero tocar y palpar a vuestra merced, por ver si es embajador fantástico o hombre de carne y hueso, we think this is one of the things of Don Quixote, our compatriot, who thinks everything is done by enchantment; and so I am inclined to say I want to touch and feel your grace, to see whether you are a phantom ambassador or a man of flesh and bone.
The village that holds the gentleman to be mad is the first to suspect that the real is fantasy. In ch. LXIV of Part Two, dressed as the Knight of the White Moon, he challenges the gentleman on the beach of Barcelona in the name of a lady's beauty:
Insigne caballero y jamás como se debe alabado don Quijote de la Mancha, yo soy el Caballero de la Blanca Luna [...] la cual verdad si tú la confiesas de llano en llano, escusarás tu muerte y el trabajo que yo he de tomar en dártela, distinguished knight, never praised as he deserves, Don Quixote de la Mancha, I am the Knight of the White Moon [...] which truth, if you confess it plainly, you will spare yourself death and the trouble I must take in dealing it to you.
The challenge arrives dressed in beauty, but its terms reveal another aim: if the vanquished does not confess, he dies; if he loses, he earns a year at home, without taking up the sword, for the increase of his estate and the salvation of his soul. Whoever speaks of estate and of salvation wants to send him home, and says it with the voice of a knight. Two readings: the knight knows the other's weak point and attacks him through it, or he uses the only language the gentleman hears, the honor of a lady, to impose an end that no counsel has achieved. In ch. LXV of Part Two, disarmed at an inn, he explains the whole plan to Don Antonio Moreno, who followed him:
Sabed, señor, que a mí me llaman el bachiller Sansón Carrasco; soy del mesmo lugar de don Quijote de la Mancha, cuya locura y sandez mueve a que le tengamos lástima todos cuantos le conocemos, y entre los que más se la han tenido he sido yo; y, creyendo que está su salud en su reposo y en que se esté en su tierra y en su casa, di traza para hacerle estar en ella, know, sir, that I am called the bachelor Sansón Carrasco; I am from the same village as Don Quixote de la Mancha, whose madness and foolishness move all who know him to pity him, and among those who have pitied him most I have been; and, believing his health lies in rest and in staying in his land and his house, I devised a scheme to make him stay in it.
The explanation begins with pity and ends in a plan: Carrasco presents himself as the friend who, unable to cure the sick man, decides to bind him to what he most respects, the word of a knight. What he tells without noticing is his wounded pride: he came back from the meeting with the Knight of the Mirrors defeated, humiliated, and battered, and the wish to seek out the other has not passed. Two readings: sincere compassion of someone who knows his neighbor, or the stubbornness of someone who lost once and could not leave it there. Don Antonio, who staged the enchanted head and the visit to the galleys to amuse his guests, reproves the cure:
Dios os perdone el agravio que habéis hecho a todo el mundo en querer volver cuerdo al más gracioso loco que hay en él! ¿No veis, señor, que no podrá llegar el provecho que cause la cordura de don Quijote a lo que llega el gusto que da con sus desvaríos, may God forgive you the offense you have done the whole world in wanting to bring back to sanity the most amusing madman in it! Do you not see, sir, that the benefit caused by Don Quixote's sanity cannot reach what the pleasure given by his ravings reaches?
The reckoning is self-interested and affectionate at once, and he acknowledges it as such: to say that Don Quixote would never recover would be, he admits, against charity. In ch. LXVII of Part Two, planning the shepherd's life, the gentleman gives the bachelor the pastoral name Sansonino or Carrascón, and Sancho fears only that the priest will also enter the sheepfold. In ch. LXXI of Part Two, Sancho strikes a beech with the bachelor's name on his lips, without knowing that the Knight of the White Moon was the bachelor:
¡Aquí morirás, Sansón, y cuantos con él son!, here you will die, Sansón, and all who are with him!
In ch. LXXIV of Part Two, with the priest, he visits the sick gentleman many times, tries to cheer him with the pastoral eclogue and the two dogs bought, Barcino and Butrón, and, when the patient wakes sane and announces that he is no longer Don Quixote, supposes that a new madness has taken him and tells him that Lady Dulcinea is disenchanted. He is the executor of his will. At the end, he writes the epitaph:
Yace aquí el Hidalgo fuerte / que a tanto estremo llegó / de valiente, que se advierte / que la muerte no triunfó / de su vida con su muerte. / Tuvo a todo el mundo en poco; / fue el espantajo y el coco / del mundo, en tal coyuntura, / que acreditó su ventura / morir cuerdo y vivir loco, here lies the stout Gentleman / who reached such an extreme / of valor that it is clear / that death did not triumph / over his life with his death. / He held the whole world in little regard; / he was the scarecrow and the bogeyman / of the world, in such a juncture, / that his fortune proved / to die sane and live mad.
The epitaph puts the bachelor back on the page, the very one who arranged the defeat to make him return, and his conclusion, to die sane and live mad, gives the ending the formula the whole book offered without saying it. Two readings: the sincere homage of a neighbor who loved him in his own way, or the summary, with a thread of cruelty, of someone who knows the cure cost the man.
Themes Embodied
Carrasco is Madness seen from outside, by someone who wants to cure it. He classifies it (by force or by will, ch. XV of Part Two), measures it by what the gentleman can lose (the word of a knight, ch. LXIV of Part Two), and treats it with the remedy the gentleman himself acknowledges, the order of a victor. The cure works, and the book makes the price visible: the sane man dies of melancholy, and the friend writes the epitaph.
In Language and Narration, the bachelor is the critical reader who enters the story with Part One in hand. He tells the gentleman that the book exists, corrects him by the rule of poetics (ch. III of Part Two), points out the donkey's error (ch. IV of Part Two), and ends up written into the book itself as the author of the epitaph (ch. LXXIV of Part Two). The city he suggests to the gentleman in ch. IV of Part Two, Saragossa, is the same one the gentleman avoids in ch. LIX of Part Two in order to refute the apocryphal book.
The relation to Appearance and Reality is double-edged. The bachelor hides under the armor and under another's name, and the gentleman, who sees his face, prefers to believe they gave him the face of a friend (ch. XIV of Part Two); in ch. L of Part Two, it is he who, faced with the news of the governorship, wants to touch the messenger to see whether he is a phantom ambassador or a man of flesh and bone. The same rule the gentleman taught the village turns against the village when the fantasy comes from outside.
Divergent Readings
The book sets two opposing readings of Carrasco's plan, and neither is refuted. Don Antonio Moreno reproves it in the name of everyone: curing the madman takes away the joy of those who amuse themselves with him (ch. LXV of Part Two). The bachelor himself defends it as a cure, and then as revenge (ch. XV of Part Two, ch. LXV of Part Two).
For one reading, the gentleman's defeat is that of an old, ambiguous conscience tied to the sacred, defeated on the social plane by a rationalist or literal order.
In the text, the agent of this defeat is Carrasco, bachelor of Salamanca, who wins with the rules of chivalry that the gentleman keeps, the vanquished's pact, the word of a knight, and not with arguments. Against this reading it is worth recalling that the bachelor wins only after having been beaten, and that what moves him is a grievance of a battered man and of a neighbor as much as reason; against the reading of pure compassion, that the cure is imposed by the same code the gentleman taught him to respect, and so the gentleman carries it out without resistance (ch. LXIV of Part Two, ch. LXVI of Part Two).
Relationships
- Don Quixote: the neighbor and friend who defeats him and saves him at the cost of what kept him alive (ch. XIV of Part Two, ch. LXIV of Part Two, ch. LXXIV of Part Two).
- The Priest and the Barber: the accomplices of the cure, with whom he arranges the plan before the third sally (ch. VII of Part Two, ch. XV of Part Two) and who keep vigil at his deathbed (ch. LXXIV of Part Two).
- Sancho Panza: the squire to whom he says that offices change customs (ch. IV of Part Two), whom he holds to be a solemn madman (ch. VII of Part Two), on whose compadre he relies as a false squire (ch. XV of Part Two), and who confronts him aloud without knowing it was him (ch. LXXI of Part Two).
- Cide Hamete Benengeli: the author of the book, whom the bachelor says he has read and to whom he promises to report the next edition (ch. IV of Part Two).
- Dulcinea del Toboso: the lady in whose name the bachelor challenges the gentleman twice, as the Knight of the Mirrors and as the Knight of the White Moon (ch. XIV of Part Two, ch. LXIV of Part Two).