What It Is
Montesinos's cave, in La Mancha, where Don Quixote is lowered on a rope of nearly a hundred fathoms, while Sancho Panza and a cousin of the licentiate stay at the mouth counting what comes up. Down there, the gentleman says, he fell asleep, woke in a meadow, and saw a crystal palace, the old Montesinos, the knight Durandarte lying in a tomb, the procession of Belerma with the dead man's dried heart, and three peasant women leaping across the fields, one of them Dulcinea del Toboso, who asks him for six reales on loan against a petticoat. Above ground, only a little over an hour had passed, according to Sancho; he says he lived three days. It is the adventure the book leaves most open: the narrator copies it down saying he does not vouch for it, Sancho takes it for a trick, the fortune-telling monkey calls it half false and half plausible, and an enchanted head at the end answers him "there is a bit of everything."
Where It Appears
The descent takes two chapters. In chapter XXII of Part Two, the gentleman leaves the wedding in which Basilio wins Quiteria, with the desire to see with his own eyes whether the marvels told of the cave are true. Sancho asks that he not bury himself alive or set himself like a flask to cool in a well; the master replies that the undertaking was reserved for him. Sancho and the cousin hoist him up with his eyes closed, as if he were asleep, and he laments that they have taken him out of the most delicious life and sight any human has ever known.
Ata y calla [...] que tal empresa como aquésta, Sancho amigo, para mí estaba guardada, hush and be quiet [...] that such an undertaking as this, my friend Sancho, was reserved for me.
In chapter XXIII of Part Two, the gentleman tells what he saw. He examines himself to prove he was awake, and the proof is his alone.
vi que no dormía, sino que realmente estaba despierto [...] me certificaron que yo era allí entonces el que soy aquí ahora, I saw that I was not asleep but truly awake [...] they assured me that I was then, there, the one I am here now.
When Montesinos tells the dead Durandarte that the knight the prophecy awaited is there, the dead man answers with a line from a card game.
Y cuando así no sea [...] cuando así no sea, ¡oh primo!, digo, paciencia y barajar, and when that is not so [...] when that is not so, O cousin, I say, patience and shuffle.
The vision of Dulcinea rests on Sancho's lie: he recognizes her by the clothes, the same ones the squire described in Toboso.
Habléla, pero no me respondió palabra; antes, me volvió las espaldas, y se fue huyendo con tanta priesa, que no la alcanzara una jara, I spoke to her, but she did not answer a word; rather, she turned her back on me and fled with such haste that not even a dart could have caught her.
And what hurts him most is the request his lady's companion makes, in Dulcinea's name, for half a dozen reales against a new petticoat.
Mi señora Dulcinea del Toboso besa a vuestra merced las manos [...] sea servido de prestarle sobre este faldellín que aquí traigo, de cotonía, nuevo, media docena de reales, my lady Dulcinea del Toboso kisses your grace's hands [...] be pleased to lend her, on this petticoat I bring here, of cotton, new, half a dozen reales.
Erich Auerbach reads the enchanted Dulcinea of Toboso as pure comic play, with no hidden depth, and the loan in the cave is of the same kind.
On the very scene of Dulcinea, Auerbach rules out any hidden depth: if she seems sad or tragic, it is because she was presented that way on purpose by whoever summarizes her; read in Cervantes' text, it is a joke.But if we simply read Cervantes' text, we read a joke, and it is irresistibly comic.
In chapter XXIV of Part Two, the chapter opens with a note Cervantes attributes to Cide Hamete Benengeli: he cannot persuade himself that everything happened to the gentleman exactly as it is set down in the previous chapter, and if the adventure seems apocryphal, the fault is not his, so he writes it down without affirming it false or true.
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 it out, nor can I persuade myself, that everything written in the previous chapter happened to the valiant Don Quixote exactly as written [...] and if this adventure seems apocryphal, I am not to blame; and so, without affirming it false or true, I write it down.
Sancho, in the same chapter, hears his master speak to the page with such discretion that he wonders how the same man could say he saw the nonsense of the cave.
¿es posible que hombre que sabe decir tales, tantas y tan buenas cosas como aquí ha dicho, diga que ha visto los disparates imposibles que cuenta de la cueva de Montesinos?, is it possible that a man who knows how to say such, so many, and so good things as he has said here says he saw the impossible nonsense he tells of in Montesinos's cave?
In chapter XXV of Part Two, Sancho asks his master to have Master Pedro's monkey say whether it was true, and the master agrees, with a scruple.
El mono dice que parte de las cosas que vuesa merced vio, o pasó, en la dicha cueva son falsas, y parte verisímiles, the monkey says that part of what your grace saw, or went through, in the said cave is false, and part plausible.
The duke and duchess, in chapter XXXIV of Part Two, take the cave as the matter of a hoax: Montesinos, whom the gentleman said he saw under the earth, now comes in a chariot of enchanters with Dulcinea, and the messenger devil brings the order for her disenchantment.
Yo soy el Diablo; voy a buscar a don Quijote de la Mancha; la gente que por aquí viene son seis tropas de encantadores, que sobre un carro triunfante traen a la sin par Dulcinea del Toboso. Encantada viene con el gallardo francés Montesinos, a dar orden a don Quijote de cómo ha de ser desencantada la tal señora, I am the Devil; I am going to look for Don Quixote de la Mancha; the people coming this way are six troops of enchanters, who on a triumphal chariot bring the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. Enchanted, she comes with the gallant Frenchman Montesinos, to give Don Quixote the order for how that lady is to be disenchanted.
In chapter XXXV of Part Two, Merlin threatens that if Sancho does not give himself the lashes, Dulcinea will return to Montesinos's cave and to her former state as a peasant woman. In chapter XXXVI of Part Two, Sancho writes to his wife that they went to the cave, without saying that he stayed at the mouth holding the rope.
In chapter XLI of Part Two, faced with the fantasy of the goats of heaven that Sancho invents after the flight of Clavileño, the gentleman proposes a trade.
Sancho, pues vos queréis que se os crea lo que habéis visto en el cielo, yo quiero que vos me creáis a mí lo que vi en la cueva de Montesinos; y no os digo más, Sancho, since you want me to believe what you saw in the sky, I want you to believe me about what I saw in Montesinos's cave; and I will say no more.
In chapter LV of Part Two, when he falls into the ditch, Sancho compares his fate with his master's in the cave: the master found delights there, while he will see toads and snakes. In chapter LIX of Part Two, the gentleman tells the gentlemen of the inn, point by point, about Dulcinea's enchantment, the cave, and Merlin's order, and they do not know how to rate him, somewhere between wisdom and madness.
In chapter LXII of Part Two, before the enchanted head, he asks the question the narrator had left open in the cave.
Dime tú, el que respondes: ¿fue verdad o fue sueño lo que yo cuento que me pasó en la cueva de Montesinos? ¿Serán ciertos los azotes de Sancho mi escudero? ¿Tendrá efeto el desencanto de Dulcinea? - A lo de la cueva -respondieron- hay mucho que decir: de todo tiene; los azotes de Sancho irán de espacio, el desencanto de Dulcinea llegará a debida ejecución, tell me, you who answer: was it true or was it a dream, what I relate that happened to me in Montesinos's cave? Will the lashes of Sancho my squire be real? Will Dulcinea's disenchantment take effect? As for the cave, they answered, there is much to say: there is a bit of everything; Sancho's lashes will come slowly, and Dulcinea's disenchantment will reach its due completion.
What It Means
The cave is the place where the book takes apart, from within, the question "is this true?" that it has been asking since the first chapter. In the windmills and the flocks, the refutation came from outside, from Sancho or from the world, and the gentleman absorbed it through the enchanter. In the cave there is no one down there to say what he saw; what exists is an account, the gentleman's, with a narrator who copies it and doubts it, a squire who knows where Dulcinea's dress came from, and an oracle that grants half. It is an adventure one must believe or disbelieve without proof, and that is why everything the book tells afterward leans on it: the dukes use it, Sancho cites it, and the gentleman offers it in exchange for a lie.
Auerbach says that in Cervantes the process of judging is never even begun, and that no one is condemned in this book except the bad books and the bad plays.
In place of the tragic and the symbolic, Auerbach proposes a category of its own: a play that illuminates everything it touches without judging, because in Cervantes the very process of judging never even opens.It is not enough to say that he issues no judgments and draws no conclusions; the process is not begun, the questions are not even asked. No one or nothing (apart from bad books and bad plays) is condemned in this book [...]
The chapter XXIV of Part Two runs against Auerbach's line at the one point where the narrator opens the process: Cide Hamete judges the cave by the measure of the other adventures, finds that it does not fit, and instead of condemning the gentleman or the account, he hands the decision to the reader. The difference matters: Auerbach reads neutrality as the absence of a question, and in the cave the question is asked and left standing. Three answers remain available, and the text does not choose among them: that the gentleman saw it in a dream, that he invented it afterward, or that he told it as he saw it, without knowing more than the reader. The question put to the head in chapter LXII of Part Two and the exchange of lies in chapter XLI of Part Two are the two ways the book finds to live with this: asking an oracle, or accepting another's lie in exchange for one's own.
Relationships
- The work: Don Quixote.
- Standard themes: Appearance and reality, Language and narration, Madness.
- Themes in the work: Appearance and reality, Language and narration, Madness.
- Characters: Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Cide Hamete Benengeli, Dulcinea del Toboso, the duke and duchess.
- Nearby symbols: the windmills, where the refutation came from outside, and the cage, the other scene in which the gentleman is in an enclosed space and tells what he feels.