Exemplary Novels, the last 8 tales—is Cervantes a one-book wonder?

This is the Edith Grossman translation of Novelas ejemplares (my post on the first 4 stories). 

5/ “The Novel of the Glass Lawyer”: 

Ah, a madman! This must be Cervantes’s specialty. At first it took me some time to re-adapt to Cervantes after Chekhov—Cervantes also took a while to set things up—but afterwards, what a delightful story! Here is a man who gains wisdom in madness, like Lear. More than the protagonists of previous “exemplary novels”, he is a memorable character, combining the madness and knowledge of Don Quixote and the wit of Sancho Panza. 

Tomás Rodaja in his madness believes himself to be made of glass, and is known as Vidriera. 

“A wasp once stung him on the neck and he did not dare brush it away for fear he would break, but even so he complained. One man asked him how he felt the wasp if his body was glass. And he replied that the wasp was probably a gossip, and that the tongues and mouths of gossips were enough to shatter bodies of bronze, let alone glass.”

“The Novel of the Glass Lawyer” is the second best tale in Exemplary Novels.  

6/ “The Novel of the Power of Blood”: 

If you read this tale as a realistic story, and think of the moral aspect, it’s going to be hard to stomach. The only way to approach it is as fairytale, but even then it’s difficult. The 17th century is a foreign country indeed.

(On a side note, I am so done with the theme of the woman’s honour in Spanish literature). 

7/ “The Novel of the Jealous Extremaduran”:

Cervantes is trying me again. 

““This girl is beautiful, and according to the appearance of this house, she cannot be rich; she is a child, and her youth can assuage my suspicions. I shall marry her, keep her in seclusion, train her to my habits and customs, and in this way she will have no tendencies other than those I teach her…”” 

Like Genji and Murasaki. 

The speaker, Felipo de Carrizales, is the jealous Extremaduran of the title. By my calculations, he is 68, though confusingly near the end of the story, he says he’s nearly 80. The girl—wait for it—is 13-14. 

Did I mention I was ill last week? This wasn’t helping. 

The jealous man imprisons his young wife Leonora in the house, giving her no view of the streets and allowing her to go nowhere but to Mass. Except for the black eunuch at the gates, everyone else in the house is female—apart from seeing her parents at Mass, all her companions are the duenna, the maidservants, and the (female) slaves.   

“Whoever thinks he is more perceptive and circumspect can tell me now what other precautions for his security old Felipo could have taken, for he did not even consent to having any male animal in his house. A tomcat never chased the mice, and a male dog was never heard barking; all the animals were of the female gender. By day Felipo would think, by night he did not sleep; he was the night watch and sentry of his house, the Argos of what he loved dearly. No man ever passed through the door to the courtyard; he did business with his friends on the street.”

Most of the story is enjoyable as one watches the young and handsome Loaysa break through the fortress, with his musical talent and his wit, to get to Leonora. Carrizales is a tyrant! But one reads the ending and again thinks, with vexation, that the 17th century is a foreign country. These novelas are ejemplares apparently because there are some moral lessons, or at least they reflect the moral standards of the day, but the moral values of 17th century Spain are rather dubious, if not downright revolting.  

(It also didn’t help that on 30/7, the same day I read these two morally disturbing tales, I watched The Ballad of Narayama from 1983, one of those films that made me feel like I needed a good long bath afterwards). 

8/ “The Novel of the Illustrious Scullery Maid”: 

Cervantes seems fascinated by the act of transforming, of reinventing oneself: 

“Here it is: we now have—may it be the right time to recount it—Avendaño turned into a servant named Tomás Pedro in the inn, for that is what he said his name was, and Carriazo, with the name of Lope the Asturian, turned into a water carrier; metamorphoses worthy of being placed ahead of those by the sharp-nosed poet, Publius Ovidius Naso.”

Looks like I will have to read Ovid—Shakespeare loved Ovid after all. 

This story also has a pair of friends, but Avendaño and Carriazo are not interchangeable like Rinconete and Cortadillo: both come from rich families but Carriazo is an experienced rogue, drawn to adventures and tuna fishing; Avendaño just steps out in the world and finds himself enamoured of Costanza, the scullery maid. 

If I’m allowed to be a bit petty, I’d note that the ending rather goes against the point about female autonomy that Cervantes makes multiple times throughout Don Quixote. But overall, I enjoyed this story. It’s got a few tropes of Romances, but Cervantes is inventive and a great storyteller—he’s good at captivating the reader’s attention. 

9/ “The Novel of the Two Maidens”: 

Guess what this one is about. Correct! A woman’s honour. Or rather, two women’s honour. 

The one interesting thing I have to say is that clearly Shakespeare and Cervantes are both inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but if Shakespeare is generally more interested in disguise, acting, and manipulation, Cervantes is generally more fascinated by the act of renaming and reinventing oneself, though this one is an exception. In this tale, Cervantes largely still refers to Teodosia as Teodosia whilst she’s in disguise as Teodoro (a man), whereas in “The Glass Lawyer”, “The Illustrious Scullery Maid”, “Rinconete and Cortadillo”, and of course Don Quixote, the narrator switches to the new names, the new identities the characters give themselves.  

This tale of Teodosia and Leocadia makes me think of the subplot of Dorotea and Luscinda in Don Quixote, though of course it is different—Cervantes is inventive with plot. The resolution, as in “The Jealous Extremaduran”, feels like an attempt to be “exemplary”, but one could say the untangling of the Marco Antonio – Leocadia knot is unexpected—at least to me. 

Without saying who’s who, so as not to spoil the ending, I’d say I feel second-hand embarrassment for one of the maidens. Before everyone! I just wouldn’t go out in public again if I were her. 

10/ “The Novel of Señora Cornelia”: 

Between the 9th and 10th tales, I took a little break and read “The Displaced Person”, the final story in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories.

It feels very strange to jump from the 17th century to the 20th century, then back to the 17th, and find Cervantes still treating the theme of a woman’s honour. How many times are you going to do this, Miguel? I have nothing to say—it feels rather pointless a story. 

It is worth noting though that a) Cervantes portrays with sympathy and doesn’t seem to condemn the women who have premarital sex; and b) there is no Don Juan in Don Quixote and Exemplary Novels—the men are either one-time rapists or passionate men who have sex before marriage but do keep their vows.

11/ “The Novel of the Deceitful Marriage”: 

This tale is rather short and under-developed, but it is fascinating for a few reasons. First of all, after numerous strikingly beautiful, good, and chaste women, who all seem alike, we now encounter a woman who is not very beautiful and who turns out to be manipulative. Secondly, it leads to the next—and last—story. And thirdly, a character raises a question about truth and reliability, which brings it closer to Don Quixote. 

12/ “The Novel of the Colloquy of the Dogs”: 

Now this is the height of Exemplary Novels. The story is a conversation between two dogs, Cipión and Berganza— it is closer to Tolstoy’s “Kholstomer” than to Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, though Cervantes’s dogs are a bit more human than Levin’s dog Laska in Anna Karenina. 

Berganza talks about his life, about his different masters and diverse careers, thus painting a rather rich and vivid picture of Spanish society in the 17th century. Cervantes’s gift for dialogue, as we see in Don Quixote, is at full strength here. The brilliance and wit and humour of Don Quixote, the double layers of narration and stories within the story can also be found here. 

“CIPIÓN: You call gossip philosophizing? Well, well, well: applaud, applaud, Berganza, the accursed plague of gossip! Call it whatever you like, it will call us cynics, a word that means gossiping canines; and by your life, be quiet now and go on with your story.

BERGANZA: How can I go on with it if I’m quiet?

CIPIÓN: I mean just go straight ahead, without making the story look like an octopus with all the tails you keep adding to it.

BERGANZA: Speak properly; the appendages of an octopus are not called tails.” 

It is wonderful! 

So, is Cervantes a one-book wonder? Just so you get a clearer idea, I shall digress and say that Herman Melville, often assumed to be a one-book wonder, is not one—his novellas and short stories are magnificent, especially “Bartleby”, “Benito Cereno”, “Billy Budd”, and “The Encantadas”; his novels The Confidence-Man and White-Jacket are also brilliant, even if they cannot compare to Moby Dick (but what can?). Cervantes, I would say, has one masterpiece—the funniest and also saddest novel I’ve read—but if you are curious about his other works, “The Novel of the Colloquy of the Dogs” and “The Novel of the Glass Lawyer” are worth reading.