Stanislav Zimic. Los Cuentos Y Las Novelas del Quijote

Stanislav Zimic. Los cuentos y las novelas del Quijote. 2nd ed. Madrid: Iberoarnericana-Vervuert, 2003. 349 pp. ISBN: 84-8489-105-4. In his erudite study Los cuentos y las novelas del Quijote, Stanislav Zimic challenges the often repeated assertion that the interpolated tales could be extracted without substantial detriment to the rest of the plot. Contrary to the well-known assertions by diverse writers on the topic--among them Unamuno, Madariaga, Russell, Parker, and Percas de Ponseti--Zimic sustains, in an innovative re-adaptation of the Romantic approach, that the intercalated tales in Don Quixote are not mere interludes embedded in a haphazardly chaotic narrative, but rather, critically integral to the aesthetic, thematic, and novelistic structure. In this painstakingly documented study on the intercalated stories, digressions, and interruptions in Don Quixote, Zimic devotes due attention to the most frequently studied episodes of the novel, while incorporating into his thesis multiple aspects from episodes that might otherwise be overlooked by even the most discerning reader. Cervantistas will welcome Zimic's book with much enthusiasm, especially for his detailed analysis of Cervantes' artistic technique of interweaving multiple plots and descriptive minutiae without sacrificing the complex depth of the characters. In Chapter 1," Consideraciones generales sobre las 'novelas y cuentos' de la Primera Parte del Quijote," Zimic summarizes the efforts throughout the centuries to interpret Don Quixote, noting that there are numerous extraneous parts in the novel that cannot be easily explained according to a coherent thesis on novelistic structure. Questioning the validity of Cide Hamete Benengeli's parodic condemnation of the "novelas," both "sueltas" and "pegadizas," of Part One, Zimic demonstrates that Cervantes' aesthetic intention figures prominently in the Canon of Toledo's discourse on the Aristotelian structure of the balanced fabula, a critical concept that Cervantes embraced and executed in the novel's narrative form. Put simply, Cervantes crafts his book as an intricate web of unified intercalated tales and digressive adventures that come to exemplify the seemingly tenuous yet resilient marriage of theory and practice. Zimic persuasively maintains that Cervantes craftily interweaves the many narrative threads with supreme and subtle mastery, thus creating "una inquebrantable armonica cohesion de todos los materiales novelisticos, sabia, artisticamente entretejidos" (27). Cervantes' artistic genius lies in this perfect harmony of structural unity and narrative variety. To this end, Zimic offers an exhaustive catalogue of instances that evince Cervantes' art of interweaving multiple narrative threads within the elaborate fabric of the novelistic structure. Among the many topics that Zimic analyzes we find the elusive psychological complexity of Cervantes' characters (with particular attention given to Cardenio and Anselmo, those two curiously conflicted men); the novel's parodic intent of simulating the structure of the tangential, interrupted, and fragmented adventures in chivalric romance; and the dialectic between life and literature. Of particular note is the assessment of Cervantine characters as conscious imitators of literature, what Zimic terms "literaturizacion": the incarnation of fantastic literature in quotidian reality. The appraisal of Grisostomo's death in the pastoral interlude of Part One forms the crux of Chapter 2, "La 'muerte de amores' de Grisostomo." Zimic synthesizes the varied opinions on the incurably despondent shepherd's untimely demise, revising Americo Castro's assertion that Cervantes does not explicitly allude to Grisostomo's suicide in the narrative prose, but rather in the verses of the "Cancion desesperada." Zimic, ever perspicacious of Cervantine nuances, suggests that in addition to Grisostomo's song of desperation (poetry), there are also references to his suicide in the prose, specifically evoked by the euphemistic use of "murmurar," which conveys the "unspeakable" nature of Grisostomo's desperate act. …