My astronomer was worried about how I would react to the book burning scene. It was his own favorite set piece of the novel, he said, but
"Still, I wonder if what happens to his library will upset you?"
Can you imagine to lose my precious books again or--worse-- have my library sealed up?
Poor Don Quixote, who is returning back after the first sally to his abode of books, has a shock in store for himself. All homecomings are hard, and this one is no different. Badly beaten, our hero is hauled home by a neighbor. More concerned by his mental state than his bruises, a priest and a barber are called to the house. Remember barbers doubled as surgeons back then, so, as professor Wey-Gómez reminds us, we had a doctor of the soul, along with the doctor of the body, there to try and cure the patient- who is, it has to be said, clearly out of his mind from reading too many romances.
And being doctors, they quickly decide that if they get rid of the cause of our hero's madness (the books), he will be cured.
This is the famous "inquisition of the books." Out on trial with the priest having final say on the final fate of each volume, books are either saved or cast into the flames. It is very funny! For as books are individually tried and cast judgement upon, those deemed worthy of punishment are "turned over the to the secular arm" (ie, Quixote's niece and the housekeeper, both of whom would like nothing more than to burn them all in a great bonfire). His niece refers to the books as "the heretics." The church, of course, was not directly allowed to take lives --and so their dirty work had always been performed by the state. And how arbitrary it all is!
But being such a great parody of the Spanish Inquisition, some of the students could not wrap their minds around how Cervantes escaped censor or worse.
Professor asked us if we had ever eaten mochi.
I think this took us all by surprise. And as we happily discussed the delights of mochi, professor lost the thread of where he was going. It was as comical as the book burning scene in the novel and everyone started laughing as we tried to guess why professor had brought up the subject of mochi (he had described a particular dessert he liked, mentioning how fattening it can be).... And then one of the students suggested that maybe professor had wanted to compare the deadly nature of mochi with the Inquisition. Now, this was truly hilarious, since in Japan, indeed, people have been known choke on mochi and die. In Tochigi, before New Years, there were public service announcements to people to only chew small bites at a time! And who could forget that wonderful scene from I Am a Cat when the neko almost chokes on the sticky mochi that he was trying to gobble down. Recently, on Facebook someone posted that more die from eating mochi than from handguns in Japan!
It was funny --and I thought the student was quite clever to make the connection between the dangers of mochi and the Spanish Inquisition.
But no, said professor (who had by then remembered where he had been going with this).
Think of how when you press on one side of the mochi, the other side kind of balloons out....ぷにぷにお餅!!!!
Cervantes cannot be pinned down! Carroll Johnson, in his wonderful book, Don Quixote: The Quest for Modern Fiction, also discusses Cervantes' highly ambiguous style that simply resists all definitive interpretation (and therefore censor). One of his plays, La Numancia, apparently was staged to propagate a pro-government position under the Franco regime at the same time it was being performed elsewhere in 1956 to commemorate Franco's defenders of Madrid in a 1937 battle.
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A quick word about Joseph Pérez's book, The Spanish Inquisition (Review here) and what was in fact censored in el Quixote.
In wonderfully clear prose, Pérez explains how the Spanish Inquisition was fundamentally different from the Inquisition in Rome. Being founded by the State (not the church) the Spanish Inquisition was created toward a specific purpose: the "eradication of semitism" (asPérez calls it). Spain is unique in that a great part of the modern country was a Muslim-ruled land for more than 700 years. That is a long time! And so when Ferdinand and my arch-enemy Isabella united Castille and Aragon, they quickly did three things: 1) They persuaded the Pope to let them create an Inquisition in Spain; 2) They expelled the Jews (who chose not to converted); and 3) They forced the Muslims in Castille to convert.
At the very beginning, the Inquisition was founded to deal specifically with the conversos, who were accused of "Judaising" in Seville. And it seems, based on Pérez, that for a long time, it was taken up with this issue. Unlike the Inquisition in Rome (and maybe France), it was therefore far less concerned with religion per se. The monarchs were aiming to re-exert control over the land culturally, after the reconquest of Spain from the Muslims. And they did this though a policy of "one religion." So, in the beginning at least, in Spain issues of concern were largely cultural. Is everyone eating the same food and worshipping the same God? What practices are happening in the home? They turned soon after to banning religious books. And then the speaking of Arabic and Moorish dress became outlawed. New Christians were always suspect. And rooting them out was a main occupation. (I read somewhere else that Torquemada was himself a New Christian).
As the Counter-Reformation picked up steam, the Inquisition next turned its eyes to rooting out Lutherans (at first this was mainly about banning books and turning out foreigners).
Political reasons became increasingly important.
Don Quixote had one sentence censored from the book. And that was one that declared, "charitable works performed with tepid enthusiasm and laxity have no merit and no value." It is not surprising that this would greatly upset the Inquisition, as it is stepping dangerously close to him weighing in on the meaning and interpretation of scripture and to seeming to side with Protestant sentiments. The idea of Good Works versus Faith being a huge point of contention at that time. A religious and a political point of contention.
** Also see, Dopico-Black, 'Canons Afire: Libraries, Books, and Bodies in Don Quixote's Spain,' in Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Casebook, ed. Roberto González echevarría (new york: oxford University Press, 2005):
The scrutiny of the library chapter of Don Quixote brilliantly opens the door to this haunted, enchanted place, a place in which reading is both refuge and risk, in which the traces of power and memory are grafted on skin or on paper, in which bodies and books are fraught with history and desire: madness to surrender, madness not to.
**The librarian and I had hoped to learn more about the term "relaxed in person" as a euphemism to burning at the stake. Also to learn a bit more about the medieval custom of the sanbenito.
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