Aportes de teorías psicológicas del aprendizaje

Contemporary editions of Vida de don Quijote y Sancho exemplify Unamuno’s dual status as reader and author. The 1905 edition passed without authorial note, until a prologue was added to a second edition published in Salamanca in 1913. An addendum to the prologue was provided in 1928, with a notional third section released in 1930 to assure the reader that the author had nothing more to add. Post-1913 editions of Vida feature arguably the most significant authorial comment in Unamuno’s writings on the Quijote. Unamuno opted to publish Vida after his essay ʻSobre la lectura e interpretación del Quijoteʼ as the former is simply an explanation of the system set out in the latter:

Lo que se reduce a asentar que dejando a eruditos, críticos e historiadores la meritoria y utilísima tarea de investigar lo que el Quijote pudo significar en su tiempo y en el ámbito en que se produjo y lo que Cervantes quiso en él expresar y expresó, debe quedarnos a otros libre el tomar su obra inmortal como algo eterno, fuera de época y aun de país, y exponer lo que su lectura nos sugiere. (Unamuno 2011: 133)

Ironically referring to the task of critics to reconstruct the intentions of Cervantes as utilísima, he proposes a new approach: one which sees meaning as determined by the circumstances of reading. We are free to examine how meaning has changed by the force of historical progress far outside of the spatio-temporal coordinates of a 17th Century Spanish reader. Unamuno condenses various theories that would be expressed later in the 20th Century, including Iser’s statement that reading texts as if they held meaning only as intended by the author is outdated, and Jauß’s contention that the ever-changing historical moment provides new horizons of expectations that validate readings departing from those that would have been accepted at the moment of writing. Borges’s ʻPierre Menardʼ also examines how the Quijote might be read from a modern, international perspective, though it allows for communication between the author’s horizon of expectations and the reader’s.

The quality of Menard’s rewriting is relative to the poverty of Cervantes’s, whereas Unamuno sees little interpretive use for Cervantes’s version.35

Unamuno takes a radical stance against the author that would be permitted by Iser’s and Jauß’s later theoretical work. The clash between cervantismo and quijotismo is an early expression of the conflict between what we would later call intentionalism and anti-intentionalism, as Unamuno seems to express here:

No creo deber repetir que me siento más quijotista que cervantista y que pretendo libertar al Quijote del mismo Cervantes, permitiéndome alguna vez hasta discrepar de la manera como Cervantes entendió y trató a sus dos héroes, sobre todo a Sancho. Sancho se le imponía a Cervantes, a pesar suyo. (134)

Reception theory permits us to dispute the meaningfulness of an author’s stated intention. Vida achieves this. The statement that Sancho imposed himself on his creator is evidence of Unamuno’s reader-centrism.36 _{The novel’s authorship must be credited to a broader, international literary} tradition. Literature is one of the many ways in which the intra-historic spirit expresses itself. Recipients of that spirit have an interpretive authority equal to the author. Hence Sancho imposed himself on the author; Cervantes could not have authored his story were it not for the chivalric form that enabled him. To Unamuno, the text appears to the author as a landscape might appear to a painter. So his railing against Cervantes is an extreme vocalisation of an aesthetics of readership. New horizons of expectations can provide a meaning in the work distinct from that which the author intended. Historical circumstances outside the text provide a reading that bears few traces of the satirical, burlesque interpretation that would have been most accepted in 17th Century Spain.

35 _{For that reason, Gemma Roberts argues that: ʻNo intenta Unamuno realizar en su Vida de don} Quijote y Sancho labor de erudición cervantina y mucho menos de crítica literaria […] Es decir, su propósito es extraer la verdadera filosofía del Quijote contraponiéndola a las usuales interpretaciones profesorales. Trata, precisamente, de sacar a don Quijote de la cátedra literaria para introducirlo de lleno en la vida. Ciertamente, la filosofía que él deriva de la figura el héroe cervantino es, en parte, el producto de su propia interpretación de la vida del propio carácter de su pensamiento, que pudiéramos definir, con sus mismas palabras como un ʻquijotismo filosóficoʼ (Roberts 1966: 17). 36 _{It is, I must add, reminiscent of the clash between Unamuno and Augusto in Niebla, as Ardila and} Biggane recently pointed out (Ardila & Biggane 2016: 200).

In a second prologue in 1928, Unamuno apologises for typographical errors in previous editions caused by ʻprecipitaciones de improvisadorʼ (135). Calling himself an improviser instead of an author could hardly express Unamuno’s suspicion of authorial authority more clearly. This prologue also shows Unamuno taking Cervantes literally in a reductio ad absurdumof intentionalism:

En el prólogo del Quijote —que, como casi todos los prólogos (incluso éste) no son apenas sino mera literatura—, Cervantes nos revela que encontró el relato de la hazañosa vida del Caballero de la Triste Figura en unos papeles arábigos de un Cide Hamete Benengeli, profunda revelación con la que el bueno […] Cervantes nos revela lo que podríamos llamar la objetividad, la existencia […] de Don Quijote y Sancho y su coro entero fuera de la ficción del novelista y sobre ella. Por mi parte, creo que el tal Cide Hamete Benengeli no era árabe, sino judío y judío marroquí, y que tampoco fingió la historia. (136)

Unamuno probably did not see Benengeli as anything other than a literary trick. Rather, in taking Cervantes literally, he guides his reader in the pitfalls of reading naively, and explores the rich meaning that an anti-intentionalist reading can create.37

Modern editions of Vida also feature the essay ʻEl sepulcro de Don Quijoteʼ published in La España Moderna in 1906. It defines don Quijote’s agonismo as an idealist worldview that accepts that ʻEl verdadero porvenir es hoy. ¿Qué será de nosotros mañana? ¡No hay mañana! ¿Qué es de nosotros hoy, ahora? Esta es la única cuestiónʼ (141). Historical advancement must be made by agonistas like don Quijote who wish to make a material impact here and now. That ideological movement has don Quijote as its figurehead: ʻCreo que se puede intentar la santa cruzada de ir a rescatar el sepulcro del Caballero de la Locura del poder de los hidalgos de la Razónʼ (142). Don Quijote teaches the value of existing over simply being, of seeing the world in an irrational way so as to change it according to the will.

Quijotismo’s greatest moral teaching is stoicism towards ridicule. Ridicule is the weapon of erudite bachilleres who guard the sepulchre of a ʻCaballero que hizo reír a todo el mundo, pero que nunca soltó un chiste. Tenía el alma demasiado grande para parir chistesʼ (143). Fear of ridicule stifles intellectual progress. If we abandon that fear as Quijote did, we will promote a reader-centric discourse of free ideological exchange. Ridicule is a circular argument born of common sense in

37 _{As Molinero argues, ʻUnamuno ha tenido que pasar por la ocurrencia cervantina del autor fingido;} esto es, ha tenido que enmascararse literariamente de cervantista para posicionarse poéticamente como quijotistaʼ (Molinero 1999: 111).

order to justify the application of common sense. The satirical reading of don Quijote is based on a positivist logic which is affirmed cyclically. The romantic approach, by its nature irrational, empowers the reader to trust their own interpretation and to bring it into public discourse. So, says Unamuno,

Sigue a la estrella. Y haz como el Caballero: endereza el entuerto que se te ponga delante. Ahora lo de ahora y aquí lo de aquí. ¡Poneos en marcha! […] ¡Luchar! ¡Luchar!, y ¿cómo? ¿Cómo? Tropezáis con uno que miente?, gritarle a la cara: ¡mentira!, y ¡adelante! ¿Tropezáis con uno que roba? gritarle: ¡ladrón!, y ¡adelante!… (146-147)

The reader’s own mind is the source of categorial imperatives. This is the stuff of modernising political discourse:

Mira, amigo, si quieres cumplir tu misión y servir a tu patria, es preciso que te hagas odioso a los muchachos sensibles que no ven el universo sino a través de los ojos de su novia. O algo peor aún. Que tus palabras sean estridentes y agrias a sus oídos […] Echa del escuadrón a todos los danzantes de la jeringa […] Son a la vez estetas y perezistas y lopecistas o rodriguezistas. (148)

Unamuno’s political, cultural and aesthetic views share a methodology. An interpretive approach described by reception theorists bridges the gap between those disciplines. Serving one’s nation entails a scepticism of given literary interpretations and political ideologies: ʻSi quieres, mi buen amigo, llenar tu vocación debidamente, desconfía del arte, desconfía de la ciencia, por lo menos de eso que llaman arte y ciencia y no son sino mezquinos remedos del arte y de la ciencia verdaderos. Que te baste tu fe. Tu fe será tu arte, tu fe será tu cienciaʼ (150). Art, science, politics: all must be viewed exclusively through the eyes of the individual, and each view must be defended with unerring faith.

The irony of Unamuno’s treatment of don Quijote as an historical figure is evident from the first chapter. In an aping of Cervantes’s pseudo-admission as to the unreliability of the record on Alonso Quijano, Unamuno offers a similar admission, with an unlikely solution: ʻNada abemos [sic] del nacimiento de Don Quijote, nada de su infancia y juventud, ni de cómo se fraguara el ánimo del Caballero de la Feʼ (157). He calls Cervantes’s bluff on the historicity of the account to illustrate the success of the narrative conceit: forewarning against reading objectivity into a text. He takes the feigned historical record to its logical extreme, ostensibly criticising those who see don Quijote as a mere fiction. How could anyone ascribe Quijote’s existence to Cervantes when ʻtan esparcida cuanto

nefanda creencia de que Don Quijote no es sino ente ficticio y fantástico, como si fuera hacedero a humana fantasía el parir tan estupenda figuraʼ? (158). From there, he makes the dubious claim that Quijote ʻera de los linajes que son y no fueron. Su linaje empieza en élʼ (158). Here I believe that Unamuno argues an extreme case in order to state its opposite. A lacuna in the historical record does not imply that don Quijote is free of all lineage. Rather that lacuna is a condition of his literary heritage: it is a travesty of the pseudo-historical nature of the chivalric novels that Cervantes so lampoons. The Quijote is the meeting point of various cultural and historical trends that are not the work of one author. It must be read as a fiction which does not prescribe its own meaning. Unamuno demonstrates the extent to which a reader must engage scepticism when reading by playing the extreme form of an unsceptical reader.

This seems to be at work when Unamuno embarks on a pseudo-biblical reading of the novel. For what hermeneutic principle exists for a reader to separate the truth of the Gospel from the truth of the novel? Unamuno’s messianic statements on don Quijote highlight the ingenuousness that readers of any work must abandon: ʻPor nuestro bien lo perdió [el juicio]; para dejarnos eterno ejemplo de generosidad espiritual. Con juicio, ¿hubiera sido tan heroico? Hizo en aras de su pueblo el más grande sacrificio: el de su juicioʼ (163). This claim is an imbroglio of competing readings. Unamuno’s feigned naivety reduces to the absurd the kind of reader the Quijote seems to take aim at. But Quijote’s reading of chivalric novels as if they were historical record is the basis of his heroism. His heroic madness is a product of the necessary scepticism of given modes of reading. The inherent contradictoriness of the argument is a condition for its success: the only valid interpretation is arrived at sceptically.

Radical scepticism towards given models of thinking promotes the reader to a quixotic agonista. Quijote's abandonment of reason is an act of self-sacrifice that a reader must emulate. When we no longer fear ridicule, but work to realise our worldview, then we might leave a lasting impact on the world that will grant us metaphysical longevity. This is precisely what Quijote achieved: Y su honra ¿qué era? ¿Qué era eso de la honra de que andaba entonces tan llena nuestra España? ¿Qué sino un ensancharse en espacio y prolongarse en tiempo la personalidad? ¿Qué es sino darnos a la tradición para vivir en ella y así no morir del todo? (164, emphasis in original)

To live without making some impact on the world is to practically not exist. To be a quixotic agonista bridges the gap between estar and existir, and brings into being the best of all possible worlds.

Unamuno demonstrates the potential to extrapolate political, cultural and philosophical morals from fictional works when the majority reading is abandoned.

Chapters VIII and IX of the first volume of the Quijote, where the narrative device of Cide Hamete Benengeli is introduced, finds its narrative entirely overwritten by a reader whose horizon of expectations renders it completely foreign. The comedic narrative of the eighth chapter, in which don Quijote tilts at windmills under the illusion that they are giants, is practically omitted: ʻY Don Quijote los tomó [los molinos] por desaforados gigantes, y sin hacer caso de Sancho encomendóse de todo corazón a su señora Dulcinea y arremetió a ellos, dando otra vez con su cuerpo en la tierraʼ (199). Reducing the narrative to a framework strips it of its comic impact, and tells it from an apparently impartial perspective before interpreting it as a symbolic parable on industrialization.38 This is the technique by which Unamuno excises the text from the horizon of expectations of a Golden Age reader and reinserts it into that of a reader in early 20th Century Spain. Critic María Ochoa Penroz in fact labels the work a kind of novela-ensayo, a kind of textual baciyelmo (Ochoa Penroz 1997: 65). This can be observed here:

Tenía razón el Caballero: el miedo y sólo el miedo le hacía a Sancho y nos hace a los demás simples mortales ver molinos de viento en los desaforados gigantes que siembran mal por la tierra […] Hoy no se nos aparecen ya como molinos, sino como locomotoras, dínamos, turbinas, buques de vapor, automóviles, telégrafos con hilos o sino ellos, ametralladoras y herramientas e ovariotomía, pero conspiran al mismo daño. (199)

The anachronistic references to post Industrial Revolution phenomena directly reflect the extent to which readers’ horizons of expectations have changed since the publication of the Quijote. Unamuno sees in the symbols of modern industrialisation exactly the same giants that appeared to Quijotein what is now a primitive technology.39 _{Hence a caveat: there remains a shared possible reading across}

38 _{Ardila & Biggane see a historiographical significance here: ʻThe legacy of 1898, and the rise of} other nations’ imperial and economic might haunts the pages of the Vida, and the text is, in part, a defiant nationalist credo in the wake of defeat, pitting will, faith and spiritual superiority against technological and military might. It also contains bitter criticism of Spain’s civic and political life: the Restoration monarchical regime, for Unamuno a regime with little credibility, is compared with maese Pedro’s puppet show, and a Don Quixote was needed to destroy it’ (Ardila & Biggane 2016: 202).

39 _{Prado argues that Vida is a manifesto on the role of poetry in human lives. He suggests that} Unamuno prefers the poetic view of don Quijote to the material view of Sancho: ʻ‘aunque en primera

various horizons of expectations. This is the eternal tradition of En torno al casticismo set to narrative commentary. Unamuno identifies the fleeting phenomena in the material world, as well as the spiritual reality they convey. No matter whether windmills are replaced with automobiles or telegraph poles, we must never be afraid to see in them what we wish to see.

Sancho is an intentionalist reader of the world. He declares that the giants are in fact windmills by showing how a windmill works: ʻ—Mire vuestra merced —respondió Sancho— que aquellos que allí se parecen no son gigantes, sino molinos de viento, y lo que en ellos parecen brazos son las aspas, que, volteadas del viento, hacen andar la piedra del molinoʼ (Cervantes 2010: 100). For don Quijote, the intended function of an object has no role in determining its essence: ʻ—Bien parece —respondió don Quijote— que no estás cursado en esto de las aventuras: ellos son gigantes; y si tienes miedo, quítate de ahí, y ponte en oración en el espacio que yo voy a entrar con ellos en fiera y desigual batallaʼ (100). Fear is the sanchopanzine hermeneutic principle. It delineates things in the world according to a prescribed purpose. That principle blinds its adherents to the potential meanings in the world: ‘El miedo y sólo el miedo sanchopancesco nos inspira el culto y veneración al vapor y a la electricidad; el miedo y sólo el miedo sanchopancesco nos hace caer de hinojos ante los desaforados gigantes de la mecánica y la química implorando de ellos misericordiaʼ (Unamuno 2011: 200). Fear prevents Sancho from exercising his imaginative faculties to the extent that don Quijote does so. Sancho sees windmills because they have been built to fulfil that purpose. This is irrelevant to don Quijote, to whom the intended purpose of things does not define them. Similarly, the intended purpose of a text is not the meaning of a text.40 _{Unamuno advanced this argument explicitly in a} 1917 essay, ʻLa traza cervantescaʼ, stating that:

por mi parte me metí a comentar el Quijote […] no pretendí desentrañar lo que Cervantes quiso decir en él, cosa que me tiene sin cuidado, sino lo que yo en él veo y no lo que me sugiere. No me interesa lo que los autores quieren decir, sino lo que dicen o mejor lo que me

instancia Don Quijote, un mito genuinamente español — y, por ello, diría Unamuno genuinamente universal — se presente como modelo a seguir frente a una crisis española, en realidad su alcance