The White Knight: Tirant Lo Blanc | Page 4

life, and from his imagination?
Cervantes, writing more than one hundred years after Tirant lo Blanc
was published, was sufficiently impressed to talk about it in his Don
Quixote not once, but on two separate occasions, in fairly glowing
terms.(10) Furthermore, some readers have pointed out scenes that

appear to be similar in both books: both Philippe and Don Quixote find
holes in their stockings, which leads one into great searching for a lost
needle, and the other into even deeper depression; there is a
cat-howling episode in both books, etc. And there is one other way that
Tirant lo Blanc points the way toward the Quixote: in the framework.
Cervantes uses a device often found in the novels of chivalry that
preceded his work, stating that his book is no more than a "translation"
from another language. (While, in fact, the authors of those books are
simply advertising the next novels they intend to write in the series,
much as the "Hardy Boys" or "Nancy Drew" series advertise in the
final pages of each novel.) But in the Quixote the device has a far
deeper purpose: Cervantes informs us that Don Quixote is a flesh and
blood figure whose real-life adventures appear in several Arabic
histories, and one in particular, by a certain Cide Hamete Benengeli.
With the aid of a translator, Cervantes says, he is now bringing the
story of Don Quixote's life back into the Spanish tongue. What we have
here is, of course, a ploy to make the characters seem more real, and
Cervantes makes this assertion with a broad wink, for while we are
"suspending our disbelief," we also know that it is nothing more than
his artistry.
And what of Tirant lo Blanc? According to Martorell's dedication, his
book is also a translation: from the English original, he is translating
into Portuguese, and from the Portuguese into Catalan. But where is the
English original from which this book is simply a translation? There is
no character in English literature or history named Tirant lo Blanc, and
discounting the beginning pages, taken from the "Guy of Warwick"
romance, there is no book in English from which this one has been
translated. As for the translation into Portuguese, there is no book about
Tirant in that language. So why does Martorell tell us all this?
(Although, as we have noted, other novels of chivalry speak of
themselves as "translations", all were printed after the publication of
Tirant lo Blanc.) Is this novel then, which Cervantes so admired, also
presenting us with a "true history" which has been "translated" in a way
similar to the Quixote? Within Tirant lo Blanc we also find allusions to
historians who have "originally" set these words down. For example:
"Here the book returns to the emperor..." "Hippolytus... performed
singular acts of chivalry which this book does not relate, but defers to

the books that were written about him." Is there any difference between
this and the statements of Cervantes about his characters? ("Here Cide
Hamete Benengeli leaves him for an instant and returns to Don
Quixote..." "The history goes on to tell that when Sancho saw...") But
we are given no broad wink from Martorell. It is all true, he tells us,
and there is nothing more to be said. That Martorell died before the
work was published, and that Marti Joan de Galba may have made
some additions before it was finally published, does not clarify the
matter. For De Galba also affirms that the book is no more than a
translation from the English to the Portuguese, and from that language
into the Valencian tongue, and that he is merely finishing what
Martorell was unable to complete.
There are no broad winks. But the characters belie the "history": They
come to life as no straight-forward, factual history can bring its subjects
to life. As Damaso Alonso so accurately puts it: this fifteenth century
work "is precisely that whip that could excite Cervantes' imagination.
Tirant was not yet the modern novel, but in it were many elements, and
furthermore, essential elements of what would become the modern
novel."(11)
Having read this novel, who could forget the characters that Martorell
has brought to life? Who would not feel grief at the death of Tirant and
the princess, no less united in soul than Calisto and Melibea in Spain
(making their appearance a few short years later in Fernando de Rojas'
masterpiece, La Celestina), than Romeo and Juliet in England, and no
less tragic. And in remembering Tirant, who would not smile at the
thought of him serving as a go-between for Prince Philippe and the
infanta, Ricomana. Could anyone be more delightful than the forthright
Plaerdemavida (whose name translates literally as
"Pleasure-of-My-Life") -- surely one of the best delineated characters
in any literature.