Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 14:15:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Juergen Hahn <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Molinos
To: [log in to unmask]
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I applaud G.L. Gingras for taking the molino-debate
where it belongs: into the actual text, and into
Cervantes' own cultural sphere.

I am sorry, but I cannot accept the proposed
connection of the "moneda de molino"-idea to DQ's
adventure until I see an enormous amount of detailed
empirical textual proof. DQ striking an allegorical
blow against Golden Age monetary policy? That seems
too far off Cervantes' novelistic intention to make
sense.

By now I have read quite a number of interesting,
elaborate studies on Golden Age windmills, but like
most material culture studies, these end up being
unsatisfactory, because they fail to link convincingly
all the accumulated data to the text itself. For, DQ's
adventure is, in my view, not so much about windmills,
as it is about his mad obsession with giants, which he
then readily projects on any remotely suitable object.
The windmills just happened to be there. That in the
end the windmill tilt turned out to be the most
impressive, most memorable iconic image of his story
must have surprised even Cervantes himself.

My point is that any thematic relevance for the text
resides less in the windmills, no matter how
esthetically impressive, than in the giants, and DQ in
his lucid moments is quite explicit about this: "Hemos
de matar en los gigantes a la soberbia"(II,8). Killing
giants means combating the Original Sin of Pride, a
knight's Godly act ("gran servicio de Dios"[I,8]), an
act that he repeats in the wineskin episode, where he
allegorically kills Pride (Pandafilando) in response
to Anselmo's Original Sin of prideful impertinent
curiosity. (I elaborated on this in BHS [1972]). 

In short, there is indeed a theme that connects with
giant-killing and windmills, a theme that relates
directly to Cervantes' purpose, and it is emminently
provable in the text. But it is a theological theme,
and I am afraid that theological and Humanistic themes
do not have great currency among most critics these
days. They would rather pursue all the (post)modern
"-isms" like Marxism, Freudianism, colonialism,
empirialism, no matter how anachronistic and
unfitting,  no matter how little textual proof. We are
watching in this 400th anniversary year the dark
sinister cloud of ideological, epistemological
distortion hovering not only over Cervantine, but over
all of literary studies. Let us hope (to God?) that
the 500th will be more positive and enlightened.

Juergen Hahn
CCSF
San Francisco, CA

 









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