Don Quixote, Benengeli and Coetzee’s Jesus Trilogy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the central role of Don Quixote (1605, 1615) in J.M. Coetzee’s Jesus novels, arguing for the relevance of the fact that it is Benengeli, the fictional Moorish historian – and not Cervantes – who is presented as the author of the Spanish novel. This is first explored in relation to the analogy that The Childhood of Jesus (2013) makes between authorship and paternity, along with the depiction of the relationship between authors and characters as one of temporary, non-substantial stepfatherhood. The disruption of Don Quixote’s authorship/paternity also traverses the trilogy’s questioning of linguistic origins, and concern with linguistic processes of estrangement, displacement and irony. Finally, Cervantes’s absence in Coetzee’s novels is examined in relation to David’s act of trust and blind belief in the character of Don Quixote, a response to both the performative power of words and the capacity of literary characters to outstrip their original authors.KEYWORDS: CoetzeeThe Childhood of JesusThe Death of JesusCervantesDon Quixote AcknowledgementSpecial thanks to Derek Attridge for providing me with insightful comments on a previous version of this essay.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 López and Wiegandt provide a fairly comprehensive picture of the main literary traditions and also individual writers that Coetzee’s work has been associated with.2 Hayes, J.M. Coetzee and the Novel.3 López, “Miguel de Cervantes and J.M. Coetzee.”4 Galván, “Borges, Cervantes and Coetzee.”5 Hayes, “Influence and Intertextuality,” 152.6 Ibid., 154.7 Ibid., 158–67.8 Coetzee, Schooldays of Jesus, 220.9 Ibid., 229.10 In the case of The Master of Petersburg, the centrality of Dostoevsky is much stronger than that of Defoe in Foe, where the English author has a much flimsier presence, being very much in the shadow of Susan Barton.11 See Hayes’s chapter “Influence and Intertextuality” for an insightful analysis of Coetzee’s exercise of “intertextual literary imagination” (162) in Foe and The Master of Petersburg, in which the act of literary creation emerges as one of displacement of the author’s consciousness.12 Coetzee’s dialogue with Defoe and Dostoevsky, as opposed to that with Cervantes, differs in other aspects. Along Coetzee’s writings, Defoe is associated with Robinson Crusoe, but also with other works such as Roxana or A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, whereas Dostoevsky is associated with Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov or Demons. As regards Cervantine intertextuality in Coetzee, it involves – up to now – one single work, at least as long as explicit intertextual references are concerned – Don Quixote – with a special focus on Don Quixote, the character, as it is indeed the case in the Jesus trilogy.13 Coetzee, Childhood of Jesus, 104. Further quotations from the novel, abbreviated CJ, are given as in-text references.14 González Echevarría, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, 6.15 Cervantes, Don Quijote, 3.16 The metaphor of the author as father is one that pervades Western literature and literary criticism. As put by Edward W. Said, “[t]he ground of literature is the text, just as its father – the mixed metaphor is inescapable, and encouraged by every writer who ever wrote – is the author” (n.p.n.).17 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 3. In the translation I am using, Grossman translates “engendrar” as “beget” in the preface, and as “engender” in Don Quixote’s words on Dulcinea. Given the connections between these two uses of the Spanish verb and its very specific connotations, the translation as “engender” in both cases would have worked better.18 Riley, Introducción, 62.19 Coetzee, Schooldays of Jesus, 180, 197, 229.20 Close, Companion, 8–9.21 We may think of the case of Mrs Curren in Age of Iron, literally a mother, but who also represents what I am calling “fatherhood”, as the whole novel is structured upon the distance between her and her daughter, a distance which she tries ineffectually to bridge through the letter she addresses to her.22 Coetzee, Disgrace, 63.23 Coetzee, Foe, 91.24 Coetzee, Master, 239.25 Coetzee, “He and His Man,” n.p.n. See Effe’s chapter “Author and Character: Of Fathers, Foes, and Figurations” (25–60) for an analysis of the use of metalepsis in Foe, Slow Man and “He and His Man” in order to question the boundary between the different ontological worlds to which author and character presumably belong.26 Coetzee, “Daniel Defoe,” 20.27 Ibid., 21.28 Ibid.29 Ibid., 22.30 Ibid., 21.31 Ibid.32 Davenport, “Foreword,” xiv.33 Kossew uses this concept in her analysis of moments of “sympathetic emotional identification” in Coetzee, “often associated with the parent/child relationship” (149). Neill also turns to this notion in his analysis of confession, metaphor and grace in Age of Iron. Zimbler has paid sustained attention to the idea of the “language of the heart” in Coetzee’s fiction, in relation to the also frequent references to a language of the spirit and the soul. Zimbler’s emphasis is on Coetzee’s metaphorical references of the “heart” as the site where one’s true feelings reside, so that a language of the heart would be one that “enables generosity, love and a relation to what is not ourselves” (191–2).34 Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, 106.35 Coetzee, Slow Man, 197.36 Ibid., 198.37 Coetzee, Slow Man, 197.38 Wiegandt, J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human, 188.39 The otherwise infrequently used term “father tongue” is occasionally used in order to suggest a second language that one learns through education and reading, as opposed to the “mother tongue” as the language one grows up speaking. In these uses of the term, there is often the implication of a distance between one’s self and the father tongue, as opposed to the oneness or intimacy felt toward the mother tongue. Thus, the artist and Italian-to-English translator, Scott Belluz, reflects on his relation to Italian as his father tongue as one characterised by elusiveness, a feeling of exile and a search for identity. The Pakistani critic and short story writer, Aaamer Hussein, also explores his very complex, ambivalent relations to his multilingual identity through the concepts of “mother tongue” and “father tongue”.40 Auster and Coetzee, Here and Now, 73.41 Ibid.42 See Attridge for a detailed discussion of these developments in Coetzee’s recent career.43 Kossew, “J.M. Coetzee,” 157.44 Attridge, “The South According to Coetzee,” n.p.n.45 Seshagiri has addressed The Childhood of Jesus as a “multiply translated work” (650), also pointing to the inaccessibility of the protagonists’ original tongue.46 Mulhall, In Other Words, 11.47 Ibid., 12.48 Reed, “Chaotic Quijote,” 738.49 Kusek, “Thirty Years After,” 26; emphasis in the original.50 Coetzee, Death of Jesus, 106.51 Honold, “The Reading of Don Quixote,” 208; emphasis in the original.52 Miller, On Literature, 14.53 Ibid., 15.54 Coetzee, Death of Jesus, 108.55 Miller, On Literature, 38. Derek Attridge (The Singularity of Literature, The Work of Literature) and Nicholas Royle (Jacques Derrida) have also made powerful claims about the performative dimension of literary works and the subsequent response that they demand from readers.56 Miller, On Literature, 111.57 Ibid., 29.58 Ibid., 111.59 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 611.60 Kusek, “Thirty Years After,” 25.61 Murillo, A Critical Introduction, 162.62 Parr, Don Quixote, 27.63 Cervantes, Don Quixote, 614.64 Miller, Tropes, 139.65 As Wiegandt points out (205), there is not such proof in Coetzee’s novel either. When Sancho Panza demands to be shown a ruby or sapphire, the chapter just breaks off.66 Barbour, Derrrida’s Secret, 13.67 Ibid.68 Barbour, Derrida’s Secret, 50.69 Ibid.70 Ibid.71 Miller, Literature as Conduct, 177.72 Miller, Tropes, 139.73 https://cervantes.org/es/sobre-nosotros/sala-prensa/notas-prensa/j-m-coetzee-estoy-encantado-asociar-mi-nombre-miguel. My transcription.74 https://cervantes.org/es/sobre-nosotros/sala-prensa/notas-prensa/j-m-coetzee-estoy-encantado-asociar-mi-nombre-miguel. My transcription.75 Said, Beginnings, 83.76 Miller, On Literature, 111.Additional informationFundingThis article is part of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [ref. PID2019-104526GB-I00], whose support is gratefully acknowledged.