Mimesis in Auerbach’s version is, as is well-known enough, a representation o f reality, dar gestellte Wirklichkeit, reality as it has been experienced by our senses. I will not explore the conceptual history here, nor will I discuss the interesting but problematic relations that Auerbach establishes between style and sense- experience. Instead I will try to say something about his view o f the temporality o f representation by way o f another concept:
figura. This is much used in his Dante-chapter in Mimesis but not in the chapter where I would like to have seen it: the pages on Cervantes’ Don Quijote.
Auerbach’s figura is presented in his impressive essay by that name from the 30s: there, he works his way through the history o f the concept up to Dante. Its originally grammatical and rhetorical import — Quintillian provides the examples — expands into temporal pertinence through the church-fathers. The relation o f the Old Testament to the New is constructed in temporal terms with the first instance prefiguring the second or being a “figure” o f its own realization. Auerbach quotes Tertullian explaining the words o f Christ, “Hoc est corpus meum,” as meaning “figura corporis mei” (Auerbach 1959: 31). The host being a “figure” would not mean that it is a “phantasma” but a physical reality. Still, this reality can become even more real; the figure is its own pre
figuration, meaning that it is imagined to be realized in future time.
The figure is a reminder (o f C hrist’s body) and a promise (of resurrection). Thus, Auerbach situates the idea o f “figura” in a Christian tradition that divides the world vertically as well as horizontally: this world is but a shadow o f another world, that is
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either parallel or futural or both. This world is full o f those meaningful signs called “figura.” These are real but still mere umbrae, i.e. shadows o f an other world; they are at once physical and spiritual, “hence” — in Auerbach’s words — “authentic, sig
nificant, and existential” (ib. 45). “Figura” is close to the allego
rical sign as well as to the symbol but Auerbach claims “figura” to be their alternative: “figura” is not only a sign referring in tim e (as the allegorical sign) but is simultaneously manifest and present.
Not only filled by its own presence, like the symbol, but at the same time referring in time. “Figura” can perhaps be called a hermeneutical construction, to use a term not used by Auerbach;
“figura” being closely related to interpretation. A phenomenon perceived as a “figura” can only be understood in its relation to other phenomena. Auerbach defines figural interpretation as the establishment o f a relation between two phenomena separate in time but still within time (Auerbach 1945: 53). The possibilities o f figural interpretation are therefore as inexhaustible as time and world (or times and worlds) and figural thinking is doomed to interpretation. Auerbach insists on the concrete empirical character o f figural thinking at the same time as figural interpretation transforms empirical reality into text and history into an endless process: the full reality o f resurrection will always be beyond.
Auerbach’s prime example on figural thinking is Dante, a Dante not read allegorically or theologically but read as simulta
neously allegorical and realistic. In the figural interpretation Virgil is real but also a figure o f Dante, who is real but also a figure o f the poet, etc. Dante’s comedy “is a vision which regards and pro
claims the figural truth as already fulfilled,” according to Auerbach (1959: 67). This idea is further developed in the Mimesis-chapter dealing with Dante (“Farinata and Cavalcante”).
In this brilliant part o f Mimesis Auerbach derives stylistic breaks and blends from the poet’s contact with real life — his “sensory experience o f life on earth” (Auerbach 1957: 166). Still, D ante’s stylistic mixture is subordinated to an elevated level ju st as Dante’s realism is a figural realism presenting earthly phenomena as real while they receive their full meaning only in transcendence.
Unearthly phenomena are still sensory phenomena along with being eternal; they have received their form a perfectior. Dante’s
figures joins the eternal with the transitory and the result is, in Auerbach’s words, a “direct experience o f life which overwhelms everything else” (ib. 176). So overwhelming, indeed, that man eclipses the divine; in an astonishing conclusion Auerbach writes that D ante’s figures become autonomous through their consum
mation, that he “made m an’s Christian-figural being a reality, and destroyed it in the very process o f realizing it” (ib.).
The consequence and consummation o f figural thought was its dissolution — when Dante approaches God it means the death o f God. That was o f course not A uerbach’s words, but seems like the logical consequence when Dante is said to destroy the very
“figura” he realizes, the “figura” o f a Christian tradition, deter
mined by the idea o f this world as a shadow o f an other world.
This figural realization includes the destruction o f the temporal tension defining Auerbach’s “figura.” His figural mimesis was a temporal mimesis: a representation o f the past joined with the future ju st as the host connected the body o f Christ with my body and the resurrected body. Dante’s simultaneous realization and destruction o f such a temporality brings figural thought to an end as far as Auerbach is concerned: he finds no place for a figural interpretation in his readings o f literature after Dante. What I have to say here is an elegy over this fact. As I read art and literature there are temporal tensions in all representation, all mimesis. What Auerbach calls “figura” could therefore be given pertinence beyond the Christian tradition as a permanent alternative to allegory and to symbol.
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I will now proceed to present Auerbach’s reading o f Cervantes aiming to show how this could have been enriched by those temporal tensions defined as “figura” by Auerbach but limited, by him, to the Christian tradition. The starting-point is the tenth chapter from the second part o f Don Quijote, where Cervantes tells us about Sancho’s “devices” made for the “enchantment” o f Dulcinea. It has to do with the meeting between the knight and the lady o f his heart, an obviously central drama in those romances that modelled the actions o f our knight. Sancho has been sent in
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advance in order to negotiate with Dulcinea; he solves this task by picking up the first girls he meets on the road, presenting them for his master as Dulcinea with her ladies-in-waiting. Don Quijote, however, does not see what he wants to see; “I can see nothing, said Don Quijote, but three village girls on three donkeys” — and Auerbach starts his analysis in this sentence. The knight makes a feeble effort to express his devotion and Sancho tries to persuade him that he is actually seeing Dulcinea but nothing helps; she who was not Dulcinea does not behave as she should and Don Quijote cannot see these girls as anything but what they are. He explains this for him self with the malign enchantments that has befallen Dulcinea and when he realizes that he cannot lift the ban in order to make reality his reality the chapter is concluded with the knight calling him self “the most unfortunate o f men.” (Or: the “un- happiest” or most “rejected” o f men: el mäs desdichado de los hombres. In the discussion o f this sequence I am borrowing from my own observations in the chapter on Cervantes in Theories o f Mimesis).
Auerbach concludes his quotation before this line and starts his analysis with the knight’s belief in the enchantment o f Dulcinea;
he “takes pride in his sublime misfortune” according to Auerbach (1957: 301), it saves the situation for him by making him the
“elect” and “unique” victim o f wizardry. The scene is “special” in the sense that it forebodes the final insight o f the knight: the death- bed-verdict over his knightly ambitions. But basically the scene, like the whole book, is “pure farce” completely lacking in “tragic complications and serious consequences” (ib. 303). Its abrupt contrasts and stylistic mixture are for fun: “To find anything serious, or a concealed deeper meaning in this scene, one must violently overinterpret it” (ib.).
I am only one among many readers o f Don Quijote (at least from Romanticism and onwards) that have indeed been tempted to find something “serious” among all the “farces” in Don Quijote — and for us this very scene with the failed meeting is o f great im
portance. The reason seems simple: the knight calling him self unhappy, “the most unfortunate o f men”, can hardly be read as the knight taking pride in being exceptional. This is not so much due to the scene itself (it could very well be read as comical) nor to any
hidden meanings; it depends rather on the part played by the scene in the novel. The misery o f Don Quijote happens to be instru
mental for the great novel in making his melancholy manifest. This melancholy has always been in store for “the knight o f the sad countenance” but from this point — the turning-point — it quickly develops into his profunda melancolia, to quote from some chapters later. M elancholy will actually become mortal for the knight, as the doctor at the death-bead o f the final chapter has to confirm: “melancholy and despondency were bringing him to his end.”
To put this differently: the episode discussed by Auerbach is no doubt comical when read in isolation; and the whole book Don Quijote can o f course be read as a series o f purely comical episodes. W ithin a context this is not as easy: when you realize the continuity between the Don Quijote, unhappy from his non
meeting with Dulcinea, and the Don Quijote who dies, then so
mething distinctly “serious” intervenes in your reading. The name o f this context or continuity is time: in the book on Don Quijote there is a temporal development, that takes very little analytical effort to follow. This development can be described in terms o f prefiguration: the poor hidalgo o f the introduction prefigures the wind-mill-fighter o f the first part, who in his turn prefigures the melancholy knight o f the second part, who is a prefiguration o f the Don Quijote, who finally stops being Don Quijote and dies. Such a development is by no means unusual in a novel; and the novel Don Quijote prefigures a whole tradition o f novels and even makes a model, according to some readers, for the very Novel itself. Our knight is a novelistic character or figure. He lacks the reality as well as the transcendence, that Auerbach demands from a figure in order to qualify as “figura” . Still, he is defined by two figurations derived from mimetic representation, both constituting narrative tensions: an imitative impulse and a temporal continuity. I will comment upon both.
Mimesis has o f course to do with imitation and similarity; this is part o f the concept in its long history up to Romanticism. The poor gentleman o f some rank from La M ancha making him self into Don Quijote is, as we all know, the result o f an act o f comical imitation: he wants to become similar to the knights he has been
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reading so much about, specially Amadis de Gaul. The concept
“ imitation” is furthermore frequently in use in the many aesthetical discussions in the book probably functioning as a translation o f A ristotle’s mimesis — we are in the renaissance o f Aristotelian Poetics. In the prologue o f the book “imitation” functions as an aesthetic pass-word: “In what you are writing you only have to make use o f imitation,” according to the friend, who encourages the efforts o f the narrator, “and the more perfect this is, the better your writing will be.” And in the end o f the first part (ch. 47) Aristotelian poetics is presented by a certain canõnigo, who tells us that the narrative should provoke “admiration and delight” in order to reach its “perfection,” that consists o f “verisimilitude and imitation.”
Auerbach’s mimesis was, as will be remembered, a Darstellung or representation o f reality as it was perceived by our senses;
Aristotle’s mimesis was defined as an imitation or representation o f the praxis — the act or action — limited by beginning, middle and end. Both thinkers insist that mimetical representation immediately relates to the world o f phenomena and senses. Cer
vantes does not: when he discusses mimesis through his fiction there is, remarkably enough, no mention o f reality or praxis.
Nobody says anything whatsoever on what imitation imitates.
What Cervantes calls imitaciõn seems like an aesthetical device without relevance for or reference to anything but the literary structure o f the work.
This has its equivalence in the imitation o f Don Quijote, that is literary in the sense that Alonso Quijano, supposedly his real name, imitates literature when picking up the name Don Quijote;
he wants to transform him self into a literary figure by naming his horse Rocinante and the girl from the neighbour village Dulcinea.
Naming is the literary strategy o f the knight; and the comical structure o f the book is simply derived from the conflict between this literary project and a reluctant reality, that does not wish to become literature. The windmills do not behave like foul giants, the girl from the inn is no lady and the peasant girl does not accept the name Dulcinea.
On top o f this comedy Cervantes has put some complications that point towards irony. This happens when the knight, who wants
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to make the world literary, insists on the reality o f literature. He is not content with playing around with names like Don Quijote and Sancho Panza; no, he proclaims the literary world to be more real than the real world. He calls the literary world he has taken upon him to establish for a “golden age”; his own task to revive (re- sucitar) this “golden age” in the present “ iron age” (this is in the 20th chapter, first part). That is: to change reality in a literary way, install true reality (that was literary) in the pseudo-reality where we happen to live.
Time accordingly enters the story o f Don Quijote by way o f the classical golden age-myth: his real reality is long since passed and his task is to change the present through the past into the future.
The knight is situated (or situates himself) in a great temporal drama — giving an ironic dimension to the comedy o f the book, that is based on the unvariable: the uncorrigible knight in constant confict with an immutable reality. A kind o f figural interpretation is going on already in the story o f Don Quijote — the knight understands him self and his reality in relation to a mythical past and an utopian future — in spite o f Auerbach’s reading o f the book as a series o f purely comical scenes.
It belongs to the ironies o f the book, that Cervantes allows the knight some success in his revival o f the golden age. The name Don Quijote, for instance, is accepted by everyone in the book and also by its readers: we would never dream o f referring to this literary figure as Alonso Quijano (or whatever name he had). But obviously his success cannot be complete: that would mean the end o f time and the transformation o f the novel into pastoral. His failure is finally demonstrated, also for himself, in the chapter where Auerbach started: the meeting with the girl who was not Dulcinea.
This chapter is actually a diabolical repetition o f chapter 31 from the first part: here Don Quijote has sent away Sancho with a message to Dulcinea and he comes back for report. Sancho has not been near anyone like a Dulcinea but he starts guessing what the visit would have been like, had it been to the model, i.e. the girl Aldonza from the neighbour village. Sancho invents a realist fiction, so to speak, that Don Quijote answers by correcting his realism on every point and in accordance with his elevated literary
examples on how the visit to the beloved lady should work out in ideal reality.
In chapter 10 o f the second part — Auerbach’s and our example — it is instead Don Quijote who can only see reality while Sancho tries a literary version o f the meeting. Sancho does not hesitate to present a random peasant girl as Dulcinea and why should he hesitate? — throughout the first part and some chapters in the second his lord has shown his excellent capacity o f interpreting and naming reality in accordance with literary models:
windmills he has made into giants, the landlord into a real lord, the barmaid into a lady. Reality in itself does not interest our knight;
only the literary transformed reality. When, in the first part (ch. 25) he reveals for Sancho that Dulcinea has a model in the neighbour village, he also states that it is not the real Aldonza that interests him but the idealized: "... in my imagination I draw her as I would have her be, both as to her beauty and her rank.”
No more drawing when the knight meets the girl who was not Dulcinea. Don Quijote sees “nothing” but plain iron-age reality:
“three village girls on three donkeys.”
If this had been pure comedy — as it is in Auerbach’s reading — reality would not have stopped the knight from naming Dulcinea. Neither magic nor reality could stop him from naming the windmills giants! His reality was actually enchanted from the beginning, i.e. from the moment he decided to make it literary but this has in no way stopped him from naming and trying. But now, he suddenly stops: i.e. he starts paying his compliments (without using the name Dulcinea) but is willingly interrupted by the girl’s snappy answer; and he can use the name Dulcinea only when the girls have trotted away. The conclusion seens inevitable: when trying to make the literary Woman into reality the knight loses his naming capacity. The reality o f Woman stays an unapproachable Golden Age, a literature that cannot be brought to life: Don Quijote sees “nothing”; but he realizes that Golden Age cannot be
“revived” and that a real woman is nothing but a peasant girl.
I will not go into the psychological speculation opened by this fatal situation concerning gender relations in this book but simply state that Don Quijote becomes unhappy due to his combined blindness and insight. He becomes “the most unfortunate o f men.”
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I cannot share Auerbach’s opinion when he thinks that the knight
“takes pride in his sublime misfortune” (but I find it odd with this moralizing tone concerning a book regarded as “pure farce”).
Instead I have already described the misery o f the knight as the first acute expression o f the melancholia, that accelerates in coming chapters and finally becomes mortal.
There was o f course a melancholy touch in our knight from the very beginning. All his setbacks when trying to bring literature into life have, however, not stopped him from trying again. The suddenly acute melancholia can not be explained by the meeting with Dulcinea becoming a farce — such was routine for the knight — but depends on its never taking place (“I see nothing”).
Combined, o f course, with the inevitable insight: that the meeting never can take place. The quijotic project — reviving Golden Age, making literature real, abolish the curse o f time and reality — came to nought in the decisive moment. Golden Age is forever lost and the reality o f the knight stays real. The melancholia triggered by this can, in other words, be regarded as a result o f the inter
Combined, o f course, with the inevitable insight: that the meeting never can take place. The quijotic project — reviving Golden Age, making literature real, abolish the curse o f time and reality — came to nought in the decisive moment. Golden Age is forever lost and the reality o f the knight stays real. The melancholia triggered by this can, in other words, be regarded as a result o f the inter