Alicia C Montoya
email: a.c.montoya@rug.nl

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

THE FUNCTION OF THE MEDIEVAL IN JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU"S NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE: A REREADING OF THE ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE MOTIF (7.023 words, including footnotes)

Keywords:

s critical rewriting in his Nouvelle Héloïse of two foundational medieval works -the letters of Abélard and Héloïse, and Petrarch"s Canzonierereveals the crucial role that the medieval played in his own moral vision. This article both identifies a possible eighteenth-century source for Rousseau"s retelling of the Abélard and Héloïse story, and explores the function played by the medieval in his novel. The medieval in La Nouvelle Héloïse, as in his larger thought, was not a chronological, but an ethical category. It spoke not of historical events, but of his own "pays des chimères". Because of its position outside of the accepted classical canons, it could incarnate an alternative vision commensurate with Rousseau"s own self-image as an outsider to the morally corrupted societies of his own time.

Associated with the purer language of music, the medieval finally offered access to a higher spiritual plane, exemplified by Julie"s role as a Mary-like or even Christ-like figure. As such, the medieval ultimately served as an epistemological counter-model, an imaginary point of origin within a larger history of human virtue.

The Function of the Medieval in Jean-Jacques Rousseau"s Nouvelle Héloïse:

A Rereading of the Abélard and Héloïse Motif

The influence of classical models on the oeuvre of Jean-Jacques Rousseau has frequently and convincingly been studied. By contrast, the role of the medieval is more often overlooked.

Yet even the most cursory glance at the titles of his works suggests that certain, particularly archetypal medieval texts carried a special resonance for him. Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse directly alludes to the story of the twelfth-century lovers Abélard and Héloïse. The title of his Confessions announces the influence of Saint Augustine"s work on the structure and content of his bookas has indeed recently been explored by Patrick Riley, among others. In personal life, too, Rousseau was deeply attached to the medieval. Torquato Tasso"s chivalric epic Gerusalemme Liberata remained a constant literary model for him, even during the last months of his life, when he had turned his back on all other literature [START_REF] Hamman | La vie de Jean-Jacques Rousseau ou l"éternel retour du Tasse[END_REF], Montoya 2010a[START_REF] Starobinski | Rousseau e Tasso: lezione sapegna 1993[END_REF]. Another major influence was Honoré d"Urfé"s Astrée, whose description of the pastoral loves of shepherds and druids in fifth-century Gaul underlay his own pastoral writings [START_REF] Mcdonald Vance | The Extravagant Shepherd. A Study of the Pastoral Vision in Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse[END_REF]. It is perhaps in his epistolary novel Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, which in many aspects offers a synthesis of his thought and vision, that Rousseau"s medievalism was at its most paradigmatic. By critically rewriting two foundational medieval worksthe letters of Abélard and Héloïse, and Petrarch"s Canzoniere -Rousseau offered a new view of the Middle Ages that is both of his time and outside it, and that played a defining role in his own authorial self-fashioning and larger moral vision.

Eighteenth-century Versions of the Abélard and Héloïse Story

Rousseau started writing Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse in the summer of 1756, by his own account while imagining fictional characters and situations to compensate for an unrequited love involvement of his own:

L"impossibilité d"atteindre aux êtres réels me jeta dans le pays des chimères, et ne voyant rien d"existant qui fût digne de mon délire, je le nourris dans un monde idéal, que mon imagination créatrice eut bientôt peuplé d"êtres selon mon coeur. 1 Published at the beginning of 1761, this novel conceived in the "pays des chimères" appeared during a period in which literary interest in the Middle Ages was on the rise, in many respects reworking and updating the previous century"s ideal of galanterie. Emphasizing notions such as an idealized return to a previous state of pastoral bliss and the equalizing power of love, medievalism was an important element within mondain literary sensibility. Not surprisingly, given the importance of romantic love for the galant esthetic, two medieval couples of lovers came to play a central role in it: Abélard and Héloïse, and Petrarch and Laura. Following the rediscovery of the former"s letters at the end of the seventeenth century, 2 their love story came to the forefront of literary discourse, reaching new heights of popularity during the 1750s. By the date of publication of Rousseau"s novel, at least six French translations had been produced of Alexander Pope"s extremely popular "Eloisa to Abelard" (originally 1717), 3 while other texts, including Pierre François Godard de Beauchamps"s fictionalized Lettres d'Héloïse et d'Abailard (1714) were still in circulation. At the same time, by inspiring Guilleragues"s earlier Lettres d'une religieuse portugaise (1669), the story of Abélard and 1 Confessions, 517.

2 For an overview, see [START_REF] Charrier | Héloïse dans l'histoire et dans la légende[END_REF].

3 Anderson (1971), 19. Héloïse played a crucial role in shaping the eighteenth-century epistolary novelas has indeed been noted by scholars who have explored the novel"s influence on Rousseau. In these literary versions of the story, it was above all Héloïse"s passionate love for Abélard that was foregrounded, and she was subsequently viewed as the narrative"s true protagonist. 4 Such was the resonance of Héloïse"s story that Aimé Ambroise Joseph Feutry"s 1751 translation of Pope"s "Eloisa" tellingly referred to a subject that was by that date "usé et rebatu",5 while in the Encyclopédie article "Scholastiques", Diderot rhetorically asked his readers: "Qui est-ce qui ne connoit pas l"histoire & les malheurs d"Abélard? qui est-ce qui n"a pas lu les lettres d"Héloïse?"6 There was, however, another tradition of retellings of the Abélard and Héloïse story that has, perhaps, not received the attention it deserves in accounts of the eighteenth-century Abélard and Héloïse revival. This is the tradition of monastic historiography, within which the original twelfth-century letters had possibly themselves been conceived. Because of their emphasis on the construction of a female passionate subjectivity, galant accounts had little to say about Abélard and Héloïse"s historical role as founders of the abbey of the Paraclet. Yet this was the sole role in which they were remembered at the abbey itself, according to some eighteenth-century accounts. 7 This alternative version of the story was best exemplified by the former Trappist monk François Armand Gervaise"s meticulously documented, twovolume Vie de Pierre Abeillard, abbé de S. Gildas de Ruis, ordre de S. Benoist; et celle d'Héloïse son epouse, premiere abbesse du Paraclet, that was first published in 1720. This work was followed three years later by a bilingual edition of the original twelfth-century letters -the only printed translation available in Rousseau"s day. 8 Running to over 500 pages, Gervaise"s Vie de Pierre Abeillard explicitly sought to resituate Abélard"s career within the broader framework of ecclesiastic historiography. By focusing not on Abélard the lover, but on the man of faith, Gervaise sought to revise the accounts of his predecessors. These included, among secular versions, Roger de Bussy Rabutin"s seventeenth-century, galant translations of Héloïse"s letters, which had originally rekindled literary interest in the theme, as well as Pierre Bayle"s anti-clerical rendering of the story in his Dictionnaire historique et critique. In addition, Jean Mabillon"s critical account of Abélard in his biography of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, too, was the object of critique. Gervaise"s text and subsequent edition of the letters is thus to some extent an anomalous, polemic one. Yet in its very anomalousness, it appears to presage the ways in which Rousseau"s later version would also deviate from popular accounts, thereby making Gervaise"s three volumes, thus far neglected by Rousseau scholars, a possible source for his account of the medieval story.

Renewed interest in the Abélard and Héloïse story was in turn related to the rediscovery of another medieval couple of lovers: Petrarch and Laura. Petrarch himself had of course already commented on the story of the famous French lovers, thereby linking up with a French literary tradition that went back at least to the Roman de la Rose. Eighteenth-century authors, too, willingly reinscribed Petrarch and Laura into national traditions. Petrarch"s immortalization of his beloved Laura in his Canzoniere or Rime sparse had gained a new purchase on literary imagination through his long-standing association with the troubadours, as postulated among others in Jean de Nostredame"s highly influential Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux (1575). Indeed, during the same decades that witnessed the rediscovery of Abélard and Héloïse"s letters, the memory of the troubadours began to be revived in dozens of works, gaining further momentum with the early Enlightenment search for national foundations for French literary historiography. By considering Petrarch as the last great troubadour, or the poet who had carried the troubadours" poetic traditions to a new summum of perfection, French historiographers annexed him to their own medieval past, thereby giving it a new respectability. Thus a text such as Joseph Bimard de La Bastie"s "Vie de Pétrarque", for example, published in 1743 and 1751 in the Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions, was part of a larger series in the same periodical, detailing the lives of the medieval French poets, from Christine de Pizan to Guillaume de Machaut and Charles d"Orléans.

Just as importantly, through literary reworkings of his poetically enshrined love for Laura, starting with Madeleine de Scudéry"s Mathilde (1667) and Bernard de Fontenelle"s dialogue of the dead between Sappho and Laura (1683), authors created a female protagonist and a love story that readily lent itself to fictionalization, and could indeedlike Abélard and Héloïse"sbe seen as an archetypal figure for all love stories. In many of these accounts, the medieval was a constitutive element of the narrative, producing sometimes highly curious amalgams. In Lefranc de Pompignan"s popular Voyage de Languedoc et de Provence (1745), for example, Petrarch and Laura were presented in an Eden-like French pastoral setting -Ile sur Sorgue, that in the seventeenth century had already become a destination for literary pilgrimages -complete with characters drawn straight out of d"Urfé"s Astrée, including medieval druids, feats of magic and of course the required love plot.

Structural and Thematic Parallels

Given the broader cultural context of eighteenth-century medievalism, Rousseau"s choice to foreground the already highly visible medieval stories of Abélard and Héloïse and of Petrarch on the title-pages of his own Nouvelle Héloïse is surely significant. Rousseau scholarship has regularly noted the relation between Rousseau"s text and his medieval models, but has failed thus far to move beyond noting general parallels toward an examination of the implications of these borrowings and their role within Rousseau"s literary vision. 9 Conspicuously absent in discussions to date has been an attempt to identify the actual texts Rousseau may have consulted, or the presence of direct citations from them in La Nouvelle Héloïse. In the following pages, I will therefore start by briefly sketching once again some general parallels, before moving on to a discussion of specific instances of intertextuality, and a broader consideration of the meaning of the medieval for Rousseau in this novel.

Rousseau himself emphasized his novel"s relation to its medieval intertexts. On the liminary half-title page, the shortened title Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse, by its use of the adjective "nouvelle" (originally "moderne", and changed to "nouvelle" during the typesetting), 10 contained an explicit allusion to the old or non-modern Héloïse, i.e. the twelfth-century nun. Then, on the main title page, the long title -Lettres de deux amans, Habitans d'une petite Ville au pied des Alpeswas followed by an epigraph taken from the concluding section of Petrarch"s Canzoniere:

Non la connobe il mondo, mentre l"ebbe:

Connbill"io ch"a pianger qui rimasi. 11 The verse from Petrarch cited by Rousseau, as noted by his modern editor Henri Coulet, in turn recalled two passages from the prologue of the Gospel according to John: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not" (I: 10), and: "And I 9 For discussions of the relation between the Abélard and Héloïse theme and Rousseau"s novel, see besides Charrier (1977), also [START_REF] Anderson | Abélard and Héloïse: Eighteenth-Century Motif[END_REF], [START_REF] Kamuf | Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Héloïse[END_REF], [START_REF] Spaas | Rousseau et Abélard: la structure patriarcale menacée[END_REF], [START_REF] Koschorke | [END_REF], [START_REF] Challandes | D"Abélard à Julie: un héritage renversé[END_REF]. 10 Stewart (1995), 36.

11 [START_REF] Petrarca | Canzoniere[END_REF], 421. All references are to this edition. Rousseau read the original Italian version, which was widely available in the eighteenth century in several editions. knew him not, but that he may be made manifest in Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water" (I: 31). Rousseau"s protagonist Julie, as underlined by this reference, is presented in the novel as a Christ-like figure, who sacrifices herself for the good of others. Significantly, her death results from the pneumonia she contracts after saving her son from drowning. This is not only an immersion with obvious parallels to the Christian ritual of purification by water, but her illnesspneumoniaalso suggests a rapport with the notion of divine breath / inspiration or pneuma. The juxtaposition of the two female medieval figures, Héloïse and Laura, on the novel"s title pages, would thus seem to steer the readers of Rousseau"s novel toward a reading that places it firmly within a Christian context.

While it is true that Rousseau only decided on the shortened title -La Nouvelle Héloïserelatively late,12 the overdetermination of the title-page references to medieval texts should probably be read as an explicit confirmation, after the fact, of a basic plot structure and content that were already in place, and that displayed significant similarities with their medieval models. The main plot, to begin with, follows the same general lines as the twelfthcentury letters. A young philosopher-teacher, Abélard-Saint-Preux, seduces his pupil, Héloïse-Julie. The seduction is discovered, the seducer is punished, and the two protagonists go on to live cloistered lives, in the newly-founded abbey of the Paraclet in the case of Héloïse, and at the country estate of Clarens, which includes a typical medieval hortus clausus, in the case of the eighteenth-century characters. The correspondences between the characters in the two versions of the story are clear. Saint-Preux"s relation to the scholastic philosopher Abélard is highlighted by the characters" repeatedly referring to him as "notre philosophe", while he alludes pointedly to himself as a "maître de philosophie" (I: 131). 13 His name -Saint-Preux, or saint valiant knightfurther underlines the medieval provenance of the character. This influence is finally suggested, too, in a parodic mode, by the passage in which Julie addresses him in mock old-French language, emphasizing their roles as typical courtly lovers (I: 160). 14 The analogy between Julie and Héloïse, for its part, is made both by the title"s juxtaposition of their two names -Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïseand by more explicit comparisons in the novel itself.

More importantly, both texts follow the pattern of conversion narratives, a narrative model with which Rousseau was very familiar, and which he was later to practice in his Confessions. Both the collected volume of Abélard and Héloïse"s letters and Rousseau"s Nouvelle Héloïse have a dual structure, ultimately based on the bipartite ordering of the Christian Bible into an Old and a New Testament, with the second part analogically echoing the first. In his Vie de Pierre Abeillard, Gervaise indeed very pointedly insisted on this element of conversion, which he opposed to previous galant accounts that had instead focused on Abélard"s role as lover:

C"est une chose surprenante que depuis tant de siécles, personne n"ait pensé à nous donner une véritable histoire du fameux Abeillard, & qu"on ne se soit arrêté qu"à l"endroit de ses jours le moins édifiant, pour composer des pieces galantes uniquement propres à nourrir une flâme impure, tandis qu"on a laissé dans l"oubli sa conversion qui fait tant d"honneur à la grace de Jesus-Christ. 15 Thus, the first part of Abélard and Héloïse"s exchange of letters tells of a fall from grace. The second, much longer part then tells how the sinners / a saviour figure make up again for this fall by a new sacrifice. In the twelfth-century story, the redemption is achieved by Héloïse"s separation from Abélard, her vows and subsequent leadership of an abbey. In La Nouvelle Héloïse the redemption consists in Julie"s marriage, motherhood, and ultimately, death. In 14 On the theme of courtly love in the novel, see L"Aminot (2002) and [START_REF] Leborgne | De Saintré à Saint-Preux: culte amoureux et vassalité dans la première partie de La Nouvelle Héloïse[END_REF]. 15 Gervaise (1720), non paginated. both cases, following the confessional mode established by Saint Augustine, the redemption in the second part is made more striking for the depths to which the sinners had fallen in the first part. Héloïse insists on her own previous sinfulnesseven seems to revel in itin order to make the story of her turning to God a more powerful one. The single most quoted passage from her letters, and the passage that largely cemented the eighteenth-century and Romantic view of her as passionate woman-out-of-control, occurred when she described herself in her first letter as a concubine to Abélarda term that was not infrequently translated as "whore" by later adapters and fictionalizers (including Bayle):

Le nom & la qualité d"épouse, je l"avoüe, ont quelque chose de plus saint & de plus solide que le nom de maîtresse: cependant celui-ci m"étoit infinement plus cher & plus doux que l"autre, parce que je vous faisois un plus grand sacrifice.

Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validius videtur, dulcius mihi semper extitit amicae vocabulum; aut, si non indigneris, concubinae vel scorti. 16Héloïse"s words, repeated, quoted and embellished by the numerous authors who produced new versions of her story during the following centuries, became a topos of subsequent retellings. As Cecilia Feilla has written, "it was the seduced and abandoned Heloise of the early letters that captured the popular imagination of eighteenth-century readers, not the abbess of the later letters concerned with the spiritual life of her religious community" (3). Yet Gervaise already had suggested an alternative reading by repeatedly softening the words, in his Vie d'Abeillard, and making Héloïse plea instead to Abélard "que je sois toûjours vôtre amie, & jamais vótre épouse"(I: 68; II: 28). Directly aimed at Pierre Bayle, in whose account Héloïse "aimeroit mieux être la putain de Pierre Abelard, que la femme légitime de l"Empereur de toute la Terre" (714, note K), Gervaise"s account sought to reinscribe the story within a religious tradition of monastic historiography. It is all the more remarkable, then, that among the eighteenth-century literary authors who reworked the Héloïse story, Rousseau was the only one who, following Gervaise"s example, also incorporated, and in fact gave a major role, to the second part, which tells of the characters" moral redemption after their sinful passion. Just as in the original exchange, which ends with the description of the rule to be observed by the nuns of the Paraclet, La Nouvelle Héloïse too concludes with several letters describing the precepts and way of life obtaining at Clarens, regularly punctuating the narrative with the key terms "règle" and "règle de vie" (II: 68,83,133,152,etc.). The garden that Julie builds at Clarens, her significantly named Elysée, likewise appears to echo "ce nouveau jardin qu"Abeillard avoit planté, qu"il arrosoit par ses prédications, & que la grace faisoit fructifier" in Gervaise"s account, i.e. the religious community of the Paraclet itself. 17 In this sense, Rousseau"s novel too can be read as the history of the foundation of a religious community.

The second major intertext in Rousseau"s Nouvelle Héloïse was provided by the love poems Petrarch wrote over the course of several decades for his beloved Laura, and then published in his Canzoniere. 18 Rousseau directly cited Petrarch on nine occasions, making the Canzoniere, along with Tasso"s Gerusalemme Liberata, the second most quoted text in his book, excluding the Bible. Aside from direct citation, there are several passages in the Nouvelle Héloïse that read as prosified imitations of Petrarch poems. In the fourteenth letter especially, which comes after the lover"s first kiss, Saint-Preux adopted the central Petrarchan conceit of the poisonous, bitter-sweet kiss of love -the "baisers [...] trop âcres, trop 17 Gervaise (1720), I: 246. 18 Rousseau"s debt to Petrarch has not received nearly as much attention as the influence of the Abélard and Héloïse story. For a brief account, however, see among others Duperray and Stackelberg. pénétrants" (I: 109), which simultaneously give life and death. In addition, Rousseau played with many topoi of the Petrarchan-troubadour tradition, from the conventional birth of love in springtime (I: 166) to the description of the beloved lady from head to foot (I: 198), according to Matthew of Vendôme"s "a capite usque ad pedes" system. Equally significant, perhaps, is the fact that like La Nouvelle Héloïse, Petrarch"s Canzoniere told the story of a romance, in which a young man fell in love, experienced passion, and then endured an ultimate separation from his beloved one. Like the letters of Abélard and Héloïse, this story too had a two-part structure, with spiritual elevation following earthly passion. In addition, a number of details within the text of the novel, including the episode with the courtisane Laure-Laureta Pisana in the fifth book, suggested readings in which more precise parallels could be drawn between the medieval love poems for Laura-Laureta and Rousseau"s novel.

A Meditation on Origins

If the structural parallels between Rousseau"s novel and his medieval sources, as mediated most notably through Gervaise"s account and translation of Abélard and Héloïse"s letters, strongly suggest that his medievalism was more than merely a superficial tribute to literary fashion, it also raises the deeper question of its function in the text. A first clue to its significance is provided by Rousseau"s lifelong fascination with the philosophical question of origins: the origins of society, of inequality, of moral corruption, of language, and even of the literary genres he practiced. Thus, in La Nouvelle Héloïse, Rousseau turned to the origins of the epistolary genre, for the correspondence of Abélard and Héloïse could indeed be read as "history"s first epistolary novel". 19 His Confessions likewise, by explicitly imitating Saint Augustine, went back to the medieval origins of the autobiography, skipping over the intervening centuries and authorsmost notably, in the French context, Montaigne, whom he referenced but only to dismiss as inauthentic. This is significant: by skipping over the intervening centuries, which had inaugurated the modern era, Rousseau was implicitly criticizing them and his own time, as he indeed did in his other writings. In his first published work already, the Discours sur les arts et les sciences, he had drawn an implicit link between the advent of the Renaissance and the moral degradation of European societies [START_REF] Montoya | Medievalism and Enlightenment[END_REF]). While, as Bruce Holsinger has argued, Rousseau"s works also betrayed a "pathologizing invocation of the Gothicas sickness, as perversion, as destruction" (145), his invocation of the Middle Ages was in fact strongly ambivalent. Like the filthy and antisocial philosopher Diogenes, or like Sparta (as opposed to democratic Athens), two antimodels also evoked by him, the Middle Ages did not ever completely shed their negative associations. On the contrary, it was precisely this position of the medieval outside of the accepted classicist canons that made them capable of incarnating a powerful alternative vision. For Rousseau, the self-styled, rustic "citoyen de Genève" who criticized the fashionable Parisian philosophes, the medieval was closely linked both to his mythical Golden Age, and to the "pays des chimères" in which his novel had originated and which, according to Julie, held out the only possibility of human fulfillment in this world: "Le pays des chimères est en ce monde le seul digne d"être habité, et tel est le néant des choses humaines, qu"hors l"Etre existant par lui-même, il n"y a rien de beau que ce qui n"est pas" (II: 333). The invocation of the medieval, as an atemporal and possibly even non-existent "pays des chimères", allowed Rousseau to criticize Enlightenment progressivism, and at the same time to present himself as an outsider to the morally corrupted societiesurban modernity itselfof his own day.

The medieval as a site paradoxically located outside of historical time is also at work in the novel"s setting. While the action of La Nouvelle Héloïse took place in the eighteenth century, Rousseau suggested that the particular setting which he had chosen had something archaic about it. The Pays de Vaud, in Switzerland, was associated in his mind with his own childhood and with his long-dead "pauvre Maman" (the real one, not Mme de Warens), 20 whose birthplace Vevey was the "petite Ville au pied des Alpes" where the first part of the novel took place. Consequently, the novel was suffused with a sense of nostalgia that was also typical of medievalist fiction, and that relied on the increasingly common identification of childhood or the "enfance de l"homme" with the Middle Ages. The topos of the medieval as the site of childhood and of imagination thus reinforced the archaicizing description of Switzerland as "un pays libre et simple, où l"on trouve des hommes antiques dans les temps modernes" (I: 104), and of Saint-Preux"s preserving "la simplicité des antiques moeurs helvétiques" (I: 358) even during his Parisian sojourn. While the adjective "antique" could refer both to classical antiquity and to the medieval past in eighteenth-century usage, in the preface Rousseau suggested that he was referring to the latter, when he wrote about his novel:

Le style rebutera les gens de goût, la matière alarmera les gens sévères, tous les sentiments seront hors de la nature pour ceux qui ne croient pas à la vertu. [...] Ce recueil avec son gothique ton convient mieux aux femmes que les livres de philosophie. (I: 72, emphasis added)

In an ironic opposition typical of his writing, Rousseau contrasted philosophy books, which conveyed only false knowledge, and his own book, whichdespite of, or rather because it was written in a Gothic stylewas capable of revealing deeper truths. This contrast between true and false knowledge was itself of course also an ancient topos that went back, among others, to Abélard"s letters. Throughout his letters, Abélard created an opposition between his own position as a philosopher who fully believed in book learning, and other, "antique" models that saw wisdom rather as a way of life: a position that Rousseau rejected when he consciously presented himself as a neo-antique anti-philosopher or even anti-Abélard. The 20 Confessions, 521. contrast between the Augustinian Book of Nature, which provided direct and unmediated access to the divine, and deceptive book-learning, recurred frequently in Rousseau"s oeuvre, and suggested another contrast between the paradoxical truth of the medieval "pays des chimères" and the false realism of modernity.

Rousseau"s concern with origins finally elucidates, too, his citations of Petrarch. In later editions of the novel, he added a short dialogue text in which two charactersidentified by the initials N. and R.discussed the question whether novels, as the product of modern, corrupting civilization, could have a morally edifying function. At one point, R.who could perhaps be identified with Rousseau himselfdescribed the particular nature of La Nouvelle Héloïse:

[Ces] lettres n"intéressent pas tout d"un coup [...] La grâce et la facilité n"y sont pas, ni la raison, ni l"esprit, ni l"éloquence ; le sentiment y est, il se communique au coeur par degrés, et lui seul à la fin supplée à tout. C"est une longue romance dont les couplets pris à part n"ont rien qui touche, mais dont la suite produit à la fin son effet. (II: 401)

The romance, which Rousseau defined elsewhere as "une mélodie douce, naturelle", "écrite d'un style simple, touchant, et d'un goût un peu antique" 21 was a medievalist musical genre that used a succession of couplets to tell a simple (love) tale, thereby recalling other serial poetic compositions like Petrarch"s Canzoniere. Importantly, the romance had affinities both with lyrical and with narrative genres. By using this term, Rousseau seemed to suggest that La Nouvelle Héloïse was not really a novel but rather, a lyrical composition where what mattered was not the content, but the mood expressed. The notion of literary genre, with its emphasis on form and content, was thus replaced by that of musical register or mood. Indeed, what was crucial in this redefinition of his novel was that the romance was sung. As Rousseau had written elsewhere, what attracted him in Petrarch was above all the musicality of his language, and in imitating him, it was this musicality that he was attempting to approach. Now music, associated with romance, in its turn held a specific value for Rousseau. In the key episode of the vendanges at Clarens, Saint-Preux described how after harvesting the grapes, the workers on the estate enjoyed a communal meal and started to sing popular songs or romances:

Quelquefois les vendangeuses chantent en choeur toutes ensembles, ou bien alternativement à voix seule et en refrain. La plupart de ces chansons sont de vieilles romances dont les airs ne sont pas piquants; mais ils ont je ne sais quoi d'antique et de doux qui touche à la longue. Les paroles sont simples, naïves, souvent tristes; elles plaisent pourtant. (II: 240, emphasis added)

Romance was significantly equated with a remote pastantiquity, which could be conceived either as medieval or Greco-Latinand this remote past in turn was described as naive, a time of spiritual purity. The pastoral notion of a purer, past state of human society and human morality was reinforced by the central image of the vineyard. Recalling the Gospel image of the workers labouring in the vineyards of the Lord, the vineyard was the source of the main agricultural product harvested at Clarens. Clarens"s own name in turn, as argued by Jean Starobinski, played on notions of clarity and spiritual transparencywe are now in the second, redemptive part of the novelreplacing former obscurity. 22 The association between song, moral purity and transparency was the same one that Rousseau had discussed in his Essai sur l'origine des langues. According to him, before humankind could speak, it sang: music was an archaic, purer language, and one that came closer to expressing true human feelings than later, corrupted human languages did. By singing medieval romances his 22 Starobinski (1971), 105. peasants approached a state of human authenticitya state poised halfway between nature and civilizationinaccessible to eighteenth-century Parisians. Although there is a whiff of the medievalthe autarchic mini-state of Clarens is organized along basically feudal linesthe description of the vendanges, as again argued by Starobinski, is singularly lacking in exact historical references, situating it more immediately in Rousseau"s "pays des chimères."

The medieval, as an aspect of Rousseau"s Golden Age, is thus properly a moral category rather than a temporal or historical one, and it was precisely its ahistorical nature that gave it polemic weight. It was, in fact, because the "real", historical Middle Ages remained largely unknown to eighteenth-century authors that the medieval so readily assumed this contestatory role as a site of idealized human fulfillment.

A Critical Rewriting of Medieval Sources

But at the same time as the Nouvelle Héloïse offered a reflection on origins, it also offered a more textually precise critical rewriting of the medieval texts it referenced. In the case of the letters of Abélard and Héloïse, the structural parallels actually highlighted important differences between the two texts. At a number of critical junctions in the narrative, the characters referred explicitly to the medieval prototype, but only to distance themselves from it. Thus, finding himself on the brink of giving in to his lustful passion for Julie, Saint-Preux reminded himself of Abélard, whose example he did not wish to follow.

Quand les lettres d"Héloïse et d"Abélard tombèrent entre vos mains, vous savez ce que je vous dis de cette lecture et de la conduite du Théologien. J"ai toujours plaint Héloïse; elle avait un coeur fait pour aimer: mais Abélard ne m"a jamais paru qu"un misérable digne de son sort, et connaissant aussi peu l"amour que la vertu.

Après l"avoir jugé faudra-t-il que je l"imite? malheur à quiconque prêche une morale qu"il ne veut pas pratiquer! (I: 132) Of course, the irony is that Saint-Preux would in fact end up following Abélard"s pernicious example when he, too, would seduce his young charge. After Julie"s marriage to Wolmar, her cousin Claire made a second comparison:

Cousine, tu fus amante comme Héloïse, te voilà dévote comme elle; plaise à Dieu que ce soit avec plus de succès! (II: 120)

Claire"s words contained an implicit criticism: Héloïse was not really devout, but only thought she was, while Julie truly was devout. The Nouvelle Héloïse thereby offered a critical rewriting of the popular eighteenth-century image of Héloïse, and possibly of the medieval letters too; this was the strong, programmatic sense Rousseau gave to the adjective "nouvelle" in the novel"s title.

The most significant difference between the medieval Héloïse and her eighteenthcentury counterpart in La Nouvelle Héloïse is that while the medieval Héloïse, as abbess or mother superior, played the part of mother only in a metaphorical sense, Julie really was a true mother. In the second half of the novel, Rousseau placed great emphasis on Julie"s devotion to her two children, whom she raised and educated herself, rather than entrusting them to the care of others as was contemporary aristocratic practice. To reinforce this new interpretation, Rousseau altered his citations of the medieval text. As mentioned above, in the eighteenth-century literary tradition that arose around Héloïse"s letters, the passage that was most consistently cited by her imitators was her declaration that she would rather be called Abélard"s mistress than his wife. Reread in its original twelfth-century context, however, this passage assumed a place within a much larger theme of onomastic uncertainty. In the very first words she wrote to Abélard, Héloïse hesitated on how to address him: By underlining these words in his Vie de Pierre Abeillard, Gervaise was proposing a revisionary, rechristianized reading of the Abélard and Héloïse story that was strikingly similar to the one proposed by Rousseau. Rousseau did consciously delete the female protagonist"s roles as monastic mother and daughter in Saint-Preux"s letter, but did so apparently only to be able to insist the more on their importance in later passages. Shortly thereafter, in fact, he reintroduced these monastic roles, in a context that gave them a new narrative weight. Julie, in the following letter, reproached her lover by using a new term: Tu m"as honoré quelquefois du tendre nom d'épouse: peut-être en ce moment dois-je porter celui de mère. (I:

212-213)

And as if to insist on the transformation that his protagonist had undergone, Rousseau had Julie furthermore announce to her cousin Claire, at the start of the fourth part, inaugurating Saint-Preux"s own spiritual transformation: "Tu m"as vue successivement fille, amie, amante, épouse, et mère. Tu sais si tous ces titres m"ont été chers!" (IV: 1, emphasis added). While the medieval text underscored the roles of spouse and mistress in Héloïse"s famous letter, the eighteenth-century novel finally replaced the mistress by the mother. This was an assumption of agency on Julie"s part that, as Laure Challandes has pointed out, produced an inversion of the medieval text: "l"influence intertextuelle se fait sur le mode du renversement des genres: Saint-Preux incarne la voix et la position énonciative d"Héloïse, et Julie, celle d"Abélard" (79). The mother role Julie came to play in the novel ultimately coalesced into another role: that of Mary. At the end of Petrarch"s Canzoniere, the beloved Laurawho was by then dead was identified with the Virgin Mary, transforming the poet"s sexual desire into a purer striving for grace. In La Nouvelle Héloïse too, as in Petrarch"s poetic sequence, the male protagonist finally renounced physical pleasure, and attained a more mystical union with a In thus looking back, from a stance of new knowledge, on his former love, Saint-Preux echoed the first sonnet in the Petrarchan sequence, where the poet looked back on his sinful passion for Laura:

Voi ch"ascoltate in rime sparse il suono di quei sospiri ond"io nudriva "l core in sul mio primo giovenile errore quand'era in parte altr 'uom da quel ch'i' sono. (3, emphasis added) The Italian "errore" referred both to the geographic wanderings of the protagonist, in the tradition of the Dantean wandering or lost soul, and to the error of his youthful ways. Youth was presented as a state of error, which must be corrected by the wisdom of age. As Rousseau"s alter ego R. explained in the Entretiens sur les romans:

Je ne fais point de comparaison entre le commencement et la fin de l"ouvrage. Les détails de la vie domestique effacent les fautes du premier âge : la chaste épouse, la femme sensée, la digne mère de famille font oublier la coupable amante. Mais cela même est un sujet de critique: la fin du recueil rend le commencement d"autant plus répréhensible. (II: 400, emphasis added) "Premier âge", "moyen âge": the first age of mankind, equated in eighteenth-century philosophic discourse with the medieval, had to be corrected by historic progress and by later wisdom, but tragically, this wisdom could only be acquired through the protagonists" act of distancing themselves from their youthful, truly lived passion. The medieval as a source of nostalgia, a site where human fulfilment was possible, was not a historical period, and its ultimate tragedy was precisely this location outside of human time. It was neither in the chaste present of the quasi-monastic "rule" adopted by Rousseau"s fictional lovers, nor in their past, during whichas purely sensual, non-socialized beingsthey had not yet been fully cognizant participants in human society.

Rousseau"s rewriting of the medieval letters was finally, and paradoxically, both a modernization and an archaization. Rousseau modernized the medieval text by showing how virtue could manifest itself in a contemporary setting, yet at the same time he returned his reader to the original story by insisting on its central subject --the conversion and redemption of a sinner"s soul --whose very possibility he however ended up questioning. This new reading was in turn mediated, to an important extent, by Gervaise"s previous, revisionary repositioning of the Abélard and Héloïse story within the context of monastic historiography.

Moving forward in time, Rousseau reread Abélard and Héloïse"s letters through the lens of Petrarch"s Marian sublimation of Laura, literally killing off Julie in the process. Moving backward in time, he reread Abélard"s text through the critical lens of Augustine. Religion based on ecclesiastical authority, and Abélard"s faith in book-learning, was replaced by natural religion or the Augustinian Book of Nature. This double direction of Rousseau"s rewriting of his medieval intertexts in La Nouvelle Héloïse, both forward-and backwardlooking, was emblematic of the double nature of medievalism itself. The medieval was not a historical, but an ethical category. In this capacity, it served as a polemical, epistemological counter-model, an imaginary point of origin within a larger history of human virtue. Rather than consisting in a collection of identifiable characteristics and attributes, in the manner of a literary genre, it functioned most effectively as a kind of musical mode or register, evoking the memory of a time that had, perhaps, never been, but without whose enticing "chimères" Rousseau"s own novel would not exist.

In some non-literary accounts, notably Pierre Bayle"s four articles on the subject in his Dictionnaire historique et critique ("Abelard", "Foulques", "Heloïse", "Paraclet"), the focus is rather on Abélard"s castration. See[START_REF] Walter | Le complexe d"Abélard ou le célibat des gens de lettres[END_REF] for more examples.

Cited inAnderson (1971), 19.

Encyclopédie, XIV,

 7 Feilla (2004) notes that "in 1767, an English visitor to the convent noted with surprise that apart from the abbess, the nuns of the Paraclete knew nothing of the "affecting part" of the story of Abelard and Heloise. The sisters knew the pair in terms of their institutional roles in the abbey as its founder and first abbess, but not as lovers" (10).

The original Latin letters were available in a 1616 French edition (Paris: Nicolas Buon), as well as a more recent English one (London: E. Curll and W. Taylor, 1718).

[START_REF] Stewart | Half-Title, or Julie Beheaded[END_REF].

All references are to volume and page number in Henri Coulet"s two-volume edition of La Nouvelle Héloïse (Folio classique).

Gervaise (1723), I: 26. All citations of Héloïse and Abélard"s letters are taken from this eighteenth-century edition and translation, on the assumption that it was the one Rousseau consulted.

[START_REF] Powell | Listening to Heloise at the Paraclete: Of Scholarly Diversion and a Woman"s "Conversion[END_REF], 257.

Dictionnaire de musique, 1028.


An Van Hecke
email: an.vanhecke@lessius.eu

Keywords: Augusto Monterroso, Intertextuality, Parody, Conquest of America, Chronicles

This article analyzes the dialogues that Augusto Monterroso establishes with the chroniclers of the 16th Century. The chronicles of the conquest of America appear as intertextual reference in three texts of Monterroso: in the story "El eclipse", in a fragment of the novel Lo demás es silencio, and in the essay "El otro aleph". In the first two texts the references are rather implicit, the third text, however, consists of a re-reading of La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla. Parody in these texts manifests through the imitation of some of the characteristics of the chronicles, but at the same time the author transforms this model with irony. The three protagonists of the conquest -the missionary, the conqueror and the chronicler-appear in Monterroso"s texts as antiheroes and even as victims of the violent encounter between cultures. Against the dogma of a unique and official history, Monterroso introduces the doubt, the plurality of possible histories. His eagerness to change history reflects his great sense of relativity.

Introducción

Uno de los conceptos literarios que más confusión ha creado tanto a nivel teórico como en las aplicaciones, es la parodia. Ha pasado de ser una técnica de citación para los retóricos antiguos a un género literario hoy día (Sangsue 1994: 91). La gran diversidad de definiciones se resume en dos tendencias, según se acepte el sentido estricto o amplio. Genette la define estrictamente como una "transformación textual con función lúdica" (Genette 1989: 55) distinguiéndola de la imitación, como el pastiche, que no reproduce un texto particular sino un género (ibid. 103). En Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern, Margaret Rose también propone una definición estricta de la parodia que sería un "refuncionamiento cómico de un material lingüístico o artístico preformado" (Rose 1993: 52, mi traducción). El sentido amplio se encuentra en la conocida definición de Linda Hutcheon: "La parodia es […] repetición con distancia crítica, que marca más la diferencia que la semejanza" (Hutcheon 1985: 6, mi traducción). Para el estudio de la obra de Augusto Monterroso, me inclino a adoptar el sentido amplio de la palabra: no tanto como transformación de textos específicos, sino como imitación o inversión de estilos y géneros o como desplazamiento o transcontextualización de temas. Desde este ángulo es significativa la asociación de la parodia, por un lado, con la sátira, de la que al mismo tiempo difiere: la parodia tiene como objeto la literatura, la sátira ataca al mundo extraliterario, social y moral (Sangsue 1994: 54).

Noguerol Jiménez considera la parodia como una técnica satírica entre otras, como por ejemplo la inversión, la distorsión o el desplazamiento (Noguerol Jiménez 1995: 155). Por otro lado es relevante la asociación de la parodia con los conceptos bakhtinianos como "plurilingüismo" (Bakhtin 1978: 152), "hibridización" y "diálogo" (ibid. 176-182). La interpretación bakhtiniana de la parodia sería, según Sangsue "una imitación o transformación caricatural (exageración, acentuación) que concierne tanto los discursos, los lenguajes como los temas […] o los géneros literarios" (Sangsue 1994: 41). Para Bakhtin es fundamental el carácter carnavalesco de la parodia, que rebaja los textos sagrados, invierte lo alto y lo bajo y combina lo cómico y lo serio.

El estudio de la parodia nos lleva a leer los textos dentro del marco de la intertextualidad. Monterroso establece un diálogo con innumerables autores, desde los antiguos como Homero, Esopo u Horacio, pasando por Dante, Cervantes o Shakespeare hasta los contemporáneos como Joyce, Borges, Kafka o Neruda. 1 Bien como modelo elogiado u objeto de homenaje, bien como texto parodiado o tenue insinuación, autores y obras entran en el mundo imaginario de Monterroso. De todos estos discursos latentes hay uno en particular, mucho menos frecuente que los arriba mencionados, pero no por eso menos interesante: los textos del siglo XVI, crónicas y epopeyas. Los textos del siglo XVI funcionan como referencia en tres ocasiones: en el cuento "El eclipse" de Obras completas y otros cuentos (OC 53-54), 2 en el testimonio de Luis Jerónimo Torres de Lo demás es silencio (LD 70-71) y en el ensayo "El otro aleph" de La vaca (LV 93-114). 3 En cada uno de estos textos, puede entreverse una parodia de los discursos de la conquista. En los dos primeros textos se trata más bien de 1 Existen ya algunos estudios que analizan los lazos intertextuales entre Monterroso y autores específicos, como el de Rolando Castellanos sobre Joyce (1980) y los dos estudios de Francisca Noguerol Jiménez, uno sobre Cervantes (1997) y otro sobre la literatura española (1994). También destacan los estudios de Tarsicio Herrera Zapién sobre Horacio (1993) y de Gloria González Zenteno sobre Kafka (1996). Véanse también mis estudios anteriores sobre Cervantes y Shakespeare (Van Hecke 2000) y sobre Heráclito y Zenón (Van Hecke 2003). 2 Usaré las siguientes siglas entre paréntesis al citar los textos de Monterroso: LD: Lo demás es silencio; LV: La vaca; LYV: Literatura y vida; OC: Obras Completas (y otros cuentos); VC: Viaje al centro de la fábula. 3 El ensayo "El otro aleph" es una adaptación ampliada de otro ensayo, "El aleph de Ercilla" que fue publicado diez años antes [START_REF] Monterroso | El aleph de Ercilla[END_REF]. referencias implícitas a las crónicas de la conquista, mientras que en el tercer texto, "El otro aleph", Monterroso establece explícitamente un diálogo con La Araucana de Alonso de Ercilla.

"El eclipse": una inversión de la conquista de América

En "El eclipse" (OC 53-54),4 uno de los cuentos más conocidos de Monterroso, se relata cómo un fraile español, Bartolomé Arrazola, en el siglo XVI trata de engañar a los indígenas mayas que lo han capturado, diciendo que si lo matan, él hará "que el sol se oscurezca" (ibid. 53). Gracias a su conocimiento de Aristóteles, sabe que aquel día habrá un eclipse de sol. Los indígenas lo sacrifican y el sol oscurece. Durante el ritual, un sacerdote indígena recita todas las fechas en que se producirían eclipses desvirtuando de esta manera los conocimientos del fraile. 5El diálogo velado que Monterroso entabla aquí con los autores del siglo XVI es algo ambiguo por el papel poco claro que juegan los religiosos en la conquista. Por un lado, muchos textos del siglo XVI reflejan la imagen del misionero bondadoso, elegido por Dios para salvar a los indígenas paganos. Por otro lado, la historiografía sobre la época colonial representa a menudo la imagen del religioso fanático que se dedica a las conversiones masivas, inspirado por un sentimiento de superioridad frente a los indígenas cuya religión destruye. Fray Bartolomé de "El eclipse" se acerca más a la segunda imagen. Es presuntuoso y hace creer a los indígenas que posee poderes sobrehumanos. La ironía surge del contraste entre este momento de sobrevaloración y su muerte trágica. Su supuesta inteligencia será desenmascarada por los conocimientos astronómicos de los mayas que no necesitan a Aristóteles (OC 54). Fray Bartolomé es una caricatura del fraile español. Intenta dialogar con los indígenas, pero la comunicación se limita a unas pocas palabras. Se trata aquí de una escenificación irónica de la arrogancia cultural del europeo, o en términos de Corral: "no cabe duda de que el etnocentrismo del fraile es la causa de su defunción. Su actitud condescendiente ante una cultura diferente y su autoevaluación representan una visión sucinta de la práctica del problema cultural surgido con la invención de América" (Corral 1985: 81).

El relato se articula a base de contrastes humorísticos. Así por ejemplo, el "celo religioso de su labor redentora" se ve burlado cuando los indígenas lo ofrecen en sacrificio a sus dioses (OC 53). Desde la perspectiva del fraile, de quien se dice que "esperó confiado" (OC 54), resulta un final insospechado, ya sea porque, conocedor de la cultura clásica, confiaba en la aparición de un "deus ex máchina", que lo salvara de tan penosa situación; ya sea porque, buen creyente, se entregaba a la misericordia divina. Pero en su afán de ironizar la historia, Monterroso no sólo rebaja a los hombres, sino también a los dioses. Los cronistas se vanaglorian a menudo de la ayuda de Dios, que nunca los abandona y al que acuden como legitimación última de la conquista.

Las fórmulas como "quiso Dios nuestro Señor darnos victoria" de Bernal Díaz del Castillo por ejemplo, son usuales (Díaz del Castillo, 1986: 111). Según muchos estudiosos de las crónicas de Indias, la derrota de los indígenas se debe a la convicción de que habían sido abandonados por sus dioses y a su actitud resignada al darse cuenta de que sus dioses ya no les hablaban. 6 En "El eclipse", la historia es invertida en el nivel espiritual, ya que el Dios cristiano abandona al fraile y los dioses mayas son ensalzados por el sacrificio. Lo que para el fraile termina en fracaso, culmina para los indígenas en triunfo. La parodia consiste en una inversión de las funciones de conquistadores y conquistados. La sabiduría se convierte en ignorancia. Durante un instante, la literatura crea la ilusión de que la conquista podría haber sido de otra manera. La profundidad simbólica del cuento breve consiste en sugerir las enormes implicaciones que podría haber tenido una conquista inversa para ambas culturas. Es el sueño que inquieta a muchos escritores como Le Clézio en Le rêve mexicain: "Quelle philosophie aurait pu grandir dans le Nouveau Monde, s"il n"y avait eu la destruction de la Conquête?" (Le Clézio 1988: 243). Es también la visión de Carlos Fuentes en "Las dos orillas" de la conquista de España por los mayas y los aztecas (Fuentes 1993: 54-60). Asimismo Monterroso sueña con otro mundo posible y reinterpreta la historia a través de la imaginación.

El oro de los conquistadores

Lo demás es silencio (1978) es una novela biográfica cuyo protagonista se llama Eduardo Torres, un intelectual de provincia. Según Robert A. Parsons "[l]a preferencia de Monterroso por la parodia alcanza un punto culminante en Lo demás es silencio" (Parsons 1995: 110). Parsons interpreta esta novela no sólo como una parodia sino también como una autoparodia (111). Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, por su parte, opina que "Lo demás es silencio fomenta tanto la parodia de la escritura como la escritura de la parodia" (Herrero-Olaizola 2000: 148). Para el presente estudio enfocamos sólo un fragmento de esta biografía ficticia, titulado "E. Torres, un caso singular". Se trata del testimonio del hermano de Eduardo Torres, Luis Jerónimo, en el que aparece una parodia de la fundación de las primeras ciudades coloniales en el Nuevo Mundo. Luis se imagina cómo era la ciudad de San Blas hace cuatrocientos cincuenta años, cuando el capitán Pedro de Enciso tenía la absoluta certeza de que había yacimientos de oro y así lo mantuvo hasta su muerte. Sin embargo, exceptuando dos petos funerarios nunca se encontró nada. Respecto a la ciudad de San Blas, se ha sugerido la semejanza con la Ciudad de México. 7 En el fragmento sobre la fundación de San Blas, el lector revive inevitablemente aquel tiempo descrito por los cronistas, mágico y dramático a la vez, cuando la Ciudad de México fue erigida sobre las ruinas de Tenochtitlán. Cuando Luis se refiere al cerro de San Blas, que resultó ser una pirámide de estilo "quipuhuaca" (LD 70), puede entenderse como una alusión al Templo Mayor de México, no de estilo "quipuhuaca" sino azteca. El término "quipuhuaca" no tiene origen náhuatl, sino que es una palabra compuesta, aparentemente inventada, de dos palabras quechuas: quipus que, sabemos, es un "sistema mnemónico para anotar cifras en nudos hechos en hilos de colores" (Garcilaso de la Vega II, 1991: 757-758), y huaca que "connota la antigua noción andina de lo sobrenatural: poder o fuerza virtual" (ibid. 827-828). Puesto que "quipuhuaca" tiene un componente administrativo y otro sobrenatural, probablemente designa el valor y el poder sobrenatural del oro. A través de esta confusión entre la cultura inca y azteca y el desplazamiento de la búsqueda frenética del oro de Perú a México, se burla la visión globalizadora e indiscriminada del conquistador español.

Otra huella intertextual se halla en los siete nombres de conquistadores: Pedro de Enciso, Luis de Olmedo, Diego de Duero, Fernando de Oña, el regidor Velasco, Anselmo de Toledo y García Dieguez de Paredes. Según Jorge Ruffinelli son "personajes ficticios" (LD 70: nota 24). Se podría suponer que en una biografía ficticia como Lo demás es silencio todos los personajes son ficticios, pero resulta que muchos son referenciales. De los siete nombres se encuentran por lo menos dos en La Historia Verdadera de Bernal que menciona a "un Enciso", que tuvo "unas diferencias y pleitos" con otro conquistador (Díaz del Castillo 1986: 47), y al virrey Luis de Velasco (ibid. 604-605), que en Monterroso es rebajado a regidor. De los otros cinco encontramos en Bernal personajes con nombres parecidos, pero nunca idénticos: por ejemplo, el Diego García de Paredes de Bernal resuena en el García Diéguez de Paredes. Se trata pues de desplazamientos tanto de los nombres como de las funciones. El narrador les da un nombre inventado y las relaciones entre cada uno, casi siempre de asesino y asesinado, forman una cadena absurda. La frase larguísima, que describe la suerte de Enciso y los otros en veintitrés líneas entre paréntesis, parodia el estilo de cronistas como Bernal, que se deja llevar continuamente por digresiones de este tipo. En su testimonio Luis Torres caricaturiza al tipo de conquistador español codicioso que sueña con encontrar oro. Las últimas palabras de Pedro de Enciso, antes de morir, son "¡El oooooooooooooro!" y Luis aclara que el capitán "alarg[ó] lo más que pudo la segunda, como si con ello quisiera prolongar aunque fuera un instante la poca vida que le quedaba" (LD 71). Por el énfasis fonético se revela el carácter ridículo del moribundo. Las crónicas del siglo XVI dan prueba de esta fiebre de oro que arrastró a miles de aventureros. Algunos tuvieron suerte, pero muchos murieron desilusionados por no hallarlo (por ejemplo en el suelo de la Ciudad de México nunca se encontró el oro buscado). Pero la caricatura no termina con la muerte de Enciso, ya que éste señala aún en el momento de morir con su espada "hacia el Norte", lo que desde México significa a los Estados Unidos, el país de la riqueza (LD 71: nota 26). El humor despiadado revela la debilidad y la vanidad humana.

El aleph de Alonso de Ercilla

En el ensayo "El otro aleph", de La vaca, publicado en 1998, los textos del siglo XVI ya no aparecen de manera velada, sino que forman el tema que se va a estudiar. Monterroso argumenta en contra de la interpretación de Emir Rodríguez Monegal que sostiene en una nota en la antología Ficcionarios que "El Aleph" de Borges es una "parodia oculta de la Divina Comedia, hecho que Borges ha negado explícitamente" (LV 93). A Monterroso no le convence el argumento de que la Divina Comedia "describ[a] el mundo entero" ("Es evidente que no lo hace" dice) (LV 96) y que haya una coincidencia entre los nombres de Beatriz y Dante Alighieri/Daneri (LV 95).

A diferencia de Monegal, Monterroso cree que la verdadera fuente del relato de Borges está en La Araucana de Ercilla. El desplazamiento de la Divina Comedia, una obra fundacional de la cultura de Occidente, a una epopeya americana, es relevante a la luz de la conocida polémica entre la visión eurocentrista de Rodríguez Monegal y la conciencia latinoamericana de otros como Fernández Retamar. 8 Antes de revelar las pruebas de la relación entre el cuento de Borges y el poema épico de Ercilla, Monterroso ofrece una introducción extraña y ambigua de la obra del poeta español: [...] pocas obras clásicas están tan plagadas de prosaísmos, planicies y lamentables ripios como lo está La Araucana, este gran poema que aprendí a apreciar con cierta fascinación y gusto durante mis dos años de exilio en Chile (1954Chile ( -1956) ) en donde esa rica epopeya es una especie de monumento nacional por gracia, es de pensarse, entre otras razones, de la justicia que Ercilla hace en ella al valor y la nobleza de los indios araucanos (LV 97).

La profunda admiración por el sentido de justicia de Ercilla no excluye la crítica, más compasiva que aguda, de su estilo desigual, pues "[n]o todos los poetas son Dante o Ariosto" y "los versos malos, los ripios y los (sic) consonantes pobres pueden saltar peligrosamente de una página a otra, como enemigos araucanos en la oscuridad de la noche" (LV 100). Sin embargo, el poema contiene fragmentos curiosos como el del mago Fitón que muestra la "poma lucida" a su enemigo Ercilla en el canto XXVII. La poma, que Monterroso llama "el aleph de Ercilla"9 era una "esfera de cristal en la que podía contemplarse simultáneamente cuanto sucedía en ese momento en las más diferentes y opuestas regiones del globo terráqueo" (LV 101). Ahora bien, Monterroso insiste en una frase de Borges que dice: "Yo creo que hay (o que hubo) otro Aleph" (LV 93). Borges señala lugares donde puede haber otro Aleph, como el espejo de Samosata por ejemplo, pero no menciona la poma de Ercilla. La parodia se sitúa entonces en dos niveles. En primer lugar, si "El Aleph" de Borges no es una parodia de la Divina Comedia, Monterroso sugiere implícitamente que es una parodia, aunque inconsciente, de la poma de Ercilla. Efectivamente, se puede considerar el Aleph de Borges como una transcontextualización de la poma de Ercilla.

La parodia se presenta también a otro nivel: podemos leer el texto de Monterroso "El otro aleph" como una parodia de La Araucana de Ercilla. Para el lector moderno Monterroso no quiere mencionar todas las similitudes que halla entre el aleph de Ercilla y el de Borges "en honor de la brevedad elogiada por Ercilla" (LV 107). El principio del canto XXVII reza en efecto: "Siempre la brevedad es una cosa / con gran razón de todos alabada" (Ercilla 1989: 503). Anteriormente Monterroso había expresado su asombro por la magnitud del poema de 2633 octavas reales de las que Ercilla dedicó cuarenta y siete y media a la poma. No sólo observamos cierta ironía, cuando comenta la "brevedad" de Ercilla, sino que el propio Monterroso juega con la misma contradicción: de Ercilla selecciona sólo cinco octavas e insiste en la última que es "un ceñido resumen de las cuarenta y siete y media que siguen" (LV 103). En cambio, de Borges, autor de cuentos breves, reproduce cinco páginas de "El Aleph" justificándolo así: "cito largamente para deleite de ustedes" (LV 104). Es más, Monterroso completa su ensayo con un largo P.S. en el que cita otros tres textos que se refieren a un posible Aleph y seguramente podría multiplicar los ejemplos hasta el infinito. Quizá evidencie la autorreflexividad e infinitud del mismo Aleph, pero en la extensión del ensayo puede verse también una parodia del inmenso canto de Ercilla y resulta aún más ameno tomando en cuenta que Monterroso es el autor por excelencia de la brevedad y que debe gran parte de su fama a este hecho. Pero la parodia no sólo es crítica y burla a distancia, sino que expresa también el reconocimiento del autor parodiado y es particularmente acertado en el caso de Ercilla, al que Monterroso quiere rehabilitar, porque ha sido "bien leído por unos cuantos (los indispensables) y mal o de mala gana por muchos, incluidos algunos de los que por programa lo enseñan hoy sin entusiasmo en escuelas y universidades" (LV 99).

Es significativo que Monterroso dirija su atención a un escritor "mal leído" y que en toda su obra otros autores del siglo XVI, como por ejemplo el Inca Garcilaso, Sahagún, Las Casas o Bernal, no aparezcan sino en comentarios sucintos o de manera indirecta. El reconocimiento se manifiesta en la siguiente cita de Ercilla:

"¡Cuán buena es la justicia y qué importante!" del Canto IV (LV 97) que Monterroso aplica ahora al propio poeta mal leído. Pero el ensayo va más allá del reconocimiento, pues llega hasta identificarse con Ercilla. El hecho de que ambos hayan vivido el exilio es esencial. Monterroso cuenta que su aprecio por La Araucana surgió durante su exilio en Chile y en la biografía de Ercilla insiste en el "sino viajero que marcará su vida" y que lo lleva de Chile, de donde "vuelve desterrado [...] al Perú" (LV 98). Subraya también la añoranza del poeta por "el lugar de sus hazañas" (LV 100) y, además de desterrados, ambos desempeñaron la función de "diplomático ocasional" (LV 99). Otra huella importante es la cita intra-intertextual de su novela Lo demás es silencio donde ya apareció la expresión "¡Cuán buena es la justicia y qué importante!", citada por Eduardo Torres, "escritor plano", según sus enemigos (LD 175, citado en LV 97). La parodia se mueve entre repetición y diferencia. En el fondo, todo el texto gira alrededor del concepto de la originalidad: "lo curioso es que "El Aleph" [de Borges] se ha[ya] convertido en el cuento definitorio por excelencia de la originalidad, una originalidad que nadie discute" (LV 108). Aunque en las esferas de Borges y de Ercilla "se refleja simultáneamente el infinito universo" (LV 109), la diferencia entre ambos escritores consiste, según Monterroso, en la "magia sin magia [...] un tanto mecánica" de Ercilla y la "magia conceptual, irónica, simultaneísta y ambigua" de Borges (LV 108). Monterroso brilla en este ensayo como académico literario que se empeña en investigar y refutar argumentos, pero que se queda fascinado por el texto estudiado a tal grado que termina parodiándolo.

Los protagonistas de la conquista: el fraile, el conquistador y el letrado

Sea una casualidad o no, "El eclipse", el fragmento de Lo demás es silencio y "El otro aleph" evocan a los tres tipos de protagonistas de la Conquista de América: el religioso, el conquistador y el letrado. El primero defensor de la Iglesia, el segundo, delegado del rey de España, el tercero, representante de la cultura. Héroes ilustres de una de las empresas más memorables de la historia de América Latina -desde la perspectiva eurocentrista-el fraile y el conquistador terminan siendo burlados, no por sus acciones, sino por su carácter. No se recalca la destrucción irreparable de las culturas precolombinas, ni el genocidio, ni la opresión, hechos incesantemente condenados por los seguidores de la leyenda negra a partir de Las Casas. En cambio, la crítica apunta a la forma de ser y de pensar del fraile y del conquistador. Al ridiculizarlos, se deja ver lo absurdo de sus acciones y se revela la sátira en toda su mordacidad. En el caso de Ercilla la burla es mucho más sutil y se centra en su estilo.

El poeta mismo merece la simpatía del autor por su crítica de los españoles y su glorificación de los araucanos.

Pero no impide que el poeta, junto con los otros dos, sea presentado como un ser alienado. Los tres sufrieron las peripecias del destierro de Europa hacia América. Cada uno había salido con mucha esperanza, el fraile en busca de almas, el conquistador fascinado por el oro y el poeta atraído por la aventura. Pero todos murieron desilusionados: el primero porque los dioses mayas superaron al dios cristiano, el segundo porque no encontró el oro y la decepción del tercero era doble: no sólo fueron vencidos los araucanos valientes, a los que admiró profundamente, sino que "el menosprecio de Felipe Segundo [...] lo sumió en un pesimismo incurable" (LV 99).

Son tres casos perdidos para la gran causa de la conquista, tres antihéroes, es decir, desmitificaciones de los héroes clásicos, tres víctimas que no estaban a la altura del (des)encuentro de culturas.

Los tres textos citados son susceptibles aún de otra lectura. La conquista no terminó, como se supone, en el siglo XVI, sino que dura hasta hoy día. No un siglo, sino quinientos años de dominación están expresados en cada uno de estos textos. Lo que confirma una vez más la idea de que la aparente brevedad en Monterroso oculta siempre un relato mucho más largo, incluso interminable. Monterroso evoca tres momentos históricos: la conquista espiritual de los mayas, la fundación de la Ciudad de México y la guerra con los araucanos. Pero el lector contemporáneo desplaza inevitablemente el escenario hacia el siglo XX. Los mayas de "El eclipse" siguen siendo los mayas de hoy día, pero a diferencia del cuento no salen ganando. La evocación del origen de la Ciudad de México en Lo demás es silencio se funde con la imagen de la actual ciudadel narrador Luis establece la relación. En "El otro aleph" el narrador relaciona el poema del siglo XVI con un cuento del siglo XX de Borges. El propio Monterroso, en un ensayo "Imaginación y realidad" (LYV 135-140), publicado muchos años después,10 se refiere precisamente a "El eclipse" para expresar su opinión sobre la situación actual de los mayas y sobre el mestizaje que llama "dudoso". Sobre la ilusión de la literatura, o más bien la desilusión, Monterroso afirma: Cada año, cada día transcurrido desde la primera publicación de mi cuentodebo admitirlome han ido enseñando que imaginación y realidad son términos con frecuencia opuestos, y que es más fácil hacer triunfar a alguien en tres minutos de buenos (o malos) deseos que en quinientos años de realidad (LYV: 136).

Monterroso es pesimista respecto a la realidad latinoamericana: "Hoy los mayas, viejos enamorados del firmamento, siguen allí, sin ser conquistados ni conquistar a sus presuntos conquistadores, como se dice que los griegos hicieron con los romanos" (ibid. 18). Este afán de invertir la historia está muy ligado a la convicción de la relatividad. Contra el dogma de una historia única y oficial, introduce la duda, la pluralidad de historias posibles. En "El eclipse" se muestra que la civilización occidental no debe aspirar a ser la única "civilización" verdadera. En el testimonio de Luis Jerónimo Torres, el oro no fue encontrado. En "El otro aleph" se sugiere que los indígenas ya tenían conocimiento del mundo entero antes de la conquista y que ellos no han sido descubiertos primero. Monterroso parece haber formulado las mismas preguntas que Miguel León-Portilla en la Visión de los vencidos : "¿Qué pensaron los hombres del Nuevo Mundo [...] al ver llegar a sus costas y pueblos a los "descubridores y conquistadores"? [...]" (León-Portilla 1989: IX). En Monterroso vislumbramos la otra historia, la de los mayas astrónomos en "El eclipse", la de los "quipuhuacas"/ aztecas en Lo demás es silencio, y la de los araucanos valientes y de un aleph precolombino en "El otro aleph".

Sin ser escritura política propiamente dicha, los textos de Monterroso manifiestan el rechazo rotundo de cualquier forma de totalitarismo y hegemonía. Como lo explica en Viaje al centro de la fábula, la preocupación principal del escritor debe ser el arte y su literatura no debe tener como objetivo el compromiso político: "[La literatura] es un producto social y a veces pretende tener un fin político; pero debemos partir del hecho de que la literatura en sí misma no tiene ninguna utilidad" (VC 37). Pero esta negación del compromiso no excluye una preocupación por la condición humana. Monterroso escribe movido por una angustia respecto a la historia de la humanidad y en particular de América Latina. Su respuesta a la pobreza y la explotación es el

"El eclipse" fue publicado por primera vez en 1952. La primera publicación de Obras Completas es de 1959.

Noguerol Jiménez hace referencia a los textos de Colón, Cortés y el Inca Garcilaso, que escriben sobre ardides parecidos: "Colón narra el mismo episodio del eclipse solar en su último viaje, en este caso con bastante mejor fortuna para los españoles. En otras crónicas se repiten anécdotas de este tipo, como la de que Cortés logró asustar a toda una tribu mostrándoles un caballo en celo o aquélla narrada por el Inca Garcilaso, según la cual los conquistadores hicieron creer a los indios que adivinaban el pensamiento mediante el empleo de la escritura."(Noguerol Jiménez 1995: 84-85).

Todorov, en su conocido ensayo La Conquista de América parte de este supuesto silencio de los dioses, tanto de los mayas como de los aztecas, para formular la siguiente hipótesis: "¿Será que los españoles vencieron a los indios con ayuda de los signos?" (69-70).

Noguerol Jiménez refiere a la semejanza entre las iniciales S.B. y D.F., a un comentario de Carmen de Torres y a la semejanza entre El heraldo de San Blas y El Heraldo deMéxico (Noguerol Jiménez 1995: 177, n. 79-80).

Véase el artículo de Lie, "Countering Caliban. Roberto Fernández Retamar and the Postcolonial Debate"(Lie 1997: 245- 270).

Es sugestivo el hecho de que Monterroso escriba "el aleph" de Ercilla siempre con minúscula, mientras que "el Aleph" de Borges aparece con mayúscula, de la misma manera como lo hizo Borges. Así Monterroso alude sutilmente a la posición superior del Aleph de Borges respecto al de Ercilla que nunca lo había llamado así.

Este ensayo fue publicado anteriormente en La Jornada Semanal, con ocasión del Quinto Centenario del Descubrimiento de América y llevaba como título: "500 años. Imaginación y realidad"[START_REF] Monterroso | 500 años. Imaginación y realidad[END_REF]).