The Book of Lost Books

by Stuart Kelly

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  {1547–1616}

  AT THE BEGINNING of the first part of Cervantes’ most famous novel, Don Quixote, just after the rationally mad and beautifully deluded knight has returned from his first, abortive adventure, his niece, the Barber, and the Priest discuss what to do with the volumes of old romances that have colored his fantastical imagination. They decide to burn them. The Exploits of Esplandian, Florismarte of Hyrcania, and armfuls of other tales of derring-do are consigned to the flames, while the judicious priest makes exception for the occasional volume. After the romances are thoroughly purged, they turn to the books of poetry, in case they instigate a new form of mania in Quixote. As they pass judgment on Spanish poetry of the sixteenth century, they come across a well-known tome:

  “But what is that book next to it?”

  “The Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes,” said the Barber.

  “That Cervantes has been a great friend of mine for many years, and I know he is better acquainted with reverses rather than verses. His book has some clever ideas; but it sets out to do something and concludes nothing. We must wait for the second part he promises, and perhaps with amendment he will win our clemency now denied him. In the meantime, neighbor, until we see, keep him as a recluse in your room.”

  Galatea had been Cervantes’s first success, and the Priest and Barber were doomed to be disappointed about its sequel. At the end of the prologue to Part II of Don Quixote, Cervantes plugs his forthcoming Persiles and Sigismunda, “which I am just finishing,” and “the second part of Galatea.” He had announced in the preface to Persiles that he was preparing a new play (Fooled with Open Eyes), a romance (The Famous Bernardo), a collection of novellas (Weeks in the Garden), and, as expected, the second part of his pastoral drama Galatea. The Persiles was published posthumously. None of the other works ever appeared.

  Cervantes spent half a lifetime not getting around to completing Galatea. Given the replete nature of that life, this is hardly surprising; and given his exquisite gift for irony, the permanent deferral of the conclusion to the book that made his name might well be taken as a sly self-referential aside.

  Cervantes was not just an author. He had been a soldier at the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, where an alliance of Christian countries defeated the Ottoman Empire, and where he himself lost the use of an arm. He had been captured in 1575 by Barbary corsairs and sold into captivity in Algiers. For five years he remained the prisoner of the notorious Hassan Pasha, and, despite four failed attempts at escape, he was ransomed and returned to Spain. Within a few years he was starting to attract attention: not, at first, for Galatea, but as a playwright. His captivity inspired Life in Algiers, a melodramatic comedy rediscovered in the eighteenth century. No doubt his military service inspired The Naval Battle, a play as yet undiscovered, and more than likely lost perpetually.

  Nonetheless we know that Cervantes was proud of the plays—if the postscript to The Return from Parnassus is trustworthy, there are ten or more other titles that are lost to us. Cervantes makes great claims for his dramatic career: he, he says, was the first to reduce the five-act structure to three acts, and the first to introduce the “soul’s imaginings and hidden thoughts” through allegorical figures. Nobody, he insists, threw any cucumbers, and the plays completed their runs without hissing or booing.

  At this time he met, or at least made the acquaintance of, a man fifteen years his junior who would prove to be a grievous thorn in his side. Lope Félix de Vega Carpio was merely the gentleman caller to the daughter of the famous actor for whose wife Cervantes had served as witness to a promissory note. Lope de Vega’s two thousand plays (a quarter of which survive), his friendship, and his feud with Cervantes were still in the future. As were Lope’s scurrilous satires on his ex-mistress once he and the actor’s daughter parted company. Lope de Vega, sentenced to exile, declared he would join the Armada. Miguel de Cervantes was occupied in the more mundane business of requisitioning grain for the troops.

  By the turn of the century, Lope de Vega, having survived the Armada (if he was ever in it), was known as the Phoenix, the foremost literary man of the period, and stellar center of a constellation of authors, as much at home with printers as with princes. Indeed, for the marriage of Philip III, he even staged a play called Captives in Algiers, mostly derived from the play Cervantes drew from painful experience.

  We do not know what Cervantes was doing. The few facts we do know include that he acted as executor for his brother’s will, and was godfather to a friend of a friend’s daughter. What is clear is that somehow he fell out grievously with Lope de Vega: in 1604 Vega made it known that he thought his former friend had been slandering his aesthetic ability. In hindsight, we can at least imagine what Cervantes was doing, because in 1605 the first part of Don Quixote appeared.

  That Cervantes knew Don Quixote was a new kind of literature is clear in his prologue. “Many times I took up my pen . . . and many times put it down, not knowing what to say.” This book rehashes nothing, it is so original that the author “does not even know what authors he is following in it; and so . . . cannot set their names at the beginning in alphabetical order . . . starting with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon—and Zoilus or Zeuxis, though one of them was a libeler and the other a painter.”

  It is the story of an old man, obsessed with tales of chivalry, who, suddenly, even heroically, erodes the flimsy film between life and reading. He and his bemused squire, Sancho Panza, set out on a quest and are diverted at every turn. Don Quixote, who has never seen a windmill, thinks that windmills are probably giants, and that his conquering of them (eyes screwed shut all the while) is proven by the fact that they are now mere wooden edifices. The Knight of the Woeful Countenance, as Don Quixote styled himself, is every reader who thought that generosity of spirit was a fiction and shabbiness the norm. Characters can be noble; people are irredeemably self-centered. Don Quixote’s quest, more than his search for the lovely Dulcinea, is to prove the cynics wrong.

  Even though the king himself gave a jacket-quote anecdote—“Either that student laughing out loud there is a madman, or he’s reading Don Quixote”—Lope de Vega hated it. A sonnet appeared, either from Lope himself or an eager acolyte, contrasting the Apollo, Vega, with the Quixote, which it predicted would circle the world, “arse to arse,” as toilet paper, or be used only to wrap second-rate saffron.

  Not content with scatological poetry, Lope de Vega certainly conspired with the author of a continuation to Don Quixote by “Avellaneda”; he may even have been the pseudonymous author whose identity has never been unraveled. At the end of Part I of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the knight has been brought to his home, insensible, and the supposed compiler of the story, Cide Hamete Benengeli, tells the readers that he is unable to find any accurate sources for the further adventures, though they were known to include the jousts at Saragossa.

  Avellaneda’s Part II appeared in 1614 and opens with the Don and Sancho on their way to Saragossa. Cervantes retorted in 1615 with his own continuation, setting aside the Galatea yet again. The gross imposture becomes embroiled in the book itself. Part II of Don Quixote is a form of lost book: whatever Cervantes wanted to write, or planned to write, had to be set aside in order to counter the claims of the spurious sequel.

  In chapter 59 of Part II, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are introduced to someone who demands the innkeeper listen to the latest episode of Don Quixote. The knight and squire are nonplussed, and demand to see the work in question. It is the Avellaneda Part II. Don Quixote is furious that he is depicted as being out of love with Dulcinea; and Sancho is equally irate that his wife’s name seems to have changed. They study the book, and conclude that the author writes in the Aragonese dialect, as well as being a traducer, libeler, and mendacious historian. They resolve not to go to Saragossa at all, since the false author had depicted them there as mere fools, and strike out for Barcelona instead. Even there, they find the book on sale, even though Quixote �
�thought it had been burned by now.”

  But if Cervantes ever intended to take them to Saragossa, a more melancholy end now awaited the knight. To short-circuit any future impostures, and to give a truly meaningful end to their adventures, the Don goes home. There they meet Don Tarfe, from the spurious Part II, who does not recognize them; and the real Quixote, shaken, is oppressed by omens of his death. He becomes lucid, and forgives even Avellaneda, before returning to being Alonso Quixano the Good. Cide Hamete Benengeli hangs up his pen and curses anyone who would dare intrude on the relationship between creator and character: “for me alone Don Quixote was born, and I for him.”

  Cervantes did continue to write. The Persiles and Sigismunda still attracts the occasional, apologetic enthusiast; but it is clear that the work he shone in most was now extinguished. No doubt, Cervantes could have written countless escapades for his characters, but they had to be perfected. We only have an intact Don Quixote because Cervantes knew that unfinished works attract a swarm of maggoty continuers, and the Don was so perfect he would only be safe if he was dead. Don Quixote, as we have it, is a supreme act of authorial self-sacrifice.

  Edmund Spenser

  {?1552–1599}

  ONLY SIXTY YEARS after his death, rumors were circulating, in the highest echelons of academia, about the lost books of Edmund Spenser, an author so esteemed he was called the “Prince of Poets” and was buried next to Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. Dr. John Worthington, the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, wrote thus to Milton’s friend Samuel Hartlib:

  A Translation of Ecclesiastes

  A Translation of Canticum Cantorum

  The Dying Pelican

  The Hours of the Lord

  The Sacrifice of a Sinner

  The 7 Psalms

  His Dreams

  His English Poet

  His Legends

  Court of Cupid

  His Purgatory

  The Hell of Lovers

  A Sennights Slumber

  His Pageants

  Sir, Yours I receiv’d last week; which exprest a great desire of the catalogue of those pieces of the renowned Spenser, which are only mentioned, but were never yet printed. This I now give you, as it was collected out of the scatter’d intimations of them in his printed works.

  Of these, Dr. Worthington most regrets not having The English Poet, supposedly a prose disquisition on prosody, and the religious poems. Although he mentions that there are “besides many others in the hands of noble persons, and his friends,” the doctor omits several other titles quoted in Spenser’s correspondence and postscripts: the Stemmata Dudleiana, a genealogical poem presumably for Robert Dudley, the influential earl of Leicester, of which Spenser said “more aduisement must be had”; a poem on the marriage of the river Thames; and a sequence of nine comedies, one for each of the Muses, which his friend Gabriel Harvey much preferred to the masterwork on which Spenser’s fame now rests, The Faerie Queene.

  “But the greatest want is of the other six books of that incomparable poem, the Faery Queen,” laments Worthington. The first three books of the poem were published in 1590, with books IV to VI appearing six years later. A letter from Spenser to Sir Walter Raleigh accompanied the initial publication, in which he outlined the structure of the poem.

  The beginning therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an Historiographer, should be the twelfth book, which is the last, where I deuise that the Faery Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii dayes, upon which xii seuerall dayes, the occasions of the xii seuerall aduentures hapned, which being undertaken by xii seuerall knights, are in these xii books seuerally handled and discoursed.

  Each book, therefore, contained the exploits of a knight, in twelve cantos, and each knight, Spenser intimates, is an exemplar of one of Aristotle’s twelve moral virtues. In addition, the hero of the poem, Prince Arthur, betrothed to the Fairy Queen, appears in each book representing “Magnificence,” the perfect realization of the dozen characteristics of the others.

  Book I introduces the Redcrosse Knight, emblematic of Holinesse, and his quest to defeat the Dragon of Sin. Book II has as its hero Sir Guyon, the paragon of Temperance, who seeks to capture the enchantress Acrasia, whose witchcraft robs humans of their capacity for self-control, and unfetters them to succumb to their passions. Britomart, a female knight, is the heroine of book III, where the principal virtue is Chastity and the enemy to be vanquished is the lustful sorcerer Busyrane, who has imprisoned the virtuous maiden Amoret. A similar pattern occurs in books IV to VI: Friendship, as demonstrated by Cambel and Triamond, takes up book IV; Sir Artegall embodies Justice in book V, and Sir Calidore in book VI is the template of Courtesy, struggling against the Blatant Beast.

  The narratives are not wholly confined to the individual books, and, especially in books III and IV, stories are interlaced and interconnected. Britomart is destined to marry Sir Artegall, and duly comes to his rescue in book V when he is captured by Amazons. Arthur tends to provide essential help in canto VIII of each book: he rescues Redcrosse from Orgoglio, the Giant of Pride; assists Guyon in fending off Pyrocles and Cymocles; and joins forces with Artegall to liberate Princess Belge from her oppressors.

  Each book also has set-piece descriptions of palaces, pageants, and masques. Britomart witnessed the Masque of Cupid in Busyrane’s abode (perhaps this was the “Court of Cupid” poem mentioned by Worthington?); book IV concludes with the marriage of Thames and Medway (again, a lost book absorbed into the great work?).

  Given the almost programmatic nature of Spenser’s poem, even though we have only half of the projected complete work, one would have thought that it would be easy enough to speculate about the contents of the missing books. For example, in book II, canto 11, stanza 6, Arthur praises Guyon by proclaiming him potentially the equal of Gloriana the Fairy Queen’s two staunchest knights, Sir Artegall and Sir Sophy. The reader meets Artegall and learns much of his temperament and character. This is, however, the sole reference to Sophy, who, it is implied, is of equal stature. His name derives from the Greek word sophia, meaning wisdom: one can imagine a lost book in which the Knight of Wisdom is pitted against the Ogre of Ignorance, the Basilisk of Heresy, or the Kobold of Ultracrepitudinarianism.

  Similarly, there are strong hints about the final conclusion of the poem. Redcrosse’s epic battle with the dragon is awe-inspiring, but is as nothing compared to a conflict between the Fairy Queen and the “Paynim” (or pagan) king; a struggle to which Redcrosse plights his troth after successfully dispatching his particular nemesis.

  So what would have been the subjects of books VII to XII? An obvious starting point would be Spenser’s claim that each knight represented one of Aristotle’s virtues. Immediately, the picture becomes more complex. Of Aristotle’s virtues, Spenser has dealt with only two, temperance and civility. Holiness, chastity, justice, and friendship are not in Aristotle’s list. Plato proposed four cardinal virtues—justice, temperance, wisdom, and courage—which provide a philosophical framework for Artegall, Guyon, potentially Sir Sophy, and possibly an unnamed Knight of Courage (though shouldn’t all knights be courageous?).

  Two cantos and two stanzas of what appears to be another book of The Faerie Queene were added to the third edition in 1609, after Spenser’s death. They are written in the stanza form Spenser used for the poem, and, the publisher suggested, formed part of the Legend of Constancy. Whether the publisher or Spenser or some other hand decided that these lines, about the Titaness Mutability attempting to storm Heaven, comprised cantos 6 and 7, we cannot know. They are wonderful poetry, but what is evident is that they lack one thing present in all the other books: they have no hero.

  Ralph Knevett (1600–1661), the rector of Lyng in Norfolk, unacademically attempted to supplement Spenser’s poem by writing three further books, introducing Sir Albanio, the Knight of Prudence; Sir Callimachus, the Knight of Fortitude (which might double up as Courage); and Sir Belcoeur, the Knight of Liberality. Knevett’s intention was “to make this Zodiacke
perfect,” which introduces a further complication.

  Elizabethan poets were accustomed to building astrological meanings into their poetry. In Spenser’s own Epithalamion, the twenty-four stanzas and 365 long lines allow the reader to calculate the very date of the marriage the poem celebrates. The Faerie Queene is no less nuanced. As Alastair Fowler says in his study Spenser and the Numbers of Time,

  we find numerological significance in line-, stanza-, canto-, and book-totals; in the location of these units; and even in the number of characters mentioned in each episode. Pythagorean number symbolism, astronomical symbolism based on orbital period figures and on Ptolemaic star catalogue totals, medieval theological number symbolism: all these strands, and more besides, are worked together into what—in this respect at least—must be one of the more intricate poetic structures ever devised.

  To take some simple examples: book I has as its heroine Una (one, unity, wholeness) and as its villainess Duessa (two, doubled, duplicity). Book I, canto 1 has 55 stanzas; book III, canto 1 has 67; the book between, which insists on temperance as the medium between extremes, has 55 + 67, divided by 2: 61 stanzas. The evidence is incremental, and what may appear as coincidence in isolation occurs too frequently to be discounted. Astrologically, for example, the end of book II features 8 major and 17 minor characters; 8 stars make up the constellation of Libra and 17 stars are used to locate the constellation in Ptolemy’s star charts. Libra, the scales, is an apposite symbol of the balance that typifies the book.

  It is difficult, at times, to decide exactly which numbers are significant. What are we to make, for example, of the Blatant Beast, who appears in book V, canto 12, boasting a hundred tongues, only to reappear in book VI, canto 1, with the number increased tenfold? Does this conceal an arcane meaning, or an authorial slip?