Comedy and Perfomance in «Tirant lo Blanc»

Rafael Beltran Llavador

In chapter 275 of Tirant lo Blanc, the Emperor decides to organize a great feast in honour of Tirant. The most ostentatious and symbolic part of the proceedings is to be the preparation, entrusted to master craftsmen, of an unspecified number of banners, as many as the battles he has won, and also 372 standards bearing the arms of Tirant, corresponding to the number of castles and cities he has conquered for the Empire in the course of the four-and-a-half years he has spent in Constantinople. The banners will be placed in the church of St Sophia and the standards around the principal altar of the same church. What happens a little later, in chapter 282, must be understood within the framework of this homage. The Emperor sends urgently («a gran pressa») for Tirant. He orders him to sit at the table alone. While the Emperor himself, his wife the Empress and his daughter, Princess Carmesina, serve him with dishes, the others listen spellbound to a recitation:

After this curious recital, which lasts throughout Tirant's copious meal, all the courtiers rush to the marketplace, where wild bulls are fighting, and entertain themselves with more feasting and revelry. Once night has fallen, after supper:

It is certain that literary emulation in the Middle Ages often led to the practice of genuine acts of imitative staging (Keen 1986:265-70). Thus these two quotations make clear how, in a single day, there take place two levels of literary transmission of Tirant's actions: reading or recital («recount[ed] Tirant's deeds») and performance («show[ed] how Tirant entered into battles»). The reading, on the part of an elderly knight who is both a soldier and an educated man —he is neither a minstrel nor a priest— occupies the minds of his listeners for three hours, and such is their rapture that they forget to eat. The performance, the pantomime of the «interludes» —the anonymous translator of the Castilian version of 1511 renders the term as «mummeries» (momos)— probably staged a selection of the passages the guests had listened to some hours earlier.

An oral recital and a festive performance. Action and commemoration. A war-like and ceremonial rehearsal of victory. A profane, chivalresque ceremony, but also a religious one, like the banners and hundreds of standards with Tirant's arms in the church of St. Sophia. To what extent are these two levels of narration, the reading and the performance, present and differentiated in the Tirant? The biography of the character Tirant in the novel is constructed as a sequence of pictures of public and private activity¹. The former, from the scenes of fighting in battles or tournaments, to the wedding, and eventually to his death, since they are open, sometimes require the narrator to divide himself into some of the various perspectives from which they might be seen in the real life they reflect. Thus the linear account of Tirant's deeds is compatible with another level, where some of the character's vicissitudes are seen from a different angle: readings on a different stratum, which bring with them different dimensions of Tirant and of other characters in the novel.

Point of view, in the modern sense, presents the partial realities experienced by each character and encourages the reader to reconstruct a totality on this basis. The discovery of intratextual recipients requires the multiplicity of readings, documents, letters, books, edicts, sermons, eye-witness accounts, monologues, messengers, symbolic languages (the language of banners, for example) and so on. And a polyphony of registers, within these indirect communications between narrator and reader, which goes from oratorical emphasis (the epic reading at the meal and the feast) to visualization in the form of a spectacle. As Segre says, referring to Tirant lo Blanc:

When the impersonal narrator temporarily delegates his voice in the story or in the composition of a ceremonial script to another character, the latter may initiate a new circuit of reception within a particular situation in the novel. There is a perfect example of this in the change of internal narrator for the account of Tirant's deeds in England. When Diafebus gives a detailed inventory of Tirant's victories (chapters 56-84), the latter listens to him with humility and resignation; he is listening, for the first time in the novel, to the literary expression of part of his life, which he hears with discomfort and embarrassment at seeing himself magnified in the mirror of the recitation. Similarly, when the Emperor is planning the homage in chapter 275 he summons a Royal Council for its approval, but when «he learned why the Imperial Council had been convened, Tirant hastily returned to his lodgings. He refused to attend lest he hear himself praised...» Nevertheless, in the majority of cases, this secondary mode of discourse (the recital or performance) is not based on a distant past, but has to do with a present which implicates the protagonist in the deeds which are shown. On these occasions, Tirant is not only a referent but a reader / spectator, like we ourselves, of his past and present, and his own reading of history can be a determinant in the developing actions of the plot.

We have spoken of pictures of public activity. The same illusionary and polyphonic effects are to be seen in those of private or intimate activity, those of the bedroom, which are usually represented through the lens of occultation, hidden or converted into dreams (like that of Plaerdemavida on the night of the «secret weddings») or deviant fantasies (like the loves of Hipòlit and the Empress).

Are there scripts for the representation of one and the other? The public sphere, as we shall see, has script models in a whole series of representations, tied on the one hand to the palace settings of royalty or nobility and to urban spaces, which produce feasts and courtly spectacles, and on the other to performances in churches, which produce liturgical spectacles. By contrast, the private sphere —always understood as the most intimate— can only be represented by recourse to models and codes related to exclusively textual literary sources.

We start, then, from the idea of comedy as a text that is read (which naturally, since we are dealing with a medieval work, does not exclude the dramatized reading nor the group hearing, that is to say, oral transmission), and from the idea of representation as an act performed as a spectacle (which does not exclude the use of a text, but is always dependent on the presence of other signs of non-verbal communication). The idea of the comedy as text comes from our knowledge of what the term «comedy» originally meant in the Middle Ages: a story with a happy ending.

We therefore do not take into account, for medieval literature, the identification of comedy and representation. Thus, the elegiac and humanistic comedies form a unit which, strictly speaking, does not belong to the dramatic genre, that is to say, to the medieval theatre (so difficult, incidentally, to delimit), though it is certain that its basic simplicity, the obscenity of its themes and the rhetorical use of a low, and by extension, comic style, contributed decisively to the development of the theatre. This is the case with the Pamphilus, probably the most widespread elegiac comedy, attributed in the Middle Ages to Ovid. Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, paraphrases a good part of this text in the Libro de buen amor (coplas 583-891). For some time now the Pamphilus has been recognized as one of the main sources of the Celestina. What is curious is that Joanot Martorell shows that he knew it, since Carmesina's dramatic monologue (chapters 436-7), when Tirant succeeds in conquering her and entering the castle of her body —to use the author's clumsy military image— is a fairly faithful version of Galatea's speech when she reaches a similar situation with Pamphilus (Pamphilus, vv. 680-8). Pamphilus therefore, however rudimentary his origins, provides the same remote literary origin for such apparently different characters as the I / Juan Ruiz of the Libro de buen amor, Tirant the lover and Calisto (Beltrán 1990).

Owing to this common source in Tirant lo Blanc and the Celestina, we see that the famous night of the «secret weddings» (chapters 162-3), with Estefania's amorous soliloquy and Carmesina's final surrender already mentioned (chapters 436-7), have a perfect replica in Acts VII, XIV and XXI of the Celestina, as in other Hispanic texts, such as the dramatic monologue of the Archpriest of Talavera on «How women speak to those they love, of whatever age»². Both the dramatic monologue of the deflowered maiden and the prayer which follows it (Sosia, in the Celestina, calls it an «oration») were very familiar to university students, and also to moralists like the Archpriest of Talavera, who states, after giving his variant of the prayer as an example of female deceit:

«They appear to put all their strength into it», that is to say, they are feigning or representing. Does this mean a theatrical performance, a staging within the novel (like those we shall see in a moment)? Of course not. We are simply faced with the effect or the illusion of being able to capture a concrete, vulgar, daily reality, an effect proper to low speech and, in particular, to comedy.

When Erich Auerbach (1953:20-43) comments on the use of this expressive comedy language in the Satiricon of Petronius, he emphasizes its limitations: in Antiquity (and we could extend it to the Middle Ages) the criticism of vices is posed as an individual problem which never touches social life or the historical background. But this same limitation, which comes from a lack of sufficient historical awareness, leads to the presentation of other kinds of life in an ahistorical, static and idyllic way. We observe this immobilty in the rigidity of public ceremony. Public matters, in principle, cannot be subject to a comic approach, though we certainly know very little about the presence of the comic, laughter or ludus in religious or secular ceremonies. The private sphere, on the other hand, does lend itself to, and even associates itself with, these jokes, by means of pictures which reflect intimate milieux with the lowness of vulgar language (popular proverbs, coarseness, obscenities), not in the least stylized, a language which —through the law of decorum— prevents the people who use it from being taken seriously in their actions, at least in their moments of privacy.

In the public sphere, we need to begin by attempting to differentiate, in the novel, between the reflection of courtly or liturgical performances of the period and the possible original creation of scripts or scenarios for performance. What is certain is that, if we examine in detail the scenes represented, we realize that they all imply, to a greater or lesser extent, spectacles of the medieval nobility, royalty, city or, to a lesser degree, Church. In Tirant lo Blanc, therefore —as one would expect— there would be no strictly original representations. Nevertheless, in every scene there is beyond doubt such an integration of characters and dramatic action in the plot that it would be quite inaccurate to speak of a mere reflection or of a simple picture inserted from the reality which Martorell knew. In any case, it would be more to the point to speak of two extremes between which the novel's chief representations are situated: that of closest identification with the spectacles of the period and least literary distortion, and, at the opposite pole, the greater literary elaboration and also, as a consequence, the greater distance from medieval historical representations. The three examples we are about to see are situated at different points on this imaginary line. The «rock» of the English feasts at the maximum degree of imitation of real referents, the episode of Arthur and Morgana at a point equidistant between imitation and the creation of a fresh script, and the plot invented by the Viuda Reposada at a point furthest from imitation and closest to creative imagination³.

The chief representations that appear in the work have to do with royal ceremony, and specifically with wedding celebrations or marriage petitions⁴. Grilli (1994) has shown very clearly the theatricality of two of these representations, the episode of Arthur and Morgana and that of the Viuda Reposada. The studies of Oleza (1992), Cocozella (1993) and Massip (1996) lead one to add at least one more spectacle: the «rock» of the English feasts. We shall examine them following the order in which they appear in the novel.

In the midst of the English feasts, the «magnificences of the rock», a great allegorical celebration, are described (chapters 53-5). One must remember that, as happens with the next representation we shall discuss, it is only one of the many spectacles which go to make up the London feasts, which last for a year, and which take place as a way of celebrating the marriage of the English King to a daughter of the King of France. The detailed account that Diafebus gives, at the request of Guy of Warwick, on returning from these feasts, confines itself to Tirant's victories over his successive adversaries, the procession of the estates of the Church, the wedding mass in the meadow with the «portable altar», the dances and banquets, fishing and hunting, and the rule for each day of the week (chapters 41-52), details which, taken together, recall well-known celebrations in a great many medieval kingdoms.

The architecture of the «rock» and the staging of the assault on the castle constitute a more elaborate spectacle, but one that is described in the same way from the fourteenth century onwards, with some —though not all— of the details that appear in Tirant lo Blanc. In the first place, the «rock» is plausibly announced as a very costly construction: «a thing of great magnificence, the like of which I believe is not to be found elsewhere in the world» (chapter 53)⁵. Its exterior is described thus:

But the representation is not only scenic. It implies the movement of actors. And, in fact, an attack on the rock is simulated, which is repelled by its defenders:

The text of the representation appears when they pass from the warlike game to the courtly allegory. The castle only surrenders when the Queen herself asks who is its lord and the «God of Love» appears at a window. The Queen begs him to «open the doors of your glorious dwelling to me ...and receive me into your longed for glory» (chapter 54). Only then do the doors open «with a great noise». They all enter into a courtyard covered with precious hangings and with angels above playing various instruments. The God of Love speaks, and then disappears. And then, after the tapestries and hangings fall as the result of a tremendous noise and movement («they began to move almost as if in an earthquake»), the space is transformed into four parts, each of which contains many rooms.

It is certain that artificial displays like these were prepared for great solemnities, as for example the coronation feasts of King Martin I in Saragossa in 1399, or those of Fernando de Antequera (1414) in the same city, or the feasts of Lille, in France, in 1454. Massip (1996) shows very clearly the close relationship between the display of 1414 and that described by Martorell: a mock battle with stones of leather, celestial and allegorical decorations, music and other sound effects, scenic illusions (the appearance and disappearance of elements and personages), and so on. We might add that the opening of the «rock» described by Martorell —not easy to understand— is more like that of the «fortress» of wood and cloth presented in the neighbouring Kingdom of Castile, in the feasts of Valladolid (1428), by Prince Enrique. The «fortress» consisted of a tower with four turrets and a belfry, surrounded by a fence and a barrier, the latter with twelve more towers, with a «well dressed lady» on each of them. And «below, on the floor of the fortress, resting rooms for the Prince and stables and mangers for horses» (Carrillo 1946:20-1). These interior rooms correspond to the four parts of the rock in Tirant lo Blanc:

Nevertheless, the architecture described by Martorell seems to exceed the limits of what was historically possible. The «stables and mangers» described in the «fortress» of 1428 are replaced by fountains in each of the rooms: that of the mature, naked woman whose breasts gushed water in the King's, that of the golden maiden whose sex delivered white wine in the Queen's, that of the bishop from whose mitre oil came in a third; that of the gilded lion from whose mouth honey poured in the last. In the courtyard which gave entrance to the four rooms, the statue of a grotesque dwarf who gushed fine red wine from his navel. Close by, finally, the statue of an old bearded hunchback provided them with bread, bearing on his back the weight of no fewer than 30,000 loaves. Behind the «rock» which clearly could not be more than ephemeral, though static, architecture, a garden was prepared, which included the entrance to a genuine zoo. Though the narrator, after describing these statues, insists that they were not made «by magic or the art of necromancy, but by artificial means» (chapter 55), and though we have precedents like the courtyard of the Aljafería of Saragossa where, in 1414, there was «a fountain of wood painted to resemble marble, whence flowed in three directions water and red and white wine» (and Massip [1996:154] gives more examples), there is no doubt that Martorell was pushing verisimilitude to an extreme by multiplying the variety of liquids and the quantity of bread.

As Keen remarks, in general terms «fifteenth-century chivalresque literature is truer to reality than is often thought» (1986:275). In this spectacle, specifically, there is an imitative fusion of pageantry elements taken from royalty, from the nobility and from the city. Nor must one dismiss the influence of religious spectacles, which we shall see more obviously in the subsequent representations⁶. The balance clearly inclines towards the maximum historical fidelity and the minimum literary distortion. The latter, nevertheless, exists. On the one hand, there is an attempt to create an ambiguity or uncertainty, by making the actors comply with a kind of representation:

On the other hand, though the luxury, sensuality and exoticism of these and other scenarios are effectively ambiguous and create a striking unease in the reader, there is no doubt that the latter would be perfectly aware that the limits of what was architecturally conceivable for a feast, however great, had been exceeded. As Oleza points out:

The second representation takes place in chapter 189, when Tirant finds himself once more in the midst of feasting, this time in the court of Constantinople, and it is announced that «a ship is come into harbour with neither masts nor sails, all covered in black». As in the previous case, one must remember that this is not the only one, but rather one of the several —though the most theatrical— representations that take place in the course of the feasting which the Emperor offers the ambassadors of the Sultan of Cairo, who bring a marriage petition from the Sultan to the Princess Carmesina⁷. We are now in a double ceremonial milieu of royalty: the petition of betrothal and the foreign embassy. The ceremonies, as occurred in the historical spectacles of the time, are located in internal acting spaces (like the palace and the galley) and in external ones (like the market place and the harbour), and are organized around five types of spectacle. Of these five, the first three are a courtly judgement presided over by the Sybil (chapter 189), the jousting of knights, related to this judgement, and a tournament, actions which take place in a sumptuously decorated marketplace. The two following ones are the episode of the ship's arrival, with the meeting between Arthur and Morgana (chapters 190-202) and the vows of the knights (chapters 202-7). The jousting, the tournament and the vows represent, not without originality (especially in the case of the third), the perfect triad common to every chivalresque spectacle in the Middle Ages (Keen 1986:265-88).

The representation of the Sybil is of special interest since I believe it combines echoes of both courtly and religious spectacle. The Sybil, richly dressed and seated on a revolving throne, presides over a courtly tribunal of justice:

Although the oracular role ascribed to the Sybil in the medieval theatre will here be transferred to Arthur and Morgana, nevertheless, both her superior position, the setting, costumes and accessories, and her own activity as judge can be closely related to liturgical representations⁸. But there is an intermediate ground, for which we have Hispanic witnesses, although later than Tirant lo Blanc. The Sybil of the Farsa del juego de cañas of Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, from a position very like that of Tirant lo Blanc, announces an allegorical and musical juego de cañas⁹, in which the seven deadly sins are to fight with the virtues. Not only that. There are witnesses who relate the liturgical, theatrical personage to the literature of chivalry, as is the case with the Auto de la Sibila Casandra of Gil Vicente (1513), where there appears a proud Sybil, who claims to be the one chosen to be the mother of Jesus Christ (Lida 1966:168-72). In this instance, it is a question of a personage who departs from the religious tradition of the Ordo prophetarum and, on the other hand, reflects the secularized tradition of chivalresque fiction —more specifically, its source has been traced to the Guarino mezquino of Andrea da Barberino. Thus the «wise Sybil» of Tirant lo Blanc owes something to courtly spectacles, but probably also to a medieval liturgy which, all things considered, as Zumthor points out, was «spectacular in its most intimate parts» (1989:313).

It is only with the fourth spectacle related to the feast of the Sultan's ambassadors that we find a true articulation of non-verbal elements of communication (from the temporary architecture and scenery to the movement of the actors) with other verbal ones, which allows us to speak openly of representation. Although the inspiration of the episode of the prophetic barque in the Tirant is textual, the most recent criticism refers to it as an «interlude» (entremés)¹⁰. In contrast to the first spectacle, where Diafebus revealed the cardboard deception of the scenery, here Martorell, «with the intention of plunging the reader into this refined and fantastic literary milieu, recounts these deeds without ever revealing the deceit, deliberately hiding the fact that it is all comic illusion» (Riquer 1992:147).

A theatrical spectacle? The fact is that the spectacle of the galleys is one of the first examples of mobile scenery in the Middle Ages, since it is documented in the medieval urban feast from the twelfth century onwards. There are records going back to 1274 of ships which proceed through cities of the Crown of Aragon, though we do not find «interludes» with whales until 1474 (Riquer 1990a 152-3). The whale is associated with the sea dragon which, as occurred with the enchanted castle, appears on occasion filled with fireworks. But it is not only that. The theme of the ship which arrives at a court bearing prophetesses (Sybil, Morgana) will appear in other Castilian books of chivalry, specifically in Amadís de Gaula and the Corónica de Adramón (in the latter, what is more, as a ship-whale), and will contain more explicit scenographic elements than the Tirant itself: the terrifying appearance, the transformation of the setting of the ship, music, noise, smoke, the behaviour of the personages..., are theatrical ingredients that coincide with Tirant lo Blanc, and whose presence shows that the condition of representation of this episode within a book of chivalry is not unusual.

The folklore motif of the ship coming from the Beyond, the religious motif of Jonah and the whale, announcing hope in the Saviour, the chivalresque theme of the Arthurian literary tradition, the sentimental theme of the dark galley which suggests penitence for the sin of love..., all these textual traditions, along with those of secular and religious spectacles, feed into the episode of Tirant lo Blanc, though the latter, all things considered, as Hauf explains (1990:24), is essentially a divertimento. The form of the spectacle, in this case, seems to dominate over the background of revelation, though it is very difficult to separate clearly the two aspects. There is, let us not forget, a representation, not only before the personages, but also before the reader. And we find for the first time, as Massip recalls (1996:156), a scenic use in the Crown of Aragon of Arthurian providentialism, a detail which on no account must be left out of consideration.

The Viuda Reposada, Carmesina's nurse, weaves a subtle intrigue in the face of the knight's logical refusal of her amorous overtures. She begins by telling Tirant that Carmesina is so dishonest and lustful as to exchange secret loves with a palace gardener named Lauseta, a black slave and a Moor (chapters 265-8). Naturally, Tirant does not believe her words. But in order to demonstrate the accuracy of her incredible accusations, the Widow, with the excuse that the Feast of Corpus is approaching, orders a painter to reproduce in a mask the face of Lauseta the Moor:

The Widow persuades Tirant to go into a hut near the palace garden from which he will be able to observe unseen what is to happen¹¹. She then suggests to Carmesina that she should go down to this garden to play with the Corpus masks and persuades Plaerdemavida to put on the mask (chapter 283). The latter, playing her part to perfection, caresses Carmesina's body in a daring fashion:

Tirant spies on the scene from his hiding place, thanks to a system of mirrors that reveal that Carmesina is pursuing dishonest love with Lauseta. In despair, after once again refusing the still clearer amorous suggestions of the Widow, who thought she now had a clear field, and after a period of reflection in his room, he seeks out Lauseta and kills him (chapters 284-7).

It is obvious that in the Tirant, as in the story of Dalinda in Canto V of the Orlando Furioso which derives from it, we are faced with something much more complex than the simple story of a man who watches how his wife or beloved deceives him¹². We are present at the representation of a previously prepared deception, at a comedy of deceit. The theatricality of the episode has been sufficiently remarked by Grilli (1994), Romeu (1994) and Massip (1996). Renedo (1996), for his part, sets it within the theory and moralizing concerning the medieval ludus, emphasizing its ambiguity as between the ludus turpis et inhonestus and the ludus humanae consolationis. The theatrical possibilities of the episode seem beyond doubt. For my own part, I am interested in pointing out only two things. In the first place, that the presence of a whole series of evangelical references, like that to Holy Thursday (although quite a bit earlier: chapter 228), or to Tirant compared by the Widow to Jesus Christ (chapter 264), and of festive-religious allusions, specifically the various references to the Feast of Corpus, make one think that Martorell is trying to play with the sacred-profane parallel of a Tirant who is the victim of deep amorous suffering, a genuine Passion¹³.

In the second instance, related to the first, there are the implications that this other level of reading may have on Tirant the spectator. In my opinion, Martorell wants the reader to see Tirant having the opportunity to decide his future, to calculate the possibilities that offer themselves, and that at this moment are reduced to two: to triumph over Fortune (if he takes seriously the oracle of Arthur and Morgana) or to be defeated in the face of Love (if he allows himself to be carried away by his sexual appetite). Naturally, it is a false dilemma, since the solution is already foreseen. But it seems to me, in this sense, that, in Tirant's amorous career, the episode of the Viuda Reposada signifies a second scenification at which Tirant is obliged to assist, thus doubling his own actions. The first, of course, has been the episode of the prophetic barque.

These two representations hold up the linear development of the character in order to penetrate two moments of his biographical trajectory. As we said before, from a modem point of view, certain realities perceived partially or mistakenly by some of the characters are presented to us, and it is left to the reader to reconstruct a meaningful whole. The two representations dramatize, bring to light (or to the stage) as a therapeutic diversion, as an «interlude», two stages in his life, so that Tirant, from a distance, or through his bewilderment, may recognize the blindness of the love he is suffering, and may attempt to cure and put an end to his sickness.

In the first phase of the cure, the narrator shows Tirant —always in a playful and honest way, as eutrapelia (Renedo 1996)— the dangers of the world and the prophecies of the Last Judgement. The feminine embassy, headed by the mythical Urganda, reminds him of his heroic mission. Arthurian providentialism accommodates itself to the courtly spectacle of a galley bearing omens of destruction (the signs of judgement) and revelations of restoration (the ship-whale).

Nevertheless, Tirant does not learn his lesson. In face of his persistent idleness, in this second representation there is applied with greater force another of the accustomed therapeutic remedies: the dishonouring of the beloved. In my opinion, Martorell is proposing an unexpected escape from the unbearable tension that underlies the play of relations between Carmesina and Tirant, having recourse to the Ovid of the Remedia amoris (vv. 299-310), where he advises the lover, as the best therapy against the negative effects of love, to imagine in a concentrated form, as if they were before his eyes, all possible defects of the beloved («pone ante oculos omnia damna tuos»), especially the cruel supposition that a servant is obtaining at night the favours that are denied to himself. The Widow makes use of the magic of the theatre, of the necromancy of mirrors, since the normal perception of facts would be insufficient to bring the lover to reason —to her reason, but also to objective reason. The Widow organizes the representation of a fantasy as necessary for Tirant's recovery of integrity (health) as it is convenient for the prolongation of the plot. Clearly, she involves herself in it in such a way that she destroys herself in the sacrifice. The Widow's fiction is, as Renedo says (1996), ludus turpis, but by means of the sieve that cleanses it as a spiritual joy (theatre of devotion) it is converted into ludus consolationis, into a curative or cathartic theatre (the catharsis culminates in Lauseta's death).

The defeat of the Widow represents the explicit failure of a narrative option for Tirant. Martorell is saying to us that he cannot —obviously because he does not wish to— channel Tirant's career in a straight line, despite having warned him. Tirant, who has to begin from scratch another path of ascent, loses, but the novel, which prolongs his adventures through many more pages, is the gainer.

The narrator has delegated his functions to a series of intratextual narrators, and through them he multiplies himself as oral narrator (Diafebus), reader/reciter (the «elderly man» of chapter 273), but also as theatre director, which includes a conception of scenery and decor (the Emperor, who conceives the setting for the feast), an awareness of the power of illusionary magic in temporary, static or dynamic architecture (the «rock» or the «interlude» of Arthur and Morgana), and a knowledge of the value of directing actors (those organized by the Viuda Reposada). All these partial narrators raise the building of the novel with an architectural complexity it is not possible to reduce to the level of linear action. Many of the rooms of this building remain open to the pleasure of reading the novel, which should not limit its possibilities as artistic communication to what is strictly literal.

Translated by Arthur Terry