Cervantes on Writing

For more thoughts on good writing, let’s turn to Miguel de Cervantes.

I spend a fair amount of time in class trying to bridge the humor gap between the 17th and 21st centuries to help my students appreciate that Don Quixote is a very funny book. The humor lies not only in the farcical situations, but in the language itself. Cervantes knew good writing. Novice readers, especially undergraduates, might not appreciate it, but Cervantes was a remarkable prose stylist. He had a way with irony that few have matched since, and apparently took great pleasure in puns, because every page teems with word games and double entendres impossible to translate. His prose is fun to read, once you know how, and signifies at multiple levels simultaneously.

While not a treasury of writing tips, Don Quixote can be considered a commentary on writing. It is, after all, a parody, or satire directed against the excesses of a particular literary genre. Part of Cervantes’s critique concerns issues of realism in fiction, but what concerns us here specifically is the issue of style. I suggest that we can consider the following to be a commentary on prose style:

... and he thought none was as fine as those composed by the worthy Feliciano de Silva, because the clarity of his prose and complexity of his language seemed to him more valuable than pearls, in particular when he read the declarations and missives of love, where he would often find written: "The reason for the unreason to which my reason turns so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of thy beauty." And also when he read: "... the heavens on high divinely heighten thy divinity with the stars and make thee deserving of the deserts thy greatness deserves."

With these words and phrases the poor gentleman lost his mind, and he spent sleepless nights trying to understand them and extract their meaning, which Aristotle himself, if he came back to life for only that purpose would not have been able to decipher or understand.

Don Quixote, Edith Grossman translation, page 20.

[y de todos, ningunos le parecían tan bien como los que compuso el famoso Feliciano de Silva; porque la claridad de su prosa y aquellas entricadas razones suyas le parecían de perlas, y más cuando llegaba a leer aquellos requiebros y cartas de desafíos, donde en muchas partes hallaba escrito: «La razón de la sinrazón que a mi razón se hace, de tal manera mi razón enflaquece, que con razón me quejo de la vuestra fermosura». Y también cuando leía: «... los altos cielos que de vuestra divinidad divinamente con las estrellas os fortifican, y os hacen merecedora del merecimiento que merece la vuestra grandeza».

Con estas razones perdía el pobre caballero el juicio, y desvelábase por entenderlas y desentrañarles el sentido, que no se lo sacara ni las entendiera el mesmo Aristóteles, si resucitara para sólo ello.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes

It might be worthwhile to ask, what is it about this writing that drove Don Quixote insane?

More from Twain on Cooper's Prose Style

Mark Twain followed up “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” with “Cooper’s Prose Style,” posthumously published in Letters from the Earth. “Cooper’s Prose Style” is delicious and brutal and well worth reading in its entirety, but to whet your palate, here’s a lengthy sample:

YOUNG GENTLEMAN: In studying Cooper you will find it profitable to study him in detail-word by word, sentence bv sentence. For every sentence of his is interesting. Interesting because of its make-up, its peculiar make-up, its original make-up. Let us examine a sentence or two, and see. Here is a passage from Chapter XI of The Last of the Mohicans, one of the most famous and most admired of Cooper's books:

Notwithstanding the swiftness of their flight, one of the Indians had found an opportunity to strike a straggling fawn with an arrow, and had borne the more preferable fragments of the victim, patiently on his shoulders, to the stopping-place. Without any aid from the science of cookery, he was immediately employed, in common with his fellows, in gorging himself with this digestible sustenance. Magua alone sat apart, without participating in the revolting meal, and apparently buried in the deepest thought.

This little paragraph is full of matter for reflection and inquiry. The remark about the swiftness of the flight was unnecessary , as it was merely put in to forestall the possible objection of some over particular reader that the Indian couldn't have found the needed "opportunity" while fleeing swiftly. ...

No, the remark about the swiftness of their flight was not necessary; neither was the one which said that the Indian found an opportunity; neither was the one which said he struck the fawn; neither was the one which explained that it was a "straggling" fawn; neither was the one which said the striking was done with an arrow; neither was the one which said the Indian bore the "fragments"; nor the remark that they were preferable fragments; nor the remark that they were more preferable fragments; nor the explanation that they were fragments of the "victim"; nor the overparticular explanation that specifies the Indian's "shoulders" as the part of him that supported the fragments; nor the statement that the Indian bore the fragments patiently. None of those details has any value. We don't care what the Indian struck the fawn with; we don't care whether it was a, struggling fawn or an unstruggling one; we don't care which fragments the Indian saved; we don't care why he saved the "more" preferable ones when the merely preferable ones would have amounted to just the same thing and couldn't have been told from the more preferable ones by anybody, dead or alive; we don't care whether the Indian carried them on his shoulders or in his handkerchief; and finally, we don't care whether he carried them patiently or struck for higher pay and shorter hours. We are indifferent to that Indian and all his affairs.

There was only one fact in that long sentence that was worth stating, and it could have been squeezed into these few words-and with advantage to the narrative, too: "During the flight one of the Indians had killed a fawn and he brought it into camp." You will notice that "During the flight one of the Indians had killed a fawn and he brought it into camp," is more straightforward and business-like, and less mincing and smirky, than it is to say, "Notwithstanding the swiftness of their flight, one of the Indians had found an opportunity to strike a straggling fawn with an arrow, and had borne the more preferable fragments of the victim, patiently on his shoulders, to the stopping-place." You will notice that the form "During the flight one of the Indians had killed a fawn and he brought it into camp" holds up its chin and moves to the front with the steady stride of a grenadier, whereas the form “Notwithstanding the swiftness of their flight, one of the Indians had found an opportunity to strike a straggling fawn with an arrow, and had borne the more preferable fragments of the victim, patiently on his shoulders, to the stopping-place” simpers along with an airy, complacent, monkey-with-a-parasol gait which is not suited to the transportation of raw meat.

Mark Twain’s rules for good essay writing

As I wade through reams of student writing that reasons in circles, offers up inanities and then repeats them in altered form hoping I won’t notice, and otherwise exacerbates my mental ulcers, I find myself returning to my favorite essay on writing: “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” by Mark Twain. Mr. Twain gives us a list of 18 rules “governing literary art,” which, with a little tweaking, can be made to work for essay writing as well. So here I offer my tweaks, followed by Twain’s original list. By the way, reading the complete essay at a young age cured me of ever wanting to read Cooper and made me a devoted, lifelong follower of Twain.

Mark Twain’s rules for good essay writing
(liberally adapted from “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses”)
1. An essay shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The elements of an essay shall be necessary parts of the essay, and shall help to develop it.

3. Every element of an essay shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

4. The words in an essay shall have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the essay.

In addition, the author shall:

5. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

6. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

7. Eschew surplusage.

8. Not omit necessary details.

9. Avoid slovenliness of form.

10. Use good grammar.

11. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Here’s the original list of 18 rules:
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the
people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.