Todos los Quijotes, el Quijote

Desde hace algo más de un año, José Manuel Lucía Megías se ocupa en recopilar ediciones ilustradas del Quijote y de organizar las imágenes en un gran archivo. Hoy nos ha dicho que ya pueden encontrarse hasta 7.284, extraídas de 160 ediciones diferentes localizadas en bibliotecas de todo el mundo. Verdaderamente, no está nada mal.

Nosotros, desde la Biblioteca Casasayas de la Universidad de las Islas Baleares, hemos querido colaborar en el proyecto y hemos empezado a mandarle los grabados de 19 ediciones de los siglos XVIII y XIX entre las que alberga esta colección. Nos promete José Manuel que pronto estarán incorporadas.

Ahora, justo en la semana que marca dos años de la muerte de nuestro gran amigo José María Casasayas, con quien tantas andanzas, proyectos, sueños y discusiones compartimos, este aprovechamiento de su legado bibliográfico nos parece un homenaje debido y una prueba de la continuidad de su labor. ¡Gracias otra vez, José María!

Gipsy Charity. A Footnote to the "Autoridades"

The Diccionario de Autoridades illustrates the entry “Palabrero” (vol. V. p. 86) with a quotation taken from La vida de Cristo nuestro Señor (1596, vol. 1, book. 1, ch. 5) of the Augustinian Cristóbal de Fonseca (1550?-1621):

“Topas à una Gitána, el colór abrasado, el cabello negro ... un gitanillo detrás, otro de la mano, otro al pecho, que parece la charidad, embaidóra, palabréra: dice os la buena ventúra.” (You’ll find a Gipsy woman with sunburned color and black hair ... with a little Gipsy behind her, another taken by the hand, and another on her breast so that she seems to be the Charity; a cheater and a chatterbox who tells you fortunes.)

The image of the Charity that lays behind the reference of fray Cristóbal is identical in detail with the one depicted in the contemporary (1593) Iconologia of Cesare Ripa:

“Donna vestita in rosso ... terrà nel braccio sinistro vn fanciullo, al quale dia il latte, & due altri gli staranno scherzando a’piedi, vno d’essi terrà alla detta figura abbracciata la destra mano.”

that is, in the words of the 1709 English edition:

“A Woman all in red ... with an Infant sucking, in her left Arm, and two other standing up, on of which is embrac'd with the right.”

or, as formulated in the 1866 Mexican version by don Luis G. Pastor:

“Se representa bajo la figura de una jóven, ofreciendo el pecho á un niño ... Cerca de la Caridad hay otros muchos niños, á los cuales prodiga sus cuidados.”

...y brújulas, jacintos y estrellas de Sevilla

Y aquí está la otra pregunta que nos hacía Rubem Amaral Jr.

En el Cancionero sevillano de Fuenmayor, primorosamente editado por José J. Labrador Herraiz, Ralph A. DiFranco y José Manuel Rico García (Sevilla: Universidad, 2004), hay un poema emblemático, N.º 52, del Hermano Ambrosio de Torres, con el siguiente epígrafe: A UNA PINTURA DE UNA AGUJA DE MAREAR DE PUNTAS AMARILLAS Y DE COLOR DE JAÇINTO, CON UNA FLOR DE COLOR CARMESÍ QUE MIRABA HACIA DONDE ESTAUA UN ESTRELLA. CON ESTA LETRA MAGNES AUTEM ERAT CHRISTUS [A SAN JACINTO]. Si el poeta, como parece, se inspiró realmente en un lienzo, ¿en dónde se encontraría hoy esa pintura? ¿Quizás en alguna iglesia o convento sevillano relacionado con San Jacinto?

[Rubem Amaral Jr. | Brasilia, DF, Brasil | ramaraljr@netscape.net]

Impresores, asnos, racimos, espigas...

Rubem Amaral Jr., que ya nos mandó un interesante comentario sobre el emblema 13 de Diego López, nos hace dos preguntas. Reproducimos la primera a continuación y la otra en la siguiente entrada. A ver si alguien sabe las respuestas:

Examinando el Catálogo de los pliegos sueltos poéticos del siglo XVII de la Biblioteca de Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino, organizado por Victoria Ocampo, Víctor Infantes y Marcial Rubio Árquez (Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Alcalá, 1995, Colección Repertorios Bibliográficos, 1), observé en la p. 89 la portada que reproduzco abajo. El grabado me ha parecido muy en el estilo de los de las Divisas Heroicas de Paradino, aunque no aparece allí. Además, su estilo es muy distinto al de los que solían ilustrar ese género de impresos. Parece evidente, además, que el taco xilográfico no ha sido hecho expresamente para el pliego, pues su posición está cambiada de vertical en horizontal o invertida para adaptarlo al limitado espacio disponible, pues no es natural que la mano se proyecte desde la nube de abajo hacia arriba. El pliego, N.º 20 de dicho catálogo, fue impreso en Zaragoza por los Herederos de Diego Dormer, 1675. ¿Sabría alguien decir de dónde estos impresores, que tuvieron un fondo bibliográfico tan rico y variado, incluyendo las Obras póstumas de Solórzano Pereira, pudieron obtener este taco o dónde se utilizó originalmente?

[Rubem Amaral Jr. | Brasilia, DF, Brasil | ramaraljr@netscape.net]

Spring in Huizhou

Planning our journey in next springtime to the Huangshan, the sacred mountain of painters and poets – the emblematic image of our House of Chinese Poetry – we found this beautiful gallery about neighbouring Huizhou, in autum.

And, for that matter, another gallery on a traditional tea house in nearby Hangzhou. Thanks to Gyuri.


What shocks me in these photos of contemporary Chinese photographers is on the one hand their engaging sensitivity for presenting things in a way to appear as “authentic” to Western beholders, and on the other hand their – perhaps unconscious – heritage of Classical Chinese 山水画 – landscape painting with mountains and water, always with a blossoming bough in the foreground.

Due proportion

Yesterday the reading of the Mass was about the five wise and five foolish virgins from Mt 25. This evoked in me one of the most unexpected interpretations of this parable, by Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino y Arteaga, who says thus in his Panegíricos (1641, p. 273):

Las cinco eran prudentes y sábias; locas ò nécias las cinco: Siglo venturoso, en el que discretos y nécios andaban partidos, que ahóra para un discreto hai nécios (que dice nuestra Lengua) à montónes.

(Five were clever and wise; and foolish or stupid the other five. Oh happy century, in which the proportion of the clever and the foolish was so balanced, for now there are, as our language says, mountains of foolish by each clever one.)

And his estimation was deemed so relevant by the editors of the Diccionario de los Autoridades (1722-1727), the first full-fledged encyclopedia of the Spanish language, that this quotation was included right in two entries: both in CINCO (vol. II, p. 353) and in NECIO (vol. IV, p. 657-658).

Since then it has not lost of its actuality, como dice la misma Lengua, ni una migaja.

All That Is Worth to Know Under Heaven

The Sìkù Quánshū (四庫全書), that is, All the Books from the Four Treasure Houses, was the most monumental editorial undertaking ever conceived in the history of mankind. Initiated in 1773 by Emperor Qianlong (1736-1799) – remember, the one who replied to the King of England in 1793 that “We possess all things, and we have no use for your country’s product; it is your duty to understand my intentions and reverently to obey my instructions” –, and carried out in nine years under the direction of the 300 most reputable scholars of the Empire, headed by Ji Yun 紀昀 (d. 1805) and Lu Xixiong 陸錫熊 (d. 1792), it included every work ever written in the course of the five thousand years of Chinese history and judged worth to be admitted, by this very act of canonization, to the hall of immortality. The Four Treasure Houses meant the four conventional branches or classes of literature – 經 Jing, the Classics, 史 Shi, the Histories, 子 Zi, the Masters, and 集 Ji, the Collections –, thus this most comprehensive encyclopedia ever compiled covered every field of knowledge, from literature through philosophy and its classical authors, history, genealogy, biography, geography, politics, governmental rules and regulations, strategy, economics, society, astronomy, science and technology to medicine and more, all complete with the authoritative commentaries and explanations. The books incorporated from the Four Houses in the Quanshu were 36.000 by volume, 2.3 million by page and 800 million by Chinese character. Trabajo de chinos, insomma.

The nine years of its compilation were followed by eight more years of the preparation of six more copies by the work of almost 4000 scribes. Then the seven copies were solemnly deposited in seven special libraries throughout the country, established for the purpose with imperial decree. And this carefulness has proved really foresightful. The thereafter following two centuries of Chinese history abunded in catastrophies, upheavals, foreign and civil wars and destructions, so that only three of these copies – the Wenjinge in Hebei, the Wensunge in Shenyang, and the princeps, the Wenyuange of the Forbidden City – have been intactly preserved. It was this latter, the Wenyuange, that was first photocopied in the 1930s by the Commercial Press, then published in 1500 volumes – already in Taiwan – by the same Commercial Press in 1983-86. This rare edition was further published in Shanghai in 1987, and now scanned page by page and made available in electronic form here. Trabajo de chinos.

Recently the complete collection has been published as a full-text digital database by Digital Heritage in Hong Kong (2004) as well, but this edition, although not horribly expensive – the China Publishing House offers it for 980 USD – only can be found in a handful of libraries throughout the world. If you are responsible for acquisitions in your library, or are on good terms with one such person, do consider ordering it. And in the same thought, er, uhm... don't forget about the Studiolum CDs either.

The annotated catalogue of the Siku Quanshu, compiled by Ji Yun in 1798, and known as Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四庫全書總目提要 [General catalogue of the Siku quanshu, with descriptive notes] was published in Beijing as a reprint in 1965, and in a revised and enlarged edition in 1997.

A concise overview of the works included in the Siku Quanshu can be found here (in Chinese only).

The only monography on this collection available in a Western language seems to be the one by Guy, R. Kent, The Emperor's Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch'ien-lung Era. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1987.