The Presence of a Text: The Poema del Cid

Author(s): Thomas Montgomery

Source: MLN, Vol. 108, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1993), pp. 199-213
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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The Presence of a Text:

The Poema del Cid

Thomas Montgomery
Everybody knew exactly what I was talking
about.
-Paul Simon

Nobody believes the claim made in our epigraph. Even if the speaker's assertions were trivial, and especially if they were not, each listener's interpretation was inevitably different from all others, de-

pending on cultural baggage, tacit presuppositions, vagaries of

common sense, experience, intelligence, perceptions of group interaction during performance-on factors innumerable and often imponderable. Yet it is most important for a presenter working before
a group to achieve a consensus regarding at least some aspects of the
content or the form of his presentation. Without it he loses group
acceptance and fails as a performer.
An aid to success is the adept integration of ritualistic elements
into the presentation. Doing, even if only symbolic, does not err in
the way words can err, and the familiarity of ritual, defined as repeti-

tion of acts and words in a given kind of place, and on a particular

kind of occasion, by an authorized or self-authorized person, carries
an audience along.' A further effective mode of narrative presenta-

tion is to depict the characters of the tale-gods or epic heroes

especially-as themselves acting ritualistically. In this mode the

1 The concept of ritual adapted here is in accord with Cazeneuve 42-45. Ritual in
performance of the Poema del Cid is touched on by Gilman 11, clearly implied by
Castro, and mentioned by Miletich, "Oral" 184. Early religious functions of the
minstrel are noted by Men6ndez Pidal, Poesia 341, by Lord 66-67, 220-22, and in preChristian Northern Europe, by Faulhaber 97.

MLN, 108 (1993): 199-213 ? 1993 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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200 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

characters are on display, perceived and known through their actions, externally-as performers-and they know each other in the
same way. The skillful presenter then has the opportunity to devise a

likeness between himself and his chief character or characters.

Homer "composes like his heroes"; he and Achilles, to the exclusion

of all others, share certain turns of phrase with each other (Martin
231, 235). By manipulating his narrative voice, the minstrel assumes
authority, and creates an absorbing atmosphere in which he joins
with his personages and his hearers to form a single community
(Castro 8, Zumthor 157). Even the reader distant in space and time,
despite the removes and the resulting skepticism introduced by the
printed word, senses the multidimensional presence implicit within

the text.

These general remarks might be applicable to a variety of literary

productions, but they are offered as particularly pertinent to the
less "writerly" epic, less influenced by the conventions that developed rather early in France, for example (by c. 1140), as narrative
songs come to be seen as entertainments, as imaginative variations

on one another.2 In Spain, the effects described are best repre-

sented by the Poema del Cid, which, though largely fictional, takes on

a persuasive aura of authentic history.3 The task here is to explore

the means by which that effect of authority is achieved, as observable

in the text itself. The method, since we cannot share the experience
or the assumptions of the medieval audience, is to compare the text
with others, those most apt for the purpose-the few epic or quasi2 Jean Rychner has maintained that some French epics later than the Roland are

more oral than it in character, citing their lack of coherence (14, 17, 55) and of

originality (126) as evidence. But readings of La Chanson de Guillaume, Le Couronnement de Louis, and Doon de Mayence, all of the mid-twelfth century, some fifty years after

the Roland, can lead to another interpretation. Decadent touches in these chansons,
which prefigure the chivalresque novel, include, along with the defects noted by
Rychner, references by the jongleur to himself, sermons on the attributes of a good

king and on the good old days, court intrigues, a deal offered by the Pope to

Guillaume by which, if victorious, he can have all the wives he wants (Coronation
390-91), and a lengthy prayer begun by this same hero in the middle of a pitched
battle. Ong and Zumthor provide abundant criteria for identifying these elements as
post-oral.
3 Some clarification as to the orientation of this study may be in order. It is taken as

non-controversial that the mode of presentation of medieval literature, especially

poetry, was normally oral, and that this poem, dealing with Spain's greatest hero, was

well known through repetition. These presumptions do not amount to an "oralist"

stance that would deny or downplay the effects of written adaptation of the poem. I
do maintain, though, that the written versions, except for the latest and least original
ones, were made by poets intimately familiar with oral tradition.

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201

epic compositions that bear the closest resemblance to the Poema.

What comes to light is a text in which certain modes of expression,
common elsewhere, are severely limited. A disciplined text that excludes distractions so as to intensify an effect of truth and immediacy. A deceptively transparent text which in its directness seems to

omit too much, inducing modern translators to supply interrelation-

ships and motivations by means of paraphrase and grammatical

subordination, so as to create a structure of meanings more explicitly interdependent than in the original.4
Of the limitations peculiar to the language of the poem, the most
fundamental is the almost total suppression of metaphor as a stylistic

device-of any transferred lexical meaning based on resemblance.

This peculiarity might at first be attributed to oral composition, but
if there is a connection it is not a necessary or predictable one, since
much preliterate poetry makes free use of metaphor, simile, and
related tropes. A deliberate, doctrinaire prohibition of a class of
tropes is hardly likely, but a conscious distaste for phraseology depending on imagined resemblances is plausible as an aspect of an
instinctive avoidance of distracting language. Such avoidance at the
stylistic level does not, however, rule out more abstract patterns of
resemblance.5 The poem offers models of behavior, for instance.

4 An expertly researched recent article by Walsh brings out another kind of omission to be observed in the poem, that of significant information, which was undoubtedly supplied through gesture as the minstrel performed. Walsh also attributes certain of the poem's geographical inaccuracies to the matching of symmetries of content

to alternating movements made by the performer as he recreated imagined space

around the audience. In a bolder surmise, Walsh sees the minstrel reproducing and
controlling scenes by use of his eyes. Walsh advances his views effectively, and the
presenter's role was undoubtedly crucial, but his actions would have been more
subject to variation than were his words, to judge by Zumthor, who brings out the
inexactness of the performer's movements in today's tribal oral poetry (155). Lord's
thorough description of the art of the Yugoslavian guslar is curiously silent on gesture.

Its effectiveness would depend on the size, make-up, and mood of the audience, on

lighting conditions, and on other circumstances difficult or impossible to orchestrate.

5 Among critics proposing figurative, usually metaphorical, interpretations for the

poem have been De Chasca, Grieve, Gwara, and most ingeniously, Burshatin ("Docile," "Moor"). More metonymically slanted, without making the distinction explicit,
are Castro, Smith & Morris, Bly, Deyermond & Hook, while Darbord deals particularly with the metonym. Symbolic overtones are undoubtedly present in the poem,
but it is risky to turn essential and pressing realities of existence, such as buildings,
horses, or Moors, into something else-symbols or abstractions that begin to take on a
disembodied existence of their own. The argument here is that things are above all
what they are, that transferred meanings remain secondary, and that the poem itself
compels this kind of reading by its own avoidance of interpretative elaboration. Its
aim is to duplicate an (idealized) experience, rather than develop images or concepts

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202 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

Jakobson has implied that all verbal (and mental) associations are
either metaphorical, by resemblance, or metonymic, by nearness or
contact in space or time (or, in each case, by the opposite relation).
This powerful assumption provides a key to the peculiar idiom of
the Poema del Cid. Obviously, no narrative composition can be without both dimensions, though in some cases a strong bias toward one
or the other may be identifiable. Here it is taken as principle that all
verbal constructs may be analyzed in terms of metaphor and metonymy, operating together or separately.
Apt, original, colorful metaphor is of course a most effective tool
of expression, but it draws attention to itself and to the individual
who uses it, and it brings new problems to the task of judging the
truth value of an assertion. By presenting experience as conceived
through resemblances, it can easily make the author appear as the
creator or victim of ironies, caught in a network of discrepant selfimages-another distraction that can lead to unpredictable consequences (Bauml 95). Such interference between audience and textual message may not appear important to the self-conscious writer
or to the showy entertainer, but they may be avoided by the presenter intent upon conveying the concentrated, unequivocal message of
the anonymous though propagandistic epic. The few metaphors of
the Poema del Cid are unobtrusive, including cliches such as "treacherous dogs" applied to villains or "white as the sun" applied to women, and occasional expressions combining metaphor and metonymy
such as "my right arm" referring to a valued second in command, in
which the synechdoche (a class of metonym) "arm" is understood
through both tropes as a source of power, authority, and so on, and
pre-empts any need to introduce words denoting those abstractions.
Similarly, calling a man a "valiant sword" personifies (a metaphor)
the metonym "sword," contiguous to (not resembling) the man.
Again, the celebrated simile "like the nail from the flesh," glossing
the separation of family members, builds metaphoric sense on a
metonymic base. The poem's many uses of metonymy, from simple
tropes to the organization of scenes to larger narrative structure,
appear as authentic representations of habits of thinking (Montattending that experience. Its language thus supports "performance, [which] figures
experience, but at the same time it is experience [and] does not call for interpretation"

(Zumthor 187-88; emphasis his). For the interdependent realities of economics and

war, which would surely occupy an audience's mind much more than possible symbol-

ic values, see Vincens Vives 118, Lacarra 165-66, and the excellent treatment by
Duggan 16-42.

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203

gomery, "Potentialities" 424-25) as well as poetic effects, and lend

vividness to the person or scene visualized, as in the three partial
metonymsjust cited, without interposing an additional visual image
between hearer and message. Avoidance of figurative elaboration is
extended to its congener abstraction, which also would divert the
focus from the progressing action of the poem. The hero does not
weep "because of" a stated fact; he weeps as he looks back at the
home he is abandoning.
To bring out these peculiarities, a contrast can be drawn with the
Poema de Ferndn Gonzalez (c. 1250), presumably based on a lost folk
epic but by a monk with a distinct weakness for symbolic intrusions
and interpretations. At one point, for instance, he recounts how,
during the night preceding a great battle against the Moors, while
the eponymous count is sleeping, a fearful portent appears in the
sky in the form of a gigantic, screaming, fiery "serpent" or dragon.

The count's men, demoralized by this apparent omen of defeat,

interrupt his sleep to describe it to him. He provides a rather lengthy

explanation which they accept tacitly: the Moors, astrologers and

magicians, have created the monster to frighten the Christians; but
since the latter are intelligent, they know that they need only fear
God (Catalan ed., str. 471-87).
The count, like the poem's author, assumes the role of teacher,
replacing what has been seen with what is to be believed. His knights,

like the poem's intended audience, accept the interpretation supinely. They even follow his recommendation to go to sleep for the
rest of the night. The technique is directly opposed to that of the Cid,

which establishes quite different roles for the poem's personages as

well as for the poet and audience. The fundamental traits of the
serpent episode are simply absent from the earlier work: supernatural or magical phenomena, explanation and interpretation, in-

dividual as opposed to collective opinion, manipulation of belief,

passive acceptance of authority (which, by the way, is elsewhere challenged and criticized in Fernan Gonzalez, as it never is in the Cid). All

these elements are extraneous or contradictory to the perceptions

gained by direct observation, which is the very source of the group
cohesion that underlies the power of the Poema del Cid. In this poem,

appearances, as perceived by all good people-admired characters,

minstrel, and audience-are truthful and are to be read metonymically. Smiling means happiness, kneeling means humility, a
privileged seat means honor, a great beard means manliness; a garment askew, accompanied by other metonyms, means drunkenness.

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204 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

Of the abstract words of our definitions, only "honor" is part of the

poem's vocabulary (Montgomery, "Palabras" 133-37). What you see
is-what you see: "to see" is also 'to understand' in the poem.
The interfering effect of calling an embattled knight a "beautiful
castle," as does Ferndn Gonzalez, is obvious, but brilliant metaphors
such as those of Gonzalo de Berceo (Guillen 16-20), also distract,
sometimes to create a new, higher reality to replace that of the senses
(see Lakoff & Johnson 145-54). Even confining our commentary to
epic texts, we find that all of them introduce artful symbolism much
more overtly than the Cid. A predictable occasion to do so arises in
the retelling of dreams. In the Chanson de Roland (ed. Bedier) and in
the lost Spanish epic of the Infantes de Lara (ed. Catalan; preserved
as adapted in the chronicles), birds and animals usually represent
the dreamer and his or her enemies, and the dreamed events call for

interpretation after waking. The Cid does contain a prophetic

dream, in which the archangel Gabriel appears to the hero, praising
him and predicting his success in war. But the archangel acts only as
the voice of divine authority, is not described, and uses no symbolic
language. His words are direct and require no interpretation. The
memory of this dream apparently resurfaces in the Mocedades de
Rodrigo (ed. Deyermond) of around 1360. Here the youthful warrior
who will become the Cid befriends a leper, who then appears to him
during the night as Lazarus, in white raiment (and in one version,

dispelling a distinctive odor). The apparition blows on the hero's

back to give him a chill, which will recur later in battle as a token of

invincibility. So, in this rather decadent text, symbol and magic are
confused. As a further distraction, in the battle, when the chill is

urgently desired, its tardiness in arriving creates suspense. The Roland (which portrays "a social order whose matrix is literary" according to Vance 62), provides another kind of contrast, this time with
the direct, metonymic signifier (as the lance for the knight), when
enemy emissaries carry olive branches, an act that, we are informed,
"signifies ('senefiet') peace and humility" (line 73). The author obtrudes gently to read the arbitrary sign for us, displaying his bent for
abstractions and definitions.

To complete the inventory of narrative procedures avoided by the

Cid, two may be mentioned briefly that are absent also from some of

the other epic works. While less clearly distinctive exclusions, they
also, if used, would interfere with the integrity of perception. Ferndn

Gonzalez and the Mocedades both begin with summaries of background history that supply a context of information but introduce

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205

perspectives other than those proper to the main story. Another less
disturbing source of diffuseness appears in shifts of attention to
characters who are not on the scene. Thus, Fernan Gonzalez comes
in for some unfavorable comment on the part of his vassals when
they are unable to locate him on the eve of a battle. In the Roland,
knights riding to battle think of the women at home. The prohibition against such distractions is partially relaxed in the Cid on occasions when messages travel between present and absent figures, and
in one instance when the poet listens in briefly on the king of Morocco (2499). Here integrity of stance is maintained by treating the alien
figure ironically, thereby holding to the viewpoint shared by the Cid,

his clan, the minstrel, and the community constituted by the

audience-what we might call, recalling Dunn (111) and with deliberate geometrical imprecision, the circle of four.
Up to this point the elements found lacking in the text would have

belonged to the poet's voice: the language, style, and content. Other

exclusions are projected into the experience of the personages

themselves, as portrayed by the text-specifically those who are pre-

sented favorably. The poet exercises a kind of power over their

senses that obviously works as a tool of mind-control over the audience.6 Most notable is their lack of fear (Bailey 159-61, 162-63), the
more striking because fear and self-doubt are major motives in the
more "writerly" texts. The general terror created by the serpent in
Fernan Gonzalez is a case in point. The unwillingness of his troops to
undertake armed conflict is a recurring problem for the count. He

spends much of his poem engaged in disputatious dialogue, with

God on the one hand and with his cohorts on the other, concerning
the merits of his cause and the possibility of gaining victory. He is
himself often assailed by doubts and thereby isolated from those
same interlocutors-from everyone. In the Roland, Charlemagne's
knights repeatedly voice concern about the prospect of a shameful
death in battle. No sense of shame is ever acknowledged in the Cid,
even by the Infantes de Carri6n, who project or blame their deficiencies on others, recognizing in themselves nothing more serious
than an earlier misjudgment: "Catamos la ganancia e la perdida no"
(2320). The poems retaining stronger traces of their popular origin
ascribe correspondingly greater bravery to their personages. The
Mocedades contrasts the brave with the reluctant, as when the king
6 For another kind of mind-control practiced by the poem, see Montgomery,

"Rhetoric."

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206 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

delivers a rousing pre-battle harangue that meets with silent inaction on the part of all those present, until Rodrigo appears on the
scene. A primitive, impulsively reckless bravery marks the Infantes
de Lara and carries them to their destruction, but the virtue of
prudence is offered as an alternative in the person of a wise counselor whose warnings they scorn. In the Cid, prudence and valor are
not in conflict, and while well-justified doubts may arise as to future

fortunes, self-confidence never flags among the admired characters.

This poem, like the others, shows the destructive effects of fear in its
portrayal of conflicts within the individual as well as divisions within

the group. Still, the cautionary stances of the other poems are transcended by the Cid, in which the poem gains authority by bringing to

his audience the wholeness of spirit prevailing among the fearless

clan of heroic figures, leaving no room for doubt or faltering on the
part of his hearers.

This principle comes out with some complexity in a contrast

drawn with the two misfits, the Infantes de Carri6n. When faced
with danger they express fear plainly enough, but by indirection:
" jNon vere Carri6n!" (2289, also 2322), in an ironic metonym alluding to their property and accordingly to their social class. The divisive effects of fear now infect the narrative. The two relatives by
marriage of the Cid become objects of scorn among his followers.
His authority is thereby threatened and duplicities are generated,
producing ruptures in the group's cohesiveness that must be healed.
The developing situation recalls the Roland, in which the emperor
cannot control private disputes and feuds that lead to tragic destruction and failure. A symptom of the contentious atmosphere of this
poem is the number of insulting words, culvert 'ignoble man,' bricun
'rogue,' malvais hor de put aire 'evil man of vile origin,'fols 'foolish',
fels, felun 'villain,' vil 'vile.' The reader who comes to the Roland
already knowing the Cid is surprised to find words like these in an
epic. Traditional expressions of insult are used in the Cid as part of
formal challenges, but there is only one denigrating word comparable to those cited. As a curious reflection of French influence in

Spain and in Spanish epic, with the mixed reactions it provoked, the
word follon 'foolish braggart' is applied to a "franco," the foppish
Count of Barcelona (see also West). It has a French ring, with its
resemblance to fol and felun. With this exception, the Cid presents
personal defects through appearance and action, not by means of
descriptive adjectives.
The Cid and his men appear immune not only to the fear of battle,

but to its harsh effects: the terrible fatigue that overcomes combat-

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207

ants in other poems, the heat, and of course the injuries. The few
members of the Cid's force who become casualties are not given
names. The Roland provides the sharpest contrast, with its thousands who weep and swoon in the midst of battle, and its heroes who
are grotesquely mauled before finally being dispatched. The Infantes de Lara legend shows vivid appreciation of some of the cruel
realities of war. When the first of the seven brothers has been killed

in a battle, the survivors have to clean the dust off their faces before

they can identify each other and know who was lost. They succumb
to the enemy when they become too weary to lift their swords. The
Cid speaks graphically of blows and wounds suffered by the enemy,

but violence touches the hero's followers in refined or distilled form,

even literally. Enemy blood drips from the heroic swordsman's elbow, but the verb used is destellar, applied in other early medieval
sources to honey from the comb, to myrrh, and to thejuice of leaves
(Menendez Pidal, Cantar 2:625), hardly comparable to the sticky,
dirty gore of the battlefield. Physical suffering is recounted in poign-

ant detail only when the hero's daughters are beaten and left for
dead in a wild place by their wretched husbands. Here the language
remains restrained, reflecting the sober fortitude of the women, and

the effect in strengthening consensus is powerful, built at the same

time on identification with the victims and the distinction of gender.

But scenes of brutality, like those of the terror and butchery of war,

are not allowed to divert attention from the overriding message of

collective concern and collective success.

Enough examples have been cited, it is hoped, to indicate that the

Poema del Cid uses an expressive mode that is consonant, on the one
hand, with a concept of the hero, and on the other with a way of
relating to an audience, that are both radically unlike those of the
other poems. Analogies with those works that have caught the attention of some critics appear as relatively superficial.7 The Poema's
manner is largely a function of the author's intense awareness of the
conditions and exigencies of oral presentation. Through avoidance
of a number of habits and devices that would draw attention to the

performer and his ego, and away from the message, the poem holds
to an exceptional integrity of view to create a powerful presence.8
7 Comparable warlike action in the Cid and Ferndn Gonzalez, for instance, or the
presence of the church, or shared verbal cliches, indicate that the two authors lived in
the same world, not that they took the same view of it.
8 "View" is an unsatisfactory term, but "viewpoint," which its implication of person-

al perspective, would be worse. A modern discussion must of course depend on

abstractions, a mode of expression largely alien to the style of thought represented by

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208 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

But the poem goes a step further along the same path. The presenter not only develops a special understanding with his audience
and a close identification with his hero. As will be shown below, he
makes the hero another performer, with his own set of collaborators,

an admiring audience of his own from which secondary performers

may emerge as needed to occupy or share the attention of the min-

strel's hearers.

The point may be best brought out by a comparison. In Ferndn

Gonzalez, as in most didactic literature, all characters speak with the
same voice, that of the author, uttering his words, giving his viewpoint and opinion. If they differ among themselves, it is only to
demonstrate that one of them is right and the other wrong. The
tone, vocabulary, and syntax of author and characters are the same.

The audience is expected to accept the author's pronouncements

tacitly. They, along with the hero's vassals, are to benefit from his
reading of the serpent, which was in turn derived from certain precepts. As a conveyer of information and of interpretations that,
though probably not original with him, bear the stamp of an individ-

ual mind, he takes on the role of eminent authority on his material.

His isolation is bidirectional: he refers to absent happenings, and
does not fully identify himself with the performer who is to read his

poem before the intended audience.

By contrast, the Cid minstrel is a presence who brings to life a
known story and makes it also a presence. The term "material" is not
appropriate to his dynamic medium. If he manipulates it he does so
discreetly, sensitive to the beliefs of the audience, who have learned
the story as he has, through repeated presentations. Of a variety of
excerpts that would illustrate aspects of his technique, one will be
chosen to bring out the complementarity of ritual and consensus.
The passage in question presents the Cid and his men in a hostile,

alien land, garrisoned in a captured castle, besieged by a large,

threatening army of Moors. Their situation may be considered desperate, calling for a desperate solution. But it is not so presented. A
meeting is held to publicize a decision already known, since it was
inevitable under the circumstances, and for another purpose not
openly stated, to build morale and common agreement. Everyone is
free to form his own opinion, which, not paradoxically, will be that of
the poem, and especially prone to inaccuracy when aimed at essentializing a remote
complex of perceptions. As can happen in scientific investigation, the instrument of
observation or act of observation distorts the observed object.

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209

the group, for here as always the Cid's followers concur in his decisions. As they are free to agree, so is the minstrel's audience. The
circumstances will be reviewed in two complementary speeches, in
summary form, and with some overlap in content, as a ritual enactment would review representationally the essential conditions leading to the next action. The audience will take part.
A cabo de tres semanas, la quarta querie entrar,
Mio Cid con los sos torn6s' a acordar:

"El agua nos an vedada, exir nos ha el pan,

que nos queramos ir de noch no nos lo consintran;
grandes son los poderes por con ellos lidiar,
dezidme, cavalleros, c6mmo vos plaze de far."
Primero fabl6 Minaya, un cavallero de prestar:
"De Castiella la gentil exidos somos aca,
si con moros non lidiaremos, no nos daran del pan.
Bien somos n6s seiscientos, algunos ay de mas,
en el nombre del Criador que non passe por al;
vayamoslos ferir en aquel dia de cras."
Dixo el Campeador: "A mi guisa fablastes;
ondrastesvos, Minaya, ca aver vos lo iedes de far."
(665-78)

So ends the conference; the "first" rejoinder is also the last. The
two performers have said what any of their company would say, the
second echoing the first line by line. Only in his last remark does
the Cid give any sign that he is directing the ritual. As to freedom of

response, a detail of phraseology is significant. In line 670, "c6mmo

vos plaze de far" has been rendered by translators as "what you

consider best." The original says more. Plazme is the normal formula
of assent to a request: 'it pleases me,' therefore 'I am pleased to do

so.' Its opposite, the formula of refusal, is "no quiero." The Cid
correctly expects his men's desires and acts to be one. The minstrel's
expectations of his audience are analogous.
Speaking and acting are again conceived as a unity in a memorable negative example. The Infantes face trial for their crime against

the Cid's daughters. The accusation and the defense rest on the
opposing values of two social groups. The Infantes claim their act
was justified by a difference in rank. The poem's value system reasserts itself in the set of challenges, culminating when Pero Bermudez, who has kept secret the cowardly flight of the elder Infante
before Valencia, now breaks his silence and concludes: "lengua sin
manos, ~cuemo osas fablar?" (3328) Truth is in action; the meto-

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210 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

nyms brutally expose the non-integrated character. Now, if this were

a dramatic scene, the Cid and his group would have to be amazed
and outraged by this revelation of a well-kept secret, and a distractingly complex set of interactions within the group would be implied. The audience, too, would disintegrate into a number of indi-

viduals trading impressions. In the stylized presentation of the

poem, however, this recounting of an incident already known to the
minstrel's audience simply blends in to reinforce the consensus.
For today's reader, what impresses in such a passage is not so much
the value system, admirable though it is, but rather the force of the
expression. We see a literary effect as we may see artistic excellence
in a ceremonial mask, apart from the primary intention of its maker.

The minstrel's art form, with its conventions of presentation, had

functions analogous to those of the mask. The stylized language,
poetic, archaizing, with its own tense system, full of repetitions and
linguistic parallels, is, with the music, part of a ritualistic medium
conferring a peculiar presence and authority to the minstrel and his
message. For his part, the hero of the poem, as performer, becomes
a master of words as of deeds, and so wholly successful as a leader of
men and upholder of values. The success begins with and is shared
by the minstrel, who in turn could not have created such a figure
without the support of a knowledgeable and demanding audience.
The acceptance of the minstrel and his medium as authoritative is

not a matter of conjecture. They were respected, if grudgingly

(Menendez Pidal, Poesia 301), by chroniclers who took the text as a
historical source and adapted it in their prose accounts, sometimes
without significant changes. Many a modern reader has willingly
seen the epic fictions as truth.
If we are taken in by the poet's rhetoric even without the authenticating presence of the performance, we are faced finally with the

image of the minstrel as illusionist. That he was no stranger to the art

of illusion is evident in his treatment of the Cid, who achieves most of

his triumphs by capitalizing on his adversaries' mistaken apprehen-

sion of circumstances. The poet's manipulative skill, as seen in a

number of mechanisms considered in this paper, produces one of its
best effects by undermining the distinctions separating the three
grammatical persons. The third of these, that of narrative, a "nonperson" in the analysis of Benveniste (209), is assimilated to the "I"
and "you" of the time and place of performance in a form antithetical to drama: a presence of words, not of distinct speaking figures.
The ritualized language is like the mask of authority in traditional

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211

cultures, an artifact that reduces some aspects of reality to accentuate other aspects, that embodies a power handed down across generations, that assimilates the identities of audience, performer, and
narrative personages, the ruling metaphor that controls all others.9
As an artifact, it carries truth that transcends the need to convince.

The best performer lets it speak, becomes one with it as it comes to

life in his voice.

Tulane University

9 "[In] traditional civilizations the figurations of the mask introduce the wearer
[and] its spectators at once into the mythical universe to which they aspire" (Zumthor
157). It would be tempting to quote Zumthor in extenso, given the remarkable sweep of

hisjudgments. The perspectives advanced in this paper are probably more in accord
with his than with those of any other critic. Still, this study is quite independent of
him, and is offered as essentially different in its use of the text as a point of departure,
in its comparative method, in its aim of concreteness, and in conclusions on points
such as the stylized mode of expression and its effects, the distillation of language, the
characters as performers, and the nature of performance.
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