Better (worse) is meneallo: Benedetti and Cervantes

Abstract

This study examines the intertextuality between Mario Benedetti's collection of short stories, Mejor es meneallo (published between 1956 and 1961), and Miguel de Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha. The title of the Uruguayan author's collection of short stories is an explicit allusion to Don Quixote's famous statement, ‘Peor es meneallo’ (‘It is worse to shake it’), uttered in the famous episode of the fulling mills (Chapter XX, Part I), which links it to the initial paratext presented in Benedetti's work. The variation between ‘worse’ and “better” reveals the central thematic contrast: while the nobleman from La Mancha seeks to forget baseness and physiological shame, Benedetti posits the need to ‘shake things up’ and confront the miseries of everyday life in Uruguay. The analysis focuses on the function of humour and parodic degradation as connecting threads. Eight humans ‘miseries’ identified and developed in Benedetti’s stories (including the passage of time, workplace alienation, violence, and lack of passion), and their thematic parallels with episodes and characters from Don Quixote are traced. The text demonstrates how both works, through their resources, expose with scathing lucidity the harsh reality of their respective eras, vindicating the more material and human dimension of being in the face of sublime ideals.