2023-06-28 14:03:22
Sidi
d’Arturo Perez Reverte
Translated from Spanish by Gabriel Iaculli
Threshold, 352 pages, €21.90
For the French reader, Le Cid is above all the hero of a play by Corneille, with its famous alexandrines (“I am young it is true/but to well-born souls/valour does not wait/the number of years”). But in Spain, Ruy Díaz de Vivar – the Cid’s real name – is even more: a historical hero and one of the most famous figures of the Reconquista. The tradition (unless it is the legend?) tells that his loyalty and his courage aroused even the respect of the Moors, who gave him the nickname of sidimaster or lord, in Arabic.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel captures our hero in 1080, when he has just been banished from the kingdom of Castile. His crime is lèse-majesté: having defied King Alfonso VI, accusing him half-word of being involved in the murder of his brother and predecessor on the throne, King Sancho II. Since then, the faithful but arrogant knight has become a mercenary and sells his services to the highest bidder.
His service? An army. Two hundred spears. Two hundred “good seasoned riders” who follow him and trust him completely, the leader of men. “His name and fame were a promise of gain and adventure. Loved by some, envied, feared by others, he had taken as his motto that of a Roman emperor. : “Let them hate me, as long as they fear me”. »
A fantastic ride
Sidi is a novel that smells of sweat, metal and leather; horse manure and blood. To dive into it is to embark on a ride through 11th century Spain, along the border separating Christian Castile from the region of Al Andalous, these territories “Mohammedans” of which present-day Andalusia is only a small vestige.
Francoism had made Cid a nationalist hero, to feed its patriotic story. Conversely, Pérez-Reverte cultivates the ambiguity of his hero. Catholics versus Muslims? Come on, the story would be too simple. In this Spain “uncertain with unstable borders”the Leonese, the Castilians, the Galicians, the Aragonese, the Asturians, sometimes clash with each other, change sides according to the direction of the wind. ATattack the Moorish kingdoms, while not excluding to ally with them to weaken other kingdoms or neighboring Christian counties.
Of honor and loyalty
With his invaluable talent as a storyteller, Pérez-Reverte composes a story somewhere between an epic novel and a western. The sun, like violence, brutalizes the eyes and scrolls through the souls. Under the helms, the eyes look far to spot the enemy. We gallop, battle, decapitate while reciting the creed on one side, while praising the greatness of Allah, on the other, but Christian and Moorish riders can share, at the bend of a chapter, the same prayer. At Pérez-Reverte, loyalty and honor are weapons that never surrender.
“Do you hear what I’m telling you Ruy Díaz? In a few years, no one will remember your sad name”, predicts, at the end of the novel, the Count of Barcelona. Missed ! Three hundred pages earlier, in the preamble, Arturo Pérez-Reverte wrote : “With the freedom of the novelist, I combine history, legend and imagination. There are many Ruy Díaz in the Spanish tradition and this one is mine. » A memorable Sidi.
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