Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ideology, imagery and the literalization of metaphor inA secreto agravio,secretavenganza

1977; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 54; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382772000354202

1469-3550

Walter Holzinger,

Historical and Literary Analyses

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: A SECRETO AGRAVIO, SECRETA VENGANZA [P. CALDERÓN]CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA, PEDRO (1600–1681)IMAGERY/METAPHOR Notes 1. Althusser provides some invaluable insights into the relationship between ideology and art: ‘Lo que el arte nos hace ver o nos da en forma de un “ver”, un “percibir” y un “sentir” (que no es la forma del “conocer”) es la ideología de la que nace, en la que se sumerge, de la que se destaca en cuanto arte y a la que hace alusión … Balzac y Solzhenitzin dan una “vista” de la ideología a la que la obra no deja de hacer alusión y de la que no cesa de nutrirse, una vista que supone un retroceso, una toma de distancia interior sobre la ideología misma de la que han surgido sus novelas. Nos hacen “percibir” (y no conocer) en cierto modo desde dentro, por una toma de distancia interior, la ideología misma en la que estan prendidos … Ni Balzac ni Solzhenitzin nos dan un conocimiento del mundo que describen; sólo nos hacen “ver”, “percibir” o “sentir” la realidad de la ideología de ese mundo. Al hablar de ideología, debemos saber que la ideología se desliza en todas las actividades de los hombres, que es idéntica a lo “vivido” mismo de la existencia humana … Una producción estética tiene por fin último provocar en la conciencia (o en los inconscientes) una modificación de la “relación con el mundo”. Un pintor, un escritor, un músico proponen nuevas modalidades de percibir, de ver, de oír, de sentir, etc. Estas modalidades pueden ser más o menos ideológicas según el tiempo y las épocas. Se puede plantear la hipótesis de que la gran obra de arte es aquella que, al mismo tiempo que actúa en la ideología, se separa de ella para constituir una crítica en acto de la ideología que ella elabora, para hacer alusión a modos de percibir, de sentir, de oír, etc. que, liberándose de los mitos latentes de la ideología existente, la superen.’ (‘El conocimiento del arte y la ideología’, Estética y marxismo, ed. A. Sánchez Vázquez [Mexico 1970], I, 317 and 320.) I have based much of my interpretation of the play upon this analysis of ideology. Calderón is of course much more ideological than the novelists here mentioned by Althusser. Ideologies are usually not homogeneous wholes, but contain internal divisions ranging from differences of emphasis to outright contradictions responding to different social forces within a society. In addition, there is usually a considerable time lag between ideology and social reality. The latter at present changes quickly, ideologies, on the other hand, are usually a generational attribute, traditionally very difficult to alter once acquired, especially if the acquisition has been during childhood and by way of the family. 2. Bernard F. Huppe and D. W. Robertson, Jr. insist upon this at some length in their Fruyt and Chaf. Studies in Chaucer's Allegories (Princeton 1963), 8. 3. Albrecht Schöne in his study of German baroque drama, Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock (München 1964), has carefully demonstrated the moral orientation of this theatre, and the variety of methods utilized to communicate this moral purpose, including the attribution of emblematic value to stage props. While German baroque drama is clearly more explicitly preoccupied with morality than any other European theatre in this period, Spanish drama is not very greatly different in this respect. The relatively schematic development of most characters in Spanish drama, perhaps in part due to the temporal limitations the three-act comedia imposes upon character development, naturally supports this focus away from the dramatic personate as individuals, emphasizing instead the moral implications of their situation. 4. Michel Foucault's The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York 1970) provides an excellent account of mediaeval and renaissance thought, especially of the relationship between nature and language. 5. Jacques Lacan, The Language of The Self. The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, ed. & trans. Anthony Wilden (New York 1968). 6. See Bruce Wardropper's ‘Poetry and drama in Calderón's El médico de su honra’, RR, XIX (1958), 3–11, and A. A. Parker's ‘Metáfora y símbolo en la interpretación de Calderón’, Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (Oxford 1964). 7. I have used Ángel Valbuena Briones’ edition of the text (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe 1956). E. M. Wilson studies at length the implications of the Castile-Portugal antithesis in ‘La discreción de don Lope de Almeida’, Clavileño, II, No. 9 (1951), 1–10. 8. See Wardropper's useful distinction between comedy and tragedy in Actas del Segundo Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (Nijmegen 1967), 689–94. 9. This undeveloped affair between Manrique and Sirena, the outcome of which is not revealed (indeed, Sirena herself simply drops out of the action before the final violence, and we are never told what became of her), may be seen as in some measure detracting from the seriousness with which the principal characters view their dilemmas of honour. But Calderón has probably avoided an elaborate subplot because the obsession with honour in the main action is unnatural enough so as not to have survived well very many barbs of satire or parody. 10. Covarrubias defines calma as follows: ‘Estar en calma, no poder hacer nada; como el navio que con la calma no se mueve de un lugar’. 11. Manrique addresses her as ‘la misma Sirena,/ pues enamoras y engañas’ (II, i, p. 31). 12. The image of Troya abrasada is perhaps influenced by Tirso's famous Burlador de Sevilla, where haughty but passion-consumed Tisbea has just learned that she has been betrayed by Don Juan and runs from her hut, literally on fire according to her cries: ‘¡Fuego, fuego, que me quemo,/que mi cabaña se abrasa!/Repicad a fuego, amigos:/que ya dan mis ojos agua./Mi pobre edificio queda/hecho otra Troya en las llamas;/que después que faltan Troyas/quiere amor quemar cabañas …./Fuego, zagales, fuego, agua, agua.’ (El Burlador de Sevilla, ed. Raymond R. MacCurdy [New York 1965], I, ii, 985–98). Tirso had literalized the metaphoric flames of passion felt by Tisbea, who later plunged into the sea for relief (‘Al mar se arroja’, line 1043), as Calderón will literalize Leonor's flames at the end of the play. 13. This imagery of alchemical experimentation can but recall another, more famous and obviously demented instance of such a moral anatomy of a wife, that in Cervantes’ El curioso impertinente. Anselmo too speaks of experiments and cleansing fires: ‘…. si Camila, mi esposa, es tan buena y tan perfecta como yo pienso, y no puedo enterarme en esta verdad, si no es probándola de manera que la prueba manifieste los quilates de su bondad, como el fuego muestra los del oro’ (Don Quijote I, XXXIII). Of course Anselmo directly brings about his own downfall whereas Lope facilitates it indirectly through an excessive jealousy. It is precisely this jealousy, however, which brings the two into contact on a more profound level, as may be seen from this passage from the Galatea: ‘…. no son los celos señales de mucho amor, sino de mucha curiosidad impertinente: y si son señales de amor, es como la calentura en el hombre enfermo, que el tenerla es señal de tener vida, pero vida enferma, y mal dispuesta’ (ed. Avalle-Arce [Madrid 1961], I, 230). Juergen Hahn in his excellent ‘El curioso impertinente and Don Quijote's symbolic struggle against curiositas,’ BHS, XLIX (1972), 129–39 explores at length the theological implications of the curiositas basic to both Anselmo and Lope. 14. Burlador, I, ii, 985–1047. 15. T. E. May, ‘The folly and the wit of secret vengeance: Calderón's A secreto agravio, secreta venganza’, FMLS, II (1966), 120. 16. Huppe & Robertson, Fruyt and Chaf, 23. 17. See the publications of Wolfgang Iser (e.g. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett [Baltimore 1974]) for an excellent elaboration of the theory of reader response, combined with a most perceptive exposition of its sociological implications. It is also helpful in this context to turn to Lacan's psychoanalytic linguistics, here paraphrased by Anthony Wilden (The Language of the Self …, 274): ‘The signification of a sentence remains “open” until its final term (including punctuation). Each term is anticipated by those which precede it in the construction of the sentence, and, inversely, the meaning of the sentence is retroactively revealed by a sort of reading backwards from the end. In other words, for the complete message of the conscious subject to be understood (by the emitter or by the receiver) at any level at all, there must be an unconscious reading in reverse at the end of the message, a reference to the locus of the code after the complete message has been received (the message consisting if necessary of a series of significant “bits”). This reading backwards is the interpretation of the message, and the general notion of the point de caption outside any particular sentence or discourse is that fixed relationship to a symbolic function which is the prerequisite for any messages at all to pass between subjects.’ For Lacan's original exposition of these ideas, see his ‘Subversion du sujet et dialectique du désir’, and ‘Le séminaire sur “La lettre Volée” ’, Écrits (Paris 1966), 793–826, 11–61. 18. See, for example the contemporary song, ‘Drowning in a sea of love’. For the survival of the courtly love conceits in twentieth-century popular song, see Ruth Harvey's ‘Minnesang and the “Sweet Lyric” ‘, German Life and Letters, XVII (1963), 14–26. 19. Excessive love, even of one's wife, was considered adulterous because it detracted from the love of God, the only subject worthy to be adored. Saint Thomas voices this belief explicitly: ‘Quia ille qui est ardentior amator uxoris facit contra bonum matrimonii, inhoneste eo utens’ (Suma theolo. 22, q. 1454, a. 8). 20. Lope is made deliberately to pursue revenge and seeks refuge in the false port of vengeance after himself sinking his ship and killing Luis, rather than through forgiveness to seek the true harbour of salvation. This is made clear in the ironic words he addresses to Leonor upon emerging from the sea after killing Luis : ‘No pude hallar puerto más piadoso,/que el que en tal favor acude a mi fatiga’ (III, 11. 683–84). 21. ‘The four elements in the imagery of Calderón’, MLR, XXXI (1936), 34–47. 22. Gwynne Edwards has observed a similar predicament in his study ‘Calderón's La hija del aire and the classical type of tragedy’, BHS, XLIV (1967), 185: ‘… Calderón's deep awareness of the tragic manner in which the potential good in man may, through circumstances and the short-comings of his own nature, be perverted into an evil which leads him to destruction.’ His observations are also applicable to Lope, Leonor, and King Sebastián. Lope, after all, approached his marriage with great love for Leonor. She herself sincerely loved Luis, and King Sebastián presumably sought to expand Christianity for the greater glory of God. But in spite of these good intentions, both Lope and Sebastián also demonstrate a great deal of pride, the third of Satan's triad of Sin, the temptation of the Devil, while Leonor succumbs to lust, the sin of the flesh. For an enlightening study of the importance of pride in mediaeval theology, see Donald R. Howard, The Three Temptations: Medieval Man in Search of the World (Princeton 1966). 23. Schöne suggests that frequently the characters in baroque drama become speaking images, but their emblematic dimension was not limited to the text they delivered in their speeches, it also was frequently visual (208). He especially emphasizes the importance of the innovations in stage techniques which allowed the creation of illusion both in scenery and in its rapid changing, thereby underlining the basic mutability and illusory nature of reality (22). And throughout his study he stresses the emblematic nature of the physical stage props, much developed in Spain. Such a technique was necessary to help communicate to a theatre audience the complex patterns of imagery conveying important implications difficult to apprehend in spoken dialogue. Schöne has also shown Spanish literature to have played a considerable rôle in this emblematic dimension of German drama. Notes to the seventeenth-century texts of plays by dramatists such as Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein and Andreas Gryphius frequently cite Saavedra Fajardo's and Juan Borja's emblem books as sources for emblems utilized in their plays, usually as stage props. Both Borja and Saavedra Fajardo spent long periods in Germany as diplomats, and Fajardo's tremendously popular Empresas políticas was published in Spanish, Latin and German in Germany before it appeared in Spain. 24. Wilson succinctly summarizes his position at the end of his article: ‘En A secreto agravio, Calderónparece decir: tomemos un código seglar de conducta y desarrollémoslo en sus conclusiones lógicas; excluyamosrigurosamente todos los puntos de vista religiosos que puedan chocar con él; veamos cómo es el código yqué envuelve ;… Calderón muestra, si se acepta mi interpretación del drama, cómo la venganza va seguida de la muerte del vengador. Que esta interpretación no es completamente arbitraria se demuestra, creo, en el hecho de que Calderón nunca acentúe que don Luis y doña Leonor sean pecadores. Las únicas menciones que hace de tipo religioso son puramente incidentales; no hay intención de situar en la otra vida las palabras o acciones de los que participan en este drama’ (9). But surely Calderón did not have explicitly to invoke religion to judge and condemn the notably irreligious actions in the play. The ideology of the period was sufficiently theological and pervasive in all sectors of society to make it impossible for these misdeeds to be judged in a purely secular context, simply because no such context existed, nor could Calderón create one artificially in his work as long as he utilized the ideologically-burdened figurative language which I have tried to draw attention to in this paper. Indeed, unless we assume the prominent presence of a moral code transcending that of wordly honour, it becomes very difficult to fault Lope's conduct, and his obvious sins simply are reduced to errors in judgement (as Wilson suggests), and the play itself becomes a rather banal domestic melodrama: ‘La idea fundamental que hay detrás del argumento es la necesidad de tener prudencia en el cotidiano vivir. Si don Lope y doña Leonor hubieran considerado con más cuidado su matrimonio antes de embarcarse en él, nunca hubiera tenido el fin que tuvo. Don Lope adquiere prudencia a través de la intensidad de las circunstancias …‘ (9). But the marriage itself is a given at the play's inception; the negative exemplary value of the play lies in its showing what not to do once married (even if unhappily), for Lope's conduct not only results in their death, but also in their damnation. In fact, the more wordly prudence Lope acquires, the more does he become morally imprudent, and even his dubious prudence is singularly imprudent as it expedites his wife's seduction by Luis. 25. A brief version of this article was delivered at the April, 1976 meeting of the North-East Modern Language Association in Vermont. I should also like to express my thanks to Professors Wolfgang Iser and Andrés Diez-Alonso, for much of the new perspective from which I have sought to study iconology in this paper was developed out of ideas discussed in many invaluable conversations with them.