Iberian Pastoral Characters (Scripta Humanistica, Volume 30)

Iberian Pastoral Characters

^crijrta ijumamsttca Directed by BRUNO M. DAMIANI The Catholic University of America ADVISORY BOARD SAMUEL G. ARMISTEAD University of California (Davis) JUAN BAUTISTA AVALLE-ARCE University of California (Santa Barbara) THEODORE BEARDSLEY The Hispanic Society of America

HANS FLASCHE Universitat Hamburg ROBERT J. DiPiETRo University of Delaware GIOVANNI FALLANI Musei Vaticani JOHN E. KELLER University of Kentucky

GIUSEPPE BELLINI Universita di Milano

RICHARD KINKADE University of Arizona

GIOVANNI MARIA BERTINI Universita di Torino

MYRON I. LICHTBLAU Syracuse University

HEINRICH BIHLER Universitat Gottingen

JUAN M. LOPE BLANCH Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

HAROLD CANNON National Endowment for the Humanities

LELAND R. PHELPS Duke University

DANTE DELLA TERZA Harvard University

MARTIN DE RIQUER Real Academia Espanola

FREDERIC DELOFFRE Universite de ParisSorbonne

JOHN K. WALSH University of California (Berkeley)

Iberian Pastoral Characters Barbara Mujica

>crfpia Jtmnamstfca 30

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mujica, Barbara Louise. Iberian pastoral characters. (Scripta humanistica ; 30) 1. Pastoral fiction, Spanish—History and criticism. 2. Spanish fiction—Classical period, 1500-1700—History and criticism. 3. Ribeiro, Bernardim, 1482-1552. Menina e rnoca. 4. Characters and characteristics in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PQ6147.P3M84 1986 863'.3 ' 09321734 84-51568 ISBN 0-916379-17-5

© Barbara Mujica Library of Congress Number 84-05.1568 International Standard Book Number (I.S.B.N.) 6-916379-17-5 Washington, D.C. 1986 Printed in the United States of America Impreso en Estados Unidos

Table of Contents

Preface, by Frederick A. de Armas Introduction I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

The Italian Precedent: Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia

vii 1

11

Vague Beginnings: Bernardim Ribeiro's Menina e moga 43 Allegory and the Neoplatonic Ideal: Jorge de Montemayor's Siete libros de la Diana

111

Didactic Pastoral: Caspar Gil Polo's Diana enamorada

143

Cervantes' Blood-Spattered Arcadia\LaGalatea 171 Lope de Vega's Arcadia'. A Step Toward the Modern Novel

211

VII. The Decline of a Genre: Gabriel de Corral's Cintia de Aranjuez

249

Conclusion

259

For Mauro, Lillian, Mariana, and Mauro Eduardo

Preface Samuel Johnson, believing that the pastoral disallows originality, called it "easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting."1 Early critics of the Spanish pastoral novel also adopted an attitude of dismissal—they thought of it as an artificial and decorative genre that could only be associated with literary decadence. But the pastoral ideal could not remain in disfavor for long. Whether an artist evokes the Golden Age or Arcadia (two concepts that are the "two sides of the same coin")2 he is still returning to that basic psychological root which Renato Poggioli describes as "a double longing after innocence and happiness, to be recovered not through conversion or regeneration but merely through a retreat."3 This retreat from \hzpolis is also a withdrawal from the sufferings, frustrations, indeterminancies and contingencies of everyday life. Art projects this bucolic perfection creating a "paradox of natural art."4 However, it is unable to sustain the illusion. The enchanted natural realm is cursed since it has been made manifest by a writer whose inner tensions underlie his creation. It is thus not surprising that modern critics of the Spanish pastoral have moved away from notions of sameness and artificiality to discussions of socio-historical realities as well as cultural and individual differences. Americo Castro, Marcel Bataillon and Bruno Damiani are among those who have uncovered social structures and concerns in the genre. Mia Gerhardt separates European pastorals according to 1

Cited in Thomas E. Rosenmayer, The Green Cabinet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 4. 2

Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet, p. 235.

3

Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 1.

4

Elias L. Rivers, "The Pastoral Paradox of Natural Art," MLN, 77 (1962), 130-44.

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national cultures. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce highlights the uniqueness of each Spanish text: Discussion ranges from the Platonic "realism" of La Diana to the autobiographical concerns of authors such as Galvez de Montalvo and Lope de Vega. Barbara Mujica continues this re-evaluation of the pastoral novel in Spain, tracing the steps by which the romance begun by Sannazaro's Arcadia slowly evolves into a form that resembles the modern novel. This evolution takes place through character development. The magician or wizard, for example, gives way to a wise person that does not alter outer "reality" but attempts to transform the self of the suffering lovers. As the form develops, characters move away from the allegorical mode and towards more concrete representations. The authorial voice no longer describes a setting where characters represent certain moods or ideas. Instead, personages are allowed to develop in a manner that may even highlight the tensions and paradoxes inherent in the ambience and the genre. To say that Barbara Mujica's book is about characterization in the pastoral as it evolves from romance to novel does not do justice to this sensitive and scholarly study. Mujica weaves into her analysis a number of themes and concerns which reflect her extensive knowledge of Renaissance culture. She is equally at home discussing Gnosticism and the Cabbala in Menina e moga or pinpointing feminist concerns. The Orphism of Sannazaro's Arcadia and the Neoplatonism of Montemayor's Diana are brought into the appraisal of the characters' motivation. For example, she clarifies the role of memory in Montemayor's Neoplatonic scheme by showing how characters, in remembering early erotic happiness, come closer to spiritual fulfillment since human love is a reflection of the divine. Yet, the harmonious relationship between creator and creature is seldom actualized. Discord often prevails. Rebellion, Mujica argues, is a key issue since characters struggle against the onslaughts of a world where viii

whimsical fortune seems to rule and where the erotic ideal often ends in victimization. Even in their passivity, certain characters are defiant, Mujica claims, but we must remember that this defiance is one extended towards society or fate, not towards the ideal imagined by the searching self. Mujica's book may stress rebellion, suffering and the emergence of a willful individual who ignores to his own peril the realities that surround him. But throughout these pages the author re-creates that longing for perfection that was central to the Renaissance psyche and that exists even in denial. Indeed, Barbara Mujica evokes for the modern reader and critic that elusive Golden Age through an approach to scholarship which is imbued with thoughtful moderation and critical balance, thus approaching the truth of Arcadia. Frederick A. de Armas

Louisiana State University

IX

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Introduction From the Garden of Eden to Marlboro Country, images of men and women living in communion with nature have permeated Western culture. The peaceful existence, free from the pressures of personal and civic responsibility, has never lost its allure. During the Renaissance, that highly visionary period in which educated men strove for perfection in every domain, the ideal society was represented as a Golden Age when people lived free of stress and in harmony with their natural surroundings. The earthly paradise depicted in literature and art was inspired by both classical and Biblical sources. As A. C. Spearing has pointed out, the locus amoenus is a Mediterranean landscape typical of Greece, Italy, or Palestine.1 It features spring-like warmth, bright sunlight, fruit trees, flowery meadows, songbirds, springs, brooks, and fountains. It is the ideal landscape of Homer, Theocritus and Virgil, as well as of the Garden of Eden and of the Song of Songs. The Golden Age was first prophesied by Virgil, in his Eclogue IV. Of the Spanish Renaissance writers, it is Cervantes who best describes the Golden Age. Don ^Medieval Dream Poetry (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 17. On the pastoral landscape, see also "Le milieu pastoral" in Luigi Monga, Le Genre Pastoral au XVle siecle, (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1974), pp. 5-72. 1

Quijote, that undauntable Utopian intent on ridding the world of injustice, invokes the Golden Age as the incarnation of his ideal world in a gathering with some goatherds early in the first page of Cervantes' masterpiece: "Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos a quien los antiguos pusieron nombre de dorados, y no porque en ellos el oro, que en esta nuestra edad de hierro tanto se estima, se alcanzase en aquella venturosa sin fatiga alguna, sino porque entonces los que en ella vivian ignoraban estas dos palabras de tuyo y mto...Todo era paz entonces, todo amistad, todo concordia; aun no se habia atrevido la pesada reja del corvo arado a abrir ni visitar las entranas piadosas de nuestra primera madre, que ella, sin ser forzada, ofrecia, por todas partes de su fertil y espacioso seno, lo que pudiese hartar, sustentar y deleitar a los hijos que entonces la poseian. Entonces si que andaban las simples y hermosas zagalejas de valle en valle y de otero en otero en trenza y en cabello, sin mas vestidos de aquellos que eran menester para cubrir honestamente lo que la honestidad quiere y ha querido siempre que se cubra... Entonces se decoraban los concetos amorosos del alma simple y sencillamente del mesmo modo y manera que ella los concebia, sin buscar artificioso rodeo de palabras para encarecerlos. No habia la fraude, el engano ni la malicia mezcladose con verdad y llaneza. La justicia se estaba en sus propios terminos, sin que la osasen turbar ni ofender los del favor y los del interese, que tanto ahora la menoscaban, turban y persiguen... Las doncellas y la honestidad andaban, como tengo dicho, por dondequiera, sola y senora, sin temor que la ajena desenvokura y lascivo intento le menoscabasen, y su perdicion nacia de su gusto y propia voluntad.2

The Utopia Don Quijote envisions is free of deceit and artifice. It is a world of simplicity and freedom which Don Quijote compares repeatedly with the complex, corrupt, hypocritical world that he knows. The Golden Age dominated the European imagination 2

Don Quijote, ed. Martin de Riquer (New York: Las Americas, 1967). pp. 105-106.

2

from early in the Renaissance. When Columbus discovered the peaceful, naked Taino Indians on his first voyage to the New World, it was believed that he had perhaps stumbled onto a remnant of some Golden Age civilization.3 Before long the Europeans realized the true nature of Columbus' discoveries, and once again the Golden Age slipped beyond reach. Indeed, the most problematical characteristic of the Golden Age is its inaccessibility. In Cervantes, it is a projection into the distant past; in Virgil, it is a projection into the distant future. In the present, it exists only in men's minds. The locus amoenus is a mental landscape into which citizens weary of the demands ofthepo/is may retreat. It is a welcome illusion, conjured up deliberately through meditation and art. The visionary experience requires a physical and mental distancing from everyday reality. It requires a blocking out of the individual's immediate surroundings. Paradoxically, it depends on the very artifice it seeks to eliminate, for in order to achieve it, one must impose the discipline and order that art and meditation require. One must occult the dissonant sounds, the rough edges, the cruel inequities that are part, not only of civilized existence, but of nature itself. The role of art in the Renaissance is to purify the spirit, to assuage the passions. Through art, man strives for moderation, balance, beauty. Artifice becomes a positive concept. Rather than guile, craftiness, or deceitful ostentation, artifice is ingenuity, inventiveness, skill. It is through artifice that man the creator strives toward truth and harmony with nature. The locus amoenus of pastoral is an invented landscape in which the only inhabitants are shepherds and supernatural beings. The concept of the shepherd as a peace3

Samuel Eliot Morison, Christopher Columbus, Mariner (New York: Signet-New American Library, 1984), p. 50.

ful man—simple, yet nurturing, unassuming, yet skilled — comes, like the pastoral landscape itself, from both Biblical and classical sources. The image of Christ as a good shepherd who protects his flock and rescues the occasional wayward sheep recurs throughout Christian art. In classical writing, too, the shepherd is a frequent theme. In his Bucolics, Virgil, who spent ten years of his youth on a farm, first describes an imaginary Arcadia inhabited by shepherds and shepherdesses. Here, in the midst of rustic simplicity, peace and harmony reign. It is also Virgil who introduces the technique of referring to real persons in the guise of shepherds. From ancient times the locus amoenus is associated with love. It is in a garden that God created Eve for Adam. Often the concept of womanhood and the concept of nature are inseparable. Woman—fertile, nurturing, and physiologically cyclical—is man's link with the primal forces. In the Song of Songs, woman is described as an "enclosed garden" (4.12). In his idylls celebrating the simplicity of rustic life in Sicily, Theocritis introduced enduring amorous figures such as Daphnis, Lycidas, Corydon, and Amaryllis. Virgil's Eclogues II and VIII deal specifically with love themes. In the third century A.D., a Greek poet, probably Longus, wrote Daphnis and Chloe, a pastoral about a young boy and girl who are abandoned by their parents and raised by shepherds. Eventually they fall in love and marry each other after having been reunited with their respective families. Daphnis and Chloe had great influence in the Renaissance, and was a source for Robert Greene's Pandosto (1588) and Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale (1611). If eros is an important element in the classical pastoral, it is fundamental to the Utopian vision in the Renaissance. Spanish pastoral incorporates the Medieval concept of the ennobling force of love, the elevation of the beloved to a place of superiority above the lover, and the concept of love 4

as an unsatiable desire. Neoplatonism contributes the revelation of a spiritual union between man and God achieved through love; since the beloved's particular beauty is a reflection of superior, divine beauty, it is through the contemplation of the beloved that the lover transcends the ephemeral and visible. Montemayor's Diana ends with the vision of an erotic paradise in which gods and men share a common ground. Between 1559 and 1633 at least twenty-two pastoral romances were published in Spain. Best-sellers in their day, the pastoral romances often strike the modern reader as archaic and silly. The flute-playing shepherds, whose only preoccupation is love, seem incompatible with the values and objectives of twentieth century men and women. And yet, pastoral responds to a timeless, universal longing for simple solutions. Religion, political reform, medicine, drugs, technology have all promised Utopias attractive to different segments of modern Western society. And when those Utopias have failed, men and women have rejected them and turned back to the pastoral ideal. In the sixties and early seventies, thousands of young people retreated from a society they viewed as corrupt and injust. Spurning the artificial and the technological, they founded communes where they grew their own food, enjoyed love unencumbered by the convention of marriage, and sought communion with nature. Even in the pragmatic eighties, the Arcadian vision remains vital. In the recent movie Witness, a street-wise cop escapes into an earthly paradise in the Amish country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the charms of a young Amish widow for whom he longs and pines, just as Sireno does for Diana, he assimilates into the group, participating in domestic and agricultural chores. The land is fertile and generous. Photographed in warm, soothing shades, the countryside is as inviting as any literary Arcadia. 5

The film is replete with scenes of farmers working the fields, gathering for prayer, singing at fests. And who can forget the magnificent barnraising, in which rivalries are set aside and men work together for the common benefit! But like Sincere in Sannazaro's Arcadia, the cop is an exile from the polis. The pressures of the outside world cannot be cast aside indefinitely. Little by little, reality intrudes. Finally, it recaptures the hero's focus. Now this modern-day Sincere must come to terms with the fact that his experience has been nothing more than a temporary escape. Like Sincere, he must return to the real world, leaving the dream world behind. The perfect pastoral structure of Witness illustrates that even today, the vision of Arcadia is enticing. What is evident in Witness and in Renaissance pastoral as well, is the inevitable collapse of the Utopian vision. Unfailingly, outside forces or internal passions interfere and destroy the image of harmony. In no pastoral romance is the projection of perfection actually achieved and maintained. Arcadia is an illusion. It is necessarily so because humans are flawed, and their shortcomings will inevitably penetrate the dream worlds they construct. And yet, the pastoral experience is not a failure, for if imperfection is human, so is the striving for perfection. In this sense, pastoral responds to a basic need. A close examination of the evolution of pastoral from the early Spanish translations of Sannazaro's Arcadia to the later works reveals a process of maturation in the art of character development that contributes to the transformation of the genre from simple romance—a series of scenes depicting colorful events that appeal to the imagination and are tied loosely together by narrative—to a form that closely resembles the modern novel. As the genre develops, characters evolve from the allegorical to the concrete, from the decorative to the substantive. They cease to be peripheral, as in Sannazaro's Arcadia, and become central to

6

the romance. There is no direct trajectory from the symbolic to the realistic. The earliest examples of the genre include characters that reveal elements of psychological depth, while the very latest retain elements of allegory. Still, there is a distinct tendency toward the end of the century to create characters who are individuals functioning within a specific context and who react to particular circumstances. With its emphasis on free will and individual responsibility, the Counter Reformation represents a concept of life diametrically opposed to the protected, ordered world of the early pastoral romances. As the Counter Reformation exerts increasing influence on Spanish thought and letters, pastoral characters become less pawns of providence and more forgers of their own destinies. In its earliest manifestations, Renaissance pastoral depicts an enchanted realm governed by natural law. Conflicts are resolved by providence or magic. It is a world in which an omniscient wizard-father delivers his shepherd-sons from evil and unrest, and a comforting, bountiful earth-mother provides shelter and sustenance. In the early Renaissance, magic was considered a legitimate science. It was viewed as the means of harnessing the natural world for man's benefit. Harmony between man and nature required the exercise of magic, and therefore, the wizard figure was central to pastoral romance. Early pastoral depicts a world in which the individual has little control over his own destiny. The controversy over freedom of the will raged throughout the better portion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Reformation brought with it the belief that man was saved or damned by the will of God, regardless of his own deeds. Luther wrote in De servo arbitrio: ".. .neither in man nor in an angel, nor in any other created being, can such a thing as free will exist." Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, maintained: "inasmuch as the human will is fettered by sin and a slave, it 7

can achieve no manner of good; it is entirely devoid of this power of doing anything of a kind." In opposition to this doctrine of servo arbitrio, the Counter Reformation took a stand in defense of the doctrine of free will. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, wrote in the appendix to his Spiritual Exercises: "We should not lay so much stress on the doctrine of grace as thereby to encourage the holding of that noxious doctrine which denies the existence of free will." The theologian Francisco Suarez takes the same unequivocal stand as Loyola in his Disputaciones metaflsicas: "Tpdo agente racional, y solo el, es capaz de libertad."4 It is inevitable, perhaps, that in Spanish pastoral, characters become increasingly responsible for their own destinies as the genre develops. By Cervantes' Galatea, the magical element has disappeared and free will is a major theme. With the exception of Lope's Dardanio, the wizard—prominent in most of the early pastoral romances — is either absent or replaced by a wiseman (or wisewoman) who relies on natural rather than supernatural remedies. As the emphasis shifts from the community to the individual, the vast arrays of characters that typify early works give way to a narrower focus. Like the modern novel, the later pastorals are dominated by a single protagonist—or, at least, a limited number of protagonists—whose adventures dominate the action and with whose emotional tribulations the reader identifies. Although not absent from the early pastoral romances, psychological complexity becomes more pronounced in the later ones. Lope's Anfriso is multidimensional in comparison with the characters of Montemayor and Gil Polo. In the following study I consider four major Spanish pastoral romances accessible to modern readers: 4

See Barbara Louise Mujica, Calderon's Characters: An Existential Point of View (Barcelona: Puvill, 1980), p. 23-

8

Montemayor's Los siete libros de la Diana, Gil Polo's Diana enamorada, Cervantes' Galatea and Lope's Arcadia. Each represents a different approach to pastoral. Together, they illustrate the development of specific novelistic techniques within the genre as well as the evolving philosophical climate of late sixteenth-century Spain. In addition, I have included a brief chapter on Corral's Cintia de Aranjuez, a late pastoral romance that exemplifies the decline of the genre. Two pastoral romances precede Montemayor's, both of which are also included in this study. Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia established the genre early in the sixteenth century and has been recognized from the time of its publication as the prototype. A Spanish translation of Sannazaro's work was the first pastoral romance to appear in Spain. Menina e moga, by the Portuguese writer Berdardim Ribeiro, has received scant attention from critics, especially in the English-speaking world. Published shortly before Los siete libros de la Diana, Menina e moga is a hybrid work with a strong pastoral component. A unique and in many ways baffling piece of literature, it is the first pastoral-type romance written by an Iberian. Menina e moga represents an intermediate step in the development of the pastoral romance. It provides examples of characters that respond to both the pastoral and sentimental traditions as well as to cabalistic beliefs that recent research has shown to have influenced the author. Iberian Pastoral Characters is the culmination of many years' work. Some of the material in the following chapters has appeared in the following publications: "Violence in the Pastoral Novel: From Sannazaro to Cervantes," Hispano-Italic Studies, 1, No. 1 (Fall 1976) pp. 39-55. "Antiutopian Elements in the Spanish Pastoral Novel," Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 26, No. 3 (1979), pp. 263-82.

9

"The Wizard in the Spanish Pastoral Novel," Homena/e a Humberto Pihera, ed. Enrique Ledesma and Wayne H. Finke (Madrid, Editorial Playor, 1979), pp. 179-85. "Lope's Arcadia: A Step Toward the Modern Novel," Hispanic Journal, 2, No. 2, (1981)pp. 27-49. "The Decline of a Genre: Gabriel Corral's Cintia de Aranjuez" Homenaje a J.M. Sola-Sole, ed. Victoriano Aguera and Nathaniel B. Smith, (Barcelona: Hispam, 1984), pp. 217-22. Damiani, Bruno and Barbara Mujica, Et in Arcadia Ego: Essays on Death in the Pastoral Novel (forthcoming).

It is my sincere hope that Iberian Pastoral Characters will contribute to a revaluation of the pastoral romance, and that a more thorough understanding of our fantasies of perfection will lead to a greater understanding of ourselves.

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Chapter I The Italian Precedent: Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia Jacopo Sannazaro was the initiator of the pastoral idyll in prose and verse not only in his native Italy, but also in the rest of Europe. The earliest pastoral romance to appear in Spain was a translation from the Italian. Spanish editions of Sannazaro's Arcadia appeared in Toledo in 1547 and 1549, and later translations appeared in Madrid and Salamanca. With the publication of these early translations, a new type of romance was introduced on the Iberian Peninsula. Of course, there had long existed a pastoral current in Spanish poetry and didactic prose. The encounter between knight and shepherdess was the theme of the light-spirited Provencal pastourelles, and later, of the Galician-Portuguese pastorelas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Medieval morality plays as well as Nativity and Easter dramas contained pastoral elements, and, by the end of the fifteenth century, independent pastoral plays, both secular and religious, were being performed. Early fifteenth-century playwrights, such as Juan del Encina, Lucas Fernandez, and Gil Vicente, wrote dramatic eclogues and pastoral autos. In addition, several novels of chivalry incorporated pastoral episodes. But it was Sannazaro's Arcadia that provided the principal model for the new Spanish literary genre, even though, As Rogelio Reyes Cano has pointed out, in Spain the pastoral romance took on a character all its own.1 ^La Arcadia de Sannazaro en Espana (Sevilla: 1973), 11

The date of composition of Sannazaro's Arcadia is not altogether clear. Current scholarship holds that the poet was born in 1456.2 As a young man, he spent some time at a country retreat near Salerno, and it is possible that during this period he wrote several of the eclogues he later incorporated into the romance. Ralph Nash argues that there is little convincing evidence that the work was written prior to 1482, the year that the poet returned to Naples, although it is possible that Arcadia began as a few independent eclogues that Sannazaro later wove together with prose passages once back in the metropolis.3 A draft of Arcadia through Eclogue X bears the date 1489, but the romance remained unpublished until 1502, when an unauthorized text appeared while Sannazaro was in voluntary exile in France with King Frederick. In 1504, upon the king's death and the poet's return to his homeland, a complete text, including Eclogues XI and XII, their accompanying prose, and an epilogue, were published. Sannazaro's pastoral romance was an immediate success, not only in Italy, but also abroad. The Neopolitan poet exerted an immeasurable influence on Spanish letters for more than a century, and, although the Spanish pastoral evolved along its own particular lines, Sannazaro's Arcadia was the starting point, or, as Amadeu Sole-Leris has put it, "the crystallizing factor" that consecrated the bucolic ideal and popularized the pastoral theme.4 Remarkably—from a modern perspective —the popularity of Arcadia was a source of displeasure to the poet, who distrusted the judgment of

2

Ralph Nash, "Introduction" tojacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1966), p. 7. 3

Nash,p. 8.

*Tt>e Spanish Pastoral Novel (Boston: Twayne, 1980), p. 25.

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the masses and strove to establish his worth through his less universally accessible Latin verse .5 Sannazaro was not particularly concerned with characterization. For one thing, he did not conceive of Arcadia in terms of characters or narrative, but, most probably, wrote the eclogues first and merely joined them together with prose interludes. For another, the essence of the Arcadian ideal is, precisely, community, not individuality. Sannazaro begins his idyll without any reference to characters at all, but rather, with a detailed description of the idealized landscape of Arcadia. This is a world in which man and nature are one, in which vegetation is humanized ["potrb ben io fra queste deserte piagge agli ascoltanti alberi...racontare le rozze Ecloghe." (p. 50)6 "Ne sono le dette piante si discortesi, che del tutto con le loro ombre vieteno i raggi del sole entrare nel dilettoso boschetto..." (p. 52] and in which humans are rendered anonymous. It is a world in which there is no distinction between natural and supernatural; Arcadia is inhabited by nymphs and gods as well as by shepherds and animals. It is, clearly and frankly, a fantasy world. In his Discorso sopra le Rime di Sannazaro, published in 1561, Francesco Sansovino clarified that Arcadia is a region in central Peloponnesus.7 However, as William J. Kennedy points out, although Sannazaro suggests that the pastures he describes are somewhere near Naples, Arcadia is not a specific geographical region, but an imaginary realm, a literary landscape.8 The narrative is in the first person singular, but the reader 5

Nash,p. 11.

6

Quotations are from Opere di lacopo Sannazaro, ed. Enrico Carrara (Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1952).

7

See William J. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1983), pp. 114-115. s

jacopo Sannazaro, p. 115. On the absence of seasons in La Arcadia, see Monga, pp. 56-57.

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is only vaguely aware of the narrator as a character. The shepherds themselves do not appear until past the prologue and well into the first chapter, and then only as incidental to the landscape. They are busy at their games, in harmony with nature and with each other, devoid of individuality. Only Ergasto sits alone, divorced from the general merriment, pining for a shepherdess. Moved to compassion, his friend Selvaggio comforts him, and the two sing together. Neither Selvaggio nor Ergasto is fully developed as a character, but their songs serve to introduce two themes essential to pastoral: violence and melancholy. In spite of the harmony and consonance of the initial description, Arcadia masks an underlying disorder that periodically threatens to surface.9 Unlike the Spaniards who follow him, Sannazaro does not introduce violence through evil characters. Evil exists not in the person of the villain, but as an omnipresent reality, an element common to both man and nature. In Selvaggio's song, two rams joust, while the hypocritical flock praises the winner and ridicules the loser; evil wolves lie waiting to attack innocent sheep abandoned to lazy dogs by unconcerned shepherds; Cupid throws unsuspecting victims into inner turmoil; Procne and Cecropia lament ancient acts of violence. These images reveal the psychological, social and political realities that intrude upon the poet's mental projection of perfection.10 In The Landscape of the Mind, Richard Cody points out that Plato and his Italian disciples, such as Polizano, who invented the pastoral play around 1480, conform to "a 9 See my article "Violence in the Pastoral Novel: From Sannazaro to Cervantes," HispanoItalic Studies, 1, No. 1 (Fall, 1976), 49-55. 10 The early sixteenth century was a period of political turmoil. Sannazaro had close ties with Frederick of Aragon, who was exiled to Anjou in 1501 as a result of the decision of France and Spain to divide his kingdom between them. Sannazaro, loyal to his king, disposed of a considerable amount of his property and voluntarily accompanied him into exile. It was not until Frederick died in 1504 that Sannazaro returned to Naples.

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single mode of composition: a verbal art of landscape which is an allegory of the inner life."11 But the Ego is rarely tranquil. Summarizing Ficino's Orphic view as put forth in the Italian's commentary on the Symposium, Cody writes, "The human soul, being full of discord, needs the music of poetry to temper it, the Bacchic sacrifice to unify its parts, the Apolline vision to reveal the transcendent unity behind and before it, and the passion for beauty to unite it with God."12 Pastoral represents an attempt to withdraw from the chaos of the polls into the contemplative life. It is the search for an inner self in harmony with God and nature by means of the literary myth of the courtier as lover and poet.13 Vittorio Gajetti defines L'Arcadia as an attempted regression to the protected world of childhood in which the Mother—that is, Nature —provides total fulfillment ,14 The essence of pastoral is the undertaking, not the achievement. At the beginning of The Oaten Flute, Renato Poggioli writes, "The psychological root of the pastoral is a double longing after innocence and happiness to be recovered not through conversion or regeneration but merely through a retreat."15 But the retreat—or regression—is only attempted, never fully realized. The tension that permeates pastoral results from the poet's endeavor to maintain the projection of harmony in spite of the inevitable intrusion of the forces of discord that operate within the human psyche. Order vies with chaos, harmony, with discord. Anthony Cascardi defines the nature of this tension when he writes that pastoral "expresses at once man's desire to regain Eden, as well as his awareness that this can never be achieved. In much pastoral literature, the "(London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 24. lz

Cody,pp. 28-29.

13

Cody,p.5.

u

Epido in Arcadia (Naples: Guida Editori, 1977).

15

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 1.

15

artist conjures up an Earthly Paradise, but also leaves that Paradise behind, sometimes destroying it as he goes."16 The harmony depicted in the early passages of Arcadia is immediately undermined by the images of Selvaggio's song. As his name implies, Selvaggio represents the luxuriance and beauty of the natural world, but also its savagery. Ergasto's part of the eclogue is equally paradoxical. Ergasto sings a love lament that depicts him immersed in a state of erotic sublimation characterized by intensely pleasurable melancholy and sexual arousal. ("lo vidi prima 1'uno e poi 1'altro occhio, / fin al genocchio alzata al parer mio / in mezzo al rio si stave al caldo cielo..." p. 56) The sight of a young girl washing clothes in the river, her skirt hiked up to the knee, leaves Ergasto mesmerized and vanquished. Spying him, the girl wades into the river. He, wild with passion, lets out an anguished scream, causing her to come running to comfort him. The scene is patently erotic, the river symbolizing the life force (sex, procreation), the hot sky, the heat of Ergasto's desire.17 No sooner does Ergasto recover, than the girl runs away, leaving him to cry after her. The eclogue ends with the image of the weeping Ergasto calling out to the compassionate woods, river, mountains, and flocks. like the landscape that mirrors the poet's mind, the girl is a host of contradictions. Kind and cruel, repentent and unrelenting, compassionate and unpitying, seductive yet cold, she is as beautiful and perfect as the nature of which she is a part, and masks as many ambiguities. If she is anonymous, it is because she needs no name. She is not an individual character, but the enticement of eros. Distinguishing sex from eros, Rollo May writes, "Sex is a need, but eros is a desire...Eros seeks union with the other 16 "The Exit from Arcadia: Reevaluation of the Pastoral in Vkgil, Garcilaso and Gongora. JHP, 4No. 2 (Winter, 1980), 119-141.

"Compare with Garcilaso's imagery in Eclogue I, lines 116-126.

16

person in delight and passion, and the procreating of new dimensions of experience which broaden and deepen the being of both persons."18 Eros is uplifting, purifying. For Saint Augustine, it is the power that drives men toward God. For the Neoplatonists, it through erotic love that man approaches the divine. In Sannazaro, eros is the life-force, a bond between man and nature. What is essential is not the identity of Ergasto's shepherdess, but the myth of womanhood, the pull of desire, the possibility of physical and spiritual fulfillment. Ergasto's arousal reflects the hope and innocence of adolescence. The state of erotic sublimation in which the Arcadian shepherds typically find themselves represents a regression to the first passions of youth. Then, love, recently discovered, unincumbered by shame, logic, or social considerations, overwhelms and fills with promise. But adolescence—that hopeful age to which the pastoralist escapes—is also a time of turmoil. In his discussion of Virgil's Eighth Eclogue, Anthony J. Cascardi notes that Damon, spurned by Nysa, conjures up an imaginary world by invoking the power of song. Like Ergasto, he allows his thoughts of his loved one to provoke and torture him. As a result, "he is forced to see the natural world as one of disordered, uncontrolled passions... Damon's complaint alternates between a vision of the ideal world he hopes his song will give him and the disordered world he senses as real because of his plight in love."19 In pastoral, art both imposes order and reveals chaos, postulates perfection and exposes the imperfectness of all things human. Erotic harmony is the ideal, but the immediate reality of the characters is anguish, melancholy, unfulfilled desire. The pastoralist retreats into his inner self in an attempt to 18

LoveandB^7/(New York: Norton, 1969), p. 74. Cascardi,p. 123.

19

17

transcend the conflicts of the outside world—the "real" world; the harmonious landscape is the objectivization of his subjective longing—what Cody calls the "landscape of the mind." But the pastoralist's "other" world never disappears. Anxiety and discontent can be masked or transformed through art, but not eliminated. The dichotomy between the ideal and the real never dissolves. The pastoral world is not one of perfection, but of yearning for perfection. It is a world into which turmoil constantly intrudes. The overlapping realities of human existence are evident in the first eclogue, but the singers are not developed further. The paradoxical nature of love—the pleasure, the anguish —is the leitmotiv that recurs in the songs of so many undelineated shepherds that the reader perceives the singers' plaints as a lament on the general condition of man, rather than as responses to individual fictional situations. As Eduardo Saccone has indicated, Sannazaro's Arcadia is a series of lyrical abstractions divorced from the modifications that narrative imposes. The characteristics of the romance are "1'assenza di moto, e perb di tempo, e Finstaurazione di una condizione assoluta, dunque non psicologica, di uno spazio simbolico, dove i dadi son tratti per sempre, e ogni modificazione e esclusa a priori"20—precisely the opposite of what narrative development requires. Hence, neither lover nor loved-one are individuals. Ergasto appears twice more in the novel, once lamenting the death of Androgeo, once lamenting the death of his mother Massilia. No reference is made in either episode to his previous love affair. The cohesiveness of his character results from the fact that he is consistently melancholy and from certain parallels with Sincere-Sannazaro to be discussed later on. Yet, aside from the narrator, Ergasto is one of the few characters who

20

II "soggetto"delfurioso (Naples:LiguoriEditore, 1974), p. 19.

18

offer any cohesiveness at all.21 The next shepherds to appear are Montano and Uranio, who contribute a rustic element. Montano's motives for singing are not romantic, but practical: in the first place, he wishes to lessen the burden of the journey; in the second, he has been offered a prize for doing so. While Montano is concerned with material gain, Uranio is concerned with sleep, food, and wine. The rustic theme, prominent in several Spanish pastoral romances, recurs throughout the Italian prototype. The first part of the eclogue sung by Montano and Uranio is, like Selvaggio's song, full of references to political and social violence represented by frequent mention of wolves and thieves: Fuggite il ladro, o pecore e pastori, ch'egli e di fuori il lupo pien di'inganni, e mille danni fa per le contrade. (p. 61) Nessun si mostri paventoso al bosco; ch'io ben conosco i lupi: andiamo, andiamo: die s'un sol ramo mi trarrb da presso, nel faro spesso ritornare addietro. (p. 61) Ite, miei cani, ite, Melampo et Adro, cacciate el ladro con audaci gridi Nessun si fidi nell 'astute insidie de' falsi lupi che gli armenti furano; e cib n'awiene per le nostre invidie. (p. 62)

A reflection of the outside world, the wolves and thieves are an omnipresent menace to the well-being the flock, and therefore, to the tranquility of the Arcadian landscape. Vittorio Gajetti has suggested that the thieving wolf that 21 Melancoly was a Renaissance preoccupation and was one of the accepted variations of man. The melancholic was represented as profound, as, for example, in Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo el magnifico, and sincere, as in Milton's IIpenseroso, probably written in the early 1630's. See Americo Castro, La realidadhistories de Espana (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1954), p. 453; Marcel Bataillon, "Melancolia renacentista o melancolia judia," in Estudios Hispanicos, Homenaje a Archer M. Huntington (Wellesley: 1952), pp. 39-50; and Mia Gerhardt, La Pastorale: essai tfanalyse litteraire (Assen: Vangorcum, 1950), p. 107.

19

hovers over the flock symbolizes the literary thieves who threatened Sannazaro.22 The image of the triumphant poet-shepherd, who protects his flock by frightening the villains away, recalls Sannazaro's triumph over plagiarists, imitators, and filchers. It is also probable that the wolves and thieves reflect the political adversaries who were responsible for Sannazaro's exile.23 The second part of the eclogue stresses the conventionality of pastoral love poetry. Montano acknowledges that the song corresponds to no personal sentiment, but rather is chosen from an existing repertoire: Or qual canterb io, che n'ho ben cento ? Quella feifiertormento? O quella che comincia: Alma mia bella? Dirb quell'altra forse: AhicrudaStella? (p. 63)24

The emphasis here is on form and style. Montano challenges Uranio to a singing contest, and the two show off their skill in a variety of metric forms. At line 57 they answer each other in responsorial tercets. At line 81 they undertake a barzelleta measure of five-line stanzas combining eleven and seven-syllable verses with the rhyme AbCcB, BcDdC. At line 101, they perform a madrigal measure, and then at line 133, they return to the terza rima of the very beginning

22

Gajetti,p. 59.

23

See Note 10. The mention of wolves is common in early pastoral work songs, in which the appearance of the wolf is represented as a natural danger faced by the flock, as in the following example: Cata el lobo do vajuanica, Juanilla. Cata el lobo do vajuanica, Juanilla.

From libra de musica para vihuela, intitulado Orpbenica lyra, compuesto por Miguel de Fuenllana, 1554, Libro VI, fol. 154v. Throughout L'Arcadia, wolves represent the political conniving that was going on in Naples. 24

Similar situations arise in earlier pastoral works. In Virgil's Eclogue III Damoetas challenges Menalcas to a singing match, but in the end Palaemon decides that both deserve the prize.

20

of the eclogue.25 The narrator, who invites Montano to sing and offers him a prized staff of knotty myrtle for his efforts, first calls attention to Montano's art, then, after the eclogue is finished, praises both Montano's introductions and Uranio's quick and confident responses. The shepherds' talent lies in their ability to revitalize existing forms. "Innovation is welcome," as Kennedy points out, "but it proceeds from the already extant. 'Originality' means returning to origins. "26 Montano and Uranio are distinguished only by their poetic aptitude and their rusticity. They are characters without a past, without goals, without emotions. However, like Selvaggio and Ergasto, they serve to broaden our understanding of the true nature of Arcadia: a conventionalized Utopia that reflects man's dream of harmony, beauty, and emotional sublimation, but that is nevertheless inseparable from those political, social and psychological realities with which man lives. Montano's song, with its metric variations and deliberate reminders of source, stresses the artificiality of Arcadia at the same time that it evokes hidden dangers lurking in the shadows. It is a microcosm of the pastoral world, in which art seeks—unsuccessfully—to eliminate evil. In Chapter III, the same concept is conveyed through the description of the paintings in the holy temple. Above the entrance, a series of scenes depicts mythological beings so distracted that they are oblivious to both the pleasures and the menaces that surround them. A ram, intent on an oaken garland, ignores a lush crop of grasses. Several nymphs, their gaze fixed upon him, remain unaware until almost too late of four approaching satyrs. Nameless representations of 25

Kcnnedy,p. 119.

26

Kennedy, p. 119. See also David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).

21

an erotic ideal, the nymphs play naked in the fields, arousing the desires of the satyrs, who clamor after them only to be disappointed when the nymphs leap into the river and swim away. But lust is not the only danger. The lush forest is carpeted with brambles and other injurious undergrowth that threaten the white bodies of the fleeing nymphs. The scene captures the essence of Arcadia: anonymous imaginary beings exuding sensuality arouse desires never to be satisfied, but rather, to be maintained in a state of intensely pleasurable sublimation. The sensuousness of the nymphs reflects the luxuriance of nature itself. They escape danger, not by following an intellectualized strategy, but by following their natural instincts. They are part of the artificial harmony of Arcadia, where menace hovers but is held in check. Another panel of the painting shows Apollo, intently watching two fighting bulls, unaware that Mercury, dressed as a shepherd, is stealing away his cows. The scenes are playful and amusing, yet disconcerting. The image of the inattentive individual, so lost in reverie that he is heedless of danger, is reminiscent of Sannazaro's political experiences. Although the chaos of the outside world constantly shows its face, it is not until the end of the romance that reality vanquishes the illusion. The success of pastoral depends on the poet's ability to hold the forces of confusion and disorder at bay. Throughout VArcadia, clashes among the shepherds are avoided, although conflict is depicted in the man-made art forms—in the poetry, paintings and drawings.27 For example, in a later episode, there is mention of a cup bearing the image of a god who is forcing a nymph 27

Paul Hie discusses the grotesque element evident in works of art in several pastoral novels in "Grotesque Elements in the Pastoral Novel," Homena/e a William L, Fichter (Madrid: Castalia, 1971), p. 319-28.

22

while she struggles to get loose, scratching his nose and pulling his beard. Art is an imperfect escape, for the shadow of discord cannot be eradicated. Yet, through art, the hard edges of reality can be softened, controlled, temporarily obscured. In the artificial world of Arcadia, conflict is avoided. The characters' different opinions and perspectives combine to form a harmonious whole, like the contrasting shades of a painting. For example, in the episode in which various shepherds pass judgment on Galicio's song, "Alcuni lodarono la giovenil voce piena de armonia inestimabile; altri il modo suavissimo e dolce, atto ad irretire qualunque animo stato fusse piu ad amore ribello: molti comendarono le rime leggiadre, e tra rustici pastori non usitate; e di quelli ancora vi furono, che con piu ammirazione estolsero la acutissima sagacita del suo awedimento..." (p. 77) There is no discord among the characters; all agree on the value of the song. The shepherdesses distinguish themselves as individuals even less than the shepherds. Not one of them speaks in the entire work. Rather than real characters, they are catalysts of erotic sublimation. They combine with the landscape to produce an atmosphere of luxuriant sensuality. Amaranta, for example, is described in terms that are refined, yet frankly sexual: ...li cui capelli erano da un sotilissimo velo coverti, di sotto al quale duo occhi vaghi e lucidissimi scintillavano, non altrimente che le chiare stelle sogliono nel sereno e limpido cielo fiammeggiare; il viso alquanto piu lunghetto che tondo, di bella forma con bianchezza non spiacevole, ma temperata, quasi al bruno dechinando, e da un vermiglio e grazioso colore accompagnato, reimpieva di vaghezza gli occhi che '1 miravano: le labra eran tali, che le matutine rose avanzavano; fra le quali, ogni volta che parlava o sorrideva, mostrava alcuna parte de' denti, di tanto strana e maraviglioso leggiadria, che a niuna altra cosa, che ad orientali perle gli avrei saputo assomigliare.

23

Quindi a la marmorea e delicata gola discendendo, vidi nel tenero petto le picciole e giovenili mammelle, che a guisa di duo rotondi pomi la sotilissima veste in fuori pingivano, per mezzo de le quali si discerneva una vietta bellissima, et oltra modo piacevole a riguardare, la quale perb che ne le secrete parti si terminava, di a quelle con piu efficiacia pensare mi fu cagione."(p-78)

The passage combines conventional Petrarchan erotic simile—eyes like stars, lips like roses, teeth like pearls, skin white as marble—with an explicit and unashamed expression of sexual desire. Unlike the Spanish pastoralists, Sannazaro depicts an unabashedly erotic paradise. It is an atmosphere of unbridled voluptuousness in which natural inclination is never condemned. Like Ergasto's clothes-washing shepherdess, Amaranta is a symbol of beauty, delight, and liberation, rather than an actual character. She is, like the other shepherdesses, a mythical representation. She is static; no story is associated with her. She is a personification of the Arcadian ideal, rather than a woman. In the description of Amaranta, attention is given to color, chromatics and form, rather than to any psychological attribute. Like a flower, she is a natural object that contributes to the harmony and luxuriance of the locus. She delights by her very existence. She arouses by her very insouciance. She is the call of eros. The scene in which Amaranta joins her friends reinforces the concept of harmony achieved through contrast. Each of Amaranta's companions decorates her own hair with flowers of a different hue, producing an array of shades that complement and enhance each other. The effect is chromatic harmony. There is contrast, but no clash. Together, the tones combine to form a perfect whole. Art imposes order on the chaotic, and thereby soothes the troubled psyche. Temporary and imperfect though its fruits may be, art provides relief. 24

The view of nature as composed of diverse complementary parts —the One in the Many—is essential to Orphism, which is at the heart of Renaissance pastoral. According to one legend, after Eurydice was snatched away from Orpheus, he became a recluse and devoted follower of Dionysus. The Thracian women, angered by his inattention, tore him to pieces. Another version says that Orpheus taught the men of Thrace to worship Apollo; in revenge Dionysus ordered the women to murder their husbands and to tear Orpheus into pieces. Even dismembered, Orpheus continued to sing, and thus personifies the concept of the unity of the whole achieved through its separate parts. Orphism, an ancient Greek cult based on doctrines found in poetry supposedly written by Orpheus, stressed the double aspect of man's nature—the divine, inherited from Dionysus, and the evil, inherited from Titan. Here, too, the concept of the One in the Many is fundamental. Zeus, according to the myth, proposed to make Dionysus Zagreus ruler of the universe. The Titans, enraged, dismembered the boy and devoured him. Athena saved his heart and gave it to Zeus, who swallowed it and from it produced a second Dionysus Zagreus. Zeus then destroyed the Titans with a lightning bolt. From the ashes of the Titans the human race sprang forth, part divine, part evil. The Orphics affirmed the divine origin of the soul, but held that it was through initiation into the mysteries contained in the poetry of Orpheus and the process of transmigration that the soul could be liberated from its evil element and could achieve eternal blessedness. Basic to the Orphic doctrine is the belief in the role of the music of poetry to temper the discordant soul. Orphism requires strict adherence to natural law—including agriculturalism and vegetarianism. Equally important is the view of Orpheus as the selfless lover. Music, nature worship, and love combined make possible purification of the soul 25

through erotic ascent from physical desire to desire for union with the first mind, where absolute beauty resides. Orphism serves as a kind of bridge between the pagan and the Christian. Music is the vehicle that makes possible man's union with the absolute. The canto or incantation is an instrument of magic, a link between this world and the other. The Otherworld envisioned by Orphism is the universal One. "The great virtue of Orpheus for a syncretizing Christian humanist," writes Cody, "is his having brought the Greek theology out of polytheism into montheism, and so saved for posterity the fabled wisdom of the gentiles—classical mythology. The heart of this mystery is thus how the many pagan gods are one. This discovery is reputed to have occurred after he visited Egypt and learned the doctrine of Moses... As a victim of dismemberment he personally embodies what syncretic rationalism always assumes, the One in the Many."28 As Cody points out, both Orphism and pastoralism are transmitted by the Platonists.29 The Orphic view dominates the first four chapters of Sannazaro's Arcadia. Art—both image and music — embodies the concept of the One in the Many. The singers combine notes, meters, rhymes and rhythms to produce a harmonious whole. The shepherdesses, like the flowers they wear, are merely the stitches in an intricate tapestry. Contrasting perspectives do not give rise to discord, but rather, to the creation of a whole. Man arrives at an appreciation of the One through the contemplation of the parts. As he withdraws into his inner self, he feels himself one with art and nature, and therefore, with the divine. It is now that he can begin his ascent toward the Absolute. 28

Cody,p.32.

29

Cody,p. 33.

26

But the union does not occur. The relief provided by art is superficial and temporary. Chapter 5 introduces an abrupt change of tone. Although the atmosphere of general harmony of the earlier chapters is maintained, the underlying tension and melancholy become more pronounced. Elegiac eclogues become increasingly frequent. The landscape becomes rugged, craggy. The old shepherd Opico leads his companions to a waterfall so terrible it fills the observer with fear. Shortly afterwards, the shepherds chance upon the funeral rites for Androgeo. Bruno Damiani notes that even though otium, the condition of idyllic peace and pleasure evoked in pastoral, shuns death, death is a major preoccupation in pastoral romances.30 Just as Nicolas Poussin's painting Et in Arcadia ego reminds us that even it Utopia, mortality is an inescapable reality, the funeral ceremony for Androgeo brings home the cold, penetrating immediacy of death. The rites are pagan and colorful. The mourning shepherds dance and chant, then pour milk, sanctified blood, wine, and flowers over Androgeo's tomb in an ancient ritual celebrating the return of the spirit to nature. Melancholy is diminished by the esthetic quality of the ceremony as well as by the belief in the permanence of the soul. The spirit of the deceased lives on in the woods: "Godi, godi, Androgeo, e se dopo la morte a le quiete anime e concesso il sentire, ascolta le parole nostre; e i solenni onori, i quali ora i tuoi bifolci ti rendono, ovunque felicemente dimori, benigno prendi et accetta. Certo io creggio che la tua graziosa anima vada ora attorno a queste selve volando, e veda e senta puntalmente cib, che per noi oggi in sua ricordazione si fa sovra la nova sepultura." (pp. 90-91) The rite stresses the unity of man and nature, mortality being an essential element in the natural cvcle of 30

"Et in Arcadia ego: Death in La Diana of Jorge de Montemayor," Rom. Forschungen, 4 (1983), 445-466. 27

birth, death, and renewal of which man is a part. Death, then, is a joyous return. Yet, the pain of death cannot be totally obscured. The survivors experience a profound sense of loss. Furthermore, Androgeo s death brings forward the fear of the unknown that haunts every human being: "La qua! cosa se e pur vera, or come pub egli essere, che a tanto chiamare non ne risponda? Deh tu solevi col dolce suono de la tua sampogna tutto il nostro bosco di dilettevole armonia far lieto: come ora in picciol luogo richiuso, tra freddi sassi sei constretto di giacere in eterno silenzio?" (p. 91) Death alters the psychological landscape. The fields are no longer lush, but sterile. "Oime che nel tuo dipartire si partirono inseme con teco da questi campi tutti li nostri Dii. E quante volte dopo avemo tarro pruova di seminare il candido frumento, tante in vece di quello avemo ricolto lo infelice loglio con le sterili avene per li sconsolati solchi, et in luogo di viole e d 'altri fiori sono usciti pruni con spine acutissime e velenose per le nostre campagne." (p. 91) Death is incompatible with Arcadia and yet, there can be no Arcadia without death, for death is intrinsic to life. The bucolic Arcadian paradise carries the seed of its own destruction. The relief it provides must necessarily be fleeting, for man cannot blot out indefinitely consciousness of his own mortality. The spectre of the inevitable end of life is represented here by the shining wheat with sterile stalks and by the violets with thorns and poisonous spines. The episode appears to encompass two conflicting views of death. On the one hand, death is normal and not to be feared; it is an essential element in the natural process of renewal. On the other, death is the end of the individual—in this case, Androgeo—and, therefore, ugly, painful, and fearsome. The apparent contradiction dissipates in view of the allegorical nature of Sannazaro's characters. Androgeo is not an individual, but a symbol of order, discipline, and 28

spiritual comfort that Vittorio Gajetti identifies specifically as the lost father.31 It is Androgeo who, playing on his sweet-sounding sampogna, made the nymphs sing, that is, who guaranteed the Arcadian harmony that is the metaphor for the psychological peace sought by the poet. The melancholy of the funeral rites is diminished by the anonymous nature of Androgeo; the scene does not elicit the sense of personal loss that a reader feels at the death of a character he has known. This is what permits us to view the scene from a philosophical perspective, to consider death as an inevitable—even beautiful—phenomenon that is part of the natural scheme. Our sense of sadness does not result from our feelings for Androgeo the man, but for the loss of innocence that the death of the father figure represents. The guide — "fidata guida nei dubbiosi casi" —who guaranteed justice among his shepherd children is the personification of the spiritual harmony of Arcadia. His death is the death of the poetic voice. "Senza la componente paterna che garantisce lo sponstamento in direzione spirituale di quella oralita che nasce, nutritivamente, dalla madre animale, il canto poetico non e piu possibile."32 The funeral is a pivotal scene after which the tone of the romance necessarily changes. The introduction of the death theme and the emergence of individual characters occur, significantly, at approximately the same point in the romance. It is immediately before the scene at Androgeo's tomb that the individual shepherds of Arcadia begin to take on more pronounced personalitites. Opico is clearly defined as the old man who relies on his experience and wisdom. His role is that of guide or teacher. He has gained special insight with regard to the true nature of the world, and this he imparts "Gajetti,p. 51. Gajetti,p. 51.

32

29

to his listeners when, together with Serrano, he sings a song in which he dwells upon the prevalence of envy, lack of faith between friends, depraved wills, malice, and greed that exist in Arcadia itself: 0 quanti intorno a queste selve nomeri pastori in vista buon, che tutti furano rastri zappe sampogne aratri e vomeri! (p. 106)

Both death and individuality are at variance with the pastoral ideal. With the emergence of individual characters, the illusion of harmony begins to dissipate. As the focus turns from the whole to the parts, the imperfection of human existence becomes increasingly evident. In Chapter 7, an autobiographical technique is introduced that contributes toward greater characterization. From the beginning, the story has been told in the first person. Now the other shepherds inquire about the identity of the narrator, and for the first time an individual character emerges. The narrator identifies himself as Sincere and also as Sannazaro. Unlike the characters who preceded him, he exists in a specific social context. A Neopolitan of noble background, he relates his family history, his birth, and the circumstances under which he left Naples to come to Arcadia. This is the first time a character defines his relationship with the outside world. It is at this point that the themes of circumstance, fortune, and fate are introduced—Renaissance /o/>oz that will be fundamental to the Spanish pastoral romances. With the description of the polls, the image of Arcadia crumbles. As Sincere speaks of his past, he becomes increasingly explicit regarding his present dissatisfaction. Recreating verbally the amorous pursuits of a happy adolescence, he becomes painfully aware of the 30

imperfection of his present situation: "lo non me sento gia mai da alcun di voi nominare Sannazaro, quantunque cognome a' miei predecesori onorevole stato sia, che, ricordandomi da lei essere stato per adietro chiamato Sincero, no me sia cagione di sospirare. Ne odo mai suono di sampogna alcuna, ne voce di qualunque pastore, che gli occhi miei non versino amare lacrime; tornandomi a la memoria i lieti tempi, nei quali io le mie rime e i versi allora fatti cantando, mi udla da lei sommamente comendare." (p. 113) Memory is the means by which Sincero develops a sense of self-awareness. In the meadow he contemplates the doves exchanging kisses and feels increasingly estranged from the Arcadian harmony. Through his evocation of past happiness, Sincero gains depth as a character, but he also destroys the illusion. Or rather, he reveals the illusion for what it is—an unattainable ideal. Sincero has escaped from the polis into Utopia, only to discover that Utopia is elsewhere. Even as he sits surrounded by compassionate shepherds and complacent sheep, he experiences a deep sense of alienation. He finds no solace in nature. Anguished, he projects another Arcadia—the golden age of an idealized, bygone youth in which love was requited and harmony prevailed. But that past—mythical to begin with—is unretrievable. No matter how close one comes, Arcadia will always be out of reach. Sincero's deep unhappiness in the midst of the bucolic paradise is the marrow of the poet's vision. Art cannot blot out indefinitely the turmoil that is intrinsic to the human condition. Where there are thinking, feeling human beings, there is no Arcadia. Since human existence is imperfect, any Utopian projection will be undermined by the jumble of factors that play at cross purposes within the psyche, leaving the individual in discomfort and yearning for some other, distant Arcadia. But only death guarantees release from care. Now, the 31

pleasurable self-torment that characterized the previous love episodes becomes a morbid obsession with death. "Dunque per ultimo rimedio, di piu non stare in vita deliberai; e pensando meco del modo, varie e strane condizioni di morte andai esaminando. E veramento o con laccio o con veleno o vero con la tagliente spada avrei finiti li miei tristi giorni..." (p. 110) Critics have attributed the oppressive melancholy that permeates much Spanish pastoral to the Jewish presence in Spain. Yet, it is already evident in Italian pastoral. The emergence of Sincero-Sannazaro as an individual is accompanied by a new perspectivism that also imbues other characters with increased depth. Sincere exists not only in time and space, but also in relation to others. For the first time in the romance, a shepherd offers a differing point of view. Carino, who has heard Sincero's story, tells a similar one. Carino was in love with a girl with whom he enjoyed a relationship free of the constraints imposed by social custom and modesty. But when he revealed his great passion for her, she became cold and disdainful. Like Sincero, Carino fell into a state of intense grief in which he sought death. He turned against his former friends, divorced himself from the Arcadian shepherds, and withdrew into solitude. Yet, the situation was rectified when his loved-one had a sudden change of heart. In contrast with Sincero's melancholy and despair, Carino offers hope and faith. Carino adds a new dimension to the romance, for he tells Sincero his story in order to comfort and assist him. This optimistic interlude is undermined by the appearance of the enamored Clonico, who is obsessed with the same morbidity as Sincero and Carino were. Now it is Eugenio who provides a contrasting point of view. Eugenic ridicules the lovers, arguing that they are responsible for their own suffering:

32

A quanti error gli amanti orbi non guantano! Con desio del morir la vita sprezzano; tanto a ciascun le sue sciocchezze aggratano. E pria mutan il pel, poi che s'avezzano, che muten volgia; tal che un dolce ridere, et un bel guardo piu che un gregge apprezzano. (p. 131)

Love has been depicted all along as a sickness leading to physical and emotional suffering and even to death. What is new is Eugenio's contention that the lovers are answerable for their own misfortune: che non s'acquista liberta per piangere; e tanto e miser 1'uom, quant'ei si reputa. (p. 133) Caccia i pensier che t'han gia posto assedio, e che ti fan di a notte andar fantastico; che al mondo mal non e senza rimedio. (p. 134)

Eugenic is a stock character from an established catalogue. Anteros, Eros's inseparable brother, incarnated desamor. Eugenio's appearance is significant because it devitalizes the idyll by mocking the notion of an erotic Utopia. Eugenio admonishes the shepherds to stop their pining and to think, rather, of practical matters. By stressing individual responsibility, he invalidates the image of a smoothly running Utopia in which order is imposed by nature or by an omniscient father figure. It is at this point that a conflict develops between the Arcadian dream-world—characterized by the poet-shepherds' sublimated suffering over unrealized desires—and the world of practical considerations. Eugenio intimates that the individual has control over his fantasies as well as over his actions. His song introduces the concept that men are not pawns of fate, as Sincere intimated when he said he was born "sotto infelice prodigio di comete, di terremoto, di pestilenzia, di sanguinose battaglie," (p. 109) but are free agents. This

33

is the beginning of a real contrast of perspectives that will characterize later pastoral romances produced in Spain. Clonico, too mad with love to heed Eugenio's words, wishes to be taken to a local wisewoman versed in the practice of magic. Opico suggests that he visit Enareto, the local wiseman, instead. The pilgrimage to the wizard provides this episode with narrative unity and the characters with a sense of purpose. The many observations and descriptions of magic deeds recounted by Opico are not gratuitous but have the function of preparing Clonico for his visit. The new characters introduced are persons they meet along the way. The structure of this segment will serve Montemayor as a model for his Diana. Opico becomes more clearly defined as we see him a second time in the role of wise old man, knowledgeable in practical and amorous affairs. Enareto, who does not actually appear until later, is introduced and given a distinct identity through Opico's elaborate description of his talents. Clonico is not the kind of monolithic character typical of the beginning of the romance, but rather, two dimensional. He is, on the one hand, a shepherd who pastures his flock, a good singer, and a generally admirable person when unperturbed by love. On the other hand, he is immoderate and reckless when love enters his heart. This episode, then, not only provides examples of conflicting perspectives presented by diverse characters, but also of ambiguities within the individual. It shows how the passions can agitate an individual and bring to the surface characteristics not otherwise evident. The meeting between Clonico and Enareto brings into prominence the role of magic in Arcadia. The magical element in pastoral is very ancient and goes back at least to Virgil's Eclogues,,33 In the Bucolics, the shepherds, in 33

Francisco Lopez Estrada, Los libros de pastores en la literatura espanola (Madrid: Gredos, 1974), p. 78.

34

communication with nature and receptive to its harmony and poetry, are moved to song. As Marie Desport34 and Francisco Lopez Estrada35 have both pointed out, the words canto and "incantation" share a common etimology, and there is confusion between the two terms in the context of early pastoral. Lopez Estrada shows that Alphesiboeus' words in Eclogue VIII are actually an encanto, a verse of which the purpose is to conjure up magical forces.36 The encanto is a means of communication between the individual and nature. The magic formula expresses this communication and the word comes to be considered the means by which the relationship is realized. In L'Arcadia, the wizard Enareto personifies the magical element, and one of his tools is, precisely, the word—that is, the chant or incantation. Enareto's power resides in his knowledge of the secrets of nature. He possesses much practical information about breeding and caring for animals. He understands the language of the birds, and the preparation of potions that enable others to understand it. He knows how to dry up entire rivers with the use of special herbs. He knows the powers of the plants that bring fortune in love and the incantations that ward off maritime storms, thunder, snow, rains, hail, and wind. He knows the rituals that enable one to see into the future, and understands the power of the hyena, whose various parts serve to guarantee the shots of hunters, protect individuals from hounds, and seduce women. He is a kind of pantheistic high priest of the forest who reflects the pre-Christian pagan atmosphere of the book.37 The rites that will enable Enareto to cure Clonico are long 3

*L'incantation virgilienne. Virgile et Orphee (Bordeaux, 1952), p. 93.

35

L6pez Estrada, p. 78.

36

L6pez Estrada, p. 80.

37

See Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 108.

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and complex. They involve the manipulation of natural elements, magic numbers, and sacred words. They reflect a belief in the unity of man, nature and the gods. In addition to myriad other ceremonies, Enareto will lead Clonico to a secret place and will bathe him in the light of the full moon nine times in sacred waters. He will burn incense and sacrifice a lamb. Clonico, with one foot bare, will walk around an altar seven times. Then Enareto will call out the names of three hundred pagan gods. By performing such acts, Enareto will put all nature and the divinities that are found in nature at his command, thereby enabling himself to enlist their aid in resolving Clonico's problem. The story is left unconcluded. The wizard offers Clonico a choice: Enareto can work magic that will enable the lovesick shepherd to reject love completely or he can force Clonico's loved-one to love him in return in a kind of erotic vengeance. Interestingly, a solution based on forgiveness and mutual understanding is not one of the alternatives. Such a solution would be premised on the type of relationship that requires acceptance of the partner as an individual. But it is not an individual woman but passion itself that is the issue here. As in earlier episodes, the loved-one is anonymous, mythical. Clonico's derangement recalls the sweet erotic awakening of youth. It is the tempestuousness of the adolescent experiencing first love; the emotion, not the woman, matters. The reader never finds out what decision Clonico makes; the significance of the character lies in his erotic experience itself, not in its outcome. Just as Androgeo is a kind of archetypical earth father whose role it is to insure discipline, justice, and right thinking in the community of men, Enareto is a kind of archetypical spiritual father, whose role it is to help his sons attain happiness by putting at their disposal the forces of nature and the gods. He is, like a father, both fearsome and 36

comforting. He holds a solution to every problem, offering his charges a choice of courses of action, but always reserving authority and wisdom for himself. Just as Clonico is an adolescent lover, Enareto is a paternal figure conjured up from the enchanted, bygone days of early adolescence, when one is old enough to be taken seriously, yet young enough to have one's problems solved by someone else. The escape to Enareto is an escape from personal responsibility. It is a welcome, pleasurable abdication of the will, a sumptuous refuge for a man weary of thepo/is. It is significant that the reader never witnesses the resolution of Clonico's problems. Enareto, like Arcadia itself, represents a magical and superficial deliverance. But nowhere in the work—through Enareto or otherwise—is a solution actually realized. Clonico's pilgrimage is followed by the the games and competitions sponsored by Ergasto in honor of his dead mother, Massilia. If Androgeo and Ergasto represent different aspects of the archetypical father, Massilia is the archetypal mother.38 Associated always with the sacred, her tomb decorated with altars, Massilia is the earth mother whose fertility encompasses the mystical union of god, nature, and man. The approach to her tomb is filled with womb-like openings—a valley, a cavern, an underground river—as well as a lush forest and abandoned mountains. Gajetti sees a map of Massilia's body in the landscape, the journey to her tomb is, then, a symbolic act of incest, an Oedipal regression.39 Whether or not we accept this Freudian interpretation, it is clear that Massilia personifies growth and abundance. She is a maternal symbol of hope, of new life. Her tomb holds two shrines, one to Pan, the pastoral god of fertility, the other, a newly erected altar which will serve in Clonico's cure. Thus, Massilia is 38 39

Gajetti,p.79. Gajetti,p.79-

37

associated both with reproduction and with purification. Like Androgeo's, Massilia's death portends imminent disenchantment. Ergasto sings at her tomb: Poi che '1 soave stile e '1 dolce canto sperar non lice piu per questo bosco, ricominciate, o Muse, il vostro pianto. (p. 186)

Two important symbols, the tree and the ship, come into play in the description of Massilia's funeral rites. Both signal the impending departure of Sincero and the failure of Arcadia. A small pyramid pointing to the sky, "in forma d'un dritto e folto cipresso" evokes the image of the mythological Mount Parthenius and the real and geographical Mount Vesuvius, thereby becoming a link between dream and reality.40 Young and flourishing trees, newly planted by Ergasto in a symbolic rite of renewal, shade the pyramid. The tree, associated with protection and fecundity, is a traditional symbol of motherhood, but the cypress specifically is associated with death.41 Above the image of hope and regeneration looms an ominous shadow, a reminder that the illusion must end. Out of pity for Ergasto, other shepherds had enclosed the place with hedges of juniper, roses and myrtle, "Incontro a le quali con gonfiate vele veniva una nave fatta solamente de vimini e di fronde di viva edera, si naturalmente, che avresti detto: — Questa solca il tranquillo mare—per le sarte de la quale, ora nel temone, et ora ne la aha gabbia, andavano cantanti ucelli, vagandosi in similitudine di esperti e destrissimi naviganti." (p. 162) The image of the ship of 40

Gajetti,p.83.

41

Gajetti, p. 83; Sir Philip Sidney includes a list of symbolic trees in his Arcadia. See The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, ed. with intro. and notes by Maurice Evans (New York and Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 195. Evans explains that several of Sidney's manuscripts contain notes explaining the symbolism: laurel: victory; myrrh: lamentation; olive: quietness; myrtle: love; willow: refusal; cypress: death; palm: happy marriage.

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willows, like that of the trees, is a complex combination of affirmations of life and portents of death. The vegetation and birds evoke thoughts of rebirth and growth, but willows are associated with tears and crows with death. The ship itself augurs Sincere's imminent, dreamlike river journey back to Naples. The episode does little to define Ergasto as a character, but—although he is never developed in depth either psychologically or physically—his image as a lover and then as a mourner establishes him as a kind of Arcadian counterpart of Sincere. Ergasto is the youth who seeks fulfillment through ritualized love, then mourns his loss of innocence and poetic voice. His melancholy parallels Sincere's, and if his mourning seems governed more by convention, tradition and rite than by personal sorrow, it is because artifice is the essence of Arcadia. These later chapters, probably written at a different time from the rest of the book, are as bereft of characters as the early ones. Shallow and undefined, the shepherds are mere shadows that appear and disappear. Carino, Clonico, Selvaggio, Uranio all participate in this episode, but with no reference at all to their previous appearances. There prevails, here as elsewhere, an atmosphere of underlying tension that is never allowed to erupt. For example, a conflict arises when Carino stumbles in a race and either by accident or out of malice trips Logisto. Ofelia, who is in next place, claims the prize is his. The shepherds take sides among the three contenders. The harmony of Arcadia seems to be momentarily disrupted, but Ergasto resolves the problem by giving each of them a prize. There is another potential conflict in the wrestling match between Selvaggio and Uranio, but once again, discord is avoided when Ergasto agrees to reward both contenders. Throughout this episode, there is a sense of ferment, as conflicts come to the verge of eruption but are quickly 39

dissolved by the generosity of one or another of the shepherds. Ergasto emerges as the peacemaker, struggling to maintain harmony. Perhaps he is symbolic of the poet struggling to maintain the illusion of Arcadia amid outbreaks of discord. In the last chapter, the vision is at last shattered. The narrator, overcome by conflicts and sorrows, goes off by himself. The superficial peacefulness of Arcadia had been nothing more than a reverie into which the turmoil of the narrator's inner reality constantly intruded. Now, overcome by sleep, he dreams he is alone in a solitary place, surrounded by tombs, overwhelmed by fear, unable to flee. It is the dream, the exit from Arcadia, that provides the character with psychological depth, for it is the dream that reveals his inner reality. Everywhere he sees nymphs weeping. An oppressive, sinister atmosphere reflects, surely, the political situation that forced Sannazaro to flee from his native land as well as his agitation over thefts of his literary creations. Sincere yearns to find the Sebato River in order to return home. A nymph leads him to it, and he is amazed to see how rapidly he has left Arcadia. But Arcadia is only a projection of the mind, a desire, a longing for peace. Arcadia is a dream never fully realized and at last abandoned because the individual cannot divorce himself from the conflicts of human existence. In an instant Sireno-Sannazaro finds himself at an incalculable distance from the Utopia he sought. In the distance he perceives fire and a smell of sulphur, a reminder of the Hades that awaits him in his homeland and of his own mortality. Faced with the imminence of his return, Sireno yearns ardently for death, the ultimate escape: "...io mi trovai in tal punto si desideroso di morire, che di qualsivoglia maniera di morte mi sarei contentato." (p. 201) Yet, as he approaches the familiar city, he is surprised to hear shepherds singing. The 40

songs are not the same as those he heard in Arcadia, nor can they be compared with those. Still, they inspire in him a fleeting hope that the countryside around Naples contains more than barbaric violence. The last scene is one of total disenchantment. The song sung by Barcinio, Summonzio, and Meliseo is a morbid elegiac eclogue. Arcadia is gone. The epilogue that follows resounds of despair caused, ostensibly, by the loss of Sincero's loved-one. The tone is desconsolate and morbid: "...ogni cosa si perde; ogni speranza e mancata; ogni consolazione e morta." (p. 218) Reality has triumphed. Sincere-Sannazaro gains depth and credibility precisely as he distances himself from the atmosphere of idealized harmony. It is at the end of the romance, when the poet-narrator emerges as a man tortured by the monsters of his inner consciousness, that he becomes an authentic character with whom the reader can identify.

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Chapter II Vague Beginnings: Bernardim Ribeiro's

Menina e moga A strange and enigmatic work, Bernardim Ribeiro's Menina e Moga has been perceived from radically different perspectives by critics of diverse inclinations. For some, the work is simply a conventional sentimental romance with strong pastoral and chivalric components.1 Increasingly, however, there has been a tendency to stress the cryto-Judaic elements in the work, and to interpret it as a document of the Jewish resistence designed to incite to reconversion those Portuguese Jews who had adopted Christianity.2 Both views are somewhat problematical, the first, because it fails to explain many obscure portions of the text as well as the decidedly unsentimental tone of much of it, the second, because some of Ribeiro's characters seem simply not to fit convincingly into the cryto-Judaic mold. If Menina e moga is, in fact, either a sentimental romance or a cabalistic political instrument, why include it in a study of pastoral? Whatever else it may be, Menina e moga is a romance that develops, for the most part, in a bucolic setting. It incorporates many of the elements we associate 'See Antonio Salgado Junior, Menina e Mo fa e o Romance Sentimental no Renascimiento (Aveiro: Labor, 1940). See also Dicionario de Literatura. Direcao dejacinto Prado Coelho, 3a. edicao (Potto: Cia.Jose Aguilar Editora, 1973), II, 633-35. 2

This view is expressed by Helder Macedo in Do significado oculto de Menina e mofa (Lisbon: Moraes Editores, 1977). In his preface to Menina e moga, Aquilino Ribeiro suggests that Bernardim wrote his work with no preconceived notions and no specific objective, that the work "e produto de mao automatica, conduzida pelo subconsciente a maneira de tantas obras celebres e caoticas..." Obras completas de Bernardim Ribeiro, prefacio e notas de Aquilino Ribeiro e M. Marques Braga (Lisbon: Livraria Sa da Costa, Editora, 1959), I, x.

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with pastoral—an idealized rustic landscape, pining lovers, erotic sublimation, hovering providence, liberation through love. The first such romance written by a native of the Iberian Peninsula, it includes allegorical and didactic elements that link it to the Spanish pastoral as well as to other genres and currents. Certainly, Menina e moga is more than a conventional pastoral romance, but the same may be said of several romances we readily classify as pastoral, among them Sidney's Arcadia and Cervantes' Galatea? In fact, all the major pastoral romances incorporate sentimental, Byzantine or chivalric elements and reflect diverse philosophical currents. In Menina e moga, not only readily recognizable Neo-platonic influences, but also Catarism, Sufiism, Cabalism and Illuminism come into play.4 To include Menina e moga in a study of the pastoral romance is not to deny the work's unique qualities, but simply to recognize that Bernardim Ribeiro's romance had a signficant a part in what was, in the early part of the sixteenth century, a new involvement on the part of Portuguese and Spanish writers with Italianate bucolic themes that they inevitably modified according to their own individual and cultural realities. Ultimately, this book, like all books, "ha-de ser do que vai escrito nele." (p. 2S)5 Every great work of art transcends generic classification, Menina e moga especially so, since it was conceived, apparently, as an instrument of consciousness-raising rather than as a purely literary endeavor. Published in Ferrara in 1554, with subsequent editions appearing in Evora in 1557 and Cologne in 1559, Ribeiro's romance precedes Montemayor's by four or five years. Michele Ricciardelli has seen the Portuguese work as the first 3

Evans, in intro. to Sidney, pp. 12-13.

4

Macedo, pp. 49-79. 5 All quotes are from Menina e moga, fixacao do texto, actualizcao e comentario explicative de Maria de Lourdes Saraiva (no city: Livros de Bolso-Europa-America, 1975).

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imitation of the genre initiated by Sannazaro and has stressed the similarities between Meninae mogaand Arcadia* Still, it is not certain that Bernardim Ribeiro deliberately modeled his romance after Sannazaro's or that he even knew the Italian work. Marcelino Menendez Pelayo asserted that there is none of Sannazaro's influence in Ribeiro's romance,7 while Francisco Lopez Estrada takes the more moderate view that it is probable that the Portuguese author, who is known to have been in Italy around 1522 when Arcadia was in vogue, read the Italian work and was at least vaguely influenced by it.8 Whatever familiarity Ribeiro may or may not have had with Sannazaro's Arcadia, he made an obvious attempt to establish a bucolic atmosphere in Menina e moga in spite of the generally chivalric nature of the action. This is not surprising, in view of the growing popularity of pastoral themes. As Amadeu Sole-Leris has pointed out, by midsixteenth century, pastoral episodes were beginning to appear in all kinds of literature.9 Two well-known examples are Antonio de Torquemada's miscellany Coloquios sattricos, published in 1553, which contains a miniature pastoral romance, and Antonio de Villegas' Inventario, published in 1565, but completed more than a decade earlier, which contains a romance that combines sentimental and pastoral elements. At first reading Menina e moga appears to be structured similarly to later pastoral romances. It consists of a series of stories of unrequited love that, except for the tale of Avalor and Arima, develop in a bucolic setting. 6

"Relazione tra Menina e mofa di B. Ribeiro e L'Arcadia di J. Sannazaro," Italica, 42 (1965), 371-379.

7

Origenes de la novela, II, in Obras completas, XIV, ed. Enrique Sanchez Reyes (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1961), p. 220.

*Los libros de pas tores, p. 375. *The Spanish Pastoral Novel (Boston: Twayne, 1980), p. 152.

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The work begins with a monologue by a young girl, the menina, who, separated from her family and from her lover, roams the hills alone and finally seeks refuge on the bank of a river. She is joined by an older woman, identified only as a dona do tempo antigo, whose son has apparently died, under what circumstances the reader is never told. Each woman recognizes in the other a suffering soul, but neither confides the secrets of her past to her companion. Instead, the menina and her new acquaintance pass the time with stories, the old woman relating a series of adventures she heard from her father about former inhabitants of the valley. The variety of these narratives reflects the range of genres from which Ribeiro draws. The title Menina e moga was not supplied by the author, but by editors. The choice is significant because they, more than we, were privy to the author's intentions. Their selection makes clear the primacy of the menina, a character who introduces the work and then nearly disappears. Nearly, but not completely. The infrequent but repeated interventions of the menina and the dona, who offer commentaries not so much on the behavior of the protagonists of the episodes but on the universal suffering of women, serve to maintain the menina as a central presence throughout the romance. It is the menina and her companion who introduce the dominant themes that are illustrated and elaborated on by the secondary protagonists. Perspectivism is evident in all Renaissance pastoral, with its endless variations on the theme of unrequited love. It is evident in Menina e moga, too, but with a difference. That difference is the nature of the allegory that the author employs. Unlike Sannazaro's work, Ribeiro's emphasizes character from the onset. While Arcadia begins with a description of the countryside, Menina e moga begins with the menina's lament, "Menina e moc,a me levaram de casa de minha mae 46

para muito longe." (p. 23) It is the menina who sets the plaintive, melancholy tone of the work. It is she who establishes the central theme: exile. The despondency of the young girl stems not only—in fact, not primarily—from her separation from her lover, but from her separation from her family (mae in the Ferrara edition, pae in the Evora edition). References to families ripped asunder abound in Menina e mo$a. The characters lament separation from their parents, sisters, brothers. The dona cries for her lost son. In a later episode, when Belisa dies, it is not just her death, but her death in exile, far from her family, that her lover Lamentor laments. Lamentor's anguish stems in large part from the fact that he was responsible for separating Belisa from her mother: "For mim deixastes vossa terra, por mim vossa mae." (p. 71) Much of Aonia's lament centers around her sense of alienation: "Triste de mim, donzela de pequeno tempo, desamparada en terra alheia, sem parente, sem ninguem e sem prazer." (p. 66) Belisa's daughter Arima is, likewise, a "filha estrangeira, em terra estranha." (p. 65) Later, Arima is torn from her father by the demands of the king. But separation from family is not the only dimension of exile present in Ribeiro's work. There is also an element of persecution. Belisa and Lamentor are victims of their neighbors' condemnation of their love. Bimarder, who courts Belisa's sister Aonia, is the victim of the domineering Aquelisia. The theme of exile is not particular to Menina e moga. Sannazaro, himself a voluntary political exile, made the protagonist of his romance an exile, as well. All pastoral protagonists are expatriates, for pastoral is, in essence, escape—or, at least, an attempt at escape. Exile is central to all Renaissance Utopian literature—chivalric as well as pastoral —for the core is always the quest. The nature of this quest is, A. Bartlett Giamatti writes of the epic, "to get home, to get back to those roots where one lives at harmony 47

with oneself."10 The pastoral protagonist is an exile—a voluntary exile—from the confusion and corruption of civilization. He seeks asylum in the meditative life, represented metaphorically by the bucolic landscape. For all the shifting and menacing that goes on in pastoral, order is possible. Tensions are neutralized. Danger is thwarted. The wolves are kept at bay. The escape of the aristocrat-poet to an artificial, idyllic setting is a projection of his desire to retreat from chaos to order. Giamatti says of the romance of chivalry that Virgil is the father of its visionary core.11 The same is true of pastoral. And the center of that visionary core is the sorcerer or wiseman—Enareto, Felicia, Polinesta— who creates harmony out of discord. That Bernardim's characters are all exiles of one type or another is clear from the text. What is not immediately clear is what kind of exiles and to what kind of Arcadia. From what kind of corruption are they escaping? Why was the menina taken from hearth and home? Why is Bimarder pursued by Aquelisia, whom he does not love? As in all early Renaissance romance, misfortune occurs without explicable cause, but in Menina e moga, fate is particularly malevolent. Destiny dictates; human beings are simply pawns: "havia de ser o que depois foi." (p. 23) A feeling of impotence and dejection permeates the work. Happiness is always transitory; comfort and security, provisional. No sooner does an individual ease into a state of well-being than some fluke of fortune throws his world into chaos. "Muito contente fui em aquela terra," begins the menina. "Mas cuitada de mim, que em breve espaco se mudou tudo aquilo que em longo tempo se buscava e para longo tempo se buscava!" (p. 23-24) What operates here is not a Petrarchan wheel of fortune that sometimes casts its riders ™ExiIe and Change in Renaissance Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 4. n

Giametti,p. 77.

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up, sometimes, down. The abrupt changes in luck in Menina e moga are always for the worse: "das desaventuras ha mudanca para outras desaventuras, que do bem nao a havia para outro bem." (p.25) As a result of countless blows of fortune, the menina is heart-stricken and weary, burdened with a sense that happiness is deleterious, since it causes the sadness that will inevitably follow to seem that much more painful: "Grande desaventura foi a que me fez ser triste, ou, por aventura, a que me fez ser leda! Depois que eu vi tantas cousas trocadas por outras, e o prazer feito magoa maior, a tanta tristeza cheguei, que mais me pesava do bem que tive que do mal que tinha." (p. 24) As in Montemayor's Diana, the memory of past happiness is more painful than present suffering. But the Diana and Menina e moga are unmistakably different in tone. Montemayor's shepherds are given to the conventionalized woe that is both pleasurable and uplifting. They are products of courtly and Neoplatonic traditions that sublimate the anguish of unrequited love. Although far less merely ornamental than Sannazaro's anaglyphic rustics, Montemayor's characters are hardly heart-rending. Although highly original in terms of their variety and interaction, they are, in essence, cliches inherited from an established genre, and, as such, lack depth. Ribeiro's menina is far more moving. Her sorrow, her unrelenting pessimism, seem rooted in some unspeakable authentic experience. Enrique Moreno Baez points out that the major difference between the sentimental romance and the pastoral is that in the latter, the shepherds' pain is "un dolor gustoso, que se resuelve en musica y poesia," while in the former, "el amor es como un infierno en el que se consumen."12 Salgado 12 Jorge de Montemayor, Los siete libros de la Diana, ed. Enrique Moreno Baez (Madrid: EditoraNacional, 1976), p. xiv.

49

Junior and Lopez Estrada both stress the strong sentimental element in Menina e mofa,13 but the menina is much more than a sentimental heroine. While her anguish is not the dolor gustoso of the archetypic pastoral romance, neither is it the product of an all-consuming erotic passion. The absent lover is mentioned only passingly. He is never the focus of the meninds lamentations. The menina?, grief is less specific, more transcendental than that of the martyrs to Eros of the sentimental novels, for her despair is not the result of a failed love affair, but of broader experience that teaches that against fate man has no recourse. The menina is in forced exile, not voluntary retreat. In the bucolic surroundings she has chosen, she expects to find only relative contentment. "Escolhi para meu contenamento 'se em tristezas e cuidados ha i algum!...' vir-me viver a este monte." (p. 24) Experience has taught her that prolonged happiness is not possible: "porque grande erro fora, depois de tantos nojos quantos eu com estes meus olhos vi, aventurar-me ainda a esperar do mundo o descanso que ele nao deu a ninguem." (p. 24) The hills and mountains offer not an escape from suffering, but simply a place appropriate for suffering. She does not seek innocence and regeneration, but the annihilation of the last vestige of joy in order to avoid future rude awakenings. Whatever peace man can attain comes not from retreat to some psychological Arcadia, but through the liberation of death. That is why the menina will grieve "ate que venha o tempo que alguma pessoa estranha, de do de mim, com as suas maos cerre estes meus olhos, que nunca foram fartos de me mostrerem magoas." (p.33-34) In Menina e moga there is a mystical order revealed through the individual's contacts with the Otherworld—ghosts, apparitions and the 13 Salgado Junior, Menina e mofa e o Romance Sentimental; Lopez Estrada, Los libros de pastores. Lopez Estrada concludes, however, that "cuando la niebla sentimental se aclara, predomina el desarrollo lineal que cararteriza los libros de caballerias." p. 377.

50

like—but there is no projection of harmony on earth. There is no Felicia, and there is no search for one. In recent years, mounting evidence of Bernardim Ribeiro's Jewish origin and of Semitic influences in Menina e mo$a have made increasingly convincing the theory that the menina is an allegory of the expelled Portuguese Jews, cast abruptly and, surely to many of them, inexplicably out of their homeland ("Que causa fosse entao daquela minha levada... nao a soube." p. 23), persecuted by the Inquisition (as Bimarder is by Aquelisia), and condemned to wander homelessly and hopelessly through the world (as the menina roams the valley). Little is actually known of Bernardim Ribeiro. He was born in Alentejo during the latter part of the fifteenth century. He was a friend of Sa de Miranda and was one of the court poets included in the Cancioneiro Geral, compiled by Garcia de Resenda and published in 1516. Several theories explaining Ribeiro's apparent disappearance have circulated. One postulates a fall from grace at court. Others involve amorous scandals. All have been discredited by modern criticism.14 In 1931 Jose Teixeira Rego put forth the theory that Bernardim Ribeiro was actually Juda Abravanel, that is, Leon Hebreo, author of the Dialoghi d'amore. 15 Although this theory has been disproven, Rego's work is significant because it provided evidence substantiating the probability that Bernardim was an exiled Jew. Ribeiro's romance was first published in 1554 in the Italian city of Ferrara, by Abraao Usque, an important Jewish Portuguese jurist who settled in Italy after the expulsion. Significantly, Usque published exclusively books by Jewish authors, including important Jewish mystics, with the one exception of Jorge Manrique's Cop las, an abnomaly 14

Macedo,p. 11.

^Estudose Controversias, 2aserie (Porto: 1931).

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that does not alter the identity of Usque as a publisher of Jewish works. Jorge Manrique was nephew of Gomez Manrique, chief magistrate of Toledo and active in the protection of converses. He was son of Don Rodrigo Manrique, Gran Mestre of the Order of Santiago, and, more important still, he was brother of Don Alonso Manrique, Archbishop of Seville and Grand Inquisitor of Spain. Helder Macedo points out that for a man like Usque, so clearly involved with the survival of his race and culture, the good will of the Manriques was essential and certainly worth the publication of the Cop las.™ Other critics suggest the possibility that Bernardim Ribeiro was the nephew of Gracia Mendes, a powerful financier and protector of Jewish intellectuals, including Usques. If such a relationship did exist between Mendes and Ribeiro, it would be logical that Usques, who was indebted to the financier, publish Bernardim's book. It is curious that the second edition of Menina e moga was published in Cologne by Arnoldo Birckmann, who possessed a bookstore in Antwerp, where Gracia Mendes lived for some time and had financial interests.17 Not all critics subscribe to the theory that Bernardim Ribeiro was an exiled Jew. Carolina Michaelis, for example, has disregarded the "Jewish interpretation."18 However, Helder Macedo's extensive research on the possible cabalistic influences in Menina e moga do much to reinforce the hypothesis that Bernardim Ribeiro was an exiled Portuguese Jew. Macedo sees important clues in the dualism apparent in Menina e mo$a as well as in the primary role occupied by women.19 He points out similarities between the function of 16

Macedo,p.82.

17

'Menina, Intro., pp. 8-9. ^Bernardim Riveiro e Cristovao Falcao: Obras, ed. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos (Coimbra: 1923), p. 44. 19

Macedo,p.49ff.

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women in Cathari, the dualistic heretical sect that flourished in Europe from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, and in Menina e moga. Cathari philosophy, which originated from a pre-Christian system of thought, postulated two opposing eternal principles, Good (Spirit) and Evil (Matter), in constant conflict with one another. In Menina e moga, according to Macedo, good and evil are similarly at odds. Cathari preached an asceticism whose goal was the liberation of the spirit from the evil prison of the body. In the Cathari sect, purification could be achieved through spiritual love of a woman. According to Macedo, the function of women is closer to the Cathari concept than it is to Neoplatonism, which is far less radical. Cathari taught that sex and procreation were evil. They repudiated authority, images, property, and sacrements, and they rejected the doctrines of the Incarnation and Resurrection. Although by the thirteenth century the Cathari became fragmented and finally, extinct, Macedo postulates that many Catharian ideas continued to exist in diverse forms. Macedo points out an uncanny similarity between the first line of the Portuguese romance and Hymn of the Pearl, the Gnostic apocryphal Gospel of Thomas that was a basic text for diverse gnostic sects of Jewish, Arabic, and Christian persuasion. The central theme is the exile of the soul. The Spirit or Messenger of God, is sent forth from his father's house to search for the pearl that is held prisoner in the depths of the sea. The pearl symbolizes the spirit, which is held prisoner by matter and is in need of liberation in order to rejoin the Father, man's spiritual source. The Messenger, an exile and foreigner, is at first fascinated by the material world that he newly discovers. He forgets his mission and lives happily in exile until, at last, he awakens from his stupor, completes his assigned task, and returns home .20 20

Macedo,pp. 52-53.

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Although Bernardim Ribeiro may not have known the Gospel of Thomas directly, the work, argues Macedo, serves as an archetypal model of Gnostic teaching and influenced the Sufi, an Islamic gnostic sect, and the Provencal troubadors. The Sufi produced love poetry of an allegorical nature that in many ways resembles Neoplatonism as well as Iranian Maniqueism.21 Both they and the troubadors transform human love into an allegory of divine love, and both present an essentially dualistic vision of the universe. More significant still are the contributions of Sufi and Cathari to Hispanic illuminism and cabalism. The Spanish Alumbrados developed from a Gnostic sect with roots extending back to the second century. They claimed to have received illumination (gnosis) directly from the Holy Spirit, independently of the Church. Because they believed themselves pure and therefore free from prohibitions, some Alumbrados indulged their passions without restraint. This and their many secret and ritualistic practices provoked opposition from ecclesiastical authorities. Like the Cathari and Sufi, the Alumbrados reserved a special place for women, whom they considered spiritually superior. Among many, there developed a Mariolatrous cult that taught that in order for an individual to enter into communication with the Virgin, all he had to do was contemplate the face of a beautiful and beloved woman. According to Macedo. "As semelhancas, das posicbes dos alumbrados com alguns dos elementos da gnose feminista central a obra de Bernardim Ribeiro sao evidentes."22 Significantly, the illuminist sects were especially popular among Portuguese and Spanish converses.2* Macedo's research on Spanish cabalism is particularly 21

Macedo,p. 55.

22

Macedo,p. 59.

23

Macedo, p. 60.

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illuminating. Cabala is a system of esoteric theosophy and theurgy developed by Jewish mystics. The word itself means "tradition" and denotes the continuity of Jewish thought from antiquity. Cabalism reached its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and influenced many medieval and Renaissance Christian thinkers, among them, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), founder of the Christian cabalistic school and chief exponent of Italian Neoplatonism. Cabala is based on a mystical method of interpreting Scripture that permitted certain initiates to penetrate sacred mysteries and foretell the future. The central doctrines are that all creation emanates from the Deity and that the soul exists from eternity. Cabala fused with other mystic and metaphysical currents, including Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as cabalistic currents extended from the Middle East throughout Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Provence and Germany. Centers of cabalistic thought developed in all these regions, and the teachings of Abraham ben David and his son Isaac the Blind were established as fundamental works. Cabala reached its greatest expression, however, in The Zohar (Book of Brightness), a work compiled in the thirteenth century by the Spanish Jew Moises de Leon. According to the system set forth in works by these and other authors, the relationship between God and man could be established and maintained through ten intermediary emanations, or Sefirot. These included Keter (highest thinking), Hokhmah (wisdom), Hesed (kindness), Hod (beauty). When all are joined together by Malkut (the kingship of God), then creation from earliest times to the end of days is continual. The mystical archetype of the Community of Israel is Shekhinah, the feminine emanation of God, the "daughter", and Macedo argues, the key to Menina e moga. 55

It is in the Sefer ha-Bahir, the principal book of the Provencal school, in which Shekhinah is identified specifically as the Jewish people. According to the legend, she is sent forth from the house of her father to wander distant lands, where her presence will eventually permit the redemption of man. In the light of Macedo's research, a connection between Cabala and Menina e moga is likely. It was precisely in Provence, that Cathari influence remained strongest. The confluence of Cabala, Cathari, Neoplatonism and other currents contributed to the creation of a character of the strength and emotional appeal of the menina. She, Belisa, Aonia and Arima are the first female protagonists of a Renaissance pastoral romance. The legend of Shekhinah elucidates not only the figure of the exiled menina, but also that of the dona. Central to cabalism is the concept of desdoblamiento, the division of the self, that is, the escape of the spiritual self from the material self represented by the escape of the daughter from the material world, to which she has been temporarily exiled, to the spiritual world of her Father, which is her home. All women are divided by their very functions—that of lover, wife, mother—all of which are essential to man's union with God. Shekhinah is a daughter when she obeys her Father's command to go forth into the world; she is a woman and mother in her function of Community of Israel. The dona is in essence a variant of the menina; she is the menina at an older age: "o encontro da Chequina consigo propria nas suas duas idades de noiva e de mae."24 The resignation and will-lessness of both characters is due to the fact that they reflect Shekhinah's submission to God. The essence of Hispanic cabalism—as of other mystic currents, as well—is the ultimate union of man's spirit with God. Such coalescence requires the total surrender of the will. 24

Macedo,p.83.

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Macedo's study goes a long way toward demonstrating that Menina e moga is not just a romance with chivalric, sentimental and pastoral elements, but a cabalistic allegory with political overtones, for, through the complex symbolism easily recognizable to the initiated, Bernardim could communicate with the persecuted Jewish minority. The menina, then, fulfills two allegoral functions. She is Shekhinah, expelled from her Father's house and doomed to wander until she is called back, and she is the Portuguese Jews, expelled from the land of their fathers. Her grief and longing seem authentic because she is the symbol of a tragedy that was real and immediate for the author. One of the ways in which Ribeiro conveys the meninds helplessness is through the repeated use of passive constructions. Like Sannazaro's and Montemayor's shepherds, the menina is surrounded by an external world that reflects her personal anguish, but unlike them, she does not inhabit that world by choice. Misfortune has forced her out of her natural environment. Throughout the menina's monologue, passives occur repeatedly: "me levaram de casa" (p. 23); "fui levada em parte onde me foram diante meus olhos apresentadas, em cousas alheias, todas as minhas angustias" (p. 25); "tudo me foi tirado no meu mal." (p. 27) Yet, in spite of her portrayal as a victim—one who is acted upon rather than acts—she expresses a sense of responsibility. If she suffers, it is because she is guilty; she has anguished so long that she expects the worst, and, expecting the worst, she acts in such a way as to cause herself grief: "Daqui me veio a mim parecer que esta mudanca em que me eu agora vejo, ja a eu entao comefava a buscar..." (p. 25); "sempre folguei de buscar meu dano." (p. 31) As an independent character, Ribeiro's menina reveals psychological subtlety, for she demonstrates that negative mindset foments misfortune. As an allegory of the Jewish people, she reflects not only the traditional guilt that is a 57

result of original sin, but the guilt of those Portuguese Jews who have brought about their own spiritual destruction through their conversion to Christianity. The true nature of the work, that of an occult document, is intimated by the menina herself, who is the ostensible author of the romance and who writes it only for her "amigo verdadeiro." (p. 27) It is a secret communication between the two, and, if it fails to reach him, it will be for her eyes alone. In her approach to writing, the menina is as pessimistic and fatalistic as in her approach to life. Since her days have been full of sorrow and events have a way of playing havoc with one's projects, she doubts that she will finish. If she does, she doubts that the romance will be read. Helder Macedo has seen numerous parallels between the meninds commentary and introductions to other mystic works.25 The concept of the book as a receptacle of a secret sacred message that can be comprehended only by initiates is fundamental to ancient Jewish thought. Ernst Robert Curtius points out that in Judaism, as in other Near Eastern cultures, "writing and the book have a sacred character."26 In fact, "writing itself is felt to be a mystery and the scribe is accorded particular dignity."27 Fundamental to Cabala is the belief that there are hidden messages, esoteric and mystical, in the Torah, in the Bible, and in Jewish law and custom that must be sought out. Numbers and letters have an inherent magical significance; when combined according to certain patterns, they convey divine truths. As Vincent Foster Hopper has demonstrated through ample documentation, number symbolism was not limited to Cabala, but was fundamental to medieval expression.28 25

Macedo,p. 51.

^European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 304. 27

Curtius,p.304.

^Medieval Number Symbolism (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1969), p. viii.

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However, particular to Cabala was the science of gematria, which consisted of assigning number values to all the letters of the alphabet in order to derive hidden meanings from Scripture. Hopper writes that, "The discovery of gematria was all but inevitable among the Jews, since the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were used as numerals, so that any given word actually was a number."29 The written word was considered to be a bridge between man and God, a means by which mystical union could be achieved. Although the ancient Greeks did not share the Semitic concept of the sacredness of the book, but, rather, disdained writing as an evil that could weaken the role of memory in the cultivation of the mind, in its religious end phase, pagan Antiquity did develop a concept of the evangelical significance of the written word.30 Thus, Homer's poems came to be viewed as sacred works. With the the spread of Christianity, the concept of the book as a sacred instrument grew in importance. As Curtius points out, "Christ is the only god whom antique art represents with a book-scroll."31 In the high Middle Ages, books and metaphors relating to writing abound. In Spain and Portugal, where the influence of medieval Latin poetry was particularly strong and where there was constant intermingling between Semitic and Christian intellectuals, the imagery relating to writing and books persists until the end of the Golden Age.32 The menina's identity as a book author sets her apart from conventional pastoral characters, who are typically portrayed as pseudo-rustic artists whose medium is poetry or song. The auctor is, however, a commonplace in the 29

Hopper,p. 62.

30

Curtius,p.308.

31

Curtius,p.310.

32 See my discussion of book imagery in Calderon's La gran Cenobia in Calderon's Characters, p. 77.

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sentimental romance, in which the narrator is often cast as a biographer who commits the amorous sufferings of his protagonist to writing at the request of another party. Arnalte e Lucenda and Carcel de amor, both by Diego de San Pedro, as well as Triste Deleytacion provide examples of the author-narrator, who, as E. Michael Gerli has pointed out, "fashions himself as a writer—a shaper and not a mere teller of the tale; an involved entity who maintains a closeness to the characters and events."33 In Grimalte y Gradissa, by Juan de Flores, the narrator is the protagonist and autobiographer. In both the sentimental romance and in the pastoral, in which courtier-shepherds are usually tellers of their own tales, use of first person singular contributes a sense of involvement on the part of the narrator. Ribeiro clearly worked within the framework of established literary usage; the author-protagonist is both a Renaissance convention as well as an emblem of Jewish mysticism. In her role of author, the menina acquires a special significance in the romance. She is a bearer of hidden messages, not simply a narrator. In fact, it is not she, but the dona, who actually relates the episodes, for, in spite of the menina's announcement that she is writing her own story, she defies the reader's expectations by not telling it. Furthermore, her preamble is filled with false leads and vague references that are never clarified, possibly because Ribeiro died before finishing his romance, possibly because he desired to confuse the uninitiated reader. The menina not only acknowledges the disorganized nature of her prose, but makes a point of it. As if in anticipation of the reader's criticism of the complex and sometimes chaotic narrative, the menina explains that writing well requires tranquility ("escriver alguma cousa pede algo repouso" p. 28), but that she has been through too much to think clearly. Perhaps 33

Irate deleytacion: An Anonymous Fifteenth Century Castilian Romance, ed. E. Michael Gerli (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1982), p. xxiv.

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Ribeiro, writing under the strain of persecution and exile, was excusing himself for the erratic nature of his book, or perhaps, as Macedo suggests, there is an indication here that the reader must look beyond the obvious to comprehend the work. The menina's comment seems to indicate that content, not style is the important thing. "Ainda que quern me manda a mim olhar por culpas nem desculpas?" (p. 28) A book is what it relates, not how it relates it. Since life is chaotic and confusing, so will the book be: "Que o livro ha-de ser do que vai escrito nele. Das tristezas nao se pode contar nada ordenadamente, porque desordenadamente acontecem elas." (p. 28)These are words that must have had particular meaning to Portuguese Jews and converses who understood the allegory and saw in it a depiction of their own situation. They also may have served to tip off the reader regarding the true purpose of the book. The structure of the romance, with its long first-person preamble and its episodes in series, serves the dual purpose of imbuing the work with a sense of intimacy and also a sense of magnitude. Both are appropriate to a story that encompasses individual hardship as well as a calamity endured by an entire people. The sense of magnitude emanates from the dona, who suffers from a personal loss (the death of her son), but tells the stories of others. Ribeiro distances himself from the narrative by two degrees. First, he disclaims authorship by attributing the work to the menina; then, he removes it still further by claiming that the stories of Belisa, Aonia and Arima are not inventions of the menina at all but tales told to her by the dona, who in turn heard them in her father's house. This distancing constitutes an essential difference between Menina e moga and sentimental novels, as well as between the donas perspective and the menina's. The menina's preamble stresses her personal sense of loss. Although the dona comments on the material that she 61

relates, she stresses repeatedly that none of the characters are her own personal acquaintances. The stories took place in some distant past and are part of the lore of the valley. The result of this dilution of the dona's personal involvement in the narrative is to establish the material as inherited communal history. The dona's tales belong to "este vale." (p. 46) These are stories that define a community. The allegorical nature of the menina places her well within the framework of Renaissance convention. Both the sentimental and pastoral romances are allegorical. In pastoral, myth reflects a highly personal internal reality. The bucolic landscape, peaceful and protected from external menace, represents the good inner life achievable through meditation. Essential to Italianate pastoral is the Platonic concept of nature as a reflection of divine perfection. Man approaches God through his contemplation of nature, through sense and intellect. God reveals his love for man through the creation of natural beauty. "Eros is conceived of as a mutural desire of the intelligible for the sensual and the lower being for the higher, as transcendental yet immanent," writes Richard Cody.34 Thus, the symbolic mental landscape of pastoral seeks "to comprehend an erotic dualism of 'this-worldliness' and 'otherworldliness'."35 At the center of Neoplatonism is the concept of love as the nexus between man and God. "Everywhere in Platonic theory and pastoral mythology love brings forth the manifold beauty of things and yet leads back to the invisible unity of God."36 Love (spirit) is in constant opposition to chaos (matter). Through love contradictions and discords are eliminated. But love requires refinement, purification, art. At the same time, love is natural. But then, "the truest art is 34 35 36

Cody,p.7. Cody,p.8. Cody,p.9.

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to live naturally."37 At the image level, the problem of pastoralism is to reconcile this-worldliness and other-worldliness, to give divinity a natural presence. "The burden of the pastoral poet...is thus an enactment of the Socratic compromise between artifice and naturalness, transcendence and immanence."38 The tool of the pastoral poet is myth. Through myth he represents the triumph of harmony over discord, Eros over lust, spirit over chaos. With the exception of Philomela, Menina e moga draws little on the Greek myths. The menina is not a Diana or Galatea adapted from the ancient fables. And yet, she is a figure of mythological proportions. Her suffering is infinite, her submission, inimitable. like the dona, she is nameless. Menina and dona are girl and woman, all girls and women, mourning the loss of their lovers and their sons. They are personifications of the spiritual anguish of a people. They are two facets of Shekhinah, a myth in her own right. If Neoplatonic harmony is never achieved in Menina e moga, it is because the mystical union sought by the Jewish people and the author himself has not been achieved. The menina awaits death or her lover's return the way Shekhinah awaits to be called back to her Father. As in conventional pastoral, love renders liberation possible, for love is the nexus between God and man. The menina s perfect love, not only for her amigo, but also for her parents, offers the only conceivable assuagement of her unrelenting grief, the only antidote to the chaos that plagues her existence. Whether or not a reunion with her loved-ones is possible in this world is not clear; the romance is incomplete. But significantly, in Menina e moga, there is no Felicia, no Enareto. Achievement of happiness is never projected into the future, but always associated with a remote past in which 37

Cody,p. 12.

38

Cody,p. 12.

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the menina was not alone, but lived in the company of her parents and beloved. Like Cervantes' Marcela, the menina roams the valleys and the hills in solitude, sometimes perching on the highest point to look down at the landscape below. She seeks solitude, not, like Marcela, out of disdain for suitors, but because no outsider can comprehend her grief. As night falls and birds return to their nests, the menina feels estranged from the harmony of nature, in which every beast has its mate. The scene is one of peace and order within a community: "As doces aves, batendo as asas, andavam buscando umas as outras. Os pastores, tengendo as suas frautas e rodeados dos seus gados, comencavam de assomar japelas cumeadas." (p. 30) It is a tradicional pastoral image: shepherds surrounded by their flocks play upon rustic flutes as they return home at sundown. Traditional, too, is the image of the lonely lover, alienated by sadness caused by the absence of his loved-one. Significantly, it is dusk. The meninds frame of mind is symbolized by the struggle between the sun and the darkness, with the inevitable triumph of night. The scene attains a deeper meaning when considered within the context of the myth (Shekhinah condemned to roam the earth) and the historical reality (the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal). Like the traditional pastoral protagonist, the menina languishes in memories of a lost past, but unlike the prototype, she entertains no hope of eventual reunion. Garcilaso's first eclogue culminates in the image of the lover reunited with his dead Elissa in an erotic paradise. The menina's lamentation contains so such projection. Rather, it is permeated by a morbid sense of fatalism that leaves no room for hope. The tone is somber, not sweetly melancholic. While the shepherds of Italianate pastorals typically complain of the obstacles that fortune has placed between them and their loved-ones, here, the 64

emphasis is not on the desired union but on fate. The meninds past is represented by a conventionally bucolic landscape: the sun shines, harmony and good will reign among the shepherds; there is a promise of fulfillment. But suddenly, catastrophe strikes, forcing the menina to leave in search of a new home. As in conventional pastoral, the contrast between past happiness and present sorrow is a major theme. But the menina finds no solace in her memories. Strangely, she never defines the calamity that caused her to leave her valley or tells what befell her lover. The focus is on destiny, "o que tinha a ventura ja ordenado" (p. 30), rather than on particular events. Seeking refuge at the foot of a wooded mount, the menina trips and falls three or four times. So lost in sorrow that she pays no attention to the stumbles, she later realizes that they were warnings of future adversity. Confident that she has been through so much that she has nothing more to fear from fate, she learns that there is always room for more misfortune. Omens abound everywhere, but the individual, so immersed in his present reality, pays them no heed. The meninds negativism is, no doubt, imbued with a strong sense of Portuguese fado. But it is also a reflection of the historical moment. The expulsion of the Jews from Portugal took place in 1496, and persecution of judaizantes was commonplace. Nature reveals not the possibility of reconciliation between God and man, but the vulnerability of all living things. The river runs softly through cool pastures, and the menina seeks a quiet spot in the shade of a tree. But even this innocent move causes affliction, for here the menina witnesses a painful scene, causing her to feel condemned to bring about her own misfortune.. ."sempre folguei de buscar meu dano..." (p. 33) Even the sparkling waters cannot run peacefully, for an obstruction cruelly separates the current and sends it off in two different directions. The menina 65

concludes that pain is intrinsic to the natural scheme... "comencei a cuidar como nas cousas que nao tinham entendimento havia tambem fazerem-se umas as outras nojo." k-32). The image of the divided water pales beside the next omen. A nightingale singing a sweet and melodious song suddenly falls dead into the river. The nightingale is one of the rare classical mythological figures to appear in Menina e mo fa.39 A traditional symbol of the victim, the nightingale appears in Italianate pastoral as a symbol of the lovesick shepherd. In Menina e moga the image of Philomela does not evoke a sense of sorrowful gentleness, but of irrational and violent destiny. The menina is so taken aback by the untimeliness and absurdity of the bird's death that she dissolves into tears. She had been certain that previous blows of fortune had numbed her. Now, she is astonished at the intensity of her reaction. As Maria de Lourdes Saraiva points out, this is a key episode. Beginning with the description of the divided water, the parallel between the external world and the internal world of the menina becomes increasingly evident.40 The death of the nightingale conveys the sense of gratuitousness that permeates the romance. The image of the sweet-singing bird cut down without reason reflects the inexplicable change in fortune that caused the meninds departure from her valley and is mirrored in subsequent episodes: Belisa's death in childbirth; Abnia's unexpected betrothal and separation from Binmarder; the sudden revelation of Arima's secret and Avalor's apparent suicide. While conventional pastoral projects an Arcadia that 39 According to the myth, Philomela, the unfortunate daughter of Pandion, was raped by Tereus. Her victimizer had her tongue cut out in order to prevent her from telling of the wrongs she had suffered, but Philomela contrived to communicate them anyway. Finally, the gods transformed her into a nightingale in order to allow her to sing her sorrow all night through. w Menina,pp. 32-33.

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promises happiness, harmony, and beauty, Menina e moga depicts a valley of interminable disasters: "dos desastres que sobre este ribeiro acontecem vos espantais." (p. 37-38)41 The location of the valley is never specified. References to certain archeological ruins indicate that it may be in Italy, where Bernardim Ribeiro himself may have settled. In a 1940 essay, the critic Antonio Jose Saraiva wrote that Bernardim Ribeiro "nao foi um pintor."42 In comparison with the richly chromatic landscapes created by Sannazaro, Saraiva contends, Ribeiro's are stark and somber. Ribeiro's style, notes Saraiva, suffers from a dearth of adjectives, and those adjectives he uses produce melancholy images. While for Cambes' stars are nitidas, claras, lucidas, for Ribeiro, they are palidas e veladas. Jose G. Herculano de Carvalho defends Ribeiro, insisting that his vocabulary is appropriate for the situations he describes, and citing similar descriptions of the night in French and Latin literature.43 If Ribeiro uses relatively few adjectives, he also produces relatively few landscapes. Missing from Menina e moga are the lush Arcadian valleys, warm and florid, green and fertile, where love is the sole preoccupation. The atmosphere is neither sensual nor voluptuous. Conventionally bucolic, the meninds valley contains the requisite birds, trees, grass, flowers and streams, but also "espessas sombras" (p. 60) that provide a place to brood rather than merely pleasurable relief from the heat. Significantly, there are few people. The menina has chosen this valley precisely because she craves solitude. Here, there are no country dances, no gay rustic gatherings, only an occasional reference to shepherds returning home with their 41 Note the etimology of the word desastre: dis + astrum (star). The menina's use of the term emphasizes the sense of fatalism that charges the romance. 42

"Ensaio Sobre a Poesia de B. Ribeiro," Revista da faculdade de Letras, 1 (Lisbon, 1940-41), 61.

*3Critica filologica e compreensao poetica (Rio de Janeiro: MEC-Departamento de Assuntos Culturais, 1973), pp. 16-17.

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flocks. The most salient characteristic of the meninas valley is its emptiness. Once filled with people, now it is inhabited only by wild animals (p. 46), and so, even in exile, the meninais in danger. Wolves menace here, just as they do in Sannazaro's Arcadia. Yet, it was not always so. Once, in some pastoral Golden Age, the valley was peaceful, but fate, never content to let happiness reign, wrought inexplicable"and unforeseeable changes: "...a terra se muda como as cousas dela." (p. 46). If the people have suffered misfortune, so has the land. Earth and man together are subject to the inclinations of a destiny that plays its hand in unexpected ways: "Tudo anda trocado, que nao se entende; e assim nos vem tomar as magoas quando estamos mais desseguradas delas." (p. 47) There is, then, a fundamental difference between Sannazaro's bucolism and Ribeiro's. Sannazaro's Arcadia is a locus amoenus to which the wordly Renaissance gentleman, spent by political upheaval, could retire, at least psychologically. Rather than the slavish recreation of a classical model, it is a projection of a personal ideal. Although the real world constantly intrudes on Sannazaro's Arcadia, the bucolic paradise remains intact as an ideal. Arcadia is a projection of the author's fantasy, and, as Rollo May has pointed out, fantasy is not merely unreality but a projection of the will.44 From the Greek phantastikous, meaning "able to represent," "to make visible," fastasy is the language of volition. Sannazaro's Arcadia is an affirmation of the author's craving for mental tranquility. No two Arcadias are alike because no two poets are alike. In Menina e moga the emphasis is not on the locus amoenus, but on the deep personal anguish of the character. Conventional Arcadias hold forth the promise of joy. The landscape of Ribeiro's mind is morbid. Sannazaro's turmoil "Love and Will, v.Z&\.

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stemmed from political upheaval and court intrigue, the kind of menace represented by wolves at the edge of Arcadia. This is external intimidation from which a man can escape to the quiet refuge of the inner self. But for Ribeiro, there is no escape. The menina's grief accompanies her into exile and colors the bucolic landscape with somber hues. Yearning for death as the only possible release from misery, the menina is approached and comforted by the dona do tempo antigo who, because she has lived longer, has suffered even more. Although the menina insists that she has never seen the dona before, her new companion assures her that she has always been in the valley. Their exchange reiterates a familiar warning: An individual can become so immersed in his own reality that he becomes oblivious to his surroundings and misses signals of impending crisis. The point is significant from an historical perspective. For the Portuguese Jews of the late fifteenth century, signs of danger were everywhere. Dom Joao II allowed the Jews to leave Portugal, but burdened them with a hefty exit fee. Those who stayed were reduced to virtual slavery, although the king did make concessions to skilled artisans whose talents were useful to the country, discreetly encouraging them to stay. Upon assuming the throne in 1495, Dom Manuel freed the enslaved Jews. However, a year later, under pressure from Ferdinand and Isabella, whose daughter was heiress to the Spanish throne and an attractive match for the Portuguese king, he decreed that all Jews must accept baptism or leave the country within ten months. In the meantime, he ordered that all Jewish children under fourteen years old be taken from their parents and handed over to Christian families. This, in addition to mass forced baptisms, led some Jews to commit suicide. Those Jews who were baptized against their will were unable to emigrate, since now they were officially 69

Christians. The policy allowed Dom Manuel to prove himself acceptably ferocious in his anti-Jewish policies to his potential Spanish in-laws. At the same time, it kept vast numbers of Jews in Portugal, where they provided services essential to the well-being of the nation. Although the Portuguese anti-Jewish policies must have seemed irrational and unforeseeable to many Jews, the signs were there for those astute enough to see them. Intolerance was spreading from Spain, which had expelled the Jews in 1492. Dom Manuel, who had designs on the Spanish crown, was ready to yield to Spanish pressure. Early in the sixteenth century, religious tension was intensified by the Reformation. In 1536 the Portuguese Inquisition was established. Construed as a symbol of the Community of Israel, the menina must have had special significance to the Portuguese Jews in her role of the victim caught repeatedly unawares. The dona, however, does not represent a menace but a consolation. Companionship is an essential element in pastoral from the time of Virgil's eclogues. The two shepherds who meet to share their woes is a commonplace. The friend and confidant is also a stock character in the sentimental romance, but the two woman who meet unexpectedly and recognize in each other a fellow sufferer is particularly close to pastoral. In Montemayor's Diana, as well as in the works of his principal imitators, shepherds recognize in each other fellow martyrs to Eros. Several critics have seen in the meeting of the two women an image of exiled Jews who recognize in each other a common bond and cultural identity. Curiously, in Menina e moga the two women never tell their own stories, although they allude to them repeatedly. While in conventional pastoral the characters take pleasure

and find solace in sharing their woe, in Menina e mo$a, the characters convey a deep sense of privacy, even a fear of revealing personal secrets. The dona introduces dialog into the romance. With the introduction of a second character, Menina e moga begins to read more like a work of fiction and less like a memoire. The dialog is innovative and structurally sophisticated, with interventions and interruptions that provide animation and realism. Suspended sentences like the following provide variety: "—Maravilha e— comengou vir dizendo contra mim—ver donzela em ermo, depois que a grande minha desventura levou a todo o mundo o meu... E dai a pedaco, misturado ja con lagrimas, disse: "-...filho!"(p.35) The exchanges between the menina and her companion provide the protagonist with depth. It is through her conversations with the dona that the reader perceives her delicate manner, her sensitivity. The dialog is replete with niceties, compliments, and pauses dictated by decorum that define the menina as a lady. Oddly, the extreme courtesy demonstrated by both the menina and the dona rings sincere. Rather than mere social (or literary) convention, it is the consideration accorded to one person who has suffered to another. Although neither woman knows the circumstances that have caused the other's unhappiness, there is a sense of mutual commiseration that permeates their exchanges. Each tactfully avoids delving. Each respects the other's need for privacy. The menina and the dona are bound not only by personal loss, but by their womanhood. The strong feminine—even feminist—element that pervades the first part of Menina e moga is one of the romance's most salient characteristics. In

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Sannazaro's Arcadia the voice is masculine exclusively. In Menina e moga, it is almost exclusively feminine. While the strong feminine element in Menina e moga is certainly a reflection of the important spiritual role of women in Semitic mysticism and of the strength of Shekhinah as a symbol of Jewish unity, it must be noted that the moga enamorada as a poetic figure has roots deep in the Galician-Portuguese tradition. The cantigas d'amigo are, like the portrait of the menina that constitutes the first part of Ribeiro's romance, tableaux in which particular circumstances are overshadowed by the protagonist's emotions. There is no explicit context or narrative. The focus is on the desire of the amada to be reunited with her loved-one. The cantigas, as Eugenio Asencio points out, have their origins deep in oral literature and are undoubtedly related to the f'aryas.45 The jaryas, like the cantigas, express a longing of the amada for the amado.^ The pain of separation, the sorrow experienced by the amada due to her loved-one's absence, the fear that accident has befallen him, are all common themes. While the jaryas of Arabic origin are often frankly sensual, those of Jewish origin are more decorous, with an emphasis on emotional anguish rather than carnal desire. Like the meninds preamble, the jaryas are in the first person singular. Nearly always they have a female protagonist who, like the menina, confides her preoccupations to another woman—a mother, sister or K

Poeticay realidaden elcancioneropeninsular de laEdadMedia (Madrid: Gredos, 1970) 22ff. ^The farya—a. poetic product of the Moorish and Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages —was the final strophe of a longer poem called a muwaschaha written in classical Arabic or Hebrew. The jarya was in romance, spoken Arabic, or Hebrew, and was either written by the composer of the longer poem or simply borrowed from oral tradition or from another muwaskaha. The earliest known jaryas connect to muwashahas that date from about the eleventh century, but many jaryas may be much older, having been transmitted orally from one generation to the other until they were at last incorporated into the more elevated poetic form. In about eighty percent of the jaryas, the poetic voice is that of a young woman.

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friend. The jarya-cantiga tradition reflects, in the words of Eugenio Asencio, "una etica y una poetica que interiorizan el amor."47 The phenomenon of the cancion de mujer\s> not unique to the Iberian Peninsula. Many societies have an ancient tradition of fraulider, but the Galician-Portuguese cantigas and their predecessors, the Sephardic jaryas, are uniquely melancholic. If Ribeiro's romance owes its bucolic backdrop to Sannazaro, it owes the figure of the menina at least partially to the Iberian Semitic lyric.48 Suffering as a common bond among women is the prevalent theme of the early segments of Menina e moga; the grief of one woman makes her sensitive to the sorrow of others. "Podeis dizer tudo," the old woman tells the girl, "que eu sou mulher como vbs." (p. 35) The dona recognizes her companion's state of mind simply by virtue of being a woman: "deveis ser triste." (p. 35) The 'menina and the dona suffer because they have experienced tragedy, but more to the point, they have experienced tragedy because they are women. While it is man's lot to venture forth and do battle, it is woman's to stay behind and mourn: "...Nao ha tristeza nos homens," comments the old lady. "So as mulheres sao tristes." (p. 41) Men lose themselves in activity, "andavam de un cabo para outro." (p. 41) It is not that men do not experience sadness, but that their grief is obliterated by action. If suffering is part of the human condition, then activity is a means of escape. But it not a means available to women. "As tristezas" seek out women precisely because women "nao 47

Asencio, p. 24. ^The menina's lament is hauntingly similar to that of the young jury a singer, who confides: ya mamma mio al-habibi bay-se no me tornade gar ke fareyo ya mamma in no mio 'ina' lesade

jOhmadre,miamigo se va y no vuelve! Dime que hare, madre si mi pena no afloja.

FromJ.M. Sola-Sole, Corpus depoesia mozarabe (Barcelona: Hispam, n.d.), p. 100.

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tinham para onde Ihes fugir." (p. 41) That is, sadness is the destiny of women not because they cause it but because it seeks them out. Throughout this section of the romance, the adjective coitadas is applied to women. Women are "poor things" because they bear all the burdens—not only their own, but also men's. When the fighting man returns to his women, he may be broken spiritually and physically by the hardships he has endured. It is then up to the women to absorb and heal the hurt. Once he is cured, the man will then return to his endeavors and the woman will be left to bear both her own anguish and that of her husband, brother, son or father: "Assim que padecemos dois males.. .urn que sofremos, e outro que se nao fez para nbs." (p. 41) Thus, women's suffering is eternal and unrelenting. The pain is always as intense as if it were new, for, as the dona points out, while the body may become accustomed to suffering, the spirit never does. It is woman's role to endure because she is strong, not weak. Society dictates specific roles for the sexes. It provides outlets for men that are unavailable to women: "...nao temos remedies para o mal, que os homens tern," (p. 41) It is precisely because they are unable to mask their inner feelings that women develop strength. The more one bears the more one is capable of bearing: "Que o pesar—onde ha este bem—ainda que nao aproveita para dele nos doermos, aproveita logo para se sofrer melhor." (p. 41) The dona is attracted to the menina because she recognizes in her a kindred spirit, a fellow sufferer: "tudo o que em vbs olho e cheio de tristeza, cousa a que eu sou ha mucho tempo conforme." (p. 36) Since misery attracts misery, the dona gravitates to those afflicted with misfortune, a habit that intensifies her own grief, for she suffers not only due to her own losses but due to those of others: "Coitada de mim... que para me magoar busco ainda desaventura alheias, como se as minhas nao 74

bastassem, que sao tantas, que muitas vezes nestes despovoados eii mesma me ando espantando de mim como as posso softer!" (p. 39) An intense sense of sorority, reminiscent of that of the jarya singers and their confidantes, is conveyed not only through words, but also gestures, as the old woman, sensitive to the young girl's sighs and silences, takes her hand—discreetly, in order not to embarrass her—and holds it to comfort and encourage her. The conflict between the real and the ideal becomes immediate and tangible in those scenes in which the old lady frets over her young companion, sensitive to the fact that the girl is too young to suffer so intensely, but painfully aware, too, that suffering is the inalterable destiny of women: "mas das cousas costumadas, quem se debe agravar?" (p. 44) Although each woman must bear her grief alone, she is nevertheless a member of a larger group that shares a common fate. In this sense, the menina and her companion reflect the situation of the exiled Portuguese Jews, each living a personal tragedy, each part of a larger group of sufferers. The sense of community is a source of consolation for the women, as it must have been for the Jews: "Muito me aprouve achar-vos tambem amiga da tristeza, porque nos consolaremos ambas, desconsoladas, que isto vai assim como quem e doente deumapegonha, e cura-se com outra." (p. 40) If suffering is a poison, then compassion for another woman's poison is an antidote. The choice of a feminine protagonist responds not only to the legend of Shekhinah and to the jarya tradition, but to the special spiritual role traditionally accorded to women in the Renaissance. Debates on the virtues and weaknesses of women are characteristic of the Italianate questioni and dialogs present in amatory prose of the period, and Neoplatonism epitomizes woman's role in man's spiritual redemption. Marian doctrine, too, contributes to 75

profeminine Renaissance thought. Mary's association with the Redemption and the concept of Mary as spiritual mother of all men and Mother of the Mystical Body coincide with currents of Jewish mysticism that accord a similar role to Shekhinah. In Catholic mysticism the anima or alma is associated with the feminine principal, especially as present in men.49 In Menina e mo$a, not only are sensitivity and spirituality viewed as intrinsic to women, but that aspect of men that is sensitive and spiritual is viewed as feminine as well. During her youth, points out the dona, when men were done with their fighting and could bear no more, "tornaram-se a nos, como a parte mas fraca." (p. 41) The words "como a parte mas fraca" are ambiguous. Parte can be interpreted either as "place" or as "part". Men find comfort and solace in the blandness and softness of women, but by turning to them in times of distress they also rediscover their own emotional "part." The feminism of Menina e moga reflects the spiritual and philosophical climate of Renaissance Portugal, in which a confluence of currents led to the cult of the feminine. Although courtly love undoubtedly played its part in the development of this climate, Ribeiro's attitude is not courtly. Throughout the narrative the dona distinguishes between authentic emotion and the kind of ritualistic distress flaunted by courtly lovers. In the criticism of courtly love implicit in much of the dona's commentary, there may be an occult message to Portuguese conversos feigning devotion to one mistress (the Church), while secretly serving another (Judaism), as well as a censure of a society that requires empty manifestations of an unfelt faith. The dona's disapproval of courtly love is clear from the beginning. When she was a girl, she tells the menina, she was moved by tales of sacrifices that knights made for their ladies. But soon 9

The alma is represented as a woman in the poetry of San Juan de la Cruz, for example.

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it became obvious to her that all the agonizing of knights was nothing more than artifice, that a handsomely armed knight, riding on the river bank on his gallant steed, "nao podia ir tao triste como uma delicada donzela." (p. 43) Courtly love, she concluded, was nothing more than a sham as far as men were concerned ("Mais maneira tern os cavaleiros para se mostrarem mais tristes do que sao..." (p. 43) At the same time, it forced women into the unnatural role of emotionless icons of male eroticism, unable to express their heartfelt passion. A man might pay court to a woman who returned his love but was obligated, by the rules of conduct, to conceal it. The knight had license to ride away from the supposed source of his anguish (the lady), in search of adventures, perhaps paying court to some other lady along the way, while the girl he left behind had no recourse but tears or death. Women, the old lady laments, are easily forgotten by men engaged in worldly pursuits. And whether knights triumph or die in battle, the women they leave behind suffer. Women, more than men, die in the adventures required by the code of chivalry, for their spirit and will to live are destroyed by the interminable absences. In both the Madrid and Evora versions of Menina e moga there is the implication —missing from the Ferrara version—that women abandoned by knights are driven to suicide.50 The sacrifices made by women, the dona concludes, are purer than those made by men, because a woman only dies of love for a single man while a knight is bound by the laws of chivalry to risk his life for any woman. Is there an allusion here to Shekhinah weeping for the unfaithful, the converses who abandoned her for a new object of devotion, or to the suicides that resulted from forced separations of parent from child, of individual from community, of believer from synagogue? One can only 50

* Menina, notes, p. 45.

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conjecture, but in view of historical data on the Jewish expulsion and Macedo's work on the cabalistic elements of Menina e mo$a, the hypothesis is a tempting one. like the menina's, the dona's monologue is fraught with unresolved difficulties. The story of her son's disappearance is never told. Her own circumstances are never clarified. Most notably, the tale of the dois amigos, which she mentions on several occasions, is never defined. Critics from different schools have identified the dois amigos as Bimarder and Avalor. The dona herself identifies Bimarder as one of them, but whether or not Avalor is the other is unclear. The dona specifies only that the dois amigos were loyal, idealistic knights who were murdered treacherously by knights less virtuous than they. The dona's narrative includes three male protagonists—Lamentor, Bimarder, and Avalor—no two of whom appear to be friends and none of whom is assassinated. Helder Macedo argues that within the context of the romance, amigo means lover and does not imply that the two men were necessarily each other's friends. He sees Lamentor as a kind of archetype or padrao, who, within the context of the Jewish exile, provides an example of a faithful Jew who achieves mystical union with God through woman's love, made possible by Belisa's death. The dois amigos are variations on the theme: Bimarder illustrates the faithful Jew who allows his sensual inclinations to prevent his spiritual salvation. He represents those Jews who, yielding to political pressure and the lure of material benefits, leave the fold and lose their way. Avalor, in contrast, illustrates the faithful Jew who resists material distractions to pursue the spiritual calling. Macedo postulates an ending to the romance, which Ribeiro never wrote, in which Bimarder would be reconciled with Abnia and reconverted.51 It is impossible to be certain of Ribeiro's intentions. It 51

Macedo,pp. 80-97.

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seems probable from the ending of the Ferrara edition that he planned to introduce new characters, but we cannot know whether any of these would have clarified the identities of the dois amigos. In view of the fact that friendship is a traditional theme of pastoral and of Renaissance writing in general, it is difficult to dismiss the possibility that Ribeiro might have produced a conventional "tale of two friends."52 The dona introduces a chivalric element into the romance that shifts the emphasis to action. The chivalric-pastoral episodes follow the same pattern as the menina's story: the love between a man and a woman is rendered impossible by some unforeseen obstacle imposed by fate. While the emphasis in the first part of the romance is on the menina's grief, here, the emphasis is on narrative. In the chivalric episodes, masculine characters become prominent. In the preamble, the menina hardly mentions her lover. He is more a catalyst than a character: his absence causes the sorrow that is itself the theme. The separation and not the loved-one is the focus. In the preamble, there is no reality apart from the characters' suffering. Circumstances are never clarified. In the chivalric episodes, however, the characters move within a context. The four chivalric episodes are related by the dona as examples of the misery that has always haunted the valley.53 Like the menina's, the dona's story begins with an exile. Lamentor and Belisa, accompanied by Belisa's younger sister Aonia, arrive in a valley de reinos estrangeiros, (p. 49) fleeing from the scandal of Belisa's pregnancy, which can no 5Z

See Juan Bautista Avalle Arce, "Una tradicion literaria: el cuento de los dos amigos," NRFH, 11(1957), 1-35.

53 The technique of introducing a narrative by relating it to the setting is an ancient one. In Phaedrus, Socrates and his disciple retire to the countryside near Athens, where Phaedrus, reminded of Boreas' rape of Oreithyia, which supposedly occurred nearby, asks a question that elicits a monolog by the master. See Cody, p. 71.

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longer be concealed. As in the prototype, Lamentor finds a bucolic paradise—bright spring day, trees in bloom, birds in song—only to be overtaken by an absurd and brutal fate. A knight who is guarding a bridge hurls a challenge that Lamentor is forced to accept, in spite of his inclinations and common sense. Although Lamentor is victorious, he feels sorry for the vanquished knight, recognizing that the young man acted in the name of love, which "nao vive em terra de razao." (p. 52) Things always being worse than they seem, Lamentor's challenger is not just grazed, but mortally wounded. Overcome with compassion, Lamentor tries to assist him, but the young man dies on the same litter that moments before carried the pregnant Belissa, his eyes on the castle of the lady in whose name he had protected the bridge—a lady who had never loved him. Obligation to a cruel and demanding mistress is a recurring theme in Menina e moga. The fact that the knight's death occurs eight days before the end of his assignment is significant. For both Christian and non-Christians, the number eight symbolized sanctity, regeneration, immortality, and eternal bliss. The knight's death is, in spite of its absurdity, a symbolic liberation from bondage.54 The episode illustrates the central idea of the romance: fortune is cruel and unjust; man is a pawn of fate. Lamentor comforts the dead man's squire, assuring him that vengeance will be taken, to which the servant responds, "para a morte nao ha a! vinganca." (p. 55) The squire's words ring with the quiet desperation of a man who realizes that there is no defense against destiny, no vengeance against death. The words reflect a sense of the absurd similar to that of much modern existential literature. The young knight dies a futile, heartbreaking death. like an existential antihero, he sacrifices his life for a cause, shedding his blood too soon to accomplish his mission. 54

On the meanings of-eight, see Hopper, p. 323.

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The pointlessness of his death is rendered all the more grievous by the appearance of his sister, who has come to help him celebrate the completion of his three-year guardianship of the bridge. Prepared for a joyous reunion, the girl is met by a brutal scene —the battered cadaver of her beloved brother. The girl's anguish is tinged with defiance. She wildly tears at her hair—a practice specifically prohibted in Portugal from the late fourteenth century55 —for no laws can govern expressions of pain. Her actions respond not to the demands of society but to a grief so profound that it can be manifested only through ancient rites whose origins are buried deep in custom. Equally touching is the scene in which the girl recollects her last meeting with her brother, then an enthusiastic youth just setting out on an arduous mission. Her deep sense of loss at his senseless, unjustifiable death resounds in her simple lament, "Irmao meu, que morte foi esta que assim vos levou tao asinha, que vos nao pude falar." (p. 57) What characterizes this and other moving episodes of Menina e moga is their utter simplicity. Adjectives, metaphors, hyperboles are all stripped away to reveal a raw emotion that is never diluted through the use of stylistic contrivances. In the romance, art typically distances the reader from the reality of death. Word-play reduces, even obviates the pain. As Maurice Evans points out in his discussion of Sidney's Arcadia, conceits serve to dehumanize the descriptions of death and to turn tragedy into something ornamental.56 The description of Parthenia's dead body provides an example: "...in her cheeks the whiteness striving by little and little to get upon the rosiness of them; her neck, a neck indeed of alabaster, displaying the wound, which with most dainty blood 5E

'Menina, notes, p. 57.

56

Sidney,p. 18.

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laboured to drown his own beauties, so as here was a river a purest red, there an island of perfectest white, each giving luster to the other."57

The emphasis here is on image, not feeling. The insistence on colors (white, rose, red) that compliment and enhance each other, the geographical metaphors (river, island), the suggestion of an alabaster statue all contribute to what Evans calls "the systematic transmutation of life into artifice,"58 that permits the reader to encounter death without becoming emotionally involved. In Sannazaro's Arcadia the finality of death is tempered by the concept of a self-renewing nature. The image of a happy Massilia taking pleasure in her son's song counteracts that of the weeping Ergasto. Ergasto's eclogue combines Christian and pagan ideas regarding the inevitability of death and the wisdom of accepting man's natural end not merely with resignation but with joy. Garcilaso mutes the pain of death-imposed separation in still another way. In the first eclogue the poet-lover overcomes death by projecting the image of a pagan paradise that is a recreation of the locus amoenus: Divina Elisa, pues agora el cielo con inmortales pies pisas y mides, y su mudanza ves, estando queda, por que de mi te olvidas y no pides que se apresure el tiempo en que este velo rompa del cuerpo y verme libre pueda, y en la tercera rueda, contigo mano a mano, busquemos otro llano, busquemos otros montes y otros rios, otros valles florido y sombrios

"Sidney, p. 528. 58

Sidney,p. 19.

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donde descanse y siempre pueda verte ante losojosmios, sin miedo y sobresalto de perderte ?59

Garcilaso's paradise is devoid of Christian context. It is what A.C. Spearing calls a "universal psychic archetype" common to all Western medieval and Renaissance visionary poetry.60 Garcilaso's paradise is an erotic Utopia in which lovers enjoy each other's company free of the fear of censure or separation. It is characteristic of pastoral to sublimate pain, transforming human suffering into an experience of sweet and terrible beauty. In the sentimental romance, the lover's death is tragic but predictable. He is a martyr to love, sacrificing his being to a god that renders him defenseless. In Menina e moga there is no such sublimation. The young knight's death is neither grand nor exemplary. The emphasis is not on his devotion but on the anguish of his squire and his sister, deprived of master and brother by an absurd destiny. If Sidney reveals "divine law in sensible form,"61 so does Ribeiro. But if for Sidney divine law is just and benevolent, for Ribeiro it is incomprehensible and seemingly malevolent. In tableaux after tableaux he portrays a destiny that is both capricious and indifferent to human suffering. The next stroke of misfortune is announced by a sign that does not go inadverted by the characters but is not adequately understood by them. Lamentor dreams that Belisa, unsure of his love, abandons him. Sensing that his dream is an indication of his lack of confidence, Lamentor feels guilty, although he does not grasp the full meaning of 59

Obras completas ed. Elias L. Rivers (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1964), p. 133. 60 Spearing,p. 17.

"Sidney, p. 23.

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the omen. A. C. Spearing, who has studied dreams and visions in European literature through the sixteenth century, shows that the somnium, or enigmatic dream that veils with ambiguity the information conveyed is common in both classical and Biblical writing, as is the visio, or prophetic vision.62 Lamentor's dream has elements of both. That night, Belisa goes into an early labor and dies in childbirth. One of the most poignant episodes of the romance, Belisa's death is rendered all the more touching by her concern for Lamentor. Methaphorically Everyman, Lamentor slumbers, lost in own private dreamworld. Belisa, tormented by pain, begs only that her loved-one be allowed to enjoy a few more moments of peace before awakening to the nightmare of her death. Once again, there is no attempt to distance the reader from the characters' anguish. Belisa's final words, "Chamem-no! Chamem-no!" (p. 64) are direct and simple, an expression of agony torn from a dying woman who can no longer shield her lover from the grief she must cause him. Here, it is the woman who protects the man, while he, helpless and distraught, faints away. Menina e moga is characterized not by the stylized suffering of conventional pastoral and sentimental protagonists, but by emotional authenticity. Throughout the book, the richness of detail in the descriptions of interpersonal relationships gives the characters depth. Ribeiro's protagonists display a concern for each other revealed in the gesture—a pause, a sigh, a squeezing of hands, even concern in the throes of death for a lover's sleep —that prevents them from becoming the mechanized creations of a fixed genre. There is a subtlety to these characters, a credibility that is communicated through minutiae. Aonia and Lamentor mourn and bury Belisa according to custom, a fact upon which Ribeiro insists 62

Spearing, p. 10.

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heavily. But it is not Abnia's conventional speech over the body of her dead sister that moves the reader, but Lamentor's expression of incredulousness upon learning of Belisa's unforeseen death ("Que cousa foi esta, senhora?" p. 64), and later, his expression of guilt at having taken her from her family to die alone in a strange land. (p. 71) Yet now, as after the death of the knight of the bridge, practical considerations intrude upon the characters' grief. The ama who had been attending Belisa reminds Lamentor that he must get on with the burial: "A sepultura e devida aos mortos: hao-se de fazer as cousas necessarias." (p. 70)No amount of tears will bring Belisa back, and so there is no sense in mourning endlessly. "Lembre-vos que tristeza e de todos," (p. 70) she tells him, and "temos a dor para sempre." (p. 70) Since pain is a constant companion, we cannot allow it to prevent us from going about our business. Every human being is a lamentor; Lamentor is, in this sense, no different from anyone else. The old woman's pragmatism seems jokingly unidealistic. Yet, what she preaches is strength, constancy, survival in the face of affliction. The fact that her message is reiterated repeatedly suggests that it encompasses a fundamental truth, one that Bernardim was perhaps striving to communicate to the exiled Portuguese Jews or to the converses. Lamentor at first disregards the ama's advice. As foretold in the dream, Belisa is gone and he is bereft. He identifies Belisa's will to go to heaven without him as the will of destiny, and riles against her broken promise to stay with him forever. But the ama, in a touching exchange, reminds him that life must go on. Lamentor has a baby to care for, a reason to live. If he truly loves Belisa, she tells him, he must let her go. This is the inevitable separation of spirit from matter, the return of the spirit to the Father. Man has no choice but to accept. After this scene, Lamentor all but disappears from the 85

romance. There is no sweet lamentation, no projection of a future reunion in an erotic heavenly locus amoenus. Helder Macedo argues that Belisa' death makes Lamentor's redemption possible. Yet, there is no clear indication that Lamentor has been redeemed. Rather, the focus here, as elsewhere, is on man's suffering on earth rather than on redemption in an afterlife. While Lamentor and Abnia grieve over Belisa, an anonymous knight appears. Pursuing an adventure imposed by a women to whom he is obligated by the requirements of chivalry, but to whom he feels no emotional attachment, the newcomer is drawn to Aonia. In a scene filled with psychological realism, Lamentor courteously, but firmly insists that the intruder leave. Instinctively, Lamentor knows that the stranger represents a menace and seeks to separate him from the family group. The impulsiveness of the young knight will, in fact, prove to be a menace to Aonia's purity and, consequently, to Lamentor's honor and integrity. Leaving the mourners, the stranger first tends to his horse. Ribeiro's preoccupation with details of this nature creates a kind of tug-of-war between the pragmatical and the philosophical, between the physical and the metaphysical. Even as he yearns for Aonia's beauty, the young knight must care for his steed. The scene synthesizes the conflict that characterizes the entire episode. According to both Neoplatonism and Jewish mysticism, woman is an allegory of perfect, Godly beauty. The horse is a traditional symbol of passion. Throughout his relationship with Aonia, the young knight will be torn between two dominant aspects of love: spiritual purification and desire. The knight's most immediate preoccupation is his allegiance to Aquelisia. Vigilent and jealous, she keeps constant tabs on him, relying on informants and even employing his squire as a spy. She is insatiable in her demands for demonstrations of devotion. Several critics have 86

suggested that Aquelisia is an allegory for the Church (ecclesia), to which Bimarder (the Jew) is bound by obligation rather than heartfelt devotion.63 The db/z^-narrator interrupts the episode to offer one of her infrequent commentaries on the action. Riling against the requirements of chivalry, she insists that obligations imposed on a lover are never repaid by heartfelt devotion. The message that love cannot be forced acquires a special significance when considered within the historical framework of the Portuguese Jews pressured by the Church to convert. The dona condemns the system that causes women who love sincerely (unlike Aquelisia) to suffer. Decorum requires women to display disdain. They are not only deprived of the opportunity to express their deepest feelings, but, paradoxically, risk alienating their suitors by demanding proofs of devotion that elicit mechanical compliance rather than inspiring true love. The reintroduction of the dona serves as a signal, an asterisk. A messenger of truth, it is she who reiterates the distinction between true love and empty rite. The young knight, now ready to recognize his love for Abnia, determines to abandon Aquelisia and manages to get rid of the squire. It is at this point that a second visionary episode occurs. A mysterious shadow warns him that he will never be free from persecution, even if he changes name and environment. The supernatural being appears at a critical moment. The knight is about to discard his old identity and embark on a new life. The vision is an oraculum, in which an authority figure —in this case, a spirit from the Otherworld—conveys essential information.64 The spirit's appearance is an indication of the transcendental nature of the knight's decision. He has opted to abandon K

Menina, notes, p. 74.

64

See Spearing, p. 10.

the hypocrisy of empty rites and follow his heart. But faith demands sacrifice. The road will be rugged. The voice from the Otherworld implies that the insurgent against the imposed order—be it the code of chivalry or the religious establishment—will never be free from persecution. More important still, although the young man may change his name and his allegiance, he will never be free of his passionate nature. It is this that will cause his downfall. The circumstances leading up to the naming of the knight are equally prophetic. A woodsman appears out of a burning forest and utters the words "Bin m'arder." The knight transposes some of the letters—an act that recalls the cabalistic preoccupation with extracting secret truths from holy texts through the systematic rearrangement of letters — and decides on the name Bimarder, which evokes not only his passion for Abnia, but, as Maria de Lourdes Saraiva suggests, the fires of the Inquisition ,65 Like prototypical pastoral and sentimental lovers, Bimarder pines for an unknown lady, whom fantasy, imagination and memory contrive to make into an obsession. Although Bimarder has barely seen Abnia, the psychological mechanism is in gear. The doce tristeza that characterizes Italianate pastoral becomes evident (p. 80). For the first time in the romance, malaise is specifically erotic and afflicts a male character. Disguised as a shepherd, Bimarder takes up residence in the valley where, sick with love, he venerates Abnia but keeps his distance. In spite of the similarities between Bimarder and his pastoral counterparts, the tone of the episode is far more similar to the sentimental romance than to pastoral, for, while Arcadia is governed by a benign providence, the locus of Bimarder's story is imbued with a sense of doom. A series of omens forecast disaster. An ominous shadow K

Menina, notes, p. 79-

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announces Bimarder's ruin. The knight's first impulse is to reach for his sword —just as Lamentor did at the moment of Belisa's death—but Bimarder realizes that his arms are worthless against the supernatural. To fight is an act of self-determination, an effort to take one's destiny into one's own hand; the sword is a symbol of strength and will. But against destiny, there is no defense. Moments later, Bimarder's horse is senselessly attacked by wolves, portending the bad end to which his passion will come. As elsewhere in the romance, danger lurks everywhere, sowing chaos, ravaging hope, wrecking plans. Confronted with his own impotence in the face of destiny, what can man do but resign himself? After the death of his horse, Bimarder is aided by some shepherds, whose appearance he interprets as a sign he is to become a shepherd, too. The pastor maior, whom Bimarder will serve, is a kind spiritual guide and wiseman whose observations serve to reiterate the central message of the romance. He is not a wizard in the tradition of Enareto, but a sage whose knowledge is the product of observation and experience. Amid descriptions of the peasants and their huts, the fundamental truth of human existence reverberates. The pastor maior conveys his wisdom in the guise of comments on the risks of grazing in open fields: "Assim como cria o bom, cria o mau." (p. 83) Since the bad grows with the good—the fox with the sheep, the wolf with the calf—there is no protection against danger. Peril is inherent to the natural scheme, for "nao ha os maus senao onde ha os bons, nem ha ladrbes senao onde ha que furtar." (p. 83) Saddest of all, man often unwittingly brings misfortune upon himself, as did Bimarder, who rode so lost in thought that he was unaware of the dangers to which he exposed his steed. Indeed, that grief we cause ourselves is the hardest to bear: "Podemos sofrer melhor o mal que nos faz outrem que 89

o que nbs otros fazemos a nos mesmos." (p. 84) The same pessimism expressed by the menina early in the romance echoes throughout the old shepherd's discourse. Clearly, life and not love is the theme of the romance. Tormented by nightmares and premonitions, Bimarder nevertheless opts to stay on in the valley as the old man's servant. His decision is temerarious. Dreams reveal divine truths, and Bimarder has disregarded the omens. In the locus amoenus, the distinction between this world and the other is blurred. Supernatural beings become accessible through dreams, and providence becomes tangible through signs. It is at this point that the landscape is most conventionally bucolic, and yet, the atmosophere is not pastoral at all. Rather than harmony, the protagonist senses foreboding. Everywhere there are omens that he must not stay. Yet, doggedly, he pursues his plan. He learns to play the flute with such expertise that he is known as "o pastor da frauta." (p. 86) With skill and artifice he imitates the rustic language of the shepherds. Being of noble blood and refined manner, he combines his courtly sensibility with country simplicity to produce exquisite expressions of his amorous frustration, singing songs so beautiful that they reduce both singer and listener to tears. Like the Italianate pastorals, the episode is filled with sighs and sweet yearning. Here, for the first time, the protagonist is a poet. Bimarder sings a vilancete, a lamentation that dwells on the lover's unhappiness, his estrangement from nature, his inability to find a refuge from grief, and the malevolence of fortune. The song is imbued with a deep existential anguish capsulized in the final line: "nao sei para que nasci." (p. 94) This is one of the few poetic interludes in Menina e moga, which, unlike Italian and Spanish pastoral romances, does not consist of a series of poems strung together by prose passages. The eclogue was a form that Bernardim Ribeiro mastered. He produced exquisite examples of bucolic

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poetry. Yet, he incorporated no idyllic verse into Menina e moga, a further indication that, in spite of their shepherdly accouterment, Bernardim's characters are not intrinsically pastoral. For the most part, Ribeiro's characters, like those of other sixteenth-century romances, do not evolve psychologically. Each tableaux reveals a temporal fragment, rather than an extended view of growth and development. The exception is Aonia. So inexperienced at the beginning of the episode that she lacks the skills to mourn Belisa properly and therefore looks to the sister of the knight of the bridge for a model, Aonia develops within the duration of the narrative from a state of childhood innocence to womanly cunning. Taken to be raised by the ama, the midwife who attended her sister, Aonia is oblivious to the joys and perils of love. When Bimarder first appears at the time of Belisa's death, Aonia hardly notices him. Much of the remainder of the episode focuses on Abnia's erotic awakening. The ama views Bimarder's presence in the valley with anxiety. His songs are too sweet, too entreating. She herself is deeply moved by them. With psychological precision Ribeiro describes the amds attempts to eradicate the lovesick shepherd—and the danger he represents to Aonia—from her consciousness. Sighing, blinking back tears, she busies herself with domestic tasks in order to block out his song. Suspicious that the newcomer is not a shepherd at all, she does her best to protect the girl. Anxiety mounts as the ill-fatedness of the affair is presaged in a somber passage in which Bimarder sees the shadow of his own death. But there is no protection against destiny. From the moment Aonia becomes aware of Bimarder's presence, her transformation from girl to woman begins. With great delicacy and perspicacity Ribeiro traces Aonia's Melibea-like

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metamorphosis, which begins with sleepless nights and restless days that the girl herself cannot explain. Her malaise becomes acute when she witnesses from her window a frightening scene in which Bimarder is attacked by a raging bull. Although Abnia is not in danger and Bimarder is saved by his own herd, the experience leaves the girl agitated. Maria de Lourdes Saraiva points out that the episode may have an occult significance. The word toura (Torah) designates the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Old Testament, especially sacred to the Jews. The bull became a sign associated with Jews, and several persons were denounced to the Inquisition on the grounds that they possessed touras, that is, figures of bulls (touros] that were supposedly symbols of their true faith.66 According to Saraiva, in the struggle against adversity, Bimarder is protected by his Torah, his faith. But, in the end, his inability to impose self-control pulls him down. Abnia, still unconscious of the cause of her discontent, is attracted, in spite of her careful upbringing and better judgment, to Bimarder. The ama's efforts to conceal the truth about the Bimarder's background, which she learns through gossip, fail, for Abnia overhears the story and finds that every bit of new information contributes to her fascination with the stranger. Giving rein to her imagination, which, in turn, stimulates her passion, she abandons her efforts to resist. Delighted, yet confused, she yields slowly, unable to grasp completely the significance of the changes that the handsome new shepherd is working on her psyche. Ribeiro's portrait of a young girl coming to terms with her own erotic feelings is one of the most sensitive to be found in a sixteenth-century romance. But the mad attraction between Bimarder and Abnia is essentially unhealthy. Abnia is the wrong solution for Bimarder, who has abandoned Aquelisia only to yield to K

Menina, notes, p. 98.

carnal passion. There has been ample foreshadowing of the ultimate failure of the affair. The sad solam that the ama sings to her charge, reiterates the familiar message: women are born to suffer. The song summarizes Abnia's life, beginning with the tragic circumstances of her birth ("Como vos criarei, vos, ftlha estrangiera em terra estranha!" p. 65) Dramatized by poignant images of the ama bathing the new-born in her own tears, the song stresses Aonia's rootlessness and makes evident her role as an extension or variation of the menina and of Belisa. Like them, she is an exile, "Nada em dor, em dor crescida." (p. 104) like them, she is beautiful—a treasure of grace—and in peril. And like them, she is doomed to unhappiness. From this point on, the atmosphere becomes increasingly heavy, ominous, pessimistic. The ama, well aware of the cause of Aonia's turmoil even before the girl herself is, expatiates on women's lot. Like the dona, she is the girl grown old. She is experience, wisdom, truth. Her monologue contains both a warning and a moral lesson. It is a condemnation of chivalresque idealism, which causes women to suffer more than men by forcing them to risk more by expressing their love. It is also a warning against hope, which is too often vain. The conflict here, as elsewhere in the romance, is between imposed compliance to a rigid standard of behavior and adherence to sincerely felt sentiments. A person must act out of honest conviction, asserts the ama, because if all goes right, he will be praised, but if not, he will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he acted righteously. There is no Christian optimism in this message, no hope of justice from a benevolent Almightly, only a plea for moral integrity. In a world full of grief, concludes the ama, the best one can hope for is a sorrow that is bearable. If there is a message here intended for the exiled Jewish community, it is certainly readily accessible.

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The ama pleads with Aonia not to be her own enemy. In the struggle between man and adversity, the danger exists that the individual will take sides against himself. Aonia turns a deaf ear. Unable to sleep for days, she now blocks out the ama's message by dozing off. Too young and inexperienced to appreciate her guardian's wisdom, she slides deeper and deeper into confusion. like Calderon's Nina de Gomez Arias, "Ela era rnoga, e nunca se vira ainda noutra tal." (p. 109)67 Aonia's rejection of the ama's advice is a pivotal point. The ama has preached moral integrity, but Aonia has succumbed to lust. Just as the dona and menina represent woman at two different ages, so do the ama and Aonia. The ama, made wise through experience, is a mother figure unlike any in conventional sentimental or pastoral romances. A portrait of feminine domesticity, the ama bustles around her house, engaged in household chores. Her language is conversational, her attitude, homey. She is, perhaps, a projection of what the passionate Aonia is to become. Both Bimarder and Aonia smoulder with anticipation. He bears the anguish better than she because as a man, "poderia con ela." (p. 109) Aonia attempts to lose herself in household chores, but, in the end, it is she who surrenders to temptation and makes the first move. Just as woman is the bridge to salvation, she is the lure to perdition. The significance of the turn of events is marked by the intervention of the