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Ideal Love and Human Reality in Montemayor's La Diana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

T. Anthony Perry
T. Anthony Perry*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut, Storrs
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Abstract

As an abstraction from the conditions of real life, the pastoral mode permits both heightened esthetic contemplation and concentrated study of human love. Such removal from reality is related to music, myth, and nature. The peculiarity of La Diana consists in an attempt to fuse the neo-aristotelian antithesis between poetry (myth) and history. For Montemayor, love and virtue are mysterious gifts of nature which man preserves through effort. But if man serves love, high feelings mark the nobleman. In a social context such sentimental aristocracy must be proved in the form of a trial of love. Felismena's contradictory behavior may be understood as an amorous despair—the hardest of trials—that is nevertheless willed. Similar conclusions arise from viewing Belisa's dreams as symbolic projections (the paradigm for which is Felicia's potion—a symbol of rebirth). A symbolic interpretation of the magical dream induced by Alfeo reveals Belisa's desire to kill her lover (will to trial) without suffering his permanent loss. Such psychotic tendencies are stemmed by the goddess Felicia, who allegorically reinstitutes the desire for happiness and its pursuit in the world of reality through self-renunciation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 227 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 For La Diana I follow the edition of F. Lopez Estrada, 3rd ed. (Madrid, 1962), “Clásicos Castellanos,” No. 127.

2 La Pastorale: essai d'analyse littéraire (Assen, 1950), p. 188. See also Bruce Wardropper, “The Diana of Monte-mayor: Revaluation and Interpretation,” SP, xlviii (1951), 126–144.

3 La novela pastoril españala (Madrid, 1959), p. 81.

4 A second and related irony is in the character of Diana herself. Unfaithful to her first love and “mal casada,” her natural beauty and manners remain exemplary in their perfection (“exemplary” is a possible meaning of “poetic” in neo-aristotelian criticism ; see Américo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes, Madrid, 1925, pp. 29–30). It is she who chastises Sylvano because he has allowed his attention to stray from the one worthy occupation: praise of love and beauty (p. 272). Diana is Montemayor's cautious experiment in courtly love, in her wanderings from her husband and especially in her role of belle inconnue or, better still, belle absence qui fait souffrir.

5 See Gustavo Correa, El Templo de Diana en la novela de Jorge de Montemayor (Bogotá, 1961), p. 13, n. 11.

6 J. B. Avalle-Arce (p. 79, n. 58) rejects Lapesa's concept of “desrealizaciôn” and prefers to speak of “una ‘pastorilización’ de la realidad, en la que los valores de esta se transmutan—y ganan en uhiversalidad—al pasar de la Historia al Mito.”

7 An extreme example of this is A. Solé-Leris, “The Theory of Love in the Two Dianas: A Contrast,” BHS, xxxvi (1959), 65–79.

8 Against Solé-Leris' peculiar assertion that “the theory of extraordinary reason never comes into the Diana at all” (p. 77), one need only reread Diana, pp. 195–198. The further and consequent claim that through this putative omission “Montemayor drastically distorts his thought to suit his own point of view” (p. 77) is unintelligible. Like Leone Ebreo before him, Montemayor tried to account for both sides of the paradox wherein love can be both irrational and reasonable in a higher sense. Far from being a “last minute expedient” which was “shamefacedly conjured up” (pp. 77–78), the theory of extraordinary reason was grasped in its higher rationality and made the doctrinal core of La Diana.

9 Is Felicia's doctrine any different from the perfect love attributed by Coomaraswamy to the troubadours as the deepest meaning of their courtly love? Consider the love song of Chandidas, which combines wild devotion with perfect selflessness: “I have taken refuge at your feet, my beloved. When I do not see you my mind has no rest. You are to me as a parent to a helpless child. You are the goddess herself—the garland about my neck—my very universe. All is darkness without you, you are the meaning of my prayers. I cannot forget your grace and your charm— and yet there is no desire in my heart” (Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva, New York, 1957, p. 127; italics mine). For desire implies, as the reader of Leone Ebreo knew, consciousness of a lack on the part of the lover. But to love the person entirely for herself (sin esperar otro interesse), this alone is perfect selflessness. Felicia's doctrine is hermetic because it is an absolute ideal, never fully understood because never perfectly experienced. Further parallels may be found in Peter Dronke's excellent reappraisal of courtly love, Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric, i (Oxford, 1965). Relevant to our discussion of ideal love are the following: the unity of human and divine love—“you are the goddess herself”—(pp. 5–7, 66–69) ; love as a school of perfection (“one must love ‘by Love‘—lovingly, not calculatingly,” p. 34) ; love as a quality of mind rather than a passing emotion (pp. 37, 85); the paradox of a suffering that is also serene and even joyful (pp. 36–38).

10 See G. Correa, El Templo de Diana en la novela de Jorge de Montemayor, p. 18.

11 Paul Bénichou finds this aristocratic and “feudal” conception of life dominant in the France of Louis XIII: “Ce qui frappe d'abord, chez ces écrivains comme chez Corneille, c'est le ton exalté, l'attitude glorieuse des héros qu'ils offrent en modèles au public. Ni la contrainte, ni le silence des désirs ne semblent être le partage des ‘grandes âmes’ comme on les conęoit alors; chez toutes s'épanouit la même forme glorieuse et ostentatoire du sublime, le même étalage des puissances du moi, le même grandissement moral de l'orgueil et de l'amour” (Morales du grand siècle, Paris, 1948, p. 16).

12 “Persons of high birth” is Otis Green's translation of “personas de suerte” (p. 170). See Spain and the Western Tradition, ii (Madison, Wis., 1964), 327.

13 In view of this I cannot agree with Wardropper's belief that the relationship between generations in La Diana is harmonious, that amorous and filial duties are “of equal validity” (“The Diana of Montemayor: Revaluation and Interpretation,” p. 137). The quality of Diana's love is disturbing. She tries to conceal her bitterness over the fact that no one loves her any more: “puesto caso que ella uviesse

querido a Sireno más que a su vida y a Sylvano le uviesse aborrecido, más le pesava del olvido de Sylvano, por ser cosa de otra [i.e., because he belonged to someone else] . . . que del olvido de Sireno a quien no movia ningn pensamien to nuevo“ (pp. 266–267). Such jealousy over another's happiness, such a vanity that prefers the hated lover, simply because he is inaccessible, to the supposedly true beloved, is not very edifying. It seems that Diana's exclusion from the Temple of Chastity is due not to filial devotion but rather to her failures as a lover. The case for harmony between generations is hard to document. Arsileo competes with his father Arsenio for Belisa's affections. Belisa's origins are not disclosed. Felismena's parents die in her infancy, and she casts her good name and theirs to the winds as she pursues her lost Felis (p. 105).

14 Gustavo Correa writes: “Lospastures . . . consideran que los trabajos (tormentos) son tîtulo de honra en proporciôn a las dificultades y a la intensidad del sufrimiento. … El tormento amoroso equivale asi a la ejecuciôn de hazañas notables (comp. los trabajos de Hércules) y en tal virtud adquiere una dimensión de heroicidad” (p. 16).

16 In a similar vein Mario Casella (Il Chisciotte, i, Firenze, 1938, 425) speaks of the potion as a “mezzuccio meccanico.” Fer Américo Castro (El pensamiento de Cervantes, p. 151), Cervantes' criticism inveighs against Montemayor's “frivolity” in trying to change the powerful impulse of love with a simple gulp of water.

18 In Brihadaranyaka Vpanishad, ii, some distinctions are drawn between the states of waking and deep sleep. Swami Nikhilananda (The Upanishads, in, New York, 1956, 157—158) explains that the notions of action, agency, and result “which are the results of past action, are not experienced in deep sleep.” In such a state the soul “remains in its undifferentiated, natural, absolute self” (p. 158).

17 Felicia's lesson to the lovers is an allegorical transposition of the author's admonition to Leriano in Diego de San Pedro's Cárccl de amor (ed. S. Gili y Gaya, Madrid, 1958, p. 139) : “de tu pena te veo gloriar. Segund tu dolor, gran corona es para ti que se diga que touiste esfueręo para sofrirlo. Los fuertes en las grandes fortunas muestran mayor coraęôn. . . . Cata que con larga vida todo se alcanęa; ten esperanęa en tu fe.”

18 I am thinking especially of Rudel's amor de lonh, where the antithesis between cupiditas and satisfaction is final. Consummation destroys the charm of desire, and it is by desire that man lives. See Leo Spitzer, L'Amour lointain de Jaufré Rudel et le sens de la poésie des troubadours (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1944), pp. 8–10. Whereas the beloved, in Monte-mayor's view, is a real person, for Rudel the Other is beyond existence, by definition unattainable. Dronke discusses this question (Medieval Latin, pp. 48–49) and decides that amor purus is not essentially related to amour courtois. Of interest to Montemayor's ideal of marital felicity is Dronke's further assertion that divorce and amour courtois are only casually connected (pp. 46–48).