Iberia (51 page)

 

If Córdoba is the apex of the Romantic Movement because of
Don Alvaro, or The Force of Destiny
, Sevilla is the popular capital
because of the works which have used this city as their locale. The
story of
Carmen
takes place in Sevilla and one needs no
imagination to see the gypsy lounging in the doorway of the old
tobacco factory, second largest building in Spain and now used
as part of the university. Spaniards profess to be irritated by the
attention given
Carmen
throughout the rest of the world and
claim that it damages the image of Spain, but I have noticed that
whenever a Spanish impresario needs a full house, he puts on
Carmen
. One of the greatest performances came in the bullring
at Sevilla; when the brigands filtered onto the stage they came
with lanterns from all parts of the ring, and in the gala scenes
carriages with prancing horses and three hundred extras filled
the ring. Say the Spanish intellectuals with resignation, ‘
Carmen
is the cross each Spaniard has to bear.’ But others confess, ‘We’re
just bitter that it took two Frenchmen to invent her.’
Naturally, it was here that
The Barber of Seville
plied his trade
and went forth to conquer the theaters of the world. Many other
works of a romantic turn have centered on this city, but the most
seminal was a curious play which appeared in print, without
fanfare, for the first time in 1630, although it may have been on
the boards for as long as fifteen to twenty years. Since then many
people have wished that they could have been in the audience on
opening night, whenever it was, to see the birth of what has
become the most ubiquitous legend in world drama, yet one
whose significance has never been adequately explained.
This fateful play was
El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
,
and I have left the title in Spanish because of the difficulty English
translators have faced with the second word. Obviously we are
speaking of the standard hero of the play, and he was a burlador,
or one who engages in burlas. Any standard Spanish-English
dictionary shows that a burla is a joke, a jest, a trick, a sneer, a
gibe, a mockery, a taunt, a scoff, so we are here dealing with what
we might call a prankster, and this accounts, I think, for the
erroneous titles which English-speaking translators have used:
The Rogue of Seville
, or Mocker, or Rake. Actually, in Spanish
daily life a burlador is a seducer of women and the title should
only be
The Seducer of Seville
, which is not only alliterative but
also pertinent to the action. Why English translators have shied
away from this simple word, I do not know.

 

Who is this seducer? We meet him at the medieval court of the
King of Naples, where his uncle serves as Spanish ambassador.
He is leaving the bedroom of a duquesa whom he has seduced in
the royal palace by posing as her future husband. This incurs royal
displeasure, so he flees to Spain, where he is shipwrecked on the
Catalan coast and saved by a lovely fishergirl who nurses him
back to health and whom he seduces with promises of marriage.
He moves on to the court of the Castilian King at Sevilla, where
his father is chancellor and where his servant announces that for
the good of all maidens a public crier should precede his master
with the proclamation, ‘Let all beware of a man who deceives
women and is the seducer of Spain.’ The king has learned of the
Naples escapade but forgives him, with the stipulation that he
marry the duquesa, but before this can be arranged he enters by
trickery the house of a noble lady loved by a friend of his and
attempts to seduce her. When her father, the Comendador de
Calatrava, rushes in to protect her honor, the seducer kills him.
He now flees to a nearby town, where he thrusts himself into the
midst of a local wedding and, with a violent promise of marriage,
seduces the intended bride. As the duquesa and the fishergirl
appear at court to complain to the king, the seducer returns to
Sevilla, and chancing upon the tomb of the Comendador, with a
show of bravado seizes the stone statue by the beard and invites
it to dine with him that night, which explains the second part of
the play’s title: convidado de piedra (guest of stone). To his
astonishment, even though he has had a table set as his part of
the bargain, the statue appears, eats, then invites the seducer to
dine the following night in its chapel, on which they shake hands.
Although the seducer notes a certain unearthly quality in the
handshake, his pundonor obligates him to keep the appointment.
At the conclusion of the meal, which has consisted of scorpions,
vipers and wine of bile and vinegar, the statue extends its hand,
which is taken, whereupon host and guest sink down amid sound
and fury into the fires of hell.

 

Thus appears for the first time in the theater Don Juan Tenorio,
hero-villain of demonic proportions. Imagine the reincarnations
he is to have. In France, Molière (1665) and Corneille (1677) will
produce plays on his life, while at a later date Mérimée, Dumas
and De Musset will base stories on his legend. In Italy there will
be several versions, the best being Goldoni’s (1730). In England,
Shadwell (1676) will construct a play on the subject, which Purcell
(1676) will use as the basis for an opera, and Byron (1819) will
borrow the theme for his major poem. In Germany three
distinguished musical versions will appear: Gluck (1760), Mozart
(1787) and Richard Strauss (1899). In Spain the recensions will
be numerous, until in 1844 a dramatist of whom we shall speak
later will construct of the legend a play which will become Spain’s
national drama, a kind of
Hamlet
and
Faust
combined.
I cannot recommend too highly the original version of this
legend. It was written by an ingratiating friar, Tirso de Molina,
nom de plume of Gabriel Téllez (1571?-1648), thought to be the
illegitimate son of some noble family and the author of four
hundred plays, of which nearly ninety are extant. In many ways
Friar Tirso’s account of Don Juan excels anything that followed,
even Mozart’s
Don Giovanni
, because it is a hard, clean,
unsentimental play with terrific impact. It is realism ahead of its
time; ironically, it was to serve as the source of much romanticism.
The scenes move rapidly and with a grand fatality; the character
of the seducer develops properly and those about him are well
differentiated; and the device of the marble statue is used with
stunning effectiveness. The style of writing is most attractive, a
lean statement not overburdened with simile but filled with salty
observation. One matter is of particular importance: although
this original version was written by a friar, it does not, like some
of the later accounts, end in an orgy of religious reconciliation.
Don Juan dies a cynical, tough rogue. At the final banquet with
his stone host he dares retribution to over-take him:

‘What do you call this dish, Sir?’

 

‘Scorpions and vipers. These are our foods. Aren’t you eating?’
‘I’d eat it if it were all the asps in hell.’

His only concession comes in his next to last speech, and it was
on this that the later versions built their scenes of redemption:
‘Then let me call someone to confess and absolve me.’ To which
the statue replies, ‘You have thought of it too late.’

Tirso’s version has a classic dignity. It was apparently written
about the time of Shakespeare’s death (1616) and shows Tirso to
have been rather less inventive and poetic than his English
contemporary, but in the use of characters from everyday life he
is as good. Actually, the form of the play and its development
remind one of Racine and Corneille, who followed him. It makes
a strong impression on stage, the flow of scenery and costume
being particularly attractive, but it requires a strong actor to carry
the role of Don Juan. He cannot burlesque it or play it as a dandy;
he must be more like the resolute hero of a western movie than
a fancy gentleman in lace and ruffles. He is, indeed, the archetype
of the hero-villain and should be played as such.

Excellent as the Tirso original was, so far as Spain was
concerned it remained merely one more good play among the
hundreds produced in this period and it appeared in the theater
no more often than any of the minor works of Lope de Vega, who
died just about the time when Tirso’s play was published. But in
1844 something happened, of itself of no significance but of great
accidental importance. A romantic playwright named José Zorrilla
y Moral (1817-1893), the darling of the theater at that time,
produced

Don Juan Tenorio
, a metrical version in full-blown
romantic style. It was a sloppy play filled with so many
improbabilities that any critic could tear it apart, as many did.
The author himself termed it ‘the greatest nonsense ever written’
and listed the dozen or so points at which it violated dramatic
canons and psychological reason. And yet it was touched with
flashes of true poetry that tugged at the sentiments; it was
flamboyantly staged and excited the imagination, and in some
curious way that has never been explained, it evoked a sense of
Spain, and in its bombast people of all degrees could see
themselves. It leaped into prominence and has ever since retained
a hold on the Spanish imagination, both in Spain and in the New
World.

Zorrilla’s Don Juan is an astonishing man to have become the
hero of a nation. Before attempting to guess why this has
happened let me assert briefly that it has; intellectuals today in
Spain will try to pooh-pooh the idea and say, ‘Don Juan Tenorio?
No one takes him seriously any more,’ but I have talked with too
many Spaniards to accept that easy dismissal. Toward the end of
October, for reasons which I will describe later, newspapers across
Spain carry full-page analyses of Don Juan and find a surprising
number of public figures to admit that he is their hero. ‘Tenorio
lives the way a hero should, not giving a damn for anyone, and
when it comes time to die he dies like a man.’‘Tenorio is Spain.
I feel very much like Tenorio. I hope I can stand up to adversity
the way he did.’‘Estupendo! I vote for Don Juan.’‘What I like
about Tenorio is the way he was willing to fight anybody for any
reason. The bit about the girls? Well, a man couldn’t get away
with that today. At least not so much, but men are fundamentally
like that. He’s my hero.’ The statements go on and on. I have
more than fifty before me as I write, and some are much more
revealing than the commonly heard ones which I have quoted.
Today Zorrilla’s Don Juan has practically the same power over
the imagination of the Spanish male, at least certain males, that
he did when he first appeared in 1844.

What changes did Zorrilla introduce to account for the
popularity of his hero? Well, the setting remains much the same
but the time has been advanced from the indiscriminate
fourteenth century to the heroic 1550s, when Carlos V was king
and Spain was on the move. In the play there is a sense of Spain’s
new greatness and some of this rubs off on Don Juan. This time
the curtain rises on an inn in Sevilla, where Don Juan sits writing
a letter to his intended bride, Doña Inés, on whom he has not set
eyes, since according to custom she has been hidden away as a
novice in a convent. He is masked, for it is carnival, and is awaiting
the arrival of his friend Don Luis Mejía, with whom he made a
wager a year ago ‘as to which could commit in a year more evil.’
This is the night for casting up accounts. Unexpectedly Don Juan’s
father and the Comendador de Calatrava, father of Doña Inés
arrive separately, also masked, and take chairs in a side room so
as to overhear what this disreputable young man is up to. Don
Luis appears; the bettors unmask; and they proceed to report on
their behavior. Don Juan says that he chose Italy as his theater of
operations and in Rome fixed the following notice to his door:

Here is Don Juan Tenorio,

 

For anyone who seeks anything of him.

 

When forced to flee from Rome because of his evil reputation,
he repaired to Naples, where he posted another sign:

Here is Don Juan Tenorio

 

And there is no man his equal.

 

From the haughty princess

 

to the lowly fisherwoman

 

all women are fair prey;

 

and he will undertake anything

 

if it involves gold or valor.

 

Let troublemakers seek him out;

 

let anyone who dares come forth

 

to see if anyone can best him

 

in gaming, dueling or making love.

When his extended list of accomplishments is compared with
that of Don Luis, it is seen that Don Juan has won, with thirty-two
men murdered in duels and seventy-two women seduced. Don
Luis admits himself the loser but points out that Don Juan’s list
lacks one type of seduction to make it strictly first-class, that of
a novice about to take vows as a nun. Don Juan leaps at the
challenge and says that for good measure he’ll add an additional
category, the intended bride of some good friend. Don Luis
proposes a time limit of twenty days, but Don Juan says that six
will be sufficient, because he does not require much time per
woman:

One to make love to them,

 

another to enjoy them,

 

another to get rid of them,

 

two to replace them,

 

and an hour to forget them.

With supreme arrogance he climaxes his boast with the
announcement that the bride whom he will ravish shall be none
other than Doña Ana, Don Luis’ betrothed. At this dreadful
statement the two men in the side room have heard enough. The
comendador, convinced that his intended son-in-law is a monster,
announces that Don Juan’s engagement to Doña Inés is ended,
whereupon Don Juan says that the novice he must seduce shall
be Doña Inés. At this blasphemy his father disowns him with the
words, ‘You were never my son.’