The Confluence of the Mythic, Artistic, and Psychic Creation in Valera’s «Doña Luz»

Gilberto Paolini

Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana

There is a long and complex tradition in the world of mythology, superstition, legend, and saga in which human creation, instead of being caused by physical union, is brought about by a phenomenon: a dream, a vision, gazing, the wind, the sense of smell, etc. In the world of classical literature, there are examples in which a woman’s gazing at a painting or sculpture causes in her unborn child a transformation which reflects the observed work of art. In modern Spanish literature, Juan Valera, the nineteenth-century «classical» novelist, in his novel Doña Luz (1879), while encompassing the aforementioned concepts of creativity, shifts the creative power from an exterior force to the conscious psyche of Doña Luz herself, thus causing a transformation in her unborn child, who will in essence resemble the man whom Doña Luz loves instead of the natural father.

Valera’s creative process in Doña Luz is complex because it draws its inspiration from superstition, from pagan as well as Christian legend, from art, and from both ancient and modern literature. All these forces are brought to life by his creative power, which reflects not only his enormous knowledge but also the Christian/pagan attitude so often encountered in his works. It is appropriate, therefore, to approach this study by scanning the centuries chronologically and episodically in order to illustrate the multi-faceted phenomena mentioned above as they relate to Valera’s Doña Luz.

The word «incarnation», derived from the Latin incarnare, means «to make flesh». «Flesh» is taken to mean the physical and psychological aspect of a human being. In Christianity, the term specifically refers to the human form taken by the Second Person of the Trinity as Jesus of Nazareth in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Nevertheless, the concept of incarnation, which is a fundamental and well defined tenet of Christianity, is indeed more ancient and more widespread than Christianity itself¹. The ancient Egyptians believed that the pharaoh was an incarnate deity. Many bas-relief scenes graphically depict how the divine birth was achieved². Divine incarnation is also a basic tenet of Hinduism, in which ten incarnations of Vishnu are acknowledged. One of these incarnations is Buddha (V century B.C.). In Buddhist metaphysics we find a change that is of immense value for this study. The incarnation of Buddha is accomplished when Queen Maya has a vision of a white elephant entering her body, and thus she conceived without profanation. The birth of Buddha is as immaculate as his conception in that his mother gives birth through her right side and without pain³.

From the multiple legends and sagas from different parts of the world, one learns that fertilization or impregnation can occur by drinking water or other liquids, by eating fish, fruit, leaves, flowers, and even parcels of dead corpses, or by touching flowers, herbs, and other things⁴. There are also many versions of legends in which conception is accomplished by the rays of the sun. This calls to mind the famous story of Perseus. When Acrisios learned from the oracle that he would be killed by the son of his daughter, Danae, he had her put into a bronze chamber and kept there so that she might not bear a son. But Zeus fell in love with Danae and descended from the roof in a shower of gold, and she gave birth to a son, Perseus⁵.

In many sagas the power of conception has been given to the sense of smell. In a Chinese tale, a girl holding a fragrant herb called heng-wei was caused to conceive. According to a mid-thirteenth century poem written in Old French by a priest at Valenciennes, Abraham planted in his garden the Tree of Knowledge which God had flung out of Paradise after the Fall. Abraham’s daughter became pregnant by the scent of a blossom broken from the tree and bore Phanuel, from whom the Virgin Mary descended⁶. Pliny the Elder, in his Historia naturalis, states that according to an ancient belief, partridges are impregnated in exactly the same way: by the sense of smell. He says: «If the female only stands opposite to the male, while the wind is blowing from that direction she will become impregnated;... The female will conceive also from the action of the air, as the male flies above her»⁷.

In the legends of the Far East, it is not uncommon to find that divine or quasi divine beings exercise their phallic power by means of looks, as is the case in this Laotian legend set eighteen thousand years before the coming of Buddha:

The inhabitants of the Marquesa Islands, which form part of French Polynesia, report that the god Taaroa and his wife Apouvaru «looked steadfastly at one another, with the result that Apouvaru became a mother. She brought into the world a son; and the visual intercourse being repeated, she brought forth a second son. After repeating it again, she brought forth a daughter»⁹.

There is a dramatic transition from impregnation caused by the exterior power of the five senses to the inner power of the will. Even though the will may be supernaturally bestowed, it is, nevertheless, exercised by human beings. The popular story of «Peruonto», found in the collection Pentamerone (1634), written by the sixteenth-century Italian, Giambattista Basile (1575-1632), illustrates this point well. Peruonto, a simpleton, on his way to cut wood in the forest, comes across three youths who are asleep and perspiring in the hot sun. Peruonto takes pity on them and shades their heads with oak branches. When the youths awaken, they endow the simpleton with the power of obtaining anything he wants by merely wishing for it. Peruonto makes a huge bundle of wood and exercises his newly-acquired power by wishing that he be carried home on the bundle. On the way home, as he is passing the king’s palace, he is seen by the princess, Vastolla, who bursts into loud laughter at the sight. Peruonto looks at her and wishes that she become pregnant by him. The wish is accomplished, and she gives birth to twin boys¹⁰. As in the other stories, the supernatural, of course, dominates; however, it is important to note that, unlike the previous stories, the intervention of the supernatural is carried out not by a look or a glance, but rather by the discriminating and selective mind of Peruonto. Moreover, the power of the will is not exercised directly by a supernatural being for his own personal gain; the power of the will is placed instead at the discretion of a human being -and a simpleton at that- who does, however, use his power wisely. At the end of the story, the king is forced to recognize him as his son-in-law and as his heir to the throne.

In all of the preceding stories, there is not necessarily a direct relationship between fertilization and actual physical union. The cases above are, for the most part, parthenogenetic; that is, the female egg develops without fertilization. The ambience in which these situations occur is so imbued with myth, superstition, and legend that it is impossible to separate the real from the magic, or what really happened from what was thought to have happened. What is important is that these births were believed to have been actual events. What is also clear is that the stories imply, even if the reader is not told so in so many words, that the actual conception of the child is a result not of physical union but of supernatural power, of consuming a particular food, of a shower of gold, of a fragrance, of a look, of a wish, etc. Also relevant is the unclear relationship of time between the supposed moment of conception and birth¹¹.

The point that a change in the unborn child can occur at any time during or after conception has taken place is very important. One of the oldest Greek romances, Aethiopica, written by Heliodorus of Emesa in the mid-third century is an excellent example. The story evolves around the fortunes of Chariclea, who was born white of black parents. Chariclea’s epic begins as her mother, Persina, relates the circumstances of her daughter’s birth. Persina explains that after ten unfruitful years of marriage, one hot day while she was resting in the king’s bridal chamber, where the walls were decorated with pictures illustrating the loves of Perseus and Andromeda, «your father had to do with me..., and I by and by perceived myself to be with child... But thou wert born white, which colour is strange among Ethiopians. I knew the reason, that it was because, while my husband had to do with me, I was looking at the picture of Andromeda naked brought down by Perseus from the rock, and so by mishap engendered presently thee, white, and very similar to her»¹². In this case, it is the imagination, together with the will, which has caused a genetic change in the unborn child. However, even though there may have been some kind of supernatural intervention, the birth of the white child from black parents was a result of Persina’s imagination and desire while she was contemplating the beautiful, appealing, white, nude body of Andromeda as depicted in the frescos by an unknown painter.

The ancient writers who often referred to or related the story of Chariclea, the white daughter of black parents, agree with the explanation given by Heliodorus and attribute the marvel to the power of the imagination. Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), a Roman naturalist, in the VII Book, Chapter 10, of his Historia naturalis, also speaks about the power of the imagination¹³. The same concept is found among Arab writers. Ibn Hazam of Cordoba, in his work El collar de la paloma, relates the story of a black child begotten of white parents¹⁴.

Among the Spanish writers of the Golden Age, Francisco de Osuna, who exercised strong influence on Santa Teresa de Jesús and other Spanish mystics and ascetics, paved the way for profound mystic doctrine in his work Norte de los Estados¹⁵. He states: «Has de saber que la imaginación hace mucho y conforma consigo lo que es engendrado, mayormente si está muy impresa en el pensamiento y en la representación»¹⁶.

The Aethiopica has been popular throughout the ages. At the end of the sixteenth century, Alonso López Pinciano, in his famous treatise, Filosofía antigua poética, explains the creative and reproductive powers of the imagination by citing the above mentioned case of the queen of Ethiopia, who, although black, gave birth to a white daughter because at the time of conception she was contemplating and thinking about the beautiful Andromeda whose painting she had near her bed¹⁷. Pinciano then adds: «El caso de la reina de Ethiopia no es imposible, que la imaginación al tiempo de la generación llevase algun humor blanco y rubio a las partes della, y engendrase alba criatura la madre negra»¹⁸.

In 1580 the Italian poet, Torquato Tasso, published in Venice his Gerusalemme Liberata, an epic poem written in a period of transition and of fierce struggle between two contrasting periods, the Renaissance and the Counterreformation. Tasso draws inspiration from the pagan artistic tradition and recreates under different concepts of truth and beauty the Christian version of Chariclea in the XII canto in the person of Clorinda. Clorinda, an extraordinarily beautiful girl and a valiant and fierce warrior, was born white of black parents because her mother, another queen of Ethiopia, who had been incarcerated in her bridal chamber on account of her husband’s jealousy, and would constantly weep and tell her woes to a painting which represented the legend of St. George slaying the dragon in order to free a young white girl. This is the queen’s story as told by Arsete to Clorinda:

Heliodorus, the pagan Greek writer, made use of the painting depicting Andromeda, while Tasso, the Christian poet, employed the painting of the St. George legend. Each one built his poetic creation on the power which the imagination, stimulated by an artistic, visual image, had on the product of an act of sexual union.

Throughout the ages great importance has been given to art itself as a means of improving the human condition. In Greece, «in the V century B.C. it was believed that the purpose of art was to edify, to create perfect forms of men and gods»²⁰. It was also believed «that the highest aspirations of the spirit could be expressed in a perfection of human form based upon harmony and proportion»²¹. «In the second half of the V century B.C., the ancient world believed that the perfect harmony of ideal form and nature in the representation of the human figure»²² had been achieved. It is no wonder, then, that the paintings illustrating the many triumphs of Greek civilization, which covered the walls of the king’s mansion, should fascinate, enrapture, and set Persina’s imagination afire²³.

A similar concept and attitude toward the function of art was not uncommon during the Renaissance. Tommaso Campanella, an Italian philosopher and writer of that epoch, whose importance, like that of Francis Bacon and Giordano Bruno, lies largely in his anticipation of what came to be the scientific attitude of empiricism, emphasized perception and experiment as the media of science. In his best-known work, Civitas solis (1623), (La città del sole), while explaining how perfect citizens can be engendered, he clearly states that in the bridal chamber there should be statues of very illustrious men so that they can be contemplated by the women, who then would pray that God would grant them perfect children²⁴.

It is interesting also to bring forth here the attitude of Valera himself toward the sociological function of art. On defining the type of artists whom he would like to see in the dramatic company for the new theater he envisions in Madrid, Valera insists explicitly that the actors and especially the actresses be very attractive. He explains: «La educación estética de un pueblo no se forma ni se mejora, sino se corrompe y se vicia, manifestándole lo feo, lo inelegante, lo canijo, lo estropeado, lo ruin y lo plebeyo de la figura humana»²⁵. Supporting, then, his point of view with his knowledge of Greek culture, he continues:

And referring specifically to the V century B.C., Valera states:

On other occasions, Valera manifests the constancy of this belief in the power of art over the human being, and he comments in some private correspondence that on his visit to Rome he found a strong resemblance between the Roman women and ancient statues. He explains that such a resemblance is not due to the copying on the part of the artist of the most important features of the most beautiful women of the area, but that, on the contrary, the Roman woman, who constantly contemplated such beautiful statues, «había ido perfeccionándose de líneas al paso de los tiempos»²⁸.

In Doña Luz (1879), Valera, while introducing some variants which demonstrate his own originality, has created a situation in the main characters of Padre Enrique and Doña Luz which strongly resembles and parallels the legends of Perseus and Andromeda and of St. George and the Damsel. The evil forces of yesteryear portrayed in the mythical monster pitted against Andromeda, in the biblical serpent pitted against Eve, in the legendary dragon pitted against the Christian damsel, have taken on new forms and disguises and have adapted themselves to the moral, social, and literary ambience of the modern world -for example, Belfagor in Machiavelli, Mephistopheles in Goethe, the gentleman in black in Casona, and the locomotive in modern psychology.

A brief résumé of Doña Luz follows. The blond, blue-eyed Doña Luz, umblemished in body and spirit, is the personification of beauty. Unmarried at twenty-seven, she serves as a model of virtue to all the women in her town, and she causes the young men to treat other women with respect. She spends her days reading, praying, and riding her fiery black stallion. Padre Enrique, who, for reasons of health, has recently returned from his missionary work in the Far East, is a constant guest at her nightly tertulias. A profound, sincere, spiritual relationship develops between the two. Shortly thereafter, Doña Luz marries don Jaime Pimentel, who has come to Villafría for political reasons. Doña Luz learns of Padre Enrique’s inner conflict with respect to her from a letter found among the books she inherits from him at his death. Two weeks after the marriage, Doña Luz discovers that her husband had only pretended to be in love with her because he knew of the sizeable inheritance she was about to receive. Horrified, she sends him away. In due time an intelligent and beautiful child is born whom Doña Luz names Enrique.

As mentioned before, the episode of Padre Enrique and Doña Luz evokes the two main legends cited. However, Valera modernizes and fuses the Perseus and St. George legends while he adds elements from other sagas. He creates a myth with an atmosphere all its own, which finds acceptance and credence in nineteenth-century Spain. The beautiful tradition of pagan antiquity, which had served as an inspiration to the Christian world and had then found a new interpretation among authors of the Renaissance, experiences a rebirth in the creative mind of the Christian-pagan Valera, who captured all the harmonizing elements and combined them into a beautiful canon, into which he breathed the soul of conscious psychological strength.

In this new myth, Doña Luz is the Andromeda/damsel-in-distress, who, in time of need, vests herself with the Perseus/St. George hero-armor of the will and in battle defeats the monster, exemplified by her husband, don Jaime Pimentel. After the defeat of her «enemy», she enjoys the fruits of her victory. Doña Luz, by the power of her will, rejects her physical mate, her husband, as the father of her unborn child, and she causes the reincarnation in the child of her spiritual love, Padre Enrique. Doña Luz, after she has her friend Doña Manolita feel the unborn child who moves in her womb, states:

There is yet another dimension in the creation of this new myth. In Doña Luz one encounters, in addition to the elements already discussed from the pagan and Christian worlds, a confluence of attitudes, myths, and legends from the oriental world, which Valera skillfully fuses into an eclectic whole. It is this very eclectic nature that makes the novel extremely suggestive and fascinating, yet elusive. Although Valera describes Doña Luz’ beauty at great length, her physical beauty is transcended by her spiritual beauty. She is portrayed as having an ennobling quality, and as being superior to all who surround her. The personages in the novel, and the reader as well, perceive her as being on a pedestal and as being ethereal, just as Dante perceived Beatriz. Once the initial physical description of Doña Luz has been given, her importance rests on how and what she thinks, not on how she looks:

Locked in her inner world, she lives in the outer world as if in a dream.

When the conqueror of souls, Padre Enrique, returns to Villafría, he reveals himself as a most unusual person who spends hours and hours in the solitude of his room reading, writing, and preparing an extensive work which defends Christianity from the attacks of the pantheistic, positivistic, and materialistic philosophers of his time. It is a Platonic dialogue upholding the supernatural spirit (181). Through the intellectual discussions which take place daily at the tertulias in Doña Luz’ home, both she and Padre Enrique come to discover the kindred nature of their souls, and they engage in a mutually beneficial spiritual relationship.

In several of the legends previously mentioned, the influence paintings exercise on people is evident. Similarly in this novel Doña Luz spends several hours every day ascetically enraptured before the terrifyingly beautiful portrait of the dead Christ:

Doña Luz finds this horrifying representation of the dead Christ emotionally satisfying. One day while looking at the image, she becomes aware of the similarity of the Christ with Padre Enrique.

Padre Enrique dedicates most of his time to spiritual and intellectual pursuits. It is he, however, who introduces into the novel elements of oriental mythology. He has spent more than twenty years as a missionary in India, the Philippines, and the Far East. It is this long exposure to the mythical ambience of the Orient that one seems to sense in the aura that surrounds him. His sudden return as if into exile, his excessive love for solitude, study, and meditation is similar to the situation of the Hindu God, Shiva. While embarked on a career of asceticism, Shiva is distracted by the golden goddess, Shakti also known as Uma, and personifying Light and Beauty³⁰. Shiva is an extraordinarily complex deity. He is at once god of asceticism and sexuality³¹. He is the second god in the Hindu triad of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. He looks toward eternal truths and ignores the fleeting aspects of physical life. «His meditations and austerities build up his spiritual strength, giving him unlimited powers to perform miracles and also strengthening his powers as fertility god»³². Therefore, great importance must be attributed to the wedding gift which Padre Enrique gives to the newlyweds: a strange bronze idol which represents the God Shiva (196). The text indicates that the gift was not given by chance. It was selected carefully from among the many things Padre Enrique had brought back from the Orient.

It may be worth mentioning here that Valera was very knowledgeable about things oriental. There are several references to them in his Correspondencia, especially when he was a diplomat in Saint Petersburg in 1857. There, in addition to his frequent reading in the Imperial Library, he struck up a friendship with Kassowitch, an Oriental specialist, with whom he often conversed about the many myths of Syria, Chaldea, Persia, and the Far East³³.

The details surrounding the apoplectic attack and the eventual death of Padre Enrique ten days after the wedding are significant. Padre Enrique lies in bed in the very same room in which Doña Luz had slept until she married. It is here that their spiritual union takes place. Doña Luz, while staring at Padre Enrique, reconfirms her belief that he resembles the image represented in the painting with which she had communicated daily and which she had previously kissed ardently (212). Doña Luz is convinced that the static look of Padre Enrique is communicating with her and is sadly but lovingly beckoning her. As if impelled by an unavoidable, fateful force, Doña Luz «acercó suavemente el rostro al del padre y puso los labios en su frente macilenta, y luego en su boca, ya contraída, y los besó con devoción fervorosa como quien besa reliquias» (214). This is the sublime moment, the moment of spiritual compenetration. Doña Luz, receiving thus Padre Enrique’s last breath, and as if in a act of mystical union and ecstasy, «exhaló un ¡ay! agudo y cayó desmayada en el suelo» (214). The archetypal sacred marriage of the two souls , the spiritual union of opposites, of the male and female elements, has taken place here. In Shiva, the destroyer, who is also Shiva, the bearer of fertility, all opposites are reconciled. It is believed that Shiva restores what he destroys so that man may live again³⁴. It seems that Don Jaime, who deceptively lured Doña Luz into marriage, was limited to playing the role of husband only long enough for the physical implantation of life. Once his deception was discovered, Doña Luz rejected him completely.

In the birth of Heliodorus’ Chariclea and of Tasso’s Clorinda and in the explanation set forth by Pinciano, there was no direct relationship between physical union and the resultant offspring. It was a question of the will. In like manner, in this novel it is the power of the will that imposes itself and causes a displacement and replacement of genes according to its own desires. There is a juxtaposition of two images of Padre Enrique: (1) the painting of the dead Christ in Doña Luz’ bridal chamber which resembles Padre Enrique in Doña Luz’ mind, and (2) the face of the dying Padre Enrique which resembles the painting. This dual image takes new life through the power of Doña Luz’ will and causes a transformation in the life already present in her womb. That is to say, Padre Enrique in his death is reborn as Doña Luz’ beautiful and intelligent child, whom she al so names Enrique. Doña Luz explains how her willpower effects the genetic change:

It is essential to point out again that Valera describes Doña Luz, whose name, of course, means «light», as blond and blue eyed and as the epitome of beauty. In Hindu mythology, the God Shiva has a consort, Shakti, also called Parvati or Uma, the golden goddess who also personifies Light and Beauty. In Hindu theology, this consort represents the divine creative power.

The constant in the attitude of Heliodorus, Tasso, and Valera is that the contemplation of a work of art, be it a painting or a sculpture, can stimulate and encourage the mind of a human being (a woman in our situation) to imagine, to wish. The unconscious of the woman draws upon this archetypal material and modifies and adapts it according to its desire. The effect of the objectivated beauty of the work of art in the subconscious is needed by the conscious mind to achieve its desire, which could not otherwise be fulfilled. However, since each desire, wish, or dream is singular to the one who experiences it, the precise form of the will must be determined by each individual’s situation. In Doña Luz it is essential to keep in mind the obstacles caused by Padre Enrique’s vow of chastity and his subsequent death as well as the fact that Doña Luz became aware of his love for her only after his death. Therefore, it is not marital bliss that Doña Luz desired but rather the continuation of, the rebirth of Padre Enrique. The subconscious Love she felt for him while he was alive is transmitted by the power of her will into the physical form and essence of her unborn child. The spiritual love that burned subconsciously in Doña Luz’ chaste mind and soul willed its exteriorization and objectivation in the form of the child, Enrique.

In conclusion, it can be stated that Valera’s creative process in Doña Luz is complex because it draws its inspiration from superstition, from pagan as well as Christian legend and Oriental religions, from art, and from both ancient and modern literature. All these forces are brought to life by his creative power which reflects not only his enormous knowledge but also the Christian/ pagan attitude so often encountered in his works.