Another Look at Love in «La Galatea»

John T. Cull

One of the most debated issues in the Galatea, and perhaps one of the keys to its interpretation, is the role played by the human love experience¹. At first glance, Cervantes appears to send out contradictory signals. The theories of love espoused by the shepherds and pseudo-shepherds that inhabit the bower are systematically deflated and brought down to earth by direct or observed experience. The exemplary intent of many of the episodes presented accounts for the apparently high incidence of «voyeurism» in the novel. Lovers themselves are painfully inconsistent in their beliefs, which again complicates our interpretation of the nature of love depicted. The vagaries of time and circumstance are sufficient to sway certain lovers. Adding to these already considerable difficulties is the abrupt ending that hints strongly at amorous violence. The unexpected truncation would seem to preclude any coherent statement on the ever-shifting nature of human love. Indeed, the vast majority of love cases set in motion in the Galatea as it has come down to us never reach resolution. However, in spite of these obvious impediments, it is in fact possible to reach a satisfactory conclusion on the view of human love that Cervantes intended to reign supreme in his Galatea, regardless of whether a continuation was truly envisioned. The textual evidence is multilayered and overwhelming. And perhaps though not conclusive, the clues provided lead to speculation that the Galatea is as finished a work as any of the Spanish pastoral novels.

Without doubt, one of the greatest attractions that pastoral literature held for Cervantes was its inherent quality as a moderator of extremes. Classical pastoral eschews all forms of excess in favor of the via mediocritas, the only path that leads to pastoral poetry's highest value, otium². On a stylistic level, as Hatzfeld has shown³, Cervantes masterfully pays homage to pastoral moderation by means of an arsenal of mitigating devices. These constant attenuations of excess, which presents itself stylistically most often in the form of hyperbole, tend to nave a demythifying effect: flights of lyrical fancy are systematically deflated and undeceived, often accompanied by ironic understatement. This technique serves as a constant reminder to the reader and to the characters themselves, that absolutes of any kind are not to be trusted in the bower. Under closer scrutiny they are subject to substantial modification.

While the theories of love embraced by would-be lovers suffer a gradual revision or reversal when contrasted to the practice of love, the attenuation of language is usually immediate and direct. A good example of this procedure is evident in Timbrio's characterization of fortune: «envidiosa de nuestra ventura, quiso turbarla con la mayor desventura que imaginarse pudiera, si el tiempo y los prósperos succesos no la hubieran reducido a mejor término»⁴. The novel is rampant with instances in which absolutes are promptly tempered⁵. Perhaps this stylistic device is intended, on one level, as a suggestion of the way that lovers should manage the extremes of their passion. In any event, the cautious reader has learned by novel's end not to put any stock in the words of lovers, but rather to look at their deeds. The inhabitants of the pleasance themselves, on countless occasions, check excess and heighten verisimilitude by recognizing the wide gulf that separates words from action. Elicio's unreasoned reaction to word that Galatea is to be married, though not an example of self-correction, calls attention to itself as discourse that the informed reader refuses to accept at face value. He laments: «se ha dado hoy irrevocable sentencia que el bien se acabe, que la gloria fenezca, que el gusto se cambie y que, finalmente, se concluya la tragedia de mi dolorosa vida» (II, 130). The whole point of the preceding narration has been to document that, short of death, nothing is irreversible.

It is perhaps valid to propose that the contrast between an ideal extreme and its subsequent demythification is another way in which Cervantes works out the apparent disjunctives of poetic and historical truth. The pastoral myth does not tolerate extremes. Rather, it exists on the premise that a balance or compromise can be struck between conflicting extremes. Through arbitration, then, poetic and historical truth, that is, the depiction of reality as it is and as it should be, can peacefully coexist in pastoral. However, the delicate balance cannot withstand deep probing. At the same time, to draw another parallel, for Cervantes, the pastoral romance can also accommodate the extremes of pure entertainment and moral didacticism, when the aurea mediocritas mediates.

Thematically, Cervantes embraces the pastoral value of moderation of extremes most clearly in his handling of its predilect subject matter, love. This remains true in spite of the fact that Cervantes is unable, or unwilling, to obey Fernando de Herrera's precept for the depiction of pastoral loves: «simples y sin daño, no funestos con rabia de celos; no manchados con adulterios; competencias de rivales, pero sin muerte i sangre»⁶. Cervantes, faced with the same problem of maintaining reader interest throughout the vast expanses of the pastoral romance that plagued virtually all of its practitioners, chose to foreground the extremes of love as the magnet to attract reader interest. With Lenio, we can state that the portrayal of human love in the Galatea is often «ponzoña disfrazada / cual píldora dorada» (II, 55). Obedient to Horace's formula of making the utile dulci, Cervantes avails himself of subdued eroticism as the sugar coating on the essentially moral and moderate pill that he wants his reader to swallow.

It is perhaps crucial to remember at this point that part, if not most, of the popularity of the pastoral romances derived from their manifestly erotic nature, however veiled or tame that facet of a given work might appear to the modern reader⁷. Nevertheless, Cervantes uses the pastoral, the vehicle of eroticism, only to turn the tables ultimately and take advantage of the mode to impart a lesson that is consummately moral-didactic. It is really quite an elaborate game (and games are in large part what the pastoral novel is all about). Cervantes constantly toys with reader expectations of titillation only to undermine and indeed foil those expectations. I hope to shed more light on this process when I take up the discussion of the specific kinds of love presented in the Galatea. For now, suffice it to say that Cervantes accepts the golden mean proposed by classical pastoral, and its attendant goal, the enjoyment of otium, the leisure that affords contemplative speculation. However, Cervantes rejects the erotic anarchy that classical pastoral embraces (in the form of homosexual love), as a regulatory device to preserve the ultimate value of otium without the intrusion of obsessive and destructive passion. Cervantes does not reject leisure (and especially its extreme form, sloth) out of hand. If indeed idleness is the devil's workshop and is the breeding ground of lascivious thoughts, Christians have at their disposal a legitimate means of bridling these urges. The enjoyment of pastoral otium affords too much potential for spiritual rekindling to condemn it outright.

What, then, are the extremes of love depicted in the Galatea? One amorous extreme involves the medical tradition of heroic love or love melancholy⁸. Also known as erotes, this conception of love as a malady drawn from the ancient medical canon is more prevalent in the Spanish pastoral romance than is commonly recognized. This self-centered kind of yearning emphasizes unchecked self-indulgence. The mad lover, denied the use of reason, and even free will according to some of the physicians, attempts to satisfy his or her carnal lusts without regard to any social or moral considerations. The Galatea abounds with evidence that Cervantes was at least aware of the medical pathology of the love malady, even if he did not drink directly from first-hand sources. What is clear is that the author of the Galatea rejected some of the implications of love melancholy, and ultimately perhaps, the pastoral mode itself⁹.

That love can fall under the domain of the physicians is confirmed by a rather conventional play of words voiced in this novel by Erastro. In his efforts to free himself from the bonds of passion, the spurned lover affirms: «he andado a los médicos y curas del lugar a que me diesen remedio para las ansias que por su causa padezco. Los unos me mandan que tome no sé qué bebedizos de paciencia; los otros dicen que me encomiende a Dios, que todo lo cura, o que todo es locura» (I, 23). Both cures, significantly proffered by secular and ecclesiastical authorities, represent extremes in their own right, and are therefore proven to be failures. Some of the physical symptoms of the lovesick patient, though perhaps commonplaces in the late sixteenth century, can be traced back to the medical treatises, as they appear in Silerio's self-diagnosis: «yo estaba entonces más para pedir medicina para mi llaga que salud para la ajena [...] Estos sobresaltos y combates me apretaban de manera que, sin procurar la salud ajena, comencé a dudar de la propria, y a ponerme tan flaco y amarillo que causaba general compasión a todos los que me miraban» (I, 146).

Perhaps the most incontrovertible statement on the power of certain ills to overthrow the rational faculty ushers from the irreproachable lips of Galatea herself, whose extraordinary understanding is praised universally. Her observation then, on the heels of discovering that she has been promised in marriage, can be taken as gospel: «que cuando el mal es tal que se le puede dar este nombre, lo primero que hace as añublar nuestro sentido y aniquilar las fuerzas de nuestro albedrío, descaeciendo nuestra virtud de manera, que apenas puede levantarse aunque más la solicite la esperanza» (II, 136). The final attenuation («apenas») of this statement rich in the medical terminology of the epoch, is crucial, for it refuses to admit that the flickering light of free will is ever totally extinguished. Clearly, Cervantes is gradually showing his hand, as he sides with the moralists on this hotly debated issue.

The most unequivocal condemnation of the destructive power of human passion, when lovers yield to their mad frenzy, proceeds from Lenio's long harangue in his dispute with Tirsi. Much of this impassioned discourse reflects an obvious familiarity with the medical tradition of amor hereos. There are several passages that bear repeating. First of all, Lenio assures his audience, idealistic youths naturally predisposed against his argument, that the devastating consequences of lusting after corporal beauty have their origins in the mad lover's objective, which is euphemistically termed «gozar la belleza que desea», and since «esta belleza sea imposible poseerse y gozarse enteramente, aquel no poder llegar al fin que se desea, engendra en él los sospiros, las lágrimas, las quejas y desabrimientos» (II, 45). But more importantly, from the moral point of view, Lenio insists that, in spite of the bestial consequences of mad love, «ni aprovecha que le hagamos obstáculo con la razón que, puesto que nuestro mal claramente conozcamos, no por eso sabemos retirarnos dél» (II, 47). And what is worse, the love crazed will stop at nothing to attain their illicit ends: «y lo peor es que, si acaso con las lágrimas, con los sospiros y con las quejas no puede venir al fin de lo que desea, luego muda estilo y procura alcanzar por malos medios lo que por buenos no puede» (II, 48). This advice could have been copied from any of a number of moral treatises in vogue at the time. Juan Luis Vives used startlingly similar appeals to persuade his young charges not to believe the wiles of their crafty suitors.

The above passages include some interesting and tantalizing euphemisms that hardly need clarification. Of course, «gozar la belleza» and «alcanzar» are intentionally suggestive and ambiguous. Throughout the course of the novel, Cervantes teases his readers with sexually suggestive terminology only to foil those expectations with an attenuating clarification. There is no question but that Cervantes wrote with a particular audience in mind, and that he fully intended to manipulate that audience's familiarity with the conventions of pastoral to suit his own purposes. The euphemism most frequently enjoined by lovers in the Galatea is «coger el fruto»¹⁰. It occurs some seventeen times in the novel, with some slight variations, and in spite of the fact that it is often qualified with the epithet of honesto¹¹, the true meaning of «coger el fruto» is conveyed without calling attention to itself in Silerio's description of the pillaging of a Catalán town: «y alguno sé que hubo que con sacrílega mano estorbó el cumplimiento de los justos deseos de la casta recién desposada virgen y del esposo desdichado, ante cuyos llorosos ojos quizá vio coger el fruto de que el sin ventura pensaba gozar en tiempo breve» (I,137). We have, in this suggestive description, a premonition of the cervantine solution to the problem of amorous frenzy: its placation in marriage. An example of the great distance that separates word and deed, appearance and reality in this playful sexual teasing that characterizes much of the Galatea, is evident in Rosaura's bold declaration that, in her attempt to win the love of Grisaldo: «vine a condescender con sus deseos, y a poner en efecto los míos» (II, 21). But this apparent confirmation of love's consummation is almost immediately attenuated with the explanation: «sin que nuestra estada solos a más se estendiese que a vernos y a darme él la palabra que hoy con más fuerza delante de vosotras me ha tornado a dar» (II, 21). This is just another proof of the denial of extremes in favor of the justo medio, or middle road that is reiterated so frequently in the Galatea.

If the extreme of lascivious love is harshly condemned in the Galatea, so too is its opposite, the totally dispassionate state, though perhaps not quite as vehemently. This extreme of self-abnegation takes two forms. On the one hand, we have the desamorados, such as Lauso, Lenio and Teolinda, who tend to pass from one amorous extreme to another without transition. On the other hand, there are lovers who, in the Neoplatonic tradition of León Hebreo and his Diálogos de amor, treat love as an elaborate dialectic. This kind of lover strives to sublimate passion totally and to stylize it almost beyond recognition. This extreme of self-denial, if we may avail ourselves of a telling oxymoron, is practiced by those who yearn to be dispassionately passionate. There is a very fine line that separates the lover deserving of praise, that is, the one who manages to reconcile reason and passion within human limitations, from the lover who is guilty of playing the game of love and adopting the pose of one who is dispassionately passionate. Perhaps a significant example of the latter is Rosaura, who, in her attempt to play the game of love by piquing Grisaldo's jealousy, nearly lost him. In essence, Rosaura blames the series of misunderstandings on naive Grisaldo's ignorance of the rules of the game: «-Como no puede caber en tus verdes años tener, ¡oh Grisaldo!, larga y conocida experiencia de los infinitos accidentes amorosos, no me maravillo que un pequeño desdén mío te haya puesto en la libertad que publicas» (II, 15). The stylization of passion into an elaborate game is a prefiguration of Quijote's studied imitation of Orlando. The parodic knight errant managed to fabricate an intense dedication and obsessive passion for a human being with whom he had never bothered to communicate. Real human communication is, in fact, often all that is necessary to break through the decorous facades and facilitate the mutual correspondence of desires and wills. In the Galatea, this simple but effective breaking down of barriers to prevent tragic consequences is evident in Lauso enamored: «había llegado a términos de desesperarse o de dar alguna muestra que en daño de su persona y en el del crédito y honra de su pastora redundase; pero que todo se remedió con haberla él hablado, y haberle ella asegurado ser falsa la sospecha que tenía» (II, 94). Lauso passes from thoughts of suicide to tranquil felicity by simply talking with the object of his desire.

It is indeed tempting to oversimplify matters and suggest that Cervantes intended merely to depict the difference between the theory and practice of love with the extreme types of lovers already documented. However, a close examination of the love cases in the Galatea tends to confirm that Cervantes objects to both extremes, each of which, in its own way, strips its adherents of their essential humanity. Very few of the shepherds and pseudo-shepherds of the Galatea, regardless of the means employed, manage to attain the objects of their passion. A most unscientific tally indicates a total of thirty potential couplings of lovers, which I will not document here. These pairs of ideal matches tend to exist only as potential, since they represent the fantasies of one of the pair involved. Normally, the object of one person's desire does not reciprocate. At the conclusion of the Galatea, we can state beyond doubt that three of these couplings, a scarce ten percent, result in a concert of wills. Another six are left unresolved, with at least the chance of satisfactory resolution at some future time. Twenty-one of the potential couplings are hopelessly frustrated, a full seventy percent.

These statistics indicate, for one thing, the extreme difficulty of human love reaching fruition. And for that reason, the weight of the evidence supports the contention that Cervantes intended to contrast the superiority of divine love to the inconstancy and transience of all things human¹². This insight, in turn, represents an affirmation that the pastoral dream of a terrestrial paradise does not really exist; that erotic anarchy must be abandoned in favor of compromise and engagement with the world. The stasis of the morally dangerous noon hour can exist only as an eternal yearning never to be fulfilled. The glorification of the dispassionate state, one of the most important tenets behind the original pastoral impulse, meets with rejection in the Galatea. To be human is to feel, sometimes intensely, indeed to the point of incurring in errors born of passion. But let us not forget the other side of the dilemma. Excessive passion, and especially that which characterizes the victim of love melancholy, is equally objectionable because it exempts the lover from moral responsibility for his or her actions by affirming that the malady overthrows the rational faculty. This, in fact, is the reason that underlies the frequent appearance of the exculpation of the yerros por amores in the Galatea¹³. Love's peccadilloes, in this interpretation, are excused and pardoned literally because the lover could not help himself.

If, then, neither extreme of the love passion is an acceptable expression of the human love experience, does Cervantes offer some kind of middle ground to mitigate that which he finds objectionable in our two forms of excess? Yes, as we have hinted earlier, and as Casalduero has shown¹⁴, but again Cervantes is forced to violate the original impulse behind pastoral poetry, which eschewed the married state. With St. Paul, Cervantes would argue that it «is better to marry than to burn». Although this dictum conflicts with pastoral's rejection of marriage, this holy sacrament is the only compromise that legitimizes and mitigates the erotic fury that is bred of pastoral otium, from the Christian point of view. Of all the love cases presented in the Galatea, that of Silerio, because it embraces both extremes before passing to a satisfactory resolution, offers the most convincing illustration of the ideal of love to be adumbrated from our reading of the novel.

Silerio's bout with mad love, partially documented earlier, was checked before it led to disaster. The use of reason, a mere willing it so, was the instrument used to effect the cure. After taking stock of himself, Silerio accepted the fact that he was aiming too high in his amorous pursuits: «¡Ay, que si se tardara un poco en soccorrerme la consideración de quien yo era, la amistad que a Timbrio debía, el mucho valor de Nísida, el afrentoso hábito en que me hallaba...: que todo era impedimento a que, con el nuevo y amoroso deseo que en mí había nacido, no naciese también la esperanza de alcanzarla, que es el arrimo con que el amor camina o vuelve atrás en los enamorados principios» (I, 143-44). Reason results in restraint, but the battle to moderate passion is not an easy one to wage. Silerio elects to cure his impossible passion by seeking the other extreme in love, total self-denial. He chooses the life of a hermit: «...cansado ya y desengañado de las cosas deste falso mundo en que vivimos, he acordado de volver el pensamiento a mejor norte, y gastar lo poco que de vivir me queda en servicio del que estima los deseos y las obras en el punto que merecen. Y así, he escogido este hábito que veis y la ermita que habéis visto, adonde en dulce soledad reprima mis deseos y encamine mis obras a mejor paradero» (I, 187). The only place where words and deeds really square is in the realm of the divine.

In spite of the sincerity of his efforts, Silerio is proven to be a failure at giving up the world. Few are those who are called upon to disengage themselves from earthly pursuits. The religious vocation is not the solution to the problem of the fury of love's passion. At every turn the shepherds and shepherdesses remind each other of the path to salvation. Teolinda, for one, expresses the need for moderation in verse:

And in prose, the solution of following the middle road is explicitly spelled out in Tirsi's response to Lenio's diatribe against love. Tirsi is careful to assure us that nothing can impede the function of free will, and that man is endowed with reason, «que corrige y enfrena nuestros desordenados deseos». However, human beauty is such that desire sometimes overpowers reason, by virtue of which God «quiso templarle y corregirle, ordenando el santo yugo del matrimonio, debajo del cual al varón y a la hembra los más de los gustos y contentos amorosos naturales le son lícitos y debidos. Con estos dos remedios, puestos por la divina mano, se viene a templar la demasía que puede haber en el amor natural [...] pues siempre los medios fueron alabados en todas las cosas, como vituperados los estremos» (II, 62-4). Even within marriage, then, the lover must temper and attenuate his or her passion. Cervantes' use of qualifying adjectives is a stylistic reflection of moderation as the only acceptable solution to extremes.

Cervantes, nevertheless, was well aware that man is weak and easily tempted. And so, while he is harsh in his condemnation of extremes, he is the first to forgive the excesses of passion. And who better than Silerio, undeceived, to convey this compassionate exculpation of the errors of love?: «Cuando los casos de amor, hermosa Nísida, con libres ojos se miran, tantos desatinos se ven en ellos que no menos de risa que de compasión son dignos» (I, 149). Silerio moderates his initial course, then, and agrees to marry Blanca. Since the foursome of Silerio, Timbrio, Blanca and Nísida, are city dwellers who live out a pastoral interlude, their promises of marriage do not represent egregious violations of pastoral freedom. The only other marriage and successful union in the novel, that of Daranio and Silveria, does not occupy center stage at any time in the course of the narration. There is even a strong hint that the marriage is arranged and primarily motivated by material interests (I, 178). Their marriage serves a twofold purpose in the novel. It is a pretext to introduce Tirsi and Damón, city dwellers whose presence in the bower might otherwise raise questions of verisimilitude, onto the figurative stage of the novel. On the other hand, at least one marriage was necessary in order to celebrate the pastoral convention of the epithalamium.

If Silerio ultimately earns his reward because he has eschewed all extremes for the golden mean, the case of Timbrio is markedly different. One of the polemics debated throughout the course of the novel is whether or not fortune favors the bold, as the old aphorism states. This maxim usually takes the form of «fortuna favorece a los atrevidos/osados». In other pastoral novels, this rallying cry is brandished as a justification for amorous violence¹⁵. However, I believe that its function is somewhat distinct in the Galatea. It is false glitter for most, the golden ring that keeps the obstinate from seeing the error of their ways. Timbrio's love case is unusual and exemplary in the sense that it shows that certain, almost superhuman lovers (and Elicio/Galatea would probably fit into this category), are endowed by virtue of their inherent qualities, to aim high in their amorous endeavors. Though they suffer no end of travails (love, in the epic and byzantine tradition, is referred to as an empresa and hazaña on numerous occasions), they are able to prevail and triumph. Of course, the frequent use of terms such as empresa, negocio, trabajo and the like, have no legitimate place in the pastoral milieu. The cases of Timbrio and Elicio are prefigurations of the ideal of love incarnated by Persiles and Sigismunda. But their heroic love is truly exceptional. Only a chosen few can set their sights on the impossible and hope to attain their ideals. Most must reconcile themselves to the notion of compromise and all that it entails. It is certainly revealing that Lauso's attempt to mimic Timbrio's «bold» stance ends in abject failure:

A slight disdain from Silena is sufficient to undo this inconstant lover's daring and return him to his former dispassionate state.

Lauso's exemplary case is a clear indication that fortune does not necessarily favor the bold, unless the bold happen to dispose of the other attributes requisite for the successful lover. These are inner qualities that cannot be imitated. All other lovers must set their sights realistically, and follow the golden road of moderation. This is the final statement on love in the Galatea. The realization that Christian marriage is the only acceptable solution to pastoral love is a paradox that effectively precludes a viable continuation to the novel. The pastoral romance can barely tolerate a single wedding, much less the multiple nuptials that a continuation would logically entail. I believe that the wording of the beginning and ending of the Galatea subtly acknowledges speculation that a second part was never seriously planned.

Cervantes knew that pastoral literature by convention was the training ground on which the novice author cut his teeth, in preparation for the epic that would represent the culmination of the artist's craft. He pays lip service to this tradition in the prologue, where we learn that, among other benefits, pastoral poetry can: «enriquecer el poeta considerando su propria lengua, y enseñorearse del artificio de la elocuencia que en ella cabe, para empresas más altas y de mayor importancia» (I, 6). At the same time, Cervantes toys with the adage that fortune favors the bold in this same prologue. In part, this is a response to Horace's dictum that a work should be kept under lock and key for nine years before publication: «unos, con deseo de gloria, se aventuran; otros, con temor de infamia, no se atreven a publicar lo que, una vez descubierto, ha de sufrir el juicio del vulgo, peligroso y casi siempre engañado. Yo, no porque tenga razón para ser confiado, he dado muestras de atrevido en la publicación deste libro» (I, 7). Cervantes, like so many lovers, is using the maxim as a justification to embark on an adventure that some might condemn as rash. Now, the novel's conclusion, given Cervantes' penchant for playful ambiguity, is worded in a very revealing manner. He says that this second part «tendrá atrevimiento de salir con brevedad» (II, 266). Is the marvelous and eloquent silence represented by a lack of a continuation of the Galatea really a crafty strategy on the part of Cervantes to indicate that the bold are not in fact favored by fortune at all? I believe so. While Cervantes always yearned for a return to the pastoral mode, he realized as an artist that it was a fleeting dream, the pastoral dream, to which he could never return.