The poetics of pastoral: the prologue to the «Galatea»

Elizabeth Rhodes

It is remarkable that the prologue to La Galatea has passed unnoticed through modern scrutiny of literary theory in the works of Cervantes, especially given the quantity of critical attention devoted to theoretical issues over the last twenty years¹. Of course, the Galatea has always been something of an enigma; no one has ever been happy with it, not even its author. The explanation of the book's uncomfortable assignment to the genre of pastoral fiction may lie, so to speak, in the ignored prologue, for it is there that Cervantes reveals what the book itself does not: its intended status as poetry. Close examination of the introduction to the Galatea in relationship to the text proffers some information which cannot be gotten from any other source and has particular relevance for its pertinence to literary theory and the author's subsequent works.

Cervantes directs his introductory comments to the «Curiosos lectores», words which not only hark back to predecessors' prologues (Porqueras 76), but remind us that our task as readers of this work is to maintain the same lively curiosity/nosiness about the affairs of the characters that they display toward each other. Bandera calls them «mirones» (124), without pausing to recognize that their role parallels that of the reader, the greatest «mirón» of all. Thus, with his choice of opening vocative, Cervantes identifies the Galatea as a literary text which he then proceeds to classify.

The prologue begins with an exercise in self-defense:

Once we have weeded out the rallying call for the use of the vernacular, or vulgar tongue (which, as Porqueras indicates, was borrowed from Mejía's Silva de varia lección [76]), one point stands out clearly: Cervantes considered the Galatea as poetry, specifically, as eclogue material. After rationalizing his «osadía» in publishing his work by declaring that he does not wish to be counted as one who, «de puro escrupuloso, perezoso y tardío», never commits himself to publish anything, he makes a most interesting comment on the nature of his text:

There are three theoretical issues presented here that merit close attention: the Galatea as poetry, an eclogue, and as a pastoral work, something which bothered Cervantes with regard to the business of having shepherds portrayed as they really are not.

Forcione has demonstrated awareness of neo-Aristotelian poetics in almost all of Cervantes' prose works except the Galatea; given his convincing evidence that issues of classical poetics were in vogue by the mid-sixteenth century (Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles 12), it is curious that the sections of the prologue quoted above have not been adduced as evidence of Cervantes' concern with theoretical problems. According to the system of poetics inherited from the ancients, a work's classification as poetry was dependent on imitation, not meter (poetry representing humankind as more perfect than it is). The fact that the Galatea is predominantly in prose is thus no hindrance to its consideration as a poetic work, and indeed it seems that Cervantes wanted it to be considered exactly that. Modern critics have difficulty, not in accepting the pastoral genre as poetic, but in labelling the Galatea as truly pastoral². Cervantes apparently had no such difficulty. This problem is best approached by examination of the subcategory into which he placed his first work, the eclogue.

López Pinciano, author of the first neo-Aristotelian commentary in Spanish, systematically summarizes the theoretical material that had become popular well before his Philosophía antigua poética was published (1596)³. He classifies the eclogue as one of the six «especies menores de la Poética», the function of which is to relieve the «ueneno y melancholía» provoked by the study of «letras mayores» (such as philosophy, [111:230])⁴. Cervantes' ideas that writing the sort of literature he presents in the Galatea serves as preparation «para empresas más altas y de mayor importancia» is clarified by López Pinciano's declaration of the lesser value of the «especies menores» relative to the «especies [poéticas] mayores», such as epic and tragedy.

Specifically, the eclogue is among the categories of «rústica poesía» with which particular care must be taken in order to remain within the bounds of poetic imitation, for rustic characters doing rustic things can violate the canon («en la qual imitación [rústica poesía] se deuen considerar las personas imitadas, porque muchas dellas no consienten imitación en el tiempo que exercitan su officio, y es menester ponerlos sentados» [III: 244]). Shepherds qualify as acceptable characters for poetic imitation, «porque tienen officio quieto» [III: 245]), with the understanding that pastoral style should be relatively humble to guard the rules of verisimilitude, and that depiction of shepherds in literature should be selectively orchestrated so as to focus on the poetically acceptable qualities of their life⁵.

Whereas Cervantes had other pastoral romances as precursors in chaining narrative incidents together around the locus amoenus with prose and verse, he alone claims to be writing eclogues, and it is precisely this critical awareness that attracts attention in the Galatea prologue. The reason why the pastoral romance emerged in the protean form in which it did is an issue beyond the scope of the matter at hand, but Cervantes seems to have been singularly aware of that form and of the purely theoretical implications of what he was, or was supposed to be, doing with it. According to the poetics Cervantes himself invokes, it is precisely the «unrealistic», or poetic, depiction of shepherds that allows the pastoral to fall within the bounds of poetry. The literary guise was more or less accepted by other authors and theorists alike: for example, Herrera's often-quoted commentary on Garcilaso's «Égloga primera»:

The highly selective verisimilitude of the pastoral genre as justified by neo-Aristotelian poetics did not ease the literary conscience of this beginning writer, who was uncomfortable with any hermetically sealed literary style until he wrote the Persiles⁶. To accept hands down the artifice which allows shepherds to speak of lofty love theory while they were supposed to be herding sheep was too much for Cervantes to let pass unnoticed, for he felt the need to remind the «curioso lector» in the prologue that what followed was really not pastoral at all but only apparently so: «que muchos de los disfrazados pastores della lo eran sólo en el hábito». The courtly nature of some of the Galatea's shepherds is blatant in the text through their sophisticated behavior and does not in itself require such an explanation by the author. It is also unnecessary in light of the status as poetry which Cervantes had just claimed for his book; in eclogues, characters were expected to have suffered a double metamorphosis, from «real» courtiers into shepherds, and from «real» shepherds into literary ones. Such a remark is precisely the sort of meta-fictional authorial commentary that becomes increasingly apparent in Cervantes' works and in this case, leaves us indeed «curiosos» about just what is «real» and what is not. Thus, the pastoral structure within which he proposed to work is overcome through irony by Cervantes' initialing the reader into the secrets of the game at the end of the prologue, insisting on the artificiality, the fictionality of the whole thing⁷.

Cervantes adopts the same ironic stance toward the convention of pastoral romance in the Galatea as he did toward the novels of chivalry in Don Quijote. Bandera has commented on the role that fiction itself plays in the Quijote by calling attention to the fictitious and chivalresque, therefore false, expectations under which most of the characters operate, from Don Quijote himself to those of the interpolated stories such as Anselmo (who plays out a desire to have Lotario fit a role similar to that of Amadís, [153]). The same process functions in the Galatea: whereas the fiction of the chivalresque novels consists of impossible heroic feats, in the pastoral romance it is static meditation on a state of love, a desire to escape time reflected in the flight to the locus amoenus itself. The chivalric «lie» is active and physical; that of the pastoral is contemplative and emotional.

Characters are often trying to convert the pastoral fiction (the suspended lyric moment) into reality (which functions in time) with the same disastrous results that the characters of Don Quijote later face with chivalric fiction⁸. Thus the shepherdesses make every attempt to imitate the chaste Diana, remaining excessively aloof and free (Galatea, Teolinda, Belisa, Gelasia), which only tempts Fortune -via the hand of the author- to strike at them with particular zeal, in order to get the narration moving, if nothing else. Likewise, there is an abundance of shepherds with hopeless loves which they can neither abandon nor solve (to name a few, Elicio, Erastro, Silerio). Appropriately, in and out of the love cases which are stuck in suspended animation walk Tirsi and Damón, courtiers who preach moderation and suspicion of the excessive emotionalism so characteristic of pastoral love (Lenio, Lauso), encouraging all to heed the dictates of Christian love philosophy and thereby to act on their desires. In order to act, the characters must leave the confines of the genre within which they exist and behave in a non-pastoral fashion⁹. Literary shepherds, perhaps in defiance of their over-active predecessors in chivalric novels, weep, sing, lament, and talk, but they are notoriously passive and are not supposed to solve their problems. Arcadia is for recognizing and contemplating emotions, not resolving them (which terminates the lyric moment). The pastoral device, well suited to the lyricism and idealism to which Cervantes always declared an attraction, ill fitted his theoretical astuteness¹⁰.

The characters in the Galatea do not abandon the world when they enter Arcadia, they bring it in with them. The unaccustomed force with which they often violate the bucolic tranquility has provoked many a critical remark. By intruding into the environment traditionally designed for peaceful recollection of the past with a very vivid present, they break the rules of the code and in so doing pertain neither to the realm of poetry nor that of history. This mixture of action «on the scene» and narration of past events undercuts the pastoral device, already weakened by the combination of characters as Cervantes presents them. There are the traditional «pastores de hábito», who stoop to the pastoral disguise, bringing courtly manners to the rustic scene. These are the shepherds whose disguise Cervantes betrays in the prologue. Commingled with them are «pastores de verdad» who, through the grace of love, rise to the profession of literary sheep-herding but nonetheless violate the rules of verisimilitude in order to perform the philosophical acrobatics in love theory that the pastoral romance required. What previous authors of this type of fiction implied, Cervantes made apparent: to let the artifice stand, without narrative comment about its shaky relationship to literary canon, is what the pastoral mode is all about. But Cervantes was unwilling to accept the convention without modifications and commentary, and through use of his antithetical collection of characters he cuts into the artistic unity of his own narration.

The narrative structure of the Galatea undermines the pastoral artifice as well. In the context of prolonged prose, the bucolic world must be one of constant interruption in order to exist: since psychological motives are the only ones available to move the pastoral plot (social and economic concerns supposedly being annihilated on the banks of those «claras y frescas aguas»), truly pastoral characters have only the option of exercising their «officio quieto», those activities which justify the genre's existence as something worthy of imitation. Of course, as a result nothing can «happen», which leads to the necessity of interpolation, and thereby to the breaking of the narrative plane¹¹. The basic structure of the pastoral romance with its interpolations differs from that of the Persiles and Don Quijote in its characteristic use of the locus amoenus as the stabilizing center in the natural world where all of the characters congregate. What Cervantes did as none of his precursors had was superimpose the narrative past, the stories told, onto the narrative present, «what happens», within the confines of the locus amoenus, thus creating a beehive of activity, decidedly not pastoral. That is, he made the shepherds' «art of the backward glance» a matter of remembering a past that, rather than being removed in time, continues right up to and into the narrative present¹². Many characters act on their love right on the pastoral scene (e. g., Lisandro, Rosaura) before meeting the central characters; rather than enter the bucolic realm wistfully recalling the past, they continue that past into the present by living it «on the scene» rather than remembering it. This is markedly different from the structure of the Diana, for example, in which all characters are introduced after their love stories have reached an impasse and melancholy remembrance is their only activity as they are «introduced» to each other.

The bucolic device offered potential which was not available in any other type of literature and which was very dear to sixteenth-century artists: the opportunity to depict the newly awakened sensitivity to the love experience within the sphere of individual spirituality (as contrasted to the social context of courtly love, for example), and the renewed importance of contemplative experience in the secular sphere, directly related to the religious upheaval which followed in the wake of Renaissance humanism. The pastoral constitutes a hymn to the spiritual self, the striving individual, which Cervantes was always willing to exalt. But the step into the pastoral realm simultaneously presented the problem of verisimilitude in relation to shepherds' lives, whose true «officio» Berganza so aptly described¹³. This is, then, the identification in terms of literary theory of the two poles to which critics constantly refer in the Galatea¹⁴. From this angle, it is particularly interesting to reconsider Cervantes' repeated insistence on the poetic nature of his pastoral romance.

The poetic ideal of the Galatea arises from two sources: the pastoral motif, the classical literary device, and what might be labelled Christian idealism. The first has received ample attention and is the one which exalts atemporal contemplation of the love experience. It consists of characters trying to sustain the pure and tender moment of still unfulfilled passion, idealizing love by removing it to an ethereal zone where it can be exalted but not confronted. In this fashion, love is removed from time and therefore presents life as better than it is. The second ideal, not traditionally considered as poetic, insists on active incorporation of ideals into life and is directly related to the Christian philosophy which, contrary to classical pastoral, functions in the world, not out of it: «Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone» (James 2:17). Of course, this motif is also the directing force of the chivalric code, which requires proof of worth through action, and may not necessarily be directly associated with religious ideals in the works of Cervantes. Compared to the poetic pastoral ideal, it is a more realistic depiction of lovers in life, not just lovers in love, and is one of the characteristics that distinguishes the Galatea from other works of its kind, for in combination with the traditional pastoral motif, it produces the uncomfortable atmosphere that characterizes Cervantes' romance, with its uneasy juxtaposition of harsh reality and bucolic tranquility. The story of Elicio and Galatea, which unites the entire work, exemplifies the combination of these two ideals: initially, their relationship is one which follows the rules for a good eclogue and faithfully represents pastoral love. However, by the end of the Galatea, both have had enough of the bucolic ideal: they leave the realm of contemplation and move into the arena of active love, the one in which most of the other characters have already appeared.

The importance of tempering thought and action (the pastoral and Christian ideals) seems to be the message implied in the story of Elicio and Galatea. Although they are involved in almost none of the narrative events, one or the other witnesses all of them, and in so doing they are exactly the sort of characters they are supposed to be, literary shepherds, whose function is to contemplate and learn from the past. Having examined himself in his own circumstance and in the light of others', Elicio has overcome the domination over his personality exercised by purely poetic, inactive, and literary desire; he assimilates the historical part of himself, the part that lives in human, not poetic time, into his personality. Likewise, Galatea is finally willing to step off her pedestal and reach out for help, leaving her impossible fictitious role behind while remaining true to her ideals of virtue and love. Both characters have witnessed the integration of their spiritual, emotional selves into the totality of their beings. Through the course of the narration, the reader witnesses the evolution of both from purely pastoral figures (the only ones in the romance) into characters of more realistic dimensions, guided by an ideal beyond that of the literary shepherd. Appropriately, their story ends at the moment when their love is no longer only pastoral, for then the excuse for the pastoral narration as such no longer exists and the resources of the bucolic device have been exhausted through confrontation with values which require action.

The pastoral ideal is passive but, if the major characters his works may be used as evidence, Cervantes' ideal was not. When considered in light of Don Quijote and the Persiles, the Galatea is not a surprise: all three are stories of idealistic desire pitted against the world, all relate the conflicts between desire itself and action taken to fulfill that desire. That Arcadia is removed from the world and the Galatea is not may be precisely the point. Whereas classical pastoral characters adopt a philosophical, contemplative posture toward life and love, Cervantes' shepherds do not. By having his characters exemplify not only desire (for perfect love) but the fate of that desire in a context beyond static contemplation, Cervantes teaches his shepherds and his readers how inexorably Arcadia is tied to the rest of life.

The Galatea was ever in the back of Cervantes' mind; he regularly threatened to finish it, although he probably never did. However, at the end of Don Quijote he pays a final tribute to the pastoral ideal. The reader stands with Sancho as he entreats his master to hang onto life so they could sally forth into the bucolic dream and become shepherds:

However, Don Quijote had learned his lesson, that fiction cannot be made reality, and to become a shepherd would have only repeated that lesson. The knight faces the end of his life promising to return to Arcadia (as did his author), yet both ultimately abandoned that promise. The unwillingness to live or make live an illusion is what saved both Don Quijote and Cervantes. Through the Galatea, its author discovered that this attempt to depict the conflict between idealism and its integration into reality was bound to fail in a pastoral context. He succeeded through recourse to satire (Don Quijote) and elevation of he entire narration to romance (Persiles y Sigismunda). Unlike the shepherds of the Galatea, whose beings represent idealism and realism without faithfully capturing either one, Don Quijote finally accepts the poetic ideal as a fantasy and becomes «real». This acceptance does not reject poetry rather affirms it, for it allows him to die Alonso Quijano el Bueno, the man as he should be.

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