Shepherds in the Pastoral Novel «arrebatados de un divino pero no muy poético furor»

John T. Cull

The idealized life of shepherds and their surroundings constitutes one of the favorite topics of Spanish Golden Age authors. In addition to the presentation of shepherds and shepherdesses in their natural, though admittedly idealized pleasances, the one common denominator that unifies the widely disparate pastoral romances is their subject matter: love. It is the nature of that love that is the topic of this presentation.

The pastoral bower is the background against which the theory of the nature of love is debated, and its practical effects demonstrated on those who profess to be love's devotees. In essence, all of Renaissance pastoral can be boiled down to the theory and practice of love. The possibilities for dramatic interest arise from the fact that the two seldom coincide. If the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, as the all too human protagonists vainly attempt to practice what they preach. The inseparability of the concepts of «pastoral» and «love» are reinforced by a telling etymological coincidence¹. It seems that the terms pastor and amador derive from the same Hebrew etymon. The root of the two now divorced concepts originally meant «to give food». The shepherd provides for his flock and, ideally, lends a different kind of sustenance to his hungry shepherdess.

Critics have long since noted that the pastoral ideal is that of love. Renaissance Neoplatonism provides the impetus for the elevation of love to the status of governing force in the universe and makes the shepherd, because of his innate refined sensibilities, the figure most appropriate to debate the wonders and complexities of the love experience. Prior critical inquiries into the nature of pastoral love have correctly pointed to the precepts of Neoplatonism as the ideals to which the shepherds aspire in the Spanish pastoral novels. What they have failed to properly emphasize is that the ideal so elaborately wrought is rarely, if ever, attained. Factors that contribute to hinder the realization of perfect love include, among others, human frailty, inconstancy and fate.

The shepherd, then, is a deceptive figure. A symbol of simplicity and innate strength through his close relationship with his environment; a figure of responsibility in his role as herder; the epitome of virtuous love, unswerving and untainted by the corrupting influence of the city. He is, nevertheless, ultimately exposed in all his human shortcomings. The shepherd is really no different from his charges, the sheep, and like them needs to be led back to the right path after he has strayed. The pastoral novels contrahechas a lo divino take full advantage of this analogy as they emphasize that man is an animal fiero who is in need of the only true love, that of Christ, the buen pastor. There are exceptions, of course. Certain, almost superhuman, shepherds and shepherdesses remain faithful to the ideal and are held up as examples from whom the fallen can learn.

However, the vast majority of would-be lovers fall to meet the highest standards in love. Human nature is weak, «y el deleyte deshonesto, a quien lo ama, le atormenta y enferma». So says Fray Luis de León in De los nombres de Cristo². This is not a passion, nevertheless, that Fray Luis would associate with the pastoral landscape. Rather, he asserts that life in the greensward is innocent, pure, simple and natural. When Sabino, one of the interlocutors, objects that the vast majority of poets erroneously choose to express the accidentes de amor through shepherds, whose speech is characterized by lo tosco y villano, Marcello, his foil, admits this fault but counters with: «la fineza del sentir es del campo y de la soledad» (p. 223). Indeed, harmonious and ordered nature is in itself «una como escuela de amor puro y verdadero» (p. 223). For Fray Luis, then, the countryside is free of the artifice and lasciviousness that characterize love in the cities, «que tiene poco de verdad y mucho de arte y de torpeza» (p. 223). That which is learned and studied, that which is artificial, in unhealthy and destructive. But, paradoxically, the elaborate rules of the art of love that are codified in social convention are precisely the methods of erotic sublimation championed by the highly moral-didactic Spanish pastoral novels.

Fray Luis' orthodox views of pastoral love, in keeping with theoretical doctrines of ideal love, do not correspond with the reality of love in the novels. All bucolic novelists, to a greater or lesser extent, present the practice of love as a kind of madness or illness that at the very least could deprive the victim of his or her reason, and in its worst manifestations, could cause the death of the lover, or could lead him or her, in a fit of rage, to murder the real or imagined rival to the affections of the beloved. Violence is, in fact, rampant in these works. These numerous episodes of pastoral antisocial behavior are almost always predicated on a failed attempt to attain the erotic ideal³.

In the pastoral myth, the shepherd is first and foremost a «singer of songs», that is, a poet. The amorous frenzy that precipitates violent outbreaks is a conscious transposition of the Platonic divine frenzy of the poets to the sentimental realm. It is in the Phaedrus that Socrates enumerates the three types of divine madness and suggests a fourth. The third frenzy springs directly from the muses: «This seizes a tender, virgin soul and stimulates it to rapt passionate expression, especially in lyric poetry, glorifying the countless mighty deeds of ancient times for the instruction of posterity»⁴. The final form of divine madness, not developed at any length in the Phaedrus, is that of lovers. We do learn, however, that «this sort of madness is a gift of the gods, fraught with the highest bliss» (Phaedrus, p. 58). Medieval and Renaissance medical lore seem to confirm that poetic and amorous fury spring from the same source: the hot and dry melancholic humor⁵.

Any reader of Spanish Golden Age poetic theory is familiar with the image of the poet «arrebatado de un divino furor», in the many variants that this precept assumes. A very influential source for the transmission of this concept was likely the widely diffused Examen de ingenios (1575), of Huarte de San Juan. He quotes Cicero on this matter: «poeta natura ipsa valet et mentis viribus excitatur, et quasi divino quodam spiritu afflatur», (Al poeta, le basta su propia naturaleza: fuerzas anímicas le impulsan, inspirado como por un soplo divino)⁶.

Regardless of the source of transmission, the identification in Spain between poetic and amorous frenzy was total, almost to the point of becoming a cliché. Lope, to cite one example, makes use of the commonplace in his Arcadia. In the verses of «Anfriso desesperado», we learn: «que quien ama y no enloquece, / no tiene sutil ingenio»⁷. Later, during the visit to the «Templo del Desengaño», a stanza from the encomium of poetry reiterates the Platonic notion. The combination of nature and art: «vienen a tal extremo de excellencia, / que parece furor divino y raro, / y de sus fuerzas instrumento claro» (p. 421). Finally, after Anfriso's sentimental fury abates, he drinks of the «agua versífera» offered by Polinesta, «y arrebatado de un furor poético (como Platón dijo, que no por arte, sino movidos de un divino aliento, cantaban los poetas estos preclaros versos, llenos de deidad y ajenos de sí mismos, que Aristóteles y Cicerón llamaban furia), ...» (p. 426). Although this represents another example of Lope's penchant for encyclopedic erudition, the examples gleaned from the Arcadia are very representative of the tendency in the Spanish pastoral novel to portray the love malady initially as something glorious only to subsequently drag it back down to earth. The love malady is naught but a dangerous form of self-indulgence that needs to be checked. This is accomplished in some novels through the administration of magic potions, in others through the exercise of restraint and self-will, and in others through the sacrament of matrimony, which allows young lovers to channel and vent their passions within bounds consecrated by society. Love melancholy, then, serves as the vehicle of the moral-didactic message in the Spanish pastoral romances. Its presence in these works, side by side with the Neoplatonic commonplaces, is undeniable.

Love madness, according to the ancient medical canon, is a genuine illness that has very precise causes, symptoms, prognostics and cures⁸. It held sway as an accepted medical fact until the mid-seventeenth century, when the discovery of the circulation of blood discredited humoral medicine. Not only does this malady appear in Spanish medical treatises of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but it also occurs with surprising frequency in all forms of literature, both creative and scientific. This question even occupied the attention of the legal minds of the times. Alfonso el Sabio, for example, found it necessary to legislate against those who would use love potions, philters or herbs, to attain their illicit ends. In the Siete Partidas, there is a law on «De los que encantan espiritus, o fazen ymagines, o otros fechizos, o dan yeruas para enamoramiento de los omes, o de las mugeres»⁹. In any event, the use of love potions, this time to cure, not to incite the love passion, is a burning issue in the Spanish pastoral novels, several centuries after it became a point of law. Love potions threatened man's claim to free will.

The issue of free will was a delicate point of debate that pitted moralists against physicians. Most medical authorities, in describing the pathology of the illness, stated quite clearly that the rational faculty could be overthrown when the patient's radical moisture was consumed. Francisco López de Villalobos, in his Sumario de la medicina con un tratado de las pestíferas bubas (Salamanca, 1498), carefully avoids stating that the rational faculty is corrupted in his unique verse chapter, «Del Mal de Amores que Auicena Llamo Flisei y los Griegos le Llaman Hereos». Rather, as a result of a corrupt imagination: «la imaginatiua y bestial pensamiento / como es gran potencia y padeçe el tormento / engaña consigo a las otras potencias»¹⁰. The remaining stanzas in this chapter set down in some detail the standard and to our way of thinking, quite humorous, symptoms and cures of this madness. The final bit of advice, when all else has failed, bears repeating: «y tinto con blanco le deuen aguar / que siempre emos visto del enborrachar / caer los amantes y amores en tierra» (p. 41).

Physicians, moralists, and pastoral novelists did not hold exclusive claim on this fascinating territory. An example of the unexpected sources of material on love melancholy is Cosme Gómez Tejada de los Reyes' León prodigioso (1636). This is a series of apologues of an allegorical nature that involves a company of animals on a kind of spiritual pilgrimage. In the twelfth apologue, we learn that love is blind,

The thirty-sixth apologue, «Que el amor deshonesto es furia infernal», is of fundamental importance for the close identification of pastoral landscape and love madness. It begins with the description of what appears to be a locus amoenus, obviously modelled on a pastoral description of the same kind. But the subsequent demythification of this idyllic setting is revealing:

The deceivingly pleasant pastoral landscape is equated with the proper ambiance for love dalliance that yields to mad love. We have here confirmation that a Renaissance audience identified pastoral literature with eroticism, no matter how veiled and subdued that aspect of a given pastoral work might appear to the modern reader.

This same apologue provides other examples of the demythification of the pastoral love ideal. For example, the animals question the hyperbolic expression of beauty bestowed on the rustic nymphs by their enamored shepherds: «¿Quien podra reprimir la risa, viendo a estos Platones defender, que sus damas son ideas de toda perfeccion y hermosura?» (f. 253 v). Consider, for example, the guide's description of the patients of this house of madmen, as the entourage journeys through this inferno. There are lovers who, «cabizbaxos, palidos, y consumidos han dado en tema de melancolia y silencio» (f. 253 v); «tontos o locos, cuyo tema es dezir mal de mugeres, y facilitar sus conquistas» (f. 254 r) and «los amantes heridos de la locura de zelos, que como perro rabiosos vagan essos campos sin hallar sossiego en lugar alguno, mordiendose vnos a otros» (f. 254 v).

The theme of love melancholy then, bolstered by a strong medical tradition, was also firmly rooted in the particular conventions evolved for the pastoral, conventions which we do not have time to detail here¹². The love lunatic, who was to eventually become a topos in the lovesick swain, originally symbolized something far more consequential than the humorous stock figure that has come down to posterity. In addition to the legal, anecdotal and literary manifestations of this «heroic» lover, we must consider briefly the serious moral and theological implications embodied in this convention.

If the repression of natural urges led to madness and constituted an illness, as the doctors held, then indulgence in sex could be excused as a natural consequence of the malady, and indeed some physicians advocated sexual congress as a cure for the disease. What is more, if concupiscence could be proven to deprive man of his reason, he could not be held responsible for the acts committed while a slave to this passion¹³. The medical experts seemed to be guilty of a double heresy then, condoning, on the one hand, sexual intimacy outside of marriage as something natural and healthful, and on the other, by inadvertently jeopardizing the doctrine of free will. For if the balance of humors could be shown to corrupt reason and overthrow it in the lovesick patient, and thereby confer on his urges a totally biological basis over which he had no control, then the matter of choice was obviously eliminated in some instances. Mad lovers could be medically proven to have sinned carnally because they literally could not help themselves, which is actually no sin at all. Seen in a certain light then, the issue of love sickness threatened the entire moral fabric of society, and if the disease could overwhelm the shepherds, the stoutest and most virtuous of lovers, what could be said of the morally feeble city dwellers, accustomed as they were to a life of vice?

The reading of profane literature in general occupied the attention of moralists in the period under consideration, but the condemnation of pastoral novels in particular is as frequent and vehement as that of the chivalresque novel. For example, Cristóbal de Fonseca's Tratado del amor de Dios (1652), indirectly addresses the issue by denying that wine and women can hold sway over man's free choice: «But neither wine nor woman, hath or can have this power over man, unlesse it first prevaile, and get the love of man. So that it is not the beauty, or inticements of woman, but man's love, that overcomes, inthralls, and destroyes man»¹⁴. Man's transgression, then, is a willed act. However, the moralist is forced to admit that at least in part, the actions of the lover are to be excused:

In general, the erroneous impression of many that pastoral love is absolutely pure and chaste is simply not true¹⁵. The innocence of amorous ecstasy exists only superficially. Fernando de Herrera establishes that eclogues are the oldest form of poetry, and their subject, love. He adds: «la materia desta poesia es las cosas i obras de los pastores, mayormente sus amores; pero simples i sin daño, [...] sin muerte i sangre»¹⁶. This nonviolent precept was ignored in the novels.

Nevertheless, modern criticism supports a theory of love in the Spanish pastoral novel that is Neoplatonic¹⁷. The theory and practice of love in pastoral rarely coincide. The Neoplatonic ideal is unattained and unattainable; the stuff of which songs and discussions are made. In practice, pastoral love leads to madness, suicide, rape and other expressions of violence. This disparity is an important manifestation of the deceptive nature of pastoral, where surface illusions rarely stand up.

The appearances depicted in these novels were tempting enough to warrant the disapproval of the moralists. The passage most frequently enjoined is from La conversión de la Magdalena (1592), where we learn that the «treatises of love, the Dianas and Boscanes and Garcilasos, are but a dagger in the hands of a mad-man»¹⁸. Another objection to pastoral literature is found in Alonso Núnez de Reinoso's Historia de los amores de Clareo y Florisea (1552). From «los vanos amores,»: «no se saca más que hacerse los hombres mujeriegos y afeminados hasta convertirse en flacas y débiles doncellas». (Quoted out of Libros de pastores, p. 357).

«Heroic» love, then, met with the condemnation of the legislators of social morality. Entire treatises dealt with the diet of those who would avoid substances that induce a bout of love madness¹⁹. The swooning of shepherds is not only a parody of the divine madness of the poets. Rather, it is the outward manifestation of a rift between dogma and science.