Pedro Caldern De La Barca and the World Theatre in Early Modern Europe 9781501517020, 9781501527173, 9781501517006

Citation preview

Rasmus Vangshardt Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the World Theatre in Early Modern Europe

Early Drama, Art, and Music

Series Editors Katie Brokaw, University of California, Merced Erith Jaffe-Berg, University of California, Riverside Jenna Soleo-Shanks, University of Minnesota Duluth Christopher Swift, New York City College of Technology Andrew Walker White, George Mason University

Rasmus Vangshardt

Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the World Theatre in Early Modern Europe The Theatrum Mundi of Celebration

ISBN 978-1-5015-2717-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1700-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1702-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023941670 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Urania (astronomy) (Tarocchi series D: Apollo and the Muses, 12), before 1467, engraving hand-colored with gold, © Dudley P. Allen Fund, The Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 1.0 Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

To Sofie Kluge

This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. —Psalms Preiset die Tage. —J.S. Bach

Acknowledgements “Instead of that bleak image of linear world history, which one can only uphold by closing the eyes to the predominant amount of facts, I see a spectacle of multiple, mighty cultures which flourish with primeval force from the wombs of their maternal scenery.” In a characteristically prophetic tone of voice, the German philosopher of history Oswald Spengler invokes the theatrum mundi and relates it to the spectacle of sceneries on the world stage.1 This book has benefited from several such old European sceneries during the course of the last years. I do not believe it would have been a work of such comparative nature if these places had not exerted their primeval force. Therefore, I wish to begin by paying my small homage to the places where this book was written: the cities of Copenhagen, York, Heidelberg, Oxford, and Munich. Humano cielo, this Europe. The experience of these spectacles would not have been possible without a three-year PhD fellowship at the unique work environment of the Centre for Medieval Literature (CML) and the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). Without the centre, funded by the Danish National Research Foundation, and an Elite Researcher’s Travel Grant from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, this work would have been much less ambitious than it hopefully is. In this context, I would like to thank Prof. Elizabeth Tyler (York), Prof. Gerhard Poppenberg (Heidelberg), Prof. Jonathan Thacker (Oxford), and Prof. Susanne Reichlin (Munich) for letting me spend full terms at their institutions. This is also the place to thank the co-supervisor of the original dissertation, Prof. Christian Høgel (CML/ Lund), for his unlimited enthusiasm and medieval-like learning. The present study would definitely have been a work of poorer quality without his advice. I would also like to thank Erik Willem Coenen (Madrid) for detailed comments and suggestions. The PhD assessment committee—Prof. Hilaire Kallendorf (Texas), Prof. Julio Vélez Sainz (Madrid), and Prof. Lars Boje Mortensen (SDU)—offered generous and valuable thoughts. The book—and especially my joy working on it—benefited from conversations with Søren Lund Sørensen (Freie Universität Berlin), Morten Sørensen Thaning (Copenhagen Business School), and Adam Paulsen (SDU). That these can be one’s colleagues and friends at the same time makes you want to praise the days. I am grateful that the following people took time from the play of their own lives to read and criticise excerpts of the full text. Thank you, Ole Vangshardt,

 Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte (Cologne: Anaconda Verlag, 2017), 53f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-202

X

Acknowledgements

Jonas J. H. Christensen, Ida Aagaard Holm, Joachim Wiewiura, Kristoffer Garne, and Andreas Riis Damgaard. I also thank the latter three for endless adventure, a universal fighting spirit, and shared beliefs in what the humanities ought to be. The following work is—to the best of my ability—a humble attempt at an example of what that is. Finally, one person more than anyone else deserves—and long has—my immense gratitude: my treasured Doktormutter. I thank Sofie Kluge for her unprecedented generosity, her wisdom, spirit, and ambition. I hope that many more years of cooperation and friendship are to come.

Contents Acknowledgements Texts and Translations

IX XIII

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose 1 Theatrum mundi: Topos, Metatheatre, Absolute Metaphor? Philosophical Pessimism versus Celebration 13 On the Right Side of History 17

7

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity 31 Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul 33 Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas 45 Calderón on Applauding “This Day” 63 Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa 83 Metalepsis: The Puzzle of Intrusion Fiesta and the Día del Señor 98 Theodicy and Divine Law 102

91

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo 109 The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life “Do Good, for God Is God” 130 Beautiful Apologies 162 Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy 185 The Principle of Plenitude 187 Calderón’s Dramatic Theodicy 192 Cosmic Theatrum mundi 198

109

XII

Contents

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy” Apologetic World Theatre across the Epoch 209 “Horrible, Intolerable Anachronisms” 212 Earth and Heaven 217 Bibliography Index of Names

223 237

209

Texts and Translations In order to make the work accessible to non-Spanish readers, I provide prose translations of all longer quotations of Spanish verse. All English translations of El gran teatro del mundo are thus my own. I also provide English translations— printed or, in the absence of current printed translations, by me—of all Spanish, German, and French philosophy. To make the text as readable as possible, I have also translated all quotes from the Spanish and German secondary literature into English. For the philosophical texts as well as the secondary literature, I consequently also provide the original text in brackets for transparency. In the case of Latin and Greek, I have restrained myself to only providing key terms in the original, also in brackets in the text. To reduce the number of footnotes, references to Calderón’s El gran teatro del mundo along with its loa, as well as all quotations of Shakespeare and the Bible are given in parentheses in the body text. Information about the preferred editions of Calderón and Shakespeare will be inserted at first quotation. The preferred edition, along with all other consulted editions of Calderón’s works, can also be found under section A in the bibliography. When nothing else is noted, biblical translations stem from the New King James Version, but use of other translations and editions in Spanish and English is discussed continuously in the footnotes. The bibliography’s section D supplies a complete account of the Bible editions and abbreviations used. A version of the chapter on the loa to El gran teatro del mundo has been published in the Bulletin of the Comediantes 72, no. 2 (2020).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-204

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose This staging begins with a blatantly private experience. Once one begins to discover the classics of European literature, the startling idea that perhaps the world is a great theatre presents itself. This occurrence is anything but private for it is accessible to anyone who travels the literary canon. The private nature of the experience consists in the peculiar feeling of being moved or touched by this image; whether it be Homer’s anticipation of the idea in Zeus’ reluctance to turn his shining eyes away from the spectacle of human affairs and folly in the Iliad,2 St. Paul’s claim that the apostles have been made a theatron to the world and to the angels,3 that deep, dark wood of Dante’s divine comedy,4 Antonio’s sigh that he has been given a sad part on the world stage in The Merchant of Venice,5 or Ernst Jünger’s watching the bombing of Paris with a glass of strawberry Burgundy in his hand from a hotel rooftop, noting that the world had become “a theatre” [“Schauspiel”], a place of “stupendous beauty” [“gewaltiger Schönheit”].6 The peculiarity of the feeling arises through encounters with many largescale histories of European literature. To be sure, few fail to mention the importance of the image, yet many assume that the experience that maybe all the world’s a stage—clearly transcending any historical boundary—would always spring from an inherently pessimistic disposition: If life is a play, we all wear masks. If history is a script, the freedom of the will is rendered impossible. If the world is a stage, everything is an illusion. The problem is that these interpretations of the nature of the trope hardly explain why the reader or the audience would be moved by the image, its beauty or by (life in) the world theatre.7

 Homer, The Iliad, 16, 652–53, trans. Barry B. Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 391. This of course only being a precursor of the idea as drama did not yet exist.  1 Cor. 4:9.  Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, 1, 2, trans. Robert M. Durling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 27.  William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1.1.78. All Shakespeare references are put in the body text and refer to the Arden editions. They denote act, scene, and lines. See the bibliography for details.  Ernst Jünger, A German Officer in Occupied France, trans. Thomas S. Hansen and Abby J. Hansen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 325, entry of May 27, 1944. Ernst Jünger, Strahlungen, vol. 2 (Munich: DTV, 2008), 270.  The bluntly generalising nature of this claim about “many” of “our” large-scale histories of European literature is evident, but in this prelude, one example of a sweeping idea of the image’s long history and its pessimistic denotation must suffice. In a recent book on Shakespeare, Brian Walsh writes: “The comparison between life and playacting normally worked to emphasise the powerlessness of humanity as a kind of plaything of the gods. Eventually, in the Middle Ages, a https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-001

2

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

The initial motivation for this book was a personal puzzlement in the face of these analyses of the driving forces behind such an essential metaphor of literary history: Surely, this image must also derive from an experience of the meaningfulness or of the beauty of the world? What is it, therefore, about the theatrum mundi’s aesthetical and metaphysical register that is still not accounted for? Why do Zeus’ eyes become bright when he spectates the ways of the world? Why does Antonio infer the will to sacrifice himself for those he loves if the world is but a stage? Why does Jünger think the bombing of Paris is a spectacle of stupendous beauty? And, finally, why is the theatre of the world so great according to Pedro Calderón de la Barca? At the same time, there can be little doubt that the theatrum mundi is a core feature of literary modernity. It literally hovers over the entrance to the canon of the modern period as one of its fathers made it the motto of his Globe Theatre: Totus mundus agit histrionem.8 It is everywhere in the Shakespearean text corpus, and it seemingly has not lost its attraction since. It is echoed—if not fully invoked— in some of the greatest pieces of modern literature: from King Lear and Don Quijote to Goethe’s Faust, Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and Beckett’s Godot. This trend in modern literature generates a second related series of questions which do not so much pertain to aesthetics or metaphysics as to historiography; for one can also encounter a popular idea in our literary histories that the theatrum mundi is an exclusively modern experience: the eternal but unsubstantial mask-play of modern politics, the anticipation of an author who will never appear, or the absurdness of one’s longing for a role in a history which has lost its purpose. Yet there is nothing necessarily modern about the idea that the world is an all-encompassing stage. The image—or prefigurations of it—is almost as old as literature itself and can be found in certain Pre-Socratic philosophers, in Plato, and in the New Testament. It has by no means always solely implied an experience of the futility of human endeavours, a puppet play to the amusement of the gods, or a general denial of human freedom as the scholarly literature on it at times could lead to believe.

homiletic tradition developed from this perspective. Theatrum mundi became a means of staying focused on the reality of the afterlife and Christian salvation rather than getting too caught up in the false and fleeting reality of the world. By the time Jaques speaks his melancholy version in Arden, the expression had become also a vehicle for a proto-nihilism that is developed further by Shakespeare in his tragic figures Macbeth and Lear.” Brian Walsh, Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men and the Elizabethan Performance of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 163, emphasis added.  Literally “all the world plays the actor,” the motto put over the main entrance to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

3

This book is an attempt to tell that different story of the role of the theatrum mundi in the history of European literature. Invoking the Spanish baroque dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) as its lead part, two related series of questions are asked: How can the world theatre be understood in a sense where it is neither the expression of nor a reason for metaphysical pessimism? How, on the contrary, does it constitute a form of vindication of the world which corresponds to the experience of the image’s moving nature? And how might these conceptions of the image historiographically not simply constitute a reactionary or anti-modern movement within that which the Germans would call die Neuzeit but rather be a natural supplement to traditional understandings of the modern condition? The relation between the answers to these two sets of questions is the reason that the “world theatre of celebration” in seventeenth-century Europe will be suggested as an alternative modern beginning. It was also this celebratory tradition—in whom audience and reader encounter a theatrum mundi which conveys the sense that the world is a great and beautiful work of art and history laden with meaning—that inspired much later use of the theatrum mundi. This is especially pertinent to the Germanic world, where Spanish literature has held a prominent place, accentuated in the modern period through the dominance of the two branches of the Habsburg dynasty.9 When engaging the notion of a modern beginning, the intention is thus to suggest that the story of the theatrum mundi of celebration to be unravelled below is one which constitutes a tradition in literary modernity which can be seen to begin in early modern Europe with Calderón as its emblematic figure. Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegel brothers, Eichendorff, Richard Wagner, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, and Ernst Jünger are all examples of modern authors who also stage various justificatory theatrum mundi. To prove this latter point would require a second book. Focusing on the culture of early modern Europe allows the present monograph to argue that the possible varieties and the richness of the trope tend to be overlooked as a consequence of a lack of understanding for the mental horizons of many of the formative texts for the canonisation of the trope. Calderón and Shakespeare are particularly susceptible to these misunderstandings because they stand at that threshold between the premodern era and modernity. The popular urge to see Calderón as a first modern, often next to Descartes and Shakespeare, can be harmful because it has led to exaggerated pessimistic and scepticist accounts of some of Calderón’s most famous works  Sullivan has begun a study of this relation and comprehensively documented Calderón’s great reception history in the German-speaking world. Henry W. Sullivan, Calderón in the German Lands and the Low Countries: His Reception and Influence, 1654–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

4

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

and their use of the metaphor of the world stage. The argument is not that Calderón cannot be seen as a first modern but that we tend to operate with too reductive a notion of what that means. A dualist conception of history with a before and after the occurrence of a state of modernity has far-reaching consequences for the way we talk, teach, and write literary history. It bears the risk of obscuring our appreciation of the significance and richness of the theatrum mundi in general and its popularity in the culture of seventeenth-century Europe. It also suggests that a simplified and damaging notion of modernity can be at stake in literary historiography when modernity implies an absolute break with the Middle Ages. This period of a thousand years of European history then becomes that which we must overcome in order to be what we should, instead of letting it emerge as a natural part of what we are. When one considers the later modernist usages of the world theatre metaphor— for example, in Pirandello, Ionesco, or Beckett—it is tempting to think that the theatrum mundi is about claustrophobia, the flatness of the universe, or the anticipation of the author-god who will never show. These are legitimate modernist uses of the trope, but they should not be allowed to cause oblivion to the fact that several early modern uses of the theatrum mundi often had the opposite function: to invoke a sense of the pure vastness of the cosmos.10 One of the most characteristic attributes of the early modern world theatre image is that it implies a spatial experience where greatness, vastness, or pure largeness are emphasised. This tendency is common between Calderón and Shakespeare. Portia echoes Antonio’s world theatre of sadness in the first Belmont-scene saying: By my troth, Nerissa, my body is aweary of this great world. (1.2.1–2)

Portia’s feeling of being a tiny creature in a great world resembles the most famous Shakespearean use of the trope. Jaques’ proclamation that “all the world’s a stage” is triggered by the Duke’s opinion that the world is a Wide and universal theatre. (2.7.138)

The condition of being a small entity in an enormous world is thus also tied together with the theatrum mundi in other places in the works of Shakespeare. Lear has, for example, arrived at This great stage of fools. (4.6.179)

 And the claustrophobic version is not necessarily a part of the interwar use. Besides the obvious example of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, both Robert Musil and Ernst Jünger employ an older experience of grandness in their use of it. Cf. the Bourgogne scene in Strahlungen and the idea of world history as Dichtung in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften.

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

5

The tendency is distinct in Calderón as well. Neoclassical as well as new-critical approaches to the texts have difficulties conveying these literal and figurative effects of grandeza which the theatrum mundi (also) generates.11 What will further on be described as the “spatial acoustics” of the greatness of the world theatre is an example of how Calderón used the theatrum mundi to create a response or a mood of cosmological wonder and consolation rather than of despair or nihilism. In Calderón’s universe in particular and in early modern Spain in general, the experience of the vastness of the universe can just as well generate effects of comfort. The baroque theatrum mundi is highly suited for the stage because the theatre and the epoch were obsessed with vertical orientation and a cosmological mirror effect that would diminish God if the universe and stage were not “great”: the physical greatness of the universe mirrors God’s omnipotent majesty and the ancient sense of God as a skilled artist or craftsman. This verticality of greatness is often abandoned in modernist uses of the world theatre metaphor as well as in the ethical and political renditions which are observable from Stoicism through John of Salisbury to Machiavelli and parts of Shakespeare. To study these strands of the world theatre is of course warranted, but the point of the present work is that we cannot afford to lose sight of the celebratory use of the trope if we are to understand its full dimension in literary history; or if we are to appreciate the reasons for the theatrum mundi’s unique place in early modern culture more generally. This aspect of the world theatre has rather peculiarly gone somewhat unnoticed in the history of the image. After all, E. R. Curtius had already in 1948 identified Plato’s Laws as the seeds of the idea of the world as a theatre.12 There, Plato demonstrated a very exact sensation for the Janus-faced nature of the image: Let’s think about it this way. Consider each of us, living beings that we are, to be a divine puppet—whether constituted as the Gods’ plaything [παίγνιον] or for a serious purpose [σπουδῇ τινι], we have no idea. What we do know is that these various experiences in us are like cords and strings that tug at us and oppose each other. They pull against each other towards opposing actions across the field where virtue is marked off from vice.13

 González has recently argued for this claim of grandeza with reference to the “visual text” of El gran teatro del mundo, demonstrating that this side of the play also strives to generate “a great visual and auditive spectacle [un gran espectáculo visual y auditivo].” Aurelio González, “El texto espectacular en El gran teatro del mundo,” in “A dos luces, a dos visos”: Calderón y el género sacramental en el Siglo de Oro, ed. Carlos Mata Induráin (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2020), 84.  Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, 7th ed. (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1969), 148.  Plato, Laws, I, 644d–e, trans. Susan Sauvé Meyer in Plato: Laws 1 and 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 40, Greek original added.

6

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

Plato identified two different interpretational doors to enter. On the one side, he predicted Lear’s and Gloucester’s feeling of being toys in the hands of malevolent powers. On the other, he demonstrated the sense of a purposefulness in the world as a work of art. Plato then related it to ethics, subsequently: even if we cannot decide between the two, herein lies the difference between good and evil. This fundamental ambivalence in the world theatre is what he adheres to much later in the same work: “While man is contrived, as we said above, to be a plaything of God, and the best part of him is really just that.”14 The present book stages the Vorspiel to such an inquiry by re-contextualising and close reading Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s El gran teatro del mundo (ca. 1633–1636) in order to study Calderón’s awareness of the metaphor’s contact with the second part of Plato’s disjunction.15 This will be the basis for a general argument about the popularity of the theatrum mundi in early modern culture. By illustrating how the genre of the auto sacramental is not merely a tool for political ideology or ecclesiastical didacticism but also an autonomous art form, the relation between the genre of the auto and the theatrum mundi of celebration is first studied anew.16 Consequently, this could compel us to reconsider how the structure of the iconic text of El gran teatro del mundo and its core themes can be viewed. Instead of the traditional focus on the ethics of the auto’s play-within-theplay, the epistemological problem of illusion, or the consequences of baroque desengaño, the book will shed light on a world theatre which seeks to transform traditional early modern problems of crisis, death, and scepticism rather than being their mere expression. With the aid of vocabularies drawn from Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hans Blumenberg, and H. G. Gadamer, the monograph develops a concept of Calderón’s world theatre as an “aesthetic theodicy” which—through metaphor and drama rather than through reason or dogmatics—strives to trans-

 Plato, Laws, VII, 803c, trans. R. G. Bury in Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 11 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).  The dating of the play is to be found in N. D. Shergold, “El gran teatro del mundo y sus problemas escenográficos,” in Hacia Calderón: Coloquio anglogermano Exeter 1969, ed. Hans Flasche (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970, 77. A spectacular evidence for this dating is that the American hispanist W. A. Hunter found a translation of the play into the Aztec language of Nahuatl, dated 1640, at a Berkeley library in 1960. Due to logistics of manuscript travel, Hunter therefore believed 1633 to be likely. W. A. Hunter, “Toward a More Authentic Text of Calderón’s El gran teatro del mundo,” Hispanic Review 29, no. 3 (1961): 241. The play was definitely staged in 1641 in Valencia wherefrom a set of production instructions survives. Shergold, “Problemas,” 77.  Auto refers to the Iberian theatrical genre of the auto sacramental. The genre is widely known within Hispanic studies but less so within the general field of comparative literature. It will be introduced and discussed in the next chapter which treats Calderón specifically. His El gran teatro del mundo is written in this genre.

Theatrum mundi: Topos, Metatheatre, Absolute Metaphor?

7

form the horrors of empirical existence into a vindication of Creation. This will pave the way for a new reading of the play’s inner horizon with an emphasis on modes of celebration and effects of jubilation. The world theatre is intended to echo the greatness of Creation, not solely to mirror man’s futile existence in it. That is the world theatre of celebration which finds resonance across early modern Europe. In other words, to reiterate the lines VOZ sings when RICO and POBRE are called to account for their sins: “Happiness is numbered, sorrow is numbered.” [“Número tiene la dicha,/ número tiene el dolor.”]17 Hence, it is time to interpret the amount of dicha, happiness, when all the world was a seventeenth-century stage.

Theatrum mundi: Topos, Metatheatre, Absolute Metaphor? What kind of expression, what kind of trope, is the theatrum mundi? E. R. Curtius identified it as a metaphor, and the general tendency has been to call it a topos.18

 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran teatro del mundo, ed. Ignacio Arellano (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2021), vv. 1203–1204. All future references to this work will be put in parentheses in the body text. Characters’ names from autos sacramentales will be fully capitalised in order to emphasise their allegorical nature. In standard dramatis personae of the time, they appear with an el or la and are then abbreviated in the texts themselves.  The most important general surveys of the trope since Curtius (Europäische Literatur, 148–54) is Jean Jacquot, “‘Le Théâtre du monde’ de Shakespeare à Calderón,” Revue de Littérature Comparée 31 (1957): 341–72; Minos Kokolakis, The Dramatic Simile of Life (Athens: Private edition, 1960); Anne Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 59–80; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodramatik: Prolegomena (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1973), 121–238; Franz Link and Günter Niggl, eds., Theatrum Mundi: Götter, Gott und Spielleiter im Drama von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981); Lynda Christian, Theatrum Mundi: The History of an Idea (New York: Garland, 1987); Jonathan Thacker, Role-Play and the World as Stage in the Comedia (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002); William Egginton, How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality and the Question of Modernity (New York: University of New York, 2003); William N. West, “Knowledge and Performance in the Early Modern Theatrum Mundi,” Metaphorik.dk 14 (2008): 1–20; Björn Quiring, ed., “If then the world a theatre present . . .”: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi in Early Modern England (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014). These are usually the most quoted surveys, along with Vilanova’s study of the sources of Calderón’s use of it. Antonio Vilanova, Boletín de la real academia de buenas letras de Barcelona 23, no. 2 (1950): 153–88. An area a bit overlooked in studies of the theatrum mundi is the Germanic tradition of rather free attempts at essayistic philosophy of theatre. This applies to Eugen Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1960), Heinz Otto Burger, “Dasein heißt eine Rolle spielen”: Studien zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte (Munich: C. Hanser Verlag, 1963) and Ralf Konersmann, Der Schleier des Timanthes (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1994). See also the general surveys of Wilfried Barner, Barock-Rhetorik (Tübingen: Max Nie-

8

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

Considering that Curtius’ goal was to demonstrate the geographical unity of Europe by identifying the shared Latin-medieval origins of the national canons, his approach is congruent with the general argument of the present study. Curtius argued for a continuity in literary history, very much in opposition to various theories of historical rupture, as for instance to be found in Jacob Burckhardt, Michel Foucault, and Stephen Greenblatt. Many of the topoi identified by Curtius are treated as proverbial sayings. This makes apparent sense when Curtius defines topoi as clichés essentially derived from ancient rhetoric.19 But Curtius nonetheless considered some of the topoi underivable from the rhetorical genres and instead saw them “pertaining to original matters of existence [Urverhältnisse des Daseins].”20 The temptation to regard the theatrum mundi as a commonplace is understandable. Sancho Panza likewise suggests this depreciation of the image when his master invokes it: “Then the very same thing,” said the knight, “happens in the comedy and commerce of this world [. . .] but, when the play is done, that is, when life is at an end, death strips them [humankind] of the robes that distinguished their stations, and they become all equal in the grave.” “A brave comparison!” cried Sancho, “tho’ not so new but I have heard it made on divers and sundry occasions.” [“Pues lo mismo,” dijo Don Quijote, “acontece en la comedia y trato de este mundo [. . .]; pero en llegando al fin, que es cuando se acaba la vida, a todos les quita la muerte las ropas que los diferenciaban, y quedan iguales en la sepultura.” “Brava comparación,” dijo Sancho, “aunque no tan nueva, que yo no la haya oído muchas y diversas veces.”]21

The ironic squire does his best to downplay the Don’s invocation of the world theatre, to some extent representing the sense that the theatrum mundi is proverbial in essence. Nevertheless, Sancho’s reduction could never be true in the case of El gran teatro del mundo and Cervantes’ own novel is infused with the idea on a far more structural level. Indeed, “topos” can be said to be a bad term because of its rhetorical and proverbial connotations.

meyer, 1970) and Frank J. Warnke, “The World as Theatre: Baroque Variations on a Traditional Topos,” in Festschrift für Edgar Mertner, ed. Bernhard Fabian and Ulrich Suerbaum (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1968), 185–200.  Curtius, Europäische Literatur, 79.  Curtius, Europäische Literatur, 92.  Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Tobias Smollett (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 426; Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, pt. II, ch. 12, ed. Francisco Rico (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2004), 631.

Theatrum mundi: Topos, Metatheatre, Absolute Metaphor?

9

A lot has happened in topos studies since Curtius, but the proverbial meaning of the theatrum mundi is hard to lose. What seems promising, on the other hand, is Björn Quiring’s ingenious suggestion that Hans Blumenberg came close when he deemed it an “absolute metaphor.”22 Blumenberg’s metaphorology is an attempt to liberate metaphor from its origins in rhetoric in order to establish its philosophical legitimacy. Blumenberg notes that in a world where kosmos and logos are congruent, metaphor belongs to rhetoric as its use is ornamental;23 due to the fact that logos in itself has access to the structure of kosmos, figurative speech is solely necessary for aesthetical or persuasive measures. It just happens to be the case that the history of ideas consists of a long series of proofs that logos and kosmos are not correlates, and therefore, certain metaphors are not merely leftovers which reason will eventually dispose of on its way “from myth to reason” [“vom Mythos zum Logos”] but the “core” [“Grundbestände”] of philosophical language.24 These metaphors are, amongst others, the light of truth and the world stage.25 They constitute metaphors that are not reducible to logic,26 but they can still express something true about the world; literary language justified as an autonomous medium of truth. This is developed—quite spectacularly— through a dominating metaphor itself, namely the “power of truth” [“die Macht der Wahrheit”].27 Through its foundational function in the philosophical tradition, this very expression constitutes the type of the absolute metaphor in the sense that these images are themselves subcategories of “mighty truths.” The theatrum mundi is not only an absolute metaphor in itself but also such a mighty truth. This sense of “mighty truths” is beneficial seeing that it echoes the idea of the world as a wonder or monument, which is a further development of the idea of the universe as God’s work of art. This is made especially clear in the loa to El gran teatro del mundo where the universe is described as a type of Roman colosseum.28 This Blumenbergian sense can clarify new aspects of Calderón’s world theatre of celebration, but the goal is also to explain how Calderón’s works dem-

 Hans Blumenberg, “Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 6 (1960): 22. Cf. Björn Quiring, “Introduction,” in “If then the world a theatre present . . .”, ed. Quiring, 2.  Blumenberg, “Paradigmen,” 8.  Blumenberg, “Paradigmen,” 9.  Blumenberg, “Paradigmen,” 22.  Blumenberg, “Paradigmen,” 9.  Blumenberg, “Paradigmen,” 23.  Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado El gran teatro del mundo, ed. Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros (Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 2001), vv. 165–70. A loa was a separate dramatical genre enacted before the auto. To its genesis and generical qualities, see the section on the (alleged) loa to El gran teatro del mundo below. The validity of it is contested. All future references to this loa refer to the mentioned edition.

10

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

onstrate a sympathy towards the epistemological potential of metaphor in general. Or, as he put it: Y pues ya la fantasía Ha entablado el argumento, Entable la realidad La metáfora.29 [And when the imagination has arranged the plot, let metaphor arrange reality.]

This could be a plausible approach when seeking to appreciate the full scope of and fascination with the world theatre. If this is the case, and in fact, we are dealing with a mighty truth, not an ornamental surface phenomenon, the world theatre as an absolute metaphor would have a definitive role in the meeting between the texts’ outer and inner horizons. The absolute metaphor is introduced in this context to argue that enough has been said about the world theatre of modernity as an ironical meta-approach to existence, or to general senses of discomfort, with reference to the apprehension that the world theatre automatically blends reality and illusion. The theatrum mundi, to be sure, does blend the two, but this confusion of illusion and reality by no means automatically leads to existential despair, epistemological scepticism, or metaphysical pessimism. It just as well generates the effects of belonging, of man’s home in the world. Thereby, it sacralises reality with the aid of metaphor and ritual. This point is already mentioned here due to a, perhaps peculiar, absence of a seemingly evident concept. The comprehensive use of Lionel Abel’s famous concept of metatheatre as modernity’s primary dramatic form will not do for the purpose at hand. Abel’s minimal definition of metatheatre is not wrong, for the definition merely states that some of the great early modern plays were about life perceived as “already theatricalized” and that plays’ characters “were aware of their own theatricality.”30 Nonetheless, the concept of metatheatre is not compatible with the purpose of describing an early modern world theatre of celebration and as a Blumenbergian absolute metaphor. In the first place, the term metatheatre has a natural tendency to suggest the absence of metaphysics in modernity because everything turns into language games of immanence. This tendency depicts one aspect of modern theatre and of modernity’s use of the theatrum mundi, but it is not the only one. This is still what Abel maintains and for this

 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Las órdenes militares, ed. Nicolás González Ruiz (Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 1999), vv. 241–44. The Arden Shakespeare tradition of beginning each verse line with a capital letter will be observed throughout.  Lionel Abel, Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York: Hill and Wang, 1963), 60.

Theatrum mundi: Topos, Metatheatre, Absolute Metaphor?

11

reason, the concept is inexpedient to the present study’s goals. In his often amusing and beautiful prose, Abel claims that there is no such thing as religious metatheatre. George Lukacs has said that the principal spectator of tragedy is God. I cannot imagine God present at a play of Shaw, Pirandello, or Genet. I cannot imagine Godot enjoying Waiting for Godot.31

This incorporates part of the idea that in modernity, defined as the period of God’s death, “all the world’s a stage for us—but no one is watching it.”32 Such an assumed lack of verticality represents one standard theorem of modernity but is poorly suited for understanding the celebratory tendency of the theatrum mundi. The Spanish scholar Manuel Sito Alba once applied the term of metatheatre to El gran teatro del mundo but did not use it in Abel’s sense. In fact, Sito Alba thought that Calderón’s metatheatre was different in kind from the normal examples of metatheatre such as El retablo de las maravillas by Cervantes and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.33 Contrary to these, Sito Alba described the metatheatrical nature of El gran teatro del mundo as one which places the world in “a larger whole and in another magnificent spectacle; simply of holy Creation itself” [“de un conjuto mayor, de otro espectáculo grandioso; sencillamente de la propia creación divina”].34 If this were the meaning of metatheatre generally acknowledged, it would also apply to the present interpretation: Sito Alba’s argument would just have to be broadened in order to suggest that “the larger whole” and the “magnificent spectacle” could also apply to several works from early modern Spain, to other Shakespearean invocations of the world theatre, to Pascal, and to encyclopaedias such as those of Boaistuau’s Le théâtre du monde (1558) and Boissard’s Theatrum vitae humanae (1596). Secondly, Abel’s expanded definitions of metatheatre exclude the world theatre of celebration: “Tragedy glorifies the structure of the world, which it supposedly reflects in its own form. Metatheatre glorifies the unwillingness of the

 Abel, Metatheatre, 113.  Richard Hornby’s exegesis of the concept of metatheatre after Abel. Richard Hornby, Drama, Metadrama and Perception (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986), 47.  This is also Poppenberg’s critique of Abel although Poppenberg still thinks metatheatre applicable to Calderón. Gerhard Poppenberg, “Nachwort und Anmerkungen,” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran teatro del mundo: Das grosse Welttheater. Spanisch/Deutsch (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2012), 206. Feijoo uses metatheatre in relation to a number of autos but abstains from applying the term to El gran teatro del mundo. Not, however, because he would think this wrong but because the case is “so evident” [“tan palmario”]. Luis Iglesias Feijoo, “Calderón y el metateatro,” in “A dos luces, a dos visos,” ed. Induráin, 105.  Manuel Sito Alba, “Metateatro en Calderón: El gran teatro del mundo,” in Actas del congreso internacional sobre Calderón y el Siglo de Oro, ed. Luciano García Lorenzo, vol. 2 (Madrid: CSIC, 1983), 790.

12

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

imagination to regard any image of the world as ultimate.”35 This is followed by Abel’s claim that “tragedy cannot operate without the assumption of an ultimate order. For metatheatre, order is something continually improvised by men.”36 Through the disjunction, one must think that this means that metatheatre operates without a “structure of the world.” Calderón’s world theatre is an immensely clever way of operating with such structures—even though the genre is not tragedy and even though his concept of the world as a theatre is usually described as early modern. The same counts for Abel’s distinction that “tragedy tries to mediate between the world and man. Tragedy wants to be on both sides. Metatheatre assumes there is no world except that created by human striving, human imagination.”37 As just noted, this is where Calderón’s world theatre would become too modern if we failed to see that it is engaged in a serious attempt to reconcile the differences between the world and man, along with the difference between the world and eternity. This is the reason why Blumenberg’s idea of an absolute metaphor is better suited. This concept enables descriptions of a play where the world as theatrum becomes a sort of wonder, a mighty work of art, reverberating its meaning and beauty into a wide and universal theatre which does not only generate dizziness but also glory. This sense of grandeza will be the one to trace in early modern culture in the following with Calderón as the lead example. A. A. Parker, arguably the most influential Calderonista in the English-speaking world, had a sense of this line of thinking. One could say that Parker’s method is almost new-critical in its approach to the genius of Calderón’s technical use of allegory. In this way, Parker’s famous The Allegorical Drama of Calderón (1943) is an exposition of Calderón’s literary genius. But Parker does not place El gran teatro del mundo in the full context of the history of the world theatre.38 Or, to put it more polemically: Parker’s defence of El gran teatro del mundo is credible, but it cannot explain why the play in the end came to be known as “El gran teatro del mundo” and not plainly “El teatro del mundo.” Another explanation of the ingenuity of the use of the image in the play, seen both historically and textually, is necessary in order to deliver a credible explanation and interpretation of the success and quality of the play’s use of the image; its power, its greatness. Or, as ANTIGUO puts it in the loa to El gran teatro del mundo:

 Abel, Metatheatre, 113.  Abel, Metatheatre, 113.  Abel, Metatheatre, 113.  Alexander A. Parker, The Allegorical Drama of Calderón: An Introduction to the Autos Sacramentales (Oxford: The Dolphin Book Co., 1943).

Philosophical Pessimism versus Celebration

13

Para una comedia suya Dispuso Dios, donde fuese Su grandeza conocida. (vv. 169–71) [God arranged for his very own comedia where his glory could be revealed.]

The thesis of the present book is that such a new explanation holds the key, not only to unlocking a secret about this play’s seminal status but also to a hitherto underemphasised side of early modern intellectual Europe.

Philosophical Pessimism versus Celebration The two concepts of pessimism and celebration have already been widely utilised as if they were common sense and also as if they were indisputably antithetic. Perhaps the reader may have grasped it already, but this distinction will be employed in the general apparatus to examine the two variables of the Platonic dichotomy. Plato displays an awareness of the metaphysical register of this absolute metaphor; that the experience that we are puppets can either lead to a feeling of despair—we are playthings to the gods, they kill us for their sport—or living in the world theatre can imply that we, and the world, are created with a purpose. There are obvious reasons why the first disjunct would lead to inherently negative dispositions. The term pessimism is intended to cover these “negative” aspects of the experience of the world as a stage which, of course, appears in a variety of forms and contents in the history of the trope. There are three reasons why this exact term is applied.39 First, it prompts a natural discussion with recent scholarship which also tends to

 It is important to stress that this disjunction in Plato is not understood as mutually exclusive. Being a plaything is not necessarily negative, and purpose is not necessarily positive: both can incite a wide array of emotion. The term pessimism is consciously anachronistic; the term was not used before the eighteenth century. Cf. Tobias Dahlkvist’s genealogy in Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism (Uppsala: Uppsala Studies in History of Ideas, 2007), 12. There is, however, broad precedence for applying it to Calderón as well. Valbuena Prat writes that “Calderón is one of many representatives of Spanish pessimism” [“Calderón es uno de tantos representantes del pesimismo español”]. Ángel Valbuena Prat, “Los autos de Calderón: Clasificación y análisis,” Revue Hispanique 61 (1924): 214. Quoted after Jutta Wille, Calderóns Spiel der Erlösung: Eine spanische Bilderbibel des 17. Jahrhundert (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1932), 252n224. Otis H. Green devotes an entire chapter to the theme of “Optimism—Pessimism in the Baroque” in his Spain and the Western Tradition, vol. 4 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 19–42. Maravall also begins his description of the Baroque’s image of the world with the thought that a “pessimism begins to spread” [“se difunde un pesimismo”]. José Antonio Maravall, La cultura del barroco, 9th ed. (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2002), 90.

14

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

focus on the negative side of the theatrum mundi through its relation to effects of philosophical pessimism.40 Secondly, it has come to echo a general problem in the history of ideas, which is also notable in Calderón, namely the question of whether it was better for man never to have been born. This topic is sometimes known as the “wisdom of Silenus” and is quite common in the literature of the ancients, for instance in some of the chorus lyrics in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.41 It has been suggested that Segismundo’s complaint in La vida es sueño is an expression of the topos of Silenian wisdom as well: Aunque si nací, ya entiendo Qué delito he cometido. Bastante causa ha tenido Vuestra justicia y rigor; Pues el delito mayor Del hombre es haber nacido. [And yet, if I was really born, I now understand which crime I have committed. There is cause enough for Your justice and harshness for Man’s most heinous crime, is having been born.]42

El gran teatro del mundo could also be considered to invoke the topic when POBRE curses the world: “Gone be the day, oh Lord, upon which I was born into this world” [“perezca, Señor, el día/ en que a este mundo nací”] (vv. 1175–76). If a transformation from the apparent meaninglessness of existence to a vindication of Creation is at play, the justification could be said to be an answer to the Silenian wisdom; the play offers a reason why it is in fact better for man to have come unto this great stage—fools or not. Thirdly, the reason why the term pessimism activates this topic from the history of ideas can to some extent be said to have been caused by the philosophies of Schopenhauer and, especially, Nietzsche,

 Jeremy Robbins, Arts of Perception: The Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque 1580–1720 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 8f. Robbins’ approach is a suitable counterpart to the present study because he explicitly underscores that his understanding of pessimism has to do with internal intellectual contexts of Spain rather than external political events of war and economy (9).  “Do not be born!/ I still maintain that that’s the finest plan,/ or if you are, go whence you came,/ as quickly as you can.” Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, trans. David Molroy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), vv. 1224–27.  Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, ed. Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros (Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 1997), vv. 107–12. The quote as an echo of the Silenian wisdom is suggested by Antonio Regalado, Calderón: Los orígenes de la modernidad en la España del Siglo de Oro, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Destino, 1995), 67–70. As with so many other themes of the play, they have a pagan coinage in the Silenian wisdom and a Christian in Job’s laments.

Philosophical Pessimism versus Celebration

15

who retells the tale of the Silenus and also operates specifically within the notion of Silenian wisdom.43 The concept of pessimism is thus not solely beneficial because it activates the problem of the Silenian wisdom, it is also inherently related to ideas of possible justifications of existence or cosmos in high modernity. These meanings of pessimism are not intended to directly equate with the famous baroque concept of desengaño, disillusion. To be desengañado is a highly ambiguous state of mind, implying the beneficial meaning of not being deceived, not fooling oneself, as well as a sense of horror in the face of the naked truths of existence. Sofie Kluge defines and contextualises the concept of desengaño: Faced with contemporary socioeconomic, political, and ideological crises, the baroque intellectual and artistic elite expressed a profound feeling of desengaño no doubt more intensely experienced by society as a whole. A predecessor of Romantic Weltschmerz [world-weariness] and modern spleen, and a descendant of ancient melancholy [. . .] baroque desengaño rested on a polarized, antithetic worldview where a prior (utopian) synthesis of history and meaning was felt to have been irremediably broken and replaced by a situation of uncontrollable change, transition into nothingness, and growing crisis.44

The difference between the notion of pessimism and the early modern phenomenon of desengaño furthermore enables a natural discussion with very different contemporaneous uses of the theatrum mundi. The assumed antithesis of pessimism—celebration—does not imply antonymy. The best blanket term for the second disjunct of the Platonic disjunction is, inspired by theology, perhaps apologetics; a way to convey a defence of the cosmos or man’s life in it with reference to some form of purpose.45 A subcategory of this apologetic approach to the world theatre is Calderón’s historically unique investigation and development of a celebratory world theatre. This will be elaborated in detail below but for the purpose of encapsulating the point, “celebration” is a way to understand the relation between the genre of the auto sacramental and the early modern world theatre as sharing a fundamental feature, namely that both of them can be said to work to establish what Díez Borque, a Spanish historian of theatre, has described as an “espacio festivo.”46 The aura of festivity is often acknowledged in the case of the auto sacramental but to a lesser degree

 In The Birth of Tragedy. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Geburt der Tragödie, sc. 3; sc. 7, in Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 1 (Munich: C. Hanser Verlag, 1954), 28f; 47.  Sofie Kluge, Baroque, Allegory, Comedia: The Transfiguration of Tragedy in SeventeenthCentury Spain (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2010), 109.  In the sense described in the OED as “constituting a formal defence or justification of a theory or doctrine.”  José María Díez Borque, Historia del teatro en España, vol. 1 (Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, 1990), 640.

16

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

in the case of the theatrum mundi. Here, we encounter one of the first possible explanations of the immense artistic and popular success of Calderón’s play: He struck a shared disposition at the core of a genre and of a metaphor respectively. A second result of this inquiry into the theatrum mundi is another shared feature between image and genre which is best described as a transformative potential, and which also supports the idea of a world theatre of celebration. The notion of a celebration has deep roots in ritualistic and artistic practices. You celebrate mass in the Catholic church. The ancient Dionysia were festivals, in the English language according to the OED deriving from feast, which is a large, celebratory meal, ultimately relating to the Latin plural of festus, “joyous.” Calderón’s world theatre does not necessarily solely illustrate epistemological problems of illusion or lamentation of vanitas. It aims to achieve a vindication of Creation—through the medium of art. This transformation suggests that the festive aura surrounding the world theatre has its parallels in the singular nature of the event of a religious celebration whereby a ritual changes something in the world or in the partaker of it. Calderón’s work can equally be seen to experiment with art’s potentially transformative power, especially inherent in the theatrum mundi. To a large extent, Calderón made use of it in the play in order to establish an aesthetic theodicy with his specifically celebratory world theatre. The contention here will therefore be that Calderón’s very specific blend of auto sacramental and the metaphor of the world theatre is one way of illustrating and exemplifying a fundamental feature of the theatrum mundi. Lastly, the term celebration is supposed to serve a historiographical concern of the study. In this use of the theatrum mundi, there is a certain risk of what might be deemed “art worship.” This is also echoed in the notion of an aesthetic theodicy. When seeing how Calderón is emblematic of one sort of modern beginning and considering the substantial seventeenth-century impact on many later uses of the image of the theatrum mundi in high modernity, it is of interest to ponder whether the celebratory (and religious) world theatre contributed to sowing the seeds of what in the age of the Romantics would come to be called art religion [Kunstreligion]. One might just think of how (the admirer of Calderón) Richard Wagner called the genre of his works in Bayreuth Bühnenweihfestspiele, perhaps translatable as “art festivals on a consecrated stage.”47 In the notion of the world theatre of celebration, we have quite a clear example of the modernity of Calderón’s enterprise, but strictly in a sense where modernity does not mean the disappearance of either the cultic, or the beautiful. The world remains a work of art in

 Joyce Kennedy and Michael Kennedy, eds., “Parsifal,” in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Oxfordreference.com.

On the Right Side of History

17

this alternative tradition of literary modernity, and the universe is still something to be praised in a cultic manner. The emphasis on the celebratory tendency distances this study to certain approaches to early modern world theatre where it is seen in terms of a modernity, signified by the loss of transcendence and a disappearance of the cultic, in short what might be called a “dark” modernity of where there is nothing or no reason to celebrate—but much to mourn.

On the Right Side of History The historiographical concern stems from two questions which are pertinent to an enormous amount of work within the field of historico-comparative literature. The first one has a direct bearing on seventeenth-century culture, namely the question of how historiographical assumptions about the birth of modernity affect the way the theatrum mundi has been interpreted. A preliminary claim is that when Calderón is considered an early modern author or even one of the first moderns, alongside the likes of Descartes and Shakespeare, there is a tendency to automatically assume a pessimistic fashioning of his world theatre as well. The following hypothesis is the opposite. It is possible to maintain the modernity of Calderón’s enterprise without implying escalating scepticism or pessimism—this is one reason why he could be said to impersonate an alternative modern beginning, also extendable to several great works of the time. The second perspective concerns the relation between the Middle Ages and modernity. As will be demonstrated, one standard definition (or occasionally: a presupposition) of modernity is purely negative in the sense that it simply means to stop being “medieval.” This definition constitutes the known dichotomy of being medieval when one acts in a beastly or barbarical manner in later epochs where one is supposed to be “civilised.”48 The present analysis aims to contribute to a general perspective of the way in which literary history of the modern period is (all too) often written. The guiding principle is an urge to identify a particular moment in history wherein “we” became “modern” and where the act of becoming modern intrinsically implies to stop being “medieval.” In this case, the quotation marks in “we” are important as they indicate a basic function of a particular figuration of history: whenever one identifies a moment in history where the West went from medieval to modern, one is by definition on the right side. As  For an exposition of this standard assumption in literary historiography and its inherent problems, see Rasmus Vangshardt, “Coherence and the Longing for Modernity in Literary Historiography, or: Why History and Historicism Are Two Things,” Res Cogitans 14, no. 2 (2020): 85–103.

18

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

such, every person in search of that decisive breaking point will eo ipso be safely home when they find it. This idea—that the Middle Ages is not a natural part of what we moderns are, but that which is to be overcome—can be enormously damaging for literary historiography. This is the other side of the historiographical task of this book. Calderón seems highly suited as an example to carry out such a discussion because he remains situated, historically and intellectually, between medieval and early modern worlds. Medieval practices of hymn, danse macabre, and typology are used for a specific early modern aesthetic theodicy. This suggests that on two levels, the taxonomy of medieval and modern has direct consequences on the way we interpret and teach literary history. To sketch the outlines of a theoretical apparatus to approach these questions, it is necessary to recognise that the discussion of Calderón’s modernity points forward as well as backwards in historical time. When considering his possible modernity, the direction goes backwards in historical time in the sense that it is a question of whether one’s modernity hinges on being not-medieval. It points forward by circling around the question of whether modernity also somehow necessarily leads to metaphysical or historical forms of pessimism. The next natural step is therefore to pose a simple yet immensely difficult question: What does it mean to be modern? In the Anglophone world as well as in Continental Europe, there is nothing dubious or controversial about the use of the terms early modern literature or a frühe Neuzeit. They are the expression of a standard theorem of European history often derived from either a dissection of linear time as ancient/modern or from a trinitarian scheme of ancient/medieval/modern. The problem arises with the “when” of this modernity and is present within the different genres of the humanities. In political philosophy, modernity often enters the stage either with Machiavelli (1469–1527) or in the year of the French Revolution, 1789. Within economical history, the industrialisation around the year 1800 usually constitutes the historical peripeteia. Within the history of ideas, 1637 with Descartes’ Cogito. Within theology, the pivotal year is 1517 with the events in Wittenberg. When reading grand-scale histories of the different areas of human culture, one can get the impression that although everyone is sure that they themselves are on the modern end of history, it is very unclear when we in fact became modern. One thing, however, is certain: It is a matter of life and death, that this point in history is identifiable. As Oswald Spengler expressed it in his influential draft for a “morphology of world history”: “The relocation of the beginning of ‘modernity’ from the crusades to the Renaissance and from the Renaissance to the beginning of the nineteenth century only proves that the scheme itself was considered imperturbable” [“die Verlagerung des Anfangspunktes der ‘Neuzeit’

On the Right Side of History

19

von den Kreuzzügen zur Renaissance und von da an zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhundertsbeweist nur, daß man das Schema selbst für unerschütterlich hielt”].49 The fact that people have been willing to proclaim the starting point of modernity from the period of the crusades in the eleventeenth century all the way to the industrialisation in the nineteenth is enthralling. Another assumption is that the birth of modernity coincides with the creation of two figures, Hamlet and Don Quijote, whose makers died within a fortnight in the same anno domini of 1616. This framing of the scheme is identifiable in several studies of Calderón’s world theatre. The term “modernity” will also here be defined as a period of history which begins with the birth of these two heroes from the pantheon of European literary history. This framing can be contested but is widely applied within literary studies. When the tentative and broad meaning of the epoch of modernity is used without further qualification, it refers to the macro-scale assumption of a ground-breaking shift between that which came before modernity and roughly corresponds to the time around the year 1600 and ends in the aftermath of the Second World War. If the reader considers this a crude division or a rather long period of time, it would be worth remembering that no one flinches when a period of some one thousand years of European history is condescendingly dubbed the “middle” ages. A suitable place to begin a discussion of the meaning of describing ourselves as modern is once again with Hans Blumenberg, as his main project was to serve as a champion, not a detractor, of the modern period. Blumenberg set out to defend the autonomy and independence of modernity [die Neuzeit] as more than a secularised version of Judeo-Christian notions of world and history in his seminal Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (1966). He began with what he saw as the typical, but wrong, public and common-sense idea of the worldliness or secularisation which was achieved during the centuries of modernity and which Blumenberg saw to be in its final stages: What the term “Secularization” signifies should, it seems, be readily determinable. Whether as an observation, a reproach, or an endorsement, everyone is familiar with this designation for a long-term process by which a disappearance of religious ties, attitudes to transcendence, expectations of an afterlife, ritual performances, and firmly established turns of speech is driven onward in both private and public life. [Was der Ausdruck “Verweltlichung” besagt, scheint unvermittelt und leicht einzugehen. Jedermann kennt, als Feststellung, als Vorhaltung, als Bestätigung, diese Beziehung für einen langfristigen Prozeß, durch den ein Schwund religiöser Bindungen, transzendenter Einstel-

 Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 45.

20

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

lungen, lebensjenseitiger Erwartungen, kultischer Verrichtungen und festgeprägter Wendungen im privaten wie täglich-öffentlichen Leben vorangetrieben wird.]50

The purpose of Blumenberg’s book was to present a completely different account of modernity, wherein secularisation was exchanged for the more independent property of self-assertion [Selbstbehauptung],51 so he did not favour this public discourse on modernity. He singled out four aspects of modernity that many histories of literature still today count as inherent features of what it means to be modern: loss of (1) religious commitments, of (2) transcendental or vertical engagements, of (3) expectations of an afterlife, and of (4) cultic performances of divine ceremony and thereby of the celebratory nature of human life. Whether historiographically correct or not, Blumenberg saw this standard version of modernity as an ideological attempt to infuse modernity with the sense of the word he so disliked: secularisation. He believed that the concept of secularisation was a way of trying to purge modernity from any oddities of the Middle Ages while still maintaining every possible structural affinity to a medieval worldview. The most obvious examples are modern work ethics as a secularised monasterial asceticism or the idea of continued historical progress of the enlightenment as a secularised version of religious belief in the teleological-eschatological direction of history. The above-mentioned features of modernity only comprise a negative definition as they mention that which is not supposed to be present. Whenever the historian then encounters a celebratory approach to human existence or a vertical engagement, he only has one choice when assuming the secularisation theorem—to consider them anachronistic oddities (waiting) to be removed: Once “secularization” had become the cultural-political program of emancipation from all theological and ecclesiastical dominance, of the liquidation of the remnants of the Middle Ages, it could equally well be formulated as a postulate for the clarification of fronts, for the decisive and ineluctable divisions of the souls (of the “sheep from the goats”) in anticipation of the final eschatological judgment dividing “this world” from “the next.” [Nachdem “Säkularisierung” zum kulturpolitischen Programmwert der Emanzipation von allen theologisch-kirchlichen Dominanzen, der Liquidation von Restbeständen des Mittelalters geworden war, ließ sich ebenso zum Postulat der Klärung der Fronten, der entschlosse-

 Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 3; Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), 11.  Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 138; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 151. The term is Hans Blumenberg’s famous attribute with which he attempted a defence of the substantial difference of substance between modernity and the previous macro-epochs of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

On the Right Side of History

21

nen und zur Entschließung zwingenden Scheidung der Geister im Vorwege jenes endgültig “diese Welt” und “jene Welt” trennenden eschatologischen Gerichts formulieren.]52

To be sure, Blumenberg was not a reactionary and is not one in this quote. After all, the book was an attempt to defend the legitimacy of modernity. Blumenberg’s point was that when modernity is only defined by not being medieval, all medievalisms in modernity become embarrassments, where progress eventually will dispose of the remainders of the medieval in the most final of ways: liquidation. Blumenberg saw this as a problem exactly because it obscures the difference in substance between modernity and past epochs: “Thus what had in fact occurred in the process of secularisation did not have to be protested as a loss of substance but could appear as an abandonment of encumbrances.” [“Danach brauchte, was faktisch im Prozeß der Verweltlichung geschehen war, nicht als Verlust an Substanz reklamiert zu werden, sondern konnte als Preisgabe von Belastungen erscheinen.”]53 The last sentence is of interest: In the common-sense understanding of modernity as secularisation, history becomes a process of the “relinquishment” of burdens, especially the features of the Middle Ages.54 The second important theoretical contribution to a relevant definition of modernity is Bruno Latour whose thoughts on the temporal logic of modern selfunderstanding offer an important historiographical perspective. Latour notes that one important feature of modernity is its specific assumption of temporality. He claims that anthropology teaches us that specific forms of historicity always contributed to the (self-)understanding of epochs. Time, Latour claims, can and has been understood as “a cycle,” as a fall of cadence, as a “return” or as “continuous presence.” The assumption in modernity represents another of these specific temporalities: The moderns have a peculiar propensity for understanding time that passes as if it were really abolishing the past behind it. They all take themselves for Attila, in whose footsteps

 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 6; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 14.  Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 6; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 14.  This also has some precedence in medievalism studies but in the opposite meaning. Cole and Vance Smith began their important The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages with the assertion that Blumenberg’s erudite study continues to be a problem as it asserts that the persistence of the medieval “undoes the cohesion of the modern.” Andrew Cole and D. Vance Smith, “Outside Modernity,” in The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory, ed. Cole and Vance Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 2. It is in this way not comme il faut to use Blumenberg on the side of the medievalists. The point is, however, that the historiographical apparatus, which Blumenberg subtly offers, accounts for a European history which does not rely on standard theorems of modernity and thereby offers the possibility of alternative understandings of what literary modernity (also) means.

22

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

no grass grows back. They do not feel that they are removed from the Middle Ages by a certain number of centuries, but that they are separated by Copernican revolutions, epistemological breaks, epistemic ruptures so radical that nothing of that past survives in them— nothing of that past ought to survive in them. [Les modernes ont pour particularité de comprendre le temps qui passe comme s’il abolissait réellement le passé derrière lui. Ils se prennent tous pour Attila derrière qui l’herbe ne repoussait plus. Ils ne se sentent pas éloignés du Moyen Âge par un certain nombre de siècles, mais séparés de lui par des révolutions coperniciennes, des coupures épistémologiques, des ruptures épistémiques qui sont tellement radicales que plus rien ne survit en eux de ce passé—que plus rien ne doit survivre en eux de ce passé.]55

This is an addition to the Blumenbergian understanding of the modern period. Modernity is simultaneously a historical structure where the Middle Ages is cast to be the “temporal other” and a relation between temporality and epistemology, where time as progress also becomes the annihilation of the past.56 Some years later, Latour elaborated what he meant by the relation of temporality and epistemology in the definition and self-understanding of his infamous and perhaps polemical term “the moderns.” They are: All those people, no matter where they were born, who feel themselves pushed by time’s arrow in such a way that behind them lies an archaic past unhappily combining Facts and Values, and before them lies a more or less radiant future in which the distinction between Facts and Values will finally be sharp and clear. The modern ideal type is the one who is heading—who was heading—from that past to that future by way of a “modernization front” whose advance could not be stopped. It was thanks to such a pioneering front, such a Frontier, that one could allow oneself to qualify as “irrational” everything that had to be torn away, and as “rational” everything toward which it was necessary to move in order to progress. Thus the Moderns were those who were freeing themselves of attachments to the past in order to advance toward freedom. In short, who were heading from darkness into light—into Enlightenment.57

Latour’s phrasing of a “modernisation front” is close to Blumenberg’s notion of secularisation. Latour’s claim is that modernity (also) refers to this similar idea of the “irrational” which is to be disposed of, along with the dream of necessary or inevitable progress. What is so very lucid about both of the Latour quotes is his

 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 68f ; Bruno Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1991), 92f.  For a convincing account of the relevance of Latour for literary historiography, cf. Andrew James Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages from Beowulf to Othello (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). The expression of the Middle Ages as “temporal other” is also his.  Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 8f.

On the Right Side of History

23

own apparently intentional oscillation between descriptions of facts and value. In the former quote, he drifts between two claims, namely between the descriptive claim that nothing of the past will survive and the prescriptive claim that nothing ought to survive. These are not the same propositions, and Latour is well aware of this. This oscillation poses a relevant question for literary studies, including the study of Calderón: Do we apply it prescriptively or descriptively when we claim the modernity of his work? The second oscillation has to do with the notions of pessimism. Latour always displays an awareness that there are two possible emotive paths in this understanding of modernity: With enlightenment comes a more or less radiant future. With the common-sense expression of early modernity, with the theories of Blumenberg and Latour, and with some recent studies in the theatrum mundi, the term “modernity” will therefore be applied in its formal sense as a period between the birth of the figures of Hamlet and Don Quijote and to the time around the aftermath of the Second World War. For the purpose of clinging to the category of years, 1603–1968 will be a heuristic assumption. It denotes a specific understanding of temporality as progress and as enlightenment. As philosophers, Blumberg and Latour are not solely preoccupied with literature, but their diagnostics of this general tendency in historiography are identifiable within the field as well. The next challenge facing the historiographical perspective is to concede a longing for modernity in the way literary history is often written. This tendency once more unveils itself in Spengler’s eloquent identification of the willingness to move the big bang of modernity from the Crusades to the English industrialisation; the tendency discloses the compulsion to see one’s favourite author on the right side of history so that he or she becomes “one of us.” The Chaucer scholar Lee Patterson has suggested that this logic would also apply to the popularity of Hamlet. The Danish prince is so easily conceived as the first modern. Sarcastically paraphrasing Eagleton, Patterson writes: [Hamlet] stands at the beginning of the period when the “crippling burden” of subjectivity will be “disciplined and ‘naturalized’ into the oppressive unity” of bourgeois humanism. Since we now stand at the end of that period, at a moment “when that individualist conception of the self will enter into crisis,” we recognize Hamlet as a kindred spirit: he expresses our modernity.58

If this is an expression of thought where Don Quijote and Hamlet typically become the two persons of type example, the scheme is also applied in Calderón

 Lee Patterson, “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65 (1990): 98.

24

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

studies, for better or worse.59 As also anticipated by Patterson in relation to Shakespeare studies, it seems that an implicit inference often follows, namely a sense of crisis. In the case of Calderón, the Middle Ages is, to a larger extent than with the examples of Cervantes and Shakespeare, explicitly cast as the excluded other. This will often be the case with the phenomenon of great literature where the subject is also some form of Catholicism. This has been described in a witty way by Alexander Parker: The extreme of the first class of criticism is exemplified by those who have such a horror of Catholicism that they find Calderón revolting: a genius certainly, but with an intelligence atrophied by the intellectual vices and moral perversions of his fanatical and “bestial” age, and with all noble aspirations suffocated by irrationality.60

With the inverted commas, Parker is referring to J. L. Klein’s Das spanische Drama (1875)—a book he had not read.61 It seems Klein had the Spanish Baroque in mind, yet it is unclear: The “moral perversions” might relate to the excessive nature of the Baroque in contrast to Renaissance or Classicist harmony. But “intellectual vices” would be easier to apply to the Dark Ages before the dawn of reason. There are two related problems with this retrospective projection of modernity. It seems that Calderón’s inherent sense of crisis (leading, of course, to what would be the interpretation of his world theatre of pessimism) is allowed to dominate, impeding our ability to understand the full scope of his world theatre that does not only convey a sense of crisis but also offers a means of overcoming it. It also narrows our understanding of what modernity is on a more general level because it blurs the “medieval” traits of some parts of literary modernity. Secondly, in early modern Spanish studies, the dualism has often led to the automatic assumption of a world theatre of pessimism as well. It seems that the dualism thus also limits our appreciation of the complete register of the trope. One way to overcome this in the case of Calderón will be the use of the rather new discipline of medievalism studies which will be explored in detail in the next chapter. The purpose of medievalism in relation to Calderón is intended to work in two directions. Specific motives and genres are medieval in origin, but Cal-

 Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 96: “Perhaps we will, after all, meet ourselves there, transformed, enlightened.” [“Al fin y al cabo, quizás podamos encontrarnos allí con nosotros mismos transformados, iluminados.”] Another example is Thacker who sympathises with the approach but warns against naïve practices of it and is very close to Patterson’s formulation: “We want the artists we admire from former times to think like we do and we focus sharply on any examples of their like-mindedness or modernity while leaving the full picture somewhat blurred.” Thacker, Role-Play, xi–xii.  Parker, Calderón, 31.  Parker, Calderón, 55n42.

On the Right Side of History

25

derón uses them to fashion a highly original art form. Simultaneously, the role of the theatrum mundi in it helps to bring forth a world theatre which is neither reactionarily medieval in form or content nor pessimistic in the modern sense of conveying the futility of human endeavours in the light of existence’s theatrical nature. The medievalisms should in this fashion help us to see that the allure and attraction of the early modern theatrum mundi disappear out of sight if we take the exclusively modern view of the time, but also that a purely medieval take obscures the highly autonomous baroque fashioning of the possibility of a celebration of existence through art. The objective is to delineate a dialectic between visions of the past and expressions of the present. The idea that Calderón’s belongs to and represents a Siglo de Oro rather than to the beginning of European dark modernity is a subtler way to hint at this uniqueness. Consequently, he does not necessarily have to be classified as either medieval, premodern, or reactionary, or modern in the manner previously described. He becomes the epitome of a unique moment of Iberian literature, a culmination of a historical exchange of tradition and artistic innovation. This way we do not need to give up the obvious potential of using medieval concepts to explain fundamental workings of the period’s art. Medievalism studies is a way to begin a discussion of method, but a broader topic must be discussed. “Method” should not be taken in too specific a sense. Following the ideals of the humanities as laid out in H.-G. Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode (1960)—which, as Figal has remarked, should rather have been called truth or method62—the concept can often be seen to do more harm than good to the humanities. The present study of a specific side of seventeenth-century culture is intended, amongst other things, to demonstrate the ideal of the eclectic: A variety of “methods” will be applied—hermeneutical close reading, extrinsic approaches of philosophy and systematic theology alongside contextualisations of stage and church history—in order to try to understand the full horizon of meaning and depth of poetry and thought in the baroque creation of a theatrum mundi of celebration. When a couple of lines on method still make sense, it relates to a discussion that does not fall prey to the unification of the humanities under the ideals of the natural sciences: The difference between (national-)philological approaches to the study of literature versus comparative literature is delicate but one bearing consequence. The question could also be put like this: Is this a work of comparative literature or of Hispanic studies? Students and experts from the

 Günter Figal, “Philosophische Hermeneutik—hermeneutische Philosophie: Ein Problemaufriss,” in Hermeneutische Wege: Hans Georg-Gadamer zum Hundertsten, ed. Günter Figal et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 335.

26

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

field of Hispanic studies reading this book might (reasonably so) expect a study of El gran teatro del mundo, or at least of Calderón’s works, but still have yet to hear much about Spanish literature specifically. This case of possibly disappointed expectations will be remedied in due time, for what follows aims at being the first close reading of its kind ever published on this seminal play.63 The study is thus intended to contribute to the long and admirable tradition of early modern Spanish studies and, of course, to the Calderonian society of scholarship. The reason that this introduction still also centres on other aspects slightly more foreign to Hispanic studies is that it is a work from the field of comparative literature rather than from national philology. As a result, the basic questions concern the two principles or systematic subjects sketched out above, namely the meaning of a metaphor and a problem of literary historiography. The study can be read without these interests on behalf of the reader so that it might be solely viewed as an exegesis of the play called El gran teatro del mundo, but the scope is (also) intended to be wider: to allow Calderón to be regarded as a primary example of a way to discuss these systematic issues of aesthetics and history. In this respect this work is one of comparative literature rather than of Hispanic studies. The book is also comparative in the theoretical sense that much later philosophers like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Gadamer and Blumenberg are allowed to supplement the close reading of the play when their various theories of aesthetics and time can aid the understanding of functions of the world theatre in Calderón’s works. This approach has consequences for the topics scrutinised, the choice of theory, and the references and comparisons that invite meaningful perspectives from the history of literature and ideas. As perhaps manifest by now, comparisons of literature from the European canon, from Homer to Jünger, are allowed whenever they can contribute to the clarification of a thought on the mentioned systematic issues. This will also be the automatic legitimisation of continuously alluding to the works of Shakespeare; an author who seldom tires of invoking a cluster of reactions to the experience of the world as a stage.64 When considering the Shakespearean text corpus in full, the theatrum mundi so transparently in-

 This perhaps surprising claim will be supported in the beginning of the next chapter.  The comparisons to Shakespeare are rather common in Calderón studies, though. A recent example is the chapter “Calderón y Shakespeare: Una misma preocupación,” in Santiago Fernández Mosquera, Calderón: Texto, Reescritura, Significado y Representación (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2015), 27–34. Within comparative literature, Lionel Abel saw The Tempest and La vida es sueño in the same theatrum mundi tradition. Abel, Metatheatre, 59. This peculiar connection was later elaborated in Stephen Rudd, “Reason of State and Repetition in The Tempest and La vida es sueño,” Comparative Literature 42, no. 4 (1990): 289–318.

On the Right Side of History

27

vites pessimism as well as apologetics. His works therefore allow for an engaging comparison, a fact which is of course not made less relevant by the fact that Shakespeare was only thirty-six years Calderón’s senior. ✶✶✶ These considerations pose the primary question of the present book: In what sense can the theatrum mundi be understood in terms of the second part of the Platonic disjunction, namely as an experience of man’s purpose in life, and theatre as a reason for the human practice of celebration? It should also be remarked that the world theatre does not necessarily need to be interpreted as a cause for apologetics or celebration—just think of the gloomy and hopeless versions that we find in baroque emblems, in King Lear and Macbeth, and in the German Trauerspiel—but this present tradition represents a version of the world theatre which has its origins in a distinctively medieval way of life, a feeling for the celebratory nature of human praxis. This idea is perhaps best explained with reference to Clemens Heselhaus, who already in 1954 considered the medievalisms of the autos without knowing the term: Calderón was familiar with this art form through the biblical parables; and there was a rich tradition of parable representation in the iconography and in the sacred drama of the Middle Ages. El gran teatro del mundo is in this respect a post-medieval sacred play. But it transcends the medieval sacred drama in two ways: It dramatizes the salvific-historical parable as it makes an author out of God, and it sets the salvific-historical gravity in relation to the gravity of art. [Diese Kunst war Calderón aus den Parabeln der Bibel vertraut; und es gab im Mittelalter eine reiche Tradition der Parabeldarstellung in der Ikonographie und in den geistlichen Schauspielen. Das “Große Welttheater” ist in diesem Sinne ein nachmittelalterliches geistliches Spiel. Aber es geht in zwei Richtungen über das mittelalterliche geistliche Spiel hinaus: Einmal poetisiert es das heilgeschichtliche Gleichnis, indem es Gott selbst zum Autor macht und den heilsgeschichtlichen Ernst zum Ernst der Kunst in Beziehung setzt.]65

The two italic phrases encapsulate the main themes of the book. The former shows that the autos are post-medieval phenomena—that is, medievalisms—and this does not necessarily authenticate them as reactionary leftovers or simply oldfashioned. There are other historical temporalities than linear progress. The latter depicts how the world theatre specifically demonstrates the relationship between theology and art; a relationship that will enable the idea of an aesthetic theodicy, as art achieves the same severity [Ernst] as salvation history itself. MUNDO will

 Clemens Heselhaus, “Calderón und Hofmannsthal,” in Calderón de la Barca, ed. Hans Flasche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), 266, emphasis added.

28

Introduction: Plaything or Purpose

come to end the play called The great theatre of the world with a similar logic when he, addressing the audience, claims that because this whole life is a play, it merits forgiveness.66 El gran teatro del mundo does not deny the confusion of human existence or the metaphysical anguish in the face of death. But the play’s theatrum mundi, the cosmology which follows from it, the conscious use of Greek and Latin sources from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the inner structure of the text, and the effects that the play seeks to generate in its audience, can all be seen to work together in a brilliantly coherent and poetically beautiful work of art, in order to justify man’s existence and the creation of the world in the face of existential problems. The contextualisation and the close reading of the play are all directed at the purpose of developing concepts, horizons of understanding, and reading strategies that enable us to understand and deliver this sense of early modern theatrum mundi which justifies man’s existence on Earth instead of being expressions of lamentations of it. The approach will be at odds with prominent understandings of the history of the image within the discipline of comparative literature, with several of the best monographs on Calderón’s work and perhaps also with respect to certain popular understandings of early modern Spain.67 This is not mentioned in a desire to be polemical but rather to remind the reader of two connected points. First, the interpretation of early modern texts is directed at scrutinising the specific sense of an apologetic meaning of the world theatre based on the celebratory nature of human existence and a sense of historical continuity, not on existential pessimism or historical rupture. Secondly, the relation to prominent monographs on Calderón in the Spanish, German, and English languages prompts a reminder to the reader of a fact which the author of the present monograph himself all-too-often forgets; that a logical disjunction such as the Platonic one invoked above can be true when “at least one of the” disjuncts is true as well.68 The implication is by necessity, even if counter-intuitive, that both disjuncts can be true without falsifying the proposition. Perhaps Plato hinted at this when he said of this disjunction that we would have “no idea” which one would be active at a given time?69 Plato also suggested that “these various experiences in us

 [“MUNDO. Y pues representaciones/ es aquesta vida toda,/ merezca alcanzar perdón/ de las unas y las otras”] (vv. 1569–72).  The relevant discussions of the state of the art within Calderón studies and understandings of the Baroque respectively will be carried out in the section “Medievalism, Autos Sacramentales, and Early Modern Vanitas” in chapter 1.  Maria Aloni, “Disjunction,” in The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition).  Plato, Laws, 644d.

On the Right Side of History

29

are like cords and strings that tug at us and oppose each other.”70 Calderón’s play can be seen in its striving towards the generation of positive affections in the characters, in the potential audience, and in later readers. Perhaps he also strove to generate effects of lament, of despair, to be as true to the full implications of human existence as possible. Both variables of a logical disjunction can be true. We must develop new ways to understand and appreciate the apologetical nature of the theatrum mundi. Partly because it is a major part of Calderón’s ingenious use of an absolute metaphor of European literature, still not fully studied; partly because it holds the promise of staging a different spectacle of seventeenth-century culture than is normally done.

 Plato, Laws, 644e.

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity Historiographical assumptions influence the interpretation of the nature of Calderón’s world theatre between pessimism and apologetics. The understanding of Calderón’s possible modernity and the notion of his world theatre as an expression of pessimism are at times two sides to one argument. This is especially evident in a popular tendency to see Calderón’s enterprise as kindred to that of his contemporary, René Descartes. Gerhard Poppenberg has hit upon a very useful way to reflect on this: The distinction between appearance and reality, dream and life, theater and world, is at most of analytical interest to Calderón. For him, it is not about revealing the truth behind the mask and not by any means about being deluded by appearances. The fear of his contemporary Descartes that “some evil spirit, supremely powerful and cunning, has devoted all his efforts to deceiving me,” that “all external things are no different from the illusions of our dreams, and that they are traps” (First Meditation), is alien to Calderón.71

This striking comparison reveals a possible false analogy. That Descartes and Calderón are contemporaries and transnationally popular in the modern era does not by necessity make them think alike. Many later uses and descriptions of the world theatre in modernity will follow the Cartesian impulse to fear the illusive nature of life in the world, and they will repeat the thought-experiment, now just in literary vocabulary, that if an author-God exists, he must surely be malevolent. The same is observable in the commentary literature on Calderón’s world theatre. Regalado claims that Calderón sets off from a position analogous to Descartes’ cogito. That makes sense ideologically as Regalado’s whole project is to establish the dark modernity of Calderón’s oeuvre: “Descartes, his [Calderón’s] contemporary, commences modern philosophy by founding it on the cogito ergo sum. [. . .] Calderón begins from an analogous position.” [“Descartes, su coetáneo, inaugura la

 Gerhard Poppenberg, “Role and Freedom in Calderón’s ‘The Great Theater of The World,” Comparative Drama 47, no. 3 (2013): 333f. That Poppenberg is the one to connect the two sides of the argument is interesting and a counter-example to a claim that modernity and pessimism always go hand-in-hand in the case of Calderón’s world theatre—for Poppenberg is clearly concerned to establish the modernity of Calderón’s enterprise without accepting the devaluation of existence and world which otherwise often follows. Robbins constitutes a counterweight where Cartesian scepticism is seen as the basis of the period’s attention to the distinction between aparecer and ser. Robbins, Arts of Perception, 1: 6f. Robbins ties this epistemological crisis to the Segismundo of La vida es sueño but does acknowledge that “Segismundo’s scepticism is eventually overcome by such desengaño and by the fideism awakened in him by Clotaldo” (54). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-002

32

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

filosofía moderna fundamentándola en el cogito ergo sum. [. . .] Calderón parte de una posición análoga.”]72 Yet Calderón, not Descartes, is the origin of one of the most important currents of dramaturgical modernity, and they need not be spiritual twins. It is not hard to see why the moderns in the Latourian sense have a preference for the analogisation of Descartes and Calderón. Two essential features of this foundational myth are, according to Blumenberg, radical epistemological doubt and a form of presentism where the very purpose of reason is to deny the past’s grip on the present.73 In other words, if intellectual kinship between the two can be assumed or proven, Calderón is automatically rescued onto the safe shore of modernity, whether dark or bright. Poppenberg, however, suggests that Calderón’s concern with the absolute metaphors of the world as stage and life as dream is not the “delusion of appearances” as quoted above: Prince Segismundo’s experience that it is not possible to distinguish with absolute certainty between dream and life does not lead him—as it does so many of Calderón’s contemporaries—to the pathos of vanity, to the devaluation of that which is, taken as a whole, only because it could at any time turn out to be an appearance, a simulacrum, but rather to the valorization of the appearance which he acknowledges as a dimension of reality as a whole. In the course of the play, Segismundo achieves a form of serenity in view of this suspension between existence and appearance.74

Poppenberg here refers to a comedia’s occupation with life as a dream, but the example is relatable to the auto’s world as theatre. It is not without interest that exactly these two plays, so different in form, became the most popular works of Calderón’s entire text corpus. This impression of the valorisation of reality is of acute relevance to the genre of the auto and to the history of the theatrum mundi. It seems to invite a struggle between negative and positive notions of the worth of human life if the whole thing is a play. And it does not by necessity lead to what Poppenberg describes as a “pathos of vanity.” The tendency, however, to observe a correlation between modern historiographical taxonomies and pessimis Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 82. Already Hugo Friedrich warned against the comparison even though he also overestimated the devaluation of reality in the Spanish Baroque. Hugo Friedrich, Der fremde Calderón (Freiburg im Breisgau: H. F. Schulz Verlag, 1955), 33. The tradition for comparing Descartes and Calderón is broad. Aside from the mentioned examples in the following, Leonie Pawlita, Staging Doubt: Skepticism in Early Modern European Drama (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019) has recently summarised and discussed it. Cf. 107n278.  Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 60; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 71: “Modernity could only have succeeded [. . .] if it had really begun just as absolutely from scratch as Descartes’ program described.” [“Die Neuzeit konnte nur gelingen, [. . .] wenn sie wirklich so absolut neu angefangen hätte, wie es im Programm des Descartes stand.”]  Poppenberg, “Role and Freedom,” 334, emphasis added.

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul

33

tic sentiments is eminently observable in Regalado’s huge monograph on Calderón’s modernity. After analogising Calderón’s and Descartes’ taking-off points, Regalado claims that it is not a mere coincidence that in the 20th century, the philosophy of existence and its spin-offs dramatise this subject grounded in the cogito and lifting it into a world and an existence which are characterised by their exiguity and inadequacy; neither is [it a coincidence] that philosophy and sociology have appealed to the metaphor of the great theatre of the world. [no es mera coincidencia que en nuestro siglo la filosofía de la existencia y sus derivados dramaticen ese sujeto encallado en el cogito reflotándolo en un mundo, en un existir que se define por su carácter menesteroso y deficiente, y que la filosofía y la sociología hayan apelado a la metáfora del gran teatro del mundo.]75

This is an obvious example of a description of the world theatre as an expression of Calderón’s early modern pessimistic sentiment which stands at the beginning of an epoch alongside Descartes. Early modern fascination with the world theatre metaphor is seen to reach its peak in the perception of existence as a place of exiguity and inadequacy. This tacit assumption of analogy between Calderón and contemporaneous European intellectual developments, along with the assumed correlation between dawning modernity and pessimistic sentiments about life in the world, need revising for Calderón’s modern yet celebratory world theatre to take centre stage. To achieve this, the present chapter will revisit the trope’s apologetic history in premodern times and reconsider the relation between genre and epoch.

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul The claims as to where Calderón “found” his inspiration to cultivate the image of the theatrum mundi are numerous and comprise a curious tendency: A lot of commentators mention the source of Calderón’s world theatre—but rarely the same one. While the use of the definite article is questionable in this context, the fact  Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 82f, emphasis added. An admirable counterexample is Cascardi’s book with the telling title The Limits of Illusion: A Critical Study of Calderón (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Already in the preface, Cascardi notes that “the theatre, as a form of representation, is a form of illusion, but Calderón finds that this is no reason to reject it. [. . .] Theatre thus may serve ethically justifiable ends” (ix). Cascardi also mentions the possible Cartesian parallel but focuses on the differences between the two (x). Regrettably, no chapter is devoted to El gran teatro del mundo.

34

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

that a variety of sources has been suggested is understandable. We cannot know how or where Calderón first encountered the metaphor, and he probably could not himself either. That also makes sense if the trope is an absolute metaphor in not just the semantical sense of Blumenberg’s metaphorology but also in the historiographical sense that it holds a permanent place in the literary canon across the epochs. These facts, however, do not prevent an interpretation of the question of which sources from the history of ideas are compatible with Calderón’s use of the trope in the play. The following exposition does not claim to be exhaustive of the relevant sources of the world theatre ante Calderón. The examples have all been chosen because they constitute relevant meanings of the image in relation to the specific discussion of the side of the theatrum mundi which implies a sense of apologetics—or “purpose” to speak with Plato. The more conspicuous part is that the examples normally thought most prominent, e.g. Seneca and Epictetus, are only considered briefly. They have already been discussed thoroughly in the literature on the trope and on Calderón. The following brief exposition of canonical thoughts on the trope is therefore highly selective, summary, and (hopefully) a bit foreign to common sense. The examples are all discussed because they widen the metaphysical register of the theatrum mundi. Many of them tell a story of the double-nature of the image in the sense that they display an awareness that the experience of the world as a stage can lead both to pessimism and to a sense of purpose. This also gives cause for a general nuancing of the argument: The pessimistic tenet of the theatrum mundi is certainly present and relevant. The point is that the battle of the valorisation for man’s place in the world—“plaything or purpose”—has always taken place within philosophy, literature, and religion. The world theatre metaphor is supremely capable of conveying these conflicting effects.76 The metaphor is, in other words, essentially Janus-faced. In Dodds’ Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (1965), the pessimistic tenet of the trope in Greek Antiquity is convincingly laid out.77 The following short exposition is intended to demonstrate that an apolo-

 The “effects” are relevant because it is a way to indicate that the study of drama should be careful not to ignore the importance of enactment and audience-response, especially in an intrinsically metaleptic image such as the theatrum mundi which continuously dismantles the fourth wall. What has come to be known as the “affective fallacy” after New Criticism will therefore also be polemically disregarded. The supposed error of letting an interpretation of a work of art be tainted by its (intended) effects on audience or reader is no such thing when it comes to genres of drama which are more akin to religious cult than to an autonomous poem. “Effect” will be preferred over “affect” to avoid the ideological stint of the concept of the latter. For a recent successful use of the less burdened term of effect in comparative literature, see Karl-Heinz Bohrer, Mit Dolchen Sprechen: Der literarische Hass-Effekt (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019).  Eric R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul

35

getic tenet is equally present. However, the ancient sources which explore the sense of purpose rarely lead to outright practices of celebration of states of joy. They are apologetic, but not festive. It seems that Calderón was the first person in European literary history to clearly visualise the world theatre not just in an apologetic sense but to straight-forwardly connect it to modes of festival and celebration.

Homer The oldest relevant source related to the theatrum mundi metaphor is Homer. Hans Urs von Balthasar has thus gone the furthest back, claiming that the first relevant textual evidence of trope is the Iliad and especially the sixteenth book where Zeus did not “ever turn his shining eyes from the savage contendings.”78 Balthasar uses the German Schlacht for ὑσμίνης.79 This is obviously not a complete invocation of the trope, as the word drama nor the associated concept existed yet, but the verticality of orientation and Zeus’ attending the spectacle of human affairs can be seen as early prefigurations of the trope or a sense of the idea avant la lettre. Balthasar does not claim that this passage from the Iliad is particularly important in relation to Calderón, but it is a relevant assertation that this is the first evidence of the thought in Western literature. In Balthasar’s pathos-laden prose: “Here it all begins with the world drama on the Trojan strand, where the heroes, representatives of mankind, struggle for victory before the eyes of Zeus and the entire world of Gods.”80 This is important to keep in mind because it has the seed of an essential meaning in the theatrum mundi. Balthasar’s point is that this metaphysical verticality remains present throughout the ancient period: All of them [i.e. the gods], and Zeus most of all, follow men’s fates with their hearts in an indefinable mixture of divine superiority and compassionate concern. And although this alltoo-human sympathy on the part of the gods later fades away, absorbed by an abstract ideal

 Homer, The Iliad, 16, 652–53.  Balthasar, Theodramatik, 122.  Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama I: Prolegomena, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 135. The English edition is occasionally dubious. In the previous quote, it uses “scene” for Schlacht (136)—a problematic translation which has no warrant in either the Greek or in German. [“Alles beginnt mit dem Weltschauspiel am Gestade von Troja, wo die Helden, Vertreter der Menschheit, unter den Augen des Zeus und der ganzen Götterwelt um den Sieg ringen.”] Balthasar, Theodramatik, 121.

36

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

which attributes a sublime passionlessness to them, the element of dramatic play before the eyes of the gods retains its vitality right to the end of the ancient era.81

Balthasar mentions the Greek tragedies, Plato, Seneca, Sallust, Epictetus, Saint Paul, and Marcus Aurelius as examples of this “all-too-human” sympathy. He argues that the verticality expressed in the Iliad has a very specific point: “However great the tragedy, it takes place before the eyes of God.”82 This sentence is to be understood as a conveyor of contrast: The fact that the theatrum mundi of human existence is often a staging of tragedy is not a cause for cosmological, ethical, or existential pessimism. The experience of life as a tragedy is comforted by existence on the world stage because it ensures an audience and a verticality to human evil or folly. Balthasar quotes Marcus Aurelius for this originally Homeric point: “In the first place, tragedies were brought on to the stage to remind us of what comes to pass in life and that it is natural that such things should come about, and that what enchants you on the stage should not distress you on the greater stage of life.”83 Balthasar is thus on the path to an understanding of the ancient theatrum mundi image as a justification of human existence, a sense of an apologetic experience of the metaphor. His underscoring of the fact that the drama of the world is something that takes place on a stage [Schauplatz] before the Gods is not a contingent fact, and his Aurelian touch accentuates the continuity between stage and world rather than their inherent segregation. This verticality of God(s) watching is an attribute which assures the effect of a sort of cosmic reverberation and the literal effect of grandeza, playing along in the title of Calderón’s play and effectively prepared throughout the loa. The natural continuity between stage and world furthermore corroborate the possibility of the transformative power of art, in the Aurelius quote clearly tied to an Aristotelian idea of katharsis.

Democritus and Heraclitus Balthasar’s presentation of the metaphor in Antiquity is only one side of the coin— but it is the side which has received the least attention. Perhaps few scholars have demonstrated a sense of this story because they saw the origins of the metaphor in  Balthasar, Theo-Drama, 136; Balthasar, Theodramatik, 122.  Balthasar, Theo-Drama, 137. This criterion would also entail that the God of the Old Testament is as relevant as the Iliad as an “oldest” source for this way of thinking. I will refrain from discussing this area here but select topoi from the Old Testament of relevance for the understanding of Calderón’s world theatre will be discussed continuously throughout the book.  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, XI, 6, trans. Robin Hard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Drama, 137.

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul

37

Pre-Socratic fragments which tend to support the pessimistic variety. Lynda Christian points out that for a long time, it was considered an established fact that Democritus was the first to formulate an explicit theatrum mundi: The world is a stage [σκηνή], life an entrance [πάροδος]. You came, you saw, you went away.84

As Christian mentions, this source likely gained its massive influence because Edmund Chamber quoted it on the title-page of his Shakespeare study from 1930.85 The prosaic nature of the saying is striking, completely lacking the comforting sense of Balthasar’s emphasis and equally leaving out the spatial meaning of the greatness of the universe. At the same time, it propounds an important feature of the theatrum mundi metaphor, contained in both Jaques’ melancholy in As You Like It and in El gran teatro del mundo’s celebratory ritual: In the theatrum mundi, entering and leaving the stage become of the essence.86 The prosaic aspect of the experience of the world theatre articulated by Democritus is likely to be the beginning of the pessimistic side of the trope which is often considered to develop towards the essentially negative experience that in the theatrum mundi, mankind is a mere plaything to the Gods. This early origin is often seen to be invoked in full by Heraclitus. In Mechthild Nagel’s genealogy of drama, Heraclitus’ fragment 52 is considered a formulation of this pessimism under the telling section title “Heraclitus’ Human Play World.”87 In Nagel’s translation, the fragment reads: “Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.”88 Nagel summarises the meaning after a discussion of the commentaries: “Pais qua aion, (life) toys with the mortals.”89 We thus encounter the reason  Quoted after the translation in C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 238; fragment 115 [118 N]✶84 in Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 2. 17th ed. (Germany: Weidmann, 1974), 165.  E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems I–II (London: Clarendon Press, 1930). Cf. Christian, Theatrum Mundi, 1.  This connection between the fragment and As You Like It/El gran teatro del mundo is also suggested in Christopher Wild, “They Have Their Exits and Their Entrances: On Two Basic Operations in the Theatrum Mundi,” in “If then the world a theatre present . . .”, ed. Quiring, 86.  Mechthild Nagel, Masking the Abject: A Genealogy of Play (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2002), 17.  Heraclitus, fragment 52, translation quoted after Nagel, Abject, 18. Greek original in Diels and Kranz, Fragmente, vol. 1, 162.  Nagel, Abject, 20. It should be remembered, though, that a Spieltrieb would not necessarily be negatively connotated. Eugen Fink senses this when noting that the Heraclitus quote is of “monumental simplicity” and “a cosmic metaphor of incredible boldness.” Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol, 83. Schiller would also think that the human urge towards Spielen was more valuable than “merely” being earnest. Cf. The fourteenth letter in Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 5, 3rd ed. (Munich: Hanser Verlag, 1962), 611f.

38

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

for pessimism in the world theatre in the sense of arbitrary suffering hitting men as pawns in a game of chess, famously echoed in Gloucester’s feeling that we are to the Gods as flies are to wanton boys: they kill us for their sport (4.1.38–39). The point of this short double-genealogy in Homer and the Pre-Socratics respectively is that at the very beginning of European literature, the germs of the theatrum mundi are already working along two axes: It can be a vehicle for a sense of purpose to human existence, and it can express the sense of being helplessly exposed to the entertainment of the Gods. The existence of an audience or a director is not a sufficient reason for enjoying or celebrating one’s life on the great world stage: At its very core and beginning, the semantical and metaphysical register or scale of the trope is quite broad and reaches from apologetics to pessimism. A topos from the Spanish Baroque gives a clue to the reception history of the sequence from Democritus to Heraclitus which not only constitutes a development of escalating world theatre pessimism but on the contrary, often has seen Democritus and Heraclitus as opposites. To depict them through the famous topos of the weeping and the laughing philosopher is common, from Juvenal and Seneca through to Robert Burton and Rabelais.90 The same occurred in early modern Spain around the time of the emergence of El gran teatro del mundo. Antonio López de Vega (not to be confused with the “real” Lope) published the moral dialogues Heraclito y Democrito de nuestro siglo in 1641 which tied the opposition of the pair to the period’s broad fascination with the theatrum mundi.91 The point is that there is a long tradition, evident in Greek and Latin Antiquity as well as in the early modern period for sensing the possibility of two wholly different affective reactions.92

 Cf. Cora E. Lutz, “Democritus and Heraclitus,” The Classical Journal 49, no. 7 (1954): 309–14.  Antonio López de Vega, Heraclito y Democrito de nuestro siglo (Madrid: Diego Diaz de la Carvera, 1641), 98; 259, Archive.org. Luis Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez, Vanitas: Retórica visual de la mirada (Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro, 2011), 221, argues for the relation between the epoch’s fascination with the theatrum mundi and the topos of the two philosophers.  Although of course, laughter as an affective reaction might not solely relate to joy, but also to Diogenesian cynicism and unmasking. The point that the pair are clearly depicted as opposites in literature and art history is still of some relevance and appears to be at times forgotten by comparative-literary studies such as Christian’s and Nagel’s. That does not exclude, though, the possibility that they can be considered two different reactions to a basic pessimistic attitude to the world where laughter or weeping would be different reactions to the same experience of the devaluation of the play of life.

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul

39

Plato It is thus not entirely correct when Curtius identifies Plato as the one to plant “the seeds” [“die Keime”]”93 of the idea of the world stage, but Plato is the first to synthesise the positive and the negative versions of the metaphor on a comprehensive scale. As in the case of Homer’s poetry, Plato’s very thinking is infused with structures suited for the invocation of the image of the world as a stage.94 Plato’s persistent relationship to it emerges most clearly in Laws where the image is applied in full two times. Whilst dealing with the question of how to react when tragedians come to the city and ask to bring their dramas, Plato notes: Now as to what are called our “serious” poets, the tragedians,—suppose that some of them were to approach us and put some such question as this,—“O Strangers, are we, or are we not, to pay visits to your city and country, and traffic in poetry? Or what have you decided to do about this?” What would be the right answer to make to these inspired persons regarding the matter? In my judgment, this should be the answer,—“Most excellent of Strangers, we ourselves, to the best of our ability, are the authors of a tragedy at once superlatively fair and good; at least, all our polity is framed as a representation of the fairest and best life, which is in reality, as we assert, the truest tragedy [εἶναι τραγῳδίαν τὴν ἀληθεστάτην]. Thus we are composers of the same things as yourselves, rivals of yours as artists and actors of the fairest drama [καλλίστου δράματος], which, as our hope is, true law, and it alone, is by nature competent to complete.95

The essential rejection of the poets, if they speak another language than that of philosophy, is congruent with the general treatment of poetry known from The Republic. But there are also three benevolent comparisons of life to a drama. First, the philosopher is a tragic poet—he just brings forth tragedies that are “superlatively fair and good.” Secondly, the republic is an imitation of the best and noblest life—and that is a truth akin to the truth of tragedy. Thirdly, philosophy and poetry are rivals in the “truest tragedy,” which must be life itself. Life is a drama, and philosophy is also a way to write tragedy. The ideal state imitates truth whereas the poets imitate something harmful. The passage displays an awareness of a higher order of the theatrum mundi, irreducible to simple poetry which was judged two removes from the truth in the

 Curtius, Europäische Literatur, 148.  Kluge explicitly identifies Plato’s Laws as inspiration: “The emblematic expression of Calderón’s exploration of the notion of the world as a stage is of course El gran teatro del mundo, but his entire work in fact rests on this idea originally developed by Plato in the Laws, describing the world as a puppet theatre manipulated by the gods.” Kluge, Baroque, 274.  Plato, Laws, VII, trans. Bury, 817a–b.

40

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

tenth book of The Republic.96 The Athenian knows that the idea of life as a tragedy holds a more promising potential for truth than art’s alleged helpless mimesis of phenomenal reality. He also seems to think that a tragedy can be both noble and good. This double-awareness suggests a deeper meaning to the Laws’ other theatrum mundi passage, which is frequently referred to for its pessimistic idea of man as the plaything of the gods, but, as already seen, is actually a synthesis of the Janus face of the trope: Let’s think about it this way. Consider each of us, living beings that we are, to be a divine puppet—whether constituted as the Gods’ plaything or for a serious purpose, we have no idea. What we do know is that these various experiences in us are like cords and strings that tug at us and oppose each other. They pull against each other towards opposing actions across the field where virtue is marked off from vice.97

With this double consciousness in mind of “a toy” or “a purpose,” and the Athenian’s explicit disjunction as a consequence of the fact that man is a puppet to the Gods, the clear line of thinking emerges that the theatrum mundi could cause an establishment of purpose to human existence, not just futility. It could also imply that the experience of life as a play and the world as a stage tends to generate two opposed affective states of mind. As we know from the first quote, the goal of the republic must be an imitation of the best life, akin to tragedy. In relation to the disjunction above, this must surely mean that Plato identified his theatrum mundi with the second possibility: living beings created with a purpose. In this respect, the figurative representation of the world as a stage is irreducible to poetry. This is the case because the narrative voice of Laws claims that in opposition to the poets, philosophers and their use of the world theatre metaphor do not “harangue women and children and the whole populace, and to say not the same things as we say about the same institutions, but, on the contrary, things that are, for the most part, just the opposite.”98 This way, in which Plato deals with the theatrum mundi, is a historical argument for Blumenberg’s systematic claim about the status of the world theatre as an example of an absolute metaphor. In developing an argument which puts the theatrum mundi on the same level as philosophy in the world drama competition between philosophy and poetry, he used

 Plato, The Republic, X, 597e. In a recent edition, the translation suggested is “three stages away from nature.” Trans. Christopher Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy in Plato. Republic, Volume II: Books 6–10. Loeb Classical Library 276 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 401.  Plato, Laws, I, 644d–e, trans. Susan Sauvé Meyer, emphasis added.  Plato, Laws, VII, 817c, trans. Bury.

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul

41

the image in exactly the way Blumenberg describes it: as a mode of thinking, an expression of ontology, rather than of the rhetorical use of ornamental language.

Stoicism If the previous short survey on the birth of the metaphor is metaphysical in the struggle between pessimistic and apologetic accounts of the ways of the world, a second and separate origin is ethical and centres on Stoicism. Seneca is perhaps the most prominent inspirational source. The other is Epictetus, especially because Quevedo had recently translated the Enchiridion into Spanish by the time of El gran teatro del mundo. Valbuena Prat called El gran teatro del mundo “an argument” [“prueba”] for the persistence of a Senecan tradition.99 Vilanova confirmed with an even more substantial claim: “The most distant source” [“la fuente más remota”] of the idea of the great world theatre was to be found in Seneca’s epistles.100 As shown above, it is not correct that the “most distant” source of the world theatre is Seneca. That does not mean that Stoicism is not the most important school of influence. The literature shows some agreement that Seneca is the most influential source. However, the security, with which the locus is identified, is peculiar. For no one quite agrees which letters constitute the source. Lynda Christian identifies the letters 76 and 80.101 Poppenberg writes that Calderón’s “basic concept” [“Grundkonzeption”] is “preformed” [“vorgebildet”] in the seventy-sixth and seventy-seventh letters to Lucilius.102 The most important emphasis of Seneca’s Stoic theatrum mundi is the imperative to care about how well one’s role is played, not how long it lasts: “It is with life as it is with a play,—it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is.” [“Quomodo fabula, sic vita non quam diu, sed quam bene acta sit, refert.”]103 This has substantial influence on Calderón’s play. The play-withinthe-play is entitled “Obrar bien que Dios es Dios,” and the characters are judged  Ángel Valbuena Prat, “Nota preliminar,” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, ed. Ángel Valbuena Prat (Madrid: Aguilar, 1952), 199. His argument is acute because he deduces that Calderón had already himself freely translated a passage from Seneca’s letters in Saber del mal y el bien.  Vilanova, “El tema,” 157.  Christian, Theatrum Mundi, 18.  Poppenberg, “Nachwort und Anmerkungen,” 106, emphasis added. In the following, Poppenberg’s notes to the verse lines of the play in this edition are referred to by his surname and the phrase “note to v. xx.”  Seneca, The 77th letter in Epistles, vol. 2, trans. Richard Gummere (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 181.

42

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

according to the standards with which they played their part. The connection between morality and world theatre is hence so explicitly shared between Seneca’s moral letters and the play that a kinship could not and should not be denied. This kinship can, however, also be overestimated. The notion that the world is a stage has several other meanings than the ethical one, which is essential to Seneca’s influence on the trope. In addition, there is another problem. Seneca’s theatrum mundi is operating in an affective field of earnestness to a sombre tone of fundamental sadness.104 The perhaps most famous formulation of the topos in Seneca is rarely quoted within Calderón studies. It reads: The merriment of those whom men call happy is feigned, while their sadness is heavy and festering, and all the heavier because they may not meanwhile display their grief but must act the part of happiness in the midst of sorrows that eat out their very hearts. [. . .] This drama of human life wherein we are assigned the parts which we are to play so badly. [Horum, qui felices vocantur, hilaritas ficta est at gravis et subpurata tristitia, eo quidem gravior, quia interdum non licet palam esse miseros, sed inter aerumnas cor ipsum exedentes necesse est agere felicem. [. . .] hic humanae vitae mimus, qui nobis partes, quas male agamus, adsignat.]105

This grave tone is not necessarily pessimistic but still somewhat foreign to the festive functions of the theatrum mundi in Calderón’s version.

St. Paul With the image’s origins in the Pre-Socratic era and with later Christianity’s traditional hostility towards the theatre, it is perhaps easily overlooked that there is a famous use of the trope in St. Paul and that several features of the Pauline θέατρον in 1 Cor. 4:9 have a lot in common with the world theatre as described in traditional Stoicism, for instance in Seneca.106 The Pauline influence on the his This sadness is complicated. It does not mean that Seneca’s concept of the world as a theatre is pessimistic, but it does not have the celebratory nature of Calderón’s. For a discussion of Seneca’s sad world theatre concept in relation to early modern literature, cf. Rasmus Vangshardt, “Antonio’s Sadness and the Stoic Theatrum Mundi of the Early Modern City,” Orbis Litterarum 74, no. 4 (2019): 264–77.  Seneca, The 80th letter in Epistles, vol. 2, 217. Even if rare in Calderón studies, Lynda Christian quotes it at length and notices its possible relation to Richard II and the hollow crown image. Christian, Theatrum Mundi, 18f.  Not that this common ground is unanimous. Kittel thinks that it differs in essence from Seneca to Paul because Stoicism implies forms of heroism whereas Pauline Christianity assumes weakness. Kittel, “θέατρον” in Theologisches Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament, vol. 3 (Stuttgart:

Old and New Sources of the Theatrum mundi from the Pre-Socratics to St. Paul

43

tory of the trope could be seen as a third beginning besides the metaphysical and the ethical. In the New King James Version, it says that you are already full! You are already rich! You have reigned as kings without us—and indeed I could wish you did reign, that we also might reign with you! For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonoured! (1 Cor. 4:8–10)

The context of the letter is the discord in the Corinthian congregation, and Paul establishes a difference between the apostles (himself included) and the Christians of Corinth by way of contrast: In the physical sense, the apostles are weak, but the Corinthians strong; in the spiritual (and perhaps ironical) sense, the Corinthians are “wise in Christ” and the apostles “fools for Christ.” With this purpose in mind, the apostles are made “a spectacle [θέατρον] unto the world [κόσμῳ], and to angels, and to men.” There are two shared significations of the theatre of the world between Paul and Calderón, namely the themes of the comic and the cosmic. There is a broad tradition to see Paul’s theatron in light of ancient comedy.107 This mainly pertains to the two typical comical-opposite characters of the gloater [ἀλαζών] and the self-depreciator [εἴρων], both known from ancient poetics. The point is that even though the apostles are “appointed to death,” the theatron in which they live is closer to tragicomedy than tragedy. This also makes sense when the passage is seen in the framework of the larger Pauline text corpus where the general theme is salvation, not death. With the traditional pair of gloater and self-depreciator applied by Paul and the sense of a good ending to the spectacle through salvation in Christ, the Pauline world theatre is a comedy which does not ignore the tragic facts of suffering or death but progresses towards their surmounting. In this sense, Paul could be said to be the first ancient source which explicitly shares the aspect of Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1938), 43. Recent trends in theology have elaborated extensively on Paul’s possible Stoicism. A major advocate of this view is Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). This work would not necessarily agree that Paul’s outlook could be said to be “more” positive than that of mainstream Stoicism as implied above. It does, however, remain of interest when considering the specific history of the ancient theatrum mundi metaphor that intellectual heritage is shared between Paul and the Stoics and that this fact also invites problems and discussions of the valorisation of life in the world theatre between comedy and tragedy.  Cf. L. L. Welborn, Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1. Corinthians 1–4 in the ComicPhilosophical Tradition (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005). The inspiration to this point of Paul in relation to ancient comedy, the references here consulted and the comical pair of the gloater and the self-depreciator come from Agnete Veit, “Εἴρων versus ἀλαζών—1 Kor. 4,8:13 i lyset af et klassisk filosofisk-litterært modsætningspar,” Collegium Biblicum 23 (2019), 1–7.

44

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

comedy with El gran teatro del mundo; a play which certainly does not tire of underscoring that what is to be enacted on the world state is a comedia, sometimes a farsa, but never a tragedia.108 The cosmic also plays a role. One might wonder why the theatron needs the addition of angels and men: “For we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” The addition is of consequence to the understanding of Paul’s world theatron according to Schrage’s commentary on First Corinthians. Schrage notes that God is not only audience but also director of the play—just like the author-God of El gran teatro del mundo carries the meaning of an allresponsible producer rather than simply being the manuscript writer.109 Furthermore, the addition of the angels implies the cosmic verticality of the world theatre, and it excludes the possibility of the theatron being a mere language game or the reduction of it into ornament: “It concerns a drama of universal and eschatological meaning, not a closet play on a private stage.” [“Es handelt sich um ein Drama mit weltweiter eschatologischer Bedeutung, nicht um ein Kammerstück auf einer Privatbühne.”]110 Fitzmyer agrees: “Angelos cannot just mean a ‘messenger’ or ‘envoy,’ but rather a transcendent being [. . .] The mention of ‘world’ and ‘angels’ gives a cosmic dimension to the spectacle that Paul and the other apostles have become.”111 Paul’s letter thus implies that the cosmic-comical world theatre does not necessarily lead to a “playful diminution of reality” [“die spielhafte Reduzierung des Wirklichen”], which Walter Benjamin will come to accuse Calderón’s comedias of.112 The Pauline perspective equally excludes Lionel Abel’s metadrama. In the Pauline sense, which is highly compatible with the world theatre of celebration in Calderón, world and God are sacramentally brought in touch. In Stoicism, there can be a tendency towards isolating God from the world in the sense that divinity becomes a disinterested spectator. In Paul (and in Calderón), the world the-

 Because of the fact that early modern Spanish comedias referred to many kinds of plays, not all of them necessarily comic, the Spanish comedia will be maintained throughout rather than misleadingly translating to comedy.  Autor in Baroque Spanish does usually not mean author but all the leading functions: producer, director, script writer. Schrage on God as director in St. Paul: “Additionally, God does not appear as a spectator and admirer of the spectacle but as its director.” [“Zudem erscheint Gott hier nicht als Zuschauer und Bewunderer des Spectaculum, sondern als dessen Regisseur.”] Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther: Bd. I: 1 Kor. 1,1–6,11 (Zurich: Benziger Verlag, 1991), 342.  Schrage, Der erste Brief, 342.  Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 219.  Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I/1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2019), 262.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

45

atre implies that author, audience, and actors stand in some form of liturgical or ontological relation which is more akin to participation than to spectating.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas The ancient sources are of obvious relevance to an interpretation of Calderón’s world theatre when his own learning and the play’s subsequent reception history are taken into account. But the following reading of El gran teatro del mundo rests on the assumption that it was not only the premodern trope which helped establish Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy. It was as much the genre of the auto sacramental, an inherently festive ritualistic and dramatic phenomenon with medieval origins. Therefore, the understanding of ancient uses of the topos is not the only question which has bearing on the present argument. The understanding of the Middle Ages and the auto’s origins influence the topic as well. Medievalism studies is a rather new discipline and has only in the 2010s really begun to flourish. A medievalist study is about what happened in the Middle Ages, medievalism studies is about images of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages ended—no matter how diverse such an often-despised macro-period of history as the Middle Ages could be said to be. Medievalism studies is generally said to have been founded by the medievalist Leslie Workman in the 1970s when he began to chair sessions on “medievalism” during traditional medievalist conferences in America. The same thing happened simultaneously in the Germanspeaking world although the groups were not aware of each other.113 Leslie Workman defined medievalism studies as “the post-medieval idea and study of the Middle Ages and the influence, both scholarly and popular, of this study on Western society after 1500.”114 Workman’s definition of medievalism studies is still the most concise, but the early pioneers of the discipline have also been good at dis-

 Jürgen Kübnel et al., eds., Mittelalter-Rezeption: Vorträge, Salzburg, 1979 (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1979) and Peter Wapnewski, ed., Mittelalter-Rezeption (Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlag, 1986). On the fact that they were not aware of each other, see Kathleen Verduin, “The Founding and the Father,” Studies in Medievalism 17 (2009): 15.  Workman quoted after Karl Fugelso, “Medievalism from Here,” Studies in Medievalism 17 (2009): 86. The results of this can be seen now where books on medievalism are suddenly in fashion with the two most important likely to be David Matthews’ Medievalism: A Critical History (2015) and the Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), edited by Louise D’Arcens. For the newest survey of literature on medievalism, see Berit Kjærulf, “Medievalism and the Post-Medieval Middle Ages: A Review of Anglophone Medievalism Studies,” Orbis Litterarum 73, no. 5 (2018): 458–70.

46

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

cussing definitory issues.115 The epigraph of the Studies in Medievalism was one that Leslie Workman, according to Kathleen Verduin, found in an anthology called Man On His Past. The quote he found there was by the British-Catholic historian Lord Acton: Two great principles divide the world and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages. These are the two civilizations that have preceded us, the two elements of which ours is composed. All political as well as religious questions resolve themselves practically to this. This is the great dualism that runs through our society.116

Lord Acton’s idea is supremely suited for the study of a relation between the theatrum mundi of Antiquity and the medieval festival play, staged in the early modern world. This relation in post-medieval literary history is an illustration of Acton’s claim. A core feature of medievalism studies is to weaken the great divide between the Middle Ages and modernity. But this is usually done by showing how “modern” phenomena are present in premodern times: For example how subjectivity or historical consciousness are already present in the writings of St. Augustine or Chaucer.117 But this is still a presentist approach to the past—as if “the moderns” only are to judge literary history on the basis of our own ideas of what it means to be civilised; and as if the past is only relevant if it complies to our standards of historical progress. In the present methodological framework, the question is inverted. The discipline of comparative literature in the modern period can contribute by going in the opposite direction. Not by showing that Augustine, Dante, or Chaucer were (also) modern but by demonstrating how motifs in canonical literature of the modern period are not. Medievalism thus utilises premodern genres and metaphors in ways which do not comply with many narratives of modern literary history; these genres and images become idealised medievalisms in a period whose existence in literary history is too often based on the same rejection. There is an obvious danger that the discipline applied to Calderón will be misunderstood as reactionary; taking it to mean that Calderón is medieval, not that his

 The fact that four(!) issues of Studies in Medievalism in a row dealt with the question is clear evidence to support that claim. Studies in Medievalism, vols. 17–20 (2009–2011). The issues were called Defining Medievalism(s) I–II and Defining Neomedievalism(s) I–II.  Found on the epigraph of Studies in Medievalism. See Verduin, “The Founding and the Father,” 13.  Subjectivity and historical consciousness can generally be said to be two mental aspects which medieval man lacked according to the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt’s immensely influential Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860). He there claimed that in the Middle Ages, “both sides of consciousness [“die beiden Seiten des Bewusstseins”] [. . .] lay dreaming or half-way awake as if under a veil” [“wie unter einem gemeinsamen Schleier träumend oder halbwach”]. Jacob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien (Basel: Schweighauser Verlag, 1860), 131.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

47

plays are expressions of medievalism. This is an important distinction. Medievalism by no means implies reactionary untimeliness, or artistic late-coming. The constructive tendency of medievalism studies is that it identifies medieval traditions, themes, genres, or thought patterns in post-medieval times. It would be very mistaken to claim that Wagner’s medievalisms meant that his ground-breaking new style of opera was therefore automatically reactionary. The inspiration cannot by necessity eliminate the novelty in his art. But it is relevant to consider this in relation to Calderón, and it touches on an important debate about Calderón from the 1990s. Joachim Küpper’s Diskurs-Renovatio (1990)118 was reviewed by both Gerhard Poppenberg and Sebastian Neumeister and triggered a minor Historikerstreit. Küpper reminded (correctly) that “classifying these texts as a direct continuation of the medieval tradition is no less problematic than a modernizing interpretation.”119 On the other hand, Gerhard Poppenberg claimed that Küpper’s frequent use of the term “restoration” means that this study of medieval phenomena in Calderón becomes a matter of regression nonetheless, “a relapse” [“Rückfall”] into the Middle Ages when dealing with Counter-Reformation Spain.120 The present goal is to use medievalism studies to uncover what is original in Calderón’s art. Küpper’s use of the concept of the Middle Ages is somewhat different as he never uses the term medievalism. The question of the originality or “newness” of Calderón’s art form is important in a discussion of medievalism. The likes of Eichendorff and Hofmannsthal explicitly and consciously considered the auto an expression of medievalism; but they were so far removed from the Middle Ages that they were free to entertain such thoughts.121 Calderón would surely not have thought of himself as radically  Joachim Küpper, Diskurs-Renovatio bei Lope de Vega und Calderón: Untersuchungen zum spanischen Barockdrama. Mit einer Skizze zur Evolution der Diskurse in Mittelalter, Renaissance und Manierismus (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1990). An English version was published as Discursive Renovatio in Lope de Vega and Calderón: Studies on Spanish Baroque Drama (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007).  Küpper, Discursive Renovatio, 14.  Gerhard Poppenberg, “Neuzeit oder Renovatio? Überlegungen beim Lesen von Joachim Küppers Diskursrenovatio bei Lope de Vega und Calderón,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 41, no. 4 (1991): 445f. Poppenberg supports his argument by several references to Küpper’s of the concept of “restauration.” Küpper’s argument is, however, relatively dialectical: “The Baroque differs from the discourse of the High Middle Ages, whose abstract ordering structure it aims to restore.” Küpper, Renovatio, 13.  Hofmannsthal was very explicit about his view of Calderón’s play as expression of medievalism. In the preface to his own Salzburger große Welttheater, he noted that the metaphor of the world stage, as we meet it in Calderón’s auto, was “moulded” [“ausgeformt”] “by” the Middle Ages. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Das Salzburger große Welttheater, in Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelbänden, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1979), 106.

48

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

broken-off from the “dark ages.”122 But the state of the art is still that something new happened and that a dialectic is present between the newness and the “relapse into the Middle Ages.” The goal must therefore be to follow Walter Benjamin’s desire to show that there is a relevant “kinship” [“Verwandschaft”] between the medieval and the baroque drama but that “lazy analogy” [“müssiges Analogisieren”] must be avoided.123 Sebastian Neumeister’s review of Küpper’s book is also representative: “It would be strange if such intelligent authors as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina or Calderón should not have found answers to the main problems of human existence which are more than a simple relapse into medieval categories.”124 This is perhaps also a stretch in relation to Küpper’s objectives, but it is necessary to stress that the auto as medievalism is not automatically liable to accusations of relapse into the medieval world. It could even be said that such a relapse would be to reverse the complaints levelled against the moderns: That they apply their standards of historical progress to epochs foreign to them. The reversal would be a wish to fetishise the Middle Ages by making early modern phenomena exclusively medieval. The present study will therefore be placed between two of the most recent poles of studies with regard to Calderón, namely Küpper’s DiskursRenovatio and Poppenberg’s Psyche und Allegorie. During the course of the investigation of the possible medievalisms surrounding the play, a general tendency in the commentary literature has surfaced, namely that later modern fascination with Calderón is at times explained with reference to the theatrum mundi.125 In other words, those who wish to secure him a place on the safe shore of historical modernity sometimes use the argument of the presence of the world theatre metaphor in Calderón’s oeuvre—as if his extensive use of the trope was a sufficient condition for his modernity.126 Such arguments risk reversing themselves in their exchanging cause for effect. A second explanation might also be an exclusive focus on a theatrum mundi without verticality which can be found

 Analogous to C. S. Lewis’ calling attention to the fact that “no one thought of himself as a Bronze Age man.” C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 55.  Benjamin, Ursprung, 255.  Sebastian Neumeister, Review of Diskurs-Renovatio bei Lope de Vega und Calderón. Untersuchungen zum spanischen Barockdrama by Joachim Küpper, Hispanic Review 60, no. 3 (1992): 361.  Not, of course, that there are no other modern fascinations to be found in him.  See for instance Egginton, How the World Became a Stage, 124; Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 82f; Christian, Theatrum Mundi, 197. Pawlita is also close to this assumption in a reading of Lope’s world theatre play Lo fingido verdadero when she claims that “comparatively, Calderón’s auto sacramental about ‘the great theater of the world,’ also lacks a clear (metaphorical) demarcation between the realms of life in this world and life beyond,” as if this would necessarily entail early modern scepticism. Pawlita, Staging Doubt, 235n614.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

49

in some successful modern uses of it. Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where nothing seems to exist outside the human play of life, springs to mind.127 The contextualisation and reading of El gran teatro del mundo that follows should demonstrate the problems entailed in assuming a direct causality between Calderón’s fascination with the theatrum mundi and his possible status as an early modern figure. There seems to have arisen a confusion of Greek-Latin origins, medieval practices, and modern taxonomies in the historiography of the trope which needs reconsideration; especially as they have direct influence on the previously described valorisation of the world between pessimism and apologetics. When medieval elements of relevance to the Calderonian auto are emphasised, the purpose is to call attention to inspirations that can release tensions in the connection between auto and image and perhaps contribute to the explanation of what is unique or original in Calderón’s drama. A discussion of the autos as medievalisms will equally be instructive in seeing their place in the macroliterary history of Europe. The goal is two-fold. First, medievalism is pointedly the acknowledgement that Calderón is not medieval but that certain phenomena which we now academically associate with the Middle Ages—liturgical drama, anti-nominalist metaphysics, danse macabre, and the fourfold interpretation of Scripture—can be consciously used to understand something about the uniqueness of early modern Spain and Calderón’s world theatre metaphor.128 Secondly and intentionally paradoxically, medievalism is intended to let a Calderón emerge who can let us see a path of drama history in the modern period that is more heterogenous than normally acknowledged. Medievalism then becomes a way to see Calderón as the initiator of an alternative current in literary modernity where the Middle Ages is part of what we are, not of what we have to overcome.

 In one of the newest collected editions on the trope, Quiring mentions that Jaques’ use “remains on a purely immanent level of existence, without any reference to transcendent authorities.” Quiring, “Introduction,” 6. Brian Walsh nurtures the same thought: “By the time Jaques speaks his melancholy version in Arden, the expression had become also a vehicle for a protonihilism.” Walsh, Shakespeare, 163.  They are therefore “made medievalisms” rather than “found.” This is Louise D’Arcens’ suggestion to discern between a medievalism which is based on materials or manuscripts surviving from the Middle Ages versus purely imaginative ideas of the Middle Ages in later epochs. Louise D’Arcens, “Medievalism: Scope and Complexity,” in Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. D’Arcens, 2. Here, medievalism is used in the meaning of a subcategory to such “made” medievalisms, which could be called “academic.” This means it does not make sense to try to evaluate if Calderón thought of his own application of medieval tradition as “found” or “made.” Rather, from a perspective of historic-comparative literature, his many applications of traditional medieval forms should surely be considered “made” medievalisms.

50

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

A second necessary contextual consideration concerns current understandings of the auto sacramental genre, the world theatre metaphor, and pessimism in early modern Spain. Scholarly work on the Baroque and more specifically on Calderón have long ago acquired enormous dimensions, and there is no good reason for attempting to sum up the many currents of these here. The sheer volume of scholarly literature is not made any smaller by the fact that (at least) a Spanish, an Anglo-Saxon, and a German tradition of scholarship exist side by side but not always mutually attentively. As the theatrum mundi is a shared European phenomenon, a methodological clash between studies in the metaphor from the field of comparative literature and studies of the metaphor in the Spanish Baroque will arise. All this cannot be presented within the scope of this section, but there are useful distinctions and also interesting observations to make on recent trends which will inform the present study; above all, a comparably recent tradition for assuming the connection between the image of the world stage, epistemological scepticism, and metaphysical pessimism. The present book is not about understandings of how to define the Spanish Baroque. There has been a long discussion on whether to see “baroque” as a style, which can be repeated in different eras, or whether the term refers to a specific sociological structure in a limited area of Europe in a finite period of time. This is then dividable in a prescriptive sense where it can be seen as a period of unique artistic expression and inspiration or as a time of political absolutism and social crisis. A peculiar paradox consists in the fact that the Spanish Baroque is at times identified with the period of Calderón’s life and works (1600–1681) but described in terms of crisis and desengaño—whereas the whole point of the following close reading is that this is only half the story. Even if “baroque” was for decades primarily a description of a style,129 also used as such in Francesco Milizia’s Dizionario delle belle arti del disegno (1797), the latter also points to the possible decadence (and thus implied negativity): “BARROCO è il superlativo del bizzarro, l’eccesso del ridicolo.”130 As the present study is not about the definition of the period, “the Baroque” will be used as a period of time identified with the life of Calderón and interchangeable with “early modern Spain,” generally preferring the latter to avoid the many associations with the name of the Baroque.131 In the twentieth century, there has been a tendency to describe the later Spanish Baroque as a fundamentally crisis-ridden period. This has been established from two rather different  The OED still describes the adjective as “relating to or denoting a style.”  Francesco Milizia, “BARROCO,” in Dizionario delle belle arti del disegno, ed. Francesco Milizia (Bassano, 1797).  “Golden Age Spain” often includes a longer period, beginning in the early sixteenth century.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

51

sides which are important because they have had considerable influence on recent commentaries on Calderón’s world theatre specifically. José Antonio Maravall had immense impact with his La cultura del barroco: Análisis de una estructura histórica (1975). The precondition of his description of Baroque Spain is the assumption of a social crisis. Maravall saw a (weak) progressive desire for subversion of the structures of society but also described most of the great poets of the era as essentially reactionary and as political tools for the preservation of the status quo: “All baroque art, from Lope’s comedia to the novel of Mateo Alemán, to Zurbarán’s paintings of saints, becomes a drama of the estates, the gesticulating submission of the individual to the confines of the social order.” [“Todo el arte barroco, de la comedia lopesca, a la novela de Mateo Alemán, a los cuadros de santas de Zurbarán, etc., viene a ser un drama estamental.”]132 All baroque art. Maravall’s influential book is historical rather than literary, but it laid the foundation for a recent tendency and discussion when studying the collusion between fiction and truth in Calderón, especially imminent in the famous topoi of life as a dream and world as a stage.133 Not only did Maravall begin his chapter on “The Image of the World and Human Being” with the rather laconic (if still funny) claim that the main thing that could be stated of the people of the last years of the sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth century, was that “they were sad human beings” [“unos hombres tristes”].134 Another part of the pessimistic approaches to the period is one which comes from the disciplines of philosophy and art history. This part is of less relevance in the following because this tradition is (perhaps surprisingly so) seldomly quoted in studies of El gran teatro del mundo; but still of relevance when seeing that another Calderón emerges in the present book. The so-called postmodern turn in theory saw a renewed interest in early modern Spain with a more philosophical approach but did not abandon the focus on pessimism. Sofie Kluge sums up what she calls the neo-baroque theories of Barthes, Buci-Glucksmann, Calabrese, and Bukdahl:

 José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 35; Maravall, Cultura, 90.  And Maravall’s political way of thinking about art history was made relevant in literary studies with his Teatro y literatura en la sociedad barroca (1972). In Kluge’s words, Maravall views baroque theatre as “an unambiguous propaganda machine, created to brainwash the masses of the city with the conservative ideology of the Church, the nobility and the monarch.” Sofie Kluge, “Historien om fortiden—historien om nutiden? Et eksempel fra barokforskningen,” in Det historiske blik, ed. Ulla Kallenbach, Sofie Kluge, and Rasmus Vangshardt (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2021), 154.  Maravall, Culture, 149; Maravall, Cultura, 309. Maravall alludes to this being a phrase by Lucien Febvre but does not reference it.

52

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

Ignoring the fundamental dialectic of baroque vanity, [. . .] recent neo-baroque theories have either seen it as the expression of quasi-neurotic aesthetics of vanity or identified it with purely secular aesthetics of transience, radical reproduction, simulacrum, and flux. Fundamentally united through their negativistic, anti-metaphysical bias, both interpretations lead to the rather absurd and clearly ahistorical view that the Christian interrelation of vanity and resurrection was of no ideological significance to the baroque period. Yet as a result of this very negligence, they are totally unable to account for the characteristic baroque interaction of desengaño and apotheosis, secular worldliness and metaphysics.135

Maravall and neo-baroque theory combined have established what one might call “the dark modernity” of Calderón’s world theatre. He is modern because he depicts the sad predicament of people without hope, helplessly delivered to the authorities’ manipulation or to the metaphysical void of a godless world. He is also modern because his world is one of vanity and simulacrum. In short, desengaño without apotheosis, worldliness without metaphysics, time without history, Creation without God. This also makes him “dark” because his (otherwise) ingenious use of an image such as the theatrum mundi contributes to the devaluation of the world. These tendencies confirm the relevance of the Latourian diagnostics presented in the previous chapter. To be (a) modern, Latour argues, is to believe that history disappears behind you. With this appetite for identifying the “flatness” of time and space in early modernity—in the sense of a denial of metaphysics and historical continuity—much connecting Calderón to the “behind” is lost from sight: The medieval sense of the transformation of reality through ritual, the Quadriga’s idea of a multilayering of meaning in texts, connecting several temporalities, and the general feeling of the continuity of history begin to fade as essential parts of Calderón’s universe when he is severed from time past.

State of the Art The present study is, as mentioned, not about the Baroque in general but about how to understand the history of the theatrum mundi metaphor in early modern Europe with Calderón as its zenith. Of course, a long tradition of commentary on El gran teatro del mundo already exists, and other scholars’ exegesis of individual scenes and lines will be discussed continuously. There is a specific tradition to see Calderón’s world stage metaphor as exactly that devaluation of the world which is central to Maravall’s interpretation. The main figures of this recent trend are Antonio Regalado’s Los orígenes de la modernidad (1995), Fernando Rodriguez de la Flor’s Barroco: Representación e ideología en el mundo hispánico (2002), Egginton’s  Kluge, Baroque, 111.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

53

How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity (2003), Vives-Ferrándiz’ Vanitas: Retórica visual de la mirada (2011), and Leona Pawlita’s Staging Doubt: Skepticism in Early Modern European Drama (2019). There are relevant differences amongst these studies, but in one way or another, they articulate a belief that the difficulty of discerning between reality and stage in the world theatre leads to a series of related philosophical problems or states of negatively connotated emotions.136 But Calderón did not exclusively see it as a problem that reality and theatre were indiscernible. On the contrary, he used El gran teatro del mundo to generate effects of joy in the audience through just this indiscernibility. He used the image of the theatrum mundi to “deepen” time, space, and history, and he achieved a unique blend of ritualistic ceremony and theatre. It might strike some readers that in this select list, there is no generic discernment between studies of autos sacramentales and of comedias. This is intentional for several reasons. First, the contention is that the mentioned works all claim something about the relation between the image of the world theatre and pessimistic sentiments of the age—this part of the argument is not related to genre. Secondly, there might be something to gain for the tradition of Calderón studies when the way his world theatre is fashioned in the famous auto is allowed to enter into a conversation with claims about the nature of the world theatre in studies of the epoch or of the comedia. It will (hopefully) go to show that the auto sacramental is not an esoteric or exclusively theological domain but an artistic equal of other genres, the comedia included. The invocation of the aforementioned tendency to see a causal relation between the world theatre metaphor and pessimism is therefore not intended to blur or hide the formal difference between auto and comedia but hopefully to contribute to naturalise the auto sacramental as a full-grown artistic genre, especially due to this particular auto’s unique fashioning of the theatrum mundi. If the above trend is highly eclectic, one can of course also talk of more general research schools within Calderón studies. For the last decades, the one centring around the University of Navarra’s GRISO research team has been the most ardent. From there and with the aid of the German-based publisher Reichenberger, an enormous and beneficial enterprise has been taken on to publish Cal-

 There are also dozens of articles and essays assuming this logic. They cannot be mentioned here but will be integrated as the close reading develops. One might miss Jeremy Robbins’ Arts of Perception (2005) in this connection but although he subscribes to an idea of a pessimistic Baroque (e.g. 8), the ubiquity of the theatrum mundi metaphor is never used as an argument. The same goes for Bradley J. Nelson’s The Persistence of Presence: Emblem and Ritual in Baroque Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

54

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

derón’s autos in critical editions and simultaneously to facilitate the publication of studies of the autos.137 This work is of major importance because it so obviously facilitates scientific endeavour within the study of the history of the auto in several ways. El gran teatro del mundo is, no matter how famous, a very atypical auto. This is perhaps the reason why it has received quite limited attention in the many works from this group over the last decades. This is comprehensible, and other autos surely have been in need of more elucidation. Therefore, the present work with its close reading and its new contextual suggestions for El gran teatro del mundo can hopefully constitute a small but relevant contribution to this field of philological exploration of the auto sacramental.138 With regard to the specific interpretational approaches to Calderón, the works of Gerhard Poppenberg and Sofie Kluge are the greatest inspirations of this book’s intentions. Poppenberg’s Psyche und Allegorie (2003) and his SpanishGerman critical edition of the play have initiated much of what will be attempted in the following: to see how Calderón explored an area between ritual and drama and thereby did not seek to generate “religious indoctrination” [“religiöse Unterweisung”] but “poetic theology” [“poetische Theologie”].139 The proposed concept of Calderón’s “aesthetic theodicy” in the following is one suggestion of the possible content of this idea. Furthermore, in Poppenberg’s insistence on seeing Calderón’s works in relation to spiritual issues such as psychomachia and incarnation, he

 Recent studies published with Reichenberger with special relevance for the present book are amongst others Ignacio Arellano, Estructuras dramáticas y alegóricas en los autos de Calderón (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2001); Vincent Martin, El concepto de “representación” en los autos sacramentales de Calderón (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2002); Enrique Rull, Arte y sentido en el universo sacramental de Calderón (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2004); Carolina Erdocia Castillejo, La loa sacramental de Calderón de la Barca (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2012); Carlos Mata Induráin, ed., “A dos luces, a dos visos”: Calderón y el género sacramental en el Siglo de Oro (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2020).  Duarte claims that it was not until the twentieth century that academic studies of the auto began to flourish, amongst other reasons because they had previously been considered superstitious and/or absurd. J. Enrique Duarte, “The Spanish Sacramental Plays: A Study of Their Evolution,” in A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 60. But that of course does not mean that the GRISO project is the only tradition of scholarship. The main characters of earlier twentieth-century studies are Ángel Valbuena Prat, Alexander Parker, Bruce Wardropper, and N. D. Shergold. They will be continuously imbedded in the discussion.  Gerhard Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie: Studien zum spanischen auto sacramental von den Anfängen bis zu Calderón (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003), 14. Also published in the Reichenberger series in translation. Poppenberg, Psique y alegoría: Estudios del auto sacramental español desde sus comienzos hasta Calderón, trans. Elvira Gómez Hernández (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2009).

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

55

might be arguing for a modern Calderón, but still one entirely foreign to modernity as a period of the singular temporality of the present or of the disappearance of God. Sofie Kluge’s works have a different approach but share the desire to resist the political or anti-spiritual Calderón profoundly.140 In her critique of Maravall and the so-called “neo-baroque theories,” Kluge’s concern is to show that a fundamental feature of the Baroque is a dialectic between the disillusive experience of desengaño and the apotheosis of reality through myth, art, and religion. Although Kluge’s books, unlike Poppenberg’s, primarily deal with the comedia and only briefly turn to the autos, this baroque dialectic will be argued to be very much applicable to Calderón’s world theatre auto as well.141 The last relevant point for now on the state of the art is a highly interesting paradox and a (surprising, yet still empirically observable) fact: Not a single close reading of El gran teatro del mundo appears to exist.142 The following is the most meticulous attempt of such kind there is (to its author’s knowledge, at least), but there will still remain work to be done afterwards. Close readings of a multitude of the most essential scenes, themes, and motifs of the play follow, but these close readings as well as the selected contextualisations are there to bring forth a specific side of the theatrum mundi. One can only hope that further close readings will emerge in the future. There is also a demonstrative point to the close reading with regard to the state of the art. A peculiar consequence in studies such as Maravall’s is that the church is everywhere but religion nowhere: “Rather than a question of religion, the Baroque was a question of the church, and especially the Catholic church because of its status as an absolute monarchical power.” [“Por eso, habría que decir, en todo caso, que más que cuestión de religión, el Barroco  Kluge, Baroque; Sofie Kluge, Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2014).  This approach is also solidified by the established possibility of observing points of contact between Maravall’s concept of a cultura dirigida and New Historicism’s tendency towards politicised interpretations of early modern Europe. Cf. Melveena McKendrick, Playing the King: Lope de Vega and the Limits of Conformity (London: Tamesis, 2000), 3; Hilaire Kallendorf, Sins of the Fathers: Moral Economies in Early Modern Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 9.  For instance, Parker’s discussion of the play in The Allegorical Drama of Calderón is a summary of the action with many important claims, but Parker never close-reads in the sense of comparing parts and whole(s) systematically. Poppenberg’s Nachwort to the Spanish-German edition published in Comparative Literature as “Role and Freedom in Calderón’s The Great World Theatre” is of immense originality but uses contexts rather than exegesis as its method. One might expect to find it in Barbara Kurtz’s impressive The Play of Allegory in the Autos Sacramentales of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), but she left out a reading of it with the prosaic claim that “hispanists will doubtless note my omission of El gran teatro del mundo, the best known of the autos. The explanation is simple; I find it overstudied, and perhaps overrated as well” (5n8).

56

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

es cuestión de Iglesia, y en especial de la católica, por su condición de poder monárquico absoluto.”]143 The practice of viewing historical epochs in a perspective of power is not new, but one wonders how Maravall thinks himself able to know why people would attend the procession and spectacle on, say, Corpus Christi. The consequence is that the natural practice of religion—out of which ancient theatre grew—disappears from sight in favour of an idea of power, politics, and latent reaction. This bears the risk of forgetting the fact that Calderón’s autos are actually, and foremost, works of art. In a paradigmatic example of treating Calderón as a Golden Age example of art in the service of reaction, Francisco Carrillo supports the pessimistic tenets of Calderón’s world theatre in his explication of what “anyone” could understand by attending a staging of El gran teatro del mundo: God is playwright, the world a great stage, and man the actor who should accept his role with resignation as LABRADOR or POBRE. The manuscript cannot be changed nor can it lighten the retribution of sin. Man cannot, nor should he, understand the drama. His intellect should reveal the truth of revelation and justify his faith through reason. [Dios es un dramaturgo, el mundo un gran teatro, y el hombre el actor, que debe aceptar su papel con resignación como el Labrador o el Pobre. El texto no puede alterarse ni mejorar su pena de pecado. El hombre no puede ni debe entender el drama. Su inteligencia debe demostrar la verdad de la revelación y justificar su fe por la razón.]144

Por la razón, through reason? Carrillo fuses two approaches to which this study seeks to become a counterweight. On the thematic side, Carrillo implies that life in the auto’s world theatre leads to a state of resignation. In terms of genre, Calderón’s very understanding of literature seems to be ignored in favour of what reason can justify—but Calderón’s definition of the auto from the loa to La segunda esposa clearly states that the very purpose of dramatising sermons is that some things are to be understood that reasoning alone cannot do.145 Much has of course happened since Carrillo published the article just quoted, but his approach remains characteristic by way of negative comparison.146 Some scholarly literature is in danger of not being able to pose the question of what Calderón’s art

 Maravall, Culture, 13; Maravall, Cultura, 47.  Francisco Carrillo, “Contexto y ley natural en El gran teatro del mundo de Calderón de la Barca,” in Actas del congreso Internacional sobre Calderón el teatro del Siglo de Oro, ed. García Lorenzo, vol. 2 (Madrid: CSIC, 1983), 681.  This full Calderonian definition of the genre of the auto sacramental and its implications are discussed in the next chapter.  And the theme of resignation is also present in the more recent accounts of a pessimistic interpretation of the world theatre metaphor. De la Flor describes the theatrum mundi of “impe-

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

57

essentially concerns; this literature equally has trouble explaining the relation between religion and poetry in Calderón’s works. It cuts itself off from this question when neither religion nor art are seen as a human practice in their own right but all too often as a function of didacticism, dogmatics, or politics. The demonstrative point of the close reading below is then to show that Calderón’s text is such great art that it merits and warrants textual and theatre-historical attention. The beneficial consequence is that a highly praxis-related layer of common meaning in the genre of the auto and the image of the theatrum mundi emerges; both constitute a transformation of reality in their annihilation of the boundary between spectacle and spectator. Both are also essentially oriented towards a state of joy and constitute a common ceremonial event of the celebration of existence. And perhaps most important of all: If the theatrum mundi is a core feature of early modern Spain, crisis is not the only thing it spells. A methodological challenge arises when two different areas of literary studies are combined. There is a specific state of the art within studies of the Calderonian auto sacramental, and there is a wholly different area of comparative literature dealing with the broader history of the theatrum mundi metaphor. The latter form of studies is often set over much larger periods of time than early modern Spain. There is also a challenge related to geographical and thereby to confessional issues. There is a strong tendency in the utilisation of the trope in Europe around the year 1600 towards a pessimistic and death-centred version where life in the world theatre is one of despair. This is for example the case with the Belgian book illustrator and explorer Theodor de Bry (1528–1598) whose emblems of the world theatre were printed in Jean-Jacques Boissard’s book Theatrum vitae humanae (1596). De Bry let the first page containing the title be surrounded by a classical ages-of-man series, and the presence of the allegory of Death is extensive in most of them.147 Life of man is thus a permanent danse macabre. The first complete emblem inside of the book depicts a colosseum where man is the slave of Death with the inscription that “human life is like a theatre of all miseries” [“vita humana est tanquam theatrum omnium miseriarum”].148 The French tradition for this theatre of misery had also already been popularised by the humanist Pierre Boaistuau through his Le théâtre du monde (1558) with the telling subtitle of “where there is comprehen-

rial Spain” as one where man must accept an evil God’s punishment. [“Se está condenado por un Dios o por un poder que empieza a pensarse como específicamente perverso y despiadado, y cuya lógica de prueba y punición hay que aceptar.”] Fernando R. de la Flor, Barroco: Representación e ideología en el mundo hispánico (Madrid: Cátedra, 2002), 35.  Christian befittingly calls de Bry’s world theatre “a pageant of the triumph of death.” Theatrum Mundi, 121.  Jean-Jacques Boissard, Theatrum vitae humanae (Metz: Abraham Faber, 1596), 2, Archive.org.

58

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

sive talk of human miseries” [“où il est faict un ample discours des misères humaines”].149 This is a relevant tradition of the theatrum mundi tradition in Europe around the year 1600, and it is quite visible in the following German Trauerspiel as well as in the early modern Spanish emblemas.150 But the theatrical developments on the Iberian Peninsula were somewhat separated from the rest of Europe. This is for instance the reason why many scholars lean towards the theory that the auto developed out of the liturgical drama of Spanish Catholicism rather than out of the European, theatrical tradition of mystery plays. This means that too general views on Calderón’s world theatre can obscure the fact that his use of the trope is not by default partaking in a general European tendency towards the world theatre as one of misery. It also means that phenomena which we today might consider to be medievalisms, e.g. the danse macabre or Calderón’s Thomistic social teachings, are not necessarily causes for reaction or pessimism in Calderón’s art.

Geography This can be explained through geography and thereby confessional culture. The under-emphasising of one of these two related areas could be a reason why the festive nature of the theatrum mundi in Calderón is not always duly appreciated in general works on the history of the trope. But the Calderonian shaping of the world theatre had considerable impact on the trope’s later modern history in the works of such eminent authors as Goethe, the Schlegel brothers, Eichendorff, Wagner, and Hofmannsthal. This is a trend that might partly be explained by the connection between imperial Germany and Madrid through the two lines of the House of Habsburg. But said writers are by now all considered eminent authors and part of the modern European canon. And their fashioning of the world theatre was influenced by Calderón’s specific use of it which cannot simply be considered congenial with pessimistic branches of the trope in other parts of the continent. A reevaluation of the meaning of Calderón’s world theatre would and should impact our understanding of a considerable part of the later Germanspoken heritage of dramatical modernity. The Pyrenees appear to have segregated Spain to a large extent with respect to the evolution of drama. The Iberian practice simply did not follow French and English developments of medieval miracle and mystery plays but was much more

 Pierre Boaistuau, Le théâtre du monde, ed. Michel Simonin (Geneva: Droz, 1981).  Most prominently in Sebastián de Covarrubias’ Emblemas morales (Madrid: Luís Sanchez, 1610), Archive.org.

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

59

tied to church liturgy moving out into the town squares. The risk of such geographical fallacy is obvious with respect to both the genre of the auto and the trope of the theatrum mundi because they have been evaluated according to panEuropean and early modern geographies. This appears to have resulted in a general tendency towards an interpretation of the world theatre metaphor as pessimistic in meaning which disregards both textual and historical realities with respect to El gran teatro del mundo. Ernst Robert Curtius has been celebrated due to his anti-nationalist philology in the sense that the masterpiece Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (1948) established the trans-European heritage of the later national philologies; how they are branches of the same tree. But that does not mean that the goal ever was to make us lose sight of the fact that the branches grew differently. Maybe this is partly what has happened to the large-scale studies of the theatrum mundi. Curtius thought so in the general case of the unique Iberian “theological art theory” of the Baroque: Only in Spain was it able to unfold in significant and fertile manner. The reason that this has not been observed yet could be that the study of Spanish art theory—and not just outside of Spain—has often been orientated towards the general-European, and especially the Italian, course of intellectual history. [In Spanien allein hat sie sich bedeutsam und fruchtbar entfalten können. Wenn dies bisher nicht beachtet wurde, so liegt der Grund wohl darin, daß die Erforschung der spanischen Kunsttheorie—nicht nur außerhalb Spaniens—sich häufig allzusehr an dem Gang der allgemein-europäischen, und besonders der italienischen Geistesgeschichte, orientiert hat.]151

Rather peculiarly, the universalism of Catholic thinking might have clouded the specific and highly successful Spanish-Catholic art forms of the Siglo de Oro.152 There is a thin line to walk in the division of secular history versus church history in this respect. To exclude the possibility that institutionalised Christianity was capable of rejoicing, of celebration, is far too modern (and perhaps: Protestant) an approach. In the case of the Corpus, the very goal of the church was effects of jubilation. Two early scholars of the auto, Parker and Wardropper, both underscore that the auto grew out of the Iberian tradition for liturgical practices, not out of the regular mystery plays as we know them from other areas of Europe.153 As will become evident in the next chapter, a crude division between austere ec-

 Ernst Robert Curtius, “Theologische Kunsttheorie im Spanischen Barock,” Romanische Forschungen 53, no. 2 (1939): 173.  Curtius, “Theologische Kunsttheorie,” 159.  Alexander Parker, “Notes on the Religious Drama in Medieval Spain and the Origins of the auto sacramental,” The Modern Language Review 30, no. 2 (1935): 178. Within Danish Hispanic

60

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

clesiastical liturgy and merry, folkloric celebration is a popular interpretation of the festival of the Corpus; but such a discernment is a modern invention which the auto equally dismisses. On the other hand, and this is the thin line, it seems that secular drama in Spain was so segregated from the rest of Europe that it developed quite separately—as if the Pyrenees were a hard border. But this is not the case for institutionalised religious matters. The idea of a festival in celebration of the Eucharist—the Corpus—was able to spread very fast from Liège, where it was invented, to Spain. Here, there is a meaningful division to make between secular drama and religious custom: The former was slower and more local, whereas the church was able to spread practices much faster. This is not surprising as the church was universal in its own self-understanding but perhaps still foreign to a modern mindset: The church was pan-European, the various drama traditions were, by comparison, national.

Genre Another challenge is that also experts in Calderón have been keen to make him compatible with standards of genre in other parts of Europe. This is for instance clear in Alexander Parker’s wish to show that Calderón was a capable tragedian.154 Parker was understandably annoyed that European histories of the theatre tended to dismiss the possibility and existence of Spanish tragedy: Spain, according to Parker’s opponents, “remained orthodox, Catholic, hierarchical; and Spain wrote no tragedy.”155 Parker believed this to be the understanding because it was assumed that the religious nature of Calderón’s times made sure that the audience could never experience suffering on stage as grieving or troubling— scholars thought that the audience would only conceive of it as expressions of “purification and redemption.”156 Parker therefore went on to describe a number of Calderón plays that could be seen to make use of both a “traditional Christian

studies, Lund Nielsen has convincingly studied the development of the auto without relation to the mystery play. Orla Lund Nielsen, Theatrum Mundi: Middelalderens Kristi Legemsfest og barokkens auto sacramental med særligt henblik på centrale temaer i Calderón de la Barcas værk (Odense: University of Southern Denmark, 2002), 23n34.  In Alexander Parker, “Towards a Definition of Calderonian Tragedy,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 39, no. 4 (1962): 222–37.  Parker quoting Herbert Müller. Parker, “Tragedy,” 222.  Parker, “Tragedy,” 222. This seems even more problematic as these are in fact key features of the Aristotelian view of tragedy as presented in the Poetics: that tragedy distinguishes itself by “accomplishing catharsis.” Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, 1449b, trans. Stephen Halliwell, LCL, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

Medievalism, Auto sacramental, and Early Modern Vanitas

61

conception of moral evil” and a “tragic sense of life.”157 There is nothing wrong with Parker’s argument, it just had the unfortunate consequence that his summary of the human condition in light of these readings could easily be read as constitutive for Calderón’s works and worldview in general. And in Parker’s case of Calderonian tragedy, this was shown to be a very bleak one: The human world, as Calderón presents it, is not one to arouse in us any exaltation; his view of the human predicament is not a heroic but a sad one. It is the predicament of man individualized from all other men yet in intimate solidarity with them, caught in circumstances that are the responsibility of all, whose ramifications the individual cannot see, prisoner as he is of the partial perspectives of a limited time and space, yet both the sufferer of acts that have their repercussions beyond them. From the recognition of the human predicament as consisting in the solidarity in wrongdoing flows that sense of sadness which is the hallmark of the most typical Calderonian tragedy.158

This sad predicament is taxonomised as strictly pertaining to Calderonian tragedies, not, for instance, the autos in general or to his understanding of the theatrum mundi. And tragedy is not necessarily pessimistic since it strives to effect katharsis. Unfortunately, not everybody saw this delicate distinction of genre. In her influential Theatrum Mundi: The History of an Idea, Lynda Christian first summarised the action of El gran teatro del mundo with a focus on the last judgement of the characters and claimed that “man’s part is resignation, asceticism, and passivity.”159 This is an objectively wrong statement, but it still echoes Parker’s point that Calderón’s world is not one of exaltation. Christian then goes on to quote the same lines from Parker as above with the conclusion that “the world for Calderón, as for the Protestants Boissard and Raleigh, was indeed a ‘theater of all miseries.’”160 This is an example of how a loss of the sense of genre in Calderón mixed with assumed geographical and confessional spill-over effects result in a distorted approach to the Spanish theatrum mundi in an influential monograph within comparative literature.161 That could be a sign that Calderón’s world the-

 Parker, “Tragedy,” 236. His examples are amongst others La devoción de la cruz, Las tres justicias en una, and El pintor de su deshonra.  Parker, “Tragedy,” 236.  Christian, Theatrum Mundi, 178.  Christian, Theatrum Mundi, 179.  Especially influential as there still are no monographs available on the literary history of the trope. It is a significant fact that so many of the contributions in Björn Quiring’s edited collections of essays on the world theatre use Christian’s book. Ruge even admits that “like many scholars before me, I have relied heavily on Lynda B. Christian’s magisterial history of the idea of the theatrum mundi.” Enno Ruge, “Having a Good Time at the Theatre of the World: Amusement, Antitheatricality and the Calvinist Use of the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor in Early Modern England,” in

62

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

atre has been seen in an unnecessarily pessimistic light within larger comparative-literary studies due to such errors of false analogy. Another pitfall is overtly anti-metaphysical viewpoints on what constitutes reality. This is evident in one of the newest treatments of the theatrum mundi. In Björn Quiring’s “If then the world a theatre present . . .” from 2014, Christopher Wild deals with Calderón and especially the importance of the cradle and grave doors on the stage of El gran teatro del mundo: The boundary between theatre and non-theatre, between on and off, is demarcated equally sharply. Of course, there is a “life” before birth and after death in Calderón’s play, but that “life beyond life” is of less ontological and epistemological substance. If earthly life is likened to a play by Calderón, then that “life” which takes place before and after that “theatrical” life has really no place on the stage.162

It is doubtful whether the idea that God’s reality (“life beyond life”) is of “less ontological and epistemological substance” is representative of the general metaphysical outlook of early modern Spain. One might just think of the loa to El gran teatro del mundo where ANTIGOU makes known—as a matter of fact—that “it is to be understood that time is a short afternoon in relation to God’s eternity” [“pues según se comprehende/ acá, es de su eternidad/ el tiempo una tarde breve”] (vv. 174–76). But also that there is no distinction between afterlife and theatrical life because Creation is a stage, not like it.163 AUTOR surely knows this when he discerns between the theatre of fictions (human life) and the theatre of truths (God’s reality). This is the perhaps most important distinction of the play which will be discussed continuously. After MUNDO has stripped the characters of their props, he concludes: Al teatro pasad de las verdades, Que este el teatro es de las ficciones. (vv. 1387–88) [Continue now, to the theatre of truths for this is the theatre of fictions.]

“If then the world a theatre present . . .”, ed. Quiring, 27n3. Another recent survey is West, “Knowledge and Performance,” 1–20. West writes the same: “The excellent survey of Christian (1987), upon which I have relied heavily” (2n2). Even Fernando R. de la Flor references Christian’s monograph as the only example of a larger survey including literature in imperial Spain. De la Flor, Barroco, 35n54.  Christopher Wild, “They Have Their Exits and Their Entrances,” 87.  E.g., Warnke notes that in Calderón, the theatrum mundi does not merely serve as “witty observation of an analogy but [as] the profound assertion of an identity.” Warnke, “The World as Theatre,” 199.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

63

Fiction and truth are evidently of theatrical nature. Calderón’s belonging to the early modern world does not automatically dispose him towards anti-metaphysical tenets. To formulate it with Blumenberg: Calderón’s world theatre does not by necessity comply with the modernisation theorem where transcendent orientation and expectations of an afterlife are in natural decline. This is one example of how the dichotomy of the Middle Ages versus modernity creates more problems than it solves; it might also be an explanation as to why only the one end of the aesthetic and metaphysical register of the theatrum mundi will be heard under such conditions.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day” The auto sacramental is a specifically Spanish dramatical genre and part of the tradition of celebrating the Catholic feast of the Corpus Christi. This feast developed in Liège in the thirteenth century, was instituted by Urban IV in 1264, and redecreed in 1311 by Clement V.164 When Pope John XXII in 1317 ordered that as part of the feast, the procession should carry the host through the streets of the cities, “a dramatic element made its appearance.”165 This procession evolved quickly and created the possibility of more extensive dramatical performance. Shergold has demonstrated that “in Spain the Corpus Christi drama began as a pageant, consisting of a series of static tableaux, with wooden figures.”166 The study of the genre has grown greatly since, and there is no need to repeat the history of this genre here.167 Calderón reflected extensively on the nature of the genre during the plays themselves. He also famously defined two formal features in a 1677 edition of his plays called Primera parte de los autos sacramentales. In a prologue, he distinguished between asunto and argumento of the genre, claiming that the theme [asunto] would always be the same—the Eucharist—but the plot [argumento] different.168 A tentative and minimal definition of the Spanish auto sacramental is therefore that we are dealing with a one-act sacramental play of  Cf. “The Feast of Corpus Christi,” in The Catholic Encyclopaedia.  Shergold, History of the Spanish Stage, 52.  Shergold, History of the Spanish Stage, 53.  But see Duarte, “Spanish Sacramental Plays”; Rull, Arte y sentido, 45–132; Ignacio Arellano, Historia del teatro español del Siglo XVII, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2002), 685–732; Shergold, History of the Spanish Stage, 52–84; Melveena McKendrick, Theatre in Spain 1490–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 238–60; Sofie Kluge, “Autos Sacramentales: Historical World as Divine Pageant,” in The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture, ed. Rodrigo Cacho (London: Routledge, 2022), 370–85.  Pedro Calderón de la Barca, “Prólogo al lector,” in Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas, 41–42.

64

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

allegorised characters where the topic is the Eucharist but the plot is open to all sorts of content: myth, saints’ lives, secular history, or philosophy.169 The auto is not only part of the practices of the church calendar year, and it is not simply an instrument for political or ecclesiastical power. It became a genre on par with other dramatic traditions. The Christian drama we meet in Calderón’s Madrid is no longer only a part of the medieval tradition of the Corpus Christi celebrations; it has somehow detached or segregated itself from the purely religious-practical use. It was likely enacted just before the procession re-entered the church and was performed by laymen and clerics,170 but the auto of the Calderonian times is far from this amateurism.171 By Calderón’s time, the theatre and its use of the auto as a genre of art had thus changed into a separate and autonomous profession. As McKendrick puts it: “In Spain, as in the rest of Europe, it was the sixteenth century that saw the emergence of the theatre as we would still recognise it today—the theatre understood as performances by professional players before a public audience in a secular setting.”172 Parker also mentions the evident development from the medieval church liturgical drama to Calderón’s professionalism and tells the story of the most symbolic transformation. In Seville, where change came at a slower pace than in other parts of Spain, liturgical plays were performed in the sanctuary of the church until 1579 when a “sumptuous catafalque was erected in the choir.”173 This meant that the drama had to be performed on the west porch of the cathedral and finally in the town square: “Here we have the Spanish auto sacramental as a development of the liturgical drama without the intermediate form of the miracle play evolved from a ‘pageant.’”174 We thus observe a development from medieval liturgical drama in the cathedral to a conscious, autonomous art form in the open.175 This must have had immense

 Valbuena Prat suggested a more elaborate categorisation of the autos in seven groups, cf. “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón de la Barca,” in Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas, 32.  McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 238.  Parker notes that already in 1372, the bishop of Valencia let the “municipal authorities” organise the Corpus procession and thus “freed it from the control of the clergy.” Parker, “Notes on the Religious Drama,” 175. This was obviously a necessary development if the autos were to be taken over by theatre professionals in the longer run.  McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 6. The claim does not necessarily have to include the auto sacramental, but it does not preclude it either.  Parker, “Notes on the Religious Drama,” 177.  Parker, “Notes on the Religious Drama,” 178.  One of the best descriptions of this move towards secular professionalism is Wille’s. She describes how El gran teatro del mundo is a fulfilment of a whole epoch and that the play constitutes “the liberation” [“Befreiung”] of the auto as a genre from its own “instrumental purpose” [“Zweckgebundenheit”]. Wille, Spiel der Erlösung, 250n217.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

65

importance for an auto with the specific theme of the theatrum mundi because the free view of the sky would enhance the sense that the universe itself is a theatre. The separation of the auto from the actual procession or from the physical space of the church is also clear from the eye-witness report of the 1655 Madrid celebrations of the Corpus Christi by Antoine de Brunel. He saw the procession and registered that it was not until later in the afternoon, at five o’clock, that the autos took place.176 The development towards autonomous theatre can also be seen on the physical stage. The technical levels of the stage scenery rose to new heights during the seventeenth century, and even though El gran teatro del mundo only required two carros and not four as some of the later autos, it would still have demanded quite the expertise to stage it. Both carts would have to be able to open up as globes, the platform would have to support the open upperhalf of them, and all ten actors would have to be able to stand on one of the open globes.177 It would also require “a rigging system which lifts a woman” [“una tramoya que sube una mujer”]:178 probably a reference to the stage direction after v. 659 where LEY DE GRACIA hovers above MUNDO. One imagines the dangers of such contraptions. The technical know-how is important because it enabled a verticality of the stage design which is paramount to the beneficial connection between the idea of the world as theatre and auto as genre. In an essayistic account of the baroque theatre, Richard Alewyn suggests that Renaissance staging usually stayed on what he calls “platform level” [“Bühnenebene”], by which he means that the stage only needed a horizontal level of imagination.179 The same can also be said in general about French Classicism and the post-Baroque bourgeois realism according to Alewyn. But “when the baroque theatre expands in a vertical direction, it renews and improves a medieval achievement” [“wenn das barocke Theater sich nun in die Vertikale ausdehnt, erneuert und steigert es damit eine Errungenschaft des Mittelalters”].180 The double verbs of renew and improve are very adequately used because together, they emphasise a dialectic of continuity and break on the baroque stage. Alewyn continues: “Once more, that transcendental cosmos of the  According to Shergold’s account of Brunel’s testimony to his experiences. Shergold, The Spanish Stage, 452f.  The most thorough investigation of the scenography is N. D. Shergold, “El gran teatro del mundo y sus problemas escenográficos,” in Hacia Calderón: Coloquio anglogermano Exeter 1969, ed. Hans Flasche (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970), 77–84.  Quoted after Shergold, The Spanish Stage, 442. He is quoting the surviving stage instructions for the play in a 1641 staging in Valencia.  Richard Alewyn, Das große Welttheater: Die Epoche der höfischen Feste (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989), 66.  Richard Alewyn, Das große Welttheater, 66.

66

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

Middle Ages has re-established itself in the Baroque and only therefore does theatre again expand in the vertical direction.” [“Noch einmal hat sich im Barock der transzendente Kosmos des Mittelalters wiederhergestellt, und nur darum dehnt sich das Theater noch einmal in die Vertikale aus.”]181 The “only” seems too constraining in comparison with the subtlety of the rest of the argument, but the Middle Ages and the Baroque certainly have a general cosmology in common. The technical possibilities in Calderón’s Spain allowed for a stage to mirror such a cosmology. This possible mirroring is also one of the reasons for the artistic and philosophical potential in fusing theatrum mundi and auto.

The Transiturus The apologetic nature of Calderón’s theatrum mundi and its exceptional suitability within the genre of the auto sacramental also arise from common origins in modes of celebration. What has still been left somewhat under-appreciated is a consideration of the original intentions of Urban IV’s institution of the Corpus Christi in the 1264 papal bull of the Transiturus de hoc mundo.182 The relevance of the fact that it was Thomas Aquinas who created the liturgy, probably the same year, must also be considered. In the year 1264, Aquinas wrote the Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium, a Latin hymn for the Corpus Christi festivities. The auto is of course a later invention than Urban IV’s bull and Aquinas’ office, but this context is helpful when studying an auto like El gran teatro del mundo. Partly because the Transiturus text can remind us of the context of joy, surrounding the purpose of the Corpus, partly because the “Tantum ergo” part of Aquinas’ 1264 Pange is sung to the sound of shawms when five of the characters ascend to God’s supper table in the final scene of El gran teatro del mundo. That is no secret as the stage directions mention the “Tantum ergo” explicitly. We hereby arrive at a strange and almost contradictory double consciousness with regard to the auto: it has become an autonomous art form by Calderón’s time, but it equally consciously employs references to the 1264 medieval and ecclesiastical genesis of the Corpus. A fine example of what a medievalism looks like. The Transiturus is also relevant because Calderón took it seriously and it suggests that his auto is attempting to generate the same desired effects as the ones Urban IV circulates in his papal bull.

 Richard Alewyn, Das große Welttheater, 68.  Urban IV, Bulla Transiturus de hoc mundo. Digital version at Vatican.va after Acta Urbani IV, Clementis IV, Gregorii X. 1261–1276, ed. A. L. Tàutu (Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1953), 43–47.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

67

In an influential study of church history, A. V. Kolve pursued this connection between the drama form of the auto and the original purpose of the institution of the feast.183 He noted that there was quite a practical reason for Urban IV’s wish to institute the feast: On the day of the Last Supper, where the sacrament is instituted in the Bible, “Christians properly mediate on the terror of the Sacrifice.”184 Maundy Thursday would therefore tend to generate effects of lament, and Urban IV agreed that the sacrament equally needed celebration and the generation of effects of joy. The purpose with the establishment of a new religious festival which was to become the Corpus Christi, according to the Transiturus, is therefore that on the same Thursday [i.e. the proposed festival of Corpus Christi], the devout crowds of the faithful should flock eagerly to the churches—in order that clergy and congregation, joining one another in equal rejoicing, may rise in a song of praise, and that, from the hearts and desires, from the mouth and lips of all, there may sound forth hymns of joy at man’s salvation. [in ipsa quinta feria devote turbe fidelium propter hoc ad ecclesias affectuose concurrant, ut tunc cleri et populi partier congaudentes in cantica laudis surgant, tunc omnium corda et vota, ora et labia ymnos personent letitie salutaris.]185

Hence, the very purpose of the Corpus was to create an antidote to the sufferings and laments of the Passion Week in the wish that the day be one of appraisal and that hymns of joy may sound at man’s salvation; just what happens at the end of El gran teatro del mundo. Kolve equally stresses that Aquinas had understood this and used it in the office for the mass of the festival. In the office, Aquinas wrote:

 A. V. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), 44. A notable example as far as Kolve and Calderón studies are concerned is Martin, who also uses Kolve’s study to point to the relevance of the Transiturus and the festive aura of the Corpus. Martin, Representación, 154f. This gives cause for another nuancing of the present argument: The claim is not that the festive aura of the Corpus has been generally toned down, but only that the theatrum mundi’s affinity to the effects of jubilation has yet to be explored. A good example of the attention to the relation between festivity and theatre is Díez Borque’s work, especially “Teatro y fiesta en el barroco español: El auto sacramental de Calderón y el público. Funciones del texto cantado,” Cuadernos hispanoamericanos 396 (1983): 606–64. This article usefully employs the idea of the “polysemic term fiesta” (608).  Kolve, Corpus Christi, 45. According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, this was also the reason why St. Juliana of Mont Cornillon began to long for a separate celebration of the sacrament in Belgium some twenty years before Urban IV’s institution. Cf. “The Feast of Corpus Christi” in The Catholic Encyclopaedia.  Urban IV, Transiturus, translated by and quoted after Kolve, Corpus Christi, 45.

68

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

Sit laus plene, sit sonora, Sit jocunda, sit decora Mentis jubilatio; Dies enim solemnis agitur, In qua mensae prima recolitur Hujus institutio. [Let our praise be full and resounding, let our soul’s jubilation be joyful and seemly; for a solemn day is being observed upon which the first institution of this table is commemorated.]186

Following Poppenberg’s insistence that the potencies and struggles of the soul are decisive in understanding Calderón’s dramatic art,187 it would be beneficial to remember that the autos arose out of a tradition that accentuated “the jubilation of the soul” [“mentis jubilatio”] and that Calderón did not hesitate to underscore his own knowledge thereof with the closing hymn of his most famous auto. In this way, there is in the very foundational texts of the Corpus a striving towards the generation of effects of joy and a conscious relation between the Middle Ages and Calderón’s art. It might be objected that the concept of “solemnity” still plays a role in the Transiturus. Kolve also mentions that later editions of the Legenda aurea stress that the Corpus was instituted for the sacrament to be “hallowed more solemnly.”188 In fact, there is a general tendency to see the context in this way. Several studies of the autos refer to Francis George Very’s book on the Corpus processions from 1962. Very tends to see a division between the “liturgical and the folkloric or popular elements” and even that “the employment of grotesque figures, of the tarrasca, of scenic representations and dances, superimposed on a basically austere liturgical procession.”189 There is nothing about Very’s book which suggests that he had a particularly historiographically biased approach to Iberian history. To be on the lookout for differences between church history and secular history—and to assume the latently earnest nature of the former and the possible gaiety of the latter—is simply a standard tradition of the time. But in the case of the auto (the “scenic representations” in the quote), this is not a reasonable description. Nonetheless, Very can show that several attempts were made to control the public’s urge towards paganism, unseemly behaviour and the like, on this day that came to be the most im-

 Thomas Aquinas, “Office for Corpus Christi,” translated by and quoted from Kolve, Corpus Christi, 46.  Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie, 24.  Kolve, Corpus Christi, 46.  F. G. Very, The Spanish Corpus Christi Procession: A Literary and Folkloric Study (Valencia: Moderna, 1962), 6f, emphasis added.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

69

portant Catholic festival of the year. Very’s conclusion to this part is to see a dichotomy between the laity’s “deeply implanted drive to express rejoicing and allegory,” which “finds its full expression in the celebrations with which the people of the Iberian Peninsula observed the feast instituted by Urban IV in 1264”190 and the church’s striving towards the “basically austere.” Very thus himself observes the inclination towards rejoicing on the Corpus but thinks it a proto-pagan offspring of the people’s urges, foreign to the external practices forced upon them by the church. This is also emphasised by a focus on the effect of solemnity; according to Very a basic tenet in the original institution of the feast and its consequence in “austere” liturgical procession, set against the merry, gay, and gaudy folkloric elements which came to surround the observance of the Eucharist. However, this dichotomy between austere institutionalised Christianity and merry folkloric paganism is not true to the wording of the Transiturus, nor to Aquinas’ office. Calderón’s use of both equally suggests something else. “Solemn” could just as well be intended to signify greatness or highness, not quite unlike the play’s title highlighting the great world theatre. As Kolve notes, “‘Solemnly’ [. . .] meant something close to ‘highly’ or ‘worthily’ and does not imply our later sense of ‘grave’ or ‘sombre,’ the mood of its Maundy Thursday occasion.”191 Through Kolve, we here get an example of the dangers of too modern interpretations of modes of effects from earlier epochs and an entirely plausible reason for negative interpretations of the codings of the world theatre in the Middle Ages as well as in the Baroque. The applicability of Bruno Latour’s definition of modernity as the desire (here including Calderón) for a “sharp and clear [. . .] distinction between Facts and Values” emerges, not the least in the description of the moderns’ idea that “behind them” lies an “archaic past unhappily combing Facts and Values.”192 Very’s desire to discern the “gaudy folkloric” of the people’s paganism from the “basically austere” attitude of the church has the same structure. In the Transiturus, the concept of solemnity means “worthy” of the greatness of the sacrament. A point that is replayed in El gran teatro del mundo in several original ways. It also represents an example of how secular history and church history can become too segregated if the intentions of joy within institutionalised Catholic Christianity are denied. Or, to rephrase elementarily: It is possible to be happy whilst practising Christianity. Calderón’s autos demonstrate this astounding

 Very, The Spanish Corpus Christi, 9.  Kolve, Corpus Christi, 46.  Latour, Inquiry, 8, Latour’s own capital letters.

70

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

fact. The echoes of cosmological greatness that the world theatre in fact often tries to resound are compatible with the wording of the Transiturus.193 J. M. Díez Borque—who in his Historia del teatro en España indicates that a focus on the didactical, scholastic, or theological elements can obscure the original espacio festivo of the auto’s context—formulates it beautifully. The auto enables certain performances of prayer and liturgical practice—entrusted to a large extent, as we will see, to the sung text—which place the audience of the auto on a plane similar to that of the worshipper. These functions ensure that the story line and the basic doctrinal meaning will only be one element of this communication, in which [. . .] other aspects of the festive relation, such as the worship of divinity, are introduced. I will describe this in detail because I believe that the problem with the reception of the auto can be better understood when focusing on the worshipping public rather than on the theological and when the festive space is considered a valid explanation. [se dotará de unas funciones de oración y práctica litúrgica—encomendadas, como veremos, al texto cantado—que sitúan al espectador del auto en un plano semejante al del feligrés, determinando que la total comprensión de la anécdota conceptual y el significado doctrinal profundo sea sólo un aspecto de esta comunicación, en la que [. . .] entran otros aspectos de la relación festiva, como el rendir culto a la divinidad. Explicaría esto el por qué pienso que el problema de recepción del auto se entiende mejor hablando de pueblo feligrés que de pueblo teólogo y recurriendo al espacio festivo como explicación valida.]194

Díez Borque demonstrates an acute awareness of the practical elements of the auto and the importance of the actual enactment of the plays, not purely their conceptual content or their possible political intentions.195 He also stressed the affective state of celebration. What is still missing, however, is to see the connection between these theatrological observations and the register of the world theatre. One reason for El gran teatro del mundo’s marvellous success and artistic quality could for instance be that the image of the world theatre invites similar features of the genre of the auto; that the theatrum mundi equally has a tendency towards the establishment of espacios festivos and that this feature breaks down the  Wardropper suggested this possibility already in 1950: “In these words [i.e. the Transiturus] the spirit of Corpus Christi is set; there is forecast in them of the language used three or four centuries later by those Spanish dramatists who succeeded in finding the dramatic formula of the sacramental world.” Bruce Wardropper, “The Search for a Dramatic Formula for the Auto Sacramental,” PMLA 65, no. 6 (1950): 1197.  Díez Borque, Historia, 640.  Díez Borque is not alone in this focus. A major voice in Calderón studies, Enrique Rull, supports this line of thinking: Calderón’s “art transcends its own principles of doctrinal intent. Above all, as mentioned, through the festive-theatrical nature of the genre [su arte transciende sus propios principios conscientes de intencionalidad doctrinal. Primeramente, como se ha dicho, por el carácter festivo-teatral del propio género].” Rull, Arte y sentido, 73.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

71

boundaries between liturgy and drama; or perhaps better, that the theatrum mundi has a proto-cultic nature, transferred to the realm of art. This does not mean that one must forget Poppenberg’s critique of overly didactic approaches to Calderón scholarship, namely that the difference between cult and theatre is overlooked and that the poetical autonomy of the auto is lost in translation.196 The caveat is justified, but it can be overstated so that the festivity, the holiness, and the anti-pessimistic side of the theatrum mundi are forgotten. We would also risk forgetting that the theatrum mundi and the genre of the auto invite a participatory element to the particular enactment of the play where the audience is somehow part of the show. Especially in the sense that they are persuaded that they also live in a world theatre of a larger play on a greater stage. The complete segregation of cult and theatre also risks obscuring the connection in an important sequence in European literary history between the Middle Ages, Calderón’s fusion of auto and theatrum mundi, and the German-writing world’s fascination with the world theatre because the Calderonian espacio festivo is such an important part of the subsequent reception history. Maybe the compatibility of genre and image is a way to bridge the gap. In any case, the Transiturus does not exclude but in fact endorses the generation of effects of celebration and grandeza. Calderón delivered a much-quoted definition of his understanding of the genre of the auto sacramental. But no matter how thoroughly studied, the relation to the medieval origins of the auto, especially clear in El gran teatro del mundo, still lacks some appreciation. Through this medieval origin, an apologetic and festive analogy inherent in the Calderonian definition can be brought to light. “What are they,” the autos, PASTOR asks in Calderón’s loa to the auto La segunda esposa, and LABRADORA answers: Sermones Puestos en verso, en idea Representable cuestiones De la Sacra Teología, Que no alcanzan mis razones A explicar ni comprender Y el regocijo dispone En aplauso de este día.197

 In Poppenberg’s eligible formulation that it is dangerous to assume that the “cohesion between theatre and cult, literature and liturgy, is without gaps [dass der Zusammenhang von Theater und Kult, Literatur und Liturgie bruchlos sei”]. Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie, 14.  Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Loa to La segunda esposa, in Obras completas, 427. The translation offers “image” for idea to maintain the dramatic sense rather than the epistemological, and something “which can be staged” for representable to avoid the Cartesian analogy. This will be

72

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

[[The autos are] sermons, put into verse, turned into an image which can be staged, questions of sacred theology which my reasonings are insufficient to explain or understand. And joy shall command in applause of this day.]

The didactic element of the definition can be blinding: The autos represent—illustrate—theological topics. And of course, they do. The same applies to the orthodox or theological element: The autos are (most of the time) in line with sacred theology and as such, summed up in the first lines: “Sermons put into verse.” A sermon teaches orthodoxy. The second part of the definition is the emphasis on the fact that the autos are theological poetry and poetic theology where the medium of drama is allowed to explore theology and religious sentiment in its own right. Díaz Balsera acknowledges the inspiration from Kurtz and criticises twentieth-century tendencies towards reducing the autos to church panegyrics.198 Instead, Díaz Balsera, not unlike Poppenberg, desires to speak of the autos as a sort of heterogenous theology. This is visible in her quest to study persistent appearances of evil in Calderón’s autos.199 This is an intersection between literature and theology: The autos deal with questions (of theology) which reason alone cannot explain nor understand; this is the whole reason for the development of the art form. The drama can show things that a regular sermon cannot. This is one reason for the autos’ uniqueness and their fruitful tension between aesthetics and theology, between drama and ritual. In Poppenberg’s words: “They are set in the borderland between literature and liturgy; no longer liturgy in a cultic sense and not yet literature in the aesthetic sense of later modernity.” [“Sie sind im Grenzgebiet von Literatur und Liturgie angesiedelt: nicht mehr Liturgie im kultischen und noch nicht Literatur im ästhetischen Sinn der späteren Neuzeit.”]200 The unclear boundary between poetry and ritual has important implications and consequences for the understanding of Calderón’s brilliant and original use of the theatrum mundi. The third part of the definition has still been somewhat overlooked, and only with this addition can the full ingenuity of El gran teatro del mundo be appreciated with reference to its use of the theatrum mundi. “And joy shall command in applause of this day,” the last sentence reads. The literal meaning of this third part of the definition is then that aside from the didactic purpose and the alliance discussed throughout, but “representable” for representable would of course also work—and Descartes does not exercise a philosophical monopoly of the term.  Viviana Díaz Balsera, Calderón y las quimeras de la culpa: Alegoría, seducción y resistencia en cinco autos sacramentales (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1997), 1.  Díaz Balsera, Calderón, 3. Unfortunately, the book does not deal with uses of the theatrum mundi.  Poppenberg, “Nachwort,” 176.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

73

between poetry and theology, there is an affective level and a praxis-related purpose: That “joy shall command” and that the auto should be written and enacted in praise of “this” day; one might already here sense Aquinas’ office and the goal of the mentis jubilatio. The last sentence of the definition is often left out when quoted in works on Calderón. This happens even in Barbara Kurtz’ brilliant The Play of Allegory.201 Poppenberg, the scholar perhaps closest to the approach used in the present book, equally leaves them out.202 Rull does the same in the most recent comprehensive study of the genre.203 Arellano quotes the definition in full but makes little use of the last sentence.204 Even in a study of the Romantics’ fascination with Calderón, Wilfried Floeck disregards them.205 The same is the case for the detailed prologue to the edition of the play published by Ynduráin and Allen in 1997.206 What does it mean, and how important is it, that the autos are written in “applause of this day”? The literal meaning must be the separate enactment of the auto on the day of the Corpus Christi. Calderón’s definition is thus perfectly aligned with the spirit and the letter of the Transiturus. It also means that Calderón acknowledged the practical or performative element to the auto at a core point in his thinking about its nature. Parker also displays an awareness of this performative aspect: They [the autos] are a part of the public celebration of the feast, but not a disconnected part. They do not celebrate the feast in the way that university students would have celebrated a royal visit by performing a play of Seneca’s. They are an integral part of the religious festivities, having in their asunto an intimate connection with the feast, and being, as it were, a contribution to the Church’s liturgical office. Their specific purpose is the “aplauso” of the Sacrament. They are therefore primarily liturgical, or semi-liturgical, in a way that the Corpus Christi plays of medieval England or of any other country never were. Though not directly a form of worship, they were the people’s contribution to the liturgical celebrations, something to be placed side by side with the Church’s official form of worship. Hence one detail of the production which foreign visitors noted with amusement: the

 Cf. Kurtz, Allegory, 43.  Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie, 94n122.  Rull, Arte y sentido, 52.  Arellano, Historia, 690. Duarte seems fair when briefly stating that the “sacramental play is a staged sermon to teach people Catholic doctrine, showing abstract ideas (Faith, Truth, Hope) upon the stage. But also, it must be underlined from this definition that the Corpus Christi day was a feast, a joyful moment to celebrate people’s faith and their belonging to a Catholic community.” Duarte, “Spanish Sacramental Plays,” 59f.  Wilfried Floeck, “El gran teatro del mundo de Calderón de la Barca: ¿Drama religioso como paradigma teatral en tiempos profanos?,” Iberoromania 19 (1999): 52.  John J. Allen and Domingo Ynduráin, “Prólogo,” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran teatro del mundo (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997), lv.

74

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

lighted candles on or behind the stage, though the autos were performed in broad daylight. Hence, too, the sumptuousness of the production, the music, the whole note of “regocijo” which Calderón so constantly stresses. In this festive spirit, and in placing all the resources of art at the service of religion, the autos were in keeping with an essential element of the Catholic tradition.207

This acute attentiveness to a permanent feature of Calderón’s purpose with the autos and their general performative history are immediately forgotten as Parker continues with his first reading; in fact, a reading of El gran teatro del mundo. Parker is also quoted at length here to show a contradicitio in a book which in several ways consists of a scorn of “irrational” or Romantic approaches to Calderón’s work: The point that foreign guests were stunned at the candles is interesting because it encapsulates the liturgical practice of the auto;208 but Parker is not consistent. He claims that the auto is “liturgical” and an “integral part” of the festivities, “side by side with the Church’s official form of worship.” But they are also placed “at the service of religion.” They cannot be both as they must be either autonomous of the role of the church in the festivities or instrumentalised by it. Perhaps Parker struggled to accept the idea—Calderón’s own—that the auto as drama was itself religious and that such a phenomenon can be identified: an art form that is also religious, not one that is placed at the service of religion. The reception history of the auto shows that this is not a futile point to make. In a typical reading of the political or sociological Calderón, Johnson for instance stresses that “having insisted upon the centrality of its social dimension, I must observe that GTM [El gran teatro del mundo] does not cease to be an allegorical religious play whose function is to instruct the (already) faithful in the tenets of  Parker, Calderón, 63.  Regrettably, Parker does not offer a source of reference for the candles, but the reference is repeated in McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 244, with the emphasis that candles would burn “throughout the performances even in broad daylight.” The liturgical relation to the candle consists in the fact that there is a long biblical tradition for having a seven-armed candlestick, in Jewish tradition “a menorah,” placed at the alter during mass and service. It likely stems from God’s addressing Moses in Exodus 25, ordering that “you shall also make a lampstand of pure gold; the lampstand shall be of hammered work. Its shaft, its branches, its bowls, its ornamental knobs, and flowers shall be of one piece. And six branches shall come out of its sides: [. . .] You shall make seven lamps for it, and they shall arrange its lamps so that they give light in front of it” (Exod. 25:31–37). A menorah therefore came to be placed in the tabernacle and later in the temple of Jerusalem. It was adopted by Christian typology in several ways. Cf. the section below on the negro velo, an analogy between the world theatre as a metaphysical structure of the world and the original temple of the Old Testament is specifically applied in El gran teatro del mundo. With the example of the menorah, we might therefore here encounter a preliminary and tentative example of how Calderón unifies the tradition and genre of the auto with his theatrum mundi art.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

75

Counter-reformation orthodoxy.”209 It might look admirable on the surface to accept the religious dimension when carrying out a political reading. But it is a hidden reduction when the “function” of the religious allegory is to instruct—as if religious phenomena exist solely for the purpose of the didactic—which, in essence, is a political project anyhow. The full scope and genius of Calderón’s religious drama is that it neither reduces religion to an instrument of power, nor drama to the handmaiden of theology.210 Another clue to the lack of attention to the last part of Calderón’s own definition of the auto is Barbara E. Kurtz’ monograph from 1991 already briefly mentioned. Kurtz quotes the definition but also stops prior to the last sentence. Peculiarly, the footnote to the quote then says: “The full implication of Calderón’s emphasis on ‘this day’ of dramatic representation, a commonplace in his autos, are discussed in Ch. 4 of the present study.”211 As Kurtz has not quoted “this day,” the new reader might find herself at a loss—even more so as the whole of Kurtz’ chapter 4 unfortunately fails to discuss this commonplace at all. A specific analogy, which has to do with signifié and signifiant in the use of the phrase en aplauso de este día, is at play. Parker identified the phrase as a historical and performative aspect of the Calderonian auto, but there is something unclear about what is signified. Parker claims that the autos’ “specific purpose is the aplauso of the Sacrament.” Strictly speaking, this is wrong; the meaning must surely be that autos are enacted in applause of the feast of Corpus Christi, not of the sacrament itself—the sacrament cannot logically be un día. We are dealing with a celebration (the auto) of a celebration (the Corpus) of a celebration (the sacrament). It is obviously a matter of semantics, but it shows this instability be-

 Carroll B. Johnson, “Social Roles and Ideology, Dramatic Roles and Theatrical Convention in El gran teatro del mundo,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 49, no. 2 (1997): 247f.  The criticism of this trend with the expression of the negligence of art (or aesthetics) as the handmaiden of theology is used in both Poppenberg (Psyche und Allegorie, 13) and Kluge (Baroque, 230) and echoes Martin Luther’s phrase of philosophy as theology’s handmaiden. Johnson is by no means alone in this reduction of the auto’s aesthetic autonomy and potential. Melveena McKendrick does the same in an otherwise sympathetical account of the auto: “The finest autos are stunning theatre, the consummate example of religious propaganda, of art in the service of religion.” McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 250. Greer intimated a similar line of argument in the conclusion of her seminal The Play of Power, suggesting that Calderón’s genius led to “a discourse of power” and that this was a shared feature of comedias and autos alike. Margaret Greer, The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calderón de la Barca (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 201. Küpper sees didacticism as a defining feature of Calderón’s art. He discerns between Marino and Calderón with the labels “aestheticist” and “didactic” art. Küpper, Renovatio, 8.  Kurtz, Allegory, 43n46.

76

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

tween signifier and signified at a central place in the Calderonian text corpus when it comes to the purpose of the auto. The semantic instability opens the possibility for a more analogical way of thinking about the very expression that the auto is enacted in applause of “this day.” Seeing as there is always an allegorical structure at work in the autos between plot and theme, there is no reason that this should not be transferrable to Calderón’s definition itself. This can be established by the fact that so many commentators have discussed this distinction between argumento and asunto which Calderón introduced in the 1677 prologue to his works; even there he felt the need to underscore that the autos were enacted in front of the majesty and the royal council “en su festivo día.”212 One might therefore ask: If the literal sense of this day is the festival of the Corpus Christi, what is the figurative meaning? The play operates with a very distinct use of the word but that pertains to the text’s inner horizon. Concerning the outer horizon, there are contexts to consider which can pave the way for a new awareness around the use of the word día in Calderón’s definition of the auto sacramental and in the specific play. To understand this, a short excursus on the status of temporality in the fourfold meaning of Scripture in the Middle Ages will prove helpful.

Polysemy and the Ecstasies of Time in the Medieval Quadriga One reason for Calderón’s dramatic genius is his ability to work with polysemy within semantic fields. This capacity is best understood in the hermeneutical terms of the fourfold interpretation of Scripture as it was developed in the Middle Ages, especially now famous through Dante’s poetics and Aquinas’ Summa. It has at times come to be known as the Quadriga.213 This is not intended as an argument for Calderón’s reactionary view of Scripture or a “medieval” mindset but rather as another argument for the claim that substantial attributes of the Middle Ages are not necessarily foreign to the modern condition. Calderón is an example of the contrary. In Dante as well as in Aquinas, a division of the literal and the

 Calderón, “Prólogo al lector,” 41.  And sometimes simply as the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Curtius asserts the medieval vogue of metaphorising the allegorical interpretation in terms of wheels and carts (Curtius, Europäische Literatur, 130). There is general agreement that the fourfold interpretation of Scripture is foremost a medieval commonplace. Cf. Auerbach who asserts that typological bible exegesis is an early Christian idea but that it was not systematised until the Middle Ages where it came to comprehensive use and fame. Erich Auerbach, Typologische Motive in der mittelalterlichen Literatur (Krefeld: Scherpe Verlag, 1964), 7.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

77

spiritual meaning of Scripture can be found alongside a threefold subdivision of the spiritual.214 In the tenth article to Q1 in the Summa Theologica, Aquinas asks whether a word may have several meanings in Scripture and claims: Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division. For as the Apostle says the Old Law is a figure of the New Law, and Dionysius says the New Law itself is a figure of future glory. Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type of what we ought to do. Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense. But so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense.215

Three spiritual meanings are clearly identified: an allegorical, a moral, and an anagogical. The allegorical sense is the one which later times have often come to call “typological,” namely the phenomenon that there are prefigurations (“types”) of the Old Testament in particular forms in the New Testament.216 The moral sense has to do with how Scripture and thereby Christ influence the lives and deeds of the faithful. The anagogical has to do with how expressions and images

 Aquinas’ and Dante’s specific divisions of the spiritual senses are not definitive. There are many other understandings of these subdivisions. Auerbach’s later successful use of the figura term perhaps invites the thought that the allegorical meaning by default entails understandings of typology or Figuralstruktur, but that is not necessarily the case. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur, 3rd ed. (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1964), 18f. The fourfold approach to literary exegesis can be said to be a general subsection of the enormous literary and historical topic of allegory. Aquinas’ and Dante’s are specific explications of the medieval Quadriga approach, but there are others as this strategy has several peaks historically. Origen, for instance, developed a theological allegory with three rather than four meanings. Cf. R. T. Davis, “Allegory,” in Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Literature, ed. S. H. Steinberg (London: Cassell, 1953), 10.  Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, vol. 1, q1, 10th article, trans. The English Dominican Province, revised Daniel J. Sullivan (Chicago: William Benton, 1923), 10.  Evidence that Aquinas’ understanding of allegory is better known now as “typology” within literature studies is provided by Cuddon: “Allegory, largely typological, pervades both the Old and the New Testaments. The events of the Old Testament are ‘types’ or ‘figures’ of events in the New Testament” (22). A given example is that the paschal lamb sacrificed by the Jews during Passover is a prefiguration of Christ. J. A. Cuddon, “Allegory,” in Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, ed. J. A. Cuddon, 5th ed. (London: Penguin, 1999), 22. This confusion of categorical terms also gives reason to emphasise that Aquinas and Dante are applied in a very specific sense to demonstrate how word fields can achieve beneficial polysemy in Calderón’s work. Allegory could easily be understood in a much broader and thematic sense as Frye for instance suggests when considering what he calls “formal allegory”: “When a work of fiction is written or interpreted thematically, it becomes a parable or illustrative fable. All formal allegories have, ipso facto, a strong thematic interest.” Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 53.

78

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

of the Bible simultaneously related to eternal glory, that is, to judgement and the regaining of Paradise. Dante used a similar division in the letter to his patron Can Crande della Scala, but Dante, importantly, applied it to his own Divine Comedy, not to Scripture: It should be understood that there is not just a single sense in this work: it might rather be called polysemous, that is, having several senses. For the first sense is that which is contained in the letter, while there is another which is contained in what is signified by the letter. The first is called literal, while the second is called allegorical, or moral or anagogical.217

Dante’s description is close to Aquinas’, and he acknowledges that the last three meanings are all mystical. Dante quotes the opening of Psalm 114: “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion” (1–2). He then explains to Can Grande that the “letter alone” means the historical event of the people of Israel leaving Egypt. Allegorically, it means redemption in Christ. Morally, it means the necessity of every soul’s conversion from the “sorrow and misery of sin” to “the state of grace.” Anagogically, it signifies the general transition from the “corruption of the present” to “eternal glory.” The first spiritual sense, in Dante called “allegorical,” is not typological as is the case in Aquinas, but Dante is working towards an exegesis of his own Divine Comedy through the Quadriga. The allegorical sense used there is often applying figure and type from the Bible. All this is of relevance to Calderón. A temporal dimension is present, especially in the Aquinian version, which can enable an understanding of what will later be developed as the “deep temporality” of Calderón’s world theatre. Beginning with the issue of polysemy in relation to temporality, the Aquinian threefold division of spiritual meaning has an inherent temporal dimension: Allegory as typology is related to a temporality of the past. An event or an image needs a prefiguration somewhere else to be typological. The moral sense relates to the temporality of the present because its centre is the life of the faithful or the reader. The anagogical centres on the temporality of the future because it has to do with events which have not happened yet. This does not mean that each of the senses does not operate with the other temporalities; that is the whole point of polysemy in the Quadriga. They are there simultaneously. It does, however, mean that each of the three spiritual meanings have a primary temporal orientation.

 Dante Alighieri, “The Letter to Can Crande,” trans. Robert Haller, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 51.

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

79

Heidegger on the Phenomenology of Time The best way to understand this is a short visit to Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of time from Sein und Zeit (1927). In an attempt to understand the relation between existence [Dasein] and temporality [Zeitlichkeit], Heidegger has provided a convincing account of this temporal element of the medieval Quadriga and an adequate terminology or a possible exegesis of elements of time in the world theatre. In §65 he explains his understanding of three “orientations” of temporality without the loss of the unity of time. In other words, Dante’s polysemy without the loss of continuity. In Heidegger, they can be summed up as the unity of the ecstasies of time: The future, the character of having been, and the Present, show the phenomenal characteristics of the “towards-oneself,” the “back-to,” and the “letting-oneself-be-encountered-by.” The phenomena of the “towards . . ., ” the “to . . ., ” and the “alongside . . .” make temporality manifest as the ἐϰστατιϰόν pure and simple. [. . .] We therefore call the phenomena of the future, the character of having been, and the present, the “ecstases” of temporality. [. . .] its essence is a process of temporalizing in the unity of the ecstasies. [Zukunft, Gewesenheit, Gegenwart zeigen die phänomenalen Charaktere des “Auf-sich-zu,” des “Zurück auf,” des “Begegnenlassens von.” Die Phänomene des zu . . ., auf . . ., bei . . . offenbaren die Zeitlichkeit als das ἐϰστατιϰόν schlechthin. Zeitlichkeit ist das ursprüngliche “Außer-sich’ an und für sich selbst. Wir nennen daher die charakterisierten Phänomene Zukunft, Gewesenheit, Gegenwart die Ekstasen der Zeitlichkeit. Sie ist nicht vordem ein Seiendes, das erst aus sich heraustritt, sondern ihr Wesen ist Zeitigung in der Einheit der Ekstasen.]218

In the use of prepositions, Heidegger is demonstrating the orientation of the three temporalities rather than their essence—they are kein Seiendes. This processual understanding, also expressed in the awkward German concept of Zeitigung, is excellent to show that the temporalities of the Quadriga are not to be understood as mutually exclusive but that each of them makes use of its orientation in time. This is indicated by the expression of “the unity of the ecstasies.” Time is one but not one-dimensional—from the Middle Ages through Calderón to Heidegger’s phenomenology. This is a way in which Calderón’s día can hold a multitude of meanings without losing its literal-practical-political meaning of celebrating a particular day in the calendar. Two theatrical images lie hidden as well in this Heideggerian exegesis of the multidimensionality of time. There is the puzzling claim that temporality is the

 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 377; Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, §65 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2006), 328f.

80

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

ekstatikon. It is impossible not to think of Nietzsche’s suggestion of the origins of the theatre in the Dionysian Mysteries in which the cultic goal was trance or ecstasy. Furthermore, J. G. Lovejoy suggests that there is a metaleptic element in the use of the word in the sense that the structure of temporality is “something which steps beyond itself while remaining where it is.”219 The combination of these two theatrical images is of importance to the coming understanding of Calderón’s world theatre as a bid for the transformation of reality. The presence of “deep temporality,” of past and future in the present, is something which sets man in a state of ecstasy, it takes him “out-of-himself” without leaving himself. When working with the simultaneous presence of other temporalities, reality becomes a new unity of states of time. Reality is transformed into a state of ecstasy—and the audience of course along with it because everyone is participating when the whole world is a stage.220 And as we shall see, the image of the theatrum mundi is highly suited for this invocation of the multidimensionality of time. We can now return to the relevant sense of the Quadriga in the question of how to understand Calderón’s día and try to see how already the loa’s definition is working with deep temporality and the unity of the ecstasies of time. The biblical motif of “the day” as used in Calderón’s definition is cut out for a fourfold interpretation. The “day of the Lord” is a biblical commonplace, not an innocently literal expression only referring to a calendar day. First of all, it is likely that the etymological meaning in Hebrew of the expression “day of the Lord” refers to the resting day and is to be celebrated as God rested on the seventh day. Already in this etymological origin, a typological and a moral meaning can be sensed. The lives of the faithful are prefigured in God’s life when they also rest on the seventh day. They thereby repeat a figure of the (divine) past. It also has the moral sense that this has to do with the question of how to live your life in and with God. As Aquinas argues that the moral sense has to do with what “signifies Christ,” it makes sense for Christians to see the seventh day as a resting day due to typology of Creation and as morality because of the fact that Christ arose from the grave on a Sunday.221

 J. G. Lovejoy, Heidegger’s Early Ontology and the Deconstruction of Foundations (Doctoral dissertation, University of Warwick, 1992), 155.  This state of ecstasy can also be related to Río Parra’s study on mysticism and the state of suspensio animi, cf. Elena del Río Parra, “Suspensio Animi, or the Interweaving of Mysticism and Artistic Creation,” in A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 391–410.  The biblical commonplace of “this day” is explained and studied in meticulous detail in D. A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982).

Calderón on Applauding “This Day”

81

At the same time, there is a tradition of seeing the term “the day of the Lord” in the eschatological-futuristic light of the ending of the world because the topos also relates to the day of vengeance (Isaiah 34:8) and of rage (Psalms 110:5).222 This is reflected in the New Testament with the aid of typology: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). The day of the Lord thus acquires the futuristic level of the anagogical sense, woven into an argument of typology. Biblically speaking and with the use of the fourfold understanding of Scripture, surely not foreign to a person of Calderón’s learning, a number of spiritual meanings and all three temporalities are contained in the concept of the applause of this día. There is no proof that the same fourfold layer is intentionally established in Calderón’s text, but that would be one way of explaining a possible spiritual meaning in addition to the literal in the phrase “y el regocijo dispone/ en aplauso de este día.”223 This is additionally supported by a generalised analogy in the biblical wisdom books. In Psalms, this subtle understanding of the Lord’s day is connected to the concept of jubilation or the act of rejoicing: “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (118:24).224 ✶✶✶ The fact that Psalms and the New Testament tie together the theological concept of the day of the Lord and the effect of jubilation is not conclusive but still suggestive. At least, the ending of Calderón’s definition of an auto sacramental can be interpreted to do the same. Calderón’s definition of the genre of the auto might even contain an intentional reference to the genesis of the Corpus itself in the  The eschatological meaning is also present in other Old Testament formulations. Martin Beck, “Tag Jahves (AT),” in Die Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibel Gesellschaft, 2008).  The claim that the día in the last line of the definition of the auto in the loa to La segunda esposa also carries the meaning of being in praise of “all days” is supported textually in the section “Fiesta and the Día del Señor.”  The Vulgate uses the verb laeto for “rejoice.” The argument thus strictly pertains to resonance. It is an open debate whether to quote the Bible in Latin or in later Spanish when arguing for its resonances in Calderón. Calderón would definitely have used the Vulgate Bible, and in English, only the Douay-Rheims version corresponds to the Vulgate. As stated in the opening note on “Texts and Translations,” the New King James Version is preferred over the Douay-Rheims in the present book when quoting the Bible in English. A Spanish translation of the Bible was published in Switzerland in 1569—La Biblia del Oso—by the convert Casidoro de Reina, but it was prohibited in Spain. This version uses alegrar for laeto/rejoice. In the Reina-Valera translation, the same verb as in Calderón’s definition is used: “Éste es el día que el Señor ha hecho; y en él nos alegraremos y regocijaremos.” But the Reina-Valera version is also Protestant and much younger.

82

Chapter 1 A Poetics of Festivity

form of Aquinas’ hymn and its call for celebration. Within this outer horizon of the word día in Calderón, it might be concluded that the auto arose out of the wish to celebrate “this” day, that is, the Corpus Christi. But in fusion with the premodern world theatre and the contexts of theology and church history, it also acquires the analogical meaning, known from the Bible, that “this” day means all days, Creation itself, which in turn draws on three temporalities simultaneously. “This day” is not just a praise of the second Thursday after Pentecost, but of life itself as it is lived every day, this day; drama in celebration of all days. An apology of life and Creation and not only a celebration of a church holiday. This would also be to take Parker’s imperative seriously: “The dramatic action must [. . .] always be seen a dos luces” in Calderón.225 With this particular analogical sense, an explanation of the success of El gran teatro del mundo comes into view: This play sublimated the art of Calderón’s autos because it combined an absolute metaphor—which at its very heart nurtures an apologetic gesture as applause of the days of mankind’s life—with the nature of the auto as joyous celebration. This is a stage which connects the original medieval bull and Calderón’s own definition of the purpose of the auto with his most successful version of the genre.

 Parker, Calderón, 80.

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa Already in Calderón’s lifetime, El gran teatro del mundo was staged with a socalled loa. Cristóbal de Medina and Antonia Manuela Sevillano’s company performed the auto in 1674 with its “loa, mojiganga y entremés.”226 These were a part of the multitude of dramatical subgenres of early modern Spain, often utilised to enhance the spectacle around longer plays, but eventually developing into autonomous stagings. They belong to the type-term of teatro breve: Loa (prelude), entremés (sketch), baile (dance), mojiganga (parade) and jácara (song).227 The 1674 staging constitutes a puzzle for a close reading of the play itself. A loa to El gran teatro del mundo has in fact survived. Of what, then, are the textual parts and whole comprised which are to be interpreted and compared? As an answer to that question, this chapter answers two decisive questions for future studies of El gran teatro del mundo: Which philological arguments are there for encompassing the loa in close readings of the play? And if these arguments are found credible, what can this loa then in fact teach us about the auto and about perceptions of the theatrum mundi in this epoch? The loa was meant as an opening praise of a person or a theme and quickly developed into a short play often more or less unrelated to the following auto or comedia.228 Pedro de Pando y Mier included just such a loa to El gran teatro del mundo in his 1717 edition Autos sacramentales, alegoricos, y historiales,229 but the inclusion of such a loa had little effect on twentieth-century scholarship. No recent edition of El gran teatro del mundo includes the loa. Equally few mention it in their philological considerations. On the first pages of Valbuena Prat’s 1952 edition of the autos, he explains:

 According to the entry in the DICAT.  This term and the classification are summed up by Ted L. L. Bergman, “Entremeses and Other Forms of Teatro Breve,” in A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 145. Only the taxonomy of the loa has been changed from “monologue” to “prelude.”  The most recent, comprehensive study of the genre is Erdocia Castillejo, La loa sacramental. Others of special interest here are J.-L. Flecniakoska, La loa (Madrid: Sociedad española de librería, 1975) and Ignacio Arellano et al., eds., Apuntes sobre la loa sacramental y cortesana: Loas completas de Bances Candamo (Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994).  Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado El gran teatro del mundo, in Autos sacramentales, alegoricos, y historiales, ed. Pedro de Pando y Mier (Madrid: Manuel Ruíz de Murga, 1717), 133–138. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-003

84

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

Concerning the loas, just as Pando y Mier points out that not all of them are by Calderón, we have constrained ourselves to only include those which after their style, character and relation to the sacramental works bear the unmistakable sign of the master. [Respecto a las loas, como el mismo Pando y Mier—primer editor de la edición fundamentalmente completa de autos—indica que no todos son de Calderón, nos hemos limitado a incluir aquellas que por su estilo, carácter y relación con la obra sacramental llevan el sello inconfundible del maestro.]230

Although no particular explanation follows in the case of El gran teatro del mundo, it seems safe to say that Valbuena Prat did not think that this particular loa bore the “unmistakable sign of the master.” Pando expressed some of the same concerns in 1717 when he did print it. He admitted this in the foreword: All of them are printed with loas, though not all by him. I do not dwell on whether or not one will be able to tell the difference. What I can affirm without offence to their authors is that they achieve the honour of being very well accompanied; the spectacle, which the company makes, not being the least important thing in the opinion of humankind. [Todos van con loas, aunque no todas son suyas; no me detengo en si se conocerá, o no, la diferencia; lo que puedo, sin agravio de sus autores, afirmar es que logran la estimación de salir bien acompañadas, no siendo lo que menos califica en la opinión de los hombres el viso que hacen las compañías.]231

It is stunning how much philological criteria can differ. Pando’s approach is quite different from Valbuena Prat’s. Valbuena Prat’s concern was textual-scientific as he would only print something positively identifiable as a text from Calderón’s hand. Pando, more than 200 years earlier, did not care as long as it made people attend the spectacle which the actors had to be made capable of delivering. The concept of el viso, the appearance or spectacle, is conspicuous in Pando’s argument. Autoridades mentions two relevant meanings. One where viso is not just connotated to a neutral or objective appearance but can imply meanings of radiance or brilliance. Pando thus on the one hand could have been working under the principle of how a play’s brilliance could best be supported by the published editions of it. It almost echoes Calderón’s auto’s need to stress that the coming show will be a great world theatre. The adjective grandeza is accordingly used two times in the loa and four times in the auto by Calderón. The other relevant meaning is the Autoridades’ illustrative example, noting that viso is often used in

 Valbuena Prat, “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón de la Barca,” in Obras completas, 9.  Pedro Pando y Mier, “Prólogo al lector,” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Autos sacramentales alegoricos y historiales del insigne poeta español don Pedro Calderon de la Barca, ed. Pedro Pando y Mier (Madrid: Manuel Ruíz de Murga, 1717), xxxii.

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

85

the phrase “hacer buen o mal viso,” meaning to make a good or bad impression. This would mean that not only should the auto’s brilliance be enhanced by a given edition, but additionally that the loa is somehow textually rehabilitated by being allowed to precede Calderón’s acclaimed auto. This could look unscientific at first sight. Pando, after all, printed loas as Calderón’s although he suspected that several of them were not written by him. But Pando merely thought that loa and auto were historically inseparable if we were to understand Calderón’s plays as theatrical experience instead of seeing them as a critical object of perfect or at least autonomous textuality.232 The difference is also illustrative of a general disagreement about Calderón in his Spanish reception history. Parker quotes the director of the Madrid theatres José Clavijo y Fajardo, who in 1762 scorned the fact that both actors and audience were “crude and unedifying” and that the “eighteenth-century ‘intellectuals’ were prejudiced against any art that savoured too much of the people.”233 Pando was certainly no such thing as an eighteenth-century intellectual, given his reasoning and his focus on the pragmatic aspects of publishing the autos. His focus was clearly on what worked, what made people attend the Calderonian auto. The problems concerning the genesis of the loa are not confined to the problem that the text printed in the 1717 edition of Calderón’s works cannot positively be assigned to him. In 1722, just five years after Pando’s edition, it seemed conclusive that, in fact, Calderón had not written this loa. In the collected works of Francisco Bances Candamo (1662–1704), a text called Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado: El gran chímico del mundo was printed.234 This loa is almost identical to the one in the name of Calderón five years earlier with one minute exception. Towards the end, the character ESPAÑA makes the following call in the subjunctive mode: “Let then this be what my might offers: The great theatre of the world.” In the text by Bances Candamo, this is changed to: “Let then this be what my might offers: The great chemist of the world.” [“Sea, pues, el que mi poder ofrece: El Gran Teatro del Mundo/El Gran Chímco del Mundo.”]235 Such different subject matter and even categories (a chemist is a person; a theatre is a place)  But this inseparability only holds with regard to audience experience. Already in the 1655 edition of the Autos sacramentales, loas and plays were separated in the “Tabla de todo lo que se contiene en este libro” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Autos sacramentales con quatro comedias y sus loas y entremeses (Madrid: Juan de Valdés, 1655).  Parker, Calderón, 22.  Francisco Bances Candamo, Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado: El gran chímico del mundo, in Poesias cómicas, obras posthumas, vol. 2, ed. Lorenso Francisco Mojados (Madrid: Joseph Antonio Pimentel, 1722), 1–6. The spelling of the title in the following is modernised where it makes sense.  Calderón de la Barca, Loa para El gran teatro del mundo, v. 365; Bances Candamo, Loa, 6.

86

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

have clearly been considered interchangeable. Blas de Villanueva claimed the following in the prologue to his edition of the Bances Candamo plays from 1722: The loa to the auto El gran químico del mundo was created by Bances Candamo although it was applied to El gran teatro del mundo when the autos of don Pedro Calderón were printed: it was easy to present what was the work of Candamo as Calderón’s; for the thoughts of the two geniuses are, if not considered competing, gloriously interchangeable. [La loa del auto de El gran químico del mundo la hizo el autor [Bances Candamo], aunque al imprimirse los autos de Don Pedro Calderón, se aplicó al de El gran teatro del mundo: fue fácil introducir la que era obra de Candamo, por la de Calderón; porque los dos ingenios, si no se miran competidos, se ven sus pensamientos gloriosamente equivocados.]236

The reasoning could be clearer although Villanueva might have had biographical evidence or other documentation which he just did not think relevant to mention. It seems, in any case, that the editor considers it self-evident that Bances Candamo had written the loa and that the only argument he needed to supply was that it was easily interchanged between the two autos because both authors were geniuses. This is an example of the logical fallacy of petitio principii: it assumes what it proves, and we are not much further.237 In the editorial practice ever since, it has been taken for granted that Calderón had nothing to do with the loa. In 1994, Arellano, Spang, and Carmen Pinillos made an admirable attempt to rehabilitate the relevance of the loa as a genre, significantly in an edition of the work of Bances Candamo called Loas completas de Bances Candamo: Con apuntes sobre la loa sacramental y cortesana. In the specific article on El gran químico del mundo, Arellano and Zugasti accepted the 1722 claim by Blas de Villanueva and therefore printed the loa with a title as if it was surely a loa for the play El gran químico del mundo. They used two arguments for the attribution of the loa to Bances Candamo. First, they refer to the short gloss inserted between loa and the auto in the Poesías cómicas edition of 1722: “It is noted that this auto, with the same loa, was enacted for the first time not on the octave of the Corpus but during the year.” [“Se previene, que este auto, con esta misma loa, se representó la primera vez, no en la octava del corpus (como se acostumbra) sino entre año.”]238 Arellano and Zugasti

 Blas de Villanueva, “Prólogo,” in Francisco Bances Candamo, Poesías cómicas, obras posthumas, ed. Blas de Villanueva, vol. 1 (Madrid: Joseph Antonio Pimentel, 1722), xiii.  Another philological problem is that already in the 1655 collection, an authentic Calderón play was attributed to Rojas Zorrilla. Davinia Rodríguez Ortega, “Publicación de autos sacramentales en el siglo xvii: Volúmenes propios, colectivos y misceláneas,” Revista de filología española 98, no. 1 (2018): 177.  Villanueva’s editorial note in Francisco Bances Candamo, Loa, 6.

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

87

accordingly establish that the play was enacted before the city council in 1692 but that the council decided to enact autos by Calderón.239 Enrique Rull, in his 1997 edition of El gran teatro del mundo, did not include the loa, but noted the following: “We do not print the loa which preceded El gran teatro del mundo in Pando’s edition because it surely corresponds to a text by Bances Candamo.” [“No reproducimos la loa que precede a El gran teatro del mundo en la edición de Pando por corresponder, seguramente, a un texto de Bances Candamo.”]240 The exact reasons for this mutual confidence seem to be based on the fact that there is proof of an enactment of a loa as a prelude to El gran químico del mundo on the occasion of a performance before the city council, which corresponds to Blas de Villanueva’s editorial gloss of the text cited above. Furthermore, the loa’s wordplay emphasising the difference between “the new” and “the old” (vv. 367–68) supports the inference that Bances Candamo wrote these words in order to distinguish himself from the poet he so admired.241 There is thus no conclusive evidence in favour of Calderón just because El gran teatro del mundo was performed with a loa in 1672. The discipline of comparative literature can, however, contribute to revisiting and interrogating the received opinion that Bances Candamo surely wrote this loa. Arellano and Zugasti consider the evidence quoted above conclusive proof of Bances Candamo’s authorship of the loa without reference to an interpretation of the relation between the text of the loa, or to the two plays which it could have accompanied. They do, however, present documentation that the loa and the play were enacted at another time than on the Corpus Christi celebration: “The loa comments exactly this circumstance of the staging of the auto outside of the traditional date of the day of the lord.” [“La loa comenta precisamente esta circunstancia de la representación sacramental fuera de la fecha tradicional del Día del Señor.”]242 Here, they assume that the loa contains textual corroboration that the loa and auto were enacted on another day than the Corpus as noted in the above-mentioned gloss which Blas de Villanueva added to the Poesías cómicas of Bances Candamo. Unfortunately, Arellano and Zugasti do not themselves present textual examples of what they mean by the claim that the loa comments on the circumstance of not being enacted on Corpus. They are likely to have this passage in mind with which MÚSICA begins the loa:

 Ignacio Arellano and Miguel Zugasti, “La loa del gran químico mundo,” in Apuntes sobre la loa sacramental y cortesana, ed. Ignacio Arellano et al. (Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994), 214.  Enrique Rull, “Introducción,” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Autos sacramentales, vol. 2, ed. Enrique Rull (Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 1997), xx.  Arellano and Zugasti, “Note to v. 366,” in Francisco Bances Candamo, Loa para El gran químico del mundo, in Apuntes, ed. Arellano et al., 233.  Arellano and Zugasti, “La loa,” 214.

88

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

MÚSICA. Memoria de sus prodigios Hizo Dios sumo y clemente En el día suyo, dando Sustento a los que le temen. (vv. 1–4)243 [Memory of his wonders, did the high and mild God make on his day, giving sustenance to those who fear him.]

This hymn will come to serve as the refrain of the loa. Above, the past tense of the día de Dios (“hizo”) could be taken to be a reference to the year’s previous celebrations of Corpus Christi. This is, however, unlikely because ESPAÑA’s lines immediately follow with the conclusion that: A un auto nuevo os convido; Pues que a esto alude, parece, Aquel psalmo de David En que está fundado este Himno que mis coros cantan, Y a esparcir al aire vuelve. (vv. 25–30) [I invite you to a new auto; it seems that this is what it refers to, this psalm of David, on which the hymn, which my choir sings, is established and which keeps spreading into the air.]

ESPAÑA is thus directing the audience’s understanding towards the Book of Psalms, not a particular calendar day, when enjoying the hymnic appreciation of what God “did” on “His day.” One might be tempted to think that Arellano and Zugasti’s argument is not represented with fairness here due to this obvious reference. But from the following annotation of this passage in their critical edition, it can be established with certainty that this is indeed their argument. In the note to verse 3 (“el día suyo”), the editors identify “día suyo: Corpus Christi.”244 Arellano and Zugasti thus chose to disregard the possibility that the text also alludes to the biblical “this day” of the Psalms, not only to the literal meaning of the Corpus Christi—even though this is a biblical commonplace. A more general point is that Bances Candamo’s actual auto, El gran químico del mundo, shows few signs of reference to its own supposed loa. This does not  Unless otherwise noted, verse quotes of the loa refer to Calderón de la Barca, Loa para auto sacramental intitulado El gran teatro del mundo, ed. Rodríguez Cuadros. They are kept in the body text throughout.  Arellano and Zugasti, “Note to v. 3,” 217.

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

89

constitute conclusive evidence either but is of hermeneutical relevance. The themes of El gran químico del mundo contain features akin to the imagery of natural science whereas the loa is mainly biblical. Bances Candamo’s auto evolves around discussions of science versus magic. The last quarter of the play is clearly meant as a reversal of the sophistry of this philosophical theme when Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and Elijah enter the stage to proclaim Old Testament truths to the voices of natural reason. El gran químico del mundo is not devoid of theatrical virtues. In stylistic terms, this auto bears the marks of being later than the traditional Calderonian auto. The play also requires sophisticated stage scenery with more elaborate stage directions. At one point, the playwright uses a clever metonymical strategy, yielding wordplays with pan and sal and shifting them from chemical compounds towards theological dogma. Speaking of the biblical salt of the Earth, SALOMÓN, in keeping with the theme of chemistry, wonders how the apostles can “become” this salt and how the divine sustenance comes in the form of bread: SALOMÓN. [. . .] Y así, solo al Pan apelo, Puesto que para curarte Tiene el Pan su mayor parte De la sustancia del Cielo. MÁGICO. Ay Magia, ¡cierto es mi mal!245 [SOLOMON. And thus I only appeal to the bread since Heaven has its largest share in the bread’s curing you. MAGIC. Oh, my mistake was obvious!]

Indeed, MÁGICO could not see the right relationship between science and belief. He soon realises this: “They call me the devilish science, and science, which doubts the faith, will be a damned science: I must oppose it.” [“Ciencia infernal me llaman,/ y Ciencia, que en la Fe duda,/ será Ciencia condenada:/ a ella he de oponerme.”]246 The point of this short excerpt is to demonstrate the logic of Bances Candamo’s play: while clever, it makes no use of effects of the “wide and universal theatre” that is prepared so carefully in the loa as we will see in due course. The spatial acoustics (the glory of the Earth and the Universe) have disap-

 Francisco Bances Candamo, El gran chímico del mundo, in Poesias cómicas, obras posthumas de D. Francisco Banzes Candamo, vol. 2, ed. Lorenso Francisco Mojados (Madrid: Joseph Antonio Pimentel, 1722), 35.  Bances Candamo, El gran chímico, 38.

90

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

peared. In the themes of science and natural philosophy, the play is much more worldly, especially due to the apotheosis of metonymical change from the chemistry of food to the food of the soul. The transformation here is semantic, not ontological, as is the case in El gran teatro del mundo, where the characters pass over from one reality, “the theatre of fictions,” to another, “the theatre of truths” (vv. 1387–88). At the same time, logical argument, not fear of God or his judgement (as in the refrain of the loa), persuades the devil(s) in Bances Candamo’s auto. In consequence, the most important challenge is that there is little continuity between the loa and El gran químico del mundo. One of the substantial elements of the way of the world, according to MUNDO in El gran teatro del mundo, is that history is divided into the three laws of Nature, Scripture, and Grace (vv. 101; 169; 203). These are the basic elements of the spatial structure of Creation and of the temporal logic of world history in El gran teatro del mundo, and they are on the list of dramatis personae to the loa in both editions, yet they are not used substantially in Bances Candamo’s play. While it cannot be argued that the loa was definitely written by Calderón, he will be referred to as the author in the section that follows for the purposes of interpretive analysis in relation to El gran teatro del mundo.247 This exercise— hermeneutical even if not philological—might, in turn, draw attention to forgotten features of one of the most popular uses of the theatrum mundi in stage history. Putting the question of authorship in epoché, it is time to see which interpretational fruits might be reaped from the text. It will develop in three parts. (1) The phenomenon of metalepsis, especially in the metaphorical use of the circular Coliseo. (2) The vivid use of the analogy, known from the loa to La segunda esposa of the applause of days and its explicit allusion to Psalms, further legitimising a typological understanding of the concept of día and the celebratory element of human existence. (3) The theological question of theodicy and the three divine laws, repeated in the auto itself as the structure of salvation history.

 Alexander Parker is one of the few critics who had no problem using the loa as an argument in the assessment of Calderón’s art. It was even used to refute the neoclassical playwrights whom Parker so despised (Parker, Calderón, 23). He was aware of the attribution puzzle, but he still thought the loa relevant for an interpretation of Calderón’s work. Parker acknowledged that “Bances Candamo claimed to have written this loa” (54n22). Another scholar who used the loa as if it was surely by Calderon is Very, Corpus Christi, 14. Very’s source is the edition of Calderón’s plays from the later eighteenth century, Autos sacramentales alegoricos, y historiales, ed. Manuel Fernandez (Madrid: Manuel Fernandez, 1759–60).

Metalepsis: The Puzzle of Intrusion

91

Metalepsis: The Puzzle of Intrusion The loa uses an extensive idea of the theatrum mundi as if preparing the audience for its metaphysical register in the actual play. This prelude begins with the allegory of ESPAÑA entering the stage to music and dance and addressing “the famous theatre of Europe” [“teatro insigne de Europa”] (v. 5). Drama and religion are immediately fused as ESPAÑA continues to state that “I am Spain, in whom the Faith has its metropolis” [“yo soy España, en quien tiene/ la metrópoli la Fé”] (vv. 6–7). The loa comprises 390 verse lines and revolves around the refutation of the allegory of APOSTASÍA who enters the stage just after ESPAÑA’s first address. Various biblical allegories are introduced to turn those questions of sacred theology into images which can be staged, and it ends in a choral praise of what the “high and mild” God did in his day, repeating the words of the opening music, quoted above. After the first battle of theology between ESPAÑA and APOSTASÍA, the allegories of ANTIGUO and NUEVO TESTAMENTO enter a lo hebreo and a lo romano, respectively. After short introductions where both explain their clothing, they engage in a surprising and weird justification of Creation, a meta-version of the history of the world as told in the beginning of the auto. Without much cause, ANTIGUO takes his cue and says: El circular Coliseo Desta máquina terrestre A quien cubre la techumbre De ese artesón transparente, Para una comedia suya Dispuso Dios, donde fuese Su grandeza conocida En los prodigios que ostente El breve espacio que dure. Pues según se comprehende Acá, es de su eternidad El tiempo una tarde breve. Para una tarde del mundo Dispuso su poder este Teatro. (vv. 165–79) [God arranged the circular Colosseum of this earthly machine, which the roof covers with this transparent, coffered ceiling, for his very own comedia where his glory could be revealed in the miracles he would show in the brief time it was to endure. Thereby it is to be understood that time is but a brief afternoon of his eternity. For a world’s afternoon, his might arranged this theatre.]

92

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

The audience is given an interpretation of Creation and a justification for it. The world is like a round colosseum and the sky a roof like an artesón transparente. The ceiling form of an artesón, a coffered ceiling, is an architectural style often used for domes like the Roman Pantheon.248 In this exegesis of a cosmogenesis, ANTIGUO is therefore engaging immediately with the comparison of the universe as theatre and as a work of art. The reason is that it be known that the play enacted in the circular colosseum of the world is a comedia, for as the choir began, God is “high and mild” [“sumo y clemente”] (v. 2). The transparency from the Heavens, the greatness of the universe and the art-like nature of reality are thus prepared along with the affective preparation of the audience that these ontological facts are not a reason for despair. On the contrary. What emerges here are just those spatial acoustics mentioned above. The world is seen as a traditional wonder in ancient cultures or as a monument echoing beauty and greatness into the mighty universe.249 The metaleptic element of this stunning passage is obvious: ANTIGUO stands on a stage, in a “circular colosseum,” and claims that the world has the same qualities. The stylistic figure of metalepsis, especially seen in the metaphorical use of the circular Coliseo, is explicable in the sense of Gérard Genette’s essay on narrative discourse in Figures III. Genette defines metalepsis as “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.).” [“Toute intrusion du narrateur ou du narrataire extradiégétique dans l’univers diégétique (ou de personnages diégé-

 The circular Coliseo could be a reference to the Coliseo in the Madrid Palace of the Retiro which opened in 1640. Otherwise, Autoridades gives no reference. The Tesoro does not mention a theatrical meaning of the Spanish word but refers the fact that Tito’s amphitheatre in Rome was called a coliseo. ANTIGUO’s circular Coliseo seems similar to Shakespeare’s more famous loa-like opening of Henry V when Chorus refers to the Globe Theatre and, by extension, describes the theatre as “this wooden O” (0.13). Luis Iglesias Feijoo has recently made the claim that early modern metatheatre such as Shakespeare’s or Calderón’s versions needed to convey “an experience clearly limited by convention” [“el teatro suponía siempre una experiencia delimitada por convenciones muy claras”] and that the wooden O of Henry V functions as such. Feijoo, “Calderón y el metateatro,” 104.  A line of thinking akin to the one suggested here, but not applied to the theatrum mundi, is Ana Suárez Miramón, “El cielo estrellado en la cosmología sacramental de Calderón,” Hipogrifo 5, no. 1 (2017): 433–44. The term “spatial acoustics” is intended to describe a way that the world is converted into a work of art which can reverberate into the larger cosmos (which—in turn—is also a work of art). An “acoustic space” is a place where sounds are heard, and for this reason, “spatial acoustics” are also intended to imply the sense of a relation between what the world echoes and who possibly hears it. The metaphor thereby invokes the opposite of a void or silent universe where the world might be a mighty truth, but no one is there to appreciate it.

Metalepsis: The Puzzle of Intrusion

93

tiques dans un univers métadiégétique, etc.).”]250 The audience is about to watch a play called the great theatre of the world, and its prelude is an idea that the world around them is equally a grand colosseum-like stage. The loa is thus already rehearsing the doublings of reality and preparing the dissolution of the possibility of discerning between illusion and reality. If you are watching a play wherein a play takes place, who is then not in a play? This is also the case of the following auto with its play-within-the-play. ANTIGUO is preparing a reversal of the argument. With the metaleptic transgression, the character is claiming that not only is the stage a world on its own, the world is also a stage.251 ANTIGUO breaks into the universe of the audience and is thus a fine example of what Genette would call “a game”: All these games, by the intensity of their effects, demonstrate the importance of the boundary they tax their ingenuity to overstep, in defiance of verisimilitude—a boundary that is precisely the narrating (or the performance) itself: a shifting but sacred frontier between the two worlds. [Tous ces jeux manifestent par l’intensité de leurs effets l’importance de la limite qu’ils s’ingénient à franchir au mépris de la vraisemblance, et qui est précisément la narration (ou la représentation) elle-même; frontière mouvante mais sacrée entre deux mondes.]252

Genette then proceeds to quote Borges: “Such inversions suggest that if the characters in a story can be readers or spectators, then we, their readers or spectators, can be fictitious.” [“De telles inventions suggèrent que si les personnages d’une fiction peuvent être lecteurs ou spectateurs, nous, leurs lecteurs ou spectateurs, pouvons être des personnages fictifs.”]253 Genette’s narratological use of metalepsis thus applies to the use of the theatrum mundi. But one issue following from Genette’s theory does not work. As so many others before and after him, Genette assumes that this transgression of narratological boundaries is by nature generating effects of discomfort:

 Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 234f; Gerard Genette, Figures, vol. 3 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), 244.  This would also be further evidence for Parker’s claim that the play is not arguing that the world is a stage but assuming it; in short the goal is not to “demonstrate that the world is a stage, but to demonstrate that since the world is a stage, certain important conclusions follow.” Parker, Calderón, 113, original emphasis.  Genette, Narrative Discourse, 236; Genette, Figures, vol. 3, 245. Genette’s own emphasis. He importantly also notes the sacred element to this shift; both in Calderón’s sense that the world is God’s work of art and in the later Romantic desire to use the theatrum mundi as part of an art religion.  Genette, Narrative Discourse, 236; Genette, Figures, vol. 3, 245.

94

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

The most troubling thing about metalepsis indeed lies in this unacceptable and insistent hypothesis that the extradiegetic is perhaps always diegetic, and that the narrator and his narratees—you and I—perhaps belong to some narrative. [Le plus troublant de la métalepse est bien dans cette hypothèse inacceptable et insistante, que l’extradiégétique est peut-être toujours déjà diégétique, et que le narrateur et ses narrataires, c’est-à-dire vous et moi, appartenons peut-être encore à quelque récit.]254

Genette cannot be expected to take Calderón into account, but this shows the limits to the application of the term. That the theatrum mundi will generate effective states of discomfort is not necessarily the case with either Calderón or the theatrum mundi image itself. ANTIGUO also touches on a central temporal element in the world theatre. In Shakespeare, the experience of the world theatre can lead to dejection or dismay.255 The loa is exploring the opposite effect or answer to the experience of the brief candle of human time: Pues según se comprehende Acá, es de su eternidad El tiempo una tarde breve. Para una tarde del mundo Dispuso su poder este Teatro. (vv. 174–79) [Thereby it is to be understood that time is but a brief evening of his eternity. For a world’s evening, his might arranged this theatre.]

This evening’s auto might be short, but that fact does not abolish its beauty or render its message useless.256 The same is being said of the world: through the experience of the world theatre, God’s grandeza and his comedia can be revealed; and in his might, he created este teatro for the afternoon of the world. At the same time, the metalepsis allows for a smooth metonymical shift. In this long speech, it is al-

 Genette, Narrative Discourse, 236; Genette, Figures, vol. 3, 245.  For instance, in the case of Lear’s idea that we have come onto a “great stage of fools” (4.6.182). The same is the case for Macbeth in a temporal perspective. Because of the fact that life is a brief candle, and all the tomorrows only lead us “lighted fools/ The way to dusty death” (5.5.22–23), life is but a “poor player,” “a tale,/ told by an idiot,” “signifying nothing” (5.5.24–28; emphasis added).  This line of thinking where brief moments or the now can contain deeper layers of time is present elsewhere in Calderón, for instance in the auto El día mayor de los días (1636) where MÚSICA has the line that “Día de todos los Días/ contiene edades eternas.” Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El día mayor de los días, in Obras completas, 1636.

Metalepsis: The Puzzle of Intrusion

95

ready now unclear if ANTIGUO is talking about the play or about Creation when he refers to “this theatre”—but none of them are to be understood negatively in spite of their contingent temporality. This overlap between the areas of theatre and world also contains another traditional Calderonian analogy where everything can be seen in “two lights.”257 Maybe ANTIGUO is talking about a literal, particular place: the stage on a Thursday afternoon of the exact calendar year in which this loa is being staged. But he simultaneously talks of Creation itself. The staging lasts a short afternoon in the course of the spectator’s life, the world is but a brief afternoon in relation to God’s eternity. This aspect is elaborated when NUEVO takes over. It has often been noticed that the theatrum mundi implies a multi-layered reality, perhaps due to the playwright’s Platonic influences.258 This multilayering is most often considered in an ontological sense, but in this loa the text is also preparing something else, namely that time is equally multi-layered. NUEVO begins with an equally unclear spatial metalepsis because the boundaries between the actual theatre and the theatre of the world are immediately obscured: NUEVO. Los celestes luminares De Sol y Luna, y las leves Centellas con que tachona Todo el óvalo sus ejes, Son luces deste teatro. Y en su esfera refulgente El ingeniero es el tiempo. (vv. 195–201) [The celestial lights of the Sun and the Moon and the smaller sparks, with which the oval studs its axes, are the lights of this theatre. And in its splendid sphere, time is the engineer.]

It appears that the author hit upon a noteworthy fact in the spatial metalepsis of an outdoor theatre: the source of light for both theatres, that of the world and that of the stage. The auto does the same when, in the course of MUNDO’s cosmogenesis, two heavenly lights are created, sun and moon, to light up the theatre (v. 91). This ensures a physical synchronicity which could function as a preparation for what is perhaps the most quoted distinction of the actual play between the “theatre of truths” [“teatro de las verdades”] and the “theatre of fictions” [“teatro de las ficciones”] (vv. 1387–88). More importantly, returning to the loa, NUEVO is working on a fusion of the spatial

 Parker, Calderón, 80.  Kluge’s term for the theatrum mundi’s role in baroque metaphysics with origins in Plato’s Republic. Kluge, Baroque, 209.

96

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

and the temporal in the complex image of time as an engineer. There is use of a mechanical allusion to the person who built the machinery of the scene and enabled theatrical lights. But the idea to fuse them through the phrase of the ingeniero as el tiempo also constitutes a metaphysical allegory. The loa is preparing the theme of a multilayering of time itself in the sense that cyclical, linear, and eternal temporalities are all modes of time present and used in the actual play. This will also emerge as one of the most innovative uses of the theatrum mundi in Calderón in relation to previous uses and to the dominant idea of an exclusively ethical focus; it might be the case that there is this ethical level to the play, also expressed through Quevedo’s translation of Epictetus, but a fundamentally original use of the theatrum mundi is also this way of using the topos to demonstrate the “deepness” of time in the sense that a multitude of temporalities can be simultaneously present in the world theatre. Ingeniero also carries a possible allusion to Christ. The example given in Autoridades is from Luis de León (1527–1591), who compares Christ to an ingeniero in De los nombres de Cristo (ca. 1585). Furthermore, this religious allusion is supplemented by the power of imagination in the popular baroque adjective of ingenioso, an attribute famously ascribed to the ingenioso hidalgo, Don Quijote, and later theorised in depth in Baltasar Gracián’s Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648). The point of these underlying contexts is twofold: First to show the loa’s skilful association style. Secondly, to demonstrate that the human faculty of imagination and the architectural construction of theatres are not unrelated areas of meaning in this seventeenth-century intellectual framework. NUEVO continues to underscore that “as suits the occasion,” time Forma las mutaciones, Pues donde estaba la verde Confusión de unos jardines, En la primavera fértil, Apenas empieza cano A hacer su papel diciembre, Cuando se muda el teatro En la pálida y estéril Hoja seca. (vv. 209–17) [shapes the set changes; where there was a green confusion of the gardens in fertile spring, immediately grey December begins to act his part as the theatre changes into the pale and sterile dry leaf.]

The theatre of fictions adjusts itself to the changing of the seasons because this theatre is not essentially different from reality. In this fusion of space and time, another important clarification arises in relation to standard readings of El gran teatro del mundo. If the theatrum mundi does not entail a division between illusion and reality

Metalepsis: The Puzzle of Intrusion

97

—because both are theatres—the loa can be seen to work against popular descriptions of a fundamental early modern problem of representation. The loa is working with the idea that it is a strength that fiction and truth are inseparable. The time of the theatre and the time of the world are made similar by way of the spatial image of the engineer of time and with the example of the changing of the seasons. This is developed into a philosophical point at the end of NUEVO’s long speech: Y él, en fin, lo muda todo: Imperios, cortes, poderes, Palacios, islas, montañas, Porque su inventiva ostente En la comedia del siglo, Donde solo puede verse Lo aparatoso en lo vario, Lo hermoso en lo diferente. (vv. 227–34) [And in the end, time changes everything: empires, royal courts, authorities, royal palaces, islands, mountains because time’s ingenuity is exhibited in the comedia of the world where one can only see the ostentatious in the varied, the beauty in the diverse.]

At the end, everything changes but not in a negative sense. In the comedia of the world, one will be able to see the spectacular and the beautiful in these different modes of space and time. This is a claim repeated in El gran teatro del mundo: Tú, que siempre diverso, La fábrica feliz del Universo Eres, primer prodigio sin segundo. (vv. 21–23)259 [Thou art the infinitely diverse, blessed matter of the universe, a miracle second to none.]

 This passage could also be interpreted as the devaluation of existence when detached from the textual whole or when contextualised to the sense of crisis in baroque literature. This is Parrack’s solution: “Life is an artifice based on variety, instability, appearances, masks, and fiction.” [Un artificio basado en la variedad, la inestabilidad, las apariencias, las mascaras, y la ficción.”] Quoting the siempre diverso-lines, Parrack continues to claim that it “is a statement that insists on the instability and variety of existence in the seventeenth century.” [“La inestabilidad y variedad de la existencia en el siglo XVII.”] John C. Parrack, “El auge de la subjetividad moderna en El gran teatro del mundo,” in Calderón 2000: Homenaje a Kurt Reichenberger, ed. Ignacio Arellano (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2002), vol. 2, 871. The article also makes use of the idea of the birth of subjectivity around the year 1600 and even (seldom for Calderón studies) attributes the thought to Stephen Greenblatt (867). Parrack does, however, note that the special generic qualities of El gran teatro del mundo must be disguised from the “modern” subjectivity of Quixote.

98

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

Fiesta and the Día del Señor A second signification connects the word fields of día and fiesta in a literal and an analogical sense which is an essential component in the specific festive aura surrounding not only the Corpus Christi and the genre of the auto but also Calderón’s use of the theatrum mundi.260 This is no less relevant as the motif of fiesta is used twice in the loa and an astounding ten times in Calderón’s auto. Already the himno which opens and runs through the loa is interesting in this respect: MÚSICA. Memoria de sus prodigios Hizo Dios sumo y clemente En el día suyo, dando Sustento a los que le temen. (vv. 1–4) [Memories of his wonders made God, great and mild, in his day, giving support to those who fear him.]

One of the most famous passages of the auto occurs early in the play when MUNDO introduces this key distinction: “Even though the work is mine, the miracle is yours” [“Aunque es mía/ la obra, es milagro tuyo”] (vv. 77–78). Had the text of the loa quoted above used milagro instead of prodigio, the connection between the two would have increased. But the paradoxical nature of the hymn is still meaningful. God’s miracles are honoured and construed positively: his workings are high and mild, giving sustenance to the faithful. But such gifts are only given to those who fear God, a concept which heeds the dialectic proposed between fear and blessing. In the following speech by ESPAÑA, the audience is reminded of the biblical reference in the hymn as the character says that “it seems that this is what it refers to, this psalm of David on which is established this hymn which my choir sings” (vv. 26–29). In the critical edition of Bances Candamo’s version, Arellano and Zugasti identify the reference to Psalms 111:4–5.

 The technical term “word field” draws on Poppenberg’s imaginative use of it to ponder the concept of prevenir in El gran teatro del mundo. Poppenberg, “Role and Freedom,” 316. The concept of word fields stems from linguistic studies’ custom of working with semantic fields. Cf. Lehrer and Tacoma’s definition that “a semantic field is a set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual domain, and which bear certain specifiable relations to one another.” Adrienne Lehrer and Paul Tacoma, “Semantic Fields and Semantic Change,” Coyote Papers. Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (1983): 119.

Fiesta and the Día del Señor

99

He has made His wonderful works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and full of compassion. He has given food to those who fear Him; he will ever be mindful of His covenant.

This literal meaning is apotheosised in the ending of the play when several of the actors are allowed to rise to the AUTOR with host and chalice, thus evolving from literal food to the Lord’s food of the last supper. This would seem to be a reference to the very theme of Bances Candamo’s El gran químico del mundo. But such a logic is equally prepared during the play-within-the-play in El gran teatro del mundo when POBRE says: Limosna de pan, señora, Era fuerza hallarla en vos, Porque el pan que nos sustenta Ha de dar la Religión. (vv. 919–22) [It was powerful, ma’am, to find in you alms of bread because the bread which sustains us must come from the religion.]

This would also make sense in relation to the last words of the biblical text to which the loa hymn alludes: that God will never forget the covenant—the covenant which is renewed in the Eucharist with the consecration words of the “new and eternal covenant.” In this light, the loa and the auto stand in a relation that is the basis of much biblical typology: the relation of the old covenant to the new, the analogy between the Old Testament and the New. The chorus contains the tricky concept of el día suyo. This opens a wide horizon of biblical meaning because it once more carries the allusion to the Lord’s day. Such multivalence demonstrates the pitfalls of adhering to the literal meaning as exclusive. Here in the loa, this broader sense is heightened. MÚSICA sings of what God did on “his day” (vv. 2–3) and connects it to the miracles of the biblical stories. ESPAÑA uses it in a literal meaning although the signified is unclear: “And the day of the Lord shines in joy” [“Y pues el día del Señor/ en júbilos resplandece”] (vv. 11–12). The literal meaning is likely the celebration of the day of the Eucharist; but the analogical meaning would be that of all days, Creation itself. This becomes clear towards the end of the refutation of APOSTASÍA’s heresy. This refutation succeeds with explicit mention of the world theatre: ESPAÑA. Sea, pues, El que mi poder ofrece: El Gran Teatro del Mundo, Nueva idea en que pretende Su ingenio, no que lo antiguo

100

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

Con lo nuevo se coteje Sino que todos los doctos, Discretos como corteses, No estén mal con lo que viven, Ni con el siglo que tienen. [. . .] APOSTASÍA. Y que siendo este un misterio Que Dios incesantemente Le ejecuta cada día, Cada día también quiere Que le aplaudamos y que Sus alabanzas no cesen Por no ser el día suyo. Pues también David previene En sus psalmos que le alaben En todos tiempos las gentes. (vv. 363–84) [SPAIN. Let then this be what my might offers: The great theatre of the world. A new idea which His wit wishes not so much to compare the old to the new, but so that all the wise, who are as discerning as courtly, are not unhappy with their lives, nor with the world in which they live. APOSTASY. And this being a mystery that God performs every day, He wishes us to applaud Him every day and that his praises do not end with the end of His day [i.e. the Corpus]. In his psalms, David also urges the people to praise God all the time.]

The great theatre of the world is offered so that all doctos—learned people, possibly in an ironic sense—will realise that they should rejoice in their existence and the epoch in which they live.261 By now, APOSTASÍA has been refuted and has converted, but her answer is not merely a rhetorical emphasis thereof. It has the important function of shifting the meaning of the word day. Cada día, every day, is a mystery, created by God, and cada día he wishes that his creation will salute him and that his

 It must be acknowledged that the lines just quoted constitute some of the heaviest evidence against Calderón and in favour of Bances Candamo. This is due to the fact that Arellano and Zugasti have a good explanation for the warning that “the old” and “the new” are not confused, namely that the author of the loa is assuring the audience that there is a difference between the old style of autos (Calderón’s) and the new (belonging to the present author, that is, Bances Candamo). This would be the meaning if this loa was attributed to Bances. The problem is that this explanation does not take the elaborate typological relationship between old and new law into account which is so important in the previous scenes of the present loa. If these lines were seen as a prelude to El gran teatro del mundo, they would be alluding to the divine laws of salvation history.

Fiesta and the Día del Señor

101

praise never ends. This is why this day is in fact every day and why Calderón’s emphasis on the joy that commands resounds here at a crucial moment in the loa. The celebratory effects are also underscored by an intelligent use of the word fiesta. Not only is this term employed strategically to remind the audience of the purpose of the feast of the Corpus Christi, but the passage also evokes the incipit of the Transiturus. This allusion is significant, considering that the text of El gran teatro del mundo employs Thomas Aquinas’s divine office composed in the same year as the bull as studied in the previous chapter. APOSTASÍA asks: ¿Cómo figuras sagradas Al teatro sacar puede La pluma atrevida? ESPAÑA. Como El Pontífice en el breve, En que desta Institución La fiesta al orbe concede, Dice que dance la Fe, Que la Caridad se alegre, Y que la Esperanza cante, Explicando cuanto debe Este asumpto festejarse Y este bien encarecerse. (vv. 329–40) [APOSTASY. How can the insolent pen put sacred characters on stage? SPAIN. As the pope says in the bull in which he permits this celebration to the world; that faith should dance, piety rejoice and hope sing and where he explains how much this theme ought to be celebrated and that it is right to commend it.]

APOSTASÍA introduces a delicate matter in the question of theatrum mundi versus Christian theology. In the concept of the pluma atrevida and the theatre, the question is how the works of human imagination are capable of representation of the sacred and why that should be allowed. As El gran teatro del mundo explores this very question, the consideration is valid. ESPAÑA’s answer is interesting because it begins with the reference to the Transiturus. The explicit reference to the institution of the celebration is followed by another allusion: That faith shall dance (dance is a conjugation of danzar) and hope shall sing are quotations of Urban IV’s bull. This connection between the loa and the auto in the intentional use of the Latin-medieval origins of the feast of Corpus Christi increases the contextual relevance of a comparison, even if the authorship question remains unsettled. The last four lines appear to be an explication of the relevance of the invocation of the Transiturus: They explain the theology of the Eucharist as proof of the righ-

102

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

teousness of celebrating the feast of the Corpus. But APOSTASÍA would not be an apostate if she did not rely on her good reasoning. She accordingly objects by claiming that she has heard a justification of celebration, but not of theatre: APOSTASÍA. Y las figuras sagradas Es lícito que se empleen En personas, que . . . ESPAÑA. No más, Dios no puede comprehenderse, Y es fuerza para nosotros Que a nuestro modo se deje Concebir en formas que Más su grandeza revelen. (vv. 341–48) [APOSTASY. And is it licit that the sacred characters are represented by people who . . .? SPAIN. Enough! God is not intelligible, and it is valid for us that in our way, he is conceived of in forms which further reveal his greatness.]

There is an echo here of the definition of the autos as sermons put into verse. The limitations of human reason and the blessings of art, which can show things that logic cannot, are saluted. This is a justification of the theatre and a reason why the auto contributes so efficaciously to the party: Theatre is another form in which God’s grandeza can be shown and known. This is the legitimacy of the pluma atrevida that dares to connect the theatre and the sacred in new ways. The new path to knowledge anticipated here is the image of the world theatre and the theme of the Eucharist. And it shows that the author of the loa was aware that theatre could and should also make faith dance and hope sing. A true fiesta.

Theodicy and Divine Law The drive of the loa’s plot is the refutation of APOSTASÍA on a general level. The way to launch this disputation is to stress the issue of theodicy understood as a theological justification of God or Creation. As already suggested, APOSTASÍA ponders the problem of the relation between theatre and theology proposed with the pluma atrevida. This is also the point of contention when the dispute begins in the play’s opening lines. If the traditional formulation of theodicy is the question of the existence of evil if God is good and almighty, the question of the loa is this: How can mankind allow itself to celebrate when the cause for celebration is the

Theodicy and Divine Law

103

suffering and death of Christ? On this dilemma, ESPAÑA has already reminded the audience that the autos and the fiestas are there to represent and celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist. In turn, this argument is revisited by APOSTASÍA in the loa’s first long declaration: APOSTASÍA. Atiende, No solo me escandaliza Que un asumpto se festeje, Hoy en ti tan doloroso Como aquel que de la muerte De Cristo, que lloró el mundo. (vv. 62–67) [APOSTASY. Listen, I am not only outraged that you celebrate today an event so painful as that of the death of Christ which the whole world lamented.]

APOSTASÍA is outraged that the country is celebrating a topic as painful as that of the death of Christ. This parley can be seen in terms of a Counter-Reformation spirit; the Protestant APOSTASÍA, calling herself “una nación del norte” (v. 39), affirms a disinclination towards expressive and imaginative visions of the faith. The declaration above can also be seen as a negotiation of the problem of drama in Christianity. APOSTASÍA is repeating echoes of the “wooden O” parallel with which NUEVO described the world. APOSTASÍA does not understand how Catholics can celebrate Christ’s suffering on the cross and adds to the metaphor of the mourning world that Y los dos polos se mueven Cuando esta máquina cruje, En fe del dolor que sienten (vv. 72–74) [When this fabric creaks, the two poles move in testimony to the pain they feel.]

And later in the same speech: No solo me escandaliza, Esto digo otra y mil veces, Sino que ya que a alegría Pasar el dolor intentes, Hagas representaciones Del dolor, donde se cree, Que quieres hacer gala De lo que Cristo padece. (vv. 87–94)

104

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

[Not only does this outrage me, as I say one and a thousand times, but also that, since you endeavour to turn pain into joy, you make a performance of the pain so that one thinks that you wish to show off Christ’s suffering.]

The use of the word máquina is in agreement with ANTIGUO’s later expression of the “circular colosseum, this earthly machine.” The boundary between theatre and world is thus also blurred in APOSTASÍA’s declaration—both the world and the theatre are some forms of stage machinery. It bears notice how APOSTASÍA uses the resonant verb representar. The accusation is thus that ESPAÑA hace representaciones, that is, she stages a show, surrounded by effects of joy. APOSTASÍA uses a clever little shift in the course of the argument. She implies that to stage a joyful show is to use the suffering of Christ for festivity [hacer gala]. But El gran teatro del mundo more than once reminds its audience that the world is not just a stage but explicitly one erected for the performance of a comedia which can earnestly celebrate a given subject. That is one way it explores the very pertinency of calling the world a stage. In consequence, a discussion of its justification becomes an important dimension of Calderón’s understanding of the theatrum mundi. ESPAÑA explores this option in her answer to the argument above: Y así Dios en alegrías Quiere que hoy solo se muestre Nuestro amor, y no en dolor, Porque en lo humano parecen Afectos incompatibles Lo compungido y lo ardiente. (vv. 143–48)262 [And so God desires that we show our love joyfully and not painfully—in public festivals because the contrite and the impassioned seem to be incompatible affections in human affairs.]

This is a good argument for the difference between hacer una representación and hacer gala de algo. The Thursday of Holy Week—which is also the day on which the betrayal of Jesus is prophesised—and the feast of Corpus Christi represent two afectos incompatibles of the human mind. Just because it will end in celebra-

 The word alegrías is interesting and most likely refers to national or public festivals rather than simply to joy in the plural—but the double-meaning is obviously good for the argument. It is worth noting here that ESPAÑA shows an awareness of the relevance of afectos in relation to the staging of dramatic spectacles on Corpus Christi: her parley reveals two competing effects in the human soul, the state of being compungido and ardiente. The loa can in this respect also be seen to investigate Poppenberg’s useful concept of psychomachia. Cf. Psyche und Allegorie, 55.

Theodicy and Divine Law

105

tion, the play about to be staged, El gran teatro del mundo, will not hacer gala of either the sacrament or the human condition. Its comical and festive nature will, on the contrary, speak to the passionate dimension [lo ardiente] of the human soul. This logic is thoroughly applicable to Calderón’s fashioning of the theatrum mundi: The play of life might be a comedia, but it is not a joke. In this respect, the world theatre is festive and ardent rather than pessimistic or desolate. APOSTASÍA entertains the idea that the world mourns the death of Christ and so should mankind: Y los dos polos se mueven, Cuando esta máquina cruje En fe del dolor que sienten. En fuego, tierra, aire y agua, Luces, flores, aves, peces, pálidas, lánguidas, mustias, porque su Rey le confiesen. (vv. 72–78) [When this mechanism creaks, the poles move in testimony to the pain they feel, in fire, earth, air and water. The lights, flowers, birds and fish are pale, faint and wilted because they confess their Lord.]

The very fabric of the universe seems to be an argument for the blessed nature of Creation. Esta máquina—the world/the theatre—creaks as a testimony to pain as quoted above. Now it just refers to the four elements and to the flowers, birds, and fish that mourn because they confess the Lord. The four elements are observed as a basic structure in the Spanish Baroque.263 That AUTOR’s metaphysical thinking, down to the fish and the birds, is identical in El gran teatro del mundo is therefore not surprising. There, the world is also made of “fire and air, water and earth” (v. 20). Earth is a place where the birds fly on the winds (v. 12), where the fish swim in the ocean (v. 13), and the flowers compete with the number of the stars (vv. 5–6). We are still at a level where the commonplace is too general to suggest direct comparability, but the likeness is interesting. This is increased because both AUTOR and APOSTASÍA work with the rhetorical device of contrast where the mild beauty of fish, flowers, and birds is contrasted with the raging of the might of nature (vv. 79–83). Both sequences work together to show the fallen state of the world. AUTOR also uses similar contrasts in El gran teatro del mundo, as in the opening monologue where he reminds the audience that the universe is

 Cf. E. M. Wilson, “The Four Elements in the Imagery of Calderón,” in Calderón de la Barca, ed. Hans Flasche, 112–30.

106

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

“always diverse” [“siempre diverso”] (v. 21) and beauty therefore also represented “with rays of light where the fury of fire blindly illuminates you” [“con rayos donde ciego/ te ilumina la cólera del fuego”] (vv. 15–16). Therefore the world is in “permanent war” [“continua guerra”] (v. 19). On this similarity, one might nonetheless say that there is an obvious difference in relation to character. Maybe the loa and the auto sacramental employ the same metaphysical imagery but certainly, AUTOR and APOSTASÍA cannot hold the same truth potential or personal ethos. This, however, might possibly be the whole point and relevance of the concept of theodicy within this context and thus solidify the relation between loa and auto. AUTOR’s opening words can be seen as another refutation of the loa’s APOSTASÍA. The latter’s words emerge as part of the discussion about whether it is allowable to celebrate on a day essentially related to the betrayal of Christ and his death.264 In this light, the first twenty-five lines of El gran teatro del mundo become a justification of being and a refutation of a proto-Lutheran denial of aesthetics’ constitutive role in a fallen world. It also becomes a justification for the tradition of comparing the world to a (beautiful) work of art instead of exclusively seeing its variety as different versions of either a shadow world or a place of reckless grief. This is the path down which the loa leads us in relation to the auto when seen hermeneutically through exchanges of part and whole. One of the most striking differences between the two plays of Bances Candamo and Calderón is that three of the roles in the loa—the three laws—are nowhere mentioned in the former’s play but receive quite a lot of attention in El gran teatro del mundo. This is a comparative and not a philological argument, but it seems unwarranted to ignore it. In MUNDO’s world history in the beginning of El gran teatro del mundo, the drama of the world is divided into three acts, the period of the natural law, the period of written law, and the period of the law of grace (vv. 161; 169; 203). They are called acts [actos] and later, the three ages [edades] of the world (v. 208).265 These three acts have their personification in the  Structurally, this part of the plot pertains to what Carolina Erdocia Castillejo identifies as the typical conflict of the structure of a Calderonian loa where the action develops into an invitation to the auto itself. An argument for the connection between theodicy and world theatre is thus that the loa’s conflict is the problem of suffering and the solution an invitation to enter the world theatre. Erdocia Castillejo, La loa, 49.  Fiore identifies the teachings of Aquinas as the source for the division. Robert L. Fiore, Drama and Ethos: Natural-Law Ethics in Spanish Golden Age Theater (Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 1975), 50f. Carrillo gives a brief and unclear account of the possible contexts of Calderón’s time but does not contain a specific thesis, apart from the beautiful, if blurry, claim that Calderón “was a theological poet and apostle of the theatre.” [“Fue un poeta de la teología y un apóstol del teatro.”] Carillo, “Contexto,” 685.

Theodicy and Divine Law

107

loa. Just after NUEVO’s arch-metaphysical claim about “the ostentatious in the varied, the beauty in the diverse,” LEY NATURAL enters and immediately begins with the same astute conflation of the universe, the comical, and the theatre: LEY NATURAL. Dígalo yo, que la Ley Natural soy, porque empiece En mí el artificio desta Gran comedia que se teje. (vv. 235–38) [Let me say it, who am Natural Law, because with me, the weaving of the plot of this great comedia begins.]

Artificio covers the art or the way in which something is done and tejer likely the “weaving” of the history of the world. This would make sense in the theological perspective where natural law would have been the only accessible source of ethics to mankind prior to Moses receiving the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and it constitutes the foundations of ethics, which human reason can realise without reference to Scripture or Christ.266 The theatrum mundi effects of this theology are enhanced as LEY NATURAL calls himself “the first act” (v. 239) of the great drama. After Isaac has entered the stage, LEY ESCRITA calls himself “the second act” (v. 265) but has little relevance within the drama. He inscribes his importance within the limited story of Exodus—of the crossing in the Egyptian desert and the deeds of Moses, Gideon, and Aaron. After an intervention by SANSÓN, LEY DE GRACIA presents himself as the third act (vv. 295–96). This dramatic progression thus connects the three divine laws to the idea of history as comedia, specifically. It also intensifies the links between loa and auto. Of the three features studied above—metalepsis, fiesta, and theodicy and divine law— this last one is the least important. But this traditional theological commonplace is still woven together with images of the theatre. It at least goes to show how deeply rooted the theatrum mundi is: the concept is never exclusively tied to problems of representation, but equally connected to a teleological notion of human history and to the Bible. ✶✶✶

 Fiore quotes Aquinas’ definition of natural law: “The light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law.” Fiore, Drama and Ethos, 8.

108

Chapter 2 A Circular Colosseum: The Loa

How does all this influence the interpretation and the status of the textual whole? What we have studied up to this point does not prove that Calderón wrote the loa. But it is not safe to say that Bances Candamo wrote it either. When or if this philological argument is accepted, the question then becomes one of hermeneutics: Which interpretational fruits can be reaped from such exercises of comparative literature? A first suggestive answer is the shift from allegory to metalepsis in the broad theme of the theatrum mundi. Calderón himself arguably meant that a theme such as the world theatre should best be treated as an allegory. One instance is the preface “Al lector” to the 1677 partial edition of his autos.267 Metalepsis is therefore not intended to displace allegory as a better description of Calderón’s preferred mode. But metalepsis in Genette’s sense is one way to describe an epistemological and ontological consequence of the way in which Calderón used the specific allegory of the theatrum mundi. Through the selected three topics of stylistic metalepsis, the motif of fiesta and the theological relation of theodicy and divine law respectively, the aura around Calderón’s specific use of the topos of the theatrum mundi in El gran teatro del mundo becomes one of celebration and justification. The loa, notwithstanding the attribution puzzles it presents, truly sets the stage for a presentation of Calderón’s world theatre as a defence of the constituency of beauty through the comparison of the world to a work of art. The auto then becomes an original attempt to explore new paths in seeing early modern fashioning of the world as theatre in an apologetic and celebratory light—and as the development of theodicy through art. This path is yet to be walked and the full consequences of such a reading strategy for the understanding of El gran teatro del mundo will require a meticulous close reading of the auto itself.

 Calderón de la Barca, “Prólogo al lector,” 41f.

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo From the first variable of the Platonic disjunction to King Lear’s use of the theatrum mundi through Gloucester’s sigh that “as flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods;/ they kill us for their sport” (4.1.38–39), the experience of the world theatre easily leads to the sense of taking part in a meaningless game where some superior being, most likely out of boredom, uses mankind for entertainment. In a religious sense, this can develop towards versions of Gnosticism, conveying the experience of the world as subject to a dark or evil Creator-God and the Christian religion as a liberation from the hell of Creation.268 Therefore, it is of importance that in El gran teatro del mundo AUTOR gives a benign reason for his desire that a play be enacted for his entertainment as well as to his praise. Furthermore, the whole play will investigate the consequences of the fact that the world is a stage. The effect must be as follows: AUTOR’s reasons for wishing that a play be enacted are by analogy an explanation of why God created man and the world; that is, a justification of God in light of Creation. A theodicy.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life The following close reading will not follow the argumento of the auto systematically and therefore presupposes a general knowledge of the plot and framework  Gnosticism is applied as the theological counterpart to philosophical pessimism. Gnosticism is qualified for the present purposes for two reasons. First, it implies the devaluation of the created world and religion as salvation from it. This makes it a framework very related to the pessimistic world theatre where gods toy with mankind. Secondly, “a second overcoming of Gnosticism” is Blumenberg’s systematic tool for explaining the transition from the late Middle Ages to early modernity in better ways than the secularisation theorem offers. Gnosticism therefore also paves the way for a discussion of Calderón’s possible alternative modernity in the concluding remarks. In Calderón studies, Manichaeism is often preferred (e.g., Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie, 23). Here, the blanket term of Gnosticism will be preferred with support from Blumenberg who delivers the generic description as “a separation of Greater-God and Saviour-God.” [“Schöpfergott und Heilsgott.”] Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 141. The Catholic Encyclopaedia offers the best definition of what will be understood under the term of Gnosticism in the following (although it applies to the subbranch of Marcionism there): “In Marcionism, the most dualistic phase of Gnosticism, salvation consisted in the possession of the knowledge of the Good God and the rejection of the Demiurge. The Good God revealed himself in Jesus and appeared as man in Judea; to know him, and to become entirely free from the yoke of the World-Creator or God of the Old Testament, is the end of all salvation.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-004

110

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

of the play. Instead and in detail, it thematically orders a series of questions, motifs, problems, and style figures and studies them structurally between part and whole of the text’s inner and outer horizon. It is partly intended, of course, to interpret how the theatrum mundi’s apologetic and celebratory tenet can be understood in this particular work. But it is also structured after these themes in order to best be able to suggest original solutions to traditional puzzles in the commentary literature: the evaluation of the word Representación; the meaning of the negro velo of Creation; the question why there are no rehearsals if life is a play; why REY thinks he must go to the grave “without being what he was”; the puzzle of the similarity between HERMOSURA and REY; and the apparent discrediting of the form of beauty itself. What is lost didactically in not retelling the plot meticulously is hopefully won in letting traditional questions and new answers surface.

The Purpose of Creation Beginning with the stage directions, AUTOR appears in a star-covered cloak and with “rays of light in his crown” [“potencias en el sombrero”]. He pays a metaphysical homage to the splendours of Creation in all its variety, to the hermosa compostura and humano cielo: Tú, que siempre diverso, La fábrica feliz del Universo Eres, primer prodigio sin segundo. (vv. 21–23) [Thou who, infinitely diverse, art the blessed fabric of the universe, [and] the first miracle second to none.]

The theodician nature of this metaphysical argument has already been discussed; the hailing of Creation as siempre diverso reiterates the loa’s joy at the “beauty in the diverse.” In iconic fashion, the universe is saluted as a “miracle second to none” and straight afterwards as a human Heaven. The rays of light give a further clue to how the play seeks to establish the sense of metaphysical splendour. Poppenberg identifies them as a typical motif from contemporaneous paintings where nine beams would surround the head of God as a crown, also described as such in Autoridades.269 Should there be any doubt, it is remedied here; the allegorical figure of the author is also God. It is unclear where these potencias were placed. The Spanish-German edition suggests an aureola, but sombrero is not nec Poppenberg, “Note to the stage directions,” 107.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

111

essarily a hat or crown; it also bears the meaning of the canopy of state built over the pulpit to preserve sound volume.270 The stage directions might refer to a crown or a hat, but sombrero could invoke two other areas of meaning: The opening twenty-five lines are not merely metaphysical in the traditional sense of studying “the ostentatious in the varied, the beauty in the diverse,” but also in an ontotheological sense of fusing metaphysics and theistic theology. It simultaneously works to create the sense of an auditory or cosmological echo. That is the purpose of a baldachin or a canopy. Thus, the play’s opening lines and stage directions do not only create the sense of a vast or infinite universe where humankind’s endeavours and longings ring into a void and careless space. They also enhance the beauty of Earth that can echo into the greater universe, which will answer; not in silence, but in resonance. AUTOR summons MUNDO who answers the call with a rather Hamletian opening: “Who’s calling?” [“¿Quién me llama?”]271 (v. 26). AUTOR establishes the analogy between the wish for a play and the reason for his creating the world. He calls forth MUNDO from of the globe and lets the world know his wishes: Pues soy tu Autor y tú mi hechura eres, Hoy de un concepto mío La ejecución a tus aplausos fío. Una fiesta hacer quiero A mi mismo poder, si considero Que solo a ostentación de mi grandeza Fiestas hará la gran naturaleza. (vv. 36–42) [As I am your maker and you my creation, I want a thought of mine carried out today, and I expect your applause: I want a celebration of my might, and I believe that great nature will only host celebrations to my glory.]

The term grandeza is of course not unusual. Nevertheless, it is the same word used for the creation of the world in the loa. The AUTOR twice asserts that the play of life is una fiesta, and not, for instance, a tragedy or a Trauerspiel about the follies of man or the meaninglessness of history. God is explicit about the fact that there will be a theatrical fiesta, not a funeral service or a mourning session, on his world stage. Once familiar with the textual whole, the reader will know that AUTOR’s idea [concepto] is the staging of a play in his honour; that is the fiesta mentioned above. It is also important and understandable that AUTOR empha-

 Also witnessed as such in Autoridades: “Se llama tambien el techo, que se pone sobre el púlpito.”  Reminiscent of the first line of Hamlet: “Who’s there?” (1.1.1).

112

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

sises the fact that the staging of a play in his world theatre is there to “celebrate his might.” This means that the world theatre cannot exclusively represent the experience of existential futility, for it is intimately related to God’s glory. The audience is about to watch a play in a town square. However, the theatrum mundi is not simply constituted by the less ontologically hard claim that the stage is a world of its own—it is—but also that everything in the world is part of a stage. The hermosa compostura of Creation from the play’s first line and the campaña de elementos with its mountains, lightnings, oceans and winds (v. 10): All of it is somehow part of an artwork. The purpose of the theatre as well as the purpose of Creation are thus artfully merged.272

Representación as Vorstellung? The second reason for AUTOR’s summoning of MUNDO lies in the immensely important word of representación. AUTOR uses the word twice in the following lines elaborating his motives: Y como siempre ha sido Lo que más ha alegrado y divertido La representación bien aplaudida, Y es representación la humana vida, Una comedia sea La que hoy el cielo en tu teatro vea. Si soy autor y si la fiesta es mía, Por fuerza la ha de hacer mi compañía (vv. 43–50, emphasis added) [As that which has always entertained and pleased the most is a well applauded play—and human life is a play—it will be a comedia, which the Heavens will watch in your theatre. If I am the author, and if the celebration is mine, my troupe must do it.]

The interpretation (and translation, here provisionally as “play”) of this word, representación, is essential to an understanding of the meaning of the world theatre.  If El gran teatro del mundo is considered an archetypical baroque work of art, this cosmic dimension and the feeling of grandeza, which the image of the theatrum mundi generates, needs to be emphasised more. A rare sense of it is to be found in Peter Skrine’s The Baroque: Literature and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Europe (London: Methuen, 1978): “The notion of theatrum mundi, of ‘all the world’s a stage,’ has been expanded to embrace the whole of life: all nature, the entire cosmos, all created things are involved in it. The bounds of conventional metaphor have burst to open up a universal dimension” (9). Unfortunately, Skrine is here talking of Lohenstein’s Sophonisbe (1680) and offers only three pages on Calderón.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

113

Within an early modern taxonomy, it is tempting to translate directly to “representation” because it captures the scent of the Cartesian foundation of modern epistemology and Calderón thereby drawn over on the right side of history. The importance of the word is also increased dramatically (so to speak) by the fact that MUNDO’s final theatrological apology, directed at the audience, contains it too: MUNDO Y pues representaciones Es aquesta vida toda, Merezca alcanzar perdón De las unas y las otras. (vv. 1569–72, emphasis added) [And since all of this life is plays, it should merit forgiveness for one and for all.]

MUNDO’s final words qualify another meaning of representation which can also be supported by Autoridades. The first meaning of the word listed is “the act of representing or making something present” [“el acto de representar o hacer presente una cosa”], and the second “a comedy or tragedy which is performed in the theatres” [“la comedia o tragedia, que se representa en los teatros”]. There is thus little doubt that representación could have the theatrical meaning of a performance and not solely be a mental representation. The English language is challenged, but Poppenberg’s German translation catches the meaning in translating representación to Vorstellung.273 In German, a Vorstellung can be a mental image in the mind and a theatrical show. Any study or translation of the play into English needs to find a way to show that representation bears the aesthetical meaning of theatre in the text and not solely the Cartesian meaning of epistemology.274

 Pedro Calderón de Barca, El gran teatro del mundo/Das Grosse Welttheater, ed. Gerhard Poppenberg (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2012), v. 1572.  Therefore, the translation offered here is “play.” It is not ideal, and a literal translation to “representation” would not be wrong either. “Performance” is also a possibility, but that noun would generate associations to much later performance and performativity theories which also seem unwarranted for the present purpose. It is—as so very often with translation—a question of emphasis. One of the few to notice this connection explicitly is Konersmann: “The concept of ‘representation,’ which is still present in the Goethezeit, maintains the theological connotations of ‘performance’ and ‘embodiment’ besides the stage imagery.” [“Der Begriff ‘Repräsentation,’ den die Goethezeit noch kennt, neben der Bühnensprachlichen auch die theologisch besetzten Mitbedeutungen ‘Vorstellung’ und ‘Darstellung’ gegenwärtig hält.”] Konersmann, Der Schleier, 112. Vincent Martin has dealt extensively with the use of the concept in El concepto. The book is very comprehensive but also somewhat divided with regard to the aesthetical and metaphysical consequences of the urge towards “representation” in the body of Calderón’s works. Martin sees

114

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Returning to AUTOR’s use of the word in the lines 45–46 as quoted above, this also has influence on the way they can be perceived. The reason that there will be a play-within-the-play is that applauded representaciones have always brought most joy to man. And because of the fact that life is a play, una comedia will be staged. In this way, the world theatre is not solely used for the typical baroque experience of the illusive character of reality. The thought in the interposed sentence that “y es representación la humana vida” is not used in the sense that human life is a mental image. What makes life worth living is the fact that the world is a stage. This tenet decisively drives Calderón’s world theatre in another direction than modern Cartesian problems of knowledge. The last important element to the reasons given for the staging of the play, and thus the very purpose of Creation itself, has to do with the fact that the staging must be conducted to great applause. Even at the end of the play-within-theplay, the celebratory nature of the world theatre is underscored in the clothing which marks the difference of social status. These differences of status and wealth are what constitute the play’s possible critique of society and its negatively connotated ideas of human injustice. But it is exactly RICO and POBRE left at the end—two extremes—whose robes are “festive gowns” [“galas”] (v. 1269). The text thus stresses that what took place in the-play-within-the-play was something along the lines of a ceremonial feast—and that both life, and the judgement of one’s ability to play a role in it, are to be bien aplaudida—celebrated.

The Negro Velo Another important part of the creation process of the world is MUNDO’s reply to AUTOR’s wishes, especially the puzzling introduction of the negro velo (v. 83), which is to cover original chaos (v. 85). The passage deserves to be quoted in full because it

it in light of themes of mystery (33) and joy (19). Historiographically, he also acknowledges the relevance of seeing the meaning through Thomas Aquinas (33n16). On the other side, he claims that Regalado has been the principal inspiration for his thinking (23), de la Flor claims in the book’s prologue that it is a work of the neobaroque school of thought (18), and Martin at one point thinks that the natural heir to Calderón world theatre is Brecht and his Verfremdungseffekt (40). Martin furthermore sees the “technique” of El gran teatro del mundo as something which “wipes out the lines between fiction and reality which is so popular among the avant-gardists” [“esta técnica que borra las líneas entre ficción y realidad tan popular entre los vanguardistas”] (41n26). Martin does not enter into a discussion of the relevant double-meaning of representation as theatre and as mental image in the special case of El gran teatro del mundo, and he does not discuss the use of the word in the final lines of the play.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

115

relates the negro velo and traditional world theatre metaphysics. After AUTOR has imparted to the world what he desires, MUNDO sets out to tell a longer world history (vv. 67–278), which begins with a cosmogenesis. MUNDO weaves the story of the three acts of salvation history in the form of the laws of Nature, Scripture, and Grace. Then, he sets up the human world theatre with two doors of a cradle and a grave and summons the mortals in order that they might perform “¡en el teatro del Mundo!” (v. 278). The beginning of these many lines contains said negro velo: Primeramente porque es De más contento y más gusto No ver el tablado antes Que esté el personaje a punto, Lo tendré de un negro velo Todo cubierto y oculto, Que sea un caos donde estén Los materiales confusos. Correrase aquella niebla Y huyendo el vapor obscuro, Para alumbrar el teatro, Porque adonde luz no hubo No hubo fiesta, alumbrarán Dos luminares: el uno Divino farol del día, Y de la noche nocturno Farol el otro. (vv. 79–95) [Primarily because it is most satisfying and pleasing not to see the stage before the cast is ready, I will keep it all covered and secret with a black veil as long as it is a chaos and matter still formless. Then, the mist will disappear and, as the dark fog breaks away, two lights will shine to light up the theatre (for where there was no light, there has never been a celebration), the one is the divine lamp of the day, the other the nocturnal light of the night.]

The text is clearly playing with a cosmogenesis, but of current interest is the role of this negro velo in relation to the logic of the text and the sources of the world theatre. It might be a clue to the preparation of the ontology of fiction and truth. The black veil also represents an intelligent use of theatre imagery to prepare the audience for the fact that the world theatre can be a serious epistemological path to knowledge of the world rather than a scepticist threat of illusion. Beginning with the ontology of fiction and truth (which is not a dualism of opposites), the concept of the velo establishes a difference between Schein and Sein. Something exists, but it is a chaos of the elements, and it is kept hidden from perception by a curtain. There is a dawning epistemological difference between, on the one side, what is, and, on the other side, what is experienced. At a structural level, this is a

116

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

position not foreign to the Platonic philosophy of a shadow world and ideal reality behind it. This position can then later be cultivated in the ideas of fiction and truth. At the same time, the genesis of the cosmos is described in mixed metaphors of theatrical and geological elements. (Personaje, tablado and the natural elements or matter itself, the materiales confusos along with the moon and the sun.) The velo lies between these two areas of meaning with its biblical epistemology and the theatrological meaning of a cortina, the stage curtain. Biblically, the velo is placed exactly within the epistemological framework of Sein and Schein. The veil was originally a division of epistemological constraints in the temple: “And you shall hang the veil from the clasps. Then you shall bring the ark of the Testimony in there, behind the veil. The veil shall be a divider for you between the holy place and the Most Holy” (Exod. 26:33). That division is eroded by Christ’s sacrificial death: “Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split” (Matt. 27:51). It is also employed by Paul: Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech—unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2. Cor 3:12–16, emphasis added)

The veil is thus essentially linked to biblical epistemology of blindness and seeing, illusion and truth—an acutely relevant thematic in relation to the world theatre. To understand how the play’s negro velo in this way not only upholds an analogy between the theatre and the ontotheological structure of the world, but also estimates the benefits of this similarity and thereby becomes an essential motif of the logic of the text, a first comparison is warranted. The most well-known experience of world theatre in relation to Sein and Schein with the use of the theatrical curtain-motive incidentally comes from Søren Kierkegaard. Behind the world in which we live, far in the background, lies another world, and the two have about the same relation to each other as do the stage proper and the stage one sometimes sees behind it in the theatre. Through a hanging of fine gauze [et tyndt Flor], one sees, as it were, a world of gauze [en Verden af Flor], lighter, more ethereal, with a quality [Bonitet] different from that of the actual world. Many people who appear physically in the actual world are not at home in it but are at home in that other world.275

 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/or, in Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 3, pt. 1, trans. Howard V. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 192. Søren Kierkegaard, Enten-Eller, in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscentret), 295f.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

117

Kierkegaard’s Johnannes Forføreren shows how the curtain (the “gauze”) can be used to express the experience of a dualism between this world and another “behind it.” He also—importantly—suggests an affective state of epistemological pleasure in this experience. The “ethereal” and something of perceptive quality are the dominating effects. Ralf Konersmann was the first to draw attention to Kierkegaard’s contribution to the history the theatrum mundi. Konersmann mentions that the visible world becomes a Spielfläche, but it equally remains a passage and appears in the knowledge of the backgrounds of other possible worlds. The spectator is conscious of the presence of the invisible; the presence of Heaven as it resounds in Shakespeare’s King Lear, “peeping through the blanket of the dark.” [die sichtbare Welt wird zur Spielfläche, aber sie ist immer auch Passage und erscheint im Wissen um die Hintergründe anderer möglicher Welten. Der Betrachter ist sich der Präsenz des Unsichtbaren gewiß: der Gegenwart des Himmels, wie es in Shakespeares König Lear heißt, “Durchschauend aus des Dunkels Vorhang.”]276

A further meaning lies hidden in the relation between Pauline images of epistemology and the theatrical metaphors. “The veil is taken away,” it reads in the King James translation and reflects the idea that man will become wise when turning to Christ. Through the images of the theatre, the rise of the curtain to unveil the great world theatre is connected with notions of clear-sightedness, of knowledge. The theatre in general and the world theatre specifically thus become a medium of knowledge, not a distortion of true being or of (dis)illusion. This is also the relevance of Kierkegaard’s prose and Konersmann’s observation: In the experience of the world theatre through the use of the veil, the visible world comes to light in knowledge of the background of other possible worlds. This is the first sign of the transformation of reality through the theatrum mundi. The theatre is a medium for deeper knowledge of the multi-layered reality, but not in the sense that the visible world is degraded or devaluated. The world theatre is a Spielfläche (a place to play in and a reality unto which another light can shine— like a pond on a sunny day), and it is a passage to “more” reality because: “The spectator is conscious of the presence of the invisible.” This idea that the negro velo represents a way of fashioning the world theatre as a means of knowledge also has a more distant philological element. The sixth meaning in Autoridades of the word velo points to the phrase “correr el velo”: “Metaphorical phrase which means that the truth finally reveals itself or the reality of something which was covert or hidden.” [“Phrase metafórica, que vale de-

 Konersmann, Der Schleier, 11.

118

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

scubrirse finalmente la verdad, o realidad de alguna cosa, que estaba dissimulada u oculta.”] Remembering that there is no point at which the negro velo is lifted, the first verb in the next full sentence is actually “corer”: “The mist will disappear” [“correrase aquella niebla”] (v. 87). The text is closely connected to the use of this metaphorical phrase where a hidden truth is made known: a long way from the idea that the “theatre of fiction” can only mean engaño, distortion, or paths leading away from the truth. The velo does not necessarily imply epistemological constraint or even straightforward scepticism, but just as well contributes to a deepening and an appreciation of early modern reality.

¿Fue corta la comedia? The Play’s Deep Temporality After this explication of cosmogenesis, time needs to begin to float. The loa prepares the sense of the world history only lasting a short afternoon in comparison to eternity and explores the emotional and ontological consequences of the perceived shortness of life. So does the auto. This is a comprehensive theme and problem in the play and needs to be studied in depth before we can move on to the actual plot and drive of the auto. AUTOR has established the purpose of Creation, identified it with a stage and demanded a fiesta. MUNDO’s cosmogenesis has then further explored the theatrum mundi consequences, especially through the negro velo, but also through the suggested acts of salvation history. But this temporal economy has more secrets throughout the play and must be appreciated if the sense of the unreality of the phenomenal world is to be avoided. At a crucial moment later in the play, just when the “globe of the Earth” has closed and the play-within-the-play is done, MUNDO exclaims beautiful words of apparent despair: Corta fue la comedia, pero ¿cuándo No lo fue la comedia desta vida, Y más para el que está considerando Que toda es una entrada, una salida? (vv. 1255–58) [The play was short! But when was the play of this life not? And even more so to him who considers that everything is an entrance and an exit.]277

 Once more, the Shakespearean parallel is extraordinary: Jaques’ claim that “all the world’s a stage” is followed by the same idea that all the men and women merely players who “have their exits and their entrances” (2.7.140–42). Christopher Wild sees a connection between this focus of coming and going and one of the first full uses of the theatrum mundi in European literature,

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

119

It seems only logical that the question of such an archetypical experience as the shortness of life on Earth also be one which the theatrum mundi naturally invites and that early modern literature be concerned with it. Macbeth ties the same knot when he invokes the metaphor that life is but a “brief candle” (5.5.23), and then frames the world theatre of that play with the infamous claim that life is a “poor play” that is soon to be “heard no more” (5.5.24–26). Due to popular assumptions of analogy between geography and temporality as described in part one, MUNDO’s stormy words might easily fall into the same category and contribute to a world theatre of temporal scepticism where time’s fleeting nature makes the possibility of history impossible; time happens and is then irretrievably lost. Out, out, brief candle. If the loa, however, was engaged in exploring a relation between finite human time and eternity so that the latter might justify the former, the auto can be said to enlarge or develop this analogic relationship by deepening time further. This deepening means that four different temporalities are at play in the world theatre simultaneously. Sofie Kluge has repeatedly demonstrated a deep ontology of baroque metaphysics and the theatrum mundi with emphasis on spatiality.278 A further point would then be that the baroque drama—and especially El gran teatro del mundo—is also working with deep temporality where several layers or levels of time are intertwined just as it has been acknowledged in relation to space. Through the use of medieval concepts of typology, the play itself can be seen to endorse this structure of multilayers of time.279 This should also come as no surprise. If the world theatre implies that reality has several ontological layers, it would only befit as great a dramatist as Calderón to double this into the nature of time as well. On the broader level, this will be another argument against a modernisation theorem of literary history: As a supposed “modernisation front” (Bruno Latour) gains ground, the price of increasing secularisation is a simplification, a flattening of our understanding of time where only a level of worldly-linear conception of temporality is conceivable; an understanding which overtly confident comparisons to Macbeth’s gloomy and hopeless world theatre Democritus’ idea that “the world is a stage. Life is an entry. You come, you see, you go.” Wild, “Two Basic Operations,” 83. The quote is Wild’s own translation of fragment 68 in Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente.  Cf. Kluge, Baroque, 209.  Kurt Reichenberger has also hinted at the general relevance of seeing the auto in relation to typology: “In connection with the typological exegesis of Scripture, Adam is Christ, and Andromeda and Perseus are Christ and his bride, the church.” [“Im Zusammenhang mit der typologischen Schriftauslegung ist Adam Christus, s i n d Andromeda und Perseus Christus und seine Braut, die Kirche.”] Kurt Reichenberger, “Calderóns Welttheater und die autos sacramentales,” in Theatrum mundi: Götter, Gott und Spielleiter im Drama von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Franz Link and Günter Niggl (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981), 163.

120

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

would support; there, the time that passes is never heard again. This is one area where Calderón represents an alternative current in literary modernity. His theatrum mundi opens possibilities of deep temporality besides the spatial multilayering, and it openly combats ideas of the sole dominion of the present.280 The first temporality is the finite time of a human life. The possibility of beauty in the contingent facts about nature and humans is also one that takes up the anti-Macbethian thinking from the loa where the text refuses to consider the experience of the shortness of human life a reason for pessimistic sentiments about existence in the world theatre. Where DISCRECIÓN is capable of a sane reaction to this human state of affairs, RICO is not, and the play shows this. As a consequence of the short span of individual human life, RICO encourages the thought that Pues si tan breve se nombra, De nuestra vida gocemos El rato que la tenemos; Dios a nuestro vientre hagamos: Comamos hoy y bebamos, Que mañana moriremos. (vv. 1165–70) [If it is all characterised by its shortness, let us relish the part we have left: Let us make a God out of our bellies. Let’s eat and drink today for tomorrow we shall die.]

At first sight, RICO could be in line with the play’s much-used agreement about the shortness of life, found in the loa as well as in MUNDO’s beautiful exclamation of the comedia being corta. But it could also be a great stupidity in several directions. The play has very consciously set up the typological relation between literal food and the Eucharist. When RICO invokes God and food, only in relation to gluttony, he is suggesting one of the seven deadly sins, namely Gula. In biblical under-

 The present book works with the notion of modernity as a flattening of time, described by Patterson as the “purist erasure of history” and by Latour as the abolishment of previous time in the modern self-understanding. Felski, a student of Latour, later elaborated this idea as “the quintessentially modern gesture of disavowing and disclaiming the past.” Rita Felski, “Modernist Studies and Cultural Studies: A Reflection on Method,” Modernism/Modernity 10, no. 3 (2003): 503. That is a tentative and specific definition of modernity as a unison assumption of temporality as it is used in Blumenberg, Latour, and Patterson. A suited elaboration here would be Paul de Man’s definition of modernity that it is “a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at last a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.” Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1983), 148. Also used ingeniously in Patterson, “On the Margin,” 88.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

121

standing, it is also a direct denunciation of the resurrection of the dead as RICO clearly paraphrases 1 Cor. 15:31–32: I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If, in the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me? If the dead do not rise, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”

MUNDO immediately points to the fact that Isaiah (22:13) is the origin for this commonplace and that it is there connotated to paganism.281 In both the innerhorizonal logic of the play’s setup and in the text’s outer-horizonal resonance in Scripture, the nihilistic tendency of the world theatre’s first form of temporality is rejected. This rejection supervenes on a relation between the level of salvation history and the level of human-limited time; because the two stand in a relation to each other, the limited span of one human life is not made superfluous or worthless but receives meaning from another temporality of the universe.282 The second temporality emerges from MUNDO’s long speech containing the cosmogenesis and the negro velo. When the fog disappears, and the moon and the sun emerge, the three acts of human history begin, signified by the three laws and the último paso of Judgement Day when a ray of light will cover the stage and make MUNDO tremble (vv. 209–20). Even this event, no matter how much it scares MUNDO, is part of the party. For the ending of the world in a ray of lightning is once more a good thing with reference to a metaphysical argument; this bright light is there so that “fire is not missing at the celebration” [“porque no falte/fuego en la fiesta”] (vv. 213–14). This world history from Creation to Judgement Day must necessarily have influence of the temporalities of the play’s world theatre. First of all, there seem to be two celebrations. The first is the one acted out on the world stage, on the stage of fictions. The second celebration refers to the line just quoted, the transition from the stage of fictions to the stage of truths in God’s eternity—the jubilant rise to God enacted at the end. These two celebrations are not essentially different but stand in an analogical relation to each  At v. 1173. Poppenberg also refers RICO’s comments to both Isaiah and 1. Cor. Poppenberg, “Note to v. 1170f,” 124.  Konersmann: “The world conceived of as a stage is time again confirmed as fair and holy.” [“Die als Bühne begriffene Welt wird wieder und wieder als gerecht und sakrosant bestätigt.”] Konersmann, Der Schleier, 113. Konersmann, however, also contradicts himself whilst writing of “the Baroque” (114, emphasis added). This relative relationship between the different times and layers of reality is, for instance, soon forgotten in his argument. Konersmann knows that representación means Vorstellung (112), but suddenly: “As representación, she [HERMOSURA] stands far from that to which she points, endlessly far, for her pomp is wholly of this world” [“Als representación steht sie dem, worauf sie hindeutet, unendlich fern, denn ihr Prunk ist ganz von dieser Welt”] (112).

122

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

other, as shadow world to ideal reality, and as Creation to its Creator, as Old Testament to the New. This analogy implies that the different temporalities of the universe are not completely segregated. Poppenberg notes that MUNDO’s world history is an expression “of the great spectacle of Nature and Cosmos [. . .] It is the prelude to the world theatre of man and places the latter in a salvationaleschatological perspective.” [Des grossen Schauspiels der Natur und des Kosmos [. . .] Es ist das Vorspiel zum Welttheater der Menschen und stellt dieses in eine heilsgeschichtliche-eschatologische Perspektive.”]283 The second basic temporality of the play is thus linear-teleological. Time moves linearly forward towards the end in the last judgement. This is salvation history, and it is called a fiesta twice (vv. 91; 214). A third foundational temporality is the cyclical time of days and seasons. This concept is already prepared in the opening lines when AUTOR says that Cuando con flores bellas El número compite a sus estrellas, Siendo con resplandores Humano cielo de caducas flores. (vv. 5–8) [When [the world with its] beautiful flowers can compete with the multitude of its stars, being a star-spangled human heaven of mortal flowers.]

AUTOR is exercising the idea that the mortal or dying condition of the flowers of the earth—that is, its vanitas—is no argument for neglecting its beauty.284 That is another formulation of the idea that human life can even at times measure itself to the beauties of the heavens in spite of its temporal and spatial limitations. This is a preparation for a justification of the world through its beauty. The point of the beauty of cyclical time is also underscored in the song which DISCRECIÓN sings just after the two globes have opened. AUTOR proclaims that he sits on a throne “where day is eternal.” This is in apparent opposition to DISCRECIÓN’s following song: Alaben al Señor de tierra y cielo El sol, luna y estrellas; Alábenle las bellas Flores, que son carácteres del suelo;

 Poppenberg, “Note to v. 85f,” 111.  If this dialectic is not recognised in the opening lines of El gran teatro del mundo, the flower motif will appear exclusively as a symbol of vanity and lead to the “dark” Baroque and to pessimistic readings of the play. The flower motif does, to be sure, have the function of vanitas. The point is that this is only the one side of the emblem and that there is often the possibility of a dialectic between decay and resurrection in the Spanish Baroque.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

123

Alábenle [. . .] El invierno y estío. (vv. 638–44) [Let Earth and Heaven, the sun and the moon and the stars, praise the Lord. Let the beautiful flowers, which are the writings of the earth, praise the Lord. Winter and Summer should praise the lord.]

There is a difference between the nature of God’s eternal day and the cyclical nature of his creation, but this opposition need not be one of complete segregation. On the contrary. Even though the play will allow laments over death and the condemnation of the transitory nature of beauty and flowers, there is also a connection between God and Creation. The flowers—the “writings of the earth”—are capable of praising God through their very being, as are winter and summer. Cyclical human reality stands in some form of relationship to eternity, is contingent on it.285 This is reinforced through the argument with which the two first characters are invited to AUTOR’s table: Suban a cenar conmigo El Pobre y la Religiosa, Que aunque por haber salido Del mundo este pan no coman, Sustento será adorarle Por ser objeto de gloria. (Suben los dos.) (vv. 1449–54) [The poor and the pious should rise to dine with me. Although they have come from the world and will not eat this bread, it will suffice to worship it as it is the object of glory. (The two arise.)]

Those who are “of the world” will be capable of worshipping the true bread as the objeto de la gloria. Even in the “theatre of truths,” a distinction is thus upheld between literal bread consecrated in the Eucharist and its spiritual status as the body of Christ.286 The fourth temporality is eternity. Another secret of the play’s quality lies in this subject with relation to the concept of día. There is this particular day on  This is suggested further by its biblical allusion, namely The Book of Daniel where Daniel’s song of praise salutes the God who “changes the times and seasons” (Dan 2:21). Reference suggested by González, “El texto,” 77. The Vulgate states that “et ipse mutat tempora, et aetates” (VUL., Dan. 2:21).  The question of why the characters are only allowed to worship, but not consume the host, is precarious. It does not necessary entail a devaluation of the world. It will be considered in depth in the next chapter’s section on “Cosmic Theatrum Mundi.”

124

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

which a play is enacted to the merriment of its author, and there are all the other days in the great(er) world theatre, just as the auto is in praise of the particular day of the Corpus and of the general days; linear, cyclical, and eternal time intertwined. This is also a thought pattern which AUTOR exercises. “His” time and human time are compared, but just like AUTOR’s role establishes a typological relation between the food of the world and the Eucharist, he is also used to frame the layers of meaning in the concept of the día. It receives the following coding: Pues para grandeza mía Aquesta fiesta he trazado, En este trono sentado Adonde es eterno el día. (vv. 628–31) [Since I have outlined this celebration to my own greatness, sitting on this throne where day is eternal.]

God’s time is eternal day and from this perspective of eternity, he is entirely capable of planning and enjoying a feast for his own greatness on the world stage. This again means that in the great world theatre (which covers both the “theatre of fiction” of mankind and the “theatre of truths” of God), time and eternity can be at play simultaneously.287 Just like the auto can be enacted in appraisal of this day and of all days.

Excursus: Gadamer on Celebration and Temporality “Es ist eine Kunst, zu feiern,” H.-G. Gadamer observed in a lengthy essay on the experience of beauty.288 The phrase can be understood in at least two ways. It can

 Supported by Wardropper: “History is telescoped in the concept of the sacrament; past, present and future merge.” Wardropper, “The Search,” 1198. The current explication of this deep temporality is one topic where the world theatre of celebration diverges from recent trends toward the pessimistic world theatre. A prime example is Egginton who encourages a disjunction at the heart of the theatrum mundi, claiming that there is a “theological” version, which Calderón represents, and a “secular” which Shakespeare’s Jaques incarnates—but both lead to pessimism: “In the theological reading, the world is uncertain because we are all playing temporary roles in a play written and directed by God—the meaning of our words and actions, in other words, is determined by the intentions of another: God; in the secular or structural reading, the world is uncertain because we are all the time playing different roles for different audiences—our characters, in other words, are unstable.” Egginton, How the World Became a Stage, 76.  Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 8 (Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 131f.

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

125

mean that there is art worth celebrating. The literal meaning would then be: Es gibt Kunst, die man feiern sollte. Certain works of art should be celebrated. The more likely intended meaning is: True celebration is an art form in itself. The reason that this Gadamerian excursus becomes of relevance here is not only the affinity between art and celebration but also because Gadamer elaborately examines the multi-temporal aspect of the experience of works of art. He has, in other words, laid the groundwork for a philosophical substantiation of the terminology of deep temporality and its relation to phenomena of celebration. Gadamer maintains the idea of the real presence of the ecstasies of time and, importantly, arrives at an analogy between the temporal structure of celebration and of the experience of the work of art. It seems, in other words, that Gadamer has argued philosophically for what the present book argues as a matter of fact in the particular example of Calderón’s use of the world theatre. That the experience that the world is an artwork is a cause for a celebration in the very building of said artwork—the world. In what looks for him like a typical assumption of a Heideggerian phenomenology without an argument, Gadamer begins by noting that the activity of experiencing art is not much different from everyday experience of life: In our daily life we proceed constantly through the simultaneity of past and future. The essence of what is called spirit lies in the ability to move within the horizon of an open future and an unrepeatable past. [Unser tägliches ist ein beständiges Schreiten durch die Gleichzeitigkeit von Vergangenheit und Zukunft. So gehen zu können, mit diesem Horizont offener Zukunft und unwiederholbarer Vergangenheit, ist das Wesen dessen, was wir “Geist” nennen.]289

This must be understood as if Gadamer thinks that a precondition for our very existence as Dasein is this experience of the world as a place of simultaneous past and future.290 It then follows that the experience of art is of the same nature; the synchrony of past and future in the experienced moment. As the subtitle of the essay states, three forms of human Praxis are considered in their appearance as

 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Relevance of the Beautiful: Art as Play, Symbol, and Festival,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 10; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 101. The English translation is generally acceptable, but it consequently translates “Fest” with “Festival” which downplays the overlap between Dasein’s general experience of the world and the experience of works of art.  This would also comply with the hermeneutics of Truth and Method where prejudice would determine the past, application the present, and the Volkommenheitsannahme the future as a triadic and transcendental precondition for Dasein’s meeting with a text. E.g. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd ed. (London: Continuum, 2006), 277–304.

126

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

art and are hardly translatable: Spiel, Symbol, Fest. In German intellectual history, the easiest translation would perhaps even be a benevolent ad hominem, for it might just as well say: Schiller, Goethe, Nietzsche.291 In this light, Spiel means simultaneously “game” and “play,” Symbol refers to an, in principle, endless relation between signifier and signified, and Fest can mean “festival,” “feast,” as well as “celebration.” It is of course the concept of Fest which is of interest here, and with the Nietzsche allusion in mind, it should be less conspicuous than it might seem at first to consider the human practice of celebration an art form: If translated to “festival,” it activates a long Western tradition of combining the feasts of the seasons with the enactment of drama; the ancient Dionysia, much Christian liturgy, the medieval cycles of mystery plays, the Spanish autos, Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestivals, and Hofmannsthal’s Salzburger Festspiel all spring to mind. If the precondition for every “daily life” experience, that is, our being-in-the-world, presupposes an experience of the synchrony of past and present, Gadamer claims that the same is true of celebratory activity. The point is that the “nature of the temporality of the celebration” is an experience of the unity or of the fulness of time: It characterises the celebration that “we speak of ‘enacting’ a celebration. [. . .] The temporal character of the festive celebration that we enact lies in the fact that it does not dissolve into a series of separate moments” [“dass wir von einem Fest sagen, man ‘begeht’ es. [. . .] Das ist der Zeitcharakter des Festes, daß es ‘begangen’ wird und nicht in die Dauer einander ablösender Momente zerfällt”].292 This is seen as the antipole to being either bored or busy. These implicate that you experience an emptiness of time because there is either nothing or too much to do; time becomes something either to be “vertrieben” or something which “vertrieben ist.”293 In both cases, it becomes a “gradual sequence of empty moments to arrive at a totality of time.” [“Eine langsame Folge von leeren Momenten, [die] zur ganzen Zeit zusammengestückt [werden].]”294 This would in the present terminology of this reading of Calderón be a “flat time”; dots on a

 Schiller dealt extensively with the concept of Spiel in relation to aesthetics in Über die äesthetische Erziehung des Menschen (1801), Goethe’s posthumous Maximen und Reflexionen (1833) favoured symbol over allegory, and Nietzsche’s Geburt der Tragödie (1872) established that the music-centred performances during the ancient festivals of the Dionysia were the origin of tragedy.  Gadamer, “The Relevance,” 41; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 131.  Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 132.  Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 133. This is also where comparisons between Calderón and Descartes become problematic. The Blumenberg student Manfred Sommer describes Descartes’ historical program as the opposite of Gadamer’s: “Time loses its continuity. Instead of encompassing the endless arch of past, present, and future, the ‘now’ now means: Now, now, now, now.” [“Die Zeit verliert ihre Stetigkeit. Statt als endloser Bogen Vergangenheit und Gegenwart und Zukunft

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

127

row constituting time as successive but unrelated moments; Macbeth’s candle which is to be put out time and time again. But another form of time can be experienced. Its description offers a way to theorise Calderón’s touch of deep time, and it is “profoundly related to the kind of time characteristic of both the festival and the work of art” [“sowohl mit der des Festes wie mit der der Kunst aufs tiefste verwandt”].295 Gadamer’s description of this state is remarkable: In contrast with the empty time that needs to be filled, I propose to call this “fulfilled” or “autonomous” time. We all know that the feast [das Fest] fulfils every moment of its duration. This fulfilment does not come about because someone has empty time to fill. On the contrary, the time only becomes festive with the arrival of the festive season. [Ich möchte sie, im Unterschied zu der auszufüllenden leeren Zeit, die erfüllte Zeit oder auch die Eigenzeit nennen. Jeder weiß, daß, wenn das Fest da ist, dieser Augenblick oder diese Weile vom Fest erfüllt ist. Das ist nicht durch jemanden geschehen, der eine leere Zeit auszufüllen hatte, sondern umgekehrt, die Zeit ist festlich geworden.]296

What Gadamer here calls fulfilled time complies with the described “deep temporality” in the above as both rely on the synchrony of temporalities and are established through celebration. From this relation follows a first sense of the transformative power of art: Time becomes festive. Fiesta and art are two human practices which transform time from disconnected moments, dots on a line, into something else, a chain of being. This is another point at which Gadamer enlightens the connection between this day and all days in the auto. It offers a way to understand how Calderón’s work vindicates existence through the conversion of empirical reality into ritualistic celebration. In this possible sense of fulfilment, a deeper and deeper penetration into the now is not a way to escape the eternal or favour the present but a way for finite and infinite time to collide: In the experience of art we must learn how to dwell upon the work in a specific way. When we dwell upon the work, there is no tedium involved, for the longer we allow ourselves, the more it displays its manifold riches to us. The essence of our temporal experience of art is in learning how to tarry in this way. And perhaps it is the only way that is granted to us finite beings to relate to what we call eternity. [Es geht in der Erfahrung der Kunst darum, daß wir am Kunstwerk eine spezifische Art des Verweilens lernen. Es ist ein Verweilen, das sich offenbar dadurch auszeichnet, daß es nicht langweilig wird. Je mehr wir verweilend uns darauf einlassen, desto sprechender, desto

umzuspannen, heißt Zeit jetzt nur noch: Jetzt. Jetzt. Jetzt. Jetzt . . .”] Manfred Sommer, Evidenz im Augenblick (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 247.  Gadamer, “The Relevance,” 42; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 132.  Gadamer, “The Relevance,” 42; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 132.

128

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

vielfältiger, desto reicher erscheint es. Das ist vielleicht die uns zugemessene endliche Entsprechung zu dem, was man Ewigkeit nennt.]297

Art and celebration can make you dwell or linger in the moment of the present, perhaps because they need not have any purpose besides themselves. But this is a dwelling in the moment which does not flatten time or isolate the present; it deepens it. This day and all the days suddenly talk to each other.298 Gadamer’s argument for the similarity of the festival and the experience of a work of art furthermore offers an argument for the immense success of El gran teatro del mundo: Its genre is part of a festival and its leading metaphor and theme compile the claim that the world is a work of art in itself; genre and image are in this way epistemologically and aesthetically alike. A second use of Gadamer has to do with the importance of participation. Gadamer delivers a related point about the difference between the performing and the visual arts. He calls them “transitory” [“transitorisch”] and “static/statuary” [“statuarisch”] arts respectively.299 The examples of the former are music and dance and of the latter painting and architecture. The temporal nature of the experience of art does not exclusively belong to the performing arts such as dance or drama. The experience of non-performative works of art such as paintings or buildings presupposes the same temporal structure; in Gadamer’s ingenious German formulation, they are also “Zeit-Gänge.”300 According to Gadamer, this is evident when you consider that not every painting becomes accessible as an experience of art at the same speed and that the way to experience a building is to enter it. Gadamer underscores this with reference to a “great lie” of his time, caused by the rise of mechanical-reproductive artwork.301 This lie, according to Gadamer, consists in the claim that people in general are disappointed when they see great achievements of human culture (for instance buildings or paintings) in real life after having known them beforehand only through photographic reproduction: This feeling of disappointment only shows that we still have to go beyond the purely artistic quality of the building considered as an image and actually approach it as architectural art in its own right. To do that, we have to go up to the building and wander round it, both

 Gadamer, “The Relevance,” 45; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 136.  And phrased in a biblical way, Calderón would have probably preferred: “Day unto day utters speech.” Psalms 19:2.  Gadamer, “The Relevance,” 45; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität, ” 135.  Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 135. Untranslatable. The English edition offers “temporal processes” (45).  Staying within German intellectual history, the argument has thus moved from the nineteenth-century sequence Schiller—Goethe—Nietzsche to Walter Benjamin’s Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1935).

The Black Veils and the Short Comedies of Life

129

inside and out. Only in this way can we acquire a sense of what the work holds in store for us and allow it to enhance our feeling for life. [In Wahrheit bedeutet diese Enttäuschung, daß man überhaupt noch nicht über die bloße malerische Anblicksqualität des Bauwerks hinaus zu ihm als Architektur, als Kunst, hingelangt ist. Da muß man hingehen und hineingehen, da muß man heraustreten, da muß man herumgehen, muß sich allmählich erwandern und erwerben, was das Gebilde einem für das eigene Lebensgefühl und seine Erhöhung verheißt.]302

This idea has influence on the way (life in) the theatrum mundi is thought of and on how its function is seen in Calderón’s work. The point is that the participatory element as a precondition for the experience of human productions as forms of art might be of relevance for the interpretation of the world theatre on behalf of author, actor, and audience and especially of the decisions between reading the world theatre as cause for pessimism or for celebration. If the participatory element is downplayed, God or the audience become the passive and disinterested onlookers of a spectacle, essentially foreign to themselves. If God has created a work of art (or is enjoying one), but has no understanding of the participatory element when experiencing something as art, he and the audience can enjoy the “purely artistic quality,” but they are not part of it and will never arrive at an understanding of its art; the present and the eternal have been separated, Creator and Creation fall apart. An entirely good reason for pessimism. When the participatory or “performative” element of art is downplayed, it also means that the possible transformative potential of art is weakened. El gran teatro del mundo is very attentive to the destruction of the fourth wall in order to connect actors and audience. Figures of metalepsis are one obvious example where the audience clearly belong to the performance and where something happens with and to the audience as participants rather than as spectators. The absoluteness of the metaphor is another example in the sense that it is often intentionally open whether the claim is that the stage is a world of its own or if the world is a stage in itself. The theme of the Eucharist entails a participatory element during a church service because the congregation must participate in the salvation history which the service replays; such is also the case when the auto ends at an alter table with AUTOR, and the audience must there surely sense the dissolution of the boundary between drama and ritual. Gadamer’s aesthetics is one way to be reminded that once this participatory element of art is acknowledged, the celebratory and transformative nature of “living in” works of art is much closer to human practices of celebration than to laments of the meaninglessness of the world or of history.

 Gadamer, “The Relevance,” 45; Gadamer, “Die Aktualität,” 135f.

130

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

“Do Good, for God Is God” The author wishes not only for a celebration; he requires that a comedia be enacted. When MUNDO has finished his long world history (vv. 67–278), the mortals are summoned in the form of seven souls “without form” [“todos informes”] (v. 295). They are given the roles of the rich man, the king, the farmer, the poor man, beauty, religion, and a child—to various degrees of satisfaction. AUTOR does not want to listen to these complaints over assigned lots in life “for when the whole world is a stage, one can earn [his reward] with any part” [“pues/ con cualquier papel se gana,/ que toda la vida humana/ representaciones es”] (vv. 425–28). Instead, he announces that the company will enact a play called “Obrar bien, que Dios es Dios” (v. 438). Do good, for God is God. This becomes the dramatic engine in the form of a play-within-the-play-within-the-play.303 The play-within-the-play has two parts: a loa (comprised of two sub-loas) and a plot, also divided in two with the first section focusing on the ethical question of giving alms and the second being a danse macabre. These then lead to the judgement of the characters—in a sense their theatrical review once the playwithin-the-play is over—and the eventual ascent to the Eucharist table with AUTOR. One motivation for an ethical focus could be that some principles surrounding the enactment of the play and their function within the larger text are overlooked. This concerns the peculiar fact that no rehearsals are given (v. 461) and no script is provided (v. 466). This absence has led to the obvious assertion that the play was a pleading in the on-going feud about the question of man’s free will; a debate led between Jesuits and Dominicans, especially relevant after Luis de Molina’s Concordia liberi arbitrii (1588).304 That is definitely one aspect. But in attempting to investigate the staging of celebratory effects in relation to the theatrum mundi, other reasons for this dissonance in the comparison of life to a play also surface. Certainly, plays normally do have rehearsals and often a script as well. This prompted Parker to the idea that “the allegory itself” (i.e., the theatrum mundi) generates “a problem.”305 But it does not. There can be no rehearsals if life is a play, not like one, as AUTOR explains: Llegando ahora a advertir Que siendo el cielo juez,

 Human life is a play, the auto is a play in it, and the auto contains a play-within-the-play.  This (relevant) contextualisation is made by Christian Weber, “Zur Konjunktur der Theatrum-Metapher im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert als Ort der Wissenskompilation und zu ihrer literarischen Umsetzung im Großen Welttheater,” Metaphorik 14 (2008): 347f; by Poppenberg, “Note to v. 482,” 117; Kluge, Baroque, 262f, sees La vida es sueño in the context of this debate.  Parker, Calderón, 125.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

131

Se ha de acertar de una vez Cuanto es nacer y morir. (vv. 459–62) [I now come to remark that—Heaven being the Judge—one has to get birth and death right the first time.]

The absence of rehearsals does not constitute a dramatic or logical problem: the lack of rehearsals warrants the existential identity of life and play. This could inspire an emotive state of anguish in the world theatre. Two characters explore this effective possibility. Should one not complain about one’s lot in life if God has created a stage and demands perfection but does not allow for anticipative attempts? DISCRECIÓN ¿Cómo ensayarla podremos Si nos llegamos a ver Sin luz, sin alma, y sin ser Antes de representar? POBRE ¿Pues cómo sin ensayar La comedia se ha de hacer? LABRADOR Del Pobre apruebo la queja, Que lo siento así, Señor, [. . .] Si no se ensaya esta nueva ¿Cómo se podrá acertar? (vv. 443–58) [RELIGION. How can we rehearse it if we find ourselves without light, without soul and without being before acting? POOR MAN. How can the comedia be done without rehearsals? FARMER. I support the poor man’s complaint, because I feel it that way, oh Lord. [. . .] How will this new comedia be well done without rehearsals?]

But the identity of stage and world would dissolve if there could be artificial rehearsals in life and thus there cannot in the theatre either, as AUTOR also answers. The lack of rehearsals is thus not a dramaturgical problem of the theatrum mundi, neither is it necessarily a reason for despair.306

 Parrack argues the opposite as he sees it as a modern form of subjectivity: “This lack of rehearsals, I believe, models another aspect of modern subjectivity developed by Greenblatt: improvisation.” [“Esta falta de ensayos, creo, modela otro aspecto de la subjetividad moderna desarrollado por Green-

132

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

This is enforced by a hitherto overlooked parallel on the inner horizon of the text and has to do with another analogy within the play: that between the creation of the world and the enactment of the play-within-the-play, which is especially relevant to the question of beauty. MUNDO’s short history of the world has already established the fact that there cannot be rehearsals in the world theatre and has associated absence with the appearance of beauty. For the world was originally created as Un jardín Con bellísimos dibujos, Ingeniosas perspectivas, Que se dude cómo supo La naturaleza hacer Tan gran lienzo sin estudio. (vv. 103–8, emphasis added) [A garden of such beautiful design and brilliant perspective that one wonders how Nature was capable of this great painting without practice].

There is a dogmatic difference because this is the state of the world before the fall, but the structure of the argument is remarkable. The world is depicted as a painting [un lienzo], of beautiful perspective, and, importantly, one marvels that these were made sin estudio. The world was once capable of an aesthetic justification of itself without prior studies and thus, the actors get no rehearsals either. It is the way of the world— and it is clearly right that this should be the case.307 These examples are not just preparing the analogy between the two theatres. They are also tied to the role and purpose of beauty and therefore of theatre and poetry. This is where the play moves towards an aesthetic theodicy. In its beauty, the world supervenes on God’s world. It is analogous without being identical. That is its justification, not its devaluation.

The Fall of Man in the Theatrum mundi Before the assignment of roles in the play of life, the mentioned dogmatic difference between the creation of the world and the lack of rehearsals needs to be ad-

blatt: La improvisación.”] Parrack, “El auge de la subjetividad,” 872. Parrack perhaps concludes so differently because he emphasises the difference between the two theatres of fiction and truth.  Such extraordinary parallels in the text are one sign of the truth of Goethe’s claim that in Calderón’s plays, “no feature is there which is not thought through for effect” [“kein Zug, der nicht für die beabsichtige Wirkung kalkuliert wäre”]. J. P. Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1981), 166.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

133

dressed because it would constitute a refusal of the argument by analogy. The point is that the state of the world before and after the event of original sin can be exaggerated in the case of El gran teatro del mundo. Poppenberg reminds the reader that there are allusions to Adam in the play but that the fall of man is is “almost a trifle” [“eine Lappalie”].308 This is exemplified by the fact that MUNDO’s world history explains that the peasant must carry the yoke of ploughing the earth “por culpa de un necio” (v. 259)—because of an idiot. In MUNDO’s long speech, virtually nothing changes after the snake of envy has poisoned alguno (vv. 115–16). This indicates that Calderón in this case focused less on traditional Catholic dogma where the fall of man would surely constitute an important event in history which substantially changed the world. Here it rather seems that for metaphysical and theological reasons, the world and its relation to its Creator were in place all along: the event of the fall of man is not of the essence. This dogmatic tendency is an argument for the play’s philosophical (i.e. Platonic) orientation. There might in fact be good reasons for Calderón’s weakening of a central dogma, connected to the sense of a celebratory theatrum mundi. Peter Sloterdijk has recently noted that the concept of the deluge seems to belong to all cultures, pagan as well as Christian: The first terror of brute force, which in the myths sediment in the type of the “great flood,” is of cosmic nature. [. . .] The phenomenon of the deluge destroys man’s cosmic, primordial trust. Everything which appears as post-deluge “religion” is dedicated to fixing that which has been destroyed. Original trust is replaced by a provisionally patched hope that God will keep his promise and not let such a debacle repeat itself. [Die ersten Gewaltschrecken, die sich in den Mythen vom Typus “grosse Flut” sedimentieren, sind kosmischer Natur. [. . .] Das Phänomen Sintflut zieht die Zerstörung des kosmischen Urvertrauens der Menschen nach sich. Alles, was als nach-sintflutliche “Religion” auftritt, widmet sich dem Versuch, das Zerbrochene zu reparieren. An die Stelle des primären Vertrauens tritt die notdürftig geflickte Hoffnung, Gott werde sich an sein Versprechen halten, ein solches Debakel nicht zu wiederholen.]309

Sloterdijk is primarily thinking of the earliest historical records of religious behaviour and therefore uses the deluge as the example of how man loses his sense of home in the world; how he, mentally speaking, falls from Paradise. The experience of the deluge is what destroys man’s “cosmic primordial trust” in the universe. To medieval Christianity, the fall of man, rather than the deluge, might have been what was experienced as the origin of man’s distress: original sin is the reason that the world can be experienced as evil and foreign. Yet these histor-

 Poppenberg, “Note to v. 115,” 113.  Peter Sloterdijk, Neue Zeilen und Tage: Notizen 2011–2013 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018), 84ff, emphasis added.

134

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

ical events of the annihilation of man’s trust in the universe should not be exaggerated with the purpose of the auto and El gran teatro del mundo specifically in mind. In Sloterdijk’s terms, both the deluge and the fall of man are cosmic events which destroy man’s equally cosmic sense of primordial trust in the world as a home. In the case of El gran teatro del mundo, the text strives to employ the theatrum mundi for just such a cosmic sense of belonging to this universe. An overtly attentive approach to the fall of man (or to the deluge) would work against the very effects which the play is attempting to generate in its audience. This does not mean that death or evil are eliminated from the play’s world. But it is one explanation why their origin in events such as the one mentioned is not emphasised too much. The effects of a cosmic liturgy, rather than a dogmatic one, would be weakened if they were.310 This can also be supported by Calderón’s Tratado defendiendo la nobleza da la pintura which was not published until 1781. It was, however, written down on 8 July 1677 by a court scribe when Calderón testified in favour of the painters at a judicial hearing in connection with a disagreement on tax issues between them and the city of Madrid.311 Here, in favour of the art of painting, Calderón used the primary argument that “painting is almost a copy of God’s Creation and an emulation of nature because divine providence did not create anything that does not look like itself, nor would providence produce anything which does not characterise itself.” [“La Pintura [es] un casi remedo de las Obras de Dios, y emulación de la Naturaleza, pues no crio el Poder cosa, que ella no imite, ni engendró la Providencia cosa que no retrate.”]312 A thought present in many of the early Church Fathers and in Protestantism generally is not entertained here. The world itself is not fallen, and the beauty of its original creation is somehow still present, even if we have left the garden of Eden. This means that the painting can become “a copy of the works of God” in its imitation of nature (i.e., the whole world) because God could not possibly have created something that was not like himself. In fact, God is a sort of painter.313 Such thought patterns could be the reason why the state of the world before and after the fall does not really change in the salvation history of the play: The theatrum mundi of celebration requires that the state of the

 The concept of a cosmic liturgy is inspired by von Balthasar’s book on Maximus the Confessor, Kosmische Liturgie, 3rd ed. (Einsideln: Johannes Verlag, 1988). The concept will be used in the sections on aesthetic theodicy.  Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tratado defendiendo la nobleza da la pintura, in “Calderón und die Malerei” by E. R. Curtius, Romanische Forschungen 50, no. 2 (1936): 89–136. An edition and translation.  Calderón, Tratado, 91.  Calderón, Tratado, 97: “Pues Dios, en cierto modo Pintor, se retrató en sus mayores obras.”

“Do Good, for God Is God”

135

world is not “too” fallen.314 Through Sloterdijk, the potential of the relation between an ancient commonplace and a Christian genre can also be sensed here. Sloterdijk continues the above quote as follows: “In the Greek concept of Kosmos, the signs of primordial trust return. It lets the mortals recognise a trustworthy relation of order between Heaven and Earth.” [“Im griechischen Kosmos-Begriff kehren Züge des Urvertrauens wieder, das die Sterblichen zu glaubwürdigen Ordnungsverhältnissen zwischen Himmel und Erde aufblicken lässt.”]315 Perhaps Calderón sensed this as well: There is potential in the Greek cosmic idea of the theatrum mundi because it has at its disposal elements of the “cosmic primordial trust.” If this is what the theatrum mundi is striving to achieve, it has the effect of a consolation of man through art. To return to the play, the question of the assignments of roles arises. This side of the drama is a permanent reason for Parker’s suggestion that the auto is essentially sociological, and it is the reason for sociological (e.g., Johnson) and ethical (e.g., Fiore) readings. The assignment of roles and thus of lots in life can surely be seen through the didactic elements of the definition of the auto: Calderón was trying to defend or to confirm the existing political order through Thomistic social teachings.316 Just after being called to life, HERMOSURA underscores that when we come into the world to act in the play of life, AUTOR assigns the roles and “we do not have the choice to pick which we want” [“no tenemos elección/ para haberlos de tomar”] (vv. 307–8). LABRADOR and POBRE complain about their assigned lot, but AUTOR’s answer is not solely a defence of the existing order, for instance that some are born to rule and others to serve. It is also a justification of the world theatre itself. For there is liberation in the fact of the inequality of lots: AUTOR En la representación Igualmente satisface El que bien al pobre hace Con afecto, alma y acción, Como el que hace al rey, y son Iguales este y aquel En acabando el papel:

 Not, of course, that this means that there is no difference between God’s world and man’s. There clearly is. The two are analogical, not identical. It just should not be overstated. As will be clear later, this is what Balthasar’s concept of a cosmic liturgy is intended to avoid; neither “heavenly liturgy” nor “cosmic Gnosticism.” Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie, 78.  Sloterdijk, Neue Zeilen, 86.  As both Valbuena Prat and Parker have noted. Valbuena Prat, “Nota preliminar,” 201; Parker, Calderón, 146f.

136

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Haz tú bien el tuyo y piensa Que para la recompensa Yo te igualaré con él. (vv. 409–18) [In the play, he who plays the poor man well, with feeling, soul and action, satisfies just as well as he who plays the king, and this and that role are equal, when they come to their conclusion. Play your part well and remember that in the gratification, I will make you even with him.]

The difference of the assigned lots is considered a liberation because all are made equal in the demand to play their role well and through the fact that since this life is not the only one, the judgement of the role-play will render all equal. In this sense, the world theatre of difference is one of justice because “you can earn it with any part because all of human life is a play” [“con cualquier papel se gana,/ que toda la vida humana/ representaciones es”] (vv. 426–28). From a political or didactic perspective, this can of course be seen as a conservative defence of the existing social order, but in the present perspective on the theatrum mundi it is also an explanation of the fact that since the world is a stage, it is good to be part of the comedia. The only information AUTOR gives his company before the play begins is, as noted, the title: “Obrar bien, que Dios es Dios” (v. 438)—do good (and act well) for God is God. On the didactic level, this has bearings on the theological question of good deeds and their role in man’s salvation, but a double meaning can be grasped: “Good works” can in Spanish (and in German) mean “to do good deeds”; it can also mean great works of art: Una obra, ein (Kunst)Werk. The same applies to the English language. This is a double meaning detectable in the ancient origins of the image. Seneca’s seventy-seventh epistle says: “It is with life as it is with a play,—it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is.” [“Quomodo fabula, sic vita non quam diu, sed quam bene acta sit, refert.”]317 This possible double meaning was eminently constructive for the art metaphysics of the German Romanticists. We are, in other words, looking at one formidable reason as to why Calderón’s world theatre would be so popular in later attempts at aesthetic justifications of existence: The very title of his play-within-the-play in-

 Seneca, Epistles, 180f. The parallel to Calderón first noted by Peter Michelsen, “Das große Welttheater bei Pedro Calderón und Hugo von Hofmannsthal,” in Pedro Calderón de la Barca: Vorträge anlässlich der Jahrestagung der Görres-Gesellschaft 1978, ed. Theodor Berchem and Siegfried Sudhof (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1983), 34. Michelsen quotes the Latin original falsely as “bene agere,” but it says “bene acta” as evident above. The important point remains; that Michelsen senses the duality between a good work of art and a good deed, also present in Seneca.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

137

vites it. It simultaneously conveys an experience of the world theatre present from the ancient beginnings of European literature. After two successive loas,318 the play-within-the-play begins. “Obrar bien, que Dios es Dios” can, as mentioned, be divided into two parts. The first is ethical and centres on the moral question of whether to give alms to those in need. The second is metaphysical and comprises an enactment of the medieval tableau of a danse macabre. The ethical part will be downgraded in this interpretation. Primarily because the present close reading is about releasing some layers of meaning in the use of the world theatre which have hitherto not received the attention they deserve; and they do not circle around the ethical question.

The Flower Motif The characters are given their props by MUNDO, and two globes open on the stage. On the one sits AUTOR on a throne of glory and on the other one, the playwithin-the-play takes place. On the latter, two doors are placed: one has a cradle painted on it and one a coffin. The audience is also introduced to another character, namely “The Law of Grace” who is to act as the prompter. The first ethical part concerns the characters’ self-image and sense of entitlement and thereafter, their willingness to almsgivings is tested. After these events, a sad voice begins to proclaim the death of each of them. This is where the danse macabre begins. HERMOSURA’s life is vital to the inquiry into the status of worldly, metaphysical, and religious beauty in the play, and her use of the flower motif contains important nuances in order to understand the theme of beauty. The flower is a popular topic of the period and often figures as a symbol of vanity in the genre of the bodegón, the still life painting. It is also everywhere in the play and can only be understood in relation to false and true beauty as expressed in HERMOSURA’s follies. It is tempting to see the flower motif exclusively in its worldly meaning of decay. To begin in medias res, this is for instance what happens when VOZ proclaims the death of HERMOSURA: VOZ (canta). Toda la hermosura humana

 Poppenberg’s suggestion. “Note to v. 654,” 119. DISCRECIÓN’s beautiful songs about the sun and the moon and the stars praising the Lord (vv. 638–47) are not described as the actual loa but clearly have that function along with the explicit loa of vv. 659–65. On the function of the first loa, see the section on “Deep Temporality.”

138

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Es una temprana flor: Marchítese, pues la noche Ya de su aurora llegó. (vv. 1043–46) [VOICE (singing). All human beauty is an early flower. It must wither, for night came soon after its daybreak.]

All human beauty’s precondition is decay, for night will come. This is the cyclicaltemporal element of nature, of human life, of the year. The flower thus becomes a symbol of vanitas. This is also the meaning which Arellano traces in his study of Calderón’s flowers: “The flowers and roses also warn HERMOSURA in El gran teatro del mundo of her expiry, which she resists in vain as she intends to delude herself with appeals to an eternity which is not possible.” [“Flores y rosas que avisan también a la Hermosura humana en GT de su caducidad, a la que se resiste vanamente, intentando engañarse con apelaciones a una eternidad que no es posible.”]319 Arellano operates with a proto-leitmotivic strategy where the flower points towards the theme of expiration and the general effect of baroque desengaño. The play is certainly working with this conception, for instance in the opening lines whilst entertaining the thought that the flowers of the earth compete with the number of the stars, the “lower architecture of the world” becomes a “human heaven” of decaying flowers. The question is whether the attribution of the predicate of expiry is a sufficient condition for the assertion that motif and theme together constitute an appeal to “an eternity which is not possible.” Flowers are finite and in permanent decay, but that is only part of their meaning. They are also a reflection of true beauty just as the world theatre itself is. The flower motif is therefore more likely to be playing with one way in which such an appeal to eternity is possible. After all, the inferior architecture (v. 2) of the world is still “a beautiful composition [“una hermosa compostura”] and a “human heaven” [“humano cielo”] (vv. 1; 8).320  Ignacio Arellano, “La flora simbólica en los autos sacramentales de Calderón,” in Neophilologus 97 (2013): 317. In his study of the two sonnets of the play, Fernández Mosquera supports the interpretation of the finite nature of human existence. He writes that “the dispensable greatness of the empire and the vanity of beauty are inexorably judged and that which seemed positive is turned negative in its human area of meaning.” [“La superflua grandeza del imperio y la vanidad de la belleza son juzgadas inexorablemente y aquello que parecía positivo es vuelto negativo en su comportamiento humano.”] Fernández Mosquera, Calderón, 59.  Ana Suárez Miramón is a rare example of this line of thinking. In a short article on the important theme of “sacramental cosmology” in the autos, she describes Calderón’s world theatre as one “where the AUTHOR is described ‘in a star-covered cloak and with rays of lightning in his crown’ but also where the Earth is related to a mirror of heaven and where various correspond-

“Do Good, for God Is God”

139

One way to see this is by looking at the role of HERMOSURA. She (as the playwithin-the-play itself) begins on an ethical level. As one of the three pairings, she shares the stage with DISCRECIÓN, a very typical Calderonian topos. The first half of HERMOSURA’s act does not fail because she values the idea of beauty, but because she does not see its ontological dependence on God’s divine beauty, essentially expressed in her reaction when POBRE begins to plea for alms: HERMOSURA Decidme, fuentes, Pues que mis espejos sois, ¿Qué galas me están más bien?, ¿Qué rizos me están mejor? POBRE ¿No me veis? MUNDO Necio, ¿no miras Que es vana tu pretensión? ¿Por qué ha de cuidar de ti Quien de sí se descuidó? (vv. 861–68) BEAUTY. Tell me, springs—for you are my mirrors—which gowns suit me best? Which hairstyle becomes me? POOR MAN. Do you not see me? WORLD. You fool, do you not see that your pretensions are in vain? Why should she care about you when she neglects herself?

The issue is that HERMOSURA thinks the source of her beauty an inner-worldly matter and her neighbours purely a mirror for it. This could be a deliberately ironic use of a character for the audience to see that the true source of beauty is never an exclusively inner-worldly matter. Fuentes refers to a spring or fountain like the one in which Narcissus sees his own image in the water, and an ontological point emerges once more where Platonism and Christianity are fused: The source of worldly beauty is not intrinsic to the (phenomenal) world but lies outside the sphere of appearances. Not to acknowledge this is dangerous, for he, who thinks himself unreliable or unanswerable to God/AUTOR, “neglects” himself—a feasible threat of damnation. The relative point between shadow world and ideal

ences are derived from this mirror-character of the Cosmos” [“donde no solo se describe al Autor ‘con manto de estrellas y potencias en el sombrero’ sino que se refiere ya a la tierra como espejo del cielo y establece las correspondencias derivadas de ese carácter especular del Cosmos.”] Miramón, “El cielo estrellado,” 439. She thus importantly underscores the sacramental relation between author and earth established through the nature of the cosmos.

140

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

world or between man’s time and God’s is important. There is nothing in the play to suggest that beauty (or the world theatre) is in itself reprehensible, but it needs to be seen in its right place between Criador and criaturas (vv. 717–18). This theological commonplace distinction is enforced through HERMOSURA and DISCRECIÓN’s first dialogue. HERMOSURA calls to enjoy the natural surroundings, referred to as the “happy fatherland of May“ [”felice patria del mayo”] and as “the sweet flattery of the sun” [“dulce lisonja del sol”] (vv. 677–78). That is not in itself a problem. She is even given leave to adopt the concept of celebrating un día: “Can’t there be a day’s pleasure?” (v. 689) she asks and notes that it seems unreasonable not to enjoy ”God’s wonders” [“las maravillas de Dios“] (v. 710). It surely is, DISCRECIÓN confirms; to enjoy them in the sense of admiration is right. The problem is that HERMOSURA does not do that—“gozar para admirar” (v. 711). This is emphasised by a typical erroneous understanding of the theme of the día, also used in the case of HERMOSURA. When MUNDO is handing out props, she demands the colours of “jazmín, rosa y clavel” (v. 498), attributes related to the word field of fauna. But she desires them so that Hoja a hoja y rayo a rayo Se desaten a porfía Todas las luces del día, Todas las flores de mayo. (vv. 499–502) [Leaf after leaf and ray after ray may stand out in fray with all the light of day, and all the flowers of May.]

Implicitly, it must be understood that the flowers of May could join in the praise of days, but HERMOSURA desires the beauty of nature so that she can compete with the very same light of day. In view of the comprehensive artistical strategies behind the use of the word día surrounding the outer and inner horizons of the text, HERMOSURA is playing with fire when she entertains such thoughts. Her errors can thus be seen as a way of exploring how not to understand the theme of beauty when the theatrum mundi is to work as an aesthetic justification of Creation. But the errors are not a repudiation of beauty itself, and it is not an attempt to sever the ties between the forms of the beautiful and the true. The substantial evidence in favour of this interpretation lies foremost in the way the flower motif is installed in the structure of the text. HERMOSURA is put in contact with it several times, and it operates as a mirror effect between two kinds of Paradise: the eternal one in Heaven and the small one on Earth. The two heavens in turn parallel the two theatres of fiction and truth much more than they serve their negation or separation. RICO also makes use of the flower motif with a biblical echo and a traditional typological configuration at a crucial point in his development. After LABRADOR’s

“Do Good, for God Is God”

141

own funeral speech (vv. 1111–46), existential despair grips the remaining characters. RICO, of all people, remains calm and returns to biblical wisdom. What are we to do, DISCRECIÓN asks, and RICO answers: Volver A nuestra conversación, Y por hacer lo que todos Digo lo que siento yo. ¿A quién mirar no le asombra Ser esta vida una flor Que nazca con el albor Y fallezca con la sombra? (vv. 1157–64) [Return to our conversation; and in order to do what everyone does, I shall speak my mind. Who does not marvel to see that this life is a flower which blooms at dawn and dies at dusk?]

Immediately after these sound words, RICO will state the ironic monstrosity of the urge to “eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die,” but for now, this remains a reasonable existential question. It is important because it can clarify the possible biblical echo in the use of the flower motif and its metaphorical identification with life. The resonance also indicates that the fauna imagery is not exclusively supposed to generate the sense of vanity. “To marvel [asombrarse]” is not necessarily negative:321 RICO continues his speech, he thinks that this riddled nature of cyclical time is a reason to enjoy what is left of life (vv. 1169–70). Given the popularity and impact of the Book of Job, Poppenberg’s suggestion of Job 14:1–2 as a likely reference in RICO’s bewilderment seems reasonable: “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and fades away; he flees like a shadow and does not continue.” The challenge is that this would only cover the unfavourable meaning of asombrar as despair in the face of decay. A second possibility on the more general level could be Song of Sol. 2:11–12: “For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come.” Not to mention the perhaps most famous passage on flowers in the Old Testament, Psalm 103: “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him” (15–17). We here have an ideal example of Hebrew poetry with the parallel and analogy between man’s

 Cf. Gran Diccionario Oxford. Español-Inglés / Inglés-Español: “To be astonished, to be amazed.”

142

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

death and God’s sustenance. The logic of fear of God establishes yet another possible relation to the refrain of the loa. Paul is an eager perpetrator of the typological line of thinking and with the temporal aspect in mind, one might also think of 2. Cor 6:2: “For He says: ‘In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Paul is referring to Isa. 49:8, but Song of Sol. is employing the same idea: “Now the time of singing is come” in a seasonal sense, typologically transferred in the Pauline sense to salvation history. These resonances are obviously not of conclusive nature but are intended to recapitulate two points when dealing with a religious play such as the auto by a Catholic like Calderón in a time like the Baroque; namely that the multitude of possible biblical echoes in such a popular motif as the flower and the fact that the Book of Job’s passing pessimism does not necessarily amount to the full horizon of meaning. A further point of this speculative selection of the flower in its extended biblical echo is the phenomenon of typology once more. It is not only in the baroque painting and popular collections of emblemas that typological argument and imagery are prevailing; the same is true of an interminable list of autos; it lies in their allegorical nature. This means that even when the Siglo de Oro audience could have thought of Job’s man, who is cut down like a flower, they would be schooled or at least used to experiencing that Christian-biblical wisdom is so very often placed in a larger typological framework where an Old Testament sense of vanity is the precondition for the New Testament proclamation of salvation. The flower is in decay, and man is always dying. Calderón’s world theatre does not ignore these sad truths, but contextually, it is hardly warranted to let them be conclusive either.

Medievalism I: The Danse Macabre The danse macabre is a popular idea in relation to the theatrum mundi as seen in the works of such different men as de Bry’s illustrations and Covarrubias’ collections of emblems. In the early modern canon, the two motifs are also linked, for instance through the figure of the emperor Carinus in Lope de Vega’s Lo fingido verdadero and in Richard’s “Hollow Crown” speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II.322  “CARINUS. I acted my part. I was Caesar, Rome, I was king; the tragedy is ended, death stripped me naked.” [“CARINO. Representé mi figura: / César fui, Roma, rey era; / acabóse la tragedia,/ la muerte me desnudó.”] Lope de Vega, Lo fingido verdadero, ed. Maria Teresa Cattaneo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1992), Emothe.uv.es, vv. 641–44. From Richard II: “Within the hollow

“Do Good, for God Is God”

143

There is not much disagreement in the general literature that the danse macabre is originally a medieval phenomenon. But Calderón’s use of it is far from the meanings of popular early modern misery, and his figuration of it is one way of answering the question of what is new in Calderón when dealing with his medieval heritage. Surely, the danse macabre in El gran teatro del mundo is no unique phenomenon in early modernity. Some attention has been given to this idea in recent scholarly literature. In his history of the Spanish theatre of the seventeenth century, Arellano claims that the play’s plot is similar to “las danzas macabras medievales.”323 Balthasar claims that what he calls the “fourth act” of the play is “very deliberately constructed by Calderón; it is the baroque form of the late gothic Dance of Death.”324 The danse macabre is originally a motif of the plastic arts where people in different ages of their life dance with Death personified. An early preserved Spanish auto is also Juan de Pedraza’s Farsa llamada de la danza de la muerte from 1551. An anonymous poem called Danza general de la Muerte from the fifteenth century also survives.325 According to Uwe Pörksen, the first known motif in art history is a mural in the Cimetière des Innocents in Paris. He dates it to 1424.326 There are also a Baseler Todentanz from 1440 and a Lübecker Totendanz from 1463. Two basic functions of the motif are of interest here. Pörksen has noted the following: To the great hidden factors of the dance of death belongs without a doubt the imagination of a worldly judgement; the idea that mortal life is only a proscenium behind which, once past the threshold of death, heavenly bliss and hellish damnation await. Belief in the afterlife belongs to the preconditions of the dances of death. [Zu den großen, heimlichen Mitakteuren des Totentanzes gehört zweifellos die Vorstellung von einem Weltgericht, die Idee, dass dieses irdische Leben nur eine Vorderbühne ist, hinter der es, von der Schwelle des Todes an, himmlische Seligkeit und höllische Verdammnis gibt. Der Jenseitsglaube gehört zu den Voraussetzungen dieses Spiels.]327

In such a conception, the danse macabre and the theatrum mundi become kindred spirits in the history of ideas. The almost metaphysical monism of the phrase of a crown/ That rounds the mortal temples of a king/ Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,/ Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,/ Allowing him a breath, a little scene.” Shakespeare, Richard II, 3.2.160–64.  Arellano, Historia, 714.  Balthasar, Theo-Drama, 165.  Wille, Spiel der Erlösung, briefly compares the danse macabre of Pedraza and Calderón (115).  Uwe Pörksen, “Der Totentanz des Spätmittelalters und sein Wiederaufleben im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” in Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Wapnewski (Stuttgart: J. P. Metlerzsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1986), 247.  Pörksen, “Der Totentanz,” 251.

144

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

world judgement operates with a coherence of the world where “representation” can mean theatre but not singular representation of isolated phenomena of the Ding-an-sich or the Res extensa. The danse macabre is also connected to the idea of a proscenium. There is substantial evidence in art history for this claim, for instance in de Bry’s emblems which show the ages of man in a colosseum or a circus, dancing with death;328 it seems that a danse macabre needs a Schauplatz.329 With respect to medievalism and the Blumenbergian diagnostics of literary history, it is also pertinent that Pörksen mentions the fact that final judgement and thus Blumenberg’s Jenseitsglaube, belief in an afterlife, are intrinsic features of the danse macabre—a fact that must make its re-use in modern canonical literature strange to supporters of the secularisation theorem; secularisation, according to Blumenberg, means the disappearance of expectations of an afterlife or a belief in the beyond. Calderón is clearly not partaking in such a scheme. Another general function is the one suggested by Sofie Kluge, according to which the medieval danse macabre and baroque uses of allegory are similar and that this has relevance to the connection between the Middle Ages and the Baroque—that is, a way to look at the question of medievalism. In an introduction to Walter Benjamin’s book on the origins of the baroque German Trauerspiel, Kluge notes the analogy: As the medieval danse macabre-like imagery, which takes its departure point in the vanity of human existence, but does not make it a definitive horizon, the allegories of the Baroque constantly induce the feeling of something more behind the transient surface. [. . .] Benjamin’s study thus represents the inner logic of the Baroque as an allegorical transfiguration of physical reality, an infusion of the decaying—disastrous—historical world with a glimpse of a quasi-mystic, spiritual meaning.330

Benjamin operates with an analogy (neither straight continuation, nor complete segregation) between the Middle Ages and the Baroque in the case of the dance of death. At the same time, the motif is not exclusively a reason for the lamentation of fundamental vanity. The allegory (i.e., both the danse macabre and the theatrum mundi) is cultivating the sense of deep temporality, of the intertwinement of different spatial and temporal levels of being. If Benjamin thinks that the baroque

 Perhaps it is worth repeating that also Paul connects the idea of being a theatron for men and angels to a circus, according to Curtius, Europäische Literatur, 148.  This is evidence of the “principle of adaptability” of the danse macabre as suggested by Freytag, relating to the title of a collected edition. Hartmut Freytag, “Preface,” in Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sophie Oosterwijk and Stefanie Knöll (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2011), xxiii.  Sofie Kluge, “Walter Benjamins bog om det barokke sørgespil,” in Walter Benjamin, Det tyske sørgespils oprindelse, trans. Sofie Kluge (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2014), 54.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

145

danse macabre has the ability to transfigure physical reality through glimpses of spiritual meaning, the theatrum mundi has the same function in El gran teatro del mundo. But still, Death does not appear in the play, nor does any form of Satan. And there is no dancing.331 This is where Kluge’s observation comes into play; it is a way to see how analogised the play has become in Calderón’s time that we can have a danse macabre without a skeleton, without a dance and without any traditional idea of the ages of man.332 At the same time, the idea of a possible transfiguration of physical reality is a consequence of medieval danse macabre and baroque allegory—a feature they then have in common with Calderón’s theatrum mundi. The part of the danse macabre of the play-within-the-play begins at v. 949 when the characters have concluded on the ethical question of free will, which exists because the right way to live has been proclaimed (“Obrar bien que Dios es Dios,” v. 942). For this reason, sin will be man’s own fault. The danse macabre is then announced as the subsequent theme by REY: As life is a play and everyone walks the same path, they ought to have a joint conversation. This ends with the suggestion that everyone is to say what is on their mind. REY begins with a sonnet (vv. 961–74) which results in the VOZ proclaiming that REY’s time has come (vv. 977–80). With the motifs of the cradle and the grave on the stage doors, Calderón analogises the very course of life in the theatre of fictions as one long dance of death but not necessarily in a strictly pessimistic sense. This insight is also what the admirable REY realises in beautiful verse after his sonnet and the announcement of his death: ¿Dónde voy? Porque a la primera puerta Donde mi cuna se vio, No puedo, ¡ay de mí!, no puedo

 Here is a case for the argument that Calderón is very medieval in his way of thinking. Pörksen has mentioned how Ivan Illich showed that it was not until the fifteenth century that Death was personified and made an independent figure. Pörksen, “Der Totentanz,” 252. But this is not the case in El gran teatro del mundo where it is solely an undefinitive voz triste which announces death—Calderón’s lack of personified death is in this light a premodern feature.  Uwe Pörksen notes that many early death dances consist of a Bilderfolge. This of course suits the theme of the ages of man. Pörksen, “Der Totentanz,” 246. This is also what relates it intimately with the theatrum mundi: Jaques’ invocation of the trope is followed by an Ovidian idea of the ages of man. Baltasar Gracián’s Criticón (1651) does something similar as its first part is subtitled The Spring of Childhood and the Summer of Youth [“En la primavera de la niñez y en el estío de la juventud”] and makes extensive use of the theatrum mundi, especially in the chapter called “El gran teatro del universo.” Baltasar Gracián, El Criticón, ed. M. Romera-Navarro (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938), 116–27.

146

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Retroceder. ¡Qué rigor, No poder hacia la cuna Dar un paso! . . . Todos son Hacia el sepulcro . . . ¡Que el río, Que brazo de mar huyó, Vuelva a ser mar; que la fuente Que salió del río, (¡qué horror!), Vuelva a ser río; el arroyo Que de la fuente corrió Vuelva a ser fuente . . . y el hombre Que de su centro salió Vuelva a su centro a no ser Lo que fue! ¡Qué confusión! (vv. 986–1002) [Where am I going? I cannot go back through the first door with my cradle. Woe is me! I cannot return. Such hardship! To not be able to take a step back towards the cradle! All steps lead towards the grave: the river which began as a creek, shall once more return to the sea; that the spring which ran from the river (such horror!), will once more be a river; the stream, which flowed from the spring, will once more be a spring; and man, who came of its centre, will return without being what he was? Such confusion!]

These are metaphorical images of the analogical dance of death which all humans perform through their lives, just as all the action of the play-within-the-play has a grave hanging over its head. Apparently, REY sees the transitory nature of life and not much else: “All steps lead towards the grave.” It is tempting to interpret or experience REY’s word as an unequivocal expression of desengaño in the image of the sepulchre. In a chapter about the philosophical problem of representation in Calderón, Regalado quotes REY’s lines and explains: The feeling of the role’s unreality is repeated throughout Calderón’s work, a feeling of nightmare where the dramatical force is one of challenge and terror for the actor. [. . .] That this world is smoke, nothing, delirium in its odd and strange facticity. The great theatre of the world is at the same time a scenic space where an actor, desperate and trapped between birth and death, remains shocked by the terrifying presence of death until this moment of a retractable not-yet-being. [El sentimiento de lo irreal del papel se reitera a lo largo de la obra Calderón, sensación de pesadilla cuya fuerza dramática es un reto y un susto para el actor. [. . .] Que este mundo es humo, nada, un delirio en su fantástica y extraña facticidad. El gran teatro del mundo es a la vez es espacio escénico donde un actor desesperado, atrapado entre el nacer y el morir,

“Do Good, for God Is God”

147

queda sobrecogido por la terrorífica presencia de la muerte, hasta ese momento un escamoteable aún-no-ser.]333

Although Regalado also relates this “feeling” to early Christians, this is the “dark modernity” version of the great world theatre, which has been popular in much twentieth-century existentialist and absurdist use of the theatrum mundi; Regalado’s description might just as well fit the theme and plot of Waiting for Godot. It is also not entirely foreign to the Calderón reception in general as several recent monographs have taken this road of the experience of terror in the face of life in the early modern existence of theatre and dream.334 It can also be traced to more old-school studies of Calderón, for instance Jutta Wille’s Spiel der Erlösung—a title which should otherwise suggest that her purpose lay somewhat at a distance from Regalado’s nihilism: Death and Sin, memories of death and desengaño or knowledge of earthly vanity, these are the last things of Calderón’s autos sacramentales. [. . .] The 17th century—and already the 16th—is permeated by a strange longing for death, a Romantic affirmation of Death. [Tod und Sünde, Erinnerung an den Tod und desengaño oder Erkenntnis der irdischen Vergänglichkeit, das sind die letzten Dinge der autos sacramentales von Calderón [. . .] Das 17. Jahrhundert—und schon das 16.—durchzieht eine eigenartige Todessehnsucht, eine romantische Bejahung des Todes.]335

It is acceptable to interpret REY’s words here as ones of longing for death, but the interpretation of the last things of the Calderonian auto as death, considering that so many of them end with apotheosis and the Lord’s supper after death, is untenable. At any rate, as Walter Benjamin’s work argues, the dominance of vanity does not exclude the possibility of resurrection. Forgetting the ending for a moment and judging by REY’s words alone, there is more to say, and there is another path to walk in the face of them. On the effectual level, REY is of course articulating an experience of being scared to die, but the question remains, which feelings his speech would arouse in the audience. It articulates two experiences of true horror. The exclamations “¡qué rigor!” with regard to the impossibility of travelling backwards in time, and “¡qué horror!” with regard to the idea that Creation  Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 404, emphasis added. Felkel holds a similar view but is not as biased: “At this point the Dance of Death theme is introduced. Death in this play functions as a powerful agent of desengaño.” Felkel does, however, acknowledge that RICO’s sober realisations are not too bleak: “His awareness of life’s brevity does not lead to desengaño, as might be expected, but only to further deception.” Robert W. Felkel, “El gran teatro del mundo of Calderón de la Barca and the Centrality of Grace,” Bulletin of the Comediantes 31, no. 2 (1979): 131ff.  Cf. the section on “Early Modern Vanitas.”  Wille, Spiel der Erlösung, 188f.

148

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

will be undone with the example that a stream, which had developed out of a river, will once more be undone. But another category of emotions is equally in play. That is the sense of something ominous and mysterious.336 “Where am I going?” the king asks. Surely a question that could as easily be grounded in effects of puzzlement and wonder as in terror or despair. The same goes for the cry at the end about such confusion(!). It does not only end with the expression “¡qué horror!” but also with something else. The question, rather than the exclamation, leading up to the last two words replays the initial sense of bewilderment rather than of desperation. The role is not simply experiencing that the world is “smoke, nothing, delirium” (Regalado), but rather that it is also an enigmatic place and exudes a sense of foreboding. This is equally supported by the fact that it is hard to see how these laments of death could be expressions of a character who would rather not have been born. REY is mourning the loss of something—and why would you do that if you were of the Silenian wisdom that it would be better for man never to have been born? In the imagery of geography and water, he is also partaking in MUNDO’s original establishment of Creation as a hermosa compostura which man is clearly capable of enjoying. He can therefore lament the fact that his private death will mean the end of the possibility to admire the beauty of Creation. Once more, the modes of temporality are of relevance to gain new perspectives on the orientation of the text. The imagery of the sea, river, and spring are experiences of present-tense futility as the tendency goes in Regalado and Wille: All is Stasis, emptiness, circularity. This sense becomes unfortunately enforced when Poppenberg references Ecclesiastes as a possible biblical allusion without further comment:337 “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, there they return again” (Eccles. 1:7). This is not a reason for lament in the original text, for the King James Bible misses the Vulgate’s underscoring that the rivers return from where they came that they may keep flowing.338 It is thus the experience of continuity rather than annihilation which is operating here. This is important because the context of this biblical locus is one of immense fame and therefore easily dominates. Eccles. 1:7 is foregrounded by the refrain “vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Eccles 1:2). This is not exactly the emotional state REY is in, and it is not likely to be the effectual status he is supposed to generate. Not only because of the questions of wonder and riddle, rather than terror or horror as described  An effectual status which can be seen to have its parallel in the German Romanticism’s striving to depict das Ahnungsvolle.  Poppenberg, “Note to vv. 995–1004,” 123.  “Revertuntur ut iterum fluant” (VUL., Eccles. 1:7).

“Do Good, for God Is God”

149

above, but also because of the analogy between his death and the way of the world. The stream will run back into the spring, REY says, “and man, who came of its centre, will return to it without being what he was.” The “and” placed in the middle of the verse line in traditional romance metrics emphasises the analogy. The concept of the centre has been used a couple of times, and it is natural to see the parallel to MUNDO’s question who called him forth “from the hard centre of this globe” [“desde el duro centro/ de aqueste globo”] (vv. 27–28). This could be a naturalist tenet where man is of the world in the very literal sense that he only consists of dust. The question is, however, if REY’s words might not as well be seen in the tradition of medieval funeral rites, still known in much of the world today. There are several indications that the tradition of sprinkling earth on the coffin was done with the following wording: “You have made me of the earth and clothed me in flesh. Our saviour, awake me on the last day.” [“De terra plasmasti me et carne induisti me. Redemptor noster resuscita me in novissimo die.”] In a German study of the genesis of this tradition, it has been tracked all the way back to the early Carolingian empire. In what Hieronymus Frank calls the Carolingian primary source, it is identified as the antiphon to Psalm 138 which was a regular part of the funeral rite, identifiable as such already in a ninth-century office found in the city of Saint-Denis.339 Frank subsequently demonstrates that the term was used across Germany as the words said when the priest threw soil on the coffin, at least from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.340 The antiphon was then supplemented by Psalm 138, already in the Carolingian primary source, invoking the motif of kings: “All the kings of the Earth shall praise You, O lord, when they hear the words of Your mouth. Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord” (Psalm 138:4–5). There is of course no way to establish a philologically based claim for a connection to the text of El gran teatro del mundo. The point remains, however, that REY’s famous words of dust and earth do not have to be seen in the context of despair or increasing naturalism. They equally partake in a Christian tradition of the enigmatic clash between the finite nature of the body and man’s cry for resurrection; and Catholic funeral liturgy even invoked the motif of kings at its culmination. As the rivers will one day be undone, and as man was first of the earth, he can thus return to the earth, but this is only half the story. The future temporality of the “last day” is at play and would be known to a contemporaneous audience.

 Hieronymus Frank, “Geschichte des Trierer Beerdigungsritus,” Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 4, no. 2 (1956): 281.  Frank, “Geschichte,” 280; 297.

150

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

This would also be supported by the text’s structuring through the theatrum mundi. The characters in fact already know that death does not constitute the last act, and they often demonstrate this knowledge. But more importantly, they know it from the beginning because they are aware that there will be a judgement of their doings or, if you will, a review of their theatrical performance. The structure of this baroque universe is implying, by its very nature, that the play of life is not the end of all things. Salvation history promises a judgement on the last day, and the world theatre requires a post festum review. This is why REY already during the danse macabre is aware of or can at least sense that there is more to life than dusty death. The use of the theatrum mundi is there to ensure it. It is also why the very last lines before the play-within-the-play are AUTOR’s: “Take care how you perform because the director is watching you from Heaven” [“Ved cómo representáis/ que os ve el autor desde el cielo”] (vv. 636–37). How then to achieve a better conceptual tool to describe the sense of the ominous in REY’s important lines? The intimate link between the motifs of danse macabre and theatrum mundi at least needs to be established further. Kluge mentions the example of how the medieval dance of death apparently uses a horizon of the transitory nature of life but establishes the suggestion that death still is not the final horizon. Calderón is playing with the same notion in the king’s lines.341 Kluge’s example of the baroque analogy to the medieval danse macabre is the still life painting: “For example, when the cornucopia of baroque still lives of decaying natural products is bathed in a chiaroscuro which gives them a supernatural or at least enigmatic glow.”342 Remembering the use of the flower motif, the play draws its own baroque painting of decaying natural products, and REY’s lines here are an abstract version of the baroque painting, a textual chiaroscuro.343 We consequently return to the play’s early idea of the world as “a garden of such beautiful design [. . .], this great painting without practice.” On the surface, REY thinks that the whole horizon of his human experience is that all things lead to the grave, but in fact, he is sensing the enigmatic nature of life under the apparent final horizon of

 It might also be a point that even if death is traditionally ascribed an immensely important place in the iconology of baroque culture, and even if the particular character laments his imminent death, the fact of death does not seem to bother the others much: “How willingly the living console themselves,” [“¡Qué presto se consolaron/ los vivos!”] MUNDO exclaims (vv. 1021–22). Presto could mean either “willingly” implying that REY is disliked, or “quickly” alluding to the fact that death is not of central importance. Fernández Mosquera notes how quickly the death of REY is forgotten. Fernández Mosquera, Calderón, 56.  Kluge, Benjamin, 54.  The concept and thesis of a textual chiaroscuro is elaborated in the section of the same title below.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

151

death. He expresses his confusion that everything in life moves towards the grave, but that man will return to what he was without being what he was: ¡Qué confusión! All this amounts to one explanation why the theatrum mundi fits the Baroque so well and why it works within the Catholic confines of the auto. It builds up an enigmatic light, shining on the apparently meaningless decay of man and world, so clearly expressed in Benjamin’s book on the Baroque. The fundamental equivocal nature of existence emerges where death is a reality but where the beauty of Creation constitutes a counterweight whilst a person is “trapped” between birth and death; where the transition from the theatre of fictions to the theatre of truths through the final apotheosis ensures that there is more to say about it. This is why Kluge’s suggestion of the relevance of the chiaroscuro technique and theme is a better explanation of what is going on than Regalado’s nihilism, Wille’s Romantic longing for death, or Poppenberg’s ecclesiastical sense of vanity. It is important to maintain that the enigmatic existence, caused by the reality of death, is only temporary, or at least not absolute, in the case of El gran teatro del mundo. Just as the medieval danse macabre is analogical to baroque imagery—where neither’s definitive horizon is death, only part of it. REY can temporarily express his confusion and his sense of a different ending than the one human reasoning can bring forth (that everything moves towards the grave), but the point of the play is a transformation of empirical reality, not to merely support the facticity of death and the following futility.344 REY’s own confusion, the attempts at the generation of the effects of a riddle, the reference to the coming judgement of salvation history and the logic of the world theatre imply wonder and bewilderment at the nature of Creation as a theatrum mundi just as much as they imply its pure negation.345

The King’s Three Bodies Another considerable dimension of REY’s role is his assumed place at the top of a medieval socio-political structure. This feature has received its fair amount of attention due to the general focus on ethics. Parker claims that

 Just as the whole reason for writing an auto according to the loa of La segunda esposa is that there are things that reason cannot appreciate, and which religious theatre must therefore show instead.  Re-referring to the method of hermeneutical close-reading and the structure of horizons of meaning, the claim is not that REY’s lines alone become conclusive but that they achieve this meaning when seen in the structure of the text and of specific theological and metaphysical tendencies of the context.

152

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

the excellence and value of El Gran Teatro del Mundo are to be found, more than in the appeal of its allegory, in the humanity of its social and moral teaching. Its strength lies in its affirmation of the social bond and in its denial that the individual can rightly exist in selfsatisfied isolation.346

As a judgement of literary criticism, this is a difficult position in the long run: Parker thinks that the play is excellent because it confirms his own social ideal.347 There is, however, a meta-political-theological configuration in the play which has parallels in Shakespeare’s history plays as well as in later Romanticism and which shows clear signs of a relevant discourse of medievalism. The historian Ernst Kantorowicz canonised what he described as the doctrine of the king’s two bodies in 1957 and ever since, it has had considerable influence on ideas of literary manifestations of kingship in medieval and early modern literature.348 The doctrine is an attempt to explain the configurations of kingship and operates with a division between a body natural and a body politic. What is at stake is an attempt to explain how political power was mystified and justified when a mortal

 Parker, Calderón, 151.  The tradition of evaluating the qualities of the play in relation to politics or ethics continued. Robert L. Fiore strayed a bit in 1975, denying that El gran teatro del mundo is sociological because this entailed a more empirical and less personal-ethical analysis of the human condition, and instead tried to rehabilitate Valbuena Prat’s suggestion that the play be labelled filosófico-moral. Fiore’s reading was published twice. In Fiore’s Drama and Ethos (1975) previously quoted and as “Calderón’s El Gran Teatro del Mundo: An Ethical Interpretation,” Hispanic Review 40, no. 1 (1972): 40–52. Valbuena Prat classified the play as “filosófico-moral” in Historia del teatro español (Barcelona: Noguer, 1956), 370f. In his edition Obras completas, however, he classified it as an auto of the kind filosóficos y teológicos. Valbuena Prat, “Los autos,” 32. In general, there seems to be agreement that the play’s real medievalism lies in its depiction of a Thomistic idea of society and estate. This was also confirmed by Valbuena Prat: “The social order is devised after the Thomist doctrine.” [“Se plantea el orden social según la doctrina tomista.”] Valbuena Prat, “Nota preliminar,” 201. Fiore still focused on Aquinian teachings of ethics in relation to theological law. These readings were taken ad absurdum by Caroll B. Johnson in 1997 when he wrote that “from the perspective of the late 1990s and armed with at least some of the knowledge of Calderón’s society, its ruling orthodoxies and the various challenges to them which recent scholarship, especially in France, has made visible,” Calderón’s “dramatic problem is to present the stratified order realistically [. . .] specifically to call attention to the crisis of agriculture [. . .] and simultaneously to find a way to endorse the same social order because it is divinely ordained.” Johnson, “Social Roles,” 247f, emphasis added. A constructive ethical approach is Rull’s where a foreign conception of society is accepted but invalidated as an interpretative or critical strategy: “To reject the value [of Calderón’s ‘static society’] with reference to the fact that there are no social dynamics is futile–because the author never pretended otherwise.” [“Negar su validez porque en su concepción no hay una dinámica social es inútil porque el autor nunca lo pretendió.”] Rull, Arte y sentido, 73.  Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

“Do Good, for God Is God”

153

person (the body natural) could be identified with his body of subjects (the body politic). The unification of king and subjects was sacramentally upheld and thus the stress on a political theology. Kantorowicz used Shakespeare’s Richard II as his primary example, in fact he claimed that the doctrine was “the very substance and essence” of the play.349 Poppenberg has suggested that REY’s last lines (vv. 1301–4) employ the same configuration: “This political-theological conception is equally integrated in the allegory of the world theatre and becomes part of the structure of the world.” [“Diese politisch-theologische Konzeption wird hier ebenfalls in die Allegorie des Welttheaters eingefügt und so zu einem Teil des Weltgefüges gemacht.”]350 The fundamental difference between REY and Richard lies in the nature of their roles. As Kantorowicz concluded, “the Universal called ‘Kingship’ begins to disintegrate; its transcendental ‘Reality,’ its objective truth and god-like experience, so brilliant shortly before, pales into a nothing, a nomen.”351 Kantorowicz was clearly playing with the move from realism to nominalism in late medieval England; another standard argument for the beginning of modernity. His conclusion was even derived from Richard’s “Hollow Crown” speech where the theatrum mundi and the danse macabre are so brilliantly fused.352 Nonetheless, El gran teatro del mundo does not partake of this logic. Kantorowicz presupposes that the nothing and the nomen are also compatible with the fact that kingship becomes a role. He thus weakens the meaning of the theatrum mundi in Richard II by thinking that the acting metaphor is compatible with scepticist nominalism but not with medieval realism. The theatrum mundi could not possibly be used in the nominalist sense in El gran teatro del mundo—it would destroy the very idea that the world is a stage, and its deep temporality and ontological layering through the imagery of the world theatre would be severely weakened. REY’s development is not one towards the realisation that kingship has no objective reality to which it can correspond. On the contrary, he knows that it is a role from the beginning. What he is to learn is that AUTOR makes sure that the role corresponds to an objective reality. As the characters “are not yet alive” [“mortales que aún no vivís”] (v. 279), AUTOR tells them that he will distribute roles (v. 288) in order to bring them to life, and REY knows that they are all brought to life “in order that we may act” [“para que representemos”] (v. 298). This show ensures from the start that it is serious business, an earnest comedia, not nothing, not liable to the rhetorical question of what, after all, is in a

   

Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 26. Poppenberg, “Note to vv. 1290–304,” 124. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 29. Shakespeare, Richard II, 3.2.160–64.

154

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

name, and REY knows it: “It’s very important that we do not fail at such a mysterious comedia” [“mucho importa que no erremos/ comedia tan misteriosa”]353 (vv. 439–40). The role-play of human existence is thus not a thing to be “seen through” or dissolved but the foundation for the seriousness of life. But another theology of kingship is still at play, and REY is generally receptive to this fact. As REY suggests that everyone “paints a picture” of their view of life as part of the play-within-the-play, he does so in the form of a sonnet. Part of it goes: Para regir tan desigual, tan fuerte Monstruo de muchos cuellos, me concedan Los cielos atenciones más felices, Ciencia me den con que a regir acierte, Que es imposible que domarse puedan Con un yugo no más tantas cervices. (vv. 969–74) [To rule such a diverse, such a powerful, many-headed monster, Heaven grant me its most blessed favour. May it give me knowledge that helps me rule correctly, for it is impossible to bend so many necks with one single yoke.]354

Like Richard, REY sees the divine foundation for his legitimate role, but his danse macabre does not lead him to a pessimistic experience on the world stage, even if life remains misteriosa to him. Instead, his answer to the call of death is a meditation of the temporalities: He sees his life linearly from cradle to grave. He sees the world cyclically in the odd fact that rivers which sprang from the sea shall once more be one with the sea, and the man who came from the centre of the world shall return to it. And he sees it in the contingent repetitions of new fates: “The humility of some, the riches of others, are the triumphs of discretions of fate“ [”la humilidad de unos, de otros la riqueza,/ triunfo son al arbitrio de los hados”] (vv. 966–78). But all in light of God’s time for “if my role has come to an end, great and divine author, forgive my trespassings, for I am contrite” [“si ya acabó mi papel,/ supremo y divino Autor,/ dad a mis yerros disculpa,/ pues arrepentido estoy”] (vv. 1003–6). For this reason, it might be more appropriate to speak of the doctrine of the king’s three bodies in this case: the linear-human, the cyclical-natural, and the eternal-godly. This could then be another example of the “interference of the

 Parker claims that REY, like HERMOSURA, is “deaf to the prompting.” Parker, Calderón, 136. That is questionable.  The choice of “monstruo,” a mythological monster, is interesting. Autoridades defines its common sense as something “against nature,” but also “anything excessive or extraordinary.”

“Do Good, for God Is God”

155

spheres” between Heaven and Earth which Poppenberg calls the basic structure of the play. His example is the double trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, compared to Maria, Jesus, and Joseph in Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s painting Las dos trinidades (ca. 1640).355 It certainly is an example of how the role of kingship becomes “part of the world structure” [“Teil des Weltgefüges”].356 It is a way that the world theatre represents a realist position of meaning, not a nominalist one of a contingent nomen. It is also tempting to see a connection to the play’s heavy emphasis on the three laws as the figure of salvation history: Natural law is cyclical, written law is temporal, and the law of grace is eternal. The king’s three bodies correspond to the temporal and the spatial structures of the very universe. That is how kingship becomes “part of the world structure.” There is a macro-historical fruit to be reaped as well. The theatrum mundi is overwhelmingly popular in the Antique and in the early modern period but is rare in medieval literature.357 The danse macabre, on the other hand, is highly popular in the Middle Ages. So, what do we learn from Calderón’s combination? Uwe Pörksen notes that there is a connection between the dance of death and the medieval pyramid of estates. He seems to think that the Ständepyramide is automatically implied by the dance of death because it allegorises types from the estate society of the Middle Ages; the king, the bishop, the farmer, the beggar, but also that it is often “reversed” [“wird umgekehrt”] because many of the medieval illustrations show that those who fly the highest fall the deepest.358 From the historic-comparative perspective, we can call this a medievalism in Calderón because the social structure of his times is normally not considered to be of the same as in medieval society,359 even if Calderón’s own social-political teachings are seen to be Thomistic. It is tempting to interpret Calderón’s play-within-the-play and the damnation of RICO as a social critique and consider the general assignment of roles a discomforting fact of the play of life. This would also mean that the danse macabre could be seen as a subversive element on the mentality horizon of early modern Spain.360 But through the aid of Gert Kaiser’s edition of medieval versions of the danse macabre,361 Pörksen sees that even  Poppenberg, “Nachwort,” 142.  Poppenberg, “Note to vv. 1290–304,” 124.  With John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (ca. 1159) and Dante’s Divina Commedia (1320) as notable exceptions.  Pörksen, “Der Totentanz,” 249.  Cf. Maravall’s idea of a social crisis in Calderón’s times.  Even if New Historicism has proven more popular within English studies, it is surely applicable to the Iberian Peninsula. “Subversion and containment” has become a popular concept after Stephen Greenblatt’s essay “Invisible Bullets” from 1988. Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 21–65.  Gert Kaiser, Der tanzende Tod: Mittelalterliche Totentänze (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1982).

156

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

if the pyramid is turned upside down, it is rather a matter of showing that all are equal in death. The development of the medieval danse macabre in the form of the constant “expansion of the personnel” [“Erweiterungen des Personals”] clearly shows, according to Pörksen and Kaiser, that the focus of the pyramid is to represent all types of society, not to subvert its structure: “The death dance of the characters in the end turns to all estates” [“wendet sich am Schluss an alle Stände”].362 Pörksen therefore points out that the equalisation of all in death is not to be confounded with “social, revolutionary ideas.”363 The general argument can be extended to Calderón through the present interpretation. His social pyramid and the complaints about the assigned lots in life are not necessarily there to generate social dissatisfaction amongst the audience or to demonstrate existential futility in the face of pre-established life patterns through the type of your role. The realism of the notion of role and REY’s prayer that Heaven grant him strength rather points to metaphysical notions of the structure of the world than to political ideas of subversion.

“In the Souls, Beauty Rules” HERMOSURA’s end is structurally similar to REY’s in plot and verse. It begins with a sonnet, describing her image of life (vv. 1025–38), then VOZ proclaims her end and she continues (as did REY) to ponder the riddles of existence in the face of death: “A sad song says that beauty must perish” [“que fallezca la hermosura/ dice una triste canción”] (vv. 1047–48). She thinks that the king’s reign is over bodies and hers over souls. Or, to put it differently: The king reigns in the external realm, she in the internal: “My realm is primary, for in souls beauty rules” [“mi imperio es el primero,/ pues que reina en las almas la hermosura”] (vv. 1031–32). It is in fact not false that beauty, not worldly power, tends to reign in and over the souls of mankind in the theatrum mundi, but the problem is that HERMOSURA does not understand that this idea of beauty cannot be segregated from heavenly beauty and that it is thus entirely contingent on AUTOR. Even REY acknowledges this as he is attentive to the fact that the only way to rule a vast empire such as his is the way through the favour of Heaven. HERMOSURA forgets that the same is true of her reign over souls. Both MUNDO and VOZ have to remind her. First MUNDO in the lines after HERMOSURA’s sonnet: No se acuerda de Ezequiel Cuando dijo que trocó

 Pörksen, “Der Totentanz,” 249.  Pörksen, “Der Totentanz,” 249.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

157

La soberbia a la hermosura En fealdad la perfección. (vv. 1039–42) [She does not remember Ezequiel who said that pride of beauty changed perfection into ugliness.]

The reference is to Ezek. 28:17: “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendour.” This is an adequate reference because it does not deny the value of beauty—it is, in fact, “perfection” and something to lift the heart; but it can corrupt if its source and basis are misjudged as is the case for segregated worldly beauty. The last part of the referenced Ezekiel verse is an example of the scale of Calderón’s technical genius and intuitive use of biblical echoes. Ezekiel continues: “I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings that they might gaze at you.” The brilliant technical part consists in the way a biblical allusion is used to imply the difference between REY and HERMOSURA’s images of life conveyed through the sonnets: “I laid you before kings.”364 Even though beauty and theatrum mundi are so clearly linked in the case of Calderón, this passage and HERMOSURA’s role in general are not there to discredit the absolute metaphor of the world as a stage; it is about correcting wrong conceptions of it and false expectations about it.365 Paul teaches that the world is a stage with the substantial rather than accidental attributes of the cosmic and the comic—as is the case in Calderón. But this does not mean that things cannot go wrong in the world theatre or that everyone will be saved, just because the world is a wonder and acted in the genre of a comedia. At this point in the play,

 As previously noted, the preferred English edition of the Bible in the present book is the New King James Version. For the same reason, these biblical arguments of resonance are somewhat limited by the fact that Calderón would have used the Vulgate. In Latin, however, the nouns of beauty and of kings are equally applied: “In decore tuo”; “ante faciem regum” (VUL., Ezek. 28:17). Douay-Rheims, the only English version to correspond to the Vulgate, concurs: “And thy heart was lifted up with thy beauty: thou hast lost thy wisdom in thy beauty, I have cast thee to the ground: I have set thee before the face of kings, that they might behold thee” (D-R., Ezek. 28:17).  The “we” here is intended to note that this is a point where it is not reasonable to assume that an audience would pick up lines from Ezekiel which are not even mentioned on the stage. “We” are thus later scholars of the play who are allowed to speculate about Calderón’s intuitive way of creating connections between parts and whole in his art. Possibly beyond his conscious intentions. This is a similar line of thinking as when talking about “academic” or “made” medievalisms in Calderón in the sense that he did not intend them himself but that they are a meaningful way to describe textual and historiographical issues in his work.

158

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

damnation is imminent for HERMOSURA, but that fact would not be an argument against the justificatory world theatre. After MUNDO’s ingenious allusion to Ezekiel, the danse macabre continues as VOZ proclaims the death of HERMOSURA in the song: VOZ (canta) Toda la hermosura humana Es una temprana flor: Marchítese, pues la noche Ya de su aurora llegó. (vv. 1043–46) [VOICE (singing). All human beauty is an early flower. It must wither, for night came soon after its daybreak.]

VOZ’s argument is of an ontological nature and not essentially different from MUNDO’s: All human beauty will wither because it is subject to the temporal dynamics of cyclical time; dusk eventually follows dawn. This is a reason for personal anguish but in no way is it an argument for the play’s dance of death as the Silenian idea of better-not-being-born or of Romantic longing for death. The play has consciously prepared the characters and the audience for the fact that reality consists of several temporalities other than the cyclical one. Even cyclical temporality is defended in its own right with the usual reference to the theatrum mundi and with the aid of Platonism. HERMOSURA asks how it is possible that she is finite: Si eterna soy ¿cómo puedo Fallecer? ¿Qué dices, voz? VOZ (canta). Que en el alma eres eterna Y en el cuerpo mortal flor. (vv. 1071–74) [If I am eternal, how can I perish? What do you say, Voice? VOICE (singing). That in your soul, you are eternal, and in your body, you are a mortal flower.]

Theatrically seen, there will be a new role tomorrow—the body of the characters dies, the soul of the actor lives on. Platonically speaking, the form of beauty lives on, the instantiation of it dies like a mortal flower. HERMOSURA’s soul will continue to the judgement, her body go to the ground.366 The cyclical nature of VOZ’s

 There is general agreement about HERMOSURA’s Platonism. Cf. Fernández Mosquera, Calderón, 60f.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

159

argument in the above is continued until the last character, DISCRECIÓN, must leave the stage. As she dies, she discerns in a similar way. First Platonically in the sense that although she must now die, “religion” cannot end. She can therefore perish because “I am not religion itself but a member” [“porque yo no soy/ la Religión, sino un miembro”] (vv. 1240–41). The instantiation of the form dies. But no more than that. Secondly with the vocation of the identity of world and stage: DISCRECIÓN gets the last words before the globe of the world closes: Con que doy, Por hoy fin a la comedia Que mañana hará el Autor: Enmendaos para mañana Los que veis los yerros de hoy. (vv. 1246–50) [With this I conclude, for today, the comedia which the author will make tomorrow. Better yourself for tomorrow, you who see the errors of today.]

There is an element of the pastoral tradition of admonition involved in the imperative: better yourself. But with all the above elements in mind and its parallels in the text, this passage just as easily read as an attempt at consolation in the sense that the death of the characters is not inferred from the exclusively finite nature of the lives of mankind. DISCRECIÓN’s end has bearing on our possibilities to understand HERMOSURA’s because DISCRECIÓN’s ethos as a member of “religion” is surely of a dignified nature. She sanctions and defends the cyclical part of the temporality of the world, which is the one HERMOSURA primarily partakes in as well. The form of the beautiful and the form of the good are co-extensive. In this sense, we might not entirely need to see HERMOSURA’s sonnet as “the peak of her narcissistic arrogance” [“Gipfel ihres narzisstischen Hochmuts”].367 Poppenberg concludes this on the basis that HERMOSURA calls herself “a divinity” [“una deidad”] (v. 1036) and a “small heaven” [“pequeño cielo”] (v. 1038). Considering that she is warned with reference to Ezekiel, it is not wrong to see the arrogance of her claim; but it is still kept in relation to God’s time: Her realm of beauty is to be based on God’s realm. This can be seen in the complex and beautiful sonnet pronounced by HERMOSURA just before she is called to the grave. This yields yet another ancient commonplace: Viendo estoy mi beldad hermosa y pura; Ni al rey envidio ni sus triunfos quiero, Pues más ilustre imperio considero Que es el que mi belleza me asegura,

 Poppenberg, “Note to vv. 1027–40,” 123.

160

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Porque si el rey avasallar procura Las vidas, yo las almas; luego infiero Con causa que mi imperio es el primero, Pues que reina en las almas la hermosura. Pequeño mundo la filosofía Llamó al hombre; si en él mi imperio fundo, Como el cielo lo tiene, como el suelo, Bien puede presumir la deidad mía Que el que al hombre llamó pequeño mundo Llamará a la mujer pequeño cielo. (vv. 1025–38)368 [I see my fair and pure beauty; I neither envy the king, nor do I wish for his triumphs, since I consider my realm, which my beauty ensures me, nobler: For if the king subjects bodies, I do the same with souls. I therefore with good cause infer that my realm is primary, for in souls, beauty rules. Philosophy has called man a small world; If I base my realm on him, [and] since both Heaven and Earth have each theirs, I may well presume, in my divinity, that he who called man a small world will call woman a small heaven.]

The topos of man as a microcosmos is closely linked to the theatrum mundi, and both are Pre-Socratic commonplaces. As already argued, the theatrum mundi covers an experience of purpose and the world as a home, not a place of hostility. Such is also the case of the topos of man as a small world. In a monograph on the development of this topos in Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the Siglo de Oro, Francisco Rico shows how the image of man as a microcosmos is built to communicate coherence between mankind and his surroundings, between existence and Creation. Rico shows that this is observable in Pythagoras’ comparison of the universe to the soul. Both are “alive” [“viva”] and the universe and man are therefore not essentially foreign to each other but “in harmony” [“conciertan”] and “demonstrate an essential compliance” [“muestran una conformidad esencial”].369 This invokes a sense of man’s home in the great world, not his feeling of alienation. HERMOSURA, by logical necessity, asserts that God and the world are analogous without being identical as seen with the metaphor of the world stage; just because the world is finite, it is not foreign to God. Only to see HERMOSURA’s narcissism in

 The spacing is used to underscore that this important speech is kept in the form of the sonnet and to make the rhymes easily identifiable. In the 1655 version, there is no spacing. Calderón de la Barca, Autos sacramentales con quatro comedias, 246.  Francisco Rico, El pequeño mundo del hombre: Varia fortuna de una idea en las letras españolas (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1970), 13f.

“Do Good, for God Is God”

161

this way of thinking would be a way to lose sight of the metaphysical implications to which the play is so attentive. Fernández Mosquera has alluded to the Neoplatonic teachings of the precedence of the soul over the body and to the intrinsic value of the form of the beautiful. In his erudite study of the topos, Rico furthermore suggests the continuity in this line of thinking by pointing to Aurelius Ambrosius’ (ca. 340–397) teachings on the Hexameron. This means, according to Rico, that because Adam was created on the last day, he “crowned and comprised” [“coronaba, compendiándolas”] the rest of creation.370 Rico suggests that this means that traditionally, this commonplace has led to a “positive interpretation and Calderón does not diverge from that” [“la interpretación positiva, y don Pedro no lo hace de otro modo”].371 Rico therefore also asserts that the use of this commonplace is part of the “imago mundi calderoniano”372 and must thereby be linked to the other absolute metaphors. This one, as well, is one which seems to be added to the existentially comforting ones rather than being one of pessimism. If Rico is granted this argument, HERMOSURA’s invocation of the ancient commonplace of man as a microcosmos works to assert another parallel between man and the world rather than a negation; they are words and worlds of consolation. Furthermore, this parallel is in fact doubled by HERMOSURA’s wordplay that if man is a small world, woman is a small Heaven, for it establishes a link between divine beauty and the beauty of the world. The latter can degenerate into narcissism if the universe is detached from its surroundings but by argument of analogy, HERMOSURA also underscores that the beauty of the world is real and that it has divine origins, which, in essence, is why the world is a great work of art. The question why beauty “rules” in the soul of mankind still remains, and the text once more demonstrates its complexity, and its concord with the Platonic way of thinking of the two ways of the theatrum mundi; plaything or purpose. HERMOSURA’s claim of ruling in the soul of men could of course be a way to stage the folly of mankind, its degenerate nature, and her megalomania. It would equally be a way of staging the emptiness of the world in the sense that beauty is reduced to the weakness of the flesh. Man is thereby made a plaything to the evil powers that created him or to his own egoistic nature. On the other hand, with Rico’s suggestion of Neoplatonism in mind and the present study’s comprehensive argumentation for the analogous nature of the metaphysics of the play and of the text’s own logic, it could equally be a way to show how beauty flows into the world; and how arguments of beauty are not futile in a world which is a work of

 Rico, El pequeño mundo, 246.  Rico, El pequeño mundo, 246.  Rico, El pequeño mundo, 246.

162

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

art. In fact, poetry might be the best medium to convey such a mighty truth, as there are things reason cannot understand but are still true—as we know from La segunda esposa. This would also be a reason why beauty rules in the soul in the world theatre of celebration.

Beautiful Apologies Such a way of thought can be expanded and justified through another kindred image which to a great extent accompanies the theatrum mundi in the play, and which sums up the complex ways in which REY and HERMOSURA are in fact related. In a difficult passage after the characters have left the stage, MUNDO positions himself at the grave door and states that he will demand back the characters’ props because they only belonged to the company as long as they were acting on the stage of life (v. 1266): The players must leave the world as dust “for as dust they came” [“polvo salgan de mí, pues polvo entraron”] (v. 1270). This line is open to interpretations of a deeply pessimistic and modern sentiment: In a study like VivesFerrándiz’, this is what is offered, and it therefore constitutes a fine example of the tendency in recent scholarship to assume an inherent logic between modernity, pessimism, and world theatre. Vives-Ferrándiz quotes MUNDO’s words and relates them to baroque iconology of the calavera, the skull or the death’s-head. He connects this relation to Cavaille’s claim that “the general crisis which shook Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which opened up the possibility of Modernity, was related [. . .] to the theatricality with which the world is understood” [“la crisis general que sacude Europa en los siglos XVI y XVII y que da paso a la Modernidad estaría relacionada [. . .] con la teatralidad con la que se entiende el mundo”].373 After incursions into various uses of the trope, quoting Calderón and Boissard in one breath as Lynda Christian had done, Vives-Ferrándiz concludes that “in this way, the image of the world, the stage, is based on instability and transience because nothing permanent exists [así, la imagen del mundo, el escenario, se basa en la inestabilidad y la fugicidad porque no hay nada duradero].”374 This interpretation expresses a legitimate early modern sense of crisis related to the theatrum mundi, and it would be an entirely feasible argument, for instance in the case of Macbeth, who, as already suggested, likens the human life span to a walk “to dusty death” (5.5.23, emphasis added).

 Vives-Ferrándiz, Vanitas, 183.  Vives-Ferrándiz, Vanitas, 192.

Beautiful Apologies

163

Textual and Metaphorical Chiaroscuros The point is that this is only half the story which the text of El gran teatro del mundo attempts to tell. Recalling REY’s confusion, the audience by now knows something that “the world” has perhaps forgotten; that man has to return to Earth without being what he was. After the stripping of the king’s props, it is HERMOSURA’s turn. On the surface, it might seem like her dialogue with MUNDO constitutes an expression of baroque desengaño. She was given “perfect beauty” (v. 1312), but it “remained in the grave” (v. 1313). According to MUNDO, it makes Creation full of astonishment (v. 1314) to realise how brief a moment worldly beauty lasts. But this is not an expression of straightforward pessimism either. Once more it might as well convey the ominous riddle of life: Pasmóse aquí la gran naturaleza Viendo cuán poco la hermosura dura, Que aun no viene a parar adonde empieza, Pues al querer cobrarla yo, no puedo: Ni la llevas ni yo con ella quedo. [. . .] La belleza no puedo haber cobrado, Que expira con el dueño la belleza. (vv. 1314–22) [Great nature marvelled to see how briefly beauty lasts and that she does not end where she begins; I cannot ask for it back when I want to, you do not carry it anymore, and I cannot keep it [. . .] I cannot take beauty back; it fades away with its owner.]

This is a lament of worldly decay. But there is also a layer of bewilderment, of puzzlement, and it has its parallel in REY’s metaphysical wonder how he could be of the earth and return to the earth without being what he was. It is surely the same question which MUNDO poses: How can it end where it did not begin? And as beauty is highly real, where does it go? These questions are not necessarily identical to assumptions of annihilation. That we should rather see this as a riddle rather than as a lamentation is underscored in HERMOSURA’s answer—because it is false. Where is the beauty, MUNDO asks, and tells her to give it back (in apparent contradiction to what he just said), and HERMOSURA answers that she cannot: Toda la consumió la sepultura. Allí dejé matices y colores, [. . .] Allí eclipsé esplendores y reflejos, Allí aun no toparás sombras y lejos. (vv. 1326–34)

164

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

[The grave consumed it all. There I left shading and colour. [. . .] There I dimmed the splendours and reflections; there you will not even come across shadow and depth.]

There is a degree of ambiguity. MUNDO is talking about “la beldad” (v. 1324) which was left behind when HERMOSURA left the stage just as REY left “la majestad” (v. 1319) behind. The definitive form could allude to the fact that MUNDO thinks the reality of death so conclusive that it annihilates any possible splendour of the human condition in the forms of majesty and beauty.375 It could, however, also simply mean that HERMOSURA has left her particular participation in the form of beauty behind, applying the pictorial terms of sombras and lejos. Neither of the cases would constitute a wholly bleak horizon of decay. In the former scenario she would be wrong, and the textual logic seems to anticipate it in that she ends up making a structural reference to the cosmogenesis of the play: HERMOSURA thinks that the painting-like nature of the world is abolished because she considers her death the final horizon—apparently forgetting the division between eternal soul and finite body. But the play has been carefully showing its audience that she is mistaken. HERMOSURA alludes to the disappearance of “splendours and reflections” [“esplendores y reflejos”] and of the “shadow and depth” [“sombras y lejos”] in the above. But they will not disappear with her death for the ontotheology of the play has been teaching us that they were there before her. This refers to the first lines of the entire play where the “beautiful composition of the earthly architecture” (vv. 1–2) can acquire the reflections of the divine between sombras y lejos as well. At the same time, HERMOSURA is talking of life in the grave; there, no “grandeur and reflections” are to be found. But the play—as do all autos—moves towards Eucharistic restoration and, therefore, the grave does not have the final say. This is what AUTOR sees when he observes the good nature of his creation. With the literal repetition of these first words of the play, a relatively clear reference within the logic of the text is established and should be taken into account when listening to HERMOSURA’s words: The world is beautiful in its reflection of Heaven before her existence and after her death, and it will be restored fully in the Eucharistic transformation at the end. All this can be forgotten by a particular character in the play, but her perspective of position of speech should not be that of the interpreter or the audience.

 But we should not automatically trust MUNDO. Although he holds a privileged place in the dramaturgical hierarchy, especially due to his long opening salvation history of the world, he is still just the world, and in theological terms, the wisdom of the world is foolishness (1 Cor. 3:19).

Beautiful Apologies

165

HERMOSURA’s reference to the shadows, depths, grandeur, and reflections, along with REY’s ominous sense of foreboding in the face of death, gives cause for the development of the concept of textual chiaroscuros. The technique is a famous phenomenon in baroque painting and has a somewhat symbolic use in the newer tradition of early modern drama studies. Poppenberg uses an example of it on the front cover of his Psyche und Allegorie: Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei. Kluge subsequently made it a quintessential image of transformation in her Baroque, Allegory, Comedia. In the latter, the chiaroscuro becomes the paradigmatic example of a baroque tendency towards “paradoxical identity of the literal and the spiritual.”376 The best tool to understand this identity of literal and spiritual has already been suggested as the medieval Quadriga and Martin Heidegger’s extension of it through the ecstasies of time. Kluge uses the painting of the Agnus Dei as an example of how the Baroque establishes a puzzling encounter between apparent physical decay and religious transformation: “Bathed with a characteristic baroque chiaroscuro lighting, which seems aimed at producing an uneasy awareness of the twilight of terrestrial existence in the beholder, Zurbarán’s lamb presents itself as a kind of enigma.”377 Kluge then uses the fourfold interpretation of Scripture on the painting to argue that the religious transformation (or simply the spiritual meaning of the work of art) simultaneously covers the three different levels of meaning identified by Aquinas in Scripture. REY’s words of apparent despair are a way of conjuring up the same effects which chiaroscuro paintings create: the sense of an encounter between literal death and a spiritual transformation of reality. This is the intended meaning of the term “textual chiaroscuros” offered here. We have seen several examples of how bewilderment in the face of death opens up horizons of spiritual meaning through Aquinas’ description of them as allegorical, moral, and anagogical. They also open the temporal aspects of these textual sides of interpretation in the multilayering of time, inherent in the Quadriga. The technique of the chiaroscuro is one way of accessing these spiritual senses. El gran teatro del mundo does not even confine itself to operating on this formal level of poetry with textual versions but also in the more figurative sense of using the metaphor of the world painting: The world was originally full of “beautiful images” [“bellísimos dibujos”] (v. 104) and was itself a “great painting without practice” [“gran lienzo sin estudio”] (v. 108). This is the figurative sense in which the play could be said to prepare a chiaroscuro of its own. If HERMOSURA can be said to call forth the typical puzzling existence due to her (non-conclusive)

 Kluge, Baroque, 52.  Kluge, Baroque, 53.

166

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

anxiety as she is required to give back her props, it begs the question whether her use of the words sombras, lejos, esplendores, and reflejos are not meant in the sense of a painting. In the opening lines, sombras y lejos (v. 3) could simply mean the great fields, valleys, and wastelands of the world although the imagery of shadow and perspective of course must also have the art-related meanings, enforced during MUNDO’s comparisons. Poppenberg solves this problem in his translation by straying from the strict coherence of the text. In the original, the reader will be able to establish the relation of part and whole in the text because HERMOSURA uses the same words as AUTOR in his first speech. In the German translation, they are Schatten und Weiten in v. 3 but Schattierungen und Perspektiven in v. 1334; a metonymical shift from geology to art. What is lost in relation between part and whole is won in ambiguity between creation and artwork. Autoridades for instance gives exactly two meanings of lejos: “Means something with great distance” and “in painting, it means that which is painted with diminution” [“en diminución”]. It is thus a productive ambiguity but also worth noticing that Autoridades would likely favour the art-related meaning when used as a noun. The sense of the paintedness of the world, an imago mundi, is thus also operating in the play. It is also a motif which resounds in the outer horizon of the text; Calderón’s Tratado from 1677 in favour of painting as one of the artes liberales. Not only does it enhance our understanding of Calderón’s love of the art of painting. Calderón began his testimony before the court with the assertion that he had always had a natural inclination towards painting and had therefore studied its classical definitions. He then told the court—as already quoted—that the best definition he had found was that “painting is almost a copy of God’s Creation and an emulation of Nature“ [”la Pintura un casi remedo de las Obras de Dios, y emulación de la Naturaleza”].378 At a somewhat esoteric locus, Calderón finally explicates a fundamental assertion in his (Catholic) way of thinking which is of acute relevance to the argument that his world theatre would be one of celebration, namely that emulation or mimesis of nature would always-already be a representation of God’s works. There is a twofold conclusion to be drawn from that line of thinking. First, the sentence “Creation is a work of art” would thus be a rhetorical tautology or at least an analytically true proposition. In Calderón’s world theatre, it is not better not to live on the world stage, but good to be there because it is God’s work of art, his Creatio. Secondly, Calderón reminds us once more of the positive ambiguity of the word obra. Man’s good deeds and God’s good work (of art) have the same etymology in the text’s outer horizon.

 Calderón, “Tratado,” 91.

Beautiful Apologies

167

The auto with the telling name of El pintor de su deshonra (ca. 1645) illuminates the theme. The cosmogenesis is this time put in the words of Lucifer who uses painting as imagery for the creation of the world by God: En el principio era el lienzo A la imprimación tan bronco Que solamente una sombra Le manchaba los contornos.379 [In the beginning was the painting, but the priming so crude that only a shadow stained the outline.]

In the course of the six days, God creates it all so well that you cannot tell what is painted and what is alive: Él mismo dijo era bueno, Complaciéndose gustoso Al ver que vivo y pintado No se distingue uno de otro. (vv. 191–94) [God said that it was good, indulging in pleasure when seeing that living and painted could not be distinguished from each other.]

This quite different auto can suggest once more that the world as a work of art is a popular idea in the Calderonian text corpus. The world is good as it is, and the fact that you have a hard time distinguishing living from painted is not a reason for its devaluation. The point where this auto diverges from El gran teatro del mundo is interesting. NATURALEZA finally steps out of the painting, allegorising the creation of man. But human nature “faints into the arms of guilt” [“cae desmayada en brazos de la CULPA”], and PINTOR,380 in his rage, floods the world by way of using water to wash off the painting from the canvas: Ya el Mundo a brazo partido Luchando está con las olas,

 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El pintor de su deshonra, ed. Alan K. G. Paterson (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2011), vv. 159–62. Further references to this work in the present section in brackets in the body text. The allusions to Genesis and to the Prologue of John are obvious. Poppenberg has elaborated the philosophical context in “Pro fano: Zu El pintor de su deshonra (comedia und auto) sowie zu Las meninas und Las hilanderas von Velázquez,” in Zwischen dem Heiligen und dem Profanen: Religion, Mythologie, Weltlichkeit in der spanischen Literatur und Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Wolfram Nitsch and Bernhard Teuber (Munich: Wilhelm Vink Verlag, 2008), 425.  The obvious counterpart to AUTOR in El gran teatro del mundo.

168

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Ya se rinde, ya fallece, Ya agoniza, ya se ahoga. (vv. 983–86) [Now the world is already fighting with all its strength against the waves, now it gives up, now it perishes, now it agonises, now it drowns.]

PINTOR, however, takes a canvas on which the ark of Noah is painted and throws it away in order for world and man to survive. The covenant between God and man is thereby maintained, and this sets Lucifer on his second mission. He makes CULPA drive a nail through the forehead of man with the argument that Yo Sabré borrarte, de forma Que en la fealdad de tu rostro Quien te hizo te desconozca. (vv. 1247–50) [I will know how to erase you in such a way that your maker does not recognise you from the hideousness of your face.]

Lucifer thinks that to take away the beauty of the world is to break the covenant between God and man. A decisive difference from Protestant thinking.381 He enforces this with the thought that Borrémosle de una vez Porque en esperanzas locas No fíe Dios esta imagen. (vv. 1253–55) [Let us erase it at once because through false expectation, God will not trust this image.]

The role of Lucifer is thus to make the world and man lose their status as created in God’s image so that neither God nor man would recognise the affinity; whereby the reverse must also count, namely that in its beauty and its obra-like quality, the world has affinity to God. It is not merely polvo. In El pintor de su deshonra, the covenant is restored by PINTOR using three nails to paint a new picture whereby the covenant is restored through the allegory of Christ. El pintor de su deshonra is a much more dogmatic auto than El gran teatro del mundo. As discussed in the section on “The Fall of Man in the Theatrum Mundi,” there is not really any fall in the

 Curtius describes it as if Lucifer “decides to destroy its beauty” [“er beschließt, ihre Schönheit zu zerstören”]. Curtius, “Calderón und die Malerei,” 131, but there might be a point in the original that he only talks in the negative of the world’s possible fealdad. Satan only speaks in negatives.

Beautiful Apologies

169

latter, and it can be added that the passion of Christ and the resurrection are only present in the transposed sense of the final Eucharist. El pintor de su deshonra replays the biblical account from Creation to the passion whereby the loss of the old covenant and its restoration in the new is contained in a relatively traditional fashion. The point is that the representation of the world as a theatre—largely lacking the fall of man—means that the presence of divine beauty is retained throughout El gran teatro del mundo. The covenant is not broken because everything has become fiction or “unreal.” On the contrary, the covenant remains in place the whole time because of the beauty of the world. Through this quality, its affinity to God is always recognisable in the play. The covenant relies on the very form of beauty. It is an open question whether such a theology is heretical, but it sustains an apologetic implication of the theatrum mundi. The two plays converge on another level. El pintor de su deshonra’s basic tenet is what Poppenberg has called the “In-the-Beginning-Was-the-Canvas” [“Das Am-Anfang-war-die-Leinwand”].382 He sees it as a reply to the prologue of St. John and thereby also the play’s dogmatic trends as an interface between word theology and image theology. This is the part where El gran teatro del mundo and El pintor de su deshonra are alike. Not solely in the preference of image over word but in fashioning the art-like nature of Creation. In this sense, El pintor de su deshonra can be used as a corrective to exaggeratedly secular readings of El gran teatro del mundo: The former affirms that the art-like nature of reality does not necessarily contradict Catholic dogma, but it lies far from modern, Lutheran preferences towards exclusive logocentric theology. We might here have encountered another partial explanation for El gran teatro del mundo’s success and quality in that it is highly totalising; not only does it sense and show how the genres and images of music, theatre, and painting can work together, it also uses a motif as painting in several intertwined ways. The play demonstrates awareness of being some form of multi-generic performance which once more brings it into relation to ceremonial cult and ritual because it plays on so many tangents at once as do such ritualistic phenomena as the original Dionysia, the Catholic mass, the auto sacramental, and the drama of the German Romantics, Wagner included.383 In the

 Poppenberg, “Pro fano,” 431.  Other commentators prefer to see this totality of genre as a relatively early expression of opera. Cf. Alice M. Pollin, “Calderón de la Barca and Music: Theory and Examples in the Autos (1675–1681),” Hispanic Review 41, no. 2 (1973): 362. Pollin herself thinks that “sacred opera” is a better term (362n1). There is something constructive to this parallel, but it tends to ignore that the auto organically grew out of the liturgical Middle Ages and thereby the suggestion of seeing the autos as opera somehow contributes to the harmful way of seeing Calderón as a “first modern.”

170

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

larger picture, it is also this existential threshold which El gran teatro del mundo is circling around: the transition from one kind of theatre (of fiction) to another (of truth). Two important conclusions follow from this section on textual and metaphorical chiaroscuros. REY and HERMOSURA have more in common than one might think, and their deaths share a distinctive feature of the riddled aggravations of finite time. But with the suggestion of the technique and metaphor of the chiaroscuro, and with the general aid of the theatrum mundi, the dismay at their own immanent passing is not an expression of conclusive despair brought forth by a play staging the finality of the horizon of death. Otis Green once rejected the possibility of seeing Segismundo’s complaint about being born as the formulation of a doctrine of pessimism. It was, Green claimed, “to mistake the groaning of the as yet unenlightened dramatic personage Segismundo for the conviction of the playwright.”384 This is an argument transferrable to the auto’s theatrum mundi. The chiaroscuro technique lets a paradoxical light shine on the scuffles of human life, but maintaining the structure of text, genre, and universe in mind, the existential riddle of death will be solved in due time.

The Judgement On the ethical level, one could object to the general argument of a fiesta in the world theatre with reference to both REY’s passing dismay at the confusion of existence or HERMOSURA’s failure to play her part well. This line of argument would then be extended through the further unfortunate events in the judgement of the characters after the play-within-the-play is over. MUNDO strips the characters of their props, and they realise that all are equal in death and judgement. POBRE gets to introduce the coming judgement and possible ascension to God with a blurring of the boundary between theatre and religion: POBRE Autor del cielo y la tierra, Ya tu compañía toda, Que hizo de la vida humana Aquella comedia corta, A la gran cena que tú Ofreciste, llega; corran

 Green, Spain and the Western Tradition, vol. 4, 386f.

Beautiful Apologies

171

Las cortinas de tu solio Aquellas cándidas hojas. (vv. 1429–36) [Author of Heaven and Earth, now your whole troupe, which made that short comedia of human life, arrives at the great supper which you offered; let the stage curtains of your throne fall, those white pages.]385

POBRE is repeating MUNDO’s observation that the troupe will now move from the theatre of fictions to the theatre of truths. These lines further emphasise that fiction and truth are two different things but that both are theatre—once more rendering it hard to claim that the play is working to show that theatre is illusion.386 POBRE is also repeating another important lack of difference between theatre and religion in the re-use of the cortina, the front curtain of the theatre. Remembering that the negro velo was covering chaos before Creation and is likely an ambiguous reference to the stage curtain and to the veil of the temple in Scripture, it is highly interesting that POBRE now calls it a cortina. This has the rather straightforward meaning of being a cloth, drape, or curtain. Autoridades notes that cortina is a translation of the Latin velum which enhances the sense of parallel between the negro velo of Creation, the veil of the temple, and the curtain drapes of the theatre which are apparently most suited also to describe the final ascent to God. The comprehensive attention to the words velo and cortina, from the cosmogenesis to the judgement, finally allows for an elaboration of the idea of the world as a sort of wonder in the ancient meaning of a marvellous construction, listed for instance by Philo of Byzantium as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Great Pyramid of Giza. By analogising the veil of the temple with the cortina of the stage, the play employs the theatrum mundi in such a way as to install a metaphysical architecture in the world. Thereby, Earth becomes a wonder in itself, a spectacular building of radiant beauty which mankind can enter and walk in, like a temple or a pyramid. This meaning, in turn, is consistent with Gadamer’s aesthetic metaphor that to experience a work of art is like dwelling in a building of

 Hojas is open for interpretation. Poppenberg chooses veil [Schleier] which establishes a textual connection to the negro velo of Creation, but Autoridades does not sanction this solution. Hoja has a multitude of meanings, including leaves, leafage, a flower’s petal, a sheet of paper, and panels in the scenography. The sense of flowers and of seasons make sense in relation to the structure of the text and so do connotations of the sheet pages of a book.  Or, by parallel, that it is a problem in El pintor de su deshonra that you cannot discern the pintado from the vivo.

172

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

great architecture. It also expands the Blumenbergian meaning of the theatrum mundi as a mighty truth. In spite of this magnificent metonymical blurring of the boundaries among Creation, cult, and theatre, the unfortunate events consist in the fact that not all characters are saved. RICO is damned to the flames of Hell for all eternity, and the poor NIÑO, who has done nothing wrong but still cannot be accepted into Heaven, is condemned to a life between worlds. The fact that the other characters can spitefully exalt in joy when one of them is damned to all eternity in Hell could also be considered inappropriate. These facts are, however, no argument against the interpretation of Calderón’s world theatre of celebration and would essentially be a misunderstanding of the nature of Calderón’s view of history as a divine pageant. As Sofie Kluge has thoroughly demonstrated, Calderón used La vida es sueño (the comedia) to “transfigure the universe of the acclaimed Attic tragedians into a kind of dramatic subgenre. [. . .] Calderón conceives of human tragedy as just one aspect of the great divine pageant, a possible aberration or perversion of the divina comedia.”387 If this is true of the genre of the comedia, it is even more likely to be correct when dealing with a genre working towards Eucharistic apotheosis. It would be an aberration of the world theatre itself if it did not also contain despair. The point is that these effects do not get the final say. If Calderón had not admitted this element as the dark side of existence into the worked-through presentation of the nature of the world theatre, he would have been a lesser dramatist than he is. AUTOR also stresses the reasons for the different fates. He says that what is to be seen in the various outcomes is “the four last stages” [“las cuatro postrimerías”] (v. 1545), according to Autoridades a reference to the four final events in human life: Death, Judgement, Hell, and Glory. The question is whether damnation is a party spoiler. From Heaven, the play of life is beheld as a comedia. The loa prepares it with the use of the possessive noun: “God arranged for his own comedia” [“para una comedia suya/ dispuso Dios”] (vv. 169–70). History is teleological, it moves towards the goal of apotheosis, even if this direction is unclear to its participants. Thus, another reason emerges for the very creation of a piece like El gran teatro del mundo and the general and popular use of the theatrum mundi in early modern Spain: Through the staging of a play-within-a-play and by calling it “the great world theatre,” a sense of the illusory nature of reality is cleverly established through the dizzying effect which it must surely have on the spectator. But by encompassing the playwithin-the-play and its (partly) ethical message within AUTOR and MUNDO’s dialogue, the audience is also made aware of the possibility of a view on the world sub specie aeternitatis; a better evaluation of the human condition than the perhaps

 Kluge, Baroque, 259.

Beautiful Apologies

173

clouded view from below by the individual human being’s limited outlook. This also means that the interim lamentations of REY and HERMOSURA become inconclusive as they are situated within a larger textual, metaphysical, and historical framework. This framework also has bearing on the understanding of beauty as already discussed in the case of HERMOSURA. Curtius can be quoted to make the argument of world theatre and the form of beauty come together: The theological becomes a theocentric theory of art. And this, viewed sub specie aeternitatis, is nothing short of an answer to the question which confronts any deeper thought and any great civilisation: is art merely the work of man or is it rooted in the eternal? The Spanish master decided for himself, and his solution remains exemplary. [Die theologische wird so zu einer theozentrischen Kunsttheorie. Und diese, sub specie aeternitatis gesehen, ist nichts anderes als eine Antwort auf die Frage, die jedem tieferen Denken, jeder großen Kultur entgegentritt: ist die Kunst bloßes Menschenwerk oder wurzelt sie im Ewigen? Der spanische Genius hat sich klar entschieden und seine Lösung bleibt beispielhaft.]388

The ontological point to the damnation is somewhat similar to the argument for the child’s referral to limbo. This ontological argument in the relation God/man is also one to be observed in the relation God/world: There needs to be evil for there to be good. This is akin to what is sometimes referred to as Augustine’s aesthetic theodicy. This may come as a surprise, considering Augustine’s hostile attitude towards the popularity of (certain forms of) theatre: Most famous is the formulation that the theatres are “exhibitions of depravity” [“spectacula turpitudinum”].389 One essential element to Augustine’s theodicy is the logical fallacy of the pars pro toto. From the individual perspective, there might be elements to consider repulsive or “not good” in the universe, but: “That which we abhor in any part [quod horremus in parte] of it gives us the greatest pleasure [plurimum placeat] when we consider the universe as a whole [cum toto].”390 The art form of the drama of the theatrum mundi helps us in the quest to see the universe as a whole, from God’s view. More surprisingly, Augustine—just like Calderón—then fuses the metaphors of life as a play and the world as a painting: The colour black in a picture may very well be beautiful if you take the entire picture as a whole [in pictura cum toto fit pulcher]. So the entire contest is fittingly conducted [decenter

 Curtius, “Theologische Kunsttheorie,” 177.  Augustine, City of God, book 1, ch. 32, trans. Demetrius Zema and Gerald Walsh (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1949), 69.  Augustine, Of True Religion, sc. 76, in Augustine: Earlier Writings, trans. J. H. S. Burleigh (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 264.

174

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

edit] by the unchanging providence who allots different roles to the vanquished and the victorious, the contestants, the spectators and the tranquils who contemplate God alone.391

Both Hick and Tallon, two major students of the history of theodicy, consider the former quote on part and whole as Augustine’s aesthetic theme with reference to the perspective and the focus on “taking pleasure.”392 In Tallon’s paraphrase, this means that though the world is filled with a mixture of victory and defeat, happiness and misery, pain and pleasure, Augustine remains confident that, in all these cases, “there is no evil except sin and sin’s penalty, that is, a voluntary abandonment of highest being.” So, human sin being integrated into a chiaroscuro composition, the contemplative Christian finds beauty and order within creation.393

It is striking that Tallon also uses the term chiaroscuro, but the italics are his own. The condemnations and salvations—a reason for the pessimistic evaluations of the play—at the end of El gran teatro del mundo can in this light also be seen as part of the basic theme of the world as a work of art, justifiable as such. Augustine’s world-as-art, here in Hick’s formulation, means that a basic effect of rejoicing, the original reason for the Corpus, is possible: “so Augustine [. . .] lays the foundation for a Christian naturalism that rejoices in this world, and instead of fleeing from it as a snare to the soul, seeks to use it and share it in gratitude to God for His bountiful goodness.”394

Medievalism II: The Tantum Ergo The transfer from one kind of theatre to another is consummated some time after MUNDO has announced the distinction. A heavenly globe is once more to reveal itself on the stage. AUTOR sits at a table with chalice and host. He fulfils the judgements from this position and continuously allows the characters to join him at the table, concluding the play’s continuous announcement of the transfer from  Augustine, Of True Religion, 264.  John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), 82; Philip Tallon, The Poetics of Evil: Toward an Aesthetic Theodicy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 116.  Tallon, Poetics, 116.  Hick, Evil, 45, emphasis added. To speak of naturalism in this context is perhaps a bit unfortunate for the argument. In the left-out passage, Hick also sees this rejoicing as an anti-Platonic tenet and a departure from the “prejudice against matter.” But the identification of “the bountiful” and the good, so present in the Timaeus, is essentially still a Platonic and premodern way of thinking, kept in place by El gran teatro del mundo.

Beautiful Apologies

175

fiction to truth. After the judgement, AUTOR claims that everyone now resides where they ought to. He also concludes that song is heard, sweet voices, praising the arrangement in tonal choir. Under exclamations of joy, everyone therefore sings the “Tantum ergo”— Thomas Aquinas’ immensely successful refrain, written originally for the institution of the Corpus in 1264. It is not self-evident that the “Tantum ergo” should be regarded as a medievalism. An argument against it could be that it was extremely popular in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and that it thus represented a continuous tradition, not a conscious break with the Middle Ages. Another version of this argument would be that one could over-interpret the fact that the author of the “Tantum ergo” is Aquinas. There is, however, intratextual evidence that Calderón strongly associated it with Aquinas. This happens in the song writing contest of the auto El sacro Parnaso when the character AQUINAS paraphrases the Pange lingua.395 It is easy to see the singing of the “Tantrum ergo” muchas veces as a standard repertoire of a Calderonian auto. As Arellano notes, the autos are ripe with liturgical hymns. He mentions “Tantrum ergo,” “Te deum,” and “La salve.”396 As such, the “Tantum ergo” holds no promise of further evidence. But it can be seen as another (small) contribution to the extreme attention with which the drama is built and to which extent the theme of the world theatre fits the play. Jack Sage has identified two basic tenets in Calderón’s understanding and use of music. First, Calderón followed Augustine in believing that “true music” was a mirror of heavenly harmony.397 Second, he used this understanding of music to discern between “false and true” harmonies.398 This means that there can be deep beauty which reflects the heavenly harmony, and there can be seeming beauty which is in essence false. With this Calderonian knowledge in mind, the “Tantum ergo” at the play’s end can be said to reflect a basic question in the world theatre and reflect a prior discussion of true and false beauty. HERMOSURA’s beauty was not true but merely seeming

 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El sacro Parnaso, ed. Alberto Rodríguez Rípodas (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2006), vv. 1574–624. Cf. also Richard W. Newman, Calderón and Aquinas (PhD diss., Boston University, 1956), 89f; Hans Flasche, “Calderón als Paraphrast mittelalterlicher Hymnen,” in Calderón de la Barca, ed. Flasche, 437ff.  Arellano, Historia, 699.  “True music, he [Augustine] says, is the heavenly harmony; the worldly harmony, in as far as it is a true echo of the heavenly harmony, is also true, if not perfect, music. But the sensuous music, and above all theatre music, is false and corrupt.” [“Die wahre Musik, sagt er, ist die Himmelsharmonie; die Harmonie der Welt, insofern sie ein treues Echo der göttlichen Harmonie darstellt, ist auch wahre, wenn nicht vollkommene Musik. Aber die sinnliche Musik, und vor allem die des Theaters, ist falsch und verderbt.”] Jack Sage, “Calderón und die Theatermusik,” in Calderón de la Barca, ed. Flasche, 292f.  Sage, “Calderón,” 302.

176

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

whereas the music sung to the ascent to God, taken from the canonical office of the church, surely has a more profound coherence with heavenly harmony. The play moves from one kind of beauty to another. If the use of the world theatre metaphor is purely aesthetic in the segregated sense, it will be false and essentially a worship of the devil. But the play is concerned to avoid superficial understandings of the world as theatre. The world theatre is, in the same sense as the holy music of the “Tantum ergo,” not false but an expression of heavenly harmony. Not by identity but by analogy. Through Augustine, we also then once more return to a positivePlatonic apprehension of the world theatre. Sage notes concludingly that “the general attribute of all philosophy of music, which is declaimed in Calderón’s works, is the Platonic imagination of harmony. That is: music is an echo of heavenly harmony; hence music symbolises cosmic harmony in Calderón’s works” [“das allgemeine Kennzeichen aller Musikphilosophie, die in Calderóns Werk beispielhaft vorgetragen wird, ist die platonische Vorstellung der Harmonie. Das heißt: die Musik ist ein Echo der Himmelsharmonie; demnach symbolisiert die Musik in Calderóns Dramen die kosmische Harmonie”].399 The “Tantum ergo” becomes yet another tone in the cosmic harmony which the world theatre reflects. The greatness of the “Tantum ergo” is also a way to see how ingeniously Aquinas is used in the drama. The loa prepares the audience for this when it employs the metalepsis of the circular Coliseo, built for the author’s grandeza and is inherent in the gran title of the play: The greatness of the sacrament and the feast, which the autos were to honour, can be efficiently mirrored in the theatrum mundi because it has at its disposal experiences or modes of the universe’s glory and greatness itself. It is this connection that the auto’s medievalisms can elaborate in order to demonstrate the full scale, potential, and registers of meaning in the trope. These effects are furthermore intratextually connected through the above-mentioned relation to El sacro Parnaso where the effect of joy receives its personification in the role of REGOCIJO. There, the character with this name tells of his ancestry. Amongst others, his aunts were the chirimías. Joy is, in other words, the nephew of the shawm, and that is the one which accompanies the singing of “Tantum ergo” in El gran teatro del mundo.400 The second point of the medievalism is that the “Tantum ergo” also establishes a link to the original institution of the Corpus and the Transiturus. It creates an arch across the epochs where the dialectic exchange between tradition (Aquinas; the Corpus; the birth of the auto out of the spirit of medieval church liturgy) and innovation (dramatic

 “Sage, “Calderón,” 319.  Martin, Representación, 19, admirably notices these lines as an argument for the general festive nature of the auto.

Beautiful Apologies

177

theodicy; the movement of the drama from the church to the town square; the reimagination of Antique sources) becomes clear: a medievalism which resulted in highly original drama. Moving on from the specific coding of the “Tantum ergo” as medievalism, the play also uses the mediums of music, painting, and theatre in a highly metaphysical sense of impregnating the universe with meaning, making it the opposite of silent or hostile. In a comparison of the Panegyrico, an anonymous Spanish treatise on art from 1627, and Calderón’s treatise on painting, Curtius mentions that neo-Aristotelian poetics—even those of the Italian Counter-Reformation—had virtually no impact on the major Iberian writers of the Siglo de Oro.401 Instead, a “theological theory of art” developed (specifically developed, not just evolved). According to Curtius, two shared theses of the treatises are that, one, an art form, which can include the others, will always be superior, and that, two, such an art would have its roots in the trinitarian God.402 These may not be surprising features of an aesthetic which Curtis calls “biblical poetics,” but they are important to the understanding of the theatrum mundi in the Spanish Baroque and are to be compared with the accompanying ideas of the world as a painting and the religious-harmonic nature of music as already studied. The way that the beauty of the world supervenes on God’s in the world theatre is akin to the very nature of Calderón’s aesthetics because art itself has its roots, in God. In Curtius’ words, it is a poetic which “arranges itself in the larger comprehensive context of a theological metaphysics of art” [“jene Poetik gliedert sich in den umfassenderen Zusammenhang einer theologischen Metaphysik der Künste ein”].403 When we arrive at the perspective of an aesthetic theodicy, this will be of relevance because it means that mankind has the possibility of standing in a sacramental relationship with the cosmos.404

 Curtius somehow contradicts himself as he three years earlier had explained the intellectual contexts of Calderón’s Tratado in favour of painting by contending that Spanish art theory derives from its Italian counterpart. Curtius, “Calderón und die Malerei,” 108.  Curtius, “Theologische Kunsttheorie,” 173.  Curtius, “Theologische Kunsttheorie,” 174.  This formulation is inspired by Curtius’ claim that Calderón’s “drama does not have its centre in man; on the contrary, man always operates in cosmic and religious ties” [“weil sein Drama nicht im Menschen zentriert ist, sondern der Mensch immer in kosmischen und religiösen Bindungen agiert”]. Ernst Robert Curtius, “George, Hofmannsthal und Calderón,” in Kritische Essays zur Europäischen Literatur (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1950), 192.

178

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

The Play’s Apology After the jubilant rise to God with shouts of exaltation, MUNDO stands alone on the platform and says the final words, connecting the hymn with the theme of the world theatre to the sound of the chirimías—the “aunts” of joy: (Tocan chirimías, cantan el Tantum ergo muchas veces.) MUNDO Y pues representaciones Es aquesta vida toda, Merezca alcanzar perdón De las unas y las otras. (vv. 1569–72) [(Shawms play, and everyone sings the “Tantum ergo” many times.) WORLD. And since all of this life is plays, it should merit forgiveness for one and for all.]

This gesture has an air of direct address to the audience and constitutes a new use of metalepsis: The character is showing that he knows that there is an audience. One might be tempted to consider this a poor or impoverished ending to a play so preoccupied with the generation of effects of greatness. But even if this is a conventional way of ending a comedia, this particular apology achieves an important function that has not been much appreciated in the studies of the history of the trope of the theatrum mundi but seems so literal in this case: Because of the fact that everything is representaciones, life deserves or merits forgiveness. For one last time, the play emphasises the fact that the theatrum mundi does not only imply the devaluation of human existence but the very reasons for its vindication. It is also important that it is a general concept of el mundo that deserves forgiveness, not just every Christian person. This means that the ethical reading of the play cannot coincide entirely with MUNDO’s last words. MUNDO stresses the fact that all of Creation, the universe, is what is celebrated on Corpus Christi through the world theatre, that the entirety of Creation is to be celebrated because of its nature, not because of individual persons’ actions. This does not mean that the ethical dimensions of human existence are neglected or rendered unimportant in a Christian perspective. It just means that the theatrum mundi adds another aspect to Christian life besides the ethical; and to deepen the meaning of its being celebrated. MUNDO’s concluding words establish a subtle unity in the play’s inner horizon because they refer back to AUTOR’s original justification of summoning the world and putting on a show—the very purpose of existence—for AUTOR says that it was always the case that plays were the most popular thing:

Beautiful Apologies

179

Y como siempre ha sido Lo que más ha alegrado y divertido La representación bien aplaudida, Y es representación la humana vida, Una comedia sea. (vv. 43–47, emphasis added) [Since that which has always entertained and pleased the most is a play to good applause— and human life is a play—it will be a comedia, which the Heavens will watch in your theatre.]

The reference between beginning and ending revisits the meta-morality of the play, captured in the text’s pairing of discerning between vivir and representar, for instance just before the assignment of the roles: AUTOR Todos quisieran hacer El de mandar y regir, Sin mirar, sin advertir Que en acto tan singular Aquello es representar, Aunque piense que es vivir. (vv. 323–28) [Everyone would want to have the part of commanding and ruling, without seeing, without considering, that in such a unique ceremony, it [whatever one does] is acting, although one regards it as living.]

Poppenberg uses this passage to refer to the Enchiridion and Quevedo’s translation which was published in 1635.405 An Epictetian idea of the theatrum mundi is not ethical in the sense that life is about making the right choices. Far more, it is about acting out well what was already chosen for you by the author. That would be a reading of the play which acknowledged the metaphysical implications of the worldview established in the text and its mental horizons.406 This leads to the final and most general opposition of the play in its relation to modernity: If modernity’s central feature is human self-assertion (Blumenberg),  Francisco de Quevedo, Epicteto y Phocilides en español con consonantes (Madrid: Maria de Quiñones/Pedro Coello, 1635).  For a different account, see Martin’s monograph on the concept of representation in the autos. Martin quotes the passage on playing versus living as well but concludes the opposite. He sees it as an early figuration of the later alienation effects [Verfremdungseffekt] of the modernist world theatre in Brecht and Pirandello (40) and claims that AUTOR’s words must be seen in light of “the ultimate existentialist desengaño” [“el último desengaño existencialista”]. Martin, Representación, 41n26.

180

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

how can a modern audience possibly accept the fact that someone is condemned to eternal damnation? And more importantly, how could any assumption of another reality—also theatrical in nature—be compatible with modernity’s long-term process of the “disappearance of expectations of an afterlife”? Calderón simply is not the first modern in this understanding. His theatre is rather a uniquely singular example of a mixture between Catholic religion and proto-modern forms of drama. RICO’s and NIÑO’s laments are the bass tonalities in the play’s hymnic celebration. But just as the existence of bass tonalities does not by necessity generate dissonance in a harmony, there is little argument that their cries of woe would have been experienced as a counterweight to the play’s happy ending. Furthermore, the necessity of the damnation of the unrepented sinners—those who do not obrar bien—was a natural part of the theological teachings of Counter-Reformation Spain.407 Two of the most powerful motifs are dust and flowers, and their complementary nature is biblical. The play might thus be said to transpose a well-known biblical synthesis: “Their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. 5:24). Throughout the play, both natural and written law are to follow the Epictetian version of the world theatre: to play the role you have been assigned well. The categorical imperative of the world theatre is to play it well because God is God. The fact that not all people will adhere to this imperative is not a reason for lamentation but part of the good nature of Creation. This might be foreign to a modern viewpoint, especially the Protestant European, but is in accordance with the teachings of the Council of Trent. This is the closest we come to an ethical theme within the present perspective, but it is still solely one derived from the metaphysical nature of the created world and its relation to God’s eternal time. This also means that ethics are not exempt from Calderón’s universe in favour of aesthetics—but it does mean that ethics are secondary to metaphysics in the case of El gran teatro del mundo. ✶✶✶ There is sadness in the play. VOZ often sings in una voz triste when death is announced. Several characters also lament their own passing. LABRADOR dies, and

 Both the Tridentine Council and Luis de Molina’s Concordia liberi arbitrii (1588) were concerned with a critique of man’s potential “blind confidence in salvation.” The formulation is taken from Sofie Kluge who uses the same point with reference to La vida es sueño (the comedia). Sofie Kluge, “Calderón’s Anti-Tragic Theater: The Resonance of Plato’s Critique of Tragedy in La vida es sueño,” Hispanic Review 76, no. 1 (2008): 28f. The thought that celebration of possible eternal damnation was normal cannot be allowed to be forgotten even when this period is described as early modern.

Beautiful Apologies

181

the others respond in various outcries of woe (vv. 1155–56). But their laments are not generated by the experience of living in the world theatre. The sadness arises from the fact that death is a (temporary) part of it. They know that the next act awaits them if they play their role well—an act where everyone is made equal in God. The audience will come to see the horrifying fact of death transformed into a necessary part of the good Creation. The author stresses that “they are equal, this and that role, when given up” [“y son/ iguales este y aquel/ en acabando el papel”] (vv. 413–15). This means that everyone can win in the great theatre of the world: AUTOR Uno y otro de mí cobre Todo el salario después Que haya merecido, pues Con cualquier papel se gana, Que toda la vida humana Representaciones es. (vv. 423–28) [Both the king and the poor man gets the salary he deserves from me afterwards; you can earn it with any part because all of human life is a play.]

Because life is a play, con cualquier papel se gana. This is the fundamentally good message of watching a play that tries to discern what the consequences are since all the world is a stage. This means that whichever terrors of reality one might encounter during a lifetime—with death likely to be the worst of them—the experience of the world theatre is depicted as a consolation of man and a justification of existence, not the reason for its dread. The second meaning has to do with the distinction between the two kinds of theatres. In a pessimistic version, the idea would be that because life in the world theatre is fictitious, it is of questionable value. But this distinction is effectively cancelled. There is a theatre of fiction, but it is not abolished at the end of the play (or by death). Instead you transfer to a new theatre. This is important to remember because it is tempting to read it as if there were a transfer from fiction to reality. We are dealing with a reality where fiction and truth both become subcategories—of art. They stand in a relation to and in an exchange with each other, they are intertwined, and this also means that the world can be seen in light of eternity. This is also how the play’s second important distinction relates to this issue: “Although the work is mine, the miracle is yours” [“aunque es mía/ la obra, es milagro tuyo”] (vv. 77–78). In light of the previous reading, this is not an expression of segregation but of relation.

182

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

This point that it is a transformation from one kind of theatre to another enhances the existential worth of the world theatre: It is similar in kind to eternity and therefore not only an aberration.408 This is where a new connection in the play might arise between the distinction of the two theatres and the muchdiscussed argument for why POBRE and DISCRECIÓN are allowed to worship the host but not to consume it, after their ascent to God’s table. AUTOR says that they can only admire it, not devour it, because they “came from the world” (vv. 1451–52), that is, from the theatre of fictions. This is a discussion which picks up the thread from the discussion of Platonism versus the dogma of the fall of man. The point is that AUTOR is operating with an ontological distinction: The world is sinful because it is the world and not God; in Poppenberg’s words, Calderón deducts the original sin from his concept of the world; man is fundamentally human. [. . .] The sin, the “cohesion of guilt between everything alive” (W. Benjamin), consists actually in the fact of being born—this is also confirmed by Segismundo in La vida es sueño. [leitet sie [die Urschuld] vielmehr aus dem Weltbegriff selber. [. . .] “Die Schuld, der Schuldzusammenhang des Lebendigen” (W. Benjamin), besteht,—so bestätigt es Segismundo in La vida es sueño—tatsächlich darin, geborgen zu sein.]409

With this acute observation, we once more arrive at the final and foundational discussion with regards to Calderón and the world theatre: whether it would have been better not to have been born into it. The discussion hits upon a general line of existential inquiry in Calderón. The notion of the sin of being born could lead to cosmological pessimism. It has a biographical reference in that Calderón’s sister Dorotea told Don Juan de Vera Tassis, Calderon’s first biographer, that the preborn Pedro often cried “while still in the womb.”410 It is a risky path to stay with this proto-pessimistic effect. For his monograph on the origins of modernity in Calderón, Regalado quotes Segismundo’s “being born is Man’s most heinous

 Curtius sensed this in relation to Lope. He quotes from the ending of Lo fingido verdadero after the conversion of Ginés: “I am now a Christian actor. The human comedy ended, it was all nonsense; I did what you see instead, the divine one.” Lope de Vega, Lo fingido verdadero, vv. 3017–21. Curtius makes structural use of the same kind of argument, noting that Lope demonstrates a transition from one kind of theatre to another and thereby assumes the theological legitimacy of art. Curtius, “Calderón und die Malerei,” 134. A tendency to observe segregation as an essential trait of the theatrum mundi is equally popular in Hispanic studies. An example is Thacker, Role-Play. Commenting on Calderón’s “extended metaphor” of the theatrum mundi, Thacker notes that Calderón “specifically contrasted human life with the prospect of eternal bliss in heaven” (14).  Poppenberg, “Note to vv. 1454–57,” 125.  Don W. Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xvii.

Beautiful Apologies

183

crime” and refers it to Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia and especially to Virgil’s and Cicero’s accounts of King Midas’ meeting with Silenus who told him that the secret of life was that it had been better for man if he had never been born.411 A story that many moderns came to love through Nietzsche’s canonisation of it in The Birth of Tragedy, as suggested in the introduction.412 Regalado can also use it to connect Calderón with Schopenhauer’s pessimism and the early Nietzsche’s Silenian wisdom.413 It is a troublesome argument to connect Segismundo’s (passing) metaphysical pessimism to the logic of Calderón’s famous auto.414 The general discussion of the sin of being born has lead Michelsen to a central point for the present book: Even as this ontological difference remains, it does not mean that the theatre of fiction is not capable of acting a play “to the might of the Creator [. . .] who in the appearance sees meaning” [“zur ‘grandeza’ des ‘Autors,’ [. . .] der also im Schein selbst Sinn sieht”].415 This ontological distinction has its temporal counterpart in the loa when we learn that the auto might only last a short afternoon compared to God’s eternity but that this fact does not erase Creation’s status as a theatre built to celebrate God’s very might. The ontological and temporal distinction is thus not one of value, but one of fact. It does not render the lower level of the

 Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 67.  “What is best of all is forever beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing” [“nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nichts zu sein”]. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W. M. A. Hausmann (Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, 1910), 34; Nietzsche, Geburt der Tragödie, 28f.  Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 70.  Regalado comes close to doing this when he describes Segismundo’s allegedly conclusive pessimism as follows: “In the Calderonian world theatre, the tragedy has begun long before the actors enter the stage. The worst has already happened although it paradoxically still awaits ahead as well. [. . .] In the religious theatre, a fate, which abides by a design of providence, is miraculously drawn around the characters’ secular and mundane destiny. From the secular theatre, however, the principle of redemption is absent, and the fatality of a destiny prevails which reveals another principle of Calderón’s tragic art: Existence as punishment.” [“En el teatro del mundo calderoniano la tragedia ha comenzado mucho antes de que salgan los actores al tablado. Lo peor ya ha ocurrido, aunque paradójicamente todavía quede por delante [. . .]. En el teatro religioso se dibuja milagrosamente sobre el destino profano y terrenal de los personajes otro hado que obedece a un diseño de la providencia. Del teatro profano, sin embargo, está ausente el principio de redención, imperando la fatalidad de un destino que pone de manifiesto otro principio que rige el arte trágico de Calderón: la existencia como castigo.”] Regalado, Calderón, 69. Regalado does clearly discern between auto and comedia, but as El gran teatro del mundo must surely be acknowledged as the most important use of the theatrum mundi, it is reductive to use the “Calderonian world theatre” as an obvious topos for pessimism.  Michelsen, “Das große Welttheater,” 33.

184

Chapter 3 El gran teatro del mundo

Scheinwelt useless or futile, it is just not identical to God. If it were, it would not exist. And it does not abolish the fact that both worlds are theatres.416 If Genette taught us that metalepsis is either the storyteller showing himself in the story, or the story showing itself to the story listener, the world theatre simultaneously transcends these levels of narration. MUNDO is showing himself to the “story listener” when suddenly addressing the audience directly. The storyteller somehow also shows himself in the story but not in the simpler cases of Diderot’s Jacques and the likes. It is metaphysical rather than narratological when a character is called “the world” and can be addressed by someone called “the author.” It is then no longer exclusively a question of narration or of textuality—as Genette’s whole book intended—but something beyond. This is where the play’s world theatre oscillates between poetry and ritual just like Creation oscillates between temple and theatre. The ultimate consequence of this world theatre of celebration is that it turns into an aesthetic theodicy. There is a certain parallel in said story of the preborn Pedro in his mother’s womb, for it does not stop at the alleged crying. It is, in fact, openly paradoxical. The biographer Vera Tassis continued to note that it was an ominous sign that the infant Pedro entered the world under such a “shadow of sadness, he who was going to fill the same world with immense joy, like a new sun” [“por entrar en el mundo con la sombra de la tristeza quien como nuevo sol le había de llenar de inmensas alegrías”].417

 One might expect that Orozco Díaz’s important book on the theatre and theatricality in the Baroque would be just the place to look for an appreciation of this overlap of ontology when both spheres are called theatres, but in fact, he stresses the opposite. Concluding his monograph with a thought on the role of the theatrum mundi, Orozco Díaz states the following: “We know— and we cannot forget it—that they are actors who, at the end of the play, live their true lives outside of that which they have acted.” [“Sabemos—y no podemos olvidarlo—que son actores que, al terminar de representar, viven su vida verdadera ajena a la que han representado.”] Emilio Orozco Díaz, El teatro y la teatralidad del Barroco (Madrid: Editorial Planeta, 1969), 242. The notion of a true life outside the theatre differs from the present interpretation of Calderón’s world theatre.  Juan de Vera Tassis y Villaroel, “Fama, vida y escritos de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca,” in Verdadera quinta parte de comedias de Pedro Calderón, ed. Juan de Vera Tassis (Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1682), 7v.

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy The concept of a theodicy most likely has its origins in Leibniz’s Essais de Théodicée (1710), but the problem has been an inherent part of the history of theology reaching back to the Book of Job and the early Church Fathers. Being the pairing of the words Θεός and δίκη, theodicy has become a generic description of attempts to solve the problem of evil if an omnipotent and benevolent God created the universe.418 Theodicy would be a way to expound how the world theatre can imply purpose or meaning alongside the sense of God as an evil or vile entity, playing with man as a puppeteer for his own sport. When invoking the practice of theodicy, the pessimistic experience is downplayed in favour of an author-God who has not created man and universe out of boredom or cruelty but with some kind of benevolent purpose. Theodicy is furthermore a way of contributing to the discussion of the valorisation of the world between pessimism and apologetics; whether the theatrum mundi essentially constitutes a salvation from the world or a vindication of it. In the former case, the characters of Calderón’s world theatre escape empirical existence by being allowed ascension to the higher sphere of the theatre of truths and God’s supper table. In the latter, the apparently bleak view of human existence is transformed and thereby vindicated so that world theatre and the Eucharist do not constitute escape routes from the world but a path to make man at home in it. “Aesthetic theodicy” is not a very common concept in the history of literature although aesthetic arguments in the history of theodicy, on the other hand, are quite common. The specific term of an aesthetic theodicy has mostly been applied

 E.g., the OED’s minimal definition that theodicy entails “the vindication of divine providence in view of the existence of evil.” Modern versions tend to shift their emphasis from evil to suffering. Neiman’s definition (called “classical”): “How could a good God create a world full of innocent suffering?” Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 3. One of the most intense dealings with the term in modern philosophy has been Alvin Plantinga’s work. He phrases the question of theodicy following David Hume. “Why is there any evil in the world?” Plantinga asks with Hume and claims: “Such an answer to Hume’s question is sometimes called a theodicy.” Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2002), 10. Definitions of theodicy by way of the problem of evil tend to make it harder to identify defences of Creation within the tradition of theodicy. There is, however, a tradition of discerning between theodicies, cosmodicies, and, eventually, anthropodicies, cf. Philip E. Devenish, “Theodicy and Cosmodicy,” Journal of Empirical Theology 4, no. 2 (1991): 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-005

186

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

within German studies.419 Calderón’s theatrum mundi can be seen in light of aesthetic theodicy in two ways. There are arguments in El gran teatro del mundo which suggest a speculative-dogmatic approach to theodicy built upon patterns of thought originating from Augustine.420 This is often called the “principle of plenitude” and was coined by Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being (1936). The principle of plenitude can explain certain features of the theatrum mundi’s cosmogenesis and metaphysics. But seeing the play’s theodicy exclusively in this light would run the danger of reducing El gran teatro del mundo to a piece of rationalistic theology.421 This rationalism is a component of the play’s theodicy and is worth pursuing, but it would be counter-productive for the goal of understanding the world theatre as a form of celebration if it were presented as the whole story. There is also a way of seeing Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy which places it in the category of the ceremonial, as a transformative event akin to religious ritual. It is not until this second mode has been appreciated that the full range of Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy can be acknowledged. This second sense also possesses the key to understanding why this form of aesthetic theodicy is not as liable to traditional attacks upon rationalistic theodicies such as Kant’s, Nietzsche’s or Barth’s.422 This dramatic theodicy is furthermore an area where Calderón in fact might be described as modern in a constructive sense.  E.g., to the life and works of Karl Philip Moritz by Thomas P. Saine, Die ästhetische Theodizee: Karl Philipp Moritz und die Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971); to Klopstock’s Messias in Steffen Martus, Werkpolitik: Zur Literaturgeschichte kritischer Kommunikation von 17. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 272f; to Nietzsche in Robert R. Williams, Tragedy, Recognition and the Death of God: Studies in Hegel and Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and to the late Thomas Mann by Werner Frizen, “‘Ästhetische Theodizee’: Der Erwählte und Felix Krull,” in Thomas Mann Handbuch, ed. Helmut Koopmann (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2005), 322ff.  John Hick’s Evil and the God of Love has set a habit of dividing the history of theodicy between an Augustinian and an Irenaean tradition, the main dividing line being the view of evil, in the first, as a lack of good and, in the second, as a necessary moral tool. Hick subdivided Augustinian thinking into “privation of good stemming from misused freedom” (37) and “the principle of plenitude and the aesthetic theme” (70). The former—the orthodox privatio boni argument—will be disregarded here in favour of a focus on plenitude. Due to Hick’s innovative and useful distinction, he will function as the main historico-theoretical framework in this section. Calderón was very much fascinated by Augustine and also used him dramatically. In a study of Calderón’s reading and uses of Augustine, Javier Campos y Fernández de Sevilla lays special emphasis on the shared cosmological notion. Campos y Fernández, “Calderón de la Barca, San Agustín, los agustinos y La Aurora en Copacabana,” Anuario Jurídico y Económico Escurialense 52 (2019): 481.  In post-Kantian thinking, there is a difference between speculative and rationalistic philosophical argument, but they will be used interchangeably here.  Immanuel Kant, “Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee,” in Kants populäre Schriften, ed. Paul Menzer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 257–80; Friedrich Nietzsche,

The Principle of Plenitude

187

The aesthetic theodicy is an area where the fusion of the natural espacio festivo of the genre of the auto with the celebratory side of the world theatre meant that Calderón weakened the focus on traditional dogma and achieved a justification of the world which could be seen to lay the seed for later Kunstreligionen. Only, it seemed that Calderón succeeded in forming this worship of beauty without committing outright heresy along the way, even if traditional dogma only plays a minor role.

The Principle of Plenitude Beginning with the traditional rationalistic approach, Lovejoy described the principle of plenitude as indicating “that the extent and abundance of the creation must be as great as the possibility of existence and commensurate with the productive capacity of a ‘perfect’ and inexhaustible Source, and that the world is the better, the more things it contains.”423 Lovejoy also connected it to the tradition of theodicy: “In this assumption of the metaphysical necessity and the essential worth of the realization of all the conceivable forms of being, from highest to lowest, there was obviously implicit the basis of a theodicy.”424 Lovejoy argued comprehensively that the design of a principle of plenitude is present in Plato as well as in Plotinus. Some thirty years later, John Hick obtained a full account of the reasons why this principle of plenitude ought to be seen in relation to theodicy and described how it was a movement to be identified from Plato to Augustine: “The solution that Augustine accepted: that a universe containing every possible variety of creatures, from the highest to the lowest, is a richer and better universe than would be one consisting solely of the highest kind of created being.”425 This particular idea has been accepted as evidence of a continuity of thought in Antiquity and a natural development from Plato to Augustine. This theorem assumes

Götzen-Dämmerung, in Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 2 (Munich: Hanser Verlag, 1954), 940–1035; Karl Barth, Fides quaerens intellectum: Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang seines theologischen Programms, in Gesamtsausgabe, ed. Eberhard Jünger and Ingolf Dalferth, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2002).  Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 52. On a more theoretical level Lovejoy defined plenitude as “this strange and pregnant theorem of the ‘fullness’ of the realization of conceptual possibility in actuality” (52) and contrasted it with Aristotle’s denial in The Metaphysics that it “is not necessary that everything that is possible should exist in actuality.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, II, 1003a, quoted after Lovejoy, The Great Chain, 55.  Lovejoy, The Great Chain, 64.  John Hick, Evil, 72.

188

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

that there are fixed eternal forms which can and should be brought into finite existence, and it presupposes that metaphysical multitude is always desirable. This can be developed into the ontological explanation for why there are “notgood” entities in the world (e.g., the traditional example of snakes) and perhaps also evil. That is what Augustine knew: Still, as we range from things earthly to things heavenly, from things visible to things invisible, there are some good things that are better than others. It was their inequality that made it possible for them all to exist. Moreover, God is a great craftsman [artifex magnus] when he makes great things, but without any implication that he is an inferior craftsman when he makes small things. Such small things are to be rated, not by their own greatness, for they have none, but by the skill of the artist who made them.426

This argument is advanced under the heading of section 22 from City of God where the title accentuates its direction against those who “find fault within certain features of the whole scheme of things.” These supposed faults are created by “a good Creator” [“bono Creatore”],427 in the above compared to a great artist. This makes for another analogy between Plato and Augustine related to the theatrum mundi. In Plato’s cosmology as well, the creator is a “demiurge,” which has often been translated as a craftsman or a skilled artificer.428 The loa to El gran teatro del mundo is on the track of this traditional principle of plenitude with NUEVO claiming that in the drama of the century, one can only see “the ostentatious in the varied, the beauty in the diverse” [“lo aparatoso en lo vario,/ lo hermoso en lo diferente”] (vv. 233–34). Both AUTOR and MUNDO apply the same principle in the auto. AUTOR takes delight at the very sight of Earth with a similar reference: “Thou art infinitely diverse, blessed matter of the universe, miracle second to none” [“tú, que siempre diverso,/ la fábrica feliz del universo/ eres, primer prodigio sin Segundo”] (vv. 21–23). MUNDO stresses the need for variety so that the world might prosper: Y para que más campee Este humano cielo, juzgo Que estará bien engastado De varios campos incultos. (vv. 121–24)

 Augustine, City of God, XI, sc. 22, vol. 3, trans. David Wiesen. LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 511.  Augustine, City of God, trans. Wiesen, 508f.  Cf. Plato, The Timaeus, 28a, in Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (London: Heinemann, 1925).

The Principle of Plenitude

189

[And in order for this human heaven to blossom, I deem that it will be nicely set between diverse and pristine fields.]

It thus seems evident that the play’s ontotheology requires some version of the principle of plenitude and that this metaphysical principle relates to the scene of the human heaven of the world. The variety of creation, from good to bad and from high to low, is a way of making sure that something exists at all, mankind included, and that beauty is possible: without theatrical incompetence, no poor reviews. Without ugliness, no beauty. Without sin, no judgement. Without death, no life. The principle does not suffice to describe the full scope of aesthetic theodicy in this rationalistic sense. Metaphysical plenitude is a prerequisite but not a sufficient condition. The larger framework of an aesthetic theme needs to be construed.429 This theme alludes to the fact that Augustine could progress effortlessly from an argument of metaphysics to one of aesthetics. This is the reason why particularly St. Augustine and not simply Platonic intellectual inheritance is of specific importance to understand this attribute of El gran teatro del mundo. Augustine formulates the aesthetic theme as follows: “When things pass away and others succeed them there is a specific beauty [in suo genere pulchritudo] in the temporal order, so that those things which die or cease to be what they were, do not defile or disturb the measure, form or order of the created universe [ordinem universae creaturae].”430 This is a move towards an explanation of the worldview expressed in El gran teatro del mundo in the face of the theatrum mundi: The world theatre is not solely about (playfully) reducing the world to a miniature and not necessarily the expression of a static understanding of the world seen from above. On the contrary, it might as well express a profound understanding of a universe in constant flux without this leading to scepticism or nihilism. This is one way to argue that the experience of the transience of human life—which many of the characters do express and which the world theatre of celebration does not ignore—does not necessarily constitute a problem or the definite horizon but rather that the world theatre justifies the nature of the fleeting river of worldly time. El gran teatro del mundo—hopefully this is evident by now—ensures that which Augustine in the above calls “a temporal order.” Augustine explicitly infers the possibility of beauty from this fact and relates it to a benevolent view of becoming. Calderón’s world theatre as an aesthetic theodicy is able to account for

 The aesthetic theme is meticulously unfolded and discussed in Tallon, The Poetics of Evil, 92f.  Augustine, The Nature of Good, sc. 8, in Augustine: Earlier Writings, trans. J. H. S. Burleigh (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 328. Also discussed by Hick, Evil, 84f.

190

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

the perseverance of the terrors of reality, polvo, death, judgement; not because the play’s goal is the prevalence of the effects of these experiences, but because they are interpreted as one part of the artwork. The ultimate fact of death is maintained as a horizon of understanding for the individual and as a riddle of life, but also justified as a part of creation and a way to God. The full depth of why this can be regarded as an aesthetic theodicy and why it is so relevant to Calderón can best be seen in a passage from Adolf von Harnack’s influential history of dogma which Blumenberg, Hick, and Tallon consider a vital part of the history of the aesthetic theodicy: On this point, Augustine never gets tired of sensing the pulchrum et aptum of Creation, nor of considering the universe a well-ordered work of art in which the nuances are as admirable as the contrasts. The particular and the evil are fulfilled in the concept of beauty; God Himself is the everlasting, the old and the new, the only beauty. Even the fires of Hell and the damnation of sinners are, as an act in the ordinatio malorum, an indispensable part of the work of art. [Hier wird Augustin nicht müde, das pulchrum et aptum der Schöpfung zu empfinden, das Universum als ein geordnetes Kunstwerk zu betrachten, in welchem die Abstufungen ebenso bewunderungswürdig sind, wie die Contraste. Das Individuelle und das üble ist hier aufgehoben in den Begriff der Schönheit; ja Gott selbst ist die ewige, die alte und die neue, die einzige Schönheit. Selbst das Höllenfeuer, die Verdammung der Sünder, ist als Act in der ordinatio malorum ein nicht zu missender Theil des Kunstwerkes.]431

As El gran teatro del mundo never tires of hailing the contrasts of Creation and certainly regards the universe as an ordered work of art, it is feasible to establish one basic movement of the play as an aesthetic theodicy in the tradition of Augustine. Another reason for the downgrading of the dogma of original sin in the play simultaneously surfaces; there is no reason to overtly bemoan the fact of sin when it is an indispensable part of the artwork. That also counts for the final damnation of RICO. There is no reason to see his failed review as a reason for existential pessimism when even Hell is part of the good show. A subsection of this rationalistic element to Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy is Calderón’s cosmotheological approach. Immanuel Kant was the first to introduce  Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 3, 4th ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 111f. Hick’s literal translation and usage (Evil, 82f) is somewhat unhelpful in the present context. He translates the idea of the individual and evil being aufgehoben as “lost to view.” This misses the emphasis on the biblical notion that Jesus not only claims not to destroy but also to fulfil the law in Matthew 5:17. This has its counterpart in Hegel’s later figuration of Aufhebung. Harnack, according to Blumenberg, is essential to modern thought on theodicy because he tied it so closely to early Christianity’s overcoming of dualist Marcionism. Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 141ff.

The Principle of Plenitude

191

the concept of “ontotheology” and contrast it to “cosmotheology.” He defined the difference as follows in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft: Transcendental theology, again, either proposes to deduce the existence of the original being from an experience in general [. . .] and is then entitled cosmo-theology; or it believes that it can know the existence of such a being through mere concepts, without the help of any experience whatsoever, and is then entitled onto-theology. [Die transzendentale Theologie ist entweder diejenige, welche das Dasein des Urwesens von einer Erfahrung überhaupt [. . .] abzuleiten gedenkt, und heißt Kosmotheologie, oder glaubt durch bloße Begriffe ohne Beihülfe der mindesten Erfahrung sein Dasein zu erkennen und wird Ontotheologie gennant.]432

Onto- and cosmotheology were, according to Kant, subsections of a transcendental theology and related to knowledge of God through either experience or reason. That an ontotheology is at play in El gran teatro del mundo has already been discussed in the section on the negro velo. What remains as perspectives on Calderón’s world theatre is an explanation of cosmotheology in the Kantian sense. In a particular way, El gran teatro del mundo blends these rationalistic proofs of the existence of author-God with a justification of the relation between Creator and Creation. It seems that the world as stage is assumed as an experience open to everyone or at least to anyone who visits an enactment of this particular auto. This brings it under the category of cosmotheology. What is inferred through this experience is often related to a justification of Creation, combining the epistemology of cosmotheology with theodicy. A prime example is MUNDO’s beautiful (and quite amusing) analogy between world creation and the beginning of a play: Correrase aquella niebla Y huyendo el vapor oscuro, Para alumbrar el teatro, Porque adonde luz no hubo, No hubo fiesta, alumbrarán Dos luminares: el uno Divino farol del día, Y de la noche nocturno. (vv. 87–94) [Then, the mist will disappear and, as the dark fog breaks away, two lights will shine to light up the theatre (for where there was no light, there has never been a celebration), the one is the divine lamp of the day, the other the nocturnal light of the night.]

 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 525; Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Cologne: Anaconda Verlag, 2011), 514. (Text edition after the so-called B-text of 1787.)

192

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

The cosmotheology consists in the possibility of a general experience of the world as a theatre and the created nature of the universe, and it is clearly associated with an argument of justification: There needs to be light for there to be a play of the world. So AUTOR created the sun and the moon. But it does not stop there. Where there is no light, there can be no fiesta. In an argument of cosmotheology, the precondition that the world is something to celebrate emerges. A rationalistic proof of the existence of God in this auto—as these proofs are so very well-known from the history of philosophy—automatically has a cascading effect into the area of justification of Creation. But that is only visible in the light of the world theatre as celebration. The correlation between arguments for the existence of God and justifications of Creation is quite originally fashioned, but this logic still partakes in a rationalistic tradition. However, there is more to the argument. If the first part of Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy is speculative, the second is dramatic and as such, attempting to do something “which my reason cannot explain nor understand.” The latter appeals, in contrast to rationalistic theodicy, not to reason but to ritual, and constitutes an event of transformation akin to religious ceremony.

Calderón’s Dramatic Theodicy In Psyche und Allegorie, Poppenberg claims that the autos “are ‘probably very modern’ because they keep the Devil’s share in mind and developed a poetic form to do so. Their satanic allegory does not result in dramatical Manichaeism but in poetic theodicy” [“sind ‘vermutlich sehr modern,’ weil auch sie den Anteil des Teufels im Blick behalten und dafür eine poetische Form entwickelt haben. Ihre satanische Allegorik ergibt nicht dramatischen Manichäismus, sondern poetische Theodizee”].433 Poppenberg thus sees a “poetic theodicy” arise through the autos’ dealing with literary manifestations of evil. This pattern of thought can be  Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie, 23. Poppenberg’s quotation marks refer to a saying by F. Schlegel. The only other person who applies the concept of aesthetic theodicy in relation to Calderón’s world theatre is—besides Poppenberg—Konersmann, although he only quotes El gran teatro del mundo once: “The totality of theatre empties the empirically tangible reality by always referring it to something else, but this kind of theatre [. . .] also understands itself as consolation and theodicy.” [“Die Totalerklärung des Theaters entwertet die sinnlich greifbare Wirklichkeit, indem sie sie immer schon auf anderes verwiesen sein lässt, aber sie versteht sich [. . .] auch als Trost und Theodizee.”] Konersmann, Der Schleier, 113. In a more distant relation, Karl Klindt compares the concepts of danse macabre and theodicy in his notion of the world theatre in Der Spieler Gottes: Shakespeares Hamlet als Christliches Welttheater (Berlin: Wichern Verlag, 1949), 91; 121.

Calderón’s Dramatic Theodicy

193

extended in the sense that Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy has to do with the ancient assumption of art’s transformative power and the theatrum mundi’s inherent relation to this assumption.434 In transforming the audience’s perception of reality, a justification or a vindication of the world is achieved; not through rational argument, but through ritual and drama—two inherently transformative phenomena.435 The close reading in the previous chapter has paved the way for a demonstration that the literary-metaleptic character of the theatrum mundi and the religious transubstantiation of the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist are fused congenially to achieve a transformation of reality itself; from the horrors of empirical existence to the beauty of the world, the play vindicates reality. This movement or event is what constitutes a dramatic theodicy as a subsection of the aesthetic theodicy. The theatrum mundi not only invites the audience to see the world from above or to view the artist playing with the world as a miniature where all the pieces fit: Calderón’s world theatre also places man in the middle of a vast universe into which the great theatre of the world echoes its own beauty and thereby justifies its purpose. Calderón’s consummate theodicy is not solely used in order to provide mankind with an overview of everything that exists but also to put man in his right and natural place within it. Calderón’s world theatre is closer to ritual than to philosophy, but not the same as either. When encountering the present interpretation of a world theatre as a cause for celebration, a defender of the pessimistic version of the trope might have objections. Cascardi has supplied the most well-formulated expression of this hypothetical objection: Years after the Ursprung, Benjamin wrote his celebrated essay on Proust, in whom he saw a more literal pathology. As with the Trauerspiel he tells us that we can only read the whole of a work if we are willing to consecrate each of its moments in separate, individual sovereignty. By implication, he [Benjamin] wants to say that a reading of Calderón based only on the moments of salvation, of transcendence, of plenitude and order, is partial and false in its very illusion of wholeness. It is like omitting the dark, Dostoyevsky-like veins in the magnum opus of Proust.436

 Already assumed by Aristotle as tragedy’s cathartic potential (Poetics, VI, 1449b), the idea of art’s transformative potential is kept in place through to the twentieth century in a thinker such as H.-G. Gadamer.  For now, “ritual” is applied in the minimal definition of “a ceremonial act or action” (Merriam-Webster) but defining it more precisely below as a division between ritual and liturgy will be necessary.  Anthony J. Cascardi, “Comedia and Trauerspiel: On Calderón and Benjamin,” Comparative Drama 16, no. 1 (1982): 10.

194

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

Cascardi and Benjamin both deal with the comedia and not the auto. The quote is accordingly not meant as a direct contrast to the present interpretation but only as a way to illustrate an objection that can also be levelled against the interpretation of the auto’s application of the theatrum mundi tradition. The question, in short, would be: Does El gran teatro del mundo’s world theatre of celebration give “the illusion of wholeness”? “Omitting the dark” is definitely a risk when focusing on “plenitude and order,” but not a necessary pitfall. The concept of transformation in outlining Calderón’s world theatre of celebration as a dramatic theodicy is there to prevent it. The play is not ignorant of the power of death, judgement, and decay but it can be seen to achieve an alchemistic reversal of man’s perception of their status.437 From POBRE’s cry: “perish that day, oh Lord, upon which I was born unto this world” [“perezca, Señor, el día/ en que a este mundo nací”] (vv. 1175–76) to his wish that “everything be dark shade” [“todo sea sombra oscura”] (v. 1182), the auto cannot be accused of omitting the dark. But these existential and metaphysical facts are to be perceived differently after the experience of El gran teatro del mundo through the nature of two literary elements: the theatrical genre of the auto and the literary image of the theatrum mundi. Both contain, in their equivocal mixture of ritual and drama, a transformative power related to the use of metalepsis. A carefully prepared theme so far has been the exchange of category from allegory to metalepsis when describing one basic function of Calderón’s theatrum mundi. So far, the metaleptic element has primarily been studied in its epistemological weakening of the fourth wall. This blurring of the boundary between play and world—and between the audience as spectators and as participants—can, however, also be seen to participate in a larger scheme of metalepsis. In fact, the play begins to reverse the metalepsis as it advances. If the metalepsis begins with a transgression from life to play, the text attempts a re-transgression when the

 The specific understanding of an “alchemistic reversal” from misery to bliss comes from Gísli Magnússon’s book on poetry as Erfahrungsmetaphysik in Rilke. He there makes use of what he calls “spiritual alchemy” and documents that Rilke himself thought that the main theme of his novel on Malthe Brigge was the “alchemical transformation from spiritual suffering to spiritual gold” [“alchemistische Verwandlung (Transmutation) von seelischem Leid in seelisches Gold”]. Gísli Magnússon, Dichtung als Erfahrungsmetaphysik: Esoterische und okkultische Modernität bei R.M. Rilke (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009), 371. It is of no less inspiration to Calderón studies that Magnússon also relates this reversal from misery to bliss to Rilke’s Sonette an Orpheus considering that El divino Orfeo is not the least important auto of Calderón’s. Fredrick de Armas has suggested the relevance of the concept of alchemy for Calderón studies in relation to La vida es sueño where alchemy is even tied to a sense of the cosmic. Frederick de Armas, “The King’s Son and the Golden Dew: Alchemy in Calderón’s La vida es sueño,” Hispanic Review 60, no. 3 (1992), 301ff.

Calderón’s Dramatic Theodicy

195

audience is already supposed to be convinced that the world is a stage, not like one. A section from MUNDO’s speech at the end of the play-within-the-play has been quoted, but there is more to say about it: Corta fue la comedia, pero ¿cuándo No lo fue la comedia desta vida, Y más para el que está considerando Que toda es una entrada, una salida? Ya todos el teatro van dejando, A su primer materia reducida La forma que tuvieron y gozaron: Polvo salgan de mí, pues polvo entraron. (vv. 1255–62) [The play was short! But when was the play of this life not? And even more so to him who considers that everything is an entrance and an exit. Now, everyone will leave the theatre, and the form which they had and enjoyed, is reduced to its original matter. As dust they shall exit, for as dust they entered.]

MUNDO is in principle observing the brevity of the play-within-the-play. But as he continues to state that in a moment’s time, todos will leave the theatre, he employs yet another metalepsis, reminding the audience that they are about to leave in the literal sense of going home and in the analogical sense that their life on the world stage is equally short. But he also duplicates the statement in the following line, suggesting in the form of a question that the play of life has always been short. In just two lines, MUNDO establishes a reversed metalepsis through a reminder that in fact, life is such celebratory drama as has just been performed.438 There is, in other words, the idea that use of the theatrum mundi can have a transformative effect on the audience. They will still be dust—the much-favoured metaphor for the mortality of the human body—but the world theatre strives to transform their perception of the world, no matter whether they still also leave as dust. Following the lessons of the play, this change has to do with the fact that the world theatre can teach us that the brevity of life (our being-as-polvo) is justifiable through the fact that we live in a comedia—a work of art—and that in celebrating this work of art, a form of vindication of existence can be obtained.439 Human life goes from

 “Reversed metalepsis” refers to a pattern of thought that Genette also knew, namely that metalepsis can move from author to the text but also from text to the author or to the outside world. Cf. the section on metalepsis in the loa.  The polvo is of course also a biblical motif (1 Gen 3:19; Job 19:26) and is directly quoted in relation to the Bible and death in La cena del rey Baltasar when MUERTE gives the king a memorial and Baltasar there can read that “dust you were, dust you are, and dust you will have to

196

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

dust to dust, but man will still not be what he was, when he dies. You return to what you came from without being what you were. “Such confusion!” as REY will end up exclaiming; and essentially a skandalon to human reason. But not to the proto-cultic nature of the world theatre or to the auto. This transformation is not simply one which takes place on the stage or in the text but is equally associated with the ceremonial form and enactment of the play. Within theories of ritual, there has been a long and sound tendency to discriminate between ritual and theatre: Rituals transform the world or the participants, theatre is make-believe. A standard description of this theorem was construed by Roy Rappaport in 1979: Dramas have audiences, rituals have congregations. An audience watches a drama, a congregation participates in a ritual. This participation often if not always requires more than the entertainment of a certain attitude. [. . .] For another thing, those who act in drama are “only acting,” which is precisely to say that they are not acting in earnest, and it is perhaps significant that drama’s synonym in English is “play.” Ritual in contrast, is in earnest, even when it is playful, entertaining, blasphemous, humorous, or ludicrous.440

Rappaport is aware that this is a description of what he calls “the polar forms” of ordinary usage of the terms, but readers of the present book should have noticed that El gran teatro del mundo falls just as well into the category of ritual as of drama.441 Due to the religious context of the Corpus and the purpose of the auto, it is not clear that the audience is not also a congregation. The players do not become” [“polvo fuiste, y polvo eres,/ y polvo has de ser”]. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La cena del rey Baltasar, in Obras completas, 168.  Roy Rappaport, “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual,” in Ecology, Meaning, and Religion (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1979), 177.  Barbara Kurtz’ The Play of Allegory evolves around this as well, claiming that the “auto’s quasi-liturgical role, its devotional exaltation of the Eucharist, gives the play something of the ceremonial and cultic function of Communion itself; by extension, it confers upon the audience a participatory role analogous to that of the congregant or communicant” (21). Poppenberg’s study of allegory as ritual equally supports the argument of Calderón’s autos being linked as much to ritual as to theatre: “Allegory is the form of a secular semiurgy, of a rite without office, of a liturgy without mandate, on the border of the institution itself. [. . .] The liminal dynamic of the rite is transformative; the threshold is its agent and its place, the transformation its process and its temporality, grace is its effect and its gift.” [“Die Allegorie ist die Gestalt einer profanen Semiurgie, eines Ritus ohne Amt, einer Liturgie ohne Mandat, an der Grenze zur Institution [. . .] die liminale Dynamik des Ritus ist transformatorisch; die Schwelle ist ihr Agent und ihr Ort, die Wandlung ihr Prozeß und ihre Zeitform, die Gnade ihr Effekt und ihre Gabe.]” Poppenberg, Psyche und Allegorie, 227f. Díez Borque also precisely defines the auto as “a meeting place of liturgy and theatre, ceremony scenic action” [“encuentro de liturgia y teatro, de ceremonia y acción escénica”]. José Díez Borque, “El auto sacramental calderoniano y su público: Funciones del texto cantado,” in Calderón and the Baroque Tradition, ed. Kurt Levy et al., 2nd ed. (Waterloo, ON: Lau-

Calderón’s Dramatic Theodicy

197

“only act”: that boundary between acting and being has been persistently attacked with the aid of the theatrum mundi. From the Transiturus to the play itself, the contexts and textual logic explain how this particular treatment of the world theatre can be in earnest, even when playful—as is ritual, not drama, according to Rappaport’s standard distinction. A further distinctive feature of ritual is, in contrast to mere words, its transformative power. This is a clue to the difference between Calderón’s celebratory world theatre and later modernist world theatres of dizzying language games: The distinctions of language cut the world into bits—into categories, classes, oppositions, and contrasts. It is in the nature of language to search out all differences and to turn them into distinctions which then provide bases for boundaries and barriers. It is, on the other hand, in the nature of liturgical orders to unite, or reunite, the psychic, social, natural, and cosmic orders which language and the exigencies of life pull apart. [. . .] Liturgical orders bind together disparate entities and processes, and it is this binding together rather than what is bound together that is peculiar to them. Liturgical orders are meta-orders, or orders of orders, and if we were to characterize in a phrase their relationship to what lies outside of them we might say that they mend ever again worlds forever breaking apart under the blows of usage and the slashing distinctions of language.442

This is a way to grasp the nature of the intended transformation occurring at a baroque staging of El gran teatro del mundo on a day of the Corpus. The characters in the play-within-the-play “talk,” they argue, they encounter barriers—the primary one being death. The “exigencies of life” pull the ordered world into pieces from their perspective, and “language” ultimately becomes inadequate. (“¡Qué confusión!”) But these experiences are overshadowed by a larger framework of cosmogenesis, of judgement, and of the Eucharist. This is a framework depicted in images of art, and it seeks to connect that which falls apart from the empirical and individual perspective, namely Creator and Creation. In this way, the performance of this play is a ritual working to “reunite the cosmic order.” Should Rappaport’s minimal theory of ritual even be applied to Calderón’s Spain as that historiographical exchange on the threshold between medieval and modern worlds, the last part of the quote can seem emblematic of Calderón’s epochal placement: His world theatre “mends ever again worlds forever breaking apart under the blows of usage and the slashing distinctions of language.” This particular ritualistic sense provides a theoretical framework for the earlier claim

rier University Press, 2006), 49. None of the three, however, apply these insights to the theatrum mundi or to El gran teatro del mundo.  Rappaport, “Obvious Aspects,” 206. Rappaport has here dropped the word ritual and nuanced it into “liturgical order,” which requires “more or less invariant sequences of formal acts” (176).

198

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

that Calderón’s world theatre not only contributes to seeing the world from above but also places man at home in the middle of an endless, but benign universe. When ritual (and Calderón’s form of world theatre drama in El gran teatro del mundo) presupposes participation and transformation of the participants, this performative and participatory act is committed from a particular place in the monumental universe. The loa is careful to geographically place the stage in a dusty town square in a discernible country on a specific afternoon which can then turn into something else. So much of the praise of the world emanating from the text and from the town square is about situating and saluting the limited life and the small world in a much larger framework. Not the other way around. The human illusion of partiality, the sense of a desolate world, is what the play openly combats in its conscious use of ritualistic gesture.443

Cosmic Theatrum mundi A requirement of Rappaport’s ritual is participation in the sense of the congregation singing, dancing, kneeling, or responding in litanies; and there is no such thing in the known editions of El gran teatro del mundo.444 When it still makes sense to talk of this auto in terms of ritual, there is a general argument about Eucharistic theology and a specific one combining genre and image. The theological argument concerns the medieval and Counter-Reformatory notion of elevation. Rappaport’s demand for active response on behalf of the congregation is too

 Bradley Nelson also considers the Calderonian auto in the light of ritualistic theatricality, but sees this fusion as an instrument of power. First in the sense of the genre’s bid for collective identity: “The auto sacramental does not reflect an existing social animosity between Christians and non-Christians; it helps create it. The representation of eucharistic presence becomes a primary vehicle for motivating bias against a phantasmal figure of Otherness.” Secondly, in its possible subversion of the same. “We are not really looking at a ritualistic making-present of the body of Christ and the ecclesiastical and social body of Counter Reformation society in the liturgical and medieval sense; rather, the auto sacramental is a modern, theatrical representation of a phantasmal, internal threat to a non-existent Spanish collectivity which acts to bring the desire for the presence of this collective into the psyche of the spectator, thus motivating the identification both with the threat and the castigation of that threat.” Nelson, The Persistence of Presence, 128f.  Rappaport, “Obvious Aspects,” 177—unless the stage direction to the ascension to AUTOR’s supper table in the theatre of truths is taken to mean that audience as well as actors sing the “Tantum ergo.” The stage direction’s subject is implicit, simply suggesting that an undefined “they” sing the hymn muchas veces. In any case, there is precedence for seeing the very singing itself as a reason for a sense of participating rather than spectating. Cf. Díez Borque, “El auto,” 54; Erdocia Castillejo, La loa, 194f.

Cosmic Theatrum mundi

199

strict. To understand El gran teatro del mundo’s ritualistic inclination, it would do better to remember that the very attendance and observation of a procession in religious awe has often been equal to the participation in a ritual. That is especially relevant in the case of the consecration and elevation during the Eucharist. Many worshippers of the medieval as well as the Counter-Reformation period would likely have experienced the gesture of elevation as a participatory element in itself. They would often not even always have consumed the bread, perhaps not even have sung along, but still thought themselves part of the ritual.445 This is one way of explaining why AUTOR underscores that POBRE and DISCRECIÓN can worship the host, but not consume it, at his table: Suban a cenar conmigo El Pobre y la Religiosa, Que aunque por haber salido Del mundo este pan no coman, Sustento será adorarle Por ser objeto de gloria. (vv. 1449–54) [The Poor Man and Religion should rise to dine with me. Although they have come from the world and will not eat this bread, it will sustain them to worship it as it is the object of glory.]

These lines then become a way of supporting a very typical Corpus Christi understanding of procession, Eucharist, and participation by way of witnessing. This understanding also increases the ritualistic element of the play itself—which, in turn, enhances the sense of the play of life, as the theatrum mundi-element so persistently destroys difference between stage and world.446 A further way of articulating the sense of ritual rather than drama in the Rappaportian meaning is to further investigate the theatrum mundi as not only a  Cf. Gary Macy’s history of the Lord’s supper: “God’s own body and blood are recreated on the altar and raised on high for all to see.” A large part of the congregation participates by witnessing and “while pray[ing] for the special benefits they know will come from seeing the Lord of Lords that day.” Gary Macy, The Banquet’s Wisdom: A Short History of the Theologies of the Lord’s Supper, 2nd ed. (Ashland City, TN: OSL Publications, 2015), 160f. Cf. also Bernhard Lang on ritual: “In the standard Catholic theology of the seventeenth century, consecration and, more visible to the people, elevation are the central acts of Mass.” Bernhard Lang, Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 270.  Anne Righter entertains a similar idea of participation, theatrum mundi, and medieval Church history in a chapter tellingly called “Mysteries and Moralities: The Audience as Actor” in Righter, Shakespeare, 15–40. Although English mysteries and the Spanish auto are not the same genre, Righter’s explication of automatic participation through play metaphors is highly useful. She even connects it to an argument of medievalism (58).

200

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

ritual, but one specifically of cosmic liturgy. That the vastness of the universe should generate early modern sensations of discomfort or even vertigo is a thoroughly natural or understandable reaction and interpretation. As earlier suggested, Portia will commence the Belmont plot of The Merchant of Venice by invoking the topos of a human as a microcosmos and expressing a state of exhaustion and insignificance. Similarly, the cause for the contemporaneous Blaise Pascal’s fears is said to have been the anxiety of living in an infinite space. In Pensées, he notes that: When I consider the short span of my life, absorbed in the preceding and the following eternity, memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis, the little space which I fill, and can even see, absorbed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know nothing of me, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here rather than there, for there is no reason why I am here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has placed me here? By whose order and lead have this place and this time been destined for me? [Quand je considère la petite durée de ma vie absorbée dans l’éternité précédente et suivante, memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis, le petit espace que je remplis et même que je vois abîmé dans l’infinie immensité des espaces que j’ignore et qui m’ignorent, je m’effraie et m’étonne de me voir ici plutôt que là, car il n’y a point de raison pour quoi ici plutôt que là, port quoi à présent plutôt que lors. Qui m’y a mis? Par l’ordre et la conduite de qui ce lieu et ce temps a-t-il été destiné à moi?]447

The effects which the cosmic experience of early modern Europe here generates in Pascal are logical. On these grounds, it is justifiable that many commentators interpret Calderón’s world theatre to the same effect. But in El gran teatro del mundo, the “infinite immensity” of the cosmos is also a way to explore purpose, and Calderón’s universe is still predominantly theocentric. The Latin part of the quote is from the Old Testament apocrypha—The Wisdom of Solomon—and the full quote also makes use of the now familiar motif of dust: For the hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the wind; like a thin froth that is driven away with the storm; like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day. (KJV, 5:14)

Considering how close Pascal’s biblical allusion takes him to the Macbethian dusty death in the world theatre of fleeting time and to Calderón’s lament of vanity in the dominating motif of dust, analogy is warranted. But the universe of El gran teatro del mundo is not silent, and only in passing does it “frighten” its inhabitants as in the Pensées just quoted. When the world theatre is seen as a way

 Blaise Pascal, Pensées: Opuscules et lettres, ed. Philippe Sellier and Laurence Plazenet (Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010), 197.

Cosmic Theatrum mundi

201

to put man in the middle of a vast cosmos, not to make him view it from above or to speculate about the world as a miniature, the relation between the microcosmos of man and macro-cosmos of the universe appears in a new light.448 The metaleptic tendency of the theatrum mundi equally serves to establish this link between Earth and the cosmos, not to sever it. There is no reason to suggest that anxiety would not have been a dominating emotional and existential reaction, and the experience of emptiness is surely present in the Calderonian world theatre. The point of the dramatic theodicy is that it holds the promise of transforming man’s experience of these feelings rather than simply conveying them. Peter N. Skrine once suggested that the period used the topos in this sense. In his chapter on the European Baroque’s theatrum mundi, a reading of Lohenstein’s 276-line verse dedication in the preface of Sophonisbe leads to the following remark: The notion of theatrum mundi, of “all the world’s a stage,” has been expanded to embrace the whole of life: all nature, the entire cosmos, all created things are involved in it. The bounds of conventional metaphor have burst to open up a universal dimension. [. . .] [T]he psychology of the individual and the workings of society are, like the culture they have in common, seen in terms at once of play-acting and make-believe and yet also of a deeper and more dramatic existential necessity. The microcosm that is man [. . .] is seen by the German poet as a reflection here below of activities on an altogether vaster and more sublime plane—the restless, compulsive interplay of elemental forces on an infinite and cosmic scale. And it is this that endows puny man with an element at least of nobility. The gold and purple he likes to strut about in may only be worthless fustian; but the parts he plays are scripted by God the Creator. Their re-enactment on the stage must therefore surely be the truest way of illustrating and conveying the meaning of the world. Truth is mirrored in the make-believe.449

The quote is of such length because several elements of the present argument are repeated as a signature of early modern culture. The quote even suggests that the argument could likely be extendable to a European scale. Skrine senses how fiction (“make-believe”) conveys a sense of meaning and of truth. He also describes a world theatre which does not generate vertigo but makes the world reverberate meaningfully into a vast universe; that is the “universal dimension” of the theatrum mundi, here clearly taxonomised as a feature of early modernity. Skrine is, additionally, quoted at this point because he inscribes the topos of the microcosmos in the “conventional metaphor’s bursting to open up a universal dimension” and con-

 “Cosmic” in the commonsensical meaning of a connection between man or Earth on the one side and the greater universe on the other. It was effectively applicated to Calderón studies in this way by Frederick de Armas who here writes on La vida es sueño: “This reconciliation is thus cosmic in nature, having as its basis the link between the self and the stars.” De Armas, “The King’s Son,” 305.  Skrine, The Baroque, 9, emphasis added.

202

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

centrates on the topic of beauty. Characters and people can of course fail to obrar bien. But to this play, “an element at least of nobility” is endowed, in Skrine’s prose. This means that the world can seem meaningless without being discredited altogether. And it means that when transforming the world into a stage, these possible emotional and existential reactions are directed and comforted in order to justify and vindicate the world. The idea of reflection is substantial as well. A way to see Calderón as an expression of early modern sentiments of pessimism will be to install his protagonists in a hostile world where man could never achieve the sense of belonging.450 But this particular theatrum mundi is applied to transform the world into a home for mankind.451 The very idea of a ritualistic theatre places man in a sacramental relationship to the cosmos. The theatrum mundi in its metaleptic function prepares the notion of the audience as participants in a transformation ritual, even if there is little active participation on their behalf during the staging. The absence of the fourth wall and the relation between first stage and Earth, then Earth and the universe and at last, between universe and eternity, unite to establish this remarkable phenomenon.

Metalepsis and Liturgy The absence of the fourth wall and the chain analogies among stage, Earth, universe, and eternity link Calderón’s world theatre to ritual in the specific sense of being a cosmic liturgy. The medievalist Benjamin Anderson has recently studied  The sense of hostility e.g. in de la Flor where the theatrum mundi of the Baroque in general is described as a “gloomy scene” [“escena lúgubre”] where man must fear the torment of a “perverse and merciless” [“perverso y despiadado”] power. De la Flor, Barroco, 35. It is unclear if de la Flor only means to speak of the comedia’s application of the theatrum mundi at this point, but that would not change the argument much as he refers to Christian’s monograph (which only considers the auto) and as he claims that in general, the theatrum mundi “has roved the spine of tragic thought in the West” [“ha recorrido la espina dorsal del pensamiento trágico occidental”]. (35, emphasis added). This perception of the early modern world theatre is not mentioned here with an intent of falsification but only in order to demonstrate how the study of the pessimistic side of the trope often acquires this sense of an alien and hostile universe.  In one of the perhaps more esoteric pieces on Calderón, the arguments find support in Alexander Coleman’s furious refusal of what he describes as Schopenhauer and Wagner’s “misreading and misinterpretation” of Calderón. Wagner famously, according to Cosima Wagner, thought that Calderón’s heroes undergo a Schopenhauerian “Umkehr des Willens into a state of resignation,” but they do not: “Calderón’s protagonists [. . .] instinctively know that they are microcosms and images of the grandeur of God’s creation.” Alexander Coleman, “Calderón/Schopenhauer/ Wagner: The Story of a Misunderstanding,” The Musical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1983): 228f.

Cosmic Theatrum mundi

203

the defining role of coherent images of the cosmos in premodern society. He remarks that in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, views of the cosmos “mediated between solitude and community.”452 Anderson explicates this claim as preparation for his own study by quoting a fragment by Walter Benjamin: Nothing distinguishes the ancient from the modern man so much as the former’s absorption in a cosmic experience scarcely known to later periods [. . .] The ancients’ intercourse with the cosmos had been different: the ecstatic trance. For it is in this experience alone that we gain certain knowledge of what is nearest to us and what is remotest from us, and never of one without the other. This means, however, that man can be in ecstatic contact with the cosmos only communally. It is the dangerous error of modern men to regard this experience as unimportant and avoidable, and to consign it to the individual as the poetic rapture of starry nights. [Nichts unterscheidet den antiken so vom neueren Menschen, als seine Hingegebenheit an eine kosmische Erfahrung, die der spätere kaum kennt. [. . .] Antiker Umgang mit dem Kosmos vollzog sich anders: im Rausche. Ist doch Rausch die Erfahrung, in welcher wir allein des Allernächsten und des Allerfernsten, und nie des einen ohne des andern, uns versichern. Das will aber sagen, dass rauschhaft mit dem Kosmos der Mensch nur in der Gemeinschaft kommunizieren kann. Es ist die drohende Verirrung der Neueren, diese Erfahrung für belanglos, für abwendbar zu halten und sie dem Einzelnen als Schwärmerei in schönen Sternennächten anheimzustellen.]453

Benjamin is playing with two interconnected thoughts. He senses that cosmological thinking and poetry are possible paths to consolation; they mediate man’s solitude in an enormous universe. Simultaneously, cosmic experience is a communal and therefore performative act. Benjamin even calls it dangerous that modern man thinks that the ecstatic trance of cosmological experience can be done alone in the form of a “poetic rapture of starry nights.” The idea of a cosmic mediation of man and universe can help to describe another layer of aesthetic ritual which the theatrum mundi equally endorses as a pre-Christian phenomenon and as a seed for the later art religions of modernity. The play works with what has so far been called spatial acoustics: The conscious use of effects of might and beauty generates a cosmic experience when the effects reverberate into the great stage of the universe from the small stage of a Spanish town square. This feature is established without much reference to dogmatics and has to do with an inherent potential for transformation in poetry itself which can explain why the Christian

 Benjamin Anderson, Cosmos and Community in Medieval Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 5.  Walter Benjamin, “To the Planetarium,” in One-Way Street, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 146; Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV/1, ed. Tillman Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), 146f.

204

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

genre of the auto and the originally pagan idea of the theatrum mundi are so suited to create sublime drama. In the “communal act” of performing “a coherent image of the cosmos” (as the Anderson quote puts it), the actors as well as the audience also become “congregation” in the aesthetic ritual in the sense of making themselves a natural part of the universe instead of finding themselves isolated in a foreign or even hostile reality; their solitude is mediated through the ritualistic partaking—in an image.454 Part of the cosmic metalepsis concerns the identification of stage and world. The question is whether too extensive a use of metalepsis might dissolve fiction itself because reality keeps intervening. For instance in Genette’s case when Diderot asks “himself” in Jacques le fataliste (1796) why he should not let Jacques marry and then cuckold him.455 Another example more closely related to Hispanic studies could be the opening of Don Quijote when the narrator begins: “At a place in La Mancha whose name I don’t care to remember . . .” [“En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme.”]456 But in El gran teatro del mundo, the metaleptic feature of the world theatre does not mean a dissolution of fiction through the intervention of “reality” in the text: Fiction intervenes in reality by giving it a stage-like quality—not the reversal. This is a precondition of the play’s claim for transformation of reality. This is the sense in which a transformation is also at stake in the communal ritual of attending the performance of an auto that fuses so brilliantly with the

 This must be understood in its unique Catholic and Siglo de Oro-sense and is not necessarily liable to modern fears of the blurry relation between fiction and truth. And even if this is on the verge of a Kunstreligion, it would not have been experienced as pagan or blasphemous. Returning to Benjamin, it should be noticed that he is working with a typical dualist idea of the divide between modernity and whatever came before it. Benjamin asserts that the modern “intercourse” with the cosmos is different from that of the ancient because only the ancients knew of the relation to cosmos as “ecstatic trance” and of the necessity of cultic-communal observations of the cosmos. But Calderón, allegedly one of the first moderns of literary history, exercised just such “cultic-communal observations of the cosmos” in El gran teatro del mundo which is why it might not be an exclusively premodern praxis. When Goethe, Schlegel, Eichendorff, Wagner, and Hofmannsthal will begin to cultivate this same idea of an aesthetic-cultic theatrum mundi of celebration, it might be more fruitful to demonstrate that there is an enormously influential tradition in literary-dramatic modernity which actually shows awareness of exactly the traits Benjamin at times and at least in this quote misses amongst the moderns. It should be noted, though, that Benjamin’s view on ancient tragedy is more complicated than the quoted fragment would suggest and is developed in detail in the book on the German Trauerspiel. The fragment on the planetarium is therefore predominantly applied here by way of negative comparison to ideas of a “communal” Middle Ages and an “individual” modernity.  Genette, Narrative Discourse, 234.  Cervantes, Don Quijote, 27, emphasis added.

Cosmic Theatrum mundi

205

theatrum mundi. By watching the play, the audience join the actors in a ritual which transforms the apparently evil world as a work-of-nature into a work-ofart. We then return with a better explanation for an odd formulation in Genette’s work already quoted. Metalepsis at its best is “a shifting but sacred frontier between the two worlds” [“frontière mouvante mais sacrée entre deux mondes”].457 This is not an irrelevant assertion when applied to El gran teatro del mundo. It points to a basic puzzle, namely why the genre of the auto and the absolute metaphor of the theatrum mundi are so well suited: Both of them contain traits of a transformation of reality and therein lie their holy features. This offers a point where a notion of Calderón’s modernity risks being harmful to the understanding of his celebratory and therefore ceremonial world theatre; attending the auto of Spain around the year 1640 is by no means the same as being a passive audience to an active show on a stage. This later segregation of observer and observed is exactly what the application of the world theatre helps to deny in Calderón’s mixture of ritual and theatre.458 The already applied concept of a cosmic liturgy syncretises these tenets of the dramatic theodicy. It was coined by none other than Hans Urs von Balthasar in his monograph on the medieval monk Maximus the Confessor and is of immediate use here because Maximus’ theology is intended as an antidote to Gnosticism. Balthasar introduces the concept as Maximus’ solution to Gnostic notions of physical reality as a “defection from God” [“ihres Abfalls von Gott”].459 Cosmic liturgy, on the other hand, “ultimately reconciles the idea of a hierarchical being with the analogical framework of God and world” [“versöhnt die Idee des hierarchischen Seins endgültig mit der analogischen Grundstruktur zwischen Gott und Welt”].460 The cosmic liturgy even blends Calderón’s two forms of aesthetic theodicy because speculation —the notion of hierarchical being—and the ceremonial—the establishment of analogy—both appear here. Maximus’ theology of analogy furthermore ensures that “the universe is one and is not split through its parts” [“dieses Weltall ist eins und wird nicht von seinen Teilen mit-zerteilt”].461 When applying Balthasar’s concept to Calderón, it follows that Calderón’s world theatre is liturgical in the sense of being  Genette, Narrative Discourse, 236; Genette, Figures, vol. 3, 245, emphasis added.  Amongst medievalists, a mild aversion against the label of liturgical drama has arisen. This is due to the fact that the term arguably obscures the possibility of discerning clearly between different kinds of medieval representations, cf. Nils Holger Petersen, “Medieval Latin Representations: Re-Evaluating the State-of-the-Art,” European Medieval Drama 23 (2019): 119. This is a lesser problem in the case of early modern drama such as Calderón’s where the mixture of, at least, ritual and theatre is intended to elucidate a function in the theatrum mundi.  Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie, 76.  Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie, 77.  Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie, 373.

206

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

a ritual with a cosmic perspective; it connects that which is taken apart from the human gaze twofold: the apparent segregation of man and universe is made whole, the same is the divide between God and universe. This leads to an outright rejection of the possibility of Gnosticism, and it establishes the peculiar mix inherent in the meaning and history of the word celebration; it celebrates something which itself changes with the ceremony. This cosmic liturgy can be seen as one basic movement of the play but does not imply that El gran teatro del mundo ought to be seen straightforwardly in continuity with the medieval genre of liturgical drama. Rappaport distinguishes between ritual and liturgy by presupposing in the latter “more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances repeated in specified contexts.”462 This gives cause for a last nuancing of the concepts. El gran teatro del mundo’s world theatre of celebration is ritualistic in two senses. First, when the celebratory element of the world theatre is emphasised and seen in context of the genre of the auto sacramental, the ceremonial element naturally takes precedence. Secondly, the celebratory world theatre is ritualistic in the more cultic sense of performing communal action in order to change something in the participants or in the world.463 But following Rappaport’s distinction, this does not mean that it ought to be seen as a natural part of the tradition of liturgical drama, even though this is the auto genre’s origin. A liturgical drama needs a “more or less invariant sequences of formal acts” (Rappaport), and El gran teatro del mundo is in its rather free style and composition somewhat far from this level of ordo on the formal level. One basic movement of the play can nonetheless be described as a cosmic liturgy because the ceremonial act implied in the genre as well as in the metaphor  Rappaport, “Obvious Aspects,” 17.  It makes sense to talk of the proto-cultic nature of the theatrum mundi. Braungart’s study of the relation between ritual and literature is instructive. He defines rituals as “repeated and repeatable actions or sequences of actions in which the religious cult, that is, the worship of a holy object, accepted by all partakers in the ritual, is accomplished and the holy object made present. [. . .] In the religious rituals, the transition to the holy sphere is regulated” [“eine festgelegte, wiederholte und wiederholbare Handlung oder Handlungssequenz, in der der religiöse Kult, d. h. die Verehrung eines heiligen, von allen Ritualteilnehmern akzeptierten Objektes, vollzogen und das heilige Objekt vergegenwärtigt wird. [. . .] In den religiösen Ritualen wird der Übergang zur heiligen Sphäre geregelt”]. Wolfgang Braungart, Ritual und Literatur (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996), 58f. Braungart clearly identifies ritual as a part of the greater framework of a cult, and from this viewpoint it seems fitting in the case of El gran teatro del mundo to remain on the level of ritual rather than on that of cult because of the fact that the auto was only a small part of a larger arrangement of celebration. But that does not preclude that the theatrum mundi of celebration could be said to contain proto-cultic trades. Especially since “cult” derives from the Latin cultus, meaning worship and according to the OED entering the English language in the early seventeenth century denoting “homage paid to a divinity.”

Cosmic Theatrum mundi

207

also has the purpose of uniting Earth, universe, and eternity. In this sense of a communal rite, a cosmic ordo does exist to a highest degree because the play is so attentive to the establishment of an ontological structure of Creation. The cosmic element is therefore metaphysical rather than generic-formal but is so attentive to structure that this part is not only ritualistic, but liturgical. For the present argument, surveys of the many ramifications of the last decades’ ritual theory are not necessary beyond Rappaport’s distinctions. However, a compelling school of so-called performance theorists define rituals as follows: Ritual is an event, a set of activities that does not simply express cultural values or enact symbolic scripts but actually effects changes in people’s perceptions and interpretations. [. . .] Performance theorists are concerned with the peculiar efficacy of ritual activities, [. . .] most performance theorists imply that an effective or successful ritual performance is one in which a type of transformation is achieved.464

The world theatre art of this particular auto of course also relies on more traditional understandings of ritual in relation to the sacrament of the Eucharist, but this line of thinking adds to the understanding of the unique blend of theatrum mundi and auto because it also demonstrates that the ritualistic nature of El gran teatro del mundo includes this kind of transformation of the world and participants, especially through uses of metalepsis and cosmic liturgy. ✶✶✶ This, then, is Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy: One part is a speculative consideration of finite life, metaphysical multitude, and damnation; they comprise a principle of plenitude with Augustinian prominence. This part is speculative or rationalistic in presupposing traditional philosophical principles which are accessible to reason and do not necessarily need the absolute metaphor of the world theatre to be conveyed credibly although, as seen in the case of Augustine, the metaphor and this philosophical principle can enrich each other. This part of the theodicy cannot be

 Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 74. Bell’s definition of performance theories of ritual not only offers a theoretically sound way of describing El gran teatro del mundo’s ritualistic bid for transformation, it also ensures the possible modernity of Calderón’s enterprise because this understanding of ritual precludes simple accusations of medieval superstition or premodern belief in magic. This is an argument also gaining support in theological theories of ritual. Cf. Nielsen on modernity and Protestantism’s relation to ritual: “Ritualization [. . .] is not a pre-modern ‘magical’ endeavour, which modern people have to leave behind, transforming religion into the field of pure mind. On the contrary, ritualization is a contextual and cultural determined way of doing things.” Bent Flemming Nielsen, “Ritualization, the Body and the Church: Reflections on Protestant Mindset and Ritual Process,” in Religion, Ritual, Theatre, ed. Bent Holm et al. (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 41.

208

Chapter 4 Aesthetic Theodicy

spared even if it is harder to stage than the second ceremonial part. The former ensures the sense of Calderón’s Catholic-metaphysical framework and especially contributes to the understanding of how the play-within-the-play is built into a larger composition of cosmogenesis, judgement, and Eucharist. It also indicates that while it may be the case that the world theatre of celebration especially works to situate man in the middle of the universe, the more traditional concept of the world theatre as a way to view the world sub specie aeternitatis is not entirely invalidated. The second part is dramatic and absorbs a number of the features of the theatrum mundi; the ritualistic staging, the nature of a religious and secular feast, the transformation of world and participants, the desire to cosmically unite Earth, universe, and eternity through ceremonial ritual. Many of the aspects studied in the previous chapter converge and can be seen to contribute to both versions; the deep temporality, the word field of día, the chiaroscuro, the fourfold interpretation of Scripture, the danse macabre, and so forth. By being not only speculative but also ceremonial and dramatic, Calderón’s theodicy is not liable to attacks upon traditional theodicy as they are known especially from Nietzsche. In his book about aesthetic justification, as the term is known from The Birth of Tragedy, Leo Bersani introduces the following problem: The culture of redemption might be thought of as the creation of what Nietzsche called the theoretical man—who Nietzsche claimed first appeared in the West in the person of Socrates—the man who attributes to thought the power to “correct” existence. [. . .] The redemptive aesthetic asks us to consider art as a correction of life, but the corrective virtue of works of art depends on a misreading of art as philosophy. [. . .] A redemptive aesthetic based on the negation of life (in Nietzschean terms, on a nihilism that invents “true world” as an alternative to an inferior and depreciated world of mere appearance) must also negate art.465

If Calderón’s aesthetic theodicy only rested on a principle of plenitude, this would make him liable to this classic Nietzschean accusation of negating art in favour of reason, but the dramatic element ensures that we are not simply dealing with “the theoretical man” but also the ritualistic—one who is much closer to Nietzsche’s sympathetic accounts of the ancient Dionysia and their later modern counterparts in Wagner’s Gesamtkunst, but also to Gadamer’s aesthetics. It is impossible to identify the dramatic part of the aesthetic theodicy in Calderón or to defend him against these forms of accusations if an absolute difference between the theatre of fictions and the theatre of truths is assumed. Literature is not reducible to philosophy in the world theatre of celebration, and it does not negate life nor depreciate the world of appearances either.

 Leo Bersani, The Culture of Redemption (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 2.

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy” Apologetic World Theatre across the Epoch Calderón’s celebratory world theatre is not a gleam of hope in an otherwise grim epoch. The act of the Spanish Golden Age abounds with other apologetic uses of the theatrum mundi. The humanist Juan Luis Vives from Valencia begins his text Fabula de homine (ca. 1518) with a story “since man himself is a fable and a play” [“quoniam et homo ipse ludus ac fabula est”].466 It tells of a feast offered by Juno to all the gods. After the banquet, the other gods thought that the one thing remaining for complete happiness was a play. So, Juno asked her brother-husband Jupiter if he would improvise an amphitheatre. And then “this whole world appeared” [“extitit mundus hic universus”]. It was “so large, so elaborate, so varied and beautiful” [“tam magnus, tam ornatus, tam varius, ac subinde pulcher”].467 Juno asked all the gods if they liked the show, and they assured her that “they had never seen anything so beautiful and delightful” [“se pulchrius ac jucundius quicquam numquam spectasse”].468 In Vives’ fable, it is not only the case that the image is invoked in full. The gods are seated in the skies, being “divine spectators” [“deorum spectantium”],469 and Earth has its natural place in the cosmos. The gods take infinite delight in the play of the world, and there is no absolute segregation of mankind’s world and that of the gods. Ultimately, Man is called to the table of the gods where he is served ambrosia and nectar, leftovers from the feast.470 Here, at the outset of the Spanish Golden Age, a variety of features similar to Calderón’s celebratory world theatre are found as well. Lope de Vega’s martyr drama Lo fingido veradero (ca. 1608) retells the life of the patron saint of actors, Genesius of Rome. Diocletian demands that Genesius (in the Spanish original: Ginés), the most famous autor de comedias of Rome, enact a play mocking a Christian convert martyr. The problem is that during the

 Juan Luis Vives, A Fable About Man, trans. Nancy Lenkeith, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer et al. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1948), 387; Juan Luis Vives, Fabula de homine, Vivesiana 3 (2018): 12.  Vives, Fable, 387; Vives, Fabula, 13.  Vives, Fabula, 14, translation not following Lenkeith here.  Vives, Fabula, 13.  Cascardi has already used Vives’ fable as an entry into a study of Calderón’s theatrical imagination in The Limits of Illusion, 1ff. He describes El gran teatro del mundo as “one of Calderón’s ‘versions’ of Vives’ fable” (5). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-006

210

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy”

enactment, Genesius truly converts and is therefore, on his own behest, executed by a raging Diocletian. After the curtain has fallen, it is lifted again and Ginés appears on stage, impaled: Ya soy Cristiano representante; Cesó la humana comedia, Que era toda disparates; Hice la que veis, divina; Voy al cielo a que me paguen, Que de mi fe y esperanza Y mi caridad notable, Debo al cielo, y él me debe Estos tres particulares. Mañana temprano espero Para la segunda parte.471 [I am now a Christian actor. The human comedy ended, it was all nonsense; I did what you see instead, the divine one. I go to heaven to get paid for my faith, and hope and my remarkable charity, I owe them to Heaven, and Heaven owes me for these three. Tomorrow morning, I await the second part.]

It is impossible to claim that this play essentially focuses on the problems of discerning between fiction and reality as it clearly hails the power of the theatre in Ginés’ conversion. This is enforced by the fact that Ginés expects to wake up in paradise tomorrow—the second part of the comedy. He thus, as occurs throughout El gran teatro del mundo, maintains that both this world and the next are best described in categories of drama; and fiction is what leads him to truth. Baltasar Gracián’s immensely successful El Criticón (1651–57) has one of its first chapters named “El gran teatro del Universo.” When the two protagonists Andrenio and Critilo meet up, Critilo—whose fate has been rather tough—still rejoices in the experience of the greatness of the world. This prompts a question and the invocation of the world theatre: “What did your admirable soul feel that first time you came to discover, to see, to enjoy and worship this commendable theatre of the universe?” [“¿Cuál fue el sentimiento de tu admirado espíritu aquella primera vez que llegaste a descubrir, a ver, a gozar y admirar este plausible teatro del universo?”]472 he asks Andrenio. The answer is that an earthquake had liberated Andrenio from the confines of his cave and that was the first time he came to admire the great theatre of the world. That was no cause for pessi-

 Lope de Vega, Lo fingido verdadero, vv. 3010–21.  Gracián, El Criticón, 73.

Apologetic World Theatre across the Epoch

211

mism but, in effect, a praise of the days: “I opened my eyes to the day’s unfolding beginning, a clear day, a great day, a joyful day, the best in my whole life” [“Abrí los ojos a la que comenzaba abrir el día, día claro, día grande, día felicísimo, el mejor de toda mi vida”],473 he notes and then employs the image in full: That was the first time I had that glance over this great theatre of Earth and Heaven: my soul fervid and strange, between curiosity and joy. [. . .] I just tell you that the feeling, filling my soul, still lasts and always will, the terror, the admiration, the suspension, and the astonishment. [Tendí la vista aquella vez primera por este gran teatro de tierra y cielo: toda el alma con estraño ímpetu, entre curiosidad y alegría, [. . .] sólo te digo que aún me dura, y durará siempre, el espanto, la admiración, la suspensión y el pasmo que me ocuparon toda el alma.]474

Andrenio is hit by the full register of the theatrum mundi, the splendour and the annihilation in one. From Andrenio’s wonder at the power of Creation and back to Vives’ having the gods assure Juno that “there had never been a more admirable spectacle,” Calderón was not the only one on the Peninsula to explore the ways in which the experience of the world theatre leads to effects of emotion and logics of justification. These examples suggest that El gran teatro del mundo partakes in a broad tendency of this crucial period of Spanish literature. By way of a brief summary, the original question, with which this whole inquiry began, can now be answered: The reason that it is possible for the theatrum mundi to produce effects of emotion, consolation, or even jubilation in readers of the classics is that the world theatre is remarkably suited for conveying a permanent philosophical and existential problem summarised in the challenge of the Silenian wisdom. The theatrum mundi is not an image which automatically conveys the sense of estrangement between man and world. It rather works as a unique scene of a battle for the world between two conflicting experiences of life in it. The most fundamental answer to the question of the consolidatory effects of the theatrum mundi, then, is that its register spans across intellectual and existential possibilities of various apologetics, even in the modern age. A new explanation for the transhistorical popularity of the image lies in this battle for the world also taking place within modernity. The conflicting experiences inherent in the theatrum mundi do not represent a question of Christianity versus modernity, or between religion and literature. The world theatre represents

 Gracián, El Criticón, 76.  Gracián, El Criticón, 76f.

212

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy”

a struggle—ancient and modern—which takes place within the areas of religion, literature, and philosophy. The apologetic side of the world theatre can come in many forms. One such form is Calderón’s El gran teatro del mundo. The play fashions the theatrum mundi in such a way that it can be described as a Blumenbergian absolute metaphor, which denies that metaphor should belong to ornatus as in ancient rhetorical theory, because the world theatre conveys an experience and a meaning transcending language and reason itself. The play employs a number of strategies to transform empirical reality. The most important ones indicated in this study are the theme of fiesta in relation to world theatre and auto sacramental; the analogous meaning of the word field of the día, especially accessible through the medieval Quadriga; the sense of a deepening of historical time, favouring multitemporality over the dominion of the present; the art-historical phenomena of danse macabre and chiaroscuro; the style figure of metalepsis as an apology; the liturgical origins of the auto as a transformative ritual in the religious and aesthetic sense; and, finally, absorbing all these features, theodicy as a speculative way of coping with death and judgement and as a cosmic liturgy in the form of a drama.

“Horrible, Intolerable Anachronisms” A stunning turn of events in Enlightenment Spain saw the prohibition of the enactment of autos sacramentales. Carlos III himself, by royal decree, banned the genre entirely in 1765 after a series of attacks on the plays by prominent Neoclassicists of the time. Carlos’ government forbade the autos with the drastic argument that “theatres are highly improper for representing the sacred mysteries, and actors are unworthy and disproportionate instruments” [“los teatros muy impropios y los comediantes instrumentos indignos y desproporcionados para representar los sagrados misterios de que tratan”].475 This argument exudes religious

 Spanish quote and English translation adapted from Barbara Kurtz, The Play of Allegory, 15. The prohibition and the quotations from the decree are discussed, amongst other places, in Parker, Calderón, 20–27; Kurtz, The Play of Allegory, 14–17; Duarte, “Spanish Sacramental Plays,” 73f. The most quoted source for many of the arguments are Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Calderón y su teatro (Madrid: Revista de archivos, 1910) and Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la Licitud del Teatro en España (Madrid: La Real Academia Española, 1904). Merritt Cox has tried to explain the Neoclassicist attacks upon Calderón but does not quote the most extreme opinions. R. Merritt Cox, “Calderón and the Spanish Neoclassicists,” Romance Notes 24, no. 1 (1983): 43–48.

“Horrible, Intolerable Anachronisms”

213

piety against possible theatrical travesty, but the prohibition came after a sort of literary Historikerstreit which relied on highly dubious notions of time and history. For decades, Spanish Neoclassicist critics had been arguing against baroque poetics and in favour of Classicism. Blas Antonio de Nasarre attacked the autos in a preface to an edition of Cervantes’ works, claiming that autos were “the comical interpretation of Sacred Scripture, full of violent allegories and metaphors, of horrible anachronisms; and the worst is that they mix the sacred and the profane” [“la interpretación cómica de las Sagradas Escrituras, llena de alegorías y metáforas violentas, de anacronismos horribles; y lo peor es, mezclando y confundiendo lo sagrado con lo profano”].476 Nasarre evidently applied two assumptions from the secularisation theorem. Somehow, the autos express “horrible anachronism” whereby he must assume that history moves in such a way as to eliminate certain expressions of form or content. The fact that their anachronism does not simply rule them irrelevant but “horribles” suggests an anger at signs that the arrow of history does not simply point in one direction. Half a century later, another Neoclassicist, Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, conveyed the same sense of irritability and referred it to a specific notion of history whilst attacking the very use of personified allegory in the modern period: Can “Spring” talk? Have you ever heard a word from “Appetite’s” mouth? Do you know the metallic voice of “Rose”? [. . .] Who could deem it a possibility to mix divine and profane persons from different centuries, [. . .] for example The Holy Trinity, the devil, Saint Paul, Adam, Jeremiah and the likes? These are horrible, intolerable anachronisms [horrorosos e insufribles anacronismos]. [¿Es posible que hable la Primavera? ¿Ha oído usted en su vida una palabra al Apetito? ¿Sabe usted cómo es el metal de la voz de la Rosa? [. . .] ¿Juzgará nadie posible que se junten a hablar personajes divinos y humanos de muy distintos siglos [. . .] v.gr., la Trinidad Suprema, el demonio, San Pablo, Adán, Jeremías y otros tales, cometiendo horrorosos e insufribles anacronismos?]477

The indignation is intelligible due to the accusation that the autos commit anachronisms which are not simply horribles but horrorosos and insufribles. Especially the latter, implying the predicates of unbearable and intolerable are of interest. To whom are they intolerable, one might ask? To everyone with a mimetic view of art? To modern man?478 This question is especially relevant as Moratín not

 Quoted after Barbara Kurtz, translation included. Kurtz, The Play of Allegory, 14.  Quoted after Barbara Kurtz, translation included. Kurtz, The Play of Allegory, 14f.  García Ruiz has established that, in fact, these were assumed arguments. He, for instance, demonstrates that the prohibition of the autos was considered a natural consequence of a dead

214

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy”

only disliked the mix of profane and sacred but especially that the “different centuries” were mixed. In the royal decree, the echoes of a possible Augustinian hostility towards specific forms of theatre can be heard. In the many Neoclassicist arguments, there also seems to be the aforementioned assumption of a secularisation theorem; history must move towards liquidation of the irrational and dispose of the mixture of the secular and the holy. The story of the prohibition of the autos in eighteenth-century Spain recalls the hypothesis of an assumed connection between modernity and progress in the historiography of the theatrum mundi. Might such connection not presume a similar idea of the arrow of history, pointing towards disillusion in an empty cosmos, just as the Neoclassicists assume that history moves towards rationalisation? There are of course good arguments for El gran teatro del mundo’s use of the world theatre in this respect. It can be viewed as an expression of crisis and as an escalating disenchantment of cosmos and history in early modern Spain. But, more prescriptively asked: Could this not only be one of several streams in the flowing river of time? Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy of history comprises, as seen, a critique of standard theorems of secularisation and, essentially, of ideas of advancing liquidation of all things medieval from the modern period. His description of the transition from the late Middle Ages to early modernity offers an account of a different relation between the two primary issues of this study, namely the historiographical question of the relation between the Middle Ages and modernity, and the aesthetic theme of the register of the absolute metaphor of the theatrum mundi. Blumenberg argued that the beginning of the modern period is best understood as a second overcoming of Gnosticism. The first overcoming related to the early centuries of Christianity where Catholicism, according to Blumenberg, was born out of a desire to overcome Marcionite Gnosticism. Marcion had separated the God who had created the evil world from the foreign one who was going to save man from it. The price was “the attachment of a negative valuation to the Greek cosmic metaphysics and the destruction of the trust in the world that could have been sanctioned by the biblical concept of Creation” [“die Negativierung der Kosmosmetaphysik der Griechen und die Destruktion des Weltvertrauens, das sich durch den biblischen Schöpfungsbegriff hätte sanktionieren lassen”].479 Blumenberg claimed that the Catholic-medieval gesture, from Augustine to the likes of Anselm and Aquinas, consisted in theological attempts to reconcile the concept of the god who created the world, with the concept of the god who was going to save the creatures living in it.

genre. Víctor García Ruiz, “Los autos sacramentales en el XVIII: Un panorama documental y otras cuestiones,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 19, no. 1 (1994): 61.  Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 130; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 142.

“Horrible, Intolerable Anachronisms”

215

El gran teatro del mundo could be said to share that goal. The problem is that the Catholic theologians did not succeed completely and that at the end of the Middle Ages—due to this failure—a theological absolutism had prevailed, structurally similar to ancient Gnosticism, in its devaluation of the created world: The sharper the accent finally placed by medieval theology on the topics of original sin and divine grace, the more precisely it had to differentiate between the lost paradisaic, unmediated enjoyment of the world and the hostile opposition of nature to man’s claim to dominate it in his condition of exile from that paradise. Finally, the formula that the Creator had done His work for no other purpose than to demonstrate His power omitted man entirely from the determination of the world’s meaning. [. . .] The world as the pure performance of reified omnipotence, as a demonstration of the unlimited sovereignty of a will to which no questions can be addressed. [Je schärfer schließlich die mittelalterliche Theologie die Kapitel von Sündenfall und Gnade akzentuierte, um so präziser mußte sie die Differenz zwischen der verlorenen paradiesischen Unmittelbarkeit des menschlichen Weltgenusses einerseits und dem feindlichen Widerstand der Natur gegen den Herrschaftsanspruch des Menschen im Zustand seiner Vertriebenheit aus jenem Paradiese andererseits heraustreiben. Die Formel schließlich, daß der Schöpfer sein Werk zu keinem anderen Zweck als dem geschaffen habe, seine Macht zu demonstrieren, ließ den Menschen aus der Bestimmung des Weltsinnes ganz herausfallen [. . .] Die Welt als pures Faktum verdinglichter Allmacht, als Demonstration unbeschränkter Souveränität eines unbefragbaren Willens.]480

Blumenberg’s historical diagnosis thus claims two things regarding the threshold of early modernity. Scientific advances, especially those of Copernicus, had entailed an enhanced sense of the disappearance of order and a threat of metaphysical contingency. This was, according to Blumenberg, also manifest in the period’s theological thinking where the above sharpened sense of “hostile opposition” between man and the world led to the emphasis of a deus absconditus and the world as an act of his inscrutable ways.481

 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 171; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 194.  Houlind Rasmussen sums up three reasons for an increasing late medieval sense of a second Gnosticism: the disappearance of (metaphysical) order, the threat of “radical contingency” with regard to the very existence of the universe, and the “nominalistic doctrine of creatio continua.” Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen, The Memory of God: Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophy of Religion (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen Publications from the Theological Faculty, 2009), 132. It would be tempting to level the accusation against Blumenberg that he too is instating a great divide between the Middle Ages and modernity, but that it is not the argument. Rather, as Houlind Rasmussen suggests, modernity arises as a dialectic answer to questions posed by late medieval theological absolutism. This model means that modernity is viewed as a legitimate period in its own right, but also not as an absolute beginning as the one often attributed to Descartes’ cogito. Houlind Rasmussen, Memory, 117.

216

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy”

In this intellectual environment, the early modern features of a human selfassertion can be identified as a better way to speak of the beginning of the modern period. This is also where Blumenberg reconciles with the present purpose of an aesthetic theodicy. For this late medieval situation ensured the need for a second overcoming of Gnosticism—and the answer was a justification of God and world: “The modern age begins with an act of theodicy.” [“Die Neuzeit beginnt mit einem Akt der Theodizee.”]482 This act will in Blumenberg’s universe become that of human self-assertion [Selbstbehauptung]. This might sound like modern dominance and utilisation of the exterior world, but that is not the point. On the contrary, man’s self-assertion in the period from Copernicus to the beginning of the Enlightenment, does not mean the naked biological and economic preservation of the human organism by the means naturally available to it. It means the existential program, according to which man posits his existence in a historical situation and indicates to himself how he is going to deal with the reality surrounding him. [meint daher hier nicht die nackte biologische und ökonomische Erhaltung des Lebewesens Mensch mit den seiner Natur verfügbaren Mitteln. Sie meint ein Daseinsprogramm, unter das der Mensch in einer geschichtlichen Situation seine Existenz stellt und in dem er sich vorzeichnet, wie er es mit der ihn umgebenden Wirklichkeit aufnehmen und wie er seine Möglichkeiten ergreifen will.]483

This is a suitable way of describing what could be said to be going on in Calderón’s world theatre of celebration. Blumenberg’s theory offers a way in which there is no need to deny radical changes between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries—and be able to account for the possible experiences of various political and existential crises arising from them—but where the period’s intense occupation with the theatrum mundi can be explained as an act of theodicy, of man’s “positing his existence in a historical situation” and “indicating to himself how he is going to deal with the reality surrounding him.” In its ritualistic and aesthetic bid for a transformation of reality, El gran teatro del mundo’s fashioning of the theatrum mundi offers the moderns an act of once more converting an apparently empty or even hostile universe into a home. In this scheme, Calderón’s world theatre is not an example of modernity’s growing sense of a meaningless universe. His world theatre is one early modern answer as to how meaning arises in the face of a much older problem. Following Blumenberg’s account of the beginning of the modern age, this is an entirely legitimate way of talking about Cal-

 Hans Blumenberg, Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 307.  Blumenberg, The Legitimacy, 138; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität, 151.

Earth and Heaven

217

derón as an early modern dramatist while simultaneously denying pessimism as an indispensable travel companion in the modern world. It is also the way to appreciate that this modern beginning arose from a conversation with the Middle Ages, not a break away from it.

Earth and Heaven How then to look forward in historical time? The Golden Age examples of other apologetic world theatres already invite further study into Calderón’s own epoch in order to let new comparative insights into the history and logic of this absolute metaphor emerge. Considering the reception of Calderón’s world theatre, the present excavation of the contexts and logic of his celebratory use of it, along with the account of this alternative way of speaking of his possible modernity, equally invite further studies of Calderón’s reception history. Especially in the Germanic world, where the celebratory tendency of his drama has been acknowledged. A. W. Schlegel has supplied literary historians with the most emblematic formulation of this reception: Calderón’s poetry, no matter its apparent subject-matter, is an indefatigable hymn of rejoicing to the glory of Creation. He therefore celebrates the works of nature and of human art with an ever new and joyous astonishment as if he beheld them in their still-unworn festive splendour for the first time. [Seine Poesie, was auch scheinbar ihr Gegenstand sein möge, ist in unermüdlicher JubelHymnus auf die Herrlichkeiten der Schöpfung; darum feiert er mit immer neuem freudigem Erstaunen die Erzeugnisse der Natur und der menschlichen Kunst, als erblickte er sie eben zum ersten Male in noch unabgenutzter Festpracht.]484

The present study of the details of Calderón’s celebratory use of the world theatre opens new horizons for understanding his later reception in Romantic and interwar dramatic modernity powerfully enough to possibly speak of an alternative modern current within literary history. It also promises the possibility of studying the history of the theatrum mundi more broadly in this new light of literary modernity, not limited to the specific reception history of Calderón’s work. If the world theatre of celebration can be seen as an alternative modern beginning as chronicled with the aid of the Blumenbergian vocabulary, to what extent could

 A. W. Schlegel, quoted after Deutsche Dramaturgie des 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 2, ed. Benno von Wiese, 2nd ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 95.

218

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy”

also Hofmannsthal’s, Musil’s, or Jünger’s uses of the theatrum mundi be seen in this alternative light of a justification of reality? With the aid of Walter Benjamin’s theoretical framework, Sofie Kluge has argued that we might see the period in a specific historiographical light: Benjamin’s discovery of the roots of literary modernity in the troubled allegorical imagination of the seventeenth century allows for an interpretation of the Baroque as the origin of an alternative kind of modernity. A modernity, that is, that retains a pre-modern concept of transcendence and an analogical logic of resemblance and correspondence, while at the same time embracing the different consequences of emerging modernity. [. . .] In Benjamin’s work, the aesthetic strategy of allegory is the central vehicle of this modernity and is represented as an alternative to the more univocally secular aesthetics springing from the Enlightenment period as well as to the classicist aesthetics of the symbol, both of which are seen to discard the transcendental impulse of art and literature omnipresent in Baroque literary aesthetics, Romanticism, Baudelaire, and, finally, high Modernism.485

The notion of Calderón as an alternative modern beginning is to be seen in this historiographical light because his world theatre of celebration can be seen as the future of many prominent uses of the theatrum mundi in early and high modernity. If we accept that the celebratory Calderonian world theatre also points forward in history, it at least means that this present book can be used to suggest what kind of alternative modern beginning Calderón’s world theatre suggests. The modernity of Calderón’s legacy is in this respect manifold. It denies the necessity of defining modernity as discontinuance of the Middle Ages. Calderón’s transcendental drama and metaphysics demonstrate that a much more ambiguous relation is at play, and the later fascinations with him will prove that this current in literary modernity represents a way where the Middle Ages is not necessarily foreign to us. This has consequences for the way literary history should be thought of. The idea of the autos as horrible anachronisms rests on too simple an idea of history as increasing rationality or progress. The concept of Calderón’s alternative modernity is intended to demonstrate how damaging such an idea of history can be to our understanding of the canon, in this case the theatrum mundi. A paramount feature of this alternative modernity is the fact that the world theatre maintains the possibility of experiencing the cosmos as inherently meaningful. The world might be a ruin, for instance, in the work of an Ernst Jünger, or history contingent in Musil. But this does not lead to despair or to a belief in the disappearance of the world as a beautiful work of art. A second feature is that the human practice of festivity, of celebration, known from the beginning of the cult in ancient times and from the very birth of tragedy, is not necessarily in automatic historical decline

 Kluge, Baroque, 291.

Earth and Heaven

219

through theorems of secularisation. Calderón’s world theatre is of obvious continuity with medieval forms of celebration and in relation to later art religions, even if his ethical and dogmatical framework is rather different. Ritualistic festivity does not disappear, it just takes on new forms. This brings us to another point related to an alternative modern drama tradition. When Calderón’s world theatre is studied in its pessimistic senses, he becomes the natural predecessor of nihilistic tendencies of alienation effects and man’s longing for meaning in a disinterested or hostile universe.486 Retrospectively, his use of the world theatre is actually mined with many famous topoi of a later dark modernity. The distinction between theatre of fictions and theatre of truths echoes twentieth-century ideas of the modern metropolis as a nightmare of neon signs and endless new doors: the very idea of the world theatre also found its dark-modern counterpart in Max Beckmann’s expressionist grotesques, inspired by the First World Far.487 But a second drama enters the stage of literary modernity with this celebratory world theatre which is not only remnant of premodernity but a natural feature of the modern period, also in the twentieth century. García Lorca was one to sense and formulate it: From the costumbrist character of Cervantes, where the entire naughty sexuality of the epoch is recollected in an ironic and assimilated way, to the auto of Calderón, the whole realm of the stage and the theatrical possibilities are there to be had. Through the theatre of Cervantes, one encounters the most schematic farce; it has the traits which nowadays are applied in Pirandello’s works. Through the theatre of Calderón, one encounters Faust; [. . .] and one encounters the great drama, the greatest drama, which is enacted thousands of times every day, the greatest theatrical tragedy which exists in the world: I am referring to the holy sacrifice of the Mass. In Cervantes’ popular theatre, there is the human path of the stage. Through the theatre of Calderón, the abrogation of all values is reached. Earth and Heaven. [De los colores costumbristas de Cervantes, donde recoge, ironizada y asimilada toda la picante sexualidad de la época, hasta el auto de Calderón, está todo el ámbito de la escena y todas las posibilidades teatrales habidas y por haber. Por el teatro de Cervantes se llega a la farsa más esquemática; él mismo tiene rasgos que hoy se pueden encontrar realizados en Pirandello. Por el teatro de Calderón se llega al Fausto, [. . .] y se llega al gran drama, al

 The best example is Martin, who sees the Verfremdungseffekt of El gran teatro del mundo as a forerunner for the theatre of Unamuno, Pirandello, and Brecht. Martin, Representación, 40. Regalado is another example when seeing a connection between the baroque fascination with the theatrum mundi and twentieth-century existentialism. Regalado, Calderón, vol. 1, 82f. These two examples are not expressions of an exclusive tendency, but they constitute examples of how El gran teatro del mundo’s world theatre can become the father of a dark modernity’s more pessimistic tendencies.  See for instance the catalogue to the 2017 exhibition Max Beckmann: Welttheater, ed. Kunsthalle Bremen (Munich: Prestel, 2017).

220

Conclusion: “The Modern Age Begins with an Act of Theodicy”

mejor drama que se representa miles de veces todos los días, a la mejor tragedia teatral que existe en el mundo: me refiero al santo sacrificio de la misa. Por el teatro popular de Cervantes está el camino humano de la escena; por el teatro de Calderón se llega a la evasión espiritual de todos los valores. Tierra y Cielo.]488

García Lorca’s example could be a modern example of the ancient sense of the Janus face of the theatrum mundi; and of its possible ways into modernity. The quote is an example of how the extension of the register of the trope in Calderón will also be able to expand and nuance our understanding of later modern drama so that the world theatre does not necessarily comply with the standard theorem of secularisation, nor exclusively with pessimistic understandings of the trope. Cervantes could be a suitable father for the Pirandello-style theatrum mundi of the European fin de siècle. But, as García Lorca so clearly saw, the act of modernity expands in the vertical direction as well. The cielo above us did not disappear. Hilaire Kallendorf has summed up how a movement in literary historiography from Burckhardt to Greenblatt assumed a fundamental desacralisation of the early modern West. According to Kallendorf, Burckhardt thought that Christianity’s “constant reference to a higher world beyond the grave” could “no longer control renaissance man,” and Lukács that this was the time when “God began to forsake the world.” This has, so Kallendorf, culminated with New Historicism’s assumption of “political and social forces and ‘energies’ so strong that individual talent let alone personal worship, is inconceivable. But God refuses to be removed entirely from the early modern world.”489 Jacob Burckhardt’s figuration of a great divide between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance can be said to be emblematic of a tendency to imagine escalating

 Federico García Lorca, quoted after Sergio Adillo Rufo, “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón y la renovación de la escena española (1927–1939),” Janus 7 (2018): 178. The best example of a Cervantine theatrum mundi use, which paves the way for Pirandello, could be El retablo de las maravillas. This teatro breve exposes the theatrum mundi with what Jonathan Thacker accurately calls “savage satirical intent” (Role-Play, 1n3). The two pícaros Chirinos and Chanfalla arrive at a sleepy village with a puppet play tableau—the miraculous retablo. They claim that only the pureblooded can see what happens in the puppet play in a variation of the topos of the emperor’s new clothes. The theme of illusion is problematised in quite a different way than Calderón’s. This entremés ends in slaughter when a quartermaster arrives at the village and refuses to play along. After being offended by his alleged converso status, he draws his sword and “stabs at everyone [“acuchíllase con todos”]. Miguel de Cervantes, El retablo de las maravillas, ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo (Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 2001), unlineated. The short play is a masterpiece in the sarcastic uses of the theatrum mundi and fits brilliantly with later modernist uses. As García Lorca generically suggests, this would be one fruitful way of seeing the true forebear of modernist drama traditions.  Hilaire Kallendorf, Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 184.

Earth and Heaven

221

subjectivity in the early modern world. The likes of Stephen Greenblatt and José Antonio Maravall would later contribute to an idea of social and political forces so strong that a notion of the world theatre as a communal act of positing meaning, of a way to convey the sense of the world as a work of art, or even as a means of ritualising reality, seems untenable. But that is in fact one strong movement within the theatrum mundi tradition. If the close reading and the general argument of the nature of the theatrum mundi in the above have been convincing in general, this is worth pondering: the theatrum mundi is a major metaphor in early modern art, and El gran teatro del mundo’s world theatre constitutes a ritualisation of that world. Its reference to a theatre of truths does not devalue the theatre of fictions, and it is not primarily the expression of political and social forces. The play establishes all this, not by reactionary countermeasures to modernity, but as a natural part of its beginning. Following the pessimistic history of the trope, it might be the case that all the world’s a stage—but nobody is watching.490 That is, however, neither true of El gran teatro del mundo, nor is it a full account of the subsequent history of the theatrum mundi. The heavens kept watching, and we kept acting. The sublime fusion of art metaphysics and Christianity teaches a lesson with regards to the question of the value of the world and life in it: The theatrum mundi as an aesthetic theodicy is not an expression of a Gnostic salvation of man from an evil world. In Calderón’s mix of Eucharist and world theatre ritual, the world is restored, not abandoned. The need for world theatre drama consists in the fact that this restoration cannot happen by human reason alone but needs ritual and poetry for this transformation to take place. The world theatre can be an expression of pessimistic sentiments about the human condition or of the nature of the universe. But we need to recognise this as the one side of the coin with apologetics being the other. This Janus face is not transferable to a linear Western history where the apologetic and celebratory tendency was Catholic and medieval, and the pessimistic one modern and secular. It is not a question of Christianity versus modernity but a battle for the world between two conflicting experiences of it; a struggle which takes place within the areas of theology, philosophy, literature, and art. This also offers another argument for the theatrum mundi as an absolute metaphor: The battle for or against the world is present throughout the Western history of ideas as a permanent literary and metaphysical problem. The image of the world stage is exceptionally illustrative of this truth. If anything, the history of this absolute metaphor teaches us that the effects of pessimism and apologetics are two fundamental reactions to life in a world which, in turn and in the case of the theatrum mundi of celebration, is transformed into a mighty truth and a praise of the days.

 Cf. Hornby, Drama, Metadrama and Perception, 47.

Bibliography A. Works by Pedro Calderón de la Barca Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Autos sacramentales con quatro comedias y sus loas y entremeses. Madrid: Juan de Valdés, 1655. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado El gran teatro del mundo. In Autos sacramentales, alegoricos, y historiales, edited by Pedro de Pando y Mier, 133–38. Madrid: Manuel Ruíz de Murga, 1717. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Autos sacramentales alegoricos, y historiales. Edited by Manuel Fernandez. Madrid: Manuel Fernandez, 1759–60. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Tratado defendiendo la nobleza da la pintura. In “Calderón und die Malerei” by E. R. Curtius, Romanische Forschungen 50, no. 2 (1936): 89–136. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. La cena del rey Baltasar. In Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, edited by Ángel Valbuena Prat, 155–78. Madrid: Aguilar, 1952. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. El día mayor de los días. In Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, edited by Ángel Valbuena Prat, 1636–60. Madrid: Aguilar, 1952. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado La segunda esposa y Triunfar muriendo. In Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, edited by Ángel Valbuena Prat, 425–27. Madrid: Aguilar, 1952. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. “Prólogo al lector.” In Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, edited by Àngel Valbuena Prat, 41–42. Madrid: Aguilar, 1952. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. El gran teatro del mundo. Edited by John J. Allen and Domingo Ynduráin. Barcelona: Crítica, 1997. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. La vida es sueño. Edited by Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros. Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 1997. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Las órdenes militares. Edited by Nicolás González Ruiz. Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 1999. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado El gran teatro del mundo. Edited by Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros. Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 2001. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. El sacro parnaso. Edited by Alberto Rodríguez Rípodas. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2006. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. El pintor de su deshonra. Edited by Alan K. G. Paterson. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2011. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. El gran teatro del mundo/Das große Welttheater. Spanisch/Deutsch. Translated by Gerhard Poppenberg. 2nd edition. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2012. Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. El gran teatro del mundo. Edited by Ignacio Arellano. Preliminary study by Enrique Rull and Ana Suárez. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2021.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-007

224

Bibliography

B. Other Early Modern Works Bances Candamo, Francisco. El gran chímico del mundo. In Poesias cómicas, obras posthumas, vol. 2, edited by Lorenso Francisco Mojados, 7–40. Madrid: Joseph Antonio Pimentel, 1722. Bances Candamo, Francisco. Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado: El gran chímico del Mundo. In Poesias cómicas, obras posthumas de D. Francisco Banzes Candamo, vol. 2, edited by Lorenso Francisco Mojados, 1–6. Madrid: Joseph Antonio Pimentel, 1722. Bances Candamo, Francisco. Loa para el auto sacramental intitulado: El gran químico del mundo. In Ignacio Arellano, Kurt Spang, and Maria Carmen Pinillos, eds., Apuntes sobre la loa sacramental y cortesana: Loas completas de Bances Candamo, 216–34. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994. Boaistuau, Pierre. Le théâtre du monde. Edited by Michel Simonin. Geneva: Droz, 1981. Boissard, Jean-Jacques. Theatrum vitae humanae. Metz: Abraham Faber, 1596. Archive.org. Cervantes, Miguel de. El retablo de las maravillas. Edited by Florencio Sevilla Arroyo. Alicante: Cervantes Virtual, 2001. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by Tobias Smollett. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Edited by Francisco Rico. Madrid: Real Academia Española, 2004. Covarrubias, Sebastián de. Emblemas morales. Madrid: Luís Sanchez, 1610. Archive.org. Gracián, Baltasar. El Criticón. Edited by Santos Alonso. 18th edition. Madrid: Catedra, 2020. López de Vega, Antonio. Heraclito y Democrito de nuestro siglo. Madrid: Diego Diaz de la Carvera, 1641. Archive.org. Pando y Mier, Pedro. “Prólogo al lector.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Autos sacramentales alegoricos y historiales, edited by Pedro Pando y Mier, xxxii–xxxv. Madrid: Manuel Ruíz de Murga, 1717. Pascal, Blaise. Pensées: Opuscules et lettres. Edited by Philippe Sellier and Laurence Plazenet. Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010. Quevedo, Francisco de. Epicteto y Phocilides en español con consonantes. Madrid: Maria de Quiñones/ Pedro Coello, 1635. Shakespeare, William. Henry V. Edited by T. W. Craik. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Thomas Nelsen & Sons, 1997. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by R. A. Foakes. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Methuen Drama, 1997. Shakespeare, William. King Richard II. Edited by Charles R. Forker. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Thomson Learning, 2002. Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Edited by Juliet Disomberre. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Edited by John Drakakis. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Bloomsbury, 2010. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Kenneth Muir. The Arden Shakespeare, Second Series, 2nd edition. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Vega, Lope de. Lo fingido verdadero. Edited by Maria Teresa Cattaneo. Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1992. Emothe.uv.es.

C. Further Literature

225

Vera Tassis y Villaroel, Juan de. “Fama, vida y escritos de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Verdadera quinta parte de comedias de Pedro Calderón, ed. Juan Vera Tassis. Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1682. Villanueva, Blas de. “Prólogo.” In Francisco Bances Candamo, Poesías cómicas, obras posthumas, edited by Blas de Villanueva, vol. 1, xiii–xiv. Madrid: Joseph Antonio Pimentel, 1722. Vives, Juan Luis. A Fable about Man. Translated by Nancy Lenkeith. In The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, edited by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman, Randall Jr., 387–93. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Vives, Juan Luis. Fabula de homine. Vivesiana 3 (2018): 9–25.

C. Further Literature Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form. New York: Hill and Wang, 1963. Adillo Rufo, Sergio. “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón y la renovación de la escena española (1927–1939).” Janus 7 (2018): 166–90. Alewyn, Richard. Das große Welttheater: Die Epoche der höfischen Feste. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989. Allen, John J. and Domingo Ynduráin. “Prólogo.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran teatro del mundo. Barcelona: Crítica, 1997. Aloni, Maria. “Disjunction.” In The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: The Metaphysics Research Lab, 2016. Anderson, Benjamin. Cosmos and Community in Medieval Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica. Translated by The English Dominican Province, revised by Daniel J. Sullivan. Chicago: William Benton, 1923. Arellano, Ignacio. Estructuras dramáticas y alegóricas en los autos de Calderón. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2001. Arellano, Ignacio. Historia del teatro español del Siglo XVII. 2nd edition. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2002. Arellano, Ignacio. “La flora simbólica en los autos sacramentales de Calderón.” Neophilologus 97 (2013): 315–32. Arellano, Ignacio, Kurt Spang, and Maria Carmen Pinillos, eds. Apuntes sobre la loa sacramental y cortesana: Loas completas de Bances Candamo. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994. Arellano, Ignacio and Miguel Zugasti, “La loa del gran químico mundo” and “Notes.” In Apuntes sobre la loa sacramental y cortesana: Loas completas de Bances Candamo, edited by Ignacio Arellano, Kurt Spang, and Maria Carmen Pinillos, 213–34. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1994. Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell. LCL. 2nd edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Armas, Frederick de. “The King’s Son and the Golden Dew: Alchemy in Calderón’s La vida es sueño.” Hispanic Review 60, no. 3 (1992): 301–19. Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur. 3rd edition. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1964. Auerbach, Erich. Typologische Motive in der mittelalterlichen Literatur. Krefeld: Scherpe Verlag, 1964. Augustine. City of God. Translated by Demetrius Zema and Gerald Walsh. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1949. Augustine. The Nature of the Good. In Augustine: Earlier Writings, trans. J. H. S. Burleigh, 324–48. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. Augustine. Of True Religion. In Augustine: Earlier Writings, translated by J. H. S. Burleigh, 218–83. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

226

Bibliography

Augustine. City of God. Translated by David Wiesen. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Translated by Robin Hard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theodramatik: Prolegomena. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1973. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Kosmische Liturgie. 3rd edition. Einsideln: Johannes Verlag, 1988. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Drama I: Prolegomena. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988. Barner, Wilfried. Barock-Rhetorik. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1970. Barth, Karl. Fides quaerens intellectum: Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammenhang seines theologischen Programms. In Gesamtsausgabe, edited by Eberhard Jünger and Ingolf Dalferth, vol. 2, 3rd edition. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 2002. Beck, Martin. “Tag Jahves (AT).” In Die Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibel Gesellschaft, 2008. Bibelwissenschaft.de. Beckmann, Max. Max Beckmann: Welttheater. Edited by Kunsthalle Bremen. Munich: Prestel, 2017. Bell, Catherine. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Benjamin, Walter. “Zum Planetarium.” In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV/1, edited by Tillman Rexroth, 146–47. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991. Benjamin, Walter. “To the Planetarium.” In One-Way Street, translated by Edmund Jephcott, 58–59. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016. Benjamin, Walter. Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I/1, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 203–430. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2019. Bergman, Ted L. L. “Entremeses and Other Forms of Teatro Breve.” In A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater, edited by Hilaire Kallendorf, 145–61. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Bersani, Leo. The Culture of Redemption. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Blumenberg, Hans. “Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie.” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 6 (1960): 7–142. Blumenberg, Hans. Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt, vol. 2. 2nd edition. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981. Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Translated by Robert M. Wallace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983. Blumenberg, Hans. Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996. Bohrer, Karl-Heinz. Mit Dolchen Sprechen: Der literarische Hass-Effekt. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019. Braungart, Wolfgang. Ritual und Literatur. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996. Burckhardt, Jacob. Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. Basel: Schweighauser Verlag, 1860. Burger, Heinz Otto. “Dasein heißt eine Rolle spielen”: Studien zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Munich: C. Hanser Verlag, 1963. Campos y Fernández, Javier. “Calderón de la Barca, San Agustín, los agustinos y La Aurora en Copacabana.” Anuario Jurídico y Económico Escurialense 52 (2019): 479–516. Carrillo, Francisco. “Contexto y ley natural en El gran teatro del mundo de Calderón de la Barca.” In Actas del congreso internacional sobre Calderón el teatro del Siglo de Oro, edited by García Lorenzo, vol. 2, 679–86. Madrid: CSIC, 1983. Carson, D. A., ed. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982. Cascardi, Anthony J. “Comedia and Trauerspiel: On Calderón and Benjamin.” Comparative Drama 16, no. 1 (1982): 1–11. Cascardi, Anthony J. The Limits of Illusion: A Critical Study of Calderón. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Chambers, E. K. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems I–II. London: Clarendon Press, 1930.

C. Further Literature

227

Christian, Lynda. Theatrum Mundi: The History of an Idea. New York: Garland, 1987. Cole, Andrew andD. Vance Smith. “Outside Modernity.” In The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory, edited by Andrew Cole and D. Vance Smith, 1–37. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Coleman, Alexander. “Calderón/Schopenhauer/Wagner: The Story of a Misunderstanding.” The Musical Quarterly 69, no. 2 (1983): 227–43. Cotarelo y Mori, Emilio. Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la Licitud del Teatro en España. Madrid: La Real Academia Española, 1904. Cruickshank, Don W. Don Pedro Calderón. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cuddon, J. A. “Allegory.” In Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, edited by J. A. Cuddon, 5th edition, 20–23. London: Penguin, 1999. Curtius, Ernst Robert. “Calderón und die Malerei.” Romanische Forschungen 50, no. 2 (1936): 89–136. Curtius, Ernst Robert. “Theologische Kunsttheorie im Spanischen Barock.” Romanische Forschungen 53, no. 2 (1939): 145–84. Curtius, Ernst Robert. “George, Hofmannsthal und Calderón.” In Kritische Essays zur Europäischen Literatur, 172–201. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1950. Curtius, Ernst Robert. Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. 7th edition. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1969. D’Arcens, Louise, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. D’Arcens, Louise. “Medievalism: Scope and Complexity.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, edited by Louise D’arcens, 1–13. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016. Dahlkvist, Tobias. Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Pessimism. Uppsala: Uppsala Studies in History of Ideas, 2007. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno. Translated by Robert M. Durling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Dante Alighieri. “The Letter to Can Crande.” Translated by Robert Haller. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 51–52. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Davis, R. T. “Allegory.” In Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Literature, edited by S. H. Steinberg, 9–11. London: Cassell, 1953. Devenish, Philip E. “Theodicy and Cosmodicy.” Journal of Empirical Theology 4, no. 2 (1991): 5–23. Díaz Balsera, Viviana. Calderón y las quimeras de la culpa: Alegoría, seducción y resistencia en cinco autos sacramentales. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1997. Diels, Hermann and Walther Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 2. 17th edition. Germany: Weidmann, 1974. Díez Borque, José Maria. “Teatro y fiesta en el barroco español: El auto sacramental de Calderón y el público. Funciones del texto cantado.” Cuadernos hispanoamericanos 396 (1983): 606–64. Díez Borque, José Maria, ed. Historia del teatro en España: Edad media, siglo XVI, siglo XVII. Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, 1990. Díez Borque, José Maria. “El auto sacramental calderoniano y su público: Funciones del texto cantado.” In Calderón and the Baroque Tradition, edited by Kurt Levy, Jesús Ara, and Gethin Hughes, 2nd edition, 49–67. Waterloo, ON: Laurier University Press, 2006. Dodds, Eric R. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Duarte, J. Enrique. “The Spanish Sacramental Plays: A Study of Their Evolution.” In A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater, edited by Hilaire Kallendorf, 59–74. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Eckermann, J. P. Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1981.

228

Bibliography

Egginton, William. How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality and the Question of Modernity. New York: State University of New York, 2003. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Epictetus. Enchiridion. In The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments, translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1890. Erdocia Castillejo, Carolina. La loa sacramental de Calderón de la Barca. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2012. Feijoo, Luis Iglesias. “Calderón y el metateatro.” In “A dos luces, a dos visos”: Calderón y el género sacramental en el Siglo de Oro, edited by Carlos Mata Induráin, 103–26. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2020. Felkel, Robert W. “El gran teatro del mundo of Calderón de la Barca and the Centrality of Grace.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 31, no. 2 (1979): 127–34. Felski, Rita. “Modernist Studies and Cultural Studies: A Reflection on Method.” Modernism/Modernity 10, no. 3 (2003): 501–17. Fernández Mosquera, Santiago. Calderón: Texto, Reescritura, Significado y Representación. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2015. Figal, Günter. “Philosophische Hermeneutik—hermeneutische Philosophie: Ein Problemaufriss.” In Hermeneutische Wege: Hans Georg-Gadamer zum Hundertsten, edited by Günter Figal et al., 335–44. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000. Fink, Eugen. Spiel als Weltsymbol. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1960. Fiore, Robert L. “Calderón’s El Gran Teatro del Mundo: An Ethical Interpretation.” Hispanic Review 40, no. 1 (1972): 40–52. Fiore, Robert L. Drama and Ethos: Natural-Law Ethics in Spanish Golden Age Theater. Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 1975. Fitzmyer, Joseph A. First Corinthians. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Flasche, Hans. “Calderón als Paraphrast mittelalterlicher Hymnen.” In Calderón de la Barca, edited by Hans Flasche, 425–64. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971. Flecniakoska, J.-L. La loa. Madrid: Sociedad española de librería, 1975. Floeck, Wilfried. “El gran teatro del mundo de Calderón de la Barca: ¿Drama religioso como paradigma teatral en tiempos profanos?” Iberoromania 49 (1999): 48–67. Flor, Fernando R. de la. Barroco: Representación e ideología en el mundo hispánico. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2002. Frank, Hieronymus. “Geschichte des Trierer Beerdigungsritus.” Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 4, no. 2 (1956): 279–315. Freytag, Hartmut. “Preface.” In Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Sophie Oosterwijk and Stefanie Knöll, xxi–xxiii. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2011. Friedrich, Hugo. Der fremde Calderón. Freiburg im Breisgau: H. F. Schulz Verlag, 1955. Frizen, Werner. “‘Ästhetische Theodizee’: Der Erwählte und Felix Krull.” In Thomas Mann Handbuch, edited by Helmut Koopmann, 322–26. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2005. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. 3rd edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. Fugelso, Karl. “Medievalism from Here.” Studies in Medievalism 17 (2009): 86–91. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “The Relevance of the Beautiful: Art as Play, Symbol, and Festival.” In The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, translated by Nicholas Walker, 1–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest.” In Gesammelte Werke, vol. 8, 94–142. Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck, 1993.

C. Further Literature

229

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. 2nd edition. London: Continuum, 2006. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode. In Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. García Ruiz, Víctor. “Los autos sacramentales en el XVIII: Un panorama documental y otras cuestiones.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 19, no. 1 (1994): 61–82. Genette, Gerard. Figures, vol. 3. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972. Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. González, Aurelio. “El texto espectacular en El gran teatro del mundo.” In “A dos luces, a dos visos”: Calderón y el género sacramental en el Siglo de Oro, edited by Carlos Mata Induráin, 69–87. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2020. Green, Otis H. Spain and the Western Tradition: The Castilian Mind from El Cid to Calderón, vols. 1–4. Madison and Milwaukee: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1963–66. Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Greer, Margaret. The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calderón de la Barca. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Harnack, Adolf von. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 3. 4th edition. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962. Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2006. Heselhaus, Clemens. “Calderón und Hofmannsthal.” In Calderón de la Barca, edited by Hans Flasche, 257–90. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971. Hick, John. Evil and the God of Love. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010. Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. Das Salzburger große Welttheater. In Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelbänden, vol. 3, 106–63. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1979. Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Barry B. Powell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hornby, Richard. Drama, Metadrama and Perception. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986. Houlind Rasmussen, Ulrik. The Memory of God: Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophy of Religion. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen Publications from the Theological Faculty, 2009. Hunter, W. A. “Toward a More Authentic Text of Calderón’s El gran teatro del mundo.” Hispanic Review 29, no. 3 (1961): 240–44. Jacquot, Jean. “‘Le Théâtre du monde’ de Shakespeare à Calderón.” Revue de Littérature Comparée 31 (1957): 341–72. Johnson, Carroll B. “Social Roles and Ideology, Dramatic Roles and Theatrical Convention in El gran teatro del mundo.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 49, no. 2 (1997): 247–72. Johnston, Andrew James. Performing the Middle Ages from Beowulf to Othello. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Jünger, Ernst. Strahlungen, vol. 2. Munich: DTV, 2008. Jünger, Ernst. A German Officer in Occupied France. Translated by Thomas S. Hansen and Abby J. Hansen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. Kaiser, Gert. Der tanzende Tod: Mittelalterliche Totentänze. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1982. Kallendorf, Hilaire. Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Kallendorf, Hilaire. Sins of the Fathers: Moral Economies in Early Modern Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

230

Bibliography

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. 2nd edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Cologne: Anaconda Verlag, 2011. Kant, Immanuel. “Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee.” In Kants populäre Schriften, edited by Paul Menzer, 257–80. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957. Kennedy, Joyce et al., eds. “Parsifal.” In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Oxfordreference.com. Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/or: Part One. In Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 3, translated by Howard V. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Kierkegaard, Søren. Enten-Eller: Første del. In Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 2. Copenhagen: Søren Kierkegaard Forskningscentret, 1997. Kittel, Gerhard. “θέατρον.” In Theologisches Wörterbuch zum neuen Testament, vol. 3. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1938. Kjærulf, Berit. “Medievalism and the Post-Medieval Middle Ages: A Review of Anglophone Medievalism Studies.” Orbis Litterarum 73, no. 5 (2018): 458–70. Klindt, Karl. Der Spieler Gottes: Shakespeares Hamlet als Christliches Welttheater. Berlin: Wichern Verlag, 1949. Kluge, Sofie. “Calderón’s Anti-Tragic Theater: The Resonance of Plato’s Critique of Tragedy in La vida es sueño.” Hispanic Review 76, no. 1 (2008): 19–52. Kluge, Sofie. Baroque, Allegory, Comedia: The Transfiguration of Tragedy in Seventeenth-Century Spain. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2010. Kluge, Sofie. Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2014. Kluge, Sofie. “Walter Benjamins bog om det barokke sørgespil.” In Walter Benjamin, Det tyske sørgespils oprindelse, translated by Sofie Kluge, 9–66. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2014. Kluge, Sofie. “Historien om fortiden—historien om nutiden? Et eksempel fra barokforskningen.” In Det historiske blik, edited by Ulla Kallenbach, Sofie Kluge, and Rasmus Vangshardt, 149–58. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2021. Kluge, Sofie. “Autos Sacramentales: Historical World as Divine Pageant.” In The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture, ed. Rodrigo Cacho Casal and Caroline Egan, 370–86. London: Routledge, 2022. Kokolakis, Minos. The Dramatic Simile of Life. Athens: Private edition, 1960. Kolve, A. V. The Play Called Corpus Christi. London: Edward Arnold, 1966. Konersmann, Ralf. Der Schleier des Timanthes. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1994. Kübnel, Jürgen, Hans D Mück, and Ulrich Müller, eds. Mittelalter-Rezeption: Vorträge, Salzburg, 1979. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1979. Küpper, Joachim. Diskurs-Renovatio bei Lope de Vega und Calderón: Untersuchungen zum spanischen Barockdrama. Mit einer Skizze zur Evolution der Diskurse in Mittelalter, Renaissance und Manierismus. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1990. Küpper, Joachim. Discursive Renovatio in Lope de Vega and Calderón: Studies on Spanish Baroque Drama. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. Kurtz, Barbara. The Play of Allegory in the Autos Sacramentales of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Lang, Bernhard. Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

C. Further Literature

231

Latour, Bruno. Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1991. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Latour, Bruno. An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Lehrer, Adrienne and Paul Tacoma. “Semantic Fields and Semantic Change.” Coyote Papers. Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (1983): 119–28. Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Link, Franz and Günter Niggl, eds. Theatrum Mundi: Götter, Gott und Spielleiter im Drama von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981. Lovejoy, Arthur. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. 3rd edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. Lovejoy, J. G. Heidegger’s Early Ontology and the Deconstruction of Foundations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Warwick, 1992. Lund Nielsen, Orla. Theatrum Mundi: Middelalderens kristi legemsfest og barokkens auto sacramental med særligt henblik på centrale temaer i Calderón de la Barcas værk. Odense: University of Southern Denmark, 2002. Lutz, Cora E. “Democritus and Heraclitus.” The Classical Journal 49, no. 7 (1954): 309–14. Macy, Gary. The Banquet’s Wisdom: A Short History of the Theologies of the Lord’s Supper. 2nd edition. Ashland City, TN: OSL Publications, 2015. Magnússon, Gísli. Dichtung als Erfahrungsmetaphysik: Esoterische und okkultische Modernität bei R.M. Rilke. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. Man, Paul de. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 1983. Maravall, José Antonio. Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure. Translated by Terry Cochran. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Maravall, José Antonio. La cultura del barroco. 9th edition. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2002. Martin, Vincent. El concepto de “representación” en los autos sacramentales de Calderón. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2002. Martus, Steffen. Werkpolitik: Zur Literaturgeschichte kritischer Kommunikation von 17. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007. Mata Induráin, Carlos, ed. “A dos luces, a dos visos”: Calderón y el género sacramental en el Siglo de Oro. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2020. Matthews, David. Medievalism: A Critical History. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2015. McKendrick, Melveena. Theatre in Spain 1490–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. McKendrick, Melveena. Playing the King: Lope de Vega and the Limits of Conformity. London: Tamesis, 2000. Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino. Calderón y su teatro. Madrid: Revista de archivos, 1910. Merritt Cox, R. “Calderón and the Spanish Neoclassicists.” Romance Notes 24, no. 1 (1983): 43–48. Michelsen, Peter. “Das große Welttheater bei Pedro Calderón und Hugo von Hofmannsthal.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca: Vorträge anlässlich der Jahrestagung der Görres-Gesellschaft 1978, edited by Theodor Berchem and Siegfried Sudhof, 29–47. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1983. Milizia, Francesco. “BARROCO.” In Dizionario delle belle arti del disegno, edited by Francesco Milizia. Bassano, 1797.

232

Bibliography

Miramón, Ana Suárez. “El cielo estrellado en la cosmología sacramental de Calderón.” Hipogrifo 5, no. 1 (2017): 433–44. Nagel, Mechthild. Masking the Abject: A Genealogy of Play. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2002. Neiman, Susan. Evil in Modern Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Nelson, Bradley J. The Persistence of Presence: Emblem and Ritual in Baroque Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Neumeister, Sebastian. Review of Diskurs-Renovatio bei Lope de Vega und Calderón. Untersuchungen zum spanischen Barockdrama by Joachim Küpper. Hispanic Review 60, no. 3 (1992): 359–62. Newman, Richard W. Calderón and Aquinas. PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1956. Nielsen, Bent Flemming. “Ritualization, the Body and the Church: Reflections on Protestant Mindset and Ritual Process.” In Religion, Ritual, Theatre, edited by Bent Holm, Bent Flemming Nielsen, and Karen Vedel, 19–46. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by W. M. A. Hausmann. Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, 1910. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Geburt der Tragödie. In Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 1, 9–136. Munich: C. Hanser Verlag, 1954. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Götzen-Dämmerung. In Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 2, 940–1035. Munich: Hanser Verlag, 1954. Orozco Díaz, Emilio. El teatro y la teatralidad del Barroco. Madrid: Editorial Planeta, 1969. Parker, Alexander A. “Notes on the Religious Drama in Medieval Spain and the Origins of the auto sacramental.” The Modern Language Review 30, no. 2 (1935): 170–82. Parker, Alexander A. The Allegorical Drama of Calderón: An Introduction to the Autos Sacramentales. Oxford: The Dolphin Book Co., 1943. Parker, Alexander A. “Towards a Definition of Calderonian Tragedy.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 39, no. 4 (1962): 222–37. Parrack, John C. “El auge de la subjetividad moderna en El gran teatro del mundo.” In Calderón 2000: Homenaje a Kurt Reichenberger en su 80 cumpleaños, edited by Ignacio Arellano, vol. 2, 867–77. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2002. Patterson, Lee. “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies.” Speculum 65 (1990): 87–108. Pawlita, Leonie. Staging Doubt: Skepticism in Early Modern European Drama. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. Petersen, Nils Holger. “Medieval Latin Representations: Re-Evaluating the State-of-the-Art.” European Medieval Drama 23 (2019): 115–32. Plantinga, Alvin. God, Freedom and Evil. 2nd edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002. Plato. The Timaeus. Translated by W. R. M. Lamb. In Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9. London: Heinemann, 1925. Plato. Laws. Translated by R. G. Bury. In Plato in Twelve Volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Christopher Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. In Plato. Republic, Volume II: Books 6–10. Loeb Classical Library 276. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Plato. Laws 1 and 2. Translated by Susan Suavé Meyers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pollin, Alice M. “Calderón de la Barca and Music: Theory and Examples in the Autos (1675–1681).” Hispanic Review 41, no. 2 (1973): 362–70. Poppenberg, Gerhard. “Neuzeit oder Renovatio? Überlegungen beim Lesen von Joachim Küppers Diskursrenovatio bei Lope de Vega und Calderón.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 41, no. 4 (1991): 443–56.

C. Further Literature

233

Poppenberg, Gerhard. Psyche und Allegorie: Studien zum spanischen auto sacramental von den Anfängen bis zu Calderón. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2003. Poppenberg, Gerhard. “Pro fano: Zu El pintor de su deshonra (comedia und auto) sowie zu Las meninas und Las hilanderas von Velázquez.” In Zwischen dem Heiligen und dem Profanen: Religion, Mythologie, Weltlichkeit in der spanischen Literatur und Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Wolfram Nitsch and Bernhard Teuber, 413–54. Munich: Wilhelm Vink Verlag, 2008. Poppenberg, Gerhard. Psique y alegoría: Estudios del auto sacramental español desde sus comienzos hasta Calderón. Translated by Elvira Gómez Hernández. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2009. Poppenberg, Gerhard. “Nachwort und Anmerkungen.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran teatro del mundo: Das grosse Welttheater. Spanisch/Deutsch, edited by Gerhard Poppenberg, 106–206. Stuttgart: Reclam 2012. [Referenced as: Poppenberg, “Note to v. x.”] Poppenberg, Gerhard. “Role and Freedom in Calderón’s ‘The Great Theater of The World.’” Comparative Drama 47, no. 3 (2013): 309–42. Pörksen, Uwe. “Der Totentanz des Spätmittelalters und sein Wiederaufleben im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.” In Mittelalter-Rezeption: Ein Symposion, edited by Peter Wapnewski, 245–62. Stuttgart: J. P. Metlerzsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1986. Quiring, Björn, ed. “If then the world a theatre present . . .”: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi in Early Modern England. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Quiring, Björn. “Introduction.” In “If then the world a theatre present . . .”: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi in Early Modern England, edited by Björn Quiring, 2–23. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Rappaport, Roy. “The Obvious Aspects of Ritual.” In Ecology, Meaning, and Religion, 173–221. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1979. Regalado, Antonio. Calderón: Los orígenes de la modernidad en la España del Siglo de Oro, vols. 1–2. Barcelona: Destino, 1995. Reichenberger, Kurt. “Calderóns Welttheater und die autos sacramentales.” In Theatrum Mundi: Götter, Gott und Spielleiter im Drama von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Franz Link and Günter Niggl, 161–75. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1981. Rico, Francisco. El pequeño mundo del hombre: Varia fortuna de una idea en las letras españolas. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1970. Righter, Anne. Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Río Parra, Elena del. “Suspensio Animi, or the Interweaving of Mysticism and Artistic Creation.” In A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, edited by Hilaire Kallendorf, 391–410. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Robbins, Jeremy. Arts of Perception: The Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque 1580–1720. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005. Rodríguez Ortega, Davinia. “Publicación de autos sacramentales en el siglo xvii: Volúmenes propios, colectivos y misceláneas.” Revista de filología española 98, no. 1 (2018): 161–84. Rudd, Stephen. “Reason of State and Repetition in The Tempest and La vida es sueño.” Comparative Literature 42, no. 4 (1990): 289–318. Ruge, Enno. “Having a Good Time at the Theatre of the World: Amusement, Antitheatricality and the Calvinist Use of the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor in Early Modern England.” In “If then the world a theatre present . . .”: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi in Early Modern England, edited by Björn Quiring, 25–38. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Rull, Enrique. “Introducción.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Autos sacramentales, edited by Enrique Rull, vol. 2, ix–xxvi. Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 1997. Rull, Enrique. Arte y sentido en el universo sacramental de Calderón. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2004. Sage, Jack. “Calderón und die Theatermusik.” In Calderón de la Barca, edited by Hans Flasche, 291–320. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971.

234

Bibliography

Saine, Thomas P. Die ästhetische Theodizee: Karl Philipp Moritz und die Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971. Schiller, Friedrich. Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. In Sämtliche Werke, vol. 5. 3rd edition. Munich: Hanser Verlag, 1962. Schrage, Wolfgang. Der erste Brief an die Korinther: Bd. I: 1 Kor. 1,1–6,11. Zurich: Benziger Verlag, 1991. Seneca. Epistles, vol. 2. Translated by Richard Gummere. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Shergold, N. D. A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until the End of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Shergold, N. D. “El gran teatro del mundo y sus problemas escenográficos.” In Hacia Calderón: Coloquio anglogermano Exeter 1969, edited by Hans Flasche, 77–84. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970. Sito Alba, Manuel. “Metateatro en Calderón: El gran teatro del mundo.” In Actas del congreso internacional sobre Calderón y el Siglo de Oro, edited by Luciano García Lorenzo, vol. 2, 789–802. Madrid: CSIC, 1983. Skrine, Peter. The Baroque: Literature and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Europe. London: Methuen, 1978. Sloterdijk, Peter. Neue Zeilen und Tage: Notizen 2011–2013. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018. Sommer, Manfred. Evidenz im Augenblick. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus. Translated by David Molroy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015. Spengler, Oswald. Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. Cologne: Anaconda Verlag, 2017. Sullivan, Henry W. Calderón in the German Lands and the Low Countries: His Reception and Influence, 1654–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Tallon, Philip. The Poetics of Evil: Toward an Aesthetic Theodicy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Taylor, C. C. W. The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Thacker, Jonathan. Role-Play and the World as Stage in the Comedia. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002. Urban IV. Bulla Transiturus de hoc mundo, Vatican.va, after Acta Urbani IV, Clementis IV, Gregorii X. 1261–1276, edited by A. L. Tàutu, 43–47. Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1953. Valbuena Prat, Ángel. “Los autos de Calderón: Clasificación y análisis.” Revue Hispanique 61 (1924): 1–302. Valbuena Prat, Ángel. “Los autos sacramentales de Calderón de la Barca.” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, edited by Ángel Valbuena Prat, 9–37. Madrid: Aguilar, 1952. Valbuena Prat, Ángel. “Nota preliminar [a El gran teatro del mundo].” In Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas: Autos sacramentales, edited by Ángel Valbuena Prat, 199–202. Madrid: Aguilar, 1952. Valbuena Prat, Ángel. Historia del teatro español. Barcelona: Noguer, 1956. Vangshardt, Rasmus. “Antonio’s Sadness and the Stoic Theatrum Mundi of the Early Modern City,” Orbis Litterarum 74, no. 4 (2019): 264–77. Vangshardt, Rasmus. “Coherence and the Longing for Modernity in Literary Historiography, or: Why History and Historicism Are Two Things.” Res Cogitans 14, no. 2 (2020): 85–103. Veit, Agnete. “Εἴρων versus ἀλαζών—1 Kor. 4,8:13 i lyset af et klassisk filosofisk-litterært modsætningspar.” Collegium Biblicum 23 (2019): 1–7. Verduin, Kathleen. “The Founding and the Father.” Studies in Medievalism 17 (2009): 1–27. Very, F. G. The Spanish Corpus Christi Procession: A Literary and Folkloric Study. Valencia: Moderna, 1962.

E. Dictionaries and Works of Reference

235

Vilanova, Antonio. “El tema del gran teatro del mundo.” Boletín de la real academia de buenas letras de Barcelona 23, no. 2 (1950): 153–88. Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez, Luis. Vanitas: Retórica visual de la mirada. Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro, 2011. Walsh, Brian. Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men and the Elizabethan Performance of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Wapnewski, Peter, ed. Mittelalter-Rezeption. Stuttgart: Mezlersche Verlag, 1986. Wardropper, Bruce. “The Search for a Dramatic Formula for the Auto Sacramental.” PMLA 65, no. 6 (1950): 1196–211. Warnke, Frank J. “The World as Theatre: Baroque Variations on a Traditional Topos.” In Festschrift für Edgar Mertner, edited by Bernhard Fabian and Ulrich Suerbaum, 185–200. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969. Weber, Christian. “Zur Konjunktur der Theatrum-Metapher im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert als Ort der Wissenskompilation und zu ihrer literarischen Umsetzung im Großen Welttheater.” Metaphorik 14 (2008): 333–60. Welborn, L. L. Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1. Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophical Tradition. New York: Bloomsbury, 2005. West, William N. “Knowledge and Performance in the Early Modern Theatrum Mundi.” Metaphorik.dk 14 (2008): 1–20. Wiese, Benno von, ed. Deutsche Dramaturgie des 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 2. 2nd edition. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Wild, Christopher. “They Have Their Exits and Their Entrances: On Two Basic Operations in the Theatrum Mundi.” In “If then the world a theatre present . . .”: Revisions of the Theatrum Mundi in Early Modern England, edited by Björn Quiring, 83–113. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Wille, Jutta. Calderóns Spiel der Erlösung: Eine spanische Bilderbibel des 17. Jahrhundert. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1932. Williams, Robert R. Tragedy, Recognition and the Death of God: Studies in Hegel and Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Wilson, E. M. “The Four Elements in the Imagery of Calderón.” In Calderón de la Barca, ed. Hans Flasche, 112–30. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971.

D. Editions of the Bible Biblia Sacra Vulgata. 405. Biblegateway.com. [Referenced as: VUL.] Biblia del Oso. 1569. Bibliatodo.com. Douay-Rheims Bible. 1582–1609. Biblegateway.com. [Referenced as: D-R.] King James Version. 1611. Biblegateway.com. [Referenced as: KJV.] New King James Version. 1982. Biblegateway.com. Reina-Valera Contemporánea. 2009. Biblegateway.com.

E. Dictionaries and Works of Reference Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. 1611. Bdh-rd.bne.es. [Referenced as: Tesoro.] Diccionario de Autoridades. 1726–39. Rae.es. [Referenced as: Autoridades.] The Catholic Encyclopaedia. 1912. Newadvent.org.

236

Bibliography

Diccionario biográfico de actores del teatro clásico español. 2008. Reichenberger. [Referenced as: DICAT.] Gran Diccionario Oxford. Español-Inglés/Inglés-Español. 2008. Oxford University Press. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary since 1882. 2020. Merriam-webster.com. [Referenced as: MerriamWebster.] Oxford English Dictionary. The Definitive Record of the English Language. 2020. Oed.com. [Referenced as: OED.]

Index of Names Abel, Lionel 10–12, 26n, 44 Acton (Lord) 46 Alemán, Mateo 51 Alewyn, Richard 65–66 Allen, John J. 73 Ambrosius, Aurelius 161 Anderson, Benjamin 202–204 Anselm (of Canterbury) 187, 214 Aquinas, Thomas 66–69, 73, 76–78, 80, 82, 101, 106–107, 114n, 165, 175–176, 214 Arellano, Ignacio 54n, 73, 86–88, 98, 100n, 138, 143, 175 Aristotle 10–12, 26n, 36, 44, 60n, 177, 187n, 194 Auerbach, Erich 76n Augustine 46, 173–176, 186–190, 207, 214 Aurelius, Marcus 36, 161 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 6, 35–37, 134n, 135n, 205 Bances Candamo, Francisco 85, 90, 98–100, 106, 108 Barner, Wilfried 18n Barth, Karl 186 Barthes, Roland 51 Baudelaire, Charles 218 Beckett, Samuel 2, 4 – Waiting for Godot 11, 147 Beckmann, Max 219 Bell, Catherine 207 Benjamin, Walter 44, 48, 128n, 144, 147, 151, 182, 193–194, 202–203, 204n, 218 Bergman, Ted L. L. 83n Bersani, Leo 208 Blumenberg, Hans 6, 9–10, 12, 19–23, 26, 32, 34, 40–41, 63, 109n, 120n, 126n, 144, 172, 179, 190, 212, 214–217 Boaistuau, Pierre 11, 57 Bohrer, Karl Heinz 34n Boissard, Jean-Jacques 11, 53, 61, 162 Braungart, Wolfgang 206n Brunel, Antoine de 65 Bry, Theodor de 57, 142, 144 Buci-Glucksmann, Christine 51 Bukdahl, Else Marie 51

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501517006-008

Burckhardt, Jacob 8, 46n, 220 Burton, Robert 38 Calabrese, Omar 51 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro – La cena del rey Baltasar 195n – El día mayor de los días 94n – Las órdenes militares 10n – El pintor de su deshonra 61n, 167–169 – Prólogo al lector 63n, 76n, 108n – El sacro parnaso 175–176 – La segunda esposa 56, 71–72 – Tratado defendiendo la nobleza de la pintura 134, 166, 177n – La vida es sueño (comedia)/Segismundo 14, 26n, 31n, 32, 130n, 170, 172, 180n, 182, 183, 194n, 201n Campos y Fernández, Javier 186n Carlos III (King) 212 Carmen Pinillos, Maria 86 Carrillo, Francisco 106n Cascardi, Anthony J. 33n, 193–194, 209n Cavaille, J. P. 162 Cervantes, Miguel de 8, 11, 24, 213, 219–220 – Don Quijote 2, 8, 19, 23, 96, 204 – El retablo de las maravillas 11, 220n Chambers, E. K. 37n Chaucer, Geoffrey 23, 46 Christian, Lynda 37, 38n, 41–43, 48n, 57n, 61, 62n, 162, 202n Cicero 183 Clavijo, y Fajardo, José 85 Clement V (Pope) 63 Cole, Andrew 21n Coleman, Alexander 202n Copernicus 22, 215–216 Covarrubias, Sebastián de 58n, 142 Cruickshank, Don W. 182n Curtius, Ernst Robert 5, 7–9, 39, 59, 76n, 144n, 168n, 173, 177, 182n D’Arcens, Louise 45n, 49n Dahlkvist, Tobias 13n Dante 1, 46, 76–79, 155n

238

Index of Names

De Armas, Frederick 194n, 201n Democritus 36–38, 119n Descartes, René 3, 17–18, 31–33, 71–72n, 113–114, 126n, 215n Díaz Balsera, Viviana 72 Diderot, Denis 184, 204 Díez Borque, José María 15, 67n, 70, 196n, 198n Dodds, Eric R. 34 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 193 Duarte, J. Enrique 54n, 63n, 73n, 212n Eagleton, Terry 23 Eckermann, J. P. 132n Egginton, William 48n, 52, 124n Eichendorff, Joseph von 3, 47, 58, 204n Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 43n Epictetus 34, 36, 41, 96, 179–180 Erdocia Castillejo, Carolina 83n, 106n Feijoo, Luis Iglesias 11n, 92n Felkel, Robert W 147n Felski, Rita 120n Fernández de Moratín, Nicolás 213 Fernández Mosquera, Santiago 26n, 138n, 150n, 158n, 161 Figal, Günter 25 Fink, Eugen 37n Fiore, Robert L. 106–107n, 135, 152n Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 44 Flecniakoska, J.-L. 83n Floeck, Wilfried 73 Flor, Fernando R. de la 52, 56–57n, 62n, 114n, 202n Foucault, Michel 8 Frank, Hieronymus 149 Freytag, Hartmut 144n Friedrich, Hugo 32n Frye, Northrop 77n Gadamer, Hans-Georg 6, 25–26, 124–129, 171, 193n, 208 García Lorca, Federico 219–220 García Ruiz, Víctor 213n Genette, Gérard 92–94, 108, 184, 195n, 204–205 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 2–3, 58, 113n, 126, 128n, 132n, 204n – Faust 219

González, Aurelio 5n, 123n Gracián, Baltasar 96, 145n, 210–211 Green, Otis H. 13n, 170 Greenblatt, Stephen 8, 97n, 131n, 155n, 220–221 Greer, Margaret 75n Harnack, Adolf von 190 Hegel, G. W. F. 190n Heidegger, Martin 26, 79–80, 125, 165 Heraclitus 36–38 Heselhaus, Clemens 27 Hick, John 174, 186n, 187–189 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 3, 4n, 47, 58, 126, 204n, 218 Homer 1, 26, 35–36, 38–39 Hornby, Richard 11n, 221n Houlind Rasmussen, Ulrik 215n Hunter, W. A 6n Ionesco, Eugène 4 John XII (Pope) 63 Johnson, Carroll B. 152n Johnston, Andrew James 22n Juvenal 38 Jünger, Ernst 1–4, 26, 218 Kaiser, Gert 155–156 Kallendorf, Hilaire 220 Kant, Immanuel 186, 191 Kantorowicz, Ernst 152–153 Kierkegaard, Søren 26, 116–117 Kittel, Gerhard 42n Klein, J. K. 24 Klindt, Karl 192 Klopstock, F. G. 186n Kluge, Sofie 15, 39n, 51–55, 75n, 95n, 119, 130, 144–145, 150–151, 165, 172, 180n, 218 Kolve, A. V. 67–69 Konersmann, Ralf 113n, 117, 121n, 192n Kurtz, Barbara 56n, 72–75, 196n Kübnel, Jürgen 45n Küpper, Joachim 47–48, 75n Latour, Bruno 21–23, 32, 52, 69, 119–120 Leibniz, G. W. 185 León, Luis de 96

Index of Names

Lewis, C. S. 48n Lohenstein, Daniel Casper von 112n, 201 López de Vega, Antonio 38 Lovejoy, Arthur 186–187 Lovejoy, J. G. 80 Lukács, George 11, 220 Luther, Martin 75n, 106, 169 Machiavelli, Niccolò 5, 18 Mágnusson, Gísli 194n Man, Paul de 120n Mann, Thomas 186n Maravall, José Antonio 13n, 51–52, 55–56, 155n, 221 Marcion 109n, 190n, 214 Marino, Giambattista 75n Martin, Vincent 67n, 113n, 176n, 179n, 219n Matthews, David 45n Maximus (the Confessor) 134n, 205 McKendrick, Melveena 55n, 64, 74n Medina, Cristóbal de 83 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino 212n Merritt Cox, R. 212n Michelsen, Peter 136n, 183 Milizia, Francesco 50 Miramón, Ana Suárez 92n, 138n, 139n Molina, Luis de 130, 180 Moritz, Karl Philip 186n Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban 155 Musil, Robert 2–3, 4n, 218 Nagel, Mechthild 37, 38n Nasarre, Blas Antonio de 213 Neiman, Susan 185n Nelson, Bradley J. 53n, 198n Neumeister, Sebastian 47–48 Nielsen, Bent Flemming 207n Nietzsche, Friedrich 13n, 14, 80, 126, 128n, 183, 186, 208 Orozco Díaz, Emilio 184n Ovid 145n Pando y Mier, Pedro 83–85, 87 Parker, Alexander A. 12, 24, 54n, 55n, 59–61, 64, 73–75, 82, 85, 90n, 93n, 130, 135, 151–153, 154n, 212n

239

Parrack, John C. 97n, 131n Pascal, Blaise 11, 200 Patterson, Lee 23–24, 120n Paul (Saint) 1, 36, 42–44, 116–117, 142, 144n Pawlita, Leonie 32n, 48n, 53 Pedraza, Juan de 143 Petersen, Nils Holger 205n Philo (of Byzantium) 171 Pirandello, Luigi 4, 11, 179n, 219–220 Plantinga, Alvin 185n Plato 2, 5–6, 13, 15, 27–28, 34, 36, 39–41, 95, 109, 116, 133, 139, 158–161, 174, 176, 182, 187–189 Pliny (the Elder) 183 Plotinus 187 Pollin, Alice M. 169n Poppenberg, Gerhard 11n, 31–32, 41, 47–48, 54–55, 68, 71–73, 75n, 98n, 104n, 109n, 110, 113, 121n, 122, 133, 137, 141, 148, 151, 153, 155, 159, 165–166, 169, 171n, 179, 182, 192, 196n Proust, Marcel 193 Pythagoras 160 Pörksen, Uwe 143–145, 155–156 Quevedo, Francisco de 41, 96, 179 Quiring, Björn 9, 49n, 61n, 62 Rabelais, François 27, 38 Raleigh, Walter 61 Rappaport, Roy 196–199, 206–207 Regalado, Antonio 14n, 24n, 31, 33, 48n, 52, 114n, 146–148, 151, 182–183, 219n Reichenberger, Kurt 119n Reina, Casidoro de 81n Rico, Francisco 160 Righter, Anne 199n Rilke, Rainer Maria 194n Río Parra, Elena del 80n Robbins, Jeremy 14n, 31n, 53n Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de 86n Ruge, Enno 61n Rull, Enrique 70n, 73, 87, 152n Sage, Jack 175 Salisbury, John of 5, 155n Sallust 36

240

Index of Names

Schiller, Friedrich 3, 37n, 126, 128n Schlegel, A. W. 3, 58, 217 Schlegel, Friedrich 3, 58, 192n, 204 Schrage, Wolfgang 44 Seneca 34, 36, 38, 41–42, 73, 136 Sevillano, Antonia Manuela 83 Shakespeare, William 1n, 2–5, 11, 17, 24, 26–27, 37, 49, 92n, 94, 117–118, 124n, 142, 152–153, 192n – As You Like It/Jaques 2n, 4, 37, 49, 118n, 124n, 145n – Hamlet 11, 19, 23, 111 – Henry V 92n – King Lear/Gloucester 2, 6, 27, 38, 109, 117 – Macbeth 2n, 27, 94n, 119–120, 127, 162, 200 – The Merchant of Venice/Antonio 1–2, 4, 42n, 200 – Richard II 42n, 142, 153–154 – The Tempest 26n Shergold, N. D. 6n, 54n, 63, 64n Sito Alba, Manuel 11 Skrine, Peter 112n, 201–202 Sloterdijk, Peter 133–135 Smith, Vance D. 22n Sommer, Manfred 126n Sophocles 14 Spang, Kurt 86 Spengler, Oswald IX, 18, 23 Sullivan, Henry W. 3n Tallon, Philip 174, 189n, 190 Thacker, Jonathan 24n, 182n, 220n Tirso de Molina 48

Unamuno, Miguel de 219n Urban IV (pope) 63, 66–69, 101 – Transiturus 66–73, 101, 176, 197 Valbuena Prat, Ángel 13n, 41, 54n, 64n, 83–84, 135n, 152n Vega, Lope de 38, 47n, 48, 51, 55, 142, 182n, 209–210 Vera Tassis, Juan de 182, 184 Verduin, Kathleen 45n, 46 Very, F. G. 68–69 Vilanova, Antonio 41 Villanueva, Blas de 86–87 Virgil 183 Vives, Juan Luis 209–211 Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez, Luis 38n, 53, 162 Wagner, Richard 3, 16, 47, 58, 126, 169, 202n, 204n, 208 Walsh, Brian 1n, 49n Wardropper, Bruce 54n, 69, 70n, 124n Warnke, Frank J. 8n, 62n Weber, Christian 130n West, William N. 62n Wild, Christopher 37n, 62, 118n Wille, Jutta 64n, 143n, 147–148, 151 Williams, Robert R. 186n Workman, Leslie 45–46 Zurbarán, Francisco de 51, 165 Zugasti, Miguel 86–88, 98, 100n