Iberia (52 page)
Authors: James Michener
Don Juan succeeds both in seducing the novice, Doña Inés,
and the bride, Doña Ana, but at his country house, to which he
has taken the former, he discovers that she is madly in love with
him, in spite of his treatment of her; overcome by her pure
innocence, he awakens to the fact that he loves her. His change
of heart comes to nothing because at this moment the
comendador and Don Luis Mejía break in, seeking satisfaction
for their injured honor. Don Juan kneels before the comendador,
begs his forgiveness, and tries to convince him that he is a new
man, but to no avail. When the comendador seeks to engage Don
Juan in an honorable duel, the latter whips out a pistol
unexpectedly and shoots the old man dead. He then kills Don
Luis, too, and escapes to continue his rampage of destruction. He
has proved false to his love, whom he has seduced and abandoned,
to his father, whom he ridicules, to his religion, which he has
debased, and to every generous impulse save bravery alone.
What can a foreigner make of a nation which elects such a man
its national hero? Before trying to explain we must look at the
surprising conclusion of Zorrilla’s play. Years later Don Juan
returns to Sevilla to visit his family home but finds it converted
into a cemetery, one corner of which is a mausoleum in which a
sculptor is at work putting finishing touches to a group of
life-sized statues representing the victims of Don Juan. To the
latter’s surprise, he notices among the dead a beautiful standing
statue of Doña Inés and he learns that she died of a broken heart.
When the sculptor has left, the don addresses the effigy of his lost
love and confesses that he did truly love her. Overcome with grief,
he leans weeping upon her tomb, and when he opens his eyes he
finds that her statue has disappeared from its pedestal. In a dream
sequence the ghost of Doña Inés appears and tells him that since
she has chosen to remain faithful to her satanic lover, God has
condemned her to the purgatory of her tomb to await the return
of Don Juan, both of them to be saved or lost together. Don Juan
dismisses her appearance as an illusion and his old bravado
reasserts itself. As in the Tirso play, he invites the statue of the
comendador to dine with him; subsequently he dines with the
statue in the cemetery. Again the statue offers its hand, and Don
Juan feels himself pulled down toward hell. ‘Lord, have mercy on
me,’ he cries, but the statue replies stonily, ‘It is too late.’ But now
Doña Inés takes a hand in the proceedings, and the stage
directions for the final scenes explain better than the dialogue
what is happening:
the statue leaves free. Shades and skeletons are about to throw
themselves upon him, but at this moment the tomb of Doña Inés
opens and she appears, taking the hand which the don stretches
upward
.
Flowers open and little angels issue forth, surrounding Doña Inés
and Don Juan, scattering over them petals and perfume, and to the
sound of a sweet and distant music the scene is diffused with the light
of dawn. Doña Inés falls on a bed of flowers instead of in her tomb,
which disappears
.
Don Juan falls at the feet of Doña Inés and both die, but from their
mouths issue their souls, in the form of two bright flames, which
disappear in space as music plays and the curtain falls
.
This Mercy of God and the Apotheosis of Love as the last act
is subtitled, can be quite moving if well staged and if no one
laughs; it has made the play acceptable to believing churchgoers
in spite of Don Juan’s execrable list of crimes in the first two-thirds
of the play.
thus becomes a sardonic morality play,
demonstrating the doctrine that even the most flagrant advocate
of Viva yo can attain salvation. In fact, God seems to approve of
Don Juan and, through him, of Spain as well. Also, the engaging
figure of Doña Inés—and she can be one of the most appealing
heroines in drama—as she saves the rakehell through the purity
of her love, is attractive to women. I have seen the play four times
in Spain, twice in Mexico and twice on television, and each time
as it ended the women around me were crying. A friend once
explained, ‘Every Spanish woman sees herself in Doña Inés. By
her love alone is her husband saved.’
One of the reasons why
is so popular is
accidental and relates to cemeteries. Because Zorrilla introduced
in his concluding scenes a mausoleum containing marble statues
of the don’s victims, a tradition was established for Spanish cities
to offer
Don Juan Tenorio
in the week of November 1, the eve of
All Souls’ Day, which is the Spanish Memorial Day, when families
traditionally visit cemeteries. This aspect of the play’s acceptance
is of course irrelevant and childish.
But Zorrilla’s
is much more than an accidental
cemetery prank. To understand the strange grip it has on the
Spanish audience one must remember what was happening in
Spain when it appeared. It was 1844, a time of chaos, when
knowing men already suspected that Spain was in permanent
eclipse. The empire was falling apart; the internal government
was inept; the economy had failed; the storms of liberalism and
conservation were beginning to rip the country; and here came
a figure who recalled the days of glory when Spain ruled Europe.
(Remember that numerically most of Don Juan’s adventures took
place in Italy, not Spain, and those of Don Luis in Flanders, along
with Germany and France.) He was a kind of challenge to the rest
of the world, the brave, arrogant man who would surrender to
no adversary. He was Spain entrapped; he was Spain fighting
against great odds; and in the end he was saved, partly because
of his tremendous intransigence.
Don Juan is also the exemplification of male values in Spanish
life. From what I have said of his career one might suspect that
Spanish women would hold him in contempt, but that is far from
the case. He is their hero as much as he is the hero of their
husbands and sons. His love scenes are never gross; he woos with
tremendous passion and with a poetry that explodes in symbols
and verbal fancies; he is no cruel Bluebeard but a devoted lover;
that is, during those two days that he can allot a woman. He is
also manly in a general sense, quick with the sword, swift to resent
insult and brave beyond challenge. On stage he is enormously
attractive; Enrique Guitart, one of the actors who specialize in
portraying him, wears a large variety of brocaded capes, which
he has learned to flourish in beautiful sculptured circles much as
a matador does when fighting a bull, although better because the
stage capes are bigger and their flourishes more unexpected,
cutting wide swaths of astonishment.
Finally, say the critics, Don Juan is more than a man, more
than a hero. He is all humanity, and like humanity he seeks ideal
solutions. He is not chasing women; he is seeking the perfect
women. He is not a cowardly murderer; he is mankind faced with
the inescapable responsibility to kill in warfare. And in the
culminating scenes of apotheosis he becomes all guilty men
throwing themselves on the benevolence of God and finding
themselves saved because of their submission to the female
principle of love. All these things Spain believes of herself;
redemption is possible. I spoke a few paragraphs ago of how I
have seen women weep during the scene in which Doña Inés
rescues Don Juan; I have seen just as many men weep in an earlier
scene in which Tenorio, learning for the first time that Doña Inés
died after he stole her from the convent and abandoned her, utters
a heartbreaking sob and acknowledges that he did truly love this
girl. ‘At this moment,’ a friend explained, ‘each man in the
audience remembers all the pretty girls he kissed years ago and
didn’t marry, and the passage of time and the closeness of death
become very real.’ My friend had tears in his eyes as he spoke.
Without question, this strange and poorly written play evokes in
the Spaniard a memory of Spain and of lost opportunities.
My own interpretation of Zorrilla’s play is that it epitomizes
the union of pundonor and Viva yo. At a dozen places Don Juan
affirms the principle of pundonor. In defense of his peculiar
definition of honor he would die, kill his best friend, duel his
closest associates, challenge the marble statue or oppose God. He
is almost a burlesque of pundonor, but not quite, because both
he and the audience take his challenges seriously. At the same
time he is the epitome of Viva yo. No other national hero is so
self-centered as Tenorio. Faust is concerned about human values
and is hesitant about ignoring the rights of others until
Mephistopheles goads him to do so. Hamlet constantly weighs
the good and evil which his actions might impose on others: the
king praying, the queen’s right to remarry, Ophelia’s future. Don
Juan Tenorio indulges in no such soul-searching, not even when
it is forced upon him by his father, whom he spurns abusively.
And this makes him attractive to the Spaniard, who feels the same
way about his country. The visitor to Spain is often shocked by
the fact that what he holds to be a cause for condemnation is
judged by the Spaniard to be a cause for congratulation. Later
when I speak of Queen Isabel the Catholic, I shall make it clear
that I find her one of the notable women rulers of all time,
probably greater even than Elizabeth of England, but I have always
regretted two acts which tarnish her reputation: her sponsorship
of the Spanish Inquisition and her expulsion of the Jews. I was
surprised to find that Spaniards are apt to love her
of
those reasons: ‘She showed the rest of the world that she was boss
and that Spain was Spain.’
Before ending this adventure in romanticism run wild I must
point out that among young Spaniards the cult of Don Juan is
being subjected to analysis and sometimes to ridicule. One
newspaper in 1966 asked its readers whether Don Juan still existed
in Spain: ‘Yes, and in today’s world he’s contemptible.’‘Sure, in
the cinemas. He’s masquerading as James Bond.’‘Of course, in
the Spanish gallants who swarm the beach at Torremolinos, trying
to seduce Swedish girls.’‘Yes, the gamberros [hoodlums] and the
ye-ye crowd [rock-and-rollers].’ It was generally agreed that Don
Juan was hanging on, especially in small towns, where men took
seriously their obligation to be lady killers. ‘He exists in every real
Spanish man. We all dream we are brave, honorable and death
to ladies.’ But one young woman warned, ‘I’ve got news for Don
Juan. He may exist but girls like Doña Inés are no more. I don’t
know any girl who’s going to swoon because some man looks at
her.’ Another girl said, ‘Doña Inés is still around but today she’s
comical.’
If one were preparing for a visit to Spain it would be profitable
to learn the language; it would be more so to see a performance
of
, for with mere words one can go only so far,
but with the vocabulary of this play one can speak of central
matters. To prowl the streets of Sevilla with Don Juan in cloak
and poignard is to explore permanent Spain.
Even if Sevilla had no Don Juan and no feria, it would still
throw down a unique challenge. Outwardly it strikes the visitor
as a congenial place, but inwardly it permits no stranger to
penetrate its secrets. It is not a city of contrasts; it is a city of
contradictions, enticing but withdrawn, alluring but arrogant,
modern in appearance but eighteenth century in attitude. In
Madrid or Barcelona the stranger has some hope of forming
friendships which will uncover something of the workings of
Spanish life, but in Sevilla this happens so infrequently as to
constitute a miracle when it does. The symbol of Sevilla is the
caseta, brightly illuminated and with its front wall removed so
that the passer-by can observe the festivity of a closely knit family
group. If he is lucky enough to own a horse, he can even rely on
a traditional sherry if he stops outside. But to enter the caseta and
to participate in the mystery that surrounds the family of southern
Spain seems almost impossible.
Sevilla is a feminine city, as compared to masculine Madrid
and Barcelona, but if one finds here the ingratiating femininity
of grillwork on balconies and grace in small public squares, one
finds also the forbidding femininity of a testy old dowager set in
her preferences and self-satisfied in her behavior. It is not by
accident that Sevilla has always been most loyal to movements
that in the rest of Spain are in decline.
For example, at repeated points in history Sevilla has been
faithful to the crown when other cities have not; the symbol of
Sevilla is the rubric NO-8-DO, in which what looks to be an 8 is
really a skein (madeja), so that the whole reads: ‘No madejado’
(She has not abandoned me), referring to a time when a king in
trouble appealed to Sevilla for help. The city also adheres to an
older interpretation of religion and to feudalism. As we have seen,
in the countryside surrounding Sevilla the relation of noble to
peasant is much the same as it was in England in 1400. Laws of
course proclaim otherwise, but custom prevails.
Sevilla is ancient and as a city of importance nearly two
thousand years older than Madrid. It was an important Roman
center, and near its present site stand the excavated ruins of a
considerable city named Itálica. But Roman occupation of the
area left little imprint on Sevilla, although Sevilla made
considerable impression on Rome, having contributed two of the
principal Caesars, Hadrian and Trajan. Sevilla was also a major
capital of the Moors, having been occupied by them in one
capacity or another for 536 years, yet today one finds in the city
even fewer of the Muslim memories that make Córdoba and
Granada such noble testaments to the Moorish origin submerged
in Christian additions, while in the nave of the massive cathedral
the Moorish pillars are lost in heavy Gothic shadows. Whenever
a conqueror departed, Sevilla quickly reestablished itself as a
Spanish city, jealous of its prerogatives and marvelously insular
in its attitudes. If one seeks a whole body of people who have
refused to acknowledge the advent of change, few can compare
with the citizens of Sevilla.