american association of teachers of spanish and portuguese...

American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguesehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/335970 .

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Hispania.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 64.147.209.34 on Thu, 24 Oct 2013 11:36:21 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aatsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/335970?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


TWO BAROQUE HEROES: SEGISMUNDO AND HAMLET PAUL M. ARRIOLA

Oregon State Department of Education

The Polish and the Danish prince are each trapped in a tense interaction with their environments, and the purpose of this article is to discuss that tension and to ex- plore its causes. It is our intent to show that the anguish that consumes both of these heroes is not a mere coincidence, but the result of a universal unrest common to the Seventeenth Century which, therefore, embraces both Shakespeare and Calder6n.

Critics have been aware for a long time that the period between the High Renais- sance and Neo Classicism constitutes a separate entity. Some, like Elisha K. Kane, term it an age of decline and deplore the excessive ornamentation that characterizes both the plastic and literary arts of the time as attempts to cover up an underlying exhaustion and lack of creative power.' Others, like Sacheverell Sitwell, see in it an epoch of exuberance and power.2 This is the period known as "The Baroque," and we hope that by pointing out its dom- inant features, we can define the term "baroque" sufficiently to show the reader why we consider Segismundo and Hamlet to be baroque.

The subtitle of Kane's work is A Study of Exuberance and Unrestraint in the Arts, and the mere fact that one writer uses the word "exuberance" with a pejorative and the other with a laudatory intent serves to point up the division of opinion surrounding the art of this age. Kane pro- pounds a theory of cyclic development according to which all literatures are born, gather strength and beauty in maturity and then decay. To illustrate he gives some very interesting examples of, of all things, Scandinavian "Gongorismo" that are to be found in the Scalds. An ex-

amination of this period will show that certain terms are constantly and consis- tently applied to it. One is soon very conscious of the great usefulness of expressions like flamboyant, exaggerated, transcendental, unrest, etc., regardless of whether he considers Spanish, Italian, French or German literature. This fact led the Germans to consider all of Europe as a literary unit. Writing in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in 1946, Ren6 Wellek says, "Thus all literatures of Europe in the seventeenth century (and in part of the sixteenth century) are con- ceived of by German scholars as a uni- fied movement."3

Generally speaking, French critics are violently opposed to having French Classi- cism designated as baroque, however, in the same article Wellek shows that W1lf- flin's principles may be applied even to this literature. Even Kane, though with an admittedly different purpose, found a parallel to G6ngora in Lyly, in the fantastic style of Romeo and Juliet, in the prici- osit6 of the Hotel de Rambouillet, in the music of Tom-is Luis de Victoria and in the painting of El Greco.4

But the immediate question that con- cerns us is 1) what the term baroque sig- nifies and 2) whether its use with this meaning throws light on Segismundo and Hamlet. If one applies W6lfllin's principles to Hamlet, he will find in it those traits of the plastic arts singled out by W6lfllin as baroque, namely the painterly, the recession of space, the open form, ab- solute unity and relative unclearness. Wil- helm Michels finds in both Shakespeare and Calder6n examples of bombast, a similar use of metaphors and a similar use of

537



538 HISPANIA

hyperbole.5 Kane compares the contradic- tory virile and feminine qualities of El Greco's "Saint Martin" to the oxymorons of gongoristic poetry.6 Hamlet too is a study in contrasts, for he oscillates between extremes of daring and caution. There is a kind of hyperbole in Shakespeare's tragic figures as noted by Schiicking in The Meaning of Hamlet. We have tried to show . . . that in the physi- ognomy of Shakespeare's tragic heroes there is to be observed a certain, if sometimes compara- tively faint, family likeness to those of the other dramatists of his time, or rather that some gen- eral principles prevailing in his period are to be found among others as well as in him. In the main there are three of them. Their common root is the tendency to be-in the words of the painter in Timon of Athens- 'livelier than life.' First of all there is the striving after heightening the figure of the hero by extraordinary intensi- fication of the emotion, there is secondly a pre- dilection for what in Elizabethan language is termed the 'fantastical' namely eccentricity, extravagance, or oddity which could be summed up as the bizarre, and there is thirdly, owing to a partiality for the majestic, an inclination to favour the representation of certain self-exalt- ing attitude.7 Above all there is in Shakespeare that baroque quality singled out by Roaten and Sanchez, that is the preoccupation with the transcendental.8

The term "baroque" being such a con- troversial one, one feels that before ap- plying it he should define it in order that the term may be accepted at least in the restricted sense laid down at the moment of use. Not only do critics disagree as to the meaning of the term, they disagree as to the temporal limits of the baroque period in art and literature. Still, one may note a loose agreement as to what the term connotes, i. e. exuberance, flam- boyance, hyperbole, involution, a concern for the transcendental, etc., and the recog- nition that it fulfills a need for a term to apply to the period between the High Renaissance and the Neo Classic periods.9 But there seems to be a quite unreasonable desire on the part of those opposed to the use of the term outside Spain and Italy that it apply completely and incontrover-

tibly, or not be employed at all. Why? G6ngora was not always "gongoristic" and one could name writers who were not always Romantics but who, nevertheless, are securely fixed in the Romantic category because of a differentiating characteristic. We suggest that the same condition ob- tains in the case of many sixteenth and seventeenth century writers, a differentiating characteristic is found in their work also and it sets them apart from the preceding and following epochs. Roaten and Sinchez propose a theory to account for the bond between writers of the Spanish Seventeenth Century based on an inter- working of the plastic and literary arts.'0 Accepting baroque as a recognized term applicable to art with certain characteristics, they proceed to their thesis, namely that there is a baroque in literature as well as in the plastic arts. They do not, however, concern themselves with the psy- chological significance of the word. We propose that the baroque is a symptom of emotional strain and personal anguish which could well be the common denominator of a Shakespeare and a Calder6n as well as of a Lope and a G6ngora. The century of genius, as Whitehead calls it, advanced man's domain over his physical world more than all the accumulated science of all the preceding ages. Seven- teenth Century Man stands taller in rela- tion to his physical surroundings because he has begun to unlock their secrets. They have lost some of their mystery and are no longer as imposing. However, with this gain comes a compensating loss. Long ago man had taken the world off Atlas' shoulders, but now he picked it up and put it on his own-and has not been able to rid himself of it since. This added re- sponsibility intensifies his self-consciousness. What does Hamlet's and Segis- mundo's agony betray if not an increasing self-consciousness? In Act I, Sc. II Hamlet utters this cry: O that this too, too solid flesh would melt,



SEGISMUNDO AND HAMLET 539

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. But in Act III, Sc. I in the lines from the famous soliloquy it is no longer piety it is fear that holds him back: To sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. Hamlet admires Fortinbras for his spirit and resoluteness of action but despairs of his own ability. In his speech (Act IV, Sc. V.) Hamlet says in substance, "Why was I made?" "Why was I placed here?" He exits with the words, "0, from this time forth,/My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth," empty resolutions, as we know. Segismundo develops from an im- pulsive savage ruled by instinct into a reasoning man with the growing convic- tion that he holds within his hands the key to a scheme of things baffling to him, but which he can somehow control if he can just control himself. Life, he learns, is after all, a vast complex affair. Yet he senses that the mysterious power that is regulating the process is calling him to a special position in that structure. Is he be- coming one with the cosmos or is he just trapped in a shadowy interplay between the Unknown and himself? This much he knows: his fate is terrifyingly balanced upon his actions, with which he must be ever more concerned, and yet he is en- gaged in an exasperating game of cosmo- logical blindman's buff.

Truly the age under examination was a time when men's emotions ran the gamut from wild exhilaration to intense despair. On the one hand both scientific and geo- graphical discoveries were daily staggering the imagination. This is not only the age of the new science of Galileo, Kepler, Huyghens, Boyle, etc., but also the age of a tremendous expansion of the earth. The New World promises wealth beyond the wildest fancy. Exotic products bring such words as banana, cocoa, flamingo and

alligator into all the languages of Europe. On the other hand there was cause for pessimism and despair. In Spain at least the ever growing contrast between the op- pulence of the powerful and the misery of the weak served to underscore the warn- ings of men like Quevedo concerning the moral decay of the country. In the realm of the spirit the new knowledge destroyed the traditional concept of the cosmos and brought on a conflict between science and religion." Oscar James Campbell in The Living Shakespeare states: Men learned with dismay that created matter above the moon was not, as they had been taught, free from change and corruption. Decay, therefore, was enthroned as the god of the uni- verse and man became the slave of mutability. Moreover, the strange notion that the earth was nearing its end was now widely current . Such notions produced in thoughtful men pro- found discouragement and pessimism, feelings which Shakespeare surely understood and pos- sibly shared.12

For Campbell, Hamlet in his moods of despair is the voice of his age.13 Unfortun- ately the frenzied tempo of life leaves little time for meditation. Man had acquired independence in many aspects of thought, but he had also acquired a new dependent-himself. Hence we see a sense of power and at the same time a worry- ing sense of doubt. Power generates extravagance and doubt produces unrest. Within these main divisions extravagance and unrest, one can place nearly all the characteristics usually associated with the term baroque. Thus the first explains such features as the heightening of the hero, the striving for increased energy, the flamboyant, etc. Unrest is responsible for the preoccupation with the transcendental, the striving for great conceptions and time- anguish which deserves a discussion apart, though it can only be indicated here.

Repeatedly one finds expressions of the fleetness of time and the transitory quality of life. There seems to be a pervasive feel- that the hourglass will run out before the questions raised by doubt can be



540 HISPANIA

answered. This anxiety, which I call time-anguish, is found in Shakespeare's sonnets especially. Here we find such phrases as "Time's injurious hand," and "the wreckful siege of battering days." According to Campbell, "The real subject of his sonnets is the terrifying triumph of Time-Time that ruthlessly destroys man and ultimately obliterates all his works."14 Schiicking cites the graveyard scene with its open grave, the skull and the horrible smell that clings to mortal remains as an example of Shakespeare's insistence on the transitoriness of life.'5 Again we find the theme in Calder6n's "Soneto de las rosas" and in G6ngora's sonnets i. e. "Mientras por competir con tu cabello, etc." One could speak of Gongorismo as an evasion of this life of turmoil for one of his own making and for which the poet has to create a new language. One could also de- velop the theme of disillusionment ex- pressed in the sonnet by Bartolom6 Leon- ardo de Argensola recalling Huyghen's studies on refraction and which concludes: "Porque ese cielo azul que todos vemos/ ini es cielo, ni es azul! iLaistima grande/ que no sea verdad tanta belleza!"

NOTES

1 Gongorism and the Golden Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1928) p. 128 et passim. 2 Southern Baroque Art (London: G. Duck-

worth & Co., 1951 ed.) 3 v, 77. 4Kane pp. 147, 150, 152, 179 and 236. 5"Barockstil in Shakespeare und Calderon," Revue Hispanique, Lxxv, 1929, 370. 6Kane p. 246.

N (New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 1937) p. 28. 8 Darnell H. Roaten and F. Sanchez y Escribano, Wdfflin's Principles in Spanish Drama 1500 - 1700 (New York: Hispanic Institute in the U. S., 1952) p. 78. 9 For a discussion of this point see Roy Daniells, "English Baroque and Deliberate Obscurity," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, v, Dec., 1946, pp. 115-121. 10 Roaten and Sanchez p. 43. "It should not be overbold to urge at this point that the term 'Baroque' has in literature as much cogency as in the plastic arts. Nor should it seem venture- some to suggest that 'Baroque' is the common denominator of such literary manifestations as 'Gongorismo,' 'Culteranismo,' 'Lopismo,' and all the other '-ismos' that flourish in the literature of the seventeenth century, the numerator being those strictly personal qualities which distinguish Lope from G6ngora and both from Calder6n. But in all of them it is possible to discern, along with their personal attributes, the unmistakable marks of a single school of literary thought and creation, a scheme of esthetic preconceptions and limitations which cannot easily be mistaken for the pattern of any other literary period of movement. It was because of this single-minded- ness of Baroque artists that it was possible for two or more playwrights of the period to ool- laborate in the writing of a play. For the same reason it is almost impossible to determine the authorship of such a play as La estrella de Se- villa." "1Stuart Hampshire, The Age of Reason (New York: Mentor Books, 1956) p. 15. 12 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1949) p. 44. 13 Ibid. p. 49. 14Ibid. p. 18. 15 Op. cit., p. 4.



american association of teachers of spanish and portuguese...

Documents