The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels

660 Pages·1990·1.47 MB·English

by  Maria de Zayas

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Page iii
The Enchantments of Love
Amorous and Exemplary Novels
Maria de Zayas
Translated from the Spanish by H. Patsy Boyer
Page iv
The publisher wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance of the
Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of
Culture and United States Universities in the publication of this book.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press
Oxford, England
Copyright © 1990 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zayas y Sotomayor, María de, 15901650.
[Novelas amorosas y ejemplares. English]
The enchantments of love : amorous and exemplary novels /
Maria de Zayas ; translated from the Spanish by H. Patsy Boyer.
p. cm.
Translation of: Novelas amorosas y ejemplares.
ISBN 0520066715 (alk. paper)
I. Title.
PQ6498.Z5N6813 1990
863'.3dc20 8936559
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984

Page v
¿Por qué, vanos legisladores del mundo, atáis nuestras manos para las
venganzas, imposibilitando nuestras fuerzas con vuestras falsas opiniones,
pues nos negáis letras y armas? ¿El alma no es la misma que la de los
hombres? Pues si ella es la que da valor al cuerpo, ¿quién obliga a los
nuestros tanta cobardía? Yo aseguro que si entendierais que también había en
nosotras valor y fortaleza, no os burlarais como os burláis; y así, por
tenernos sujetas desde que nacemos vais enflaqueciendo nuestras fuerzas con
los temores de la honra, y el entendimiento con el recato de la vergüenza,
dándonos por espadas ruecas, y por libros almohadillas. ¡Mas triste de mí!
¿De qué me sirven estos pensamientos, pues ya no sirven para remediar cosas
tan sin remedio?
Why, vain legislators of the world, do you tie our hands so that we cannot take
vengeance? Because of your mistaken ideas about us, you render us powerless
and deny us access to pen and sword. Isn't our soul the same as a man's soul?
If the soul is what gives courage to the body, why are we so cowardly? If you
men knew that we were brave and strong, I'm sure you wouldn't deceive us the
way you do. By keeping us subject from the moment we're born, you weaken
our strength with fears about honor and our minds with exaggerated emphasis
on modesty and shame. For a sword, you give us the distaff; instead of books,
a sewing cushion. Woe is me! What good do all these thoughts do? They don't
solve my hopeless problem.
"The Power of Love"
Page vii
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Historical Background xxxii
Translator's Note xxxvi
Frame Characters xl
To the Reader 1
Prologue by an Objective Reader 3
Beginning 7
Everything Ventured (Lisarda) 12
Aminta Deceived and Honor's Revenge (Matilda) 47
Second Night 77
The Miser's Reward (don Alvaro) 80
Forewarned but not Forearmed (don Alonso) 115
Third Night 157
The Power of Love (Nise) 159
Disillusionment in Love and Virtue Rewarded (Phyllis) 182
Fourth Night 213
Just Desserts (don Miguel) 215
Triumph over the Impossible (don Lope) 242
Fifth Night 271
Judge Thyself (don Juan) 274
The Magic Garden (Laura) 296
Page ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I should like to acknowledge support from the College of Arts,
Humanities, and Social Sciences at Colorado State University for
support of various stages of my work on this translation in the form of
a sabbatical leave in 1982 as well as a Joseph Stern research grant,
which enabled me to have the dog-eared typescript transferred to disk.
Joyce Criswell typed from my longhand and Kay Short typed to disk.
Without Jay Bodine's patient and generous advice, the computer might
have swallowed it all up.
Numberless students, colleagues, and friends have contributed to the
improvement of my work, in particular Mary Crow, Barbara Lakin,
Jon Thiem, Marion Freeman, and Maria Pilar Perez Stansfield. A
word of special appreciation goes to Ruth El Saffar who, as director of
a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar that I
attended in 1979, encouraged me to undertake this task and who has
provided invaluable support ever since. The participants in that
seminar and in the first NEH Translation Institute at Santa Cruz
(1987) helped in solving numerous ticklish problems. Finally, I wish
to express particular thanks to Kathleen McNerney for her many
insights, Russell Coberly for being a faithful reader, and Scott Mahler
at the University of California Press for his guidance.
Page xi
INTRODUCTION
The life of Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor remains largely a mystery.
The only facts known about her are that she lived in Madrid during
the first half of the seventeenth century and was a recognized literary
figure. She wrote much occasional poetry, at least one play, The
Betrayal of Friendship, and two best-selling collections of framed
novellas, The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels
(Novelas amorosas y ejemplares, 1637) and its sequel, The
Disenchantments of Love (Desengaños amorosos, 1647). It is believed
that she was noble, probably the daughter of don Fernando de Zayas y
Sotomayor, a captain in the army and member of the elite Order of
Santiago, and of doña Ana de Barasa. As a girl, she may have spent
time in Naples when don Fernando served under the Spanish viceroy,
the count of Lemos (16101616). The only contemporary references to
Zayas pertain to her literary activity; her works were highly acclaimed
by such notable contemporaries as Lope de Vega, who praised "her
rare and unique genius." The first such mention occurs in 1621; there
is no further reference to her after the publication of the
Disenchantments in 1647. The dates and places of her birth and death
have not come down to us.
With so little known about Zayas's life, it is no wonder that scholars
have set forth an amazing amount of conjecture about this intriguing
woman. Interpreting statements made by characters in the novellas,
critics have debated whether Zayas was beautiful or ugly, whether she
married, remained a spinster, or suffered a devastating love affair and
Page xii
took refuge in a convent like so many of her characters. What stands
out is that Maria de Zayas was a remarkable woman for her time and
is acknowledged by Hispanists as one of the foremost writers of
Spain's Golden Age. She is among the first secular women writers in
Spain and certainly the first to achieve such great fame.
Zayas's novellas became instant best sellers in Spain and remained so
for two hundred years, rivaled only by Cervantes's novellas in
popularity. During the 1650s, Scarron and Boisrobert translated and
adapted them into French without attributing them to Zayas.
Consequently, the widespread diffusion of Zayas's novellas in France
and England has redounded to the fame of her French adapters. Often
her works were attributed to Cervantes, but never, outside of Spain,
have they achieved recognition as hers. The only direct translations of
her work into English are Roscoe's "The Miser Chastised" (1832) and
Sturrock's A Shameful Revenge (1963), in fact a lively adaptation of
two enchantments and six disenchantments.
With the rise of subjective criticism in the nineteenth century, the
popularity of Zayas's works waned precipitously. Renowned historian
of Spanish literature George Ticknor wrote of the Enchantments in
1849: "Although written by a lady of the court, the work is the
filthiest and most immodest that I have ever read." In 1929, the
famous German Hispanist Ludwig Pfandl wrote: "Can there be
anything more gross and obscene, more nonaesthetic and repulsive,
than a woman who writes lascivious, dirty, sadistic, and morally
corrupt stories?" This kind of masculinist criticism resulted in a total
eclipse: her works at last disappeared. The twentieth century has
produced a few editions, which soon went out of print. Agustin G. de
Amezua published authoritative editions of the Novelas amorosas y
ejemplares in 1948 (used for this translation) and the Desengaños
amorosos in 1950; Maria Martinez del Portal reedited these two
scholarly versions in a popular edition in 1973; at present the Novelas