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Literary and Artistic Unity in the Lazarillo de Tormes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

F. Courtney Tarr
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Extract

Although unanimously considered a masterpiece, the Lazarillo de Tormes has given some scholars and critics the impression of a poorly sustained or even unfinished piece of work. Chandler says “it seems as if the earlier portion alone had been completed and the rest laid down in a scheme for further elaboration.” Bonilla states that “lo mejor del relato es, sin disputa, la parte contenida en los tres primeros tratados . . . . Lo restante vale mucho menos; a partir del tratado cuarto, la narración se precipita y el interés decae notoriamente.” Chaytor adds: “Lazarillo's story is a series of pictures, between which the only connecting thread is the personality of Lazarillo himself. . . . . . (It) impresses the reader as an unfinished work. Of the seven tratados . . . . only four are elaborated in detail.” Reynier observes that “ce petit roman manque trop évidemment de proportion. Les derniers chapitres sont très écourtés. . . . . On a l'impression que l'auteur n'a suivi que sa fantaisie et qu'il a abandonné son personnage lorsqu'il a cessé de l'amuser.” Finally, Northup writes: “The four final tratados are suspiciously short and betray the hand of the pruner.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 1927 , pp. 404 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 Romances of Roguery, Part I: The Picaresque Novel in Spain, New York 1899, p. 198.

2 La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, Madrid, 1915, p. vi (Clásicos de la literatura española).

3 La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, Manchester and London, 1922, p. xiii.

4 Le roman réaliste au XVLIe siècle, Paris, 1914, p. 17.

5 An Introduction to Spanish Literature, Chicago, 1925, p. 174.

6 La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, y de sus fortunas y aduersidades, Barcelona y Madrid, 1900 (Bibliotheca hispánica, t. 3).

7 Introduction to How's translation, New York, 1917, p. xxi.

8 Op. cit., p. 138.

9 Cf. pp. 18 and 40.—There are still other references to the ciego in the later chapters, but not in this connection.

10 Astuteness, tricks, and roguery are present in the fable, the animal epic, the fabliau, jest books, and beggar books. (Cf. Chandler, pp. 1-16, 184-191, for the origins of picaresque fiction in general and of the Lazarillo in particular; good summaries can also be found in Wagner and Northup, op. cit.) The episodes of the stone bull, the grapes, and the stone post belong to the realm of folklore (cf. Wagner, p. xxv and note; also notes to pp. 9 and 12). There is considerable evidence to the effect that Lazarillo himself is a legendary figure (cf. Wagner, pp. xxiii-xxv and notes; De Haan, An Outline of the History of the “Novela Picaresca” in Spain, The Hague and New York, 1903, notes 50 and 65; Foulché-Delbosc, Remarques sur “Lazarillo de Tormes” in Revue Hispanique, 1900, VII, pp. 89-97; Cejador, pp. 15-20 of his edition: Clásicos castellanos, XXV, Madrid, 1914). The blind man and his boy are also found in medieval folklore and literature (cf. Wagner and Foulché-Delbosc for further references on this point).

11 The same contrast between being dead and buried is used in the first tractado: “O gran Dios! quien estuuiera aquella hora sepultado! que muerto ya lo estaua” (p. 14).

12 It may not be amiss to point out some of the evidences of careful workmanship in this story: 1) the fact that the tinker is paid from among the loaves, 2) how the idea of gnawing dawned on Lázaro, 3) the scene in which the priest gives him the gnawed bread to eat, 4) the care taken to have the false rat holes bored by a knife like a gimlet, 5) the miserly priest borrows even the trap and cheese, 6) the dramatic ups and downs of the struggle in the dark in which the mystified priest is engaged, 7) the careful preparation for the latter's final discovery of the key, 8) Lázaro's effective silence on the details of his punishment. Stylistically, this chapter is also the most pretentious, as can be seen in the unusual metaphors (cara de Dios, parayso panal, angelico calderero—this latter figure is especially well sustained) and in the abundance of the rhetorical device known as poliptoton (remedio . . . . remediar, tercero . . . . terciana, nueve . . . . nuevas, etc.).

13 It may have been suggested by the first maña of Lázaro in tractado I: sewing and unsewing the locked bag in which the begger kept his provisions.—The chest is mentioned at the very beginning of the chapter, as is likewise the dark and gloomy house in tractado III. Their rôles in their respective chapters are thus adequately prepared for.

14 This would seem to indicate that at the time the Lazarillo was written the mozo de ciego was already a proverbial character (cf. Wagner, notes to pp. 10 and 57).—Other connections between the first and second tractados are: 1) the way in which Lázaro makes use of his mouth as a receptacle, and 2) how his masters, after punishing him cruelly, laughingly recount his exploits to others, while he bewails his ills.

15 Another connection with the preceding chapter is the phrase “tal arcaz como el de marras” (p. 34). Cf. note 13.

16 Cf. Wagner, note to p. 83 and Foulché-Delbosc, Remarques, p. 92.

17 In this chapter Lázaro's adverse fate is mentioned five times: “de todo en todo la fortuna serme aduersa” (p. 34), “mi ruyn fortuna” (p. 37), “quiso mi mala fortuna” (p. 44), “mi triste fortuna” (p. 46), “mi ruyn dicha” (p. 53). His master also laments his “aduersa fortuna” (p. 51). Can there be any doubt that the author deliberately intended this chapter to be the climax of Lázaro's bad luck, even giving him a companion in misfortune?

18 His motto is Del rey abajo ninguno, one hundred years before the play of Rojas Zorilla (“ni sufriria, ni sufrire a hombre del mundo, del rey abaxo, que: Mantengaos Dios, me diga”—p. 49).

19 As Reynier rightly remarks, it is not the Lazarillo but the Guzmán de Alfarache that established the form of the genre (op. cit., p. 19).

20 The Order of Mercy was a redemptionist order and the purpose for which the bulas de la cruzada were originally authorized was that of prosecuting the war against the infidels. At this time some of the proceeds were used to redeem captives; cf. “a su costa se saquen mas de diez cautiuos”—addition of Alcalá, p. 70.

21 For the timeliness of the satire on the buldero, cf. Wagner, p. xxvii.

22 These, the final words of this chapter, are further proof of the fact that the adventure with the escudero is intended to mark the culmination of Lázaro's misfortunes: “acabe de conoscer mi ruyn dicha.”

23 A similar situation occurs in the opening sentences of chapters IV and VI of the First Part of the Don Quijote, which is generally taken to mean that Cervantes made his final division into chapters subsequent to the writing of a large portion of his text. Cf. Ormsby's note to ch. VI (The Complete Works of Miguel de Cervantes, Glasgow, 1901, vol. iii, p. 45); Rodríguez Marin's note to ch. IV (Don Quijote, Madrid, 1916, I, p. 157); and Ford, Don Quijote, Boston, 1909, pp. 113 and 120.

24 Op. cit., pp. xxi and 144.—Viardot was the first to note the discrepancy between the title and the contents of this chapter, but his explanation was beside the mark, as Wagner points out.

25 For the sources of this episode of the false miracle, cf. Morel-Fatio, Études sur l'Espagne, 1e série, Paris, 1888, p. 167; Foulché-Delbosc, Remarques, pp. 87-89; Chandler, p. 202.

26 The brevity of this mention may seem, at first blush, to be evidence of fragmentation or condensation. But the males Lázaro experiences with the painter are summed up in a single sentence (“Despues desto, assente con vn maestro de pintar panderos para molelle los colores, y tambien sufri mil males”) for the very same reason that his fatigas with the buldero were similarly summed up in the sentence immediately preceding (“Finalmente, estuue con este mi quinto amo cerca de quatro meses, en los quales passe tambien hartas fatigas”), namely, that Lázaro's misfortunes, already having been carried to their logical climax, are no longer the theme of the book and to revert to them would be to go against the plan announced in the prologue and unduly postpone the favorable conclusion, which now must be prepared. On the other hand, the figure of the painter himself is not developed, not only because he represents the usual briefly-dismissed interval between major episodes, but also because the second stage in the elaboration of the book (that of concentrating on the master instead of on the man) has also reached its culmination in the figure of the buldero and Lázaro's complete subordination to him. Finally, it is to be noted that in both sentences the verb is in the preterit tense, the tense used for summing up a situation as a whole without dwelling on its component parts. If the author had in mind to develop further either of these two statements, we might reasonably expect to find the analytic imperfect instead of the synthetic preterit.

27 The author has to make Lázaro spend four years as a water boy in order to get him old enough to be a pregonero and to marry! This is certainly inartistic, but it does show that his main purpose is to get at the conclusion as soon as possible.

28 Cf. Wagner, p. 148.

29 Cf. pp. 3 and 66 of the text.

30 Op. cit., pp. 16-20.

31 Except, of course, in the additions in the Alcalá version numbered 1 to 6 in the appendix to the Foulché-Delbosc text. On the whole, the additions of Alcalá are inserted where they do least harm to the unity of the work. In point of fact, additions 1, 4, and S (to the first and seventh tractados) provide further links between the beginning and end of the book by developing the theme of the prophetic spirit of the blind man, already mentioned in the original version in connection with the influence of wine in the life of Lázaro (pp. 16 and 64). Additions 1 and 2 (to the first and fifth tractados) are the only ones of any length and are further illustrations of the cleverness of the ciego and the buldero, respectively. As such, they are properly placed in each tractado, coming after the incident of the grapes in the first, and after that of the false miracle in the seventh. From this standpoint, they add to the resemblances already noted between these two tractados. But when they were inserted, the original text was not changed in order to make the transitions smooth, with the result that the additions appear more awkwardly placed than they really are. Furthermore, they are unnecessary and detract from the compact, directly-moving character of the book, one of the outstanding features of which is precisely the absence of superfluous incidents. Addition 3, coming at the end of the fifth tratado, is merely a clause and refers to the hunger siege as being over, in apparent contradiction to the third sentence of the sixth tractado. Addition 6, placed at the end of the book, seemingly promises a continuation.

32 The existence of certain Lazarillo material not included in our book (viz., the tunny fish episode and that of the convent) does not necessarily mean, as some might think, that the book itself is fragmentary or incomplete. Even if other tales and episodes connected with a legendary Lazarillo were current, and even if the author of the book knew of them, it does not follow that he should have incorporated them in his story, especially as they do not fit into his scheme. To clinch the matter, it may be mentioned that R. H. Williams (in Romanic Review, 1925, XVI, pp. 223-235) has already shown that the episodes of the tunny fish and the convent do not antedate 1555 and definitely belong to the anonymous Segunda Parte and its probable author, Cristóbal de Villalón.