Garcilaso’s Eclogues: Artifice, Metafiction, Self-Representation

GARCILASO'S ECLOGUES: ARTIFICE, METAFICTION, SELF-REPRESENTATION Howard B.Wescott State University of New York College at Fredonia In Book I, ch. xxv,Don Quixote tells Sancho: "Si, que no todos los poetas que alaban damas, debajo de un nombre que ellos a su albedrio les ponen, esverdad que las tienen ... No, por derto, sino que las mas se las fingen, por dar sujeto a sus versos, y porque los tengan por enamorados y por hombres que tienen valor para serlo." Garcilaso himself also calls attention to the fictional quality of his own work in his dedicatory verses to Eclogues I and III:"El duke lamentar de dos pastores, / Salido juntamente y Nemoroso / ede cantar, sus quexas imitando" (1981:I, 1-3);"De quatro nymphas que del Tajoamado salieron juntas, a cantar m~ qffrezco" (1981:III, 51-54). I would like to focus here on the manner in wh.i,chGarcilaso's Eclogues are works of self-conscious artifice, that is, works of art that owe their ontology to other works of art and to literary traditions, and Qll the distance inevitably required for an author to use those traditions as a source of iconography and language in the creation of something new.1 This problem of "otherness" may subvert the traditional interpretation of this poetry. Readers of Gardlaso' s work have often regan;ied it as "a human voice out of the past, a voice which must somehow be brought to life."2 Indeed, it often seems that Gardlaso' s voice is brought too much to life. This tendency to believe that his work is both biographical in p.ature and somehow independent from our perception of it, has overlooked difficulties, not the least being the possibility that even biographical material can be made into artifice. The oldest, and best known, approach views the Eclogues as three loosely related poems in the pastoral mode that depict the poet's emotional reactions to different moments in his presumed relationship with Isabel Freire. According to Keniston, Gardlaso, already married (possibly by Imperial fiat), first met and fell in love with Isabel Freire in 1526,a date that would have allowed three years for them to become acquainted before Garcilaso left Spain for the Emperor's coronation in Italy in 1529. In that same year Isabel was married to Antonio de Fonseca, lord of Toro. She died in childbirth sometime in 1533 or 1534 (79-84,242-44). Thus critics have pointed to vv. 366-93in Eclogue I as proof that Nemoroso's lament for Elisa refers to Isabel's death, and Salido' s lament over his rejection by 72 ro Howard B.Wescott 03 Galatea is said to represent Isabel's marriage. 3 Luis Iglesias Feijoo points out that this traditional interpretation relies on the contradictory assumptions that Galatea was free to reject Salido, while Garcilaso was presumably not free to reject an arranged marriage, and notes that there is some evidence of Garcilaso' s genuine affection for his wife (75). This line of criticism attacks the notions that the Eclogues recapitulate biographical data and that their ideological underpinnings are to be found in the courtly love ethic. Yeteven the biographical reading presupposes a notion of artificiality as a basis for interpretation, since it begins with the assumption that the shepherds are in fact nobles and literati in disguise whose normal activities have nothing to do with life as it is genuinely lived in the country. For a literary representation of authentic shepherds contrasted with life in the pastoral genre, we must tum to the apparently genuine shepherds surrounding Cervantes' story of Marcela and Grisostomo (00 I, xi-xiv). Garcilaso, moreover, creates two contrasts within the Eclogues themselves: the first when he combines in Eclogue II, narrated in epic form, events from the life of don Fernando de Toledo with the pastoral world ofAlbanio, and the second when he sets the traditional amoebaean song of Thyrreno and Alzino as a "genuine" pastoral counterpoint to the ecphrastic mythological tapestries that comprise the bulk of Eclogue III. Another critical current argues that Garcilaso's relationship with Isabel Freire was not a major factor in his poetic endeavors, since the two may not in...