Making War, Not Love: : The Contest of Cultural Difference and the Honor Code in Calderón’s Amar Después de la Muerte

M A K I N G W A R , N O T L O V E : T H E C O N T E S T O F C U L T U R A L D I F F E R E N C E A N D T H E H O N O R C O D E I N C A L D E R 6 N ' S AMAR DESPllZS DE LA MUERTE A n n e J. C r u z University of Illinois, Chicago Calderon's play, El Tuzanidel Alpuxara, also known as Amar despues de la muerte, presents at first glance an idealized view of the Moor typified and encouraged by the sixteenth-century interest in morisco literature such as El Abencerraje and the Guzman de Alfarache's interpolated story of Osmin and Daraja.1 Yet the play was written in 1633, when the issue of the ethnic group's despised "otherness" had again flared up, some forty years after the morisco rebellion of the Alpujarras.2 Quoting Juan Goytisolo's assurance that at the time, "el moro era un simple recuerdo," Melchora Romanos rightly notes the theme's "fuerte impronta de la tradicion idealizante" which she attributes to a "defensa tardia" of the moriscos (371-72). Numerous critics have traced Calderon's source for the play to Gines Perez de Hita's Segunda parte de las guerras civiles de Granada, a novelized recounting of events that advocates for the moriscos' assimilation into Christian society.3 Most recently, Diane Sieber develops the play's mythological imagery, which she asserts construes the Alpujarras as the labyrinth that contains the moriscos in an inverted heroic role against the Christian monsters. Since Perez de Hita's narrative may be read—surprisingly, given the times—as a powerful critique of the treatment of the moriscos that led to the uprising, we may ask whether the play also serves to communicate Calderon's own negative views of the later expulsion. If, as I hope to show, the answer is overwhelmingly positive, this particular play supports Ignacio Arellano's belief that the Calderon of the millenium, unlike previous interpretations, proves "un poeta tragico, capaz de explorar los laberintos de la opresion ideol6gjca, politica y social" (4). As court playwright to Philip TV, Calderon writes his play soon after the occurrence, in 1627, of another court spectacle, the competition for a Palace painting representing the expulsion of the moriscos by Philip IV's father. The winning painting by Diego de Velazquez, who competed with other court painters, situated an armed Philip III at its center, his baton pointed at a group of men, women, and children in tears being taken by force to some carts and boats in thebackground. At his right, the figure of CALlOPE Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 (2000): pages 17-33 MAKPNG LOVE, NOT WAR: AMAR DESPUtS DE LA MUERTE f» 18 Spain, personified as a Roman matron, held in her right hand arrows and a shield, and in her left, blades of wheat, with a Latin inscription at her feet extolling Philip's virtues as "fosterer of peace and justice, preserver of the public order; in recognition of his successful expulsion of the Moors."4 The painting, approximately the size of Titian's Charles V at Muhlberg, was lost in the 1734 fire of theAlcazar; we know, however, that it garnered Velazquez his appointment as painter to the privy chamber (Orso 52-53). The contest's theme, like the play's, was most probably motivated by the changing public attitudes toward the expulsion, which drastically affected the country's agricultural production. Inhis analysis of Calderon's comedia as an astute commentary on contemporary politics, Alexander Parker identifies the strong presence of an "enlightened" position at court in defense of the moriscos (Parker 303). Velazquez's painting, exhibited in the Alcazar's "New Room," a prominent showroom for the royal treasures (Orso52), was meant to uphold the conviction that Philip III—whose epithet of "pious" underscores his religious zeal—had acted rightly in defense of Spanish orthodoxy. Depicting Spain's motherly countenance holding both the symbols of arms and of nurturance in her hands, the painting...