Lope De Vega’s La Gatomaquia and Positive Parody

LOPE DE VEGA’S LA GATOMAQUIA AND POSITIVE PARODY Isabel Torres, Queen’s University, Belfast I Luis de Góngora mastered the art of the bizarre correspondence. His favourite ‘A si no B’formula appears to reject classical notions of representation based on similitude1 , foregrounding instead two oppositional subjects as interchangeable components of a structure that is perversely analogical. In Góngora’s poetic universe linguistic and conceptual correlations are often dependent upon the potential reconcilability of the apparently irreconcilable.2 But we shouldn’t underestimate his rival Lope de Vega’s own capacity for linguistic experimentation, an equally problematic approach to the processes of signification which, though not as disproportionately envisaged, symphonically-charged, or as conceptually complex as in Góngora’s longer poems, certainly demonstrates its own defiant response to the idealistic connections that are so often manipulated to support hierarchical models of authority. Nowhere does Lope offer such a sustained liberation of the word than in the burlesque epic published towards the end of his life, La gatomaquia (1634).3 The parodic power of Lope’s tale of the passionate and jealous love of the ‘gato romano’ Marramaquiz for the beautiful and treacherous Zapaquilda, is fuelled by the poem’s resistance to and rejection of the illegitimate parallels, correspondences and relations that normalise out-moded heroic codes of behaviour and depend upon the increasingly invalid objectivity of epic. In the Gatomaqiua the essential paradox at the heart of all parody, that is, that even in degrading there is elevation, and in rejection there is reinforcement (Hutcheon 75), is itself a target of parody; and this has inevitable aesthetic and ideological implications. The poem acknowledges a disintegrating faith in the mystical bond between word and thing,4 but communicates this disconnect within an overarching framework of absurd identification: what we might term, gato, si no hombre (mujer). Within a heightened context of over-determined meta-artistry, the reader’s supension of disbelief with regard to this central unifying correspondence is rarely threatened. And yet, throughout the poem, a syncopated series of ruptured engagements with generic, mythical/ CALÍOPE Vol. 14, No. 1, 2008: pages 5-22 6 Isabel Torres ! ! ! ! ! heroic and tonal archetypes, underlines the apparent arbitrary nature of association and, therefore, the artificiality of its own parodic premise. WhereasAriosto had followed the Classical poets, especially Virgil, in his unifying use of the extended simile (Murtaugh), a controlling device that transcends the apparent chaos and flux of the surface narrative; the simplicity of Lope’s structure is belied by chaotic, imperfectly realised, correspondences. The wrenching disunity of its analogical infrastructure, and its striking self-reflexivity counters ideal epic pretensions, both aesthetic and ideological, with a deflationary, oppositional discourse, whose realism emerges (somewhat ironically) from a uniquely ludic distorsion of verisimilitude. II The poem, composed of seven silvas, can be briefly summarised as follows: the beautiful Zapaquilda catches the eye of Marramaquiz and seems receptive to his courtship. However, she quickly switches her affections to the new, richer, cat on the roof Micifuf, which plunges Marramaquiz into a near fatal jealous melancholy. By the end of the first silva Zapaquilda recalls Marramaquiz back from the brink with a promise to “guardar la fe” as his “esposa” (1.14). But betrayal is imminent. Silva two opens with Zapaquilda awaiting news of Micifuf. The recovered Marramaquiz witnesses Zapaquilda’s reaction to a note (and food) received by her from his rival and flies into (another) jealous rage. On the advice of a “sabio” he decides to feign interest in Micilda to make Zapaquilda jealous. The ruse works and the silva ends with a fight between the two female felines (compared to dogs scrapping over a bone, with obvious echoes of Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, II, 5). In the third silva Micifuf organises a serenade for Zapaquilda and from this point on she remains consistent in her loyalty to him. Marramaquiz is once again a concealed observer of the scene, and overhears both Micifuf’s marriage proposal and Zapaquilda’s suggestion that Marramquiz be poisoned to remove him as an impediment to their happiness. A confrontation between the enraged male cats is cut short by the arrival of the police who whisk them...