Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681)

Segismundo´s father, Basilio, is the king of Poland and a big fan of astrology, studying the stars in order to understand the future. When his son is born, he reads that he is destined to become a cruel ruler, and so he imprisons him in an isolated mountainside fortress, telling his people that his son died in childbirth. Segismundo grows up under the tutelage of Clotaldo, who educates him in his isolated prison. When he is grown, Basilio decides that he wants to perform an experiment, show more testing whether or not free will can triumph over destiny as read in the stars. He gives Segismundo a drug that puts him to sleep and transports him to the palace, placing him on the throne as king. In this way, he can see whether his son can transcend the predictions of the stars and rule justly. He instructs Clotaldo to explain to Segismundo what has happened, and also to warn him that his new position as king may only be a dream, and that he may well wake up back in his prison. Segismundo as king must confront the unjust nature of his prison, and decide how to treat his subjects and his father, who imprisoned him and isolated him from the world. He also must enter into courtly society after living his life as a caged beast. Calderón´s play follows the action as Segismundo tries to understand the cruel existence that he has been forced into and examines whether or not he can be a just ruler despite his star-crossed birth and isolated, savage upbringing.

As I looked at my bookshelf trying to decide which of the handful of recently-purchased plays I wanted to read next, I decided instead to reread La vida es sueño, thinking that of all of my choices, I would enjoy it the most. Before I began reading, I was paging through the critical commentaries on the play that follow the text in my edition. There was a letter from the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev expressing his enjoyment of Calderón´s work, and he compares Segismundo with Shakespeare´s Hamlet. It´s a rather obvious choice, and as I read the play I thought about how similar the two princes are (although I haven´t read Hamlet since high school and only faintly remember it). Segismundo is made to question the world that surrounds him and ponder whether he is dreaming or awake: Hamlet´s most famous line, “To be or not to be,” in Segismundo´s world, becomes more a question of “Am I awake, or is this a dream?” Segismundo has a monologue that reminds me of Hamlet´s soliloquy on existence, and is one of my favorite passages in classic Spanish literature:

Yo sueño que estoy aquí
destas prisiones cargado,
y soñé que en otro estado
más lisonjero me vi.
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

These words come at the heels of a day in which Segismundo has awoken in the bed of a king, confronted the reasons behind his lifelong imprisonment, and all the while been constantly reminded that what he is experiencing may only be a dream, and that he may wake up to the shackles and isolation of his prison. His contemplation of the world and whether or not our lives are anything more than dreams was remarkable to me the first time that I read it, because of its direct challenge to reality. I assume that Calderón was familiar with Don Quijote and perhaps Segismundo´s dilemma was inspired by his adventure in the Cave of Montesinos. It´s interesting to see another scenario where a Spaniard is writing about dreams and reality in the first part of the 16th century, because it´s a topic that seems to pertain much more to literature in modern times.

La vida es sueño is written in the baroque style, which means that the language is complicated and there are many different and sometimes confusing techniques that Calderón uses to construct arguments. My edition was thoroughly annotated, and helped bring my attention to some of the aspects of the baroque style that I would have ignored otherwise. Another element that I enjoyed was the somewhat atypical comic foil Clarín, who is unique in that he shows limited allegiance to his initial master, Rosaura, and floats around from master to master. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was the one living in a dream, and his commentaries often hint at his own confusion at the fate that befalls him. There were some parts of the play that didn´t seem as strong, such as the ending, where the different plot strands are conveniently tied up in the most straightforward way possible. In the end, though, Calderon´s depiction of Segismundo´s struggle to understand his life and the world that surrounds him, makes him one of my favorite characters in Siglo de Oro theater and a worthy holder of the title “Spanish Hamlet.”

February 12, 2012

I didn't realize I'd already read and reviewed this book in 2012...I wrote another review, but it doesn't really add much to the previous one so I'll omit it here. One interesting thing I read about this book that I do think is worth mentioning concerns the difference between life and dream: we set these two terms up to be polar opposites, but maybe that's not the right way to look at them when reading a play written in the first half of the seventeenth century. Christopher Soufas is the name of the guy who wrote the article I read, and he opines that the way that humankind ordered knowledge back then was fundamentally different from the way we do now. Where we look for differences between things, people used to look for similarities. I think Foucault wrote about this in his archaeology of knowledge. Anyway, the point is that we tend to consider the idea of doing good in dreams to be rather ridiculous: how can you do good or bad in a dream? But back then it might have been more natural for Segismundo to ponder the consequences of his acts, regardless of whether he was awake or not when he committed them. show less

Hermoso. Sin duda, una de las obras más bellas de la lengua española.
Antes, tenía un fuerte prejuicio hacia este texto, pero se debía a un profundo desconocimiento de Calderón. Después de adentrarme adecuadamente en esta belleza, me sacó lágrimas necesarias e inesperadas.
No puedo decir más. He sido gratamente derrotado.

Si Calderón es el autor teatral barroco por excelencia, cabe también decir que La vida es sueño es una obra que sustancia los grandes temas de este movimiento. La historia del príncipe Segismundo, que sale de la cueva en la que había sido encerrado por su padre para convertirse en rey por breve tiempo -un tiempo que fue un sueño- antes de ser devuelto de nuevo a ella, da pie a un complejo drama sobre el libre albedrío, la fugacidad de la vida y la falsedad de las apariencias.

This play had a slightly different twist on the standard Renaissance plots. Yes, there is a lady being kept away from all men by the men who are in charge of her. Yes, there is a potential lover and his servant, as well as servants of the lady, to bring comedy relief. But the solution to the age-old problem is a bit unique, and as is often the case in these plays, demonstrates a great deal of cleverness on the part of the women in seeking relief from their position. An enjoyable piece, and a show more quick read on a Sunday afternoon. show less