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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1967 Definition and Contrast of Love in the 'Corte De Amor' and the 'Sonatas' of Ramon Del Valle-Inclan. O. E. jack Roberts Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Roberts, O. E. jack Jr, "Definition and Contrast of Love in the 'Corte De Amor' and the 'Sonatas' of Ramon Del Valle-Inclan." (1967). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 1314. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/1314 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This dtssartattoa has bsan sdcroflhned sxsctly as rscaiYsd 67-14,009 ROBERTS, Jr., O. E. Jack, 1942- DEFINITION AND CONTRAST OF LOVE IN THE CORTE DE AMOR AND THE SONATAS OF RAMON DEL VALLE- Loulslana State University and Agricultural and Meoh&nlcal College, FtuD,, 1967 I jmguage and Literature, general University Microiilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan 0. E. Jack Roberts* Jr. 1967 All Rights Reserved DEFINITION AND CONTRAST OF LOVE IN THE OORTS DS AMOR AND THE SONATAS o r a ® DmrVALLB- INOlBT A Dissertation Submitted to the Oraduato Faculty or the Louisiana State university and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Spanish by 0*£. Jack Roberts, Jr. M.A., Louisiana State University, 1965 Hay*, 1967 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to express his sincere appre­ ciation to Dr, H*L. Kirby for his guidance, encourage­ ment, and remarkable ability to stimulate the type of soholarshlp which the student, by himself, rarely aohleves and without whloh this study would be laoking* TABLE OP OOIITENTS AOKNOWL EDGMEN T 11 ABSTRACT lv CHAPTER I. A GENERAL VIEW OP LOVE IN THE WESTERN WORLD 1 II. OORTE PE AMOR 16 I I I . SONATAS 71 CONCLUSIONS 155 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 168 VITA 170 111 ABSTRACT In the Middle Ages there arose In western Europe a oonfllot between two moral oodes, feudalism and ohi- ▼airy. Basing his observations upon evidence from the Tristan romance, Denis de Rougemont in Dove £n the Wes­ tern World describes the evolution of the passlon-myth oonoept of love from this oonfllot and the Maniohaean heresy of the twelfth and thirteenth oenturies. The passion myth, which emphasizes suffering and death, pervades every art medium today and dlreotly opposes Christian Ideals of marriage as a permanent, happy union. The purpose of this study was to define and oontrast the oonoepts of love in Ramon del Valle-Inclan's Oorte de amor and the Sonatas. In doing this, it was dis­ covered that the lnfluenoe of the passion myth is extremely Important In both works. The frustrated, domineering women in Corte de amor demonstrate quite well the struggle between the passion myth and marriage. These women, whose desires range from n aro lssistio to sensual to maternal, do not wish to marry beoause they fear losing their lovers. Shis reasoning isa basio tenet of the passion myth—the oonsoious obstruction of happiness and the diesire to suffer. But the women lv In the Sonatas represent religious symbole. They are younger than their counterparts in Oorte de amor and they are a ll dominated by the Marques de Bradomin. On the part of the women in the Sonatas there is a deoreased emphasis on sensuality and an absence of maternal love toward Bradomln. In the Sonatas the Marques de Bradom£n is a man obsessed with the search for love. But for him love becomes a mixture of sensuality, satanlsm, sadism, narcissism, and death. While Tristan's searoh had been direoted toward a union with the supreme Good through suffering, Bradom£n*s quest beoomes a means of nurturing his ego by overcoming obstaoles that have no meaning other than the faot that they stand in the way of personal gratification. Bradomfn's goal is heaven on earth, a temporal, physical heaven. Yalle«lnolan, in ohanging the reason for Bradomfn's love affairs, has fused the passion myth with the Christian oonoept of love and provided us with the portrait of a selfish man whose narcissism leads him to a oynloal old age fille d with empty memories and no sense of lasting happiness. v CHAPTER ONE* A GENERAL VIEW 07 LOVE IH THE WESTERH WORLD The •motion which we o all MloveM—and whioh is so loosely defined by tho dictionary—is probably the most oomplex end oontradiotory feeling of whioh man is capable. The term "love" is applicable to a variety of relationships* each of whioh may be oonoeived and desorlbed differently by the partners of that relation- ship* That i t is a powerful emotion there ean be no doubt* In a sense* "love" initiates the history of man—»at least in the Christian tradition—for it was Adam's love for Ere that induced him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge* thus incurring the wrath of God and the destruction of th at perfeot b liss whioh had been his in the Garden of Eden* Put love* as we have said* is an elusive term* Han's relation to woman has not always been what i t Is In modern Western society* I t would be profitable to trace briefly the evolution of this most intimate association before entering into a discussion of Valle-Iholan's oonoept of love as expressed in the Corte de amor and the Sonatas* The modern Western notion of love* whioh implies a certain equality and respect between man and woman* was unknown to primitive man* Prehistoric man dominated 1 2 his woman completely. She was fit only for menial ohores and ohlldbearlng* The tasks men wore loathe to perform fell to her, for she was weaker and com­ pelled by foroe to do them* Anthropologists generally agree that in the Paleolithlo Age(50,000-8,000 3*0*) a crude form of marriage probably oame into existence* But this type of relationship evolved more in the com­ mon Interest of defense and survival than as a result of romantioally ooneeived notions of a union between man and woman** We might say that among prim itive men sex and love were on the instinotual level end not until the Christian era did they attain a conscious level: Christianity revealed, perhaps even aroused, the notion of a oonfllot, radical, bitter, bloody, between the flesh and the s p ir it of whioh the anolents had hardly a notion* For oenturies this oonfllot caused torments of oonsolenoe, and until the threshold of our own era, no essentially new element seems to have been introduced into this development of love..* Until then, "sex" and "love" were on the plane of instinot* Consolousneas of sex was soaroely aroused, or was at least hardly to be distinguished from li f e its e lf . There was a kind of radlanoe lighting up such instinotlve aots as the motions of love whioh oould elevate, enrich, and expand them, but did not beoome detaohed as knowledge, » whioh barely distinguished se lf from it s object. It is with the oomlng of Christianity that the oonfllot between the flesh and s p ir it—which is very important th* Sonatas—was impressed upon the oonsoiousness of man, and he has oontlnued even into the twentieth oentury trying to understand and reconcile the duality 3 of h is desires and needs* One of the first Important expressions of a oohoept of love is found among the Greeks, Plato In partioular* I t has been pointed out that although the Greeks were familiar with oonjugal love* It does not seem to have provided them with Inspiration In poetry or philosophy* Although the Greeks had a word for desire—"Bros;" for friendship—"Philia;" and for God's love for man—"Agape;" they had no word to desoribe conjugal love*^ The Greeks seem to have been more Interested in the state or con­ dition of love and the life of the spirit than in love between a man and a woman* In the Platonic concept of love, the loved one is only an Intermediary between the one who loves and the attainment of the supreme Good* By oontemplatlon of his beloved* a man might hope to oatoh a glimpse of the beautiful s p ir it whioh is the eternal Good! Plato-is not Interested so much in love itself as in the vibrations whioh love oauses in the soul, and in the inoentive which this passion ives to the aspirations of the spirit. Love fs the medium of eostasy, a kind of intermediary or "demon," as he c a lls i t , whioh inspires flig h t towards the intelligible world.••It is a spark kindling a fire whioh then feeds itself*..The loved being only exists in order to be constantly surpassed.••one must pass from the love of beau­ tiful bodies to that of beautiful souls and from the love of beautiful souls to that of the supreme and formless Good,4 The purpose of love, according to Plato, is to afford 4 • passage to a higher level of beauty and understanding of the supreme Good* The loved one is only a cataly st, an intermediate stage, in this asoent. Quite different from the Platonic concept is the Tristan or passion myth of love whioh came into existenoe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

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