Góngora and the PartridgeAuthor(s): Francis G. VerySource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 76, No. 8 (Dec., 1961), pp. 770-773Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3039953 .

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Summary.-The date of composition of the Eufemia and the date of its first performance are unknown. Moratin thinks the play was first performed in 1544 but presents no evidence to support this statement. The date of composition is suggested in Scene II by a topical allusion which may refer to the Spanish expedition to Algiers in 1541 under Charles V. In Scene IV a remark concerning an armada at Cadiz may plausibly allude to the sack of Gibraltar in 1540, an event which was the primary cause of the aforementioned expedition. If one accepts the conjecture about the date of composition which we base on a probable allusion to the Algiers expedition, it is clear that the Eufemia could not have been written before 1541. Since the expedition to Algiers took place in December of that year, the play was probably composed in 1542. Its first performance could have taken place the same year or in 1543.

University of Pittsburgh FRED ABRAMS

Gongora and the Partridge Readers of G6ngora's Las firmezas de Isabel[a] (1610), may have

been perplexed by the following lines, lines which have puzzled at least one of the commentators of the prinncipe de tinieblas. In this note I shall try to shed some light on the passage, which runs as follows.

2466. Eso no Tadeo; no quiero lleuar allA francolin, que conuide a sus ceregas a quien las pague en anis.1

Alemany y Selfa candidly says that he leaves this matter in abeyance, amongst others of like difficulty, "para ver si otros mas afortunados logran explicar[lo]."2 What has the Francolinus vulgaris (a bird related to the partridge family), to do with cherries? We may com- mence by turning to Alemany's entry for francolin, where we find several solutions proposed.

1 In Obras po6ticas, ed. Foulche-Delbosc (New York, 1921), I, 432. 2 Vocabulario de las obras de D. Iuis de G6ngora y Argote (Madrid, 1930),

p. 22.

770 Modern Language Notes

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Mujer liviana o f'acil de dejarse seducir. Esto se deduce del contexto: cerezas son los atractivos o prendas personales de la mujer y el pagdrselas en anis debe aludir quiza al hecho de que las cerezas se ponen en aguardiente. De modo que a quien le d4 a ella el anis, le d4 ella las cerezas.8

An ingenious reading of part of the text, and one which can be supported from even a cursory glance at the medieval bestiaries. From the time of Pliny on, perdix has enjoyed a doubtful renown as a symbol of incontinent lust.4 St. Isidore calls it "avis dolosa et immunda "; 5 Brunetto Latini says of it that " mout est trecheresse et luxurieuse"; 6 the Bestiaire of the 13th-century Guillaume le Clerc echoes Pliny and Isidore and remarks of the bird in its lust that "madles od madle se joint/ Itant est ardant lor luxure."

The partridge found its way into the vast number of emblem-books of the Renaissance. One example will suffice. In a purported trans- lation of the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa [lst ed. Rome, 1583], we find this figurative use of the bird.

Lussuria: LuxuaY. A young Damsel, with her Hair finely curl'd; in a manner naked; sits on a Crocodile, and makes much of a Partridge.8

By 1700 English slang equated "partridge" with "whore."9 In- deed, if we read the quatrain preceding the one quoted from G6ngora, we can, I think, agree with Alemany's contention that francolin

mujer livianai. 2462. Io a Seuilla muger facil,

que las encinas alli son cafias, si no son varas, de pescar o de alguacil.10

8 Ibid., p. 451b. The Natural History, trans. Rackham (London, 1940), III, 355-57. Etymologiarum libri XX, ed. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), II; lib. XII: vii: 63.

6 Li livres dou tresor, ed. Francis Carmody (U. of California Press, Berkeley, 1948), p. 151. For the Italian version, see the modernised version of Bono Giamboni, in Collezione di opere inedite o rare, vol. 51 (Bologna, 1877), pp. 192-94.

7Ed. Robert Reinsch (Leipzig, 1892), p. 325. Cf. The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, trans. George Boas (New York, 1950), p. 106. The literature on the bestiary is large; we mention here only Florence McCulloch, Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries (U. of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1960), pp. 152-153, and Bibliography, pp. 205-210, and T. H. White, The Bestiary (New York, 1960), pp. 136-37.

8 Iconologia or, Moral Emblems by Caesar Ripa . . . by the Care and at the Charge of P. Tempest (London, 1709), fig. 199.

9 Farmer and Henley, Slang and its Analogues, V ([London], 1902), p. 142b: "Go home, ye Fop. . . . And for half Crown a Doxey get, But seek no more a Partridge here."

10 Foulch6-Delbosc, op. cit., loc. cit.

VOL. LxxvI. December 1961 771

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We may also appropriately note here that according to folk belief the partridge will not sing if caged." In the light of this credence, the following lines from a letrilla of G6ngora of 1606, would take on additional meaning, especially if parada here is taken as dispuesta, or even albergada.

En el Prado tenia vn page Parada vna perdiz bella; Mientras encaraua en ella Ganimedes su lenguage, ella vatiendo el plumage Se le leuant6 al moguelo.1"

What better manner of expressing the idea that a kept woman will not be a joy forever?

The francolin-perdiz image, then, need offer no great complications. As to the juxtaposition of the cerezas with the bird, while we do not claim that Alemany's interpretation of the fruit as a courtesan's charms purchasable with generous libations is totally incorrect, let us not seek hardships for hardships' sake in the works of the great Cordoban. Alemany frankly states, "Pero no se que relacion tengan las cerezas con el francolin." 13 It seems strange that this commentator failed to consult the Tesoroq of Covarrubias, where we find a simpler, yet effective, explanation.

Es ave que en el campo canta; y siendo yo nifo me hazian entender, quando le oia cantar, que dezia: " Tres, tres cerezas," o " Queres, queres cerezas." 14

11 E. g., Athenaeus, The Deiphnosophists, trans. Gulick, IV (London, 1930), p. 255: " If they are caught they not only cannot be tamed, but they do not even utter a note any more. If released, they become vocal again." Cf. Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue fran,aise du 16eme 8ifcle, IV (Paris, 1950), p. 1988.

"Ed. Foulche-Delbosc, I, p. 276. I have emended the punctuation slightly. "I Vocabulario . . , p. 451b. 14Ed. Martin de Riquer (Barcelona, 1943), p. 60Gb (def. of 1611). A sepa-

rate matter, possibly related to the present study, is that of the partridge as a bird of ill omen. Athenaeus (op. cit., IV, p. 253): "They uttered for a time the note of a quail; but ever since a famine occurred as the result of the river running too low, and many of the inhabitants died, the birds have not ceased to this very day to utter, more plainly than children who speak most distinctly could, 'three times evil to evil-doers ' " (observe Gr. tri8-Sp. tre8); the Rev. Charles Swainson, The Folklore and Provincial Names of British Birds (London, 1886), p. 173: "The Bohemians believe that the flight of a partridge over a house prognosticates its destruction by fire "; Brian Mel- bancke, Philotemus (London, 1583): "If there be any poison prepared in a house a partridge penned up in a cage or coop, will bite and scratch and cry out: such divination hath she by nature" (cited in Vincent Stuckey Lean, Collectanea, II: 2 [Bristol, 1903], p. 626; Swainson, p. 173, quotes the same belief from Aldiovandus buit neglects to furnish a precise reference). For the partridge as a sign of death in the U. S. (mostly in Maine), see: Fanny Ber-

772 Modern Language Notes

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From the foregoing we may claim that we have here but one more example of the controlled, yet "free association" technique in which the poet delighted. He has combined two or more seemingly disparate images into what is actually a suggestive series of ideas, although at first glance the allusion appears to be yet another obscure culteranismo.

Xorthwe8tern Univer8ity FRANCIS G. VERY

Two Images in the Soledades of Gongora This article is an attempt, with the guide of two images, to find a

way through the silvas / selvas of the Soledades. We all know that one of the charges of the antigongoristas of the seventeenth century was that the poem lacked meaning or content: what Faria y Sousa called alma. Gracian agreed with this, and found the lyre of G6ngora to be of golden strings stretched across the cheap wood of the matter. DIlamaso Alonso, who has done more than anyone to illuminate G6ngora for us, seems to agree: "Faltan inniimeros temas vitales, dignos de ser transfundidos en materia y forma de poesia eterna." As far as I know only Spitzer and Royston Jones1 have attempted to understand the Soledades through the images: I am doing no more than follow their lead, perhaps in ways that they would repudiatc. The two images that I propose to look at are those associated with walls, and those associated with hunting. These images can only temporarily be treated separately, because they overlap in the poem, but it seems to me significant that in association they begin the poem and they end it.

First the walls. Successive readings of the poem implanted in my mind the image of muros. It is not an image which is inherent in the subject of the poem. The work is about soledades-deserted places-

gen, Animal and Plant Lore (vol. VII of the Memoirs of the American Folk- lore Society [Boston-New York, 1899], nos. 299-302.). Stith Thompson, Motif- Index, I (Bloomington, Indiana, 1955), no. B 147, 2, 2, lists no example for the partridge in this capacity. For Classical employment of the sparrow, partridge, etc., in an erotic context, see G. R. Throop, " The Bird of Venus," Washington U. Studies (Humanities series), IX; 2 (April, 1922), pp. 275-91; on the sparrow as symbol of lust, see The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, p. 111, and Anon., Emblems for the Entertainment and Improvement of Youth . . . (London [1742?]). plate XXXIII, no. 5.

' Royston Jones "The Poetic Unity of the Soledades of G6ngora," BHS, XXXI (1954), 189-204.

VOL. LXXVI, December 1.961 773

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