A Case of Functional Obscurity (George Shipley)

A Case of Functional Obscurity: The Master Tambourine-Painter of Lazarillo, Tratado VI
Author(s): George A. Shipley

Source: MLN, Vol. 97, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1982), pp. 225-253
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2906102
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A Case of Functional Obscurity: the

Master Tambourine-Painter of
Lazarillo, Tratado VI
George A. Shipley
In memory of Raimundo Lida
Scholars have written relatively little concerning the sixth Tratado
of La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, and about Lazarillo's sixth master,
almost nothing. The latter has sometimes been overlooked entirely
by commentators attracted to this complex text's larger issues. It
must be admitted that the maestro de pintar panderos is but a small
problem; he is scarcely mentioned before he passes into oblivion

and his narrator moves on to other affairs judged more worthy of
note. This neglected fellow exists in fact only in the following
sixteen words, which I will set apart to give him, whoever he is, a
moment of reprieve from the obscurity to which the narrator assigned him:
... Asente con un maestro de pintar panderos, para molelle los colores,
y tambien sufri mil males.1
It is my understanding that this master, like others in Tratados
IV-VII of Lazaro's narrative, is nearly insignificant because it is
important to the narrator to keep him so.2 Lazaro, the narrator of

1 Quotations of Lazarillo de Tormes (henceforth noted by page number within
parentheses) are drawn from Francisco Rico's edition, in La novela picaresca espanola,
I (Barcelona: Planeta, 1967); here, p. 75.
2 In "The Critic as Witness for the Prosecution: Making the Case Against Lazaro
de Tormes," to be published in PMLA, I argue that the disproportion between
Tratados I-III and IV-VII, and the reticence and ellipses so conspicuous in the latter
group, are to be understood as strategies under the narrator's control, rather than,
as some would have it, signs of the anonymous author's inexperience or "creative
impotence."
MLN Vol. 97 Pp. 225-253

0026-7910/82/0972-0225 $01.00 ? 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
226 GEORGE A. SHIPLEY
this autobiographical sketch, is

required to account formally fo
unspecified caso mentioned in t
circumstantial and textual evide
d-trois described elliptically in th

a threat that may be pulling him
buena fortuna" (p. 80)-that is, fr
social satisfaction he depicts in T
strategies, which I call expedien
tion.3 The maestro de pintar pand

interrelated narrative strategies.
termediate object that comes flee
(plotting his escape via the writ

abuse about him) shifts his atten
the here and now of the caso, aw
and his wife ("buena hija y diligen
by that good padre, the Archpr
problem would stump a narrator e
maias, and indeed it taxes his o
deceitful experience to its conside

attention of his reader (i.e., Vues
and me) from the current affair
allowing that attention to dwell t
into other episodes of the narrat
to satisfy his reader and exculpat
reader's eyes titillating, amusing,
corruption.
3 By recontextualization I mean the narrator's self-serving expansion of the
dimensions of the relate to include early stages in Lazarillo's life and a great deal of
useful fictional imagining. Lazaro works himself free of the bind he is in currently in
Toledo by implicating his fellow toledanos (in Tratados III-VII) in a web of

degradation the filaments of which extend outward and backward in time to
entangle all his contemporaries, who are represented synecdochically in the masters
of Tratados I-III. These three, in their failing ways, suggest the general corruptness
of the three estates into which society is naturally ordered, the corruptness of the
entire empire of the victorioso emperador, whose triumphant entry into Toledo (p. 80)
is as hollow, consequently, as Lazaro's salida a buen puerto (p. 7). Concerning the caso we
learn no more from the narrator than his gossipy vecinos and Vuestra Merced would
have known from the start. What we have instead of "entera noticia de mi persona"
(p. 7) is a tableau of corruption in and about Toledo (Tratados IV, V, and VI, 12.3%
of the text, and a good part of Tratado VII, 4.7%) and a masterful recreation of
Lazarillo's experience of a long ago and a far away outside the jurisdiction and
largely beyond the inspection of the powerful and menacing Vuestra Merced
(Tratados III, II, and I: 80.6% of the text). (The squire, though a resident df Toledo,
is an out-of-towner from far away and is essentially anonymous, typical, and

untraceable.)
227
I. False Starts and First Leads: Proverbs
It may be that Lazaro expects some of his readers to surmise

that on his return to the city, following some months of wa
about La Sagra de Toledo in the company of the "indus
buldero and his accomplice (Tratado V), he became apprentic
master tambourine-painter. Toledo had long been a cen
skilled craftwork; a master artisan would employ apprentic
these would do his menial work.4 Toledo's master craftsmen were
often moriscos, and moriscos were especially associated with
merry-making and with music;5 this master, then, might well be

morisco. Lazaro's step-father was a morisco; the narrator's clumsy
syntax can lead us to suspect his father may also have died a morisc
renegade ("se hizo cierta armada contra moros, entre los cuales fue
mi padre, que a la sazon estaba desterrado .. ." [p. 10]), in whic

case Lazaro obviously would be part morisco himself.6 Seeking
refuge and protection in the city, he might well arrimarse to a stable
citizen of his own caste; and given his ambition to rise, and th
isolated, dead-end standing of moriscos in society7, and also the har
work that would accompany service under a morisco (that cast

being notorious and suspect because of its dedication to hard
work), Lazaro might well be expected to look elsewhere quickly for

easier work and better opportunities ("entrando un dia en la iglesi
mayor . . ." [p. 75]), and to express years later only a faint an
negative recollection ("sufri mil males") of a brief episode premised
on hard, honest labor, about which the less said, the better.
Such an interpretation would be consistent with our limited

textual evidence and with the social scene of mid-16th-century
Toledo. But it is tenuous: slim indications depending on
likelihoods resting on possibilities. It might be so, but no critic has
suggested such a reading and none would rest the case willingly on
such a fragile network of associations. The search for a sounder
reading, however, has not been marked by success. Expert students

4 Paulo Rossi observes that in the ataliers of 15th-century Florence an apprentice
began "with manual chores and it was only after the apprentice had ground colors and
prepared panels and canvases that he passed on to the execution of the drapings or
secondary parts of the painting." In Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early
Modern Era (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), at pp. 21-22 (emphasis mine).
5 Antonio Dominguez Ortiz, The Golden Age of Spain, 1516-1659, trans. James
Casey (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 168-69.
6 Claudio Guillen raises the possibility of such a reading, without subscribing to it,
at p. 137, n. 23 of his edition Lazarillo de Tormes and El Abencerraje (New York:
Dell, 1966).
7 Dominguez Ortiz, p. 169.
of this text have tended to conclud
intense organization and signific

the few who have ventured inte
reward for their efforts. Marcel B

among this bold few, and a shrewd
16th-century Spain. In this mat
curiosity is deficient and easily ass

have been willing to entertain: "La
por Lazaro nos intriga menos cuan
Ulenspiegel engafo al landgrave
pintor, y que se dio la gran vida a
que te6ricamente deberian habe
italics).9 Bataillon's inquiry is no m
more promising (if tentative) i

sentence: "Mas aun, la comparac
Segun sea el dinero sera el pandero y
permite imaginar una vieja hist
Ulenspiegel, en la cual un falso pin

a una humilde clientela pueblerin
por adelantado." What is valuab
imagine a missing anecdote but ra
matic passage in Lazarillo with f
refranes, and most particularly wi

word pandero. In this association,
formation as damning to him an
8 A. A. Sicroff, "Sobre el estilo del Lazaril
at pp. 167, 169: "La menci6n del pintor

alguno .. ."; "el pintor de panderos es u
menor importancia dentro del libro .. .";
del Lazarillo de Tormes y Juan de Valdes
maestro de pintar panderos poco se dice,
hacer pasar el tiempo ...." In his Introducc
Anaya, 1972), at p. 35n, Maurice Molho a

appearance to the author's indifference: "El autor an6nimo se desinteresa
visiblemente [!] de las historietas del artesano: su silencio lo proclama
suficientemente." The explanation is unsound. Had the author no interest in this
master, why would he have devised him and recorded his indifference and made it
an enduring part of his otherwise intensely organized and efficiently wrought art?
There is too much going on at every moment of Lazarillo for us to presume to
diagnose the ebbing of the author's interest and creative capacity.

9Novedad y fecundidad del Lazarillo de Tormes (Salamanca: Anaya, 1968), p. 65.
Rico comments (p. 75, n. 1): ". .. Por mi parte, encuento harto dudoso el paralelo."
Manuel Asensio, in "Mas sobre el Lazarillo de Tormes,"HR, 28 (1960), 245-50, at p.
249, is more than doubtful: "No creemos que tenga justificaci6n posible .. ."
that
do VII.10
229
concealed
in
Alberto Blecua, apparently unconvinced by the linkage of
Lazarillo to Till Ulenspiegel, does share and advance Bataillon's sens
that obscure popular associations of pandero might lead to the

undoing of this knot: "La voz pintapanderos tenia significado de-
spectivo-'ser un cualquiera'-(vid. Paul M. Lloyd, Verb-Complement Compounds in Spanish, Tubingen, 1968, p. 37); pero por lo
proverbios anteriores y el siguiente texto de la Picara Justina .. .:
Siempre engendra un bailador/el padre tamborilero,/pero siempre
con un fuero:/que si acaso da en sefor/se torna siempre a pandero'
se deduce que el pandero, o bien no es un instrumento musical
o este y su pintura tenian intima relaci6n con la nobleza de un
familia. Seria, por tanto, una anticipaci6n del tema de la honra
de tanta importancia en este Tratado."' Tambourine-painting, w
shall see, has nothing to do with nobility; but Blecua's intuitio
is two-thirds valid: pandero here is not the musical instrument; and

the euphemism painted over by Lazaro has to do, if only obliquely
with honra.
Justina's verses will become fully comprehensible when read in

the rhythm governed by the popular convention of tambourine10 On zapatos and calzas see chapters 3 and 7 of Harry Sieber's important Language
and Society in La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes (Baltimore and London: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978). Now that Sieber has pulled Lazaro out of the closet, a
more comprehensive study of sexuality and perversion in Lazarillo is possible and
desirable. Subject to reinterpretation are the mujercillas hilanderas of Tratado III, the
archpriest's gifts to Lazaro's wife in Tratado VII (all of them euphemisms of sexual
exploitation), and several details of Lazarillo's upbringing in Tratado I. Javier
Herrero has attempted to deal with some aspects of sexuality in two recent studies:
"The Great Icons of the Lazarillo: the Bull, the Wine, the Sausage and the Turnip," I
& L, 1, No. 5 (Jan.-Febr., 1978), 3-18; and "The Ending of Lazarillo: the Wine
Against the Water," MLN, 93 (1978), 313-19. The latter of these offers an
extravagant reading of Lazarillo's four years with the capellin of Tratado VI but
makes no mention whatsoever of the pintor de panderos.

11 Alberto Blecua, ed., La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de susfortunas y adversidades
(Madrid: Castalia, 1972), pp. 170-71, n. 320. More accurately, what Lloyd says
concerningpintapanderos is that the word figures in his list of "contemptuous names"

referring to certain occupations and which "revealpopular attitudes toward unworthy
or incompetent representatives of the occupation" (my emphasis). Sieber, p. 77n.,

draws attention to Mateo Aleman's use of pintapanderos in his Ortografia castellana.
There (ed. J. R. Garciduefas [Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, 1950], p. 8) the word
functions figuratively, without reference to the occupation of painter, to suggest the

vain posturings and flourishes of those who pretend to an expertise that they in fact
lack. For Justina's verses, complete, see Angel Valbuena Prat, ed., La novela picaresca
espanola, I (Madrid: Aguilar, 1974), p. 915.
tapping that will be elucidated
ficiently clear when considered i

Blecua inexplicably disregards. "Li
theme, and the surrounding pa

review of her infamous ancesto
blatantly glossing the point. Just

cause of what her parents, abuelo
before her. In particular her sex
"que tuve abuelo tamborilero, a

Qut tuve abuelo flautista, y pa
el cuerpo, segun gusto de ello"
fue ... tamborilero . . ." (p. 917). 12 T
verses, as in her family history,

pandero is a term for the instrum
as sex-object.
This sense ofpandero, just derive
will not help us elucidate a diffic
half-century earlier, unless we ca
a possibility long available to w
suggested by the refranes adduce
the second, with its mysterious
pandero. On its literal face the refr
reasonable to suppose that the p
painted tambourines or that tamb

prosperous off their craft. Figur
that sort of modest well-being s
humble work. This is less helpf
proverbs are lastingly useful pre
in denotation; we know also that Lazaro is deceitful and a master of
local irony; our recognition of one possible commonplace

application of this refrdn leads us to no clear understanding of what
precise activity Lazaro is here concealing. We must concede that

still the first clause of Lazarillo, Tratado VI, "asente con un maestro
de pintar panderos ...," is either veiled or unexpressive.

But Lazarillo de Tormes is a marvelously functional and efficient
piece of art. As Francisco Rico has said, it contains no neutral
12 The passage continues: "Hacia hablar a un tamborino, dado que algunas veces
hubo menester hacerle que callase algunas tamboriladas, que si las parlara, fueran
mas sonadas que nariz con romadizo. No habia moza que no gustase de tenerle
contento .... No le holgaba miembro.... Por cierto, con mas propiedad le
pudieran llamar a mi abuelo mufidor de matrimonios que tamborilero." As for this

fellow's father, he was a "tamborilero tambien de fama .. ." (p. 917).
matter,
us
to
231
nothing
suppose
intensity,
is
lik
sense
Lazaro
and
panderos.
If
we
expressive
(par
would
stand
a
g
phrase.
The
re
masterpiece,
an
adventure
for
fellow-readers
a
not
to
shirk
ris
II. Pandero
What Bataillon's second refrdn and Lazarillo have in commo

modest cluster pintar + pandero, plus a common interest in
Bataillon's first refrdn reiterates the concern with din

pandero, omitting pintar. Both proverbs are included in
compilations, but evidence points to their deriving from a

already old in Correas' time.13 Clearly pandero, whatever
long been associated popularly with having-earning-s
money, and also with painting, in some sense.

With a fuller repertory of ancient, common, popular asso
of pandero before us, we can judge better which sever
current in Lazaro's day may be at work in Tratado VI. Let

that end, display several other proverbs in whichpandero f
association with additional aspects of experience also docu
in Lazaro's account of his life. The most common tambourine
proverb is the following one:

En buenas manos esta el pandero,
which appears with eight variant forms from Santillana to G
in Campos's Diccionario de refranes. 14 It points, as do many refra
to the expertise that comes with living and embracing life, a

calls to mind a specific range of wordly experience-the rhyth
the dance, accompanying music, concerted movement-all
13 Bataillon, p. 66, n. 56. We need not accept Bataillon's hypothesis concerning the
possible existence of an "historieta del pintor de panderos" to deem it likely that the
proverb existed as a variant of those collected by Correas.
14Juana G. Campos and Ana Barella, Diccionario de refranes, Anejos delBRAE, 30
(Madrid, 1975); henceforth cited by refrdn number, within parentheses.
positively connoted ("buenas m

speaker's confidence and self-
pleasure is more richly conjured
mas quiero pandero que no say

vale un gusto que cien pandero
repeatedly associated with ple
refrdn-generation, to draw the f
mujer loca, mas le agrada el p
2061); and a healthy word of caut

least seems to be the view of th
crea de ligero nin buelva sus o

mueva de ligero nin buelva su
paradoxical adaptability of prove

issue is also well illustrated by th
pandero, todo es vero"; "No es to
To the fun-loving association of
dance, the following refranes add
reasons having to do mainly but not exclusively with the

conventions of wedding celebration: "No hay boda sin pandero";
"Pichada (Ital.-'pisciata') sin pedo, como boda sin pandero"
(O'Kane, s.v. pandero). Both of these are from Sephardic tradition;
but Guzman de Alfarache's testimony a century after the Expulsion
reassures us that their association remained alive in the Peninsula:
"No se si despertara tan presto si los panderos y bailes de unas

mujeres que venian a velar aquel dia, con el tafter y cantar no me
recordaran."17
This other Sephardic proverb (also from O'Kane) "'En que se va

tu dinero? En kamanes (pers.-turc-'viol6n') y panderos," brings us
near full circle, for it associates the pleasant sensuality of music,
15 Alfonso Martinez de Toledo, ArCipreste de Talavera, ed. Mario Penna (Torino:

Rosenberg & Sellier, [1955]), pp. 145, 157; included in Eleanor S. O'Kane (Sister M.
Katharine Elaine, C. S. C.), Refranes y frases proverbiales espanoles de la edad media,
Anejos del BRAE, 2 (Madrid, 1959).
16 The first is Santillana's, the second from Correas; s.v.pandero in O'Kane. Sieber,
p. 77, n. 2, quotes a clumsy variant form of this, together with Gonzalo Fernandez
de Oviedo's moralizing gloss; the variant: "No tiene juicio sano / El que cree de
ligero: / Ni lo que dice el pandero / Suele ser todo verdad."
17 Guzmdn de Alfarache, Part I, Book I, Chapter 3; p. 148 in Rico. This association
in Guzmdn and proverbs is likely a survival of ancient orgiastic practices that may
well have been Pan-Mediterranean. Aristophanes' Lysistrata opens with the title
character alluding to festivals of Dionysis, Pan, and Aphrodite in which women
danced to the accompaniment of tambourine rhythms. Lysistrata mentions
tambourines explicitly; the context shows that she intends them as a metaphor for
"women."
percussive
money,
as
sera
el
233
rhyth
in
Bat
pandero.
complex
of
assoc
tu
dinero
unde
tambourine
in
proverb,
this
one
(according
to
its
"of
a
man
who
h
the
tent
burned?
termarck's
expl
tamborilero
...;
need
to
puzzle
f
which
is
upperm
available
in
all
t
attempt
to
prove
the
band.
This
on
Westermarck's
c
are
taught
prove
must
be
good-loo
play
on
a
big
tam
being
the
perfo
sexual
intercours
In
the
concordan
struck
in
Spanish
experience
and
world,
the
pleasu
the
joining
of
tw
principal
these
overto
fundament
shall see again, in written literature overseen by ironic

authors-this image is worked into association with sexual
intercourse, with woman as sexual object, and the tambourine-its

fragile membrane struck rhythmically to produce resonance, the
sympathetic shimmer of sonajas, the pulsation of handsome bodies
18 "Bas nhraq 1-qaiton be t-tror u s-sebbaba," in Wit and Wisdom in Morocco: A
Study of Native Proverbs (London: George Routledge, 1930), p. 84. Of course
Hispanists will be intrigued but hardly astonished by the coincidental association of

pandero in the folklore of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. The place of the tambourine
in folklore beyond the Pyrenees is, in contrast, modest, according to my provisional
findings.
19 "Li ma drab f bendair kbir ma sba hadra," Westermarck, p. 83.
moving in concert, ecstatic ejacul

in-all, a synaesthetic feast-serves
maidenhead, integral or perforated

Let us observe the working of this
or less richly corroborative of thes
of speakers and the intent of their
de Rojas's La Celestina Sempronio tr
tasteless and dangerous public p
Celestina happens into the scene jus
"No descubras tu pena a los est
pandero que lo sabra bien tafer."20

double-entendre misses the remar
with the association pandero/Melibe
to weigh for and by himself the ap
words and the author's wit before h
other matters. Feliciano de Silva wa
the words and judged them worth
them. In Cena XXVI of his Segun
Polandria, his Melibea, that she is a

asegurate, asegura, que en manos es
tafer." Polandria's reply makes clea
she, but perhaps not every reader,
saw: "iAy Dios, madre, c6mo ere
vayas."21
Long after Lazarillo Francisco de Quevedo will insert the same

refrdn into a stew of cliches in his "Cuento de cuentos," and Luis de
G6ngora will tap the malicious possibilities of pandero in a

romancillo, both of them providing further evidence of the
commonplace nature of pandero references, their easy accommoda-
tion to authors' ironic play, and (in the G6ngora passage) their
ready cooperation with sexual and other sorts of innuendo.22 Far
more amusing, as well as useful for our purpose here-that pur-
pose being to illustrate the constellation of concerns suggested by
pandero and their frequent, if not inevitable, sexual overtones20 Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina, ed. Dorothy S. Severin (Madrid: Alianza,
1969), p. 163.
21 Feliciano de Silva, Segunda comedia de Celestina, ed. Maria Ines Chamorro
Fernandez (Madrid: Ciencia Nueva, 1968), p. 336.
22 Francisco de Quevedo, "Cuento de cuentos," in Obras completas, ed. Felicidad
Buendia (Madrid: Aguilar, 1958), I, 368-73, at p. 371; Luis de G6ngora, Obras
completas, ed. Juan and Isabel Mille y Gimenez (Madrid: Aguilar, 1956), p. 152 (in
"Trepan los gitanos").
235
is
a
brief
passa
grotesque
moz
Gallega,
whose
those
of
the
ar
fantasize the conversation they will inflict on "sus dos
desapasionados amantes" if ever they are able to break down their
doors and their resistance. "Worry not that we give ourselves free
to all comers," they plead, "callad y tapaos los ojos, y dejad tocar el
pandero a quien sabe, y que gui'e la danza quien la entiende, y no
habra par de can6nigos en esta ciudad mas regalados que
vosotros ...."23 There is no doubt here about meanings; the speech

of these creatures, though figurative, is, like their conduct, as direct
and uninhibited as Lazaro's is elliptic.
It is in Cervantes' only rival as principal comic ironist of Spain
that we find the richest lode of evidence corroborating the sexual
suggestiveness of pandero and the cluster of allied associations

exemplified above. At stanzas 468-71 of Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen
amor, in the course of don Amor's instruction of the Archpriest, the
latter is told that once a woman is made ardent, her fire needs no
rekindling, and arguing by analogy: "Desque pierde vergiiefa el

tahur al tablero,/si el pellote juega jugara el braguero;/desque la
cantadera dize el cantar primero,/siempre los pies le bullen, e mal para
elpandero" (470).24 More striking than this passage, with its reiteration of the associative linkage tambourine/dance/song/sexual parts/
intercourse, is another often associated by scholars with La Celestina.
The introduction of Trotaconventos into the negotiations between
don Mel6n and dofia Endrina is accompanied, between stanzas 697
and 705, by a series of key words and puns that indeed have a family
resemblance to others in Rojas's work, but also to the proverb lore I
have reviewed here, and to Lazarillo, Tratado VI. One or two sim-
ilarities are so notable as to constitute probable clues to the enigma

of the maestro de pintarpanderos. But first, two lesser matters: "Busque
trotaconventos qual me mand6 el Amor; de todas las maestras ecogi la

mejor" (697ab). The appropriation of maestra to cover mastery in
the profession of match-making is repeated in LBA (in this

sequence, for example, at 698b and 699c) and embraced by
Celestina; that maestro in Lazarillo is also suggestive of expertise and

23 Miguel de Cervantes, La ilustre fregona, in Novelas ejemplares, ed. Francisco
Rodriguez Marin, Clasicos Castellanos, 27 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1957), I, p. 256.
24Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, ed. Raymond S. Willis (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1972), p. 131.
dedication in sexual matters will b

conclude this study. As for trotacon
of La Celestina, both elements of t
Lazarillo, Tratado IV ("gran enemig
"ni yo pude con su trote durar mas"
Juan Ruiz's compound is the pri
Mercedarian master; the youth is h
trotaconventos. 25 It would not be inc
for him to play this role again, pro

for a new master, on his return to Toledo, in Tratado VI. I shall
depend on other evidence to suggest this relationship and activity

more clearly.
Don Mel6n's procuress "era vieja buhona de las que venden

joyas" (699a). This activity is a suggestive cover for her (and of
course it also prefigures Celestina's covers, enumerated by
Parmeno in Act I of Rojas's masterpiece): "Como lo an de uso estas
tales buhonas,/andan de casa en casa vendiendo muchas donas"
(700ab). Clearly these joyas are also for Trotaconventos' creator a
promising image for sexual punning, and as such they ar
exploited immediately in the above play: vender joyas/vender don

(We have already observed alhaja (alfaya) surface in a proverb, in
association, potentially sexual, with pandero.) Skipping over t

amusing puns of st. 704, which provide additional evidence
Ruiz's will to exploit his language's power of sexual suggestion, w

reach the deposit that most interests us as students of Lazarillo
Tormes. I quote stanza 705:
Si a quantas d'esta villa nos vendemos las alhajas
sopiessen unas de otras, muchas serian las barajas;
muchas bodas ayuntamos que vienen a repintajas;
muchos panderos vendemos que non suenan las sonajas.
The refrdn "Alfaya por alfaya, mas quiero pandero que no saya"
evermore enrichened by association with Juan Ruiz's art; given th
decoded meaning this stanza brings to mind again, who would no
choose a pandero over a saya? I believe most readers of LBA w
agree thatpandero and alhajas, beyond being trinkets peddled by a

astute buhonera, are here also synecdochic metaphors, and that th
part of the whole they refer to is woman's sexual part.
As Trotaconventos works under cover, so do Ruiz's verses (and
Lazaro's prose, centuries later); and they reward close scrutiny.

25 On Tratado IV see Sieber's analysis of the narrator's coded revelation of his
hetero- and homosexual commerce with the Mercedarian friar.
First,
at
237
705d:
"many
panderos
women/sexual
in
ones
that
do
not
been
perforated.
superficial
inco
making
in
705c
under cover, where both allude to the same sexual commerce. I
take 705c to say on its surface: "We arrange many marriages for
repentent women," repintajas being weakly justified here on the
face-level of the passage but richly integrated into the underlying
metaphoric texture. Repintajas are those women who have a need to
repent, who have done things which they ought not to have done,
who desire atonement, who wish to be whole again. Trotaconventos specializes in salving such wounds; like her distinguished
professional colleague Celestina, she restores the appearance, at
least, of honesty to many who regret and would recover their lost
integrity. She sells broken tambourines, she makes matches for

repentant women; in short, she deals successfully in damaged
goods.
These (scarcely-)hidden meanings are prepared and justified by
705ab. The duplicity of the text throughout this passage matches
that of the speaker's social group. Trotaconventos and those of her
calling-and remember: she speaks in the plural for her profession
and is herself, again like Celestina, a synecdochic image of the
enduring institution of alcahueteria-work covertly to satisfy needs

and to right wrongs that cannot be acknowledged openly ("muchas
serian las barajas"). Similarly her revelations (to don Mel6n and to
the reader) are masked but not hidden in language that may seem
puzzling and nervously disconnected on its face ("We sell jewels,"
"we arrange weddings," "we sell tambourines" in a single stanza)
but is richly coherent on the disguised but nevertheless
fundamental level of its overlapping sensual associations. There

the superficially disparate images cohere and the three become
one: "vendemos las alhajas," "muchas bodas ayuntamos," "muchos
panderos vendemos" are equivalent metaphors for expressing the
necessary, useful, and dishonorable (pace Celestina) activity of the
alcahueta. 26
26 The fundamental, allusive, and only coherent sense of 705ab is syntactically

different from the surface sense. The latter is translated by Raymond Willis this
way: "If all the women in this town to whom we sell jewels knew about each other,
there would be many brawls. . ." (p. 190). The former would go something like this:
It is always a pleasure to explor

purpose is to show in 698-705, an
that is explicitly and also allus
organized to discuss sexual comme

conventional language of sexuality,
trotaconventos, joya, alhajas, pandero
afterwards in more literary an
adduce here. The terms, and the t

most for the moment are those th
help elucidate its Tratado VI. One
yet to be mentioned. In fact it d
rather, does not quite appear, do

705a speaks allusively of the pro
match-makers ("a quantas . . . ve
with apparent sub-sets within this
repentant (705c), and the damag
... que non suenan las sonajas")

reread the stanza, taking full n
construction,27 and to consider the liklihood that the final two lines
refer through different metaphors to one and the same group.

That is, they are equivalent affirmations having to do with the
damaged and repentant but nevertheless marketable and
marriageable clients of Trotaconventos.28 I am perhaps belaboring
the obvious; Juan Ruiz habitually works by reduplicating and

accumulating (sometimes into long chains extending over many
stanzas) images which share a common referent. The emphasis I
seek to give to the association of 705cd is intended to draw my
reader into assent when I claim that the key word of 705c, that is,
repintajas, is an acoustic pun which cannot be seen, but which when
heard, draws its line much more closely into parallel with 705d, and
"If all the townswomen whose jewels we have sold / were to learn of each others'
affairs, all hell would break loose."
27 Particularly the following:
vendemos - alhajas - a quantas (i.e., para las muchas)

ayuntamos - bodas - a repintajas (i.e., para repintajas)
vendemos - panderos - que non suenan (i.e., para las que
los tienen que no suenan

por estar rotos)
28 We could consider the Archpriest's two lines a gloss of the Sephardic proverb
already cited, "No hay boda sin pandero," and its scatological cousin, "Pichada sin
pedo, como boda sin pandero." The three texts reflect a common underlying
concern (typically Hispanic, Semitic, and Mediterranean) with that apparent honor
that depends on a bride's intact virginity.
also
with
hear read:
239
marvelously
Lazarillo
de
muchas bodas ayuntamos que vienen a repintajas
we are to see, or to hear, for the merest instant necessary for

planting the pun in mind:
muchas bodas ayuntamos que vienen a repintadas.
The idea of deceitful contrafacture, fraudulent concealment, and
cosmetic appearances covering bodily and social injury run

through the stanza, through Trotaconventos' profession and
through its rich cultural history. A momentary association of the
nearly identical repintajas and repintadas is exceedingly easy to
accept in a linguistic and cultural tradition that associates pintar

with cosmetics, and both of these with artificiality, falseness and
moral and sexual wantonness, and this whole cluster with the
persons, the activities, and the institution of the trotaconventos and
the celestina. Such an association is facilitated on one hand by the
very unusualness of the word repintajas (attested elsewhere, I

believe, only in the Fuero de Usagre), and on the other by the very
common use of pintar, pintado, -a, etc. with the connotations I have
just suggested, including several usages in LBA itself.29
The evidence above, albeit fragmentary, is sufficient nevertheless to indicate that each of the three terms Lazaro chooses, in
the very elliptic report of Tratado VI, for acknowledging (and also
concealing from the uninitiated) the activity of his sixth masterthose terms being maestro, pintar, and panderos-is associated popularly and in literary usage, in texts that both precede and follow
Lazarillo de Tormes, with the arts and crafts of love, sexual seduction
and conquest, match-making and procuring.30 What conclusions
29 In stanza 69 pintadas is associated with apparent beauty that masks ugliness; in
79 it is associated with money as a bright and deceitful, and futile, temptation

against which virtue holds strong; in 1257 it is found yoked in explicit association
with afeites, and with the deceitful "gestos amorosos e enganososjuguetes" of teasing
nuns. Compare Sempronio's characterization of women: "ique imperfecci6n, que

albafiares debajo de templos pintados!" (La Celestina, p. 52).
30 The following mentions ofpandero return us first to Lizaro's century and then
to our own and attest further the adaptability and endurance of this instrument for
sexual suggestion.
First this homely seguidilla, which Lazarillo might have overheard in that Mes6n
de la Solana (p. 12) where, as a child, he began his long career as an intermediary
and perhaps did his first pandering ("iba a los huespedes por vino y candelas y por
lo demas que me mandaban"): "Eras puta aprobada / del tiempo viejo: / si quieres
can we draw from all this concer

the services performed for him b
icler? Conclusions are yet prema
to do.
III. Moler
". . Asente con un maestro de pintar panderos, para m

colores ..." We have now a good idea, or perhaps it sho
be called a bad idea, of the kind of craft alluded to in the first

clause. What can be said about the second and about the relation
between the two, and about the relation between Lazarillo and his
master during this undelimited and scarcely defined episode

que te hode [sic] I rapa el pandero." The second, drawn like the first from an
entertaining and very useful Floresta de poesias er6ticas del siglo de oro edited by Pierre
Alzieu, Robert Jammes and Yvan Lissorgues (Toulouse: France-Iberie Recherche,

1975), at pp. 270 and 211, appears in a sonnet on the theme of woman's sexual
insatiability. I excerpt the relevant portion here: "Cas6 de un Arzobispo el
despensero, / y la noche que el novio se acicala, / para hacer de la novia cata y cala / y
repicar el virginal pandero, // Le dijo el Secretario...."

The wide popularity of this more pristine lyric: "Tango vos yo, mi pandero, /
tango vos y penso en al" (in Jose Ma Alin, El cancionero espanol de tipo tradicional
[Madrid: Taurus, 1968], p. 432) is indicated by numerous 16th-century variant
versions and glosses; Francisco Salinas includes it in hisDe musica (Salamanca, 1577).
At least two of its glosses exploit the eroticism implicit in tango /pandero / al.
The eroticism of percussive rhythms and instruments is exploited again in this
proverb (53, 742), which I cite from Luis Martinez Kleiser's Refranero general
ideol6gico espanol (Madrid: Real Academia Espafiola, 1953): "Cuatro putas y un
tambor, cinco personas son."
Early in Ram6n del Valle-Inclan's Los cuernos de don Friolera "El bululu" urges don
Friolera to punish his wife for having cuckolded him: "Zurrala usted, mi teniente, el
pandero" (Martes de Carnaval, Col. Austral [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964], p. 72).
And finally, in Federico Garcia Lorca's romance "Preciosa y el aire," the delicate and
musical, but frightened, heroine, pursued by the viento-hombr6n San Cristobal6n
(with his phallic sword and leeringpiropos), casts aside her tambourine and races to
the cold, sexless refuge of the ingleses. The most pertinent fragments: "Su luna de
pergamino / Preciosa tocando viene / .... / San Cristobal6n desnudo, / lleno de
lenguas celestes, / mira a la nifia tocando / .... / Preciosa tira el pandero / y corre sin
detenerse." In Romancero gitano, in Obras completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1957), pp.
356-58.
Lorca's Preciosa is an inhibited, diminished descendant of the splendid

homonymous protagonist of Cervantes' La gitanilla. The latter, emphatical
associated with dance, music, and other forms of excellence, is six times mentioned
together with references to tambourines. Pandero, however, never appears in the

text. Panderete is used once, in a sonnet, tamborin once, and the synecdoche sonaja
four times. I hope my readers will accept my surmise that the gross associations o
pandero adduced above were instrumental in leading Cervantes to pass over th

term in favor of others less threatening to the virginal integrity of his heroine.
241
immediately
pre
material
security
The
surface
comprehensibly
it
is
not
a
suffi
here
bears
no
re
ask,
does
the
na
be
setting
fort
even
for
these
attach
such
slig
out
of
sight
of
allusion
and
con
malicious,
the
w
In
the
primary
activity
in
the
sense
of
routin
accidents
of
all
miller,
and
the
and
a
familiar
p
in
the
village
words
and
town
handy,"
were
u
well-being,
and
pumps.33
Simi
mortar
and
pes
as
now,
antique
described the action of both sorts of tools; and an idea of the
centrality of that action in a simpler society can be got by a review of
that verb's many derived forms including even today in any good
dictionary.
31 It was, it seems, sufficient sense for one reader, Jer6nimo de Alcala Yafiez y
Rivera, who imitates the passage unimaginatively, and without comprehending his
source, in El donoso hablador Alonso, Second Part, Chapter IX, p. 289 in Valbuena
Prat, II. Alonso describes how, in Toro, "me halle a la puerta de un pintor .. ,"
talked with him and was hired to be his assistant. "Hiceme una gran olla de cola para
unos lienzos, apareje los pinceles, moli unos colores, saque aceite de espliego, de
nueces y linueso ...." The coincidence, if not casual, is superficial and innocent;
here there is no irony, no concealed communication.
32 In this paragraph I draw from Fernand Braudel's compendious survey,
Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, trans. Miriam Kochan (New York: Harper &
Row, 1973), first published as Civilisation materielle et capitalisme (Paris: Armand
Colin, 1967).
33 Braudel, p. 97; see also pp. 261-63.
It seems normal to suppose that o

prominent in daily life about town
centuries of familiar presence, c
imaginative experience of townspeo
moler and its derivatives would

applications in such a world, but
significance might be lost on us, w

teeth, figuratively, and our coffee
of the vocabulary of milling wou
sentation in verbal art and also evi
symbolic association to the express
as significantly related. Why shou
capacity for structuring imagina
satisfying ways that we find in ot

also impinge daily on the conscious
group: bread and wine, say, and f
gardens, walls and doors; day an
scribes, and their tools, and so on?
have generated many secondary
repertory is too extensive to revie

am not competent to do more) I
briefly of one or two things obviou
associations that once were, but
currency of Spanish-speakers, who

wary of mills and several realities c
The immediate sense of molelle in
preceding maestro and pintar and
these terms, as was Alcala Ynfie
paraphernalia, and particularly of

grinding device, the mortar and pe
minerals, stems, leaves, animal p

pigments. Lazarillo, it seems, pr
master's art. But we recall that th

produces pigment for the painter
colores is a common synonym for a
proverb shows "Colorada, mas no
trujo."34 La color is used as a term
34 Campos, #963. The refrdn was well kno

La Dorotea, in Hernan Nufez, and in Corr
"la Costanilla es lugar alto en Sevilla y aun
venden estas colores." On the considerable interest that Costanilla holds for students
purchased
as
in
so
243
tints
many
connotation,
and
and
stable
enoug
and
set
phrases
association
of
c
commonplace;
n
Lazarillo were conjoined in Parmeno's recollection of Celestina's

covers: ". . perfumera, maestra de hacer afeites y de hacer virgos,
alcahueta, . . "(I, 60). "Molelle los colores," we see, complements the
previous clause both by completing the surface suggestions of
craftwork accomplished by cooperation of master and apprentice

and by extending the chain of double-dealing images that allude to
sexual conquest. The student of image patterns will recognize
supplementary evidence for this reading in the analogous formal

appeal of the pandero and the mortar as images of feminine sex:
circularity, rhythmic pounding (by the hand in one case and its
metonym, mano de mortero, in the other), the break-down of

materials, and so on. We accept without surprise Pierre Alzieu's
claim that mortar and pestle are images commonly allusive of
sexual members.36
That molelle refers ostensibly to the hand-held device does not
mean that the suggestions of the other milling apparatus, the
molino, can be barred from association here. It is in the nature of

poetic expression for the text to tolerate at any point a crowd of
meanings, which certainly will respond to the controls decreed by
context but may, and very often do, disregard surface logic.
Pandero, we have seen, is a case in point, where there is in fact little

surface logic but much rich allusion. Moler is another. In a world
crowded with milling devices of all sorts, pounding, hammering,
beating, bellowing, and pumping wherever people and flowing

water coincided (Braudel, p. 261), the generic verb moler would
have more ready associations than we today can easily imagine.
Some of these that are not logically summoned by Lazaro's verb
may contribute nevertheless, induced both by the pattern of sexual
of Lazarillo, as a coded indicator that the squire of Tratado III is a converse, see Rico,
p. 61, n. 89.
35 In La Celestina see, for examples, I, 54; VI, 118; Celestina's sentencia at IV, 97;
and the appropriately chosen idiom (so color del qual) at I, 60.
36 Alzieu, p. 230, supported by verse (pp. 136, 229) and prose (p. 137, a passage
from La Lozana andaluza, at p. 75 of Bruno Damiani's ed., Clasicos Castalia, 13
[Madrid: Castalia, 1969]).
images in the immediate context and by a

his perverse birth to the echoing perversi
in the casilla of the Archpriest. Some well
doubtless trigger and foster this encroach
a miller ("fue molinero mas de quince afos" [p
the River Tormes ("tenia cargo de prov
acefa que esta ribera de aquel rio"). Malice

"milled" his wife there; in fact she gave
means, was born in the closest possible
Lazaro, milling, sex, and also thievery ar
from the start. This all occurs, as every
narrative's first paragraph; it is memora
location (novel openings generally bein
interests of writers and readers).37
Much of what Lazarillo does and fail

according to Lazaro, by his birthright;
and the immediately following ones resou
and cluster at its close, lending the ap

narrator's sleight-of-hand. Given this
reiteration, and the systematic relation of
nuclear scene, and in light of this initial i

intimate association with the protagonist'
surprised to find the motif and cluster o
Tratado VI?
Lazarillo's father was a miller by trade; it seems that he did not

own a mill; rather he was employed ("tenia cargo de") to "proveer
una molienda de una acefia." Mutatis mutandis the son continues the
father's work, for he too, refining skills he developed under the
Mercedarian and continues to apply for the Archpriest (who
"owns" the "mill," i.e., mistress, that Lazaro merely attends, and
also supplies the "seed" to be "milled" ["siempre en el afo le da ...
al pie de una carga de trigo," p. 78]), is a humble employee who

37 "The openings of novels serve to set the rules of the game to be played by the
readers. The degree of specification in setting, the presence or absence of a persona
behind the narrative voice, the verbal density of the style-its metaphorical
elaboration or cultivated innocence-all these are ways of indicating the nature of

the game, of educating the responses and guiding the collaboration of the reader";
Martin Price, "The Irrelevant Detail and the Emergence of Form," in Aspects of
Narrative, ed. J. Hillis Miller (New York and London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971),
p. 82. Juan B. Avalle-Arce's "Tres comienzos de novela," PSA, 37, No. 110 (Mayo,
1956), 181-214, reprinted in Nuevos deslindes cervantinos (Esplugues de Llobregat:
Ariel, 1975), pp. 215-43, focusses shrewdly on the opening of Lazarillo, but from
angles different from mine here.
245
makes
ends
mee
required
by
his
activities
is
exact
only
when
it
is
supply
its
essen
("tenia
cargo
de
activity
and
thi
primary
chores
mastery
only
in
and,
consequently
employment
in
T
and
since,
as
well
too
of
a
disposit
This
complex
o
embrace
the
wo
"devout"
to
that
"visiting"
community.
shoe
than
the
all
To
leather,
implacable
he
wh
fricti
maste
ministrations
of
on
this
occasion,
su
trote
durar
exploitation
parallels
by
both
amounts to a structural norm and near constant in Lazarillo's
dealings with others. He is an intermediary and provider

questionable services from beginning ("iba a los hu6spedes .
lo demas que me mandaban" [p. 12]) to end ("casi todas las cosa
oficio tocantes pasan por mi mano" [p. 77]), and, like his fath
hired hand in whose life coarse sexuality and thievery are norm
associated with employment.
"Like parents like offspring," the commonplace theme assoc
in La picara Justina with the sexual sense of pandero, is much
evidence in La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes. One of its vehicles is mo
and its post-formations molienda, molinero, which are similar

sexual in connotation, both in this text's metaphorical complex
in surrounding conventions, lyric and folkloric. Many 16th-cen
readers must have consciously relished the backward relati
Lazarillo the moledor of Tratado VI to the circumstances of his
conception; others would have been entertained by their
sub-conscious perception of the
readers this nexus amounts to a droll confirmation and
reinforcement of a common association of milling and gr
with intercourse, and with other activities too. "The associati
milling and lovemaking," J. G. Cummins assures us, "is

international and of long standing."38 Of course we are most
interested in the evidence he and others sift from Spanish sources.
Lyric examples de tipo tradicional printed in Lazaro's century are
especially relevant here: "Muele, molinico,/molinico del amor./
-Que no puedo moler, no" (Cummins, p. 88; Alin, p. 452; 1527);
"Molinico, por que no mueles?/Porque me beben el agua los
bueyes" (Alin, p. 640; 1580); "Pareceys molinero, Amor,/y soys

moledor" (Alin, p. 660; 1593; cf. Cummins, p. 88); and, less refined: "Cuando vuelve los ojos/la mi morena,/es serial que no
muele/el molino arena" (Alzieu, p. 266, st. 25; cf. p. 265, st. 19).39
As with pandero, the leading associations of molino are stored for
communal use in the refranero, from which they are drawn by
poets, novelists, trotaconventos, and others, whenever the need of
their persuasive authority is felt. One such occasion interests us
students of Lazarillo because it arises in the course of that same
interview between don Melon and Trotaconventos in which we
previously found erotic suggestions attached to maestra, repinta[d]as,
and panderos. At stanza 712 (that is, only seven stanzas after the
previous cluster, and in its continuing context of unsurpassed

sexual suggestiveness) the bawd urges her student to pursue his
interest energetically: "Miembresevos, don amigo, de lo que dezirse
suele:/que 'civera en molino quien ante viene ante muele' "
(712ab).40 More striking still is the close association of molino with
pandero in that other passage of LBA examined above, where

woman's lust is analogized to enthusiasm for song and dance
("desque la cantadera dize el cantar primero,/siempre los pies le
bullen, e mal para el pandero" [470cd]). Following an additional
38 In The Spanish Traditional Lyric (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1977), at p. 87. The
association is already a commonplace euphemism in Old Testament times; see Job
31:9. Examples in the text are drawn from Cummins, Alzieu, and Alin.
39 Further examples: Alin, pp. 428 (Gil Vicente), 517 (Lope de Vega), 603
(Correas, Arte, with a startling modern, and fortuitous, pun: "El tu amor, Xuanilla, /
no le veras mas; / molinero le dexo / en los molinos de Orgaz"). Also Cummins, pp.
88-89; Alzieu, pp. 146.59 and 148, n. 59, where "El molin, o molino es la palabra
clave de una serie de metaforas er6ticas (cerner, harina, cedazo, etc.)."

40 In the same context, at 718d and 723a, is evidence confirming Alzieu's assertion
that "sieve" too is conventionally an erotic metaphor; and at 729d there occurs yet
anotherpandero reference, also probably sexual in allusion. For evidence tending to
confirm this last, see Alin, #198, at p. 432, and the erotic imagery in its gloss.
stanza
of
247
simila
erotic
metapho
Tratado
III),
do
gives
this
wise
suso:/muger,
m
reiterates
the
i
which
the
first
andando
On
two
gana"
occasion
merely
that
do
in
many
pan
oth
and are associated with one another by their eminently

experienced speakers, don Amor and Trotaconventos (who never
are at a loss for words). In both cases a mention of pandero is
followed by another of molino, which is the same order in which
related images appear in the Lazarillo passage I am attempting to
understand. In one instance, the first above, the correspondence
with Lazarillo is even more notable: the LBA sequence
maestralrepinta[d]as/panderoslmolino parallels Lazarillo's maestrol
pintarlpanderolmoler at every point.
Additional proverb lore can help us reconstitute this field of
associations that Lazaro, his author, and their readers shared, and
that the first two use in Lazarillo to amuse the third. It must be clear
that I am not arguing for the dependence of Lazarillo on LBA;

rather I am attempting to elucidate a specific instance in Lazarillo of
the presence of a quality long before now recognized central in

both masterpieces: that is, the creative exploitation of the
inexhaustible resources of popular traditions. Traditions that rest

in part on the foundation of material civilization and therefore, to
that degree, are very widely shared. What can be said this way in
14th-century Castile: "muger, molino y huerta siempre quieren el
uso" (472b), is commonly voiced this way in the English language of
Lazaro's day: "Mills and wives are ever wanting."41 Spaniards,
meanwhile, developed additional comparable forms: "Al molino y
a la esposa, siempre falta alguna cosa" (M.-K., No. 39803); "Al

molino y a la mujer, andar sobre el" (M.-K., No. 40008); and
"Huertos, molinos, y mujeres, uso continuo requieren" (M.-K., No.
42963).42 To this association of milling and intercourse is added

41 William George Smith, compiler, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), p. 298. Subsequent references to this collection
will be contained within parentheses in the text.

42 The parenthetical references are to Martinez Kleiser's Refranero general....
occasionally a suggestion of fat

casado te veas, que asi rabeas" [C
concern ("El molino y el castill
[M.-K., No. 63791]), or, possibly
hace harina, no gana maquila"
the commonly-conceded thiever
sexuality is quite secondary ("Hal
el molinero sea tu amigo" [M.-K.,
be a proverb's exclusive them
molinero, ni en raci6n de despe

number of English maxims.44
The resemblance of these and other traditional formulations and
the concerns wittily formulated by Lazaro in the recollection of his
life and the characterization of his parents must have been an
apparent source of pleasure for early readers of La vida de Lazarillo
de Tormes.
IV. The Decoded Meaning and the Reason for Such Slyness
It is time to venture to conclusions concerning early readers' ways
of sorting and combing the latent and manifest possibilities of

Lazaro's words to get meaning out of the first sentence of his
Tratado VI. There were several ways, I am sure, for the exact senses
of the key words studied above would vary in imaginative richness
and affective intensity according to individual experience. But two
sorts of readings, I think, must have been common, and I will
suggest their general nature.

What I have termed the surface meaning of Lazaro's declaration
is grasped whole and at once, for his sentence is at first glance

straightforward and uncomplicated, in syntax and in denotation:
Lazarillo became apprenticed to a skilled artisan and did the menial
chores his master required for his trivial production-trivial, that
is, for the reader who accepts the face value of these words. There
is nothing in this plausible reading to arrest the attention of a
43 This proverb, as the Campos (i.e., Royal Academy Dictionary) commentary

suggests, is also somehow related to the LBA; see the "Enxiemplo del gar6cn que
queria cassar con tres mugeres" (stanzas 189-96, and especially 195d: "diz': 'jay,
molino rezio, aun te vea casado!"').
44 In Smith: "As safe as a thief in a mill," p. 53; "An honest miller hath a golden
thumb," p. 41; "Millers take aye the best multar ["toll," i.e., maquila] with their own
hand," p. 298; and pp. 451, 366. No doubt many other examples could be gathered
from European traditions.
249
reader
who
has
j
and
complex
anec
once
again
as
so
first
sentence
of
certainly
is
not
moment
enclosed
The
second
sort
Lazaro's
prologue
to
read
intensel
competing
conve
the
lines.
Readers
the
text
(that
is,
not
expect
the
in
to
differ
fundam
text
will
bring
to
induces
from
intensity
and
th
ir
comm
illegitimate
appeared
in
varia
They
will
find
it
surface
to
compl
at
first
glance.
I
believe
the
text
mechanically
sim
first
reading,
par
the
text
has
pre
exploratory
rere
first clause invited the reader's attention to rest for an instant on
pintar panderos, where (given the drabness of the surface sense,
which is unsatisfying by itself) his processes of imaginative

association would have brought to mind the similar formation
"pintapanderos," with its connotations of fakery and vain display,

and also the proverbs recovered by Bataillon, "Quien tiene dineros
pinta panderos" (and its important association of the tambourine
with money) and "Seguin sea el dinero sera el pandero" (which
contributes the key notion of exchange, expenditure, supply and

demand). These three items might well have sufficed to signal the
reader that the surface sense here denotes no reality at all and that
whatever relation this sentence holds to Lazarillo's experience lies
encoded in the series of images of which pintar panderos is the key.
The reader's work, then, had to do with making the proper choices
from among the secondary senses of images that on their surface
have no "real" (denotative, info
vocation during this important p

be those that together constitute
ing below the surface of a sent
The discovered meaning would n
sense it replaced, and it would ha
most conspicuous deficiency. Tha
better integrated into the who
then came to be.
If Lazarillo did not work for a tambourine-decorator, what did
he do? The second clause, and the two considered together, tell the
reader not what he did-not immediately, in any case-but that
what he did was analogous to what an apprentice would do for his

master, to wit: accept subordination, work hard, and supply the
master's wants. Obviously this relation parallels others the narrator
claims to recollect from earlier and also subsequent stages of his
career. Depending on his degree of sensitivity to the eroticism

disguised elsewhere in the text, the reader might or might not at
this point have placed the relationship of Lazarillo and his sixth
master in association with two others it closely resembles: those of
Tratados IV and VII, where Lazarillo's service to his superiors also
has to do with providing an adequate and dependable supply of the
wherewithals for their sexual satisfaction.
Through this association, or perhaps by a sudden recognition of
the cogent sexual connotations of two or more items in the

sentence, the reader would have come to sense the sexual
substratum underlying the entire series of terms. Invited by this
awakening awareness and by its consistency with all that has gone
on before, the complicit reader would have focused his attention
below the bland surface, on the connotative possibilities of maestro,
pintar, pandero, moler, and colores. His reward would have been the
discoveries I have presented above (and, I am certain, many
additional associations, some of them known by my readers, others
now irrecoverable). Once the underlying significance of two or

three parts was revealed, and their common sexual reference could
be seen to point toward a systematic communication controlled by
the narrator, the completion of his disguised but coherent disclosure would have followed easily-rather more easily in earlier
times than today, when some of these associations are no longer

current.
What is finally clear is still nevertheless imprecise. Wh

IV was decoded by Harry Sieber, in his fourth chapter,
251
both
what
Lazar
destiny
and
his
to
sexual
inter
acquainted
both
with
his
real
cal
despite
intense
the
narrator's
c
We
know,
as
in
most
dear,
but
w
he
operated
in
t
in
the
way
stu
particles
that
leaving
eviden
known
bodies
inferences to be drawn from the bits of connotation and allusion
al
sensitized in the rapid passage of this unknown quantity through
the cloud-chamber of Lazaro's narrative: The maestro of Tratado VI
was an accomplished and avid womanizer whose dedication to his

craft was as unstinting as that of his counterparts in episodes IV
and VII. Consequently he imposed incessant demands on his
apprentice, who was hardpressed ("sufri mil males") to supply and

prepare the kind and quantity of raw materials his master required
for his art. Whether this maestro was a wholesaler in sexual
commerce (a male heir of that maestra Celestina who feared she w
the last of the really great pimps) or no more than a wastef
individual consumer of scarce resources (a run-of-the-mill

profligate), I cannot say. We can, however, surmise further (on the
slim evidence of Bataillon's proverbs: "Quien tiene dineros . .. ,"

"Segun sea el dinero .. ."), that this master was prosperous, and
that he was a layman (on slim negative evidence: the interruption

here of the chain of indicators of clergy that extends, with this
exception, from Tratado IV [the Mercedarian] through V [buldero]
and VI [capelldn] to VII [arcipreste]).
Two final interrelated questions remain to be answered, briefly;
a third must be postponed for later and fuller treatment.45 First,
45 The third has to do with the third clause of Lazaro's sentence, neglected above
and also by other commentators: "y tambien sufri mil males." This may be viewed as
a vacant formula similar to the concluding "pase tambien hartas fatigas" of Tratado
V (p. 74) and the better-known final sentence of Tratado IV (p. 67): "Y por esto y por
otras cosillas que no digo, sali del," and like them may be supposed to be an easy
means of stimulating the casual reader's empathy. But there may be more to it than
this. The cluster of similarities between Tratados IV and VI, and the homosexuality
why is the narrator so extremely re
presumes to call the "entera notic
answer to this one is quite easy, and

time the explanations that attempt t
apparent lassitude at the anonymous
in charges that the author was in
creation of Tratados I-III, hasty, or fo

control of his work.46 The work acc
earlier Tratados, the concluding one
the author's doing; rather it is th
narrator, Lazaro. And Lazaro at this

us and concealing from us (much as h
much in Tratado IV, also judged awk
by naive readers) that he was a pand
again a pander, as he had been bef

this is an awkward problem for a fi
not be surprised that Lazaro's handl
guarded and is deceiving.
The second and final question follo
is a good deal more intriguing. Why
at all an episode that is dull on its s
As narrator, he is the first censor o
selects what is to be included in it, a
and proportions of the parts. What is m
talent for knowing what to say and
famous. Why, then, is he at this
reticent; why is he not quiet altoget
introduced in IV, encourage the reader to
maestro as admitting the possibility of hom

Tratado IV Lazarillo both wore out shoes pand
his master's "foot"; this is the double messag
mas" (p. 67). In Tratado VI Lazarillo "asent6
pander for him, as Guzman de Alfarache
ambassador) "y tambien sufri mil males" (I g
infernal milling). Additional, but slight, e
deserves but must await a full airing) lies co
second of Tratado VI.
46 See, as representative of these charges, Fernando Lazaro Carreter,
"Construcci6n y sentido del Lazarillo de Tormes," in Abaco (Madrid: Castalia, 1969), I
45-134, especially pp. 108-9; the essay is reprinted in Lazarillo de Tormes en la

picaresca (Barcelona: Ariel, 1972), pp. 61-192.
I want to thank Alan Deyermond, Arthur Askins, Marcia Tardito, and Fernando
Samaniego for their help in preparing this study.
The
253
answer
is
Merced
and
th
entertain
("no
todos
los
que
e
must
write
because
Merced,
beca
he
by
is
the
concerning
his
tainingly,
to
co
a
notoriety
th
paragraph,
and
Lazaro also chooses not to dwell on the caso but to contextualize it
("entera noticia") in his history and society, which is a history an

society filled with deceit and corruption. He became what he is, h
assures us, by being an intermediary (out of necessity) and a
subordinate (by the determination of society) in the life-long serie

of exchanges documented in his text. The segments of this series
contextually most close to Lazaro's current situation are locate

in the same time and space inhabited by his foul-tongued neigh-
bors. What he says about these affairs consequently must no
contradict what others know (have seen, have heard) to be the case.
Lazaro writes under a double constraint: he cannot leave out episode
that are or might become common knowledge, easily spread by
rumor and always subject to superior inquiry; he cannot detail his
participation in doings that (even though they might be

commonplace realities) are scandalous and dishonorable. On the
other hand, the richer he paints his tableau of Toledo
corruption, the more colorless and unworthy of special relief will

his own peccadillos appear to be. Understood as the result of this
double bind, Tratado VI confirms the shrewd calculation and
rhetorical genius of the narrator of the first three Tratados: the
reader of the fiction who misses the concealed level is not bothered
by it (and, if he is a scholar, accuses the author, not the narrator, of

clumsiness!); the reader who discovers between the lines what I
have revealed above likely will consider Lazaro clever and amusing
(and his author more so) and possibly may be persuaded by
Lazaro's argument that, in a city crowded with such amigos y sefores

(p. 77), he is not worse than those who paid and continue to pay for
his services.
University of Washington

A Case of Functional Obscurity (George Shipley)

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A Case of Functional Obscurity: The Master Tambourine-Painter of Lazarillo, Tratado VI

Author(s): George A. Shipley

A Case of Functional Obscurity: the

problem; he is scarcely mentioned before he passes into oblivion

note. This neglected fellow exists in fact only in the following

It is my understanding that this master, like others in Tratados

IV-VII of Lazaro's narrative, is nearly insignificant because it is

important to the narrator to keep him so.2 Lazaro, the narrator of

I (Barcelona: Planeta, 1967); here, p. 75.

de Tormes," to be published in PMLA, I argue that the disproportion between

MLN Vol. 97 Pp. 225-253

226 GEORGE A. SHIPLEY

this autobiographical sketch, is

d-trois described elliptically in th

strategies, which I call expedien

tion.3 The maestro de pintar pand

(plotting his escape via the writ

by that good padre, the Archpr

problem would stump a narrator e

maias, and indeed it taxes his o

deceitful experience to its conside

Toledo by implicating his fellow toledanos (in Tratados III-VII) in a web of

is an out-of-towner from far away and is essentially anonymous, typical, and

I. False Starts and First Leads: Proverbs

It may be that Lazaro expects some of his readers to surmise

about La Sagra de Toledo in the company of the "indus

buldero and his accomplice (Tratado V), he became apprentic

master tambourine-painter. Toledo had long been a cen

skilled craftwork; a master artisan would employ apprentic

these would do his menial work.4 Toledo's master craftsmen were

often moriscos, and moriscos were especially associated with

merry-making and with music;5 this master, then, might well be

mi padre, que a la sazon estaba desterrado .. ." [p. 10]), in whic

refuge and protection in the city, he might well arrimarse to a stable

isolated, dead-end standing of moriscos in society7, and also the har

work that would accompany service under a morisco (that cast

work), Lazaro might well be expected to look elsewhere quickly for

negative recollection ("sufri mil males") of a brief episode premised

Such an interpretation would be consistent with our limited

such a fragile network of associations. The search for a sounder

reading, however, has not been marked by success. Expert students

at p. 137, n. 23 of his edition Lazarillo de Tormes and El Abencerraje (New York:

7 Dominguez Ortiz, p. 169.

228 GEORGE A. SHIPLEY

of this text have tended to conclud

intense organization and signific

reward for their efforts. Marcel B

16th-century Spain. In this mat

curiosity is deficient and easily ass

Ulenspiegel engafo al landgrave

pintor, y que se dio la gran vida a

que te6ricamente deberian habe

italics).9 Bataillon's inquiry is no m

more promising (if tentative) i

Segun sea el dinero sera el pandero y

permite imaginar una vieja hist

Ulenspiegel, en la cual un falso pin

por adelantado." What is valuab

imagine a missing anecdote but ra

matic passage in Lazarillo with f

refranes, and most particularly wi

formation as damning to him an

8 A. A. Sicroff, "Sobre el estilo del Lazaril