AN EXISTENTIAL VIEW OF MAN IN FOUR DRAMAS OF CALDERÓN

Author(s): Lynette Seator

Source: Hispanófila , SEPTIEMBRE 1973, No. 49 (SEPTIEMBRE 1973), pp. 17-31
Published by: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for its Department of
Romance Studies

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43807410

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Hispanófila

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 AN EXISTENTIAL VIEW OF MAN IN
FOUR DRAMAS OF CALDERÓN

by Lynette Seator
Illinois College

Early in the past century the tensions of the German intellectual situation
created a milieu out of which sprang the Existential philosophy which has
evolved through various interpretations to a highly important place in the
thought and art of the twentieth century. 1 It was in the same milieu that an
interest in the plays of Calderón attracted some of the finest minds of Germany
at a time when the exotic past of Catholic Spain held a special fascination. 2
In the dramas of Calderón there is something of the God-centered and
directed world of medieval man where faith leads to salvation, but essentially
the ideology and artistry of Calderón lie beyond medieval certainty and order
and renaissance idealism. Arnold Hauser characterizes Calderón with Cer-
vantes and Shakespeare as a writer who reflects the sixteenth century vision
of man.

From this idea of man's problematical identity, his failure to

appear what he is, partly because he must not and partly because
he dare not be what he should be, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Calderón,
and most of the writers of the age, developed the theme that it was
his nature and destiny to conceal and disguise himself, to be always
playing a part, hiding behind a fictitious identity, living an illusion,
and that it was part of the tragi-comedy of his life that there might
be spectators who where amused at, or even actually took malicious
pleasure in, watching him play his role in dreadful earnest. 3

1 Paul Tillich, "Existential Philosophy," Journal of the History of Ideas, January

1944, p. 44.
2 Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Calderon y su teatro (Madrid, 1881), p. 26.
3 Arnold Hauser, Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of
Modern Art , trans. Eric Mossacher (London, 1965), pp. 112-113.

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 18 Ly nette Seat or

Hauser in explaining the d

anxiety makes an analogy

The deep disillusion an

in the natural sciences f
many who deplored the
materialism, in spite of
reminder of the shock that must have been caused at the outset of
the new age by the beginnings of modern science. Men were alarmed
instead of reassured at finding themselves in a disenchanted world,
deprived of witches and wizards and spirits, both good and bad.
The world had grown empty and barren, and once more the result
was a sense of solitude, not a sense of release (113-14).

Ricardo Marín in analyzing the importance of the Sartrean philosophy

in the twentieth century sees it as a natural product of an evolution of ideas
which began once medieval certainty was complicated with renaissance ideas.
He interprets Sartre's logical-rationalist ideas as the ultimate consequence
of the anthropocentric philosophy of free inquiry which presented itself in the
renaissance opposed to medieval theocentrism. According to Marin the en-
ciclopedism of the French Revolution and nineteenth century liberalism ap-
pear as uniting links in this evolution of ideas. 4 Sartre, in analyzing the
relationship of his fiction to the twentieth century, observes that: "In our
world where the true chaos of things has at last been realized, only a tech-
nique that seems to leave characters genuinely free to face that chaos is
tolerable."5 In Sartre's plays which have been an effective vehicle for the
presentation of his view of existence, the act is of such crucial importance
that the dramas are restless, dynamic, violent and do not conform to a
concept of "philosophical" literature. It is no wonder, since Existentialism
itself equates life with action or motion. At the very core of the philosophy
there is an emphasis on the dynamic, unknowable quality of human life.
First man exists, empty and unidentifiable until through his acts he creates
his essence. Central to this important postulate of modern Existential thought
is the concept that it is motion that distinguishes the realm of existence from
the realm of essence. 6 Man cannot arrive at a state of completion but rather
must suffer the anguish of becoming throughout his lifetime. Only at his
death does he achieve an identity or essence in the totality of his acts. Here
a parallel may be drawn between the mobility and dynamism of modern

4 Ricardo Marín Ibáñez, Libertad y compromiso en Sartre (Valencia, 1959), p. 156.

5 Jean Paul Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays, trans. Annette Michelson
(London, 1955), p. 110.
6 Tillich, p. 49.

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 19

Existential and baroque drama since also in the latter underlying tensions
created by vital problems lead to violence.

"¿Qué he de hacer?" se pregunta Clotaldo, cogido entre su

amor de padre y lealtad a su rey que ha condenado a muerte a
cualquier extranjero que se acerque a la torre ... El conflicto del
hombre es interno ; nace de su libertad, de la elección constante que
tiene que hacer entre el bien y el mal

queda reducida a su esencia : refinada crue

en que queda el hombre. Segismundo nos m
zona ontológica ; esencia de la vida, esen
yada por Clotaldo, se sitúa en la zona de la

It is beyond the scope of this essay to define

currents of Existential philosophy, the elemen
far back as to Plato. 8 Here the Existential attitu
as a view of man in his world that has emerged
century and that emphasizes the loneliness, ang
tence between birth and death and in which
reality and an ever present threat. Man's suffer
freedom which gives him the responsibility of
through the choices he makes and his acts con
a product of his acts, he never reaches a stage
identity is fixed. Man is alone, alien to his wor
and their meaning must be determined in this
realize himself through his freedom to choo
individual but rather accepts a life predetermi
patterns, the way of the masses, he rejects the
life becomes absurd.

Y estoy temiendo en mis ansias

que he de despertar y hallarme
otra vez en mi cerrada
prisión. Y cuando no sea,
el soñarlo solo basta.

Díaz Plaja cites these lines and suggests that here we are possibly
confronted with "un complejo de 'angustia existencial'." He goes on to say
that:

7 Joaquín Casalduero, Estudios sobre el teatro español , 2nd ed. (Madrid, 1968),
p. 184.
8 "Even in Plato Existential elements are obvious, especially in the non dialectica
method of 'the TimaeusY' Tillich, p. 45.

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 20 Lynette Seator

Valbuena en otro tra

por Eugenio Frutos,
"que es tristeza - de
nada - ¡ser que para nada empieza!" "Pero Calderón - escribe
nuestro historiador - , que sabe como San Agustín que la clave del
hombre 'mutable' está en el 'ser inmutable', no se detiene en ser
'nada' (como Sartre)."9

Segismundo's awareness of being alone in a world that holds him precariously

between life and death, two chasms of the unknown, is close to Sartrean
anguish. Here the critics suggest that because Segismundo was aware of the
existence of God, the Divine presence gave significance to the prince's choices
and removed them from the realm of Sartrean Existentialism. However, even
in the Sartrean world, although God has vanished, man, aware of his
metaphysical freedom is finally thrown back on himself and the responsibility
for his acts so that there is a kind of internalization of the absolute. In other
words, man free from the bonds of tradition and an all-knowing God is
trapped by his own freedom since his responsibility is to himself and the
possibility of Divine forgiveness is no longer present.
Segismundo, whose violent birth hurled him into a meaningless existence
in which his confinement in the stone tower made it impossible for him to
become a man, finally asserted his freedom and so found his humanity and
with it its terrible anxieties and responsibilities. Basilio, a victim of the old
confining, life denying superstitions did not recognize his son's metaphysical
freedom. When given the opportunity to act, Segismundo first responded out
of passion but later realized himself by making his own reasoned choice.
There is a correspondence here between Calderóni presentation of the
personal demons man must conquer in order to assert his humanity and
Sartres's idea that man is not subject to the caprices of his emotions but is
responsible for making them. According to Sartre, in suffering man suffers
for not suffering enough so that no matter how deeply he suffers he feels
as "a silent reproach the look of complete and total suffering on the face
of a statue portraying suffering." 10 Rosaura abandoned herself to her suf-
fering, making it conform to what Sartre might call the impersonal ideal of
suffering so that when she sees the suffering of Segismundo which is so much
greater, she gives pause and examines her own emotion:

9 Guillermo Díaz-Plaja, Prologue, La vida es sueño y El alcalde de Zalamea, 2nd

ed. (Mexico, 1968), p. xxvi.
10 Hazel Barnes, "Jean-Paul Sartre and the Haunted Self," Western Humanities
Review, X (1956), 123. Miss Barnes* study gives an exceptionally lucid analysis of this
aspect of Sartrean thought.

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 21

pues volviendo en mi sentido,

hallo que las penas mías
para hacerlas tú alegrías
las hubiera recogido. 11

Sartre's Les Mouches like Calderon's La vida es sueño is the drama in

which the author most clearly defines his concept of man as a metaphysically
free human being who must overcome the acceptance of the old stultifying
beliefs as well as his own emotion in order to act in accordance with respon-
sibilities which go beyond himself. Oreste, like Segismundo, as an infant was
wrenched from the palace where he was born and later given the task of
creating his princely identity through his acts. Oreste returns to Argos with
his tutor and considers his existence which has been without the realities
of life. When he says that he has no memories, his tutor protests that he has
gone to great lengths to educate Oreste. The young man replies, "Des palais!
C'est vrai. Des palais, des colonnes, des statues ! Pourquoi ne suis-je pas plus
lourd, moi qui ai tant de pierres dans la tête?" 12
Oreste has known the cold stone of monuments and Segismundo that
of his tower, but life for them has been devoid of the warmth of human
meaning. Segismundo questions the significance of his humanity and tries
to understand how in his state of confinement he has a life superior to an
unthinking animal: "Y teniendo yo más vida, / ¿tengo menos libertad?"
(502). Oreste finds the life of a dog to be preferable to his since the creature
at least seems to have some concept of his relationship to the rest of the
world.

Ah! Un chien, un vieux chien qui se chauffe, couché près du

foyer et qui se soulève un peu, à l'entrée de son maître, en gémis-
sant doucement pour le saluer, un chien a plus de mémoire que moi :
c'est son maître qu'il reconnaît. Son maître. Et qu'est-ce qui est
à moi? 23

Oreste finds the people of Argos living with their plague of flies, their own
guilt which has immobilized them and caused them to accept the fate imposed
upon them by the gods. Like Segismundo who puts aside his love for Ro-
saura, Oreste overcomes the temptation of a life without the rigors of re-
sponsibility.

Hier, j'étais près d'Electre; toute ta nature se pressait autour

de moi ; elle chantait ton bien, la sirène, et me prodiguait les conseils.

11 Calderón de la Barca, Obras completas , I, 2n ed. (Madrid, 1966), 503.

12 Jean-Paul Sartre, Théâtre, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1947), p. 23. All quotations from
Sartre's play will be from this edition.

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 22 Lynette Seator

Pour m'inciter à la do
regard se voile ; pour
fait suave comme un
s'était levée, elle se te
fiancée qu'on va déla
fois. Mais, tout à cou
nature a sauté en arri
tout seul, au milieu d
a perdu son ombre (1

Oreste denies his dream

accepts the terrible res
which necessitates the k
Segismundo also denies
that goes beyond perso

que es el gusto llam

que la convierte en
cualquiera viento
acudamos a lo eterno,
que es la fama vividora
donde ni duermen las dichas,
ni las grandezas reposan . . . (245).

Both Segismundo and Oreste have accepted responsibility but neither has
worked to gratify his desires. Each has won the right to claim his kingdom
but turns his back on power. Oreste is alone in his benign little world, so
alone that he has even been forsaken by his shadow. Segismundo is also alone.
His prison, the Tower, imposes its image even in the immense world of his
freedom : "Y cuando no sea, / el soñarlo sólo basta . . ." (533).
Don Fernando of El príncipe constante is another lonely Calderonian
hero who identifies freedom with life. Unlike Segismundo who evolves from
a living death, un cadáver vivo , to assert his humanity, Don Fernando's
capture and imprisonment by the Moors signals for him the end of life.
Since to comply with the conditions for his freedom set by the Moorish king
would be to deny his responsibility to his people, don Fernando considers
himself to be already dead. "Morir es perder el ser / yo le perdí en una
guerra . . (263). Don Fernando does not conceive of any kind of existence
that denies his responsibility to his country and his God.

. . . libertad no quiero,
ni es posible que la tenga.
Enrique, vuelve a tu patria:
di que en África me dejas

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 23

enterrado; que mi vida

yo haré que muerte parezca.
Cristianos, Fernando es muerto . . . (263).

The prince equates his loss of freedom with a loss of existence since there
are no choices left to him, no possibility for meaningful action. The king
offers don Fernando a way to compromise with the responsibility he has
to his people as a prince and a soldier. He suggests to don Fernando, who
is in his power, that it is honorable to do as he, the king, demands : abandon
Ceuta and thus save his own life. Don Fernando's response is: "quien peca
mandado, peca" (264). Obedience to law and authority does not sanction or
make valid an act which negates the responsibility of the individual. For don
Fernando God is the only force exterior to his being which can influence
him in his existential choice. In the Sartrean picture man has been abandoned
by God and is thrown back on himself in making all of his own choices ; but
even in this situation man looks for some way to exteriorize and universalize
his own conscience, as does Frantz von Gerlach of Les Sequestres ď Altona
when in his madness he pleads his case to the tribunal of crabs and as the
lawyer Quentin of Arthur Miller's After the Fall who hopes to find some
kind of exoneration as his life unfolds before an invisible listener.
When the men of Sastre's Escuadra hacia la muerte kill their corporal
who exercises brutal authority over them, their suffering becomes more
intense. They look for a power and an answer outside of themselves but find
that when they look, toward heaven "El único que podía hablar está calla-
do." 13 In their confinement the men are among the living dead. Pedro, who
is aware of his responsibility for acts and the fact that they are crucial in
determining his identity, refuses to make compromises in order to live. Life
without meaning is no longer life. "Se es un degenerado cuando ya no hay
nada que intentar, cuando uno ya no puede hacer nada útil por los demás.
Pero a nosotros se nos ofrece una estupenda posibilidad: cumplir una
misión" (202). "A mí me parece que hay cosas más importantes que vivir. Me
daría mucha vergüenza seguir viviendo" (209). Thus the important thing to
Pedro is not to cling to life but rather to discover a purpose that has been
fulfilled through existence that can give some meaning to dying. He would
have hoped to be killed in battle with the enemy, but since he was not, he
looks to another kind of purpose in dying. "Ya que no se nos ha concedido
este fin, pido, al menos, que no haya nunca ofensiva en este sector, y que
nuestro sacrificio sirva para detener el derramamiento de sangre que parecía
avecinarse a todo largo del frente" (53).

13 Afonso Sastre, Obras completas, I (Madrid, 1967), 221. All quotations from
Escuadra hacia la muerte will be from this edition.

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 24 Lynetîe Seator

For the committed pr

condemnation to live
self by a cowardly act
and to others than it i
in spite of his faith
nace el hombre / suj
his condition which h
y que no hay hora seg
te . . (274).
Man suffers from the awareness of living only a breath away from death.
The terrible price that man must pay for his life is his death so that: "El
delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido." The anguish shared by all the
men of Escuadra hacia la muerte is this awareness of the threat of death.

Javier: Somos una escuadra de condenados a muerte.

Andrés : No ... Es algo peor ... de condenados a esperar la
muerte. A los condenados a muerte los matan. Nos-
otros . . . estamos viviendo (177).

Besides this vision of death as an ever present and haunting spectre, a frightf
counterpart of life, there are three other ways in which death is presen
both in Calderonian and contemporary Existential drama. Death ma
either a punishment, a triumph, or the result of meaningless violence. Or
punishes Aegistheus and Clytemnestra for killing his father, and the me
the death squad kill the cabo because of his inhuman treatment of them
Les Mouches and Escuadra punishment carries the concomitant of liber
of the oppressed as does the killing of the captain in El Alcalde de Zalam
Both the Calderonian hero and the committed Existential protago
may triumph over their oppressors in death. Don Fernando takes on th
responsibility for the Christian held city of Ceuta and dies superior to
Moorish captors. The Moorish king causes the prince's death but can
accept his own act : "que pues tu muerte causó / tu misma mano y yo no
(275). The king tries to deny his responsibility in Fernando's death, and
expresses concern over the interpretation which future ages will give to
action :

Cristianos, ese es padrón

que a las futuras edades
informe de mi justicia:
que rigor no ha de llamarse
venganza de agravios hechos
contra personas reales (276-77).

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 25

Fernando's spiritual triumph over his captors is embodied in his return to

life and in the exchange of his corpse for the beautiful Princess Fénix. In the
denouement of Sartre's Morts Sans Sépulture there is the same kind of triumph
of the oppressed over the forces that crush them. The members of a
group of French Resistance fighters are willing to forfeit their lives rather than
betray their cause by revealing the whereabouts of their leader. The German
captors senselessly kill their prisoners and are left with the terrible awareness
of their crime.

Pellerin: On aurait bonne mine aux yeux du survivant.

Clochet : Dans un instant, personne ne pensera plus rien de tout
ceci. Personne d'autre que nous (251).

The Resistance fighters have been murdered, but the reality of their breavery
transcends their death and remains alive to haunt the captors with their own
guilt. In the Sartrean world although there is no resurrection there is still
the possibility of a metaphysical triumph after death. The guilty coward
is left alone as his own judge and tormentor to consider his betrayal of his
humanity.
Cipriano of El mágico prodigioso dares to sell his soul to the devil but
finally dominates his lust for Justina and dies at the hands of pagans because
of his commitment to Christianity. John Proctor of Arthur Miller's The
Crucible presents some parallels to Cipriano in the resolution of the problems
of his existence. He is a Puritan, and his conscience rending crime is his
adultery. Later his concern goes beyond his own sins to the suspicion and
evil that stalks the town in the form of a witch hunt. Like Cipriano, Proctor
finds a means of absolving himself through his commitment to a purpose
that transcends his own life. Proctor may live if he will only sign a confession
stating that he has conspired with the devil, in this way adding the strength
of his name to the evil that is pervading the town. He signs, but when he
finds that his confession will negate the sacrifice of others who have given
their lives for the truth, he destroys it.

Proctor : Because it is my name ! Because I cannot have another

in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies!
Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them
that hang! How may I live without my name? I have
given you my soul; leave me my name!
(Proctor tears the paper.)
Hale: Man, you will hang! You cannot!
Proctor: I can. And there's your first marvel, that I can. You
have made your magic now, for now I do think I see
some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough
to make a banner with, but white enough to keep it

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 26 Lynette Seator

from such dogs

heart and sink them with it! 14

Proctor goes to his execution, a triumphant man who has reconciled his own
personal identity and finally stood firm against evil.
Cipriano like Proctor sees his name as an extension of his self, and is
horrified at giving it to the devil.

(A p. ¡ Qué hielo ! , ¡ qué horror ! , ¡ qué asombro ! )

Digo yo el gran Cipriano,
que daré el alma inmortal
(¡qué frenesí! ¡qué letargo!)
a quien me enseñare magias
(¡qué confusiones!, ¡qué espantos!)
con que pueda atraer a mí
a Justina, dueño ingrato:
y lo firme de mi nombre (629).

It is with his life's blood that he later annulls the contract with the devil.
Cipriano, like Proctor, reconciles the problem of personal sin, in both cases
a surrender to the senses, by accepting a commitment to a cause working
against a pervasive evil in the society. In one case hatred and oppression are
symbolized in the tyranny of the Salem witch hunts, in the other in the per-
secution of the Christians:

que como la tiranía

de los gentiles crüeles
su sed apaga con sangre
de la que a mártires vierte,
hoy la primitiva Iglesia
ocultos sus hijos tiene ... (614).

Alexander Parker identifies Cipriano as the exceptional, committed hero who

has broken out of the mass apathy to assert his Existential freedom: "To
follow convenience and self interest is to be a mere automaton - to have,
in effect, no free-will because there are no principles and no values whereby
to guide it. This negative existence is the way of the world ; the way of the
spirit and of reason - the way of Cipriano and Justina - is the way of
freedom." The gracioso Clarín represents the easy way of convenience and
self interest, the negative way of the world which carries no awareness of
freedom and responsibility and denigrates existence to absurdity. 15 Clarín

14 Arthur Miller, The Crucible (London, 1966), p. 144.

15 Alexander A. Parker, "The Approach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age,"
Tulane Drama Review, IV (September 1959), 49.

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 27

imitates his master by falling in love and parodies the importance of his sig
ing his name to a contract with the devil :

le haré, para que más te escandalices,

dándome un mojicón en las narices ;
que no será embarazo
salir de las narices o del brazo.
Digo, yo, el gran Clarín, que si merezco
ver a Livia criiel, que al diablo ofrezco . . . (631).

The devil, however, has no interest in Clarín since he already possesses him
Examples of death as a result of a gratuitous violent action abound in
both Calderonian and modern Existential drama. In the latter such violence
may be explained by the emphasis on the significance of the act itself rathe
than on the motives and thought processes that lead up to the act. Serrano
Plaja compares the meaningless succession of crimes of Camus' Caligula wit
those of Eusebio of La devoción de la cruz and finds absurdity in both drama
In explaning the frequency of the violent and evil act in Spanish drama of
the Golden Age, he suggests that it constituted a kind of daring challenge
to a transcendent and unshakeable faith. 16 Existential theater presents no
transcendent belief other than the idea that the human being is free and
capable of determining himself through the authenticity of his acts, but its
insistence upon the act as a product of the individual and the individual as
a product of his acts presents a point of comparison with the sacrifice of th
Calderonian hero as well as with anti-heroic revolt.
There is a half-way point between death as a product of a meaningful
act, seen as a punishment or a liberation, and death resulting from a senseless
violent act. In Les Mains sales Hugo accidentally kills Hoederer for the
wrong reason in a moment of passion when he discovers that Hoederer is
having an affair with his wife. Hugo loved Hoederer but was prepared to
make a great personal sacrifice for the good of the party by killing his friend.
Under those circumstances Hoederer's death would have had the significance
of a liberation, a sacrifice for a larger cause. When it happens in a moment of
jealous rage, it seems to be a product of mere chance, a senseless slaughter,
since Hugo valued Hoederer's life far more than he valued his wife. Gutierre's
killing of doña Mencia also seems to be a product of chance, a gratuitous
piece of violence. The innocent wife dies at the hands of a jealous husband
who then marries his former sweetheart. Gutierre's punishment is the loss
of the wife whom he loves, but the tragic denouement is not carried out in
anguished guilt. Instead, Gutierre admonishes his betrothed to be circumspect

16 Arturo Serrano-Pia ja, "El absurdo en Camus y en Calderón de la Barca," Mé -

langes à la Mémoire de Jean Sarrailh, I (Paris, 1966), 403.

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 28 Lynette Seator

in the light of what h

happy prospect of a w
El médico de su honr
deronian honor play, a
but tends to remain s
the poetic justice att
fact that Gutierre's ac
by having Coquin's t
second marriage based
the picture to conform
posed by Gutierre him
cente y que padezca?
portance when conside
and does not act as an
society. The significanc
by chance happenings,
minds. Here the Calde
but incapable of accep
with tradition Gutier
breath of scandal from his door. In Existential terms the honor code is the
extreme result of viewing one's self as an object existing only in the mind of
others. Menendez y Pelayo discusses El médico de su honra with La niña
de Gómez Arias and A secreto agravio , secreta venganza and finds them
to be:

Monumento de una época y de unas gentes que obraban, pen-

saban y sentían de una manera muy distinta de como sentimos nos-
otros, y sobre todo de como siente el hombre en su estado natural
y cuando no está viciado y corrompido por preocupacines sociales
tan absurdas como las que conducen a la traición, al asesinato y al
incendio por sospechas no averiguadas, y hasta por átomos poco
menos que invisibles. 17

In view of Calderonian ideas concerning the autonomy of man in his world,

it is logical to emphasize don Marcelino's use of the word absurd with a
twentieth century interpretation. As Serrano-Plaja has suggested, it seems
that Calderón has at times projected an absurd view of human life into his
theater. If a godless world is an absurd world as it was for Caligula, certainly
uch a criterion may be applied to the microcosmic universe ruled by the
honor code and removed from Christian ethics.

17 Menéndez y Pelayo, p. 203.

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 29

On the other hand, the Calderonian hero builds his life on the reality of
his choices and acts. Don Fernando was willing to become a slave reduc
to the most disgusting outward physical state because he was committed
a purpose that went beyond himself. It was not for the purpose of romant
intrigue that the narcissistic Fénix was juxtaposed to the constant prince
but rather to dramatize the sharp contrast between two modes of existence
Early in the play the gracioso is removed, and it is Fénix who takes the rol
which in its vacuous absurdity the more strongly delineates the hero's com
mitment. Fénix has no existence beyond that of her beautiful image reflect
back to her in a mirror or in men's eyes. She looks for superficial pleasur
in music and flowers but suffers from a kind of ennui, a general dissatisfaction
with her existence. Like Rosaura she looks for fulfillment in her sufferin
but is reminded that her suffering is not the ideal of absolute suffering:
"¿Y qué dejas para el muerto / si tu lo sientes asi?" (266). 19 Fénix passively
accepts Muley's love and enjoys attentions from don Fernando until his suf
fering alters him so that he is repulsive to her.

Horror con tu voz me das,

y con tu aliento me hieres.
; Déjame, hombre ! ¿Qué me quieres?
Que no puedo sentir más (275).

Fénix is haunted by a dream in which she was turned into a tree trunk
and told that her beauty would ransom a dead man. Finally the absurdity
of her non-existence manifests itself in the exchange that is made: Fernan-
do's corpse is worth more than her unrealized life. Worse than a death sen-
tence is her condemnation to the void of her non-being and the awareness
that: "Precio soy de un hombre muerto" (278).
Estelle is one of the unhappy group of three of Huis clos who have
been condemned to the hell of a continuing existence in which they are
tortured by being conscious of what they have made of themselves. They
look to one another to reevaluate and find some worth in their individual

18 William M. Whitby points to the role of Fénix as having a symbolic analogy

to the beautiful and prized city Ceuta. "There are, then, two triangles, one of earthly
love (Muley-Fénix-Tarudante) and the other (if we see it from the Christian point of
view) of religious devotion (Fernando-Ceuta-King of Fez)." "Calderóni El Principe
Constante : Fénix's Role in the Ransom of Fernando's Body," Bulletin Of The Co-
mediantes, VIII, no. 1 (1956), 2.
19 "Is it too daring to assume that the servant wishes to point out the egoism of
this sadness? There is no room in Fénix's thoughts for the other person whose death
must also somehow be a cause for regret." Leo Spitzer, "The Figure of Fénix in
Calderóni El principe constante Critical Essays on the Theatre of Calderón, ed.
Bruce W. Wardropper (New York, 1965), p. 146.

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 30 Lynette Seator

lives but find they can

greatest torments is b
j'ai beau me tater, je m
the mirrors of her bed
comme c'est vide, une
geais pour qu'il y en a
her beauty is complime

Ines: Vous êtes très belle. Je voudrais avoir des fleurs pour
vous souhaiter la bienvenue.
Estelle: Des fleurs? Oui. J'aimais beaucoup les fleurs. Elles se
faneraient ici: il fait trop chaud (126).

Estelle recalls with satisfaction that a man had killed himself for her and
that for Robert she was his crystal girl. In the confines of the room that is
her hell she chooses the sofa whose color will suit her best and tries to attract
Garcin's interest. Like Fénix she lives only for exteriors and protests any
kind of assault on her sensibilities. When the twitching of Garcin's mouth
betrays his fear, she becomes angry. "C'est ce que je vous reproche. (Tic de
Garcin.) Encore! Vous pretendez être poli et vous laissez votre visage à
l'abandon. Vous n'êtes pas seul et vous n'avez pas le droit de m'infliger le
spectacle de votre peur" (124). She is attracted to Garcin because he is a hand-
some man but is repelled by anything that disturbs the exterior image. When
Garcin exclaims over the heat and asks to be permitted to removed his coat,
Estelle's response is: "Ah non! (Plus doucement.) Non. J'ai horreur des
hommes en bras de chemise" (128). Finally Estelle must admit her own
absolute worthlessness. "Le cristal est en miettes sur la terre et je m'en
moque. Je ne suis plus qu'une peau" (154). Like Fénix she has existed with
the concern that the pleasant superficialities not be disturbed by unpleasant
realities. Fénix, haunted by the fear of losing her beauty, dreamed that her
body had been transformed into a tree ; Estelle, equally terrified, surrounded
herself with mirrors. Both are left with their beauty but also with the terrible
awareness that it is hollow and of no value.

Certainly the aesthetic element of the scenes surrounding Fénix have

enormous value in the totality of El príncipe constante. Calderonian theater
presented the viewer with a feast for the eyes and ears, and in its color,
music and poetry is a far different genre than the stark, contemporary theater
of commitment. At the core of the Calderonian art, however, there is a
concept of man in a changing, bewildering world, a world which presents
crucial problems and decisions and a terrible responsibility for identity. It
is at this point that out of the multitude of facets of the Calderonian art we
discern a vision of the human world close to the realities of the twentieth

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An Existential view of man in four dramas of Calderon 31

century. If man is to realize himself, he must accept the responsibility for h

freedom. If he turns his back on the rigors of this lonely way to follow
custom and the masses, then life is reduced to the absurd mimicry of
conformity.

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