On Love and Occasion: A Reading ofthe "Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity"
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On Love and Occasion: A Reading ofthe
"Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity"
Fernando Plata Praga
Calgate University
In the most subtle of Cervantes' three carneo appearances
in Part 1 of Don Quixote, he is the unnamed traveller lodged at an
inn, who leaves behind a case fiUed with books and papers,
including a novella or tale later recovered by the innkeeper and
read aloud by the priest to the assortment of characters congregated
at cack-handed Juan Palomeque's inn l . It is the famous exemplary
Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity [El curioso impertinente]. The
story goes as follows: In Florence there lived two friends, Anselmo
and Lotario. Anselmo is suddenly filled with an inexplicable desire
to test his virtuous wife' s loyalty, and asks bis good friend Lotario
to court CamBa. Lotario resists at first, but finally, persuaded by
Anselmo, he reluctantly initiates a fake courtship, until he
inexorably falls in love with Camila, and she with him. The two
lovers decide to hide their newfound love from the inappropriately
curious Anselmo, but their secret adulterous affair unravels due to
an unfortunate chain of events. Camila's maid, Leonela, Ís seeing a
young neighbour, and Camila fears for her honour: «[tbis] worried
CamBa, who feared that this could put her own honour at risk»2
[«de lo cual se turbó Camila, temiendo que era aquel camino por
1 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transL Rutherford, p. 294.
2 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transl. Rutherford, p. 319.
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.Fernando
donde su honra podía correr riesgo»3]. The mistress is a negative
role .model for the maid, who has gone beyond mere conversatíon
with her Jover. Camila asks Leonela to be discreet about her own
doings. But the bad example set by Camila yields a predictable
outcome: Leonela takes her Jover into the house at night, knowing
that even if her owner finds out, she will not say anythíng: «The
sins of any lady give rise to this evil, among many others: she
becomes her own servants' slave» 4 [«que este daño acarrean, entre
otros, los pecados de las señoras: que se hacen esclavas de sus
mesmas criadas»]. Inevitably, Lotario, on seeing aman leaving
Anselmo's house in the early hours of the moming, is wrought by
jealousy, which makes him tell Anselmo everything, thus unveiling
Camila' s honour and causing her eventual disgrace, and bringing
doom upon all the characters. Anselmo dies of sorrow, as does
CamBa shortly after she takes refuge in a convent. Lotario,
repentant and trying to escape his fate, joins the anny and gets
killed in a batde.
Leonela is the character that has caught my attention. She
counsels her mistress on issues of love, and explains to her why,
during Anselmo's absence, she has fallen in love with Lotario thus
bringing upon herself her own dishonour:
«because love. I've heard, sornetirne flies and
sornetirnes walks, rushes along with one person and
dawdles with another, cools sorne people down and
heats sorne others up, wounds this one and slaughters
that, ends the race of passion just about as soon as he's
started it, lays siege to a fortress in the rnoming and
3 Original citations ofCervantes' text are taken from L. A. Murillo's
edition.
4 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transl. Rutherford, p. 319.
196
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.overruns it in the evening, because there's no force that
can resist him» 5
[«porque el amor, según he oído decir, unas veces vuela, y
otras anda; con este corre, y con aquel va despacio; a unos entibia,
y a otros abrasa; a unos hiere, y a otros mata; en un mesmo punto
comienza la carrera de sus deseos, y en aquel mesmo punto la
acaba y concluye; por la mañana suele poner el cerco a una
fortaleza, y a la noche la tiene rendida, porque no hay fuerza que le
resista» ]
Leonela says this echoing the famous Virgil dictum,
popularized in innumerable contemporary books of emblems:
«omnia vincit Amor» 6. Furthermore, the reason why Camila has so
quickly fallen in love with Lotario in the absence of her husband is
«because love has no better minister to carry out his desires than
opportunity: he makes use of opportunity in all his actions,
particularIy at the beginning>} 7 [«porque el amor no tiene otro
mejor ministro para ejecutar lo que desea que es la ocasión: de la
ocasión se sirve en todos sus hechos, principalmente en los
principios»]. These are the words 1 would like to explore in this
paper, and more specifically, the concept of 'opportunity', or
'occasion', as is more faithfully translated in Shelton's 1611
rendering of Don Quixote: «For love hath none so officious or
better a minister to execute his desires than is occasion. It serves
itself of occasion in its entire act, but most of all at the beginning»8.
Leonela is the voice of the people (Fernando Plata
who inhabit the upper echelons of society: «1 know all this very
well, more from experience than from hearsay, and one day 1'11 tell
you all about it, ma' am, because I' m young, too, and made of flesh
and blood»9 [«Todo esto sé yo muy bien, más de experiencia que
de oídas, y algún día te lo diré, señora; que yo también soy de
carne, y de sangre moza» ].
It is not rare in Don Quixote to see Cervantes' sympathy
for the underdog, for characters of humble or lowly origin, and we
also find in them sorne of the most interestíng morals. We may
recall in Part II the important lesson on tolerance taught by Ricote,
the Morisco recently expelled from Spain. Or Sancho Panza's
enduring lesson, after his governorship of Barataria Island is over,
on the corrosive effects that power has on the happiness of those
who hold public office. Or Don Quixote's moment of reckoning in
the outskirts of Barcelona, as he contrasts the meagre results of his
false knighthood, when trying to save Claudia Jerónima, against
the effectiveness and nobility of spirit of the outlawed bandit
Roque Guinart.
Occasion, in the passage cited above, is personified as a
minister, as a tool of Love, the child of Venus. An exploration of
Occasion as minister of Love could yield an exemplary message in
Cervantes' novella. What 1 want to argue is that Leonela, the
maidservant, is the character who proffers the exemplary message
in this novella. It is Anselmo's failure to understand the nature of
love and occasion that brings doom upon him, his wife and his
friendo Cervantes sums it up in the concluding sentence of his
novella: «These were the ends that the three of them carne to,
arising from such ridiculous beginnings» 10 [«Ese fue el fin que
9 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transl. Rutherford, p. 318.
10 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transl. Rutherford, p. 337.
198
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.On Lave and Occasion: A
tuvieron todos, nacido de un tan desatinado principio»]. 1 would
argue that this «desatinado principio», better translated as «rash
and inconsiderate beginning» by Shelton ll , does not only refer to
Anselmo's ludicrous test of Camila's virtue, but to occasion, the
instrument of love, which, as we have read, is most effective «at
the beginning». Thus, it is Leonela's popular wisdom that offers
the due to understanding the protagonist' s error and the exemplary
message of the novella.
Iconographic representations of Occasion abound. Perhaps
the one that has had the greatest impact on popular imaginatíon is
that of a bald woman: «la ocasión la pintan calva» (the occasion
paints he bald), as the popular Spanish saying goes. There are other
elements, however, that provide us with a richer, more complex
characterization of Occasion.
Aleiato, in bis seminal book of Emblems, fírst published in
1531, says that occasion is «[al moment of time seízed, holding
sway over everytbing» 12. The eighteenth-century Autoridades
dictionary offers a definition of occasion primarily as a
«Oportunidad o comodidad de tiempo o lugar que, como acaso, se
ofrece para ejecutar alguna cosa» (opportunity or juncture suitable,
for doingl executing something); o «Se toma también por tiempo
oportuno, sazón y coyuntura» (or it is also taken for opportune
time, moment or juncture)13. This is the most common, «positive»
meaning of the term, which, according to Covarrubias' 1611
dictíonary, is derived ultimately from Cícero: «Occasio est pars
temporis, habens in se alicuius reí idoneam faciendi, aut non
11 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transl. Shelton, p. 355.
12 «Cuneta domans capti temporis articulus», or in Spanish: «el instante
de tiempo capturado que domina todas las cosas» (Alciato, p. 160)
13 Real Academia Española, Autoridades, vol. 5, p. 13.
199
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.Fernando Plata
faciendi opportunitatem» 14. Moreover, according to Aleiato,
Occasion is portrayed on top of a wheel, with wings on her feet,
signifying that she moves constantIy, thus connecting Occasion to
Fortune and its wheel, which symbolizes the idea of the mutability
of human happiness. Occasion carries a sharp knife in her right
hand. and wears a tuft on her forehead, while showing a bald nape.
The latter is, perhaps, the better known iconographic feature. It is,
for instance, what the French poet Mathurin Régnier refers to in his
1609 satire, which opens with the following lines: «Ce mouvement
de temps peu cogneu des humains, I Qui trompe nostre espoir.
nostre esprit et nos mains, I Chevelu sur le front et chauve par
derriere» 15. Thus, in an emblematic sense, seizing the occasion is a
prerogative of the prudent and wise mano Alciato's emblematic
description of occasion pervades Spanish Golden Age. Covarrubias
replicates Alciato's description almost verbatim: «Pintábanla
[occasíon] de muchas maneras y particularmente en figura de
doncella con solo un velo, con alas en los talones y las puntas de
los pies sobre una rueda volúbil, con un copete de cabellos que le
caían encima del rostro y todo 10 demás de la cabeza sin ningún
cabello; dando a entender que si, ofrecida la ocasión, no le
echamos mano de los cabellos con la buena diligencia, se nos pasa
en un momento, sin que más se nos vuelva a ofrecer». [they used to
always paint her (occasion) in various ways and specially like a
figure of a lady but with a single veil and wings in her heels with
the tow of her feet on a circling wheel, the tuft of her hair falling
on her face and the rest of her head is shown bald; thus leting us
know that given the occasion if we do not lend a helping hand to
her eIegant hair then we shallloose the opportune moment).
14 Covarrubias, p. 834.
15 Regnier, Satyre [Xl], p. 129.
200
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.What I want to emphasise with this iconographic excursus
is that Occasion was such a familiar figure to the learoed man of
the period that when Cervantes uses the word in the passage I am
analysing, he is not just referring to the generally accepted
meaning 'opportunity', but rather, he personifies Occa... ion usíng
the complex set of cultural allusíons familiar to the Early Modero
reader. In fact. so commonplace was the personificatíon of
Occasion that she became the butt of ridicule in the satirical
literature of those times.
Cervantes makes use of this topos in burlesque passages in
Part I of Don Quixote. In one of the parodie sonnets that preface
the novel, Sir Belianis of Greece compares his own deeds to those
of Don Quixote. In the third stanza the fictional knight writes: «1
made Dame Fortune grovel at my feet, I And my control, by
calculating skill, / Of Opportunity was so complete / I dragged her
by the forelock at my Will»16 [«Tuve a mis pies postrada la Fortuna,
I y trajo del copete mi cordura / a la calva Ocasión al estricote»].
At another point, as Don Quixote arrives in Sierra Morena, he finds
it the appropriate place to do penance imítating Amadís of Gaul:
«Since this place [Sierra Morena] is so suitable for such a purpose,
there is no good reason to allow opportunity to slip by, now that
she so conveniently offers me her forelock» 17 [«y pues estos
lugares son tan acomodados para semejantes efectos, no hay para
qué se deje pasar la ocasión, que ahora con tanta comodidad me
ofrece sus guedejas»]. The word «guedejas» ('forelock') situates
the scene in the lowly style of burlesque, so much in vogue at the
time. The burlesque rendering of mythological and classical figures
is not strange to seventeenth-century Spanish literatures. For
16 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transL Rutherford, pp. 20-21
17 Cervantes, Don Quixote, transl. Rutherford, p. 207. Passage quoted in
Fernández Gómez, p. 724.
201
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.Fernando Plata
instance, Quevedo, the great burlesque poet, in his famous La
fortuna con seso y la hora de todos (composed c. 1630, published
1650) portrays Occasion as a cleaning lady, with a lock on her
forehead with barely enough hair to make up a moustache: «en la
cumbre de la frente un solo mechón en que apenas había pelo para
un bigote» (on the forehead there is a lock which has hardly
enough hair for a moustachei 8
Occasion, conceptualIy speaking, is a posltIve human
attitude, an opportunity that ought to be seized by the wise person
before it flees away. To grab occasion by her hair is, according to
Autoridades, to make use of the opportunities we are offered for
doing something use fuI or advantageous (On Lave and Occasion: A Reading ofthe "Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity"
«ocasión próxima» and «ocasión remota». The first one should be
avoided because it leads to sin, while the second one does not, and
thus need not be avoided (Fernando Plata
respects but refuses to see the king. In the second act, the king
decides to visit Juan Labrador while Otón pays a visit to Lisarda.
That is the moment when Lisarda dances to the «serrana» song in
question. This is a traditional song in which a serrana, abandoned
by her beloved, who is busy trying to kilI a bear, wanders alone on
a mountain near París. There she meets a knight, hunting in the
vicinity. He chides her lover for abandoning his beloved while
busying himself with hunting and offers to protect her from the
rain with his cape and to take her back to the village. Unfortunately
they get lost in the darkness and decide to spend the night in the
mountain. Under the cover of night, the stanza evokes, love will
seize the moment, as it is implied by the propitious note of
antícipatíon in the concluding lines of the poem: «la ocasión y la
ventura I siempre quieren soledad» 21 (The occasion and happiness
always want solitude). Thus the end of the song both opens up and
discreetly veils the initiation of a love affair in which Occasion
play s, once again, a prominent role.
This poem was evidently a popular «villancico» at the end
of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, so
it was not necessaríly written by Lope 2\ but rather intercalated in
the play, as was a common practice among playwrights at the time.
lt would be interesting to see whether Lope added the two lines
quoted aboye or whether they were also part of the cultural wealth
of the periodo According to the analysis by Salomon of the
traditional material within the song, it appears that the last two
lines were written by Lope23 • However, a version of the song kept
21
1 quote from Lope, Poesías, p. 139. Rodríguez (p. 642) says the poems
concludes «en picante anticipación».
22See Montesinos, in Lope, Poesías, p. 137; Rodríguez, p. 640; and Alín
and Barrio, pp. 86-87 and 216-217.
23Salomon, pp. 567-568.
204
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.On Lave ami Occasion: A Reading ofthe "Tale oflnappropriate Curiosity"
in a «romancero» at the Brancacciana library in Naples does not
inelude the two coneluding lines 24. In Golden Age theatre,
traditional lyric songs underscore, as Marin has pointed out, the
nature of the scene developing before our eyes, thus allowing for
the characters in the play to express their own emotions 25 •
According to Hesse, this play is about the power of lo ve which
conquers all: «The key to the understanding of the play in its
several plots is the concept of lo ve as a force, which transcends
every barrier, uniting persons of unequal rank» 26. In the song, the
knight (caballero) represents Otón, a member of the king's
entourage, hunting in the outskirts of París, and the peasant lady
(serrana) represents Lisarda27 • In the play Otón and Lisarda finally
realize their love. Occasion, so useful at the beginning, gives way
to a happy ending, perhaps because the lovers understood the
nature of love. It was not, however, an easy affair. Otón first falls
for Lisarda during act one, as Lisarda is taking a walk in the streets
of París, dressed as a lady, and chances upon Otón. From this
propitious moment until the happy end, innumerable obstaeles
come their way, not just the obvious social inequality between the
lovers, but also the king's own deelaration of love to Lisarda in act
two. At the end, however, love conquers all.
It is precisely this occasion, La ocasión, the title that the
Argentine writer Juan José Saer chooses for a 1988 novel that
gravitates around a disturbing event (Fernando Plata
go back to Cervantes and focus my attention on his use of
Occasion.
Bianco, the protagonist, comes back home unexpectedly
one night to find his wife, Gína, in a somewhat compromising
posture, smoking a cigar, sitting next to her husband's friend and
business partner, Garay López. This is the scene Bianco discovers
upon entering his house:
«Sentada en un sillón, el cuello apoyado en el
respaldo, la cabeza echada un poco hacia atrás, las
piernas estiradas y los talones apoyados en otro sillón.
los zapatos de raso verde caídos en desorden en el suelo,
Gina, con los ojos entrecerrados y una expresión de
placer intenso y. le parece a Bianco, un poco equívoco.
le está dando una profunda chupada a un grueso cigarro
que sostiene entre el índice y el medio de la mano
derecha. En otro sillón, con una copa de cognac en la
mano, inclinado un poco hacia ella, Garay López le está
hablando con una sonrisa malévola, y Bianco no puede
precisar si la expresión de placer de Gina viene del
cigarro o de las palabras de Garay López que, a pesar
de sus ojos entrecerrados, parece escuchar con atención
soñadora» 28
(She was sitting in an arrnchair, her neck resting on the
back, head bent a bit, legs stretched out, heels were on the other
arrnchair, flat green shoes were carelessly thrown on the floor,
Gina, with half opened eyes, had an expression of intense pleasure
and to Bianco, it seemed a bit mistaken, she is taking a deep puff
of a fat cigar held in between her middle and index finger. In the
28 Saer. pp. 38-39.
206
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.On Love and Occasion: A
other sofa, with a glass of cognac in his hands, inclining slightly
towards her, Garay Lópes was talking to her, with a malevolent
smile on his face, and Bianco can not make out whether the
expression of pleasure on Gina's face is thanks to the cigar or
hecause of Garay López's words, which she is listening to with
dreamy attention, inspite of her half opened eyes.)
Unlike the Florentine Anselmo, Bianco, who also has an
ltalian name, has not urged his friend to court his wife; but like
Anselmo, he finds himself in the awkward position of a voyeur
witnessing his wife in a seemingly adulterous situation: her shoes,
he notices, are off, her shirt partially unbuttoned, her skirt up to her
knees, the master bed undone, a cushion in the middle of the hed.
Neither of the three is capable of confronting the elephant-in-the-
room question floating in the air, and Bianco is unable to extract
from either of them a confession that may clear the air on this
scene of 'equivocal intimacy' (Fernando Plata
workings of love, or the nature of sin. But «Occasion» is viewed in
a more sympathetic light by those who understand that love uses
this tool to fulfil its plans: as Leonela, full of experience and
popular wisdom, attests; and as Lope, in his remake of the
«serrana», reminds the auruence watching El villano en su rincón.
These are the ways of love, or as Lope has written elsewhere, with
his ample experience in matters of the heart, and perhaps with the
same «malevolent smile» sported by Garay López: «esto es amor:
quien lo probó, lo sabe»31(This is love who has tasted it knows it).
31 Lope, Soneto 126, in Rimas, published 1609; cited in Obras poéticas,
p.98.
208
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.On Lave and Occasion: A
Notes
Alciato, Emblemas, ed. S. Sebastián, Madrid, Akal, 1985.
Alín, J. M. and Barrio Alonso, M. B., Cancionero teatral de Lope
de Vega, London, Támesis, 1997.
Cervantes Saavedra, M. de, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la
Mancha, ed. L. A. Murillo, Madrid, Castalia, 1982,2 vols., 2nd ed.
The First Part of the Delighiful History of the Most
Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of the Mancha, [1611] translation
by T. Shelton, New York, P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1969.
- - , The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha,
translation by J. Rutherlord, New York, Penguin Books, 200l.
Correas, G., Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales, Madrid,
Visor, 1992.
Cortanze, G. de, «Juan José Saer: Don Quichotte en liberté»,
Magazine Littéraire, 358, October 1997, pp. 51-53.
Covarrubias Horozco, S., Tesoro de la lengua castellana o
española, Madrid, Tumer, 1979.
Femández Gómez, c., Vocabulario de Cervantes, Madrid, Real
Academia española, 1962.
Foulché-Delbosc, R, «Romancero de la Biblioteca BrancacCÍana»,
Revue Hispanique, 65, 1925, pp. 345-396.
Hesse, E. W:, «El villano en su rincóm>, in Análisis e
interpretación de la comedia, Madrid, Castalia, 1968, pp. 30-42.
Lope de Vega, El villano en su rincón, ed. J. M. Marin, Madrid,
Cátedra, 1987.
- - , Obras poéticas, ed. J. M. Blecua, Barcelona, Planeta, 1983.
209
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.Fernando Plata
- - , Poesías líricas 1. Primeros romances. Letras para cantar.
Sonetos, ed. J. F. Montesinos, Madrid, Ediciones de «La Lectura»,
1925.
Quevedo, F. de, La fortuna con seso y la hora de todos. Fantasía
moral, ed. L. Schwartz, in Obras completas en prosa, voL l, 2, dir.
A. Rey, Madrid, Castalia, 2003, pp. 561-810.
Real Academia Española, Diccionario de autoridades, Madrid,
Gredos, 1969,3 vols.
Régnier, M., Oeuvres Completes, París, Librairie Nizet, 1982.
Rodríguez, A., «Los cantables de El villano en su rincón», in
Homenaje a William L. Fichter. Estudios sobre el teatro antiguo
hispánico y otros ensayos, ed. A. D. Kossoff and J. Amor y
Vázquez, Madrid, Castalia, 1971, pp. 639-645.
Saer, J. J., La ocasión, Barcelona, Ediciones Destino, 1988.
Salomon, N., Recherches sur le theme paysan dans la «comedia»
au temps de Lope de Vega, Bordeaux, Féret & FUs, 1965.
Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-6, ed. H. R. Fairclough,
Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1994.
Wardropper, B. W., «La venganza de Maquiavelo: El villano en su
rincón», in Homenaje a William L. Fichter. Estudios sobre el
teatro antiguo hispánico y otros ensayos, ed. A. D. Kossoff and J.
Amor y Vázquez, Madrid, Castalia, 1971, pp. 765-772.
210
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. Fernando PLATA PRAGA. On Love and Occasion: A Reading.You can also read
