Pedro Calderón de la Barca (January 17, 1600 to May 25, 1681), was a soldier, and a priest, and a dramatist. It is of course his literary output that guarantees this native of Madrid a place in world culture: he is one of the greatest playrights we have. His topics have a serious philosophical dimension. Here is an excerpt from a play, Life is a Dream, that Calderon wrote between 1629 and 1635:
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction,
And the greatest profit is small;
For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are nothing but dreams.
And the following is clever, though not in a superficial sense; a distinct sincerity is apparent in his writing. This is part of a dialogue from the play,The Devotion to the Cross (1637).
[ To the question, "Who art thou?" a painter replies}
Flowers to him are like a salad;
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction,
And the greatest profit is small;
For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are nothing but dreams.
And the following is clever, though not in a superficial sense; a distinct sincerity is apparent in his writing. This is part of a dialogue from the play,The Devotion to the Cross (1637).
[ To the question, "Who art thou?" a painter replies}
....
And a painter by profession.
I to Celio Batistela,
Of Florence, this fine picture bear
Of a lady young and fair,
Call'd Madama la Florela,
By him order'd, to him sold.
[Eusebio, the questioner, continues]
Let me see it. A fair dame
Truly! but why write her name
Florela.
List! a tale doth run
Of a painter to whom sat
For her picture Puss: below her,
So that every one might know her,
He inscribed, " This is a cat."
.....
Calderon here is concerned to make clear questions about words and reality, art and reality.
And a painter by profession.
I to Celio Batistela,
Of Florence, this fine picture bear
Of a lady young and fair,
Call'd Madama la Florela,
By him order'd, to him sold.
[Eusebio, the questioner, continues]
Let me see it. A fair dame
Truly! but why write her name
Florela.
List! a tale doth run
Of a painter to whom sat
For her picture Puss: below her,
So that every one might know her,
He inscribed, " This is a cat."
.....
Calderon here is concerned to make clear questions about words and reality, art and reality.
He carries out the painter's thought to it's logical extreme, and says finally:
Flowers to him are like a salad;
Give him some colours and a pallet,
Let him eat of what he paints.
Calderon's point in the above dialogue is that labeling the painting, confuses, not clarifies, for when you say "this is a cat" on a painting, you are not accurate. Should the label then, read: "this is a painting of a cat?" And of course if you did this, your artistic creation would fail---because your goal was to paint something that looks like a cat, not looks like a painting of a cat. Nice post modern discussion, only it was written out over 400 years ago, and with perhaps more clarity than our 21st century contemporaries.
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