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Call for papers #37

Saavedra, Ángel de, Duke of Rivas. Don Alvaro, or the Force of Fate, translated by Robert M. Fedorchek. Catholic University of America Press, 2005. 22+142 pp. 1 ill.

Don Alvaro, or the Force of Fate shocked the public at its premiere with its representation of a cultural, racial, and political outsider who, over the course of several years and in several lands under Spanish rule (Peru, Andalusia, and Italy) attempted to forge a new identity, gain acceptance by traditional society, and marry his beloved "idol." In 1835 the duke of Rivas presented his Madrid audience with a tremendous Romantic hero; Robert M. Fedorchek has recreated him magnificently for a new set of Anglophone readers today.
When the play opens, Don Alvaro has just arrived in Spain as a noble savage: "I grew up among barbarians, and at / the age of reason I set out to fulfill / a son's obligation" (68). That is, he has come to Old Spain to clear his parents' name of the shame of treason. His father, a former American viceroy, and his mother, an Inca princess, are guilty of having planned to create an independent monarchy in South America years before. However, before he could visit his Spanish relatives and petition the king for royal pardon, Don Álvaro falls in love with Leonor, the daughter of the powerful but impoverished marquis of Calatrava. The marquis refuses to permit a marriage that would link his family to the mysterious outsider, a refusal that reproduces Spain's attempts to behave as though it, too, could deny its ties to and economic dependency on American silver. When Alvaro and Leonor attempt to elope, the marquis is accidentally killed, and the lovers are separated. Leonor will go on to withdraw from society as a penitent hermit and Don Alvaro will first chase death in war and then endure a living death in a monastic cell. He is thwarted in both attempts by the "force of fate" that brings him face to face with Leonor's vengeful brothers and his own past. His only means to ultimately defeat this force is through a terrifying suicide, staged in the play's final, violent denouement.
Whereas the Calatrava family represents the oldest and greatest Spanish traditions, Don Alvaro is the personification of the Spanish empire: he is paradoxically both an ideal Spaniard (valiant, brave, handsome, kind, and a torero to boot) and a bearer of its colonial subjection and humiliation of the Incas in the Americas. Rivas's mysterious indiano looks and acts like a noble Spaniard but is externally marked by a set of differences: his immense wealth and black servants manifest not only his status as the personification of intercontinental conquest but also the hero's unclear ethnic identity.
As Joyce Tolliver notes in her introduction, this play is "required reading for all serious students and scholars of Spanish literature" (xiii). Moreover, as the Romantic and, sometimes, melodramatic plotline is attractive to undergraduates, this play is an enjoyable way to introduce discussions of empire, race, and the political situation of the early nineteenth century.
Although this is, to my knowledge, Fedorchek's first foray into theater, his already impressive contribution to nineteenth-century Spanish literature includes translations of Palacio Valdéz, Bécquer, Caballero, Alarcón, and Valera. In his preface to this edition, Fedorchek reminds his readers that Rivas wrote in a combination of prose and verse and explains that in his translation, "the latter has been rendered into prose, but the text is set in short lines (in approximate measure with the original) so that the reader will know when verse is used in Spanish (x)." This is an excellent choice, as it retains the original distinction between prose scenes with local color and verse scenes of passion. Moreover, Fedorchek's compromise wisely takes advantage of the paratextual power of white space on the page: the layout of poetry tends to cause readers to pause and interpret the words more closely. Fedorchek guides readers to interpret poetically without having them read through a translation artificially tied to English meter or rhyme over five long acts.
Overall the translation is excellent. Indeed, a number of lyric passages are breathtakingly beautiful and an homage to the duke of Rivas's style. Consider, for example, Don Álvaro's anguished soliloquy on his desire for a death that continually escapes him: "For the man who lives quietly / and joyfully amid applause and / honor, and drains the delectable / chalice of innocent love, death / tramples his happiness and / destroys his bliss when he is at / his strongest and most spirited, / while I who am forlorn, I who / seek death, cannot find it." (67)
Tolliver's introduction provides ample historical and academic context for non-specialist readers. She is a leading scholar of nineteenth-century Spanish literature, and her introduction reflects her vast knowledge of the field. In addition, the brief bibliography will point interested readers on the right path toward crucial secondary readings. With all due respect to the octogenarians who will read this edition, comments such as that found in footnote 10, on page 12 (which provides Miguel de Unamuno's dates, 1864-1936, as an indication of the importance of the University of Salamanca "in our own times") date the translation. However, the majority of footnotes are quite helpful, and the few unusual word choices by no means mar this excellent text.

Lisa Surwillo
The Pennsylvania State University