La virtualidad como entramado de representaciones sociales de género

We make this girl’s acquaintance in the opera Don Giovanni, and it will be of some importance for our later investigation to take heed of the hints of her earlier life contained in that piece.

She had been a nun;¹⁵ it is from the peace of a convent that Don Giovanni has snatched her.

This gives some indication of the intensity of her passion. Here was no frivolous hussy from a boarding-school who had learned to love in class and to flirt at dances; there is no great

significance in someone like that being seduced. Elvira, on the other hand, has been brought up in the discipline of the convent, yet this has not been able to root out passion, though it has indeed taught her to suppress it and so made it even more violent once it is allowed to emerge. She is a sure prey for a Don Giovanni; he will know how to coax out her passion,

wild, ungovernable, insatiable, to be satisfied only in his love. In him she has everything and the past is nothing; if she leaves him she loses everything, including the past. After she had renounced the world, there appeared a figure she could not renounce, and that is Don Giovanni. Henceforth she renounces everything in order to live with him. The more

important the life she leaves behind, the more she must cling to him; the more tightly she has embraced him, the more frightful her despair when he abandons her. Already from the

beginning her love is a despair; nothing in heaven or on earth means anything to her except Don Giovanni.

In the opera Elvira interests us only so far as her relationship to Don Giovanni has importance for him. Were I to suggest what this importance of hers is in a few words, I would say, ‘She is Don Giovanni’s epic fate, the Commendatore his dramatic fate.’ There is a hatred in her which will seek out Giovanni in every out-of-the-way corner, a flame of fire which will illumine the darkest hiding-place, and should she still not bring him to light, there is a love within her that will find him. She joins in with the others in pursuit of Don Giovanni, but were I to imagine all powers neutralized, the efforts of his pursuers cancelling each other out, so that it was up to Elvira alone and Don Giovanni was in her power, then the hatred would arm her to murder him, but her love would forbid it; not from sympathy, since for that he is too great in her eyes, and so she would constantly keep him alive, for were she to kill him she would kill herself. So if there were no other forces than Elvira turned against Don Giovanni, the opera would never end; for, in order to avenge herself, Elvira would, if possible, prevent the lightning itself from striking him, and yet she would again be unable to take revenge herself. Such is the interest she has for us in the opera; but here we are only concerned with her relationship to Don Giovanni so far as it is significant for her. She is an object of interest to many, but in very different ways. Don Giovanni has an interest in her before the piece begins; the audience bestows its dramatic interest upon her; but we friends of sorrow, we follow her not just to the end of the street, not only for the instant she crosses the stage; no, we follow her upon her solitary way.

So Don Giovanni has seduced Elvira and abandoned her; it is quickly done, as quickly as ‘a tiger can snap a lily’.¹⁶ From the fact that in Spain alone there are 1,003, we can see that Don Giovanni is in a hurry and to some extent reckon the speed. Don Giovanni has abandoned her, but there is no environment into whose arms she can helplessly fall; she need have no fear of the environment closing too tightly around her; it realizes, rather, that it should open

wide its ranks to make her departure easier. She need have no fear of anyone disputing her loss with her, on the contrary, someone or other may perhaps take it upon himself to try to prove it. She stands alone and abandoned, and there is no doubt that can tempt her; it is clear that he was a deceiver who has taken everything from her and exposed her to shame and dishonour. Aesthetically, however, this is not the worst that can happen; it saves her, for a while, from that reflective sorrow which is certainly more painful than immediate sorrow.

The fact here is indubitable and reflection cannot turn it now into one thing, now into another. A Marie Beaumarchais may have loved a Clavigo just as violently, as wildly and passionately; as far as her own passion goes, it may be altogether accidental that the worst has not happened; she could almost wish that it had, for then, after all, there would be an end of the story; she would be much more strongly armed against him; but it has not happened.

So in her case the fact is far more doubtful, its reality will always be a secret between her and Clavigo. When she considers the cold cunning, the shabby calculation required so to deceive her that in the eyes of the world it appears something far less serious, and she herself is exposed to the sort of sympathy that says, ‘Well now, good gracious, it’s not as bad as all that’, it can arouse her, she can become practically insane at the thought of the proud superiority in the face of which she has nevertheless meant nothing, which has set her a limit and said, ‘thus far and no further’. And yet the whole story can also be interpreted in another way, a nicer way. But as the interpretation changes, so does the fact. Reflection, therefore, straightaway gets enough to do and reflective sorrow is inescapable.

Don Giovanni has abandoned Elvira; at that instant everything is clear to her, and there is no doubt to lure her grief into the seminar room of reflection. She is mute in her despair. Her sorrow courses through her with a single beat of the pulse, and it flows outwardly, the passion shines through her in a blaze and can be seen in her outward appearance. Hate, despair, vengeance, love, all break forth to make themselves visibly revealed. At this moment she is picturesque. The imagination also therefore immediately presents us with a picture of her, and here the external is not rendered indifferent, reflection upon it is not empty, and its activity not without significance, as it proposes and disposes.

Whether she is at this moment an object of artistic representation is another question. But what is certain is that at this moment she is visible and can be seen, not of course in the sense that this or that actual Elvira can actually be seen, which in most cases amounts to her not being seen, but the Elvira we imagine is visible in her essentiality. Whether art is able to

provide just that shade in her expression that renders visible the point of her despair I leave open, but she can be described, and the picture which thus appears is not a mere burden for the memory that is neither here nor there, but has its validity. And who has not seen Elvira!

It was early morning when I undertook a journey by foot in one of the romantic parts of Spain. Nature awoke, the trees of the forest shook their heads, and it was as though the leaves rubbed the sleep from their eyes; one tree bent to the other to see if it had arisen, and the whole forest billowed in the fresh cool breeze; a light mist rose from the earth, the sun snatched it away as if it were a carpet under which it had rested during the night, and now looked down like a loving mother upon the flowers and everything that had life, and said,

‘Arise, dear children, the sun is already shining.’ As I rounded the end of a gully my eye fell upon a monastery high up on the peak of the mountain, to which there led a footpath with many turnings. My thoughts dwelt upon it. Thus it stands there, I thought, like a house of God founded firmly upon the rock. My guide told me that it was a convent famous for its strict discipline. My pace slackened, like my thought; why hurry when so near the monastery?

I should probably have come to a full stop had I not been startled by a rapid movement nearby. Involuntarily I turned; it was a knight who hastened past me. How handsome he was, his step so light yet so full of strength, so royal and yet so fugitive! He turned his head to look back, his countenance so captivating yet his glance so uneasy; it was Don Giovanni. Is he hurrying to an assignation or is he coming from one? Yet he was soon gone from my sight and out of my mind, and my glance was fixed on the convent. I sank once more into contemplation of the joys of life and the quiet peace of the convent, when up on the mountain I saw the figure of a woman. She was hurrying headlong down the footpath, but the path was steep and it looked all the time as though she were plunging down from the mountain. She came nearer. Her countenance was pale, only her eyes blazed terribly, her body was trembling, her bosom rose and fell violently, but still she hurried faster and faster, her locks Hung about and scattered in the wind, but not even the fresh morning breeze and her hurried pace could bring colour to her cheeks; her nun’s veil was torn in shreds and flew behind, her thin white gown would have betrayed much to a profane glance had not the passion in her face attracted even the most depraved person’s glance. She rushed by me – I dared not address her, her brow was too majestic, her glance too royal, her passion too high-born. Where does this girl belong? In the convent? Have these passions their home there? In the world? But the costume? – Why does she hurry? Is it to hide her shame and disgrace or to

catch up with Don Giovanni? She hastens on to the forest and it closes around her and conceals her, and I see her no more but hear only the forest’s sigh. Poor Elvira! Perhaps the trees have found out something – and yet the trees are better than men, for the trees sigh and keep silent; men whisper.

In this first moment Elvira can be represented, and even though art really cannot take the measure of it, because it would be hard to find a unified expression that also contained all the multiplicity of her passion, the soul demands to see her. This I have tried to suggest through the little picture just sketched. The idea of it was not actually to present her but only to suggest that a description of her was in place, that it was not an arbitrary whim on my part but a legitimate requirement of the idea. Yet this is just one moment and we must follow Elvira further.

The most obvious movement is one in time. She maintains herself on that almost picturesque point suggested in the foregoing, through a series of moments in time. This gives her dramatic interest. In the haste with which she sped past me she overtakes Don Giovanni.

This, too, is quite as it should be seeing he has abandoned her, but he has drawn her into his own life’s pace and she must reach him. If she does reach him, her whole attention is then turned outward again and we still do not get reflective sorrow. She has lost everything, she lost heaven when she chose the world, the world when she lost Don Giovanni. So she has nowhere to seek refuge except with him, it is only by being in his presence that she can keep despair at a distance, either by drowning out the inner voices with the clamour of hate and resentment, which resound only when Don Giovanni is present, or by hoping. This latter indicates that the elements of reflective sorrow are present already but have not yet been able to gather themselves inwardly. ‘She must first be cruelly convinced,’ reads Kruse’s adaptation,¹⁷ but this requirement completely betrays the inner disposition. If what has happened hasn’t convinced her that Don Giovanni was a deceiver, nothing will. But as long as she requires a further proof, she can succeed, with a restless, rootless life constantly occupied in pursuing Don Giovanni, in escaping the inner unrest of a quiet despair. The paradox already exists in her soul, but so long as she can keep the soul agitated by external evidences not designed to explain the past but to provide information about Don Giovanni’s present condition, she escapes reflective sorrow. Hate, resentment, curses, prayers, imprecations alternate, but her soul is still not turned back on itself in order to rest in the contemplation that she is deceived. So when Kruse has Don Giovanni say:

‘Are you now disposed to hear,

To believe my words, you who suspect me;

Then I might almost say improbable Is the cause that compelled,’ etc.,

one must be careful not to think that what, to the spectator’s ear, sounds like mockery has the same effect upon Elvira. For her the words are a relief, for it is the improbable she wants, and she wants to believe it just because it is improbable.

If we now let Don Giovanni and Elvira come together, we have the choice of letting either Don Giovanni or Elvira be the stronger. If he is the stronger, her appearance on the scene loses all its point. She demands ‘proof to be cruelly convinced’; he is gallant enough not to withhold it. But, naturally, she is not convinced and demands a new proof; for demanding a new proof is an alleviation, and the uncertainty is a relief. She then becomes but one witness more to the exploits of Don Giovanni. But we could also imagine Elvira as the stronger. It rarely happens, but we would do it out of gallantry to the sex. She stands, then, in her full beauty still, for though she has wept, the tears have not quenched the lustre in her eye, and though she has sorrowed, the sorrow has not wasted her youthful vitality, and though she has fretted, her fretting has not gnawed away the vitality of her beauty, and though her cheek has become pale, the expression has become for that reason all the more soulful, and though she does not glide with the lightness of childlike innocence, she steps forward with the energetic firmness of womanly passion. This is how she confronts Don Giovanni. She has loved him more than the whole world, more than the blessedness of her own soul, she has lavished everything upon him, even her honour, and he was unfaithful. Now she knows only one passion, it is hate; only one thought, it is revenge. Thus she is as great as Don Giovanni; for seducing all girls is the male equivalent of the woman’s letting herself be seduced once with all her soul and now hating, or if you will, loving her seducer with an energy no spouse possesses. This is how she confronts him, she does not lack the courage to dare to have at him, she does not fight for moral principles, she fights for her love, a love she does not base upon respect; she does not fight to be his mate, she fights for her love, and this is not satisfied with a contrite faithfulness, it demands revenge; for love of him she has thrown away her blessedness, and if it were offered her once more she would throw it away again in order to avenge herself.

Such a figure cannot fail to make an impression upon Don Giovanni. He knows what pleasure lies in sucking in the finest and most fragrant flower of first youth, he knows it is only a moment, and he knows what follows, he has seen these pale figures often enough wither so quickly that one can almost see it happening. But here a miracle has taken place, the laws of life’s ordinary course are broken. He has seduced a young girl but her life is not extinguished, her beauty has not faded; she is transformed and is more beautiful than ever.

He cannot deny it, she captivates him more than any girl has captivated him, more than Elvira herself has done; for the innocent nun was still, in spite of all her beauty, a girl like many others, his infatuation with her an adventure like many another; but this girl is the only one of her kind. This girl is armed, she does not conceal a dagger in her breast but she has an armour,¹⁸ not visible, for her hatred is not satisfied with speeches and declamations, but unseen, and it is her hatred. Don Giovanni’s passion is aroused, she must be his once more;

but not so. Yes, if it were a girl who knew his baseness, who hated him although she had not been deceived by him, then Don Giovanni would have won; but this girl he cannot win, all his seduction is powerless. Had the voice been more ingratiating than his own, the approach more insidious than his own, he still would not have moved her; had the angels prayed for him, had the Mother of God been willing to be bridesmaid at the wedding, still it would have been in vain. She will turn, not away from him, as even, in the underworld, Dido turned away from Aeneas who had deceived her, but towards him, even more coldly than Dido.¹⁹

But this encounter of Elvira with Don Giovanni is only a moment of transition; she walks across the stage, the curtain falls, but we, dear Symparanekromenoi, we steal after, for only now does she really become Elvira. As long as she is in the presence of Don Giovanni she is

But this encounter of Elvira with Don Giovanni is only a moment of transition; she walks across the stage, the curtain falls, but we, dear Symparanekromenoi, we steal after, for only now does she really become Elvira. As long as she is in the presence of Don Giovanni she is