a collective suicide caused by women, an example of Cervantine humanism

From the capital of the empire, it was decided to take definitive action on the matter, addressing the most prestigious general: Scipio Africanus the Littlea soldier who had defeated Carthage in the Third Punic War. The year was 134 BC and the tactic he decided to adopt was to defeat hungerwithout having to draw the sword.

This is the starting point of The Siege of Numanciatragedy written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1585, after having overcome five years of captivity in Algiersbut twenty years before publishing the novel which would lead him to the Olympus of literature, the name of which it will not be necessary to recall here. It is a little-valued and little-known text, where to the scenes which take place on either side of the barrier are added other allegorical scenes in which characters such as Fame, War, Hunger or even Spain itselfwith voice and face.

Alonso de Santos or the essence of the classic

Jose Luis Alonso of Santos (Valladolid, 1942) is a veteran of the Spanish stage and presents his version of this drama at the Teatros del Canal, premiered at the Spanish-American Festival of the Golden Age, in Alcalá de Henares. Award-winning writer and director National Theater Prizeconfronts the classics of our dramatic literature without getting carried away by gratuitous transgressions or passing fashions. An irreduciblelike these Arevacians or like the Gallic villagers. At his side, masters of the game of Arturo Querejeta either Pepa Pédroche They once again demonstrate their wisdom in the use of verse.

“My main objective is to preserve the spirit and essential values ​​of the classic: grandeur, dignity, etc., but to do so in a clear and communicative way, without transforming everything into gibberish. To obtain the label of modernity, it is not necessary to come out with… a flying saucer, for example. The viewer should be as unconfused as possible.“, he admits in a conversation with 20 minutesa few days after the premiere. In their montages, the Roman legionnaires are dressed as they are, not as office workers or soldiers from World War II.

Cervantes escape The Siege of Numancia erect a hero as the architect of the act, as happened in Greek tragedies, and emphasizes a collectiveto an entire city. This historical event ended with the creation of the term ‘numantin’accepted by the Royal Spanish Academy: ‘Who resists with tenacity to the limit, often in precarious conditions..

“During the tragedies of Calderonand also in lopeit is God who regulates human actions, here man does it – underlines José Luis Alonso de Santos -. Cervantes goes from theocentrism always anthropocentrism which places man at the center of the universe. It is a humanism of the Renaissance much more modern than that of Baroque in the political and social aspects, which with the counter-reformation gave all power back to religion.” Cervantes attributes the responsibility for his destiny to human beings, without seeking subterfuge.

‘With the church we gave, Sancho», we note in a passage from Don Quixote. Whether or not there is a double interpretation of this phrase, which some have wanted to see as anticlerical, the truth is that Cervantes offers a new element of conflict with the religion by lifting The Siege of Numancia nothing less than a collective suicide in response to Scipio’s strategy. The consul had ordered to dig a grave and build a wall around the city. Given this, the decision of the people of Numancia in the tragedy of Cervantes is to commit suicide and immolate themselves with their wealth in a big fireso that the Romans found everything reduced to ashes. “Let us not forget that attempted suicide, in the time of Cervantes, was punishable by death penaltyeven if it may seem paradoxical”, recalls Alonso de Santos.

The siege of Estepa, a precedent for Numancia

The historian who testified to what happened at Numancia was Polybiuscompanion and advisor of Scipio himself. Later summaries made by other authors have come down to us of his chronicles, and they do not refer to such a powerful fact, but rather to a capitulation with a few isolated cases of suicide. The image that these writings of survivors offer is creepy:’emaciated bodies, full of hair and dirt, with nails overgrown with vegetation, emitting a nauseating odor; The clothes hanging there were just as disgusting and no less stinky. This is how they presented themselves before their enemies, whom they incited to mercy.‘. In the previous photograph, the scene in which the inhabitants of Numancia gather their belongings to burn them.

Cervantes was able to extract the idea from a large funeral pyre from a previous episode, explicitly mentioned. The city of Astapa -now Estepa, in Seville-, was also besieged by the Romans fifty years before Numancia, and there is evidence of an immolation similar to that recounted by Cervantes. ‘They chose a place in the town square to pile up the most precious objects; They brought their wives and children to the top; They raised a pyre around“, says the historian Titus Livy.

De Santos worked with particular care on certain aesthetic aspects production, get scenes from great plastic beauty. Ricardo Sánchez Cuerda in the scenography and lighting by Juan Gómez-Cornejo have a lot to do with it. “Many of the gestures and postures are taken from the paintings and this required me to work with the actors to achieve this mixture of truth and composition. The tear must appear in a given context and moment. For me, theater puts the world in a frame and the frame is the stage“, he concludes.

José Luis Alonso de Santos: “Art is the territory of the impossible; the search for a diamond hidden in a mountain »

The director sees his work almost as that of a artisan or a explorer. “Art is the territory of the impossible; it’s like searching for the sources of the Nile, like finding the diamond hidden in a mountain. If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

Numancia can be considered as a choral cry of freedomto fight against the conqueror until the last consequences, but this also hides another innovative aspect. In reality, the decision to commit collective suicide comes from Numantine women. They They burst into the assembly and demanded that they not be abandoned; They declare that they want to die before falling into the hands of the Romans, assuming the defeat of their men in a clearly unequal fight. ‘Offer our necks to your swords first, which is a better choice than considering us dishonored enemies.“, they say in a passage from Cervantes’ tragedy. The men accept this request. renounce a hand-to-hand combat which would have been more honorable to them. There is nothing in Polybius’ historical text about this feminine decision, so it is an element entirely incorporated by Cervantes.

A platonic love between hunger and misery

We speak with Ania Hernándezone of the actresses who make up a brilliant cast, with names like those mentioned in Arturo Querejeta And Pepa Pédrochealongside others like Jacobo Dicenta, Karmele Aramburu and Javier Lara. Ania trained within the Young National Classical Theater Company and gave us her first roles in The discreet lover either Don Gil of the Green Calzasalways bringing sensitivity and emotion. “This work has more to do with Medea and the Greek theater only with the golden age. It’s throwing yourself headlong into the pool of tragedy,” explains the actress.

Ania plays Lira, who stars in the only love story amidst the devastation: a young girl Numantina who has lost her family and appears on the stage, bearing witness to the ravages of hunger. “It’s almost a platonic love, because Lira and Morandro, her fiancé, -played by Jimmy Castro- hope to get married after the war, but the situation has already lasted sixteen years.” As an almost mystical symbol of this impossible-to-consummate love, a loaf of bread soaked in blood, stolen from the Roman camp, is offered by Morando to Lira before he dies.

Ania Hernández: “In the golden age, women take center stage in disguise, but Cervantes gives her voice for all to see”

In line with the living paintings that Alonso de Santos composed, Ania comments on the effort necessary to achieve this: “We have worked on the position of the bodies since a non-naturalistic point of viewfrom an immobility code, to obtain an effect. Also the way of saying verse in real octavesso solemn and noble.

Concerning the importance of women in this and other later works, he comments as follows: “In the golden age, the female characters They gained great notoriety, sometimes resorting to disguise, like Doña Juana (Don Gil green tights) or Fenisa (The discreet lover), but Cervantes in Numancia “He does it in full view of everyone, showing all the women, in front of the council, a place that is forbidden to them.”

Cervantes against Lope, a bitter feud

A few years before writing The Siege of Numancia, Cervantes encounter Lope de Vega at the home of actor Jerónimo Velázquez. Don Miguel went there with the hope of having one of his comedies performed by the famous actor. He did not succeed, neither for himself nor for another actor, since he never saw any of his creations represented. Meanwhile, Lope proudly attended premiere after premiere of his famous comedies. Which was initially born as friendship between the two geniuses, it quickly became a constant struggle who plotted their lives, spurred on by a particular malice on Lope’s part, it must be said.

The drama that unfolds before our eyes in Numancia, tragic and nobleeven if something as hard as life itself, clearly shown in this version of Alonso de Santos, has little to do with the profusion of comedies where Lope de Vega brings into play the springs of sparkling entertainment. Cervantes’ stage design would be buried by the comedies of the Golden Age, but we will always have to thank him for his bold and profound commitment. humanist of everything that came out of his pen, carried by an almost numantine free determination.