Avalle-Arce writes, «... esta construcción cíclica sirve en 'El celoso extremeño' para subrayar la estupenda ironía de que seductor y marido cornudo son los mismos en su proyección temporal: víctima y victimario se enlazan así en la misma voluta del tiempo, y demuestran, con claridad inalcanzada hasta entonces, como las posibilidades artísticas pueden pujar con las posibilidades vitales» (Nuevos deslindes cervantinos [Barcelona: Ariel, 1975], p. 69). Castro also comments on a change in the printed version which emphasizes its circular structure: «En la versión impresa el autor no 'mata' a Loysa, se satisface con enviarlo a las Indias, de donde había venido Carrizales, y queda así cerrado el círculo: el joven impotente va a parar al lugar de donde había salido el hecho impotente por su mucha edad» («Cervantes se nos desliza en 'El celoso extremeño,'» PSA, 48, No. 143-4 [1968], 214). (N. from the A.)

I read the «anointing» as an incorporative act -both soiling and merger. Harry Sieber has also read Leonora's treatment of Carrizales as a kind of violation: «El yerro de Leonora es la violación de este mundo interior, del mundo de la imaginación de su marido. O mejor dicho, la única violación que cuenta para Carrizales es la violación imaginada de su mundo imaginario» («Introducción», II, 20). (N. from the A.)

The British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott has discussed the importance of destruction in fantasy and survival of the object in the establishment of a world of object reality. See «The Development of the Capacity for Concern», in The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment, International Psycho-Analytical Library No. 64 (London: Hogarth, 1965), pp. 73-82 and Playing and Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 90-94. (N. from the A.)

Lambert offers another interpretation of the passage, «The obsession with measuring and quantifying remains, but now it signals depth of feeling rather than absence of feeling» (p. 228). It is possible that Carrizales' «quantifying» corresponds to the «naming» which Segal notes as an important element in reparation: «The 'naming'... represents the acceptance of reality, the fundamental element of real reparation, which is lacking in manic reparation» (pp. 101-102). (N. from the A.)

The importance of the presence of Leonora's parents can be explained best, I believe, in Kleinian terms; «only if the individual has grown up in the real sense of the word can his infantile phantasies be fulfilled in the adult state. What is more, guilt due to these infantile wishes then becomes relieved, just because a situation phantasied in childhood has now become real in a permissible way, and in a way which proves that the injuries of various kinds, which in phantasy were connected with this situation, have not actually been inflicted» (Love, Guilt, p. 317). In other words, intimacy with a woman is permissible and non-destructive. (N. from the A.)

Gwynne Edwards notes that the revised ending, underscoring Carrizales' erroneous interpretation of the events, is more ironic, but I cannot agree with him that Carrizales therefore becomes a parody of a tragic figure. See «Los dos desenlaces de 'El celoso extremeño' de Cervantes», BBMP, 49 (1973), 281-91. I find much more convincing Lambert's analysis of the two texts, showing a movement toward «heightened pathos and dignity» in the published version (p. 229). (N. from the A.)

Leonora acts here in accordance with Winnicott's «mirror-role» of the mother who reflects the child's emotions thus initiating the child into a world of perception as a «two-way process» (Playing, pp. 112-118). But Carrizales is unable to trust his mirror.

The acceptance of Leonora's sexuality, however, allows Carrizales to break out of his incorporative fusion with her. Ruth El Saffar has illuminated this «emergence from solipsism»: «Essential to Carrizales's subsequent self-transcendence is the sight of the sleeping Leonora and Loaysa. For that sight releases Carrizales from the internal struggle which was expressed externally in his nearly maniacal effort to keep them apart. When he sees them outside himself, he discovers his own reality as distinct from and above either of the two with whom he had formerly identified himself» (Novel, p. 48). Carrizales' feat of recognizing Leonora as a whole object corresponds to the achievements of the phase of development which Klein called the depressive position and Winnicott the «stage of concern». But as Hanna Segal writes, «The depressive position is never fully worked through... Good external objects in adult life always symbolize and contain aspects of the primary good object, internal and external, so that any loss in later life reawakens the anxiety of losing the good internal object... If the infant has been able to establish a good internal object relatively securely in the depressive position, situations of depressive anxiety will not lead to illness but to a fruitful working through..». (p. 80). In other words, Carrizales' belated achievements in the depressive position cannot entirely compensate for his early failure to secure a good internal object. (N. from the A.)

For a discussion of Cervantes' treatment of the theme of «el viejo y la niña» as an aspect of his attitudes toward incompatible marriages, see Castro's El pensamiento de Cervantes, ed. Julio Rodríguez-Puértolas (Barcelona: Noguer, 1972), pp. 133-136. (N. from the A.)

In other words, both characters can be compared in terms of the psychopathology of their guilt-sense, manifested in their two inter-related illnesses -obsessional neurosis and melancholia. As Winnicott has observed, these illnesses are maintained in order to hide the fear that «in some specific setting of which the patient is unaware, hate is more powerful than love» («The Sense of Guilt» in Maturational Process, p. 20). (N. from the A.)

Rafael Osuna, «La crítica y la erudición del siglo XX ante La Galatea de Cervantes», Romanic Review, 54 (1963), 251. (N. from the A.)