Don Felix: Sociopath

We touched on the idea of Don Felix of El Estudiante de Salamanca having a personality disorder in class this week. Having personal experience with this type of person I thought it would be interesting to elaborate a little more about this type of person in context with Don Felix's character. Don Felix, in my opinion, exhibits many personality traits that would lead readers to believe he has sociopathic tendencies. A sociopath, by definition, have superficial charm, and feel that certain things are their right or entitled to them. They are manipulative and use other people only to get what they want. They have no sense of remorse no matter what they might do. They have an ability to mock human emotions such as remorse in order to appear more human but in reality they feel nothing. They don't have the capacity to love, only to adapt in order to appear to feel the emotion of love. They have no empathy for others. They need constant stimulation; they do outrageous things to get a rush, such as acting out verbally and physically against others. They exhibit promiscuous sexual behavior and they lack a plan for life. they go throughout life, acting human enough to be accepted and constantly fooling those that love them, but without any emotion and are simply fulfilling their own needs at the expense of others.
I think that Don Felix falls easily into this description. He kills without remorse, uses women without a second thought, and seems to believe that he is entitled to whatever he wants. He shows no emotions good or bad, yet is accepted by his peers because he's able to make himself appear human enough despite his behavior. It's an interesting concept to consider, and for me it brings the work into a whole new light.

Lost in Translation

The translations we did in class this Wednesday really got me thinking about the loss of meaning that happens when things are translated. I always thought things "just sounded better" in Spanish. I thought maybe it was because of the accent, or just because the people saying those beautiful things in Spanish were so attractive:) But things really do sound better in Spanish as opposed to trying to figure out what it means in English. And that's because with the translation, you lose a lot of things. There is no way, for the most part, to directly translate something into another language and have it make perfect sense. You have to change the wording around to make everything seem logical. With this, you can change the original feeling the message had intended to create in its recipient.

El Estudiante de Salamanca was a really difficult play for me, but when I started relating the play back to the themes of Romanticism, it began coming together for me. It all has so much to do with passionate, undying feeling. Every action and feeling in this Romantic play seems to be completely over the top and I think Romanticism is kind of meant to be that way. As soon as I got that concept into my head, it made total sense as to how Elvira died from a broken heart. I also made sense of all the abrupt sounds, like the clashing of swords and the screams around don Felix as he spirals within his "vision" down to hell. Without these effects, there would be no other way of getting the dark feeling Espronceda wants to portray.
Like many others have been saying, I think this play would make a great movie too. There is so much technology in the special effects world that I think someone could make this play into a great movie. It would be fun to see a modern version of such an old play.

Uy!

There is nothing quite like waking up on Friday morning to the realization that "¡Uy! Se me olvidó escribir en el blog!" Needless to say, this past week was full of presentations (in 3 different languages), lots of reading (to be expected), and a nice paper to be written in spanish. Since I havn't started the next reading assignments and just wrote a paper about the 2 works we have read in class, I would like to reflect on my experience writing in Spanish. Para ser honesta, yo disfruto de escribir en español. Pienso en la clase de 403, la que era la primera clase de escritura "intensiva", y me doy cuenta de lo que he logrado desde que tomé aquella clase hace un año. No me resulta tan difícil (hooray!) pensar y escribir en español hoy en día. De hecho, a veces prefiero escribir en español porque me da la oportunidad (y libertad) de escribir frases largas que no son recomendables incluir en los trabajos escritos en inglés. Pero lo que me gusta más que escribir en español es mezclar el español y el inglés. Claro que no puedo hacer esto en un trabajo oficial y sério, pero igual, es interestante (para mí) ver cómo puedo utilizar los dos idiomas para comunicar mis ideas. También me parece linda la interacción entre los lenguajes, no sólo de forma escrita, pero también en lo hablado. No sé cuánto más espacio haya dentro de mi mente para tener un vocabulario español cómo lo de Espronceda, pero ando pensando cómo puedo utilizar estos dos idiomas para crear algo lindo. Awesome!

El estudiante de Salamanca

As a work of literature, El estudiante de Salamanca is very clearly a Romantic text. This is especially seen in the character of Don Felix. In my last blog post, I referenced some British Romantic poetry including Byron’s Don Juan. As we talked about in class, the Don Juan character is a prominent figured in Romantic literature. Byron’s epic poem about this ladies’ man is perhaps his most famous work. Don Felix certainly shares many characteristics of Byron’s Don Juan. Don Juan and Don Felix are both handsome, strong, macho men with little to no concern for the consequences of his actions. Both figures are also passionate men with a great interest in seducing as many women as possible. However, there is a substantial difference between the two characters. Don Juan is heartless, with no significant affection for any one person other than himself. However, Don Felix has a clear connection to Elvira. Although he does seem to have been just as cold to her as the Don Juan character would have been, at the very least it appears as if he subconsciously has remorse for his actions towards her as her ghost appears in his life throughout the poem. Clearly, while the two characters are very similar, it is possible that Don Felix is slightly less of an inhumane heartbreaker.

Traducción vs. versión original

Empecé a estudiar el español hace un ano y unas meses. Recuerdo que leí “Cien anos de soledad” en francés y “El otoño del patriarca” en rumano hace veinte anos, en la universidad de Bucarest. Mi primer libro en español fue el pequeño “Aura” de Carlos Fuentes, que debí leer en la clase de Español 250 y el primer libro que compre fue “La casa en Mango street,” que no es difícil. Hace tres días, inspirada por la lectura de Espronceda, leí de nuevo unos poemas de Eminescu, que es el mejor poeta rumano y es romántico también. Si, perdemos tanto cuando intentamos leer una traducción, los versos de Eminescu suenan mejor en rumano, estoy segura de esto, porque en una traducción perdemos todos los pequeños matices que el autor elegí entre tantos otros para ponerlos en su creación. Es imposible recrear la misma atmósfera del poema de Espronceda en ingles o en alemán. Sin embargo, creo que traducirlo en una lengua de origen latina, como el francés, por ejemplo, seria menos difícil, porque hay tantas palabras que son similares y tienen el mismo sentido. Cuando leí los versos de Espronceda entendí casi todo sin utilizar el diccionario porque el español es tan similar al francés y al rumano. Creo que es más difícil traducir algo en una lengua que no tiene muchas cosas en común con la lengua original. El más difícil es traducir una obra que es la producción literaria de alguien que vive o vivió en una cultura demasiado diferente de la de la persona que va a leer la traducción. El traductor tiene no sólo el problema de los matices de la lengua sino también el problema del aspecto cultural, y el lector no sabe como interpretar algunos aspectos. Pienso en la traducción de Faiz Ahmed Faiz en ingles. Hay tantas diferencias entre las dos culturas que no creo que hay muchas palabras en un poema que “se corresponden”. Si, el mejor es aprender muchas lenguas para disfrutar de los tesoros de otras culturas.

Compare and Contrast

In El estudiante de Salamanca, the contrasts that the author creates between Elvira and Don Felix are very strong. If Elvira is represented by light, Don Felix is darkness. She’s innocent while he’s very experienced at wooing women. She dies because of an excess of emotions whereas he doesn’t really feel anything. The only things he cares about are his appearance and reputation. He doesn’t feel anything even when he kills people. On the other hand, Elvira is affected by everything that she feels. For example, just because her first love left, she completely breaks down. It’s actually interesting how similar Elvira is to Doña Francisca. They are both young and innocent. At one point in the work, Francisca also thinks that her first love left her. However, she’s not as dramatic as Elvira and doesn’t kill her self immediately. I guess the difference in the behavior between the two girls (rational vs. irrational) shows how Moratín was a neoclassic writer whereas Espronceda was a romantic writer.