Lieberman, Julia Rebollo, ed. El teatro alegórico de Miguel (Daniel Leví) de Barrios.
Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta. 1996. xix + 234 pp.
Of the three major poets to emerge from the Marrano or New Christian background, Miguel de Barrios was the only one to become fully integrated into the Jewish community of Amsterdam and to write there as a Jew. João Pinto Delgado reached the safety of Amsterdam but ceased to be a poet and Antonio Enríquez Gómez returned to martyrdom in Spain.
To use the word marrano with its connotations for the modern Spanish speaker, however, is to offend against a sensitivity indicated by Julia Rebollo Lieberman who herself avoids the term. Perhaps it is time to give up the word, though to my mind it continues to have value in distinguishing between those conversos who identified with Judaism and those who did not. Nevertheless, Rebollo Lieberman is right where Barrios is concerned: he ceased to be a Marrano in 1672 when he turned his back on a double life straddled between the Spanish army in Antwerp and Amsterdam and became Daniel Leví de Barrios, Jew and poet laureate of Amsterdam's Jewish community. It is this Barrios that is the subject of this edition and study of five autos published in 1684. By the time these were written it seems he had actually been integrated into the Jewish community for some twenty years in a way not evident from the fact of his previous dual existence nor hitherto appreciated. In that time he had moved on from the Christian-dominated perspective of Contra la ley no hay fuerza (before 1672) which Kenneth Scholberg included in his study La poesía religiosa de Miguel de Barrios (Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1963). He had moved from a simple inversion of values—for the Christian religion substitute the Torah—to the complete assimilation of Jewish exegesis and the concept of the ley de mandamiento into the structure and fabric of his writing.
It is now over thirty years since Scholberg's milestone in Jewish-converso literary studies was written. In her introductory study, Julia Rebollo Lieberman draws on some of the intervening developments, for example, the historical and economic background to Amsterdam's rise to independence and the enlightened tolerance that drew in the Jewish diaspora from Iberia. In her own analysis she is particularly good at delineating the interface between the religious and the literary worlds that Barrios moved in—the literary and the community cofradfas and academias, whose memberships and structures were interchangeable. What is also apparent is the knife-edge which Barrios was on, fearful of rabbinical disapproval and keen to demonstrate the validity of his poetry as a medium for expressing Jewish ideas and values. (Interestingly, the author tends to play down Barrios' involvement with the pseudo-messianism of Sabbatai Zevi which played such a disruptive part in his life.)
The introduction also contains a careful analysis of the autos themselves, drawing the comparison with Calderón in terms of theme, structure and characters. A particularly interesting passage is devoted to the role of music in plays. One point which is not resolved however, is whether these or other works of Barrios were performed in the synagogue the author appears contradictory here. It also remains to be explained why Barrios and others continued to use the Valera translation of the Bible instead of that of Ferrara when we know that he drew heavily on the prayerbook which employs the same archaizing language.
None the less, this is a well-researched and valuable work which is a worthy successor to Scholberg and provides a firm inspiration for further studies to come, not least, hopefully, by Julia Rebollo Lieberman herself.
TIM OELMAN
Pinner, Middlesex.