[In the following essay, Goldberg argues that the Razón de amor is indeed a unified work, basing her assertions on her interpretation of the piece as a dream-poem.]

The Razón de amor, an erudite lyric poem of the thirteenth century has been approached critically from various points of view. Alfred Jacob performed a feat of twentieth-century exegesis to show that the poet made use of amorous imagery to write a mystical Christian allegory. Alicia C. de Ferraresi identified it as an amorous vision in conformity with the courtly love tradition. She writes: "La amada nunca vista cobra en esta dimensión visionaria la realidad humana, corporal y psìcica que corresponde al ideal del 'fin amor'." She too sees Christian symbolism in the poem—the kiss of the lovers is the kiss of peace; the baptismal water and the eucharistic wine serve jointly to make possible the communion of the soul with the "Amor Supremo"; the intrusive dove is both earthly cupiditas and divine caritas. Margot de Ley finds interesting new correspondences between the autobiographical passages in the Razón and the biographical tradition in Provencal poetry. She notes in particular the incidence of the topic of the travel account during which the poet has an amorous encounter. More recently Margaret Antwerp called attention to the mixture of the popular lyric in the poem which she identifies as the consciously literary production of a sophisticated poet. Perhaps the most vexing problem in connection with the poem is the question of its unity with the "Denuestos del agua y el vino", a traditional debate with which it was copied with some transitional lines. Leo Spitzer, seeing a thematic unity, complained that the poem suffered when it was considered to be the fusion of two different poems by a poet-scribe, a solution proposed earlier by Carolina Michaëlis.

Accepting Margaret Antwerp's image of a sophisticated poet who made use of traditional lyrics in the composition of the amorous nucleus of the poem, we can use her own argument to take exception to her stand on the unity of the poem. She writes: "The anthologists' separation of the courtly poem from the "Denuestos" is certainly justifiable. Comical in tone and traceable to medieval sources, the debate between the wine and the water cannot be properly said to belong to the same genre or tradition as the lyrical love poem, the Razón de amor" However, is it not possible that a poet who was imaginative enough to rely on popular lyrics, even reproducing a cantiga de amigo in his courtly poem, might have also considered the use of a traditional debate as a part of his total composition? Is it not also possible to imagine Michaëlis' poet-scribe, who, at the moment of transcribing two poems, saw in a creative flash a relationship between them? After all, creativity has been defined as the perception of relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas. The creative link in this case might have been a familiarity with contemporary dream lore, and, of course, an insight into human dream patterns stemming from personal experience.

This is not to suggest that the new element is the connection between dreams and amorous visions. Alicia C. de Ferraresi called attention to the use of a dream as the beginning of an amorous vision in the Cancionero de Ripoll. We find a striking parallel in the Rota Veneris of Boncompagno da Signa (b. 1170). In this guide to the composition of love letters the Bolognese scholar wrote: "Lovers have … been wont to say that they have witnessed in a dream what they have done." In a sample letter the lover writes of a time when he entered a garden where there were two rivulets. Tired after the hunt, he lies down under a pine tree and listens to the song of the birds. It is spring. A lovely virgin appears to him after he has fallen asleep sweetly: "She took me by the hand and began to tarry beside me for a while. First she made use of the most refined eloquence, introducing herself in colorful words; then after much had been spoken, she twined her arms around me, embraced me sweetly and, pressing her ruby lips upon mine, she gave me ineffable kisses." What is new in the unified Razón is the creative combination of a lyrical dream with an abrasively didactic debate as a subsequent scene in the same dream.

Having agreed that the amorous nucleus, the Razón, is a dream vision, then we can consider the possibility that the arrival of the dove whose actions provoke the debate is a transitional dream scene which leads the reader to the final episode of the dream, the noisy doctrinaire debate. We can then propose that we are confronted with a new poem in whose unity rings the authorial voice of a particular poet-scribe who made the creative connection between the dream in which wine and water figured prominently and the traditional debate. In a sense, the new work, a re-formation of two previous poems, is a translation in the most basic meaning of the word. An artistic creation has been transferred in a new version in which the meaning has been altered instead of the language.

Before going about the task of examining the entire poem as a dream narrative, it is appropriate to present a brief summary of the presentation of dream material in medieval texts. First, we can acknowledge that the medieval author and his audience shared a common fund of dream lore—classical, Scriptural and folkloric. Since dreaming is a normal part of the human experience, we can also conjecture a shared familiarity with the phenomenon of dreaming. Medieval authors presented dream accounts in realistic circumstances, frequently giving the date, the time of day, the physical condition of the dreamer, the preparations for sleep, his location, the rapidity with which the dream began, the quality of the sleep, the duration of the dream, the part of the sleep period in which the dream occurred, the awakening, the recounting of the dream to another and a reaction to the content. It was not at all uncommon, however, to find one or more of these realistic details omitted from what was nevertheless clearly a dream. In fact, Ruy Paez denied that he was sleeping but reported that he had awakened in fear. Modern psychologists make use of waking dreams as therapeutic tools recognizing their kinship with those that take place during a sleep period. For our purpose, the consideration of the Razón as a dream vision need not depend on our recognition of its having been either a sleeping or a waking dream, since in both cases most of the circumstances are similar.

We are now ready to examine the Razón de amor con los denuestos del agua e el vino as a unified poem transcribed by an imaginative poet-scribe whose intention it was to accommodate the material to the structure of a dream report.

After introducing himself and giving his credentials, poetic and courtly, the poet begins his narrative with the information that he has just eaten his midday meal. One of the six generators of dreams according to St. Gregory was a full stomach. It should be noted that dreams resulting from this kind of stimulus (ex parte corporibus in Macrobius' scheme) were prophetically unreliable because the body's digestive activities impeded the soul's capacity to receive spiritual or divine messages. Having posited a shared familiarity with scientific dream lore between author and reader, we must begin to doubt the view that the poem is a Christian allegory since it occurs specifically "despues yantar" (v. 11). In the Gran conquista de ultramar, Corvalan has a singularly unreliable dream after an evening of eating and drinking. In fact, when the author of Amadis de Gaula wanted to convey the idea that his hero was going to dream prophetically, he writes that he had eaten very little before going to sleep.

In the manner of traditional dream reports, the poet tells us that he was in an olive grove after his meal giving his location and his condition (vv. 11-12). He gives us the time mentioning the siesta, and the date saying that it is April. In the last few moments of waking reality he sees two glasses placed up high in a tree—we know what his thoughts were upon falling asleep. Although Spitzer, following Michaëlis' line of thought considered this to be a supernatural touch, and Antwerp regarded the arrangement as the symbolic expression of the dueña/doncella's carnal desire for her lover, anyone who has spent time living out of doors can testify to the practical logic of placing containers of liquid (susceptible to spillage, theft or sun spoilage) high up in the crook of a tree for safety and for shade. As part of his waking thoughts, he speculates about the contents of the glasses. The first one, a silver goblet is filled with fine red wine and is covered to keep out the heat. Idly he thinks that it must have been placed there by the woman who owns the orchard in preparation for the visit of her lover. Perhaps the wine has magical properties—perpetual immunity from illness, activated if it is taken daily with the morning meal (presumably after a night spent with the dueña): "Qui de tal uino ouiesse / en-la-mana quan comiesse: / e dello ouiesse cada-dia, / nu[n] cas mas enfermarya" (vv. 23-26). His thoughts are erotic as he imagines the relationship between the dueña of the orchard and her lover. His eye moves upward in the tree and he sees another glass full of water from the spring in the grove: "que en-el mançanar se nacia" (v. 30). This water frightens him. Although he is thirsty he is afraid that it might be enchanted (vv. 27-32).

The poet has noted the beginnings of the subsequent debate giving the water a sinister connotation and the wine a salutary one. Quite possibly he is in that interim pre-dream state called phantasma, visum by Macrobius during which the dreamer is sometimes a victim of succubi. In this state the dreamer frequently denies that he has been dreaming or even that he was asleep. Thus his recall of having disrobed and having put his head down in the meadow is a part of his memory of that period in which the boundary between the waking state and the sleeping state is uncertain. Spitzer, noting that the poet had not mentioned falling asleep, commented nevertheless on the dream-like quality of the scene. As we have noted above, the omission of one or another of the circumstantial details of a dream account did not preclude the possibility that the author was describing a dream experience. Two other dream accounts which began in a locus amoenus are also sketchy in their details—Paris' dream in the Corónica troyana and the vision of Berceo, the pilgrim, in the Milagros.

Rather than seizing upon the omission of any mention of falling asleep as a sign of a scribal lapse, I suggest an alternate explanation. The so-called lapse might be one more realistic circumstantial detail—dreamers often were unsure if they were awake or asleep. Often dreamers in medieval dream reports, upon awakening tell of having been asked by their angelic visitors if they were asleep or awake. Sometimes an author used this uncertainty to mask an apparent falsehood as in the case of Queen Brisena who tried to explain the loss of property entrusted to her under lock and key by saying that she remembered having given the key to someone: "Digovos que no puedo entender si esto me auino en suenos o en realidad" (Amadís de Gaula, I, 255).

Ready for his rest, the poet of the Razón says abruptly that he arrived at a spring: "Pleguem a una fuente perenal" (v. 37). This is a crucial point in the poem. Spitzer interprets the verb as "yo aproximé" 'I came close to' assuming that the spring in question is still the spring in the orchard. However, if we take the verb literally as an arrival, then he has suddenly found himself in a new setting, in a change of scene typical of the brusque transitions common to dreams which are in a sense interior voyages. The very suddenness of the arrival conforms to the rapid, unexplained changes common to dreams.

Preoccupied by the events of the day (dreams that resulted from recent experience or thoughts were ex parte anime), the poet's dream revolves around his erotic thoughts upon sinking into the dream which had centered on the two glasses, the woman who had put them there, her lover and the heat of the day. He names the flowers that surround the spring, instead of just saying that they were lovely and profuse (salvia, lilies, roses and violas) and then translates them dream fashion into the medieval commonplace that in Paradise there are flowers whose fragrance will magically revive the dead. This resuscitative property is reminiscent of his waking thoughts about the curative powers of the wine in the silver goblet in the tree. The refrigerative property of the spring (vv. 39-42) is an echo of his thoughts about the enchanted water in the other glass.

We have been following the poet's dream adaptation of his waking thoughts about love, about the dangers of enchantments and about the heat in his dream report. Modern psychologists (post-Freudians) emphasize the usefulness of dream imagery in our learning to deal with waking reality: "In the Jungian scheme things appear differently because dreams are viewed not as symptoms of a sickness but as visions or images of meaning." In this dream, the poet makes the connection between the wine glass and the owner of the orchard who had put it there, and the woman who is the object of his love. This is the blurring of identity to which Antwerp refers. Viewed thus this dream is a fantasy in the Augustinian sense—a dream of images conserved in the dreamer's memory, as opposed to a phantasm which is a dream of an image without correspondence to reality, and ostensio which is a dream in which the images stem from divine intervention.

In the first part of the dream, the lover drank the water of the spring, an action of which he had been afraid when he was awake (vv. 51-4). Bolder in his dream, he picks one of the magical flowers, although he never even considered trying any of the curative wine when awake. He is inspired to sing of "fin amor" but the impulse is arrested by the sudden arrival of a lovely young woman, the most beautiful he has ever seen (a typically non-visual superlative allusion). Because this is a dream, the poet is free to depart from the usual standard rhetorical portrait of the beautiful woman. C. B. Hieatt explains this descriptive freedom speaking about dream poetry (the Roman de la rose in particular): "The imagery and description of the poem are richly visual, and the poem is to a very large extent an account of what the poet sees [her italics] rather than what he hears or thinks." In the Razón the poet actually describes the young woman's hair style instead of referring to her remarkably lovely hair ("cabelos cortos sobr'ell oreia" [v. 59]). She wears a hat to protect her from the noon-day sun: "Un sombrero tien en la tiesta / que nol fiziese mal la siesta" (vv. 73-4). Here the poet repeats his waking thoughts about the sun using parallel language: "que nom fiziese mal la siesta; / parti me mi las uistaduras" (vv. 34-5). Another pictorial detail is the mention of the gloves she carries in her hand. Often the subject of a drawing in a medieval miniature was made identifiable by an object he held in his hand. In the Razón the poet uses this visual device to prefigure the information that the poet has some previous connection with the young woman (v. 75 and 122-23). Professor de Ferraresi sees this line as evidence that the dream vision is a courtly one: "Como ya hemos dicho, ella es la dama lejana, el amor de lonh (vv. 96, 108), la amada nunca vista, real e irreal como un sueño." She relates the dream device to the courtly poetic need to possess and yet not to possess the object of the poet's love.

In contrast to this position Margaret Antwerp establishes most clearly the blend of the popular lyric (a most uncourtly genre) in the Razón, However she does not mention the frankly aggressive and sexual tone of the young woman's song. It appears that the "dama lejana" is more akin to the women who sang the jarchas than she is to the belle dame sans merci (who may even have been a nineteenth century invention). In a sequence of events beginning with the taking of the young woman's hand, the lovers engage in a teasing little interplay while sitting under a tree, until they embrace and consummate their love. Whether the poet intended to suggest actual sexual union or as de Ferraresi proposes the tantalizing contemplation of the woman's unclothed figure he ends the scene abruptly. The lovers don't exchange pledges of devotion; rather she begs his pardon for having to leave so soon and he begs her to think of him (vv. 136-39).

No sooner has she left than a white dove interrupts the dreaming poet's post-coital languors. For Antwerp this is the beginning of the dream as the drowsy poet reenacts symbolically his recent sexual encounter. If, as I maintain, the entire poem is a unified dream report, then the episode of the dove's arrival is a brusque transition which links the two principal parts of the poem. It is not at all uncommon in dream lore to find a dreamer who has a dream within a dream. Here the dreamer distressed by her abrupt departure says that he wanted to fall asleep: "que que la-ui fuera del uerto, / por (por) poco non fuy muerto. Por uerdat quisieram adormir, / mas una palomela ui;" (vv. 144-46), and then dreams another repetition of his erotic thoughts upon falling asleep in the orchard. Recalling dream-fashion his fear of the water and the magical qualities of the wine, the debate which follows is a logical, censorious episode with which to end an erotic dream. Its shrill angry tone is consistent with the idea of dreams as censors of our waking thoughts. I find intriguing the connection made by Antwerp between the contents of the Razón and the popular lyric: "No pueden dormir mis ojos, / no pueden dormir. / Y soñaba yo, mi madre / dos horas antes del dia / que me florecìa la rosa: / ell vino so ell agua frida. / No pueden dormir." This little song is a complete dream report since it includes the restlessness of the sleeper, the hour of the dream, and even a dream account made to the mother of the dreamer. According to Antwerp, the wine represents the longings of the young girl who sings the song and the water stands for the satisfaction she seeks. If our hypothetical poet-scribe made a similar connection, then the spilling of the water into the wine is a dream reaction of conscience to the satisfaction derived from having bathed in the water: "Quando en-el-uaso fue entrada / e fue toda bien esfryada, / ela que quiso ex[ir] festino, / uertios al-agua sobre '1 uino" (vv. 158-61).

In this little scene we find some of the characteristic techniques of dream accounts. The dove is described comparatively at first: "tan blanca era como la nieu del puerto" (v. 148), and then more specifically: "un-cas-cauielo dorado / tray al pie atado" (vv. 153-54). Merely symbolic doves characteristically do not wear the bell of a domestic pet, nor are they usually clumsy enough to spill their bath water. The bird's caution about the spring leads it to the glass, an echo of the poet's fear of the water before he fell asleep. As we have noted, it is the satisfaction of a bodily need that leads to the noisy moralizing of the debate, further reinforcing the logical nature of the sequence of events in the new poem. A drastically sudden change of mood is entirely consistent with human dream experiences, a fact which the Marqués de Santillana recognized when he made dramatic use of the transformation of a locus amoenus into a dreadful place where even the tree trunks became "fieros, ñudosos" and the song birds turned into poisonous snakes. Although the water has the last word in the debate, we can wonder if the poet-scribe did not intend to convey extra meaning when he asks for the traditional reward of wine, making a final vinous allusion.