[Below, Grieve embellishes on Harriet Goldberg's interpretation of the Razón de amor (see above), attempting to define the exact point in the poem where the dream state begins.]

Although critics continue to debate the structure, meaning and unity of the thirteenth-century poem Razón de amor, there seems to be little disagreement that the anonymous poet's composition is complex enough to keep critics busy ever since Morel-Fatio first published it in 1887. Investigations designed to support or dispute the unity of the poem through the elaboration of the generic elements which inform the work have produced theories of the poem's relationship to Christian allegory, the courtly love tradition, its incorporation of popular lyric, and its correspondences to the biographical tradition in Provencal poetry. Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Leo Spitzer, while differing in their supporting arguments, agree that Razón de amor, an amorosa visione, and the debate, "Denuestos del agua y el vino," are two parts which form a single composition.

Continuing in the line of those who favor the view of a unified work, Harriet Goldberg proposes that the entire poem, that is to say, Razón de amor y Denuestos del agua y el vino, be considered in the context of "human dream patterns stemming from personal experience." She says:

This is not to suggest that the new element is the connection between dreams and amorous visions.… 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. [Kentucky Romance Quarterly 31 (1984)]

Goldberg provides convincing evidence of the poet-scribe's knowledge of dream lore, and she examines the poem in light of scientific discoveries on the states of dreaming and pre-dreaming. She discusses the difficulty in determining precisely where in the poem the dream-state begins, for in the recounting of the amorous adventure, which is the subject of Razón de amor, it appears that the author does not linguistically distinguish between a waking and a dreaming state. In this short study, I propose to show that the poet indeed offers indirect evidence of his moment of falling asleep, that it occurs near the beginning of the poem, and that this evidence strengthens the unity of the poem.

After the opening stanza in which it is stated that the poem was composed by "un-escolar … que sie[m]pre duens amo" (5-6), the poet begins his tale of what happened after his midday meal:

En-el-mes d'abril, depues yantar,
estaua so un-oliuar.
Entre-çcimas d'un mançanar
un-uaso de plata ui-estar;
pleno era d'un claro uino
que era uermeio e fino;
cubierto era de-tal mesura
no-lo tocas la calentura.
Vna-duena lo-y-eua-puesto,
que era senora del uerto,
que quan su amigo uiniese,
d'a quel uino a-beuer-le-disse.
Qui de tal uino ouisse
en-la-mana quan comiesse:
e dello ouisse cada-dia,
nu[n]cas mas enfermarya.
Ariba del mançanar
otro uaso ui estar;
pleno era d'un agua fryda
que en-el mançanar se-naçia.
Beuiera d'ela de grado,
mas oui-miedo que era encantado.
Sobre un-prado pusmi tiesta,
que nom fiziese mal la siesta;
parti de mi-las uistiduras,
que nom fizies mal la calentura. (11-36)

Spitzer regarded the inclusion of the mysterious vessels in the tree as a supernatural touch and commented on the dream-like quality of this part of the poem. Goldberg, however, is the first to examine the poem as a dream with a dream: the "Denuestos del agua y el vino" contained within the frame of the amorous dream of the poet. She seems unworried by the lack of a concrete reference to the moment of falling asleep, relying instead on scientific data for the possible cause: "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." Goldberg goes on to describe why the poet might be unsure of his own state of mind:

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 is head down in the meadow is a part of that period in which the boundary between the waking state and sleeping state is uncertain.

Interestingly enough, Goldberg considers the description of the vessels to be part of the waking state:

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.… 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.

This is possible, but I submit that the line of demarcation between waking and sleeping occurs both abruptly and near the beginning of the poem with a physical impossibility: the description of the silver goblet, the "vaso de plata."

In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, a masterpiece of the illogical logic of dreams, the King asks Alice who she sees coming down the road:

"I see nobody on the road," said Alice.

"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!"

If we are to believe what the poet says in Razón de amor, he, too, was able to "see Nobody." The poet describes from his position below the branches of the tree that contents of an opaque object, a silver goblet. Not only is the goblet metal, but it is covered. If we see this section as a dream report, and here I agree with Goldberg's proposal, what better place to start than with the recounting of the "seeing" of something that, logically, could not be seen? It is not infrequent in dreams to stand apart from oneself and see and do things which humanly could not be achieved. To regard this description as an oversight on the part of the author is one answer, but it fails to ring true in a poem which reflects, in many ways, an admirable level of poetic sophistication.

The description of the contents of an opaque object is not the only example of an unusual phenomenon in the poem. Near the end of the first part of the work, the poet describes how the contents of the second vessel managed to get into the first:

En-la fuent [the dove] quiso entra,
[mas] quando a-mi uido estar,
[entros] en-el [uaso del] malgranar.
Quando en-el-uaso fue entrada
e fue toda bien effryada,
ela que quiso ex[ir] festino,
uertios al-agua sobre 'l-uino! (155-61)

As far as can be determined, Arsenio Pacheco is the only critic to comment that the wine vessel has somehow become uncovered so that the dove could tip the water into the wine: "Debe notarse que, en algun momento que no se precisa, el vaso de vino ha sido destapado, pues en otro caso no se explicaria que pudiera verterse en él el agua derramada por la paloma" [in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 51 (1974)].

One or two errors, or minor slips, on the part of the poet are possible, certainly, but it should strike us as unusual that in this case both items in question deal with the silver goblet. Is it not more likely, then, that there exists a reasonable, calculated link between the "slips" which might explain the so-called errors? The first example, the description of the vessel's contents, could well occur in the context of a dream. In the second case, this kind of jump from covered to uncovered, again, quite simply poses no problem to the logic of a dream. The net result of this link is that the amorous adventure, Razónde amor, becomes circular in its reference to the two vessels and in its presentation, or lack of presentation of detail, of two unexplained phenomena.

What this reveals about the poem, therefore, is that Razón de amor is perhaps even more cleverly unified than had been thought previously. The vessels mentioned at the beginning of the poem appear not to be important to the development of the poem until the end of the amorous adventure and have been criticized for being placed there only to enable the poet to continue with the debate later. If, in fact, both references to the vessels, at the onset of the amorous adventure as well as at the beginning of the debate, serve to signal the start of dream sequences, then the question of gratuitous references, unexplained phenomena, and structural unity are happily resolved in favor of the view of a poet's highly developed awareness of sophisticated poetic composition.