Parole Rubate (Jun 2022)
Links between the legend of “Los amantes de Teruel”, Challe’s “Continuation de Don Quichotte”, and Rousseau’s “Julie”
Abstract
Suicide for love by means of lethally cold water is the shared finale of these three literary monuments. The link, on the one hand, is the erotic life force, nearly universally thought of as warm and sustaining, but here turning against itself. The connection may also be that of Rousseau, in addition to knowing the famous but only partially similar legend of Sappho’s death, borrowed the situation and words surrounding Julie’s death – caused by a leap into a frigid lake to save a child of hers and by the pain of irresolvable separation from her beloved – directly from Montalban’s dramatization of two legendary Spanish lovers. Their desperation and loss of the will to live is symbolized by him throwing himself into the cold sea and her onto a stone-cold corpse. Rousseau had really access to the play’s text in Geneva, and also to his other likely source, Challe’s depiction of Don Quichotte’s despairing drink from Merlin’s icy fountain with magical powers over the emotions. In this way the would-be knight chooses to kill his forbidden love for Dulcinea and so brings to an end his burning frustration; the deep draft fills him with abulia and takes his life.
