Lazarillo of Tormes | Page 6

Luna's life are rather sketchy, a great
deal more can be said about his novel. His continuation of Lazarillo
was the only sequel to meet with any success. The same
characters--Lazarillo, the archpriest, the squire, etc.--are here, but their
personalities are changed drastically. The squire is the one who is most
noticeably different. He is no longer the sympathetic, poor, generous
(when he has money) figure of the first part. Now he is a thief, a
cowardly braggart, a dandy, and Lazaro has nothing but scorn for him.
Lazaro himself is now fully grown, and there is no room for his
personality to change as before. Perhaps the only character who is still
the same is Lazaro's wife.
Other differences between the two novels are also evident. In the first
Lazarillo we see a central protagonist who serves a different master or
performs a different type of work in each chapter. But in Luna's sequel
we do not have this same structure. In the first five chapters of Luna's
book, for example, Lazarillo's adventures flow as they do in traditional
novels: he goes to sea, the ship sinks, he is captured by fishermen and
put on exhibition as a fish, and finally he is rescued. The following
chapters, however, often divide his life into segments as he goes from

one position to another.
Another difference to be noted is that while the first Lazarillo addresses
a certain person ("You": Vuestra merced) who is not the reader but an
acquaintance of the archpriest, in the Second Part something quite
different occurs. Luna's Lazaro addresses the "dear reader" but hardly
with flattering terms: he humorously suggests that we may all be
cuckolds. Then he ironically refuses to tell us about--or even let us
think about--certain promiscuous details because they may offend our
pure and pious ears. The framework of the first novel is apparently a
device whose purpose, like the "Arabic historian" and the "translators"
of Don Quixote, is to create an atmosphere of realism, while Luna's
"dear reader" is simply a device for humor.
Another important distinction to be made between the two books is the
extent of word-play used. Almost one hundred years elapsed between
the times the two books were published, and literary styles changed a
great deal. While the first Lazarillo used some conceits, as we have
previously noted, Luna's book abounds with them to the point where it
becomes baroque. About people who are being flooded with water or
are drowning, it is usually said that they are overcome by trifling, but
watery, circumstances: "a drop in the ocean" (ahogar en tan poca agua).
Lazarillo's child is "born with the odor of saintliness about her" (una
hija ingerta a canutillo); unfortunately this refers less to her as holy
than it does to the fact that her father is really the archpriest. The use of
antithesis is also evident throughout Luna's novel. From the beginning
in which he dedicated his small work to a great princess, throughout the
length of the book, we find Lazaro esteemed by his friends and feared
by his enemies, begging from people who give money with open hands
while he does not take it with closed ones, and so on. Another trick in
language is Luna's plays on sounds: such combinations as sali--salte
(left--leaped), comedia--comida (rituals--victuals) are abundant. Luna
also uses obscene conceits for a humorous purpose, mixing them with
religious allusions both for humor and to vent his own feelings of
hostility against the church.
Yet another important difference between the two novels lies in Luna's
emphasis on tying up loose ends. We know that in the first Lazarillo
the protagonist leaves the blind man for dead, not knowing what
happened to him, and we never do find out whether he survived the

blow or not. Later the squire runs away from Lazaro, and we never see
him again either. The author of the first Lazarillo gives us a series of
vignettes in which the psychological interplay of the characters is
stressed. The characters fade out of Lazaro's life just as people fade in
and out of our own lives. Luna, however, was much more interested in
telling a good story--and one that has an ending. So the squire appears,
and tells what happened to him after leaving Lazaro: a complete story
in itself. He steals Lazaro's clothes and runs off, and later we see him
again--having got his just retribution almost by pure chance. The
innkeeper's daughter runs off with her priest, and both turn up several
chapters later; their account amounts to another short story. The
"innocent" girl and the bawd disappear, then return to play a scene with
Lazaro once more, and finally they fade out, presumably to live by their
wits ever after. Related to this stress on external action