y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños sueño son.[1]
The mechanical artificiality of Calderón does not escape Farinelli:
The author designs and builds without inner compulsion. The crystallized thought remains dense and unstirred. There is no flow of life-blood in the drama. The words rise dryly; they never come eagerly or with a precipitate rush, and they yield themselves tamely to the skillful arrangement and intention of the artist. Simplicity is gone, selection governs. The commonplace is suppressed, instinct is slain, ornament and decoration are sought above all else. The poet forgets to mould the living clay spontaneously. Affectation becomes nature. In this drama, which deals with eternal human destiny, there are no great eternal utterances. The over-emphasis of the dialogue is on a par with its dialectic subtlety. A persistent play of logic chills the glow of the imagination. Every phrase is passed through the sieve of reflection. The rigid discipline of thought humiliates and ousts mere human feeling. The poet calculates, measures, ordains, divides, disposes.
So far as thought is concerned, the drama contains merely repetitions and amplifications of the very ancient idea that life is a dream. So far as poetry is concerned—there is none. The search for poetry reveals this one bit of ingenuous cynicism, which some follower of Nietzsche might take for his motto:
Nada me parece justo
en siendo contra mi gusto.[2]
