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217
EXTENDED MEANINGS OF
INTERESANTE IN THE LATE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
MONROE Z. HAFTER
University of Michigan, Emeritus
In Zastrozzi (1810), arguably one of the worst
English novels of the nineteenth century, no less a
writer than Percy Bysshe Shelley used the key word
in a way that expresses the new meanings added to
old usages that I should like to discuss. Here are
two examples:
A long chain of retrospection ensued—he could not forget the happy
hours he had passed with Julia; her interesting softness, her ethereal form,
pressed on his aching sense (33);
He little thought that, under a form so celestial, so interesting, lurked a
heart depraved, vicious as a demon’s. (95)
Without a shadow of doubt Shelley uses the adjective to mean something
more akin to “physically desirable” or “sexually attractive” than simply to
“intriguing,” “mysterious,” or “profitable.”
The truth is that the word “interesting” or “interesante” is now so
common in English and Spanish that in neither language do we still see
clearly the constituent elements of inter and esse, that is “to be between.”
When we speak of some share or participation in another thing, a concern
that may yield a profit or gain for that person, we have the root especially
for the application of the word to business. “Usefulness” as Pedro Álvarez
de Miranda has pointed out, is generally given as the first meaning of the
term in eighteenth-century Spanish dictionaries, at the same time that it was
already recognized by Tomás de Iriarte (355, n.7) and Ramón de la Cruz as
a Gallicism (Urzainqui, 576-77, esp. n.5). Subsequently, however, should
we find another person to be “interesting,” we may have moved the word
to a more psychological or emotional terrain. With the extension of its
basic meaning to matters of literature and art—a book, a play a painting
that may be judged “interesting”—we have stretched the original term to
embrace matters of personal taste as well as of feelings. And, as Professor
Urzainqui has pointed out in her magisterial study, it swiftly became a
cardinal issue in neoclassical thought, beginning with Ignacio de Luzán
(579-81).
At this point we are concerned primarily with the engaging of attention,
the piquing of curiosity, the satisfying of some emotional identification.
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Hafter, “Extended meanings of interesante”
Finally, when the term is used to designate the specific allure of one of the
opposite sex, then with esthetics and attraction we almost certainly are
remarking erotic, or emotional, interests. To be sure, such interests are not
far removed from the desires for personal gain with which we started, but
at a very different level and changed context. All of these meanings came
into force for interesante in eighteenth-century Spain.
References abound throughout the century to document the primary
meaning of this term. That moralizing story teller, Ignacio García Malo
leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind when he couples the following two
nouns in one of his narratives, “¡Cuánto pueden el interés y la avaricia!”
(Voz de la naturaleza, 359). Nor is Vicente del Seyxo, for another example,
any less clear when he declares in his Ensayos políticos (1798),
El interés es el más grande resorte que mueve al corazón humano, pero
pide una atención muy escrupulosa para emplear este primer principio de
las acciones del hombre; porque viciada la naturaleza, las máquinas de su
movimiento lo serán también. El interés de las riquezas debe distinguirse
del amor, de la estimación de la gloria. (49)
And the word remains perfectly comprehensible, though strangely invoked
when it appears at the end of Samaniego’s fable, “La comadreja y los
ratones” (1781). The author honors the aged and hungry weasel who used
her wits to catch new prey, generalizing: “Es feliz un ingenio interesante: /
El nos ayuda, si el poder nos deja…” (Fábulas, 154). Clearly the adjective
here means something like “clever,” “helpful,” “resourceful,” but always in
the context of “self-serving.”
I should like now to draw in a text that is especially noteworthy because
it opens up an ambiguity that leads into a new semantic field. It comes at
an early point in Torres Villarroel’s autobiography (1743) when he warns
the reader to avoid the wicked actions narrated and to learn from the good
examples. He writes:
…cuando no lee sus acciones el ansia de imitar las unas y la buena
intención de aborrecer las otras, sino el ocio impertinente y la curiosidad
mal empleada. Lo que yo sospecho es, que si este estilo produce algún
interés, lo lleva solo el que escribe, porque el muerto y el lector pagan el
contado, el uno con los huesos, que le desentierran, y el otro con su
dinero. (Vida, 114-15)
The following quotations – and Professor Urzainqui has thoroughly
studied many others documenting esthetic concerns of the eighteenth
century – pick up the foregoing ambiguity to increase the small movement
beyond personal gain to a second meaning. I am referring now to what
might prove to become usefully instructive, but also pleasurable or
intellectually satisfying. The anonymous author of El Tío Gil Mamuco
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(1789), a book imitating Don Quijote, wrote in the prefatory remarks:
“…digo que me alegrara que esta narración verídica de las empresas
divertidas del memorable Tío Gil Mamuco, que concluí ayer viernes por la
noche, diera el mayor interés y pro: de algún interés o diversión confío,
pero no de ninguna pro; porque tengo experiencia del corazón humano y
del carácter nacional” (iii). A few pages later he confirms the connection by
repeating how what is useful can engage the attention of the reader:
teniendo por la cosa más precisa el introducir y aumentar la aplicación así
en orden a las obras útiles mecánicas, y que no se hacían en el Reyno,
como a los estudios más interesantes e instructivos…” (8). Vicente
Martínez Colomer reaffirms this joining of pleasure and useful instruction
to “interesting” in the prologue to his book (1795), by writing, “…y al
mismo paso debe [un buen narrador de historia] instruir, deleitar, mover e
interesar, uniendo el placer y la ilusión al fruto y la utilidad. (El impío por
vanidad, n.p.)
It would seem that we can move, in our consideration of the semantic
values of interesar, from what is useful for or engaging to oneself to a less
self-centered range of meaning, that is, useful to others, the holding of
another’s attention, the exchange of concerns. Written in the concluding
years of the eighteenth century, Luis Gutiérrez, apparently the anonymous
author of the extraordinary, anti-clerical novel, Cornelia Bororquía (Paris,
1801), addresses this exactly:
Hay en un corazón ingenuo ciertas fibras que se conmueven con mucha
facilidad y que corresponden en cierto modo a las de los corazones que se
le asemejan; y una vez establecidas las relaciones de analogía, una vez que
se ha encontrado el punto de contacto, resulte entre ellos un concierto
dulce e interesante. (148)
Further evidence of the psychological and affective bases our Word has
moved to comes a few pages later in the same novel. The author describes
a point of contact far removed from avarice or self-interest when he writes:
“La destreza y gracia con que tocaba la zagala, su voz dulce y melodiosa, y
un cierto aire de interés que ella daba a sus palabras, todo concurrió a llamar
mi atención por un momento…” (154). It is significant that in both
instances of the use of “interes[ante],” the word is joined to dulce, as if the
sweetness of the voice induced a feeling of harmony between the two
individuals. The passage suggests that the interest that one person has in
another rests on a basis of sympathetic feelings, although not restricted
always to music.
This may prove to be the meaning, about thirty years later, of the
somewhat enigmatic signature of the author of La filósofa en el Tajo (1830), at
the end of the dedication to his cousin. He concludes the offering of this
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supposedly modest work as emanating from “Su interesante primo, José
López Escovar y Carbonera.” The most likely understanding of his calling
himself “interesting” must consist of something akin to “sympathetic” or
“caring,” or, in other words, “interested in you.” In this way, the word
interesante enlarges its semantic value and thus gives further evidence of the
growing sensibility that manifests itself towards the end of the eighteenth
century.
We see how evident this becomes in passages from books published in
the 1790’s. In the first, a dead poet’s advocate addresses a possible
publisher to win support for this posthumous volume of poems (1793):
“Para dar un aire de ternura y delicadeza mayor a las composiciones de esta
clase, Iglesias las pone casi siempre en boca del sexo más débil, y de
consiguiente más interesante cuando sufre” (Iglesias de la Casa, I, x). And
Pedro Montengón (1795) follows in line with his recourse to the key word
in the following quotations:
Mas viendo que continuaba [la vieja madre] en llorar, entró del todo en la
cueva para confortarla, diciéndola: “¡Cuánto me interesa ese vuestro
llanto!” (El Mirtilo, 316);
…decid qué queréis que haga, pues aunque sumamente me intereso por
vos, y por Melanía … . (Ibid, 320);
No podía Mirtilo infundir mayor interés de afecto, y de confianza, en el
ánimo de Melanía, que el que la daba con aquellas palabras, y con el
afectuoso y resoluto tono con que las profería. Era sobrado interesable
aquella generosa opción para una mujer que se hallaba allí sola tantos años
… .(Ibid, 321)
Thus, taking the word to mean “affecting” or “moving,” the reader avoids
any temptation to read these concluding words of the novel as
Montengón’s resort to self-advertising: “Lectores, no es culpa mía, si dejo
de entreteneros con esta linda, e interesable historia” (336). Even so, it
should be noted that Montengón still uses “interest” in its primary sense of
monetary gain, for he writes earlier in the same novel, “…y le dijo, ¿que
cuáles eran sus pretensiones? Sonriéndose entonces Aliso le respondió que
su pretensión no era de interés, sino que muy atraído al canto, venía atraído
del dulce concento que acababa de oír desde la vecina loma…” (39-40).
Hardly negligible is the hint that if Aliso’s “interest” is not mercenary, his
attraction arises again in conjunction with “sweetness.” Even so, one might
want to recall the venerable adage that I have just made up: old meanings
never die.
From here it is a short journey back to our later point of departure
where interest was identified with sexual, rather than with emotional,
attraction. I draw on a passage from a work by Javier de Lariz y la Vega
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221
(1796) about a certain Cloe and Ismenia which reads: “la lisura en el trato se
descubría en todas sus palabras, y cuando estaban solas, la confianza dictaba
sus discursos. El interés de su hermosura no interrumpió su buena
armonía” (El triunfo, 2). This extension of meaning is fully evident in a
book from early in the nineteenth century. José García de Villalta writes
(1835), at one moment, “Llenó sus ojos en efecto la forma sílfica de Isabel,
que con su amiga Eugenia bajaba por la opuesta colina. Aquella inesperada
visión aumentó el desorden de sus ideas, y apenas acertaba a saludar su
interesante amiga” (I: 50). On the very same page, García de Villalta shifts
the emphasis slightly when he notes, “¿Qué tienes, Carlos? Exclamó con
afectuoso interés: aun no estás restablecido, bien lo veo” (I: 50).
Curiously, the preceding discussion drawn from novel and poem tends
to support conclusions of José Antonio Maravall based on political or
economic study. In a richly comprehensive essay, Professor Maravall cites
José Alonso Ortiz, the translator of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, for
writing in his prologue that men choose different paths to their goal of true
happiness (304). Some do so through the sciences of calculation, and
others through the “ciencias sublimes,” or moral disciplines. People
understand that pure benevolence will not win them help or support, “por
lo que la [ayuda] conseguirá con más seguridad interesando en favor suyo el
amor propio de los otros” (313). Thus self-interest is better served by
interesting another in your behalf. Maravall argues that the supposed
increase of individualism as the eighteenth century wore on, tied to the rise
of the bourgeoisie, is rather distorted. The opposite was the actual effect,
as individual assertion was joined to the affirmation of the group, personal
rights advanced for the common good.
How far interesante has come from its earliest meaning in economic
profit emerges with striking clarity in the Spanish version of another
English novel. A certain W. Holloway published in 1800 a story that
contains near the beginning this description of the protagonist: “His
disposition was sweet and cheerful, and his manners such as could not fail
to assure universal respect and esteem” (25). It was rendered in Spanish,
however, in these terms: “su figura era del todo interesante, y tales sus
acciones que no podía de granjearse un general aprecio y respeto” (15).
“Sweet and cheerful” —a boon to others—do not belong in the same
grouping as “avaricious”—gain for oneself—and the use of “interesante”
here reveals how much it has become a fashionable word.
Nothing confirms this more than its appearance in the Spanish
translation of the Marquis Louis-Antoine Caraccioli’s Le livre à la mode
(Paris, 1759), for in the dedication of the book, the term appears
unexpectedly. The Spanish version picks up Caraccioli’s teasing references
to his own cleverness when the latter writes to the ladies’ honor: “La
novedad sola del título basta a acreditarlo y darle una estimación singular.
Los cabriolés han tenido su tiempo, que aun dura, y este libro tendrá el
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suyo, o será sin duda muy desgraciado. Con tal que vosotras, mis veneradas
Señoras, digáis que esta obra es divina, hechicera, ingeniosa, y en fin interesante,
tiene hecha su fortuna” (“Dedicatoria,” italics textual). But the French text
reveals how much of a buzz-word the Spaniard was drawing on when we
see that the original read, “…divin, enchanté, joli à croquer, enfin sémillant,
et sa fortune est faite…” When “interesante” is thought to be a good
rendering for “sprightly,” then the Spanish word has surely traveled a far
distance from inter esse.
WORKS CITED
Álvarez de Miranda, Pedro. Palabras e ideas: El léxico de la Ilustración temprana
en España (1680-1760). Madrid: Imprenta Aguirre, 1992.
[Anonymous]. El Tío Gil Mamuco. Madrid: Aznar, 1789.
Caraccioli, Louis Antoine de. Le livre à la mode. A Verte-Feuille, De
l’imprimerie de Printemps, a Perroquet, l’année nouvelle. Paris, 1795.
___. El libro a la moda. Traducido del francés al castellano.
Escovar y Carbonera, José López. La filósofa en el Tajo. Madrid: Vda. De
Villalpando, 1830.
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Carnero. Madrid: Tamesis, 1995.
García Villalta, José. El golpe en vago. 4 vols. Madrid: Repullés, 1835.
[Gutiérrez, Luis]. Cornelia Bororquía o la víctima de la Inquisición (1801). Ed.
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Holloway, W. The Baron of Lauderbrooke. London: T. Marden, 1800.
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Martínez Colomer, Vicente. “Prólogo.” El impío por vanidad. Valencia:
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