Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

EL SUEÑO DE LA RAZÓN IN THE NOVEL AND THE FILM
Feuchtwanger’s novel has been said to use the metaphor of Goya’s Sueño
de la razón, that is, of sleeping reason as the central message of his historical
novel and its social and aesthetic concerns (Fischer 223). While the novel does
depict Goya’s process of awakening from a “sleep of reason,” it does so by
focusing on the unification of reason and fantasy to create artistic “maravillas,” as
the caption to Capricho 43 describes. Although the film also portrays an
awakening of reason, its focus is Goya’s political awakening and the function of
art as a means of subverting ideology. Thus, whereas the novel ends with a re-
unification of fantasy and reason, with Goya’s victory over his ghosts who yet
still remain present (“Er hatte die Gespenster gezwungen, ihm zu dienen, aber sie
blieben aufrührerisch,” 562), and with a new project of art only for himself (the
Pinturas negras), the film ends with images of war and upheaval and the threat of
the Inquisition from which Goya has fled into exile. Here, then, the “sleep of
reason” and the demons it brings forth have not yet been overcome.
The Sueño de la razón is not only a metaphor for the novel and the film,
but is also transmedialized at various times in both, and can thus be interpreted as
a mise-en-abyme of the two media. The three ekphrases in Feuchtwanger’s novel,
two interpretive and one dramatic, depict this image as an expression of Goya’s
own inner demons and his attempts to dominate them. Thus, all three of these
ekphrases are composed in a montage of “sleeping” and “awakening” of reason
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