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

Similarly, Camilo José Cela’s Los Caprichos de Francisco Goya (1989)
invents short stories or commentaries inspired by and involving characters from
Goya’s Caprichos (1799). 78 Most of the story-commentaries explicitly situate the
characters within the action represented in Goya’s aquatints while adding details
in the form of explanations or motivations. For example, in number 32, Por que
fue sensible (Because she was sensitive) the narrator tells the story of a very
sensitive girl that nevertheless ends up in prison for having hurt the lover she
refused. Others of these story-commentaries are exclusively inspired by one of the
represented characters with only brief reference to the represented actions. This is
the case of number five, Tal para cual (Two of a kind) which narrates the story of
the womanizer, Jeronimo Heredia, focusing on his risky life, while only one line
alludes to the depicted situation and could be understood to be spoken by the two
viejas in the background of the aquatint. Yet other stories do not refer to any
concrete visual aspect of the aquatint, but generally narrativize its theme, moral or
the folk wisdom its title refers to. For instance, number four, El de la rollona
(Nurse’s child) narrates the story of the boy Gustadito Mantecón who remains a
child all his life because his family does not let him grow up. The title of this
image refers to a Spanish saying, “The nurse’s child who is seven years old and
still is being breast-fed,” a situation which Cela’s story dramatizes without
explicitly verbalizing Goya’s etching.
Unlike Goya’s Caprichos, which depict proverbs, commonplaces, and
general types, all the characters in Cela’s Caprichos have individual names, and
78 Camilo José Cela, Los Caprichos de Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (S.L.: Silex 1989).
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