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

of his Obras has a frontispiece that represents the writer asleep, leaning on his
table in front of which appears a caption, in the same position as that in Goya’s
Capricho, beginning with the words “Los Sueños de Don Francisco de
Quevedo.” 106 But the legend could also have been inspired by the poem “A
Jovino: el melancólico,” one of the Elegías morales by Méndez Valdés, a friend
of Goya’s. Moreover, as George Levitine has shown, the idea represented in this
Capricho was present in other European writers and can be traced to Horace’s Ars
Poetica. In fact, the beginning of a popular Spanish translation in Goya’s time is,
in Levitine’s words, “a colorful version of Goya’s Capricho [43]” and, unlike
other translations of that text, contains the word “capricho” in its first line. 107
To further complicate matters, many of the Caprichos have an audience in
the background, that is, interpreters of the depicted scenes within the scene itself.
These spectators often display inappropriate or unfriendly interpretations and are
generally contradicted by the verbal commentaries. In other words, neither the
verbal commentaries nor the captions are able to translate the image precisely for
the viewer/reader, but on the contrary, they further multiply the representational
possibilities and indicate “the failure of verbal and iconic signs to function as
stable signifying system” (Soufas 318).
But apart from images of viewing and observing, the Caprichos also
thematize reading itself. However, many of the readers, for example in Capricho
29, Esto sí que es leer (This is really reading), and 70, Devota profesión (Devote
106 Cf. George Levitine, “Some Emblematic Sources of Goya,” Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 22 (1959): 114.
107 George Levitine, “Literary Sources of Goya’s Capricho 43,” Art Bulletin 37 (1955): 58.
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