Treachery and the Meaning of Loss

The waves of unification and expansion that shaped the geography of thirteenth-century Iberia created an imaginative setting for its literature. The Poema de Fernán González, whether written at the end of the triumphant phase of reconquest by Ferdinand III, or during the reign of his son Alfonso X, foregrounds the theme of growth and conquest. Announcing its business as that of telling ‘commo cobro s’la tierra toda de mar a mar’ (2d), the poem concedes that a tale of loss must come first, ‘Contar vos primero de commo la perdieron’ (3a). Implicit in this caveat is that the ideology of gain in the poem, expressed as cobrar, is in fact one of re-gain, and so it always incorporates the experience of loss. Proof lies in language as much as theme; gain and loss are pressed tightly together from the outset of the poem by the recurrence of the phrase ‘perdiendo e cobrando’.

Even in its triumphant first lines, the Poema alludes to ‘coita’ (3b, 4a), the condition of abjection following territorial dispossession. It is a combination of despair and deprivation of epic proportions, ‘muchos malos espantos, muchos malos sabores’ (4b), ‘frio e fanbre e muchos amargores’ (4c). Julian Weiss has discussed in detail the concept of coita in the Poema; he describes it as connoting ‘the shame of being leaderless, landless, afraid, without food or shelter’ (144), ‘suffering shorn of desire’ (145). Of much interest to the study in hand, he adds that it conveys ‘betrayal of destiny and contamination of bloodlines’; ‘betrayal of the past, and contamination of the future’ (144-45).4 As a chaotic medley of loss and despair, coita is indeed inherently linked with treachery in the poem:

After stating definitively that treachery in the genealogical line of Witiza provoked the loss of Spain, the poet provides a second, more emphatic description of coita. It is represented again as a state of immense fear and hunger, but with added diabolical woes: slaughter, persecution, and even cannibalism.