THE AGE OF FELIPE II.
1556-1598
In Spain, as elsewhere, the secular battle waged between classicism
and romanticism. As poets sided with Boscán and Garcilaso, or with
Castillejo, so dramatists declared for the _uso antiguo_ or for the
_uso nuevo_. The partisans of the "old usage" put their trust in
prose translations. We have already seen that the roguish Villalobos
translated the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus, and Pérez de Oliva not only
repeated the performance, but gave a version of Euripides' _Hecuba_.
Encina's successor was found in the person of Miguel de Carvajal, whose
_Josefina_ deals, in classic fashion, with the tale of Joseph and his
brethren. Carvajal draws character with skill, and his dialogue lives;
but he is best remembered for his division of the play into four acts.
Editions of Vasco Díaz Tanco de Fregenal are of such extreme rarity
as to be practically inaccessible. So are the _Vidriana_ of Jaime de
Huete and the _Jacinta_ of Agustín Ortiz—two writers who are counted
as followers of Torres Naharro. A farce by the brilliant reactionary,
Cristóbal de Castillejo, entitled _Costanza_, is only known in extract,
and is as remarkable for ribaldry as for good workmanship. The _Preteo
y Tibaldo_ of Pero Álvarez de Ayllón and the _Silviana_ of Luis Hurtado
are insipid pastorals. Many contemporary plays, known only by rumour,
have disappeared—suppressed, no doubt, because of their coarseness.
Torres Naharro's _Propaladia_ was interdicted in 1540, and, eight
years later, the Cortes of Valladolid petitioned that a stop be put to
the printing of immoral comedies. The prayer was heard. Scarce a play
of any sort survives, and the few that reach us exist in copies that
are almost unique. The time for the stage was not yet. It is possible
that, had Carlos Quinto resided habitually in some Spanish capital, a
national theatre might have grown up; but the lack of Court patronage
and the classical superstition delayed the evolution of the Spanish
drama. This comes into being during the reign of Felipe _el Prudente_.
Encina's precedence in the sacred pastoral is granted; but his eclogues
were given before small, aristocratic audiences. We must look elsewhere
for the first popular dramatist, and Lope de Vega, an expert on
theatrical matters, identifies our man. "Comedies," says Lope, "are no
older than Rueda, whom many now living have heard." The gold-beater,
LOPE DE RUEDA (fl. 1558), was a native of Seville. A prefatory sonnet
to his _Medora_, written by Francisco Ledesma, informs us that Rueda
died at Córdoba, and Cervantes adds the detail that he was buried in
the cathedral there. This would go to show that a Spanish comedian was
not then a pariah; unluckily, the cathedral archives do not corroborate
the story. Taking to the boards, Lope de Rueda rose to be an _autor
de comedias_—an actor-manager and playwright. Cervantes, who speaks
enthusiastically of Rueda's acting, describes the material conditions
of the scene. "In the days of this famous Spaniard, the whole equipment
of an _autor de comedias_ could be put in a bag: it consisted of four
white sheepskins edged with gilt leather, four beards and wigs, and
four shepherd's-staves, more or less.... No figure rose, or seemed to
rise, from the bowels of the earth or from the space under the stage,
which was built up by four benches placed square-wise, with four or
six planks on top, about four hand's-breadths above ground. Still
less were clouds lowered from the sky with angels or spirits. The
theatrical scenery was an old blanket, hauled hither and thither by
two cords. This formed what they called the _vestuario_, behind which
were the musicians, who sang some old _romance_ without a guitar." This
account is substantially correct, though official documents in the
Seville archives go to prove that Cervantes unconsciously exaggerated
some details—a thing natural enough in a man recalling memories
fifty years old. A passage in the _Crónica del Condestable Miguel
Lucas Iranzo_ implies that women appeared in the early _momos_ or
_entremeses_. But Spaniards inherited the Arab notion that women are
best indoors. The fact that Rueda was the first man to choose his pitch
in the public place, and to appeal to the general, would explain his
substitution of boys for girls in the female characters. Rueda was the
first in Spain to bring the drama into the day. One of his personages
in _Eufemia_—the servant Vallejo—makes a direct appeal to the
public:—"Ye who listen, go and dine, and then come back to the square,
if you wish to see a traitor's head cut off and a true man set free."
Thenceforward the theatre becomes a popular institution.
Lope de Rueda is often called _el excelente poeta_, and his verse
is exampled in the _Prendas de Amor_, as also in the _Diálogo sobre
la Invención de las Calzas_. The _Farsa del Sordo_, included by the
Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle in his admirable new edition of
Rueda's works, is almost certainly due to another hand. Cervantes
commends Rueda's _versos pastoriles_, but these only reach us in the
fragment which Cervantes himself quotes in _Los Baños de Argel_.
Still, it is not as a poet that Rueda lives: he is rightly remembered
as the patriarch of the Spanish stage. For his time and station he
was well read: López Madera will have it that he knew Theocritus, and
it may be so. More manifest are the Plautine touches in the _paso_
which Moratín names _El Rufián Cobarde_, with its bully, Sigüenza,
a lineal descendant of the _Miles Gloriosus_. It has been inferred
that, in choosing Italian themes, Rueda followed Torres Naharro.
This gives a wrong impression, for his debt to the Italians is far
more direct. The _Eufemia_ takes its root in the _Decamerone_, being
identical in subject with _Cymbeline_; the _Armelina_ is compounded of
Antonio Francesco Ranieri's _Attilia_, with Giovanni Maria Cecchi's
_Servigiale_; the _Engaños_ is a frank imitation of Niccolò Secchi's
_Commedia degli Inganni_; and the _Medora_ is conveyed straight from
Gigio Arthenio Giancarli's _Zingara_.[8]
Neither in his fragments of verse nor in his Italian echoes is the true
Rueda revealed. His historic importance lies in his invention of the
_paso_—a dramatic interlude turning on some simple episode: a quarrel
between Torubio and his wife Águeda concerning the price of olives not
yet planted, an invitation to dinner from the penniless licentiate
Xaquima. Rueda's most spirited work is given in the _Deleitoso
Compendio_ (1567) and in the _Registro de Representantes_ (1570), both
published by his friend, Juan de Timoneda. In a longer flight the
effect is less pleasing; the prose _Coloquio de Camila_ and its fellow,
the _Coloquio de Timbria_, are long _pasos_, complicated in development
and not drawn to scale. Still, even here there is a keen dramatic sense
of situation; while the comic extravagance of the themes—farcical
incidents in picaresque surroundings—is set off by spirited dialogue
and vigorous style. Rueda had clearly read the _Celestina_ to his
profit; and his prose, with its archaic savour, is of great purity
and power. The patriotic Lista comes as near flat blasphemy as a good
Spaniard may by mentioning Rueda in the same breath as Cervantes, and
that the latter learned much from his predecessor is manifest; but the
point need be pressed no further. Considerable as were Rueda's positive
qualities of gay wit and inventive resource, his highest merit lies in
this, that he laid the foundation-stone of the actual Spanish theatre,
and that his dramatic system became a capital factor in his people's
intellectual history.
He found instant imitators: one in a brother actor-manager, Alonso
de la Vega (d. 1566), whose _Tolomea_ is adapted from _Medora_; the
other in Luis de Miranda (fl. 1554), who dramatised the story of
the Prodigal, to which, in a monstrous fit of realism, he gave a
contemporary setting. Of Pedro Navarro or Naharro, whom Cervantes ranks
after Rueda, naught survives. Francisco de Avendaño's verse comedy
concerning Floriseo and Blancaflor had long since been forgotten were
it not for the fact that here, for the first time, a Spanish play is
divided into three acts—a convention which has endured, and for which
later writers, like Artieda, Virués, and Cervantes, ingenuously claimed
the credit. JUAN DE TIMONEDA (d. ? 1598), the Valencian bookseller who
printed Rueda's _pasos_, is a sedulous mimic in every sort. He began by
arranging Plautus' _Comedy of Errors_ in _Los Menecmos_; his _Cornelia_
is based upon Ariosto's _Nigromante_; and his _Oveja Perdida_ adapts
an early morality on the Lost Sheep with scarcely a suggestion of
original treatment. Torres Naharro is the inspiration of Timoneda's
_Aurelia_; but his chief tempter was Lope de Rueda. In the volume
entitled _Turiana_ (1565), issued under the anagrammatic name of Joan
Diamonte, he attempts the _paso_ (which he also calls the _entremés_)
to good purpose. An imitator he remains; but an imitator whose pleasant
humour takes the place of invention, and whose lively prose dialogue
is in excellent contrast with his futile verse. His _Patrañuelo_, a
collection of some twenty traditional stories, is a well-meant attempt
to satisfy the craving created by _Lazarillo de Tormes_. If Timoneda
experimented in every field, it is not unjust to infer that, taking
the tradesman's view of literature, he was moved less by intelligent
curiosity than by the desire to supply his customers with novelties.
Withal, if he be not individual, his unpolished drolleries are vastly
more engaging than the ambitious triflings of many contemporaries.
Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velázquez, notes that Juan de Malara
(1527-71) composed "many tragedies" both in Latin and Castilian; and
Cueva, in his _Ejemplar poético_, gives the number hyperbolically:—
"_En el teatro mil tragedias puso._"
That Malara, or any one save Lope de Vega, "placed a thousand tragedies
on the boards," is incredible; but by general consent his fecundity
was prodigious. None of his plays survives, and we are left to gather,
from a chance remark of the author's, that he wrote a tragedy entitled
_Absalón_ and another drama called _Locusta_. His repute as a poet
must be accepted, if at all, on authority; for his extant imitations
of Virgil and renderings of Martial are mere technical exercises.
For us he is best represented by his _Filosofía vulgar_ (1568), an
admirable selection made from the six thousand proverbs brought
together by Hernán Núñez, who thus continued what Santillana had begun.
A contemporary, Blasco de Garay (fl. 1553), had striven to prove the
resources of the language by printing, in his _Cartas de Refranes_,
three ingenious letters wholly made up of proverbial phrases; and in
our own day the incomparable wealth of Castilian proverbs has been
shown in Sbarbi's _Refranero General_ and in Haller's _Altspanische
Sprichtwörter_. But no later and fuller collection has supplanted
Malara's learned and vivacious commentary.
His friend, JUAN DE LA CUEVA DE GAROZA of Seville (?1550-?1606),
matched Malara in productiveness, and perhaps surpassed him in talent.
Little is known of Cueva's life, save that he had certain love passages
with Brígida Lucía de Belmonte, and that he became almost insane
for a short while after her death. He distinguishes himself by his
independence of the Senecan example, which he roundly declares to be
at once inartistic and tedious (_cansada cosa_), and by urging the
Spanish dramatists to abjure abstractions and to treat national themes
without regard for Greek and Latin superstitions. Incident, character,
plot, situation, variety: these are to be developed with small regard
for "the unities" of the classic model. And Cueva carried out his
doctrines. Ignoring Carvajal, he took a special pride in reducing
plays from five acts to four, and he enriched the drama by introducing
a multitude of metrical forms hitherto unknown upon the stage. The
cunning fable of the people—_la ingeniosa fábula de España_—is
illustrated in his _Siete Infantes de Lara_, in his _Cerco de Zamora_
(Siege of Zamora), where he utilises subjects enshrined in _romances_
which half his audience knew by heart. It is literally true that he
had been preceded by Bartolomé Palau, who, as far back as 1524, had
written a play on a national subject—the _Historia de la gloriosa
Santa Orosia_, published in 1883 by Fernández-Guerra y Orbe; but this
was an isolated, fruitless essay, whereas Cueva's was a deliberate,
well-organised attempt to shape the drama anew and to quicken it
into active life. Nor did Cueva's mission end with indicating the
possibilities of dramatic motive afforded by heroico-popular songs and
legends. His _Saco de Roma y Muerte de Borbón_ exploits an historical
actuality by dramatising Carlos Quinto's Italian triumphs (1527-30);
and his _El Infamador_ (The Calumniator) not merely foreshadows the
_comedia de capa y espada_, but gives us in his libertine, Leucino, the
first sketch of the type which Tirso de Molina was to eternalise as Don
Juan.
It is certain that Cueva was often less successful in performance than
in doctrine, and that his gods and devils, his saints and ruffians,
too often talk in the same lofty vein—the vein of Juan de la Cueva.
It is no less certain that he improvises recklessly, placing his
characters in difficulties whence escape is impossible, and that
he takes the first solution that offers—a murder, a supernatural
interposition—with no heed for plausibility. But his bombast is the
trick of his school, and, to judge by his epical _Conquista de la
Bética_ (1603), he showed remarkable self-suppression in his plays.
In his later years, after visiting the Western Indies, he seems to
have abandoned the theatre which he had so courageously developed,
and to have wasted himself upon his epic and the poor confection of
old ballads which he published in the ten books entitled _Coro Febeo
de Romances historiales_. Yet, despite these backslidings, he merits
gratitude for his dramatic initiative.
The Galician Dominican, Gerónimo Bermúdez (1530-89), apologises for his
presentation in Castilian of the _Nise Lastimosa_, which he published
under the name of Antonio de Silva in 1577. Bermúdez has seemingly done
little more than rearrange the _Inez de Castro_ of the distinguished
Portuguese poet, Antonio Ferreira, who had died eight years earlier.
Though this "correct" play has tirades of remarkable beauty in the
Senecan manner, its loose construction unfits it for the stage. All
that it contains of good is due to Ferreira, and its continuation—the
_Nise Laureada_—is a mere collection of incoherent extravagances and
brutalities, conceived in Thomas Kyd's most frenzied mood.
The Captain ANDRÉS REY DE ARTIEDA (1549-1613) is said to have been
born at Valencia, and he certainly died there; yet Lope de Vega,
once his friend, speaks of him as a native of Zaragoza. Artieda was
a brilliant soldier, who received three wounds at Lepanto, and his
conspicuous bravery was shown in the Low Countries, where he swam the
Ems in mid-winter under the enemy's fire, with his sword between his
teeth. He is known to have written plays entitled _Amadís de Gaula_ and
_Los Encantos de Merlín_, but his one extant drama is _Los Amantes_:
the first appearance on the stage of those lovers of Teruel who were
destined to attract Tirso de Molina, Montalbán, and Hartzenbusch.
Artieda is essentially a follower of Cueva's, and he has something of
his model's clumsy manipulation; but his dramatic instinct, his pathos
and tenderness, are his personal endowment. In his own day he was an
innovator in his kind: his opposition to the methods of Lope made him
unpopular, and condemned him to an unmerited neglect, which he bitterly
resented in the miscellaneous _Discursos, epístolas y epigramas_,
published by him (1605) under the name of Artemidoro.
Another dramatist and friend of Lope de Vega's was the Valencian
Captain CRISTÓBAL DE VIRUÉS (1550-1610), Artieda's comrade at Lepanto
and in the Low Countries. Unfortunately for himself, Virués had his
share of learning, and misused it in his _Semíramis_, an absurd
medley of pedantry and horror. His _Átila Furioso_, involving more
slaughter than many an outpost engagement, is the maddest caricature of
romanticism. He appears to think that indecency is comedy, and that the
way to terror lies through massacre. It is the eternal fault of Spain,
this forcing of the note; and it would seem that Virués repented him in
_Elisa Dido_, where he returns to the apparatus of the Senecan school.
Yet, with all their defects, his earlier attempts were better, inasmuch
as they presaged a new method, and a determination to have done with a
sterile formula. He essayed the epic in his _Historia del Monserrate_,
and once more courted disaster by his choice of subject: the outrage
and murder of the Conde de Barcelona's daughter by the hermit Juan
Garín, the Roman pilgrimage of the assassin, and the miraculous
resurrection of his victim. As in his plays, so in his epic, Virués is
an inventor without taste, brilliant in a single page and intolerable
in twenty. His tactless fluency bade for applause at any cost, and
his incessant care to startle and to terrify results in a monstrous
monotony. Yet, if he failed himself, his exaggerated protest encouraged
others to seek a more perfect way, and, though he had no direct
influence on the stage, he is interesting as an embodied remonstrance.
His mantle was caught by Joaquín Romero de Cepeda of Badajoz (fl.
1582), whose _Selvajía_ is a dramatic arrangement of the _Celestina_,
with extravagant episodes suggested by the chivalresque novels; and
in the opposite camp is the Aragonese LUPERCIO LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA
(1559-1613), whom Cervantes esteemed almost as good a dramatist as
himself—which, from Cervantes' standpoint, is saying much. Cervantes
praises Argensola, not merely because his plays "delighted and amazed
all who heard them," but for the practical reason that "these three
alone brought in more money than thirty of the best given since their
time." If it be uncharitable to conceive that this aims at Lope de
Vega, we are bound to suppose that Argensola's popularity was immense.
It was also fleeting. His _Filis_ has disappeared, and his _Isabela_
and _Alejandra_ were not printed till 1772, when López de Sedano
included them in his _Parnaso Español_. The _Alejandra_ is a tissue
of butcheries, and the _Isabela_ is scarcely better, the nine chief
characters being killed out of hand. Argensola's excuse is that he
was only a lad of twenty when he perpetrated these iniquities; where,
for the rest, he already proves himself endowed with that lyrical
gift which was to win for him the not excessive title of "the Spanish
Horace." But he was never reconciled to his defeat as a dramatist, and
he avenged himself in 1597 by inditing a spiteful letter to the King,
praying that the prohibition of plays on the occasion of the Queen
of Piedmont's death should be made permanent. The urbanity of men of
letters is, it will be seen, constant everywhere.
* * * * *
The school founded by Boscán and Garcilaso spread into Portugal,
and bifurcated into Spanish factions settled in Salamanca and in
Seville. BALTASAR DE ALCÁZAR (1530-1606), who served under that stout
sea-dog the Marqués de Santa Cruz, is technically an adherent of the
Sevillan sect; but his laughing muse lends herself with an ill grace
to artificial sentiment, and is happiest in stinging epigrams, in
risky jests, and in gay _romances_. DIEGO GIRÓN (d. 1590), a pupil of
Malara's, is an ardent Italianate: prompt to challenge comparison with
Garcilaso by reproducing Corydon and Tirsis from the seventh Virgilian
eclogue, to mimic Seneca—"him of Córdoba dead"—or to echo the note of
Giorolamo Bosso. His verses, mostly hidden away among the annotations
made by Herrera in his edition of Garcilaso, deserve to be better known
for specimens of sound craftsmanship.
The greatest poet of the Sevillan group is indisputably FERNANDO DE
HERRERA (1534-97), who comes into touch with England as the writer of
an eulogy on Sir Thomas More. Cleric though he were, Herrera dedicated
much of his verse (1582) to Leonor de Milán, Condesa de Gelves, wife
of Álvaro de Portugal, himself a fashionable versifier. Herrera being
a clerk in minor orders, the situation is piquant, and opinions differ
as to whether his erotic songs are, or are not, platonic. It is another
variant of the classic cases of Laura and Petrarch, of Catalina de
Atayde and Camões. All good Sevillans contend that Herrera, as the
chief of Spanish _petrarquistas_, indited sonnets to his mistress in
imitation of the master:—
"_So the great Tuscan to the beauteous Laura
Breathed his sublime, his wonder-working song._"
Disguised as Eliodora, Leonor is Herrera's firmament: his _luz_,
_sol_, _estrella_—light, sun, and star. And no small part of the
love-sequence is passionless and even frigid. Yet not all the elegies
are compact of conceit; a genuine emotion bursts forth elsewhere than
in the famous line:—
"_Now sorrow passes: now at length I live._"
In view of the poet's metaphysical refinements no decisive judgment is
possible, and the dispute will continue for all time; perhaps the real
posture of affairs is indicated by Latour's happy phrase concerning
Herrera's "innocent immorality."
Fine as are isolated passages in these "vain, amatorious" rhapsodies,
the true Herrera is best revealed in his ode to Don Juan de Austria on
the occasion of the Moorish revolt in the Alpujarra, in his elegy on
the death of Sebastian of Portugal at Alcázar al-Kebir, in his song
upon the victory of Lepanto. In patriotism Herrera found his noblest
inspiration, and in these three great pieces he attains an exceptional
energy and conciseness of form. He sings the triumph of the true
faith with an Hebraic fervour, a stateliness derived from biblical
cadences, as he mourns the overthrow of Christianity, "the weapons of
war perished," in accents of profound affliction. His sincerity and
his lyrical splendour place him in the foremost rank of his country's
singers; and hence his title of _El divino_.
Differing in temperament from Garcilaso, Herrera may be considered as
the true inheritor of his predecessor's unfulfilled renown. Two of
his finest sonnets—one to Carlos Quinto, the other to Don Juan de
Austria—are superior to any in Garcilaso's page. The latter may be
exampled here in Archdeacon Churton's rendering:—
"_Deep sea, whose thundering waves in tumult roar,
Call forth thy troubled spirit—bid him rise,
And gaze, with terror pale, and hollow eyes,
On floods all flashing fire, and red with gore.
Lo! as in list enclosed, on battle-floor
Christian and Sarzan, life and death the prize,
Join conflict: lo! the batter'd Paynim flies;
The din, the smouldering flames, he braves no more.
Go, bid thy deep-toned bass with voice of power
Tell of this mightiest victory under sky,
This deed of peerless valour's highest strain;
And say a youth achieved the glorious hour,
Hallowing thy gulf with praise that ne'er shall die,—
The youth of Austria, and the might of Spain._"
Herrera takes up the tradition of his forerunner, perfects his form,
imparts a greater sonority of expression, a deeper note of pathos and
dignity. The soldier, with his languid sentiment, might be the priest;
the priest, with his martial music, might be the soldier. Yet Herrera's
fealty never wavers; for him there is but one model, one pattern, one
perfect singer. "In our Spain," he avers, "Garcilaso stands first,
beyond compare." And in this spirit, aided by suggestions from the
poet's son-in-law, Puerto Carrero, aided also by illustrations from
the whole Sevillan group,—Francisco de Medina, Diego Girón, Francisco
Pacheco, and Cristóbal Mosquera de Figueroa,—Herrera undertook his
commentary, _Anotaciones á las obras de Garcilaso de la Vega_ (1580).
Its publication caused one of the bitterest quarrels in Spanish
literary history.
Four years earlier Garcilaso had been edited by the learned Francisco
Sánchez (1523-1601), commonly called _El Brocense_, from Las Brozas,
his birthplace, in Extremadura; and an excitable admirer of the poet,
Francisco de los Cobos, denounced Sánchez for exhibiting his author's
debts by means of parallel passages. The partisans of Sánchez took
Herrera's commentary as a challenge, and were not mollified by the fact
that Herrera nowhere mentioned Sánchez by name. It had been bad enough
that an Extremaduran pundit should edit a Castilian poet; that a mere
Andalucían should repeat the outrage was insufferable. It was as though
an Englishman edited Burns. The Clan of Clonglocketty (or of Castile)
rose as one man, and Herrera was flagellated by a tribe of scurrilous,
illiterate patriots. Among his more urbane opponents was Juan Fernández
de Velasco, Conde de Haro, son of the Constable of Spain, who published
his _Observaciones_ under the pseudonym of Prete Jacopín, and was
rapturously applauded for calling Herrera an ass in a lion's skin. It
is discouraging to record that Haro's impertinence went through several
editions, while Herrera's commentary has never been reprinted.[9] Yet
this monument of enlightened learning reveals its author, not only
as the best lyrist, but as the acutest critic of his age. Cervantes
knew it almost by heart, and he honoured it by writing his dedication
of _Don Quixote_ to the Duque de Béjar in the very words of Medina's
preface and of Herrera's epistle to the Marqués de Ayamonte. So that,
since countless readers have admired a passage from the _Anotaciones_
without knowing it, Herrera the prose-writer has enjoyed a vicarious
immortality.
The most eminent poet of the Salamancan school is LUIS PONCE DE LEÓN
(1529-91), a native of Belmonte de Cuenca, who joined the Augustinian
order in his eighteenth year, and became professor of theology at the
University of Salamanca in 1561. He soon found himself in the midst of
a theological squabble as to the comparative merits of the Septuagint
and the Hebrew MSS. Rivals spread the legend—fatal in Spain—that
he was of Jewish descent, and that he conspired with the Hebrew
professors, Martínez de Cantalapiedra and Grajal, in interpreting
Scripture according to Jewish traditions. His chief opponent was
León de Castro, who held the Greek chair. Public discussions were
the fashion, and debates waxed acrimonious, after the custom of
professors at large. On one occasion Luis de León went so far as to
threaten Castro with the public burning of the latter's treatise
on Isaiah. Castro was not the man to flinch, and anticipated his
enemy by denouncing Fray Luis to the Inquisition. The matter would
doubtless have ended here, had it not been discovered that Fray Luis
had translated the _Song of Solomon_ into Castilian: a grave offence
in the eyes of the Holy Office, which, rejecting the Lutheran formula
of "every man his own pope," forbade the circulation of Bibles in the
vernacular. In March 1572 Luis de León was arrested, and was kept a
prisoner by the local authorities for four and a half years, during
which he was baited with questions calculated to convict him of heresy
and to involve his friend Benito Arias Montano. Notwithstanding the
efforts of Bartolomé Medina and his brother-Dominicans, Fray Luis
was acquitted on December 7, 1576. Judged by modern standards, he
was harshly treated; but toleration is a modern birth, begotten by
indifference and fear. In the sixteenth century men believed what they
professed, and acted on their beliefs—the Spaniards by imprisoning
their own countryman, Luis de León; Calvin by burning Harvey's
forerunner, the Spaniard Miguel Servet. Fray Luis was the last of
men to whine and whimper: he was judged by the tribunal of his own
choosing, the tribunal with which he had menaced Castro: and the result
vindicated his choice.[10] _Ex forti dulcedo_. The indomitable nobility
of his character is visible in the first words he uttered on his return
to the chair which Salamanca had kept for him:—"Gentlemen, as we were
saying the other day." In 1591 he was elected Vicar-General of Castile,
was chosen Provincial of his order, and was then commanded, against his
will, to publish all his writings. He died ten days later.
In prison Fray Luis wrote his celebrated treatise, the greatest
of Spanish mystic books, _Los Nombres de Cristo_, a series of
dissertations, in Plato's manner, on the symbolic value of such names
of Christ as the Mount, the Shepherd, the Arm of God, the Prince of
Peace, the Bridegroom. Published in 1583, the exposition is cast in
the form of a dialogue, in which Marcelo, Sabino, and Julián examine
the theological mysteries implied by the subject. With Fray Luis's
theology we have no concern; nor with his learning, save in so far as
it is curious to see the Hellenic-Alexandrine leaven working through
in his imitation of St. Clement's _Epistle to the Corinthians_. But
his concise eloquence and his classic purity of expression rank him
among the best masters of Castilian prose. The like great qualities
are shown in his _Exposición del libro de Job_, drawn up by request of
Santa Teresa's friend, Sor Ana de Jesús, and in his rendering of and
commentary on the _Song of Solomon_, which he holds for an emblematic
eclogue to be interpreted as a poetic foreshadowing of the Divine
Espousal of the Church with Christ. A book still held in great esteem
is his _Perfecta Casada_ (The Perfect Wife), suggested, it may be, by
Luis Vives' _Christian Woman_, and composed (1583) for the benefit of
María Varela Osorio. It is not, indeed,
"_That hymn for which the whole world longs,
A worthy hymn in woman's praise._"
It is rather a singularly brilliant paraphrase of the thirty-first
chapter of the _Book of Proverbs_, a code of practical conduct for the
ideal spouse, which may be read with delight even by those who think
the friar's doctrine reactionary.
Great in prose, Luis de León is no less great in verse. With San Juan
de la Cruz he heads the list of Spain's lyrico-mystical poets. Yet he
set no value on his poems, which he regarded as mere toys of childhood:
so that their preservation is due to the accident of his collecting
them late in life to amuse the leisure of the Bishop of Córdoba.
We owe their publication to Quevedo, who issued them in 1631 as a
counterblast to _culteranismo_. Of the three books into which they are
divided, two consist of translations—from Virgil, Horace, Tibullus,
Euripides, and Pindar; and from the Psalms, the Book of Job, and St.
Thomas of Aquin's _Pange lingua_. "I have tried," says Fray Luis of his
sacred renderings, "to imitate so far as I might their simple origin
and antique flavour, full of sweetness and majesty, as it seems to me;"
and he succeeds as greatly in the primitive unction of the one kind
as in the faultless form of the other. Still these are but inspired
imitations, and the original poet is to be sought for in the first
book. Some idea of his ode entitled _Noche Serena_ may be gathered from
Mr. Henry Phillips' version of the opening stanzas:—
"_When to the heavenly dome my thoughts take flight,
With shimmering stars bedecked, ablaze with light,
Then sink my eyes down to the ground,
In slumber wrapped, oblivion bound,
Enveloped in the gloom of darkest night._
_With love and pain assailed, with anxious care,
A thousand troubles in my breast appear,
My eyes turn to a flowing rill,
Sore sorrow's tearful floods distil,
While saddened, mournful words my woes declare._
_Oh, dwelling fit for angels! sacred fane!
The hallowed shrine where youth and beauty reign!
Why in this dungeon, plunged in night,
The soul that's born for Heaven's delight
Should cruel Fate withhold from its domain?_"
In his _Profecía del Tajo_ (Prophecy of the Tagus) Luis de León
displays a virility absent from his other pieces, and the impetuosity
of the verse matches the speed which he attributes to the Saracenic
invaders advancing to the overthrow of Roderic; and, if he still
abide by his Horatian model, he introduces an individual treatment,
a characteristic melody of his own invention. A famous devout song,
_Á Cristo Crucifijado_ (To Christ Crucified), appears in all editions
of Fray Luis; but as its authenticity is disputed—some ascribing it
to Miguel Sánchez—its quotation must be foregone here. The ode _Al
Apartamiento_ (To Retirement) exhibits the contemplative vein which
distinguishes the singer, and, as in the _Ode to Salinas_, seems an
early anticipation of Wordsworth's note of serene simplicity. Luis
de León is not splendid in metrical resource, and his adherence to
tradition, his indifference to his fame, his ecclesiastical estate, all
tend to narrow his range of subject; yet, within the limits marked out
for him, he is as great an artist and as rich a voice as Spain can show.
In the same year (1631) that Quevedo issued Luis de León's verses, he
also published an exceedingly small volume of poems which he ascribed
to a Bachelor named FRANCISCO DE LA TORRE (1534-?1594). From this arose
a strange case of mistaken identity. Quevedo's own account of the
matter is simple: he alleges that he found the poems—"by good luck and
for the greater glory of Spain"—in the shop of a bookseller, who sold
them cheap. It appears that the Portuguese, Juan de Almeida, Senhor de
Couto de Avintes, saw them soon after Torre's death, that he applied
for leave to print them, and that the official licence was signed by
the author of _La Araucana_, Ercilla y Zúñiga, who died in 1595. For
some reason Almeida's purpose miscarried, and, when Quevedo found the
manuscript in 1629, Torre was generally forgotten. Quevedo solved
the difficulty out of hand in the high editorial manner, evolved the
facts from his inner consciousness, and assured his readers that the
author of the poems was the Francisco de la Torre who wrote the _Visión
deleitable_.[11]
Ticknor lays it down that "no suspicion seems to have been whispered,
either at the moment of their first publication, or for a long time
afterwards," of the correctness of this attribution; and he implies
that the first doubter was Luis José Velázquez, Marqués de Valdeflores,
who, when he reprinted the book in 1753, started the theory that the
poems were Quevedo's own. This is not so. Quevedo's mistake was pointed
out by Manuel de Faria y Sousa in his commentary to the _Lusiadas_,
printed at Madrid in 1639. That Quevedo should make a Bachelor of a
man who had no university degree, that he should call the writer of
the _Visión deleitable_ Francisco when in truth his name was Alfonso,
were trifles: that he should antedate his author by nearly two
centuries—this was a serious matter, and Faria y Sousa took pains to
make him realise it. It must have added to the editor's chagrin to
learn that Torre had been friendly with Lope de Vega, who could have
given accurate information about him; but Lope and Quevedo were not on
speaking terms, owing to the mischief-making of the former's parasite,
Pérez de Montalbán. Quevedo had made no approach to Lope; Lope saw the
blunder, smiled, and said nothing in public. Through Pérez de Montalbán
the facts reached Faria y Sousa, who exulted over a mistake which was,
indeed, unpardonable. The discomfiture was complete: for the first and
last time in his life Quevedo was dumb before an enemy. Meanwhile,
Velázquez' theory has found some favour with López Sedano and with many
foreign critics: as, for example, Ticknor.
What we know of Francisco de la Torre is based upon the researches of
Quevedo's learned editor, Aureliano Fernández-Guerra y Orbe.[12] A
native of Torrelaguna, he matriculated at Alcalá de Henares in 1556,
fell in love with the "_Filis rigurosa_" whom he sings, served with
Carlos Quinto in the Italian campaigns, returned to find Filis married
to an elderly Toledan millionaire, remained constant to his (more
or less) platonic flame, and ended by taking orders in his despair.
The unadorned simplicity of his manner is at the remotest pole from
Quevedo's frosty brilliancy. No small proportion of his sonnets is
translated from the Italian. Thus, where Benedetto Varchi writes
"_Questa e, Tirsi, quel fonte in cui solea_," Torre follows close with
"_Ésta es, Tirsi, la fuente do solia_;" and when Giovanni Battista
Amalteo celebrates "_La viva neve e le vermiglie rose_," the Spaniard
echoes back "_La blanca nieve y la purpúrea rosa_." Schelling finds
the light fantastic rapture of the Elizabethan lover expressed to
perfection in the eighty-first of Spenser's _Amoretti_: line for line,
and almost word for word, Torre's twenty-third sonnet is identical,
and, when we at length possess a critical edition of Spenser, it will
surely prove that both poems derive from a common Italian source.
Such examples are numerous, and are worth noting as germane to the
general question. No man in Europe was more original than Quevedo,
none less disposed to lean on Italy. To conceive that he should seek
to reform _culteranismo_ by translating from Italians of yesterday, or
to suppose that he knowingly passed as original work imitations made
by a man who—_ex hypothesi_—died before his models were born, is to
believe Quevedo a clumsy trickster. That conclusion is untenable; and
Torre deserves all credit for his graceful renderings, as for his more
original poems—gallant, tender, and sentimental. He is one of the
earliest Spanish poets to choose simple, natural themes—the ivy fallen
to the ground, the widowed song-bird, the wounded hind, the charms
of landscape and the enchantment of the spring. A smaller replica of
Garcilaso, with a vision and personality of his own: so Francisco de la
Torre appears in the perspective of Castilian song.
An allied poet of the Salamancan school is Torre's friend, FRANCISCO DE
FIGUEROA (1536-?1620), a native of Alcalá de Henares, whom his townsman
Cervantes introduces in the pastoral _Galatea_ under the name of Tirsi.
Little is recorded of his life save that he served as a soldier in
Italy, that he studied at Rome, Bologna, Siena, and perhaps Naples,
that the Italians called him the _Divino_ (the title was sometimes
cheaply given), and that some even ranked him next to Petrarch. He
returned to Alcalá, where he married "nobly," as we are told; and he is
found travelling with the Duque de Terranova in the Low Countries about
1597. On his deathbed he bethought him of Virgil's example, and ordered
that all his poems should be burned; those that escaped were published
at Lisbon in 1626 by the historian Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, who
reports what little we know concerning the writer. That he versified
much in Italian appears from Juan Verzosa's evidence:—
"_El lingua perges alterna pangere versus._"
And a vestige of the youthful practice is preserved in the elegy to
Juan de Mendoza y Luna, where one Spanish line and two Italian lines
compose each tercet. One admirable sonnet is that written on the death
of the poet's son, Garcilaso de la Vega _el Mozo_, who, like his famous
father, fell in battle. Figueroa's bent is towards the pastoral; he
sings of sweet repose, of love's costly glory, of Tirsi's pangs,
of Fileno's passion realised, and of _ingrata_ Fili. His points of
resemblance with Torre are many; but his talent is more original, his
mood more melancholy, his taste finer, his diction more exquisite. He
ranks so high among his country's singers, it is not incredible that
he might take his stand with the greatest if we possessed all his
poems, instead of a few numbers saved from fire. And, as it is, he
deserves peculiar praise as the earliest poet who, following Boscán
and Garcilaso, mastered the blank verse, whose secrets had eluded
them. He avoids the subtle peril of the assonant; he varies the
mechanical uniformity of beat or stress; and, by skilful alternations
of his cæsura, diversifies his rhythm to such harmonic purpose as no
earlier experimentalist approaches. At his hands the most formidable
of Castilian metres is finally vanquished, and the _verso suelto_
is established on an equality with the sonnet. That alone ensures
Figueroa's fame: he sets the standard by which successors are measured.
Ariosto's vigorous epical manner is faintly suggested in twelve cantos
of the _Angélica_, by a Seville doctor, LUIS BARAHONA DE SOTO (fl.
1586). Lope de Vega, in the _Laurel de Apolo_, praises
"_The doctor admirable
Whose page of gold
The story of Medora told_,"
and all contemporaries, from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza downwards,
swell the chorus of applause. The priest who sacked Don Quixote's
library softened at sight of Barahona's book, which he calls by its
popular title, the _Lágrimas de Angélica_ (Tears of Angelica):—"I
should shed tears myself were such a book burned, for its author is
one of the best poets, not merely in Spain, but in all the world."
Cervantes was far from strong in criticism, and he proves it in this
case. The _Angélica_, which purports to continue the story of _Orlando
Furioso_—itself a continuation of the _Orlando Innamorato_—looks
mean beside its great original. Yet, though Barahona fails in epic
narrative, his lyrical poems, given in Espinosa's _Flores de poetas
ilustres_, are full of grace and melody.
The epic's fascination also seduced the Córdoban, JUAN RUFO GUTIÉRREZ.
We know the date of neither his birth nor his death, but he must have
lived long if his collection of anecdotes, entitled _Las seiscientas
Apotegmas_, were really published in 1548. His _Austriada_, printed in
1584, takes Don Juan de Austria for its hero, and contains some good
descriptive stanzas; but Rufo's invention finds no scope in dealing
with contemporary matters, and what might have been a useful chronicle
is distorted to a tedious poem. Great part of the _Austriada_ is but a
rhymed version of Mendoza's _Guerra de Granada_, which Rufo must have
seen in manuscript. When, leaving Ariosto in peace, he becomes himself,
as in the verses at the end of the _Apotegmas_, he gives forth a
natural old-world note, reminiscent of earlier models than Boscán and
Garcilaso. Since Luis de Zapata (1523-? 1600) wrote an epic history
of the Emperor, the _Carlos famoso_, he must have read it; and it is
possible that Cervantes (who delighted in it) was familiar with its
fifty cantos, its forty thousand lines. It is more than can be said
of any later reader. Zapata wasted thirteen years upon his epic, and
witnessed its failure; but he was undismayed, and lived to maltreat
Horace—it sounds incredible—beyond all expectation. It is another
instance of a mistaken calling. The writer knew his facts, and had a
touch of the historic spirit. Yet he could not be content with prose
and history.
A nearer approach to the right epical poem is the _Araucana_ of ALONSO
DE ERCILLA Y ZÚÑIGA (1533-95), who appeared as Felipe II.'s page at his
wedding with Mary Tudor in Winchester Cathedral. From England he sailed
for Chile in 1554, to serve against the Araucanos, who had risen in
revolt; and in seven pitched battles, not to speak of innumerable small
engagements, he greatly distinguished himself. His career was ruined by
a quarrel with a brother-officer named Juan de Pineda; he was judged to
be in fault, was condemned to death, and actually mounted the scaffold.
At the last moment the sentence was commuted to exile at Callao, whence
Ercilla returned to Europe in 1562. With him he brought the first
fifteen cantos of his poem, written by the camp-fire on stray scraps
of paper, leather, and skin. The first book ever printed in America
was, as we learn from Señor Icazbalceta, Juan de Zumárraga's _Breve
y compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana_. The first literary work of real
merit composed in either American continent was Ercilla's _Araucana_.
It was published at Madrid in 1569; and continuations, amounting to
thirty-seven cantos in all, followed in 1578 and 1590. Ercilla never
forgave what he thought the injustice of his general, García Hurtado de
Mendoza, Marqués de Cañete, and carefully omits his name throughout the
_Araucana_. The omission cost him dear, for he was never employed again.
His is an exceeding stately poem on the Chilian revolt; but epic it
is not, whether in spirit or design, whether in form or effect. In
the Essay Prefatory to the _Henriade_, Voltaire condescends to praise
the _Araucana_, the name of which has thus become familiar to many;
and, though he was probably writing at second hand, he is justified
in extolling the really noble speech which Ercilla gives to the aged
chief, Colocolo. It is precisely in declamatory eloquence that Ercilla
shines. His technical craftsmanship is sound, his spirit admirable,
his diction beyond reproach, or nearly so; and yet his work, as a
whole, fails to impress. Men remember isolated lines, a stanza here
and there; but the general effect is blurred. To speak truly, Ercilla
had the orator's temperament, not the poet's. At his worst he is
debating in rhyme, at his best he is writing poetic history; and,
though he has an eye for situation, an instinct for the picturesque,
the historian in him vanquishes the poet. He himself was vaguely
conscious of something lacking, and he strove to make it good by means
of mythological episodes, visions by Bellona, magic foreshadowings of
victory, digressions defending Dido from Virgil's scandalous tattle.
But, since the secret of the epic lies not in machinery, this attempt
at reform failed. Ercilla's first part remains his best, and is still
interesting for its martial eloquence, and valuable as a picture
of heroic barbarism rendered by an artist in _ottava rima_ who was
also a vigilant observer and a magnanimous foe. His omission of his
commander's name was made good by a copious Chilian poet, Pedro de
Oña, in his _Arauco domado_ (1596), which closed with the capture of
"Richerte Aquines" (as who should say Richard Hawkins); and, in the
following year, Diego de Santisteban y Osorio added a fourth and fifth
part to the original _Araucana_. Neither imitation is of real poetic
worth, and, as versified history, they are inferior to the _Elegías
de Varones ilustres de Indias_ of Juan de Castellanos (?1510-?1590),
a priest who in youth had served in America, and who rhymed his
reminiscences with a conscientious regard for fact more laudable in a
chronicler than a poet.
But we turn from these elaborate historical failures to religious work
of real beauty, and the first that offers itself is the famous sonnet
"To Christ Crucified," familiar to English readers in a free version
ascribed to Dryden:—
"_O God, Thou art the object of my love,
Not for the hopes of endless joys above,
Nor for the fear of endless pains below
Which those who love Thee not must undergo:
For me, and such as me, Thou once didst bear
The ignominious cross, the nails, the spear,
A thorny crown transpierced Thy sacred brow,
What bloody sweats from every member flow!
For me, in torture Thou resign'st Thy breath,
Nailed to the cross, and sav'dst me by Thy death:
Say, can these sufferings fail my heart to move?
What but Thyself can now deserve my love?
Such as then was and is Thy love to me,
Such is, and shall be still, my love to Thee.
Thy love, O Jesus, may I ever sing,
O God of love, kind Parent, dearest King._"
The authorship is referred to Ignacio Loyola, to Francisco Xavier, to
Pedro de los Reyes, and to the Seraphic Mother, SANTA TERESA DE JESÚS,
whose name in the world was Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-82). None
of these attributions can be sustained, and _No me mueve, mi Dios,
para quererte_ must be classed as anonymous.[13] Yet its fervour and
unction are such as to suggest its ascription to the Saint of the
Flaming Heart. Santa Teresa is not only a glorious saint and a splendid
figure in the annals of religious thought: she ranks as a miracle of
genius, as, perhaps, the greatest woman who ever handled pen, the
single one of all her sex who stands beside the world's most perfect
masters. Macaulay has noted, in a famous essay, that Protestantism has
gained not an inch of ground since the middle of the sixteenth century.
Ignacio Loyola and Santa Teresa are the life and brain of the Catholic
reaction: the former is a great party chief, the latter belongs to
mankind.
Her life in all its details may be read in Mrs. Cunninghame Graham's
minute and able study. Here it must suffice to note that she sallied
forth to seek martyrdom at the age of seven, that she entered
literature as the writer of a chivalresque romance, and that in her
sixteenth year she made her profession as a nun in the Carmelite
convent of her native town, Ávila. Years of spiritual aridity, of
ill-health, weighed her down, aged her prematurely. But nothing
could abate her natural force; and from 1558 to the day of her
death she marches from one victory to another, careless of pain,
misunderstanding, misery, and persecution, a wonder of valour and
devotion.
"_Scarce has she blood enough to make
A guilty sword blush for her sake;
Yet has a heart dares hope to prove
How much less strong is Death than Love....
Love touch't her heart, and lo! it beats
High, and burns with such brave heats,
Such thirst to die, as dares drink up
A thousand cold deaths in one cup._"
What Crashaw has here said of her in verse he repeats in prose,
and the heading of his poem may be quoted as a concise summary of
her achievement:—"Foundress of the Reformation of the Discalced
Carmelites, both men and women; a woman for angelical height of
speculation, for masculine courage of performance more than a woman;
who, yet a child, outran maturity, and durst plot a martyrdom." And all
the world has read with ever-growing admiration the burning words of
Crashaw's "sweet incendiary," the "undaunted daughter of desires," the
"fair sister of the seraphim," "the moon of maiden stars."
Simplicity and conciseness are Santa Teresa's distinctive qualities,
and the marvel is where she acquired her perfect style. Not, we may
be sure, in the numerous prose of _Amadís_. Her confessor, the worthy
Gracián, took it upon him to "improve" and polish her periods; but,
in a fortunate hour, her papers came into the hands of Luis de León,
who gave them to the press in 1588. Himself a master in mysticism and
literature, he perceived the truth embodied later in Crashaw's famous
line:—
"_O 'tis not Spanish but 'tis Heaven she speaks._"
Her masterpiece is the _Castillo interior_, of which Fray Luis
writes:—"Let naught be blotted out, save when she herself emended:
which was seldom." And once more he commends her to her readers,
saying:—"She, who had seen God face to face, now reveals Him unto
you." With all her sublimity, her enraptured vision of things heavenly,
her "large draughts of intellectual day," Santa Teresa illustrates
the combination of the loftiest mysticism with the finest practical
sense, and her style varies, takes ever its colour from its subject.
Familiar and maternal in her letters, enraptured in her _Conceptos del
Amor de Dios_, she handles with equal skill the trifles of our petty
lives and—to use Luis de León's phrase—"the highest and most generous
philosophy that was ever dreamed." And from her briefest sentence
shines the vigorous soul of one born to govern, one who governed
in such wise that a helpless Nuncio denounced her as "restless,
disobedient, contumacious, an inventress of new doctrines tricked out
with piety, a breaker of the cloister-rule, a despiser of the apostolic
precept which forbiddeth a woman to teach."
Santa Teresa taught because she must, and all that she wrote was
written by compulsion, under orders from her superior. She could
never have understood the female novelist's desire for publicity;
and, had she realised it, merry as her humour was, she would
scarcely have smiled. For she was, both by descent and temperament,
a gentlewoman—_de sangre muy limpia_, as she writes more than once,
with a tinge of satisfaction which shows that the convent discipline
had not stifled her pride of race any more than it had quenched her
gaiety. She always remembers that she comes from Castile, and the fact
is evidenced in her writings, with their delicious old-world savour.
Boscán and Garcilaso might influence courtiers and learned poets; but
they were impotent against the brave Castilian of Sor Teresa de Jesús,
who wields her instrument with incomparable mastery. It were a sin to
attempt a rendering of her artless songs, with their resplendent gleams
of ecstasy and passion. But some idea of her general manner, when
untouched by the inspiration of her mystic nuptials, may be gathered
from a passage which Froude has Englished:—
"A man is directed to make a garden in a bad soil overrun with sour
grasses. The Lord of the land roots out the weeds, sows seeds, and
plants herbs and fruit-trees. The gardener must then care for them
and water them, that they may thrive and blossom, and that the Lord
may find pleasure in his garden and come to visit it. There are four
ways in which the watering may be done. There is water which is drawn
wearily by hand from the well. There is water drawn by the ox-wheel,
more abundantly and with greater labour. There is water brought in
from the river, which will saturate the whole ground; and, last and
best, there is rain from heaven. Four sorts of prayer correspond to
these. The first is a weary effort with small returns; the well may run
dry: the gardener then must weep. The second is internal prayer and
meditation upon God; the trees will then show leaves and flower-buds.
The third is love of God. The virtues then become vigorous. We converse
with God face to face. The flowers open and give out fragrance. The
fourth kind cannot be described in words. Then there is no more toil,
and the seasons no longer change; flowers are always blowing, and
fruit ripens perennially. The soul enjoys undoubting certitude; the
faculties work without effort and without consciousness; the heart
loves and does not know that it loves; the mind perceives, yet does
not know that it perceives. If the butterfly pauses to say to itself
how prettily it is flying, the shining wings fall off, and it drops
and dies. The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God
within us."
And, as Santa Teresa excelled in spiritual insight, so she has the
sense of affairs. Durtal, in M. Joris-Karl Huysmans' _En Route_, first
says of her:—"Sainte Térèse a exploré plus à fond que tout autre
les régions inconnues de l'âme; elle en est, en quelque sorte, la
géographe; elle a surtout dressé la carte de ses pôles, marqué les
latitudes contemplatives, les terres intérieures du ciel humain."
And he shows the reverse of the medal:—"Mais quel singulier mélange
elle montre aussi, d'une mystique ardente et d'une femme d'affaires
froide; car, enfin, elle est à double fond; elle est contemplative hors
le monde et elle est également un homme d'état: elle est le Colbert
féminin des cloîtres." The key to Durtal's difficulties is given in
the Abbé Gévresin's remark, that the perfect balance of good sense is
one of the distinctive signs of the mystics. In Santa Teresa's case
the sign is present. An uninquiring world may choose to think of her
as a fanatic in vapours and in ecstasies. Yet it is she who writes,
in the _Camino de Perfección_:—"I would not have my daughters be, or
seem to be, women in anything, but brave men." It is she who holds
that "of revelations no account should be made"; who calls the usual
convent life "a shortcut to hell"; who adds that "if parents took my
advice, they would rather marry their daughters to the poorest of
men, or keep them at home under their own eyes." Her position as a
spiritual force is as unique as her place in literature. It is certain
that her "own dear books" were nothing to her; that she regarded
literature as frivolity; and no one questions her right so to regard
it. But the world also is entitled to its judgment, which is expressed
in different ways. Jeremy Taylor cites her in a sermon preached at the
opening of the Parliament of Ireland (May 8, 1661). Protestant England,
by the mouth of Froude, compares Santa Teresa to Cervantes. Catholic
Spain places her manuscript of her own _Life_ beside a page of St.
Augustine's writing in the Palace of the Escorial.
In some sense we may almost consider the Ecstatic Doctor, SAN JUAN DE
LA CRUZ (1542-91), as one of Santa Teresa's disciples. He changed his
worldly name of Juan de Yepes y Álvarez for that of Juan de la Cruz
on joining the Carmelite order in 1563. Shortly afterwards he made
the acquaintance of Santa Teresa, and, fired by her enthusiasm, he
undertook to carry out in monasteries the reforms which she introduced
in convents. In his _Obras espirituales_ (1618) mysticism finds its
highest expression. There are moments when his prose style is of
extreme clearness and force, but in many cases he soars to heights
where the sense reels in the attempt to follow him. St. John of the
Cross holds, with the mystics of all time, with Plotinus and Böhme and
Swedenborg, that "by contemplation man may become incorporated with the
Deity." This is a hard saying for some of us, not least to the present
writer, and it were idle, in the circumstances, to attempt criticism of
what for most men must remain a mystery. Yet in his verse one seizes
the sense more easily; and his high, amorous music has an individual
melody of spiritual ravishment, of daring abandonment, which is not
all lost in Mr. David Lewis' unrhymed version of the _Noche oscura del
Alma_ (Dark Night of the Soul):—
"_In an obscure night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest...._
_In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought but myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning._
_That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where he was waiting for me
Whom I knew well,
And none but he appeared._
_O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that hast united
The lover with his beloved
And charged her with her love._
_On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for him alone,
He reposed and slept:
I kept him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned him._
_Then his hair floated in the breeze
That blew from the turret;
He struck me on the neck
With his gentle hand,
And all sensation left me._
_I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
I fainted at last abandoned,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away._"
St. John of the Cross has absorbed the mystic essence of the _Song of
Solomon_, and he introduces infinite new harmonies in his re-setting of
the ancient melody. The worst that criticism can allege against him is
that he dwells on the very frontier line of sense, in a twilight where
music takes the place of meaning, and words are but vague symbols of
inexpressible thoughts, intolerable raptures, too subtly sensuous for
transcription. The _Unknown Eros_, a volume of odes, mainly mystical
and Catholic, by Coventry Patmore, which has had so considerable an
influence on recent English writers, was a deliberate attempt to
transfer to our poetry the methods of St. John of the Cross, whose
influence grows ever deeper with time.
The Dominican monk whose family name was Sarriá, but who is only known
from his birthplace as LUIS DE GRANADA (1504-88), is usually accounted
a mystic writer, though he is vastly less contemplative, more didactic
and practical, than San Juan de la Cruz. He is best known by his _Guía
de Pecadores_, which Regnier made the favourite reading of Macette, and
which Gorgibus recommends to Célie in _Sganarelle_:—
"_La Guide des pécheurs est encore un bon livre:
C'est là qu'en peu de temps on apprend à bien vivre._"
Unluckily for Granada, his _Guía de Pecadores_ and his _Tratado de
la Oración y Meditación_ were placed on the Index, chiefly at the
instigation of that hammer of heretics, Melchor Cano, the famous
theologian of the Council of Trent. Certain changes were made in the
text, and the books were reprinted in their amended form; but the
suspicion of _iluminismo_ long hung over Granada, whose last years were
troubled by his rash simplicity in certifying as true the sham stigmata
of a Portuguese nun, Sor María de la Visitación. The story that Granada
was persecuted by the Inquisition is imaginary.
His books have still an immense vogue. His sincerity, learning, and
fervour are admirable, and his forty years spent between confessional
and pulpit gave him a rare knowledge of human weakness and a mastery
of eloquent appeal. He is not declamatory in the worst sense, though
he bears the marks of his training. He sins by abuse of oratorical
antithesis, by repetition, by a certain mechanical see-saw of the
sentence common to those who harangue multitudes. Still, the sweetness
of his nature so flows over in his words that didacticism becomes
persuasive even when he argues against our strongest prepossessions.
It may interest to quote a passage from the translation made by that
Francis Meres whose _Palladis Tamia_ contains the earliest reference to
Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets":—
"This desire which doth hold many so resolutely to their studies, and
this love of science and knowledge under pretence to help others,
is too much and superfluous. I call it a love too much and desire
superfluous; for when it is moderate and according to reason, it is
not a temptation, but a laudable virtue and a very profitable exercise
which is commended in all kind of men, but especially in young men who
do exercise their youth in that study, for by it they eschew many vices
and learn that whereby they will counsel themselves and others. But
unless it be moderately used it hurteth devotion.... There be some that
would know for this end only, that they might know—and it is foolish
curiosity. There be some that would know, that they might be known—and
it is foolish vanity; and there be some that would know, that they
might sell their knowledge for money or for honours—and it is filthy
lucre. There be also some that desire to know, that they may edify—and
it is charity. And there are some that would know, that they may be
edified—and it is wisdom. All these ends may move the desire, and, in
choice of these, a man is often deceived, when he considereth not which
ought especially to move; and this error is very dangerous."
This distrust of profane letters is yet more marked in the Augustinian,
PEDRO MALÓN DE CHAIDE of Cascante (1530-?1590), who compares the
"frivolous love-books" of Boscán, Garcilaso, and Montemôr and the
"fabulous tales and lies" of chivalresque romance to a knife in
a madman's hand. His practice clashes with his theory, for his
_Conversión de la Magdalena_, written for Beatriz Cerdán, is learned to
the verge of pedantry, and his elaborate periods betray the imitation
of models which he professed to abhor. More ascetic than mystic,
Malón de Chaide lacks the patrician ease, the tolerant spirit of Juan
de Ávila, Granada, and León; but his austere doctrine and sumptuous
colouring have ensured him permanent popularity. His admirable verse
paraphrases of the _Song of Solomon_ have much of the unction, without
the sensuous exaltation, of Juan de la Cruz. A better representative of
pure mysticism is the Extremaduran Carmelite, JUAN DE LOS ÁNGELES (fl.
1595), whose _Triumphos del Amor de Dios_ is a profound psychological
study, written under the influence of Northern thinkers, and not less
remarkable for beauty of expression than for impassioned insight. With
him our notice of the Spanish mystics must close. It is difficult
to estimate their number exactly; but since at least three thousand
survive in print, it is not surprising that the most remain unread. A
breath of mysticism is met in the few Castilian verses of the brilliant
humanist, BENITO ARIAS MONTANO (1527-98), who gave up to scholarship
and theology what was meant for poetry. His achievement in the two
former fields is not our concern here, but it pleases to denote the
ample inspiration and the lofty simplicity of his song, which is hidden
from many readers, and overlooked even by literary historians, in Böhl
de Faber's _Floresta de rimas antiguas_.
* * * * *
The pastoral novel, like the chivalresque romance, reaches Spain
through Portugal. The Italianised Spaniard, Jacopo Sannazaro, had
invented the first example of this kind in his epoch-making _Arcadia_
(1504); and his earliest follower was the Portuguese, Bernardim Ribeiro
(?1475-?1524), whose _Menina e moça_ transplants the prose pastoral
to the Peninsula. This remarkable book, which derives its title from
the first three words of the text, is the undoubted model of the first
Castilian prose pastoral, the unfinished _Diana Enamorada_. This we
owe to the Portuguese, JORGE DE MONTEMÔR (d. 1561), whose name is
hispaniolised as Montemayor. There is nothing strange in this usage
of Castilian by a Portuguese writer. We have already recorded the
names of Gil Vicente, Sâ de Miranda, and Silvestre among those of
Castilian poets; the lyrics and comedies of Camões, the _Austriada_ of
Jerónimo Corte Real, continue a tradition which begins as early as the
_General Cancioneiro_ of García de Resende (1516), wherein twenty-nine
Portuguese poets prefer Castilian before their own language. A
Portuguese writer, Innocencio da Silva, has gone the length of
asserting that Montemôr wrote nothing but Castilian. This only proves
that Silva had not read the _Diana_, which contains two Portuguese
songs, and Portuguese prose passages spoken by the shepherd, Danteo,
and the shepherdess, Duarda. Nor is Silva alone in his bad eminence;
the date of the earliest edition of the _Diana_ is commonly given as
1542. Yet, as it contains, in the _Canto de Orpheo_, an allusion to the
widowhood of the Infanta Juana (1554), it must be later. The time of
publication was probably 1558-59,[14] some four or five years after the
printing of his _Cancionero_ at Antwerp.
Little is known of Montemôr's life, save that he was a musician at
the Spanish court in 1548. He accompanied the Infanta Juana to Lisbon
on her marriage to Dom João, returning to Spain in 1554, when he is
thought to have visited England and the Low Countries in Felipe II.'s
train. He was murdered in 1651, apparently as the result of some amour.
Faint intimations of pastoralism are found in such early chivalresque
novels as _Florisel de Niquea_, where Florisel, dressed as a shepherd,
loves the shepherdess, Sylvia. Ribeiro had introduced his own flame
in _Menina e moça_ in the person of Aonia, and Montemôr follows with
Diana. The identification of Aonia with the Infanta Beatriz, and with
King Manoel's cousin, Joana de Vilhena, has been argued with great
heat: in Montemôr's case the lady is said to have been a certain Ana.
Her surname is withheld by the discreet Sepúlveda, who records that she
was seen at Valderas by Felipe III. and his queen in 1603.
In all pastoral novels there is a family likeness, and Montemôr is not
successful in avoiding the insipidity of the _genre_. He endeavours
to lighten the monotony of his shepherds by borrowing Sannazaro's
invention of the witch whose magic draughts work miracles. This
wonder-worker is as convenient for the novelist as she is tedious for
the reader, who is forced to cry out with Don Quixote's Priest:—"Let
all that refers to the wise Felicia and the enchanted water be
omitted." The bold Priest would further drop the verses, honouring the
book for its prose, and for being the first of its class. Montemôr
accepts the convention by making his shepherds—Sireno, Silvano, and
the rest—mouth it like grandiloquent dukes; but the style is correct,
and pleasing in its grandiose kind. The _Diana's_ vogue was immense:
Shakespeare himself based the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ upon the
episode of the shepherdess Felismena, which he had probably read in
the manuscript of Bartholomew Young, whose excellent version, although
not printed until 1598, was finished in 1583; and Sidney, whose own
pastoral is redolent of Montemôr, has given Sireno's song in this
fashion:—
"_Of this high grace with bliss conjoin'd
No further debt on me is laid,
Since that is self-same metal coin'd,
Sweet lady, you remain well paid.
For, if my place give me great pleasure,
Having before me Nature's treasure,
In face and eyes unmatchèd being,
You have the same in my hands, seeing
What in your face mine eyes do measure._
_Nor think the match unev'nly made,
That of those beams in you do tarry;
The glass to you but gives a shade,
To me mine eyes the true shape carry:
For such a thought most highly prizèd,
Which ever hath Love's yoke despisèd,
Better than one captiv'd perceiveth,
Though he the lively form receiveth,
The other sees it but disguisèd._"
Montemôr closes with the promise of a sequel, which never appeared.
But, as his popularity continued, publishers printed new editions,
containing the story of Abindarraez and Jarifa, boldly annexed from
Villegas' _Inventario_, which was licensed so early as 1551. The
tempting opportunity was seized by Alonso Pérez, a Salamancan doctor,
whose second _Diana_ (1564) is extremely dull, despite the singular
boast of its author that it contains scarcely anything "not stolen or
imitated from the best Latins and Italians." Pérez alleges that he
was a friend of Montemôr's; but, as that was his sole qualification,
his third _Diana_—written, though "not added here, to avoid making
too large a volume"—has fortunately vanished. In this same year,
1564, appeared Gaspar Gil Polo's _Diana_, a continuation which, says
Cervantes, should be guarded "as though it were Apollo's"—the praise
has perplexed readers who missed the pun on the author's name. The
merits of Polo's sequel, excellent in matter and form, were recognised,
as Professor Rennert notes, by Jerónimo de Texeda, whose _Diana_ (1627)
is a plagiary from Polo. Though the contents of the one and the other
are almost identical, Ticknor, considering them as independent works,
finds praise for the earlier book, and blame for the later. An odd,
mad freak is the versified _Diez libros de Fortuna de Amor_ (1573),
wherein Frexano and Floricio woo Fortuna and Augustina in Arcadian
fashion. Its author, the Sardinian soldier, Antonio Lo Frasso, shares
with Avellaneda the distinction of having drawn Cervantes' fire—his
one title to fame. Artificiality reaches its full height in the
_Pastor de Fílida_ (1582) of Luis Gálvez de Montalvo, who presents
himself, Silvestre, and Cervantes as the (Dresden) shepherds Siralvo,
Silvano, and Tirsi. Almost every Spanish man of letters attempted a
pastoral, but it were idle to compile a catalogue of works by authors
whose echoes of Montemôr are merely mechanical. The occasion of much
ornate prose, the pastoral lived partly because there was naught to
set against it, partly because born men of action found pleasure in
literary idealism and in "old Saturn's reign of sugar-candy." Its
unreality doomed it to death when Alemán and others took to working
the realistic vein first struck in _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Meanwhile
the spectacle of love-lorn shepherds contending in song scandalised
the orthodox, and the monk Bartolomé Ponce produced his devout parody,
the _Clara Diana á lo divino_ (1599) in the same edifying spirit that
moved Sebastián de Córdoba (1577) to travesty Boscán's and Garcilaso's
works—_á lo divino, trasladadas en materias cristianas_.
Didactic prose is practised by the official chronicler, JERÓNIMO DE
ZURITA (1512-80), author of the _Anales de la Corona de Aragón_, six
folios published between 1562 and 1580, and ending with the death of
Fernando. Zurita is not a great literary artist, nor an historical
portrait-painter. Men's actions interest him less than the progress
of constitutional growth. His conception of history, to give an
illustration from English literature, is nearer Freeman's than
Froude's, and he was admirably placed by fortune. Simancas being thrown
open to him, he was first among Spanish historians to use original
documents, first to complete his authorities by study in foreign
archives, first to perceive that travel is the complement of research.
Science and Zurita's work gain by his determination to abandon the
old plan of beginning with Noah. He lacks movement, sympathy, and
picturesqueness; but he excels all predecessors in scheme, accuracy,
architectonics—qualities which have made his supersession impossible.
Whatever else be read, Zurita's _Anales_ must be read also. His
contemporary, AMBROSIO DE MORALES (1513-91), nephew of Pérez de Oliva,
was charged to continue Ocampo's chronicle. His nomination is dated
1580. His authoritative fragment, the result of ten years' labour,
combines eloquent narrative with critical instinct in such wise as to
suggest that, with better fortune, he might have matched Zurita.
Hurtado de Mendoza as a poet belongs to Carlos Quinto's period. Even
if he be not the author of _Lazarillo_, he approves himself a master
of prose in his _Guerra de Granada_, first published at Lisbon by
the editor of Figueroa's poems, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, in 1627.
Mendoza wrote his story of the Morisco rising (1568-71) in the
Alpujarra and Ronda ranges, while in exile at Granada. On July 22,
1568 (if Fourquevaulx' testimony be exact), a quarrel arose between
Mendoza and a young courtier, Diego de Leiva. The old soldier—he was
sixty-four—disarmed Leiva, threw his dagger out of window, and, by
some accounts, sent Leiva after it. This, passing in the royal palace
at Madrid, was flat _lèse majesté_, to be expiated by Mendoza's exile.
To this lucky accident we owe the _Guerra de Granada_, written in the
neighbourhood of the war.
Mendoza writes for the pleasure of writing, with no polemical or
didactic purpose. His plain-speaking concerning the war, and the part
played in it by great personages whom he had no cause to love, accounts
for the tardy publication of his book, which should be considered as
a confidential state-paper by a diplomatist of genius. Yet, though
he wrote chiefly to pass the time, he has the qualities of the great
historian—knowledge, impartiality, narrative power, condensation,
psychological insight, dramatic apprehension, perspective and
eloquence. His view of a general situation is always just, and, though
he has something of the credulity of his time, his accuracy of detail
is astonishing. His style is a thing apart. He had already shown, in
a burlesque letter addressed to Feliciano de Silva, an almost unique
capacity for reproducing that celebrity's literary manner. In his
_Guerra de Granada_ he repeats the performance with more serious aim.
One god of his idolatry is Sallust, whose terse rhetoric is repeatedly
echoed with unsurpassable fidelity. Another model is Tacitus, whose
famous description of Germanicus finding the unburied corpses of Varus'
legions is annexed by Mendoza in his account of Arcos and his troops
at Calalín. This is neither plagiarism nor unconscious reminiscence;
it is the deliberate effort of a prose connoisseur, saturated in
antiquity, to impart the gloomy splendour of the Roman to his native
tongue. To say that Mendoza succeeded were too much, but he did not
altogether fail; and, despite his occasional Latinised construction,
his _Guerra de Granada_ lives not solely as a brilliant and picturesque
transcription. It is also a masterly example of idiomatic Castilian
prose, published without the writer's last touches, and, as is plain,
from mutilated copies.[15] Mendoza may not be a great historian: as a
literary artist he is extremely great.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] The sources are carefully traced by L. A. Stiefel in the
_Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie_ (vol. xx. pp. 183 and 318). One
specimen suffices here:—
GIANCARLI, iii. 16.
_Falisco._ Padrone, o che la imaginatione m'inganna, o pur quella è la
vuestra Madonna Angelica.
_Cassandro._ Sarebbe gran cosa che la imaginatione inganassa me
anchora, perch' io voleva dirloti, etc.
RUEDA, _Escena_ iii.
_Falisco._ Señor, la vista ó la imaginacion me engaña ó es aquella
vuestra muy querida Angélica.
_Casandro._ Gran cosa seria si la imaginacion no te engañase, antes yo
te lo quería decir, etc.
[9] I learn that D. Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo is preparing a new
edition of the _Anotaciones_.
[10] For a full and very able account of the proceedings, see Alejandro
Arango y Escandon's _Ensayo histórico_ (Méjico, 1866).
[11] The Christian name of the author of the _Visión deleitable_ was
Alfonso.
[12] See the second volume (pp. 79-104) of the _Discursos leidos en
las recepciones públicas que ha celebrado desde 1847 la Real Academia
Española_ (Madrid, 1861).
[13] A very able discussion of these ascriptions is presented by M.
Foulché-Delbosc in the _Revue hispanique_ (1895), vol. ii. pp. 120-45.
[14] The question is discussed in the _Revue hispanique_ (1895), vol.
ii. pp. 304-11.
[15] See two very able studies in the _Revue hispanique_ (vol. i. pp.
101-65, and vol. ii. pp. 208-303), by M. Foulché-Delbosc, whose edition
of the _Guerra de Granada_ is now printing.