Among them _El mal metafísico_, _La vida multiple_, _La sombra del
convento_, _La tragedia de un hombre fuerte_, _Nacha Regules_. To me
his most powerful book is _El cántico espiritual_. A book that has
qualities which permit it to rank with the great novels of the world.
It is the story of a young South American artist who goes to Paris
to live, to continue his profession. There he falls in love with a
rich, beautiful, but married woman from his own Argentina. For many
years this love dominates his life. He pays court to her. He tries to
make her his mistress, but without success. There are pages and pages
of noble and inspired writing, rich revelations into the depths of
an impassioned heart. After the years they both go back to Argentina
again, to Buenos Aires, and here he finds out that she is ready to
yield to his pleas and become his mistress. Then he finds his love
for her is a thing of the spirit not of the flesh. He finds that she
was merely the protective star that watched over his ambitions, his
art. These years of sorrow had without his knowing it become years of
progression for him, in which he had left behind forever his longing
for the inferior beauty and had passed on to a nobler thing. Beauty
Absolute, which is divine. In _El cántico espiritual_, Galvez writes
(the close of the novel) the triumph of the spirit over the material,
the triumph of an ideal world over a world of reality. It is the long
pilgrimage of the soul toward the Absolute, the love of Dante for
Beatrice, the philosophy of Socrates in the Banquet. It should be the
hymn of a love that was pure, love eternal, a thing of comprehension
of the soul, powerful enough to disdain the flesh. At their last
meeting when he takes farewell of her, Suzanna, in his studio in
Buenos Aires, he says: (This is the close of the novel.) I quote:
“For this work which I wish to create, Suzanna, we must be pure. We
must forget the flesh and the body. We must be able to life up our
souls to the Great Beauty.”
“The darkness was drawing closer about them. They did not light the
light. After Morris touched her brow fleetingly with his lips, his
face again wore its noble ecstatic expression, his eyes too were
strangely revealing of some richer happiness that seemed foreign,
far.... With the eyes of the spirit he had confronted the Beauty
which is Absolute. He had progressed from the love of one woman
toward love of all human things, and from old art which was limited,
to a comprehension of the essence of all art, the Divine.”
This book is nobly felt, nobly executed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Quotation marks have been added to the following paragraphs to be
consistent with similar occurrences within the text:
Pg 7: “There is ... national soul.”
Pg 8: “Lima! Your ... of Spain.”
Pg 27: “Il y a dans ... Dame Reality.)”
Pg 31: “Il me fallut ... and Vitellius.”
Pg 41: “Figure aux ... last God.”
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 3: ‘Eightheenth Century’ replaced by ‘Eighteenth Century’.
Pg 5: ‘a Portugese critic’ replaced by ‘a Portuguese critic’.
Pg 7: ‘some the same’ replaced by ‘some of the same’.
Pg 11: ‘of great variety’ replaced by ‘of a great variety’.
Pg 17: ‘the Pyranees and’ replaced by ‘the Pyrenees and’.
Pg 17: ‘Pyranean village’ replaced by ‘Pyrenean village’.
Pg 25: ‘a sered and wasteful winderness’ replaced by
‘a seered and wasteful wilderness’.
Pg 26: ‘irridescent, like the’ replaced by ‘iridescent, like the’.
Pg 29: ‘Lamertine wrote’ replaced by ‘Lamartine wrote’.
Pg 30: ‘unbelieveable charm’ replaced by ‘unbelievable charm’.
Pg 31: ‘of Eighteenth’ replaced by ‘of the Eighteenth’.
Pg 32: ‘Gallilean Prophet’ replaced by ‘Galilean Prophet’.
Pg 35: ‘English clerygman’ replaced by ‘English clergyman’.
Pg 41: ‘shores of Gallilee’ replaced by ‘shores of Galilee’.
Pg 46: ‘Salâmmbo’ replaced by ‘Salammbô’.
Pg 64: ‘by many seiges’ replaced by ‘by many sieges’.
Pg 69: ‘the hysop of the’ replaced by ‘the hyssop of the’.
Pg 74: ‘Heine’ day was’ replaced by ‘Heine’s day was’.
Pg 75: ‘in the quartrain’ replaced by ‘in the quatrain’.
Pg 79: ‘exclamed with joy’ replaced by ‘exclaimed with joy’.
Pg 79: ‘thanks to me like’ replaced by ‘thanks to men like’.
Pg 81: ‘quartrains of Persia’ replaced by ‘quatrains of Persia’.
Pg 82: ‘After period of’ replaced by ‘After the period of’.
Pg 82: ‘born on the crest’ replaced by ‘borne on the crest’.
Pg 82: ‘in his Rubiayat’ replaced by ‘in his Rubaiyat’.
Pg 84: ‘into a quartrain’ replaced by ‘into a quatrain’.
Pg 87: ‘loved banks of’ replaced by ‘loved the banks of’.
Pg 95: ‘with new irridescence’ replaced by ‘with new iridescence’.
Pg 96: ‘at stated intervales’ replaced by ‘at stated intervals’.
Pg 97: ‘Man of Weimer’ replaced by ‘Man of Weimar’.
Pg 98: ‘Pagannini is a good’ replaced by ‘Paganini is a good’.
Pg 99: ‘Zucker und Zaubar’ replaced by ‘Zucker und Zauber’.
Pg 101: ‘Marcel Schwab’ replaced by ‘Marcel Schwob’.
Pg 112: ‘accused Bryon of’ replaced by ‘accused Byron of’.
Pg 113: ‘of metamorphasis’ replaced by ‘of metamorphosis’.
Pg 115: ‘dust of milleniums’ replaced by ‘dust of millenniums’.
Pg 117: ‘Aristophenes’ replaced by ‘Aristophanes’ (twice).
Pg 118: ‘L’Enchanteur Pourissant’ replaced by
‘L’Enchanteur Pourrissant’.
Pg 119: ‘que Nietzche’ replaced by ‘que Nietzsche’.
Pg 119: ‘entusiasm por’ replaced by ‘entusiasmo por’.
Pg 125: ‘of connoiseurship’ replaced by ‘of connoisseurship’.
Pg 128: ‘crumbling Colisseum’ replaced by ‘crumbling Colosseum’.
Pg 130: ‘Riccarda Huch’ replaced by ‘Ricarda Huch’.
Pg 132: ‘die Fusze eines’ replaced by ‘die Füsse eines’.
Pg 133: ‘his is virtuousity’ replaced by ‘his is virtuosity’.
Pg 135: ‘Aristophenes’ replaced by ‘Aristophanes’.
Pg 142: ‘laisser choir dans’ replaced by ‘laissé choir dans’.
Pg 148: ‘he is priest’ replaced by ‘he is a priest’.
Pg 149: ‘in French journels’ replaced by ‘in French journals’.
Pg 149: ‘It is case’ replaced by ‘It is a case’.
Pg 152: ‘in ancestry of’ replaced by ‘in the ancestry of’.
Pg 159: ‘been throughly’ replaced by ‘been thoroughly’.
Pg 161: ‘Are you ambitions’ replaced by ‘Are you ambitious’.
Pg 164: ‘is Schumanesque’ replaced by ‘is Schumannesque’.
Pg 166: ‘quote him verbatum’ replaced by ‘quote him verbatim’.
Pg 166: ‘Aristophenes’ replaced by ‘Aristophanes’.
Pg 166: ‘From Chauteaubriand’ replaced by ‘From Chateaubriand’.
Pg 182: ‘the Saumurai Creed’ replaced by ‘the Samurai Creed’.
Pg 183: ‘Chauteaubriand’ replaced by ‘Chateaubriand’.
Pg 189: ‘The superanuated’ replaced by ‘The superannuated’.
Pg 194: ‘as critisicm, but’ replaced by ‘as criticism, but’.
Pg 195: ‘almon-eyed beauties’ replaced by ‘almond-eyed beauties’.
Pg 200: ‘Hanson’ replaced by ‘Hamsun’.