1533-1600.
The Spanish muse has produced numerous epic poems, most of which are
unknown beyond the limits of Spain, and many even there have been
consigned to merited oblivion. The Araucana alone has been admitted to a
station in general literature. This is owing partly to its own intrinsic
merits, but in a greater degree to the novelty of its argument, and to
the circumstances under which it was written. Unlike other poets,
_Ercilla_ was himself an actor in the scenes which he describes. The
chronicler of his own story, he avowedly rejects the aid of fiction.
Veracity and accuracy are the qualities in winch, as a poetical writer,
he is peculiar. His descriptions and characters are portraits taken from
nature; invention is therefore a talent which he never exerts. If his
imagination has any play, it is only in the grouping and distribution of
his pictures. His scenery, his manners, his personages, are all copied
from originals which he had actually before his eyes. The objects of his
observation, the subject-matter of his poetry, were, moreover, of a
class strikingly novel,--a new world, savage nations, for the first time
brought into contact and collision with civilised man: on one side the
love of independence; on the other, the thirst of plunder, the fury of
religious zeal, and a misguided spirit of chivalrous enterprise. No
ordinary talents were required to do justice to so rich a theme, whilst
even ordinary abilities were sufficient to give interest to a poem
founded on such a basis. To great genius the Spanish poet cannot lay a
claim; he is indeed inferior to his labour: yet he had that cleverness
requisite to produce a work not totally devoid of interest, occasionally
abounding in beauties; such, in short, as entitles him to a respectable
though not a very high station in the literary world.
Don Alonso de Ercilla was born in Madrid on the 7th of March, 1533.
[Note 1.] His family was noble; by which word a meaning is conveyed
different from that attached in this country to the notion of nobility,
it being tantamount to saying that his ancestors were and had been for a
long time gentlemen. Fortun Garcia de Ercilla, the father of Ercilla, a
native of Biscay, was an industrious writer, whose labours as a jurist
were highly prized, and obtained for him the cognomen of the "subtle
Spaniard." He wrote generally in Latin, though a Spanish manuscript work
of his upon the challenge sent by the emperor Charles V. to Francis I.
king of France is recorded by the author of the Bibliotheca Hispana.
[Note 2.] Fortun's wife. Doña Leonor de Zuñiga (ladies in Spain do not
take their husband's names), was a woman of illustrious descent, the
feudal lady of the town of Bobadilla, the domain of which, after her
husband's death, was transferred to the crown, she having been admitted
into the household of the empress. Three sons were the offspring of
their union, of whom Alonso the poet was the youngest. He received his
education at the royal palace, and since his tender years became a
_menino_ [Note 3.], or page of the heir to the crown, prince Philip,
afterwards so famous as Philip II. of Spain. What sort of education he
received under such circumstances we are not enabled to say. It is not
probable that it was one suited to a man intended for literary pursuits.
His works, however, prove him not to have been unacquainted with the
Latin and Italian poets; and though his knowledge of the latter was
probably acquired in the course of his travels, he must have been
indebted to his early studies for his introduction to the former. The
words "gentleman" and "soldier" were at that time nearly synonymous; and
Don Alonso, though bred a courtier, and following his royal master in
that capacity, was probably considered to be intended for the military
profession. In his earlier years Philip was directed by his father to
travel over his future extensive dominions, which formed a very
considerable, and, with the exception of France, at that time the best,
part of Europe. In this tour Ercilla was a constant attendant of the
young prince, profiting, as he himself boasts[33], by his travels,
indulging his own inquisitive propensities, and, in imitation of
Ulysses, acquiring an ample store of information and wisdom, derived
from his observations of nations and manners. [Note 4.]
The ambition of Charles V. was not satisfied with the possession of
Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, great part of Italy, and the countries
recently discovered in America. The rich inheritance which he intended
to transmit to his son was to be increased, and as a compensation for
the loss of the empire of Germany, to which his brother Ferdinand had
been elected successor, he aspired to the crown of England for the
future king of Spain. A marriage between Philip and the English queen
Mary was brought about; the young prince repaired to London, attended by
Ercilla. During their residence in this metropolis, news reached them
that the Araucanos, an Indian tribe in South America, had risen against
the power of Spain. The insurrection appeared of a more serious nature
than those which had hitherto occurred in the annals of Indian warfare.
The charge of subduing the refractory patriots, or, as they were called
by their invaders, the rebels, was committed to Geronimo de Alderete,
who had come over from Peru to England, and soon set out again on his
return, having been appointed, by the king, adelantado of Chili,--a
title since become obsolete, which was equivalent to hat of military
commander of a district. To a man of Ercilla's adventurous disposition,
this opportunity of military honour was too tempting to be resisted. He
left the personal service of the prince, to follow the adelantado in his
distant expedition, and girded on his sword[34], as he himself says, for
the first time, being then in the twenty-first year of his age. Geronimo
de Alderete, however, did not reach the scene of warfare, having died
while on his way, in Taboga near Panama. His young companion proceeded
alone to Lima, the metropolis of Peru, to join the expedition.
Those distant possessions, which, for the most part, had been annexed to
the Spanish crown by the prowess of obscure and enterprising
adventurers, had already begun to rank high in the public estimation,
and individuals of noble birth and courtly favour sought to reap the
fruits of the labours of the neglected discoverers and conquerors.
Don Andres Hurtado de Mendoza, marquis of Cañete, was at that time
viceroy of Peru; a man belonging to one of the oldest and most
illustrious families in Spain.
This nobleman entrusted his son, Don Garcia, with the command of the
forces destined to subdue the Araucanos. The expedition consisted of a
corps of two hundred and fifty men, who went by sea--a brilliant and
well armed and equipped band, as we are told by the Spanish historians
[Note 5.]; and a nearly equal number which had been sent by land across
those extensive regions. With such inconsiderable forces did the
Spaniards attempt to conquer and hold in subjection those immense
regions of South America!
The expedition having reached the point of its destination, the war
proved of a far more important nature than those hitherto waged with the
natives of the American continent. Unlike the Indians of the torrid
zone, the Araucanos were a hardy and valiant race, whose courage was not
less impetuous than persevering. They are described by a Spanish
historian as "a people exceedingly brave, robust, and swift, who
outstrip the deer in the race; and of so strong a breath, that they
persist in the course for a whole day; superior to other Indian tribes,
as well in the strength of their frames as in the vigour of their
intellects; strong, ferocious, arrogant; filled with a generous spirit,
and thus averse to subjection, to avoid which they readily peril their
lives.[35] "Though masters," says Ercilla[36], "only of a district of
twenty leagues' extent, without a single town, or a wall, or a
stronghold in it, destitute even of arms, inhabiting an almost flat
country, surrounded by three Spanish towns and two fortresses, they, by
dint merely of their valour and tenacity of purpose, not only recovered,
but supported and maintained, their freedom." Their gallant stand
against the invaders of America was at last crowned with success.
Instead of the subjects, they became the honourable foes, and in process
of time the allies and friends, of the Spanish monarchy. The poverty of
their native land proved their best auxiliary; it deterred the Spaniards
from persisting in a contest in which nothing was to be gained which
could repay their exertions; and so completely was the animosity of
those nations changed into feelings of mutual esteem, that in the late
events, which have severed the colonies from their mother-country, the
Araucanos have constantly shown, and still preserve, the most decided
partiality to the cause and fortunes of the old Spaniards.
In the conflicts of that Indian war Ercilla was eminently distinguished,
according to the testimony of nearly all the Spanish writers [Note 6.],
and to his own rather boastful account. He had an ample opportunity to
indulge his daring spirit of enterprise and his habits of observation.
After the tumult of a battle, or the toils of a march, he devoted the
hours of night to write his half poetical, half historical, narration;
wielding, as he says, by turns the sword and the pen, and writing often
upon skins, and sometimes upon scraps of paper so small as to contain
scarcely six lines. The ordinary duties, which he shared in common with
his fellow-soldiers, were insufficient for his aspiring ambition, and as
little did the matter for observation on men and countries, although the
supply was unusually copious, satisfy the cravings of his inquisitive
mind. Determined to accomplish more, he penetrated into the furthermost
parts of the South American continent; left the army, in company with
ten of his fellow-soldiers; crossed twice, in a small boat, the
dangerous pass of the archipelago of Ancudbox; and in the same manner,
though with less of gasconade [Note 7.] than was long after shown by an
enterprising French traveller, in an opposite region of the earth,
carved upon a tree a record of his having, first of all human beings,
reached that distant spot.
Upon his return from this expedition, Don Alonso narrowly escaped an
early and disastrous end. News having been received at the city of _La
Imperial_, where the head-quarters of the Spanish army were fixed, that
Philip II. had succeeded to the Spanish crown in consequence of the
abdication of his father, it was thought proper to solemnise the event
by holding a tournament, after the fashion of those days of martial
spirit, chivalrous feeling, and imperfect civilisation. Among the
various shows and feats of skill there was an _estafermo_, a figure of
wood or pasteboard, in striking which knights made a trial of their
strength and dexterity. Don Alonso de Ercilla and a cavalier called Don
Juan de Pineda had a dispute, each pretending to have struck the best
blow. They soon passed from mock to real battle, drew their swords, and
were followed by their respective partisans; so that the games, as not
unfrequently happened in those martial amusements, were converted into
strife and confusion. The general having, it is said, previously
suspected the existence of a plot against his authority, concluded that
this encounter at the games was meant to be the precursor of its
execution. The civil wars, which had arisen in rapid succession among
the invaders and conquerors of that part of South America, gave
countenance to this impression. The pretended ringleaders were therefore
committed to prison; and the irritated general, being desirous of making
a salutary example, to preserve discipline among his troops, ordered
that the heads of the criminals should be cut off. The riot being
quelled, and more correct information having convinced Don Garcia that
the quarrel had been accidental, the severe sentence was revoked.[37] Of
the treatment which he then suffered, Ercilla complains bitterly in his
poem. He states that he was actually taken to a public place, there to
be beheaded by sentence of a young and hasty general[38]; nay, that he
had been already upon the scaffold, and had stretched out his neck for
the axe, whilst he was only guilty of having unsheathed his sword, which
he never drew without being most clearly in the right.[39] The historian
of Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, on the other side, pretends that he
had been justly condemned by the general, a person, in the opinion of
his panegyrist, to whom, by confession of all, no blame could attach, of
an exceedingly mild and humane disposition[40], endowed with great
equanimity, an acute intellect, and a fine memory, a perfect Christian,
of marvellous prudence and activity, no gambler, a zealous restorer of
discipline, highly abstemious, never tasting wine, and, to crown all,
constantly keeping in hand his rosary to tell his beads.[41] He,
moreover, affirms that our poet was indebted to Don Garcia for many
favours; but that he hated Ortigosa, the general's secretary, whom he
taxed with cowardice and incompetency for his office.[42] It is
impossible, and would be foreign to our present purpose, to settle this
question. If Ercilla's testimony in his own case ought to be little
attended to, the adulatory style of Don Garcia's eulogiser renders his
assertions and opinions no less liable to suspicion and unworthy of
credit.
Though the sentence of death passed upon Don Alonso was revoked, he had
to undergo a long imprisonment, which terminated, as we are informed, in
his being banished. We are at a loss how to reconcile this statement
with his own assertion, that he was, nevertheless, present at the
several sieges and engagements which took place in those countries after
the accident of which mention has been made. Not long after, he left
Chili in disgust, without having been duly rewarded for his services.
This fact appears to contradict Suarez de Figueroa, who says that he was
under many obligations to Don Garcia[43]; but what these obligations
were the historian has not stated; and, as has been observed by the
writer of Ercilla's life prefixed to the edition of the Araucana of 1776
(p. 22.), it is evident from the narration of that prejudiced author,
that in a distribution of rewards, which took place under the general,
our poet received none.
A new field of exertion seemed now opened to the martial bard. A spirit
of dissension and civil strife had prevailed among the conquerors of
Peru ever since their establishment in those regions, where, to borrow
the expression of the chief historian of Spanish America, "there had
occurred frequent instances of disloyalty and disobedience, cruel
murders, and various other crimes, two of the king's lieutenants having
been deprived of their authority and imprisoned; the tribunals having
been reduced to utter insignificance; the power of the crown and justice
usurped and trampled upon; and five civil wars had taken place, in which
men became furiously enraged against each other, and fought with inhuman
ferocity, till ultimately the prince prevailed."[44] One of the most
famous "tyrants" of those times (for such was the appellation bestowed
by the Spaniards upon those who usurped the royal authority) was Lope de
Aguirre, a native of Guipuzcoa, who, having been sent upon an expedition
to quell some Indians, raised the standard of revolt against the Spanish
commanders, and ruled for a time over the provinces of Venezuela. Of his
extraordinary cruelties much has been said, and they are still preserved
by tradition, though, perhaps, with that exaggeration of blame which
constantly attaches to the memory of an unsuccessful rebel. In the style
of the age, Ercilla compares him to Herod and Nero[45]; he having caused
his own daughter to be put to death. But before our poet had been able
to reach the scene of this civil war, the usurper had been defeated,
taken, and executed. Nothing now remained for him to do, as the country
was peaceable. He therefore determined to return to Europe, which at
that time, however, a long and painful illness prevented. Having at
length recovered, he left the American continent, proceeded to the
Terceiras, and thence to Spain. At this period (1562), his age being
only twenty-nine years, he was in the full and active vigour of life,
and had lost none of that spirit which impelled him to enterprise and
discovery. He accordingly had scarcely returned to his native country,
when the restless energy of his mind sent him forth upon new travels. He
visited France, Italy, Germany, Silesia, Moravia, and Pannonia.[46]
Having gone back to Spain, he married, at Madrid, Doña Maria de Bazan,
a damsel of rank, whose mother held a place at court as lady of the
bedchamber to the Spanish queen. The manner in which he speaks of his
marriage is quaint and singular: he represents himself to have been
carried away by Bellona, in a dream, over a widely extended and flowery
meadow, where, while he was intent upon devoting himself to amorous
songs, he felt an invincible curiosity to be informed of the names of
the beautiful damsels who inhabited that region, especially of one of
them, who was such that he suddenly lay prostrate at her feet. She was
of tender age, yet she showed a maturity of judgment and talent much
above her time of life. While the poet felt compelled to gaze upon her,
and while entranced and captivated by the contemplation of her beauty,
he anxiously wished to know her name, he saw at her feet the motto, or
inscription, "This is Doña Maria, a branch of the stem of Bazan."
Though the emperor and queen of Spain had stood sponsors to the happy
pair ]Note 8.] Ercilla does not appear to have obtained any rewards or
promotion. The emperor of Germany, Maximilian II., however, appointed
him his chambellan, a distinction which did little to better his
fortune. In 1580, he lived in Madrid, poor and neglected, and
accordingly complaining of the disregard with which his services both at
court and in the camp had been treated. The stream of fortune (he says)
ran constantly against him: he was now in a state of perfect destitution
and abandonment, yet he had the consciousness of having merited, by a
long course of honourable service, the just recompence which was
withheld from him; a consciousness which is itself a. reward, of which
the man of rectitude and honour can never be deprived by external
circumstances.[47]
The following anecdote is recorded respecting Ercilla at this
time:--Having waited to pay his court to the king, and wishing to speak
to his majesty, he felt so disconcerted that he could not find words to
declare the nature of his requests; and the king being well aware of the
temper of the man who was before him, and sure that his timidity arose
from the respect he bore to royalty, told him--"_Don Alonso, address me
by writing._" So Ercilla did (says the author from whom this story has
been taken[48]), and the king granted his request.
What the nature of this request was it is impossible to ascertain,
because Ercilla constantly complains of his having been totally
neglected and forgotten. The anecdote, moreover, seems doubtful. Though
a soldier, Don Alonso was not a blunt one: he had been brought up at
court, nay, within the precincts of the palace, and as a youthful
attendant on the person of that prince, whom now he is represented to
have looked upon with such feelings of reverential terror. On the other
hand, the account is not entirely devoid of probability, and if not
true, is, at least, well imagined. The gloomy and stem disposition of
Philip appears to have struck even his confidential servants with a sort
of respect bordering upon fear; and the notions of the divine attributes
of royalty were then carried to the most extravagant lengths by the
Spaniards; a feeling which can be traced in the Spanish writers down to
a very recent period, and which has only disappeared in consequence of
the late revolutions in the Peninsula.
The last years of Ercilla's life were spent in obscurity. The
disappointments he had met with engendered a spirit of gloomy devotion,
to which his countrymen were, in those days, peculiarly liable.[49] His
morals in his juvenile years had been loose, as is proved by the
circumstance of his having had a numerous illegitimate offspring. He now
bitterly repented of his frailties; and lamented that he had devoted the
best years of his life to worldly pursuits and vanities.[50] The year of
his death is not known. In 1596 he was still alive, and is said to have
been engaged in writing a poem to commemorate the exploits of Don Alvaro
Bazan, marquis of Santa Cruz, the bravest and most fortunate of the
Spanish naval commanders. This work, if it ever existed, has been lost;
and Ercilla is only known in the literary world by his poem La Araucana,
and by a few lines printed in the Parnaso Español[51], which, though
they were highly extolled by Lope de Vega, certainly do no credit to his
poetical powers.
Respecting Ercilla's personal character we possess little information.
He appears to have been brave, active, and clever, of an adventurous
disposition, impatient of control, restless and querulous. That he, like
most of the literary men of Spain, was shamefully neglected by his own
countrymen, is an incontrovertible fact. In his account of the Indian
war, and of his own share in the events of it, he shows himself to have
been actuated by a more liberal spirit, towards the aboriginal natives,
than was evinced by the generality of his fellow-soldiers and
fellow-writers. That this arose from his discontent has been malignantly
asserted by his enemies, but without sufficient evidence. The execution
of Caupolican, the Indian general, which he so indignantly condemns, was
a fact of glaring and atrocious injustice, though, unfortunately, of a
class by no means uncommon, not only in the annals of Spanish warfare in
those regions, but in the history of all conquests; where the assertion
of independence has been held and treated as rebellion, and punishment
the more severely inflicted in proportion as the right to inflict it was
more doubtful or untenable. But as the name of Ercilla belongs rather to
the literary than to the political history of Spain, the qualities of
his poetry demand our attention in preference to the actions of his
life.
The Araucana, though often quoted, is little known out of Spain. No
English version of it has been published, but it is stated in an article
in the Quarterly Review[52], that there exists one in manuscript from
the pen of Mr. Boyd, known as one of the English translators of Dante.
The writer of Ercilla's life, in the French Biographie Universelle,
speaks of a French translation by M. Langlès, also unpublished. We are
not aware that either the Italians or the Germans, the latter of whom
have latterly directed their attention to Castilian poetry, possess any
complete translation of that Spanish poem.
Voltaire was the first, amongst the French, who called the attention of
his countrymen to the Araucana. In his very indifferent Essay upon Epic
Poetry, he praises the speech of Colocolo in the 2d canto, which he
places above that of Nestor in the first book of the Iliad, and says
that the remainder of the work is as barbarous as the nations of which
it treats.[53] Of the excellence of the speech so praised (without
meaning to enter into a comparison with Homer) no doubt can exist, and
the judgment passed upon it by Voltaire deserves the more to be relied
upon, as, according to Bouterwek's acute remark[54], he was a better
judge of rhetorical than of poetical excellence. The unqualified
condemnation of the rest of the poem cannot, indeed, be assented to;
for, though the Araucana is far from being a work of first-rate merit,
yet it contains some manly beauties, which Voltaire's notions of poetry
rendered him unable to perceive. [Note 9.] In an article of Moreri's
Dictionnaire we find a more just though still a severe criticism of
Ercilla's poem. Latterly the writer in the Biographic Universelle
already quoted has expressed a more favourable opinion of the Araucana,
and has perhaps erred on the other side. [Note 10.]
It is to Hayley that the English are indebted for a knowledge of the
work in question: his analysis and partial translations of it, and his
eulogium upon the author, are contained in the notes and body of his
Essay upon Epic Poetry. [Note 11.] Hayley thought of Ercilla, perhaps,
more highly than he deserves; though, upon the whole, his notice of the
Araucana is judicious. In his translations he was not quite so
felicitous: his prosaic style was not ill calculated to give a just
notion of the tenour of the Spanish poet's composition; but he wanted
that force of expression which constitutes the highest recommendation of
Ercilla's poetry. The translator, besides, adopted the couplet, a very
improper medium to convey to an English reader a just notion of a work
originally written in the stanza. It would be needless to point out to
those who are acquainted with the Spenserian stanza, or with the Italian
and Spanish octava, so happily adopted by Fairfax in his Tasso, how far
the mechanism of this measure affects the original conception and
distribution of the poet's thoughts, and how much the structure of the
couplet differs from it; whence it follows, as a necessary consequence,
that conceptions originally adapted to the former must appear distorted
when brought by a forced adaptation to the latter.
From the discordant opinions of critics of all nations respecting the
Araucana, we may safely infer that, although its defects may be great
and numerous, and although even in the Castilian language it cannot be
esteemed a first-rate poem, still it possesses just pretensions to a
rank in literature above that which some would assign to it.
That Ercilla only meant to write a rhymed history cannot be justly
asserted. His fictions, though most of them infelicitous, and
unconnected with the main subjects of his story; his machinery; his
imitations of Ariosto in the first stanzas of all his cantos, and
especially at the opening of the work; his frequent similes;--all
clearly prove that he intended to write a poem. But the novel nature of
his arguments naturally suggested the idea of rendering his poem a
composition far differing from those hitherto existing. He aimed at
producing a work, striking from its subject-matter, recommended by the
veracity and accuracy of the information [Note 12.] which it was
destined to convey, yet clothed in a poetical style, and embellished by
episodes where historical fidelity might be easily departed from, and
would not, indeed, be expected on the part of the reader.
Don Alonso, however, was deficient in many of the qualities which
constitute the poet: he wanted invention and command of language and
versification; on the other hand, that which he conceived he could
express with force, if not with correctness or delicacy. His adventurous
disposition seems to prove that the elements of poetry were in his mind.
He had no eyes for the beauties of nature; but he understood the
workings of the human heart. His warlike habits directed his attention
to those fierce passions which rage in the warrior's breast. He could
interpret the feelings of the natives of those remote regions fighting
for their homes, their altars, and their personal independence, against
the invaders of their country; in his description of their characters
and exploits, his style rises and his fancy kindles. By the force of
mental association, he is thence led to the contemplation of animated
nature; hence the frequency and beauty of his similes, drawn mostly from
the animal creation.
In his delineation of character there is abundant matter for praise: his
Indians are well pourtrayed, though his Spaniards are all failures. From
this latter circumstance he has been accused of bearing ill-will to his
fellow-soldiers; but upon a consideration of his peculiar powers, the
reason of that difference will be easily explained without admitting the
invidious imputations thus cast upon him. Neither could his mind seize,
nor his pen delineate, the complex character of civilised man; whilst
the bolder and simpler lineaments of the physiognomy of the savage were
perfectly adapted to the nature of his genius and the extent of his
abilities.
The want of unity is one of the greatest faults in the Araucana, as the
poem is rendered thereby uninteresting. This defect does not arise
solely from the want of a hero; but likewise from the poet's inability
to invent a story. Yet there are frequent instances of works, the plot
of which is loose and unconnected, without losing much of their
attractions. But in Ercilla, we miss the power of imparting interest,
even to the separate stories which form his poem.
Ercilla's poem, on the whole, is rather deserving of censure than of
praise; and, if read through, will certainly be found tedious; but parts
of it may be perused with pleasure and admiration. The epithet of
Homeric has been both applied and misapplied when bestowed upon his
genius. Those qualities which have been praised in him must be admitted
by an impartial judge to savour a little of the style of the father of
epic poetry. That Ercilla was at an immense distance from his model
must, however, be confessed, even by his warmest admirers.