(1832-)
[Illustration: Jose Echegaray]
The period of political disorder and disturbance which followed the
revolution of 1868 in Spain was also a period of disorder and decline
for the Spanish stage. The drama--throwing off the fetters of French
classicism that paralyzed inspiration at the beginning of the
century--had revived for a time. But after its rejuvenescence of the
glories of the Golden Age of Spanish literature, uniting a new beauty
of form with truth to nature in the Classic-Romantic School, it sank
into a debasement hitherto unknown. Meretricious sentiment, dullness,
or buffoonery, chiefly of foreign production, occupied the scene
before adorned by the imagination, the wisdom, and the wit, of a
Zorilla, a Tamayo, a Ventura de la Vega.
It was at this period of dramatic decadence that Echegaray appeared to
revive once more the romantic traditions of the Spanish stage,
peopling it again with noble and heroic figures,--in whom, however,
the chivalric spirit of the Middle Ages is at times strangely joined
to the casuistic modern conscience. The explanation of this is perhaps
to be found in part in the mental constitution of the dramatist, in
whom the analytic and the imaginative faculties are united in marked
degree, and who had acquired a distinguished reputation as a civil
engineer long before he entered the lists as an aspirant for dramatic
honors. Born in Madrid in 1832, his earlier years were passed in
Murcia, where he took his degree of bachelor of arts, applying himself
afterward with notable success to the study of the exact sciences.
Returning to Madrid, after enlarging his knowledge of his profession
of civil engineer by practical study in various provinces of Spain, he
was appointed a professor in the School of Engineers, where he taught
theoretical and applied mathematics, finding time however for the
production of important scientific works, and for the study of
political economy and general literature. On the breaking out of the
revolution of 1868 he joined actively in the movement, taking office
under the new government as Director of Public Works, and holding a
ministerial portfolio. He took office a second time in 1872, and later
filled the post of Minister of Finance, which he resigned on the
proclamation of the Republic. Retiring from public life, he went to
Paris; and while there wrote, being then a little past forty, his
first dramatic work, 'The Check-Book,' a domestic drama in one act,
which was represented anonymously in Madrid two years later, when the
author for the third time held a ministerial portfolio.
'The Check-Book' was followed in rapid succession by a series of
productions whose titles, 'La Esposa del Vengador' (The Avenger's
Bride), 'La Ultima Noche' (The Last Night), 'En el Puno de la Espada'
(In the Hilt of the Sword), 'Como Empieza y Como Acaba' (How it Begins
and How it Ends), sufficiently indicate their character. They are of
unequal merit, but all show dramatic power of a high order. But on the
representation in 1877 of 'Locura o Santidad?' (Madman or Saint?), the
fame of the statesman and the scientist was completely and finally
eclipsed by that of the dramatist, in whom the press and public of
Madrid unanimously recognized a new and vital force in the Spanish
drama. In this tragedy the keynote of Echegaray's philosophy is
clearly struck. Moral perfection, unfaltering obedience to the right,
is the end and aim of man; and the catastrophe is brought about by the
inability of the hero to make those nearest to him accept this ideal
of life. "Then virtue is but a lie," he cries, when the conviction of
his moral isolation is forced upon him; "and you, all of you whom I
have most loved in this world, perceiving what I regarded as divinity
in you, are only miserable egoists, incapable of sacrifice, a prey to
greed and the mere playthings of passion! Then you are all of you but
clay; you resolve yourselves to dust and let the wind of the tempest
carry you off! ... Beings shaped without conscience or free-will are
simply atoms that meet to-day and separate to-morrow. Such is
matter--then let it go!"
But the punishment of sin, in Echegaray's moral code, is visited upon
the innocent equally with the guilty; and the guilty are never allowed
to escape the retributive consequences of their wrong-doing. The
pessimistic coloring of the picture would be at times unendurably
oppressive, were it not relieved and lightened by the moral dignity of
the hero. Echegaray's pessimism is, so to say, altruistic, never
egoistic; and the compensating sense of righteousness vindicated
rarely fails to explain, if not to justify, his darkest scenes.
Judged by the canons of art, Echegaray's dramatic productions will be
found to have many imperfections. But their defects are the defects of
genius, not of mediocrity, and spring generally from an excess of
imagination, not from poverty of invention or faulty insight. The plot
is often overweighted with an accumulation of incidents, and the
means employed to bring about the desired end are often lacking in
verisimilitude. Synthetic rather than analytic in his methods, and a
master in producing contrasts, Echegaray captivates the imagination by
arts which the cooler judgment not seldom condemns. His characters too
are not always inhabitants of the real world, and not infrequently act
contrary to the laws which govern it. The secondary characters are too
often carelessly drawn, sometimes being mere shadowy outlines, while
an altogether disproportionate part of the development of the plot is
intrusted to them.
On the other hand, in the world of the passions Echegaray treads with
secure step. Its labyrinthine windings, its depths and its heights,
are all familiar to him. Here every accent uttered is the accent of
truth; every act is prompted by unerring instinct. Nothing is false;
nothing is trivial; nothing is strained. The elemental forces of
nature seem to be at work, and the catastrophe results as inevitably
from their action as if decreed by fate.
The genius of Echegaray, which in its irregular grandeur and its
ethical tendency has been not inaptly likened by a Spanish critic to
that of Victor Hugo, rarely descends from the tragic heights on which
it achieved its first and its greatest triumphs; but that its range
has been limited by choice, not nature, is abundantly proved in the
best of his lighter productions, 'Un Critico Incipiente' (An Embryo
Critic). Of his achievement in tragedy the culminating point was
reached--after a second series of noteworthy productions, among them
'Lo Que no Puede Decirse' (What Cannot be Told), 'Mar Sin Orillas' (A
Shoreless Sea), and 'En el Seno de la Muerte' (In the Bosom of
Death)--in 'El Gran Galeoto' (The Great Galeoto), represented in 1881
before an audience which hailed its author as a "prodigy of genius," a
second Shakespeare. Other notable works followed,--'Conflicto entre
Dos Deberes' (Conflict between Two Duties), 'Vida Alegre y Muerte
Triste' (A Merry Life and a Sad Death), 'Lo Sublime en lo Vulgar' (The
Sublime in the Commonplace); but 'El Gran Galeoto' has remained thus
far its author's supreme dramatic achievement. In its title is
personified the evil speaking which not always with evil intent,
sometimes even with the best motives, slays, with a venom surer than
that of the adder's tongue, the reputation which it attacks; turning
innocence itself by its contaminating power into guilt.