(_a_) SPANISH LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
The direct and avowed influence of Spain upon English literature has
hardly been comparable to that of France or Italy; nevertheless, in its
totality, it has been sufficient to demand some concise review. Meanwhile
that review necessitates, if less inevitably than in the case of Italy
and France, an outline survey of the history of Spanish literature down
to the middle of the seventeenth century. After that date the Peninsula,
apart from its own lack of progress, cannot be said to count in our
literary development.
In the summary of such literary forces as existed in the Dark Ages,
we have already spoken of the Moslem learning of Cordova, and of the
agency of Moors, Arabs, and Jews in spreading science and philosophy.
We must not forget also the influence of Arab lyrics accompanying Arab
music, which not only operated in Spain, but also in Provence after the
Counts of Barcelona had established their court in that region. The
interpenetration of Christian and Moorish thought was, as a matter of
course, continued for many generations during the Christian re-conquest,
but from the eighth to the twelfth century both learning and literary
art lay with the Moslem. When in the thirteenth century the dialect
of Castile had become the most important, though by no means the only
Spanish speech, it embodied but little contribution from the north. Such
as it reveals is an imitation of the Carlovingian _chansons de geste_
of France, in the shape of romantic poems of which the hero is Ruy Diaz
de Bivar, commonly called the “Cid” (a corruption of the Arabic _Seyd_,
“lord”). Side by side with these went the troubadour poetry common to
the Provençal of Southern France and its closely related Catalonian of
Eastern Spain. In the next and following centuries there were destined
to spring from the Cid poems, combined with the Celtic tales of Arthur,
brought through France from Wales, those romances of chivalry—_libros de
caballerias_—of which something will be said in due course.
Meanwhile some noticeable elements in the character of the rising Spanish
literature were being cultivated under Oriental influence. Chief among
these were the love of aphorism and the love of story. The Spanish
mind has at all times been peculiarly sententious, and the proverbial
philosophy of Spain extraordinarily rich. The Spanish taste has also set
strongly in the direction of fiction of no very probable kind, whether
embodying more or less supernatural marvel, impossible sentiment,
chivalric and pastoral, or crowd of incident. These predilections
already showed themselves during the nascent period of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. The Spanish taste worked with the Oriental
in respect both of proverb and story. The people of the _Arabian
Nights_ naturally passed on their _répertoire_ more readily to their
Spanish neighbours than elsewhere. The Arabic version of the _Fables_
(or _Tales_) _of Pilpay_ was translated under the same title of _Kalila
and Dimna_, and the Arabic version of the _Seven Sages_ (or _Book of
Sindabad_) into the _Stratagems of Women_. With these and other materials
there went a native inventiveness, in which Spanish writers have seldom
been deficient. When they proceed to issue stories in their own names,
though still derived from eastern sources (as in the forty-nine tales of
the _Count Lucanor_ of Don Juan Manuel early in the fourteenth century),
the sententious character common to Moors and Spaniards is in strong
evidence. The same people which was gathering proverbial wisdom into such
collections as _Blooms of Philosophy_ and _Mouthfuls of Gold_, affected
tales with a moral. _Count Lucanor_ consists of stories, told by a
minister to a prince according to the Oriental machinery, which are meant
to do more than amuse. They have the credit of being the first collection
of novels, if we may call them such, in modern Europe. Scattered
_fabliaux_ existed in France, and various tales were current in Italy,
but there was as yet no _Decameron_. The extent to which portions of this
early fiction filtered into England cannot very well be estimated, but
in the neo-Latin countries, with their comparative nearness of language
and traditions, their racial affinities and their common church, the
tales enjoyed a large vogue, which brought them into the hands of the
French composers of _fabliaux_, of Boccaccio’s Italian predecessors, of
Boccaccio himself, and thence of Chaucer. The plot of one of Don Manuel’s
stories is familiar to us through the _Taming of the Shrew_, and on the
Continent some of them reappear in the dramas of Calderon, or the novels
of Lesage. Nor was the circulation of the proverbs confined to Spain. In
Caxton’s _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_, translated from the
French, there appear aphorisms which correspond to those in the Spanish
Florilegia.
* * * * *
The next step in Spanish literature consists of the prose “Chivalric
Romances,” or _libros de caballerias_, of which the existence is best
known to the ordinary reader through the derision showered upon them by
Cervantes in _Don Quixote_. The only exception which he makes is in the
case of their parent, the original _Amadis of Gaul_ (or _Wales_), as
being the best book in this kind, and deserving of preservation as an
example of a type. This _Amadis_, derived from Welsh sources, appeared
early in the fourteenth century, but enjoyed its greatest popularity
during the fifteenth. Elsewhere in western Europe the age of chivalry
had already passed, but in Spain the spirit lingered. The _Amadis_
romances, with their peculiar blend of Celtic knightly self-devotion
and the semi-Oriental fondness for magical and other marvels, were
entirely to the Spanish taste. About the original _Amadis_ and some of
its imitations, despite their extravagant conception of knightly honour
and knightly prowess, and their lack of all reality of time, place,
and circumstance, there is a certain tone or temper of nobility which
redeems them from entire contempt. Beyond this the sequels to _Amadis of
Gaul_, such as _Palmerin_, _Palmerin of England_, and _Amadis of Greece_,
possess no literary virtues. They are simply more or less ingenious
variations of one another, employing much the same figures and much the
same situations. Their knights-errant are totally unreal, and move with
much prolixity in an unreal world, of which the chief elements appear to
be love and sorcery. Nevertheless, when reinforced by a new development,
of which we are to speak next, their chivalric virtues gave them life
under a new shape in France of the seventeenth century.
This new development was the pastoral romance. Our knights and their
loves are now placed in the Arcady of shepherds and shepherdesses. It
is the same world of chivalric impossibility of sentiment, heroism, and
enchantment; but, during the vogue of the Amadises, Italy had developed
the pastoral, and the increasing contact of Spain with Italy—since
the acquisition of Naples—speedily brought before the Spanish writers
the example of Sannazaro. From the _Arcadia_ of the Italian on the
one hand, and from the _libros de caballerias_ on the other, the
Portuguese-Spaniard Montemayor created his famous _Diana_. This work,
like Sidney’s _Arcadia_, is partly in prose and partly in verse, and, in
such English development as arose from the pastoral, the influence of
the Spaniard must be reckoned with that of the Neapolitan. It appears in
Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_, and incidentally it may be observed
that, before writing his _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, Shakespeare would
seem at least to have been told of the substance of Montemayor. Not
only did this influence come directly from the Spanish work, and from
its translation into English at the end of the sixteenth century; it
came also by way of France in the latter part of the seventeenth. For
in France, early in that century, had appeared the _Astrée_ of D’Urfé,
based upon the Spaniard, and this in turn was the parent of those
tedious creations of sentimental affectation, the heroic romances of La
Calprenède and Scudéry, which have already been mentioned in dealing with
the effect of French literature upon our post-Restoration writers of
drama and fiction.
* * * * *
It would, however, be an error to suppose that, during this period of
romance and pastoral, literature made no approach towards real existence.
When war has come to play a smaller part in the national interest, and
when reading is becoming general, a country which loves stories and
“situations” will begin to find material for them in the facts, or at
least the possibilities, of real life. It was so with Spain. In the
latter part of the fifteenth century appears the first instalment of
non-romantic or non-chivalric literature in the shape of _Calisto and
Meliboea_, better known as _Celestina_, a work of uncertain authorship.
A prose “comedy,” though impracticable for the stage, and written in
twenty-one so-called acts, it sets forth—ostensibly with a dissuasive
moral purpose—a tale of intrigue and vice which might conceivably
belong to the realities of contemporary Spain. “Realistic,” indeed, it
cannot be called, since realism describes things strictly as they are.
The work was translated in all western Europe, including England. The
fact that in the early sixteenth century the productions of Spain found
ready access to our own country will be considered later. Meanwhile it
is most convenient to note the subsequent history of the Spanish novel
of common life. That history was peculiar, but intelligible. Spain was
growing weary of the monotonous pretences of the Amadises, and it was by
the treatment of the most opposite type of humanity that the liveliest
interest could be evoked. From the knight-errant to the rogue-errant was
a grateful change. The country possessed a plenty of _picaros_ or rogues,
who lived by the exercise of their wits, and whose adventures might be
embellished into stories at least as interesting as those of a Palmerin.
The appearance of _The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, his Fortunes and
Adventures_ (1554)—a work of unknown authorship, though commonly
attributed to Mendoza—marks the date at which such stories first take
shape as a distinct branch of the novel, to be known as the “picaroon”
or “picaresque.” From that time, for nearly a century, the “Novelas de
Picaros” are a chief product of Spanish writing. In them the vagabond
of low life is carried by his cunning and his luck through a multitude
of such adventures as the Spanish mind considered humorous, even though
they might not be particularly edifying. Unfortunately the hero and his
history tend to become as stereotyped as those of the chivalric romance;
and unhappily also many of the situations at which contemporary Spain
could evidently laugh, are, to us, rather productive of pity or disgust.
Chief among the progeny of _Lazarillo_ are _Guzman de Alfarache_ (1599),
a sequel to _Lazarillo_ itself by Luna (1620), and _The Life of Buscon_
(otherwise entitled _The Great Knave_) by Quevedo (1626). All these
were quickly translated into English. Upon England the effect of the
picaresque novel first appears in the _Jack Wilton_ of Nash, who was
well acquainted with Spanish, and whose choice of a picaroon higher in
the social scale than Lazarillo is merely a concession to contemporary
English tastes and interests. In France the type passed through the
hands of Scarron and reached those of Lesage, whose _Diable Boiteux_ and
_Gil Blas_ were destined to eclipse the fame of the Spanish originals.
From the example of France this species broke out in England with the
_Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_ of Defoe, the _Joseph Andrews_ of
Fielding, the _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_ of Smollett. In
the nineteenth century it finds its congeners in the _Three Musketeers_
of Dumas and in the works of several minor English novelists. Mr. Jingle
does not essentially differ from the type.
It is commonly said that it was the ridicule of Miguel Cervantes which
destroyed the vogue of the chivalric romances. In reality he is rather
the embodiment of his epoch, dealing the _coup de grâce_ to that which
was already dying. His immortal _Don Quixote_ appeared first in 1605,
when Amadis and Palmerin had already been losing their hold for a
generation. Cervantes himself began with a pastoral _Galatea_, but it
is not to be wondered at that his characteristic satirical sense of
reality diverted him from this vein to the writing of original novels.
Some twelve of these “Novelas Exemplares,” or moral and instructive
tales, were published in 1613, and, though of uneven quality, they are
the nearest approach which Spain could show to a novel of actuality.
Some of these were soon converted into plots for dramas by the later
Elizabethan playwrights. _La Gitanilla_ becomes the _Spanish Gipsy_
of Middleton, and Fletcher’s _The Fair Maid of the Inn_ is from the
_Illustrious Housemaid_. But the abiding fame of Cervantes rests upon
work of an entirely novel kind, and one which has remained unique,
despite all efforts at imitation. Though full of contemporary Spain,
_Don Quixote_ is one of those immortal books which become the property
of the world rather than of any particular country. Its happy conception
and execution, its humour, its fine suggestion of the true gentleman,
and its admirable style, combine to make Cervantes the one significant
name in Spanish literature. _Don Quixote_, a poor gentleman of La Mancha,
a true type of the Castilian with all his native dignity and ready
acceptance of lofty views of honour and loyalty, has bemused himself—as
so many others had done—with the reading of the _libros de caballerias_.
Accepting the world of the chivalric romances as a real world, where
wrongs and oppressions clamour for heroic knights to redress them, he
saddles his gaunt mare, Rosinante, clothes himself in old armour, with a
barber’s dish for helmet, and sallies forth to seek adventures. To him
Cervantes attaches the necessary squire in the shape of Sancho Panza,
a good-natured, ignorant peasant, endowed with a simple readiness to
believe his betters, but also with a fund of vulgar shrewdness which
forms an excellent contrast to the idealizing monomania of his master.
The story consists of the adventures of this worthy pair. The inns
which the knight takes for castles, and the windmills which he takes
for giants, are now a commonplace, and had become proverbial in England
within a few years of the appearance of the book. The word “Quixotic”
itself tells the story of the vogue which the work secured. But thousands
have been entertained by the book as a novel without realizing its deeper
perfections. _Don Quixote_ is something far greater than a satire upon
the chivalric romances. It is a work of creative art, a perfect mirroring
of two types of character, all the more true to nature for the apparent
contradictions which each embraces. And Cervantes possesses the supreme
gift of creation, in that, like Swift or Defoe, he makes his persons
live. We are apt to feel, not that the Don is an imaginary character in a
book, but that he once actually lived and entertained his noble delusions
in La Mancha. The skill which not only saves him from contempt, but
invests him with pathetic admiration, is in itself the skill of genius.
It should be observed that Cervantes adapts his Spanish to the situations
with the delicate tact of a master, and that more than usual is therefore
inevitably lost in translation. The difficulty of imitating such a work
is manifest. Among the best known must be reckoned the _Hudibras_ of
Samuel Butler (1663), but beyond adopting the notion of an errant knight
and squire, in the persons of Sir Hudibras and Ralpho, he achieves little
that is comparable to his original. Sir Hudibras is a cowardly and
contemptible person of narrow mind, but, even as such, his treatment is
inconsistent, and the verse which Butler employs in place of Cervantes’
prose is but facile doggerel. It would be better indeed to speak of
_Hudibras_ as a vulgar, if often amusing, travesty of _Don Quixote_ than
as an imitation.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the Spanish lyric verse of the _cancioneros_, cultivated with
much assiduity but with little genius, hardly concerns us, whether in
its native form or when reshaped into sonnets and other varieties under
Italian influence by “learned” poets like Boscan and Garcilaso de la
Vega. Of most importance is the fact that poetry of the latter kind was
disfigured by Gongora, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century,
into one of those styles of exaggerated preciosity which always seem to
secure a temporary success by their very absurdity. The _estilo culto_,
otherwise known as Gongorism, was a deliberate invention, of which the
main features were the consistent avoidance of the natural word and,
as far as possible, of the natural order. Such tricks were congenial
to the Spanish taste, which has always been too much inclined, whether
in verse or prose, to verbose and ornate expression. Gongorism is but
a new species of Spanish artificiality in this respect—a national
characteristic recognized and ridiculed by Shakespeare in his Don Armado.
How much of the peculiar style of Lyly’s _Euphues_ may be due to Spanish
as well as Italian influences cannot be determined with any preciseness.
But it should always be borne in mind that, after the marriage of Henry
VIII with Catharine of Aragon, the English Court was frequented by
Spaniards, and that, thanks to this fact, and the general prominence of
Spain in the eyes of contemporary Europe, Spanish manners, whether of
person or expression, were regarded as a proper subject of emulation
by gallants and _beaux esprits_. This imitation extended far into the
reign of Elizabeth. Before Gongora had introduced his new varieties of
expression, this circle of Englishmen had been more or less familiar with
the sententious antitheses and fantastic prolixities of the prose of
Guevara (of the early sixteenth century), whose _Golden Book of Marcus
Aurelius_ and _Golden Letters_ combined the characteristic proverbial
philosophizing, often tediously platitudinarian, of his nation with its
almost equally characteristic straining after uncommonness of phrase.
Indeed it would seem that Elizabethan England caught from the Spaniards a
taste for apophthegmatic wisdom which reached some among even the best of
its writers, including no less a person than Bacon.
* * * * *
It only remains to remark briefly upon that form of literature which,
apart from Cervantes, is the chief boast of Spain. This was the drama,
established by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), and polished by Calderon a
generation later. Spanish plays had begun in the usual manner with the
performance of “Mysteries” and “Miracles,” of which the latter, when
connected with the sacrament, were called _autos_. But from these Spain,
like England, and unlike Italy or France, developed an entirely native
species of drama. As in England, the attempts to impose the Senecan form,
with its unities of place and time and its entire distinction of the
tragic from the comic, entirely failed. But, unlike the drama of England,
that of Lope de Vega and Calderon does not undertake to mirror human
nature and action with all its various sides and complex motives. Its
characters are but types, and, even as such, they are narrowly conceived.
In the “cloak and sword” pieces a lady, a lover, a sober old man, and a
clown, are the stock figures, who are brought into existence chiefly for
the purpose of enacting their parts in certain ingenious and complicated
intrigues with abundance of exciting or amusing situations. If Calderon
shows a more finished style and a finer observation than Lope, his scope
is otherwise the same. The Spanish stage does, indeed, like the French or
Italian, affect frequent displays of rhetoric, but there the resemblance
ends. Of special note among the _comedias_ were those above mentioned as
“cloak and sword” (_de capa y espada_). The title refers to the usual
equipment of a typical Spaniard of the higher middle class, who was the
most natural hero of adventures and intrigues. It is not difficult to
find in Ben Jonson and Fletcher resemblances to these plays of Spain. In
France, where Spanish influence was at its highest in the time of Lope,
comedy was inevitably affected by much that was congenial in the tastes
and lives of the two peoples, and with the Restoration the same influence
reached England in an attenuated form. Perhaps the most amazing thing
in all Spanish literature is the miraculous fecundity of Lope, to whom
are credited nearly two thousand plays, dashed off with a rapidity which
remains a unique phenomenon. In finish they are, of course, to seek;
but the passableness of the verse thus composed, and the ingenuity of
the plots conceived, are beyond denial. To the Spaniards Lope was “the
prodigy of nature,” and “the Spanish phoenix.”
* * * * *
It is needless for our purpose to follow further the story of Spanish
literature, which, since the seventeenth century, has been singularly
barren, and, in any case, has exerted no appreciable effect whatever upon
our own. On the whole it has been justly said that the writing of Spain
has not been quite worthy of the nation. Perhaps its best work, leaving
Cervantes aside, has been in history, from which, however, we have
derived no definite influence which can be classed as literary. Apart
from these its merits are those of inventiveness in plot and of a certain
high conception of dignity—a most consistent trait of the Spaniard. But
it is a literature wordy in expression, lacking in insight, and seldom
concerning itself with the deeper interests of human life.