In the notes to the _Anthology_ an endeavor has been made to indicate
clearly the position occupied by each of the poets here represented,
with respect to the literary movements of his time. This Introduction,
then, need but serve the purpose of outlining those general movements in
so far as they have been concerned with lyric production.
Of course we have to do only with the lyric tradition which has found
expression in the language of Castile. It is not to be forgotten,
however, that it is but one out of several lyric traditions that have
flourished within the bounds of Spain; for the Spaniard can point with
pride to a poetic production in Latin which extended from the Silver Age
of Latin literature well into the Middle Ages, and he knows, too, that
the Arabs and the Hebrews who settled on his soil composed and sang in
their respective tongues. Those who desire more light upon these
traditions will find an interesting account of them in the _Prólogo_ to
the first volume of Menéndez y Pelayo’s _Antología de poetas líricos
castellanos_ (Madrid, 1890). Suffice it to say that the influence of
Arabic and Hebrew literature upon composition in Castilian has been
exceedingly slight, and that for literary expression the latter speech
is a legitimate heir of Latin in the Iberian peninsula. The Catalan and
Portuguese literatures have a tradition entirely independent of that of
Castile; we, therefore, disregard them here.
Literature, properly so called, did not appear in the vulgar tongue of
Castile until the twelfth century. From that period we have preserved
one of the greatest monuments of Old Spanish letters, the epic _Poema
del Cid_. To heroic poetry as instanced by this poem on Roderick of
Bivar, which, like most of the early epic legends or _cantares de gesta_
of Castile, must have been produced under the influence of the French
_chansons de geste_, there succeeded, in the thirteenth century, a body
of religious and didactic verse, a good part of which is due to the
industrious cleric, Gonzalo de Berceo. Very few lyric compositions in
Castilian can be found in this century. One, and apparently the earliest
of all, is the first piece in our Collection—the _Aventura amorosa_.
Modeled on the French _pastourelle_ or the Provençal _pastorela_, it
shows, like the Spanish heroic legend, the influence of the region
whence most of the mediæval Occident derived its first poetic
inspiration. Another precious example of lyrism at this early date is a
song with certain popular elements in it,—the _Cántica de la Virgen_,
introduced by Berceo into his religious poem, _El duelo de la Virgen_.
One may marvel that there was so slight an output of Castilian lyric
verse at a time when Castile had already begun to be quite active in a
literary way. However, the reason is not far to seek. It is found in the
fact that the poets of Castile, following what seems to have been a
convention with them, wrote their lyrics in the language of an adjoining
district, that of Galicia. Into this latter region, as into Portugal
generally, the wandering troubadours from Provence had early penetrated,
singing everywhere their erotic strains, until, at length, the native
poets began to imitate the Provençal manner in their own language, the
Galician-Portuguese. Of their amorous and other lyric verse quite an
amount is preserved in various _Cancioneiros_, and these also contain
the poems of Castilians and southern Spaniards, who, like the monarch of
Castile, Alfonso el Sabio, composed in Galician-Portuguese.{1}
{1} For an account of this Galician poetry see Menéndez y Pelayo, _l.
c._, _Prólogo_, to volume III, and the article on Portuguese literature
prepared for Groeber’s _Grundriss der romanischen Philologie_, vol. II,
by C. M. de Vasconcellos.
The fourteenth century is marked by the advent of a Castilian poet who
writes in his native speech only. This is Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita,
the Villon of Spain and the most original Spanish writer of the whole
mediæval period. His lyrics, interspersed among the narrative portions
of his _Cantares_, have the note of personal experience. Much has been
made of French influence upon Hita, but, when all is said and done, that
influence is restricted to a small proportion of his work, and he
remains eminently Spanish in manner, although, for his verse forms, he
has had recourse to Galician-Provençal models. These same models were
present to the mind of the Chancellor López de Ayala for the lyrics
contained in his satiric and didactic _Rimado de Palacio_, written in
the second half of the fourteenth century, and in the fifteenth century
they were followed by a whole host of verse writers.
During the first half of the fifteenth century, literary activity was
centered in the Court of John II., king of Castile. There, statesmen and
courtiers of the type of Álvaro de Luna amused themselves by inditing
verses in rivalry with the _trovadores_ who lived by the trade; and a
considerable number of their productions,—especially those conceived
according to the stereotyped Provençal manner, as adopted formerly in
Galicia and in later times in Catalonia, and imported from both regions
into Castile,—may be found in the _Cancionero_ of Baena.
By the side of this very artificial Court verse, maintaining as it does
the earlier lyric tradition that harks back ultimately to the land
beyond the Pyrenees, there appear, in the fifteenth century, two other
main divisions of poetry showing new forces brought to bear upon
Castilian letters. Of these, the one is chiefly governed by an Italian
influence, especially by that of Dante, from whose _Divina Commedia_ it
derives the allegorical tendency which is its distinguishing mark; the
other reveals the influence of the Renaissance in the attention which it
pays to the works of classic antiquity, translating and imitating them.
These new influences find expression, above all, in the poems of
Imperial, Mena and the Marquis of Santillana. Untrammelled by
conventions, Jorge Manrique stands somewhat apart from these three
poetic movements in his best work, the mournfully melodious _Coplas_ on
the death of his father.
To the fifteenth and the following century belongs the great mass of
short lyrico-epic poems or ballads, called _Romances_—a term also
applied to lyrics in quatrains having no epic character whatsoever. It
was formerly believed that the ballads, most of which deal with subjects
from the history of Spain and with the stories of Charlemagne and his
peers, were of much greater antiquity; but the artificiality of the
style and contents of the majority of them, and the introduction into
them of elements of culture and courtliness much more recent than the
times to which they relate, fix their composition as hardly earlier than
the end of the fifteenth century. Still, the weight of authority
ascribes to certain of them an early oral tradition, and even considers
some as developed out of passages taken from the old epic _Cantares de
gesta_.
With the sixteenth century, and as the famous _siglo de oro_ (1550-1680)
drew near, the number of lyric poets increased greatly, and the
Italianizing influences grew in importance. Boscán, Garcilaso de la Vega
and Mendoza were the leading champions of the exotic measures, and they
thoroughly naturalized in Spain the sonnet, the hendecasyllable, the
_ottava rima_ and kindred forms, some of which had already been
introduced in the time of Imperial and Santillana. Certain spirits, such
as Castillejo and Silvestre, opposed, though not consistently, the
endeavors of these innovators; but toward the end of the sixteenth
century the Italian manner triumphed, particularly in the works of
Herrera and his school at Seville.
Mysticism, ever a prominent characteristic of the Spanish temperament,
finds most pleasing expression, during the sixteenth century, in the
lyrics of a number of clerical writers. The most attractive of them all
is Luis de León, deservedly ranked among the greatest Spanish lyric
poets. In him an Italian influence, and the humanizing impress of the
Renaissance are also visible.
The Italian manner is henceforth, and throughout the seventeenth
century, the dominant one in Spanish verse. It is unnecessary to mention
the numerous lyrists who adopted it. The great masters of the _siglo de
oro_—Lope, Calderón, Cervantes—used the foreign measures, though,
indeed, they constantly recurred to the older domestic forms, such as
the _romance_, the _redondillas_, etc.
At the very outset of the seventeenth century there manifested itself in
Spanish poetry the vitiating influence of Góngora, a writer whose
bombastic and obscure style, termed Gongorism after its originator,
wrought the same harm in Spanish letters that Marinism wrought in Italy
and Euphuism in England. The mannerisms of Góngora were imitated by
later poets, so that his school persisted throughout the century,
despite the reaction to sanity attempted by the Argensolas, and the
satirist Quevedo. Even the virile Quevedo himself yielded finally to the
torrent and wrote, in his later period, verse and prose as extravagant
of metaphor and as obscure in style as any that ever came from the pen
of Góngora.
The _siglo de oro_ was followed by a period of decline in things
political, social and literary, which extended through a considerable
portion of the eighteenth century. Poetasters abounded, good taste was
at its lowest ebb. When matters were at about their worst in the world
of letters—and the satire of Jorge Pitillas will indicate how great the
decay was—Luzán inaugurated a reform movement by proposing, in his _Arte
poética_, to subject all poetic production in Spanish to rigid rules
such as Boileau had imposed upon classic French verse. Luzán’s ideas
found favor and, despite the counter-efforts of García de la Huerta, a
champion of the older Spanish methods and a bitter opponent of
innovations, the disciples of Luzán began to compose dramas and lyrics
according to the Gallic laws. The most important lyrist of the new
movement was Meléndez-Valdés, about whom gathered the so-called
Salamancan school of poets. Of these the best was Cienfuegos, who most
nearly approached his master Meléndez in the skill with which he
versified according to the precepts from abroad. The fabulists Samaniego
and Iriarte also underwent French influence.
The opening years of the nineteenth century witnessed a passionate
outburst of Spanish patriotism, which found poetic utterance in the odes
directed against the Napoleonic invader by the Tyrtæan poet Quintana, by
his friend Gallego and other authors. Although leveled against the
French, these compositions were framed in obedience to the canons of the
French poetic lawgivers. The rules of French classicism prevailed also
in the works of the members of a school made up mainly of young clerics,
who had their centre at Seville. Lista and Blanco were among the number
of these poets, whose use of French methods was tempered somewhat by
their imitation of the manner of Herrera, the leader of the school of
Seville that had flourished in the sixteenth and the early seventeenth
century, and of that of his disciple Rioja.
With the third decade of the century the wave of Romanticism began to
sweep over the land. Triumphant with the drama of Rivas, it reached its
apogee of lyrism in the verse of that writer and in the works of the
Byronic poet Espronceda and of Zorrilla. Not the least attractive among
the authors of the Romantic period are the Cuban poets Heredia and
Avellaneda.
The Romantic movement passed away and its unrestrained outpourings of
the inner man ceased to be fashionable after the middle of the century.
Realism, which has prevailed generally in literature since that time, is
not too favorable to the composition of lyric verse, and the production
of the latter during the last fifty years has been rather individual
than characteristic of any school. Bécquer’s Heinesque strains have not
been echoed by any one of note; no one has imitated successfully the
poetic philosophizing of Campoamor, the winning poet so lately deceased;
Núñez de Arce, the author of the _Gritos del combate_ and the _Vértigo_,
has alone found any considerable following; while the humanism of Valera
and Menéndez y Pelayo raises their verse to an intellectual level above
the comprehension of ordinary men. The gentle mysticism of León, of
which reminiscences are found everywhere throughout the works of Valera,
is suggested by the lyrics of Carolina Coronado, who is also of the
school of St. Theresa.