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CHAPTERS ON SPANISH LITERATURE
by
JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY
Fellow of the British Academy
Corresponding Member of the Spanish Academy
Medallist of the Hispanic Society of America, etc.
London Archibald Constable and Company Ltd.
1908
TO
MY FELLOW-MEMBERS
OF
THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA
THESE LECTURES
ARE CORDIALLY DEDICATED
PREFACE
Last summer the Trustees of the Hispanic Society of America did me the
honour to invite me to give a course of lectures on Spanish literature
in the United States, and almost at the same time an invitation to
lecture on the same subject reached me from the Provost of University
College, London. The chapters contained in the present volume are the
result. The lectures on the Cid, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, and
Modern Spanish Novelists were delivered during the autumn and winter
of 1907 at the University of Columbia; some of these were repeated at
Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, and Yale Universities;
some at Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and Smith’s College (Northampton,
Massachusetts); and the whole series was given this spring at
University College, London.
Owing to the limited amount of time available for each lecture, it
became necessary to omit a few paragraphs here and there in delivery.
These are now restored. With the exception of the chapter on the
Archpriest of Hita (part of which has been recast), all the lectures
are printed substantially as they were written. Occasional references
have been added in the form of notes.
In addresses of this kind some repetition of ‘you’ and ‘I’ is almost
unavoidable. It has, however, been thought better to retain the
conversational character of the lectures, and it is hoped that the use
of the objectionable first personal pronoun does not degenerate into
abuse.
Lastly, it is a duty and pleasure to thank my friendly audiences in
America and England for the indulgence with which they listened to
these discourses.
JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY.
KNEIPPBADEN: _vid_ NORRKÖPING,
_May 1, 1908_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. THE CID 1
II. THE ARCHPRIEST OF HITA 25
III. THE LITERARY COURT OF JUAN II. 55
IV. THE _ROMANCERO_ 77
V. THE LIFE OF CERVANTES 120
VI. THE WORKS OF CERVANTES 142
VII. LOPE DE VEGA 163
VIII. CALDERÓN 184
IX. THE DRAMATIC SCHOOL OF CALDERÓN 184
X. MODERN SPANISH NOVELISTS 231
INDEX 252
CHAPTER I
THE CID
Just as a portrait discloses the artist’s opinion of his sitter, so the
choice of a hero is an involuntary piece of self-revelation. As man
fashions his idols in his own image, we are in a fair way to understand
him, if we know what he admires: and, as it is with individual units,
so is it with races. National heroes symbolise the ambitions, the
foibles, the general temper and radical qualities of those who have set
them up as exemplars. But there are two sides to every character, and
Spain has two national heroes known all the world over: the practical
Cid and the idealistic Don Quixote, one of them an historical figure,
and the other the child of a great man’s fancy. Perhaps to the majority
of mankind the offspring of Cervantes’s poetic imagination is more
vividly present than the authentic warrior who headed many a desperate
charge. It is the singular privilege of genius to substitute its own
intense conceptions for the unromantic facts, and to create out of
nothing beings that seem more vital than men of flesh and blood. Don
Quixote has become a part of the visible universe, while most of us
behold the Cid, not as he really was, but as Corneille portrayed him
more than five centuries after his death. It may not be amiss to bring
him back to earth by recalling the ascertainable incidents in his
adventurous career.
So marked are the differences between the Cid of history and the Cid of
legend that, early in the nineteenth century his very existence was
called in question by the sceptical Jesuit Masdeu, an historian who
delighted in paradox. Masdeu’s doubts were reiterated by Samuel Dunham
in his _History of Spain and Portugal_, and by Dunham’s translator,
Antonio María de Alcalá Galiano, a writer of repute in his own day.
Alcalá Galiano’s incredulity caused him some personal inconvenience,
for—as his kinsman, the celebrated novelist Juan Valera, records—he
was threatened with an action at law by a Spanish gentleman who piqued
himself on his descent from the Cid, and was not disposed to see his
alleged ancestor put aside as a fabulous creature like the Phœnix.
These negations, more or less sophistical, are the follies of the
learned, and they have their match in the assertions of another school
that sought to reconcile divergent views by assuming the existence of
two Cids, each with a wife called Jimena, and each with a war-horse
called Babieca. This generous process of duplicating everybody and
everything has not found favour. Cervantes expresses his view through
the canon in _Don Quixote_:—‘That there was a Cid, as well as a
Bernardo del Carpio, is beyond doubt; but that they did the deeds which
they are said to have done, I take to be very doubtful.’ Few of us
would care to be so affirmative as the canon with respect to Bernardo
del Carpio, but he is perfectly right as regards the Cid.
It is certain that the Cid existed in the flesh. He was the son of
Diego Lainez, a soldier who fought in the Navarrese campaign. Pérez de
Guzmán, in the _Loores de los claros varones de España_, says that the
Cid was born at Río de Ovierna:—
Este varón tan notable
en Río de Ovierna[1] nasció.
But the usual version is that the Cid was born at Bivar near Burgos,
about the year 1040, and thence took his territorial designation.
To contemporaries he was first of all known simply as Rodrigo (or
Ruy) Díaz de Bivar—Roderick, son of James, of Bivar; and later, from
his prowess in single combat, as the _Campeador_ (the Champion or
Challenger). What was probably his earliest feat of this kind, the
overthrow of a Navarrese knight, is recorded in a copy of rudely rhymed
Latin verses, apparently the most ancient of the poems which were to
commemorate the Cid’s exploits:—
Eia! laetando, populi catervae,
Campi-doctoris hoc carmen audite!
Magis qui eius freti estis ope,
Cuncti venite!
Nobiliori de genere ortus,
Quod in Castella non est illo maius:
Hispalis novit et Iberum litus
Quis Rodericus.
Hoc fuit primum singulare bellum,
Cum adolescens devicit Navarrum:
Hinc Campi-doctor dictus est maiorum
Ore virorum.
The epithet gained at this early period clung to him through life: it
is applied to him even by his enemies. It is curious to find that the
Arab chroniclers constantly speak of him as Al-kambeyator, but never
as the Cid—a word which is usually said to derive from the Arabic
_Sidi_ (= My Lord). This circumstance makes it doubtful whether he was
widely known as the Cid during his own lifetime. There is, indeed, a
pleasing legend to the effect that the King of Castile, on hearing Ruy
Díaz de Bivar addressed as _Sidi_ by Arab prisoners of war, decreed
that the successful soldier should henceforth be known by that name.
But there is no evidence to support this story, and it is rather too
picturesque to be plausible. It seems more likely that Ruy Díaz de
Bivar was first addressed as _Sidi_ by Arabs who served under him or by
the Arab population of Valencia which he conquered towards the end of
his career, that the phrase was taken up by his Christian troops, and
that it was not generally current among Spaniards till after his death.
That he soon afterwards became widely known as ‘the Cid’ or ‘my Cid’
is apparent from a line in the rhymed Latin chronicle of the siege of
Almería, written some fifty years later:—
Ipse Rodericus, mio Cid semper vocatus.
But we need not discuss these minutiæ further. Let us record the fact
that Ruy Díaz de Bivar is known as the Cid Campeador, and pass on to
his historical achievements. At the age of twenty-five he was appointed
_alférez_ (standard-bearer) to Sancho II. of Castile, a predatory
monarch who drove his brother Alfonso from León and his brother García
from Galicia, and annexed their kingdoms. Both campaigns gave the
Cid opportunities of distinction, and he became the most conspicuous
personage in Castile after the murder of Sancho II. by Bellido Dolfos
at Zamora in 1072:—
¡Rey don Sancho, rey don Sancho, no digas que no te aviso
que de dentro de Zamora un alevoso ha salido!
llámase Vellido Dolfos, hijo de Dolfos Vellido,
cuatro traiciones ha hecho, y con esta serán cinco.
Si gran traidor fue el padre, mayor traidor es el hijo.—
Gritos dan en el real: ¡A don Sancho han mal herido:
muerto le ha Vellido Dolfos, gran traición ha cometido!
The Castilians were in a difficult position: the assassination of
Sancho II. left them without a candidate for the vacant thrones
of Castile and León. The Cid was not eligible; for, though of good
family, he was not of royal—nor even of illustrious—descent. The sole
legitimate claimant was the dethroned Alfonso, and there was nothing
for it but to offer him both crowns. It is alleged that the exasperated
Castilians found a salve for their wounded pride by inflicting a signal
humiliation on the Leonese prince whom they invited to rule over them.
According to tradition, Alfonso was compelled to swear that he had no
complicity in Sancho’s death, and this oath was publicly administered
to him by the Cid and eleven other Castilian representatives in the
church of Santa Gadea at Burgos. This story reaches us in ancient
_romances_, and Hartzenbusch has given it a further lease of life by
dramatising it in _La Jura en Santa Gadea_. There may be some basis for
it, and any one may believe it who can. There is, however, no positive
proof that any such incident took place, and the tale reads rather
like a later invention, fabricated to account for the bad blood made
subsequently between the king and his formidable subject. Picturesque
stories concerning historical personages are always ‘suspect,’ and are
generally untrue. As there was no pretender in the field, why should
Alfonso submit to insulting conditions? Is it not simpler to suppose
that he regarded the Cid with natural suspicion as the man mainly
responsible for his expulsion from León, and that the Leonese nobles
were careful to keep this resentful memory alive? Now, as in the time
of Fernán González:—
Castellanos y leoneses tienen malas intenciones.
Is it not intrinsically probable that the Cid, like a true Castilian,
smarted under the Leonese supremacy; that his allegiance was from
the outset reluctant and half-hearted; and that he scarcely troubled
to conceal his ultimate design of carving out for himself a
semi-independent principality with the help of his famous sword Colada?
However this may be, king and subject were, for the moment, mutually
indispensable. Neither could afford an absolute breach at this stage;
both were deep dissemblers; and on July 19, 1074, Alfonso VI. gave
his cousin Jimena in marriage to the Cid. The wedding contract has
been preserved—a prosaic document providing for the due disposition of
property on the death of one of the contracting parties.
After this diplomatic marriage the Cid vanishes for some time into the
dense obscurity of domestic bliss, emerging again into the light of
history as defeating the Emir of Granada, and then as being charged
with malversation. The details are by no means clear. What is clear
is that the Cid was exiled about 1081, that he entered the service of
Al-muktadir, Emir of Saragossa, and that he continued in the pay of
the Emir’s successors—his son Al-mutamen, and his grandson Al-mustain.
Henceforward we have a relatively full account of the Cid’s exploits.
He defeated the combined forces of the King of Aragón, the Count of
Barcelona and their Mohammedan allies at Almenara near Lérida; he
routed the King of Aragón once more, this second battle being fought on
the banks of the Ebro; he played fast-and-loose with Alfonso VI., was
reconciled to his former master, quarrelled, and was again banished.
His possessions were confiscated. But confiscation is a game at which
subjects can play as well as kings, and the Cid was in a position to
recoup his losses. By this time he had gathered round him a motley host
of raiders, men of diverse creeds eager for any enterprise that offered
chances of plunder. Fortune was now about to furnish him with a great
opportunity. On the surrender of Toledo to Alfonso VI. in 1085 it was
agreed that Yahya Al-kadir, the defeated Emir, should receive Valencia
by way of compensation; and he was imposed on the restive inhabitants
by a force under the Cid’s nephew, Alvar Fáñez Minaya. In ordinary
circumstances the intruder might have held his own; but the incursion
of the African Almoravides, the Jansenists of Mohammedanism, abruptly
changed the political aspect. It soon became clear that the gains of
the Reconquest were in jeopardy, and that Alfonso VI. must concentrate
his army for a momentous struggle.
He might fairly plead that he had kept his bargain by installing the
ex-Emir of Toledo at Valencia, and that his own kingdom was now at
stake. He had no sooner recalled Alvar Fáñez and his troops than the
Valencians revolted, and Al-kadir besought Al-mustain to come over and
help him. The inducements offered were considerable. But Al-mustain
was a mere figurehead at Saragossa; effective aid could come only from
his lieutenant, the Cid: the two feigned acceptance of Al-kadir’s
proposals, but secretly agreed to oust him and to divide the spoil.
The relief expedition was commanded by the Cid in Al-mustain’s name.
It was a post after his own heart. Valencia was then, as it is now,
‘the orchard of Spain,’ and the Cid was in no hurry to reach the
capital. He ravaged the outlying districts of the fertile province,
levied forced contributions, or induced the inhabitants to pay
blackmail to escape his forays. He advanced cautiously, fortifying
his position, and scattering delusive promises as he went along. He
assured Alfonso VI. that he was working in the interest of Castile,
and he assured Al-mustain that he was working in the interest of
Saragossa; he encouraged Al-kadir to put down the Valencian rebels, and
he encouraged the rebels to throw off Al-kadir’s authority. A master
of dissimulation, resolved to make Valencia his own, he successfully
deceived all parties till the murder of Al-kadir by Ibn-Jehaf, and the
threatened advance of the Almoravides, forced him to drop the mask.
Failing to carry the city of Valencia by storm, the Cid reduced it by
starvation, and in June 1094 the Valencians surrendered on generous
conditions. These conditions were flagrantly violated. Ibn-Jehaf was
tortured till he revealed where his treasure was hidden; he was finally
burned alive, his chief supporters shared his fate, and the Mohammedan
population was given its choice between banishment and something like
slavery.
In all but name the Cid was now a king, and he was careful to
strengthen his hold on his prize. By taking a census of Christians,
and by forbidding them to leave the city, he kept his most trustworthy
troops together; and he promoted military efficiency as well as
religion by founding a bishopric to which he nominated Jerónimo, the
French prelate mentioned in the _Poema del Cid_, and as valiant a
fighter as Archbishop Turpin in the _Chanson de Roland_:—
Tels curunez ne cantat unkes messe,
Ki de sus cors feïst tantes proeces.
The Cid came out of his trenches to rout the Almoravides at Quarte
and in the valley of Alcoy; he extended his conquests to Murviedro,
and formed an independent alliance with the King of Aragón. And,
if the report of Ibn-Bassam, the Arab chronicler, be true, he had
more vaulting ambitions: in a gust of exaltation, the Cid—so we are
told—was heard to say that, as the first Roderick had lost Spain, a
second Roderick might be destined to win it back. Ibn-Bassam writes
in good faith, but he is a rhetorician, and moreover, in this case,
he gives the story at second-hand. It is difficult to believe that
a clear-headed, practical man like the Cid, who had recently found
it hard enough to seize a single province, can have talked in this
wild way about winning back all Spain. If he did, his judgment was
greatly at fault: the Reconquest was not completed till four centuries
later, and little more was done towards furthering it during the Cid’s
last days. His lieutenant, Alvar Fáñez, was beaten at Cuenca: the
Almoravides, flushed with victory, again defeated the Cid’s picked
troops at Alcira. The Cid was not present on the field, but the
mortification was too much for him: he died—‘of grief and fury,’ so the
Arab historians state—in July 1099. Supported by Alvar Fáñez and Bishop
Jerónimo, Jimena held out for another two years: then she retreated
northwards, after setting fire to the city. Valencia—the real ‘Valencia
del Cid’—ceased to exist. The Christians marched out by the light of
the flaming walls; the Cid’s embalmed body was mounted for the last
time on Babieca (a horse as famous as Roland’s Veillantif), and was
taken to San Pedro de Cardeña. There you may still see what was his
tomb, with this inscription on it:—
Belliger, invictus, famosus marte triumphis,
Clauditur hoc tumulo magnus Didaci Rodericus.
But his body, after many vicissitudes, now rests in the unimposing town
hall of Burgos.
This is the Cid Campeador as he appears in Ibn-Bassam’s _Dhakira_,
written ten years after the Cid’s death, and in the anonymous _Gesta
Ruderici Campidocti_ which dates from between 1140 and 1170. The
authors write from opposite points of view, and are not critical, but
they are trustworthy in essentials, and a statement made by both may
usually be taken as a fact, or as a close approximation to fact. The
Cid, as you perceive, is far from being irreproachable. He has all the
qualities, and therefore all the defects, of a mediæval soldier of
fortune: he was brave, mercenary, perfidious and cruel. How, then, are
we to account for his position as a national hero? In the first place,
we must avoid the error of judging him by modern standards, and in the
second place, we must bear in mind that almost all we learn of his
later years—the best known period of his life—comes to us from enemies
whose prejudices may have led them unconsciously to darken the shadows
in the portrait. It is a shock to discover that the man who symbolises
the spirit of Spanish patriotism was a border chief in the pay of the
highest bidder; it is a greater shock to find that the man who figures
as the type of knightly orthodoxy fought for the Mohammedans against
the Christians. We must part with our simple-minded illusions, and
admit that Pius V. was right in turning a deaf ear when Philip II.
suggested (so it is said) the canonisation of the Cid. All heroes are
apt to lose their glamour when dragged from the twilight of tradition
and poetry into the fierce blaze of fact and history. The Cid is no
exception. Renan sums up against him with gay severity. ‘Tout ce qu’il
fut, il le dut aux ennemis de sa patrie, même le nom sous lequel il
est resté dans l’histoire. Le représentant idéal de l’honneur espagnol
était un _condottiere_, combattant tantôt pour le Christ, tantôt pour
Mahomet. Le représentant idéal de l’amour n’a peut-être jamais aimé.
Encore une idole qui tombe sous les coups de l’impitoyable critique!’
Yet, if it were worth while, a case might be made for the Cid without
recourse to sophistry. It is enough to say that he acted as all other
leaders acted in his age and for long afterwards. He was anything but
a saint: if he had been a saint, he would never have become the idol
of a nation. It has been thought that he had some consciousness of a
providential mission, but this is perhaps a hasty generalisation based
upon Ibn-Bassam’s story of his having said that a second Roderick
might reconquer Spain. This theory ascribes to him more elevation of
character and more political foresight than we can suppose him to have
possessed. The supremacy of Castile was not an accepted political
ideal till it was on the point of establishment, and this takes us
forward, nearly a century and a half, to the reign of St. Ferdinand.
The Cid was no idealist: he lived wholly in the present. The land
of visions was never thrown open to him; he had no touch of Jeanne
d’Arc’s mystical temperament; his aims were immediate, concrete,
personal. His popularity was due, first of all, to his conspicuous and
inspiring valour; due to the fact that the last and most celebrated
of his expeditions, though undertaken primarily for his own profit,
incidentally helped the cause of national unity by wresting a
province from the Mohammedans; due to the instinctive feeling that he
represented more or less faithfully the interests of Castile as against
those of León—a feeling which found frank expression five centuries
later in the _Romancero general_:—
Soy Rodrigo de Vivar,
castellano á las derechas.
And, no doubt, the man bore a stamp of self-confident greatness which
awed his foes and fired the imagination of his countrymen. As posterity
is apt to condone the crimes by which it gains, it is not surprising
that later generations should minimise the Cid’s misdeeds, and should
end by transforming his story almost out of recognition. But these
capricious and often grotesque travesties are relatively modern.
They are not found to any excess in the work of the earliest poets who
sang the Cid’s feats-of-arms. They do not occur in the Latin poem,
already quoted, which speaks enthusiastically of his exploits as being
numerous enough to tax the resources of Homer’s genius:—
Tanti victoris nam si retexere,
Coeperim cuncta, non haec libri mille
Capere possent, Homero canente,
Summo labore.
This cannot have been written much later than 1120, about a score of
years after the Cid’s death. The theme, like many another theme of the
same kind, was too alluring to be left to monks who wrote in a learned
language for a small circle, and it was soon treated in the speech
of the people by _juglares_—not necessarily laymen—who recited their
compositions in palaces, castles, monasteries, public squares, markets,
or any other place where an audience could be got together. In this
way a body of epical poems came into existence. You may say that this
is late, and so it is if you are thinking of _Beowulf_ and _Waldhere_
which, in their actual shapes, certainly existed before the reign of
Alfred, and have even been assigned to the sixth century. But we must
make a radical distinction. _Beowulf_ and _Waldhere_ are, we may say,
sagas in verse, and have no immediate relation to England, so far as
subject goes: the French and Spanish epics are conspicuously national
in theme and sentiment. We know that Spain possessed many epics which
have not survived: epics on Roderick, on Bernardo del Carpio, on Fernán
González, on Garci-Fernández, on Sancho García, perhaps on Alvar Fáñez
Minaya, the Cid’s lieutenant. Only three of these ancient _cantares de
gesta_ have been saved, and among them is the epic known as the _Poema
del Cid_, Possibly it was not the first vernacular poem on the subject,
though it was composed about the middle of the twelfth century, some
fifty years after the Cid’s time; but, as we shall see presently, there
is a long interval between the date of composition and the date of
transcription. As to the author of the _Poema_ nothing is known. On
the ground that some two hundred lines relate to events occurring at
the monastery of Cardeña near Burgos, it has been conjectured that the
author was a monk attached to this monastery. It has also been thought,
owing to his warlike spirit, that he was a layman, and that he came
from the Valle de Arbujuelo: this is inferred from his minute knowledge
of the country between Molina and San Esteban de Gormaz, and from the
relative vagueness of such knowledge as the itinerary extends to Burgos
and Saragossa. These, however, are but surmises. It is further surmised
that the substance of the _Poema del Cid_ may be derived from earlier
epic poems. That may be: but, as it stands, it has a unity of its own.
The _Gesta Ruderici Campidocti_ survives in a unique manuscript which
was stolen during the last century from the Monastery of St. Isidore at
León, was bought in Lisbon by Gotthold Heyne two years before he died
on the Berlin barricades of 1848, and is now, after many wanderings,
in the Academy of History at Madrid. The _Poema del Cid_ also reaches
us in a unique manuscript, the work of a certain Per Abbat who in
1307 wrote out the text from a pre-existing copy; this manuscript is
not known to have passed through any such adventures as the _Gesta_,
but it has evidently had some narrow escapes from destruction: the
beginning of the _Poema del Cid_ is missing, a page is wanting after
verse 2337, and another page is wanting after verse 3307. Had Per Abbat
not taken the trouble to write out the _Poema_, or had his manuscript
disappeared before October 1596 (when it was transcribed by Juan
Ruiz de Ulibarri), the epic on the Cid would be as unknown to us as
the epics on Roderick, Bernardo del Carpio, and the rest. Per Abbat
seems to have followed an unfaithful copy in an uncritical fashion,
but the defects in the existing text cannot all be laid at his door.
There are passages in the _Poema del Cid_ which are almost universally
regarded as interpolations, and for these Per Abbat is not likely to be
responsible. It is more probable that he continued in the bad way of
his predecessors, who apparently took it upon themselves to abridge the
poem. This desire for greater brevity is answerable for transpositions
and corruptions which are the despair of editors and translators; but,
mutilated as it is, the _Poema del Cid_ is a primitive masterpiece, the
merits of which have been increasingly recognised since the text was
first published by Tomás Antonio Sánchez in 1779.
The interest in the literary monuments of the Middle Ages was not then
what it is now. We are talking of a period more than half a century
before any French _chanson de geste_ was printed, and the taste for
mediævalism had still to be created. The Spanish poet, Quintana, who
died only fifty years ago, and was a lad when the _Poema del Cid_
was published, could see nothing to admire in it; and yet Quintana’s
taste in literature was far more catholic than that of most of his
contemporaries. Still the _Poema_ slowly made its way in the world of
letters. One illustration will suffice to show that it was closely
studied within a few years of its appearance in print. John Hookham
Frere, the British Minister at Madrid, read the _Poema del Cid_ on
the recommendation of the Marqués de la Romana, who had praised it as
‘the most animated and highly poetical as well as the most ancient and
curious poem in the language.’ In verse 2348 of the _Poema_:—
Aun vea el hora que vos merezca dos tanto—
the curt reply of Pero Bermuez to the Infantes of Carrión—Frere
proposed to read _merezcades_ for _merezca dos_, and his conjectural
emendation was approved by Romana to whom alone he mentioned it.
Some years later Romana was destined to hear it again in striking
circumstances. He was then serving with the French in Denmark, and it
became necessary for Frere to communicate with him confidentially. It
was indispensable that Frere’s messenger should be fully accredited;
it was of the utmost importance that, in case of arrest, he should not
be found in possession of any paper which might suggest his mission.
The emended verse of the _Poema del Cid_, easily remembered, formed
his sole credentials. Romana at once knew that the agent must come
from Frere, who—apart from his fragmentary translation of the _Poema_,
now superseded by Ormsby’s version—thus began in a small amateurish
way the work of critical reconstitution which has been continued
by Damas-Hinard and Bello, by Cornu and Restori, by Vollmöller and
Lidforss, by Sr. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Mr. Archer Milton
Huntington.
Thanks to these and other scholars whose labours cannot be adequately
acknowledged by any formal compliment, the text of the _Poema del Cid_
has been purged of many corruptions, and made vastly more intelligible.
But there are still problems to be solved in connection with it. What,
for instance, is the relation of the Spanish epic to the French?
The ‘patriotic bias’ should have no place in historical or literary
judgments, but this is a counsel of perfection. Scholars are extremely
human, and experience shows that the ‘patriotic bias’ often intrudes
itself unseasonably in their work. In writing of the French _chansons
de geste_, Gaston Paris says:—‘L’Espagne s’en inspirait dès le milieu
du XII^e siècle pour chanter le Cid, et composait, même sur les
sujets carolingiens des _cantares de gesta_ dont quelques débris se
retrouvent dans les _romances_ du XV^e siècle.’ Rightly interpreted,
this is a fair statement of the case. But earlier French scholars
inclined to exaggerate the amount of Spain’s indebtedness to France
in this respect, and—by a not unnatural reaction—there is a tendency
among the younger generation of Spanish scholars to minimise it. We are
not called upon to take part in this contention of wits: we are not
concerned here to-day with ingenious special pleas, but with facts.
It is a fact that the earliest extant French _chanson de geste_ was
in existence a century before the earliest extant Spanish _cantar de
gesta_: it is also a fact that the French version of Roland’s story was
widely diffused in Spain at an early date. It was there recorded in the
forged chronicle ascribed to Archbishop Turpin, and it filtered down to
the masses who heard it from French pilgrims on the road to the shrine
of St. James at Santiago de Compostela. Among these pilgrims were
French _trouvères_, and through them the Spaniards became acquainted
with the _Chanson de Roland_. It was natural that suggestion should
operate in Spain as it operated in Germany, where Konrad produced
his _Rolandslied_ about the year 1130. There is at least a strong
presumption that the author of the _Poema del Cid_ had heard the
_Chanson de Roland_. Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo, whose patriotism and fine
literary sense make him a witness above suspicion, admits that there
is a marked resemblance between the battle-scenes in the two poems,
and further allows that there are cases of verbal coincidence which
cannot be accidental. We may therefore agree with Gaston Paris that the
author of the _Poema del Cid_ found his inspiration in the _Chanson de
Roland_: that is to say, the _Chanson_ probably suggested to him the
idea of composing a similar work on a Spanish theme, and gave him a
few secondary details. We cannot say less, nor more: except that in
subject and sentiment the _Poema_ is intensely local.
As regards its substance, the _Poema_ is intermediate between history
and fable. There is no respect for chronology; one personage is
mistaken for a namesake; the Cid’s daughters, whose real names were
Cristina and María, are called Elvira and Sol, and are provided with
husbands to whom they were never married in fact, but who may have been
maliciously introduced (as Dozy surmised) to exhibit the Leonese in
an odious light. It is the office of an epic poet to exalt his hero,
and to belittle that hero’s enemies; you might as reasonably look for
perfect execution in the _Poema del Cid_ as for judicial impartiality.
Apart from freaks which may be due to bad copying, we accept the fact
that the metre is capricious, fluctuating between lines of fourteen and
sixteen syllables: we must also accept the fact that history fares no
better than metre, and often fares worse. Yet the spirit of the poet is
not consciously unhistorical; he conveys the impression of believing in
the truth of his own story. There is an accent of deep sincerity from
the outset, in what—owing to mutilation—is now the beginning of the
_Poema_, a passage recording the exile of the Cid:—
With tearful eyes he turned to gaze upon the wreck behind:
His rifled coffers, bursten gates, all open to the wind:
No mantle left, nor robe of fur: stript bare his castle hall:
Nor hawk nor falcon in the mew, the perches empty all.
Then forth in sorrow went my Cid, and a deep sigh sighed he;
Yet with a measured voice, and calm, my Cid spake loftily—
‘I thank thee, God our Father, thou that dwellest upon high,
I suffer cruel wrong to-day, but of mine enemy.’
As they came riding from Bivar the crow was on the right,
By Burgos gate, upon the left, the crow was there in sight.
My Cid he shrugged his shoulders, and he lifted up his head:
‘Good tidings, Alvar Fáñez! we are banished men!’ he said.
With sixty lances in his train my Cid rode up the town,
The burghers and their dames from all the windows looking down;
And there were tears in every eye, and on each lip one word:
‘A worthy vassal—would to God he served a worthy Lord!’
Fain would they shelter him, but none dared yield to his desire.
Great was the fear through Burgos town of King Alfonso’s ire.
Sealed with his royal seal hath come his letter to forbid
All men to offer harbourage or succour to my Cid.
And he that dared to disobey, well did he know the cost—
His goods, his eyes, stood forfeited, his soul and body lost.
A hard and grievous word was that to men of Christian race;
And since they might not greet my Cid, they hid them from his face.
He rode to his own mansion gates; shut firm and fast they were,
Such the King’s rigour, save by force, he might not enter there.
We cannot tell how the poem began in its complete state. Some scholars
think that what is missing was merely a short unimportant prelude;
others believe that the _Poema del Cid_, as we have it, is but
the ending of a vast epic. It must have been vast indeed, for the
fragment that survives amounts to 3735 lines; the _Chanson de Roland_
consists of 4001 lines, and it seems improbable that the _Poema_ was
much longer. At any rate, it is difficult to imagine a more spirited
opening than that which chance has given us. The Cid is introduced
at a critical moment, misjudged, calumniated, a loyal subject driven
from his own Castilian home by an ungrateful Leonese king. There is
something spacious in the atmosphere, there is a stately simplicity
even in the deliberate repetition of conventional epithet—‘the
Castilian,’ ‘he who was born in a good hour,’ ‘the good one of Bivar,’
‘my Cid,’ and rarely—very rarely—‘the Cid.’ The poet lauds his hero,
as he should, but does not degrade him by fulsome eulogy; he is in
touch with realities. He seems to feel that the Cid is great enough
to afford to have the truth told about him; with engaging simplicity
the _Poema_ relates how the crafty chief imposed on the two Jews,
Raquel and Vidas, by depositing with them two chests purporting to be
full of gold (but really containing sand), and how he fraudulently
borrowed six hundred marks on this worthless security. In the _Crónica
general_, a passage founded on a re-cast of the _Poema_ represents the
Cid as refunding the money, and in the _Romancero general_ of 1602
an anonymous ballad-writer excused the trickery on the plea that the
chests contained the gold of the Cid’s truth:—
No habeis fiado
vuestro dinero por prendas,
mas solo del Cid honrado,
que dentro de aquestos cofres
os dejó depositado
el oro de su verdad,
que es tesoro no preciado.
But there is neither casuistry nor other-worldliness in the primitive
poet. He clearly looks upon the incident as a normal business
transaction, describes the Cid as postponing payment when the Jews put
in their claim, and sees no inconsistency between this passage and an
earlier one which vouches for the Cid’s fine sense of honour. We read
that the Count of Barcelona, on his release,
spurred his steed; but, as he rode, a backward glance he bent
Still fearing to the last my Cid his promise would repent:
A thing, the world itself to win, my Cid would not have done;
No perfidy was ever found in him, the Perfect One.
No doubt the _Poema del Cid_ is very unequal. Too often it degenerates
into tracts of arid prose divided into lines of irregular length
with a final monotonous assonance: there are too many deserts dotted
with matter-of-fact details, names of insignificant places, and the
like. But the poet recovers himself, glows with local patriotism
when recording a gallant feat, and humanises his story with traits of
gentler sympathy—as when describing the parting of the Cid from Jimena
and his daughters at the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña. And the
Spanish _juglar_ has the faculty of rapid, dramatic presentation. His
secondary personages are made visible with a few swift strokes—the
learned Bishop Jerónimo who, attracted by the Cid’s fame as a fighter,
comes from afar (‘de parte de orient’), and would almost as soon miss
a Mass as a battle with the Moors; the grim Alvar Fáñez, the Cid’s
right arm, his ‘diestro braço’ as Roland was Charlemagne’s ‘destre
braz’; the Cid’s nephew, Félez Muñoz, always at the post of danger; the
stolid, inscrutable Pero Bermuez, the standard-bearer whose habitual
muteness is transformed into eloquent invective when the hour comes
for denouncing the poltroonery of the Infantes of Carrión; and even
these fictitious rascals have an air of plausibility and life. In the
_Poema del Cid_ we meet for the first time with that forcible realistic
touch, that alert vision, that intense impression of the thing seen and
accurately observed which give to Spanish literature its peculiar stamp
of authenticity. And the poem ends on an exultant note with a pæan over
the defeat of the imaginary Infantes of Carrión, the really historical
betrothal of the Cid’s daughters, and the triumphant passing of the
Cid, reconciled to the King:—
And he that in a good hour was born, behold how he hath sped!
His daughters now to higher rank and greater honour wed:
Sought by Navarre and Aragon for queens his daughters twain!
And monarchs of his blood to-day upon the throne of Spain.
And so his honour in the land grows greater day by day.
Upon the feast of Pentecost from life he passed away.
For him and all of us the grace of Christ let us implore.
And here ye have the story of my Cid Campeador.
The _Poema_ is the oldest and most important existing epic on the Cid,
but there is ample proof that his deeds were sung in other _cantares
de gesta_ of early date—earlier than the compilation of Alfonso the
Learned’s _Crónica general_, which was finished in 1268. Recent
investigations place this beyond doubt. It was long supposed that the
chapters on the Cid in the _Crónica general_ were largely derived
from the _Poema_, but Sr. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s researches into
the history of the text of the _Crónica general_ have shown that this
view is untenable. The printed text of the _Crónica general_, issued
by Florián de Ocampo at Zamora in 1541, is not what it was thought to
be—namely, the original compiled by order of Alfonso the Learned: it
lies at three removes from that original, and this fact throws new
light on the history of epic poetry in Spain. Briefly stated, the
results of the recent researches are these: the First _Crónica general_
was utilised in another chronicle compiled in 1344; this Second
_Crónica general_ was condensed in an abridgment which has disappeared;
this last abridgment of the Second _Crónica general_ is now represented
by three derivatives—the Third _Crónica general_ issued by Ocampo,
the _Crónica de Castilla_, and the _Crónica de Veinte Reyes_. And it
is further established that pre-existing _cantares de gesta_ on the
Cid were utilised in the chronicles as follows: the _Poema del Cid_
(from verse 1094 onwards) was used only in the _Crónica de Veinte
Reyes_, while what concerns the Cid in the first _Crónica general_
comes principally—not (as was believed) from the _Poema del Cid_ as we
know it, but—from another epic, no longer in existence, which began
and continued in very much the same way as the _Poema_ for about 1250
lines, where the resemblance ended. The chapters on the Cid in the
Second _Crónica general_ derive mainly from another vanished _cantar de
gesta_ which coincided to some extent with a surviving epic on the Cid
known as the _Crónica rimada_, or (less generally) as the _Cantar de
Rodrigo_.
This _Crónica rimada_, apparently written by a _juglar_ in the diocese
of Palencia, was thought by Dozy to be older than the _Poema del Cid_,
and Dozy has been made to feel his error. But let us not reproach him,
as though we were infallible. Dozy undeniably overestimated the age of
the _Crónica rimada_ as a whole; still the critical instinct of this
great scholar led him to conclude that it was a composite work, that
its component parts were not all of the same period, and (a conclusion
afterwards confirmed by Milá y Fontanals) that the passage relating to
King Fernando (v. 758 ff.)—
El buen rey don Fernando par fue de emperador—
is the oldest fragment embodied in the text. In these respects Dozy’s
views are admitted to be correct. The _Crónica rimada_, which in its
present form is assigned to about the end of the fourteenth century,
is an amalgam of diverse and inappropriate materials, and scarcely
deserves to be regarded as an original poem at all. If it is probable
that the author of the _Poema del Cid_ had heard the _Chanson de
Roland_, it is still more probable that the author of the _Crónica
rimada_ had heard _Garin le Lohérain_. Not only does he incorporate
part of a lost _cantar de gesta_ on King Fernando; he borrows from
other lost Spanish epics, from the existing _Poema del Cid_, from
degraded oral traditions, and perhaps from foreign sources not yet
identified. The patchwork is a poor thing pieced together by an
imitator who has lost the secret of the primitive epic, and insincerely
commemorates exploits which he must have known to be fabulous—such
as the Cid’s expedition to France, and his triumph under the walls
of Paris. But, though greatly inferior to the _Poema_, the _Crónica
rimada_ is interesting in substance and manner. It includes primitive
versions of legends which, in more refined and elaborate forms, were
destined to become famous throughout Europe: the quarrel between the
Cid’s father and Count Gómez de Gormaz (not in consequence of a blow,
or anything connected with an extravagantly artificial code of honour,
but over a matter of sheep-stealing); the death of the Count at the
hands of the Cid, not yet thirteen years of age; and the marriage of
the Count’s daughter Jimena to her father’s slayer, who is represented
as a reluctant bridegroom:—
Ally despossavan a doña Ximena Gomes con Rodrigo el Castellano.
Rodrigo respondió muy sannudo contra el rey Castellano:
Señor, vos me despossastes mas a mi pessar que de grado.
The Cid in the _Poema_ is a loyal subject, faithful to his alien King
under extreme provocation. In the _Crónica rimada_ he is transformed
into a haughty, turbulent feudal baron, more like the Cid of the
later Spanish ballads or _romances_; and it is worth noting that the
irregular versification of the _Crónica rimada_, in which lines of
sixteen syllables predominate, approximates roughly to the metre of the
_romances_, to which I shall return in a later lecture. For the moment
it is enough to say that by 1612 there were enough ballads on the Cid
to form a _romancero_, and that in the most complete modern collection
they amount to 205. Southey and Ormsby, both ardent admirers of the
_Poema_, thought that the _romances_ on the Cid impressed ‘more by
their number than their light,’ and no doubt these ballads vary greatly
in merit. But a few are really admirable—such as the _romance_ adapted
with masterly skill by Lope de Vega in _Las Almenas de Toro_.
The mention of this great dramatist reminds one that the Cid underwent
another transformation in the theatre. Guillén de Castro introduced
him in _Las Mocedades del Cid_ as the central figure in a dramatic
conflict between love and filial duty; Corneille took over the
situation, and created a masterpiece which completely overshadowed
Castro’s play. The names of other dramatists who treated the same theme
are very properly forgotten: another great dramatisation of the Cid’s
story is about as likely as another great dramatisation of the story of
Romeo and Juliet. But the poetic possibilities of the Cid legend are
inexhaustible. Nearly fifty years ago Victor Hugo, then in the noontide
of his incomparable genius, reincarnated the primitive Cid in the first
series of _La Légende des siècles_. Who can forget the impression left
by the first reading of _Quand le Cid fut entré dans le Généralife_, by
the sixteen poems which form the _Romancero du Cid_, by the interview
between the Cid and the sheik Jabias in _Bivar_, and by that wonder
of symbolism _Le Cid exilé_? It is as unhistorical as you please, but
marvellous for its grandiose vision and haunting music:—
Et, dans leur antichambre, on entend quelquefois
Les pages, d’une voix féminine et hautaine,
Dire:—Ah oui-da, le Cid! c’était un capitaine
D’alors. Vit-il encor, ce Campéador-là?
The question was soon answered. Within three years a fiercer—perhaps
a more melodramatic—aspect of the Cid was revealed by Leconte de
Lisle in three pieces which contributed to the sombre splendour of
the _Poèmes barbares_, and now appear among the _Poèmes tragiques_;
and thirty years later, in our own day, José Maria de Heredia, the
Benvenuto of French verse, included a figure of the Cid among his
glittering _Trophées_. These three are masters of their craft, and one
of them is the greatest poet of his time; but their puissant art has
not superseded the virile creation of the nameless, candid, patriotic
singer who wrote the _Poema del Cid_ some eight hundred years ago.