THE LITERARY COURT OF JUAN II.
The reign of Juan II. is one of the longest and most troubled in the
history of Castile. In his second year he succeeded his father, Enrique
_el Doliente_, at the end of 1406, and for almost half a century he
was the sport of fortune. Enrique III.’s frail body was tenanted by a
masterful spirit: his son was a puppet in the hands of favourites or of
factions. Juan II.’s uncle Fernando de Antequera (so called from his
brilliant campaign against the Moors in 1410, celebrated in the popular
_romances_) acted as regent of Castile till he was called to the throne
of Aragón in 1412, when the regency was assumed by the Queen-Mother,
Catherine of Lancaster. The generosity of contemporaries and the
gallantry of elderly historians lead them to judge Queen-Mothers with
indulgence; but Catherine is admitted to have been a grotesque and
incapable figurehead, controlled by Fernán Alonso de Robles, a clever
upstart. Declared of age in 1419, Juan II. soon fell under the dominion
of Álvaro de Luna, a young Aragonese who had come to court in 1408, and
had therefore known the king from childhood. Raised to the high post of
Constable of Castile, Álvaro de Luna resolved to crush the seditious
nobles, and to make his master a sovereign in fact as well as in name.
But the king was a weakling who could be bullied out of any resolution.
Factious revolts were met with alternate savagery and weakness.
Opportunities were thrown away. The victory over the Moors at La
Higuera in 1431, and the rout of the rebel nobles at Olmedo in 1445,
failed to strengthen the royal authority. At a critical moment, when he
seemed in a fair way to triumph, Álvaro de Luna made an irremediable
mistake. In 1447 he promoted the marriage of Juan II. with Isabel of
Portugal: she was ‘the knife with which he cut his own throat.’ At
her suggestion the unstable Juan took a step which has earned for him
a prominent place among the traitor-kings who have deserted their
ministers in a moment of danger. Álvaro de Luna had fought a hard fight
for thirty years. In 1453 he was suddenly thrown over, condemned, and
beheaded amid the indecent mockery of his enemies:—
Ca si lo ajeno tomé,
lo mío me tomarán;
si maté, non tardaran
de matarme, bien lo sé.
So even the courtly Marqués de Santillana holds up his foe to derision,
unconscious that his own death was not far off. In 1454 Juan II. died,
and during the scandalous reign of Enrique IV. it might well seem that
the great Constable had lived in vain. But his policy was destined to
be carried out by ‘the Catholic Kings,’ Ferdinand and Isabel.
Contrary to reasonable expectation, the court of Juan II. remained a
centre of culture during all the storm of civil war. Educated by the
converted Rabbi Sh’lomoh Hallevi—better known to orthodox Spaniards as
Pablo de Santa María, Chancellor of Castile,—Juan II. had something
more than a tincture of artistic taste. So stern a judge as Pérez
de Guzmán, who had no reason to treat him tenderly, describes him
as a wit, an excellent musician, an assiduous reader, an amateur of
literature, a lover and sound critic of poetry. Juan II. had in fact
all the qualities which are useless to a king, and none of those which
are indispensable. He himself wrote minor poetry, a luxury in which no
monarch less eminently successful than Frederic the Great can afford to
indulge. From his youth he was surrounded by such representatives of
the old school of poetry as Alfonso Álvarez de Villasandino. Castile
might go to ruin, but there was always time to hear the compositions
of this persistent mendicant, or those of Juan Alfonso de Baena, with
the replies and rebutters of versifiers like Ferrant Manuel de Lando
and Juan de Guzmán. It was no good training for either a poet or a
king. In the few poems by Juan II. which have come down to us there
is an occasional touch of laborious accomplishment: there is no depth
of feeling, no momentary sincerity. Poetry had become the handmaid
of luxury. Poetical tournaments and knightly jousts were both forms
of court-pageantry. Nature was out of fashion; life was infected by
artificiality, and literature by bookish conceits. ‘Mesure est precioux
tesmoing de san et de courtoisie,’ according to the author of the
thirteenth-century _Doctrinal_, and _mesura_ and _cortesía_ predominate
in the courtly verse of Juan II.’s reign. The Galician _trovadores_
brought into Castile the bad tradition which they had borrowed from
Provence, and the emphatic genius of Castile accentuated rather than
refined the verbal audacities of conventional gallantry. Macias o
_Namorado_, the typical Galician _trovador_ who died about 1390, had
dared to introduce the words of Christ Crucified as the tag of an
amatory lyric:—
Pois me faleceu ventura
en o tempo de prazer,
non espero aver folgura
mas per sempre entristecer.
Turmentado e con tristura
chamarei ora por mi.
_Deus meus, eli, eli,_
_eli lama sabac thani._
And shortly after the death of Macias another literary force came
into play. As Professor Henry R. Lang observes in a note to his
invaluable _Cancioneiro gallego-castelhano_, ‘the Italian Renaissance
had taught the poet to combine myth and miracle and to pay homage to
the fair lady in the language of religion as well as in that of feudal
life.’ The conventions of chivalry were combined with the expressions
of sacrilegious passion. So eminent a man as Álvaro de Luna set a
lamentable example of impious preciosity. In one of his extant poems he
belauds his mistress, declares that the Saviour’s choice would light on
her if He were subject to mortal passions, and defiantly announces his
readiness to contend with God in the lists—to break a lance with the
Almighty—for so incomparable a prize:—
Aun se m’antoxa, Senyor,
si esta tema tomáras
que justar e quebrar varas
fiçieras per el su amor.
Si fueras mantenedor,
contigo me las pegara,
e non te alçara la vara,
per ser mi competidor.
This is not an isolated instance of profanity in high places, for
Álvaro de Luna’s repugnant performance was equalled in the _Letanía de
Amor_ by the grave chronicler Diego de Valera, and was approached in
innumerable copies of verse by many professed believers. The abundance
of versifiers during the reign of Juan II. is embarrassing. In the
_Ilustraciones_ to the sixth volume of his _Historia de la literatura
española_, José Amador de los Ríos gives two lists of poets who
flourished at this period, and (allowing for the accidental inclusion
of three names in both lists) he arrives at a total of two hundred and
fifteen. Even so, it seems that the catalogue is incomplete; but we
should thank Ríos for his good taste, forbearance, or negligence in
not making it exhaustive. It is extremely doubtful whether two hundred
and fifteen poets of superlative distinction can be found in all the
literatures of Europe put together; it is certain that no such number
of distinguished poets has ever existed at one time in any one country,
and many of the entries in Ríos’s lists are the names of mediocrities,
not to say poetasters. We may exclude them from our breathless review
this afternoon, just as we must pass hurriedly over the names of
minor prose-writers. There is merit in Álvaro de Luna’s _Libro de
las virtuosas e claras mugeres_ in which the Constable replies to
Boccaccio’s _Corbaccio_ and takes up the cudgels for women; there is
uncommon merit in a venomous and amusing treatise, branding the entire
sex, by Juan II.’s chaplain, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo—a work which
he wished to be called (after himself) the _Arcipreste de Talavera_,
but to which a mischievous posterity has attached the title of _El
Corbacho_ or the _Reprobación del amor mundano_. There is merit also
in the allegorical _Visión delectable_ of Alfonso de la Torre, and in
the animated (though perhaps too imaginative) narrative of adventures
given by Gutierre Díez de Games in the _Crónica del Conde de Buelna,
Don Pero Niño_. And no account of the writers of Juan II.’s reign would
be complete without some mention of the celebrated Bishop of Ávila,
Alfonso de Madrigal, best known as _El Tostado_. But _El Tostado_ wrote
mostly in Latin, and, apart from this, his incredible productivity
weighs upon him.
Es muy cierto que escrivió
para cada día tres pliegos
de los días que vivió:
su doctrina assi alumbró
que haze ver á los ciegos.
We must be satisfied to quote this epitaph written on _El Tostado_
by Suero del Águila, and hurry on as we may, blinder than the blind.
When all is said, the importance of _El Tostado_ and the rest is purely
relative. We need only concern ourselves with the more significant
figures of the time, and this select company will occupy the time at
our disposal.
One of the most striking personalities of Juan II.’s reign was Enrique
de Villena, wrongly known as the Marqués de Villena. Born in 1384,
he owes much of his posthumous renown to his reputation as a wizard,
and to the burning of part of his library by the king’s confessor,
the Dominican Fray Lope Barrientos, afterwards successively Bishop of
Segovia (1438), Ávila (1442), and Cuenca (1445). Barrientos has been
roughly handled ever since Juan de Mena, without naming him, first
applied the branding-iron in _El Laberinto de Fortuna_:—
O ynclito sabio, auctor muy çiente,
otra é avn otra vegada yo lloro
porque Castilla perdió tal tesoro,
non conoçido delante la gente.
Perdió los tus libros sin ser conoçidos,
e como en esequias te fueron ya luego
vnos metidos al auido fuego,
otros sin orden non bien repartidos.
Barrientos, however, seems to have been made a scapegoat in this
matter. He asserts that he acted on the express order of Juan II.,
and, in any case, we may feel tolerably sure that he burned as few
books as possible, for he kept what was saved for himself. However
this may be, owing to his supposed dealings with the devil and the
alleged destruction of his library after his death, Villena’s name
meets us at almost every turn in Spanish literature: in Quevedo’s _La
Visita de los chistes_, in Ruiz de Alarcón’s _La Cueva de Salamanca_,
in Rojas Zorrilla’s _Lo que quería ver el Marqués de Villena_, and
in Hartzenbusch’s _La Redoma encantada_. These presentations of the
imaginary necromancer are interesting in their way, but we have in
_Generaciones y Semblanzas_ a portrait of the real Villena done by the
hand of a master. There we see him—‘short and podgy, with pink and
white cheeks, a huge eater, and greatly addicted to lady-killing; some
said derisively that he knew a vast deal of the heavens above, and
little of the earth beneath; alien and remote from practical affairs,
and in the management of his household and estate so incapable and
helpless that it was a wonder manifold.’ Yet Pérez de Guzmán is too
keen-eyed to miss Villena’s intellectual gifts. From him we learn that,
at an age when other lads are dragged reluctantly to school, Villena
set himself to study without a master, and in direct opposition to the
wishes of his grandfather and family, showing ‘such subtle and lofty
talent that he speedily mastered whatever science or art to which he
applied himself, so that it really seemed innate in him by nature.’
Here we have the man set before us—vaguely recalling the figure of
Gibbon, but a Gibbon who has left behind him nothing to represent his
rare abilities.
It must be confessed that Villena owes more of his celebrity to his
legend than to his literary work. Perhaps the nearest parallel to him
in our own history is Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Both were fired by
the enthusiasm of the Renaissance; both were patrons of literature;
both were popularly supposed to practise the black art—Villena in
person, and Gloucester through the intermediary of his wife, Eleanor
Cobham. But, while Duke Humphrey was content to give copies of Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio to the University of Oxford, Villena took an
active part in spreading the light that came from Italy. He was not
the first Spaniard in the field. Francisco Imperial, in his _Dezir de
las siete virtudes_, had already hailed Dante as his guide and master,
and had borrowed phrases from the _Divina Commedia_. Thus when Dante
writes—
O somma luz, che tanto ti levi
dai concetti mortali, alla mia mente
ripresta un poco di quel che parevi—
Imperial transfers these lines from the _Paradiso_ to his own page in
this form:—
O suma luz, que tanto te alçaste
del concepto mortal, á mi memoria
represta un poco lo que me mostraste.
This is rather close translation; but students, more interested in
matter than in form, asked for a complete rendering. Villena was
already at work on the _Æneid_; at the suggestion of Santillana, he
further undertook to translate the _Divina Commedia_ into Castilian
prose. His diligence was equal to his intrepidity. Begun on September
28, 1427, his translation of Virgil was finished on October 10, 1428,
and before this date he had finished his translation of Dante. These
prose versions are Villena’s most useful contributions to literature.
With the exception of the _Arte cisoria_—a prose pæan on eating
which would have attracted Brillat-Savarin, and which confirms Pérez
de Guzmán’s report concerning the author’s gormandising habits—his
extant original writings are of small value. Pérez de Guzmán, Mena,
and Santillana speak of him with respect as a poet, and, as Argote de
Molina mentions his ‘coplas y canciones de muy gracioso donayre,’ it is
evident that Villena’s verses were read with pleasure as late as 1575
when the _Conde Lucanor_ was first printed. But they have not reached
us, and perhaps the world is not much the poorer for the loss. Still,
we cannot feel at all sure of this. Villena showed some promise in
_Los Trabajos de Hércules_, and ended by becoming one of the clumsiest
prose writers in the world; yet Mena exists to remind us that a man who
writes detestable prose may have in him the breath of a true poet.
Judged by the vulgar test of success, Villena’s career was a failure,
and a failure which involved him in dishonour. He did not obtain
the marquessate of Villena, and, though inaccurate writers and the
general public may insist on calling him the Marqués de Villena, the
fact remains that he was nothing of the kind. He had set his heart on
becoming Constable of Castile, and this ambition was also baulked. He
winked at the adultery of his wife with Enrique III. and connived at
her obtaining a decree of nullity on the ground that he was impotent—a
statement ludicrously and notoriously untrue of one whom Pérez de
Guzmán describes as ‘muy inclinado al amor de las mugeres.’ Enrique _el
Doliente_ rewarded the complaisant husband by conferring on him the
countship of Cangas de Tineo and the Grand Mastership of the Order of
Calatrava; but he was unable to take possession of his countship, was
chased from the Mastership by the Knights of the Order, and remained
empty-handed and scorned as a pretentious scholar who had not even
known how to secure the wages of sin. Meekly bowing under the burden
of his shame, Villena retired to his estate of Iniesta or Torralba—two
petty morsels of what had once been a rich patrimony—and there passed
most of his last years working at his translations or miscellaneous
treatises, and dabbling in alchemy. He had once hoped to reach some
of the highest positions in the state; in his obscurity, his heart
leapt up when he beheld a turkey or a partridge on his table, and he
speaks of these toothsome birds with a glow of epicurean eloquence.
But his ill luck pursued him even in his pleasures. His gluttony and
sedentary habits brought on repeated attacks of gout, and he died
prematurely at Madrid on December 15, 1434. As a man of letters he is
remarkable rather for his industry than for his performance. But there
is a certain picturesqueness about this enigmatic and rather futile
personage which invests him with a singular interest. It is not often
that a great noble who stands so near the throne cultivates learning
with steadfast zeal. In collecting manuscripts and texts Villena set
an example which was followed by Santillana, and by Luis de Guzmán, a
later and more fortunate Master of the Order of Calatrava. We cannot
doubt that, in his own undisciplined way, Villena loved literature and
things of the mind, and that by personal effort and by patronage he
helped a good cause which has never had too many friends.
A man of stronger fibre, nobler character, and far greater achievement
was Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, the nephew of the great Chancellor Pero
López de Ayala, and the uncle of Santillana. From a worldly point
of view, he, too, may be said to have wrecked his career; but the
charge of obsequiousness is the last that can be brought against him.
He was not of the stuff of which courtiers are made; his haughty
temper brought him into collision with Álvaro de Luna, whom he
detested; some of his relatives were in arms against Juan II., and
this circumstance, together with his uncompromising spirit, threw
suspicion on his personal loyalty to the throne. Such a man could not
fail to make enemies, and amongst those who intrigued against him we
may probably count that inventive busybody Pedro del Corral, whose
_Crónica Sarrazyna_ he afterwards described bluntly as a ‘mentira ó
trufa paladina.’ After a violent scene with Álvaro de Luna, Pérez
de Guzmán was arrested together with many of his sympathisers. On
his release, though not much past middle life, he closed the gates
of preferment on himself by withdrawing to his estate of Batres, and
thenceforth, like Villena, he sought in literature some consolation for
his disappointment. He had a most noble passion for fame, and he won it
with his pen, when fate compelled him to sheathe his sword.
Any one who takes up the poem entitled _Loores de los claros varones
de España_ and lights upon the unhappy passage in which Virgil is
condemned for tricking out his wishy-washy stuff with verbose ornament—
la poca é pobre sustancia
con verbosidad ornando—
is likely to be prejudiced against Pérez de Guzmán, and is certain
to think poorly of his judgment as a literary critic. It is not as a
literary critic that Pérez de Guzmán excels, nor is he a poet of any
striking distinction; but as a painter of historical portraits he has
rarely been surpassed. In the first place, he can see; in the second,
he writes with a pen, and not with a stick. He is an excellent judge of
character and motive, and he is no respecter of persons—a greater thing
to say than you might think, for as a rule it is not till long after
kings and statesmen are in their graves that the whole truth about
them is set down. And it is the truthfulness of the record which makes
Pérez de Guzmán’s _Generaciones y Semblanzas_ at once so impressive
and entertaining. There is no touch of sentimentalism in his nature;
rank and sex form no claim to his indulgence; he is naturally prone
to crush the mighty and to spare the weak. If a queen is unseemly in
her habits, he notes the fact laconically; if a Constable of Castile
foolishly consults soothsayers, this weakness is recorded side by
side with his good qualities; if an Archbishop of Toledo favours his
relatives in little matters of ecclesiastical preferment, this amiable
family feeling is set off against other characteristics more congruous
to his position; if an _Adelantado Mayor_ has a bright bald head and
pulls the long bow when he drops into anecdotage, these peculiarities
are not forgotten when he comes up for sentence. There is no rhetoric,
no waste: the person concerned is brought forward at the right moment,
described in a few trenchant words, and discharged with a stain on
his character. The _Generaciones y Semblanzas_ is not the work of an
‘impersonal’ historian who is most often a sophist arguing, for the
sake of argument, that black is not so unlike white as the plain man
imagines. Pérez de Guzmán goes with his party, has his prejudices, his
likes and dislikes, and he makes no attempt to dissemble them; but he
is never deliberately unfair. The worst you can say of him is that he
is a hanging judge. He may be: but the phrase in which he sums up is
always memorable for picturesque vigour.
He is believed to have died in 1460 at about the age of eighty-four,
and in any case he outlived his nephew Íñigo López de Mendoza, who is
always spoken of as the Marqués de Santillana, a title conferred on
him after the battle of Olmedo in 1445. In 1414, being then a boy of
eighteen, Santillana first comes into sight at the _jochs florals_ over
which Villena presided when Fernando de Antequera was crowned King of
Aragón; and thenceforward, till his death in 1458, Santillana is a
prominent figure on the stage of history. His father was Diego Hurtado
de Mendoza, Lord High Admiral of Castile; his mother was Leonor de la
Vega, superior to most men of her time, or of any time, in ability,
courage and determination. On both sides, he inherited position,
wealth, and literary traditions, and he utilised to the utmost his
advantages. He was no absent-minded dreamer: even in practical matters
his success was striking. During his long minority, his mother’s crafty
bravery had protected much of his estate from predatory relatives.
Santillana increased it, timing his political variations with a perfect
opportuneness. Beginning public life as a supporter of the Infantes
of Aragón, he deserted to Juan II. in 1429, and, when the property of
the Infantes was confiscated some five years later, he shared in the
spoil. Alienated by Álvaro de Luna’s methods, he veered round again in
1441, and took the field against Juan II.; once more he was reconciled,
and his services at Olmedo were rewarded by a marquessate and further
grants of land. Apparently his nearest approach to a political
conviction was a hatred of Álvaro de Luna in whose ruin he was actively
concerned; but Santillana was always on the safe side, and, before
declaring openly against Luna, he provided against failure by marrying
his eldest son to the Constable’s niece.
Baldly told, and without the extenuating pleas which partisanship
can furnish, the story of those profitable manoeuvres leaves an
unfavourable impression, which is deepened by Santillana’s vindictive
exultation over Álvaro de Luna in the _Doctrinal de privados_. But
we cannot expect generosity from a politician who has felt for years
that his head was not safe upon his shoulders. Yet Santillana’s
personality was engaging; he illustrated the old Spanish proverb which
he himself records: ‘Lance never blunted pen, nor pen lance.’ He
made comparatively few enemies while he lived, and all the world has
combined to praise him since his death in 1458. The slippery intriguer
is forgotten; the figure of the knight who appeared in the lists with
_Ave Maria_ on his shield has grown dim. But as a poet, as a patron of
literature, as the friend of Mena, as a type of the lettered noble
during the early Renaissance in Spain, Santillana is remembered as he
deserves to be.
He had a taste for the dignity as well as for the pomps of life. If he
entertained the King and arranged tourneys, he was careful to surround
himself with men of letters. His chaplain, Pedro Díaz de Toledo,
translated the _Phaedo_; his secretary, Diego de Burgos, was a poet who
imitated Santillana, and commemorated him in the _Triunfo del Marqués_.
But Santillana was not a scholar, and made no pretension to be one. He
knew no Greek, and he says that he never learned Latin. This is not
mock-modesty, for his statement is corroborated by his contemporary,
Juan de Lucena. He tried to make good his deficiencies, airs a Latin
quotation now and then, and must have spelled his way through Horace,
for he has left a pleasing version of the ode _Beatus ille_. Late in
life, he is thought to have read part of Homer in a Spanish translation
probably made (through a Latin rendering) by his son Pedro González
de Mendoza, the ‘Gran Cardenal de España,’ the Tertius Rex who ruled
almost on terms of equality with Ferdinand and Isabel. Whatever his
shortcomings, Santillana’s admiration for classic authors was complete.
He caused translations to be made of Virgil, Ovid and Seneca, and
records his view that the word ‘sublime’ should be applied solely to
‘those who wrote their works in Greek or Latin metres.’ His interest in
learning and his wide general culture are beyond dispute. His library
contained the _Roman de la Rose_, the works of Guillaume de Machault,
of Oton de Granson, and of Alain Chartier whom he singles out for
special praise as the author of _La Belle dame sans merci_ and the
_Reveil Matin_—‘por çierto cosas assaz fermosas é plaçientes de oyr.’
He appeals to the authority of Raimon Vidal, to Jaufré de Foixá’s
continuation of Vidal, and to the rules laid down by the Consistory
of the Gay Science; and, if we may believe the lively _Coplas de la
Panadera_, he carried his liking for all things French so far as to
appear on the battlefield of Olmedo
armado como francés.
He had a still deeper admiration for the great Italian masters. In the
preface to his _Comedieta de Ponza_, which describes the rout of the
allied fleets of Castile and Aragón by the Genoese in 1435, Boccaccio
is one of the interlocutors. There is a patent resemblance between
Santillana’s _Triunphete de Amor_ and the _Trionfi_ of Petrarch, who is
mentioned in the first quatrain of the poem:—
Vi lo que persona humana
tengo que jamás non vió,
nin Petrarcha qu’ escrivió
de triunphal gloria mundana.
But Dante naturally has the foremost place in Santillana’s library.
Boccaccio’s biography of the poet stands on the shelves with the
_Divina Commedia_, the _Canzoni della vita nuova_, and the _Convivio_.
Without Dante we should not have Santillana’s _Sueño_, nor _La
Coronación de Mossén Jordi_, nor _La Comedieta de Ponza_, nor the
_Diálogo de Bias contra Fortuna_: at any rate, we should not have
them in their actual forms. Nor should we have _El Infierno de los
Enamorados_, in which Santillana invites a dangerous comparison by
adapting to the circumstances of Macías _o Namorado_ the plaint of
Francesca:—
La mayor cuyta que aver
puede ningun amador
es membrarse del plaçer
en el tiempo del dolor.
It is not, however, as an imitator of Dante that Santillana interests
us. He himself was perhaps most proud of his attempt to naturalise the
sonnet form in Spain; but these forty-two sonnets, _fechos al itálico
modo_ in Petrarch’s manner, are little more than curious, premature
experiments. And, as I have already suggested, the passion of hate
concentrated in the _Doctrinal de privados_ is incommunicative at a
distance of some four centuries and a half. Santillana attains real
excellence in a very different vein. His natural lyrism finds almost
magical expression in the _serranillas_ of which _La Vaquera de la
Finojosa_ is the most celebrated example, and in the airy _desires_
which show his relation to the Portuguese-Galician school. Indeed he
has left us one song—
Por amar non saybamente
mays como louco sirvente—
which Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo believes to be ‘one of the last composed in
Galician by a Castilian _trovador_.’ In these popular or semi-pastoral
lays, so apparently artless and so artfully ironical, Santillana has
never been surpassed by any Spanish poet, though he is closely pressed
by the anonymous writer of the striking _serranilla morisca_ beginning—
¡Si ganada es Antequera!
¡Oxalá Granada fuera!
¡Sí me levantara un dia
por mirar bien Antequera!
vy mora con ossadía
passear por la rivera—
and still more closely by the many-sided Lope de Vega in the famous
barcarolle in _El Vaquero de Moraña_.
More learned, more professional and less spontaneous than Santillana,
his friend Juan de Mena was in his place as secretary to Juan II. We
know little of him except that he was born at Córdoba in 1411, that
his youth was passed in poverty, that his studies began late, that
he travelled in Italy, and that, after his introduction at court, he
was a universal favourite till his death in 1456. Universal favourites
are apt to be men of supple character, and it must have needed some
dexterity to stand equally well with Álvaro de Luna and Santillana.
Perhaps a Spaniard is entitled to be judged by the Spanish code, and
Spaniards seem to regard Mena as a man of independent spirit. But it
is unfortunate that our national standards in such matters differ
so widely: for the question of Mena’s personal character bears on
the ascription to him of certain verses which no courtier could have
written.
With the disputable exception of Villena, Juan de Mena is the worst
prose-writer in the Spanish language, and no one can doubt the justice
of this verdict who glances at Mena’s commentary on his own poem _La
Coronación_, or at his abridged version of the _Iliad_ as he found it
in the _Ilias latina_ of Italicus. These lumbering performances are
fatal to the theory that Mena wrote the _Crónica de Don Juan II._, a
good specimen of clear and fluent prose. The ponderous humour of the
verses which he meant to be light is equally fatal to the theory that
he wrote the _Coplas de la Panadera_, a political pasquinade—not unlike
_The Rolliad_—ascribed with much more probability by Argote de Molina
to Íñigo Ortiz de Stúñiga. Till very recently, there was a bad habit of
ascribing to Mena anonymous compositions written during his life—and
even afterwards. But this is at an end, and we shall hear little more
of Mena as the author of the _Crónica de Juan II._, of the _Coplas de
la Panadera_, and of the _Celestina_. Henceforward attributions will be
based on some reasonable ground.
Mena had an almost superstitious reverence for the classics, and
describes the _Iliad_ as ‘a holy and seraphic work.’ Unfortunately
he is embarrassed by his learning, or rather by a deliberate pedantry
which is even more offensive now than it was in his day. It takes a
poet as great as Milton to carry off a burden of erudition, and Mena
was no Milton. But he was a poet of high aims, and he produced a
genuinely impressive allegorical poem in _El Laberinto de Fortuna_,
more commonly known as _Las Trezientas_. The explanation of this
popular title is simple. The poem in its original form consisted of
nearly three hundred stanzas—297 to be precise—and another hand has
added three more, no doubt to make the poem correspond exactly to its
current title. Some of you may remember the story of Juan II.’s asking
Mena to write sixty-five more stanzas so that there might be one for
every day in the year; and the poet is said to have died leaving only
twenty-four of these additional stanzas behind him. This is quite a
respectable tradition as traditions go, for it is recorded by the
celebrated commentator Hernán Núñez, who wrote within half a century
of the poet’s death. We cannot, of course, know what Juan II. said, or
did not say, to Mena; but the twenty-four stanzas are in existence, and
the internal evidence goes to show that they were written after Mena’s
time. They deal severely with the King—the ‘prepotente señor’ of whom
Mena always speaks, as a court poet must speak, in terms of effusive
compliment. Here, however, the question of character arises, and, as I
have already noted, Spaniards and foreigners are at variance.
Thanks to M. Foulché-Delbosc, we are all of us at last able to read _El
Laberinto de Fortuna_ in a critical edition, and to study the history
of the text reconstructed for us by the most indefatigable and exact
scholar now working in the field of Spanish literature. It has been
denied that _El Laberinto de Fortuna_ owes anything to the _Divina
Commedia_. The influence of Dante is plain in the adoption of the seven
planetary circles, in the fording of the stream, in the vision of what
was, and is, and is to be. The _Laberinto_ contains reminiscences of
the _Roman de la Rose_, and passages freely translated from Mena’s
fellow-townsman Lucan. It is derivative, and, though comparatively
short, it is often tedious. But are not most allegorical poems tedious?
Macaulay has been reproached for saying that few readers are ‘in
at the death of the Blatant Beast’: the fact being that Macaulay’s
wonderful memory failed for once. The Blatant Beast was never killed.
But how many educated men, how many professional literary critics, can
truthfully say that they have read the whole of the _Faerie Queene_?
How many of these few are prepared to have their knowledge tested?
I notice that, now as always, a significant silence follows these
innocent questions; and, merely pausing to observe that there are two
cantos on Mutability to read after the Blatant Beast breaks ‘his yron
chaine’ in the Sixth Book, I pass on.
The _Laberinto_, with its constant over-emphasis, is not to be compared
with the _Faerie Queene_; but it has passages of stately beauty, it
breathes a passionate pride in the glory of Castile, and, while the
poet does all that metrical skill can do to lessen the monotonous throb
of the _versos de arte mayor_, he also strives to endow Spain with a
new poetic diction. Mena thought meanly of the vernacular—_el rudo y
desierto romance_—as a vehicle of expression, and he was logically
driven to innovate. He failed, partly because he latinised to excess;
yet many of his novelties—_diáfano_ and _nítido_, for example—are now
part and parcel of the language, and many more deserved a better fate
than death by ridicule. Like Herrera, who attempted a similar reform in
the next century, Mena was too far in advance of his contemporaries;
but this is not necessarily a sign of unintelligence. Mena was too
closely wedded to his classical idols to develop into a great poet;
still, at his happiest, he is a poet of real impressiveness, and
his command of exalted rhetoric and resonant music enable him to
represent—better even than Góngora, a far more splendid artist—the
characteristic tradition of the poetical school of Córdoba.
I must find time to say a few words about Juan Rodríguez de la Cámara
(also called, after his supposed birthplace in Galicia, Rodríguez
del Padrón), whose few scattered poems are mostly love-songs, less
scandalous than might be expected from such alarming titles as _Los
Mandamientos de Amor_ and _Siete Gozos de Amor_. Nothing in these
amatory lyrics is so attractive as the legend which has formed round
their author. He is supposed to have served in the household of
Cardinal Juan de Cervantes about the year 1434, to have travelled in
Italy and in the East, to have been page to Juan II., to have become
entangled at court in some perilous amour, to have brought about a
breach by his indiscreet revelations to a talkative friend, to have
fled into solitude, and to have become a Franciscan monk. Some such
story is adumbrated in Rodríguez de la Cámara’s novel _El Siervo libre
de Amor_, and the romantic part of it—the love-episode—is confirmed by
the official chronicler of the Franciscan Order. An anonymous writer
of the sixteenth century goes on to state that Rodríguez de la Cámara
went to France, became the lover of the French queen, and was killed
near Calais in an attempt to escape to England. The imaginative nature
of this postscript discredits the writer’s assertion that Rodríguez
de la Cámara’s mistress at the Spanish court was Queen Juana, the
second wife of Juan II.’s son, Enrique IV. Rightly or wrongly, Juana of
Portugal is credited with many lovers, but Rodríguez de la Cámara was
certainly not one of them. As _El Siervo libre de Amor_ was written not
later than 1439, the adventures recounted in it must have occurred—if
they ever occurred at all—before this date; but the future Enrique
IV. was first married in 1440 (to Blanca of Navarre), and his second
marriage (to Juana of Portugal) did not take place till 1455. A simple
comparison of dates is enough to ensure Juana’s acquittal. Few people
like to see a scandalous story about historical personages destroyed in
this cold-blooded way, and it has accordingly been suggested that the
heroine was Juan II.’s second wife, the Isabel of Portugal who brought
Álvaro de Luna to the scaffold. The substitution is capricious, but it
has a plausible air. Chronology, again, comes to the rescue. Rodríguez
de la Cámara became a monk before 1445, and Isabel of Portugal did not
marry Juan II. till 1447. The identity of the lady is even harder to
establish than that of the elusive Portuguese beauty celebrated during
the next century by Bernardim de Ribeiro in _Menina e Moça_.
There are scores of Spanish books which you may read more profitably
than Rodríguez de la Cámara’s novels. _El Siervo libre de Amor_ and the
_Estoria de los dos amadores, Ardanlier é Liessa_; and better verses
than any he ever wrote may be found in the _Cancionero_ of Juan Alfonso
de Baena, who formed this _corpus poeticum_ at some date previous to
the death of Queen María, Juan II.’s first wife, in 1445. But Rodríguez
de la Cámara has the distinction of being the first courtly poet to put
his name to a _romance_. One of the three which he signs, and which
were first brought to light by Professor Rennert, is a recast of a
famous _romance_ on Count Arnaldos. He was not the only court-poet of
his time who condescended to write in the popular vein. Two _romances_,
one of them bearing the date 1442, are given in the _Cancionero de
Stúñiga_ above the name of Carvajal who, as he resided at the court
of Alfonso V. of Aragón in Naples, is outside the limits of our
jurisdiction. But the best _romances_, the work of anonymous poets
disdained by Santillana and more learned writers, will afford matter
for another lecture.