"O Love Divine, Celestial Purity,
Pity my cries!
My soul is prone before a clouded throne.
Let thy keen light arise,
Pierce this obscurity
And free my dream-bound eyes!"
--_Ganivet's Last Poem._
The civilization of Spain, streaked as it is with Oriental barbarisms,
belated and discouraged as the end of the nineteenth century finds it,
is still in many respects finer than our own. In everything that
relates to grace and charm of social intercourse, to the dignified
expression of reverence, compassion, and acknowledgment, Spain puts us
to the blush. I was especially touched in Granada by the whole-souled
sympathy and veneration with which the city rendered public honors to
one of its sons, Angel Ganivet, who died in the preceding winter, a
poet hardly thirty.
Although I had glanced over obituary notices of this Spanish writer in
the Paris papers, I had but a vague idea of his work and life, and
sought, before the night of the memorial ceremonies, for further
information. I appealed, first of all, to our table waiter, whose
keen black eyes instantly turned sad and tender.
"_Pobre! Pobre!_ He threw himself into the river at Riga, in Russia,
where he was consul. It was at the close of the war. And he such a
genius! So young! So true a Spaniard! But all Granada will be at the
theatre. He left his play to Granada, asking that it be seen here
first of all. I have never read his books, but I have met him in the
streets, and lifted my hat to him for a wise _caballero_ who cared
greatly for Spain."
My next appeal was to our kind neighbor, the English consul, who
assured me laughingly that he, like myself, was vainly ransacking the
few bookstores of Granada for Ganivet's works.
"The first time I ever heard the name," he added, "was some three or
four years ago, when I noticed an old gentleman standing often in
front of my house, and gazing at the British coat-of-arms above my
door. He told me one day when I drew him into talk that he had a
nephew, Angel Ganivet, roaming in foreign lands. 'But he does not
forget his old uncle,' said he. 'I always receive my little pension
prompt to the day, and so I like to look at the foreign shields about
the city, and remember my nephew, far away, who remembers me.' That
was a trifle, of course, but it gave me a kindly feeling for the young
fellow, and I'm sorry he came to such an end. They found him in the
river, you know. I dare say it was suicide, and likely enough the
defeat of Spain had its share in causing his despondency; but nobody
knows. He was a zealous patriot, I understand, and all Granada seems
to take his death to heart."
My next authority was an aged Granadine, a man of letters; but he had
not read Ganivet's books.
"I have heard of him often," he said, "but I never met him. He was not
much in Granada, although he seems to have had a romantic affection
for the place. _Bueno!_ Its pomegranates are worth remembering. But
Ganivet liked to live in foreign countries, with the idea of
understanding his own better by comparison. He was young; he still had
hopes for Spain. Eighty years are on my head, and I have long done
with hoping. I have served in my country's armies, I have served in
her Government, I have seen much of Church and State, and since the
night when they murdered General Prim I have seen nothing good. But
Ganivet had faith in the national future, and the people, without
waiting to ask on what that faith was founded, love him for it, and
mourn his loss as if he had been their benefactor. They are all going
to pour into the theatre to-morrow night to hear his symbolic drama,
that not one in a hundred of them will try to understand, and the
hundredth will get it all wrong."
The "function" took place in the _Gran Teatro de Isabel la Catolica_,
a name to conjure with throughout all Spain, and especially in
Granada. The day set for the performance, and widely advertised by
newspapers and posters for a month in advance, was a Wednesday. On
Tuesday, in a fever lest we be too late, we arrived at the ticket
office. We had our hurry all to ourselves. Apparently nobody else had
as yet taken a seat. The office was empty, save for us and our
attendant train of boys and beggars.
The official in charge, deaf, slow, and courteous, invited us into a
private room and gave us rocking-chairs by the _brasero_, while he,
with paper and pencil, laboriously added the price of our _entradas_
to the price of our modest box, and spent five minutes in subtracting
the amount from the figure of the small bill we handed him. The
counting out of the change was another strain on his arithmetic, and,
after all these toils, we were still without tickets. He said he would
"write them out at home," and we might send some one for them the next
day. But he affably offered to show us the theatre, and led us through
black passages to a great dusky space, where, while he struck match
after match, we could catch glimpses of pit and balconies, and even a
far-off stage, with a group of actors gathered about a lamp,
rehearsing the play. In Wednesday morning's paper, however, they
announced with entire nonchalance that they were not ready yet, and
would postpone the representation until Thursday.
On Thursday evening the theatre, choking full though it was, hardly
presented a brilliant appearance. Granada is not Madrid, nor Seville,
and the best the Granadines had to offer their dead poet was the
tribute of their presence in such guise as they could command. The
big, barnlike theatre, with its rows of broken lamp-chimneys, looked
shabby, and the rag-tag proportion of the audience was so great that
it overflowed the _Paraiso_ into the aisles and doorways and all
conceivable corners. People were so jumbled and crumpled together
that, with reminiscences of my traveller's hold-all, I found myself
wondering if they would ever shake out smooth again.
Whole families were there, from the infant in arms that invariably
screamed when the actors were reciting any passage of peculiar
delicacy, to the dozing old grandfather, who kept dropping his
cigarette out of his mouth in a way that threatened to set us all on
fire. The gentlemen, even in the boxes and the stalls, were generally
ungloved, and we did not see a dress suit in the house. Cloaks and
neckties were ablaze with color as usual, but the masculine toilets
eluded our stricter observation; for when the curtain was up, our eyes
were all for the stage, and between acts your Spaniard sits with hat
on head, enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
But the Andalusian ladies made amends for everything. By some
prehistoric agreement, Spanish women have yielded the rainbow to the
men, reserving for their own attire the quiet elegance of black or the
festive beauty of pure white. The dress that evening, even in the
principal boxes, was conspicuously simple. But the clear brunette
complexions, the delicate contours, the rich black hair worn high and
crowned with natural flowers, the waving fans and flashing glances,
cast a glamour over the whole scene.
The memorial rites themselves made up in quantity whatever they might
lack in quality, continuing from eight o'clock till two. An orchestra,
organized from Granada musicians for this occasion, opened the
programme. The bust of Ganivet, wrought by a young Granada sculptor,
was reverently unveiled. The star actor, Fuentes of Granada, who had
undertaken with his troupe to present his fellow-townsman's drama
purely as a labor of love, read an interpretation written by one of
Granada's leading critics. The orchestra was in evidence again,
introducing the first act, entitled "Faith." After this the orchestra
played Breton's serenade, "In the Alhambra," and the curtain rose for
the second act on so natural a scene-painting of the famous fortress
that the audience went wild with enthusiasm, and the blushing artist,
also a Granadine, had to be literally shoved from the wings upon the
stage to receive his plaudits.
Between the second act, "Love," and the last act, "Death," came an
_andante elegiaco_, "written expressly for this artistic solemnity" by
a Granada composer. Here, again, the appreciation of the audience was
unbounded, and nothing would do but the reluctant master must leave
his box, struggle through the packed multitude to the conductor's
stand, and take the baton himself for a second rendering from the
first chord to the last. At the close of the third act the orchestra
did its part once more, and the celebration ended, somewhat
incongruously, with a lively bit of modern comedy.
There was imperfection enough, had one been disposed to look for it.
The fifty members of the impromptu orchestra had hardly brought
themselves into accord, the acting was not of the best Spanish
quality, and the players had not half learned their parts. Every long
declamation was a duet, the prompter's rapid undertone charging along
beneath the actor's voice like a horse beneath its rider. But the
audience understood, forgave, were grateful, and sat with sublime
patience through the long pauses between the acts, repeating one to
another, "They say Fuentes is studying his speeches." As the caustic
old scholar had predicted, most of them, apparently, did not try to
understand the allegory. They applauded the obviously poetic touches,
the palpably dramatic situations, and when, in the Alhambra act, a
gypsy air was sung, the galleries delightedly caught it up and
chorused it over again.
But in general that nondescript assembly looked on in passive gravity
while _El Escultor de su Alma_ was rendered, as their poet had
bidden, in their own theatre and for them. They may have gathered
hints and snatches of that mystical message from the dead, whose lofty
look, fixed in shining marble, dominated all the house.
The restless Spirit of Man, seeking the perfect Truth, tears himself
loose from the bride of his youth, Heavenly Faith, and wanders in
beggary through the world. Yet Truth for him can only be the child of
his union with Faith, and in parting from one he has parted from both.
In old age, almost maddened by his wanderings and woes, he meets his
Truth again, full-grown and beautiful, but is so fierce and wild in
his desire to possess her that only Death can reconcile them--Death
and that Heavenly Faith who could not abandon him, though he had
forsaken her.
Ganivet's mother, who, with his brothers, witnessed the play from
behind the scenes, is said to have rejoiced in it as a last solemn
assurance from her son of his secure repose in the Catholic faith of
his fathers. It may not have meant so much to that great audience,
many of whom could neither read nor write, but those tiers upon tiers
of dark Spanish faces were full of earnestness and of a proud content.
However it may have baffled their heads, this legacy of a play, in its
Alhambra setting, spoke clearly to their hearts. One ragamuffin said
to another, as an all-sufficient criticism, "He was thinking of
Granada when he wrote it."
A few days later, I found and eagerly read Angel Ganivet's most
significant booklet, _Idearium_, published in the autumn of 1896, in
which he sets forth his dream for the future of his beloved country.
Ganivet claims that the deepest moral element in Spanish character is
stoicism, "not the brutal and heroic stoicism of Cato, nor the serene
and majestic stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, nor the rigid and extreme
stoicism of Epictetus, but the natural and humane stoicism of Seneca."
He holds that Seneca, himself a Spaniard, found his philosophy in the
inherent genius of the country, and only gave voice to the indwelling
soul of Spain. The Spanish church, cherishing this element, became a
thing apart from the general Catholicism of Europe. The long warfare
and incidental intercourse with the Moors stamped Spanish Christianity
with its two other characteristic features of mysticism and
fanaticism. "Mysticism was like a sanctification of African
sensuality, and fanaticism was a turning against ourselves, when the
Reconquest ended, of the fury accumulated during eight centuries of
combat."
The author, _muy espanol_, is naturally _muy catolico_, yet he
protests against violence in the repression of other forms of
religion. "Liberty should bring with it no fear." He believes that
Spain is, above all, _sui generis_, independent and individual. The
representative Spaniard is a free lance, striving and conquering by
his own impulse and under his own direction, like the Cid of old or
Cortes in the field of arms, like Loyola in the church, like Cervantes
in letters. He lays stress on the achievements of Spanish art--the
master paintings of Velazquez and Murillo, the master dramas of Lope
de Vega and Calderon, as expressing, better than political history has
expressed, that intensification of Spanish life resulting from the
struggle against the Arabs "and making of our nation a Christian
Greece."
[Illustration: THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT IN GRANADA]
He finds it logical and right that Spain, after her successive
periods of Roman influence, Visigothic influence, Arab influence,
and her modern era of colonial expansion, should now abandon foreign
policies and concentrate all her vitality within her own borders. Not
by the sword, but by the spirit, would he have Spain henceforth hold
sway over mankind, and especially over the Spanish-descended peoples
of South America.
He winces under the monopoly of the term "American" by the citizens of
the United States--"a formidable nation," he admits, "very populous,
very rich, and apparently very well governed." He notes, in contrast,
the poverty and comparative anarchy of the South American republics,
but he urges still that the Spanish character, shaped through such
eventful centuries, is an entity, clear and firm, with qualities well
defined, whereas the Yankees are yet in the fusing pot. He would have
all the peoples of Hispanian descent recognize and realize in
themselves this Spanish individuality, effecting not a political
union, but a "confederation, intellectual and spiritual," whose first
aim should be the preservation of Spanish ideas and ideals, and the
second, the free gift of these to all the nations of the earth.
The ancient glory of Spain, he says, has vanished like a dream; let a
new and whiter glory dawn. Her career of material conquest is ended.
Those savage struggles have left her faint and spent. Let her now seek
to attain, through purification and discipline, such fresh fulness of
life as shall insure the triumph of her spiritual forces--her fervent
faith and her unworldly wisdom. "Our Ulysses is Don Quixote."
V