"Inferior as these after-books of Amadis certainly
are, they form so singular an epoch in the history
of literature that an abridgment of the whole series
into our language is to be desired."--Southey
In dealing with the literatures of the Peninsula, a task for which he
was eminently well equipped, Southey followed an instinct of natural
discrimination which seldom played him false. Feeble as some of the
'after-books' of Amadis undoubtedly are, we cannot afford to ignore
them, if only because of the literary phenomena they present. In these
fantastic tales the imagination which had flowered so luxuriantly in
Amadis became overblown. They are, indeed, the petals fallen from
the fading rose--so quickly did the wonderful blossom of chivalric
fiction droop and wither.
The first of these sequels, called The Fifth Book of Amadis, is
more generally known as Esplandian, as it chiefly refers to the
adventures of that hero. Cervantes is, perhaps, rather more unkind
to this romance than its peculiar merits deserve, for he makes his
critical curate say of it: "Verily the father's goodness shall not
excuse the want of it in the son. Here, good mistress housekeeper,
open that window and throw it into the yard. Let it serve as a
foundation to that pile which we are to set a-blazing presently."
The first edition of Esplandian was published at Seville in 1542. The
greater part of it seems to have been composed by Montalvo, the
original translator of Amadis. But whereas when he penned that work
he acted the part of a translator only, in Esplandian he undertook
the rôle of authorship proper, and that he failed to discern the
wide distinctions which separate these tasks is rather painfully
apparent. It seems to me, however, a mistaken criticism which brands
Esplandian as entirely lacking in merit, and I suspect that more than
one of the censorious folk who have thus entreated it have not perused
it in the original, or have merely taken Cervantes' word regarding
its lack of quality. It is notorious that many English critics
seem to believe it possible to pass a verdict upon works written in
Spanish without possessing more than a nodding acquaintance with the
language, and the absurd idea obtains among many men of letters, who
ought to know better, that, given a knowledge of Latin and French,
the acquisition of the Castilian tongue is merely a matter of a
little reading.
Esplandian possesses many quaint beauties, and the fairy 'machinery'
and rather distinguished simplicity of its atmosphere make it most
pleasant and delectable to peruse. Where, too, may we encounter a
better or more representative example of romantic extravagance at its
best?--for Esplandian, without exhibiting the grosser faults of its
descendants, has the rich and varied colour of that imaginative excess
which is the birthright of all true poets, and in the discipline of
which all are not successful. I quite admit, however, that Esplandian
is food for the enthusiast, and I do not recommend its perusal to
unromantic souls. It is not for the barbers and curates of this world,
and pity 'tis that they who cannot appreciate its spirit should
attempt to influence others to its detriment.
Esplandian spent his childhood at the Court of his grandfather, King
Lisuarte, and had scarcely been knighted when he felt the call of
high adventure. His wishes in this respect were speedily gratified,
for shortly after the gilt spurs had been placed on his heels he
fell into a deep swoon, which seemed to portend enchantment of no
common order. As he slept, the people of the Firm Island, whence he
had journeyed to have knighthood conferred upon him, beheld a vast
mountain of fire approach the shore, from which issued the sylph-like
form of the enchantress Urganda the Unknown, sailing through the air
upon the back of an enormous dragon. Some time prior to these events
Amadis, to whose custody the malicious Archelaus had been entrusted,
had injudiciously released that firebrand of the magical world, only
to learn shortly afterward that the unscrupulous wizard had taken
advantage of his new-found liberty to work his wiles once more upon
the all too unsuspecting Lisuarte, who seemed incapable of profiting
by experience, and who now paid for his credulity by incarceration in
the deepest dungeons of the necromancer's castle. Urganda announced
to the distracted son-in-law that it would be necessary for Esplandian
to execute a mission of vengeance, and ere it was possible to question
her further she bore away the youth on the back of the winged monster
she bestrode.
The enchantress conveyed the sleeping Esplandian to a mysterious
vessel called the Ship of the Great Serpent, and on waking it was
with no little exaltation of spirit that he found himself on its
deck. As he was wafted across the smooth ocean he felt a thrill
of pleasure arising from the magical ease with which the enchanted
galley skimmed the waves. In time he beheld a rocky islet standing
in the midst of a forsaken sea, and going ashore he found it to be
barren and showing no other sign of habitation than a tall tower,
which crowned its topmost height. He climbed the eminence upon which
it stood, and discovered the ancient fortalice to be completely
deserted. Exploring its recesses, he observed a stone in which a
richly ornamented sword was firmly embedded, but as he attempted to
grasp this the air was rent by the bellowings of a frightful dragon,
which descended upon him with such velocity that ere he could prepare
himself for its onset it had coiled its enormous folds round his body
in an effort to break through the plates of his armour and crush him
to death. Man and monster wrestled to and fro in a death-grapple,
and so terrific were their exertions that the earth shook and the
castle rocked beneath them as they swayed and writhed in a deadly
embrace. At length Esplandian succeeded in freeing his right hand
from the dragon's encircling folds, and, drawing a magic sword which
Urganda had bestowed upon him, passed it through the monster's scaly
hide. Mortally wounded, the dragon relaxed its grip, and its huge
body became rigid in death. When he had assured himself that it was
quite dead, Esplandian quitted the castle and returned to the shore, a
weird light which came from the enchanted sword, which he had extracted
from the boulder, guiding his footsteps through the gathering dusk.
Re-embarking on the Ship of the Great Serpent, he was speedily wafted
to a rugged country known as the Forbidden Mountain, a stronghold
on the borders of Turkey and Greece. At a distance he perceived a
castle, and was making his way thither when he encountered a hermit,
who warned him to avoid it, and told him that a prince of renown
was imprisoned therein. At once it occurred to Esplandian that this
must be none other than Lisuarte, and the castle the stronghold of
the wicked Archelaus, and this surmise naturally made him resolve to
inquire into the character of the place. As he neared the gate he saw
that it was guarded by a giant sentinel, who, on espying him, rushed
at him fiercely, brandishing a formidable club. Avoiding the onset of
his gigantic adversary, Esplandian slew him with the sword of power,
and was about to enter the castle when he was suddenly confronted
by Archelaus in person. A bitterly contested struggle ensued. The
enchanter, enraged at the stripling's audacity in seeking to probe
the mysteries of his stronghold, and in the knowledge that he came
of the race of his detested enemy Lisuarte, attacked Esplandian with
great fury. But his blind rage could not avail against the cooler
courage of his youthful antagonist, who succeeded in dispatching him
with the magic sword, thus for ever putting an end to his necromantic
enormities. A nephew of the slain enchanter next assaulted the young
knight, but he too fell before the magic falchion of Urganda. Next
Arcobone, the mother of Archelaus, a witch deeply versed in the
mysteries of the occult arts, sought to vanquish him by the force
of her anathemas, but the powers of counter-charm concealed in
Esplandian's blade saved him from the fury of the dread sybil, who
felt herself bound to obey his behests. He commanded her to reveal
the place of Lisuarte's confinement, and had the satisfaction of
releasing his aged relative.
As Esplandian and Lisuarte were about to leave the island, the fleet
of Matroed, eldest son of Arcobone, arrived off its shores, and the
young hero found himself forced to do battle with a fresh enemy,
for, relying upon his ability to defeat such a youthful adversary
with ease, Matroed made the combat a strictly personal one, and he
and Esplandian were engaged in deadly fight until the waning of the
sun. But at length the many wounds which the pagan warrior had received
forced him to discontinue the struggle, and he begged Esplandian to
permit him to die in peace. At this juncture a holy man arrived, and
the expiring heathen requested his blessing, which was piously granted.
Assuming the name of 'the Black Knight,' from the colour of his armour,
Esplandian now ruled in the Forbidden Mountain as lord of the castle
he had subdued. But he was not permitted to remain in quiet for long,
as the fortalice was speedily invested by Armato, the Soldan of
Turkey, with a great army. Attracting numerous followers to himself,
however, Esplandian defeated the paynims, and took their sovereign
prisoner. Encouraged by this success, he carried the war into the
heart of the Turkish dominions and captured the principal city.
Before entering upon his career of adventure Esplandian had met
Leonorina, daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople, of whom he
had become greatly enamoured, and during the course of his war with
the Turks he had dispatched many messengers to her, assuring her of
his undying affection. He now learned that she had taken umbrage
at his long absence, so, when the capital of Turkey had fallen to
his sword, he speedily set out for Constantinople. Arrived there, he
purchased a cedar chest of exquisite workmanship, which he entrusted
to certain messengers, commanding them to bear it to the lady. When
she opened it in the privacy of her own apartment, to her mingled
confusion and delight her long-absent lover himself emerged from its
recesses. In Spanish romance it is inevitable that the loves of the
hero and heroine should remain unknown to the lady's relatives, not
only because this was demanded by the romantic susceptibilities of
the average Spanish reader, but because Spanish opinion would have
been seriously affronted by the idea of parental compliance in any
intercourse between the lovers prior to marriage, save of the most
formal kind. This sorry condition of affairs still obtains among the
middle and upper classes of Spain and Spanish America, and we can
scarcely suppress amusement when we hear of ardent youths unable to
converse confidentially with the maidens to whom they are formally
affianced otherwise than by assuming some ridiculous disguise,
or through the kind offices of servants. Not infrequently young
Spanish couples whose engagement is quite en règle, and to whose
union not the slightest opposition is made, arrange and carry out
an elopement, purely because of the romantic atmosphere surrounding
such a proceeding. It is circumstances such as these which enable us
to appreciate the firm hold of romance upon the Spanish heart.
But Esplandian had but little time for dalliance, as the Turks
were once more arrayed against him in the field. He had, however,
a firm ally in Urganda, but, to counterbalance this, the infidels
were supported by the enchantress Melia, the sister of Armato,
the defeated soldan, who had succeeded in making his escape upon
the back of a flying dragon, dispatched for that purpose by this
Turkish witch. With all speed he levied a large army, and set siege
to Constantinople. Numerous as the sands of the sea were his allies,
one of whom was a beautiful Amazonian queen, who brought with her to
the scene of hostilities a squadron of fifty griffins, which flew
over the city much in the manner of devastating aircraft, belching
fire and smoke on the heads of the unhappy folk below.
So dire was the loss of life in this combat between the forces
of Christendom and paganism that at last it was agreed that the
question of pre-eminence should be settled by the issue of a double
combat. Amadis and Esplandian were selected on the one side, and the
Amazon queen and a celebrated pagan soldan on the other. The heathens
were defeated, but so enraged were they at their downfall that they
rushed to the attack with every available man (and woman) in their
hosts. But the Christians, mightily encouraged by the victory of their
champions, repulsed them with terrific loss, and drove them from the
bounds of the Grecian dominions. The Greek Emperor, probably only too
happy to rid himself of the burden of such a troublous inheritance,
resigned his crown to Esplandian, who espoused his Leonorina and
settled down to the task of governing the Hellenic realm.
Relieved from the pressure of military duties, in which she had proved
herself no inefficient ally, the sage Urganda had now leisure to
pay some attention to the private affairs of her mortal charges. On
consulting her magic mirror and other divinatory apparatus, she was
desolated to find that Amadis, Galaor, Esplandian, and indeed all of
her favourite champions, were soon to pay the debt of nature. Had her
prophetic soul been enabled to envisage the immensities of fiction to
which their future adventures were to give rise, she would undoubtedly
have allowed nature to take its course, so we must conclude that her
powers of vision were limited. Resolved to frustrate unkindly Fate,
she summoned her protégés to the Firm Island, and advised them, if
they desired to escape mortality, to obey the injunctions she would
now place upon them. They anxiously assured her that these would be
carried out to the letter, and with the best possible grace submitted
to be cast into a magic sleep, from which, it was decreed, they were
not to awaken until disenchanted by Lisuarte, son of Esplandian, who,
on gaining possession of a certain magic sword, would be enabled to
bring them once more to life with renewed vigour.
The Sixth Book of the Amadis series is concerned with the adventures
of Florisando, his nephew, but as its hero is not in the line direct,
and is, moreover, intolerably tiresome, we may well pass him over
with a mere mention of his existence.
Lisuarte of Greece
More sprightly is Lisuarte of Greece, hero of the seventh and eighth
books, which are believed to have been written by Juan Diaz, Bachelor
of Canon Law, and published in 1526. Lisuarte is not, however,
the sole hero of this romance, Perion, a later son of Amadis and
Oriana, claiming a considerable share of the exploits which fall to be
recounted in the volume. This young warrior, hearing of the prowess and
address in arms of the King of Ireland, resolved to gratify a desire
to be knighted by him, and for this purpose embarked for the Green
Isle. While traversing St George's Channel, or its romantic equivalent,
he encountered a damsel cruising in a boat managed by four apes. The
animals begged Perion to accompany their mistress for the fulfilment
of a great enterprise, so, quitting his own vessel, he embarked in the
boat along with the apes and the lady. His attendants, chagrined by his
acceptance of the adventure thus thrust upon him, turned their vessel
eastward and sailed on until they eventually arrived at Constantinople,
where they reported his virtual disappearance, on learning of which
his kinsman Lisuarte decided to go in quest of him.
In the meantime young Perion had arrived with his strange
fellow-wanderers in the kingdom of Trebizond, which, as we are all
aware, is readily accessible from the Irish coast. In that city he
had seen and fallen in love with the daughter of the Emperor, but did
not have much leisure to pay his addresses to her, as the Lady of the
Apes rather unduly hurried him in the preliminaries of the task she
had set him. They had scarcely left Trebizond when Lisuarte arrived
in the city, and promptly fell in love with Onoloria, the Emperor's
remaining daughter. But one day, as the lovers were enjoying each
other's society, an enormous giantess entered the Court and requested
a boon from Lisuarte, which, in true romantic fashion, he granted
without inquiring its nature. It proved to be his attendance for a
year wherever the gigantic damsel chose to demand it. The giantess
was, indeed, a pagan spy, and had concocted this device to withdraw
Lisuarte, who was one of the great props of Christian Greece, from
the support of the Hellenic throne at a difficult and dangerous time.
When Lisuarte had quitted Trebizond on the adventure in which he was
an unwilling partaker, the Emperor of that country, father of his
inamorata, was informed of the true character of the prodigious damsel
who had carried him off by a letter which was closed with sixty-seven
seals and which announced that Constantinople was about to be besieged
by Armato, the Turkish Soldan, who had placed himself at the head of a
league of sixty-seven princes for the purpose of waging war against the
imperial city. Meanwhile Lisuarte was given into the care of the King
of the Giants' Isle, whose daughter Gradaffile fell in love with him,
procured his escape, and followed him to Constantinople, whence he
at once betook himself for the purpose of combating the infidels who
invested it. In this task he was assisted by Perion, who now arrived in
Greece, after having accomplished the behest of the Lady of the Apes.
In course of time Lisuarte became conscious that duty now called
him to effect the release of his sleeping ancestors from the
spell in which they had been cast for the purpose of prolonging
their existences. After many adventures, which we spare the
reader, he obtained possession of the fatal sword and proceeded
to the Firm Island, where he broke the enchanted sleep into which
Amadis, Esplandian, and the rest had been lulled by the far-sighted
Urganda. These, naturally refreshed by their long slumber, and longing
for martial exercise, at once assisted him in routing the pagan forces
before Constantinople, and achieving peace once more. Lisuarte, freed
from his patriotic labours, now bethought himself of his lady-love,
and turned his steps to the city of Trebizond. Perion had also gone
thither from a similar reason, but on the request of the Duchess of
Austria had accompanied that lady to her dominions, which were in
the grip of a usurper. On his return from this chivalrous task he
encountered his kinsman Lisuarte, and both champions were in the act
of preparing their wedding festivities when Perion and the Emperor
of Trebizond were carried off by pagan treachery in the midst of a
hunting expedition. Lisuarte, following on their track, was also seized
by the enemy, and imprisoned along with those he had sought to succour.
Amadis of Greece
The Ninth Book carries on the adventures and exploits of the race of
Amadis, who in more senses than one may be said to be immortal. It
was first published in 1535 at Burgos, a place of many literary
associations, and purports to have been imitated in Latin from the
Greek, after the manner of the famous Troy romance Dares and Dictys,
and at a later time translated into the Romance language by the potent
and wise magician Alquife, evidently a supposititious Moor pressed
into the service of the most imaginative but undisciplined writer
who fabricated it. Amadis of Greece, indeed, approaches the sublime
of imaginative excess and fictional unreason, and in its extravagant
pages we are confronted with such a maze of marvel that to provide
an intelligent account of it is a task of no little difficulty.
Following the wild career of the romancer with the halting step
of modern incredulity, we learn that Amadis of Greece was, like his
forbears, a child unwanted, the son of Lisuarte and Onoloria, Princess
of Trebizond, born shortly after the period of their interrupted
wedding. While the infant was being baptized at a fountain in a wild
and deserted place, to which he had been conveyed for the purposes of
secrecy, he was carried off by corsairs, who sold him to the Moorish
King of Saba. Distinguished by the representation of a sword upon his
breast, he adopted the name, when knighted by the pagan monarch, of
'The Knight of the Flaming Sword.' Soon after he had entered the ranks
of chivalry he was falsely accused of cherishing a secret love for
the Queen of Saba, and, dreading the wrath of his benefactor, he made
his escape, and embarked upon a career of adventure--which, indeed,
it would have been difficult for anyone of his lineage to have avoided.
A pagan in religion and sentiment, he came to the vicinity of the
Forbidden Mountain which his grandfather had been instrumental in
liberating from the clutches of the infidel, and, reversing the pious
work then accomplished, he defeated and expelled those who held it
for the Emperor of Greece. Aroused by the menacing turn events had
taken, the great Esplandian himself, now Emperor of Constantinople,
hastened to the scene of hostilities and engaged in single combat
with the doughty new-comer, only, however, to suffer defeat at his
hands, an event which never could have entered into the calculation
of the enthusiastic author who composed the romance of that hero, who
would have been horrified at the mere thought of the eclipse of his
invincible 'star.' Shortly after this Amadis encountered the King of
Sicily. Their acquaintance commenced with a combat, as it was indeed
essential that it should, as the only fitting means of introduction
between gentlemen of errant tendencies, but when they came to know
and esteem each other they patched up a comradeship which was the
more powerfully cemented by the passion of Amadis for the martial
monarch's lovely daughter.
In the course of his voyage to Sicily, Amadis chanced to visit an
island, where he found the Emperor of Trebizond, Lisuarte, Perion,
and Gradaffile in a state of enchanted slumber. As we have seen, they
had been spirited away by the emissaries of paganism. It chanced
that at this time Amadis of Gaul, who was evidently not yet too
old for adventurous pursuits, encountered the Queen of Saba, who was
everywhere searching for a champion to defend her against her husband's
false charges of conjugal infidelity. Amadis espoused her quarrel,
and accompanied her to Saba, where he did battle with and overcame
her accuser. He also succeeded in establishing her innocence, and
that of his namesake, Amadis of Greece, to the satisfaction of the
King her husband.
After he had freed his ancestors from their charmed sleep, Amadis of
Greece betook himself to Sicily. He had not been long in the island
when he heard a knight reciting amorous verses in the vicinity of
the palace. At once his jealous heart leapt to the conclusion that
the singer was chanting the praise of his princess. Almost crazed
by his suspicions, he searched everywhere for his supposed rival,
but without success, dogging his footsteps, but always failing to
come up with him. During this chase he met with many adventures. But
at last he seems to have convinced himself that his suspicions were
groundless and that the singer he had heard had had no designs upon
the heart of his inamorata.
Whilst these events were passing, Lisuarte, the father of our hero,
had returned to Trebizond, and had formally requested the hand of
Onoloria. But Zairo, Soldan of Babylon, had seen this princess in a
dream, and, accompanied by his sister Abra, had arrived at Trebizond
to demand her in marriage. The Emperor was quite prepared to grant
his suit, but not so Lisuarte, who had prior claims to the lady,
and his opposition so enraged the Soldan that he resorted to warlike
measures and set siege to "many-towered Trebizond." After the siege
had progressed for some time champions were selected from either army
to decide the pretensions of the rival parties. But the Soldan's
paladins were defeated by Gradaffile, daughter of the King of the
Giant's Isle, who disguised herself as a knight, and whose Amazonian
fury the unfortunate Babylonians could scarcely be expected to confront
with any chance of success. The Soldan, however, after the manner of
the baffled in romance, broke the rules of the tourney and carried
off Onoloria by a stratagem.
As his fleet sailed with all speed from Trebizond, it encountered
that of Amadis of Gaul, who was hastening to the relief of that city,
and had evidently not been retarded in his passage of the Dardanelles
by any considerations of international law. In the circumstances it
is scarcely necessary to chronicle the Soldan's overthrow, or dwell
upon his untimely fate.
But the will to evil of the race of Babylon was not extinguished by
the decease of the short-lived if romantically named Zairo. By his
death his sister Abra succeeded to the throne of Semiramis. While
sojourning at Trebizond in the happy days before hostilities had
broken out between her brother and Lisuarte, she had fallen under
the spell of that champion's attractions, and after the manner of
Eastern womanhood as depicted by the writers of romance, made the
first advances to the object of her affections. Let us hope that
he did not repulse her as rudely as did blunt Sir Bevis of Hamton,
when the fair Saracen Josiana sent her envoys to him to acquaint him
with her passion:
He said, if ye ne were messengers,
I should ye slay, ye lossengers.
I ne will rise one foot fro' grounde
For to speak with an heathen hounde.
She is a hound, also be ye:
Out of my chamber swith ye flee.
But repulse her Lisuarte did, and all the fury of a woman scorned
burned in the breast of the fair Babylonian. Out of the depths of
her vengeance she sent emissaries to all the kingdoms of the earth,
asking that the knighthood of every realm should assist her to destroy
Lisuarte. One of her damsels while on this quest met with Amadis of
Greece, who, still a pagan, was easily inveigled into promising that
he would never rest until he had presented the lady Abra with the
head of Lisuarte. On the arrival of Amadis at Trebizond a dreadful
combat between father and son ensued, which was mercifully broken off
by the timely appearance of Urganda, who, following her usual custom,
made parent and child known to one another.
But the young Amadis was not to be exempt from the amorous advances
of pagan princesses any more than his father had been. Niquea, the
daughter of an Eastern soldan, had fallen in love with him by report,
and had sent him her picture by the hands of a favourite dwarf. The
lady's undoubted attractions were, however, seriously counterbalanced
by the circumstance that all who beheld her resplendent beauty either
died on the spot or were deprived of reason. Her father, in the
exercise of ordinary wisdom, shut her up in an almost inaccessible
tower, to which her relatives (who, like most family friends, were
rather apt to discount her charms) alone had the entrée.
Notwithstanding the former strong attachment of Amadis to the Princess
of Sicily, he had no sooner set eyes on the portrait of Niquea than
he renounced his former allegiance and devoted his affections to the
Oriental beauty. In order that he might delight his eyes with the
original of the portrait which had so enchanted him, he disguised
himself as a female slave, and gained access to the tower in which
Niquea was interned. They plighted their troth to each other,
and Amadis remained in the tower in his disguise. Needless to say,
Niquea's good looks wrought him no bale.
We now return to the fair but vindictive Abra, who, having marshalled
an immense army, marched against Trebizond. After a furious encounter,
the forces of paynimrie were duly routed. But as Onoloria had in the
meantime been so obliging as to shake off the trammels of mortality,
Lisuarte, at the persuasion of his platonic friend Gradaffile,
agreed to cement a lasting peace by espousing the Babylonian queen,
who was thus lucky in love if unlucky in war.
Niquea, tiring of her virtual imprisonment, succeeded in eloping with
Amadis, and soon afterward arrived with him at Trebizond, where their
nuptials were celebrated. Later she gave birth to a son named Florisel
de Niquea, the subject of a future tale.
This romance, like that of Esplandian, ends with the enchantment of
the Greek heroes and princesses in the Tower of the Universe by the
spells of the wise magician Zirfea, who warned them that by this means
alone could they escape mortality. But, unlike the enchantment of the
Firm Island, the spell which they must needs undergo in this tower
of marvels was not of a somnolent character, so that the enchanted
paladins and their lady-loves were enabled to cultivate each other's
society for a century or so, an advantage at which they had small
occasion to grumble, when their long separation as relatives is taken
into account. Even did they tire of one another's society, they were
not likely to fall under the more dreadful spell of boredom, since the
accommodating magician who undertook their enchantment had provided
an apparatus by means of which they could behold every event which
took place in the world, a vehicle of solace and amusement which
Madame d'Aulnoy introduced into one of her fairy fictions.
Cervantes' barber and priest were especially caustic regarding Amadis
of Greece and its immediate successors. "Into the yard with them all,"
quoth the priest, "for rather than not burn the queen Pintiquinestra
and the shepherd Darinel with his eclogues and the devilish intricate
discourses of its author, I would burn the father who begot me,
did I meet him in the garb of a knight errant."
Florisel of Niquea
The composition which chiefly seems to have excited the wrath of
Cervantes' unromantic churchman and even more unpoetic barber is the
Tenth Book of Amadis, which is entitled as above, and is feigned to
be written by no less a person than Cirfea, Queen of the Argives,
who doubtless composed it in the intervals of repose stolen from
the more important duties of royalty. Her Majesty does not degrade
her exalted position by revealing to us the fee which she received
from the Valladolid publishers who produced the work in 1532, but
if one may place a value on her compositions without breaking the
dread law of lèse-majesté, it might be suggested that a penny a line
would amply remunerate the literary output of this most imaginative
sovereign. In a word, Cirfea, or the scribbler who sought to shelter
himself behind her royal robes, is tiresome to a degree, and her
pastoral absurdities can scarcely be described otherwise than in
a vein of humorous tolerance. The one thing that renders her work
of any importance is that she was probably the first to import the
sylvan element into romance, and is thus the creator of that long
line of artificial and over-amorous shepherds and shepherdesses
whose tears and sighs fall upon or are wafted over the poetic pages
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the insistence of
whose plaints makes one dread to open a volume which seems in any
way reminiscent of l'esprit de bergères.
The romance introduces us to Sylvia, the daughter of Lisuarte
and Onoloria, who was, in the course of nature, removed from her
parents in infancy, and was brought up to a pastoral life in the
neighbourhood of Alexandria, which, if it enjoyed a reputation in her
day as a sheep-rearing district, must have owed it to the well-known
properties of sand as a medium for the fattening of those animals for
the market. As Sylvia grew up she became conscious of her beauty, and,
relying upon her good looks, and no doubt also upon her pretty name,
she enslaved to her will the handsome swain Darinel, whose appellation,
like that of his lady-love, is racy of the land of the Pharaohs. Sylvia
conceived it as being correct in a shepherdess to be 'cruel' to her
lover, who, thus setting the fashion for many a future sonneteer,
complained bitterly of her indifference, and signified his intention
of ending his days by exposing himself to the fury of the elements
on a mountain-top--rather a prolonged operation, one would think, in
a region especially suited to pulmonary patients. Probably finding
that the climate of Egypt scarcely lent itself to the consummation
of such a fate, he betook himself to the region of Babylonia,
where, in the intervals of searching for mountains in a land where
they are tantalizingly absent, he found time to make a friendship
with Florisel, whose good nature must have been sorely tried by his
plaintive apostrophes to his mistress's eyebrow. So glowing, indeed,
were Darinel's descriptions of Sylvia's charms that Florisel became
infected with his unhappy comrade's emotion, so that at last, unable
to combat the passion which was consuming him, he disguised himself
as a shepherd and prevailed upon the luckless Darinel to conduct
him to Sylvia's abode. But although Florisel had paid her the great
compliment of walking all the way from Babylon for a glance from her
bright eyes, she showed herself every whit as cold to him as she had
been to Darinel.
One evening, when Florisel deigns to grant the reader a blessed
intermission from his pleadings to the fair shepherdess, he described
to her how the prince Anastarax, brother of Niquea, had been enclosed
in a fiery palace by the enchantments of the potent magician Zirfea. On
hearing the story, the petulant Sylvia fell headlong in love with
Anastarax, and persuaded Florisel and Darinel, who no longer hankered
after Alpine rigours, to attempt the deliverance of the fire-encircled
prince. But when they arrived in the vicinity of the tower in which
he was detained they learned that the adventure was reserved for
Alastraxare, a fair Amazon, daughter of Amadis of Greece and the
Queen of Caucasus. The reader is now compelled to follow the fortunes
of this female Hercules, whose tongue-encircling name has proved a
stumbling-block to generations of printers. These are spread over
many pages. The little party from Alexandria went in search of this
heroine, and encountered many adventures, as per arrangement with
the booksellers. Chief among these was the amorous dalliance with
Arlanda, princess of Thrace, who had fallen in love with Florisel
by report, as ladies had a disconcerting habit of doing in the days
of high romance. She donned the clothes of the immaculate Sylvia,
and thus beguiled him to a moonlight rendezvous, where she succeeded
in gaining his favour while he was under the impression that she was
the shepherdess whom he had vainly pursued so long.
In the course of their wanderings Sylvia became separated from the
rest of the party during a great storm, and, retracing her steps,
made her way back to the flaming prison of Anastarax. Meanwhile
Florisel and Darinel arrived on the coast of Apollonia, where the
former happily forgot the charms of the capricious little shepherdess,
who by this time had been duly discovered as the daughter of Lisuarte,
and had been united to her beloved Anastarax. But it was not because
he suffered from a failing memory that Florisel became oblivious
of Sylvia, but rather on account of the bright eyes of the Princess
Helena of Apollonia.
The sequence of the tale is now broken up in a manner calculated to
aggravate the most hardened of readers. Florisel was not left much
leisure to enjoy the society of the fascinating Apollonian princess, as
the deliverance of his kindred from the enchanted tower had all along
been reserved for him. When at last he had satisfied the promptings
of duty, he set his face once more toward Apollonia, but was not, of
course, destined to arrive on the shores of that delectable kingdom
without undergoing still further adventures. Landing at Colchos,
he met with Alastraxare, who had found happiness with Falanges, a
brilliant warrior of Florisel's train. Arriving at last in Apollonia,
he found the Princess Helena on the eve of a marriage with the Prince
of Gaul, a match ordained by the lady's politic father. But Florisel
would have belied the adventurous blood which he drew from a long line
of heroes who had never yet remained inactive in such a contingency
if he had failed to defeat the tyrannical father's intentions, so,
as our royal authoress remarks, he repeated the exploit of Paris in
the tale of Troy by carrying off this second Helen.
Like its prototype of Homeric story, this action very naturally
precipitated the kingdoms of the East and West, real and apocryphal,
into a condition of chaotic warfare. Assisted by the Russians, who even
at that distant epoch appear to have had a predilection for the task
of social demolition, the countries of the West poured their myriads
upon the plains of Constantinople, and inflicted a serious reverse
upon the Hellenic arms. But the erratic Slavs, true to type, turned
later upon their allies of the Occident, drove them from the shores
of the Golden Horn, and finally secured Florisel in the possession
of the capital of the East and the Princess Helena.
Here the august Cirfea might with all judiciousness have written
"Finis" with her golden pen to this amazing history. But at this
stage of events, if a phrase so familiarly colloquial may be employed
regarding one so exalted, she 'gets her second wind,' probably in
view of the circumstance that her bargain with the booksellers of
Valladolid stipulated that their patrons were to be regaled with so
many thousand lines of her glowing periods, an arrangement in which
she was probably loath to disappoint them, for reasons to which,
as a crowned head, she should have been superior. But her domain of
Argolis is proverbially a poor country, whose populace possesses a
rooted and hereditary bias against taxation. Be that as it may, she
was not the last Balkan sovereign to supply herself with pin-money
by literary labours. Equipping herself, therefore, with a fresh ream
of parchment from the Department of Archives (for Government paper
has proverbially been everybody's property, even from the times of
Khammurabi), she cast about for fresh situations and addressed herself
to the task of 'spinning out.'
When the treacherous Russians had accounted for the armies of the West,
they embarked for their own country, there to hatch fresh schemes for
the further disturbance of a harassed Europe. But Amadis of Greece was
in no mind that a people who owed so many debts to civilization (to
say nothing of vast pecuniary obligations) should escape unpunished for
their original adherence to the enemy. Pursuing them, but losing track
of their vessels, he came to the inevitable desert island, where he
resolved to stay and do penance for his infidelity to the Princess of
Sicily. Quite naturally, that lady herself landed on its shores, and,
after upbraiding her unfaithful lover, very sensibly advised him to
return to his sorrowing wife Niquea, which he at last consented to do.
When, after a reasonable interval, Amadis did not return to
Constantinople, the imperial city was in an uproar, and Florisel and
Falanges elected to go in quest of him. They arrived in time at the
island, where, under the assumed name of Moraizel, the former fell
in love with and espoused its queen, Sidonia, who, however, did not
scruple to show her preference for his companion. But Florisel soon
tired of his island bride, who bore him a beautiful little daughter,
Diana, destined to prove the heroine of the eleventh and twelfth
books of this interminable history.
Agesilan of Colchos
The young Agesilan of Colchos was prosecuting his studies at Athens
when he chanced to see a statue of the beauteous Diana. Irresistibly
attracted by it, he resolved to search for and behold the original,
so, donning the garb of a female minstrel, he fared to the Court of
Queen Sidonia, the royal maiden's mother. Here he was employed as a
companion to the princess. But when a succession of adventurous knights
arrived in the island he could not refrain from giving them battle
in the guise of an Amazon, with results invariably in his favour.
Learning from the Queen how she had been neglected by Florisel,
Agesilan obligingly offered to bring her the head of the erring
warrior, revealing, at the same time, his own personality. Sidonia,
who bore her husband a deep grudge for his desertion of her, readily
accepted his championship. So Agesilan repaired to Constantinople
and defied the recreant to mortal combat. It was arranged that the
encounter should take place in the dominions of Sidonia, but on
the would-be combatants arriving in these regions they found them
beleaguered by the ubiquitous Russians, who, not content with the
freedom of their own vast steppes, seem to have hankered after a
place in the sun in a more genial clime. It was scarcely fair to
the ebullient Slavs to launch two such renowned paladins upon them
at one and the same time, but, the brief battle over, victory seems
to have made Florisel and Sidonia forget their estrangement, and all
went merry as a marriage bell, Agesilan being duly affianced to Diana.
It was agreed, however, that the splendours of Constantinople would
provide a more fitting background to their nuptials, and accordingly
all set sail for the Golden Horn, having first been honoured by a visit
from Amadis of Gaul in person, who, notwithstanding his patriarchal
years, still continued to prove the delights of errantry. He was
accompanied by Amadis of Greece, who, though almost as venerable as
his great-grandfather, could yet break a lance with any like-minded
champion.
They had not proceeded far from the shores of the island when they were
beset by a furious tempest, in which Agesilan and Diana were separated
from the rest of their kindred and cast upon a desert rock, where they
would have perished had not an accommodating knight, mounted upon
a hippogriff, who chanced to be flying overhead, picked them up and
carried them to his home in the Canary Islands. But their preserver's
disinterestedness vanished on beholding the beauty of Diana, so,
when Agesilan was off his guard, he bore her to a distant part of
the Green Island, as his demesne was called. His amorous dream was,
however, destined to be rudely broken in upon, for at that moment a
party of corsairs landed, and seeing in Diana a prize who would bring
them a large sum in the nearest slave-market, promptly bore her off.
Agesilan, on being unable to find Diana, suspected treachery, so
mounted the hippogriff and set out in search of her. Having in vain
surveyed the island from the back of the winged monster, in his despair
he took to flying at large. Whether from 'engine trouble' or causes
even more obscure, he was forced to alight in the country of the
Garamantes, the king of which had been struck blind as a punishment
for his overweening pride. Moreover, the unfortunate monarch was
doomed to have the food prepared for him devoured daily by a hideous
dragon. From this monster Agesilan delivered him. The whole incident is
an unblushing imitation of a passage in Orlando Furioso (can. xxxiii,
st. 102 ff.), in which Senapus, King of Ethiopia, is visited by a like
misfortune, and has his food daily destroyed by harpies until relieved
by Astolpho, who descends in his dominions on a winged steed. But
the author of Agesilan is no whit more guilty than Ariosto himself,
for both incidents are derived originally from the story of Phineus
and the harpies in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius.
Agesilan, pursuing the quest of Diana, arrived at the Desolate
Isle. The god Tervagant (Termagaunt, Tyr Magus='Tyr the Mighty')
had fallen in love with the queen of this country, and on being
repulsed by her let loose a band of demons upon her possessions,
who ravaged them far and wide. The god's oracle had announced that he
would not be appeased unless the inhabitants daily exposed a maiden
on the sea-shore until such time as he found one as much to his taste
as the Queen. Each day a hapless damsel was chained to a rock on the
desolate shores of the island, and was promptly devoured by a monster
which rose out of the sea. This naturally rendered the supply of
maidens in the vicinity rather scarce, so in order to save one of the
local ladies for another occasion, Diana, who had been brought to the
island, was tied to the rock one morning and, like another Andromeda,
of whose myth the incident is a paraphrase, was left to the mercy of
the monster. Agesilan, soaring through the air on his hippogriff,
witnessed her plight, descended to her aid, and, after a terrific
combat, slew the monster which had been about to devour her.
Having accounted for the grisly satellite of Tervagant, he placed the
almost unconscious Diana upon his aery steed, whose head he turned
in the direction of Constantinople; but on the way thither this now
practised airman caught sight of the ship of Amadis from which he
and his mistress had been separated in the tempest. Alighting on
the vessel with all the skill of a sea-plane pilot on the deck of
a 'mother-ship,' he greeted his astonished kindred, and the party
eventually reached Constantinople, where the wedding of the principal
characters was solemnized.
Silvio de la Selva
Silvio de la Selva, son of Amadis of Greece and a certain Finistea,
is the hero of the twelfth and last book of the Amadis series. He
first came into prominence by the gallant display he made against
the Russians at the siege of Constantinople, and when the Tsar
of that turbulent folk showed a desire to plunge Europe into the
distractions of war once more he was not the last to unsheath his
falchion and assure the twelve dwarfish ambassadors of the Muscovite
that the confederacy of one hundred and sixty monarchs which he had
brought together had a small chance of returning to their respective
dominions. The resultant siege, with its sallies and combats à
outrance, we shall forbear to describe, only remarking en passant
that, in the mercantile phrase, its details are 'up to sample.' But
if the Greek princes bethought them to escape the consequences of
having incurred the enmity of the turbulent Russ merely by defeating
him in the field, they were destined to receive a rude awakening, for
by one fell stroke of necromantic art the entire galaxy was spirited
away. Once more the inhabitants of the romantic city on the Bosphorus
were plunged into the deepest consternation; but, nothing daunted at
the task which now confronted them, the knights and paladins of the
family--in themselves an army of no mean dimensions--set out in search
of their honoured relatives. But we are not yet liberated from the
tangle of plot and counter-plot excogitated by the expiring hackery of
Castile, and the dying candle of the great romance of Amadis does not
flare up and flicker out with the rescue of the heroes and heroines
who have swaggered through its pages in almost immortal sequel of
intrigue and battle. For, the princesses having been brought safely
back to Constantinople, it was discovered that during their absence
some of them had been blessed with little olive branches, many of whose
adventures are related, until the bewildered reader, lost in the maze
of their story, like Milton's Satan, looks round in desperation for
any outlet of escape, exclaiming with the fallen great one:
"Me miserable, which way shall I fly?"
But, like the doomed archangel, he must 'dree his weird,' and wade
through the adventures of Spheramond, son of Rogel of Greece, and
Amadis of Astre, son of Agesilan--or, better still, he may do as we
did, and, reverently closing the worm-eaten volume, restore it to the
library, where its embossed back is, perhaps, rather more appreciated
than its grotesque contents.
Instead of being hurled from the throne by an incensed and neglected
populace, the line of Amadis continued to flourish exceedingly, and
perhaps the secret of its success as a dynasty lies in the fact that
it was more habitually resident in fire-ringed castles or enchanted
islands than in its palace in the metropolis, which it seems to have
chiefly employed as a convalescent establishment in which to recover
from wounds delivered by magic swords and the poisonous bites of
'loathly' dragons, rather than as a seat of governmental activity
and imperial direction.
We have seen how the great theme of Amadis of Gaul burst upon Spain
in a blaze of glory, and how, mangled by the efforts of fluent hacks,
it sank into insignificance amid the derision of the enlightened and
the gibes of the vulgar. It is as if our own peerless British epos
of Arthur, that thrice heroic treasury of the deeds of those who
Jousted in Aspremont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebizond,
had been seized upon by Grub Street and prostituted to the necessities
of scribblers. We cannot give thanks enough to the god of letters
that it has escaped such a doom, though this has been more by virtue
of good hap than through that of any protecting influence. The
sequels of Amadis descend by stages of lessening excellence until at
length they approach the limits of drivel. But does this sorrowful
circumstance in any way dim the glory of the first fine rapture? Nay,
no more than darkness can cloud the memory of morning. The knightly
eloquence of the original characters may degenerate in rodomontade;
the lofty and delicate imagery of the primary books may merge into
unspeakable vulgarities of invention; the tender beauty which enchants
the first love idyll may become coarse intrigue. But no work of art
is to be judged by its imitations. With the exception of the Fifth
Book, the remaining Amadis romances are as oleographs placed beside
a noble painting. Unrestrained in execution, daubed in colours of the
harshest crudity, uneven in outline and distressing in ensemble, they
are more fitted for the scullions' hall than the picture-gallery. Yet
they may not be passed over in a work dealing with Spanish romance,
and they point a moral which in this twentieth century it is
fitting that we should digest--that if a nation acquiesce in the
debasement of its literary standards and revel in the worthless and
the excitement of meretricious fiction, it will cease to excel among
the comity of peoples. Literature is the expression of a nation's
soul. And what species of soul is that which voices itself in crudely
jacketed novelettes, redolent of a psychology at once ridiculous and
unhealthy? Have we no Cervantes to shatter this ignoble thing to the
sound of inextinguishable laughter? Is not the sad lesson of Amadis
one for the consideration of our own people? Spain was never so great
as when its first books roused her chivalry to an ardour of knightly
patriotism, and she was never so little as when the printing-presses
of Burgos and Valladolid and Saragossa flooded her cities with a
mercenary and undistinguished fiction, prompted by commercial greed,
and joyfully received by a public avid for the drug of sensation.