FROM GARCILASSO TO THE ARGENSÓLAS.
To Juan Boscán is generally attributed the introduction into Spanish
poetry of endecasyllables, and Italian measures. Andreas Navagero,
ambassador of Venice to the court of Spain, recommended to Boscán this
novelty, which, begun by him, and followed by Garcilasso, Mendoza,
Acuña, Cetina, and other fine spirits, effected an entire change in the
art. Not that endecasyllabic verse was unknown in Castile before. There
are some specimens of it in the _Conde Lucanór_, written in the
fourteenth century; and the Marques de Santillana in the fifteenth,
composed many sonnets in the mode of the Italians. But these essays had
not obtained consequence, and it was only in the time of Boscán that the
poets generally devoted themselves to this species of versification. And
herein, if rightly I judge, the intimate relation that now subsisted
between the two nations had more influence than the authority of a
second-rate poet like Boscán; it is, notwithstanding, without dispute
much to his glory to have been the author of so happy a revolution, and
to have contributed by his example and his talents to its establishment.
But those who were sufficiently satisfied with the old versification,
instantly rose in clamour against the innovation, and treated its
favourers as guilty of treason against poetry and their country. At the
head of these, Christoval de Castillejo, in the satires which he wrote
against the _Petrarquistas_ (for so he called them) compared this
novelty to that which Luther was then introducing in religion, and
making Boscán and Garcilasso appear in the other world before the
tribunal of Juan de Mena, Jorge Manrique, and other troubadours of
earlier time, he puts into their mouth the judgment and condemnation of
the new metres. To this end he supposes that Boscán repeats a sonnet,
and Garcilasso an octave, before their judges, and presently adds:
"Juan de Mena, when he through
Had heard the polished stanza new,
Looked most amused, and smiled as though
He knew this secret long ago;
Then said: 'I now have heard rehearse
This endecasyllabic verse,
Yet can I see no reason why
It should be called a novelty,
When I, long laid upon the shelf,
Oft used the very same myself.'
Don Jorge said: 'I do not see
The most remote necessity
To dress up what we wish to say
In such a roundabout fine way;
Our language, every body knows,
Loves a clear brevity, but those
Strange stanzas show, in its despite,
Prolixity obscure as night.'
Cartagena then raised his head
From laughing inwardly, and said:
'As practical for sweet amours,
These self-opinioned troubadours,
With force of their new-fangled flame
Will not, it strikes me, gain the game.
Wondrously pitiful this measure
Is in my eyes,--a foe to pleasure,
Dull to repeat as Luther's creed,
But most insufferable to read!'"
If Juan de Mena and Manrique could then have manifested any regret, it
would have been for not having had the new versification established
when they wrote. The fiery and daring genius of the one, the grave and
sedate spirit of the other, would have found for the expression of their
thoughts and pictures, a fit instrument in endecasyllabic verse. They
would instantly have known that the _coplas de arte mayor_, reduced to
their elements, were one continued and wearying combination of verses of
six syllables; that the rhymed octosyllabics serve rather for the
epigram and the madrigal than for sublime poetry, and that _coplas de
piè quebrado_,[F] essentially opposed to all harmony and pleasure,
ought not to be defended. This Castillejo could not know; he wrote
indeed the Castilian language with propriety, facility, and purity; but
the inspiration, the invention, sublime and animated imagery, force of
thought, warmth of emotion, variety, harmony,--all these qualities,
without which, or without many of which, no one can be considered a
poet--all were wanting in him. Hence it is nothing extraordinary, that,
entrenched in his coplas, all sufficient for the acute and ingenious
thoughts in which he abounds, he perceived not the need that Spanish
poetry had for the new versification to issue from its infancy. The
latter had more freedom and ease, gave opportunity to vary the pauses
and cesuras; and the variety of combinations of which long and short
verses are capable, supplied a flexible instrument for the various
purposes of imitation. Such were the advantages gained by the new
system, and they were all recognised by the new geniuses who adopted it;
but it was an exact touchstone of the quality of a poet, and Castillejo,
finding it a rigorous one, would not hold with it. This circumstance was
of much more consequence to the dispute than at first sight appears;
for though there had not been the great difference which there was
between the two metres, that party would have borne away the palm, which
could have produced in its favour the most, and the most agreeable
verses and compositions. In this point of view, the single talent of
Garcilasso should diminish and reduce to nothing, as he did, all the
partisans of the Copla. A thing truly extraordinary, not to say
admirable! A youth who died at the age of thirty-three, devoted to the
bearing of arms, without any regular studies, with only his native
genius, assisted by application and good taste, drew Spanish poetry
suddenly forth from its infancy, guided it happily by the footsteps of
the ancients, and of the most celebrated moderns then known; and coming
into rivalry with each in turn, adorned it with graces and appropriate
sentiments, and taught it to speak a language, pure, harmonious, sweet,
and elegant! His genius, more delicate and tender than strong and
sublime, inclined him by preference to the sweet images of the country,
and to the native sentiments of the eclogue and elegy. He had a vivid
and pleasing fancy, a mode of thought noble and decorous, an exquisite
sensibility; and this happy natural disposition, assisted by the study
of the ancients, and intercourse with the Italians, produced those
compositions which, though so few, conciliated for him instantly an
estimation and a respect, which succeeding ages have not ceased to
confirm.
There are some who wish that he had given himself up more fully to his
own ideas and sentiments; that, studying the ancients with equal
devotedness, he had not allowed himself to be led away so much by the
taste of translating them; that he had not abandoned the images and
emotions which his own fine talent could suggest, for the images and
emotions of others; that, as for the most part he is a model of purity
and elegance, he had caused some traces which he keeps of antique
rudeness and negligence to disappear; they wish, lastly, that the
disposition of his eclogues had preserved more unity and connexion
between the persons and the objects introduced in them. But these
defects cannot counterbalance the many beauties which his poetry
contains, and it is a privilege allowed to all that open a new path, to
err without any great diminution of their glory. Garcilasso is the first
that gave to Spanish poetry wings, gentility, and grace; and for this
was needed, beyond all comparison, more talent, than to avoid the errors
into which his youth, his course of life, and the imperfection of human
powers, caused him to fall.
To the supreme endowments which he possesses as a poet, is added that of
being the Castilian writer who managed in those times the language with
the most propriety and success. Many words and phrases of his
cotemporaries have grown old and disappeared: the language of
Garcilasso, on the contrary, if we except some Italianisms, which his
constant intercourse with that nation caused him to contract, is still
alive and flourishing, and there is scarcely one of his modes of speech
which cannot be appropriately used at the present day.
So many kinds of merit, united in a single man, excited the admiration
of his age, which instantly gave him the title of the Prince of
Castilian poets--foreigners call him the Spanish Petrarch; three
celebrated writers have illustrated and written comments on him; he has
been printed times innumerable, and all parties and poetical sects have
respected him. His beautiful passages pass from lip to lip with all who
relish tender thoughts and soothing images; and if not the greatest
Castilian poet, he is at least the most classical, and the one that has
conciliated the most votes and praises, who has maintained this his
reputation the most inviolate, and who will probably never perish whilst
Castilian language and Castilian poetry endure.
The impulse given by Garcilasso was followed by the other geniuses of
his time; by D. Hernando de Acuña, Gutierre de Cetina, D. Luis de Haro,
D. Diego de Mendoza, and a few others, but all very unequal to him: and
to meet with a writer in whom the art made any progress, we must look
for him in Fray Luis de Leon. This most learned man, versed in every
kind of erudition, familiar with the ancient languages, connected by
ties of friendship with all the learned of his time, was one of those
writers to whom the Spanish language has owed most, for the nerve and
propriety with which he wrote it; and as the one who gave to its poetry
a character hitherto unknown. The songs and sonnets of Garcilasso were
written in the elegiac and sentimental tone of Petrarch, and his _Flor
de Gnido_ was the only one of his compositions in which he approaches
near to the character of ancient lyric poetry. Luis de Leon, full of
Horace, whom he was constantly studying, took from him the march, the
enthusiasm, and the fire of the ode; and in a diction natural and
without ornament, he knew how to assume elevation, force, and majesty.
His profession and his genius inclined him more to the moral lyric than
to the epic, yet his _Profecía del Tajo_[2] shows what he could have
accomplished in this; in that he has left some excellent odes, which
very nearly approach, if they do not equal, the models which he proposed
to himself for imitation. His principal merit and character in them, is
that of producing majestic and forcible thoughts, grand images, and
sententious maxims, without effort, and with the greatest simplicity.
His style and diction are animated, pure, and copious, as though they
gushed from a rich and crystal spring. He is not so fortunate in his
versification; although sweet, fluent, and graceful, his verse wants
stateliness, and fails not unfrequently from want of harmony and
fulness. With this defect must be named another, greater yet in my
estimation, which is, that no one shows less poetry when the heat
abandons him: languid then and prosaic, he neither touches, nor moves,
nor elevates; the merit remains alone of his diction and style, which
are always sound and pure, even when they preserve neither life nor
colour.
To this same epoch belongs, in my opinion, the poetry of Francisco de la
Torre, published by Quevedo in 1631. No one doubted then that these were
the works of a poet anterior to the editor; but in these later days, a
gentleman of much merit, D. Luis Velasquez, reprinted them with a
preliminary discourse, wherein he assures us they were the production of
Quevedo, who wished to publish his amatory verses under a feigned name.
The absolute ignorance that existed of the quality and particulars of
this Francisco de la Torre; the example of Lope de Vega, who published,
under the name of Burguillos, poetry known to be his own; the similarity
of style which Velasquez thought he saw between these verses and those
of Quevedo, with other less important reasons, were the foundation of
this opinion, which at that time was followed without any contradiction.
But these proofs not only pass for mere conjectures, but being moreover
unconfirmed by any positive fact, vanish the instant we examine the
nature and character of the poetry. He who might not know how to
distinguish the verses of Quevedo from those of Garcilasso, or any other
poet of the former age, could alone confound Francisco de la Torre with
him. Verses gleaned from the works of both writers, drawn from their
places, and jumbled together, are not proof sufficient of similarity;
nor, even taken in this manner, will they, if they are well examined,
show the similarity so well as is supposed. To know if the poetry of
Francisco de la Torre be, or be not that of Quevedo, it is absolutely
necessary, after reading the former, to seek out in the _Erato_ or
_Euterpe_ of the latter, the verses which he there gives for pastoral
poetry: it is then that the vast difference which subsists between them
becomes palpable; whether we examine the diction, the style, the verses,
the images, or nature of the composition. It is not possible to mistake
them, as it is impossible ever to confound women that are naturally
beautiful with those who torture themselves to appear so.[G]
In fact, these poems of Francisco de la Torre are the most exquisite of
the fruits which the Parnassus of Spain had then produced. All of them
pastorals, his images, his thoughts, and his style, detract nothing from
this character, but preserve the most rigorous keeping with it. His most
eminent qualities are simplicity of expression, the liveliness and
tenderness of his emotions, the luxury and smiling amenity of his fancy.
No Castilian poet has known how to draw from rural objects so many
tender and melancholy sentiments: a turtle-dove, a hind, an oak thrown
down, a fallen ivy, strike him, agitate him, and excite his tenderness
and enthusiasm. The imitations of the ancients, in which his poems
abound, are recast so naturally in his character and style, as to be
entirely identified with him. It is a pity that to the purity of his
language was not added greater study of elegance, which suffers at times
from trivial words and prosaic expressions. At times, also, the diction
becomes obscure from dislocations and omissions of expression, the
results perhaps of negligence, and a corruption of the manuscript.
Lastly, we miss in his eclogues variety, knowledge of the art of
dialogue, and opposition and contrast in his situations and
interlocutors: the poet who paints and feels with so much delicacy and
fire when he speaks for himself, does not succeed in making others
speak, and loses himself in uniform and prolix descriptions, which at
last weary and grow tiresome.
Hitherto poetry preserved the natural graces and simplicity which it
had caught from Garcilasso; and Luis de Leon had succeeded in giving it
some sublimity and grandeur: Francisco de la Torre inclined more to
subjects that require a middle style, such as those which rural nature
presents. He had ornaments of taste, but without ostentation or wealth,
and his language was more pure and graceful than brilliant and majestic.
The best supporters of this style were Francisco de Figueroa, who in his
eclogue of Tirsi gave the first example of good blank verse in Spanish;
Jorge de Montemayor, who, with his _Diana_, introduced the taste and
love of pastoral novels; and Gil Polo, one of his imitators, who, less
happy than he in invention, had much the advantage of him in
versification, and almost arrived at the point of throwing him into the
shade. But, passing from these writers to the Andalusians[H], the art
will now be seen to take a change in taste, to assume a tone more lofty
and vehement, to enrich and adorn the diction, and to manifest the
intention of surprising and ravishing; in short, to aspire to the _mens
divinior atque os magna soniturum_, by which Horace characterises true
poetry.
At the head of these authors must indisputably be named Fernando de
Herrera, a man to whom poetic elocution owes more than to any other. His
genius was equal to his industry; and, familiar with Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, he devoted himself to the imitation of the great writers of
antiquity, to form a poetic language which might compete in pomp and
wealth with that which they used in their verses. He was not, it is
true, circumstanced like Juan de Mena; he had not the license to
suppress syllables, syncopate phrases, or change terminations. This
physical part of the language was now fixed by Garcilasso and his
imitators, and could not suffer alteration. But the picturesque part
might, and in fact, did receive from him great improvements: he made
much use of the compound epithets that already existed, he introduced
other new ones, he re-established many forgotten adjectives, to which he
imparted new strength and freshness by the fitness with which he applied
them, and used in fine more phrases and modes of speech distinct from
usual and common language than any other poet. To this careful
attention, he added another quality, not less essential, that of
painting to the ear by means of imitative harmony, making the sounds
bear analogy with the image. He breaks them; he suspends them; he drags
them wearily along, he precipitates them at a stroke; he rubs them into
roughness, he touches them into mildness;--in short, they sometimes roll
fluently and easily along, at others they pierce the ear with a calm and
quiet melody. These effects, which the verses of Herrera produce by the
mechanism of their language, distinguish them from prose in such a
manner, that though they may be broken up, and lose their measure and
cadence, they still preserve the picturesque and poetic character which
the poet stamped upon them.
If from the exterior forms we pass to the essential qualities, it may be
said that no one surpasses Herrera in force and boldness of imagination,
very few in warmth and vivacity of emotion, and none even equal him, if
we except Rioja, in dignity and decorum. The greater part of his poems
consists of elegies, songs, and sonnets, in the taste of Petrarch. It
was Petrarch who first, deviating from the manner in which the ancients
painted love, gave to this passion a tone more ideal and sublime. He
refined it from the weakness of the senses, converting it into a species
of religion; and reduced its activity to be constantly admiring and
adoring the perfections of the object beloved, to please itself with its
pains and martyrdom, and to reckon its sacrifices and privations as so
many other pleasures. Herrera having, throughout his life, a passion for
the Countess of Gelves, gave to his love the heroism of Platonic
affection; and under the titles of Light, Sun, Star, Eliodora,
consecrated to her a passion fiery, tender, and constant, but
accompanied by so much respect and decorum, that her modesty could not
be alarmed, nor her virtue offended. In all the verses which he devoted
to this lady, there is more veneration and self-denial, than hope and
desire. This taste has the inconvenience of running into metaphysics
nothing intelligible, into a distillation of pains, griefs, and
martyrdoms, very distant from truth and nature, and which, consequently,
neither interests nor affects. To this error, which may occasionally be
remarked in Herrera, must be added that his diction, too much studied
and refined, offends, almost always, by affectation, and not seldom by
obscurity. The style and language of love must flow more easy and
unencumbered, to be graceful and delicate. Thus Herrera, who, no doubt,
loved with vehemence and tenderness, seems, in uttering his sentiments,
to be more engaged about the manner of expressing them, than with the
desire of interesting by them; and to this cause must be attributed,
that, of the Spanish poets, he is the one whose love-verses are the
least calculated to pass from lip to lip, and from nation to nation.
But the composition in which this rich poetic diction shines equally
with his ardent and vigorous imagination, is the elevated Ode, which
Herrera, a happy imitator of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin poetry, knew how
to fill with his fire, and thus to become the rival of the ancients.
Lyric poetry, in its origin, was very distant from the range of ordinary
ideas. The poet, possessed by an afflatus which it was not in his power
either to moderate or to rule, chanted his verses before the altars of
the temples, in the public theatres, at the head of armies, in grand
national solemnities. The genius that inspired him caused him then to
take flight to other regions, and to see things hidden from the ken of
common mortals. Thence, in a language of fire, and through all their
wonderful circumstances, in grand and forcible addresses to the people,
he made Truth descend from on high, he opened the gates of destiny, and
announced the future; tuned hymns of gratitude and praise to gods and
heroes; or, filling with patriotic and martial fury armed squadrons,
called them on to battle and to victory. In this situation of things,
the lyric poet should not appear a mortal like the rest of mankind; his
agitation, his language, the numbers to which he reduced it, the music
with which he sang it, the boldness of his figures, the grandeur of his
conceptions,--all should concur to the consideration of him, in these
moments of enthusiasm, as a supernatural being, an interpreter of the
Divinity, a sibyl, and a prophet.
Such, in ancient times, was the character of the ode; which modern
nations have since introduced into their poetry with more or less
success. But, stript of the accompaniment of song, and removed from
solemnities and numerous assemblages, it has been but a weak reflection
of the first inspiration. The modern poets of Spain have thought that,
to restore it to the exalted and divine character which it held at its
origin, it was necessary to transplant it again to the regions whence it
sprung, and to fill it with antique ideas, images, and even phrases.
Herrera was the first that thought so. Horace would have adopted with
pleasure his ode to Don Juan of Austria; his hymn on the battle of
Lepanto breathes throughout the most fervent enthusiasm, and is adorned
with the rich images and daring phrases that characterise Hebrew poetry;
whilst the elegiac cancion to King Don Sebastian, animated with the
same spirit as the hymn, but much more beautiful, is full of the
melancholy and agitation which that unhappy catastrophe should produce
on a vivid imagination. Even in songs, little interesting in their
subject and composition, are found flights daring and worthy of Pindar.
So absolutely superior to all others is his assiduous attention to
diction and the poetry of style, that never can three of his verses be
possibly mistaken for those of any other poet. The following passage may
serve as a specimen here, extracted from his song to San Fernando, which
is not one of the best.
"The sacred Betis strewed the wavy shore
With purple flowers, fine emeralds, golden ore,
And tender pearls; toward heaven he raised his head,
Adorned with grasses, reeds, and corals red;
Spread o'er the sands the moving glass that shot
Capricious lustres round his shadowy grot;
Then stretched his humid horns, increasing so
His affluent floods, dilated in their flow;--
Swift roll his billows, murmuring, pure, and cool,
And into ocean far extend his rule."
Lope de Vega, quoting these verses as a model of poetic elevation, so
opposite to the extravagances of _Purism_,[I] exclaimed with enthusiasm,
"Here no language exceeds our own; no, not the Greek nor the Latin.
Fernando de Herrera is never out of my sight."
His countrymen gave him the surname of Divine; and of all the Castilian
poets on whom that title has been bestowed, none deserved it but he. In
spite of this glory, and the praises of Lope, his style and principles
of composition had then but few imitators; nor, till the
re-establishment of good taste in our own times, has the eminent merit
of his poetry, and the necessity of following his steps to elevate the
poetic above the vulgar language, been properly appreciated. Don Juan de
Arguijo imitated him in his sonnets, a little curtailing the style of
that excessive ornament which sparkles in Herrera; but the poet who
improved infinitely upon Arguijo was Francisco de Rioja, a Sevillian
like the other two, and a disciple of the same school, although he
flourished several years afterwards.
Equal in talent to Herrera, and superior in taste, Rioja would,
doubtless, have fixed the true limits between the language of poetry and
prose, if he had written more, or if his compositions had but been
preserved. How is it possible that a man of so great a genius, and who
lived so many years, should have written no more than one ode, one
epistle, thirteen silvas, and as many sonnets? It is easier to believe
that his writings were lost in the different vicissitudes which his
life sustained, or that they lie forgotten with the many other literary
monuments which, in Spain, wrestle still with dust and worms. The few
that he has left are sufficient, notwithstanding, to give us an idea of
his poetic character, superior to others for nobleness and chasteness of
phrase, for novelty and choice of subject, for the force and vehemence
of his enthusiasm and fancy, and for the excellency of a style always
pure without affectation, elegant without superfluity, without tumidity
magnificent, and adorned and rich without ostentation or excess. A merit
which particularly distinguishes him is the happy success with which he
constructs his periods, which neither grow dull from brevity, nor
cumbrous from prolixity; a great and frequent defect amongst the poets
of Spain, whose sentences, ill distributed, fatigue the voice when
recited. I am well aware that, even in these few compositions, there are
traces of that prosing which marked the poets of the sixteenth century,
and of the tinsel of the following one; but, besides that these are very
rare, it should be kept in mind that he neither polished nor arranged
his verses for publication; a circumstance that would sufficiently
excuse yet greater errors. But whatever importance may be attributed to
such defects, none will be able to deprive the delicate Silvas to the
flowers, the magnificent ode on the ruins of Italica, and the almost
perfect moral epistle to Fabio, of the foremost rank which they enjoy
amongst the poetical treasures of Spain.
To the last third division of the sixteenth century belong other poets,
celebrated then, but of a merit and order very inferior to those already
named:--Juan de la Cueva, who more properly belongs to the history of
comedy, is considered amongst its first corrupters; Vicente Espinel, to
whom music owes the introduction of the fifth chord in the guitar, and
poetry the combination of rhymes in octosyllabic verses, to which was
then given the name of _espinela_, but which are now better known under
that of _decima_; Luis Barahona de Soto, author of _Las Lagrimas de
Angelica_, a poem very celebrated then, and read by no one now; Pablo de
Cespedes, sculptor, painter, and poet, in whose didactic poem on
Painting breathes, at times, the vigorous and picturesque style of
Virgil; Pedro de Padilla, whom some esteemed highly for his pure diction
and fluent versification, but poor of fancy and fire; and lastly, others
less noted, who cultivated the art, and who, if they did not obtain a
great reputation in it, contributed with the rest to give to verse and
style more ease, harmony, and copiousness.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote F: The Spaniards call _quebrado_ those shorter verses which
are, as it were, _broken_ from, and intermingled with their _redondillas
mayores_, or octosyllabic lines, as for example:
"Recuerde el alma adormida,
Avive el seso y despierte,
Contemplando
Como se pasa la vida,
Como se viene la muerte,
Tan callando."
MANRIQUE.
They do not however strike an English ear as destitute of harmony, but
it is a harmony that in any long composition would become very
monotonous.]
[Footnote G: These signs I think sufficient for my purpose. Whoso
desires yet farther proofs may compare the ode of Torre, which begins
"Sale de la sagrada," with the two canciones of Quevedo, "Pues quitas
primavera al año el ceño," and "Dulce señora mia," placed in _Euterpe_,
whence Velasquez took the verses which he cites here and there in his
discourse, to prove the resemblance. He may do more; he may look in
_Melpomene_ for the funeral Silva of the Turtle, and compare it with the
very beautiful cancion of Torre, to the same bird. What a troublesome
ingenuity, what exaggeration, what hyperbole, what coldness in the
first; what melancholy, tenderness, and sentiment in the second! It is
quite impossible that the same object could produce an inspiration so
different in the same fancy. The example of Lope is cited, in the poetry
of Burguillos; but the real and absolute similarity that exists between
these verses and the diction of Lope and Burguillos, notwithstanding the
difference of subject and character, the insinuation of Lope himself,
that of Quevedo in his approbation of the same poems, the conclusive
authority of Montalban and Antonio de Leon, friends and cotemporaries of
Lope, who attribute them to him, make the identity of Lope with
Burguillos as evident, as the reasons already alleged do the diversity
of Francisco de Torre and Quevedo.]
[Footnote H: Luis de Leon, although a native of Granada, finished his
studies and lived in Salamanca, and consequently does not contradict
this general observation.]
[Footnote I: The meaning of this term will be fully understood by the
English reader, when he is reminded of the style of writing which was
prevalent in the time of Elizabeth, under the name of Euphuism; rich
specimens whereof are exhibited by the author of Waverley, in the
delectable speeches of sir Piercie Shafton.]