OF GÓNGORA, QUEVEDO, AND THEIR IMITATORS.
To restore to Castilian poetry the tone and vigour which were failing
it, the powers of Horace and Virgil, with all the grandeur of their
genius, the perfection of their taste, and the high protection they
enjoyed, would scarcely have sufficed. Two men in Spain applied
themselves to this task; both of great talent, but of a depraved taste,
and of different pursuits. Their defects, which they sometimes relieve
by better qualities, had the effect of a contagion, and produced
consequences more fatal than the evil itself which they sought to
remedy.
The first was Don Luis de Góngora, the father and founder of the sect
called Purists. All know that after a century of adoration by the
followers of his style, Luzán and the other professors who
re-established good taste, set themselves to destroy the sect by
decrying their founder; and with them Góngora and the detestable poet,
were terms synonymous. But this was unjust; and in him, the brilliant,
gay, and pleasant poet, should ever be distinguished from the
extravagant and capricious innovator. His independent genius was
incapable of following, or of imitating any body; his imagination, fiery
and vivid in the extreme, could not see things in a common light; and
the weak and pallid colouring of other poets will not bear comparison
with the rich emblazonry, if we may so say, of his style and
expression. In which of them are poetical periods met with, that in
wealth of language, brilliancy, and music, can be compared with the
following?
Deep king of other streams, whose waters go
Renowned in song, and crystal in their flow;
Let a rough coronal of dark green pine
Bind thy broad brow and wandering locks divine!
* * * * *
Rise, glorious sun, illuminate and print
The laughing mountains with thy golden tint;
Chase the sweet steps of rosy-red Aurora,
And loose the reins to Zephyrus and Flora!
In which are images more delicate and appropriate, or more naturally
expressed, than these?
Sleep, for your winged Lord in guardianship
Keeps watch, the finger on his serious lip.
Lovers! touch not, if life you love, the chaste
Sweet smiling mouth that wooes you to its taste!
For 'twixt its two red lips armed Love reposes,
Close as a poisonous snake 'twixt two ripe roses.
* * * * *
Each wind that breathes, gallantly here and there
Waves the fine gold of her disordered hair,
As a green poplar-leaf in wanton play
Dances for joy at rosy break of day.
There is not in all Anacreon a thought so graceful as that of the song,
wherein, presenting some flowers to his lady, he begs from her as many
kisses as he had received stings from the bees that guarded them.
"From my summer alcove, which the stars this morn
With lucid pearls o'erspread,
I have gathered these jessamines, thus to adorn
With a wreath thy graceful head.
From thy bosom and mouth they, as flowers, ere death,
Ask a purer white and a sweeter breath.
Their blossoms a host of bees, alarmed,
Watched over on jealous wing;
Hoarse trumpeters seemed they all, and armed
Each bee with a diamond sting:
I tore them away, but each flower I tore
Has cost me a wound which smarteth sore.
Now as I these jessamine flowers entwine,
A gift for thy vagrant hair,
I must have, from those honey-sweet lips of thine,
A kiss for each sting I bear:
It is just that the blooms I bring thee home,
Be repaid by sweets from the golden comb."
If from Italian measures we pass to Letrillas and the Castilian Romance,
Góngora will be found king of that class, which has received from no one
so much grace, so many splendours, and so much poetry. His merit indeed,
in this department, is so great, and specimens of his success in it are
so common, that there remains no other difficulty to prove it than that
of choice. This fragment will suffice for our purpose.
"Now, all pomp, the Moorish hero,
Whilst his robes sweet perfumes throw,
Lays aside his crooked sabre,
Hangs on high his moony bow.
His hoarse tambours, hoarse no longer,
Seem like amorous turtle-doves;
And his pendants streaming favours,
Favours given by her he loves.
She goes forth with bosom naked,
Loosely flow her golden locks;
If she stays them, 'tis with jasmines,
Chains them, 'tis with pinks and stocks.
All things serve their gentle passion,
Every thing fresh joy assumes;
Flattering, if not babbling breezes,
Stir their robes and toss their plumes.
Green fields yield them mossy carpets,
Trees pavilions, flowers the vales,
Peaceful fountains golden slumber,
Music love-lorn nightingales.
Trunks their bark, whose tablets better
Keep their names than plates of brass;
Better far than ivory pages,
Than the marble's sculptured mass.
Not a beech but bears some cipher,
Tender word, or amorous text;
If one vale sounds Angelina,
Angelina sounds the next."
How could a writer possessing this strength and richness afterwards
abandon himself to the pitiable frenzies in which he lost himself,
without preserving even a shadow of their excellences! Thinking that the
poetic period was enervated, and looking upon nature as poverty, purity
as subjection, and ease as looseness, he aspired to extend the limits of
the language and poetry, by the invention of a new dialect which should
re-elevate the art from the plain, dull track into which, according to
him, it was reduced. This dialect was distinguished by the novelty of
the words, or by their application; by the singularity and dislocation
of the phrase, or by the boldness and profusion of its figures; and in
it he not only composed his _Soledades_ and _Polifemo_, but distorted,
after the same manner, almost all his sonnets and songs, sprinkling as
well with a sufficient number of false ornaments his romances and
letrillas.
If Góngora, to the excellent qualities he possessed, had joined the
judgment and good taste he wanted; if he had made the same profound
study of the language as Herrera, both meditating on the resources which
the idiom presented, and attending to its character, richness, and
harmony, then would have followed the result he desired, and he would,
perhaps, have gained the glory of being the restorer, and not the
opprobrium of having been the corrupter of the art. But the same
circumstance befel him which befals all who seek to erect a building
without foundations; he gave into a world of freaks and extravagances,
into an abominable gibberish, as opposite to truth as to beauty, and
which, whilst it was followed by a multitude of the ignorant, was
censured by as many as yet preserved a spark of sense and judgment.
"He sought," says Lope de Vega, "to enrich the art, and even the
language, with such figures and ornaments, as were never, till his time,
imagined or beheld. In my opinion, he fully succeeded in what he aimed
at, if this was his aim; the difficulty is in receiving it. According to
many, he has raised the novelty into a peculiar class of poetry, and
they are not at all mistaken; for, in ancient times, men were made poets
by the study of a whole life; in the modern, they become poets in a day;
as, with a few transpositions, four precepts, and six Latin words or
emphatic phrases, you will see them elevated where they neither know nor
understand themselves. Lipsius wrote that new Latin which good judges in
these matters say Cicero and Quintilian laughed at in the other world.
The whole foundation of the structure is transposition; and what makes
it the more harsh is the so far separating the substantive from the
adjective, where the parenthesis is impossible: it is a composition full
of tropes and figures; a face coloured in the manner of angels with the
trumpet of judgment, or of the winds in maps. Sonorous words and figures
enamel an oration; but if the enamel covers all the gold, it is no
longer a grace to the jewelling, but a notable deformity." And in
another part he says, "..., without going in search of so many metaphors
on metaphors, wasting in rouge what is needed in features, and
enfeebling the spirit with the weight of such an excessive body. This it
is that has destroyed a great number of talented men in Spain, with such
deplorable effect, that an illustrious poet, who, writing with his
native powers and in his proper language, was read with general
applause, since he has abandoned himself to purism, has lost it all."
Not satisfied with these demonstrations of severity, this placid man,
who scarcely knew what malignity was, thought it his duty to persecute
the pest as with fire and sword, and in his comedies, in the burlesque
poetry of Burguillos, in the _Laurel de Apollo_, and in a thousand other
places, ridiculed and cursed this kind of poetry, which he characterized
as "an odious invention to make the language barbarous." He was aided in
this warfare by Jauregui, Quevedo, and some others; but their efforts
were unavailing, and they themselves were at length forced to yield to
the contagion. For though they cannot be called Purists in all the
rigour of the term, they adopted some of the elements which composed the
dialect, such as violent transpositions, extravagant hyperboles, and
incoherent figures. Góngora, meanwhile, as he had never known restraint
or subjection, fulminated against his adversaries the grossest taunts;
and, fierce and proud from the applauses of the ignorant, internally
exulted with all the glory of a triumph. This was increased by the
support given to his party by the celebrated preacher, Fray Hortensio
Paravicino, from the great influence which he had with the theologians
and sacred orators, and by the unfortunate Count de Villamediana, in the
secret and powerful favour which he was supposed to have at court. Both
imitated Góngora, and drew after them other writers of less note,
propagating thus this barbarous language till the middle of the century
in which Luzán and other admirable critics entirely succeeded in weaning
the nation from it.
At the same time with the Purists appeared the _Concettisti_, punsters,
and utterers of grave saws in frigid and sententious language: D.
Francisco de Quevedo surpassed all, as well by his merit as influence,
in the progress of these different sects. Quevedo, according to some, is
the father of laughter, the treasury of jests, the fountain of wit, the
inventor of a number of happy words and phrases, in a word, the Comus of
Spain. According to others, he is, on the contrary, a writer
inauspicious to the beauty and decorum of wit: his humour, say they,
instead of being festive, is low buffoonery; he has impoverished the
language, depriving it of an infinite number of modes of speech, once
noble and becoming, now, thanks to him, low and indecorous; and if he at
any time amuses, it is by the original extravagance of his follies.
These two judgments, so contradictory, are yet both true; and if we
consider attentively the character of this writer, we shall see what
foundation both the one and the other have for their censures and
applauses. Quevedo was every thing in excess: no one, in the same
manner, displays in the serious a gravity so rigid and morals so
austere; no one, in the jocose, shows a humour so gay, so free, and so
abandoned to the spirit of the thing. In the choice of his subjects, we
are alike sensible of this contrariety. Alguazils, scriveners,
procuresses, compliant husbands, ruffians, and women of easy access,
generally form the subject matter of his buffooneries; and we must, in
justice, acknowledge that he very often lashes them in a masterly
manner. At another time a theologian and stoic, he translates Epictetus,
comments on Seneca, interprets Scripture, and entangles himself in the
useless labyrinths of metaphysics; lost labours, which, for the most
part, are no longer read, and which have scarcely any other merit than
their astonishing erudition.
From this contradiction springs so often the effort and difficulty with
which he writes in both kinds of composition. His style, in prose as in
verse, in serious as in jocose, is always struck forth without connexion
or graduation, sacrificing almost always truth and nature to
exaggeration and hyperbole. His imagination was most vivid and
brilliant, but superficial and negligent; and the poetic genius that
animates him, sparkles but does not glow, surprises but does not
agitate, bounds with impetuosity and force, but neither flies nor ever
supports itself at the same elevation. The rage of expressing things
with novelty made him call the brink of the sea _the law of the sand_;
love, _the civil war of the born_; trunks of trees on which lovers'
names are engraved, _a rural book written in enamel_. In burlesque
verse, he heaps together forced allusions, ambiguities, and paragraphs
of nonsense. A ruffian, to denote how keenly he has felt his disgrace,
will say, that he has wept _rope for rope_, and not, at every lash; he
will say, that he has had _more grasshoppers than the summer, more
tenants than the tomb, more bookstrings than the missal_. I am well
aware that Quevedo often diverts with what he writes, and raves because
it is his pleasure: I know that puns have their proper place in such
compositions, and that no one has used them more happily than he. But
every thing has its bounds; and, heaped together with a prodigality like
his, instead of pleasing, they create only weariness.
The same incorrectness and bad taste that mark his style, composed of
words and phrases noble and sublime, united with others as mean and
trivial, are found in his images and thoughts, which are mixed together
without economy, judgment, or decorum. The following sonnet will show
this miserable confusion better than any description:--
"Cæsar, the fortunate and forceful, bled;
Pity and warning know it not--a wreath
This of his glory, for there is a death
Even to the grave that sepulchres the dead.
Dies life, and like life, dies, and soon is fled
The rich and sumptuous funeral; time flies,
And, in his unseen circuit, stills the cries,
Shouts, and huzzas, that fame delights to spread.
The sun and moon wind night and day the web
Of the world's life robust, and dost thou weep
The warning which age sends thee? all things ebb!
Auroras are but smiling illnesses,
Delight the lemon of our health, nor less
Our sextons the sure hours that seem to creep."
In spite of these defects, which are certainly very great, Quevedo will
be read with respect, and be justly admired in many passages. In the
first place, his verse is for the most part full and sonorous, his rhyme
rich and easy, and yet this merit, the first which a poet should
possess, is not the principal one; our author knows how to accompany
them with many touches, excellent, some from the brightness of their
colouring, others from their spirit and boldness. His poetry, strong and
nervous, proceeds impetuously to its end; and if his movements betray
too much of the effort, affectation, and bad taste of the writer, their
course is yet frequently seen to have a wildness, an audacity, and a
singularity, that is surprising. His verses oft-times spring from his
own imagination, and without extraneous aid strike the ear with their
loud and strong vibration, or sculpture themselves in the mind by the
profundity of the thought they develope, or by the novelty and strength
of the expression. From no one can such beautiful isolated verses be
quoted as from him; from no one, poetic periods so stately and so
strong.
"Pure, ardent virtue was a joy divine."
"The' unbounded hemisphere fatigued his rage."
"I felt my falchion conquered by old age."
"Lashed by the waves, before, around, behind,
And rudely lashed by the remorseless wind;
The storm's thy glory, and its groans, that tear
The clouds, move more thy triumph than thy care.
Then, daring cliff, thou reign'st in majesty,
When the blast rages and the sea rides high."
_Rome buried in her Ruins._
"Pilgrim, thou look'st in Rome for Rome divine,
And ev'n in Rome no Rome canst find! her crowd
Of mural wonders is a corse, whose shroud
And fitting tomb is the lone Aventine.
She lies where reigned the kingly Palatine,
And Time's worn medals more of ruin show
From her ten thousand fights than ev'n the blow
Struck at the crown of her Imperial line.
Tiber alone remains, whose rushing tide
Waters the town now sepulchred in stone,
And weeps its funeral with fraternal tears:
Oh Rome! in thy wild beauty, power, and pride,
The durable is fled, and what alone
Is fugitive, abides the ravening years."
On meeting in his works with these brilliant passages, after paying them
the high admiration they deserve, we cannot restrain a feeling of
indignation, to see the deplorable abuse which Quevedo has made of his
talents, in employing on the useless evolutions and balanced movements
of a tumbler, the muscular limbs and strength of an Alcides.
Don Francisco Manuel Melo was a friend of Quevedo, a Portuguese, and as
indefatigable a writer as he was an active warrior and politician. He
managed the Castilian idiom with equal facility as his own, and poet,
historian, moralist, author political, military, and even religious, he
excels in some of these departments, and is contemptible in none. The
volume of his verses is extremely rare, and though some have made him
the imitator of Góngora, he has more points of resemblance to Quevedo;
the same taste in versification, the same austerity of principles, the
same affectation of sententiousness, the same copiousness of doctrine.
He has besides conformed to the example of Quevedo in publishing his
poems, in divisions of the nine Muses, though three of them are in
Portuguese. There are in the Spaniard colours more brilliant, and
strokes more strong; in Melo more sobriety and fewer extravagances. His
style, though elegant and pure, is barely poetical; and his amatory
verses are deficient in tenderness and fire, as are his odes in
enthusiasm and loftiness. He is as little happy in the many burlesque
verses with which the large volume of his poetry abounds; but when the
subject is grave and serious, then his philosophy and doctrine sustain
him, and his expression equals his ideas. Naturally inclined to maxims
and reflections, he was most at home in moral poetry; in the epistle
particularly, where strength and severity of thought best combine with a
tempered and less profound fancy. Here, if he is not always a great
painter, he is at least chaste and severe in style and language, in his
verse sonorous, grave and elevated in his thoughts, a respectable
moralist in character and principles. Notwithstanding these
distinctions, the claims of his glory as a writer are more firmly
grounded on his prose works; on the _Eco politico_ for instance, on his
_Aula militar_, and, above all, on the _Historia de las alteraciones de
Cataluña_, the most excellent production of his pen, and perhaps the
best work of its kind in the Castilian language.
Poetry was meanwhile expiring; tortured by such demoniacs, it could not
recover its beauty and freshness from the aid of the few who yet
composed with care, and wrote with greater purity. Rebolledo had neither
force nor fancy, and his verses are nothing more than rhymed prose:
Esquilache, with somewhat more grace in his romances, was spruce and
affected, and had neither the talent nor strength which are necessary
for higher compositions: Ulloa wrote nothing good but his _Raquel_: and
lastly, Solis, who sometimes shows himself a poet in his comedies, and
often in his history, is a mere rhymester in his lyrics, which now are
read by none. How could these emasculated writers raise the art from the
abyss into which it had fallen? The thing was impossible. This vicious
taste was reduced to a system in the extravagant and singular work of
Gracian, _Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio_, which is an art of writing in
prose and verse, founded on the most absurd principles, and supported by
good and bad specimens, jumbled together in the most discordant manner.
This Gracian is the same that composed a descriptive poem on the
seasons, under the title of _Silvas del Año_; the first I fancy that was
written in Europe on this subject, and most assuredly the worst. As a
specimen of his manner, and of the laughable degradation to which poetry
had fallen, the following verses will suffice, selected from the opening
of Summer:--
"After, in the celestial theatre,
The horseman of the day is seen to spur
To the refulgent Bull, in his brave hold
Shaking for darts his rays of burning gold.
The beauteous spectacle of stars--a crowd
Of lovely dames, his tricks applaud aloud;
They, to enjoy the splendour of the fight,
Remain on heaven's high balcony of light.
Then in strange metamorphosis, with spurs
And crest of fire, red-throated Phoebus stirs,
Like a proud cock amongst the hens divine
Hatched out of Leda's egg, the Twins that shine,
Hens of the heavenly field."
This is beyond every thing: the whole poem is written in the same
barbarous and ridiculous manner, and it is a proof as evident as
mournful, that there now remained no memory of the principles of
composition, no vestiges of eloquence. Ornaments, suited to the madrigal
and epigram, were transferred to the higher kinds of composition, and
the whole was changed into concetti, conundrums, puns, and antitheses.
Thus Castilian poesy came to an end! In her more tender youth, the
simple flowers of the field which Garcilasso gathered sufficed to adorn
her; in the fine writings of Herrera and Rioja, she presents herself
with the pomp of a beautiful lady, richly attired; in Balbuena,
Jauregui, and Lope de Vega, although too free and gay, she yet preserved
traits of elegance and beauty; but first spoiled by the contortions
taught her by Góngora and Quevedo, she afterwards gave herself up to a
crowd of Vandals, who completed her ruin. Thenceforward her movements
became convulsions, her colours paint, her jewels tinsel, and old and
decrepid, there was nothing more for her to do than madly to act the
girl, to wither, and to perish.