Spanish Prose and Poetry, Old and New

Front matter

OLD AND NEW

WITH TRANSLATED SPECIMENS

BY

Introduction

A well-known contemporary Spanish writer has complained that the average foreigner associates Spain with little beyond religious fanaticism, bull-fights, and dances. Even of the more enlightened, who are aware of her past literary achievements, few, he says, realize that her literature is a living and progressive one, and that there exists in Spain a youth in close touch with the best European thought. That an observation of this kind has been largely true with regard to the English none, I think, will deny; but there is now good reason to believe that this indifference towards things Spanish is coming to an end. It is probable (how can it be otherwise?) that though peace has come we shall find it psychologically impossible to overcome our repugnance to Germans, with their crimes and moral outlook, sufficiently to enter into social relations with them. We shall, perhaps, also arrive at seeing that in literature, as in other subjects, we have too readily taken the Germans at their own estimate; that the number of works produced by them of first-class importance is extremely small, while those belonging to the second or third class are frequently dull and clumsy. When we thus realize that we have overrated German as a means of education, we shall turn, let us hope, the more willingly to the literature of the great Latin races, and be mindful of Italian, too long out of vogue, and of Spanish, too long neglected.

As to this latter, professorships have recently been founded in our universities, which will necessarily lead to a steady increase in the number of those acquainted with Spanish originals. It is, however, for the many who have no leisure for learning Spanish itself that this little book is intended. Its aims are simple. It has been given me, after years of work in other directions, to arrive at knowing a little of the great Iberian peninsula and its literature. I have revelled in its scenery, its architecture and painting, spent many happy hours in its ancient libraries, spoken with its people, and enjoyed much of Spanish courtesy and hospitality. Having in this manner received abiding impressions of the kind that help to enrich and beautify life, I would gladly convey to English readers something of the high interest and pleasure that Spain has brought to myself. Spanish is a grand language, strong, sonorous, and stately; it is that, moreover, of a people who once led Europe, and who still represent a very considerable portion of the human race. Apart from Cervantes—a life-study in himself—its literature is of singular richness and variety. There are the early epics, the ballads, the splendid drama, the lyrics, the picaresque novels of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with those of a more general type of the nineteenth and twentieth.

As to the lyric poets, of whom, together with certain prose writers, I have given critical and biographical sketches with translated specimens, I have chiefly concerned myself with those either wholly untranslated or at any rate but little known in our country. The first of these is Juan Ruiz, one of the least known amongst us, and it is owing to this fact partly that I have given him a space in my book out of proportion to that allotted to men greater than he. Moreover, he is the representative fourteenth-century poet, and his voluminous book, with its various elements, requires a fair number of specimens adequately to illustrate it. Other poets in my collection are undoubtedly among the finest that Spain has produced, and the specimens I have given of them are, with one or two exceptions, to be found either in Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly’s The Oxford Book of Spanish Verse, or among The Hundred Best Poems, selected by the late Professor Menéndez y Pelayo. Of these there are, as will be seen, notable omissions. Jorge Manrique’s exquisite poem on death, one of the brightest jewels in Spanish literature, has been many years ago beautifully rendered into English by Longfellow, while Lockhart and others have given us fine versions of the Ballads. Poems, the beauty of which is mainly that of form, and whose subtle cadences are peculiarly Spanish, are obviously best left among the unattempted. Moreover, verse translation cannot be done to order. Before one can hope to obtain any measure of success it is necessary that the original should possess itself of one’s heart and brain and warm them up to the work. It is for this reason that in spite of their literary importance I have felt unable to translate either Gongora or Quevedo. The eighteenth century, when Spanish poetry, largely owing to the pernicious influence of Gongorism, the Spanish equivalent of Euphuism, was at its lowest ebb, is unrepresented here.

In my renderings I have endeavoured to keep as closely to the text as the great difference between English and Spanish permits; but I have in all cases sought to be true to the spirit rather than to the letter of the originals. I have adhered as much as possible to their metre and rhyming- systems, even though, as Chaucer complains: ‘Ryme in Englisch hath such skarsetë.’

Spanish lyric poetry was a late development, and the fact must be realized that in Castile there co-existed for about 150 years a lyric poetry in the Galician language and an epic poetry in the Castilian. The Galicians, Celtic in race and imaginative in temperament, showed themselves in the earlier ages lyrically more gifted than the solid and sober-minded Castilians. Their language, as well as Portuguese, is closely akin to that of Provence, the higher civilization of which came to them through their proximity to it, as also through the enormous number of pilgrims whom the famous shrine of Santiago de Compostela attracted. In Galician wrote Alfonso the Learned and Alfonso XI; the famous ‘Cantigas’, attributed by some to the former, are in this tongue, nor was it till near the middle of the fifteenth century that the supremacy of Castilian as a language became definitely established.

The influence of Provencal poetry seems chiefly to have reached Spain indirectly through Galicia, but it also came from Provence itself when, after the Albigensian War, trouba- dours found a shelter at the courts of Spanish princes. By then, however, the poetry of the Langue d’Oc had fallen into decline, and Spanish imitators of the later troubadours rivalled them in insipidity, though they learnt much from them in the matter of technique and versification.

Indirectly again (for were they not the teachers of Dante and Petrarca?) came the influence of the troubadours through Italy. The commercial intercourse between Genoa and Catalonia, and still more the conquest of Naples by Aragon, brought the two countries closely together. Italy became to Spain as Greece to Rome. In the fifteenth century the study of Dante was the chief inspiration from without, while yet more potently in the sixteenth century Italy brought a new impetus to Spain—Petrarca and others taught her poets how to sing of love, and gave a new delicacy and variety to their verse. Spain proved an apt pupil, and, in poetry as in art, where she borrows she shows a special gift for reflecting with originality the inspiration of others.

The genius of Spain is not pre-eminently lyrical, and love has not been the theme of her best poetry. The innumerable love-poems of Provence and Italy are not to be found among a people whose idealism has so strong an admixture of realism. Spanish love in its most characteristic form is not the spiritual worship of Dante for Beatrice, nor has it the delicate unearthliness of the troubadour’s adoration for his lady. The love of Rodrigo for Ximena is deep and sincere rather than passionate, and it is Ximena who kneels, not he. The best Spanish lyrics seem to me those that dwell on such subjects as religion, patriotism, the mystery of death, or the fleetingness of life. There is a remarkable homogeneity and oneness of tone in both the literature and art of Spain. Even the mystics have their practical side. St. Theresa notably was, though an idealist with her face upturned to heaven, a realist with her feet firmly planted upon earth, and has thus much in her that makes her akin to Cervantes, Velasquez, Goya, or the unknown author of the Poema del Cid.

In the few examples of Spanish prose that I have added to the lyrics I do not, of course, attempt to convey an adequate idea of this branch of literature. They are merely supplementary, and with a view to giving further general impressions of Spanish life and thought. Don Juan Manuel is an important personage, not only for the high intrinsic worth of his Conde Lucanor, but because of the Arabic influence traceable in his work. In spite of the existence of Mabbe’s beautiful seventeenth-century translation of La Celestina I have felt that some extracts from this book, the greatest perhaps after Don Quixote in Spanish literature, could hardly be omitted. Various English translations of St. Theresa’s prose work, one of the great glories of Spain, already exist, and her life by the late Mrs. Cunninghame Graham is a fine memorial to her. Lazarillo de Tormes, the famous book which fixed the type of the picaresque novel, has been introduced to English readers by Prof. Butler Clarke. In the nineteenth century, as hitherto in the twentieth, the novel has been the chief form of literature in Spain, and I have preferred to illustrate this by fairly lengthy specimens from two writers than by shorter ones from several. It may perhaps seem strange that I have chosen nothing from novelists of such distinction as Sr. Galdós and Sa. Pardo Bazán. It must be borne in mind, however, that some writers can be less fitly illustrated by detached specimens than others.

We are living in an age when, in spite of all our belief in the future of our race, and the uplifting of our hearts by our Empire’s glorious achievements, life is infinitely tragic, and sorrow and grave anxieties encompass us. Therefore we need all the comfort that literature can give us; and if the voices of the great band of singers, dead and living, whom I faintly echo here, can cheer and inspire any of my countrymen the chief purpose of this book will be fulfilled.

IDA FARNELL.

July 1919.

Juan Ruiz: Archpriest of Hita

Archpriest of Hita (1283?–1350?)

The past is as a book sealed with seven seals. Our histories tell us much of battles, treaties, and alliances, but comparatively little of the inner life of men and women. It is the poets who best bridge over the gulf between ourselves and past humanity, and this is markedly so in the case of Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita.

The Archpriest is a genius, but this is not his sole claim to our notice. The historical importance of his poems is perhaps as great as their intrinsic merit. He is beyond question the chief Spanish poet of the fourteenth century; he is also the first strongly-defined personality in Spanish literature. The author of the Poema del Cid is a mere matter of conjecture; Berceo, the first poet of Spain, whose name has reached us, is as a man vague and shadowy. It is true that Alfonso the Learned is a great historical and literary figure, be he has not, after the manner of Juan Ruiz, laid bare his heart to us, and how much is actually his of the various works attributed to him is a problem difficult of solution.

With the Archrpeist we are on firmer ground. Scanty as is our knowledge of the events of his life, we know a surprising amount about the man himself. He has given us his own portrait, robust and virile as the book he has left us, that of a big, burly man, with dark hair, coal-black eyebrows and red lips, pleasant of speech and deep of voice. He has given hi autobiography, the first of its kind in Spain, not to speak of other countries. Whether or not he was Don Melon, and whether or not the hero of the Serrana poems, his account of himself seems, as a whole. reliable, and he tells us not only what he did, but what he felt on a vast variety of subjects. He represents himself as a gay, pleasure-loving, priestly Don Juan, hurrying, though not always with success, from one amour to another. His joie de vivre, his unfailing good humour, his easy tolerance, are those of a man of sound health and immense vitality. He is of the opinion that all men, including himself, are sinners; but he is on excellent terms with the sinners, and thoroughly convinced of the desirability of life. In spite of his sensuality, the debauchee priest has waves of religious feeling, sincere, it seems, as far as they go, and he is typically mediaeval in his mixture of profanity and religious sentiment. Nevertheless, he was as ill-suited to the clerical life as Fra Filippo Lippi or the merry troubadour-monk of Montaldon, but one must judge him by the age in which he lived, and his morality seems to have been neither more nor less depraved than that of the priests, his contemporaries. The corruption of the Church and the loose lives of the clergy during the Middle Ages are facts well known to the student of that period; and in Spain there were no great religious revivals equal to those in Italy under the wonderful influence of St. Francis and St. Catherine.

Juan is in no way morbidly self-concentrated; he has a large, healthy interest in human nature, and was as much the poet of the men and women of real life as Giotto was their painter. He shows us the fourteenth century as he saw it himself, but in studying his presentation of it we must bear in mind that, though he had the keenest eye for its humorous side, its faults and its follies, the spiritual shallowness of the man made him incapable of realizing the higher side that must, nevertheless, have existed. His book is as full of sunshine as the Canterbury Tales, but characters like the Knight or the Parson are beyond the poet’s ken. His world is a merry, evil place, and monks and nuns stream forth from their conventual seclusion into the glorious light of a southern spring, and together pay homage to Don Amor. His knights and nobles are without high chivalry, his women, whether secular or religious, without purity.

As for his life, we must content ourselves with probabilities. It is thought that he was born in 1283, and he died in 1350 or 1351. Alcalá de Henares , where Cervantes was born, whom he in some ways resembles, claims to also to have been the birthplace of Ruiz. The poet himself tells us that he was Archpriest of Hita, a village on a hill-side not far from Guadalajara. He seems to have spent much of his life in New Castile, and to have been well acquainted with Toledo, of which he makes frequent mention. That he was a true Castilian is a fact borne out by his purity of style and grace of diction. In the course of his career he in some way offended Gil Albornoz, the powerful Archbishop of Toledo, who imprisoned him, and this probably for a period of thirteen years, during which time he seems to have written his book.

The Archpriest’s contribution to literature is the ‘Book of Good Love’ (Libro de buen Amor), a work of some 7,000 lines, and, like the Roman de Renart, not so much a poem as a series of poems, the whole, however, having a connecting thread, and forming one book. It has a singular fascination and charm, partly because, as the late Señor Menéndez y Pelayo remarks, it gives us the ‘human comedy of the fourteenth century’, but chiefly because it is the product of a genuine artist, who possessed the gift of style, and whose aim was to cheer and delight the reader. It is a protest against gloom and asceticism, the first vigorous assertion of the beauty and worth of life in a country whose tragic history has given a character of melancholy and pessimism to much of its literature. The book is made up of various elements. It reveals its writer as a lyric poet of considerable merit, an accomplished story-teller, and a fabulist equal to La Fontaine himself in grace, satiric power, and closeness of observation. In the Autobiography which joins the short poems together, Juan Ruiz is the founder of the Spanish picaresque novel, influencing as such the author of Lazarillo de Tormes and through him Le Sage, Fielding, and Smollett.

The Archpriest is never pedantic, never dull. In his spontaneity, ease, gaiety, and power of expression he is a striking contrast to the long-winded poets that had gone before him; and these qualities, together with his humour and knowledge of life, make him no unworthy predecessor of the great Cervantes. He was as much at home in country life as in that of the towns. He had roamed over the mountain ranges of Castile, and there is the freshness of the mountain breezes in the poems that treat of them. In his art he is essentially a realist, and of the earth, and the remark that has been made about Velasquez, that he saw all that was to be seen with his eyes open, and little with his eyes closed, is largely applicable to the Archpriest. He is a man of many moods, and his views on love, women, and other matters vary according to these moods, his waywardness being in itself a charm. On the whole he took life lightly, and the pagan element is uppermost in him; nevertheless his verses on death and one or two of the religious poems show another side of a curiously complex nature. He certainly took his art seriously, and did great service to versification, and to the development and enrichment of the beautiful language of his country. The Archpriest was a man of considerable erudition, though his readings seem to have been wide rather than deep. He was well acquainted with the Apostolic Fathers; he had read, whether in the original or in translations, certain Latin authors, more especially the poet Ovid. He borrows much from the French Trouvères, with whom he has considerable affinity. The Arabic influence is perceptible in him; the construction of the book—a narrative interspersed with fables and apologues—is oriental. In spite, however, of what he owes to outside sources, his originality is incontestable. He pillaged freely, but he has the alchemist’s gift of transmuting into gold the baser metal that he took from others, and in the treatment of his subject he is always himself.

The parallel that has been drawn between Juan Ruiz and Chaucer holds good in much, but the tenderness, pathos, purity of sentiment, and spirit of high romance that charm us in our own poet are wholly absent in the Spanish one.

Neglected for some centuries, Juan Ruiz’s work was first printed in 1779 by the Spanish professor Sanchez. The best edition is the palaeographical one of M. Jean Ducamin, published in 1901. The book is almost entirely in verse, usually that of the so-called ‘Cuaderna Via’ of the Archpriest’s predecessors, a stanza, namely, of four monorhyming lines, each of fourteen syllables, the monotony of which is greatly reduced by the freedom and ease with which the poet treats it. The book begins with the following prayer to God for release from prison:

Great God, who once hast even deigned the Israelites to free, Leading them forth from Pharaoh’s hand and long captivity, Thou Saviour of wise Daniel, that placed his trust in Thee, Eke from this dark and evil cell release unhappy me.

Lord, unto gentle Esther once Thou gavest pitying grace, So that Ahasuerus looked with favour on her face: Even so, Lord, I pray thee grant to me Thy saving grace, And free me from this prison—from this foul and noisome place.

Thou from the fiery furnace. Lord, Thy servants hast released, So that the three came forth unsinged, and persecution ceased; As Peter from the roaring waves, save Thou Thy last and least, O, rescue. Lord, from grievous teen, rescue Thine own archpriest.

A preface in prose comes next, a solemn homily on Good Love designed perhaps for the purpose of throwing dust in the eyes of his readers. ‘To love aright, three things’, he tells us, ‘are necessary: understanding, will, and memory.’ ‘Wherefore’, he continues, ‘I with my small knowledge and great simplicity, loving with a right good will the salvation of my soul, made this writing as a record of virtue … wherein also are set down certain cunning wales of the foolish love of the world, whereby some do even fall into sin.’ After further pious utterances, in which he expresses his abhorrence of vice, he says: ‘Nathless, if any there be, that seek after unlawful love, the which I in no wise counsel them, here they will find ensamples thereof … for, as saith St. Gregory, “The more ye see the darts of the evil one, the better ye can shun them. Thereupon follows a prayer to God to inspire him in the making of his book. So prayed our own high-souled Milton and great Dante, and whether such a prayer is in this case wholly impious it is hard to say.

After his prayer, uneasy as to the reception of the questionable book, the poet continues to apologize and explain, saying:

Think not my book containeth naught but folly vain and bold, Nor deem that jest and mockery are all its pages hold; For, as in roughest leather purse may lie the purest gold, E’en so a book of semblance base great wisdom may enfold.

Two poems now follow on the Joys of the Virgin Mary, as the ‘Source and Root of all things good’. But, remarks the Archpriest, ‘Cato bids men mingle with their many cares a little merriment and laughter,’ upon which he tells us in flowing verse the following amusing story, of which I give the substance in prose.

The Romans being without laws, besought the Greeks in their wisdom to frame them some. ‘Nay,’ said the Greeks, ‘that were great folly, seeing that ye are small of worth and understanding. Nathless, if have them ye must, prove your worth and wit by a disputation with our wise men. (This they said in their subtlety, thinking to evade the matter.) The Romans answered that this pleased them well, and a day was straightway appointed for the disputation; and, inasmuch as the Romans knew not the Greek tongue, it was ordained that signs should take the place of words in the disputation.

Then the Romans were sore perplexed, in that they were unlettered and unskilled in contending with men of wisdom. Being thus hard bestead, they followed the counsel of one of their citizens, and made choice of a certain ribald churl to dispute for them, trusting that God would even instruct him in the signs that he should make. He was a big, bold fellow, and they set on him fine clothes, as though he had been a Doctor of Philosophy, and he got him into a high chair, such as doctors use, and with much insolence challenged the Greeks to arguments with him. Straightway there came forth a Greek doctor, chosen of his people for his great excellence and polished wit, and he got him into another raised chair, and sat him down and all his people round him. Then, ere long, the wise Greek in solemn and seemly fashion slowly uplifted his forefinger and sat him down again, and at that the ribald churl, as one ill-pleased, raised his thumb and two fingers, and held them towards the Greek, and thereon sat him down, eyeing the fine clothes he wore. The Greek at this arose, and held out an open palm and sat down in his wisdom, the while the foolish churl, rising, showed his great fist fast clenched. Thereat incontinently the wise Greek spake and said: ‘Verily the Romans are worthy of laws, nor may I therein gainsay them.’ And at this they all rose calmly, and as men of one mind, and the Romans received great honour by means of a low rascal.

Then all asked of the wise Greek that he should interpret the signs he had made, and the answer given him, and the Greek spake and said: ‘Behold I said that there is one God, and the Roman answered that there is one God in Three Persons. Then I said that all things obey God’s will, and he gave answer that God has the whole world beneath his dominion, by the which signs I verily perceived that the men of Rome acknowledged the Holy Trinity, and were worthy of good laws.’ Thereon they bade the churl likewise interpret the signs made. Quoth he: ‘With his forefinger raised the Greek told me that he would dash out my eye, whereat, full wroth, I answered that with two fingers I would put out his eyes, and with my thumb his teeth. Then he told me that he was minded to deal me a sounding blow on the ears. Quoth I that I would give him such a buffet with my fist as he had never yet known in his life; and he, seeing that he could not withstand me, ceased to contend with me, whereat I held him in great scorn.’

The moral of this story is, says Juan, that there are no words that in themselves are evil, all depends on how they are taken. His book, he assures us, is the father of all instruments, and as the reader points the music so it will be.

Here, without more ado, the Archpriest begins to tell us of his admiration for a fair lady, to whom he sends an old woman as his messenger. The lady defends herself from his addresses by relating various fables, tending to show the small worth of lovers’ promises. She tells with much spirit one, of which the substance is as follows: .

A certain lion lay sick and suffering, and the beasts all paid him visits of condolence. When convalescent he invited them to a feast. An ox was the pièce de résistance, and the monarch bade the wolf give to each beast his share. The wolf, who was not conspicuous for ready tact, placed before his host the delicate portion suitable to an invalid appetite, keeping for himself and friends the parts of greater substance.

At this the lion was wroth, for he was looking for a good square meal, and, raising his paw with the apparent intention of saying grace, dealt the wolf such a buffet on the head that he carried off his ear, and indeed no mean portion of the scalp. He then commanded the vixen to act as dispenser. Of course the cunning beast gave the major part to the lion, who in high good humour said to her: ‘Good mother, who taught you how to make division so skilful and so just?’ ‘Sire,’ she said, ‘it is the wolf’s head so please you, that taught me my lesson.’

‘Away with you then, false messenger,’ said the lady, ‘lest I show you how the lion chastiseth.’

The poet, notwithstanding her rejection of him, writes thus on women:

Surely when God created man He hath in wisdom seen That woman would not be his bane, else had she never been; God brought her forth from Adam’s side, and fashioned her, I ween, That she should be his well-loved mate, noble and fair of mien.

And if man loved not woman well, as God did e’en ordain, Then poor, forsooth, would be Love’s joys, and small would be his reign; Methinks there is no hermit saint that would not hold it gain To have her dear companionship, and dwell ’neath Love’s sweet chain.

These words I say and say again, e’en as a twice-told tale: Unless the hen be in the nest full ill doth sing the male; A house without a woman is a mast without a sail, And when there is no water-wheel the parched orchards fail.

The poet then pays court to another lady, but here again bad luck attends him, for the lady, as in the case of Miles Standish, prefers the messenger, a young man, to himself. Still the Archpriest persists in thinking well of Don Love, and in the following verses seeks to show that he brings out what is best in a man:

Truly my mother bore me ’neath the sign of Venus fair, Know, therefore, that to serve good dames is aye my chiefest care; And if the pear-tree I must see yet never taste the pear, To rest at least beneath its shade is bliss that all may share.

Love to the foolish giveth wit by great and potent art, Love to the dumb or slow of speech can eloquence impart, Can make the craven, shrinking coward valiant and strong of heart, Can by his power the sluggard spur out of his sleep to start.

Love to the young eternal youth can by his craft bestow, The all-subduing might of eld can even overthrow; Can make the face as swart as pitch full white and fair to grow, And give to those not worth a doit full many a grace, I trow.

The dolt, the fool, the slow of wit, the poor man or the base Unto his mistress seemeth rich in every goodly grace. Then he that loseth lady fair should straightway set his face T’ward finding one that worthily may fill her vacant place.

At length the poet, still unsuccessful in his quest of a lady, loses patience and makes a spirited attack on Love, here, as in Provençal poetry, represented as a young man.