James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

“ Just so Ben Jonson lamented that Shakespeare ‘wanted art’—that is, he paid no heed to the pseudo-Aristotelian precepts concerning dramatic composition. Nor did Lope: and it is precisely by neglecting to follow blind leaders of the blind, and by giving free play to their individual genius that Shakespeare and Lope de Vega have become immortal. Rules may serve for men of simple talent; but an original mind attains independence by intelligently breaking them, and thus arrives at inventing a new and living form of art. It is in this sense that we call Lope the founder of the Spanish theatre. ”

“ The Moor of fiction is so much more attractive than the Moor of history that he has imposed himself upon the world. Most of us still see him, with the light of other days around him, as we first met him in Scott’s Talisman, or in Chateaubriand’s Aventures du dernier Abencérage. Still the fact remains that he is a conventional lay-figure, and that a Spanish poem in which he appears transfigured and glorified is neither ancient nor popular, but is necessarily the work of some late Spanish writer who knows no more of Moors than he can gather from Pérez de Hita’s gorgeously imaginative pages. ”

“ Splendid as Calderón’s diction often is, it lapses into gongorism too easily. Rojas Zorrilla’s natural mode of expression is direct and energetic; his dialogue is both natural and brilliant in Don Diego de Noche and Lo que son mugeres; he knew the difference between a good style and a bad one, and he pauses now and then to satirise Góngora and the cultos. But he must be in the fashion, and as Calderón has dabbled in culteranismo, he will do the same. And he bursts into gongorism with all the crude exaggeration of one who is deliberately sinning against the light. ”

“ Continuous production, as Chorley puts it, is a vital requisite to ‘the existence of the drama in its true form, as acted poetry.’ This, however, is beyond the power of a few normal men of genius. Schiller and Goethe combined failed to create a national theatre at Weimar: no one but Lope could have succeeded in creating a national theatre at Madrid. At precisely the right moment Spain happily produced a most abnormal writer who could throw off admirable plays—many of them imperfect, but many of them masterpieces—in such profusion as twenty ordinary men of genius could not equal. ”

“ A perfect contrast in every way was Juan Valera, whose ductile talent had concerned itself with many matters before it found an outlet in fiction. Pereda was stubbornly regional and fanatically orthodox: Valera was a cosmopolitan strayed out of Andalusia, a careless Gallio, observing with serene amusement the fussiness of mankind over to be, or not to be. Pereda tends to tragic or melodramatic pessimism: Valera is a bland and disinterested spectator, to whom life is a brilliant, diverting comedy. ”

“ As man fashions his idols in his own image, we are in a fair way to understand him, if we know what he admires: and, as it is with individual units, so is it with races. National heroes symbolise the ambitions, the foibles, the general temper and radical qualities of those who have set them up as exemplars. But there are two sides to every character, and Spain has two national heroes known all the world over: the practical Cid and the idealistic Don Quixote, one of them an historical figure, and the other the child of a great man’s fancy. ”

“ Like most Spaniards, Calderón is too copious; but in lyrical splendour he is unsurpassed by any Spanish poet, and is surpassed by few poets in any language. Had he added more frequent touches of nature to his idealised presentations, he would rank with the greatest dramatists in the world.
As it is, he ranks only just below the greatest, and in one dramatic form peculiar to Spain, he is, by common consent, supreme. Everybody quotes Shelley’s phrase about ‘the light and odour of the starry autos’; but scarcely anybody reads the autos, and I rather doubt if Shelley read them. ”

“ Calderón dealt with his abstruse theme more than seventy times—not always with equal success, but never quite unsuccessfully, and never repeating himself unduly. This is surely one of the most dexterous exploits in literature, and Calderón appears to have done it with consummate ease. His reflective genius, steeped in dogma, was far more interested in the mysteries of faith than in the passions of humanity, far more interested in devout symbolism than in realistic characterisation. ”

“ If Cervantes be a ‘great’ poet, what adjective is left to describe Garcilaso, Luis de León, Lope de Vega, Góngora and Calderón?
A sense of measure, of relative values, is the soul of criticism, and we may be appreciative without condescending to idolatry, or even to flattery. Cervantes was a rapid, facile versifier, and at rare intervals his verses are touched with poetry; but, for the most part, they are imitative, and no imitation, however brilliant, is a title to lasting fame. Imitation in itself is no bad sign in a beginner ”

“ He has the unique power of creating the daintiest heroines in the world—beautiful, appealing, tender and brave. He has the secret of communicating emotion, of inventing dialogue, always appropriate, and he is ever prompt to enliven it with a delicate humour, humane and debonair. He has not merely enriched Spain: in some degree not yet precisely known—for the history of comparative literature is in its infancy—he has contributed to almost every theatre in Europe. ”

“ The world, leaving scholars and professional critics to estimate the writer’s indebtedness to Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, has steadily refused to be interested in Persiles y Sigismunda; and in the long run the world delivers a just judgment. It is often led astray by gossip, by influence, by publishers’ tricks, by authors who press their own wares on you with all the effrontery of a cheap-jack at a fair; but the world finds out the truth at last. An author’s genius may be manifest in most or all of his works ”

“ His labyrinthine romance, Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, appeared in 1617. Even had this posthumous work been, as Cervantes half hoped, ‘the best book of its kind,’ it could scarcely have added to his glory. Though distinctly not the best book of its kind, the great name on its title-page procured it a respectful reception, and it was repeatedly reprinted within a short time of its publication. But it was soon lost in the vast shadow of Don Quixote: no one need feel guilty because he has not read it. ”

“ No man of letters has ever received such visible proofs of his own celebrity, and none has retained it so long. For something like half a century Lope had contrived to fascinate his countrymen, but even he began to grow old at last. Yet the change was not so much in him as in the rising generation.
The swelling tide of culteranismo was invading the stage; the fatal protection of Philip IV. was beginning to undermine the national theatre. Lope had always opposed the new fashion of preciosity, and he could not, or would not, supply the demand at court for a spectacular drama. ”

“ Most authors write far too much, either from necessity or from vanity, and Valera, who was too acute to be vain, wasted his energies in too many directions and on too many subjects. Still he has improvised comparatively little in the shape of fiction, and, even in extreme old age, when the calamity of blindness had overtaken him, he surprised and enchanted his admirers with more than one arresting volume. Speaking broadly, the characteristics of the best Spanish art are force and truth, and in these respects Valera holds his own. ”

“ But, when every deduction is made, Calderón is still one of the most stately figures in Spanish literature. Naturally a great lyric poet, his deliberate art won him a pre-eminent position among poets who used the dramatic form, and he lives as the typical representative of the devout, gallant, loyal, artificial society in which he moved. He is not, as once was thought, the synthesis of the Spanish genius, but no one incarnates more completely one aspect of that genius. ”

“ One of the most attractive characteristics of Don Quixote is its maturity; it may not have taken more than three or 158 four years to write, but it embodies the experience of a lifetime, and it breathes an air of urbanity and leisure. Cervantes was not an exceptionally rapid writer, and—if he thought about the matter at all—probably knew that masterpieces are seldom produced in a hurry. His great rival Lope de Vega easily surpassed him in brilliant facility: Cervantes’s mind was weightier, less fleet but more precise. ”

“ Cervantes was no bloodless ascetic, no incarnation of dreary righteousness: we do him wrong, if we present him in that crude, intolerable light. With some defects of character and with some lapses of conduct, he is a more interesting and more attractive personality than if he were—what perhaps no one has ever been—a bundle of almost impossible perfections. He was even as we are, but far nobler—braver, more resigned to disappointment, more patient with the folly which springs eternal in each of us. ”

“ Lope’s redundant genius adapts itself easily enough to the narrow bounds of the comedia de capa y espada, but he instinctively prefers a more spacious field. The very artificiality of such plays must have been an attraction to Calderón. All plays of this class are much alike. There are always a gallant and a lady engaged in a love-affair; a grim father or petulant brother, who may be a loose liver but is a rigid moralist where his own women-folk are concerned; a gracioso or buffoon, who comes on the scene when things begin to look dangerous. ”

“ At any rate, it is difficult to imagine a more spirited opening than that which chance has given us. The Cid is introduced at a critical moment, misjudged, calumniated, a loyal subject driven from his own Castilian home by an ungrateful Leonese king. There is something spacious in the atmosphere, there is a stately simplicity even in the deliberate repetition of conventional epithet—‘the Castilian,’ ‘he who was born in a good hour,’ ‘the good one of Bivar,’ ‘my Cid,’ and rarely—very rarely—‘the Cid.’ The poet lauds his hero, as he should, but does not degrade him by fulsome eulogy ”

“ Some modern Spaniards, with a show of indignation which seems quaint in countrymen of Cervantes and Quevedo, reject the notion that humour is a characteristic quality of the Spanish genius. We must bear these sputterings of storm with such equanimity as we can, and hope for finer weather. The fact remains: Juan Ruiz is the earliest of the great Spanish humourists; he is also the most eminent Spanish poet of the Middle Ages, and, all things considered, the most brilliant literary figure in Spanish history till the coming of Garcilaso de la Vega. ”

“ It is frequently alleged against him that his copiousness was an artistic blunder, and that he would have acted more wisely in the interest of his fame, if he had concentrated his magnificent powers on a smaller number of plays, and perfected them. In other words, he would have done more, if he had done less. This may be true; Virgil wrote ten lines a day, and they endure for ever: Lope wrote three thousand lines a day, and most of them have perished. But we must take genius as we find it, and be thankful to accept it on its own conditions. It is far from clear to me that Lope chose unwisely. ”

“ In the first place, we must avoid the error of judging him by modern standards, and in the second place, we must bear in mind that almost all we learn of his later years—the best known period of his life—comes to us from enemies whose prejudices may have led them unconsciously to darken the shadows in the portrait. It is a shock to discover that the man who symbolises the spirit of Spanish patriotism was a border chief in the pay of the highest bidder; it is a greater shock to find that the man who figures as the type of knightly orthodoxy fought for the Mohammedans against the Christians. ”

“ Máximo Juncal in La Madre Naturaleza thinks with Pereda that townsfolk are beyond salvation: only—and the difference is capital—he would leave nature to work her will without the restraints of traditional ethics. Clearly all women are not hampered by timidity and conservative instincts! But Palacio Valdés may be read for the constant, acrid keenness of his appreciation of character, and the Condesa Pardo Bazán for her vigorous portraiture of the Galician peasantry, and her art as a landscape painter. ”

“ It is no less true that, but for Avellaneda, the sequel might have been even better than it actually is. Cervantes had steadily refused to be hurried over his masterpiece, and, so long as he followed his own bent, his work is almost flawless. But Avellaneda suddenly forced him to quicken his step, and in the last chapters Cervantes manifestly writes in furious haste. His art suffers in consequence. His bland amenity deserts him; his eyes wander restlessly from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to Avellaneda, whom he belabours out of season. ”