Antonio de Quevedo

“ Among the men who, last of the Spaniards of renown, flourished at that epoch, Quevedo deserves particular mention. He was a man of genius—a man who acted as well as wrote, and displayed in both originality, penetration and rectitude; whose character was as admirable as his intellect. He was the victim, also, of the most frightful misrule; and the fate of Quevedo alone might be brought forward as an example of the infamy of the political institutions of Spain.
Don Francisco Gomez de Quevedo Villegas, was born at Madrid in September 1580. His father, Pedro Gomez de Quevedo, was a courtier. ”

“ Such is the sort of wit that Quevedo indulges in; terse, pointed, bitter, and driven home with an unsparing hand. Extravagant in its imaginations, yet so proportioned to the truth of nature as to excite admiration as well as surprise, and to be the model of a variety of imitations, none of which come up to him in penetration, vivacity and subtle felicity of expression. ”

“ Being in a church at Madrid during the Holy Week, he saw a gallant of the Court offer a gross insult to a modest woman. He interfered to protect her, swords were drawn, and Quevedo slew the aggressor. The slain man being discovered to be a person of rank, nearly related to those who had power at Court, Quevedo was forced to fly the country, taking refuge in Sicily, then a dependency of Spain. The governor or viceroy of the island was Don Pedro Tellez Giron, Duke of Osuna, a powerful grandee, of whom it was said that nature made him a very little gentleman and his deeds a very great lord ”

“ He exposed certain abuses in the distribution of the patronage of the military order of Santiago with a fearlessness which cost him another period of banishment from Court. He wrote letters to the King of France (Louis XIII.) and others, more or less directly impugning the conduct of affairs then under the worthless favourite, the Count-Duke of Olivares.
In 1634 Quevedo, being in his fifty-fourth year, married—to the surprise, and somewhat to the amusement, of his friends. His way of life hitherto had scarcely been such as to proclaim his confidence in the married state ”

“ The bullies said, “Pray, Sir, do not eat too much supper, lest it does you harm”; and the devil of a scholar answered, “Besides, Sir, you must begin to practice to be abstemious considering the life you are to lead at Alcalá.” I and the other servant prayed heartily that God would put it into their hearts to leave something; and when they had devoured every bit, and the curate was picking the bones over again, one of the bullies turned about, and said, “God bless us, we have left nothing for the servants; come hither, gentlemen. Here, landlord, give them all the house affords ”

“ To judge the character of the man is easier for posterity than to estimate the worth of his products in literature. The greater part of his writings, those which brought him most fame in his lifetime, men have ceased to read even in Spain itself. Of the eleven octavo volumes which constituted the first complete edition of Quevedo’s works (1791-94) it may be said that it would be no loss to the world had three-fourths shared the doom which their author, on his death-bed, requested might overtake them all. ”

“ Get thee home, blockhead, and see after thy affairs, and thy wife and children, and give over these fooleries that are sapping thy brains and skimming away thy wits."
"Go your own way, brother," said Don Antonio, "and don't offer advice to those who don't ask you for it. Senor Don Quixote is in his full senses, and we who bear him company are not fools; virtue is to be honoured wherever it may be found; go, and bad luck to you, and don't meddle where you are not wanted."
"By God, your worship is right," replied the Castilian; "for to advise this good man is to kick against the pricks ”

“ His imagination was vivid and brilliant but superficial and negligent; and the poetic genius that animates him, sparkles but does not glow, surprises but does not move deeply, bounds with impetuosity and force, but neither flies nor supports itself at the same elevation. I am well aware that Quevedo often diverts with what he writes, and raves because it is his pleasure. ”

“ In that Golden Age, prolific of authors, the hundred years between the birth of Cervantes and the prime of Calderon, there was no genius so fruitful in every kind of intellectual product. Poet, politician, humorist, satirist, theologian, moralist, historian, novelist—Quevedo stands out a prodigy of learning, wit, and quick and various invention, even among the crowd of gifted writers who made that period famous in letters. He has been called the Spanish Juvenal—the Spanish Ovid—the Spanish Lucian. ”

“ Thus we came to Cerecedilla, and went into an inn all three of us, after night-fall; we ordered supper, though it was Friday, and in the meanwhile the hermit said, “Let us divert ourselves awhile, for idleness is the source of all vice. Let us play for Ave Marias;” and so saying, he dropped a pack of cards out of his sleeve. I could not but laugh at that pleasant sight, considering the great beads; but the soldier cried, “Let us have a friendly game as far as an hundred reals will go I have about me.” ”

“ As a satirist and humorist Quevedo stands in the first rank of Spanish writers; his other literary work does not count for much. I. I. Chifliet, in a letter of February 2, 1629, calls him “a very learned man to be a Spaniard,” and indeed his erudition was of a solid kind, but he merits attention not as humanist, philosopher, and moralist, but as the keen polemic writer, the pitiless mocker, the profound observer of all that is base and absurd in human nature, and at the same time as a finished master of style and of all the secrets of the Spanish tongue. ”

“ There is no attempt to scare the wicked by means of awful examples, the moral lesson is contemptuously thrown aside; the veil of romance is rent in twain, and the picaro-the nephew of the public executioner-is revealed as he is, gloating in cruelty and revelling in the conscious enjoyment of crime. But though Quevedo detests mankind, his morose vision of existence rarely degenerates into caricature. In his repugnant, misanthropic masterpiece the sordid genius of the Spanish picaroon finds absolute expression. ”

“ 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 ”

“ To conceive that he should seek to reform culteranismo by translating from Italians of yesterday, or to suppose that he knowingly passed as original work imitations made by a man who—ex hypothesi—died before his models were born, is to believe Quevedo a clumsy trickster. ”

“ Quevedo's serious poems suffer from the conceptismo which disfigures his ambitious prose; his wit, his complete knowledge of low life, his mastery of language show to greater advantage in his picaroon ballads and exercises in lighter verse. His freedom of tone has brought upon him an undeserved reputation for obscenity; the fact being that lewd, timorous fellows have fathered their indecencies upon him. A passage from his Last Will of Don Quixote may be cited, as Mr. Gibson gives it, to illustrate his natural method:—
"Up and answered Sancho Panza ”

“ He added, he was going to Madrid, because a threadbare elder brother, as he was, soon grew tainted and mouldy in a country town, and had no way to subsist; and therefore he was going to the common refuge of distressed persons, where there is room for all, and open house kept for wandering spongers: “And I never want five or six crowns in my pocket,” said he, “as soon as I am there, nor a good bed, meat, and drink, and sometimes a forbidden pleasure; for a good wit at Court is like the philosopher’s stone, which converts all it touches into gold.” ”

“ In 1641 he was again arrested on the charge of libel, and cast into prison, where he remained for nearly two years. He died sometime after his release in September, 1645. Quevedo was undoubtedly one of the best writers of his age, both in prose and verse. His longest prose satire, “The History and Life of the Great Sharper, Paul of Segovia,” first printed in 1626, belongs to the style of fiction invented by Mendoza in his “Lazarillo,” and has most of the characteristics of its class. His “Sueños,” or Visions, are equally famous, and are extremely original. ”

“ With that, as he was just ready to fall on, I stood to my guard, and we were armed at all points alike, only he had the odds of the headpiece. “Now, sirrah,” says he, “have at ye, slave that you are to make a trade of defaming persons of honour. By the death that commands here, I’ll ha’ my revenge, and turn your skin over your ears.” This insolent language stirred my choler I confess, and so I called to him “Come, come on, sirrah; a little nearer yet, and if ye have a mind to be twice killed, I’ll do your business; who the devil brought this cornuto hither to trouble me?” ”

“ The cloth was taken away, and they all desired Don Diego to go to bed. He would have paid for the supper, but they answered that in the morning would be time enough. They stayed a while chatting together; my master asked the scholar his name, and he answered Don something Coronel. The devil confound the deceitful dog, whosoever he is. Then perceiving that the griping shopkeeper was asleep, he said, “Will you have a little sport, Sir, to make you laugh? Let us put some trick upon this fellow, who has eaten but one pear upon the road, and is as rich as a Jew.” ”

“ Cervantes resided at Seville with his family between 1588 and 1598, and there is little doubt that the picture he draws of Seville low life is of this period. Rinconete y Cortadillo, in all the qualities of the higher art, must be placed at the head of this species of literature. Although only a sketch, it is brimful of humour, wit, and life, drawn with the same delicate and masterly hand which has given us Don Quixote. What is admirable in the picture is the skill with which a repulsive subject is treated, so that, while preserving all its truth, it is redeemed from grossness. ”

“ Don Quixote was amazed to see how many people gazed at him, called him by his name, and recognised him, and turning to Don Antonio, who rode at his side, he observed to him, "Great are the privileges knight-errantry involves, for it makes him who professes it known and famous in every region of the earth; see, Don Antonio, even the very boys of this city know me without ever having seen me."
"True, Senor Don Quixote," returned Don Antonio; "for as fire cannot be hidden or kept secret, virtue cannot escape being recognised ”

“ She began with Don Diego; the poor wretch shrunk up, and the old jade being blind, and her hands shaking, instead of giving him it inwardly, let it fly betwixt his shirt and his back up to his very poll; so that became an outward ornament which should have served for a lining within. Only God knows how we were plagued with the old woman. She was so deaf, that she heard nothing, but understood by signs, though she was half blind; and such an everlasting prayer, that one day the string of her beads broke over the pot as it was boiling, and our broth came to table sanctified. ”

“ He sat down, saluting all the company, and said to my uncle, “By my troth, Alonso, Flat Nose and the Nailer have been well mauled to-day.” Up started he of the souls, and cried “I gave Flechilla, the hangman of Ocana, four ducats, to put on the ass apace and play with a slender cat-of-nine-tails, when I was fly-flapp’d there.” “By the Lord,” quoth the mulatto, “I was too kind to the dog Lobrezno at Murcia, for the ass went a snail’s gallop all the way, and the rogue laid them on so, that my back was all weals.” “My back is virgin still,” said the swineherd. ”

“ They drew their daggers, laid their hands on the edge of the bowl, and lying along with their chops to it, said, “As we drink this wine, so will we suck the blood of every informing catchpole.” “Who was this Alonzo Alvarez,” said I, whose death is so much regretted?” “He was,” answered one of them, “a brave fighting lad, a man of spirit, full of mettle, and a good companion. Let us go, for the devil begins to be strong in me.” ”

“ Quevedo, much greater in prose than in verse, displays real power only in satire, epigram and parody. There is in some of his serious pieces the stuff of a Juvenal, and his satiric and burlesque romances, of which several are written in slang (germanía) , are in their way little masterpieces. Another commonplace of Spanish poetry at this period was epic poetry after the style of Tasso’s Gerusalemme. ”

“ The most eminent author in the department of social satire, as in those of literary and political satire, is Quevedo. Nothing escapes his scrutinizing spirit and pitiless irony. All the vices of contemporary society are remorselessly pilloried and cruelly dissected in his Suefios and other short works. While this great satirist, in philosophy a disciple of Seneca, imitates his master even in his diction, he is none the less one of the most vigorous and original writers of the 17th century. ”

“ To this the peasant answered, "Senor—sinner that I am!—cannot your worship see that I am not Don Rodrigo de Narvaez nor the Marquis of Mantua, but Pedro Alonso your neighbour, and that your worship is neither Baldwin nor Abindarraez, but the worthy gentleman Senor Quixada?"
"I know who I am," replied Don Quixote, "and I know that I may be not only those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and even all the Nine Worthies, since my achievements surpass all that they have done all together and each of them on his own account." ”