Pedro Calderón de la Barca

“ But in the present volume he has far surpassed all he had previously done; for Calderon is a poet who, whenever he is translated, should have his very excesses, both in thought and manner, fully produced, in order to give a faithful idea of what is grandest and most distinctive in his genius. Mr. M'Carthy has done this, I conceive, to a degree which I had previously considered impossible. Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama ”

“ Crisanto y Daria. Comedias de Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Por Don Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch. Madrid, 1865, tomo 3, p. 234. [Return]
2 It may be added to what Dr. Trench has so well said, that Calderon's auto, "El arbol del mejor Fruto" (The Tree of the choicest Fruit) , is founded on the same sublime theme. It is translated into German by Lorinser, under the title of "Der Baum der bessern Frucht", Breslau, 1861. [Return]
THE TWO LOVERS OF HEAVEN. PERSONS.
Scene: Rome and its environs.
ACT THE FIRST.
Scene I.—A Room in the house of Polemius at Rome. ”

“ Come; we will bring him forth Out of that stony darkness here abroad, Where air and sunshine sooner shall disperse The sleepy fume which they have drugg'd him with. (They enter the tower, and thence bring out Segismund asleep on a pallet, and set him in the middle of the stage.) CAPT. Still, still so dead asleep, the very noise And motion that we make in carrying him Stirs not a leaf in all the living tree. SOLDIERS. If living—But if by some inward blow For ever and irrevocably fell'd By what strikes deeper to the root than sleep? —He's dead! He's dead! ”

“ To form a notion of what manner of man Calderon was, we must imagine a writer hardly inferior to Shakespeare in fertility of invention and dramatic insight, inspired by a religious fervour like that of Doune or Crashaw, and endowed with the wild and ethereal imagination of Shelley. But the religious fervour is Catholic, not Protestant, Southern, not Northern: it is intense, mystical, and ecstatic: like a tongue of upward-darting flame, it burns and trembles with impassioned impulse to mingle with empyrean fire. ”

“ On that same self-same festival, in a northern land, under a gray and clouded sky, in the heart of a city most unlike gay, garden-hued, out-of-door Madrid, we have spent the long hours over these resurrected dramas, and the spell of both the poets is still upon us, as we unite together, in dutiful juxtaposition, the names of Calderon and Mac-Carthy.
"How richly gifted was this Spanish priest-poet! this pious playwright! this moral mechanist! this devout dramatist! How rare his experience! how broad the contrasts of his career, and of his observation. . . . . Happy poet! ”

“ On that "sad night," the rain falling in torrents, the moon and the stars refusing their light, the sky covered with thick clouds, Cortes commanded the silent march of his troops. Sandoval, the unconquerable captain, led his vanguard; and the stern hero, Pedro de Alvarado, brought up the rear. A bridge of wood was carried by forty soldiers, to enable the troops to pass the ditches or canals, which must otherwise have impeded their retreat. It is said that in choosing the night for this march Cortes was guided by the counsels of an astrologer. ”

“ SEG. For you know 'Tis nothing but a dream? CLO. Nay, you yourself Know best how lately you awoke from that You know you went to sleep on?— Why, have you never dreamt the like before? SEG. Never, to such reality. CLO. Such dreams Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations Of that ambition that lies smouldering Under the ashes of the lowest fortune; By which, when reason slumbers, or has lost The reins of sensible comparison, We fly at something higher than we are— Scarce ever dive to lower—to be kings, Or conquerors, crown'd with laurel or with gold, Nay, mounting heaven itself on eagle wings. ”

“ LELIUS. Cyprian, although respect Which on many grounds I give thee, Holds my sword suspended thus In due deference for an instant,— To the scabbard's calm repose It hath got no power to win it. Thou of science knowest more, Than the duel, pretermitting This, that when two nobles meet In the field, no power can link them Friends again, save this, that one Must his life give as a victim. FLORUS. This I also say, and ask thee, With thy people, that thou quittest, Leaving us to end our quarrel Without any help or hindrance. ”

“ Calderon is one of the three greatest names in Spanish literature, Lope de Vega and Cervantes being the other two. He is also a great name in the universal realm of letters, though out of Spain he is little more than a great name, except in Germany, that land so hospitable to famous wits, and where, to readers and critics of a mystical and transcendental turn, his peculiar genius strongly commended him. ”

“ CLO. Courage, my liege! The curtain is undrawn, And each must play his part out manfully, Leaving the rest to heaven. KING. Whose written words If I should misinterpret or transgress! But as you say— (To the Lord, who exit.) You, back to him at once; Clotaldo, you, when he is somewhat used To the new world of which they call him Prince, Where place and face, and all, is strange to him, With your known features and familiar garb Shall then, as chorus to the scene, accost him, And by such earnest of that old and too Familiar world, assure him of the new. ”

“ In such, above all in his Autos, he reached a height beyond any of his predecessors, whose productions, on religious themes especially, striking as many of them are, with situations and motives of the deepest effect, are not sustained at the same impressive elevation, nor disposed with that consummate judgment which leaves nothing imperfect or superfluous in the dramas of Calderon. ”

“ The imagination, too, is not merely southern, but with an oriental element shining through it, like the ruddy heart of an opal". . .
"But our purpose is not to speak of Calderon, but of his translator Mr. MacCarthy; and to make our readers acquainted with his very successful effort to reproduce in English some of the most characteristic productions of the genius of Spain, retaining even one of the peculiarities in the structure of the verse which has hardly ever been transplanted from the soil of the peninsula". . . . ”

“ The present version of the entire play has been made with the advantages which the author's long experience in the study and interpretation of Calderon has enabled him to apply to this master-piece of the great Spanish poet. All the forms of verse have been preserved; while the closeness of the translation may be inferred from the fact, that not only the whole play but every speech and fragment of a speech are represented in English in the exact number of lines of the original, without the sacrifice, it is to be hoped, of one important idea. ”

“ There is, for instance, the Divine Philothea, in other words, our human spirit considered as the destined bride of Christ. This sacred drama, we may well call it the swan-song of Calderon's extreme old age, is steeped throughout in a serene power and a mellow beauty of style, making it not unworthy to be ranked with that Œdipus Colonæus which glorified the sun-set of his illustrious predecessor: but yet, Protestant as I am, I cannot discover that it is in the least obscure. ”

“ Lane in his translation of the Thousand and One Nights gives a very interesting narrative which he believes to be founded on an historical fact in which Haroun Al Raschid plays the part of the good Duke of Burgundy, and Abu-l-Hasan the original of Christopher Sly. The gravity of the treatment and certain incidents in this Oriental story recall more strongly Calderon's drama than the Induction to the "Taming of the Shrew". "La Vida es Sueno" was first published either at the end of 1635 or beginning of 1636. ”

“ KING. Nay, but, Segismund! You know not—cannot know—happily wanting The sad experience on which knowledge grows, How the too early consciousness of power Spoils the best blood; nor whether for your long Constrain'd disheritance (which, but for me, Remember, and for my relenting love Bursting the bond of fate, had been eternal) You have not now a full indemnity; Wearing the blossom of your youth unspent In the voluptuous sunshine of a court, That often, by too early blossoming, Too soon deflowers the rose of royalty. ”

“ And have alive his Purgatory here.
KING. And dost thou think, O Patrick, that I owe
My blood so little, as to yield to dread,
And trembling fear like a weak woman show?
Say, who shall be the first this cave to tread?
What silent! Philip?
PHILIP. Sire, I dare not go.
KING. Then, Captain, thou?
CAPTAIN. Enough to strike me dead
Is even the thought.
KING. Leogaire, thou'lt surely dare?
LEOGAIRE. The heavens, my lord, themselves exclaim forbear!
KING. O cowards, lost to every sense of shame,
Unfit to gird the warrior's sword around
Your shrinking loins! Men are ye but in name. ”

“ Calderon is blamed even by so thoughtful a critic as Mr. Ticknor for putting into the mouth of Enius himself the names of a number of writers who have in some way alluded to the Purgatory of St. Patrick, all of whom were of periods long subsequent to the time at which he represents himself to have lived, several of them being the very writers who nearly a thousand years later described his own adventures. But this is quite usual on the Spanish stage. There is scarcely a drama of Calderon that does not end in the same way. ”

“ LELIUS enters. LELIUS. Be silent, Florus, Nor attack me in my absence; For of a rival to speak ill, Is the act but of a dastard. 'Tis to stop this I come forward, Angry after so many passes Which my sword has had with thine, That I have not yet dispatched thee. JUSTINA. Who, not guilty, ever saw her In such dangerous straits entangled? FLORUS. What behind your back was spoken, I before you will establish, Truth is truth where'er 'tis uttered. ”

“ KING. What a shriek— Oh, some poor creature wounded in a cause Perhaps not worth the loss of one poor life!— So young too—and no soldier— FIFE. A poor lad, Who choosing play at hide and seek with death, Just hid where death just came to look for him; For there's no place, I think, can keep him out, Once he's his eye upon you. All grows dark— You glitter finely too—Well—we are dreaming But when the bullet's off—Heaven save the mark! ”

“ Victor, and that related by Mathew Paris, I took from his printed History of England: But if after all, any Man chuse rather to oppose, than piously to believe the same, let him consult the Holy Fathers, St. Gregory, Venerable Bede, Dionysius Carthusianus, and carefully read the various Revelations, Visions, and Relations not unlike these recorded by them; to which as to things very probable they themselves were not afraid to give Credit, and which they would not presume to deny."
Calderon was not the only celebrated poet who made the Purgatory of St. Patrick the subject of his song. ”

“ The self-same foe who now pretends your right, Withholding mine—that, of itself alone, I know the royal blood that runs in you Would vindicate, regardless of your own: The right of injured innocence; and, more, Spite of this epicene attire, a woman's; And of a noble stock I will not name Till I, who brought it, have retrieved the shame. Whom Duke Astolfo, Prince of Muscovy, With all the solemn vows of wedlock won, And would have wedded, as I do believe, Had not the cry of Poland for a Prince Call'd him from Muscovy to join the prize Of Poland with the fair Estrella's eyes. ”

“ Earth, loved earth, O mother dear, From this monster, this wild sea, Give me shelter in thy arms. CYPRIAN. Lose, my friend, the dread alarms, And the cruel memory Of thy peril happily past; Since we learn or late or soon, That beneath the inconstant moon Human bliss doth never last. DEMON. Who are thou, at whose kind feet Has my fortune cast me here? CYPRIAN. One who with a pitying tear, For a ruin so complete, Would alleviate your woe. DEMON. Ah, impossible!—for me Never, never, can there be Any solace. CYPRIAN. How, why so? DEMON. All my priceless wealth I've lost... ”

“ CYPRIAN. Seeing that now my spell Can fill with fear, with horror even hell, Since I, with so much care Have studied magic and its depths laid bare, So that yourself can scarcely tell Whether 'tis I or you that most excel, Seeing that now there is no place or part That I with study, diligence and art, have not attained, Since necromancy's secret I have gained, That art whose lines of gloom Can ope to me the dark funereal tomb, And bring before mine eyes Each corpse that in it lies, Regaining them, as 'twere by a new birth From the hard avarice of the grasping earth. ”

“ And thus, however much he may have been directed to the choice of a subject by the old Mysteries and Moralities (of which these Spanish Autos must be taken as the final development and bright consummate flower) , he has treated that subject, when once undertaken by him, entirely from his own point of view. 'Gerontius' is meant to be studied and dwelt upon by the meditative reader. The Autos of Calderon were got ready by perhaps the most accomplished playwright that ever lived, to amuse and stimulate a thronging southern population. ”

“ I know I must be near awake, Knowing I dream; or, if not at my voice, Then vanish at the clapping of my hands, Or take this foolish fellow for your sport: Dressing me up in visionary glories, Which the first air of waking consciousness Scatters as fast as from the almander— That, waking one fine morning in full flower, One rougher insurrection of the breeze Of all her sudden honour disadorns To the last blossom, and she stands again The winter-naked scare-crow that she was! ”