Spanish Main

“ The French, too, at least as the language of society, moves with an unequalled freedom, while, for precision and distinctness of expression, its prose has attained to an unparalleled height of excellence. The Spanish also, besides being praised for the excellence of its prose, as admirably suited either for the dignity of serious narrative or the ingenious play of wit, is in poetry distinguished above most of its sister dialects by a wonderful richness and peculiar grace in the playful sallies of the fancy. ”

“ Our style, in fact, is, at present, quite unsettled—fluctuating between the wordy pomposity of our old writers, without their ease, and the epigrammatic conciseness of second-rate French writers, stripped of their sprightliness and graces. As long, however, as we are condemned to the dead silence in which the nation has been kept for centuries, there is little chance of fixing any standard of taste for Spanish eloquence. ”

“ You are letting yourselves be deceived by big words and never go to the bottom of things to examine the results in their final analysis. Spanish will never be the general language of the country, the people will never talk it, because the conceptions of their brains and the feelings of their hearts cannot be expressed in that language—each people has its own tongue, as it has its own way of thinking! ”

“ The charm of the Spanish poetry consists, generally speaking, in the union of a sublime and enthusiastic earnestness of feeling, which peculiarly descends from the North, with the lovely breath of the South, and the dazzling pomp of the East. ”

“ The whole Spanish People are to be treated not as a mighty multitude with feeling, will, and judgment; not as rational creatures;—but as objects without reason; in the language of human law, insuperably laid down not as Persons but as Things. ”

“ If there were any thing in the Spanish character to work upon, for good or evil, the influence of such a decided national pastime 113would be more distinctly pronounced. But the senseless pride of the Spaniard,—pride with nothing to be proud of; pride with idleness, ignorance, and poverty; pride of the meanest and most contemptible sort,—is the warp and woof of Spanish character, and there is hardly any thing more in them than there would be in a nation of peacocks. ”

“ When we converse—in their own language—with the educated Spanish American folk, we find them full of wise saws and modern instances. They are shrewd and philosophical, and the Spanish language abounds with proverbs and aphorisms applicable to the things of everyday life. ”

“ They are eminently readable; and if they pretend to no great depth of reflection, they sketch the present condition of Spain—they delineate its landscapes, they cull the choicest episodes of its history, and touch upon the more conspicuous features of the Spanish character—with unfailing good sense, quick discrimination, and considerable felicity. ”

“ A beautiful trait of character and a lovely custom of the Spanish peasantry appear in their love for parents. They yield to them obedience, respect, veneration, and love, after they are aged, and the children are men and women grown. ”

“ One can find something like a palliation for people making themselves somewhat foolish about particular languages, literatures, and people. The Spanish certainly is a noble language, and there is something wild and captivating in the Spanish character, and its literature contains the grand book of the world. ”

“ Spanish prose sheds much of its uncouthness, and takes its definitive form in such a passage as that upon the Joys of Spain: "More than all, Spain is subtle,—ay! and terrible, right skilled in conflict, mirthful in labour, stanch to her lord, in letters studious, in speech courtly, fulfilled of gifts; never a land the earth overlong to match her excellence, to rival her bravery; few in the world as mighty as she." ”

“ It takes a Spaniard to depict a throng of Spanish ladies,—"fiery carnations or starry jasmine in their hair, cheeks like blush roses, eyes black or blue, with lashes quivering like butterflies; cherry lips, a glance as fickle as the light nod of a flower in the wind, and smiles that reveal teeth like pearls ”

“ There are many things we could learn from the Spanish. Their solid, dignified cities of massive stone houses with deep, heavy arcades into which the sun never penetrates; their broad plazas where cool fountains spout under great shade-trees; their imposing over-ornate churches, their general look of solid permanence, put to shame our flimsy, ephemeral, planless British West Indian towns of match-boarding and white paint. We seldom look ahead: they always did. ”

“ The clear atmosphere of Spain, in which distant mountains seem to be close at hand, is also the atmosphere of Spanish literature. The Spaniard may have little subtlety of insight or critical judgment, but he has a directness of vision that has manifested itself in bigotry, brutality, and cynical satire, as well as in keen humour, straight-forwardness, and dignity of character. ”

“ Walking along the streets, it would be easy to imagine oneself in Spain or in Mexico; on all sides the shouts of peddlers, the cries of cabmen, the conversation of pedestrians, are in Spanish. With a knowledge of that language the stranger may make his way about as easily as in his own native country. ”

“ Their language (if one may call such jargon language) is very poor, seeing one word signifies abundance of things. There are none but those born in the country that can understand it; and I am told that to the end it may be more particularly theirs they make no use of it in writing: they make their children learn to read and write French and Spanish according to which King’s subjects they are. ”

“ Capmany, probably our best living philologist and prose writer, insists upon our borrowing every word and phrase from the authors of the sixteenth century, the golden age (as it is called) of our literature; while the Madrid translators seem determined to make the Spanish language a dialect of the French—a sort of Patois, unintelligible to either nation. The true path certainly lies between [Pg 343] both. The greatest part of our language has been allowed to become vulgar or obsolete. ”

“ In the other Spanish-American countries the Spanish-speakers are confined to the upper ruling class, there being practically no lower class with Spanish as its mother-tongue, except in a couple of big cities. ”

“ We have examined every type of Spanish ballad poetry. The general note struck, we will observe, is a grave and romantic one, the fruit of the thoughts of a proud and imaginative people. Nor can we fail to notice the national note which rings through these poems, the racial individuality which informs them. “Poor Spain!” How often do we hear the expression employed by men of Anglo-Saxon race! Let these undeceive themselves. What can material poverty signify to a people dowered with such treasures of the imagination? Poor Spain! ”

“ Unfortunately for the development of Spanish countries the mental activity of the people is principally manifested in an exuberant imagination which finds expression in superlative and poetical language. ”

“ Yet the very same causes made the Spanish language itself familiar to far more Englishmen than are familiar with it now, though the direct filiation of euphuism on Spanish originals is no doubt erroneous, and though the English and Spanish dramas evolved themselves in lines rather parallel than connected. ”

“ Originality is the great distinctive of the Spanish character. Every line each author wrote was in its turn of thought and expression national. The conceits resulting from a meeting of ardent imaginations with ardent passions, which brought the whole phenomena of nature in the poet's service,—the burning emotions, the very constant brooding on one engrossing subject,—all belonged to a people whose souls were fiery, proud, and concentrated. ”

“ Our scholars are now engaged in bringing together the materials out of which a real history of Spanish America can be constructed for their fellow-Americans of the North, and their surprise when it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. ”

“ The ripest glories of the Spanish drama belong to an age of national decay—mindful, it is true, of the ideas of a greater past. The chivalrous enthusiasm pervading so many of the masterpieces of its literature is indeed a distinctive feature of the Spanish nation in all, even in the least hopeful, periods of its later history ”

“ Its people have undergone as great, if not greater, vicissitudes than any other people upon the earth, and to-day there does not exist a race more courtly, more sincere, and with more confidence in their country and themselves than the Spanish. ”

“ So in your translations, the Spanish seems to come through to the surface; the original air is always perceptible in your variations. It is like a family likeness coming out in the next generation, yet with the freshness of originality.
"But the rhyme is as remarkable as the verse and the translation; not that you have made the asonante as perceptible to the English ear as it is to the Spanish; our cumbersome consonants make that impossible. But the wonder is, that you have made it perceptible at all. ”

“ In their attire they are neat and moderate; when they go abroad they are dressed well and smartly, but with a befitting gravity.” “They spend with magnificence and extravagance.” A French traveller, Mme. d’Aulnoy, [2] in the seventeenth century, says of the Spanish that “Nature has been kinder to them than they are to themselves; they are born with more wit than others; they have a great quickness of mind join’d with great solidity; they speak and deliver their words with ease; they have a great memory; their style is neat and concise, and they are quick of apprehension ”

“ They were surprised to find there a lad as dark-skinned as themselves, who in a resistless flood of Spanish welcomed them like brothers, assuring them in the most high-flown terms of Spanish courtesy that the office and all it contained was theirs, and would be honored by suffering destruction at their hands. ”

“ A scientist of repute, his voice choking with grief and wrath, declared to us that the fetters of superstition had become hopelessly riveted, during these ages of Church control, on the Spanish mind. But call it what you will, devotion or superstition, and admitting, as the tourist must, that it is a most conspicuous and impressive feature of Spanish life, there are nevertheless thousands of Spaniards, especially the younger men, over whom it has lost sway. ”

“ Spanish literature, like our own, takes its root in French and in Italian soil; in the anonymous epics, in the fableaux, as in Dante, Petrarch, and the Cinque Cento poets. Excessive patriotism leads men of all lands to magnify their literary history; yet it may be claimed for Spain, as for England, that she has used her models without compromising her originality, absorbing here, annexing there, and finally dominating her first masters. ”

“ The people of both countries exhibit a similar excitable, ardent quality in their characters; but the national temperament of the Spaniards is, perhaps, somewhat hardier, more virile, and sturdier in its passionateness. ”

“ So much of this superior merit seemed to me to exist in modern Spanish literature, that I ventured to think the English public would receive favourably this attempt to make them acquainted with it. If it should fail, the blame must attach to the translator; if it be received favourably, there is yet a rich mine of intellectual wealth in store to reward the labours of those who choose to undertake it. ”

“ The country once belonged to Spain, and all the chief people in it are born of Spanish fathers and mothers. The people all talk Spanish, though the poorer classes have come from the native Indians, and many have had Spanish fathers. ”

“ We are not slaves, and we desire to say that the Spanish custom is not to our liking,—for every one to take care of himself, instead of assisting one another in their daily labours. [55] This is the plain truth which we say to your Excellency, that it may be attended to:—if it is not, this people, like the rest, will be lost. ”

“ As to these pretensions to nobility, so rife among Spaniards, I declare that the remark is not without foundation: it is certain there is in our country a great deal of pride joined to delicacy and an innate distinction ”

“ I determined to merge my ideas, my sentiments, and my interests, in those of the nation who elected me as its head, and whose independent character would never submit to foreign and illegitimate intrigues. My sons will have the good fortune to receive their first impressions of life here; their first language will be Spanish; their education will be in accordance with the customs of the nation; they will learn to think and feel as you think and feel ”

“ You must needs grow excited, speak at party meetings, take the elections seriously, mingle with the crowd at the political demonstrations, break with your friends, form a clique of those who think as you think—make, in a word, a Spaniard of yourself, even to the whites of your eyes. And gradu268ally, as you become Spanish, you forget Europe, as if it were at the antipodes, and end in seeing nothing beyond Spain, as if you were governing it, and as if all its interests were in your hands. ”

“ All the Spaniards here long and yearn for Spain, and everything Spanish, which is only natural, I suppose. They hate the Archipelago, as they call it, but confess that the prospect of continuing to earn a living here ties them by the leg. ”

“ Spanish alone was understood or spoken here; our friend, the countryman, stuck to us most nobly, he understood us not a bit better than the rest but saw that we were in distress and would not desert us. ”

“ His selection of native themes, his vigorous appeal to those primitive sentiments which are at least as strong in Spain as elsewhere—courage, patriotism, religion—have ensured him a vogue so wide and lasting that it almost approaches immortality. ”

“ LEANDRO FERNANDEZ MORATIN.
Spanish writers have in general too much overrated the merits of their national dramas, [1] and foreigners have too often repeated the eulogies, as if they were deserved. Like those of antiquity, the Spanish, though they abound in passages of much poetry and feeling, are almost entirely deficient in that delineation of individual character, which constitutes the highest class of the art. ”