Spanish culture

“ Perhaps no chapter in the world’s literature is so rich in colour, or displays such a variety of mood and sentiment. Still the key-note is one of noble and dignified beauty, of chivalrous distinction, of exquisite propriety, courteous, immaculate, and unspotted by vulgarity or sordid meanness. The wine-cup of Spanish romance is filled with the heart’s blood of a nation august, knightly, imaginative, a people who have preferred ideals to gross realities, and the heights of national aristocracy to the deserts of false democracy. “Poor Spain!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet Spain is far from unhappy. It is beautiful to see out of what scant allowance of that which we call well-being, may be evolved wisdom and joy, poetry and religion. Wearied as 443 we two bookish travellers were with lectures and libraries, we rejoiced in this wild Galician lore that lives on the lips of the people. The written Spanish literature, like other Spanish arts, is of the richest, nor are its laurels limited to the dates of Cervantes and Calderon. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ Spain’s claim to the world’s attention in the arts, as also in literature, rests upon the accomplishment of individuals more than upon the general average of her work. It is the result of that personal quality—the predominance of character—which rules every department of Spanish achievement. ”

“ He is authorised by custom to enter all houses, at all hours, where he is received and treated almost as a god. These are facts which can be vouched by all Spaniards, by whom they are spoken of without the least reserve. In laying them before the English public, we disavow all idea of calumniating an entire class of Spanish society. Our object is to point out one of the causes which, in our opinion, enters into the number of those which, most effectively, have contributed to the decline of so sensible and generous a nation. ”

“ Thus it was, that, with those intolerant and persecuting propensities, were also associated, in Spanish Catholicism, the gorgeous, romantic, and poetic, which are still preserved among that semi-oriental race. The Spaniard, endowed with a lively imagination, appears to identify himself with the objects of his endearment; his soul is transported by them, and he dresses them up in his imagination till he fancies they reciprocate his own affections. This vehement expansion of sentiments frequently opposes his reason, and transforms his real existence into a perpetual vision. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people of New Spain were poor and uneducated,—the aristocracy was rich, supercilious, and almost equally illiterate. It was a society without a middle ground,—in which gold stood out in broad relief against rags. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Living nearly in an insular situation, Spaniards have slept through the eighteenth century, and how in the main could they have applied their time better? Should the Spanish poetry ever again awake in old Europe, or in the New World, it would certainly have a step to make, from instinct to consciousness. What the Spaniards have hitherto loved from innate inclination, they must learn to reverence on clear principles, and, undismayed at the criticism to which it has in the mean time been exposed, proceed to fresh creations in the spirit of their greatest poets. ”

“ That which they accomplish is only a part of the national achievement. It is the medium in which it is fashioned, the environment in which it comes into being, its artistic matrix, which determines the precise type of racial endeavour. To its national character the new Spain cleaves, and by its light her ideas will be readjusted, her history interpreted, her present respected as in line with her tradition, which, in the sphere of things{2} artistic, Spaniards regard as a potent factor in the advancement of world art. ”

“ An intense passion of spiritual ecstasy burned within him. He was at once a man of action, hard and practical, and a pietistic dreamer, a fanatic and visionary. How this mingling of qualities affected Spanish art, causing it, on the one hand, to be distinctively national and, on the other, a product of naturalistic method and highly pietistic motive will appear in the course of our story. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spain is virtually a land of poetry and romance, where every-day life partakes of adventure, and where the least agitation or excitement carries everything up into extravagant enterprize and daring exploit. The Spaniards, in all ages, have been of swelling and braggart spirit, soaring in thought, pompous in word, and valiant, though vainglorious, in deed. Their heroic aims have transcended the cooler conceptions of their neighbors, and their reckless daring has borne them on to achievements which prudent enterprise could never have accomplished. ”

“ If this is so, certainly the Moors, and France, and Italy have wrought some of their most original works in Spain; and it can hardly be said that the great Spanish discoverers and conquerors, painters, philosophers, and poets of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were not original, whether they were influenced by Moors, Frenchmen, or Italians. [45] But, indeed, the Spaniard more readily repels than assimilates, it is his virtue and his defect; he remains isolated and alone, difficult to convince, impossible to govern. ”

“ This intense individualism, born of a history whose fundamentals lie in isolated village communities—pueblos, as the Spaniards call them—over the changeless face of which, like grass over a field, events spring and mature and die, is the basic fact of Spanish life. No revolution has been strong enough to shake it. Invasion after invasion, of Goths, of Moors, of Christian ideas, of the fads and convictions of the Renaissance, have swept over the country, changing surface customs and modes of thought and speech, only to be metamorphosed into keeping with the changeless Iberian mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the present time, in which there seems to have been born into the world a new assertion and exaltation of nationality, Spaniards have regained their ancient spirit, and while aspiring to absolute modernity, remain faithful to a tradition which is peculiarly their own, which makes for national individuality, and has caused them to be regarded with that interest which always accrues to the original, the characteristic, the intelligent, and consequently arouses attention and anticipation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Spanish beauty is indeed a glorious creature; of a loveliness rich alike in form and colour, but with hauteur and determination expressed in every feature of her face. A man of some fifty years of age is seated by her side, and behind her chair two or three gentlemen stand, the breasts of whose coats glitter with stars and orders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH LITERATURE THERE is not a literature in Europe more individual than that of Spain. It has been influenced greatly at various times by other countries, especially Italy and France, but in its many masterpieces it has a flavour of the soil, a local colouring that is all its own. Even when Spanish authors have borrowed most freely they have usually succeeded in casting their own individuality over their “honourable kind of thieving.” Who has a more individual genius than Juan Ruiz, the merry Archpriest of Hita? ”