Spanish poetry

“ 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. ”

“ Romance-writing was at the height of its success. And the old ballad spirit—the true foundation of Spanish poetry—had received a new impulse and richer materials from the contests in which all Christian Spain had borne a part amidst the mountains of Granada, and from the wild tales of the feuds and adventures of rival factions within the walls of that devoted city. Every thing, indeed, announced a decided movement in the literature of the nation, and almost every thing seemed to favor and facilitate it. ”

“ Nothing in Spanish verse had been ever produced to equal the sweetness of his verses, their easy tone, and sparkling thoughts and expression. He was much attached to drawing, but had no inclination for music, not even to the charms of song, the more singular in one whose ear for the melody of verse appears to have been so sensitive. To the very last he seems to have been endeavouring to improve his poems, which have been thus observed to have often lost in strength and expression what they gained in cadence. ”

“ Entirely coinciding in the opinions thus expressed, we feel, on the other hand, with regard to the modern Spanish poets, that while they have fully maintained the grace and beauty that distinguished their predecessors in former ages, their genius has expanded over far wider fields, and embraced subjects of as varied and powerful interest as the contemporary poetry of any other country can present to delight or captivate. ”

“ In Spain, as in all countries where it is possible to observe the origin and the development of letters, the earliest literature bears the stamp of influences which are either epic or religious. These primitive pieces are characterised by a vein of popular, unconscious poetry, with scarce a touch of personal artistry; and the ascription which refers one or other of them to an individual writer is, for the most part, arbitrary. Insufficiency of data makes it impossible to identify the oldest literary performance in Spanish Romance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This depression of literature, however, could not be expected to continue long, among a people of such imaginative and deep passioned character as the Spanish, whose native genius was by far too buoyant, to be affected for any length of time by inferior models, even under dynastic influences. Accordingly, towards the end of the eighteenth century, it might have become apparent to an attentive observer, that another order of writers was about to be called forth, and that the nation was prepared to welcome the advent of true genius whenever it was to be recognized. ”

“ XLVIII. Thus much in general for modern Spanish poetry; but the worst is, that you hear these sort of compositions in the sacred canticles; which are often so bad, that it would be better, instead of them, to sing the couplets of blind men; because these seem to have a tendency to promote devout affections, and their rustic simplicity is in some degree the symptom of a good intention. All the gracefulness, or rather the attempt at displaying it, in the church canticles of these times, consists in low equivocations, trivial metaphors, and puerile changes and rechanges. ”

“ Everywhere his verses charm us by their delicious melody; everywhere he indulges himself in the rich variety of measures which Spanish or Italian poetry offered him,—octave stanzas, terza rima, sonnets, silvas, liras, and the different forms of the redondilla, with the ballad asonantes and consonantes;—showing a mastery over his language extraordinary in itself, and one which, while it sometimes enables him to rise to the loftiest tones of the national drama, seduces him at other times to seek popular favor by fantastic tricks that were wholly unworthy of his genius. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The literature of Spain may be divided into four classes—the old Ballads, the Chronicles, the Romances of Chivalry, and the Drama. The most interesting of the old ballads are historical; but there are also ballads that have to do with private life wherein appear the effusions of love, the shafts of satire, the descriptions of pastoral life, and the oddities of burlesque. One and all, however, faithfully represent Spanish life. No such popular poetry is found in any other language. ”

“ Thus, Spanish didactic prose, which, from its original elements and tendencies, seemed destined to wear the attractions of an elevated and eloquent style, gradually became so formal, awkward, and pedantic, that, with a few striking exceptions, it can only be said to have maintained a doubtful and difficult existence during the long period when the less suspected and less oppressed portions of the literature of the country—its drama and its lyric poetry—were in the meridian of their success. ”

“ 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! ”

“ But your son, señor, I suspect, is not prejudiced against Spanish poetry, but against those poets who are mere Spanish verse writers, without any knowledge of other languages or sciences to adorn and give life and vigour to their natural inspiration; and yet even in this he may be wrong; for, according to a true belief, a poet is born one; that is to say, the poet by nature comes forth a poet from his mother’s womb; and following the bent that heaven has bestowed upon him, without the aid of study or art, he produces things that show how truly he spoke who said, ‘Est Deus in nobis,’ etc. ”

“ Even the Italians, in their poetical works, have indulged in strange absurdities, the more remarkable from the good taste that has pervaded their other works of genius. It is only in English literature that we can find writers imbued with the same vigour of thought and depth of poetic feeling as the Spanish, and it is therefore only with them that the latter can be classed in considering the relative merits of the poetry of different modern nations. ”

“ None of the Spanish poets, of either former or present times, can be said to have attained the highest rank; yet as they have always shown a predilection for subjects of real incident and passion or feeling, they have gained, in perhaps a greater degree than those of any other modern nation, that hold upon the popular affections which arises from all earnest participation in kindred sentiments. ”

“ CHAPTER II. SPANISH LITERATURE. The golden age of Spanish literature embraces the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, in Spain as in other European countries, a period of special literary activity. The impulses at work were the same as those to be noted in contemporary France, England, and Germany, and the work produced of the same general types. The chief phases of Spanish mediaeval literature are these:
1. Epic and heroic poetry. Here, as elsewhere, heroic ballads grew up about the national heroes. ”

“ Differing entirely from those writers who suppose that the best days of Spanish literature have gone by, and believing, on the contrary, that it never has been more truly original and flourishing than during the present and preceding ages, it might be justly considered presumptuous in any new author to present such opinions to the world without showing the grounds on which they were founded. ”

“ He aimed at the introduction of a new style into Spanish poetry, and his lyrics are distinguished by the sustained majesty of their language, the frequent recurrence of expressions and images derived apparently from a fervent study of the prophetic books of Scripture, and the lofty tone of [Pg 255] national pride maintained throughout, and justified indeed by the nature of the subjects to which some of these productions are devoted. ”

“ In burlesque poetry the Spaniards have been more successful: La Gatomaquia of Lope de Vega, and La Moschea of Villaviciosa (d. 1658) are agreeable examples of witty invention.
The departments of imaginative literature in which the genius of the new Spanish nation revealed itself with most vigour and originality are the novela and the drama. By novela must be understood the novel of manners, called picaresca (from pīcaro, a rogue or “picaroon”) Fiction. because of the social status of the heroes of those fictions; and this type of novel is a Spanish invention. ”

“ In the thirteenth century, romanz or romance acquires [33] a fresh meaning in Spain, begins to be used as an equivalent for cantar, and ends by supplanting the word completely. Hence, by slow degrees, romance comes to have its present value, and is applied to a lyrico-narrative poem in eight-syllabled assonants. The Spanish Romancero is, beyond all cavil, the richest mine of ballad poetry in the world, and it was once common to declare that it embodied the oldest known examples of Castilian verse. ”

“ The Spaniard has always been recalcitrant to the shackles imposed by complicated and artful forms of verse, and there is a natural tendency in him to drift at all times [9] to his native trochaic assonants of eight syllables. His language, admirable when properly handled for prose, wants the variety of melody required for poetry. Impatience of the difficulties of metre is another name for the want of a due sense of the beauty of form. Indeed it is not by its form that Spanish literature has been distinguished. ”

“ It is, too, a remarkable circumstance, that we can thus trace it by works both long and interesting; for, though ballads, and the other forms of [p. 12] popular poetry, by which we mark indistinctly the beginning of almost every other literature, are abundant in the Spanish, we are not obliged to resort to them, at the outset of our inquiries, since other obvious and decisive monuments present themselves at once. ”

“ As in no long process of time, dramatic poetry became the distinctive and national turn of Spanish poetic genius, it would be ungrateful towards the originators of a species of composition imitated all over the world, and extolled by every man of taste, not to make mention of them. The first dawn of the drama has been mentioned: the representation of mysteries and autos being permitted by the clergy, leave was taken to exchange the purely religious for the pastoral or the moral. ”

“ Yet there are certainly few portions of the literature of any country that will better reward a spirit of adventurous inquiry than these ancient Spanish ballads, in all their forms. In many respects, they are unlike the earliest narrative poetry of any other part of the world; in some, they are better. ”

“ In the 16th and 17th centuries the literature was eminently national. Yet in certain kinds of literature the Spaniards continued to seek models abroad.
Lyric poetry, especially that of the more ambitious order, is always inspired by the Italian masters. An irresistible tendency leads the Spanish poets to rhyme in hendecasyllabics—as the marquis of Santillana had formerly done, though his attempts had fallen Lyric Poetry. ”

“ SPANISH LITERATURE.
SECOND PERIOD.
(CONTINUED.)
CHAPTER XXXI. Satirical Poetry: The Argensolas, Quevedo, and others. — Elegiac Poetry and Epistles: Garcilasso, Herrera, and others. — Pastoral Poetry: Saa de Miranda, Balbuena, Esquilache, and others. — Epigrams: Villegas, Rebolledo, and others. — Didactic Poetry: Rufo, Cueva, Céspedes, and others. — Emblems: Daza, Covarrubias. — Descriptive Poetry: Dicastillo.
Satirical poetry, whether in the form of regular satires, or in the more familiar guise of epistles, has never enjoyed a wide success in Spain. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX. Lyric Poetry, continued. — The Argensolas, Jauregui, Estévan Villegas, Balbuena, Barbadillo, Polo, Rojas, Rioja, Esquilache, Mendoza, Rebolledo, Quiros, Evia, Inez de la Cruz, Solís, Candamo, and others. — Different Characteristics of Spanish Lyrical Poetry, Religious and Secular, Popular and Elegant. ”

“ 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. ”