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THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

NEW SERIES.-EDITED BY JOHN A. HERAUD, Esq.

VOL. I.]

MAY, 1839.

[No. 5.

RETROSPECT OF SPANISH LITERATURE.*

BY PROFESSOR CARLO PEPOLI, M.A., D. PH.

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OF BOLOGNA.

"En nuestro sistema literario no admitimos nada absoludo, y per eso tenemos mas fe en el sentimiento que en las reglas dogmaticas, y quiza arbitrarias, en que los criticos quieren que sebusque siempre la belleza.

"Al teatro, sobre todos los demas generos de poesia, es aplicable nuestra opinion."

CALDERON.

D. A. DURAN.

THE Spanish works printed in France, Germany, and Italy, and the translations made at the present time into all languages, show the degree of importance attributed to this portion of European literature. The elements of which it is composed are various, but the Oriental predominates, conferring on it exquisite original beauties; and we think it will not be uninteresting to our readers, if we present to their notice some remarks upon a literature which well merits the attention of all learned men, and which, by the vicissitudes that agitate this great nation, impart to it an interest of peculiar intensity.

It is unquestionable, that the Spanish began to cultivate letters at a very early period; and their theatre dates so far back as the year 1356. The golden age of the Spanish literature was the sixteenth century; after which, its cultivation was pursued with various results, though, in some respects, with signal success. The Oriental colouring which, as we have said, enters so generally into the Spanish literature, is a source of many beauties, and, indeed, forms its characteristic trait. When, however, the Spanish writers attempted, as they occasionally did, an imitation of the French, or Italians, they were manifestly inferior to their models, and even to themselves, and lost many of their native splendid charms. They devoted themselves principally to the drama and romance: and, with respect to the first, it may certainly be affirmed, that Spain

Colleccion des los mejores Autores Españoles Antiquos y Modernos. Tesoro du Theatre Espagnol.-Baudry, Paris, 1838.

N. S.-VOL. I.

3 Q

has produced more dramatic compositions than all the rest of Europe put together. In romance, the Spanish are most original, and singularly eminent for ingenuity, simplicity, and vivacity in their tales, fidelity in their pictures, and correctness in their costumes. From their romances-such, for instance, as "Lazarillo da Tormes," the Life of Picaro Guzman," "Gran Tacagno," "Don Quixote," " Fray Gerundio," and others, the habits and customs of the whole nation may be much better learned than from history, or the narratives of travellers.

But not to diverge from the subject of the drama, we are disposed to believe, with Chasles, as a point beyond a doubt, that the Spanish genius is in its nature European. It is profoundly imbued with the spirit of Christianity: it grew under the influence of the all-symbolic inspirations of southern catholicism; it blossomed and shed its fruit between the cross and the sword, between chivalry and asceticism. But the gales of Arabia passed over this Christian plant, depositing fruitful seeds; and the African sky produced considerable modification in the chivalry which was protected by the holy Virgin. The true Spanish literature sprung out of this peculiar mixture. Primarily Gothic, deriving very few elements from Greece and Rome, and teeming with Arabian traditions, although it received a certain degree of influence, through natural affinities and imitations, from the literature of Italy, it never was susceptible of assimilation with Northern forms. The genius of Spain is entirely and exclusively southern; the character of the people is active; absorbing, but never permitting itself to be absorbed, it suffers from the weight of its own grandeur, and sustains the unhappy consequences of its own speciality. After having produced a number of splendid intellects, and reaped a rich harvest of glory, Spain fell with prostrate energies; and when all the various influences, warlike, Catholic, Arabian, Castilian, Italian, had worked their effect, the exhausted soil, no longer enriched by fertilising juices, yielded, as the reward of her labours, merely a feeble delusive abundance.

But down to this epoch of intellectual and political languor, the creative power of Spain was truly wonderful; it was a torrent of light streaming from its bosom as from the sun in open sky; it was an eastern splendour, an enchantment worthy of the Thousand and One Nights. It produced more dramas than would have sufficed for all the theatres of Europe; even Corneille drew from its rich fountain of inspiring heroism. Its lyrics and elegiacs abounded with brilliant beauties, partly Oriental, partly European, but combined with such extraordinary taste, as to seem a new and mediate species: in fact, it seemed a forest exuberantly rich in native and foreign beauty; or a mountain covered with polypetal plants, exhaling effluvia which intoxicate the brain.*

In selecting from the infinite multitude a single example, to furnish an idea of the genius of Spanish literature, none could be

See an Essay of P. Chasles, which appeared on the publication of the comedies of Calderon-Las Comedias de D. Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Leipsic, 1837.

more appropriately chosen, than one of the celebrated dramas of Calderon de la Barca, entitled SECRET REVENGE FOR SECRET

INJURY."

66

Don Pedro Calderon drew his topics from among the things which he had witnessed and experienced in the course of a life replete with vicissitudes of every kind. He was born in Italy, at Mantua, in the year 1601. After serving as a common soldier in Italy and Flanders, he fixed his abode, in the year 1636, in Madrid (where he died in 1686), at the invitation of Philip IV, who appointed him dramatic poet to the Court and royal theatres. At the age of fifty-two he became a priest, and then commenced the composition of his "AUTOS SACRAMENTALES," viz. "La Cena de Baltasar," "La Nave del Mercader," "La Primer Flor del Carmelo," "La Viña del Señor," &c., sacred dramas with allegorical characters. Schlegel, in his "Treatise on Dramatic Literature," eulogises Calderon in the warmest terms. Some of his plays, closely translated, were performed at Weimar and other towns of Germany; and Schlegel himself translated "El Principe Constante," "The Constant Prince," one of his most beautiful comedies.

Calderon's mind was eminently poetical; and though he was generally irregular in his designs-although he was extravagant in his use of Oriental forms, and his morality, sometimes, not the most correct in the world, the richness of his imagination was truly Homeric. His style was harmonious, sweet, spontaneous, with great variety in his pictures and dramatic situations: his plots are felicitous and full of novelty; and his characters remarkable for their sweetness, vivacity, or "hermosura," and force; so that he received from many the title of Phoenix "des los Poetos Castellanos.”

But let us return to our proposed specimen, "A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza"-" Secret Revenge for Secret Injury." This drama shows, in characters of fire, how thoroughly the poet, and the country for which he wrote, understood that most terrible of all revenge, conjugal revenge. To revenge ourself, to slay, to love (vengarsi, matar, amar); such are the words which, in many dramas, resound in the Spanish theatre. Even the play which we are now considering, exhibits a pervading hue of ferocious cruelty, which probably may seem excessive and repulsive to those who have formed, on the subject of sentiments and characters adapted for theatrical representation, peculiar opinions, based on theories opposed and inapplicable to the dramatic genius of Spain. But when the reader remembers under what sky, and for what an impetuous people, the poet wrote, he will not examine his chefd'œuvre with so strict an eye. For instance, he will not be offended at meeting, in every principal scene, this terrible maxim, "Who seeks revenge, must wait, be silent, and strike!"-a maxim which sheds a glare of horror over the drama, and, recurring at intervals, falls on the trembling ear with the appalling sound of a voice from the tomb. Upon this tremendous principle the whole action of the plot is conducted; and truly admirable is the mode in which it is gradually developed, rising out of the most natural combinations, and ultimately blazing into the most fearful of tragic emotions.

The opening scene is simple and beautiful. A young lady who had just entered into a marriage of convenience, meets, the very day after her wedding, the man whom she formerly loved, and to whom she would have given her heart and hand, if a singular acci dent had not induced her to believe him dead. This situation, which will not appear novel to us, which we may have seen imitated a hundred times by subsequent poets, constitutes, nevertheless, a very lively and effective commencement of the piece. This is one of Calderon's great merits; but we may add, with the forenamed Chasles, that in general "the dramatic art of the Spanish is accustomed to dispense with those slow preparations, so agreeable to the calculating prudence of the Northerns." Among the impetuous inhabitants of Spain, but an ill reception would be accorded to the poet who should set himself to work to distil, and minutely analyse the passions: never will you there meet with an Iago, so coolly torturing his victim, and pouring the poison of jealousy, drop by drop, into his agonised heart. All is opened by a single touch ;— like those tropical plants, whose calix bursts with a loud report, and at once expands to the sun a cluster of brilliant flowers. In the Spanish drama, the action is bold and lively from the first start; the attention of the spectator is immediately absorbed in the rapid succession of events, nor is ever diverted by a studied developement of the characters.

Such, perhaps, is the essential difference which distinguishes the dramatic art of the Spanish from that of the English and Germans. The people of the North, for the most part, love to study human nature in detail, and under all the variety of its different forms; but the restless, fiery temperament of the native of the South, finds delight in movement only and warmth of action, and not in deliberate philosophical analyses. It is also necessary that the poet should powerfully curb his own mind, and learn to impose silence upon his own emotions, if he wishes to delineate profoundly the human character; for character is the combined result of organism, climate, education, social position, the crosses of life, and the feelings that have been called into action. How to calculate all these influences, to distinguish accurately their almost infinite gradations, requires, in the poet, the exercise of all his reason, all his skill, all his sagacity, and we may add, too, all his coolness: and these are special prerogatives of the North, often denied to the poet of the South.

Such are the difficulties which meet the dramatist, when he attempts the delineation of character at the moment when the passions are at work. Othello, for example, the ingenuous Othello, after his transition from confiding trust to suspicion and jealousy, became mad with a quite inhuman ferocity. He laughed and wept in the same moment at sight of the blood he had shed... ... Juliet, the delicate Juliet, through the strength of her love, became fearless and grand as a heroine of the ancient, noblest times of Sparta and Rome the tomb itself was no longer an object of terror, provided it could reunite her to him she loved; for that she would gladly robe herself in a winding-sheet, and sleep with the bones of her

forefathers. Shakspere evinced the wonderful power of his mind, in thus combining the study of character with that of the passions; but to any one who examines him closely, it will readily appear, that the predominant instinct of his genius belongs to the north; and, although in all his works he displays the power of the passions, that he devotes himself principally to the study of character. A southern poet would have had much difficulty in forming so elaborate a picture of the agonies which racked the jealous mind of Othello. Calderon would never have exhibited for contemplation the exquisitely painful transitions of a soul, by nature simple and ingenuous, but now crushed by the weight of the misfortune which generated suspicion of his loved one, and rendered fiercely cruel, in the outburst of his fury, the moment suspicion was converted into certainty.

But let us return to Calderon. The young lady, already bound, as we have said, in the chains of a marriage of convenience, received a letter from a former lover. In vain does she endeavour to repress the desire to see him again: after a brief conflict, duty is vanquished by love, which is always ready, with ingenious, subtle arguments, to persuade to acts of the greatest imprudence.

"It is better I should see him again," said Leonora, in answer to the checks of her conscience; "I must see him, to induce him to leave this city: I will insist upon it; he will conform." In fact, a few minutes after, the young man was led in by Leonora's waiting-maid.

"I am now a slave!" exclaimed Leonora to him, "I no longer belong to myself: renounce my love !" and their short conversation, full of respectful love and deep grief, was still far from approaching the culpable, when it was suddenly interrupted by the unexpected entrance of Don Juan. This was a gentleman whom Don Lopez, the husband of Leonora, had rescued from indigence, and hospitably entertained in his house. The room in which the lovers were standing was dark, which rendered their situation suspicious, and Don Juan immediately prepared to avenge the honour of his friend. Don Luigi (the lover) takes advantage of

When Friar Lawrence, to save her as she is already married to Romeo-from being given by her father to Count Paris, proposes a remedy of desperate execution, how bold is her reply::

“O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of yonder tower;
Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;

Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,

O'ercover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls :
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;

Things that to hear them told have made me tremble;
And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.”

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