History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature (Vol 1 of 2)

by Friedrich Bouterwek

VILLEGAS.

An Anacreon was still wanting to Spanish literature, though various attempts in the Anacreontic style had been made. That a poet penetrated at once with the classic spirit of Anacreon, Horace and Catullus, should now arise, and become the favourite of the Spanish public, was a thing scarcely to be expected; for all the resources of amatory poetry in the only style which had hitherto been found agreeable to Spanish taste, seemed to be exhausted. The poetry of Villegas, however, produced precisely for this reason the more powerful impression on a public which ardently longed for entertainment.

Estèvan Manuel de Villègas, was born in the year 1595, at Nagera, or Naxera, a little town in Old Castile. The history of his life is simple. His parents who were noble, though not rich, sent him to study at Madrid and Salamanca. His taste for poetry was developed at a very early period. Even in his fifteenth year he translated Anacreon, and several of the odes of Horace in verse; and likewise imitated those poets in original compositions. In his twentieth year he gave the finishing touch to his youthful effusions, and added to the collection of his translated and original poems, a second part, which has since been published conjointly with them.[497] He soon after printed the whole collection at his own expence at Naxera, under the title of Amatorias; but in the interior of the book, the poems are styled Eroticas.[498] Villegas ventured to dedicate these poems, together with the part added to them, to which a particular title might more properly have been assigned, to Philip III. though individual parts of the collection had previously been addressed to other patrons. That so indolent a monarch as Philip III. should have accepted the dedication of such a collection, may not be surprising, and the freedom was pardonable in a young author of three-and-twenty. But this dedication is, in another respect, remarkable in the history of Spanish literature; for the Eroticas of Villegas contain some passages, which though not wanting in delicacy of expression, are nevertheless so extremely free, that it is wonderful how they happened to escape the censure of the inquisition. The dedication was, however, productive of neither good nor evil to the poet. For several years he vainly solicited a lucrative office; and was at last obliged to content himself with the scanty emolument arising from an insignificant post in Naxera, his native town. From that time he devoted his leisure to the composition of philological works in the latin language; and though he produced nothing new for Spanish poetry, he made a prose translation of five books of Boethius. He lived till the year 1669.

The graceful luxuriance of the poetry of Villegas has no parallel in modern literature; and, generally speaking, no modern writer has so well succeeded in blending the spirit of ancient poetry with the modern. But constantly to observe that correctness of ideas, which distinguished the classical compositions of antiquity, was by Villegas, as by most Spanish poets, considered too rigid a requisition, and an unnecessary restraint on genius. He accordingly sometimes degenerates into conceits and images, the monstrous absurdity of which are characteristic of the author’s nation and age. For instance, in one of his odes in which he entreats Lyda to suffer her tresses to flow, he says, that “when agitated by Zephyr, her locks would occasion a thousand deaths, and subdue a thousand lives;”[499] and then he adds, in a strain of extravagance, surpassing that of the Marinists, “that the sun himself would cease to give light, if he did not snatch beams from her radiant countenance to illumine the east.”[500] But faults of this glaring kind, are by no means frequent in the poetry of Villegas; and the fascinating grace with which he emulates his models, operates with so powerful a charm, that the occasional occurrence of some little affectations, from which he could scarcely be expected entirely to abstain, is easily overlooked by the reader.

The order in which the poetic works of Villegas are arranged, is by no means the best; but as it was chosen by the author, it is proper that it should be observed in pursuing a notice of the poems themselves. The first book of the first part commences with thirty-six odes in the style of some of the odes of Horace. The Dedicatory Ode addressed to the king, announces, in language truly charming, the spirit of the whole collection.[501] Then follow in a similar strain, the most delightful plays of fancy, abounding in classical allusions, without the least trace of pedantry. The style of Villegas even imparts a charm of novelty to descriptions of the oftenest described things.[502] In these odes, romantic levity assumes freedoms, which if not always of the most excusable, are invariably of the most graceful description;[503] and the soft and melodious expression of tender passion, which in more than one instance occurs, has never been surpassed.[504]

The second book of the first division of the poems of Villegas, consists of odes, which are free translations of the first book of Horace. It ought not, therefore, to have been ranked under the same title with the other poems in the collection. There is something pedantic in the generical titles by which he distinguishes the different odes; for example—Memptica, Enetica, Parænetica, &c.

With the third book of the first division commence the Anacreontic songs, or as they are styled in the collection, the Delicias of the poet. Their measure is chiefly anacreontic, sometimes in blank verse, and at other times presenting the most pleasing alternation of rhymes and assonances. Light pleasing images and soft luxuriant ideas float through these songs even more gracefully than in the odes attributed to Anacreon.[505] Nothing can exceed the beauty of those in which a certain delicate moral feeling is combined with a pathetic simplicity.[506] Only a few can be said to be absolutely copied from the greek or latin originals.

The fourth book of the first part, contains the complete translation of the greek odes ascribed to Anacreon. The second division is chiefly occupied with elegies and idyls, or eidillios, as Villegas, in hellenizing the term, chooses to call them. The elegies which might with greater propriety be denominated epistles, do not belong to the best of the kind in Spanish literature; in the idyls, or mythological tales, as they ought to be called, Villegas appears as one of the Cultoristos, or disciples of the school of Gongora.[507]

The collection concludes with several imitations of greek and latin verse, which may be regarded as the first compositions of the kind in Spanish, that were not complete failures. Doubtless the Spanish language adapts itself somewhat more readily to the ancient metres than the Italian; for final syllables sounded in pronunciation, but subject to elision in scanning, do not occur so frequently in Spanish as in Italian.—This difference is, however, in reality but of trivial importance; and Spanish verses in the ancient syllabic measures do not flow much more naturally than the Italian compositions of the same kind; because many words derived from the latin, have received in Spanish, as well as in Italian, a modern quantity,[508] which is generally confounded with the ancient quantity by the imitators of the greek and latin metres. The Spanish hexameters of Villegas, it is true, approach in point of facility to the hexameters of antiquity.[509] But the pentameters defied his imitative talent.[510] In his sapphic verse the measure resolves into iambics: one of these sapphic odes is, however, exquisitely beautiful.[511]