EL ESTUDIANTE DE SALAMANCA
Instead of Cuento, later editions read Leyendas.
The introductory quotation is taken from the "Don Quijote," Part I, chap. 45. The words were addressed by Don Quijote to members of the rural police who were arresting him for depredations committed on the highway. The full sentence in Ormsby's translation reads: "Who was he that did not know that knights-errant are independent of all jurisdictions, that their law is their sword, their charter their prowess, and their edicts their will?" This Spanish declaration of independence was frequently used as a slogan by the Romanticists. Espronceda is here making the quotation apply more particularly to his lawless hero.
[1. ]Era más de media noche: the poet begins with a characteristic Romantic landscape, gloomy, medieval, fantastic, uncanny. He is trying to create a mood of horror. He follows the Horatian precept of beginning the plot in the middle (in medias res). The situation here introduced is not resumed until Part Four is reached. Parts Two and Three supply the events leading up to the duel. The Duque de Rivas's "Candil" begins in similar fashion:
Más ha de quinientos años
En una torcida calle,
Que de Sevilla en el centro
Da paso a otras principales;
Cerca de la media noche,
Cuando la ciudad más grande
Es de un grande cementerio
En silencio y paz imagen;
De dos desnudas espadas
Que trababan un combate
Turbó el repentino encuentro
Las tinieblas impalpables.
El crujir de los aceros
Sonó por breves instantes
Lanzando azules centellas,
Meteoro de desastres.
Y al gemido ¡Dios me valga!
¡Muerto soy! y al golpe grave
De un cuerpo que a tierra vino
El silencio y paz renacen, etc.
This was first published in "El Liceo," 1838. The Duque de Rivas may have been influenced by our text, but such introductions were a Romantic commonplace. See M. Fernández y González, "Crónicas romanescas de España. Don Miguel de Mañara, memorias del tiempo de Carlos V," Paris, 1868. The story begins "Era la media noche"; and, later, "Hacía mucho tiempo que Sevilla estaba entregada al sueño y al silencio." Espronceda is here following his sources closely.
[2. ]antiguas historias: not a mere rhetorical statement. These old stories actually existed. See the study of sources in the Introduction.
[4. ]lóbrego: I follow the reading of the 1840 edition. Later editions changed to lóbrega, making the adjective agree with tierra instead of silencio. Either reading makes good sense, but in cases of doubt I follow the Editio Princeps.
[11. ]fantasmas: this noun is usually masculine, but is often feminine in popular speech. The distinction between the masculine and feminine meanings given in most dictionaries does not apply in Espronceda. He uses both genders indifferently.
[19. ]sábados: Saturday was the usual day when, according to popular belief, witches attended their yearly aquelarre or sabbath. The favorite meeting-place for Spanish witches was said to be the plain around Barahona (Soria).
[27. ]gótico: admiration for the Gothic was a characteristic of Romanticism.
[37. ]Salamanca: the famous university city of Spain. Its founding antedates the Carthaginians and the Romans. The university of Palencia was transferred to Salamanca by Fernando III in 1239. Neither the university nor the city retains much of its ancient importance. See Gustave Reynier, "La Vie universitaire dans l'ancienne Espagne," Paris, 1902.
[38. ]armas y letras: these words summarize the Renaissance ideal of culture. The perfect gentleman must combine literature and arms. Letters were not considered to be apart from active life. Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and many others of Spain's great writers of the classic period exemplify this ideal.
[53. ]embozado: to avoid breathing the cool mountain air of his country, a Spaniard frequently draws the corner of his cape over his face, concealing it. He is then embozado, 'muffled.' When a woman is heavily veiled she is tapada. This national custom has been effectively used by Spanish poets, novelists, and dramatists. It offered a plausible excuse for the concealment or confusion of identity.
[64. ]calle: this word is the object of atraviesa, l. 72.
[65. ]la calle del Ataúd: this dismal name does not seem to be of Espronceda's own invention. It is found in José Gutiérrez de la Vega's "Don Miguel de Mañara," 1851. Espronceda probably used some earlier edition of the prose romance of Don Miguel de Mañara.
[96. ]que: a relative adverb used with the force of a genitive Translate 'whose.'
[100. ]Segundo Don Juan Tenorio: see the Introduction.
PARTE SEGUNDA
[The quotation] is taken from Byron's "Don Juan," Canto IV, stanza 72, the description of Haidée's tomb. I restore the first two words, omitted in all previous editions, without which the passage is devoid of meaning. The way in which this passage has been garbled was pointed out by Piñeyro, "El Romanticismo en España," Paris, 1904.
[181. ]de luceros coronada: this verse occurs also in Meléndez Valdés' "Rosana en los fuegos." See Foulché-Delbosc, "Quelques Réminiscences dans Espronceda," Revue Hispanique, XXI, p. 667.
[218. ]hoja tras hoja, etc.: in the first part of "Faust," Margarete pulls out one by one the petals of a daisy to determine whether or not Faust loves her. Is this a reminiscence of Margarete's Er liebt mich—liebt mich nicht?
[242. ]pasó: translate by the English perfect tense. There are many other cases in these poems where the preterit had best be rendered by the perfect.
[245. ]miraran: here and elsewhere the second (-ra) tense of the imperfect subjunctive is equivalent to a simple past. This use of the tense is frequent. At other times this tense is better rendered by a pluperfect indicative, when the common subjunctive meaning does not serve.
[268. ]These verses are the most frequently quoted of the whole poem.
[268. ]juguete: I retain, though with some doubt, the reading of the original. Later editions have changed to juguetes.
[278. ]The thought of these verses is that mean objects may present a beautiful appearance when viewed through a telescope. "Distance lends enchantment." So woman when viewed through the illusion of fancy is better than the woman of reality. This thought is developed farther in "A Teresa."
[298. ]A frequently recurring thought in Espronceda, typical of Romantic pessimism. Truth is man's greatest enemy, he holds. Illusion is friendly.
[318. ]In this and what follows, Elvira is plainly a copy of Ophelia. The influence of Hamlet cannot be doubted. Churchman has pointed out that Elvira is a composite of Goethe's Margarete, Shakespeare's Ophelia, and the Haidée and Doña Julia of Lord Byron. See "Byron and Espronceda," Revue Hispanique, Vol. XX, p. 164.
[324. ]otra: I retain the original reading. Later editions erroneously read otras.
[347. ]Vaso de bendición: `blessed vessel,' i.e. an individual peculiarly favored with the divine blessing. The phrase vaso de elección is commoner, meaning one chosen for a particular mission or appointed task. The latter term is frequently applied to the Apostle Paul (Acts ix, 15).
[359. ]Mas despertó también de su locura, etc.: Ophelia did not recover her reason before dying. Likewise she was drowned, while Elvira dies of love.
[364. ]El bien pasado y el dolor presente: an obvious reminiscence of Dante's:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.—"Inferno," Canto V, ll. 121-123.
There is no greater sorrow than to recall the happy time in the midst of misery.
[371. ]The letter which follows represents Espronceda's most important borrowing from Byron. It is based upon Doña Julia's letter of adieu to Don Juan: see "Don Juan," Canto I, stanzas 192-197. The circumstances attending the writing of the two letters are entirely different. The tone of Doña Julia's letter is cynical; she is a married woman whose sin has been discovered and whose husband is forcing her to enter a convent. Doña Elvira's letter, written with death in view, is tender and pathetic. For details see Churchman, "Byron and Espronceda," Revue Hispanique, Vol. XX, p. 161.
PARTE TERCERA
In giving [this quotation] from the second act of Moreto's "El Lego del Carmen o San Franco de Sena," Espronceda is either quoting erroneously or following some edition not known to me. In the Rivadeneyra edition the passage is as follows:
SARGENTO
¿Tiene más que parar?
FRANCO
Tengo los ojos,
Y los juego en lo mismo; que descreo
De quien los hizo para tal empleo.
As this play influenced Espronceda, it is well to give a synopsis of it. Like the "Rufián dichoso" of Cervantes, the "San Franco de Sena" deals with the sinful life and conversion of one who was destined to be a saint. Franco of Siena, a youth noted for his wild conduct, falls in love with the inappropriately named Lucrecia. He kills her lover Aurelio in a duel, and, passing himself off for Aurelio, elopes with her and gets possession of her jewels. A cross with a lighted lamp before it is placed on a wall to mark the spot where Aurelio fell. One night, as he is passing, Franco sacrilegiously attempts to extinguish the light. A hand issues from the wall and seizes him by the wrist. Words of warning accompany this action. Franco shows neither fear nor compunction. He kills all the officers of justice who try to arrest him. Again passing the wall, he hears a ghostly voice urge him to try his hand at play, for by losing he will win. Franco hopes to win in a material way, and decides to follow this advice. He loses all and then stakes his eyes, making the blasphemous remark quoted above. He loses and is stricken blind. His conversion follows immediately. In the weak third act he becomes a Carmelite monk, and his companions in sin experience a like change of heart.
The legend of the saint of Siena has many points of similarity with the legends of Don Juan Tenorio, Don Miguel de Mañara, and Lisardo the Student; but Espronceda has been only slightly influenced by Moreto's play. If he gained from it, rather than from Dumas or Mérimée, the idea of his gambling scene, he does not follow his model closely. In each case a chain is played for, but in Moreto the game is pintas, not parar or dice, and the other details are different. Moreto (1618-1659) was one of the most graceful but least original of the dramatists of the classic period.
[438. ]The game of parar, carteta, or andaboba, as it was variously called, was played as follows: The dealer, who also serves as banker, places two cards face up at his left. The third card he places in front of himself. The fourth card, called the réjouissance card in the French form of the game, he places in the middle of the table. The players stake on this card whatever bets they desire to make, and these the banker is obliged to cover. He then deals a fifth. If this matches his own card, he wins all the money staked. If, on the contrary, it matches the réjouissance card, those who have staked money upon it win from the bank. If it matches neither, it is laid face up on the table, and money may be staked upon it precisely as upon the réjouissance card. So with all successive cards. The deal ends as soon as the banker's card is matched. He then surrenders the bank to the winner, unless the two cards laid to his left are matched before the third card dealt, his own, is duplicated. In this latter case he is privileged to keep the bank for another deal. This game, by reason of its swift action and the large number of players who could engage in it, was called el juego alegre. As results depended upon the turn of a single card, it lent itself readily to cheating. It is mentioned in a pragmática of Philip II, 1575, among a list of games to be prohibited. The modern games of monte and baccarat have points of similarity. In France and England the game is known as lansquenet, and is supposed to have been invented by the German Landsknechte, mercenary foot-soldiers of the sixteenth century. For further information see Hazañas y la Rúa, "Los Rufianes de Cervantes," Sevilla, 1906, p. 44, and Monreal, "Cuadros Antiguos," Sevilla, 1906, p. 342. For a similar gambling scene see Tirso de Molina, "Tanto es lo de más como lo de menos," Act II, sc. vii.
[455. ]El Caballo: to understand what follows some knowledge of Spanish playing-cards is necessary. In Spain the baraja, or deck, consists, according to the game played, of 48 or 40 cards (cartas, naipes, cartones), and not of 52 as with us. The ten spot is unknown, and when the deck consists of but 40 the eight and nine spots are also wanting. The palos, or suits, are four: oros (gold coins, corresponding to our diamonds), copas (cups, corresponding to our hearts), espadas (swords, corresponding to our spades), and bastones (clubs). These figures are not conventionalized. The face cards are three: el rey (the king), el caballo (representing a mounted cavalryman, and corresponding in value to our queen), and la sota (a standing infantryman, sometimes called also el infante, and corresponding in value to our knave). These figures are unreversible. The First Gambler is dealer and banker, as is shown by the fact that he covers the bets (line 466). He is losing in spite of the fact that the banker had an advantage. The caballo is clearly the card that has turned up in front of the dealer. The turning up of a second caballo would end the deal.
[457. ]Pues por poco, etc.: the Second Gambler is mocking the First. "You want the caballo, and the sota, the card next under it in the suit, has turned up. This is so close that you should be satisfied." All this is implied in his remark.
[459. ]The Second Gambler strikes an irreligious note by pretending to believe that the First Gambler's oath is a pious remark. He suggests that prayer and repentance should be deferred until one is dying. Gentlemen of equal rank formerly addressed each other in the second person plural.
[466. ]The Third Gambler stakes upon the sota. Each new card, not matching previous ones, was the occasion for new bets.
[480. ]An allusion to the world-wide superstition that he who is lucky at love is unlucky at cards and vice versa.
[490. ]Se vende y se rifa: Don Félix, who has no ready cash, raffles off his chain. He places on it a value of 2000 ducats, and announces that each of the five gamblers who are in funds must contribute 400 ducats to the raffle. The First Gambler, a heavy loser, does not engage in the play; and Don Félix, too, enters into this first transaction merely as a seller. The chain is to go to the player to whom he deals the ace of oros, and he himself will get the 2000 ducats. After this he will begin to gamble on his own account. The game of parar ceased upon the entrance of Don Félix.
[491. ]afrenta: the affront lies in Don Félix's insolent manner and the masterful way in which he forces them to accept his terms without question. Indignant as the Fourth Gambler is, he dares not offer open objection.
[496. ]I restore una from the 1840 edition instead of uno, found in the later prints. The agreement is with carta, understood, not with naipe. So likewise when the cards are dealt out in Moreto's "San Franco de Sena," the first numeral is una.
[498. ]Three is the lucky number. The third card falls to the Third Gambler, who wins. The grief of the First Gambler is increased by the fact that the winning card would have fallen to him, if he had been in the game. Line 496 indicates that D. Félix passes him in dealing.
[500. ]Having now come into possession of his 2000 ducats, Don Félix, always a reckless gambler, proposes to stake them all upon a single throw of the dice.
[516. ]Si esta imagen respirara: the First Gambler is so unlucky at cards that he may be supposed to be lucky in love. Hence sentimental remarks are placed in his mouth.
[520. ]The Second Gambler makes a side bet with the Fourth and then a second one with the Fifth. These bets will be decided by the same throw that decides the bet between Don Félix and the Third Gambler.
[526. ]Tirad con sesenta, etc.: "Throw in the name of sixty horsemen." Some word like hombres or demonios needs to be supplied.
[529. ]Don Félix, who has again lost, speaks with ironic blasphemy. He blames the First Gambler for addressing his prayer to God rather than to the devil.
[546. ]vendellas: for venderlas. In Old Spanish the final r of the infinitive frequently assimilates to the initial l of the enclitic pronoun.
[550. ]Don Félix's perverted sense of honor will not brook the most trivial verbal slight to Elvira on the part of another, although he has cruelly wronged her himself by his deeds.
[558. ]The First Gambler is not sufficiently blasphemous to invoke the devil, and Don Félix does so himself. This invocation changes his luck.
[567. ]Encubierta fatídica figura: one of those threadbare phrases abused by Spain's romantic poets. Valera in his "Del Romanticismo en España y de Espronceda" instances some of these, such as negro capuz, lúgubre són, fúnebre ciprés, etc. Mesonero Romanos in his "Románticos y Romanticismo" ridicules the abuse of the word fatídica. Espronceda was less frequently guilty of this sort of unoriginality than other less gifted poets were.
[610. ]Mentís vos: the usual formula for picking a quarrel.
[625], 631. Que: equivalent to porque.
[653. ]vos: antiquated for vosotros. Don Diego alone is addressed. After Esperad, que may be understood; such omissions of the conjunction are common in poetry. Punctuating differently, we might place a period after Esperad, in which case Cuente might be taken as a first person imperative.
[676. ]juego: such is the reading of the 1840 edition. Some later editor emended to fuego. Though this emendation is plausible, the change seems to me both unnecessary and unhappy. It is characteristic of Don Félix's cool insolence that he should refer to his affair with Elvira as a "game" rather than as a "passion."
[692. ]The Fourth Gambler's remark is somewhat ambiguous, but the sense demands that we take lo as referring to Don Félix. Remember that it was the Fourth Gambler who had resented Don Félix's overbearing conduct. He acted the coward and now talks like a coward. The Third Gambler is the most skeptical regarding changes of luck, because he himself has experienced the greatest ups and downs of fortune in the game just finished.
Miguel de los Santos Álvarez (1818-1892) was a friend and imitator of Espronceda and the last surviving member of his school. He was one of several who attempted the vain task of completing the "Diablo Mundo." He was a guest of honor with Espronceda at the first reading of "El Estudiante de Salamanca" at Granada in 1837. His verse is mediocre, and he is best known for the Cuento en prosa here quoted. This Fitzmaurice-Kelly terms "a charming tale," and Piñeyro praises it for the grace and naturalness of its irony. Rubén Darío gives some interesting reminiscences of Santos Álvarez in his old age, "La vida de Rubén Darío escrita por él mismo", Barcelona, n.d., chap. xxvii. Apparently Santos Álvarez never outgrew the bohemianism of his youth.
The second quotation is from Mark xiv, 38: "The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak."
[693. ]The narrative begun in Part First is now resumed at the point where it was interrupted. We now know that it was Don Diego Pastrana who lost his life in the duel described in the opening lines.
[717. ]The omission of the usual accent of impio is intentional and indicates how the word should be stressed in this verse. Impío is a "word of double accentuation". See Introduction.
[729. ]Notice how the absolute phrase Los ojos fijos is broken by the insertion of the proper name. Poets depart from the usual word-order with the utmost freedom.
[737. ]néctar jerezano: sherry wine.
[738, ]740. bastara, intentara: to be translated as pluperfects.
[766. ]It is necessary to supply a que to serve as the object of achaca. This is readily to be inferred from the que in the verse before, which is, however, used as a subject.
[793. ]In this speech of Don Felix's there is rapid alternation between direct address, in the second person, and side remarks in the third person about the person addressed.
[800. ]tengo de: we would have he de in modern prose.
[811. ]The que in this verse is the que regularly following oaths and asseverations. Cf. Tobler, "Vermischte Beiträge zur französischen Grammatik," Leipzig, 1912, Article 17, pp. 57 f. Tobler gives the following example from Calderón: ¡Vive Dios! que no he salido. ("El Mágico Prodigioso," Act III, v. 387.) In these examples, the ¡vive dios! is hardly more than an emphatic digo, and is followed by que just as digo would be. Verse 810 is parenthetical.
[828. ]del: construe with mar.
[833. ]For the conclusion of the sentence here begun it is necessary to turn to line 883. We have to do with a sentence of 54 lines.
[840. ]The 1840 edition lacks the third su.
[853. ]fueron: 'are past and gone.'
[861. ]del: the later editions read el. Ditto in lines 862, 863, 866. De is also omitted in 865.
[868. ]jamás: I restore the 1840 reading. Later editions read y no.
[916. ]que: a conjunction introducing a clause, the verb of which (pese) has to be supplied.
[921. ]The usual accent is intentionally omitted from veame. To read this verse correctly the second syllable, and not the first, must bear the stress. The bad prosody of this verse is discussed in the Introduction.
[943. ]The Dance of Death begins.
[1012. ]misteriosa: late editors wrongly change to misterioso. Espronceda is using guía as a feminine.
[1040. ]Dale, etc.: 'plague take the tolling of the passing bell and these towers dancing in tangled confusion to the measure of such a concert.'
[1046. ]llegue: I have emended llegué (which I believe Espronceda did not intend on account of the "obstructing syllable" which that accentuation would give to the verse) to llegue. I take llegue to be the subjunctive of emphatic asseveration. See Bello-Cuervo, "Gramática Castellana," paragraph 463. Other editors are perhaps right in interpreting the passage differently. They suppress the period after maravillas, the exclamation point before Que, and write llegué. This makes equally good sense and is just as grammatical, but the verse is less harmonious. This last point, however, is not a vital objection. The two ways of editing this passage seem to me to offer little choice.
[1062. ]Construe en que with ha dado, above.
[1112. ]The quotation from Mark xiv, 38 applies especially to this passage. Also to ll. 1626-1633.
[1121. ]The three forms of address used by Don Félix in addressing el enlutado indicate his change of manner from politeness to insolence. He begins with the polite third person singular form. Then, enraged by the answer, he is intentionally insulting in verse 1126, wishing to provoke a duel. As the other puts up a brave front, he next addresses him as an equal (verse 1127) by using the second person plural. This was the usual form of address between gentlemen of equal standing during the Renaissance period. But, again losing his temper, he relapses into the insulting second person singular (verse 1133 and following).
[1133. ]haga: an instance of the use of the subjunctive after oaths and asseverations. See Bello-Cuervo, "Gramática Castellana," paragraph 463.
[1311. ]una: goes with gradería in the following verse.
[1385. ]Beginning with this verse and ending with l. 1680, the poet attempts to indicate the gathering and abating fury of the ghostly revel by the successive lengthening and shortening of the verses. The final verses also express Don Félix's waning strength. This device is an attempt to imitate the crescendo and diminuendo effect of music. This whole passage is an obvious imitation of Victor Hugo's "Les Djinns," a poem included in "Les Orientales." Nowhere has Espronceda shown greater virtuosity in the handling of meter.
[1448. ]The nouns and infinitives in this and the following lines are objects of siente, l. 1456.
[1703. ]Y si, lector, etc.: 'And if, reader, you say it is a fabrication, I tell it to you as they told it to me.' León Medina, "Frases literarias afortunadas," Revue hispanique, Vol. XVIII, p. 226, states that these two verses are a quotation from Juan de Castellanos, an obscure poet of the sixteenth century, author of Elegías de Varones Ilustres de Indias. (The first three parts of this work may be found in Vol. IV of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles; Part IV has been edited by Paz y Melia for the Colección de Escritores Castellanos, Vols. XLIV and XLIX. The passage in question may be found in Canto II, octave 8.) Churchman, "Byron and Espronceda," Revue hispanique, Vol. XX, p. 210, adds the information that Espronceda probably took the lines directly from Villalta, who had quoted them in his historical novel El Golpe en Vago, Madrid, 1835. This is made probable by the fact that whereas Castellanos had written correctly os lo cuento, Villalta wrote te lo cuento, Espronceda following him in this grammatical error.
The form dijerdes, an old form for the second plural of the future subjunctive (modern dijereis), represents the syncopation of a still older dijéredes. Grammatically the pronoun os should have been used. Evidently both Villalta and Espronceda considered dijerdes to be a second singular form. A modern editor cannot undertake to correct a mistake made by the author. In Old Spanish infinitives could be very loosely used. It was not necessary that the subject of a dependent infinitive should be the same as that of the verb on which it depended.
The word comento here has the meaning "fiction," "fabrication." I find this meaning given in none of the dictionaries, but it can readily be inferred from the word comentador, which had as one of its meanings "an inventor of false reports." Comento, like Latin commentum, has as one of its meanings "fiction," "fabrication."
The writers of leyendas were fond of stressing the traditional nature of their poems. Thus Zorrilla concludes his "Capitán Montoya":
El pueblo me lo contó
Sin notas ni aclaraciones,
Con sus mismas espresiones
Se lo cuento al pueblo yo.
CANCIÓN DEL PIRATA
[7. ]en todo mar conocido: I follow the reading of the text as it originally appeared in El Artista. The later version of 1840 is peculiar in the reading en todo el mar conocido. We cannot be certain that this is a change made by Espronceda himself.
[84. ]Instead of negro the 1840 edition reads ronco.
EL CANTO DEL COSACO
[Attila,] king of the Huns, reigned from 433 until his death 453 A.D. He is noted for the barbaric ferocity of his campaigns against the Eastern and Western Roman Empires and the Germanic kingdoms of the West. In 447 he ravaged seventy cities in Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, and all but captured Constantinople. In 451 he crossed the Rhine and sacked the cities of Belgic Gaul. He was decisively defeated at Troyes by the Gothic leader Theodoric in league with the Roman general Aëtius. He then entered northern Italy, where he continued his depredations and advanced upon Rome. The Emperor Valentinianus II saved the city by paying tribute. Legend has it that while in Gaul a hermit called Attila to his face the "scourge of God." Attila accepted the designation and replied with the remark quoted in the text. This story is not found in Jordanes, Priscus, or any of the contemporary historians. Gibbon says: "It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod" ("Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," London, 1897, III, p. 469). This poem is a magnificent expression of barbaric battle-lust. Espronceda felt as a youth that wholesale destruction must precede the new order of things in Spain and Europe.
[50.] The poet hopelessly confuses the exploits of the Huns, the Goths, and the Cossacks. Neither the Cossacks nor the Huns ever captured Rome. Alaric the Goth took Rome in 410 A.D.
[65.] The principal Cossack invasion of Poland was in the first half of the seventeenth century, when Chmielnicki, hetman of the Cossacks, with the aid of his Tartar allies ruthlessly devastated the Polish provinces. This war has been vividly described by Sienkiewicz in his novel "With Fire and Sword."
[79.] The Huns are said to have carried raw meat beneath their saddles as they rode. At the end of the day's ride they would eat it.
EL MENDIGO
[108.] The poet has paraphrased the proverb Allá van leyes do quieren reyes, the idea of which is that a tyrant can twist the law to serve the purposes of his tyranny.
A TERESA. DESCANSA EN PAZ
For an account of Teresa, see the Introduction. For Miguel de los Santos Álvarez, see the note to "El Estudiante de Salamanca," Part IV.
[41. ]The poet describes his three youthful passions: liberty, romantic literature, and love.
[49. ]Catón: Caius Porcius Cato (95-46 B.C.), commonly called Cato of Utica, was a stalwart defender of Roman republicanism against Caesar and his party. His suicide after the defeat of the republican cause at Thapsus was regarded as an act of stoic heroism.
[50. ]Bruto: it is not clear whether the poet refers to Lucius Junius Brutus, who drove from power Tarquinius Superbus, founded the Roman republic, and displayed his rigid justice by condemning to death his own sons, or Marcus Junius Brutus, who assassinated Cæsar in the name of liberty.
[51. ]Scévola: a hero of early Rome who was captured by the enemy and threatened with death by fire if he refused to give important information. He replied by deliberately holding his hand in a flame.
[52. ]Sócrates (469-400 B.C.): the celebrated Grecian philosopher. He believed in the immortality of the soul.
[54. ]Del orador de Atenas: Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.), especially famous for his Philippics, a series of twelve orations directed against Philip of Macedon, the tirano macedonio here alluded to. All these classical allusions seem to show that Espronceda, like most of the leaders of the French Revolution, was influenced by Plutarch.
[57. ]In this octave the poet voices his enthusiasm for the Middle Ages and romantic literature in general. In his desire to embrace in his own life the careers of knight and troubadour, Espronceda is harking back to the "arms and letters" ideal of many of Spain's greatest writers.
[77. ]Soñaba al héroe: con is the usual complement of soñar in prose.
[89. ]Espronceda's first meeting with Teresa took place in Portugal in the beautiful region around Cintra.
[131. ]La sacra ninfa que bordando, etc.: according to Menéndez y Pelayo, these two verses are taken from the "Fábula de Genil" of Pedro Espinosa, an author whom he says Espronceda knew by heart. (See "Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Española en la recepción del excmo. señor D. Francisco Rodríguez Marín, el día 27 de octubre de 1907," Madrid, 1907, p. 86). The verses in question are:
Corta las aguas con los blancos brazos
La ninfa, que con otras ninfas mora
Debajo de las aguas cristalinas
En aposentos de esmeraldas finas.
And farther down,
El despreciado dios su dulce amante
Con las náyades vido estar bordando.
This in turn, it seems to me, may be reminiscent of Garcilaso de la Vega's Égloga Tercera. Apparently P. Henríquez Ureña has made this discovery independently. See Revista de Filología Española, IV, 3, p. 292.
[170. ]The usual accent has been intentionally omitted from aerea.
[201. ]"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning." Isaiah xiv, 12.
[232. ]The story of the man who spits upon himself while trying to spit upon the sky is as old as Berceo in Spanish literature.
[238. ]One has to supply a se with convirtieron. This may readily be inferred from the preceding verse.
[352. ]Foulché-Delbosc thinks that this last verse was suggested by Hugo, "Les Feuilles d'automne, XXXV, Soleils couchants." See Revue hispanique, XXI, p. 667.