The Andalusians, on the contrary, speak of the Catalans much as an æsthetic young lady of literary and artistic tastes would speak of one of those domestic girls who prefer the cook-book to the romances of George Sand.
“They are a rude people,” they say, “who have a capacity only for arithmetic and mechanics; barbarians who would convert a statue of Montaigne into an olive-press, and one of Murillo’s canvases into a tarpaulin—the veritable Bœotians of Spain, insupportable with their jargon, their surliness, and their pedantic gravity.”
In reality, Catalonia is probably the province of least importance in the history of the fine arts. The only poet who was born in Barcelona—and he was not great, but only illustrious—was Juan Boscan, who flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and introduced into Spanish letters the hendecasyllabic verse, the ballad, the sonnet, and all the forms of Italian lyric poetry, for which he had a passionate admiration. Whence arose this great transformation, as it afterward became, in the entire literature of a people? From the fact that Boscan took up his residence at Granada at the time when the court of Charles V. was held there, and that he there met an ambassador from the republic of Venice, Andrea Navagero, who knew the poems of Petrarch by heart, and recited them to Boscan, and said to him, “It seems to me that you too could write such verses; try it!”
Boscan tried: all the literature of Spain cried out against him. Italian poetry was not sonorous; Petrarch’s poems were insipid and effeminate; and Spain did not need to harness her Pegasus in the traces of any other land. But Boscan was unyielding. Garcilasso de la Vega, the chivalrous cavalier, his friend—he who received the glorious title of Malherbe of Spain—followed his example. The band of reformers grew little by little, until it became an army and conquered and dominated all literature. The consummation of the movement was reached in Garcilasso, but to Boscan remains the merit of giving it the first impulse, and hence to Barcelona belongs the honor of having given to Spain the genius who transformed her literature.
During the few days I remained at Barcelona I was accustomed to spend the evening in company with some young Catalans, walking on the sea-shore in the moonlight until late at night. They all knew a little Italian, and were very fond of our poetry, so from hour to hour we did nothing but repeat verses—they from Zorilla, Espronceda, and Lope de Vega; I from Foscolo, Berchet, and Manzoni—alternating in a sort of rivalry to see who could repeat the most beautiful selection.
It is a novel sensation, that of repeating the verses of one’s native poets in a foreign country.
When I saw my Spanish friends all intent on the story of the battle of Maclodio, and then little by little becoming excited, and finally so inflamed that they grasped me by the arm and exclaimed, with a Castilian accent which rendered their words doubly grateful, “Beautiful! sublime!” then I felt my blood surge through my veins; I trembled, and if it had been light I believe they would have seen me turn as white as a sheet. They repeated to me verses in the Catalan language. I use the word “language” because it has a history and a literature of its own, and was not relegated to the condition of a dialect until the political predominance was assumed by Castile, who imposed her idiom as authoritative upon the rest of the provinces. And although it is a harsh language, made up of short words, and unpleasant at first even to one who has not a delicate ear, it has none the less some conspicuous advantages, and of these the popular poets have availed themselves with admirable skill, particularly in expressing the sense by the sound. A poem which they recited, the first lines of which imitated the rumbling of a railway-train, drew from me an exclamation of wonder. But, even though one may know the Spanish language, Catalan is not intelligible without explanation. The people talk rapidly, with closed teeth, without supplementing their speech by gestures, so that it is difficult to get the sense of the simplest sentence, and it is a great thing to catch a few occasional words. However, the common people can speak Castilian when it is convenient, but they do so utterly without grace, although much better than the common people of the northern Italian provinces speak Italian. Even the cultivated classes of Catalonia are not proficient in the national speech.
The Castilian first recognizes the Catalan by his pronunciation, to say nothing of his voice, but particularly by his uncouth expressions. Hence a foreigner who comes to Spain with an illusion that he can speak the language may easily be able to cherish the illusion so long as he remains in Catalonia, but as soon as he enters Castile and hears for the first time that crossfire of epigrams, that profusion of proverbs, the apt expressions, the clear and happy idioms, he stands aghast like Alfieri in the presence of Dame Vocabulary when they were discussing hosiery; and then farewell illusion!
On my last night I visited the Lyceum Theatre, which is said to be the most beautiful in Europe, and probably the largest. It was crowded with people from the pit to the highest gallery, and could not have accommodated a hundred more persons. From the box in which I sat the ladies on the opposite side looked no larger than children, and on half closing one’s eyes they appeared like so many white lines, one for each row of boxes, tremulous and sparkling like an immense garland of camellias impearled with dew and swayed by the breeze.
The vast boxes are divided by partitions which slope down from the wall to the front of the box, so enabling one to have a good view of the persons seated on the front row; consequently, the theatre looks like a great gallery, and so acquires an air of lightness which makes it very beautiful to look upon. All is in relief; all is open to the view; the light strikes every part; every one sees every one else; the aisles are wide, and one may come and go, turn with ease in any direction, look at a lady from a thousand points of view, pass from the gallery to the boxes and from the boxes to the gallery,—one may walk about, talk, and wander here and there all the evening without striking elbows with a living soul. The other parts of the building are in proportion to the principal room—corridors, staircases, lobbies, vestibules like those of a great palace. Then there is an immense, splendid ball-room in which one could place another theatre. Yet even here, where the good Barcelonians, after the fatigue of the day, should think of nothing but recreation or the contemplation of their beautiful, superb women,—even here the good Barcelonians buy and sell, bargain and chaffer, like souls condemned to torment.