Evening fell, an evening of October, lovely as an evening of summer, but holding keener, more grievous beauty, something more intimate that makes the soul shiver.
It has the poignancy, poetry I recall in early peasant scenes by Cazin, the same glory of yellowing fields; the same sadly serene peace of the sky.
El Encanto de Buenos Aires, by Gomez Carillo, is attractive. He is the Spanish Loti. Not so wonderful as master of words, of course, but worth consideration. He was one of that band of brilliant Spaniards who helped Rubén Darío edit Mundial, in Paris, the lamented Amado Nervo being of the number.
The book is well printed, pleasing typographically. Carillo, like Loti, loves the souls of far cities. He says in the introduction: ... mi alma siente la gracia de ciertas ciudades con una intensidad que los grandes ministros y los grandes periodistos desdeñan. Like Loti, he is a stylist, if not such a commanding one. I have followed him in various quarters of the globe. One I recall happily, is Egypt. He says he likes to watch resplendent stars he has never seen, rise from the lonely depths of oceans. Sometimes he forgets and becomes sentimental. It is easy to forgive, because so many times he forgets and then becomes artist. He has more than a little of Loti’s distinguished manner. He has sympathy, too!
His impression of New York pleases me. By New York I suppose he means America in general. The educated Spaniard, as a rule, keeps fine disdain of us, what he terms those new uncultivated people, up north, known as Americans. Hear him: La vida ahi es un vertigo, y el hombre un iluminado o un automata, una maquina, o un delirio. De arte, de gusto, de armonia, de medida, de distincion, ni siquiera una idea tiene la metropoli norte americana en su existio callejero. There is some truth in this!
What makes this more interesting is that nowhere is there more what he calls vertigo, than in B. A., Rio. I read all their magazines. They are brilliant, just as aggregated diamonds are brilliant. This, what he has just been saying, is what Spanish and Portuguese neighbors think of us. I could not count the number who have said something similar to me. In it there is unconscious aristocratic disdain of king-lovers for a young, ill-bred, free, and too noisy people who boast of democracy when they do not boast of dollars. We bow our heads to the superiority of Latin culture. They swung a long time from Caesar’s coat-tail. We did not. In fact, we are just beginning to swing. And not from Caesar’s. The Spanish-Americans write noble, flexible prose. Carillo’s prose has rhythms both ample and fine.
He sends stinging arrows, some of which hit, at New York, Chicago, America. He is of the opinion that cities that are beautiful, (meaning those of the Old World), are dirty and uncomfortable. Our comfortable clean cities, on the other hand, are ugly. They are something with which he does not like to profane fine, sensitive eyes. He hates Broadway. His sensuous, sumptuous soul loves the lasting summer of rich hued tropic lands, their languid, their sapphire seas, and perfected luxury of living.
His description of what he calls Oxford of the Argentine, makes me wish I were a boy, young, so I could go there. It is a magnificent idea, which the Spaniards have put into execution in this school, an idea worthy the dramatic genius of Latin peoples.