CHAPTER III.
CONCLUDING PERIOD OF THE HISTORY OF SPANISH POETRY AND ELOQUENCE.
The Spanish writers who lived about the middle of the eighteenth century, began to be ashamed of the unworthy bondage which had severed them from all common feeling with the public taste. It is doubtful whether at this particular period, the nation in general began once more to be roused to a sense of its own importance; but this is certain, that a literary patriotism imperceptibly revived within the narrow circle of Spanish authorship. Even several members of the Spanish academy proved that they were no longer to be satisfied with mere French elegance. The works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were again received into favour. Men of superior talents arose, who endeavoured to combine Spanish genius with French elegance; and the literature of Spain began to acquire a new life.
LA HUERTA.
One of the first who openly attacked the party of the Gallicists, was the patriotic Vicente Garcia de la Huerta, a member of the Spanish academy, and librarian to the king. None but a man whose literary judgments were accredited by the same honourable posts which gave peculiar weight to those of the Gallicists, could at that time hope to oppose with success the fashionable opinion concerning Spanish literature. La Huerta, however, undertook a dangerous task, for with every talent and right feeling for genuine poetry, he was by no means a skilful critic. In systematic coolness of judgment he was incompetent to enter the lists with men of Luzan’s critical ability. The true principles on which Spanish poetry was to be defended against French criticism, were at that period not at all understood; and La Huerta was not the man to discover them. But his feeling acted in the place of his judgment. It groped on when abandoned by theory, and rejected every theory to which it could not be reconciled. Conscious of his deficiency, La Huerta was extremely diffident whenever his opinions came into collision with those of Luzan and other academicians. But when his task was to reply to the observations of French critics, his patriotic enthusiasm knew no bounds. In exercising the law of retaliation, he attacked the admired Coryphæi of the French Parnassus with a grossness which would cast a stigma on his reputation for taste, did not his other works sufficiently prove him to have been unjust, only through the excess of a just indignation. Fortunately for La Huerta, it was not until his works had obtained decided credit that he openly avowed his hostility to the Gallicists. Among the poems which first conferred celebrity on his name, is a piscatory eclogue, which he read at a distribution of academic prizes in the year 1760. This purely occasional effusion is written in the national lyric style of the eclogues of the best period of Spanish poetry, and is free from orientalisms.[602] Three years afterwards, on a similar occasion, he read a mythological poem in stanzas. These were succeeded by other poems, also of occasional origin, by which La Huerta disarmed the critics, who might have been disposed to assert that he was destitute of the necessary feeling for French elegance. The romances by which he sought to give to that style of national poetry a new existence in the elegant world, seem to have been written at various periods of his life. Besides lyric romances, which had not entirely lost their ancient consideration, he composed narrative romances in the old style. In one of the latter compositions his success is remarkable.[603] He likewise revived the Spanish custom of composing poetic glosses; and some of his sonnets deserve the highest praise. That he was well acquainted with latin and French poetry is evident from his metrical translations of some of Horace’s odes, and of several fragments from the works of the French poets.[604]
But he had greater difficulties to overcome in his endeavours to restore the Spanish drama to its former lustre. He was not so great a poet as to be able to advance, accompanied by French elegance, in the same course in which Calderon had stopped. Calderon’s dramas were, however, still performed with approbation, in spite of all that was said by the critics, and La Huerta wrote for one of these pieces a prologue (loa) in the old style. At length when he thought he could rely on the favour of a certain portion of the public, he came forward with his first essay in tragic art. His Raquel, (Rachel), a tragedy, which was intended to combine the old Spanish forms with the dignity of the French tragic style, without being subject to the French rules of dramatic art, was first performed at the court theatre of Madrid in 1778. For upwards of half a century no new drama had been received with such enthusiasm by the Spanish public. It was represented at every theatre in Spain; and even before it was printed upwards of two thousand copies were taken, and many sent as far as America.[605] The Gallicists in Spain now rose in opposition to La Huerta; but he replied to them in a tone of contemptuous haughtiness, while he always observed the strictest modesty in addressing the public.
La Huerta’s Rachel is not a master-piece; but it is a noble testimony of the poetic national feeling of an ingenious writer, who exerted his utmost endeavours to restore the credit of the Spanish drama. The subject is taken from the old history of Castile. King Alphonso VIII. who has resigned his heart and his royal dignity to the fair Jewess Rachel, is implored by the people and the nobility to shake off the dishonourable yoke. He hesitates between love and duty, until the spirit of discontent, which has been with difficulty repressed, breaks forth in rebellion. While the king is out hunting, Rachel is surprised in the palace, and her base counsellor, Ruben, murders her to save his own life; which he only preserves until the arrival of the king, by whom he is killed in return. The tragedy is divided, according to the old practice, into three jornadas; but, in other respects, it is obvious that the author took considerable pains to conform, under certain limitations, to the French rules of dramatic art. The dialogue proceeds uniformly in iambic blank verse, without the introduction of sonnets, or any other kind of metre. All irregular theatrical pageantry is avoided. The language, upon the whole, preserves a dignified character; and in several scenes the tragic pathos is complete.[606] But the composition fails in the distribution of the characters. Only a feeble light is thrown on Rachel, the heroine of the tragedy. Her counsellor, Ruben, is a stupid contemptible Jew, whose lamentations in the moment of danger border closely on the ludicrous;[607] and the weak character of the king, who changes his resolutions on every new impression, frequently approaches caricature. The author has, however, succeeded admirably in exhibiting a striking contrast in the characters of two Spanish grandees:—the one is a base courtier, named Manrique; while the other, Garcia de Castro, in all his sentiments and actions is a correct representative of the spirit of ancient Spanish chivalry in its purest dignity. In the patriotic portraiture of this character, La Huerta’s whole soul is developed;[608] and the national spirit which pervades the tragedy, doubtless contributed in no small degree to ensure its celebrity.
La Huerta’s tragedy of Agamemnon Vengado, is a work of trivial importance compared with Rachel. It is founded on the prose translation of the Electra of Sophocles, which Perez de Oliva produced two hundred years earlier;[609] but it is a remarkable, and by no means unsuccessful attempt to unite the romantic and the classic forms, according to the conditions required by a modern audience. La Huerta wrote his Agamemnon in compliance with the wishes of some ladies of Madrid, who were desirous of seeing a tragedy in the Grecian costume. The place of the chorus is, after the French manner, supplied by a female confidante. Part of the scenes are entirely taken from Sophocles, others are those of the original remoulded, and some are new. From the beginning to the end of the tragedy, the poetic language is admirably preserved; and the alternation of the rhymeless iambics with octaves and lyric metres, completes the beauty of the whole.[610]
Finally, La Huerta adapted Voltaire’s Zaire to the Spanish stage. After he had unquestionably acquired the right of pronouncing a decided opinion on the literature of his country, he published his Theatro Hespañol; and in his prefaces to some of the volumes of that collection, he launched forth his invectives against the French drama.[611] La Huerta’s Theatro Hespañol is a classic selection from the incalculable store of Spanish dramas; and the selection is certainly well made consistently with the plan which he had adopted. With the view of marking his hostility towards the Gallicists, he selected only those Spanish comedies which are particularly distinguished for elegant ingenuity in point of invention and execution. Thus upwards of three-fourths of the whole collection consists of comedias de capa y espada, chiefly from the pen of Calderon. But for this very reason the work does not properly fulfil its title, as it exhibits the Spanish theatre only under one point of view. La Huerta has not even selected a single piece from Lope de Vega, because the plays of that great dramatist were not sufficiently elegant for his purpose: neither has he granted a place to the most beautiful of Calderon’s heroic comedies, being deterred from inserting them by their irregularity; and in conformity with the plan he had laid down, he could with still less propriety admit an Auto into his collection. By this work he, however, attained the objects he had in view, which were to restore the Spanish national comedy to its honourable place in literature, and to vent his feelings of indignation against the Gallicists. He treats the Italian authors, who had openly avowed their disapproval of the Spanish drama, with no less severity than he had evinced towards the French critics. Quadrio, Tiraboschi, Bettinelli, and other writers “of the same breed,” (de la misma raza), are denounced by La Huerta as malignant and envious critics. He accuses Signorelli, of “notorious falsehood.” “Childish egotism,” he says, is the soul of French criticism. The icy coldness of French tragedy was with him more offensive than the neglect of rules in the Spanish drama. Racine, the favourite tragic writer of the French school, owed his fame solely to the “tedious scrupulosity,” which he observed in composing his tragedies, but not to the “masculine vigour of genius, or the fire and spirit of fancy.” The “natural sublimity” of Spanish genius could not be restrained by the fetters of the French school. Luzan, though in many respects a very estimable author, was imbued with prejudices. Velasquez, with all his delicacy and erudition had fallen into the errors and misconceptions of Luzan. In general, Spanish poetry had, like the Spanish nation, a certain oriental character, which it was fit it should preserve. French imitations of Spanish dramas of intrigue are declared perfectly insupportable; and, in particular, the Marriage of Figaro, “a comedy altogether contemptible,” (despreciada en todas sus partes.[612])
La Huerta remained a debtor to the public for the critical grounds of these denunciations, which called forth the bitterest answers from the adverse party, and also for a reply to his opponents. He asserted briefly and bluntly that those opponents were merely “a ludicrous pack of cynical and drivelling critics, the vehicles of envy, ignorance, and imbecility.” What might not this patriotic author have effected had he been as energetic in his reasoning as in his abuse! He nevertheless appears to have contributed more than any of his contemporaries to produce a re-action in Spanish literature, which was indispensable to give to that literature the opportunity of again acquiring a poetic elevation.