In the first half of the eighteenth century, a new, though not a happy turn, became perceptible in the dramatic poetry of the Portuguese. While the Spanish drama still supplied the place of a Portuguese national drama, the favour of the court of Lisbon was bestowed on the Italian opera. The general approbation which was soon extended to operatic performances of every description, led to the introduction on the Portuguese stage of a singular species of hybridous comedy. There was a wish to naturalize the Italian opera; but it is probable that few Portuguese singers were then capable of executing recitative; and it may also be presumed, that the Portuguese had heard of the little French operas, in which the characters speak and sing alternately. This, however, is certain, that the public of Lisbon had always a strong predilection for comic entertainments; and, it appears, that with the view of fully satisfying the popular taste, it was thought advisable to introduce the pomp of the serious Italian opera into the comic drama of Portugal. By what practical head this idea was suggested no Portuguese writer has thought fit to record. It seems not improbable that it had its origin in the speculation of a theatrical manager, who wished to venture on the experiment of amusing the public in a new way; and who, for that purpose, availed himself of the services of some obscure writer, who happened to have a talent for dramatic poetry. The first essays of this theatrical novelty were all anonymous. It is, however, likely, that the result greatly exceeded the expectation of the speculator. The scenic decorations, in which the new species of drama rivalled the Italian, the burlesque humour of the pieces themselves, the effects of music, both vocal and instrumental, captivated the great mass of the Lisbon public. The higher ranks of society too, and even the court, took an interest in these performances. New dramas in this spirit and style followed each other in rapid succession, more particularly during the ten years which elapsed between 1730 and 1740. But no poet, who had previously acquired reputation, appears to have devoted himself to this kind of composition; and the prolific dramatist, whose anonymous productions were so fortunate as to obtain the chief favour of the public, had probably at the time private reasons for wishing to remain unknown. He was a Jew, whose name, even after it was disclosed, was seldom mentioned, as the public, content with the antonomasia, still continued to call him O Judeo, (the Jew).[353]
The popularity of the new dramas soon became so great, that manuscript copies were eagerly procured for the purpose of private performance or reading. From these copies collections were printed, the increase of which fell still short of the public demand.[354] To none of the dramas contained in these collections is the name of an author affixed. In spirit and style they so closely resemble each other, that they may all be considered as the production of one individual. If at this period French taste had acquired any decided influence on Portuguese literature, such dramas, though they might, for the sake of incident, music, and decoration, have been tolerated on the stage, would never have been sought for in print. It is impossible to imagine a more rude combination of low jests, with romantic and miraculous events, partly taken from real history, and partly from the Greek and Roman mythology. Had this strange compound been the workmanship of cultivated as well as of inventive talent, then, indeed, might the grotesque medley have been rendered, by the ingenuity of composition, entertaining even to readers of cultivated taste. But in these confused jumbles, called comic operas, the composition is, in general, as inartificial as the wit intended to enliven them is dull. The lowest buffoonery is blended with singular adventures, tournaments, or ceremonies; and trivial airs and songs are successively introduced. Some can lay no claim to any merit of invention, either in arrangement of story or incidents, as is exemplified in a spectacle of this class called Don Quixote, which was represented in 1733. No fewer than thirty-six characters figure in this compilation from the master work of Cervantes, whose spirit is, however, banished from the composition. The Esopaida ou Vida de Esopo, (Æsopeid, or Life of Æsop) is one of these pieces which seems intended to be particularly comic. The first scene represents a fair at Athens with all its appropriate accompaniments. The philosopher Zeno appears with Æsop and two other slaves, all of whom he wishes to sell. Æsop soon distinguishes himself by coarse jests and endless quibbling.[355] Another philosopher, named Xanthus enters, accompanied by his disciples Periander and Ennius. He puts Æsop’s wit to the test, and purchases him.[356] The scene now changes. Filena, the daughter of Xanthus, confides the secrets of her heart to an old and ugly female slave, named Gerigonza. They are joined by Euripedes, the wife of the philosopher, who reprimands her daughter, and sings a silly scolding duet with her.[357] Æsop enters and again makes a display of his wit. Then follows a tender scene between Filena and her lover; Gerigonza becomes enamoured of Æsop; and the philosopher and his wife quarrel together, singing a duet of the most vulgar character. By a succession of scenes of this sort, the action is carried on through the first act. In the second act King Crœsus of Lydia arrives with an army to besiege Athens: and Themistocles appears on horse-back in the suite of Crœsus. The scene is now alternately in Athens and in the camp of Crœsus. Drums and fifes are kept in constant employment. Splendid pleasure gardens adorned with statues add to the pomp of the spectacle. But Æsop, whose puns and quibbles are inexhaustible, is always the hero of the piece. At last, after bringing about a peace between Crœsus, and the people of Athens, he is appointed governor of the city. Thus ends the Æsopeid, which might with more propriety be entitled the Buffooniad. Amidst this grotesque jumble, however, sparks of no common fancy are occasionally elicited; but the anonymous author seems to have been totally destitute of literary cultivation, and to have had no higher aim than to give a humorous colouring to the rudeness of his combinations. The rest of the Portuguese comic operas are, upon the whole, still more rude than the Æsopeid, though some are richer in the musical part of the composition, and possess grave or even pathetic airs and duets in the style of the serious Italian opera.
It might, at first sight, be supposed, that a nation which could be pleased by dramas of this kind, must be for ever excluded from the path of higher cultivation. In Lisbon, the Italian opera-house continued to be the real court theatre. But the Portuguese opera which stood like a spurious child beside the Italian, maintained its ground in spite of its parent. Had not the taste for this kind of dramatic entertainment prevailed down to the second half of the eighteenth century, a new edition of the Æsopeid, and other theatrical caricatures, would not have been published in 1787. The restoration of a truly noble style in Portuguese poetry, could not therefore be expected to derive its origin from the drama.
RESUMPTION OF AN IMPROVED STYLE IN PORTUGUESE POETRY.
MANOEL DA COSTA.
To obtain this object, it was, however, only necessary that a poet should arise, who, charmed by the renewed union of Portuguese and Italian poetry, might be induced to place himself under the tutelage of the early Italian poets. Thus would the Italian opera have rendered compensation for the evils to which it had given birth. A Brazilian, named Claudio Manoel da Costa, was one of the first writers who in this way contributed to reintroduce an elevated style into Portuguese poetry.[358] Born in the province of Minas Geraes, that part of Brazil where the chief object is the working of mines, he seems not to have been destined for the service of the muses. He indeed passed through a course of academic studies in Europe; but he himself states that during the five years which he spent at the university of Coimbra, no kind of poetry was there held in esteem, save that which was composed in the corrupt but fashionable style of the Portuguese Marinists. That young Da Costa, while at the university of Coimbra, should have applied himself to the study and imitation of the older Italian poets, and of Metastasio, was a circumstance peculiarly favourable to his improvement, while at the same time it afforded the first proof of his being destined to arrive at a point of purer cultivation than his contemporaries. He even ventured on the composition of Petrarchic sonnets in the Italian language, and in this attempt he was not unsuccessful. On his return to Brazil his poetic studies were continued in the region of gold and diamond treasures, to which he seems to have attached but little value; for he complains that amidst these mountains, no Arcadian stream awakes by its sweet murmur harmonious verse: and that the turbid waters of the brooks only serve to call to recollection the rapacious perseverance of the miners by whose labour they are discoloured. On his own poems he pronounces a remarkable judgment. He observes that he was too late in learning the rules of good taste from the Greeks, Italians and French; and that influenced by bad example, he sinned against principles, the justice of which he recognized. The perverted manner of the sonnetists of the seventeenth century is certainly here and there perceptible in the writings of Da Costa. But upon the whole, it may be said, that for nearly the space of a century, no Portuguese writer had so well succeeded in that kind of sonnet poetry, which most charmingly approximates to the style of Petrarch; and that in the other compositions of this Brazilian poet, the faults are counterbalanced by merits of the most pleasing kind. The sonnets included in the collection of his poetic works, amount to nearly a hundred; and among them are some in Italian, but none in the Spanish language. The style of these sonnets, nearly all of which have love for their subject, is, however, not altogether that of Petrarch. They possess a certain tone of poignancy, which betrays the spirit of modern times. Nevertheless, Da Costa’s style, alike free from exaggeration and fantastic ornaments, exhibits the truth of nature and of poetry so happily united with Petrarchic intensity of feeling, and expressed in language so elegant and unostentatious, that his sonnets may justly be numbered among the very best in Portuguese literature.[359] While perusing them, the reader cannot fail sometimes to fancy that he recognizes the simple tone of the old Portuguese lyric poetry, reflected by an Italian echo.[360] Though the influence of French taste was far less powerful than the Italian with Da Costa, it still had some effect on his poetry. It appears to have guided him in the choice of a metre for his epicedios, or elegies. These poems, however, are not composed in Alexandrines, but in iambics of five feet, without any complexity in the rhymes. This is a kind of verse which is frequently used by English writers; and yet Da Costa seems never to have turned his attention to English poetry. But though such verse was quite uncommon, similar measures had long before been known in Portugal, and perhaps Da Costa was not the first Portuguese poet who in this way attempted to approximate to the French style, as far as the diversity of the languages would, with propriety, permit the experiment to be carried. This dull style of rhyming, appears, however, always somewhat foreign and inharmonious in Portuguese poetry. In other respects, these epicedios possess the merit of noble, inartificial, and pleasing expression; but they want the high charm of the author’s sonnets, and some of his other poetic compositions.[361] He himself appears to have attached most value to his twenty eclogues. They are indeed written with peculiar care, and are not destitute of beauty in some of their parts; but, like most Portuguese eclogues, they are either occasional poems in a bucolic dress, or partly lyric compositions, which, with the exception of pastoral names, exhibit no trace of bucolic character. The extraordinary predilection of the more ancient Portuguese for this species of pastoral poetry, had therefore descended from one generation to another, down to these latter times. One of Da Costa’s eclogues is dedicated to the prime minister, the Marquis of Pombal, or as he was then still called, the Count of Oeyras, with a warmth of feeling which seems to have been the genuine effusion of the poet’s heart. From an emphatic eulogy pronounced on that minister, it may be concluded that the Portuguese poets immediately and sensibly felt the beneficial effects of his administration, for the general encouragement of mental freedom was a part of Pombal’s system. The poet says of the statesman, that he reconciled innocence with genius, and recalled justice to the world.[362] Among Da Costa’s other poems, the most remarkable are his masterly imitations of canzonettas, cantatas, and other modern Italian poems for music, to which the opera has given birth. Nothing finer in this style of poetry is to be found even in the similar minor works of Metastasio. His A’ Lyra Desprezo (Farewell to Poetry), and the Palinodia, which accompanies it, are alone sufficient to prove the perfect accordance of the Italian and Portuguese language with respect to the laws of musical poetry.[363] But still finer is another Farewell, entitled, Fileno ä Nize, despedida, which was probably composed by Da Costa on his return to America. Here the old romantic inexhaustibility in the poetic amplification of a favourite idea, sustained by a constantly recurring burthen, is united with all the magic of Metastasio’s versification.[364] In some poems of the same class which Da Costa composed in the Italian language, a certain degree of constraint is observable. But his Portuguese cantatas, spiritual as well as temporal, are not only free from that fault, but often bear the stamp of excellence.
PROGRESS OF PORTUGUESE POETRY IN THE LATTER PART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[365]
To make a detailed report of Portuguese poetry during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, is a task which must be consigned to other writers. In this general history it is sufficient briefly to describe how the new spirit of Portuguese literature acquired, even on its poetic side, a marked influence, though it did not unfold itself with that energy which was necessary to reproduce the poetry of the sixteenth century under somewhat varied features. This period must not yet be extolled as the commencement of a second golden age of Portuguese poetry; but the poetic talent of the Portuguese has opened for itself a wider field; and fantastic rhyming no longer finds admirers among the educated class of readers. The Portuguese zealously endeavour to rival, in polite literature, as well as in science, those nations who have, or who seem to have outstripped them. But this rivalry is happily combined with a revived veneration for the poetry of the sixteenth century. Thus have the old national forms of Portuguese poetry been preserved for modern times; and the Portuguese drama alone seems doomed to be governed by French laws.
TRANSLATIONS.
In the first half of the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, the desire to cultivate a correct style in Portuguese poetry was fostered by new translations of some of the latin classics. The Odes of Horace were translated into Portuguese by Joaquim José da Costa e Sa;[366] the Satyres of Sulpitia by Antonio Luis de Azavedo;[367] Ovid’s Heroides by Miguel de Couto Guerreiro;[368] and the comedies of Terence by Leonel da Costa.[369] But it would appear that the Portuguese did not in their wish to become more intimately acquainted with genuine poetry, so happily commence the translation of the Greek poets. On the other hand, several French and English works obtained a suitable Portuguese dress. Telemachus appeared in the year 1770; and Young’s tragedies in 1788. A circumstance which cannot fail to excite surprize, at least in Germany, is that in the year 1791 there appeared a Portuguese translation of the Herman of Baron Shönaich, the most indifferent of all German epic compositions;[370] but Gessner’s Death of Abel also appeared in the Portuguese language in the year 1785.