History of Spanish Literature, vol. 2 (of 3)

by George Ticknor

That such a legend should be taken by a soldier and a man of the world as the subject of an epic would hardly have been possible in the sixteenth century in any country except Spain. But many a soldier there, even in our own times, has ended a life of excesses in a hermitage as rude and solitary as that of Garin;[809] and in the time of Philip the Second, it seemed nothing marvellous that one who had fought at the battle of Lepanto, and who, by way of distinction, was commonly called “the Captain Virues,” should yet devote the leisure of his best years to a poem on Garin’s deplorable life and revolting adventures. Such, at least, was the fact. The “Monserrate,” from the moment of its appearance, was successful. Nor has its success been materially diminished at any period since. It has more of the proper arrangement and proportions of an epic than any other of the serious poems of its class in the language; and in the richness and finish of its versification, it is not surpassed, if it is equalled, by any of those of its age. The difficulties Virues had to encounter lay in the nature of his subject and the low character of his hero; but in the course of twenty cantos, interspersed with occasional episodes, like those on the battle of Lepanto and the glories of Monserrate, these disadvantages are not always felt as blemishes, and, as we know, have not prevented the “Monserrate” from being read and admired in an age little inclined to believe the legend on which it is founded.[810]

The “Benedictina,” by Nicholas Bravo, was published in 1604, and seems to have been intended to give the lives of Saint Benedict and his principal followers, in the way in which Castellanos had given the lives of Columbus and the early American adventurers, but was probably regarded rather as a book of devotion for the monks of the brotherhood, in which the author held a high place, than as a book of poetry. Certainly, to the worldly that is its true character. Nor can any other than a similar merit be assigned to two poems for which the social position of their author, Valdivielso, insured a wider temporary reputation. The first is on the history of Joseph, the husband of Mary, written, apparently, because Valdivielso himself had received in baptism the name of that saint. The other is on the peculiarly sacred image of the Madonna, preserved by a series of miracles from contamination during the subjugation of Spain by the Moors, and ever since venerated in the cathedral of Toledo, to whose princely archbishop Valdivielso was attached as a chaplain. Both of these poems are full of learning and of dulness, enormously long, and comprehend together a large part of the history, not only of the Spanish Church, but of the kingdom of Spain.[811]

Lope’s religious epic and narrative poems, of which we have already spoken, appeared at about the same time with those of Valdivielso, and enjoyed the success that attended whatever bore the name of the great popular author of his age. But better than any thing of this class produced by him was the “Christiada” of Diego de Hojeda, printed in 1611, and taken in a slight degree from the Latin poem with the same title by Vida, but not enough indebted to it to impair the author’s claims to originality. Its subject is very simple. It opens with the Last Supper, and it closes with the Crucifixion. The episodes are few and appropriate, except one,—that in which the dress of the Saviour in the garden is made an occasion for describing all human sins, whose allegorical history is represented as if woven with curses into the seven ample folds of the mantle laid on the shoulders of the expiatory victim, who thus bears them for our sake. The vision of the future glories of his Church granted to the sufferer is, on the contrary, happily conceived and well suited to its place; and still better are the gentle and touching consolations offered him in prophecy. Indeed, not a little skill is shown, in the general epic structure of the poem, and its verse is uncommonly sweet and graceful. If the characters were drawn with a firmer hand, and if the language were always sustained with the dignity its subject demands, the “Christiada” would stand deservedly at the side of the “Monserrate” of Virues. Even after making this deduction from its merits, no other religious poem in the language is to be placed before it.[812]

In the same year, Alonso Diaz, of Seville, published a pious poem on another of the consecrated images of the Madonna; and afterwards, in rapid succession, we have heroic poems, as they are called, on Loyola, and on the Madonna, both by Antonio de Escobar;—one on the creation of the world, by Azevedo, but no more an epic than the “Week” of Du Bartas, from which it is imitated;—and one on “The Brotherhood of the Five Martyrs of Arabia,” by Rodriguez de Vargas; the last being the result of a vow to two of their number, through whose intercession the author believed himself to have been cured of a mortal disease. But all these, and all of the same class that followed them,—the “David” of Uziel,—Calvo’s poem on “The Virgin,”—Vivas’s “Life of Christ,”—Juan Dávila’s “Passion of the Man-God,”—the “Samson” of Enriquez Gomez,—another heroic poem on Loyola, by Camargo,—and another “Christiad,” by Encisso,—which bring the list down to the end of the century,—add nothing to the claims or character of Spanish religious narrative poetry, though they add much to its cumbersome amount.[813]

Of an opposite character to these religious poems are the purely, or almost purely, imaginative epics of the same period, whose form yet brings them into the same class. Their number is not large, and nearly all of them are connected more or less with the fictions which Ariosto, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had thrown up like brilliant fireworks into the Italian sky, and which had drawn to them the admiration of all Europe, and especially of all Spain. There a translation of the “Orlando Furioso,” poor, indeed, but popular, had been published by Urrea as early as 1550. An imitation soon followed,—the one already alluded to, as made by Espinosa in 1555. It is called “The Second Part of the Orlando, with the True Event of the Famous Battle of Roncesvalles, and the End and Death of the Twelve Peers of France.” But at the very outset, its author tells us that “he sings the great glory of Spaniards and the overthrow of Charlemagne and his followers,” adding significantly, “This history will relate the truth, and not give the story as it is told by that Frenchman, Turpin.” Of course, we have, instead of the fictions to which we are accustomed in Ariosto, the Spanish fictions of Bernardo del Carpio and the rout of the Twelve Peers at Roncesvalles,—all very little to the credit of Charlemagne, who, at the end, retreats, disgraced, to Germany. But still, the whole is ingeniously connected with the stories of the “Orlando Furioso,” and carries on, to a considerable extent, the adventures of the personages who are its heroes and heroines.

Some of the fictions of Espinosa, however, are very extravagant and absurd. Thus, in the twenty-second canto, Bernardo goes to Paris and overthrows several of the paladins; and in the thirty-third, whose scene is laid in Ireland, he disenchants Olympia and becomes king of the island;—both of them needless and worthless innovations on the story of Bernardo, as it comes to us in the old Spanish ballads and chronicles. But in general, though it is certainly not wanting in giants and enchantments, Espinosa’s continuation of the Orlando is less encumbered with impossibilities and absurdities than the similar poem of Lope de Vega; and, in some parts, is very easy and graceful in its story-telling spirit. It ends with the thirty-fifth canto, after going through above fourteen thousand lines in ottava rima; and yet, after all, the conclusion is abrupt, and we have an intimation that more may follow.[814]

But no more came from the pen of Espinosa. Others, however, continued the same series of fictions, if they did not take up the thread where he left it. An Aragonese nobleman, Abarca de Bolea, wrote two different poems,—“Orlando the Lover” and “Orlando the Bold”;—and Garrido de Villena of Alcalá, who, in 1577, had made known to his countrymen the “Orlando Innamorato” of Boiardo, in a Spanish dress, published, six years afterwards, his “Battle of Roncesvalles”; a poem which was followed, in 1585, by one of Augustin Alonso, on substantially the same subject. But all of them are now neglected or forgotten.[815]

Not so the “Angelica” of Luis Barahona de Soto, or, as it is commonly called, “The Tears of Angelica.” The first twelve cantos were published in 1586, and received by the men of letters of that age with an extraordinary applause, which has continued to be echoed and reëchoed down to our own times. Its author was a physician in an obscure village near Seville, but he was known as a poet throughout Spain, and praised alike by Diego de Mendoza, Silvestre, Herrera, Cetina, Mesa, Lope de Vega, and Cervantes,—the last of whom makes the curate hasten to save “The Tears of Angelica” from the flames, when Don Quixote’s library was carried to the court-yard, crying out, “Truly, I should shed tears myself, if such a book had been burnt; for its author was one of the most famous poets, not only of Spain, but of the whole world.” All this admiration, however, was extravagant; and in Cervantes, who more than once steps aside from the subject on which he happens to be engaged to praise Soto, it seems to have been the result of a sincere personal friendship.

The truth is, that the Angelica, although so much praised, was never finished or reprinted, and is now rarely seen and more rarely read. It is a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” and relates the story of the heroine after her marriage, down to the time when she recovers her kingdom of Cathay, which had been violently wrested from her by a rival queen. It is extravagant in its adventures, and awkward in its machinery, especially in whatever relates to Demogorgon and the agencies under his control. But its chief fault is its dulness. Its whole movement is as far as possible removed from the life and gayety of its great prototype; and, as if to add to the wearisomeness of its uninteresting characters and languid style, one of De Soto’s friends has added to each canto a prose explanation of its imagined moral meanings and tendency, which, in a great majority of cases, it seems impossible should have been in the author’s mind when he wrote the poem.[816]

Of the still more extravagant continuation of the “Orlando” by Lope de Vega we have already spoken; and of the fragment on the same subject by Quevedo it is not necessary to speak at all. But the “Bernardo” of Balbuena, which belongs to the same period, must not be overlooked. It is one of the two or three favored poems of its class in the language; written in the fervor of the author’s youth, and published in 1624, when his age and ecclesiastical honors made him doubt whether his dignity would permit him any longer to claim it as his own.