Defects of taste in Spanish verse. 16. The original blemish of Spanish writing, both in prose and verse, had been an excess of effort to say everything in an unusual manner, a deviation from the beaten paths of sentiment and language in a wider curve than good taste permits. Taste is the presiding faculty which regulates, in all works within her jurisdiction, the struggling powers of imagination, emotion, and reason. Each has its claim to mingle in the composition; each may sometimes be allowed in a great measure to predominate; and a phlegmatic application of what men call common sense in æsthetic criticism is almost as repugnant to its principles as a dereliction of all reason for the sake of fantastic absurdity. Taste also must determine, by an intuitive sense of right somewhat analogous to that which regulates the manners of polished life, to what extent the most simple, the most obvious, the most natural, and, therefore, in a popular meaning, the most true, is to be modified by a studious introduction of the new, the striking, and the beautiful, so that neither what is insipid and trivial, nor yet what is forced and affected, may displease us. In Spain, as we have observed, the latter was always the prevailing fault. The public taste had been formed on bad models, on the Oriental poetry, metaphorical beyond all perceptible analogy, and on that of the Provençals, false in sentiment, false in conception, false in image and figure. The national character, proud, swelling, and ceremonious, conspired to give an inflated tone; it was also grave and sententious, rather than lively or delicate, and therefore fond of a strained and ambitious style. These vices of writing are carried to excess in romances of chivalry, which became ridiculous in the eyes of sensible men, but were certainly very popular: they affect also, though in a different manner, much of the Spanish prose of the sixteenth century, and they belong to a great deal of the poetry of that age, though it must be owned that much appears wholly exempt from them, and written in a very pure and classical spirit. Cervantes strove by example and by precept to maintain good taste; and some of his contemporaries took the same line.[467] But they had to fight against the predominant turn of their nation, which soon gave the victory to one of the worst manners of writing that ever disgraced public favour.
[467] Cervantes, in his Viage del Parnaso, praises Gongora, and even imitates his style; but this, Dieze says, is all ironical. Gesch. der Dichtkunst, p. 250.
Pedantry and far-fetched allusions. 17. Nothing can be more opposite to what is strictly called a classical style, or one formed upon the best models of Greece and Rome, than pedantry. This was, nevertheless, the weed that overspread the face of literature in those ages when Greece and Rome were the chief objects of veneration. Without an intimate discernment of their beauty, it was easy to copy allusions that were no longer intelligible, to counterfeit trains of thought that belonged to past times, to force reluctant idioms into modern form, as some are said to dress after a lady for whom nature has done more than for themselves. From the revival of letters downwards, this had been more or less observable in the learned men of Europe, and after that class grew more extensive, in the current literature of modern languages. Pedantry, which consisted in unnecessary, and perhaps unintelligible, references to ancient learning, was afterwards combined with other artifices to obtain the same end, far-fetched metaphors and extravagant conceits. The French versifiers of the latter end of the sixteenth century were eminent in both, as the works of Ronsard and Du Bartas attest. We might, indeed, take the Creation of Du Bartas more properly than the Euphues of our English Lilly, which, though very affected and unpleasing, does hardly such violence to common speech and common sense, for the prototype of the style which, in the early part of the seventeenth century, became popular in several countries, but especially in Spain, through the misplaced labours of Gongora.
Gongora. 18. Luis de Gongora, a man of very considerable talents, and capable of writing well, as he has shown, in different styles of poetry, was unfortunately led by an ambitious desire of popularity to introduce one which should render his name immortal, as it has done in a mode which he did not design. This was his estilo culto, as it was usually called, or highly polished phraseology, wherein every word seems to have been out of its natural place. “In fulfilment of this object,” says Bouterwek, “he formed for himself with the most laborious assiduity, a style as uncommon as affected, and opposed to all the ordinary rules of the Spanish language, either in prose or verse. He particularly endeavoured to introduce into his native tongue the intricate constructions of the Greek and Latin, though such an arrangement of words had never been attempted in Spanish composition. He consequently found it necessary to invent a particular system of punctuation, in order to render the sense of his verses intelligible. Not satisfied with this patch-work kind of phraseology, he affected to attach an extraordinary depth of meaning to each word, and to diffuse an air of superior dignity over his whole style. In Gongora’s poetry the most common words received a totally new signification; and in order to impart perfection to his estilo culto, he summoned all his mythological learning to his aid.”[468] “Gongora,” says an English writer, “was the founder of a sect in literature. The style called in Castilian cultismo owes its origin to him. This affectation consists in using language so pedantic, metaphors so strained, and constructions so involved, that few readers have the knowledge requisite to understand the words, and still fewer ingenuity to discover the allusion, or patience to unravel the sentences. These authors do not avail themselves of the invention of letters for the purpose of conveying, but of concealing their ideas.”[469]
[468] Bouterwek, p. 434.
[469] Lord Holland’s Lope de Vega, p. 64.
The schools formed by him. 19. The Gongorists formed a strong party in literature, and carried with them the public voice. If we were to believe some writers of the seventeenth century, he was the greatest poet of Spain.[470] The age of Cervantes was over, nor was there vitality enough in the criticism of the reign of Philip IV. to resist the contagion. Two sects soon appeared among these cultoristos; one who retained that name, and, like their master, affected a certain precision of style; another, called conceptistos, which went still greater lengths in extravagance, desirous only of expressing absurd ideas in unnatural language.[471] The prevalence of such a disease, for no other analogy can so fitly be used, would seem to have been a bad presage for Spain; but in fact, like other diseases, it did but make the tour of Europe, and rage worse in some countries than in others. It had spent itself in France, when it was at its height in Italy and England. I do not perceive the close connection of the estilo culto of Gongora with that of Marini, whom both Bouterwek and Lord Holland suppose to have formed his own taste on the Spanish school. It seems rather too severe an imputation on that most ingenious and fertile poet, who, as has already been observed, has no fitter parallel than Ovid. The strained metaphors of the Adone are easily collected by critics, and seem extravagant in juxtaposition, but they recur only at intervals; while those of Gongora are studiously forced into every line, and are besides incomparably more refined and obscure. His style, indeed, seems to be like that of Lycophron, without the excuse of that prophetical mystery, which breathes a certain awfulness over the symbolic language of the Cassandra. Nor am I convinced that our own metaphysical poetry in the reigns of James and Charles, had much to do with either Marini or Gongora, except as it bore marks of the same vice, a restless ambition to excite wonder by overstepping the boundaries of nature.
[470] Dieze, p. 250. Nicolas Antonio, to the disgrace of his judgment, maintains this with the most extravagant eulogy on Gongora; and Baillet copies him; but the next age unhesitatingly reversed the sentence. The Portuguese have laid claim to the estilo culto as their property, and one of their writers who practises it, Manuel de Faria y Sousa, gives Don Sebastian the credit of having been the first who wrote it in prose.
[471] Bouterwek, p. 438.
Sect. III.