A History of Spanish Literature

by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

The first Greek text of the New Testament ever printed came from Alcalá de Henares in 1514. In 1520 the renowned Complutensian Polyglot followed; the Hebrew and Chaldean texts being supervised by converted Jews like Alfonso de Alcalá, Alfonso de Zamora, and Pablo Coronel; the Greek by Nebrija, Juan de Vergara, Demetrio Ducas, and Hernán Núñez, "the Greek Commander." Versions of the Latin classics were in all men's hands. Palencia rendered Plutarch and Josephus, Francisco Vidal de Noya translated Horace, Virgil's Eclogues were done by Encina, Cæsar's Commentaries by Diego López de Toledo, Plautus by Francisco López Villalobos, Juvenal by Jerónimo de Villegas, and Apuleius' Golden Ass by Diego López de Cartagena, Archdeacon of Seville. Juan de Vergara was busied on the text of Aristotle, while his brother, Francisco de Vergara, gave Spaniards their first Greek grammar and translated Heliodorus. Nor was activity restrained to dead languages: the Italian teachers saw to that. Dante was translated by Pedro Fernández de Villegas, Archdeacon of Burgos; Petrarch's Trionfi by Antonio Obregón and Álvar Gómez; and the Decamerone by an anonymous writer of high merit.

If Italians invaded Spain, Spaniards were no less ready to settle in Italy. Long before, Dante had met with Catalans and had branded their proverbial stinginess:—"l'avara povertà di Catalogna." A little later, and Boccaccio spurned Castilians as so many wild men: "semibarbari et efferati homines." Lorenzo Valla, chief of the Italian scholars at Alfonso V.'s Neapolitan court, denounced the King's countrymen as illiterates:—"a studiis humanitatis abhorrentes." Benedetto Gareth of Barcelona (1450-?1514) plunged into the new current, forswore his native tongue, wrote his respectable Rime in Italian, and re-incarnated himself under the Italian form of Chariteo. A certain Jusquin Dascanio is represented by a song, half-Latin, half-Italian, in Asenjo Barbieri's Cancionero Musical de los Siglos xv. y xvi. (No. 68), and a few anonymous pieces in the same collection are written wholly in Italian. The Valencian, Bertomeu Gentil, and the Castilian, Tapia, use Italian in the Cancionero General of 1527, the former succeeding so far that one of his eighteen Italian sonnets has been accepted as Tansillo's by all Tansillo's editors. The case of the Spanish Jew, Judas Abarbanel, whom Christians call León Hebreo, is exceptional. Undoubtedly his famous Dialoghi di amore, that curious product of neo-platonic and Semitic mysticism which charmed Abarbanel's contemporaries no less than it charmed Cervantes, reaches us in Italian (1535). Yet, since it was written in 1502, its foreign dress is the chance result of the writer's expulsion from Spain with his brethren in 1492. It is unlikely that Judas Abarbanel should have mastered all the secrets of Italian within ten years: that he composed in Castilian, the language most familiar to him, is overwhelmingly probable.

But the Italian was met on his own ground. The Neapolitan poet, Luigi Tansillo, declares himself a Spaniard to the core:—"Spagnuolo d'affezione." And, later, Panigarola asserts that Milanese fops, on the strength of a short tour in Spain, would pretend to forget their own speech, and would deliver themselves of Spanish words and tags in and out of season. Meanwhile, Spanish Popes, like Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., helped to bring Spanish into fashion. It is unlikely that the epical Historia Parthenopea (1516) of the Sevillan, Alonso Hernández, found many readers even among the admirers of the Great Captain, Gonzalo de Córdoba, whose exploits are its theme; but it merits notice as a Spanish book issued in Rome, and as a poor imitation of Mena's Trescientas, with faint suggestions of an Italian environment. A Spaniard, whom Encina may have met upon his travels, introduced Italians to the Spanish theatre. This was Bartolomé Torres Naharro, a native of Torres, near Badajoz. Our sole information concerning him comes from a Letter Prefatory to his works, written by one Barbier of Orleans. The dates of his birth and death are unknown, and no proof supports the story that he was driven from Rome because of his satires on the Papal court. Neither do we know that he died in extreme poverty. These are baseless tales. What is certain is this: that Torres Naharro, having taken orders, was captured by Algerine pirates, was ransomed, and made his way to Rome about the year 1513. Further, we know that he lived at Naples in the service of Fabrizio Colonna, and that his collected plays were published at Naples in 1517 with the title of Propaladia, dedicated to Francisco Dávalos, the Spanish husband of Vittoria Colonna. That Torres Naharro was a favourite with Leo X. rests on no better basis than the fact that in the Pope's privilege to print he is styled dilectus filius.

His friendly witness, Barbier, informs us that, though Torres Naharro was quite competent to write his plays in Latin, he chose Castilian of set purpose that "he might be the first to write in the vulgar tongue." This phrase, taken by itself, implies ignorance of Encina's work; in any case, Torres Naharro develops his drama on a larger scale than that of his predecessor. His Prohemio or Preface is full of interesting doctrine. He divides his plays into five acts, because Horace wills it so, and these acts he calls jornadas, "because they resemble so many resting-points." The personages should not be too many: not less than six, and not more than twelve. If the writer introduces some twenty characters in his Tinellaria, he excuses himself on the ground that "the subject needed it." He further apologises for the introduction of Italian words in his plays: a concession to "the place where, and the persons to whom, the plays were recited." Lastly, Torres Naharro divides dramas into two broad classes: first, the comedia de noticia, which treats of events really seen and noted; second, the comedia de fantasía, which deals with feigned things, imaginary incidents that seem true, and might be true, though in fact they are not so.

Of the comedia de fantasía Torres Naharro is the earliest master. He adventures on the allegorical drama in his Trofea, which commemorates the exploits of Manoel of Portugal in Africa and India, and brings Fame and Apollo upon the stage. The chivalresque drama is represented by him in such pieces as the Serafina, the Aquilana, the Himenea; while he examples the play of manners by the Jacinta and the Soldadesca. Each piece begins with an introyto or prologue, wherein indulgence and attention are requested; then follows a concise summary of the plot; last, the action opens. The faults of Torres Naharro's theatre are patent enough: his tendency to turn comedy to farce, his inclination to extravagance, his want of tact in crowding his stage—as in the Tinellaria—with half-a-dozen characters chattering in half-a-dozen different languages at once.

Setting aside these primitive humours, it is impossible to deny that Torres Naharro has a positive, as well as an historic value. His versification, always in the Castilian octosyllabic metre, with no trespassing on the Italian hendecasyllabic, is neat and polished, and, though far from splendid, lacks neither sweetness nor speed; his dialogue is pointed, opportune, dramatic; his characters are observed and are set in the proper light. His verses entitled the Lamentaciones de Amor are in the old, artificial manner; his satirical couplets on the clergy are vigorous and witty attacks on the general life of Rome; his devout songs are neither better nor worse than those of his contemporaries; and his sonnets—two in Italian, one in a mixture of Italian and Latin—are mere curiosities of no real worth, yet they testify to the writer's uncommon versatility. Versatile Torres Naharro unquestionably was, and his gift serves him in the plays for which he is remembered. He is the first Spaniard to realise his personages, to create character on the boards; the first to build a plot, to maintain an interest of action by variety of incident, to polish an intrigue, to concentrate his powers within manageable limits, to view stage-effects from before the curtain. In a word, Torres Naharro knew the stage, its possibilities, and its resources. For his own age and for his opportunities he knew it even too well; and his Himenea—the theme of which is the love of Himeneo for Febea, with the interposition of Febea's brother, petulant as to the "point of honour"—is an isolated masterpiece, unrivalled till the time of Lope de Vega. The accident that Torres Naharro's Propaladia was printed in Italy; the misfortune that its Spanish reprints were tardy, and that his plays were too complicated for the primitive resources of the Spanish stage: these delayed the development of the Spanish theatre by close on a century. Yet the fact remains: to find a match for the Himenea we must pass to the best of Lope's pieces.

Thus the Spaniard in Italy. In Portugal, likewise, he made his way. Gil Vicente (1470-1540), the Portuguese dramatist, wrote forty-two pieces, of which ten are wholly in Castilian, while fifteen are in a mixed jargon of Castilian and Portuguese which the author himself ridicules as aravia in his Auto das Fadas. An important historical fact is that Vicente's earliest dramatic attempt, the Monologo da Visitação, is in Castilian, and that it was actually played—the first lay piece ever given in Portugal—on June 8, 1502. Its simplicity of tone and elegance of manner are reminiscent of Encina, and it can scarce be doubted that Vicente's imitation is deliberate. Still more obvious is the following of Encina's eclogues in Vicente's Auto pastoril Castelhano and the Auto dos Reis Magos, where the legend is treated with Encina's curious touch of devotion and modernity, the whole closing with a song in which all join. Once again Encina's influence is manifest in the Auto da Sibilla Cassandra, wherein Cassandra, niece of Moses, Abraham, and Isaiah, is wooed by Solomon. In Amadís de Gaula and in Dom Duardos there is a marked advance in elaboration and finish; and in the Auto da Fé Vicente proves his independence by an ingenuity and a fancy all his own. Here he displays qualities above those of his model, and treats his subject with such brilliancy that, a century and a half later, Calderón condescended to borrow from the Portuguese the idea of his auto entitled El Lirio y la Azucena. Gil Vicente is technically a dramatist, but he is not dramatic as Torres Naharro is dramatic. His action is slight, his treatment timid and conventional, and he is more poetic than inventive; still, his dramatic songs are of singular beauty, conceived in a tone of mystic lyricism unapproached by those who went before him, and surpassed by few who followed. That Vicente was ever played in Spain is not known; but that he influenced both Lope de Vega and Calderón is as sure as that he himself was a disciple of Encina.

A more immediate factor in the evolution of Spanish letters was the Catalan Boscá, whom it is convenient to call by his Castilian name, Juan Boscán Almogaver (?1490-1542). A native of Barcelona, Boscán served as a soldier in Italy, returned to Spain in 1519, and, as we know from Garcilaso's Second Eclogue, was tutor to Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, whom the world knows as the Duque de Alba. Boscán's earliest verses are all in the old manner; nor does he venture on the Italian hendecasyllabic till the year 1526, just before resigning his guardianship of Alba. His conversion was the work of the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Navagiero, an accomplished courtier, ill represented by his Viaggio fatto in Spagna. Being at Granada in the year 1526, Navagiero met Boscán, who has left us an account of the conversation:—"Talking of wit and letters, especially of their varieties in different tongues, he inquired why I did not try in Castilian the sonnets and verse-forms favoured by distinguished Italians. He not only suggested this, but pressed me urgently to the attempt. Some days later, I made for home, and, because of the length and loneliness of the journey, thinking matters over, I returned to what Navagiero had said, and thus I first attempted this sort of verse; finding it hard at the outset, since it is very intricate, with many peculiarities, varying greatly from ours. Yet, later, I fancied that I was progressing well, perhaps because we all love our own essays; hence I continued, little by little, with increasing zeal." This passage is a locus classicus. Ticknor justly observes that no single foreigner ever affected a national literature more deeply and more instantly than Navagiero, and that we have here a first-hand account, probably unique in literary history, of the first inception of a revolution by the earliest, if not the most conspicuous, actor in it. We have at last reached the parting of the ways, and Boscán presents himself as a guide to the Promised Land. The astonishing thing is that Boscán, a Barcelonese by birth and residence, ignores Auzías March.

There were many Italianates before Boscán—as Francisco Imperial and Santillana; but their hour was not propitious, and Boscán is with justice regarded as the leader of the movement. He was not a poet of singular gifts, and he had the disadvantage of writing in Castilian, which was not his native language; but Boscán had the wit to see that Castilian was destined to supremacy, and he mastered it for his purpose with that same dogged perseverance which led him to undertake his more ambitious attempt unaided. He does not, indeed, appear to have sought for disciples, nor were his own efforts as successful as he believed: "perhaps because we all love our own essays." His Castilian prose is evidence of his gift of style, and his translation of Castiglione's Cortegiano is a triumph of rendering fit to take its place beside our Thomas Hoby's version of the same original. But, it must be said frankly, that Boscán's most absolute success is in prose. Herrera bitterly taunts him with decking himself in the precious robes of Petrarch, and with remaining, spite of all that he can do, "a foreigner in his language." And the charge is true. In verse Boscán's defects grow very visible: his hardness, his awkward construction, his unrefined ear, his uncertain touch upon his instrument, his boisterous execution. Still, it is not as an original genius that Boscán finds place in history, but rather as an initiator, a master-opportunist who, without persuasion, by the sheer force of conviction and example, led a nation to abandon the ancient ways, and to admit the potency and charm of exotic forms. That in itself constitutes a title, if not to immortality, at least to remembrance.

Boscán's influence manifested itself in diverse ways. His friend, Garcilaso de la Vega, sent him the first edition of Castiglione's Cortegiano, printed at Venice in 1528. This—"the best book that ever was written upon good breeding," according to Samuel Johnson—was triumphantly translated into Castilian by Boscán at Garcilaso's prayer; and, though Boscán himself held translation to be a thing meet for "men of small parts," his rendering is an almost perfect performance. Moreover, it was the single work published by him (1534), for his poems appeared under his widow's care. Once more, in an epistle directed to Hurtado de Mendoza, Boscán re-echoes Horace's note of elegant simplicity with a faithfulness not frequent in his work; and, lastly, it is known that he did into Castilian an Euripidean play, which, though licensed for the press, was never printed. Truly it seems that Boscán was conscious of his very definite limitations, and that he felt the necessity of a copy, rather than a direct model. If it were so, this would indicate a power of conscious selection, a faculty for self-criticism which cannot be traced in his published verses. His earlier poems, written in Castilian measures, show him for a man destitute of guidance, thrown on his own resources, a perfectly undistinguished versifier with naught to sing and with no dexterity of vocalisation. Yet, let Boscán betake himself to the poets of the Cinque Cento, and he flashes forth another being: the dauntless adventurer sailing for unknown continents, inspired by the enthusiasm of immediate suggestion.