None of the Spanish poets, of either former or present times, can be said to have attained the highest rank; yet as they have always shown a predilection for subjects of real incident and passion or feeling, they have gained, in perhaps a greater degree than those of any other modern nation, that hold upon the popular affections which arises from all earnest participation in kindred sentiments. This might arise partly from the national character developed, as before intimated, in the Moorish wars, and partly from the personal tendencies of the respective individuals. Whilst in other countries the poets were generally to be found among the classes dependent upon the rich and powerful, in Spain they were persons generally of the highest classes. Some were of royal rank, others were eminent as statesmen, and others, if not of the same high station, were yet equally engaged in military service or the active business of life. Three of the most favourite poets, Garcilasso de la Vega, Manrique, and Cadahalso, died the death of soldiers from wounds received in warfare. Ercilla, author of the chief poem in the Spanish language, which may be considered an Epic, was a participant in the wars he so graphically describes. Cervantes received three wounds at the battle of Lepanto, by one of which he lost an arm. Calderon de la Barca passed many years of his life in the campaigns in the Low Countries, where he gained great military reputation; and Lope de Vega was one of the few adventurers in the “Invincible Armada” who were fortunate enough to return to their native country. Such men were not likely to indulge in dreamy idealities, or idle reveries, and fantastic imaginations, the offspring of morbid temperaments and sedentary habits. On the contrary, they were only calculated to adopt that peculiar manliness of style and sentiment, which their successors, from example, from national character, and from being placed in similar circumstances of life, have continued. How far those circumstances have affected the modern literature of Spain may be best seen from the memoirs hereafter detailed of the principal poets individually. Our present purpose in this Introduction is only to make general observations to lead to the conclusions that may be deduced from them.
Spain, as it has been already observed, cannot boast of having ever produced a poet of the highest class, meaning by that term, one of such high creative genius as to stamp his character, not only on the literature of his own age and country, but also on that of all successive ages within his possible influence. Of such poets the world has only seen four or five at the utmost, with the exception of the inspired writers, referring to Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and perhaps we may add, Byron. With these, Virgil and other imitators must not be classed, however great the talents they may have displayed, nor yet other writers of greater originality and even genius, who have, however, confined themselves to minor works or those on less important subjects. Of such writers of great original genius, who did not aim at works of the highest order, Spanish literature may claim as many as that of any other country. With them the English reader has been made acquainted more fully than with the writers of most other modern countries, by the works of Bouterwek and Sismondi, translated respectively by Mrs. Ross and William Roscoe, and now by the more comprehensive work of Mr. Ticknor (New York, 1849; London, 1850), who has supplied the deficiencies the others had left in the course of their inquiries. Of these works Sismondi’s is little more than a repetition of Bouterwek’s, without the acknowledgement made which was in justice due to his original. That however was in reality so jejune in treating of the materials at the command of the writer, as almost to warrant the use of his materials for a livelier production. Another work has been lately published on Spanish literature by Mr. A. F. Foster (Edinburgh, 1851), compiled in like manner from former writers, which, for succinct and able treatment of the subject, may perhaps be recommended as the one best suited to the general reader. But Mr. Ticknor’s book must remain the great work of reference to the older Spanish authors, as he has left little for future writers to supply respecting them. Yet neither has he gone scarcely any further than Bouterwek, who wrote at the beginning of this century, and since whose time so many writers have arisen in Spain superior to any perhaps that have preceded them. In such works we have more cause to congratulate ourselves on having any one to undertake the labour of going over so wide a field, than to complain of his stopping short at a point where less was known of Spanish literature, and where it became so much more interesting as connected with our own times. But as all the compilers now mentioned have so confined their labours to works written previously to the present century, it may be considered acceptable, in continuation of them, that the present essay should be offered to the public. This is, however, also undertaken on a more extended and somewhat different plan; not merely giving short notices of the several authors and their works, as in the nature of a catalogue or dictionary, but taking only the principal poets for a particular account of their history, and giving translations from their works most characteristic of their genius or best suited for translation, for the purpose of enabling the critical notices respecting them to be better understood.
In treating of the literature of any country historically, it may perhaps be considered necessary to give a catalogue of every person who has published a book of any pretensions to notice, whatever the different gradations of talent between the authors; but for the general reader, the better course seems rather to be to pass by those works which the nation had not accepted as to be incorporated in the national literature, and to dwell extendedly on those which, by repeated editions, were entitled to be considered of that character. Bouterwek’s work on Spanish literature, which appears to have been his own performance, and which certainly does great credit to his industry, is an exemplification of the former course. The volume on Portuguese literature, under his name, which he acknowledges to have been the contribution of a friend, is not so liable to the same objection, and may be considered written according to the other. It is so difficult a task, and so enviable a lot for any one to attain to excellence above his fellows, that beyond its being due to his own merits, it is an advantage to others to show them by his example the way to attain to the same eminence. Johnson, in his Lives of the English Poets, has given us a work admirable for its criticisms as well as for the other lessons it conveys for general conduct in life; but those criticisms would have lost much of their effect, if they had not had appended to them the works to which they referred. Biography, to be worthy of study, should be something more than a mere enumeration of those particulars of a man’s life which are of the common class of every-day events, so as to be the reflex of every one’s in his station. If any man’s life be at all more memorable than that of ordinary mortals, the means by which he obtained his reputation alone merit a lengthened consideration for an example for others. With authors those claims must rest on their writings, which will speak for themselves; but this cannot be the case with foreign authors, as few readers of other nations can ever be expected to have acquired their language so perfectly as to understand the essential beauty of their poetry. To enable such readers therefore to understand their works, or even the criticisms upon them, a translation is necessary, on which again much depends, not only in respect of faithfulness but also of felicity of transcript, to render the beauties of the original sufficiently perceptible.
Many rules have been given by critics for the benefit of translators from the earliest times till now, to which it is not necessary here to refer further than to state the plan upon which these translations have been made. In a didactic or historical work, the more precisely the translation is made according to the letter of the original, the greater merit may it be considered to possess. But in works of imagination, especially of poetry, it may be more important to attend to the spirit of the original than to the literal construction. The main thoughts contained in each passage should be as faithfully given in the one case as in the other, though it may not be necessary, and sometimes not even becoming, to have the same regard to details. With poetry, the translator should make it his great aim to consider how his author would have expressed the same thoughts if he had been writing in English verse, and thus mould the original ideas into synonymous poetical expressions, as far as the idioms of the two languages and the requirements of metre will allow. It would be a poor vanity in a translator to think of improving on his original, so far as to make any alteration or addition merely for that purpose. But where any words admit of synonyms with different shades of meaning, it is certainly his right, if not his duty, to adopt the one he thinks most suitable. Sometimes it may seem to him accordant with good taste to make a more decided alteration, and in every language there are many expressions sufficiently poetical and appropriate, which if construed literally into another would appear otherwise. These the author, it may be supposed, would have altered himself, under the same circumstances, and the other, therefore, in so doing, would be only acting on his presumed wishes. In all cases much must be left of necessity to the translator’s judgement, and he, with every care he can take, must still be content to share, with Pope and Dryden and the greatest masters of rhyme, the consciousness of scarcely ever being able fully to convey the conceptions of a foreign author. The shackles of rhyme also require something to be sacrificed to them, so as of themselves alone to prevent any exact copy being given in verse. Yet still acting on the above considerations, and by rejecting expletives in some cases and adding a few in others, in following up the train of ideas suggested by the original, we may hope to succeed perhaps not only in giving the meaning, but something also of the spirit even of foreign authors.
It is fortunate for any writer to have his works sent forth to the world in any language of more than usual ascendency, such as the Latin or English, whereby to obtain for himself, if he can claim it, the most extended reputation. But it is more fortunate for a translator under similar circumstances, because languages of such a character are almost of necessity mixed languages, acquiring from that cause an extraordinary nerve and richness, which render translations into them to be made more easily and satisfactorily than from them into a poorer. The English is essentially suited for such a purpose, as, being compounded of the French and German languages, it becomes a double one, combining the nerve of the one with the facility of expression of the other, and the copiousness arising from the union of both. The Latin is still more a mixed language, the roots of which are yet to be developed, notwithstanding all the labours of philologists, who have erred in wandering after imaginary extinct languages for its derivations, instead of looking into those yet existing. Considering the Spanish to be the direct descendant of the Latin, it may be a matter of surprise that, though a very sonorous language, it cannot be termed a rich one. Abounding in long words (sesquipedalia verba), it loses in precision and strength what is gained in sound, and thus the ideas are encumbered when simplification was required. The comparatively monosyllabic character of the English language has in this respect an immense advantage for the translator, as it enables him to give the sentiments of the original more concisely than one from it into another. Having also more synonyms with different shades of meaning, a greater precision may be lost or gained, according to the circumstances and the judgement applied to them. Thus a translation may sometimes be even superior to the original, from its giving the ideas more distinctly, and as it is the test of good writing to find how it reads in another language, so with really superior authors it may be a matter of little importance in what version their thoughts are expressed. “Words are the daughters of earth, but thoughts are the sons of heaven.” It is not presumed hereby that the following translations all come under this consideration, but with the advantages above expressed, it may be hoped that, as exotics in a greenhouse, these flowers of Spanish poetry may be found pleasing representations of what they were in their native soil, even if they cannot be made entirely denizens of our own.
Differing entirely from those writers who suppose that the best days of Spanish literature have gone by, and believing, on the contrary, that it never has been more truly original and flourishing than during the present and preceding ages, it might be justly considered presumptuous in any new author to present such opinions to the world without showing the grounds on which they were founded. Bouterwek and his copyist, Sismondi, together with their criticisms on the several Spanish poets, contented themselves with giving merely a few lines from the more favoured ones in their original language, without any translation whereby to enable those ignorant of it to judge even of the thoughts they contained. They thus resemble the wiseacre in Hierocles (the Σχολαστικὸς, which word Johnson has strangely translated ‘pedant,’ taking the primary for the intended meaning), who brought a stone as a description of a building. In so doing, they have seldom given even favourable specimens; but if they had, there are few authors who can be rightly estimated by isolated passages, or even by any one short poem. Almost all authors are unequal in their productions, and many seem, by an accidental felicity, to have produced some one effusion to which none of their other efforts could ever approach. As instances of this, we may note Heber’s ‘Palestine;’ Pringle’s lines, ‘Afar in the Desert,’ and Leyden’s ‘Ode to an Indian Gold Coin,’ which Colton has pronounced, in his opinion, “to come as near to perfection as the sublunary Muse can arrive at.”
It is only by several well-sustained efforts that any author has a right to be placed among poets, and it would not be just, therefore, to judge of any without such a consideration of their productions. In all the translations here given, the most characteristic specimens of the style of each writer have been sought, particularly those containing what seemed to be his favourite course of thought, while selecting entire, though generally short, poems for that purpose. With the exception of the Duke de Rivas, the poets enumerated in this work have not published poems of any great length, and therefore the plan adopted may be considered altogether appropriate to the object in view.
With regard to the metres chosen, no rule has been attempted of taking the original strictly for a guide, where the style of verse, in a different language, would not admit of it easily. Perhaps the truest definition of Poetry may be given in the words of our great poet—
“Thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers—”