ESPRONCEDA
EL ESTUDIANTE
DE SALAMANCA
AND OTHER SELECTIONS
EDITED BY
GEORGE TYLER NORTHUP, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF SPANISH LITERATURE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
PREFACE
The selections from Espronceda included in this volume have been edited for the benefit of advanced Spanish classes in schools and universities. The study of Espronceda, Spain's greatest Romantic poet, offers the best possible approach to the whole subject of Romanticism. He is Spain's "representative man" in that movement. Furthermore, the wealth of meters he uses is such that no other poet provides so good a text for an introduction to the study of Spanish versification. The editor has therefore treated the biography of Espronceda with some degree of completeness, studying his career as one fully representative of the historical and literary movements of the period. A treatment of the main principles of Spanish versification was also considered indispensable. It is assumed that the text will be used only in classes where the students are thoroughly familiar with the rudiments of Spanish grammar. Therefore only the more difficult points of grammar are dealt with in the notes, and little help, outside of the vocabulary, is given the student in the translating of difficult passages.
The editor makes no pretense to having established critical texts of the poems here printed, although he hopes that some improvement will be noted over previous editions. A critical edition of Espronceda's works has never been printed. Espronceda himself gave little attention to their publication. Hartzenbusch and others intervened as editors in some of the earliest editions. Their arbitrary changes have been repeated in all subsequent editions. The text of "El Estudiante de Salamanca" has been based upon the "Poesías de D. José de Espronceda," Madrid, 1840, the so-called editio princeps. This edition, however, cannot be regarded as wholly authoritative. It was not prepared for the press by the poet himself, but by his friend José García de Villalta. Though far more authentic in its readings than later editions, it abounds in inaccuracies. I have not followed its capricious punctuation, and have studied it constantly in connection with other editions, notably the edition of 1884 ("Obras Poéticas y Escritos en Prosa," Madrid, 1884). To provide a really critical text some future editor must collate the 1840 text with that version of the poem which appeared in La Alhambra, an obscure Granada review, for the year 1839. "El Mendigo" and "El Canto del Cosaco" I also base upon the 1840 edition, although the former first appeared in La Revista Española, Sept. 6, 1834. I base the "Canción del Pirata" upon the original version published in El Artista, Vol. I, 1835, p. 43. I take the "Soneto" from "El Liceo Artístico y Literario Español," 1838. For "A Teresa, Descansa en Paz," I follow the Madrid edition of 1884. The text of this, as for the whole of "El Diablo Mundo," is more reliable than that of the earlier poems.
I desire to thank Professors Rudolph Schevill, Karl Pietsch, and Milton A. Buchanan for helpful suggestions, and the latter more particularly for the loan of rare books. The vocabulary is almost entirely the work of my wife Emily Cox Northup, whose collaboration is by no means restricted to this portion of the book. More than to any other one person I am indebted to Mr. Steven T. Byington of the staff of Ginn and Company, by whose acute and scholarly observations I have often profited.