Letters from Spain

by Joseph Blanco White

Even bull-fights have been forbidden, and the idle population of the metropolis of Spain have been left no other source of amusement than collecting every evening in the extensive walk called El Prado, after having lounged away the morning about the streets, or basked in the sun, during the winter, at the Puerta del Sol, a large space, almost surrounded by public buildings. The coffee-rooms are, in the cold season, crowded for about an hour after dinner, i. e. from three to four in the afternoon, and in the early part of the evening; but the noise, and the smoke of the cigars, make these places as close and disagreeable as any tap-room in London. It would be absurd to expect any kind of rational conversation in such places. The most interesting topics must be carefully avoided, for fear of the combined powers of the police and the Inquisition, whose spies are dreaded in all public places. Hence the depraved taste which degrades our intercourse to an eternal giggling and bantering.

Our daily resource for society is the house of Don Manuel Josef Quintana, a young lawyer, whose poetical talents, select reading, and various information, place him among the first of our men of letters; while the kindness of his heart, and the lofty and honourable principles of his conduct, make him an invaluable friend and most agreeable companion. After our evening walk in the Prado, we retire to that gentleman’s study, where four or five others, of similar taste and opinions, meet to converse with freedom upon whatever subjects are started. The political principles of Quintana and his best friends consist in a rooted hatred of the existing tyranny, and a great dislike of the prevailing influence of the French Emperor over the Spanish Court.

It was in this knot of literary friends that an attempt to establish a Monthly Magazine originated, a short time before my arrival at Madrid. But such is the listlessness of the country on every thing relating to literature, such the trammels in which the Censors confine the invention of the writers, that the publication of the Miscelanea was given up in a few months. Few, besides, as our men of taste are in number, they have split into two parties, who pursue each other with the weapons of satire and ridicule.

Moratin, the first of our comic writers—a man whose genius, were he free from the prejudices of strict adherence to the Unities, and extreme servility to the Aristotelic rules of the drama, might have raised our theatre to a decided superiority over the rest of Europe, and who, notwithstanding the trammels in which he exerts his talents, has given us six plays, which for the elegance, the liveliness, and the refined graces of the dialogue, as well as the variety, the truth, the interest, and comic power of the characters, do not yield, in my opinion, to the best modern pieces of the French, or the English stage—Moratin, I say, may be considered as the centre of one of the small literary parties of this capital, while Quintana is the leader of the other. Difference of opinion on literary subjects is not, however, the source of this division. Moratin and his friends have courted the favour of the Prince of the Peace, while Quintana has never addressed a line to the favourite. This tacit reproach, embittered, very probably, by others rather too explicit, dropped by the independent party, has kindled a spirit of enmity among the Court literati, which, besides producing a total separation, breaks out in satire and invective on the appearance of any composition from the pen of Quintana.

I have been insensibly led where I cannot avoid entering upon the subject of literature, though from the nature of these letters, as well as the limits to which I am forced to confine them, it was my intention to pass it over in silence. I shall not, however, give you any speculations on so extensive a topic, but content myself with making you acquainted with the names which form the scanty list of our living poets.

I have already mentioned Moratin and Quintana. I do not know that the former has published any thing besides his plays, or that he has, as yet, given a collection of them to the public. I conceive that some fears of the Inquisitorial censures are the cause of this delay. There has, indeed, been a time when his play, La Mogigata, or Female Devotee, was scarcely allowed to be acted, it being believed that, but for the patronage of the Prince of the Peace, it would long before have been placed in the list of forbidden works.

Quintana has published a small collection of short poems, which deservedly classes him among those Spaniards who are just allowed to give a specimen of their powers, and shew us the waste of talents for which our oppressive system of government is answerable to civilized Europe. He has embellished the title-page of his book with an emblematical vignette, where a winged human figure is seen chained to the threshold of a gloomy Gothic structure, looking up to the Temple of the Muses in the attitude of resigned despondency. I should not have mentioned this trifling circumstance, were it not a fresh proof of the pervading feeling under which every aspiring mind among us is doomed hopelessly to linger.

It is not, however, the Gothic structure of our national system alone which confines the poetic genius of Spain. There is (if I may venture some vague conjectures upon a difficult and not yet fairly tried subject) a want of flexibility in the Spanish language, arising from the great length of most of its words, the little variety of its terminations, and the bulkiness of its adverbs, which must for ever, I fear, clog its verse. The sound of our best poetry is grand and majestic indeed; but it requires an uncommon skill to subdue and modify that sound, so as to relieve the ear and satisfy the mind. Since the introduction of the Italian measures by Boscan and Garcilaso, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, our best poets have been servile imitators of Petrarch, and the writers of that school. Every Spanish poet has, like the knight of La Mancha, thought it his bounden duty to be desperately in love, deriving both his subject and his inspiration from a minute dissection of his lady. The language, in the mean time, condemned for centuries, from the unexampled slavery of our press, to be employed almost exclusively in the daily and familiar intercourse of life, has had its richest ornaments tarnished and soiled, by the powerful influence of mental association. Scarcely one third of its copious dictionary can be used in dignified prose, while a very scanty list of words composes the whole stock which poetry can use without producing either a sense of disgust or ridicule. In spite of these fetters, Quintana’s poetical compositions convey much deep thought and real feeling; and should an unexpected revolution in politics allow his mind that freedom, without which the most vigorous shoots of genius soon sicken and perish, his powerful numbers might well inspire his countrymen with that ardent and disinterested love of liberty which adds dignity to the amiableness of his character.

The poet who has obtained most popularity in our days is Melendez, a lawyer, who, having for some time been a professor of polite literature at Salamanca, was raised by the Prince of the Peace to a place in the Council of Castile, and, not long after, rusticated to his former residence, where he remains to this day. Melendez is a man of great natural talents, improved by more reading and information than is commonly found among our men of taste. His popularity as a poet, however, was at first raised on the very slight and doubtful foundation of a collection of Anacreontics, and a few love-poems, possessing little more merit than an harmonious language, and a certain elegant simplicity. Melendez, in his youth, was deeply infected with the mawkish sensibility of the school of Gessner; and had he not by degrees aimed at nobler subjects than his Dove, and his Phyllis, a slender progress in the national taste of Spain would have been sufficient to consign his early poems to the toilettes of our town shepherdesses. He has, however, in his maturer age, added a collection of odes to his pastorals, where he shows himself a great master of Spanish verse, though still deficient in boldness and originality. That he ranks little above the degree of a sweet versifier, is more to be attributed to that want of freedom which clips the wings of thought in every Spaniard, than to the absence of real genius. It is reported that Melendez is employed in a translation of Virgil: should he live to complete it, I have no doubt it will do honour to our country.

During the attempt to awaken the Spanish Muse, which has been made for the last fifty years, none has struck out a fairer path towards her emancipation from the affected, stiff, and cumbrous style in which she was dressed by our Petrarchists of the sixteenth century than a naval officer named Arriaza. If his admirable command of language, and liveliness of fancy, were supported by any depth of thought, acquired knowledge, or the least degree of real feeling; the Spaniards would have an original poet to boast of.