During the whole time that I remained at Merida I stirred not once from the house; following the advice of Antonio, who informed me that it would not be convenient. My time lay rather heavily on my hands, my only source of amusement consisting in the conversation of the women, and in that of Antonio when he made his appearance at night. In these tertulias the grandmother was the principal spokeswoman, and astonished my ears with wonderful tales of the land of the Moors, prison escapes, thievish feats, and one or two poisoning adventures, in which she had been engaged, as she informed me, in her early youth.
There was occasionally something very wild in her gestures, and demeanor; more than once I observed her, in the midst of much declamation, to stop short, stare in vacancy, and thrust out her palms as if endeavoring to push away some invisible substance; she goggled frightfully with her eyes, and once sank back in convulsions, of which her children took no further notice than observing that she was only lili, and would soon come to herself.
JUAN BOSCAN
(1493-?1540)
he reign of Juan the Second of Spain (1406-1454), characterized as it was by a succession of conspiracies and internal commotions, represents also one of the most important epochs in the history of Spanish poetry, which up to that period had found expression almost exclusively in the crude though spirited historical and romantic ballads of anonymous origin: Iliads without a Homer, as Lope de Vega called them. The first to attempt a reform in Castilian verse was the Marquis of Villena (died 1434), who introduced the allegory and a tendency to imitate classical models; and although he himself left nothing of consequence, his influence is plainly revealed in the works of his far greater pupils and successors, the Marquis of Santillana and Juan de Mena. Strangely enough, the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of the Austrian Charles the Fifth, covering the most brilliant and momentous period in Spanish history, are yet marked by comparative stagnation in letters until after the first quarter of the sixteenth century. During the greater part of this period the increasing pomp and formality of the court rendered the poetry correspondingly artificial and insincere. It was not in fact until after many years of constant intercourse with Rome, Naples, and Florence, while the bulk of the noble youth of Spain resorted to the universities of those cities for higher education, that a wide-spread and profound admiration for Italian culture and refinement began to pave the way for another and more important revolution in Castilian poetry than that inaugurated by Villena.
Juan Boscan Almogaver, who was the first of his nation to compose verses after the manner of Petrarch, and whose successors in the sixteenth century include some of the most brilliant and inspired lyrists of Spain, was born in 1493 at Barcelona, a city which had witnessed the recent triumphs of the Provencal Troubadours. Boscan, however, from the beginning of his career, preferred to write in Castilian rather than in the Limosin dialect. Of patrician descent, and possessed of ample means, he entered the army like the majority of the young nobles of his age. After a brief but honorable service as a soldier he traveled extensively abroad, which led to his becoming deeply interested in the literature and art of Italy. Meanwhile he had produced verses in the ancient lyric style, but with only a moderate measure of success.
The year 1526 found Boscan at Granada, where Andrea Navagiero, Ambassador from Venice to the Court of Charles the Fifth, was then in residence. A common love of letters drew the two young men into closest intimacy with each other. "Being with Navagiero there one day," says Boscan in his 'Letter to the Duquesa de Soma,' "and discoursing with him about matters of wit and letters, and especially about the different forms they take in different languages, he asked me why I did not make an experiment in Castilian of sonnets and the other forms of verse used by good Italian authors; and not only spoke to me of it thus slightly, but urged me to do it.... And thus I began to try this kind of verse. At first I found it somewhat difficult; for it is of a very artful construction, and in many particulars different from ours. But afterwards it seemed to me--perhaps from the love we naturally bear to what is our own--that I began to succeed very well; and so I went on little by little with increasing zeal." Little dreamed the Venetian diplomat that, owing to his friendly advice, a school was destined to arise shortly in the poetry of Spain which would by no means have ceased to exist after the lapse of nearly four centuries. From that day Boscan devoted himself to the exclusive composition of verses in the Italian measure, undeterred by the bitter opposition of the partisans of the old school. The incomparable Garcilaso de la Vega, then scarcely past his majority, warmly supported the innovation of his beloved friend, and soon far surpassed Boscan himself as a writer of sonnets and canzones.