"Fascinated by his books, Ramirio began to imagine himself the hero of the story. He was in turn Julius Cæsar, the Cid, the Great Captain, Cortes, Don Juan of Austria. To take up the Commentaries was to lead the legions across Gaul, but, on the Ides of March, more sagacious than the Dictator, he discovered the treachery of Junius Brutus and, concealing a sword under his toga, he entered the Senate House and slew the conspirators one by one. He conquered the Moors on countless fields, he offered to Spain the kingdom of Naples or the empire of Montezuma, and finally, planting his foot on the prow of a strange ship, he destroyed for ever the whole Turkish fleet, at a new and marvellous Lepanto, which his imagination evoked from the prints. The result was that he began to deem himself chosen by God to carry on the tradition of deathless fame. He put away from his mental view the mediocre, the commonplace, the humdrum. All that was not impulsive and heroic seemed intolerable, for he felt in himself an absolute confidence of winning at a blow the highest honours and becoming, in a short time, one of the foremost knights of the Catholic Faith on earth."
The book is in many ways one of the most remarkable works of the imagination that has been created by an Argentine and Sr. Larreta writes pure and nervous Spanish.
Last comes a branch of literature which is probably the most popular, and certainly the most esteemed, in Spanish America, which takes mediocre poets far more seriously than did Horace, or, indeed, than is the habit of the more stolid East. A somewhat sardonic French traveller[91] lately remarked: "Spanish America has only one thought—love. And love has given to it the one art which it practises, if not in perfection at least in abundance inexhaustible—lyric poetry. It appears that Peru and Colombia and Guatemala possess great poets.... Being a foreigner, I cannot judge about their greatness, but I can see that they are numerous, indeed innumerable. Not a newspaper but contains every morning poems, and their invariable burden is the passion of love. The eyes, the teeth, the lips, the hair, the hands and feet of the American misses are here, one by one, compared to all the beauties of earth and sky. The warmth of sentiment is undoubted, but the expression lacks originality."
There seems, indeed, to be an inexhaustible demand for a kind of verse which a foreigner has a great difficulty in judging, owing to difference in national temperaments and, perhaps still more, differences in national ages. A thousand years makes a great difference in a nation's point of view, and much that seems fresh and beautiful to the younger people is hackneyed and tedious to the older. The poetry of Argentina and, it is said, of all Latin America, appears to be erotic or spasmodic, or both. It is pretty, but it has not sufficient freshness to conquer a hearing in the great world.
But the earliest work with which we need deal is an anonymous anthology, which forms an exception to the general rule. In 1823 some patriot, by a happy inspiration, collected the snatches of song which the revolutionists had composed and by which they marched to victory, and these form a substantial volume—"La Lira Argentina." It consists of a great number of poems, mostly short—"Marcha patriotica," "Oda" (por la victoria de Suipacha), "Cancion patriotica," "Cancion Heroica," "A La Excelentisima Junta," "Marcha Patriotica" ("Long live our country free from chains, and long live her sons to defend her"), "Marcha Nacional Oriental," and the like. They are full of fire and simple art; they are really a noble national memorial and worth a wilderness of love lyrics. But this view has not been developed, although one would suppose that Argentina, with its mountains and Pampas, deserved better local poetry of manhood and adventure than the rude songs of the Gauchos.
Marmol (1818-1873), already referred to as a novelist, in some way carries on the patriotic tradition, for in 1838 he was thrown by Rosas into a dungeon, and inscribed with a burnt stick the following quatrain on the walls of his prison:—
"Wretch! set before me dreadful Death,
And all my limbs in fetters bind;
Thou canst not quench my moral breath,
Nor place a chain upon my mind."
He managed to survive and became a busy man of letters and subsequently Director of the National Library. Marmol wrote a good many love poems, but he is more remarkable for having attempted a field which seems to have little attraction for his countrymen. He wrote at least two poetical dramas, "El Cruzado" and "El Poeta," the first historical, the second a modern comedy. He is a sound and conscientious literary craftsman, and the literary world of Buenos Aires looks back to him with profound respect. He seems to have approached nearer to the type of the professional man of letters than is common in Argentina.
The other poets are extremely numerous, and it is not necessary to particularise them. With them it is always the hour of night, and the same question always arises: "Why do you come to disturb my calm, image of that being whom I adore, image of that being, for whom alas! I weep, for whom I consume away and die of love?" The quotation in question happens to be from a Colombian poet, but the note is always the same; there is too little distinctiveness about the poets of Argentina to require detailed treatment. The short-lived Adolfo Mitré, who was highly praised for his sincerity and passion, or Sr. Martin Garcia Mérou may stand as types of the rest.