Chapter VIII: The Age of Felipe II (2)

And, as Santa Teresa excelled in spiritual insight, so she has the sense of affairs. Durtal, in M. Joris-Karl Huysmans' _En Route_, first says of her:—"Sainte Térèse a exploré plus à fond que tout autre les régions inconnues de l'âme; elle en est, en quelque sorte, la géographe; elle a surtout dressé la carte de ses pôles, marqué les latitudes contemplatives, les terres intérieures du ciel humain." And he shows the reverse of the medal:—"Mais quel singulier mélange elle montre aussi, d'une mystique ardente et d'une femme d'affaires froide; car, enfin, elle est à double fond; elle est contemplative hors le monde et elle est également un homme d'état: elle est le Colbert féminin des cloîtres." The key to Durtal's difficulties is given in the Abbé Gévresin's remark, that the perfect balance of good sense is one of the distinctive signs of the mystics. In Santa Teresa's case the sign is present. An uninquiring world may choose to think of her as a fanatic in vapours and in ecstasies. Yet it is she who writes, in the _Camino de Perfección_:—"I would not have my daughters be, or seem to be, women in anything, but brave men." It is she who holds that "of revelations no account should be made"; who calls the usual convent life "a shortcut to hell"; who adds that "if parents took my advice, they would rather marry their daughters to the poorest of men, or keep them at home under their own eyes." Her position as a spiritual force is as unique as her place in literature. It is certain that her "own dear books" were nothing to her; that she regarded literature as frivolity; and no one questions her right so to regard it. But the world also is entitled to its judgment, which is expressed in different ways. Jeremy Taylor cites her in a sermon preached at the opening of the Parliament of Ireland (May 8, 1661). Protestant England, by the mouth of Froude, compares Santa Teresa to Cervantes. Catholic Spain places her manuscript of her own _Life_ beside a page of St. Augustine's writing in the Palace of the Escorial.

In some sense we may almost consider the Ecstatic Doctor, SAN JUAN DE LA CRUZ (1542-91), as one of Santa Teresa's disciples. He changed his worldly name of Juan de Yepes y Álvarez for that of Juan de la Cruz on joining the Carmelite order in 1563. Shortly afterwards he made the acquaintance of Santa Teresa, and, fired by her enthusiasm, he undertook to carry out in monasteries the reforms which she introduced in convents. In his _Obras espirituales_ (1618) mysticism finds its highest expression. There are moments when his prose style is of extreme clearness and force, but in many cases he soars to heights where the sense reels in the attempt to follow him. St. John of the Cross holds, with the mystics of all time, with Plotinus and Böhme and Swedenborg, that "by contemplation man may become incorporated with the Deity." This is a hard saying for some of us, not least to the present writer, and it were idle, in the circumstances, to attempt criticism of what for most men must remain a mystery. Yet in his verse one seizes the sense more easily; and his high, amorous music has an individual melody of spiritual ravishment, of daring abandonment, which is not all lost in Mr. David Lewis' unrhymed version of the _Noche oscura del Alma_ (Dark Night of the Soul):—

"_In an obscure night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest...._

_In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought but myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning._

_That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where he was waiting for me
Whom I knew well,
And none but he appeared._

_O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that hast united
The lover with his beloved
And charged her with her love._

_On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for him alone,
He reposed and slept:
I kept him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned him._

_Then his hair floated in the breeze
That blew from the turret;
He struck me on the neck
With his gentle hand,
And all sensation left me._

_I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
I fainted at last abandoned,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away._"

St. John of the Cross has absorbed the mystic essence of the _Song of Solomon_, and he introduces infinite new harmonies in his re-setting of the ancient melody. The worst that criticism can allege against him is that he dwells on the very frontier line of sense, in a twilight where music takes the place of meaning, and words are but vague symbols of inexpressible thoughts, intolerable raptures, too subtly sensuous for transcription. The _Unknown Eros_, a volume of odes, mainly mystical and Catholic, by Coventry Patmore, which has had so considerable an influence on recent English writers, was a deliberate attempt to transfer to our poetry the methods of St. John of the Cross, whose influence grows ever deeper with time.

The Dominican monk whose family name was Sarriá, but who is only known from his birthplace as LUIS DE GRANADA (1504-88), is usually accounted a mystic writer, though he is vastly less contemplative, more didactic and practical, than San Juan de la Cruz. He is best known by his _Guía de Pecadores_, which Regnier made the favourite reading of Macette, and which Gorgibus recommends to Célie in _Sganarelle_:—

"_La Guide des pécheurs est encore un bon livre:
C'est là qu'en peu de temps on apprend à bien vivre._"

Unluckily for Granada, his _Guía de Pecadores_ and his _Tratado de la Oración y Meditación_ were placed on the Index, chiefly at the instigation of that hammer of heretics, Melchor Cano, the famous theologian of the Council of Trent. Certain changes were made in the text, and the books were reprinted in their amended form; but the suspicion of _iluminismo_ long hung over Granada, whose last years were troubled by his rash simplicity in certifying as true the sham stigmata of a Portuguese nun, Sor María de la Visitación. The story that Granada was persecuted by the Inquisition is imaginary.

His books have still an immense vogue. His sincerity, learning, and fervour are admirable, and his forty years spent between confessional and pulpit gave him a rare knowledge of human weakness and a mastery of eloquent appeal. He is not declamatory in the worst sense, though he bears the marks of his training. He sins by abuse of oratorical antithesis, by repetition, by a certain mechanical see-saw of the sentence common to those who harangue multitudes. Still, the sweetness of his nature so flows over in his words that didacticism becomes persuasive even when he argues against our strongest prepossessions. It may interest to quote a passage from the translation made by that Francis Meres whose _Palladis Tamia_ contains the earliest reference to Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets":—

"This desire which doth hold many so resolutely to their studies, and this love of science and knowledge under pretence to help others, is too much and superfluous. I call it a love too much and desire superfluous; for when it is moderate and according to reason, it is not a temptation, but a laudable virtue and a very profitable exercise which is commended in all kind of men, but especially in young men who do exercise their youth in that study, for by it they eschew many vices and learn that whereby they will counsel themselves and others. But unless it be moderately used it hurteth devotion.... There be some that would know for this end only, that they might know—and it is foolish curiosity. There be some that would know, that they might be known—and it is foolish vanity; and there be some that would know, that they might sell their knowledge for money or for honours—and it is filthy lucre. There be also some that desire to know, that they may edify—and it is charity. And there are some that would know, that they may be edified—and it is wisdom. All these ends may move the desire, and, in choice of these, a man is often deceived, when he considereth not which ought especially to move; and this error is very dangerous."

This distrust of profane letters is yet more marked in the Augustinian, PEDRO MALÓN DE CHAIDE of Cascante (1530-?1590), who compares the "frivolous love-books" of Boscán, Garcilaso, and Montemôr and the "fabulous tales and lies" of chivalresque romance to a knife in a madman's hand. His practice clashes with his theory, for his _Conversión de la Magdalena_, written for Beatriz Cerdán, is learned to the verge of pedantry, and his elaborate periods betray the imitation of models which he professed to abhor. More ascetic than mystic, Malón de Chaide lacks the patrician ease, the tolerant spirit of Juan de Ávila, Granada, and León; but his austere doctrine and sumptuous colouring have ensured him permanent popularity. His admirable verse paraphrases of the _Song of Solomon_ have much of the unction, without the sensuous exaltation, of Juan de la Cruz. A better representative of pure mysticism is the Extremaduran Carmelite, JUAN DE LOS ÁNGELES (fl. 1595), whose _Triumphos del Amor de Dios_ is a profound psychological study, written under the influence of Northern thinkers, and not less remarkable for beauty of expression than for impassioned insight. With him our notice of the Spanish mystics must close. It is difficult to estimate their number exactly; but since at least three thousand survive in print, it is not surprising that the most remain unread. A breath of mysticism is met in the few Castilian verses of the brilliant humanist, BENITO ARIAS MONTANO (1527-98), who gave up to scholarship and theology what was meant for poetry. His achievement in the two former fields is not our concern here, but it pleases to denote the ample inspiration and the lofty simplicity of his song, which is hidden from many readers, and overlooked even by literary historians, in Böhl de Faber's _Floresta de rimas antiguas_.

* * * * *

The pastoral novel, like the chivalresque romance, reaches Spain through Portugal. The Italianised Spaniard, Jacopo Sannazaro, had invented the first example of this kind in his epoch-making _Arcadia_ (1504); and his earliest follower was the Portuguese, Bernardim Ribeiro (?1475-?1524), whose _Menina e moça_ transplants the prose pastoral to the Peninsula. This remarkable book, which derives its title from the first three words of the text, is the undoubted model of the first Castilian prose pastoral, the unfinished _Diana Enamorada_. This we owe to the Portuguese, JORGE DE MONTEMÔR (d. 1561), whose name is hispaniolised as Montemayor. There is nothing strange in this usage of Castilian by a Portuguese writer. We have already recorded the names of Gil Vicente, Sâ de Miranda, and Silvestre among those of Castilian poets; the lyrics and comedies of Camões, the _Austriada_ of Jerónimo Corte Real, continue a tradition which begins as early as the _General Cancioneiro_ of García de Resende (1516), wherein twenty-nine Portuguese poets prefer Castilian before their own language. A Portuguese writer, Innocencio da Silva, has gone the length of asserting that Montemôr wrote nothing but Castilian. This only proves that Silva had not read the _Diana_, which contains two Portuguese songs, and Portuguese prose passages spoken by the shepherd, Danteo, and the shepherdess, Duarda. Nor is Silva alone in his bad eminence; the date of the earliest edition of the _Diana_ is commonly given as 1542. Yet, as it contains, in the _Canto de Orpheo_, an allusion to the widowhood of the Infanta Juana (1554), it must be later. The time of publication was probably 1558-59,[14] some four or five years after the printing of his _Cancionero_ at Antwerp.

Little is known of Montemôr's life, save that he was a musician at the Spanish court in 1548. He accompanied the Infanta Juana to Lisbon on her marriage to Dom João, returning to Spain in 1554, when he is thought to have visited England and the Low Countries in Felipe II.'s train. He was murdered in 1651, apparently as the result of some amour. Faint intimations of pastoralism are found in such early chivalresque novels as _Florisel de Niquea_, where Florisel, dressed as a shepherd, loves the shepherdess, Sylvia. Ribeiro had introduced his own flame in _Menina e moça_ in the person of Aonia, and Montemôr follows with Diana. The identification of Aonia with the Infanta Beatriz, and with King Manoel's cousin, Joana de Vilhena, has been argued with great heat: in Montemôr's case the lady is said to have been a certain Ana. Her surname is withheld by the discreet Sepúlveda, who records that she was seen at Valderas by Felipe III. and his queen in 1603.

In all pastoral novels there is a family likeness, and Montemôr is not successful in avoiding the insipidity of the _genre_. He endeavours to lighten the monotony of his shepherds by borrowing Sannazaro's invention of the witch whose magic draughts work miracles. This wonder-worker is as convenient for the novelist as she is tedious for the reader, who is forced to cry out with Don Quixote's Priest:—"Let all that refers to the wise Felicia and the enchanted water be omitted." The bold Priest would further drop the verses, honouring the book for its prose, and for being the first of its class. Montemôr accepts the convention by making his shepherds—Sireno, Silvano, and the rest—mouth it like grandiloquent dukes; but the style is correct, and pleasing in its grandiose kind. The _Diana's_ vogue was immense: Shakespeare himself based the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ upon the episode of the shepherdess Felismena, which he had probably read in the manuscript of Bartholomew Young, whose excellent version, although not printed until 1598, was finished in 1583; and Sidney, whose own pastoral is redolent of Montemôr, has given Sireno's song in this fashion:—

"_Of this high grace with bliss conjoin'd
No further debt on me is laid,
Since that is self-same metal coin'd,
Sweet lady, you remain well paid.
For, if my place give me great pleasure,
Having before me Nature's treasure,
In face and eyes unmatchèd being,
You have the same in my hands, seeing
What in your face mine eyes do measure._

_Nor think the match unev'nly made,
That of those beams in you do tarry;
The glass to you but gives a shade,
To me mine eyes the true shape carry:
For such a thought most highly prizèd,
Which ever hath Love's yoke despisèd,
Better than one captiv'd perceiveth,
Though he the lively form receiveth,
The other sees it but disguisèd._"

Montemôr closes with the promise of a sequel, which never appeared. But, as his popularity continued, publishers printed new editions, containing the story of Abindarraez and Jarifa, boldly annexed from Villegas' _Inventario_, which was licensed so early as 1551. The tempting opportunity was seized by Alonso Pérez, a Salamancan doctor, whose second _Diana_ (1564) is extremely dull, despite the singular boast of its author that it contains scarcely anything "not stolen or imitated from the best Latins and Italians." Pérez alleges that he was a friend of Montemôr's; but, as that was his sole qualification, his third _Diana_—written, though "not added here, to avoid making too large a volume"—has fortunately vanished. In this same year, 1564, appeared Gaspar Gil Polo's _Diana_, a continuation which, says Cervantes, should be guarded "as though it were Apollo's"—the praise has perplexed readers who missed the pun on the author's name. The merits of Polo's sequel, excellent in matter and form, were recognised, as Professor Rennert notes, by Jerónimo de Texeda, whose _Diana_ (1627) is a plagiary from Polo. Though the contents of the one and the other are almost identical, Ticknor, considering them as independent works, finds praise for the earlier book, and blame for the later. An odd, mad freak is the versified _Diez libros de Fortuna de Amor_ (1573), wherein Frexano and Floricio woo Fortuna and Augustina in Arcadian fashion. Its author, the Sardinian soldier, Antonio Lo Frasso, shares with Avellaneda the distinction of having drawn Cervantes' fire—his one title to fame. Artificiality reaches its full height in the _Pastor de Fílida_ (1582) of Luis Gálvez de Montalvo, who presents himself, Silvestre, and Cervantes as the (Dresden) shepherds Siralvo, Silvano, and Tirsi. Almost every Spanish man of letters attempted a pastoral, but it were idle to compile a catalogue of works by authors whose echoes of Montemôr are merely mechanical. The occasion of much ornate prose, the pastoral lived partly because there was naught to set against it, partly because born men of action found pleasure in literary idealism and in "old Saturn's reign of sugar-candy." Its unreality doomed it to death when Alemán and others took to working the realistic vein first struck in _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Meanwhile the spectacle of love-lorn shepherds contending in song scandalised the orthodox, and the monk Bartolomé Ponce produced his devout parody, the _Clara Diana á lo divino_ (1599) in the same edifying spirit that moved Sebastián de Córdoba (1577) to travesty Boscán's and Garcilaso's works—_á lo divino, trasladadas en materias cristianas_.

Didactic prose is practised by the official chronicler, JERÓNIMO DE ZURITA (1512-80), author of the _Anales de la Corona de Aragón_, six folios published between 1562 and 1580, and ending with the death of Fernando. Zurita is not a great literary artist, nor an historical portrait-painter. Men's actions interest him less than the progress of constitutional growth. His conception of history, to give an illustration from English literature, is nearer Freeman's than Froude's, and he was admirably placed by fortune. Simancas being thrown open to him, he was first among Spanish historians to use original documents, first to complete his authorities by study in foreign archives, first to perceive that travel is the complement of research. Science and Zurita's work gain by his determination to abandon the old plan of beginning with Noah. He lacks movement, sympathy, and picturesqueness; but he excels all predecessors in scheme, accuracy, architectonics—qualities which have made his supersession impossible. Whatever else be read, Zurita's _Anales_ must be read also. His contemporary, AMBROSIO DE MORALES (1513-91), nephew of Pérez de Oliva, was charged to continue Ocampo's chronicle. His nomination is dated 1580. His authoritative fragment, the result of ten years' labour, combines eloquent narrative with critical instinct in such wise as to suggest that, with better fortune, he might have matched Zurita.

Hurtado de Mendoza as a poet belongs to Carlos Quinto's period. Even if he be not the author of _Lazarillo_, he approves himself a master of prose in his _Guerra de Granada_, first published at Lisbon by the editor of Figueroa's poems, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, in 1627. Mendoza wrote his story of the Morisco rising (1568-71) in the Alpujarra and Ronda ranges, while in exile at Granada. On July 22, 1568 (if Fourquevaulx' testimony be exact), a quarrel arose between Mendoza and a young courtier, Diego de Leiva. The old soldier—he was sixty-four—disarmed Leiva, threw his dagger out of window, and, by some accounts, sent Leiva after it. This, passing in the royal palace at Madrid, was flat _lèse majesté_, to be expiated by Mendoza's exile. To this lucky accident we owe the _Guerra de Granada_, written in the neighbourhood of the war.

Mendoza writes for the pleasure of writing, with no polemical or didactic purpose. His plain-speaking concerning the war, and the part played in it by great personages whom he had no cause to love, accounts for the tardy publication of his book, which should be considered as a confidential state-paper by a diplomatist of genius. Yet, though he wrote chiefly to pass the time, he has the qualities of the great historian—knowledge, impartiality, narrative power, condensation, psychological insight, dramatic apprehension, perspective and eloquence. His view of a general situation is always just, and, though he has something of the credulity of his time, his accuracy of detail is astonishing. His style is a thing apart. He had already shown, in a burlesque letter addressed to Feliciano de Silva, an almost unique capacity for reproducing that celebrity's literary manner. In his _Guerra de Granada_ he repeats the performance with more serious aim. One god of his idolatry is Sallust, whose terse rhetoric is repeatedly echoed with unsurpassable fidelity. Another model is Tacitus, whose famous description of Germanicus finding the unburied corpses of Varus' legions is annexed by Mendoza in his account of Arcos and his troops at Calalín. This is neither plagiarism nor unconscious reminiscence; it is the deliberate effort of a prose connoisseur, saturated in antiquity, to impart the gloomy splendour of the Roman to his native tongue. To say that Mendoza succeeded were too much, but he did not altogether fail; and, despite his occasional Latinised construction, his _Guerra de Granada_ lives not solely as a brilliant and picturesque transcription. It is also a masterly example of idiomatic Castilian prose, published without the writer's last touches, and, as is plain, from mutilated copies.[15] Mendoza may not be a great historian: as a literary artist he is extremely great.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The sources are carefully traced by L. A. Stiefel in the _Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie_ (vol. xx. pp. 183 and 318). One specimen suffices here:—

GIANCARLI, iii. 16.

_Falisco._ Padrone, o che la imaginatione m'inganna, o pur quella è la vuestra Madonna Angelica.

_Cassandro._ Sarebbe gran cosa che la imaginatione inganassa me anchora, perch' io voleva dirloti, etc.

RUEDA, _Escena_ iii.

_Falisco._ Señor, la vista ó la imaginacion me engaña ó es aquella vuestra muy querida Angélica.

_Casandro._ Gran cosa seria si la imaginacion no te engañase, antes yo te lo quería decir, etc.

[9] I learn that D. Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo is preparing a new edition of the _Anotaciones_.

[10] For a full and very able account of the proceedings, see Alejandro Arango y Escandon's _Ensayo histórico_ (Méjico, 1866).

[11] The Christian name of the author of the _Visión deleitable_ was Alfonso.

[12] See the second volume (pp. 79-104) of the _Discursos leidos en las recepciones públicas que ha celebrado desde 1847 la Real Academia Española_ (Madrid, 1861).

[13] A very able discussion of these ascriptions is presented by M. Foulché-Delbosc in the _Revue hispanique_ (1895), vol. ii. pp. 120-45.

[14] The question is discussed in the _Revue hispanique_ (1895), vol. ii. pp. 304-11.

[15] See two very able studies in the _Revue hispanique_ (vol. i. pp. 101-65, and vol. ii. pp. 208-303), by M. Foulché-Delbosc, whose edition of the _Guerra de Granada_ is now printing.