Chapter VII: Juan De Castellanos

[Sidenote: Castellanos in New Granada]

[Sidenote: Jiménez de Quesada]

[Sidenote: Quesada’s manuscript]

Besides Ercilla and his imitators, already mentioned, a number of other writers in verse appeared among the early chroniclers of South American affairs. The most noteworthy of these were Juan de Castellanos, of Tierra Firme, Martín del Barco Centenera, of Tucumán and Paraguay, and Pedro Peralta Barnuevo, of Peru. The position of Castellanos in relation to the literary history of New Granada, or Colombia, may be compared with that of Ercilla with respect to Chile; but the name of Castellanos in the New Granadan catalogue is preceded by that of Jiménez de Quesada, the discoverer of the territory of the Chibchas and the founder of Bogotá. Quesada was born in Córdoba, but his boyhood was spent in Granada, where his father, Luis Jiménez de Quesada, was a judge. He studied law, and was graduated with the title of licenciado. Under Governor Lugo he was the chief judicial officer of the colony of Santa Marta, and from this post he was advanced to the leadership of the expedition sent to explore the interior of the country. Having established a settlement on the plateau, August 6, 1538, he returned to Europe in 1539. His account of this expedition was called _Compendio historial_. Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita (1624-1688) affirms, in the _Prólogo_ of his _Historia general de las conquistas del nuevo reino de Granada_, that the manuscript of the _Compendio historial_ was sent to Spain, where he saw it in one of the libraries of Madrid. It is also reported that for many years it was in the possession of the national library at Bogotá, and that the historian Antonio Plaza took it from the library about 1848, and used it in writing his history of New Granada; moreover, that it was lost among Plaza’s papers after that writer’s death, which occurred in 1854. Parts of it are preserved in the quotations made from it by Plaza and Zamora. A few of these extracts have been reprinted by Vergara y Vergara in his _Historia de la literatura en Nueva Granada_. The _Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino_, by Quesada, recently published by M. Jiménez de la Espada, is found to be different, at least in part, from the original _Compendia historial_.

The events of Quesada’s march from the sea to the table-land, the coming of Benalcázar from the south, the appearance of Federmann making his way through the wilderness from Venezuela, the meeting of the three captains, and the ceremonies attending the announcement and confirmation of Spain’s claim to the land furnished themes fit for romances framed after the model of the _Cid_. The most noteworthy writer who made use of this material and presented it in verse was Juan de Castellanos; but his work, written in his old age, is rather a history than a romance; it is a metrical chronicle of the early history of New Granada.[84]

[Sidenote: Juan de Castellanos]

[Sidenote: Parish priest at Tunja]

[Sidenote: Castellano’s _Historia_]

Castellanos was born in the little town of Alanis in the province of Seville March 9, 1523. His father was Cristóbal Sánchez Castellanos. He left Spain as a soldier, began his military career in Porto Rico, and was later at Paria and in the islands of Trinidad and Cubagua. He was transferred to the island of Margarita after the earthquake which caused all of the colonists of Cubagua to remove to Margarita. In 1550 he was living at Cabo de la Vela, and a little later he is known to have been at Santa Marta, where he remained until 1552. He was at Cartagena when that town was taken by pirates in 1559. While there, after his long experience as a soldier, he became a priest, at thirty-nine or forty years of age, and was appointed to be the treasurer of the cathedral, but he refused to accept this office, and removed from the diocese. Finally, in 1561, he was established at Tunja as the parish priest. This position he held for forty-five years, and during this period at least a part of his means of support was drawn from well-stocked grazing lands. At Tunja he wrote his _Elegías de varones ilustres de las Indias_, his swan-song, as he described it at the beginning of his first canto:

A cantos elegíacos levanto
Con débiles acentos voz anciana,
Bien como blanco cisne que con canto
Su muerte solemniza ya cercana.

The time of his death is not known, but he was living in 1588, since in his writings he refers to events which occurred in that year, and his holographic will bears the date of 1606, when the author was eighty-four years old.[85]

[Sidenote: _Compendio historial de Granada_]

The manuscript of the _Historia del nuevo reino de Granada_ by Castellanos, published for the first time by Antonio Paz y Melia in Madrid in 1886, was held by the monastery of Poblet for a considerable part of the seventeenth century. Piedrahita used it as well as Quesada’s _Compendio historial de las conquistas del nuevo reino de Granada_;[86] in fact, some part of Piedrahita’s work appears as the verse of Castellanos reduced to prose. Castellanos’ effective literary activity covers the twenty-two years between 1570 and 1592. During this period at the end of which he was seventy years old, he composed the four parts of his chronicle, containing more than 150,000 lines, and another poem on the life, death, and miracles of San Diego de Alcalá now apparently lost. Although Castellanos announced, in the preface of his _Historia_, his intention to write a fifth part, this design appears not to have been carried out.

[Sidenote: _Elegías de varones ilustres de India_]

[Sidenote: On Castellanos’ verses]

The parts in print until recently were three parts of the _Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias_ and the _Historia_. The first part treats of the discovery of the New World, together with the conquest of certain islands and a part of Tierra Firme. The second part has for its subject events connected with the exploration of Venezuela and the settlement of Cabo de la Vela and Santa Marta; while the third part narrates the happenings in the provinces of Popayán and Cartagena from their discovery to the time of the author’s writing. The fourth part is the history of New Granada from the time when the Spaniards first set foot on the soil. In determining the form, in so far as the verses are arranged into rhymed octaves, there appears to be no doubt that the poem of Ercilla exerted a powerful influence; for in the preface to the _Historia_ Castellanos refers to the persons who, “enamoured of the sweetness of the verse with which Don Alonso de Ercilla celebrated the Chilean wars, wished those of the north might be sung in the same measure.” Castellanos’ determination to act in accordance with these wishes was unfortunate. The verses are, indeed, in some cases felicitous, but the author was clearly competent to write well in prose, and, if this form of expression had been employed, he would have given a more satisfactory contribution to historical knowledge: it is affirmed, in fact, that he first composed his work in prose, and spent ten years in turning it into verse. If the purpose in this undertaking was to rival successfully Ercilla’s literary effort, this also was unfortunate, for neither the excellence nor the fame of the _Elegías_ ever attained the standard of _La Araucana_.

[Sidenote: Views of critics]

The opinion of the enthusiastic Colombian historian, Vergara y Vergara, does not coincide with this view; he was disposed to think of Castellanos as “a great poet,” and to regard him as superior to Ercilla. This is, however, the view of an indulgent and patriotic critic. Moreover, Acosta, also a Colombian, found that no other chronicler exceeded him “in descriptions of the country, or of skirmishes and encounters with the Indians, and particularly in picturing the impressions which traversing the land and going among the people they had to subdue made on the hardy and courageous conquistadores.”[87]

[Sidenote: Acosta and Menéndez y Pelayo]

Menéndez y Pelayo, referring to the plan of Castellanos’ work, affirmed that “it is not really a poem, not even a chronicle, but a vast collection of rhymed chronicles, in which one may distinguish as many poems as there are personages; but whoever has the time and the courage to enter into this forest, will not count his severe labour a loss when he comes upon episodes such as the shipwreck of Licenciado Zuazo, or the dreadful story of Lope de Aguirre (_Elegía xiv_) or the charming description of the island of Margarita.”[88] The poetic quality of the several parts of the work differs greatly, the first part being superior to the rest. The poetic fire of the author burned lower with his advancing years.

[Sidenote: _Discurso del Capitán Francisco Draque_]

The last part of Castellanos’ writings to appear in print is the so-called _Discurso del Capitán Francisco Draque_, cut out of the third part of _Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias_, and now, in 1921, published at Madrid by the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan. This third part of the _Elegías_ deals with the history of Cartagena, and the pages extracted from the original manuscript contain a narrative of the events associated with Drake’s capture of the city in 1586. They present as an introduction to the main theme some account of Drake’s earlier adventures, particularly of his voyage around the world, 1577-1580. The motive for extracting these pages and making of them a separate document, and the complete history of its vicissitudes are unknown. Perhaps the censor was solicitous to keep from the public an attractive account of an enemy who had wrought such disaster in the Spanish Colonies. But whatever may have been the cause of its long obscurity, its final public appearance in two hundred and twenty-seven clean pages is a source of great satisfaction to persons interested in the early literature of Spanish America.