Chapter VIII: Canto II: , Oct. 28, et seq.63

[Sidenote: García de Mendoza]

[Sidenote: Ercilla on Ercilla]

The prominent Spaniards are sketched less clearly than the Indians, appealing apparently less powerfully to the poet’s imagination. Yet the sketch of García de Mendoza, the youthful commander of the expedition, appears exaggerated when it is remembered that he was a youth of twenty-one and that some of his actions showed a wisdom not beyond his years. But among the characters that appear in the poem, not the least conspicuous is Ercilla himself. The references to his journeys and explorations throw an important side-light on the early history of Chile. These references, moreover, show him as a champion of the more admirable features of civilization. He opposes the useless cruelty of his compatriots; he is humane towards the vanquished; proud to repel the indignities offered by the commander; religious but not fanatical; a knight of the Middle Ages, animated by a certain pride in enduring the hardships and facing the dangers presented by a barbarous enemy in an unexplored region; a chivalrous hero, but too sober-minded to be drawn into quixotic enterprises.[64]

[Sidenote: Ercilla’s limited knowledge of Indians]

[Sidenote: The poet’s philosophy]

Ercilla presents the Araucanian heroes speaking to their countrymen as Spaniards might have spoken under similar circumstances. Evidently his knowledge of them was too superficial to enable him to set forth their psychological peculiarities, but he makes their individuality distinct by descriptions of their dress. His lack of intimate knowledge of the Indian mind may be indicated by the fact that apart from geographical terms he uses few words of a local origin or meaning, or that might not have been understood in Spain before the discovery of America. It is not merely descriptions of dress or of persons that certain critics have found admirable, but descriptions of events, of battles, as well. Considering this quality, however, there has existed a wide divergence of judgments, and the extreme unevenness of the poem suggests that some feature of it may be found to justify each view. The course of the narrative is here and there interrupted by the introduction of rhetorical speeches, and by reflections that seem to embody a philosophy or views of life, and these views indicate an uncheerful, if not a pessimistic, philosophy. In the fourth octave of the second canto he announces that “the most assured benefit of fortune is not to have ever had it”; and in the first octave of the twenty-sixth canto he finds that “the coming of one good after another is very doubtful, while one evil after another is always certain. The time of prosperity was never lasting, and the time of misery has never ceased.” This mournful note recurs frequently throughout the poem until the final lamentation of the last octave.

[Sidenote: Barbarian innocence]

But in certain passages there are anticipations of the doctrine that prevailed in France two hundred years later, the doctrine of the uncorrupted virtue of uncivilized society. This octave, the thirteenth of the thirty-sixth canto, is an indication:

La sincera bondad y la caricia
De la sencilla gente de estas tierras
Daban bien a entender que la codicia
Aún no había penetrado aquellas sierras;
Ni la maldad, el robo y la injusticia
(Alimento ordinario de las guerras)
Entrada en esta parte habían hallado
Ni la ley natural inficionado.[65]

[Sidenote: _Orlando Furioso_]

The marked attention given to _Orlando Furioso_ in Spain in the sixteenth century made inevitable its influence on Ercilla. This poem was twice translated into Spanish verse in the year 1549-1550, by Jerónimo de Urrea and Hernando de Alcocer, and later a prose translation was made by Vázquez de Contreras.

Seven editions of Urrea’s translation were issued before 1564, and Ariosto appears to have been a principal source of Ercilla’s inspiration, but the vigorous and positive spirit of the Spaniard was not able to acquire the Italian’s gifts of facility, grace, and fancy.[66]

[Sidenote: Style of _La Araucana_]

[Sidenote: A view of Ercilla]

A criticism of the style of _La Araucana_ is hardly involved in the purpose of the present writing. Concerning this subject reliance must be placed on the judgment of Spanish critics, by whom one will find the excellences and defects of Ercilla’s verses sufficiently emphasized. There are stretches of dull and loose narration, but here and there are spirited verses, and octaves as fine as any found elsewhere in the Spanish language; but in this age of rapid movement, in these days of social impatience, three hundred and forty years after its publication, the reading of the poem is likely to be confined to persons who on account of their nationality or for other reasons have a special interest in the romantic history of the Spanish conquest in Chile. It is on its quality as history that stress must be laid. “Ercilla,” to quote a French critic, “n’était qu’un historien fourvoyé dans la poésie.... Il manquait surtout de sensibilité, de tendresse, pour mieux dire, et c’est selon nous, la grande cause de son infériorité. Il ne parait avoir ressenti vivement que l’ivresse brutale des combats. Il quitte la patrie sans un soupir, il la retrouve sans un transport. Il n’a fait parler ni l’amour paternel, ni l’amour filial. Les amants et les époux qu’il met en scène sont des raisonneurs froids, sententieux et subtils, et s’il leur échappe par hasard un cri passionné nous y percevons l’écho d’une plainte antique.”[67]

In his _Retórica poética_, Barros Arana affirms that Ercilla “describes with ardour” the combats and naturally and correctly the localities, sketches regularly the characters, and puts beautiful speeches into the mouth of his heroes, but his work lacks the plan and the necessary unity of an epic to such a degree that instead of a poem it appears as a poetical history of the war it celebrates.[68]

[Sidenote: Popularity of the poem]

But in spite of its shortcomings there are few books that have been oftener printed, and, like the other great modern historical poems, it has enjoyed a very noteworthy popularity. Even in recent times new and popular editions have appeared, and in the last half of the nineteenth century Alexandre Nicolas translated it into French prose, published at Paris in two volumes in 1869. It had already been translated into German by C. M. Winterling thirty-eight years earlier. An abridged translation into French, by Gilibert de Merlhiac, appeared in 1824. The metrical translation of parts of the poem into English, published in the translation of Molina’s _Historia de Chile_ (Middletown, Conn., 1808) hardly merits comment. The most striking success of the poem was achieved in Chile, where the people, ignorant of all the favourable and unfavourable contentions of the critics, have regarded it as their Iliad, celebrating the beginning of their national life.

[Sidenote: _Hechos de Don García_]

[Sidenote: Character of Figueroa’s book]

[Sidenote: Life of Figueroa]

Ercilla’s apparent determination to belittle the achievements of the Governor of Chile called forth the _Hechos de Don García Hurtado de Mendoza, el Marqués de Cañete_, by Suárez de Figueroa, who, although not a Chilean, was induced to write on a Chilean topic. His work was an attempt to overtake and smother an advanced damaging report. Don García, when in command of the expedition against the Araucanians, as already suggested, condemned Ercilla to death, a sentence later modified under the protests of persons who comprehended its injustice. After this incident Don García did not find either his leadership or his character glorified in _La Araucana_. This was a source of regret not only to himself but also to his family. He died in obscurity, and after this event his relatives sought to rehabilitate his memory for posterity. They approached Dr. Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa, proposing that he should undertake the task, should become the eulogist of a person on whom an unfavourable verdict had already been pronounced. He accepted the proposal, and of the seven books into which his work was divided the first three treat of Don García’s campaigns in Chile; the others deal with his government as viceroy of Peru, Mendaña’s expedition to the Solomon Islands, and the inglorious years of disgrace. In view of the judgments of history, Figueroa’s extravagant panegyric appears absurd. It may be said in favour of the book that it presents papers or documents given to the author by the Mendoza family, which furnish details of the viceroy’s life not otherwise known. But, on the other hand, it deals with a country which Figueroa had not visited, and with conditions of which he was almost entirely ignorant, thus making inevitable an abnormal perspective and false emphasis. The book is, however, written in “flowing and elegant language that is only rarely found in the historians of America; and in order to add interest to the work the author introduced rhetorical descriptions of a country he had not seen and of battles that were scarcely referred to in the documents.”[69]