Читать книгу The Magic of Spain - Aubrey F. G. Bell - Страница 5

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TO collect a mass of isolated and contradictory opinions concerning the Spanish is a comparatively simple task, although it is difficult or impossible to derive from them a consistent picture of Spanish character. To Wellington they are “this extraordinary and perverse people,” to whom to boast of Spain’s strength was a natural weakness. “Procrastination and improvidence are their besetting sins,” says Napier, and of their conduct in the Peninsular War: “Of proverbially vivid imagination and quick resentments, the Spaniards act individually rather than nationally, and, during this war, what appeared constancy of purpose was but a repetition of momentary fury generated like electric sparks by constant collision with the French.” “The Spaniards are perfect masters of saying everything and doing nothing.” They have dignified sentiments and lofty expressions, but taken with their deeds these are “but a strong wind blowing shrivelled leaves.” “In the arrangement of warlike affairs difficulties are always overlooked by the Spaniards, who are carried on from one phantasy to another so swiftly that the first conception of an enterprise is immediately followed by a confident anticipation of complete success.” Though they are “hasty in revenge and feeble in battle,” they are “patient to the last degree in suffering.” To the peasants he allows “a susceptibility of grand sentiments.” They “endure calamity, men and women alike, with a singular and unostentatious courage. But their virtues are passive, their faults active, and, instigated by a peculiar arrogance, they are perpetually projecting enterprises which they have not sufficient vigour to execute.” “To neglect real resources and fasten upon imaginary projects is peculiarly Spanish.” A French writer of the same period, General Marbot, contents himself with observing that the Spanish “ont beaucoup conservé du caractère des Arabes et sont fatalistes; aussi répétaient-ils sans cesse ‘Lo que ha de ser no puede faltar,’” but adds that “ils ont un mérite immense, c’est que, bien que battus, ils ne se découragent jamais.” Turning to earlier centuries we find that in Livy and Strabo the Spaniards are obstinate, unsociable, silent, dressed in black, despisers of death, very sober. In the centuries of Spain’s greatness the comments naturally thicken, although they are often not easily reconcilable. To an Italian, Paolo Cortese, at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Spanish are, in a shower of epithets, “ambitious, good-natured, curious, greedy, contentious, tenacious, magnificent, suspicious, sly.” Another Italian, Paolo Tiepolo, later draws a distinction[1] between those who have travelled and those who have not left Spain, those former being “per la maggior parte avvisati, diligenti, tolleranti.” In Pepys we read of the “ceremoniousness of the Spaniards,” and that “the Spaniards are the best disciplined foot in the world; will refuse no extraordinary service if commanded, but scorn to be paid for it as in other countries,” and of “the plain habit of the Spaniards, how the King and Lords themselves wear but a cloak of Colchester bayze, and the ladies mantles in cold weather of white flannell.” To a learned Spaniard, Masdeu, they are, to quote but a few of his judgments, “lively, swift in conception, slow and thoughtful in coming to a resolution, active and effectual in carrying it into execution. They are the stoutest defenders of religion, and masters in asceticism.” “Their disinterestedness and honesty in commerce is known to all. They are frugal at table, especially averse from any excess in drinking. In conversation they are serious and taciturn, not giving to biting speech, courteous, affable, and pleasant; they hate flattery, but they respect others and look to be respected themselves. They speak with majesty, but without affectation. They are generous, serviceable, kindly, and have a pleasure in conferring benefits, and they exalt things foreign more than their own. They have envy, pride, and a love of glory, but with noble, redeeming qualities. In their attire they are neat and moderate; when they go abroad they are dressed well and smartly, but with a befitting gravity.” “They spend with magnificence and extravagance.” A French traveller, Mme. d’Aulnoy,[2] in the seventeenth century, says of the Spanish that “Nature has been kinder to them than they are to themselves; they are born with more wit than others; they have a great quickness of mind join’d with great solidity; they speak and deliver their words with ease; they have a great memory; their style is neat and concise, and they are quick of apprehension; it is easie to teach them whatever they have a mind to; they are perfect masters in Politicks, and when there is a necessity for it they are temperate and laborious.”... “They are patient to excess, obstinate, idle, singular philosophers; and, as to the rest, men of honour, keeping their words tho’ it cost them their lives.” She considers their greatest defect to be a “passion for revenge,” and speaks of “their fantastick grandeur.” A short account by an Englishman in 1701, has little good to say of the Spanish, except that they “have an incomparable Zeal to plant the Catholick Religion.” He notes their sluggishness, their immorality, and it is, moreover, impossible to distinguish a Spanish Cavalier from a Cobler, while most of their houses are “of earth and like Mole-hills, but one storey high.” They have an “esprit orgueilleux,” and treat strangers “de turc à maure,” says a Frenchman of the same period,[3] so that the Englishman may have had some slight, some turc à maure experience in Spain. Another Englishman,[4] half a century later, writes that the Spanish are “generous, liberal, magnificent, and charitable; religious without dispute, but devout to the greatest excess of superstition.”... “If they have any predominant fault it is perhaps that of being rather too high-minded; hence they have entertained, at different times, the most extravagant conceits.”... “Their cloaths are usually of a very dark colour, and their cloaks almost black. This shows the natural gravity of the people.”... “There are no soldiers in the whole world braver than the Spanish.” Reclus, in his estimate of the Spanish, has boldly allowed the contrasts and contradictions of Spanish character to stand side by side. They are “apathetic in daily life, but of a quick resolution, persistent courage and unwearying tenacity. They are vain, but if any one has a right to be so, they have. In spite of their pride they are simple and pleasant in their manners. They esteem themselves highly, but they are equally ready to recognize the merit of others. They are very swift and keen to lay a finger on the weak side or the vices of other people, but never bemean themselves by despising them. They have a great store of seriousness, a rare firmness of character. They are contented with their lot and are fatalists. A mixture of superstition and ignorance, common-sense, and subtle irony; they are at times ferocious, though naturally of a magnanimous generosity, fond of revenge, yet forgetting injuries, fond of equality, yet guilty of oppression.” The verdicts of modern Spanish thinkers have been mostly pessimistic.[5] Spaniards in the twentieth century have been busily occupied with analytical introspection, the result of their national misfortunes and injured pride. They prefer to speak atrociously of themselves than that foreigners should speak of them only moderately well. Señor Mallada holds[6] his countrymen to be “idle, unpractical dreamers.” In Spain, says Ángel Ganivet,[7] “there are many who have no will, hay muchos enfermos de la voluntad”—there is a lack of concentration, that is of persistent concentration, and a lack of proportion, of the power to consider more than one idea, more than one aspect of a question. So Azorín complains that “there is plenty of insight and rapid vision, but no co-ordination of ideas or steady fulfilment or will.”[8] In a book by Ricardo León[9] we read that the Spanish are hostile to their rulers, whoever they may be, and of the evils of el Caciquismo. But the author sees little hope of change in a country where men live between two extremes, “two fires, two fanaticisms,” either reactionaries or demagogues; where the currents of activity and passion are unregulated, where thought is either stagnant or enmeshed in a gossamer woof of subtle distinctions, and the golden mean of common-sense is not attained. The inhabitants of Alcalá are “strong, hard, brave, and stubborn, rigorous in their virtues and their vices, violent in their loves and hates, tenacious alike of good and of evil.” To counterbalance their clear intelligence, greatheartedness, quick imagination and eloquence they have serious defects, “and especially a certain unrestfulness of spirit, a nervous irritability which prevents them from living in peace or comfort with themselves or with others, a true Spanish failing, peculiarly attached both of old and at the present day to that harsh, turbulent, strongly original character of the race which has never allowed us rest, but kept us perpetually at strife, taking umbrage at our very shadows.”... “While there were infidels to fight, strongholds to defend, vows to fulfil, or even when there were civil wars and vigorous smuggling and bands of brigands,” there was scope for the virtues and vices of a people “born and bred for action and passionate deeds,” “fashioned in battle”; but “on the advent of the moderate customs of modern times” they find themselves “out of their natural atmosphere, idle, poor, disconcerted, cramped.” And this is the tragedy of Spain to-day—a great-hearted people in the toils of civilization. In Pérez Galdós’ “El Caballero Encantado,” the spirit of Spain thus addresses one of her sons: “The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that you live exclusively the life of words, and the language is so beautiful that the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You speak too much; you lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal the poverty of your actions.”[10] In an earlier book[11] Señor León deplores the fashion prevailing in Spain “to depreciate all that is Spanish, and to bestow great praise on all that is foreign. A wave of moral cowardice and utilitarian baseness is passing over Spain.” But Spanish character is not permanently weakened nor shorn of its dignity and independence, the eclipse is but temporary and, indeed, partial, not affecting the humbler classes. The spirit of Spain will revive, as in “El Caballero Encantado,” when it is being carried from the death-bed to the grave,[12] and may be aptly likened, as by Don Rafael Altamira, to the waters of the Guadiana which, after flowing for a space underground, return once more to the surface.