Читать книгу History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature (Vol. 1&2) - Friedrich Bouterwek - Страница 11

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Still less of the character of poetry belongs to the fabulous chronicle of Alexander the Great (Poema de Alexandro Magno), respecting the origin and age of which the Spanish critics are far from being agreed. Whether it be, as some pretend, a Spanish original of the twelfth or thirteenth century, or as others assert, the translation of a French work of the same age, in verse, or, what is still more probable, a versified translation of a latin legend, with the manufacture of which some monk had occupied his solitary hours, are questions which a writer of the history of Spanish poetry cannot, with propriety, stop to discuss, even though alexandrine verse should, as some suppose, have taken its name from this chronicle. Next to stringing together his rhymes,28 the chief object of the author probably was to dress the biography of Alexander the Great in the costume of chivalry. Accordingly he relates how the Infante Alexander, whose birth was distinguished by numerous prodigies, seemed, while yet a youth a Hercules; how he was taught to read in his seventh year; how he then every day learned a lesson in the seven liberal arts, and maintained a daily disputation thereon; and many other wonders of this sort.29 Alexander’s officers are counts and barons. The real history only feebly glimmers through a grotesque compound of puerile fictions and distorted facts. But perhaps this mode of treating the materials is not to be laid to the account of the versifier.