Читать книгу History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature (Vol. 1&2) - Friedrich Bouterwek - Страница 22

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After the death of the Marquis of Villena, his pupil, Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santa Juliana, or Santillana, appears at the head of the brilliant society of poets who adorned the court of John II. Whenever a Marquis of Santillana is mentioned in the history of Spanish literature, without any more particular description, it is this nobleman that is meant. He was born in the year 1398. His elevated rank and great fortune, joined to the military and political talents by which he was distinguished from youth upwards, placed him in a situation in which he was called upon to perform a principal part among the nobles of Castile. His intellectual culture had for its basis the philosophy of Socrates; and his strict morality procured him no less celebrity than his sound understanding and love of science.75 This uncommon union of rank, influence, character, talents, and learning, could not fail to render the Marquis of Santillana highly respected; and he was indeed regarded as so extraordinary a man, that foreigners are said to have undertaken journies to Castile for the sole purpose of seeing him. He was greatly esteemed by king John, who, during the civil wars, constantly received from him, in return, the homage which was due to a protector of learning, though the Marquis was not always of that prince’s party. After the death of John II. in the latter years of his life, this eminent man assisted with his counsels Henry IV. under whom the regal authority in Castile was subsequently almost annihilated. He died in the year 1458.

The Marquis of Santillana possessed no uncommon poetic talent. But he studied to give to the poetry of his age a moral tendency, to extend its sphere by allegorical invention, and to adorn poetic description with the stores of learning. Two poems, in which he has best succeeded in realizing these objects, are also the most celebrated of his works. The first is an elegy on the death of the Marquis of Villena;76 a lyric allegory in twenty-five dactylic stanzas, constructed according to the ancient form. The idea is very simple, and the commencement of the piece brings to recollection the hell of Dante, of which it is probably an imitation.77 The poet loses himself in a desert, finds himself surrounded by wild and frightful animals, advances forward, hears dismal tones of lamentation, and finally discovers some nymphs in mourning, who bewail the loss and chaunt the merits of the deceased Marquis of Villena. On this poem, which does not discover much ingenuity of invention, the Marquis of Santillana probably expended all his stock of learning. He cites as many deities and ancient authors, as the nature of his work will permit him to notice.78 Such a display of erudition had never before been seen in the Castilian language. No genial poetic spirit is to be found except in the descriptions and in some other scattered passages of this lyric allegory;79 but the verse is not destitute of harmony. The other considerable poem of the Marquis, consists of a series of moral reflections, occasioned by the unfortunate fate of Don Alvaro de Luna, the favourite of John II.; the Marquis called this work, El doctrinal de Privados, (the Manual of Favourites.) It must be regarded as the earliest didactic poem in the Spanish language, unless that title be given to any series of moral maxims in verse. The work which is divided into fifty-three stanzas in redondillas, receives a poetic colouring from the manner in which the shade of Don Alvaro is introduced confessing his faults, and uttering those moral truths, which the author wished to impress on the hearts of the restless Castilians.80 He was less successful in his love songs composed in the Castilian manner, to which he unfortunately thought a new dignity would be given, by rendering them the vehicles of learned allusions. He possessed, however, the art of reconciling this pedantry with a pleasing style of versification.81 A kind of hymn, which he composed, under the title of Los Gozos de neustra Señora, (the Joys of our Lady) has been preserved, but it possesses no poetic merit.82 He also wrote a collection of proverbs and maxims in verse, for the use of the Prince Royal of Castile, who afterwards ascended a tottering throne under the title of Henry IV.83 However low a critical examination might reduce the value of these works, still the Marquis of Santillana deserves to retain the place assigned to him in the history of Spanish literature by his contemporaries, by whom he was generally admired, as the “representative of the honour of poetry.”

Among the literary remains of the Marquis of Santillana, the critical and historical letter is particularly remarkable. This letter, which is frequently mentioned in the early accounts of Spanish poetry,84 is instructive in various respects. It affords the means of accurately observing the infancy of Spanish criticism in that age, for the Marquis has added to the letter a collection of his ingenious maxims, (decires,) and of his poems for Don Pedro, a Portuguese prince; and from the embarrassment evinced by the Marquis when he attempts to give the prince an account of the rise of Castilian poetry, it is obvious, that with respect to the real origin of that poetry, less was understood at that time than is known at the present day. Poetry, or the gay science, is, according to the Marquis of Santillana, “an invention of useful things, which being enveloped in a beautiful veil, are arranged, exposed, and concealed according to a certain calculation, measurement, and weight.”85 Thus, allegory appeared to him to belong to the essence of poetry. He could scarcely have imbibed this opinion from Dante. In Spain, as well as in Italy and France, it seems to have issued forth from the monkish cells, when endeavours were made to unite poetry with philosophy, and to make the poetic art the symbol of knowledge, in order to ensure to it estimation among the learned. The allegorical spirit which pervades the half gothic poetry of that period, is therefore inseparably connected with the characteristic origin of modern poetry. The Marquis of Santillana would have come to a totally different conclusion, had he taken an unprejudiced view of the genuine national poetry of his country. But he imagined he was laying down a principle which would ennoble it, when, according to his theory, he held allegory to be indispensable. Without scruple, therefore, he confounded the Castilian and Limosin poetry together in one mass. Respecting the origin of the former, he entered into no investigation. He commences the history of poetry with Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, and Job,86 gives a copious account of the changes which the art of the Troubadours had undergone in the Arragonian provinces, and adds a notice of some of the earliest Galician and Portuguese poets: among the Castilian poets, he mentions king Alphonso and some others, without saying a syllable on the subject of the ancient romances.