Читать книгу The Study of Spanish and Portuguese Literature - Friedrich Bouterwek - Страница 35

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The first Spanish poet who followed the example of Boscan was Garcilaso de la Vega, a young Castilian, descended from a family of consideration in Toledo, and born, according to the statements of different authors, either in 1500 or 1503. His poetic talent was early developed, and he had written several lyric pieces in the old Spanish style, when his acquaintance with Boscan, which soon grew into friendship, commenced. The character of the poetry of the ancients and of Italy was then seen by him in a new light. He proceeded with ardour to the study of classical models, and of Petrarch and Virgil in particular. The improvement of pastoral poetry in his native tongue, appears to have been his first object. But it was his lot to follow the restless profession of arms; and the wars of Charles V. carried him abroad, and dragged him from country to country. In the year 1529, he distinguished himself in the Spanish corps, which was attached to the imperial army opposed to the Turks. While in Vienna he was involved in a romantic intrigue, between a near relation of his own and a lady of the court. The imperial dignity, it appears, was conceived to be compromised by this intrigue, and Garcilaso was punished for his interference by imprisonment in an Island of the Danube. There he composed one of his canciones, in which he bewails his destiny, but at the same time celebrates the Danube and the countries through which it flows.159 His imprisonment probably was not of long duration. In the year 1535, he served in the adventurous expedition of Charles V. against Tunis, in which he acquired both glory and wounds. In Naples and Sicily, he devoted, as far as circumstances would permit, his moments of relaxation to poetry. He execrated war, and exerted all the powers of his imagination in painting an Arcadian pastoral life, but still remained a soldier.160 It may be presumed, however, that his military talents were not inconsiderable, for when the imperial army in the year 1536, penetrated into the South of France, Garcilaso de la Vega, who could then be only thirty-three, or at most thirty-six years of age, commanded eleven companies of infantry. That campaign, which did not terminate so fortunately as it commenced, was the last to Garcilaso, and tore him from the world in the bloom of life. The emperor in person ordered him to take by assault, a fort, the garrison of which harrassed the army in its retreat. Garcilaso executed this command with more gallantry than prudence. He wished to be the first to scale the walls. He attained his object, but was struck with a stone on the head, and thrown down from the ramparts. Being mortally wounded, he was removed to Nice, where, a few weeks after, he died.

It would be difficult to discover from the works of Garcilaso, that the author had spent a considerable portion of his short life in camps, and had died in the bed of military honour, the victim of his courage; for he approaches even more closely than Boscan to the tenderness of Petrarch. The general tone of his poetry is so soft and melancholy, that it is only by occasional characteristic traits, that the Spaniard is recognized; but it must be confessed that when such passages do occur, the exaggeration is striking enough.161 In his sonnets, which are not numerous, the imitation of Petrarch is obvious; but he sometimes betrays that affectation of wit, which was still in Spain regarded as an ingenious manner of expressing vehement and profound passion.162 One however exhibits throughout a delicacy of style and sweetness of manner, equalled by few pieces of the same kind, in the Spanish language.163 He was not equally successful in seizing the character of the Italian canzone, of which he, as well as Boscan, was an imitator; and his reputation rests chiefly on his pastoral poems, which therefore deserve to be more particularly noticed.

Since the rude dramatic eclogues of Juan de la Enzina pastoral poetry had made no progress in Spain. But Garcilaso de la Vega imitated Virgil and Sanazzar, and so happily united the romantic character with the correctness of the ancients, that his eclogues, though only one of them can be regarded as a masterpiece, surpass all Italian poems of the kind, those in the Arcadia of Sanazzar alone excepted. The fine Neapolitan sky appears to have had the same influence on Garcilaso as on Virgil and Sanazzar; and he seems to have regarded Naples as his poetical country. The first of his eclogues is by far the most beautiful, and marks an epoch in Spanish pastoral poetry. The whole composition has the metrical form of an Italian canzone. The invention is very simple. In the four introductory strophes, in which is interwoven a dedication to the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, the author describes, with all the simplicity which belongs to true pastoral poetry, the meeting of two shepherds, Salicio and Nemoroso, who alternately give vent to their feelings in melancholy strains. These elegiac songs reply to each other without interruption, and the relation subsisting between them gives to the whole lyric composition a proper consistence and unity. This is all the plan of the eclogue. But the glow of enthusiastic feeling, the happy choice of expression, and the harmony of versification so completely satisfactory to the ear, to be found in almost every line of these songs of sorrow, cannot fail to give delight to every mind susceptible of elegiac and beauty. Accordingly the Spanish critics are nearly unanimous in pronouncing this eclogue one of the finest works in their language. The subject of the first song is the infidelity—of the second, the death of a mistress; and the latter complaint appears to be founded in fact. But Garcilaso would have better secured the sympathy of the more scrupulous Spanish reader, had he entirely passed over the cause of the lamented fair one’s decease. The lady whom he describes as a pastoral nymph, lost her life it seems in childbed; for an apostrophe of the complaining shepherd to Lucina, indicates plainly enough the nature of her death. But is the affected delicacy which takes offence at a trait so truly natural and pathetic, worthy of the attention of an author? In the first strain in which the shepherd Salicio deplores the infidelity of his mistress, the interest appears to be raised as far as it is possible to carry it.164 Passion is here elevated to the highest pitch, and then lost in a most affecting self sacrifice.165 But the song in which Nemoroso laments the death of his mistress, even surpasses the former in elegiac force, perhaps because it possesses greater softness. In retracing his recollections the mourner draws a series of melancholy pictures which have an indescribable charm. The beauty of the poem rises with the description of the beauty of the departed shepherdess.166 The passage in which Nemoroso relates how he carries in his bosom a lock of his Eliza’s hair, from which he is never separated—how when alone he spreads it out, weeps over it, dries it with his sighs, and then examines and counts every single hair—is unexampled either in ancient or modern literature.167 Occasional imitations of Virgil have been pointed out, but they harmonize so completely with the romantic spirit of the poem, that were it not for the particular references which critics have made, they would in general escape the notice of even the most erudite. The poem, as a whole, is evidently the genuine offspring of the author’s soul. Materials of an affecting but prosaic nature are, by his art, converted into the most graceful and impressive poetry.

As Garcilaso only imitated the ancients by the introduction of certain ideas and images, and not in the structure of his eclogues, he considered himself at liberty to vary their form at pleasure. But here his good taste abandoned him. The second and longest of his eclogues is an unnatural mixture of heterogeneous styles. An unfortunate shepherd deplores his unsuccessful love. Another shepherd joins him, and their conversation proceeds unconstrained in a romantic pastoral tone; but it is impossible to discover any reason for the changes which take place in the verse. Tercets are succeeded by rhymeless iambics, after which the tercets re-appear and are followed by the syllabic measure of a canzone. The simple dialogue suddenly becomes dramatic. The fair huntress, whose indifference is the subject of the first shepherd’s lament, appears upon the scene. The lover seizes and refuses to let her go, until she swears to listen to his addresses. She makes the required vow, and when at liberty flies. The despair of the shepherd then becomes frenzy; and a third shepherd, who has in the mean time arrived, enters into conversation with the one who first joined the unhappy lover, on the means of restoring him to reason. The author seizes this opportunity to convert his eclogue into a most unseasonable eulogium on the house of Alba. One of the shepherds proposes that medical assistance should be obtained, and mentions a physician named Severo; but this name is assigned to a learned friend of Garcilaso and the Alba family. Nothing more is necessary, according to the critical conception of the author, to warrant the making a poetical digression from his account of the merits of the physician, whose miraculous skill is to recover the frantic shepherd, to the history of the house of Alba, which he details in iambic blank verse.

In the third and last of Garcilaso’s eclogues, the genuine pastoral character is resumed. The lyric dialogue in octaves, or Italian stanzas, pleasingly harmonizes with the soft description of amatory sorrows given in this poem.

Garcilaso made essays in other kinds of poetry, but with less success. An elegy written to console the Duke of Alba for the death of his brother, is an imitation, or rather a translation of an Italian poem by Frascatoro, and is at once cold and verbose. More of interest belongs to another elegy which is addressed to Boscan, and which the author wrote at the foot of Mount Etna. Mythological recollections excited by that classic ground, melancholy complaints of the miseries of war, and tender anxieties for a loved object in the poet’s native land, diffuse a charm over the whole of this elegant poem, which is besides remarkable for comparisons and images full of novelty and truth.168

Garcilaso is also the author of a small epistle in which he has endeavoured to seize the true horatian tone. It is not sufficiently important to deserve particular notice, but it is easy to recognize in it the fine tact of this author, to whom the critic, however severely he may judge his faults, cannot deny the title of the second classic poet of Spain.