Читать книгу The Study of Spanish and Portuguese Literature - Friedrich Bouterwek - Страница 42

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Though Spanish literature was in the manner just recorded, enriched during half a century by numerous lyric and pastoral compositions, which deserve to be handed down with honour to posterity, yet within the same interval epic poetry made but little advancement in Spain.

Early in this period the absurd name of idyls (idyllios) appears to have been applied to such narrative poems as were not romances, and to have marked out a particular field for a kind of poetic tales, which were in some measure imitations from the ancients, and yet were executed in the romantic style. Such, for example, was Boscan’s free translation of the story of Hero and Leander from Musæus, which the Spaniards call their first idyl. Thus the term idyls in Spanish, conveys no idea of pastoral poems, which are always called eclogues (eglogas.)258 Castillejo, of whom further mention will shortly be made, imitated in old Castilian verse, stories from Ovid, and gave to them the name of idyls. The spurious heroic style which the authors of these tales introduced, proved, without doubt, one of the obstacles to the cultivation of chivalrous epic poetry in Spain; but it is also to be recollected, that the luxuriant mixture of the comic with the serious, which is the very soul of the romantic epopee of the Italians, was by no means congenial to Spanish taste. In Spain the works of Boyardo and Ariosto were known only through the medium of bad translations, and were read merely with the interest attached to all books of chivalry. Finally, the spirit of the old romance poetry was also hostile to the chivalric epopee. To descend from the cordial gravity of the national narrative romances, to the careless levity with which the venerable heroes of chivalry were treated by the Italian writers, was a transition repugnant to the patriotic feelings of the Spaniards; who, in their wars with the Italians, were the more disposed to be proud of the preservation of their national spirit of chivalry, when they found that it facilitated their victories over men who were better fitted for intrigue than for defending their freedom sword in hand. Thus, to the chivalrous epopee of the Italians, the Spaniards remained as completely strangers, as if they had been excluded from all opportunity of becoming acquainted with that kind of composition; and yet the period when the Spaniards and Italians maintained the closest political and literary relations, precisely corresponds with that of Ariosto’s first celebrity, and of the numerous imitations of the Orlando Furioso, which appeared in the Italian language.259

On the contrary, several Spanish poets, during the first half of the sixteenth century, zealously competed for the palm in the serious epopee; but obstacles again arose, which all the force of Spanish genius was not sufficient to surmount. Torquato Tasso had not yet shewn what the serious epic was capable of becoming, and what it must be, in order to be reconciled to the taste of modern times. The Spaniards were so little prepared for the new poetry with which they had suddenly been made acquainted on the first imitation of the Italian style, that they could not be expected to enter without a guide into the true spirit of the modern epopee. The men, who at this time boldly attempted to become the Homers of their country, appear to have felt that they could not select from ancient history the materials for an epic poem. But on the other hand, their patriotic feelings prepossessed them too much in favour of events of recent occurrence. The age in which they themselves lived was, in their eyes, the most illustrious and the most worthy of epic glory; a Spanish Homer could record no achievements save those of the Spaniards under Charles V.; and the hero, who in their poems eclipsed all others, was their favourite Charles, the never conquered, (el nunca vencido,) as he was styled by all the Spanish writers of the sixteenth century. Thus arose the Caroliads, or heroic poems, in praise of Charles V. all of which speedily sunk into oblivion. Among them were the Carlos Famoso, by Luis de Zapata; the Carlos Victorioso, by Geronymo de Urrea; La Carolea, by the Valencian poet, Geronymo Sampèr, &c. Alonzo Lopez, surnamed Pinciano, who flourished at the commencement of the sixteenth century, was more happy in his choice of an epic subject. The hero of his story is Pelayo, the brave descendant of the visigothic kings, who, in his turn, was the first to subdue the Arabs. But Pinciano’s poem, which he entitled El Pelayo, had no better fate than the Caroliads.260

The present seems a fit opportunity for mentioning La fuente de Alcover, a narrative poem, which though of humbler pretensions than the Caroliads, experienced considerable success. The author, Felipe Mey, who was of Flemish extraction, was a bookseller in Valencia. Encouraged by his patron, Antonio Agustin, bishop of Tarragona, he chose a few stanzas, written by that ingenious prelate, as the ground work of a mythological poem. The idea originated in the name given to a plant (capillus veneris), through which the water trickling drop by drop, at length forms a little fountain. This pretty poem makes, along with some others by Felipe Mey, an appendix to his unfinished translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in octave verse. It deserves also to be mentioned, that this translation reads like a modern poem; both language and versification are excellent.261

Some other translations of the ancient classic poets which appeared, during this period, remain to be noticed. Gonzalo Perez, a native of Arragon, is the author of a poetic translation of Homer’s Odyssey, in the Castilian language. The first edition was printed in 1552, and the second in 1562; so that it seems the Spanish public felt an interest in this extension of their poetic literature. Gregorio Fernandez translated the Æneid and several of Virgil’s eclogues in verse; and in the like manner Juan de Guzman executed a complete version of the georgics. All these translations, however, like those of Luis de Leon, must be regarded as re-casts of ancient materials into modern moulds, rather than translations, in the strict sense of the term. But, in an age and country, in which both the people and the language were imbued with the spirit of the romantic poetry, to have attempted to introduce the classic poets of Greece or Rome in any other way than in a romantic dress, would have been to do violence to the genius of the language and the nation.262