History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature (Vol. 1&2). Friedrich Bouterwek

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СКАЧАТЬ de Cetina is less known, though there is no doubt of his having lived about the same period, as he is mentioned by Herrera in his Commentary on the Works of Garcilaso. He was, like Herrera, a native of Seville; and having removed to Madrid, was there invested with an ecclesiastical dignity. Few of his poems have been printed;246 but from those few it is obvious that he had a fair chance of becoming the Anacreon of Spain. That glory, however, was reserved for Villegas. Still Gutierre de Cetina’s imitations of the anacreontic style are not without their share of sweetness and grace; and they are moreover remarkable as being the first productions in the class to which they belong.247 His madrigals also seem to have had no prototype in Spanish literature.248 In his canciones, however, the romantic enthusiasm occasionally degenerates into absurdity.249

      Pedro do Padilla, a knight of the spiritual order of St. Jago, must be ranked in the same class with Gutierre. He vied with Garcilaso in pastoral poetry; and in order to conciliate the partizans of both the old and the new styles, he introduced alternately in the same eclogue the Italian and the ancient Spanish metres.250 His poetry is still esteemed in Spain. He followed the old national custom by making the events connected with the war in the Netherlands serve as subjects for romances.251

      But a poet still more celebrated, and in a great degree indebted for his fame to the immoderate encomium bestowed upon him by the pen of Cervantes, is Gaspar Gil Polo, a native of Valencia, who continued and concluded Montemayor’s Diana under the title of La Diana enamorada.252 A continuation of this pastoral romance had previously been undertaken by a writer named Perez; but without success. Gil Polo in one respect effected more than did Montemayor himself; but in point of invention he is inferior, notwithstanding the faults of the original plan. After Sireno has been cured of his love by the sage Felicia, Gil Polo makes the passion of Diana revive, and renders her more unhappy for Sireno’s sake, than he had previously been for hers. Thus the romantic story is reversed; but the new relations under which it now appears are few. In the sequel the aid of the sage Felicia is again obtained, and she finally unites the long separated lovers. The narrative style in the prose portion of the romance presents a very correct imitation of Montemayor; but neither the merit of this imitation, nor the continuation of the metaphysical reflections on love, with which the romance is interspersed, would have gained for Gil Polo the approbation of the critic. What must have raised him higher than Montemayor in the estimation of such a judge as Cervantes, is the precision and clearness of the ideas, and the perfect polish of style in the poetic part of the romance. Montemayor has often indulged in too subtle or sophistical plays of wit. Gil Polo in painting the feelings has exercised a sounder judgment, without, however, descending to the coldness of prose. His sonnets may be regarded as models; for he has succeeded in combining the unity of ideas, which ought to distinguish that species of composition, with the most elegant rounding and regularity of structure.253 In his canciones he has occasionally, for the sake of variety, imitated the Provençal rhymes (rimas Provenzales) with such happy dexterity, that the reader might fancy himself perusing some of the best opera songs, though no such thing as an opera then existed.254 In like manner, he endeavoured to naturalize the metrical structure of French verse (rimas Franceses) in the Spanish language, upon which the burthen of alexandrines had already been inflicted.255 In compliment to the old Spanish taste, he bedecked his romance with a profusion of versified riddles (preguntas,) which are, for the most part, so exceedingly dull, that it is difficult to conceive how they could be endured by a man of Gil Polo’s talent.256 In honour of Valencia, his native city, he composed a poem, in which the genius of the little river Turia is made to sing the praises of the celebrated men to whom Valencia had given birth. This song of Turia (Canto de Turia) has found patriotic commentators, without whose laborious explanations it would have been unintelligible to foreign readers.257

OBSTACLES TO THE IMITATION OF THE ROMANTIC EPOPEE IN SPAIN—UNSUCCESSFUL ESSAYS IN SERIOUS EPOPEE—TRANSLATIONS OF CLASSICAL EPIC POETRY.

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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 СКАЧАТЬ