Legends & Romances of Spain. Lewis Spence

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      But it would be wrong to refuse to the imaginative literature of the Arabs a high place among the world’s achievements, and we must regret that, for causes into which we cannot enter here, opportunities for development and discipline were not vouchsafed it. As we read the history of the Arabian states with their highly developed civilization, their thronged academies, and their far-flung dominions, reaching from Central Asia to the western gates of the Mediterranean, and turn, to-day to the scenes where such things flourished, we must indeed be unimaginative if we fail to be impressed by the universal wreck and ruin to which these regions have been exposed. The great, emulous, and spirited race which conquered and governed them gathered the world to its doors, and the rude peoples of Europe clustered about its knees to listen to the magical tales of unfolding science which fell from its lips. From the desert it came, and to the desert it has returned.

      Djamshîd, the palace is a lions’ lair

      Where ye held festival with houris fair;

      The desert ass bounds upon Barlaam’s tomb:

      Where are the pomps of yesterday, ah, where?

Moorish ‘Fashion’ in Spanish Romance

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Of Moorish grandeur of thought and luxuriance of emotion we find little in Spanish literature, at least until the beginning of the fifteenth century. Its note is distinctively, nay almost aggressively, European, as will be readily understood from the circumstances of its origin.23 But it would seem that with the Castilian occupation of the Moorish parts of Spain the atmosphere which the Saracen had left behind him powerfully affected the Spaniard, who appears to have cast a halo of romance round the character of his ancient foe, with whose civilization, as expressed in its outward manifestations of architecture and artifact, he could scarcely have failed to be deeply impressed. If our conclusions are well founded it would appear that about the era alluded to a Moorish ’fashion’ set in in Spanish literature, just as did an Oriental craze in the England of Byron and Moore, when English people began to travel in the Levantine countries. But this fashion was in great measure pseudo-Saracenic, unaffected by literary models and derived indirectly more from atmosphere and art than directly from men or books. Long before the fifteenth century, however, with its rather artificial mania for everything Moresque, the Arab spirit had been at work upon Spanish literature, although in a feeble and unconscious manner. Spanish literary forms, whether in verse or prose, owe absolutely nothing to it, and especially is this the case in regard to the assonance which characterizes Castilian poetry, a prosodic device found in the verse of all Romance tongues at an early period. The Moors, however, seem to have sophisticated, if they did not write, the ballads of the Hispano-Moorish frontiers, especially those which have reference to the loss of Alhamia. In any case these are founded upon Moorish legends. Certain metrical pedants, like the Marquis de Santillana, toyed with Arabic verse-forms as Swinburne did with the French rondeau or Dobson with the ballade, or as the dry-as-dusts of our universities with Greek hexameters, neglecting for the alien and recondite the infinite possibilities of their mother-tongue. These preciosities, to which many men of letters in all ages have been addicted, had no more effect upon the main stream of Castilian literature than such attempts ever have upon the literary output of a country. Some of the popular coplas, or couplets, however, seem to be direct translations from the Arabic, which is not surprising when we remember the considerable number of half-breeds to be found in the Peninsula until the middle of the seventeenth century. There can be no doubt, too, that Arabic was the spoken language of thousands of Christians in Southern Spain. But that it had a determined opponent in the native Spanish is becoming more and more clear—an opponent which it found as merciless as the Moor found the Spaniard.24

      Perhaps the best measure of the decline of Arabic as a spoken language in Spain is the fact that the authors of many romances declare them to be mere translations from the Arabic—usually the writings of Moorish magicians or astrologers. These pretensions are easily refuted by means of internal evidence. But regarding the question broadly and sanely, Spanish literature could no more remain unaffected by Arab influence than could Spanish music, architecture, or handicrafts. All such influences, however, were undoubtedly late, and, as regards the romances, were much more ‘spiritual’ than ‘material.’ Christian Spain had held off the Saracen for eight hundred years, and when at last she consented to drink out of the Saracen cup she filled it with her own wine. But the strange liquor which had brimmed it before left behind it the mysterious odours and scents of the Orient, faint, yet unmistakable.

The Type of Spanish Romance

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      The type of Spanish romance at its best is that in which the spirit of wonder is mingled with the spirit of chivalry. Old Spain, with her glorious ideas of honour, her finely wrought sense of chivalry, and her birthright of imagination, provided almost a natural crucible for the admixture of the elements of romance. Every circumstance of climate and environment assisted and fostered the illusions with which Spanish story teemed, and above all there was a more practical interest in the life chivalric in Spain than, perhaps, in any other country in Europe. The Spaniard carried the insignia of chivalry more properly than Frenchman or Englishman. It was his natural apparel, and he brought to its wearing a dignity, a gravity, and a consciousness of fitness unsurpassed. If he degenerated into a Quixote it was because of the whole-hearted seriousness with which he had embraced the knightly life. He was certainly the first to laugh when he found that his manners, like his mail, had become obsolete. But even the sound of that laughter is knightly, and the book which aroused it has surely won at least as many hearts for romanticism as ever it disillusioned.

      The history of Spanish conquest is a chronicle of champions, of warriors almost superhuman in ambition and endurance, mighty carvers of kingdoms, great remodellers of the world’s chart, who, backed by a handful of lances, and whether in Valencia, Mexico, Italy, or Araucan, surpassed the fabulous deeds of Amadis or Palmerin. In a later day the iron land of Castile was to send forth iron men who were to carry her banners across an immensity of ocean to the uttermost parts of the earth. What inspired them to live and die in harness surrounded by dangers more formidable than the enchantments of malevolent sorcerers or than ever confronted knights-errant in the quest of mysterious castles? What heartened them in an existence of continuous strife, privation, and menace? Can we doubt that the hero-tales of their native land magically moved and inspired them—that when going into battle the exploits of the heroes of romance rang in their ears like a fanfare from the trumpets of heralds at a tournament?

      And as we gat us to the fight

      Our armour and our hearts seemed light

      Thinking on battle’s cheer,

      Of fierce Orlando’s high prowess,

      Of Felixmarte’s knightliness

And the death of Olivier.25

1 The moro latinado, or Spanish-speaking Moor, is a prominent figure in later Spanish story.

2 Bishop Odoor’s will (747) shows the break-up of Hispanic Latin, and Charles the Bald in an edict of 844 alludes to the usitato vocabulo of the Spaniards—their СКАЧАТЬ