Legends & Romances of Spain. Lewis Spence

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      Although the cantares of Fernán González and the Children of Lara also lie embedded in the chronicles, I have preferred to deal with them in the chapter on the ballads, the form in which they are undoubtedly best known.

The “Poema del Cid”

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      But by far the most complete and characteristic of the cantares de gesta is the celebrated Poema del Cid, the title which has become attached to it in default of all knowledge of its original designation. That it is a cantar must be plain to all who possess even a slight familiarity with the chansons de gestes of France. Like many of the chansons heroes, the Cid experiences royal ingratitude, and is later taken back into favour. The stock phrases of the chansons, too, are constantly to be met with in the poem, and the atmosphere of boastful herohood arising from its pages strengthens the resemblance. There is also pretty clear proof that the author of the Poema had read or heard the Chanson de Roland. This is not to say that he practised the vile art of adaptation or the viler art of paraphrase, or in any way filched from the mighty epic of Roncesvalles. But superficial borrowings of incident appear, which are, however, amply redeemed by originality of treatment and inspiration. The thought and expression are profoundly national; nor does the language exhibit French influence, save, as has been said, in the matter of well-worn expressions, the clichés of medieval epic.

Its Only Manuscript

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      But one manuscript of the Poema del Cid is known, the handiwork of a certain Per or Pedro the Abbot. About the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Sanchez, the royal librarian, was led to suspect through certain bibliographical references that such a manuscript might exist in the neighbourhood of Bivar, the birthplace of the hero of the poem, and he succeeded in unearthing it in that village. The date at the end is given as Mille CCXLV, and authorities are not agreed as to its significance, some holding that a vacant space showing an erasure after the second C is intentional, and that it should read 1245 (1207 new style). Others believe that 1307 is the true date of the MS. However that may be, the poem itself is referred to a period not earlier than the middle of the twelfth nor later than the middle of the thirteenth century.

      As we possess it, the manuscript is in a rather mutilated and damaged condition. The commencement and title are lost, a page in the middle is missing, and the end has been sadly patched by an unskilful hand. Sanchez states, in his Poesías Castellanas anteriores al Siglo XV (1779–90) that he had seen a copy made in 1596 which showed that the MS. had the same deficiencies then as now.

Its Authorship Unknown

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The personality of the author of the Poema del Cid will probably for ever remain unknown. He may have been a churchman, as Ormsby suggests, but I am inclined to the opinion that he was a professional trovador. The trouvères, rather than ecclesiastics, were responsible for such works in France, and why not the trovadores in Spain?1 That the writer lived near the time of the events he celebrated is plain, probably about half a century after the Cid sheathed his famous sword Colada for the last time. On the ground of various local allusions in the poem he has been claimed as a native of the Valle de Arbujuelo and as a monk of the monastery of Cardeña, near Burgos. But these surmises have nothing but textual references to recommend them, and are only a little more probable than that which would make him an Asturian because he does not employ the diphthong ue. We have good grounds, however, for the assumption that he was at least a Castilian, and these are to be found in his fierce political animus against the kingdom of Leon and all that pertained to it. That Pedro the Abbot was merely a copyist is clear from his mishandling of the manuscript; for though we have to thank him for the preservation of the Poema, our gratitude is dashed with irritation at the manner in which he has passed it on to us, for his copy is replete with vain repetitions, he frequently runs two lines into one, and occasionally even transfers the matter of one line to another in his haste to be free of his task.

Other Cantares of the Cid

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That other cantares relating to the Cid existed is positively known through the researches of Señor Don Ramón Menéndez Pidal, who has demonstrated that one of them was used in the most ancient version of the Crónica General, of which three recensions evidently existed at different periods, and it is now clear that the passage in question does not come from the Poema as we have it, as was formerly believed.2 The passages on the Cid in the second version of the Crónica are also derived from still another cantar on the popular hero, known as the Crónica Rimada,3 or Cantar de Rodrigo, evidently the work of a juglar of Palencia, and which seems to be a mélange of several lost cantares relating to the Cid, as well as to other Spanish traditions. This version, however, is much later than the Poema, and is chiefly interesting as enshrining many traditions relative to the Cid as well as to the ancient folk-tales of Spain.

Metre of the “Poema del Cid”

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It would certainly seem as if, like all cantares, the poem had been especially written for public recitation. The expression “O señores,” encountered in places, may be taken as the equivalent of the English “Listen, lordings,” of such frequent occurrence in our own lays and romances, which was intended to appeal to the attention or spur the flagging interest of a medieval audience. The metre in which the poem is written is almost as unequal as its poetic quality. The prevailing line is the Alexandrine or fourteen-syllabled verse, but some lines run far over this average, while others are truncated in barbarous fashion, probably through the inattention or haste of the copyist.4 It seems to me that the Poema, although of the highest merit in many of its finest passages, has received the most extravagant eulogy, and I suspect that many of the English critics who descant so glibly upon its excellences have never perused it in its entirety. Considerable tracts of it are of the most pedestrian description, and in places it descends to a doggerel which recalls the metrical barbarities of the pantomime. But when the war-trump gives him the key it arouses the singer as it arouses Scott—the parallel is an apt and almost exact one—and it is a mighty orchestra indeed which breaks upon our ears. The lines surge and swell in true Homeric tempest-sound, and as we listen to the crash of Castilian spears upon the Moorish ranks we are reminded of those sounding lines in Swinburne’s Erechtheus beginning:

      With a trampling of drenched, red hoofs and an earthquake of men that meet,

      Strong war sets hand to the scythe, and the furrows take fire from his feet.

      But the music of the singer of the Poema does not depend upon reverberative effect alone. His is the true music of battle, burning the blood with keenest fire, and he СКАЧАТЬ