Selected Writings of César Vallejo. César Vallejo

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СКАЧАТЬ our perspective, José de Espronceda is the head of romanticism in Castilian poetry, not because he is the leader of an intellectual or physical movement who for the first time raises the revolutionary flag and unleashes the nacent vision of a new activity but rather because he is the one who, though serving after other predecessors in the already-formed ranks, grabs ahold of the standard of the rebellion and, raising himself up with it to a height he had not reached before, waves it next to the sun, like a victorious eagle, and leaves it nailed on high while he flies off to Glory.

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      Behind Espronceda, who completed his mission in the progress of humanity by the age of thirty-three, the eminent José Zorrilla appears, in whose literary figure, according to the critics, romanticism displays its most outstanding mark. Yet here we are wont to resolve a question of great importance for the principles of the school in question and its history. The author of Don Juan Tenorio does not represent the apogee of romanticism for well-founded reasons.

      Far above the legends into which Zorrilla has injected the genuinely Spanish note, whose poetry is driven by the rancid perfume of the traditions of the race tacked together beneath the burning meridianal sun, far above the legends is the polyphonic canto of El diablo mundo, that grandiose poem, engendered by humanity’s innermost core, which rises out of the century that came before it and thus spontaneously surpasses Goethe’s Faust in its motivation and Christian sentiment. If these legends indeed draw from their source of inspiration, insofar as this is the history of the Spanish people—with all its war-riddled episodes and fanaticism, with all its effervescence and fragile ideals—in a word, if these poems “are written in the dust and ruins of the ancient monuments and castles” and are the voice of their race, then they might respond to one of the characters of romantic poetry, but their intrinsic importance does not fulfill the ideal of romanticism in relation to society and human evolution. “Zorrilla is not outstanding for his familiarity with the modern philosophical systems that form the superior feature in the stories of Goethe,” Camacho Roldán explains. “Before all else he is a poet, a poet of nature, a poet of the music of language, a poet whose amenable expression imitates the roaring thrust of the harsh wind.”⁷ Zorrilla, a contemporary of Espronceda, had a longer life to bring his artistic ideals to reality, and so he did.

      In the literary oeuvre of Zorrilla there are two perfectly distinct genres: drama and legend. Corresponding to the first are the so very popular Don Juan Tenorio and El puñal del godo, among other dramas; and to the second, Más vale llegar a tiempo que rondar un año and Ganar perdiendo among his comedies. The grand tribunal of posterity has already handed down its ruling on these works, and the critics have said so much about them that there is no need for us here to engage them again, except insofar as these poems respond in one way or another to the school we are studying.

      From our perspective, Don Juan Tenorio is clearly the most popular drama of all theatrical works to have been written in Castilian, and this deep sincere prestige that it enjoys among its readers can be explained by two main reasons: the water sources of inspiration Zorrilla drank from to elaborate the broad thought of this work and the form he used to embody his ideas. Don Juan Tenorio is not a figure created by Zorrilla, dispensing with a vision of society, as an a priori consequence of his astonishing fantasy, which, along with much else, was well within Zorrilla’s capabilities. Rather, Don Juan is a character who corresponds to the tradition of the Spanish people and to the spirit of its sociability. Moreover, the protagonist of this drama is a genuine model of human idiosyncrasy. To be precise, he is the passionately erotic, unreligious, and courageous personification of romantic man, and as the image of these ideas and feelings of the spirit, he has risen from society to the stage, like a natural flower, obeying one of Guyau’s laws which says that, just as in the towering mountains there exists some corner where nature’s polyrhythm goes to echo and all the voices of the region convene, so too from human activity does a man emerge who encapsulates the tumultuous palpitations of the heart in his superior psychic vitality. Hence, Don Juan Tenorio. He undoubtedly corresponds to the simple basic essence of this figure of art, the real existence of a man, whom the people knew and tradition embellished with fantastic features and painted with the stunning lines of a rare psychological composition. Tirso took him to stage and, in this sense, Tirso was romantic.⁸ But Zorrilla modified him, because aside from presenting us with this figure onstage, with this universal character to whom we have alluded, he infused him with a vigorous spirit of Spanish Latinity; it is in this way that Don Juan Tenorio is the pure and loyal image of Spanish man, and this is why the work’s widespread reception has been so favorable. With regard to the formal art of the dramatic development, this is another powerful strength that has made the author’s thought ineradicable in the astonished imagination of all who speak Castilian. Everywhere someone is heard delightfully reciting portions of the verses from Don Juan Tenorio, due to the sublime simplicity of style, the familiar phraseological elocutions, and the trademark usage of the romance and hendecasyllable meters, which the Spanish hold so dear, as if those bits of harmony are themselves the beating of the Castilian breast.

      And what can we say about El puñal del godo that we haven’t said already? The organizing dramatic idea of this poem does not have a different origin than that of Don Juan; it too is a flower of Spanish blood and sentiment; it too is the faithful representation of the social spirit of the epoch in which it was written, and this is why its genuine inspiration is the people, informed as it is by the legendary memories of medieval times.

      In the second genre, Zorrilla maintains the romantic temperament of the motifs from his dramatic works. One could say that, with the miracle of his portentous genius in the legends, he has brought us the living breath of ancient platonic love from the grave, melancholic burial ground of medieval Spain, from the remote gothic monasteries, and from the burning, mystical, patriotic enthusiasm of the Cids and Pelayos. Never before did Spanish lyricism know how to gain momentum so energetically from the heated breath of the Iberian soul; never in its creations did it unfurl so completely the net of its distant glorious memories, nor did it endow such lucid beauty of local color and architectonic forms. Other poets might have created something better with regard to highbrow ideas, lineal perfection, and beauty in the visual tonalities, but no one has managed to copy with such fidelity the mysterious majestic mansions from the Middle Ages, full of unnerving penumbras and monastic abstractions, the dark stormy nights that plunge the rugged sierras of Spain into mourning, where the wind howls and a religious tone of spiritual sadness reigns. Finally, no one has managed to show us so clearly the ephemeral nuances of the race—the wild impetuses of falconry, the mildest winged swooning of tenderness, blind Christian fanaticism, vulgarity, violence, irreligiousness, criminal blood, and the martyr’s purple heart. Admire here a brushstroke of quintessential beauty in the execution of such idealization, when he paints the vision of Margarita la Tornera in the convent:

      Pero con fulgor tan puro,

      tan fosfórico y tan tenue,

      que el templo seguía oscuro

      y en silencio y soledad.

      Solo de la monja en torno

      se notaba vaporosa

      teñida de azul y rosa

      una extraña claridad.

      Although some critics suggest that his traditions lack research with regard to philosophical speculations, this defect is completely nonexistent in the author’s lyric, no matter what portion of text one cites from his immense oeuvre. This contra is mistaken and unjust. Let he who says otherwise say so when Zorrilla pontificates and sings that

      … la hermosa

      es prenda que con envidia

      el cielo dio, y con perfidia

      por СКАЧАТЬ