Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/381

 CASTILIAN.] SPAIN 357 tendency leads the Spanish poets to rhyme in hendeca- syllabics as the marquis of Santillana had formerly done, though his attempts had fallen into oblivion and to group their verses in tercets, octaves, sonnets, and canciones (canzoni). Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536), Juan Boscan (1493-c. 1550), and Diego de Mendoza (1503- 1575) are the recognized chiefs of the school al italico modo, and to them belongs the honour of having successfully transplanted to Spain those different forms of verse, and of having enriched and improved the poetic language of their country. The few uncouthnesses of which Mendoza and Boscan more especially are guilty (such as certain faults of rhythmic accentuation) were corrected by their disciples Gutierre de Cetina, Gregorio Silvestre, Hernando de Acuna, by the poets of the so-called school of Seville, headed by Fernando de Herrera (died 1597), and also by those of the rival school of Salamanca, rendered famous mainly by the inspired poetry of Fr. Luis de Leon (1528-1591). Against those innovators the poets faithful to the old Castilian manner, the rhymers of redondillas and romances, hold their own ; under the direction of Crist6bal de Castillejo (1556) they carry on a fierce war of the pen against the " Petrarchists." But by the last third of the 16th century the triumph of the new Italian school is assured, and no one any longer thinks of reproaching it for its foreign flavour. Only a sort of schism is effected from that period between the higher poetry and the other varieties : the former employs only the hendecasyllabic and the heptasyllabic (quebrado), while the popular poets, or those who affect a more familiar tone, preserve the national metres. Almost all the poets, however, of the 16th and 17th centuries have tried their powers in both kinds of versification, using them in turn according to the nature of their subjects. Thus Lope de Vega, first of all, who wrote La Jerusalem Conquistada (1609), La Dragontea (1602), La Hermosura de Angelica (1602), in Italian verses and in octaves, composed his long narrative poem on Isidore, the husbandman patron of Madrid (1599), in quintils of octosyllabic verse, not to mention a great number of "romances." As regards this last form, previously disdained or almost so by artistic poets, Lope de Vega gave it a prestige that brought it into favour with the literates of the court. A host of poets were pleased to recast the old " romances " or to compose new ones. The 17th century, it may be said, is characterized by a regular surfeit of lyric poetry, to which the establish- ment of various literary academies in the Italian style con- tributed not a little. Of this enormous mass of verses of all sorts and sizes very little still keeps afloat : the names of three-fourths of the versifiers must be forgotten, and in addition to those already cited it will be sufficient to mention Luis de Gongora (1561-1626) and Francisco de Quevedo Villegas (1580-1645). G6ngora is especially famous as the founder of the " cultist " school, as the intro- ducer into Castilian poetry of a flowery, bombastic, and periphrastic style, characterized by sonorous vocables and artificial arrangements of phrase. The Spaniards have given the name of culto to this pompous and manneristic style, with its system of inversions based on Latin syntax. The Soledades of Gongora are the monument par excellence of Spanish mannerism, which made numerous victims and inflicted on the poetry of the Peninsula irreparable injury. But Gongora, a poet of really great powers, had started better, and as often as he cares to forget about being sonorous and affected, and is contented to rhyme romances, he finds true poetic accents, ingenious ideas, and felicitous expressions. Quevedo, much greater, moreover, in his prose works than in his verse, displays real power only in satire, epigram, and parody. There are in some of his serious pieces the stuff of a Juvenal, and his satiric and burlesque romances, of which several are even written in slang (germania), are in their way little masterpieces. Another commonplace of Spanish poetry at this period was epic poetry after the style of Tasso's Gerusalemme. None of those interminable and prosaic compositions in octavos reales come near their model ; none of them could even be compared in style, elevation of thought, and beauty of imagery to the Lusiadas. They are in reality only rhymed chronicles, and consequently, when the author happens to have taken part in the events he narrates, they have a genuine historical interest. Such is the case with the Araucana of Alonso de Ercilla (1533-1594), of which it may be said that it was written less with a pen than with a pike. In burlesque poetry the Spaniards have been rather more successful : La Gatomaquia of Lope de Vega and La Mosquea of Villaviciosa (died 1658) are somewhat agreeable pieces of fun. The departments of imaginative literature in which the Ro- genius of the new Spanish nation revealed itself with most mances - vigour and originality are the novela and the drama. By novela must be understood the novel of manners, called picaresca (from picaro, a rogue or " picaroon ") because of the social status of the heroes of those fictions ; and this kind of novel is quite an invention of the Spaniards. Their pastoral romance, on the other hand the best known examples of which are the Diana Enamorada of Jorge de Montemayor (died 1561), continued by Alonso Perez and Gaspar Gil I'olo, the Galatea of Cervantes, and the Arcadia of Lope de Vega, as well as their novel of adventure, started by Cervantes in his Novelas Ejemplares (1613), and cultivated after him by a host of writers is directly derived from Italy. The Arcadia of Sannazaro is the source of the Diana and of all its imitations, just as the Italian novellieri alone are the masters of the Spanish novelistas of the 17th century. The picaresque novel starts in the middle of the 16th century with the Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, sus Fortunas y Adversidades (1554), the work of a very bold intellect whose personality un- fortunately remains unknown, there being no satisfactory reason for assigning this little book, which is as remarkable for the vigour of its satire as for the sobriety and firmness of its style, to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. A supple- ment to the adventures of Lazarillo appeared at Antwerp in 1555 ; it is probably, however, not the production of the author of the original romance. The impetus was given, and the success of Lazarillo was so great that imitators soon appeared. In 1599 Mateo Aleman published, under the title of Atalaya de la Vida Humana, the first part of the adventures of another picaroon, Guzman de Alfarache; and, as he was in no hurry to finish this narrative, another writer, jealous of his success, took possession of it and issued in 1603, under the pseudonym of Mateo Luxan, a continuation of the first Guzman. Aleman, not to be thwarted, resumed his pen, and published the second part of his romance in 1605. Quite unlike that of the Lazarillo, the style of Mateo Aleman of Seville is eloquent, full, with long and learned periods, sometimes diffuse. Nothing could be more extravagant and more obscure than the history of Justina the beggar woman (La Picara Justina) by Francisco Lopez de Ubeda (1605), an assumed name which concealed the person of the Dominican Andres Perez de Leon. The other picaresque romances are Alonso Mozo de muckos Amos, by Geronimo de AlcalA (two parts, 1624 and 1626) ; the Historia y Vida del Gran Tacano Pablo de Segovia (1626), in which Quevedo has made his most brilliant display of style and wit ; the Garduna de Sevilla (1634) of Alonso de Castillo Solor- zano ; La Vida y Hechos de EstebaniUo Gonzalez (1646), described as compuesto por el mesmo, but an Est^ban Gonzalez is unknown in the literary history of the 17th century.