Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/385

 CASTILIAN.] SPAIN 361 collections of verse, though wanting in genuine inspiration, at least show respect for the language and will always meet with some appreciation. At the head of the new school is Juan Menendez Valde's (1754-1817), and with his are associated the names of P. Diego Gonzales (1733- 1794), Jose" Iglesias de la Casa (1748-1791), known especially by his letrillas, Nicasio Alvarez de Cienfuegos (1764-1809), and some others. Among the verse writers of the 18th century who produced odes and didactic poetry it is only necessary to mention Leandro Fernandez de Moratin (1760-1828) and Manuel Jose Quintana (1772-1857), but the latter belongs rather to the present century, during the first half of which he published his most important works. The poverty of the period in lyric poetry is even exceeded by that of the stage. Here no kind of comedy or tragical drama arose to take the place of the ancient comedia, whose platitudes and absurdities of thought and expression had ended by disgusting even the least exacting portion of the public. The attempt was indeed made to introduce the comedy and the tragedy of France, but the stiff and pedantic adaptations of such writers as Agustin de Montiauo y Luyando (1697-1764), Tomas de Iriarte (1750-1791), Garcia de la Huerta, and the well-known economist Gaspar de Jovellanos (1744- 1811) were unable to interest the great mass of play- goers. The only one who was really successful in com- posing on the French pattern some pleasant comedies, which owe much of their charm to the great purity of the language in which they are written, is Leandro Fernandez de Moratin ; his best pieces are La Niieva Comedia, a parody on the extravagant work of Cornelia, a playwright of the period, El Viejo y la Nina, El Baron, and parti- cularly El Si de las Ninas. It has to be added that the saynete was cultivated in the 18th century by one writer of genuine talent, Ramon de la Cruz ; nothing helps us better to an acquaintance with the curious Spanish society of the reign of Charles IV. than the intermezzos of this genial and light-hearted author. 19tli The terrible struggle of the War of Independence century. (1808-1814), which was destined to have such important consequences in the world of politics, did not exert any immediate influence on the literature of Spain. One might have expected as a consequence of the rising of the whole nation against Napoleon that Spanish writers would have given up seeking their inspiration from those of France, and would have tried to resume the national traditions which had been broken at the end of the 17th century. But nothing of the sort occurred. Not only the afrancesados (as those were called who had accepted the new regime), but also the most ardent partisans of the patriotic cause, continued in literature to be the submis- sive disciples of France. Quintana, who in his inflam- matory odes preached to his compatriots the duty of resistance and revenge, has nothing of the innovator about him ; by his education and by his literary doctrines he remains a man of the 18th century. The same may be said of Francisco Martinez de la Eosa (1789-1848), who, however, from his intercourse with Horace, whom he trans- lated with skill into good Castilian verse, had a greater independence of spirit and a more highly trained and classical taste. And, when romanticism begins to find its way into Spain and to enter into conflict with the spirit and habits of the 18th century, it is still to France that the poets and prose writers of the new school turn, much more than either to England or to Germany. The first decidedly romantic poet of the generation which flourished about 1830 was the duke of Eivas, Angel de Saavedra (1791-1856); no one succeeded better in reconciling the genius of Spain and the tendencies of modern poetry ; his epic poem El Moro Esposito and his drama of Don Alvaro o la Fuerza del Sino belong as much to the old romances and old theatre of Spain as to the romantic spirit of 1830. On the other hand, Jose de Espronceda (1808-1842), who has sometimes been called the Spanish Musset, savours much less of the soil than the duke of Eivas ; he is a quite cosmopolitan romanticist of the school of Byron and the French imitators of Byron ; an exclusively lyric poet, he did not live long enough to give full proof of his genius, but what he has left is certainly exquisite. Jose Zorrilla (born 1817) has a more flexible and exuberant but much more unequal talent than Espronceda, and if the latter has written too little it cannot but be regretted that the former should have produced too much ; nevertheless, among a multitude of hasty performances, brought out before they had been matured, his Don Juan Tenorio, a new and fantastic version of the legend treated by Tirso de Molina and Moliere, will always remain as one of the most curious specimens of Spanish romanticism. In the dramatic literature of this period it is noticeable that the tragedy more than the comedy is modelled on the examples furnished by the French drama of the Eestoration ; thus. if we leave out of account the play of Garcia Gutierrez (born 1813) entitled El Trovador, which inspired the well-known opera of Verdi, and Los Amantes de Terud of Juan Eugenic Hartzenbusch (born 1806), and a few others, all the dramatic work belonging to this date recalls more or less the manner of the professional playwrights of the boulevard theatres, while on the other hand the comedy of manners still preserves a certain originality and a genuine local colour. Manuel Breton de los Herreros (1796-1873), who wrote as many as a hundred comedies, some of them of the first order after their kind, apart from the fact of their being written in language of great excellence, adheres with great fidelity to the tradition of the 17th century; he is the last of those writers who have preserved the feeling of the ancient comedia. One prose writer of the highest talent must be mentioned along with Espronceda. with whom he has in the moral aspect several features in common, namely, D. Jose de Larra (1809-1837), so famous by his pseudonym of " Figaro," with which he signed the greater number of his works. Caustic in temper, of a keenly observant spirit, remarkably sober and clear as a writer, he was specially successful in the political pamphlet, the article d'actualites ; to this category belong his Cartas de un Pobrecito Hablador, in which he ridicules without pity the vices and oddities of his contemporaries ; his reputation is much more largely due to these letters than either to his somewhat feeble play of Macias or to his not very attractive novel El Doncel de Enrique el Doliente. With Larra must be asso- ciated two other humoristic writers. The first of these is Eamon Mesonero Eomanos, " El Curioso Parlante " (born 1803), whose Escenas Matritenses, although not possessed of the literary value of Larra's articles, give pleasure by their good-natured gaiety and by the curious details they furnish with regard to the contemporary society of Madrid. The other is Serafin Estebanez Calderon, " El Solitario " (1799-1867), who in his Escenas Andaluzes sought to re- vive the manner of the satirical and picaresque writers of the 17th century; in a uselessly archaic language of his own, patched up from fragments taken from Cervantes, Quevedo, and others, he has delineated with a peculiar but somewhat artificial grace various piquant scenes of Anda- lusian or Madrilenian life. The most prominent literary critics belonging to the first generation of the century were Alberto Lista (1775-1848), whose critical doctrine may be described as a compromise between the ideas of French classicism and those of the romantic school, and Agustin Duran (died 1862), who made it his special task to restore to honour the old literature of Castile, particularly its XXII. 46