Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/388

 364 SPAIN [LITERATURE. of Sardinia by James II. ; finally that of Pedro IV., The Ceremonious (1336-1387), genuine commentaries of that astute monarch, arranged by certain officials of his court, notably by Bernat Des Coll, these four works are distinguished alike by the artistic skill of their narration and by the quality of their language ; it would not be too much to liken these Catalan chroniclers, and Muntaner especially, to Villehardouin, Joinville, and Froissart. The Doctor Illuminatus, Raymond Lully, whose acquaintance with Latin was very poor, his philosophical works were done into that language by his disciples, wrote in a some- what Provengalized Catalan various moral and propagandist works, the romance Blanquerna in praise of the solitary life, the Libre de les Maravelles, into which is introduced a " bestiary " taken by the author from Kalilah and Dim- nag, and the Libre del Orde de Cavalleria, a manual of the perfect knight, besides a variety of other treatises and opuscula of minor importance. The majority of the writ- ings of Lully exist in two versions, one in the vernacular, which is his own, the other in Latin, originating with his disciples, who desired to give currency throughout Christendom to their master's teachings. Lully who was very popular in the lay world, although the clergy had a low opinion of him and in the 15th century even set themselves to obtain a condemnation of his works by the Inquisition had a rival in the person of Francesch Ximenez or Eximeniz, a Franciscan, born at Gerona some time after 1350. His Crestid (printed in 1483-84) is a vast encyclopaedia of theology, morals, and politics for the use of the laity, supplemented in various aspects by his three other works Vida de Jesu Christ, Libre dels Angels, and Libre de les Dones ; the last-named, which is at once a book of devotion and a manual of domestic economy, con- tains a number of curious details as to a Catalan woman's manner of life and the luxury of the period. Lully and Eximeniz are the only Catalan authors of the 14th century whose works written in a vulgar tongue had the honour of being translated into French shortly after their appearance. We have chiefly translators and historians in the 15th century. Antoni Canals, a Dominican, who belongs also to the previous century, translates into Catalan Valerius Maximus and a treatise of St Bernard; Bernat Metge, himself well-versed in Italian literature, presents some of its great masters to his countrymen by translating the Griselidis of Petrarch, and also by composing Lo Sompni (" The Dream "), in which the influence of Dante, of Boccac- cio, and, generally speaking, of the Italy of the 13th and 14th centuries is very perceptible. The Feyts d'Armes de Catalunya of Bernat Boades, a knightly chronicle brought to a close in 1420, reveals a spirit of research and a con- scientiousness in the selection of materials which are truly remarkable for the age in which it was written. On the other hand, Pere Tomich, in his Histories e Conquests del Reyalme d'Arago (1438), carries us back too much to the manner of the mediaeval chroniclers ; his credulity knows no bounds, while his style has altogether lost the naive charm of that of Muntaner. To the list of authors who represent the leading tendencies of the literature of the 15th century we must add the name of Johanot Martorell, a Valencian, author of the celebrated romance of chivalry Tirant lo Blanch (finished in 1460), which the reader has nowadays some difficulty in regarding as that " treasury of contentment " which Cervantes will have it to be. 16th-18th With the loss of political was bound to coincide that of centuries, literary independence in the Catalonian countries. Cata- lan fell to the rank of a patois and was written less and less ; lettered persons ceased to cultivate it, and the upper classes, especially in Valencia, owing to the proximity of Castile, soon affected to make no further use of the local speech except in familiar conversation. The 16th century, in fact, furnishes literary history with hardly more than a single poet at all worthy of the name Pere Serafi, some of whose pieces, in the style of Auzias March, but less obscure, are graceful enough and deserve to live ; his poems were printed at Barcelona in 1565. Prose is somewhat better represented, but, to tell the truth, it is only the erudite who persist in writing in Catalan, antiquaries and historians like Pere Miguel Carbonell, compiler of the Chroniques de Espanya (1547), Francesch Tarafa, Pere Anton Beuter, also chroniclers, and some others not so well known. In the 17th and 18th centuries the decadence becomes still more marked. A few scattered attempts to restore to the Catalan, now more and more neglected by men of letters, some of its old life and brilliance, fail miserably. Neither Hieronim Pujades the historian, author of a Coronica Universal del Principal (Barcelona, 1609), nor even Dr Vicens Garcia, rector of Vallfogona (1582-1623), a verse-writer by no means destitute of verve or humour, but whose literary talent and originality have been very greatly exaggerated by the Catalans of the present day, was able to bring back his countrymen to a cultivation of the local idiom. Some sermons, some lives of saints, some books of devotion, some relations and complaints for the use of the people, exhaust the catalogue of everything written in Catalan throughout the whole area of its domains down to the beginning of the present century ; not a single book of importance can be mentioned. Writers who were Catalan by birth had so completely unlearned their mother-tongue that it would have seemed to them quite inappropriate, and even ridiculous, to make use of it in serious works, so profoundly had Castilian struck its roots in the eastern provinces of Spain, and so thoroughly had the work of assimilation been carried out to the advantage of the official language of the court and of the Government. In 1814 appeared the Gramdtica y Apologia de la Revival Llengua Cathalana of Joseph Pan Ballot y Torres, which f may be considered as marking the origin of a genuine renaissance of the grammatical and literary study of ^n'd Catalan. Although the author avows no object beyond ture. the purely practical one of giving to strangers visiting Barcelona for commercial purposes some knowledge of the language, the enthusiasm with which he sings the praises of his mother-tongue, and his appended catalogue of works which have appeared in it since the time of James I., sufficiently show that this was not his only aim. In point of fact the book, which is entitled to high consideration as being the first systematic Catalan grammar, written, too, in the despised idiom itself, had a great influence on the authors and literary men of the principality. Under the helping influence of the new doctrines of romanticism twenty years had not passed before a number of attempts in the way of restoring the old language had made their appearance, in the shape of various poetical works of very unequal merit. The Oda a la Patria (1833) of Buenaven- tura Carlos Aribau is among the earliest if not actually the very first of these, and it is also the best ; the modern Catalan school has not produced anything either more inspired or more correct. Following in the steps of Aribau, Joaquin Rubio y Ors (Lo Gayter del Llobregat), Antonio de Bofarull (Lo Coblejador de Moncada), and soon afterwards a number of other verse writers took up the lyre which it might have been feared was never to sound again since it fell from the hands of Auzias March. The movement spread from Catalonia into other provinces of the ancient kingdom of Aragon ; the appeal of the Catalans of the principality was responded to at Valencia and in the Balearic Isles. Later, the example of Provence, of the felibritge of the south of France, accelerated still further this renaissance movement, which received official recogni-