STUDIES IN BPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE BY ISAAC GOLDBERG, Ph.D. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PROF. J. D. M. rORD Smith Professor of Freorh •nil Spanish Languages in Harvard UniTrrsitf NEW YORK BRENTANO'S PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1920. by BRENTANO'S All rights reserved TO MY PARENTS 4^.^480 P6 INTRODUCTION It is only tilt' other day that cultured men in the Spanish motherland began to manifest any real interest in the litera- ture ol tlieir one-time eolonies in the Western World. Hardly at all before Juan Valera, the charming novelist and discerning critic, wrote his gossipy American Letters, (1888-1890) did well trained men and much less, of course, the ordinary reader in the Iberian peninsula re- alize the ambitious activity of the many writers of the 19th century-, scattered throughout the countries lying between the southern bounds of the United States and Tierra del Fuego; and not until Menendez y Pelayo prepared for the Spanish Academy his Anthology of Spanish- American Poets (1893-95) was there any considerable knowledge in Spain of the great output of Spanish verse in the New World from the period of settlement down to our own times. Genial spirit though he was, Valera was unable to avoid a certain display of that condescending tolerance of the European critic for the products of the colonial mind which we in the United States have been so accustomed to find in the attitude of the British critics and essayists toward our own belles lettres. Still, Valera and Menendez y Pelayo did prompt their Spanish compatriots to look with some degree of attention at the range of Spanish- American authorship, and then came the Modernist movement, which, emanating from the once ignored field of colonial letters, vil viU INTRODUCTION made its way into the Old World Capital, Madrid, and showed that the American children had something of value and of their own contrivance to bring back to the Iberian mother. What the Modernist Movement means — of course it has nothing to do with the similarly named theological flurry of a little while ago — Dr. Goldberg aims to make clear in the pages of this book, and, doing this, he is also playing his useful part in the spreading of the evangel of intel- lectual Pan-Americanism. For w^e, the northern brothers of the Spanish Americans, have remained even more ob- livious to the ideals and merits of Spanish-American liter- ary culture than the Spaniards were until lately, and it is high time that we rouse ourselves to a sense of our back- wardness in the case. When we do so and bestir ourselves to know properly the tendencies and achievements of Span- ish-American writers — nor should we forget the Portu- guese-American writers of Brazil in this connection — we shall perforce begin to conceive a high regard for their zeal, their motives, and their conscious artistry. Racial antipathy, if it exist at all, or, at least, racial indifference will certainly yield to some better feeling, when the think- ing people of one racial origin are led to an adequate com- prehension and a favorable estimate of the intellectual per- formances of a people whose provenience is quite other than their own. A sermon might well be preached on this subject, but instead of a sermon a book is now presented in the hope tliat it will help to break down barriers for the maintenance of which there is no just excuse of a racial, political, commercial, cultural or other nature. J. D. M. Ford. FOREWORD The purpose of the present volume is to introduce to Eng- ish readers a continental culture that they have too long leglected. Not tliat we have been alone in our neglect; Spain itself, [\\c mother nation of Spanish America's grow- ng republics, has until very recently ignored the letters of ts numerous offspring. Owing to the meager acquaintance that our reading pub- ic has with Spanish-American literature, a book of purely Titical essays is at this time inadvisable; I have, there- ore, in the following chapters, freely mingled excerpts, 'xposition and a modicum of criticism, in the hope of thus providing an incentive for further delving into the authors ind the books commented upon. Whatever criticism I lave written has been determined by a flexible attitude, — I have sought to suggest rather than to define. Not entirely without reason, although in occasionally exaggerated fashion, Spanish Americans have frequently expressed suspicion of, and hostility to, the United States. Yet it is from a North American, Dr. Alfred Coester, that he first literary history of Spanish America has come [New York, 1916), and that valuable volume I recommend nost cordially to any one desirous of securing an adequate listorical background for studies in Spanish-American etters. In later books I plan to present not only other Spanish- X FOREWORD American writers of distinction (and there is a host that might with equal profit have been treated in the present book), but also Brazilian autliors of note, — such men as Machado de Assis, Olavo Bilac, Coelho Netto, Jose Verissimo, — to name but four out of a multitude. The spirits referred to are of value not only to a study of com- parative literature, but in themselves. For the chief impulse in assembling these studies I am indebted to Prof. J. D. M. Ford of Harvard University, a pioneer scholar of singularly communicative inspiration. I alone, however, am responsible for my opinions. I am glad to record also my thanks to Mr. Burton Kline, the short-story writer and novelist, who as magazine editor of the Boston Evening Transcript held his columns always open to articles upon Spanish and Portuguese American letters. And I am especially thankful to Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, the well known editor and suffragist, for nu- merous versions of tlie work of Spanish-American poets. Unless otherwise indicated, all verse translations are from her pen. In a field so relatively new to this country, and in which the difficulties of intercommunication are great, (even in Spanish America), errors are more than likely to appear. The author may be addressed in care of the publishers with reference to suggestions that may be incorporated into a later edition. Isaac Goldberg. Roxbury, Mass., 1919. STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE CHAPTER I THE "MODERNISTA'* RENOVATION The study of that phase of recent Spanish-American let- ters which has been rather loosely and inexpressively, if popularly, termed '"Modernism" forms one of the most in- teresting adventures in compara'tive literature. For in its broader implications it is not a phenomenon restricted to Castilian and Ibero-American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centur)% but rather an aspect of a spirit tliat inundated the world of western thought during that era. The English language contributed such influences as \^1ijtman, Rossetti, Swinburne, Stevenson, Wilde, Kipling; in Germany, Sudermann and Hauptmann dominated the stage, while Nietzsche launched forth to subjugate foreign thought under the yoke of his super-philosophy, which was, even more, poetry and vaticination; in Russia, Garshin, Korolenko, Chekhov and Gorki came to the fore; Isben and Bjoemsen spoke in different voices for Scandinavia; from Italy sounded the song of d'Annunzio; above all, from France, through which the Spanish-Americans absorbed so much of tlie foreign influence, echoed the labors of the Parnassians and the Symbolist-Decadents. And into the subsequent productions of the "modernists," both the mere 2 /••fttlJp.^FS'iV SPAN;^SPyV]\lERICAN LITERATURE imitators and the genuine spirits striving for self-expres- sion, filtered something from all the schools and movements of the various nations. It is an age of spiritual unrest; on all sides the word "free" flings its challenge to the breeze. Free verse, free love, free music, free woman; there is a riot of emancipation that crystallizes into the one great freedom, — a free self. The quest for that liberty lies over treacherous paths and in its name are committed many crimes, literary as well as political. This, however, does not invalidate the impulse itself; man ever}'where seeks to release his mind as well as his body; the true deliverance is discovered to be spiritual as well as material. The spirit of novelty and renovation in the air is but an evidence of the search for self. "Modernism," as applied to Spanish-American letters (and later to the same impulse making its way into Penin- sular literature in the year of Spain's defeat by the United ■ — J States) wasjToti tlien, a school. Perhaps the word move- ment is likewise inadequate to describe the tidal wave of reform and innovation that rose in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and, before it had spent its force, washed away the old rhetoric, the old prose, the old verse, and car- ried a fresher outlook, a more universal culture, a fuller, more sensitive means of expression to the former colonies of Spain. Modernism was not a school for the simple rea- son that its divers tendencies were too various to admit of unified grouping. It was decidedly eclectic in character and from the most antagonistic principles managed to se- lect, witli more or less confidence, those elements best suited to its purpose, — a purpose at first somewhat spon-ti taneous, uncritical, hesitant, but gradually acquiring self THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 3 rcliaiu-c, direction, vil)raliiig consciousness. The word Miovcinenl is for similar reasons not entirely satisfactory. It does not convey tlie ilyiuunic conception at llie bottom of modernism, which, more exactly si)eaking, is the syn- ^ thesis of several movements. In the latter sense modcrn- i>m, far from having run its course, has entered upon a con- tiiuMiIal |)hase which promises to bear fruitful and signifi- ( int results. For the purposes of the present study, however, it will be advantageous to use the term modernism , to mean that wave of renovation and innovation to which/ we have already referred ; we must not forget, nevertheless, that human thought possesses a certain continuity which critical labels tend to conceal; the various phases of the modernistic impulse are natural outgrowtlis of one an- other; they are all petals of the same flower, with a stem tliat sinks deep into the fecund soil of modernity. THE FRENCH BACKGROUND For a more than superficial understanding of this im- portant epoch it is necessary to glance at the course of French letters during the last half of the nineteenth cen- tury. The study of literature by periods, movements and nations is, after all, an arbitrary method, — necessarily so, since man must classify if he is to master in any degree the achievements of his predecessors and his contempo- raries; yet none the less arbitrary, and often leading students and masters alike astray. This is particularly true in the study of literary influences, where too often one man is represented as aff^ecting another, when in reality 4 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE j they are both being acted upon by the same, or similar, non-literary influences. "A great many sins," says one of the most penetrating and independent of our younger crit- ics, "have been committed by the scholarly search for influences. A saner and more philosophic view of the his- tory of literature regards the appearance of new sources of inspiration and new forms of expressions as outgrowths of those larger spiritual forces that are wont to affect at the same time or almost at the same time groups of people that have reached a like stage of development. The mod- ern emergence of the free personality from the merely political individual — the voter who in his day succeeded the tribesman and the slave — accounts for the change in the passions and the forms of poetry in Goethe and in Shelley, in Whitman and Henley, in Richard Dehmel and in Henri de Regnier." ^ It is a platitude that liter- ature, in common with all art, has its roots in life, yet how often we forget, or even ignore, that life which indi- rectly creates it. A more thorough consideration of let- ters, then, seeks to penetrate beneath merely personal in- fluences; it seeks to understand those economic and social forces that underlie artistic manifestations; it seeks the environment behind the man and the age behind the j environment, all the time remembering (what many sci- entific critics forget) that no age, however homogeneous it appears in the light of history, is a simple attitude, and that no man, however unified his life may outwardly seem, is an embodiment of calm logic unruffled by inner conflict. In a larger sense, literary history is a series of actions and reactions. That is why it is just as true to say thatad outlook, trained directly or indirectly in the culture of contemporary Europe, endowed with a growing selective power that im- bibes from foreign influences tliat which native needs may best employ and in turn su[)plies its personal, original con- tribution to the literature that crosses boundaries. The begiiming of the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury found the Spanish-American writers of originality in need of a new expressional medium and eager for new in- tellectual impulses. While these were received chiefly from France, they came, too, from sources as wide apart as our own Poe (whose Raven was most admirably trans- lated by Perez Bonalde, the noted Venezuelan "poet of Niagara," so named for an inspirational outburst that rivals the verses of the Cuban Heredia to the same handi- work of Nature) and Heine, rendered into Spanish by the same poet. The transitional period reveals characteristics that are familiarly recurrent in literary history, — a pan- theistic mysticism, a new return to mother nature, a desire for simplicity coupled with an intense response to con- temporary life and a note of query addressed to the enigma of existence. To Spanish-American modernism there is something more, however; the age is complex and so are its literary manifestations; a writer like Gutierrez Najera, coming at an early stage of the new influences, and being, in reality, a transitory figure, appears simple beside the multi-colored 'poesy of a Dario; I say appears, because at bottom the Mexican is quite as intensely human as the Nicaraguanj moreover, we must view with reserve the statement as to modernist simplicity when we recall some of the symbolistic 14 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE extravagances in France, Spain, Spanish America and the United States. Not all is simple that is symbolist; very re- cent developments in Hispano- American poetry (sporadic, though significant) reveal the fact that complexity of con- ception is not at all dead, and that poets of modernist provenance, like the modern individualistic spirits they are, reserve the right to confound critical pigeon-holing, and to climb up into the ivory tower of the Parnassians, there to write Symbolist verse in Modernist language. The Parnassians exercised a powerful influence upon form in Spanish-American poetry; their impassivity, how- ever, (or, at least, their desire to convey the impression of impersonality) did not, on the whole, appeal to an ardent youth panting for self-expression. It was only natural that a Gallic school, representing a group of highly refined spirits belonging to an old civilization, should undergo im- portant change in the virgin soil of a new continent. Par- nassian impersonality, then, was an exception ratlier than the rule. By the same ^ken the Symbolist reaction ap- pealed more to the nature of the Spanish-Americans.' Verlaine, above all, drew to himself a host of poets who turned to him not because he was French but because his ^ Cf. Ugarte, La Joven Literatura Hispanoamericana, Prefacio. ''The 'decadents,' as they were at first called with scorn, and later with admira- tion, determined the most intense literary activity, and most fertile in re- sults, that South America has ever known. Through them the language acquired a force, an accent, a precision and fresliness which transformed it completely; through them, thought, which had up to then been concealed beneath the commonplaces of rhetoric, discovered innumerable paths of unexplored beauty; through them, above all. was inaugurated the era of literary individualism, and style was emancipated." For an excellent dis- /cussion of Ugarte's anthology, as well as for valuable comment upon Spanish- 1 American letters in general, see Rodo's article, "Una Nueva Antologia Americana" in El Mirador de Prospero. M THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 15 deep humanity spoke to tlu'ir groping souls. 1 1 is religious leanings, his questioning of the unknowable, his neurotic aflliitions, his weakin> of the flesh, — these rendered him in a way a symbol of the age. To say, for example, that a poet like Dario merely imitated Verlaine, is empty phras- ing; Verlaine was in every sense a kindred spirit. Unless we are ready to assent to the manifest absurdity that all jiriority is causality, we nuist be ready to see that bcliind both the French decadent poets and the young Hispano- Americans was an age-spirit that brought them together; as in the case of so much of what is called literary influence, we are in the presence, not merely of cause and effect, but in great degree, of earlier and later effect of a common cause. It is significant that one of the rare spirits treated in Dario's book Los Raws, is Ibsen. The age was growing cosmopolitan, and it is this groping cosmopolitanism, this yearning for broader horizons, that is myopically dismissed by some critics as a mere novelty-seeking exoticism. Ex- oticism, (in its prurient sense) there was; novelty-monger- ing there was; underneath, however, lay an age-spirit that vented itself in music, in art, in science, in economics. We have, then, in Hispano- American modernism a phase of universal revolt, a double revolt, which is in reality a single one, since new technical procedure is but a concom- itant of altered vision. The self-conscious personality of the new youth now looked to the conquest of spiritual as •well as political and economic independence; more ample expression of self demanded more ample means of ex- presssion. The phenomenon is not French; it is not Span- ish; racial or cultural inheritances color the manifestation, but do not determine it. The modernist influence (using 16 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the term in its broader sense, yet with all its connotation of new technique and expansion of personality) may be amply and profitably studied even in the Yiddish poets of New York City, who, partly through American influences, have absorbed and transformed the most varied manifestations of modernity. n SOME MODERNIST PRECURSORS 1. Manuel Gutierrez Ndjera (1859-1895) Chief among the precursors of modernism who have already been mentioned was the noted Mexican, Manuel Gutierrez Najera. The average educated American of the North, who has received his information about Mexico largely from the columns of the daily press, would be surprised, perhaps, to learn that the republic directly to the south of us is an ancient seat of culture. As much surprised, indeed, as the average South American, who has received his information about the United States from the columns of his daily press, would be to discover that in our country something more than lynchings, prize-fights, railroad wrecks and divorce trials is the order of the day. Yet Mexico's literary past is distinguished by glories little appreciated in other Span- ish-speaking countries — Spain itself included — not to speak of the United States. Before the middle of the sixteenth century Mexico had a "colegio" for the natives, at which were taught reading, writing, Latin, grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and music. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 17 In 1533, thirty yoars after Hernan Cortes arrived at Trii- ochtitlan, the University of Mexico was founded hy man- date of Carlos 1. Here, also about 1536-7, appeared the first printing-press. During the sixteenth century, in fact, no less than one hundred and sixteen books were published in the City of Mexico; the first of these — La Escalera de San Juan Climaco — was printed some one hundred and three years before The Freeman s Oath, publisheil by Har- vard College. Naturally, the first books were confined in the main to religion, morals and works in native dialects. At the beginning of the seventeenth centuiy belles-lettres and history appeared in print. Two of the greatest names in Castilian literature belong by nativity, if not by their products, to Mexican letters. The noted dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcon and the world- famous poetess Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, both of the sev- enteenth century, reveal their Mexican origin in not a little of tlieir work. Thus Luis G. Urbina, one of the leading contemporary poets of Mexico, as well as a critic of en- gaging style and keen perceptions, reminds us in his La J id a Liter aria de Mexico that the tender melancholy of Alarcon is distinctively Mexican; the playwright himself, writing in far-off Spain, felt this allegiance to the land of his birth, as is shown by his frequent reference to it. In Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz — once upon a time heralded, in terms that would bring a blush of inferiority to the cheeks of our most enterprising press-agents, as "the Tenth Muse" — Urbina discovered the first symptoms of Mexican folk- lore as well as the first Mexican feminist. Today, after almost three centuries, Mexico has regained her literary pre-eminence. That same melancholy atmos- 18 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE phere which Urbina advances as one of the characteristics of his nation's art, and which his own poetry exemplifies in so charming a manner, wafts through much of what is now being written ; yet contemporary poetry, particularly in such original spirits as Amado Nervo and Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, achieves something more than intense personality of mood, — something that maintains the new universality of Mexican poetry, which was brought with flying banners into the realms of pure art by Manuel Gutierrez Najera. The contribution of Mexico to the renovation of modern Spanish letters has, in a measure, been obscured by the very universality of its chief poets, even as has been ob- scured its contribution of three centuries ago. Not only to Gutierrez Najera, to Amado Nervo and to Enrique Gon- zalez Martinez is the modernist school a debtor; the bold eloquence of Salvador Diaz Miron aff"ected both Dario and the powerful poet that has, in the minds of many, taken his place, — Santos Chocano of Peru. Nor is the position of the latter undisputed; some would accord the pedestal to Diaz Miron. Manuel Gutierrez Najera, by most reckoned as the great- est of Mexican poets, was born into a pious middle-class family, and was educated chiefly at home, having been early intended for the church. Parental influence seems to have been strong on both sides; from his mother he acquired that delicate sensitivity which shines through all his labors, and which, if but a single phrase were available, would aptly characterize his varying productions. Not only is his love of her directly evident in his prose and his poetry, but it appears in amplified fashion in his distinctly THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 19 feminine outlook, using that much abused word in its finer connotations; it is evidenced by a piety that rarely deserts him, allliough it is later translated into terms of an un- dogmatic mysticism not infrequently led to the brink of desfuiir; to her is due his Catliolic poetry, which was to raise false hopes in the breasts of some of his countrymen. Born into another age, Gutierrez Najera might have become the standard-bearer of a lyric Catholicism; he had come too late for tliat, and with the awakening of his personality turned to otlier radically different paths. From his father came, perhaps, that desire to write which the son manifested at a very early age, at times in disconcerting fashion. For the older man was not only a lover of good poetr}% but wrote verse himself and even tried his hand at dramatic pieces, which he later submitted to his son for approval. As one of the poet's commentators suggests, the taste of the child may have been influential in keeping the dramas from attempting success upon the stage. Both by racial surroundings and parental influence, tlien, Gutierrez Najera seemed destined to become a poet; to t he melancholy t hajjs characte ristic of the Mexican spirit was added the piety of a devoted mothe r and the frustrated literary^^LBibition s of the stern ej;_parent. Among the readings that shaped his in'ti'l thoughts were the mystic writers Juan de Avila, Su.v Juan de la Cruz, the two Luises, Santa Teresa an d Malon de ^Chaide; to this orthodox instruction was added a training in Latin; both ele- ments are in evidence in his later work. Before he is thir- teen we discover his running off to the editor of a Catholic paper, requesting that wortliy to print one of his articles. Stranger still, the article is accepted and printed witli no 20 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE little praise. If, however, the poet's Latin lore helped to ripen his mind and store it with the feeling for classic form that never left him, it did not furnish him, as it still fur- nishes to many, a series of symbols by which his erotic poetry might always be disguised beneath a veil of mytho- logical allusion; his love verses often contain a genuine, if precocious, passion and an ardent sincerity. Then came the knowledge of the French language which was to transform the poet. "How," asks Urbina, "could Manuel, without having attended the official places of learn- ing, have thus early learned French? The reason is that ever since the invasion of the soldiers of Napoleon III, Mexico experienced, in the upper and middle classes, the irresistible influence of this so communicative and sug- gestive people. When, after four years of living among us, and fighting us, the time came for the foreign troops to return, there remained in the country many Frenchmen vho had assimilated our ways, and among these were some who devoted themselves to instruction and opened schools." . . . This, among other things, determined the propaganda I of tht language and the literature of the invading country. Gutierrez Najera, through the eff^ect of these recent studies, turned his back upon Hispanism; he became Gallicized, but so innate was his good taste that, in his juvenile works (done at sixteen to seventeen years of age) though there is a preponderance of his enthusiastic predilections, there are still traces of his earlier admirations; even in the years 1876-77 he is found imitating Campoamor and Becquer. It is to Becquer, indeed, that some contemporary critics would relate the deeper spirit of the poet's complete labors, so that strangely enough, the same singer who introduced the THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 21 new French influences into Spanish-American verse, is compared to the charming lyricist who himself was called the Spanish Heine. Once the (iallic seed was sown it grew rapidly to matur- ity; it seems that a new world has been opened; there are changes in the poet's expression; he ventures certain free- doms of construction; he reveals his new readings by the nature of his citations; his ideas and his style are com- pletely transformed. Through the new influence he is aided upon his path to the acquisition of an independent personality. Not only is this true of his poetry, but of his prose, in which he is no less the innovator, the precursor of Dario and the modernistas. Out of the mingled currents that aff^ectcd his labors, — the oratory of a Castelar, the bitter-sweet philosophy of_a_^ampoamor, the romantic extravagance of an Echegaray, the tenderness of de Musset, — he fashioned himself a language capable of ex- pressing the finer shades of his feeling, the nuances of his dioughts. His most famous pseudonym — El Duque Job — seems to synthesize in two words, the dominant traits of his contradictory personality. A duke he was, with his lean- ings toward elegance, his innate aristocracy of feeling, his glinting humor of thought and phrase; and a suff^erer as ■^ell, not with the patience implied in the biblical name, but with all the torments of a modem soul adrift on a sea of doubt. When Gutierrez Najera came upon the scene, liberalism was triumphing in Mexico; added to that liberalism, the character of his French readings was not of the sort cal- culated to deepen in him the Catholic fervor he imbibed from his mother; yet at bottom the poet was a religious soul. 22 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE or if not quite that, a soul in need of rest, of faith, of resig- nation. When, as early as 1877, he published his famous Para Entonces, voicing his wish to die an early death — a frequent wish of the modernists, and one too frequently fulfilled, as in the case of Gutierrez Najera himself- — he was but eighteen years old. Bearing in mind his orthodox training, the nascent liberalism of the age, and his over- whelming introduction to the new current of French thought, it is easy to imagine that these youthful verses are by no means the ordinary morbidity of the juvenile in- tellect suddenly cast upon the real world, but are symptom- atic of the beginning of that conflict within him which never was fully resolved into the resignation of the calm, philo- sophical outlook. His first articles appeared in El Federalista under the title "Confidencias"; there followed, in various periodicals, such as the Liceo Mexicano, the Revista Nacional, and El Partido Liberal, a series of chroniques, tales and poems, written at times under various pseudonyms, which are il- lustrative of the author's readings as well as his tastes: El Daque Job, Junius, El Cura de Jalatlatco, Puck, Re- camier. The era of Mexican periodical activity was ap- proaching; much of modern progress is heralded by the array of magazines that sprang up on all sides. One of the most important of these — the Revista Azul — was founded only a year before the poet's death, by him and Carlos Diaz Dufoo. To this new review flocked the lead- ing intellects of the day. And why a blue review? "Be- cause," explained the gracious duke, borrowing a leaf from Hugo's notebook, "in blue there is sunlight; because in the blue, there are clouds; and because in the blue, hopes fly THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 23 in flocks. Blue is not iiuTely a color, it is a mystery." And lest it he thought that this cerulean outhurst was due solely to the widespread success of Dario's Azul, which had been printed six years before, it is instructive to re- member that as early as 1880, "the thought of the poet ap- pears more refined still, in some strophes taken from Del Librito Aziil. Do you not see in this title (tlu^ blue book) a predecessor of the first revolutionary work writtiMi by Ruben Dario, Azul . . . published years later, in 1888?"^ Gutierrez Najera, in fact, everywhere shows his fondness for color names; his poem De Blanco (1888) is an orches- tration of the color white tliat is more successful, in my es- timation, than Dario's Symphony in Grey Major: ^ What thing than the lily unstained is more white? More pure than the mystic wax taper so bright? More chaste tlian the orange-flower, tender and fair? Than the light mist more virginal — holier too Than the stone where the eucharist stands, ever new. In tlie Lord's House of Prayer? By the flight of white doves all the air now is cloven; A white robe, from strands of the morning mist woven. Enwraps in the distance the feudal round tower. The trembling acacia, most graceful of trees, Stands up in the orchard and waves in the breeze Her soft, snowy flower. See you not on the mountain the white of the snow? The white tower stands high o'er the village below; The gentle sheep gambol and play, passing by. Swans pure and unspotted now cover the lake; 8 M. H. Urena. Rodo y Ruben Dario. Havana, 1918. Page 92. " Both poems were probably suggested by Gautier's Symphonic en Blanc Majeur. 24 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE The straight lily sways as the breezes awake; The volcano's huge vase is uplifted on high. Let us enter the church: shines the eucharist there; And of snow seems to be the old pastor's white hair; In an alb of fine linen his frail form is clad. A hundred fair maidens there sit robed in white; They offer bouquets of spring flowers, fresh and bright, The blossoms of April, pure, fragrant and glad. Let us go to the choir; to the novice's prayer Propitiously listens the Virgin so fair; The white marble Christ on the crucifix dies; And there without stain the wax tapers rise white. And of lace is the curtain so thin and so light. Which the day-dawn already shines through from the skies. Now let us go down to the field. Foaming white. The stream seems a tumult of feathers in flight, As its waters run, foaming and singing in glee. In its airy mantilla of mist cool and pale The mountain is wrapped; the swift lark's lateen sail, Glides out and is lost to our sight on the sea. The lovely young woman now springs from her bed. On her goddess-like shoulders fresh water to shed. On her fair, polished arms and her beautiful neck. Now, singing and smiling, she girds on her gown; Bright, tremulous drops, from her hair shaken down, Her comb of Arabian ivory deck. marble! snows! vast, wonderful whiteness! Vour chaste beauty everywhere sheds its pure brightness, shy, timid vestal, to chastity vowed! In the statue of beauty eternal are you; From your soft robe is purity born, ever new; You give angels wings, and give mortals a shroud. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 25 Vou cover the child t(i whom life is yet new, Crown the hrows of the niaitlcn whoso promise is true. Clothe the pajje in rich raiment that shines like a star. How while are your mantles of ermine, O queens! The cradle how white, where the fond mother leans! How white, my beloved, how spotless you are! In proud dreams of love, I beiiolJ with delij^ht The towers of a church rising white in my sight, And a home, hid in lilies, that opens to me; And a bridal veil hung on your forehead so fair, Like a filmy cloud, floating down slow through the air. Till it rests on your shoulders, a marvel to see! ^^ The parallel between Gutierrez Najera and Dario does not stop here, however; both were essentially aristocratic natures; neitlier was a specimen of masculine beauty. The Mexican was of medium height, with a large head; his face was somewhat unsymmetrical, — a detail which would doubtless furnish critics of decadence with a handy topic for a sermon upon physiognomy and mental equilibrium; his nose was ill-proportioned, "cyranesque" ; his eyes were slightly oblique; his mustache was sparse but bristly; his mouth turned to one side, perhaps because of his inveterate cigar smoking. A friend (Jesus Valenzuela) describing him, wrote that he looked like A youthful Japanese in terra cotta. Was it not Vargas Vila who saw in his friend Dario a marked Mongolian expression? Was not Dario, like Gutierrez Najera, like the later Amado Nervo and so many other Spanish-Americans, tormented by the necessities of ^''Version by Alice Stone Blackwell. 26 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE journalism? Did they not both seek consolation in drink, — their anaesthetic for life? The chief service of Gutierrez Najera to Spanish-Amer- ican prose and poetry was his introduction of melody into the structure of the language; after him the verse of writers flows more smoothly, more musically; the prose is more agile, more luminous, and gleams with a thousand pregnant suggestions, novel images, and evidences of a varied cul- ture. He did not, any more than his noted successors, de- nationalize Spanish style; he broadened it; fertilized it; increased its expressional power, and answered the objec- tions of his critics, as his eulogizer Justo Sierra did after him, by telling them that since art lived a more intense life in France dian elsewhere, thither must those who would cultivate art go for their supplies. The statement looks more servile than it appears in his work. We find in him something more than the precursor of a school or a move- ment; something more than a transitional figure who im- bibed from France the soul of music that was to infuse new life into the pallid muse of Spanish-American poesy. He was these things and more. He was a vibrant personality who caught these various influences because he was ready for them; the French infiltration did not alter him funda- mentally, however high the structure that it reared upon his romantic foundations; at bottom he remained the romantic, elegiac spirit. What it did communicate to him, however, was a refinement of his natural grace, a sublety of ex- pression that was necessary to the expansion of a person- ality rich in nuance, — a lyric nature whose note echoes with new overtones. It has been remarked of him, — and it should be noticed THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 27 of many anotlier, since we are too prOne to see in the objects of our study a rci^ular (lin'elopmonl that is not always [Ht'stMit— tliat his advatu-r docs not reveal a steady progress through the various dominant French schools to his own artistic self. Parnassianism of a sort there is in Gutierrez Najera; but never of the type that seeks to take refuge in impersonality; Symbolism there is in him aplenty; a tinge of Decadence, it" the familiar terminology must be em- j)loyed. But however consciously he absorbs these in- fluences, they are metamorphosed into a product entirely his own. Whether we read tlie Gutierrez Najera so in- tensely adored by the women — the poet of Oridas Muertas [Dead Waves) or of Mariposas {Butterflies) or the Guti- errez Najera of the playful conceits, such as that addressed to the Duchess Job (his wife), or to the man plunged into tlie vortex of modern doubt, — we come face to face with an aspect of the person himself; it was his ambition to transfuse the French spirit (Justo Sierra even says die French thought) into the Spanish form; he accomplished the purpose by making himself the crucible of that test. 'A seeking soul, torn by doubt, a prey to a dominating* vice, distilling his quer)- into melodious beauty, — a vagrant' spirit caught between a vanishing world and a nascent era, — a nature shedding his inner grace upon everything touched by his pen, — such was the suffering poet who died midway upon the journey of his life, mourned by the conti- nent to which he had given the gifts of his own song and the impulse of fresh artistic conquests. The various moods of Gutierrez Najera are not distinct stages in the transformation of a man's personality; they are the different aspects of a spirit compounded of a facile 28 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE wit, an ardent nature, and that deep melancholy that so often bides beneath the outward smile. Before his gifts as a poet he feels a simple wonder, as so fancifully expressed in the playful "ars poetica" which he entitles Nada Es Mio. Nothing is his, he tells the inquisitive Rosa, who wishes to learn how his verses are made. "I myself do not know. Like your ignorance, Rosa, so mine comes from heaven! I do not write my verses, I do not create them; they dwell within me; they come from without; this playful one was formed by desire; that one, drenched with light, was bom of Spring!" At times he is aided by the magnificent ruby of the dawn; "I make a verse and unwittingly plagiarize some unpublished poet, — the thrush, the chattering spar- row, or the bee. . . ." No soy poeta; ya lo ves! En vano halagas con tal titulo mi oido, que no es zenzontle 6 ruisenor el nido, ni tenor 6 baritone el piano! Beneath this poetical denial of his poetical gifts, so char- acteristic of the poet's whimsical temperament (a trait in which so many of his followers in other countries are sadly deficient, but which has been carried by the brilliant Amado Nervo to the heights of bizarre genius) lies a stratum of sin- / cerity. Poetry, no less than the poet, is bom, not made. The same whimsical note, sparkling with foreign allu- sion and metrical crispness, sounds from the well-known lines to the Duchess Job. To English readers the rhymes and rhythms of their own Gilbert come to mind in such lines as Mi duquesita, la que me adora, no tiene humos de gran senora ; THE "MODERNISTA-- RENOVATION 29 es la priseta de Paul de Kock. No baila hoston, y desconoce de las carreras el alto g»)te, Y los placeres del five o'clock. This, however, is not the most popular of the author's styles; it requires too wide an acquaintance with foreign currents of thoup;ht; it represents a certain ease, an ele- gance, a grace, which however evanescent tlie product may he, are rooteil in a cosmopolitan cuhure. More to the taste of tlie Spanish-American lover of verse is the tender mel- ancholy of such self- revealing poems as Ondas Miiertas, in which the poet's sadness does not plumh as deep as the de- vastating despair of Despues or the Monologo del Incred- ulo. Miss Alice Stone Blackwell's English version of the poem does not preserve the metrical structure of the original — En la sombra, debajo de la tierra, donde nunca llego la mirada, se deslizan en curso infinite silenciosos corrientes de agua — hut it affords a very adequate idea of the poet's thought, in a characteristic effort to sound the depths of the soul that never come to light. In the deep darkness underneath the ground, That never has been reached by mortal sight, There silent currents of black water glide In an unending course amid the night. Some of them, by the shining steel surprised That pierces through the rocks to their dark home. Limpid and boiling to the light gush forth In a vast plume of white and silvery foam. 30 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE The others in deep darkness evermore Glide silently upon their winding way, Doomed to a course unending under ground, Failing to find an outlet to the day. The noble rivers to the ocean flow Past field and forest, meadow-bank and lawn Reflecting in their silvery, changeful glass The stars of heaven, the pale tints of dawn. Veils of fair, fragrant blossoms make them glad Nymphs bathe in their clear current with delight; They fertilize the rich and fruitful vales; Their waves are singing water, free and bright. In the white marble fountain, lo! the stream Is mischievous and playful, sporting there Like a young girl who, in a palace hall, Scatters the pearls that form her necklace fair. Now like a shining arrow it shoots up, Now like a fan it opens in its flow; It splashes glittering diamonds on the leaves, Or sinks to slumber, singing soft and low. The waves that in the mighty ocean swell Assail the craggy rocks, upsurging high; Their raging fury shakes the solid earth. And rises up in tumult to the sky. Those waves are life and power invincible; The water is a queen with wrath on fire, And against heaven like a rival fights, And wages war with gods and monsters dire. How difl'erent is the sable current sad, Doomed to imprisonment which knows no end, Living below the earth in sunless depths, Down deeper even than the dead descend ! That stream has never known what light may be; THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 35 There is one of the secrets of ihr poet's verse: "Who Knows?" For happiness is of yesterday and tomorrow is "grief, obscurity and death." Beside the mere coquetry of a Herrieis.'s carpc diem, such a poem as A Un Triste, from the author's Odas Breves, rings with a deadly earnest- ness that may not enjoy tlie fleeting pleasures of the moment even wlien they are captured, because of the rankling query that outcries the clinking of glasses, the laughter of maidens and the intoxication of wine. And it is but cold consola- tion that he pron"ers, with the parting encouragement that roses, like loves, die young. We have sampled the whimsical, the elegiac and the t tenderly melancholy strains in our poet; let us approach ' him in these moods where he seems shaken to the depths; where he is a prey to the inner conflicts so characteristic of an age that has not yet found itself, — that proceeds from scientific surety to a neo-metaphysical questioning, — that seeks to resolve doubt by resignation or affirmation, — that begins to wonder whether there is a sole truth, and has begun to sense the futility of dogma, whether clothed in religion or in science. In this connection one of the keynote poems is the Mono- logo del Incredulo, — an important human document in which the despair of the poet treads upon the verge of what to him was blasphemy, and the brittle rhythm matches the subject, being well suited to the curt questioning, the sudden thoughts and the distracted debate. cLa existencia no pedida que nos dan y conservamos, es sentencia merecida? decidme: vale la vida la pena de que vivamos? 36 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE The opening stanza plants the bold question: "We have not asked for existence; is life worth the trouble of being lived?" If it is a punishment, what sin have we unknowingly committed? If it is a reward, what was it awarded for? The life of the happy one is worth while, perhaps; let him watch over it if he finds felicity here below; but the sufferer, — why does he not escape it? And like many a one before him, the poet reflects that although life was not a boon he asked for, death is in his own hands. By the same token it is foolish to complain against fate; that would be ex- cusable were not death possible, but since it is, he keeps silent. But is that silence the product of fear? Fear of what? Of that God who gave him what he did not ask? If he should meet a God after taking his life, he could truly say to him, "I did not care for life ; that is why I return it to you." In any case, let none blame fate; the man of strong will does not call upon death; he goes out fearlessly to seek it. And yet, — and yet, — like most suicidal phil- osophers, he maintains his grip upon life. Why? Is he happy? Or is it tliat, once here, he is bound to his parents, and loves them? If a man could think at his birth, he would surely destroy himself. Now comes a transition in the thought. Tengo derecho a morir, mas no derecho a matar; y comprendo que al partir, si con la muerte he de ir me ira mi madre al buscar. Puedo matarme serene, pero mi madre adorada THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 37 creera que entre llamas peno; asi es (|ue no me condeno y a el la dejo cotuleiuula. He has the right to die, hut not the right to kill; he knows that were he to commit suicide it would endanger his mother's life; not only that, but were she to survive that grief, she would believe that his soul was burning amid the flames of sinners. Here is a strange phase of that love for his mother which so often appears in his work. Life now looms up in the aspect of a wily deceiver. First pleasure leads us to engender existence, and then life chains us to duty. And just as he was brought to earth by a woman who afterwards seemed to implore his pardon, so he, too, in tuni, will create life and feel grief at having created it. No, suicide were better. But this time the thought of his sweetheart detains him. Here, too, how- ever, the canker-worm of doubt gnaws at his heart. Is her love- sincere? Does he love her? And later, will that love endure? Then follows a verse in which the Tennyson- ian "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," is echoed with a characteristic note. Amar y no ser amado no es la pena mayor: ver el carino apagado, no amar lo antes amado es el supremo dolor, *'To love and not be loved in return is not the greatest grief. To see one's affection diminish and no longer love the one of yore is the supreme sorrow." The poet would have death or the certainty of God's 38 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE power. "Either hasten to me, oh Death, or rise from the shadows, oh God!" I do not say that this is a great poem; I do not say that it contains any remarkable profundity of thought or beauty lof language. It does, however, reveal the man that wrote it and the experience of many another perturbed spirit of his day amid the storm of an existence that strives to ra- tionalize joy and pain and give a meaning to life. And when the poet does for a moment find a refuge from such thoughts, what sort of peace is it that hovers over his soul? He himself tells us in his Pax Animce, a bitter-sweet production in which the rebellion of the previous poem now and then storms to the surface, to be conquered more or less by resignation. Be proud and gallant in the fall, he counsels the poet; "look with supreme disdain upon all the injustices of life! Seek no constancy in love, nor ask any- thing eternal of mortals; make, oh artist, of your griefs, supreme sepulchral monuments. . . ." He does not agree with the famous lines from Dante that there is no grief like remembrance of past happiness in present woe. En esta vida el unico consuelo es acordarse de las horas bellas. . . . In this our life the only consolation Is the remembrance of hours framed in beauty In beauty alone, — impassive and immortal beauty, — is solace. Recordar . . . Perdonar . . . Haber amado . . . ser dischoso un instante, haber creido . . . y luego . . . reclinarse fatigado en el honibro de nieve del olvido. THE "MODERN ISTA" RENOVATION 39 The one lesson of his sorrow is to seek clarity and cahn on the summits; love and pardon those around you; seek that love ami pardon above. The fragment To Be is associated naturally with the Monologue of the Unbeliever. A deep abyss is this our human grief! What eye has ever gazed into its depths? Lend but your ear unto tlie dismal pit Of vanished centuries. . . . Within tliere falls An eternal tear! "A groan arises tremblingly from the white bones. Life is grief. And the life of the sepulchre may be a gloomy one, but it is life none the less. . . ." Suicide would be vain. It would represent merely another phase of the essential, indestructible matter of being. We live in grief; the great ambition of all that is, is to be lost in nothingness, to sleep without dreams. To the poet's distracted soul, there is no "not to be"; it is all a grievous being with no outlet for the harassed victim of life. It is in the poem Despues, however, that the poet strikes his deepest note of despair. Here the thought of the , Monologo is something more than mere complaint, mere blasphemous soliloquy. To read the poem is not to be able to detach oneself from the work and analyze a mood ; we are plunged into the very shadows that surround the frightened questioner and beat about the darkness without shore. El templo colosal, de nave inmensa esta humedo y sombrio; sin Acres el altar; negro, muy negro; apagados los cirios! 40 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Senor, ^en donde estas? Te busco en vano . . .! jiEn donde estas, oh Cristo? Te llamo con pavor porque estoy solo, como llama a su padre el pobre nino . . .! Y nadie en el altar! Nadie en la nave! Todo en tinieblas sepulcral hundido! ;Habla! Que suene el organo! Que vea en el desnudo altar arder los cirios! . . . Ya me ahogo en la sombra . . . ya me ahogo ! Resuscita, Dios mio! In the presence of such a human outcry, it may be profit- able to speak of the metrical skill with which the effects are wrought, of the symbolic beauty in which the poet drenches his work; but above and beyond this is the eternal flash of his query, like a tongue of flame pointing to the heavens. . . . Only he who had once been a believer could have \ written such a poem of unbelief. Despues deserves a place among the great poems of the Eternal Query. The prose of Gutierrez Najera, even more revolutionary than his poetry, is no less revelatory of the man who guides the pen. It is no less indicative of a highly sensitive nature that was certain to revivify the prose of his day because of the new things he had to say and the delicate shades of thought he tried to convey. His paradoxes, his numerous epigrams, his luminous imagery, his flowing line, are not so many disintegrated elements of a mosaic manner; they are organic parts of a whole. There is a new music to the phrases, a downy tenderness ; now and then the note of pure horror, told in language that renders the horror all the more poignant, — not tlie horror of a Poe, however, and quite devoid of that technique so overprized by our own writers; the prose, indeed, is poetry of a sort, — a strange THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 41 rommingling of siil)staiHv and airiness, more crystalline tlian that of Marti (who was likewise a master of epigram and imagery) and no less a carrier of thought framed in beauty than that of Dario. His Smoke-Co lor cd Tales are notable not so much for their plot as for their melodic am- plification of a lyric mood. Everywhere is the brooding, tenderly elegiac note; tliere is humor, too; the humor of the facile Duke Job, — even a bitter, ironic, grim humor. How well named are liis Fragile Tales! The fragility, however, is that of the finely labored ivory filigree; the humor is here bitter-sweet, tlie epigrams are barbed thought that stings like arrows. The author is fond of quasi-philosophic or reminiscent prologues to his tales, which, as we may be now expect, are mood rendered vocal rather than self-sufficient narrative. At times, without any loss of virility in the es- sential conception, Gutierrez Najera writes prose that pos- sesses the subtle charm of the violin's muted strings. Ever)^here is the lyric attitude; even in his travels he looks at the cities out of eyes that gaze as much inward as outward, i What does he tell us in this music of language that is music of thought? What does this spirit, attuned to such various influences as Leconte de Lisle, Verlaine, Baude- laire, Carducci, de Castro, d'Annunzio, Dante, Gabriel Ros- setti, Anatole France, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Nietzsche, Renan, dis- til from the multifarious streams of world thought that inundate his early provincial soul? Almost wherever we greet him, he offers us something peculiarly his own. Let us follow him for a few moments at random in his prose. '"I did not see this tale," he begins his homiletic version of the Rip Van Winkle legend, called Rip-Rip, '*but I be- lieve I dreamed it." This prepares us at the very start 42 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE for the dreamy atmosphere so proper to legends. But if you imagine that we have been launched upon the story, you are mistaken. "What things the eyes behold when they are shut! It seems impossible that we contain so many persons and things within . . . for when the eyelids fall, the glance, like a lady closing her balcony-window, returns to see what is inside the house. Very well; this house of mine, this house of the madame Glance that I possess, or that possesses me, is a palace,- a city, a world, the universe . . .; but a universe which ever contains the present, the past and the future. Judging by the things that I see in my sleep, I think to myself, and even for you, dear readers: Good Lord, what things the blind must see! These, who are always asleep, — what can they behold? Love is blind, they say. And love is the sole beholder of God." So, in his Vestido Blanco, that same attraction for the color white appears that is so noticeable and so notable in his sterling poem, De Blanco. So, too, in his Cuento Triste (I am seeking now insights into his moods and paral- lels with his poetry rather than mere plots) he finds himself unable to sing, because '"harmonies do not rise from the lute whose strings are broken, nor does chirping sound from the abandoned nest. ... I have pursued love and glory like the children who run after the coquettish butter- fly that mocks at their pursuit and their laughter. All the roses that I found had thorns, — all the hearts, forgetfulness. . . . There was a moment in which I thought that love was absolute and unique. There is only one love in my soul, as there is only one sun in the sky, I said to myself then. Afterwards, studying astronomy, I learned that there were many suns. I knocked at the door of many THF '^MODERNISTA" IIFNOVATION 43 liearts and they did not open to nu\ because no one was witliin." Tlie note of loneliness amid the crowd — our poet disliked multitudes — sounds most naturally from the man whose superiority isolates him. In his Las Almas Huerfanas (Orphan Souls), turning the famous biblical lines to lyric use, he tells us tienen ojos y a mi no nie miran; tienen labios y a mi no nic hablan. Eyes have they yet do not see me; Lips have they, yet speak not to me. How far is this from the witty whimster who, in his account of a comet's progress {Los Amores del Cometa) can mingle fact and fancy in so striking a manner! And yet even here, amid a fascinating discourse of such nonsense as is relished by tlie best of men, he must strike his character- istic note, comment upon the fleeting aspect of things, and counsel us to seize the day while we may! A turn of the page and we find our responsive spirit wan- dering into a circus tent. And what does he cany forth? A detestation for those spectacles in which he beholds human debasement. A horror for the utter denial of "the most noble gift of God : thought." A deep sympathy, above all, for the poor exploited children of the circus. His at- tention is soon centered upon a little "daughter of the air." . , . "Tell me, dear little girl, have you no mother? Were you, perchance, born of a night's passion, or did you come to earth upon a moonbeam? If you had a mother, — if they tore you from her arms, — she, with that incom- parable divination which love gives us, would know that 44 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE here you were weeping and suffering; crossing seas and mountains she would come like a madwoman to free you from this slavery, this torture! No, there is no such thing as an evil mother. The mother is the projection of God upon earth. You are an orphan." In the last sentence but one we find one of the dominant inspirations of the author: that mother through whom he knew God, and to whom, when firm belief deserted him, he still clung in thought and labor. In the same tale of the circus he shows himself capable of a most powerful, even if poetical, pro- test against the exploitation of the child in the acquisition of money. He is, like all persons possessed of a sense of hmnor, capable of poking fun at himself and his fellow writers, to whom, in the delightful skit entitled Historia de un Corista, he refers as "men who, for lack of Champagne and Bour- gogne, drink down in gulps that thick, dark liquid called ink." And such a chorus girl as this is! She quotes Greek mythology and Hugo with equal ease, and when it comes to veiling the dubious aspect of her career, what a mastery of innuendo she displays. His words on the evil effects of drink are doubly effective because of his own well-known weakness. "Man thinks that he is drinking the glass," he avers, in Semana de Ldzaro, "but he is de- ceived, for it is the glass that drinks him. At first he drains it at a single gulp; but the glass recoups its losses, and the man must fill it with somewhat of his mind, with somewhat of his heart, witli somewhat of his soul. A glass seems so narrow, and within it, nevertheless, so many sons, so many mothers, so many wives, so many lives have been drowned!" THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 45 His words upon music are likewise indicative of the man who brought music into tlie reahn of modeniism. "Music is a docile, olxnlient love that submits to all ca|)rices, like the odalisk wlu), to please her mastt>r, places around his neck the divine necklace of her arms, or watches over his repose with discreet attitude, refreshing his atmosphere with her Ian. It comes to us on tiptoe, so as not to waken us if we are asleep, knocks at our door and asks, 'What sentiments would you have me rouse in you?' Therefore yesterilay we laughed to the same harmonies that today cause us tears. Music does not impose its will; it does not dominate; it is the language that adapts itself to all pas- sions; the tongue of the lion which, by dint of caressingly licking the foot of his master, finally makes a wound. On the same note Faust meditates. Marguerite sobs and Me- phistopheles laughs." Rarely has more been said of music in so few words. The metaphor of the lion, besides con- taining a most adaptable pun on the word tongue, is imbued with a deep truth; if we slay the things we love, the things we love slay us no less. By a single reference to the opera Faust he conveys the multiple appeal which is music's eternal charm. Such is the charming personality that is hidden by the pseudonym Duke Job. Whether, with his deep fondness for children, he tells us a tender tale of sadness or death; whether, with his inquisitive nature, he engages in that strangest occupation for a poet, — the scientific elucidation of a fairy tale; whether he attends a murder trial and brings back a report that would grievously disappoint the prurient readers whom Dur own "star" reporters have been trained to pamper; whether he visits cities and summons 46 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE most iin-touristic thoughts; the essential Gutierrez Najera is visible. Gutierrez Najera is, whatever his medium, fundamentally a poet; his prose, even his so-called journalism, is, in es- sence, poetry. He sees in images and thinks in terms of feeling. Deeply romantic in nature, he is by the spirit of the times plunged into the maelstrom of modern thought, amid which he attempts to preserve a yielding faith; this faith, like all departing creeds, seeks new altars. The query of that quest vibrates in his verses, — now soothed by resignation, now calmed by renunciation, now blasphemous with despair, and never completely satisfied. This is the real man beneath the verbal melodist, the revolutionary force in journalism, the inquiring soul that poured its beauty alike into the Parnassian urn and the neo-Hellenic vase, and plucked the strings of the Symbolist harp. He is a modernist precursor not through a mere pruriency for novelty, not through an affected exoticism, but because he helped fashion a new interpretative medium for a new out- look. Rise what may out of Pandora's box, mankind must peer within. . . . 2. Jose Marti (1853-1895) The resemblances among the more noted exponents of modernism are many; there is the note of growing cosmo- politanism, the morbid tendency, the pale cast of thought, the resurgence of self. From among tliese figures, how- ever, that of Marti, "the gallant paladin of Cuban free- THE "MODERN 1ST A" RENOVATION 47 cloni," stands out as an exception. True, Marti shared, and even contributed early vigor to, tlu' dominant character- istics of modernism. In him, however, no morl)i(lity, no preoccupation with metaphysical mysteries; he is the rebel in action, — a volcanic force driven by fate, like a Wander- ing Jew of liberty, through many lands and to many hearts. Like so many of his fellows, he became early embroiled in journalism, and, imbued with a passionate desire for his country's independence, voiced that ideal with the rashness of Latin youth. Before he was well along in his 'teens, he was deported to Spain for his "insurrecto" spirit, and while there was allowed to study law; he completed the course -at Zaragoza. Returning to Spanish America he married in Mexico (1873) and five years later went back to the scene of his early efforts, conspiring against Spain under the guise of practising law. There follows (1879) a second deportation; this time, however, he managed to escape to France, eventually reaching New York, making his way to Venezuela and returning to New York, where he engaged in journalism for La Nacion (Buenos Aires), wrote for the Neiv York Sun on art, incessantly strove to maintain the fires of Cuban liberty burning in the hearts of the Spanish-Americans there, and published two collections of verse: Ismaelillo and Versos Sencillos. And now his la- bors, which had taken him to Paris, London, Mexico, the United States, — began to bear fruit. The final result, however, he was destined never to behold, for on the 19th of May, 1895, he was shot at Dos Rios, on his native soil, while attempting to leave the island. So much of Marti (and how much it is!) belongs to his- tory. But there is much of him that belongs to letters, — a 48 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE little of his poetry (not so much as the generous Dario would lead one to believe from his paper on Marti in Los Raros) and a great deal of his prose. Even more, perhaps, of that elusive emanation which we term a man's spirit, only because language is still inadequate to the conveyance of human feeling. Marti, in his glowing eulogy of Perez Bonalde, has left us an excellent declaration of his views upon poetry. He reveals himself as an out-and-out apostle of personality, aware of time's conflicting currents, plunged in the struggle for liberty (of which he has a most undogmatic conception, comparable with Rodo's vision of enlightened democracy), and hence with a trace of the utilitarian in his poetic de- mands.^^ "The first labor of man," he proclaims, "is to reconquer himself. Men must be returned to themselves. . . . Only the genuine is powerful. What others leave to us is like warmed-over food." One element at least, in man's surroundings, responds to his desires: the free choice of educative influences. He can behold neither lit- erary originality nor political liberty without spiritual free- dom. Note this insistence upon self; upon the linking of the literary and political aspects of human activity. The multiple self of which Gutierrez Najera speaks and for which Marti combats is to blossom into Rodo's masterpiece, the Motivos de Proteo, which is one of the most suggestive of modern probings into the many latent possibilities of per- sonality. To Marti, the poem is in the man and in nature. He is so eager for spontaneity that he considers perfection of 1^ Cf. the similar views of poetry entertained by another man of action, the versatile, restless Rufino Blanco-Fombona. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 49 form as being purchased at the price of the fecundating idea. *'A tempest is iiKire beautiful than a locomotive." This spontaneity is what he so much admired in Bonalde's noted poem upon Niagara. ""To polish is all very well, but within the mind and before the verse leaps from the lip." And if you object that such slavery to spontaneity injures the beauty of art, he replies, "He who goes in search of mountains does not pause to pick up the stones of the road. . . . Wlio does not know that language is the horseman of thought, and not its horse? The imperfection of human language, — its inadequacy to the expression of man's judgments, affections and designs is a perfect, abso- lute proof of the necessity for a future existence." Note, in passing, another difference between the active, optimistic, implicitly believing Marti and tlie foundering precursors of his day. "No, human life is not all of life! The tomb is a path, not an end. The mind could not conceive what it was incapable of realizing. . . ." And, returning to his manifesto of spiritual independence: "No, leave small things to small spirits. Lay aside the hollow, hackneyed rhymes, strung with artificial pearls, garlanded with arti- ficial flowers. . . ." Away with affected Latinism and the bookish ills, counsels Marti. With lips tightly pressed, breast bare and clenched fist raised to heaven, demand of life its secret! The translator of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, the revealer of Walt Whitman, the man who imbibed law at Seville and Zaragoza, immersing himself at the same time in Santa Teresa, Cervantes, Calderon, Quevedo, did not manage to communicate the ardor of his theory to his verses, which are more simple and tender than would be 50 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE expected. They are characteristically sincere, written "not in academic ink but in my own blood." At times they possess the suggestion of de Campoamor, as in the following excerpt: Un beso! — Espera ! Aquel dia AI despedirse se amaron. Un beso! — Toma. Aquel dia Al despedirse lloraron. A similar note of love and disillusionment rings from the brief drama that follows : Entro la nina en el bosque Del brazo de su galan, Y se oyo un beso, otro beso, Y no se oyo nada mas. Una bora en el bosque estuvo, Salio al fin sin su galan: Se oyo un sollozo; un sollozo, Y despues no se oyo mas. It is not in his verse, — his paternal delights, his love plaints, his patriotic poems, — that we must seek the lit- erary revolutionist, but in his prose. And such a prose! One countryman has called it the "symphony of a fantastic forest where invisible gnomes enchant our ears with a flock of harmonies, and our eyes with a tempest of colors." Despite an occasional involution of phraseology and a ver- THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 51 itable cataract of images lie makes deliglitful, yet impres- sive, reading. If Gutierrez Najera's prose is the graceful violin, alternately muted by hushed thoughts and swelled hy passionate utterance, the j)rose of Jose Marti is a Wagnerian_orchcstra. It ldasts wi t h trumpet-like sonoF; , ity; It sc atters sparks; it is, indeed, as t he man himself was , incen aiary. His journalistic labors moulded a new stand- ard; from him Dario learned much of the secret of such enduring correspondence as makes up the great poet's vol- umes of newspaper labors. Marti, too, is a notable wielder of the epigram; indeed, this aspect of his prose is strik- ingly illustrated by a recent collection,^" made up entirely of chips from the statue of his prose. In all the one hun- dred and forty-six octavo pages of the book there is a sur- prisingly low number of platitudes. "There are cries that sum up an entire epoch," Marti has asserted. Marti himself was such a cry. Was it not he who opened one of his speeches with the affirmation that "I am not a man speaking, but a people protesting"? And he spoke not alone for Cuba, but for all of Spanish Amer- ica. He is looked upon by those advanced minds in whom he sowed the seed of clamant freedom as not only a pre- cursor of modernism in its narrower sense, but as one of the founders of literary, as well as political, Americanism. He was the proclaimer of a continental fatherland, — a Magna Patria. He did not believe in Cuba's annexation to the Republic of the North; knowing both nations inti- mately, he saw that only a virile Cuba could win the re spect of a virile United States. '- Granos de Oro. Pensamientos Seleccionades en las Obras de Jose Marti.. Pot Rafael G. Argolagos. La Habana. 1918. 52 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE A remarkable union of the man of contemplation and the man of action, a vagrant pioneer in both mind and body, an innovator in language because of the new vision he beheld, Marti is enshrined in both the literature and the history of his people. His life was as noble as his writ- ings; he died for that to which he had devoted his life, and Cuba is his monument. 3. Julian del Casal (1863-1893) The life of the Cuban Casal is as marked a contrast to that of his compatriot Marti as any life well could be. Exhibiting more than one of the traits of Gutierrez Najera, he more closely resembles, in his inner existence and his poetic product, the gifted Colombian, Jose Ansuncion Silva, whom I shall take up after him. Julian del Casal, in his brief career (and how all too brief are the lives of so many of these agitated spirits!) underwent, like the mod- em child he was, a variety of influences that corresponded to his neurotic, morbid personality, — Jean Richepin, Heredia of the flawless sonnets, Judith Gautier of the Oriental flavor, Baudelaire of the flowers of evil, Ver- laine of the lyric soul turned song. A stranger to what is commonly called life, his poems throb with a feverish intensity of internal existence. Cejador y Frauca refuses to place del Casal among the modernists. "I find no point of comparison," he asserts, "between Casal and the modernistas." He is "sound and robust, without the slightest decadentism in thought or expression." The I THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 53 opinion is a strange one indeed; eitVier the Spanish critic's definition of decadentism is an exceedingly ehistic one, (and it surely is an unsparing castigation that recalls Max Nordau at his best — or worst!) or else Casal is very much "ileeadent" indet'd. It has been asserted that the Cuban poet never experienced the griefs of which he sung; if that be the case, we have in his productions one of the most remarkable examples _of_Bersonaj pr ojection_ _into_aJien nioocU that modern psychology can furnish. His poetry reveals him as a faithful yet hopele ss see ker aft er beauty ; he is capable of looking upon nature not through rose-colored, but through blood-colored glasses (as in the poem Crepuscular, with its bold opening comparison of the sunset to a slashed stomach) or of commenting iron- ically upon it in a poem ostensibly dedicated to the coun- tr}' [En El Campo]^ biUJn^ reality ass erting his "impure lo ve of c ities "; his morbid presentiment o7 that early death which overtook him as it did^utierrez Najera and Silva, recurs with overtones of disillusionment, hopelessness, yet ever with sincerity ; lilce~STIva7Tie~tEinks for a moment oF his childhood, onTy^To tell himself that he will be the hang- man of his own happiness, as indeed his verses show him to have been; like so many of his confreres, he knows the price of eating from the tree of knowledge; his morbid in- trospection is so faithfully recorded in any number of poems, that if it be true they were bookish inspirations rather than the product of actual events, I make bold to say that Casal's realji fe wa sjthe life that no one saw , — the life within. He never expects to attain to manhood, and despite his griefs, does not feel "the nostalgia of hap- 54 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE piness"; indeed, his wandering soul yearns only for what he may not attain, whether that be ineffable beauty or dis- tant lands. Ver otro cielo, otro monte, Oltra playa, otro horiionte, Otro mar, Otros pueblos, otras gentes De maneras diferentes De pensar. Such is one of his Nostalgias; yet could he reach these other scenes, these other peoples, would he really go? "But I go not," he concludes. "Were I to leave I should promptly return. When will destiny be pleased to grant me rest upon my journey?" At times (Esquivez) he fears to be lured by the love of this world, because of his presentiment that he must so soon leave it, and in the same poem he speaks of his "infinite homesickness for the other world; his love of night [Laus Noctis) may be due to the fact that it most suggests the death he often longs for; for night to him, like death, is the door to a deeper life; at times, with a sort of masochistic touch (Oracion) he prefers torment to rest, suffering to ennui; he knows the age-old struggle between the spirit and the flesh, yet cannot resolve it; he recommends a volume of Leopardi's poems with the lines that it will teach the recipient The wealth of greatness that is girt by grief The infinile vanity of everything. Sending his photograph to the same friend he sees in his own features "the indifference of one who yearns for nothing, or the corporeal fatigue of the brute." Pax THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 55 Animae, one dI his numerous sonnets (a Tonn he manip- ulated with great skill and uncommon beau4y of I'orni and imagery) belies its title, which is the mocking grin of the skull; his sonnet to his mother (which is really to himself) represents her as dying at his birth, — a symbol of the wretched life he is to lead; his spiritual landscape {Paisaje Espiritual), like his Nostalgias, reveals a soul fearful alike of life or dealli; more than once he displays the neurotic's desire to escape from the world {Tras un Enfermedad) \ everywhere, even in the eyes of his beloved, whom, char- acteristically enough, he has never known, he sees lurking death, — "el terror invincible de la muerte." Who, after reading Dario's autobiography, for example, can fail to see in this mental phenomenon not the affectation of an artist, but the agonies of a man transformed into art? It is more than mere pa radox to _say_that CasaFs death, like that of other poets of the same movement, beforeHIm and after, proves his life. In the eight lines of his Flores he runs the gamut from faith to blasphemy: "My heart was an alabastrine vase, where grew in fragrant solitude, un- der the purest gleam of a star, a white lily, — prayer. Withered is this flower of delicate perfume, like a virgin consumed by anaemia. Today in my heart a purple rose- bay grows, — blasphemy." Surely this part of his work is decadentism of a refined type and in a non-depreciatory sense; but decadentism none the less. Like a true son of Cuba, Casal could not, with all the exoticism that transformed his daily surroundings into a Japanese world-in-little, keep his oar out of the political waters. The poet of morbid presentiments was, in his strange life, amid his evocations of ancient Greece and 56 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE modem France, a man of his day who clashed with official- dom because of the nature of some writings. Had he lived longer, this more public phase of his character might have developed; such was the case with his friend and admirer Dario, on the occasion of whose departure after a visit to Cuba he penned his Pdginas de Vida, a poem that affords an insight into both poets. Casal pictures the deck of the ancient vessel on which he is told the tale of the other poet's life. Tlie Dario he represents, though essen- tially the real man, appears somewhat over-optimistic, per- haps in contrast to Casal's black pessimism. ; Ignea columna sigue mi paso cierto! i Salvadora creencia mi animo salva ! Yo se que tras las olas me aguarda el puerto! Yo se que tras la noche surgira el alba. Si hubieramos mas tiempo juntos vivido, No nos fuera la ausencia tan dolorosa, jTu cultivas tus males, yo el mio olvido! jTu lo ves todo en negro, yo todo en rosa! It may be true that Casal saw everything in its dark aspect; but certainly Dario's glasses were not always rose-colored! Casal was an ultra-refined soul who sought escape from life in beauty; the quality of refinement he shared with more than one other spiritual contemporary. There may have been an element of imitation in this hyper-aestlieticism, as there surely was of inadaptability to the environment, but it should be recalled that we reveal ourselves often as much in what we imitate as in what we originate. If lit- terary influence consisted of mere imitatioii^jTt would be an endless mirroring of primitive models; even in imita- THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 57 tion tlierfi_is selectiun ol a sorL, aad that is preferable to stagnant acceptance ol" sterile '^models." 4. Jose Asuncion Silva (186S-1896) The position of Silva as a precnrsor is somewhat prob- lematical. Some Spanish-Americans omit him from the list of foreninners, but none can deny the man's gifts or hi s^ influence. The verses of this great Colombian echo the malady of the cenluiy; futile questioning of fate and life, unalloyed by the faith that mitigates the sufferings of a Gutierrez Najera or a Dario; a deep sincerity that goes further than the suicidal monologue of the former, ending that life which he could neither control nor understand. \\ ith what persistence the thought of death haunts these modernists, who have so enriched life! Through the poems of Gutierrez Najera, through Silva, through Dario, through Julian del Casal, stalks the sombre shadow of Death, — not tlie romantic pose of morbid youth, for these men are deeply sincere. Silva was bom in Bogota, tlie capital of Colombia; whatever benefit he might have derived from paternal in- heritance was consumed in one of the frequent revolutions Uiat still agitate Spanish-American politics. His regular instruction, which was of short and fragmentary nature, was added to by personal effort to understand tlie new ideas of the age. As the result of an early trip to Paris he was impressed with such poets as Mallarme, Verlaine and Baudelaire (the latter of whom he seems to have placed above them all), at a time when Hugo absorbed tlie attention 58 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE of South-American youth. The loss of a large portion of Silva's poems during the wreck of VAmerique off the Co- lombian coast in the year 1895 was a loss to literature as well. Among the manuscripts thus destroyed was a col- lection of Cuentos Negros (Black Tales) which, according to testimony, were little known outside of the intimate circles to which he had read them; there were also various other prose works as well as almost the entire Libros de Versos. To the natural melancholy of the young poet was added one stroke of misfortune after another. A few days after having written his marvellous bit of prose De Sobre- mesa (Table Talk), in which he seemed to breathe out his aristocratic soul, he shot himself. Miguel de Unamuno has summed up Silva's life in three words: "Sufrir, sonar, cantar." Thus succinctly does he epitomize not only the life of Silva, but of a Dario, of a Casal, who out of their sufiTerings spin the web of dreams and distil the beauty of song. In his Psicopatia (again the neurotic note of the age) Silva, expressing the futility of philosophy, has diagnosed his own case: Ese senor padece un mal muy raro, que ataca rara vez a las mujeres y pocas a los hombres . . . Hija mia! Sufre este mal: pensar . . . esa es la causa de su grave y sutil melancolia. . . . That is Silva's ailment, expressed with an ironic humor more characteristic of Gutierrez Najera than of Dario: "A rare disease that rarely attacks women and infrequently, men . . . Thought . . . that is the cause of his grave and subtle melancholy." THE ''MODERMSTA" RENON ATION 59 Silva, in a sense, is the eternal child. In his woes the thoughts of rhildluuHl arc his one consolation. He has sung, in Infancia: hifanria, valle ameno, df rahua y tie Irestura bendecida donde es suave el rayo del sol que abraza el resto de la vida. j Como es de santa tu innocencia pure, Como tus breves dichas transitorias, Como es de dulce en horas de amargura dirigir al pasado la mirada y evocar tus meniorias! So, too, evoking the fairy tales of childhood, which Gutierrez Najera was able to consider in so poetically scientific a light, he finds them more substantial than science and philosophy: cuentos mas durables que las convicciones de graves filosofos y sabias escuelas, y que rodasteis con vuestras ficciones las cunas doradas de las bisabuelas. May not much of his disappointment with love and life be due to this unending childhood, which persisted in tlie spirit even after it had departed from the flesh? Every- where the haunting note resounds. His bride (in the beau- tiful poem Nupcial) hears death as well as hope in the music that plays at her festivities. His Midnight Dreams (bearing the English title in the original) bring him visions of hopes and joys that he has never known. Voices from the tomb call to him, — voices he has not heard for he knows not how long. Often it grieves him that the dead 60 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE should be so soon forgotten, as if already he reckoned him- self among their number and made their complaint his own. . . . The eternal quest is futile, he feels; he suffers the nostalgia of everlasting darkness even as the moth seeks the light that once gave it life, but now destroys it. In a poem entitled ? he asks the stars why, if they live, they are silent, and why, if they are dead, they give light. He despairs alike of his own art {La Voz de las Cosas) and of his critics {Un Poema) ; his Lazarus, four days after resurrection, wanders amid the tombs in solitary grief, envying the departed. The poet, in all he has written, has given us a spiritual autobiog- raphy which renders other details quite superfluous. In common with the other innovators, Silva strove for metrical freedom and the untrammeled expression of his personality. He was born into surroundings in which the routine view of art and criticism had long held sway; against this his artistic nature rebelled. He possessed, in as marked a degree as any of the precursors, a sense of melody and form that naturally enough astonished, with its literary and artistic originality and irreverence, the pundits of the past. As examples of technical liberty, we may select the sim- ple, affecting Los Maderos de San Juan, the Luz de Luna, the Dia de Defuntos and the popular Nocturnos. Others may view in such pieces as these a technical skill worthy of admiration in itself. To me (and I confess freely, that of the various modernist precursors Gutierrez Najera and Silva are my favorite poets) the metrical element is an in- dissoluble one. It may be convenient for critics to speak of form and content; art knows only the beautiful whole. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 61 The first of the poems named above is an amplification of a nursery rliyme, — oiu- of the evoeatioiis of a childhood that the poet never outgrew eomph'tely. The changing metre corresponds to a definite eliange in thought; the very rhythm, with its occasional abruptness, conveys the rocking of the child upon the grandmother's weary knees. Child and grandmother! For, to Silva, how evanescent is the age between! Like the sw^aying child, so his poetry rocks between infancy and death. . . . Both Luz de Luna and Dia de Defuntos are characterized by that melancholy mood of Silva's in which he comments upon life's forgetfulness of tlie dead. Here again the pulse of the poem, even as of our own blood, changes its beat with the various emotions; the lines are nervous, im- mediately responsive, in their differing lengths, to the poet's fancy. The Dia de Defuntos, suggested by Poe's The Bells, may be read after the English masterpiece with- out experiencing any discordant effect. Through the sounds of the . . . campanas planideras que les hablan a los vivos de los muertos in a poem that avails itself of a striking variety of plangent metres he communicates his dominant pessimistic mood. How quickly are the dead forgotten by the living! And how strikingly Silva uses a single bell that resounds above the chorus of the others, — the bell of irony and mocking laughter, which rings out his own thoughts. It is in the Nocturnos that Silva's metrical contributions may best be studied. Here we have, for example, free metre, based 62 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE upon a rhythmic unit of four syllables, as in the opening of the third Nocturne: Una noche, una noche toda llena de murmullos, de perfumes, y de musicas de alas; una noche en que ardian en la sombra nupcial y hiimeda las luciernagas fantasticas. . . . He plays, too, with typography, seeking to obtain effects of shadow by arrangement and repetition of lines; this, however, is not an essential, element in verse or prose, nor is it an essential part of Silva's innovations. Every true poet is an excellent writer of prose, wrote Dario in his essay upon the aristocratic poet Jean Moreas. This is noticeably true in the case of the modernistas, old and new, — if modernists may ever grow old! The prose of Silva is pregnant with subtle rhythms; it glows with in- tensity, and is saturated widi that same bitterness, that same ceaseless inquiry, that same haunting melancholy which inform his poetry. Read this line from his De Sobremesa, not only for its insight into the poet, but for its vehement expression of in- cipient madness: "Un cultivo intelectual emprendido sin metodo y con locas pretensiones al universalismo, un cultivo intelectual que ha venido a parar en la falta de toda fe, en la burla de toda valla humana, en un ardiente curiosidad de la mal, en el deseo de hacer todas las experiencies de la vida. . . ." This is the very pulse of scornful renuncia- tion. De Sobremesa is one of the most striking pieces of neurotic self-revelation in modernist letters. t THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 63 "An intellectual cultivation undertaken without method and with mad pretensions to universalism, — an intellectual cultivation that has led to a toniplcte ahandonnient of faith, to the j'esting scorn of all human efl'ort, to a burning cu- riosity of evil, to the desire of tasting all the possible expe- riences of life. , . ." Such is the pass to which Silva brought iiimself, face to face with lunacy, which said to him, "I am thine; thou art mine; I am madness." And in a last burst of self-expression that resolves upon a chord of self-rejection: "Mad? . . . And why not? Thus died Baudelaire, the greatest poet of the last fifty years for all truly lettered folk; thus died Maupassant. . . . Then why should you not die thus, poor degenerate who abused ev- erything, who dreamed of ruling over art, of mastering science, all knowledge, and of draining all the glasses into which Life pours its supreme intoxication?" And thus died Silva, by a bullet from his own hand. Bv a strange coincidence, the life of Baudelaire was so similar to that of tliis great Colombian admirer, that An- tonio Gomez Restrepo (in his Pamaso Colomhiano) found it possible to apply to Silva, the words of Andres Suares indited to Baudelaire: "He was fond of rare dishes and rare books, of the stars of the Orient and of old wines, of ultramodern music and of editions that were impossible to locate. Everything about him was artistic: his hair, of blackest silk; his glance, glittering and piercing; his fore- head and his neck of admirable shape and feminine white- ness; his noble acts. He seemed to be a Persian or an Arabian prince. At thirty he was ruined completely: he then sank into the bitter sadness of lliose who, not having > been born into poverty, are forced to compare in every sen- 64 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE sation the excellency of their desires and the ignominy of reality. As a voluptuary, he was of those who nourish and caress their desires, and causing them to grow inordinately, not only lose the illusion of realilty, but reject it. The de- sire of such as these lives upon dreams, and only dreams content them. A fearful contentment, which exhausts one more than orgies. He lived only upon imagination, and this used up his nerves and exhausted his strength. In him, the flesh was cerebral." The same Gomez Restrepo, in his La Literatura Colom- biana {Revue Hispanique, XLIII, 103, pp. 185) says that if Silva had lived longer he would probably have disputed with Dario the scepter of modernist poetry not only in America but in Spain. 5. Salvador Diaz Miron (1853-) Although Diaz Miron is not generally mentioned as a precursor of modernism, for more reasons than one he is entitled to consideration with the forerunners. His own. long life spans the beginnings, the hey-day, and the later transformations of the epoch; his intensely personal man- ner, particularly that of the earlier poems which later, in a mistaken fervor of perfection, he disowned, affected not only the Dario of Azul, but Chocano of the proud gesture and the sonorous, bardic strophes. How different is that early Diaz Miron, however, from the poet of Lascas, — that collection of polished, chiselled; artfully wrought marble chips in which the exacting artist gathered tl\e few products that he stamped definitely with his own ap( oval. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 63 The poet of Lascas is iu)l lluil writer of quatrains whose verses Dario (in a well-known sonnet from Azul) com- pared to a four yoked ehariot drawn by wild eagles who love tlie tempest and the oeeaii. Nor did this "son of the New World" let humanity for long hear the pomp of his 'iyrie hymns which triumphantly salute liberty." No; the Diaz Miron of this style, — tlie "fireater," as he has been called (for did not his mind, in the words of the younger poet, have craters and eject lavas?) — underwent a change of poetic outlook; his mind turned to the rigor of harsh self-discipline; it was no longer the crater of a volcano, but the atelier of an Olympic sculptor, hewing statues from mountains of marble. . . . The life of the poet leads us to such varied places as prison cells (which, it would seem, form part of the neces- sary training of a Spanish-American writer), the tribune of the council chamber, where his fiery oratory wins him new admirers, and to the directorship of El Imparcial (1913-14). Prison, politics, press, poetry, — the four steeds that so often we discover guiding the rolling chariot of Spanish-American writers. Perhaps as famous a poem as Diaz Miron ever penned is his youthful A Gloria, which for years was widely known and cherished in the anthology of Spanish America's poetic heart. And little wonder. For it spoke the language of defiant self-assertion, couched in the flamboyant quatrains that Diaz Miron made peculiarly his own. Like Dario after him, the poet in his early efforts sang the great god Hugo, — Hugo, the perennial fountain-head of so many "new" orientations of poesy, whose influence is so potent « ven in the novel of today, as confessed by his worshipper 66 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Blasco Ibanez. Not the Hugo of Les Contemplations, it has been pointed out, but the Hugo of Les Chatiments, whom Chocano studied to good advantage. Read a few lines from A Gloria; listen, and see if you catch more than a strain of Chocano's Blason, and his other poems of arrogant defiance. No intentes convencerme de torpeza Con los delirios de tu mente loca! Mi razon es al par luz y firraeza, Firmeza y luz como el cristal de roca! Semejante al nocturno peregrine, Mi esperanza inmortal no mira al suelo. No viendo mas que sombra en mi camino, Solo contempla el esplendor del cielo! Erguido bajo el golpe en la porfia, Me siento superior a la victoria. Tengo fe en mi : la adversidad podria Quitarme el triunfo, pero no la gloria! jDeja que me persigan los abyectos! Quiero atraer la envidia aunque me abrume! La flor en que se posen los insectos es rica de matiz y de perfume. jAlunArar es arder! — Estro encendido Sera el fuego voraz que me consuma ! La perla brota del molusco herido y Venus nace de la amarga espuma! Conformate, mujer! — Hemos venido A este valle de lagrimas que abate, Tu, como la paloma, para el nido, Y yo, como el leon, para el combate. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 67 It h^s been said that all of the early Diaz Miron is in this poem. Note the aptness of the irnap;ery: "My reason is at once light ami firnuiess, firmness and light, like the rock crystal!" . . . "There are plumages that cross the swanij) and are not stained," he proclaims in a quatrain not here (pioted. *'Sueh j)lnmage is mine!" Note, too, the strikingly epigrammalie character of the utterances: ■'Adversity may cheat me of triumph, but not of glory!" "The pearl blossoms from the wounded mollusc, and Venus is born of the bitter foam!" Such a type of poetry may lack iJie coherence and the climax of higher flights, being in reality a succession of inorganic, if inspiring, utterances. Yet there is the ruddy vitality of youth in its veins, with just a touch of Nietzscheism in the final quatrain. Urbina has given us an excellent personal view of this solitary figure in Hispano-American letters. "He is still alive, expatriated, ill, sad, — this man whose arrogant youth has resemblance and affinity to the ancient heroes, in the flight of his passion as in the nobility of his deeds. An exceptional being, out of the chivalric legends, gifted with a temperament ever ready for action as is his intelligence for perception. He is of those who are loved and feared. He seems an artist of the Renaissance. He could endure comparison with the Italian cinquecentistas, — with Leon- ardo for the variety of his learning; with Benvenuto for the impulse to daring. In the parliamentary tribune and the political harangue he revealed his tempestuous, flashing eloquence; when in the council chamber he raised his trem- ulous right hand, it seemed that, like the Olympic god, he released the thunderbolt." Not only Chocano took his first inspiration from this nervous, impassioned orator of the 68 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE frail body, the haughty countenance, the dark eyes and the flowing mane. The Spaniard Villaespesa, too, in a recent visit to Mexico, confessed that he received his initial poetic impulses from the author of A Gloria. The change that so greatly affected Diaz Miron's poetic outlook seems to have affected his output as well. His new conception of technique is perhaps as rigorous a program as any poet ever devised — and followed. I sometimes wonder whether non-Latins can really appreciate the seem- ingly exaggerated attention paid by Spanish-American poets to the matter of metric structure. Our own tradition is so much freer, so rich in precept and example, that often the Spanish preoccupation appears overdone. But since we have not been brought up on Academic prescriptions, with regular places assigned to accents, caesuras and all the other high-sounding trappings that would embalm ver- bal beauty, we are prevented, not only by the difference in language, but also that in tradition, from entering inti- mately into this detail of the poet's task. Diaz Miron now refuses, for example, to rhyme two adjectives, shuns articles in favor of a Latinized phrase, avoids hiatus and in general holds up to his poetry a most difficult conception of dis- sonance and harmony. This phase of his labors, partly shown in tlie remarkable collection Lascas, represents the opposite of such a poetic canon of spontaneity as we have noticed in Marti. Diaz Miron, indeed, has with his later work induced comparison with the methods of Luis de Gongora. His preoccupation with sculptural perfection and an impersonality utterly at variance with his initial verses, ally him to the Parnassians. Yet, since somewhat of our old self always remains, the THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 69 early Diaz Miroii is (lisccrnible b(Miralli the "statuary tunic." The volcanic lava has cooled, but one may divine its cratcral origin. So, for example, the Eccc Homo in LascaSy proclaims a poetic art that recognizes humanity's deeper response to sorrow than to joy, and an intention to sing that response in verses which shun the subtle jongleur's intense, crude grace, — to adjust to Irulli his calculated taste, under the gloomy brush and tlie tragic etching needle. A la verdad adjusto el calculado gusto bajo el pincel adusto y el tragico buril The Epistola Jocoseria of the same collection sings like- wise a sort of ars poetica that seeks to combine grace and power. A touch of the old personality is there: En mi el cosmos intima senales Y es un haz de impresiones mentales. Para mi, por virtud de objetivo, todo existe segun lo percibo. Y el tamiz proporciona elemento propio y lirico al gayo talento, \ es quien pone caracter y timbre, Novedad y valor a la urdimbre. Our impassioned seeker after the exact expression may, as the above lines show, be not a little Symbolistic as well. "After the publication of Lascas," writes Jose Juan Tab- lada, one of the foremost Mexican propagandists of the French spirit in Hispano-American letters, " — that marvel- lous book whose perfection of form has neither precedent 70 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE nor continuation in Castilian, the poet has continued his glorious pilgrimage upon other paths." Such superlative judgments are common in Hispano-American criticism; they are indicative not only .of a healthy enthusiasm for beautiful self-expression, but of a passionate nature that has received a more conventional but deeper literary train- ing than our own average students and critics. With the later work of Diaz Miron we are not here concerned; his general line of development has been indicated, however; his chastened technique, his new aesthetics, his aversion to appearing in the periodicals, his proud isolation, have all conspired to obscure his importance. As a precursor he was a potent influence upon the young Dario; as the sur- vivor of the great modernist he was hailed by more than one as his legitimate successor. Such are some of the modernist influences that the chief poetic figure — Dario — breathed as he approached adult- hood. As we shall see in the study devoted to him, he was by nature suited to drink in the inspiration of the age, — an intellectual turmoil that for all its artificiality possessed a core of sincerity; that for all its exoticism, its neo-Hellen- ism, its eighteenth-century-ism, possessed a core of contem- poraneity ; that for all its early Teutonic inspiration, (which filtered in dirough Becquer and translations from Heine, and likewise through the Germanic philosophic backgrounds of the Gallic innovators) and its fulsome worship of French art, possessed a core of Hispanism. Dario's great historic significance consists in his having absorbed a multitude of conflicting elements and unified them in labors that reveal a steady progress toward self- conquest and self-proclamation. The history of modem- < THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 71 ism, with his appearance, becomes largely a matter of his biography. As rapidly as new influences appear, he as- similates them, insj)iro(I and inspiring in turn. Before approathing the salient personalities of the studies that follow, let us glance at some later phases of modernism, which has really not so much run its course as altered, restrained and finnly redirected it. Ill LATER PHASES OF MODERNISM 1. New Orientations By the year 1898 the times were ripe for the introduc- tion of the modernist movement into Spain; the war with the United States and its disastrous outcome had produced among certain of the younger writers a spirit of pessimism that assumed the extremes of dissatisfaction with the native land. They, too, like their brothers across the Atlantic, looked to outside suggestion, and although there was a possible taint of denationalization in their views (nor is this always a taint) their attitude had the effect of bringing Spain into closer touch with Europe and the rest of the world. Even so prejudiced an enemy of modernism as Cejador y Frauca admits that its effects, in Spain, were upon the whole beneficial. This dominantly French influ- ence entered Spain f rom Spaniji America rather than from across the borders directly; history thus reversed itself, for early French influences entered Spanish America through Spain. The views of Cejador y Frauca upon modernism itself, which are representative of a large body of Spanish 72 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE thought, are rather preceptive, to say the least. To him the France that produced it is a decadent, positivist, effem- inate France; a France eager for novelty for novelty's sake; he holds Pamassianism up to scorn because it sacri- fices matter to manner; he gives a horrible picture of the Decadent artist as a sort of nervous wreck whose vari- ous senses have become telescoped into a mass of sensory confusions; modernist literature appears to him not only effeminate, but erotomaniac, falsely mystic, psychiatric and what not else, and he approaches the limits of the ridiculous by quoting Marcel Reja, who in his L'Art Chez les Foas (a study of art among children and lunatics) discovers that mad art coincides with the art of the decadents! Symbol- ism becomes a mixture of romanticism and gongorism; a decadence of decadence. Modernism, which grows worse as the critic writes on, at last sinks to the level of the mere desire to attract. "This and nothing more, is modernism." I believe this is a most erroneous manner of considering any movement. The epoch is an historical fact; it was not merely willed into existence; it produced extravagances that literature has known before modernism and that it will know long after. The amount of bad writing produced by any movement is always far in excess of the great, for the simple reason that writers, being human, perform but av- erage work no matter what banner they labor under. A movement that produces a Dario in Spanish America and helps to shape a Baroja or a Benavente, a Jimenez or a Rueda in tlie old Spain, His performed its mission and may well claim its due on that score alone. The same Cejador y Frauca, in condemning the exoticism of the modernists (which owes not a little to a similar phenomenon among THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 73 the romanticists, and goes to show llial we retain more than a little of all things thai we reject), forgets that this may be, IS well as a sign of neurotic unrest or affeetation, a hroad- ening of the human spirit, an interpenetration oi races too long separated by the barriers of language and that preju- dice which attaches to the unknown and the misunderstood. From the very confusion of the early stages of modernism a more homogenous world-view was destined to arise. Dis- solution, reformation, reintegration — this has been the course of the movement in Spanish America, where, in its later phases, as we shall soon see, tlie movement turned to a closer consideration of contemporary affairs, to a sense of continental solidarity, and a broad Americanism which may not be the final step. The early exoticism of the mod- ernists is sure, sooner or later, to be transformed by this growing Americanism into a genuine universality. There are distinct promises of this in Santos Chocano,^^ who re- fuses to be called merely the poet of America, a title which was held to be unmerited by Dario. Dario's glory, how- ever, consists, among otlier things, in the fact that he was too vast to be included by such a conception, even as was our own so different poet, Whitman. And when a critic exclaims '"The great stupidity of Ruben Dario, who might have been a great American poet, and reduced himself to the position of one more in the cortege of Parisian metecos. ..." I feel strongly that the stupidity was not all on Dario's part, and that surely no man is prophet in his own language! The very fact that so many cosmopolitan influences played upon the modernists of this continent and abroad re- 13 See the special chapter devoted to him. 74 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE veals the interpenetrating spirit of the age. From foreign lands came the labors of d'Annunzio, Dickens, Poe, Whit- man, Tolstoi, Ibsen, Brandes, Nietzsche, not to speak of the roll of Frenchmen. And Valle-Inclan approaches a sub- tle truth when he declares that a renaissance is simply "the fecundation of national thought by foreign thought." I can understand, even when I cannot sympathize widi, laws against immigration. But the application of laws against literary immigration on the grounds of a national literary exclusivism is a retrogressive force in letters. We have spoken too much about nationalist art, forgetting that though the roots may lie in nationality and personality, the results, independent of school and nation, should overleap bound- aries and enter the universal heart. Such results have been attained by the modernists, in common with the great writers of all schools and of no schools; such results, if justification of a historic fact were necessary, justify mod- ernism. The new path of modernism tends in Spanish America to abandon early extravagances and to produce a genuinely continental product. Chocano's glorification of Alma America (the title of one of his most significant collections, and a beautiful variation of the phrase alma mater), awoke a legitimate continental pride that had been dormant, rather than absent. Nervo's well-known Epitalamio to Alfonso XIII is looked upon as having proclaimed a definite turn- ing point in the history of the modernist movement, by the assertion of the former colonies' spiritual service to the Spanish king. Read by the author in the Madrid Ateneo, on April 28, 1906, it told the youthful king tliat THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 75 Sois rey aiin, eii cicrlo inodo, dc Anirrira, rnmo antes. Rey, mieiilras (jiie el idioma diviuo de ("ervaiiles melifujue los labios y caiite en las canciones de diez y oelio Republicas y eincuenta mi Hones de seres; niienlras rija las almas y la mano el ideal auslero liel honor castellano.** Nervo (1870-1919) carried on the potent French influ- ences tliat have revivified Spanish poetry on bodi sides of the ocean, without becoming a victim to the less artistic forms of that renovation; like tlie new spirits of Spanish America, he had reached a stage where he recognized no arbitrary schools or rules in art; he had found himself and expressed his personality in poems diat glow with a strange, new beauty. Through a dazzling succession of literary labors he advanced to a point where he could write Yo no se nada de literatura Ni de vocales atonicas o tonicas, ni de ritmos, medidas o cesura, ni de escuelas (comadres antagonicas) , ni de malabarismos de estructura, de sistoles o diastoles eufonicas. . . . A splendid independence, a wise ignorance, that may be purchased only at the price of so much slavery to the quest of beauty, so much study of its elusive structure! "I know nothing of literature, nor of accented or unaccented vowels, nor of rhythms. . . ." Nothing, — except what only the wise know how to forget! And what a deep remark of ^* The spirit of Nervo 's verses is plainly present in Dario's much earlier poem Al Rey Oscar (in Cantos de Vida y Esperanza) and in Cliocano's still earlier Canto del Siglo. 76 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Dario's it was, when, in referring to Nervo's skill, he men- tioned a "modernism — let us call it such, that benefited only those who deserved it!" "I was born," Nervo has told us, "in Tepic, a small city on the Pacific coast (Mexico), on the 27th of August, 1870. My real name should have been Ruiz de Nervo, but my father^ shortened it. His first name was Amado, and he gave it to me. Whereupon I became Amado Nervo, and what appeared to be a pseudonym — which was what many in America believed to be the case — and what was in any event a rare combination, was of no little worth to my lit- erary fortunes. Who knows what might have been my fate with the ancestral appellation of Ruiz de Nervo., or if I had been called Perez y Perez (that name is, among the Spaniards, as common as Smith in English). I began to write when I was a mere child, and on a certain occasion my brother discovered the verses that I had furtively writ- ten; he read them to the family gathered about the dining table. I escaped to my comer. My father frowned. . . . For the rest, my mother, too, wrote verses, likewise fur- tively. Her sex and her great griefs spared her in time, and she died without knowing that she possessed talent. ... I have never had, nor have I, any particular tend- ency. I write as I please. ... I support only one school, that of my deep and eternal sincerity. I have written innumerable bad things in prose and verse; and some good ones; but I know which is which. If I had been wealthy, I would have written only the good ones, and in that case perhaps there would be today only a little volume of my writings — a book of conscientious art, free and proud. It THE "MODERN ISTA" RENOVATION 77 was not tt> be! I was compelled to make a living in a country where almost nobody reads books and where the only form of diffusion was the periodical. Of all the things that grieve me, this is the greatest: the small, precious little book that my life did not permit me to write — the free and only book." Nervo was early destined to follow the career of the churchman, Ver\' soon, however, he broke away from the surroundings, although the influence remained with him for years afterward, becoming transformed into a penetrating mysticism. His struggles to achieve his ambitions were many and di&couraging; the pattern of his career, which included travels in both hemispheres, was a checkered one indeed. From literary success in Mexico City he attained to reputation in Paris and Italy; he flitted from journalism to translating, poetr\', tales, education, to diplomacy, and along the path of his wanderings he culled the flower of a variegated poesy. Profoundly aff"ected by French influ- ence, he did not permit it to rob him of his poetic self; he was possessed of an inquisitive mind that now shook him in his religious beliefs, introducing the canker-worm of doubt; now enticed him into bold conceptions that ranged freely in space and time, dwelling in dreams of superhu- manity; yet, as one of his noted fellow-poets, Urbina, has put it, "his autumn is filled with roses." Much of his poetry possesses an ineff'able tenderness, especially such as appears in the first part of his collection called En Voz Baja (In a Soft Voice). Not only are the thoughts such as may be spoken only in a soft, sweet voice, but the very hush of passionate confiding, the soft breath of airy wishes, 78 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the deep sense of holy silences, the poignant, haunting memories of a past suddenly evoked, rise like incense from its pages. Nervo, in some of his aspects, possesses a lyric introspec- tion that seems, by some fourth-dimensional gift of thought, to penetrate into lives we only half dream of living; he feels the feverish hurly-burly of modem life, yet is a man of his times and has faith in his age. His comparisons are not only things of beauty, but conveyers of beauty as well. He is not the empty, if beautiful urn of so many Parnas- sians; he can fashion beautiful urns and fill them with intoxicating wine. For an example of Nervo's poetry — and it is hardly necessary to add that an example or two cannot hope even to suggest the innumerable beauties of his varied produc- tions — we may choose a notable and a noble poem which is of especial timeliness today, when the air is so peopled with modern Columbuses en route to new discoveries. Pdjaro Milagroso (Miraculous Bird) was written in 1910, after a flight in an aeroplane. To Nervo's soaring imagina- tion (the unintentional pun possesses substance!), the aero- plane becomes a colossal white bird that realizes the dream of generations, reconquering for man, the fallen angel, the wings that he lost in his struggle with the gods. I quote a few lines from the original to give an idea of its metric and stanzaic structure: Pajaro milagroso, colosal ave blanca que realizas el sueno de las generaciones; tu que reconquistaste para el angel caido las alas que perdiera luchando con los dioses; THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 79 pjijaro milaproso, colosiil ave blanca, jamas mis ojos, hartos de avizorar el orbe, se abriert)n mas que aliora para abarcar lu vuelo, mojado por el llaiiU) de las consolaciones. At last, cries the poet, man has grown wings. "Fathers who sought this anxiously, and died without beholding it — jiocts who for centuries dreamed of such gifts — lamentable Icaruses who provoked laughter, — today, over your tombs, tliere flies, buzzing, the miraculous bird of the snowy wings that crystallizes the dream of the ages. And your dead eyes open to behold it, and your dry bones are garlanded with flowers! Oh, God! I, who, tired of the sad and frivolous journey of life, longed for eternal night, today cry to Thee, 'More life, oh Lord, more life — tliat I may soar like an eagle over all vanities and beau- ties, winging above them in vast flight!' We poets have now a new Pegasus. And what a Pegasus, friends, does Jove return to us! Let a divine exultation flood our spirits, and a Te Deum Laudamus burst from our lips, and let old melancholies perish, strangled by virile hands! Let us live! Let us live! Nations, in vain do you wish to make a weapon out of that which is a sign of peace among peoples! Stain not the celestial bird with missions of war; it thrusts tliem aside; it was born for the message of friendship and sows kisses of peace among men!" Four years later Nervo's buoyant hopes were for a mo- ment dashed to earth by the outbreak of the world war. Only a short while ago the poet returned to the subject, to his poems and to his hopes. He had not lost faith in the miraculous bird; rather it had been strengthened. After 80 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the war he could behold visions of the nocturnal sky illum- ined by signs upon vast wings, bearing the legends: "Paris to New York," "London to Mexico," "Madrid to Buenos Aires." . . . "The aeroplane," he said, in the same article, "will give back to us the lap of night, the majesty of the forgotten stars . . . and it is already well known that the stars are pale and ardent instructors that teach us many things.^" . . . They civilized the Chaldeans, the Egyptians and the Greeks, the ]^/ahuas and the Mayas. They have given back to many men, in the clear nights of the trenches, the feeling of eternity. ... In them is our hope of sal- vation." It takes a Spanish-American to be a poet even in his magazine contributions! Miss Blackwell has made versions of some of Nervo's love poems ; two of the best known follow. Just before his death, a charming collection of his latest work was issued in Buenos Aires under the title El Estanque de los Lotos (The Lotus Pond). TO LEONORA Black as the wing of Mystery thine hair, Dark as a "Never" where deep sorrow lies, As a farewell, or as the words "Who knows?" Yet is there something darker still — thine eyes! Two musing wizards are those eyes of thine; Sphinxes asleep in shadow in the South; Two beautiful enigmas, wondrous fair; Yet is there something fairer still — thy mouth ! Thy mouth! Ah, yes! Thy mouth, divinely formed For love's expression and to be love's goal, ^^ Nervo was a student of astronomy. THE "MODEHMSTA" RENOVATION };i Shaped for love's warm comiiiiuiion — ihv young mouth! Yet is there something better siill thy soul. Thy soul, retiring, silent, hrimmiiig o'er With pity and with tenderness. I deem Deep as the ocean, the unsounded sea; Yet is there sometliing deeper still — thy dream! EVOCATION From the deep mystery of the past I called her, Where now a shade among the shades is she, A ghost 'mid ghosts — and at my call she hastened, Pushing the centuries aside for me. The Laws of Time, astounded, followed after; The Spirit of the Graves with mournful cry Called to her, "Stop!" Like unseen hooks, the Epochs Grasped her rich, faded robes when she went by. But all in vain! She came, with red hair floating, That red hair fragrant of eternity; With wings loose hanging, clad like a chimera, That strange queen, following my will, drew nigh. I said to her, "Do you recall your promise Made in the year One Thousand, to my bliss?" "Remember, I am but a shade!" "I know it." "And I was mad." "You promised me a kiss!" "My kiss has by the chill of death been frozen; Long has my life been hid in Time's eclipse." "Queens do not break the word they once have given!" 'Twas thus I answered. And she kissed my lips. By no means has there been loss of personality among 82 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the poets, but rather an increase that is mirrored by the tendency of the Republics to proclaim a literary autonomy not inconsistent with continental aspirations. Such son- nets as that by the most popular of living Mexican poets, Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, in which the swan of Dario (overemphasized as the poet's heraldic bird, owing to Rodo's brilliant analysis of the Prosas Prof anas), is sen- tenced to have its neck wrung and be replaced by the con- templative owl, indicate a more sober inspiration, yet one none the less modern. "Wring the neck of the swan with deceitful plumage," he counsels in a notable sonnet. "It merely parades its grace, but hears not the soul of things nor the voice of the landscape. Flee from every form and from every tongue that does not harmonize with the latent rhythm of profound life; adore life intensely, and let it understand your homage. Look upon the wise owl, how it spreads its wings from Olympus leaving the lap of Pallas, and rests its taciturn flight upon that tree. ... It has not the grace of the swan, but its restless eye, peering into the dark, interprets the mysterious book of nocturnal silence." Was it not Verlaine who began all this neck-twisting, in his Art Poetique? Do you recall the first line of the sixth I quatrain? "Prends I'eloquence et tors-lui son cou!" In the reaction of Gonzalez Martinez against the swans of Dario may be discerned a double effect of the Mexican's milieu and his personality. This poet comes at a time when Mexico's need is for stem self-discipline, solid cul- ture and widespread education, rather than for effete aes- theticism and ultra refinement. The verses that he wrote as a child were probably of the same character as is pro- duced by most gifted children; his training as a physician, THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 83 however, with the necessary scientific application to con- crete phenomena, nuist have had not a little to do with his substitution ol the owl for the swan. Social need and a scientific discipline aptly merged with a poetic pantheism furnished the background for the physician-poet's new or- ientation of modernism. He was born in 1871 in Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco, where he attended the Seminary. In 1893 he had won his physician's degree and was made an asso- ciate professor of physiology. For fifteen years he fol- lowed his calling in the State of Sinaloa, where he pub- lished his first four books. For a time he edited Arte with Sixto Osuna. The year 1911 saw him in Mexico City; here he founded the short-lived Argos (1912), and con- tributed editorially to El Iniparcial; now, too, began his public career as President of the Ateneo (1912), Undersec- retary of Instruction and Fine Arts for a short period (1913), professor of French literature in the Escuela de Altos Estudios, head of the literature and grammar depart- ment, and professor of Mexican Literature in the Escuela Preparatoria. A host of contradictory influences have played upon the idol of young Mexico's poetry lovers. Lamartine, Poe, Baudelaire, Verlaine (the ubiquitous Verlaine!), He- redia, Francis Jammes, Samain. Yet here we find no mor- bidity, no dandyism, no ultra-refinement. Wliere other poets feel the passing nature of joy and cry out, admon- ishing mortals to "seize the day" ere it fly, Gonzalet Mar- tinez ("a melancholy optimist" de Icaza has termed him, in a paradoxical phrase that seems to sum up modern opti- mism) feels rather tiie transitory character of grief. He 84 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE is what I may call an intellectual pantheist, — his absorp- tion of nature is not tlie ingenuous immersion of the prim- itive soul into the sea of sights and sounds about him; it is the pantheism of a modem intellect that gazes at feeling through the glasses of reason, and having looked, throws the glasses away. ... In all things, as he tells us in the beau- tiful poem Busca En Todas Las Cosas, from his collection Los Senderos Ocultos, he seeks a soul and a hidden mean- ing. The modernist poets are prodigal with poems upon their artistic creeds and practises. In this series of melo- dious quatrains Gonzalez Martinez enlightens us upon his poetic outlook: Busca en todas las cosas un alma y un sentido Oculto; no te cifies a la aparencia vana; Husmes, sigue el rastro de la verdad arcana Escudrinante el ojo y aguzado el oido. Ama todo lo gracil de la vida, la calma De la flor que se mece, el color, el paisaje; Ya sabras poco a poco descifrar su lenguaje. . . . Oh, divino coloquio de las cosas y el alma! Hay en todo los seres una blanda sonrisa, Un dolor inefable 6 un misterio sombrio ^Sabes tu si son lagrimas las gotas de rocio? Sabes tu que secretes va cantando la brisa? That is the secret of the poet's charm. His pantheism is as much wonder as worship; as much inquiry as implicit be- lief. As he has told us in La Plegaria de la Noche en la Selva: "Now I know it, now I have seen it with my rest- less eyes, oh infinite mystery of the nocturnal shadows! To my engrossed spirit you have shown the urn in which THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 85 with jealous care you hoard your deepest secrets." If poets must have heraldic birds, if Poe must have his raven, Daric) his swan, Verlaiiie his hieTatie cat, Gonzale/ MarliiKV, has his owLaiul night is his amhient, — not the Tristissintn Nox of a Gutierrez Najera, but that night which unto night showeth knowledge. To Miss Blackwell I am indcl)ted for versions of some characteristic poems by Gonzalez Martinez. These reveal the poet's mood of communion as well as his peculiarly contemporary pantheism. The first selection is one of the most popular of modern Mexican poems and almost at once found its way into the antliologies: LIKE BROTHER AND SISTER Like brother with dear sister, hand in hand, We walk abroad and wander through the land. The meadow's peace is flooded full tonight Of white and radiant moonlight, shining bright. So fair night's landscape 'nealh the moon's clear beam, Though it is real, it seems to be a dream. Suddenly, from a corner of the way, We hear a song. It seems a strange bird's lay, Ne'er heard before, with mystic meaning rife, Song of another world, another life. "Oh, do you hear?" you ask, and fix on me Eyes full of questions, dark with mystery. So deep is night's sweet quiet that enrings them, We hear our two hearts beating, quick and free. "Fear not!" I answer. "Songs by night there be That we may hear, but never know who sings them." Like brother with dear sister, hand in hand, We walk abroad and roam across the land. 86 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Kissed by the breeze of night that wanders wide, The waters of the neighboring pool delight, And bathed within the waves a star has birth, A swan its neck outstretches, calm and slow, Like a white serpent 'neath the moon's pale glow, That from an alabaster egg comes forth. While gazing on the water silently. You feel as 'twere a flitting butterfly Grazing your neck — the thrill of some desire That passes like a wave — the sudden fire And shiver, the contraction light and fine Of a warm kiss, as if it might be mine. Lifting to me a face of timid fear You murmur, trembling, "Did you kiss me, dear?" Your small hand presses mine. Then, murmuring low, "Ah, know you not?" I whisper in your ear, "Who gives those kisses you will never know. Nor even if they be real kisses, dear!" Like brother with dear sister, hand in hand, We walk abroad and wander through the land. In giddy faintness, 'mid the mystic night, Your face you lean upon my breast, and feel A burning teardrop, falling from above. In silence o'er your languid forehead steal. Your dreamy eyes you fasten on me, sighing. And ask me very gently, "Are you crying?" "Mine eyes are dry. Look in their depths and see! But in the fields when darkness overspreads them. Remember there are tears that fall by night," I say, "of which we ne'er shall know who sheds them!" The two poems that follow are a delicate variation of a similar mood ; note the attitude of wonder in tlie first, as well as the sense of repose in both. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 87 A HIDDEN SPRING Vi'itliiii tlir shadowy l)i)wl of mossy valleys, Afar from noise, you come forth timidly, Sinj^ing a strange and secret melody. With silvery dropping, where your clear stream sallies. No wanton fauns in brutal hunting bold Have niuiKliod you, or heanl your voice that sings; You know not even of what far-off springs The unseen veins created you of old. May rural gods preserve your lonely peace! Still may tiie siiihing leaves, the sobbing breeze, Down tlie low murmurs of your scanty flow! Forgive me that my momentary glance Of vour unknow'n existence learned by chance; And hence, willi noiseless footsteps, let me go! TO A STONE BY THE WAYSIDE mossy stone, thou pillow small and hard Wliere my brow rested, 'neath the starlight's gleam, Where, as my weak flesh slept, my life soared up! 1 give thee thanks for giving me a dream. The gray grass gleamed like silver fair, bedewed By a fresh-fallen shower with many a tear. A bird upon the bough his music sighed Beneath the twilight, hueless, thin and clear. Yearning, I followed evening's concert sweet. The shining ladder by a star-beam given I climbed, with eyes fast closed but heart awake, And ascended to the heights of heaven. Like Jacob, there the marvel I beheld. That in a dream prophetic glowed and burned. 88 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE In the brief space for which my sleep endured, I sailed a sea, and to the shore returned. mossy stone, thou pillow small and hard! Thou didst receive, beneath the starlight's gleam. My aimless longing, my sad weariness; 1 give thee thanks for giving me a dream. His soul is quiveringly responsive to nature's every mood, which is his own. Sometimes a leaf that flutters in the air. Torn from the treetops by the breezes' strife, A weeping of clear waters flowing by, A nightingale's rich song, disturb my life. And soft, sweet languors, ecstasies supreme. Timid and far away, come back to me. That star and I, we know each other well; Brothers to me are yonder flower and tree. My spirit, entering into grief's abyss. Dives to the farthest bottom, without fear. To me 'tis like a deep, mysterious book; Letter by letter I can read it clear. A subtle atmosphere, a mournful breeze. Make my tears flow in silence, running free, And I am like a note of that sad song Chanted by all things, whatsoe'er they be. Delirious fancies in a throng press near — Hallucination, or insanity? — The lilies' souls to me their kisses give. The passing clouds all greet me, floating by. Divine Communion! for a fleeting space My senses waken to a sharpness rare. y^\ ^ j^^ "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 91 \ There I shut up my dreams, beneath the sky — Poor waiuloriug caravan that haunts my breast. CIducI ^irl, lik.(." some old iin)unlaiirs lioary crest, That far, strange stronghold greets the gazer's eye. My dreams wait there till 1 shall close the door. They will behold tne from my home of yore Cross the still halls, to be their guest for aye. Latching tlie doors, the bolts I shall let fall, And in the moat that girds the castle wall Some night shall prouilly cast the keys away. ''The thing which hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun." Thus spake the Preacher. But then, was it not Paul in his second epistle to the Corintliians who said tliat ""old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new"? Between the two statements might be placed all the battles that are for- ever being waged around the newest of the new standards in art. "Newness," after all, is a matter of spirit rather than of chronology. The unimaginative poetaster of today who shrieks his little theories and seeks to exemplify them in chopped lines that are neither literary fish nor flesh, is ancient even as he writes, while the great authors of all time are freshly new because true to something more durable than a love of novelty for novelty's sake. Nothing ages so (juickly as novelty. This, however, is no reason for con- demning an entire movement, for the new spirit is always right, unless progress is to resolve into classic stagnation. A Remy de Gourmont may say that "the new is always good o^cause it is new," and a Villergas that "the good is not of V and the new is not good"; both, in their excessive ad- 92 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE herence to a school rather than to an idea, over-emphasize the point; above all the rivalries of school and precept (often merely verbal) there is a kinship among all true poets and creators. That modern view which tends to break away from schools, that inherent unity between the "new" and the "old," is deeply felt and effectively ex- pressed by Gonzalez Martinez in his sonnet The Poets, To- morrow. . . . ,wherein he sings the same eternal question- ing under different forms. Tomorrow the poets will sing a divine verse that we of today cannot achieve; new constellations will reveal, with a new trem- bling, a different destiny to their restless souls. Tomorrow the poets will follow their raad, absorbed in a new and strange blossoming, and on hearing our song, will cast to the winds our outworn illusion. And all will be useless, and all will be vain; the task will remain forever — the same secret and the same darkness within the heart. And before the eternal shadow that rises and falls they will pick up from the dust the abandoned lyre and sing with it our selfsame song. Extremes meet. In such a beautiful sonnet as this is in the original, it seems that the new and the old join in a golden circle. Great art is neither old nor new; it is ageless.^^ 2. "Literary Americanism" The growing national literary consciousness of the Span- i*"' A fuller treatment of modernism should include such widely admired spirits as Leopoldo Lugones and Leopoldo Diaz (Argentina). Guillermo Valencia (Colombia), Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (Bolivia), and Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay) among the poets, as well as Francisco Garcia Calderon (Peru) in whom many see the logical continuator of Rodo, and Manuel Diaz Rodriguez (Venezuela), a novelist and essayist of outstanding merit. I shall deal with these and others in a forthcoming volume. THE "MOUERNISTA" RENOVATION 9^ ish-American republics, which early appeared, may be shown by two extracts from Mexican writers; the atlituile is important as leading up to tlie natural evolution of a contiiKMital consciousness, now strongly evident in the labors of a Blanco-Fombona, a Garcia Calderon, a Rodo. Says Justo Sierra, the noted Mexican, in his study upon Manuel Gutierrez Najera: ''No people, engendered by an- other in the plenitude of its culture, and to whom there have been perforce transmitted language, customs and re- ligion, has ever been able to create an intellectual or liler- ar\' personality togetlier with its political personality; this has been, whenever it occurred, the slow work of time and circumstance. To tell us American sons of Spain that our rational literature has not yet appeared hardly smacks of good criticism. Does the illustrious Academician (Sierra is replying to the reproach of Menendez y Pelayo directed to the new Mexican poets for their intense devotion to later French literature) believe that the history of our literature does not reveal an evolution toward a certain char- acteristic form, — one which singles the Mexican group out from all those who speak Spanish? Yes, there has indeed been an evolution, and assimilation was necessary to that evolution; at first, imitation without selection; then, imita- tion by selecting, and reproducing the model; and this is what is called assimilation, which is what we have gone through. And whom could we imitate? The Spanish pseudo-classicism of the beginnings of the (nineteenth) century? That was an imitation of the French. The Spanish Romanticism of the second third of the century? That, too, was imitation of the French. Nevertheless, we imitated them; Quintano and Gallegos, the Duque de Rivas 94 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE and Garcia Gutierrez, Espronceda and Zorrilla, — these were our father's masters." This line of reasoning has been further developed by another Mexican, in a recent book dedicated to the author of the lines just quoted. ^^ From the very beginnings of his investigations into Mex- ican letters, the poet Urbina tells us, he was assailed by the old plaint that Mexican literature, and in general all His- pano-American literary production, was but a reflexion of Peninsular letters, and was as yet unable to sustain itself; that they were late in development, vague in physiognomy, and being incapable of creation, had recourse to imitation, following the changes of literary style in Spain, becoming a shadow of that body, — the echo of that voice. He does not deny the element of truth in this old notion; "the Spanish language is the sole form that has given us, and will give, a literary personality in the universe of ideas"; to speak Spanish is, in a certain manner, to think and feel in Spanish moulds. Yet the very idea of transplantation connotes modification, circumstantial alteration, variation from the primal model; he sees that the mixture of the natives and the conquistador has produced a Mexican type; anthropological investigation shows that the bodily structure of the Mexican diff'ers from the Spanish type as much as from that of the primitive American. "Physiologically we are neither one nor the other; we are a well differentiated edinic type, par- taking of the nature of both progenitory races. And one and the other strive to coexist, to survive in our organism." Undoubtedly, is Urbina's conclusion, there has been a psy- chological change commensurate with the physiological, — ^7 La Vida Literaria de Mexico. Luis G. Urbina. Madrid. 1917. THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 05 a change to he notod not only in literature (for nature does not recognize our classifications of human activity) hut in sueli pursuits as architecture and its fluid sister, music. Mexico's particular contribution in the spiritual world of Spanish speech is a certain all-pervading melancholy. "To the Sancho-Panzan jollity and the Quixotic delirium there is added in our hearts the sadness of the Indian, the ancestral submissiveness of the subject, tlie gentleness of the aborigine. And if we are Mexicans in life, we are Mexicans in speech, in dreams and in song." The continental aspirations known by the name Amer- ican i^m (since the tenn America to Spanish Americans de- notes only tlieir portion of the western hemisphere) are more or less bound up (as is the poetry of the politico- modernist writing) with a fear of the United States as possible aggressor. There is no advantage in blinking the fact that while our attitude has been one of indifference, the Spanish-American position has on the whole been hos- tile. Spanish America, judging from its literary repre- sentatives, looks upon the United States as inferior to itself in culture, and has preferred to model itself upon France. At best (always speaking generally) we are in their eyes as yet too engrossed in material ambitions to give attention to spiritual considerations; at worst, we are an intriguing nation tliat despoiled Mexico of Texas and California, de- spoiled Spain of Cuba, despoiled Colombia of Panama,^* and who now, under the shield of the Monroe Doctrine and ^*Prof. J. D. M. Ford of Harvard, in his recent Main Currents of Span- ish Literature (chapter on "Spanish-American Literature") properly indi- cates that not our nation, but certain politicians, are here responsible. Unfortunately, the political and economic interests they represent are still ) powerful. 96 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE an alleged Pan-Americanism, cherish imperialistic designs upon the entire southern continent. It is unnecessary to dwell upon these matters in a book of primarily literary appeal, except that Spanish-American letters are so deeply tinged with the political (and even economic) hue that these opinions are certain to appear in some of the best poems that have been written in Spanish on this side of the At- lantic. To be sure, there is a tendency to modify such an extreme view; it would be saying too much to assert that it is making great headway as yet. Not only this, but our neighbor critics of the south recognize in the new Hispano- American literary and cultural movement a force for gen- eral progress; their proposed literar}^ continental solidarity ; is but a phase of the politico-economic unity to which more than one of their leaders aspire. The general trend of the all-American movement is in the first place eclectic in nature ; that is an inevitable result of the age-spirit, — the one possible position for creators of strong personality plunged into the whirlpool of kaleido- scopic modernity. The artist, whetlier he believe it or not, is eclectic .from the very nature of that selection which lies at the bottom of art. Self-made men and self-made liter- atures are alike contradictions in terms; therein lies the fallacy of "schools" in art, as of the narrow conception of "nationalism" in literature and music, for example. Modernism, which in its restrictive sense has passed into history, still persists in its effects; even as it proceeded from antagonistic elements like Parnassianism and Symbolism, it has produced a fusion of the best in Classicism and Ro- manticism. The new writers reserve the privilege (and exercise it!) of absorbing all the "isms" that float in the THE "MODERNISTA" RENOVATION 97 literary amhicnl and turning tluMii to advantage for an autonomous product. Such is "literary Americanism" that is at present in its early stages. The purely national, while by nt) means owrlookeil, is relegated to a secondary position; and here, not even critics who insist upon the na- tional note in all literary products may with validity object to the larger vision that seeks to merge llie various republics into a eonunon continental voice. For a common history, a eonunon languge, a common problem and common aspira- tions naturally seek a common art. It has been questioned whether the term literature may be properly applied to die letters of Spanish America. It may be noted in passing that Coester does not call his book a history of Spanish-American literature, but a literary history of Spanish America. He seems to have adopted the view of Bartolome Mitre, the famous Argentine poet, historian, and ex-President of his countiy, who, when some years ago a professor desired to initiate a course in Spanish- American literature, opposed tlie plan on the grounds that such a thing did not exist. The position of Mitre (similar to tlie one Sierra combated) was that literature is some- thing more than a collection of books, — that the volumes written by Spanish Americans, though all in tlie same tongue, lacked logical coherence and tlie evidence of evolu- tion toward a definite goal. He admitted, however, that their ''literary productions might be considered, not as models, but as facts, classified as the expression of their social life during three periods, the colonial epoch, the struggle for freedom, and the independent existence of the social republics." To some it would seem that this state- ment approaches very near to self -refutation ; there is cer- 98 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE tainly logic, if not unity or coherence, to Spanish- American letters, and there is just as certainly evolution; as to whether that evolution tends toward a definite goal is another matter, for literary evolution need not be conscious, and least of all, self-conscious. Even this definite goal, however, seems to have appeared with what may be termed the post-modern- ist group, in their aspirations to intellectual continental unity, under the inspiration of a broader concept of union derived from Bolivar's audacious, unfulfilled dream. It is interesting to compare with Mitre's position that of the recently deceased Jose Verissimo, one of the foremost Brazilian critics, — a man of broad views, wide reading (how often the one seems to grow from the other!) and in- corruptible fearlessness of expression. In regard to the letters of his native country Verissimo expressed doubts similar to those of Mitre. "I do not know," he writes, in his essay Que Falta A Nossa Literatura}^ "whether the existence of an entirely independent literature is possible without an entirely independent language." In this sense Verissimo denies the existence of an Austrian literature, as well of a Swiss or Belgian. He finds that Brazilian letters lack perfect continuity, cohesion, the unity of great literatures, chiefly because at first they depended upon Por- tugal, then Europe (particularly France) and only lastly 1" Estudos de Literatura Brasileira. Vol. II. Cf. however, the speech delivered before the Brazilian Academy of Letters by Joaquim Nabuco. "The truth is that, although tliey speak the same language, Portugal and Brazil will have, in the future, literary destinies as profoundly distinct as their national destinies. . . . The formation of the Academy of Letters is an affirmation of the fact that, in literature as in politics, we are a nation with a destiny and a character of its own — a nation that can be directed only by itself, developing its originality through its own resources and wish- ing only that glory which can come from its own genius." THE "MODERN ISTA" RENOVATION 99 referred to Brazil. In such a sense, too, it would be possi- ble to clc'tiy (or, at least, it would have once been possible) the existence of a North American as distinguished from an English literature. Yet despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of speech to similarity of thought, the environment (which helps to shape pronunciation as well as the vocabulary and the language itself) is, from the stand- point of literature, little removed from language as a de- termining factor. Who would pretend, on the basis of lin- guistic similarity, to say that there is no United States liter- ature as distinguished from English literature? Is it not national life, as well as national language, that creates lit- erature, especially in the broader sense as used by both Mitre and Verissimo? Time here, as elsewhere, plays a leading role, creating new languages out of old, new liter- atures out of old, even new worlds out of old. And al- though Remy de Gourmont's characterization of Spanish- American speech as "neo-Spanish" is rash, it recognizes the innovating power inherent in a change of environment and outlook; perhaps he spoke the word too soon rather than too thoughtlessly."" After all, the question as to whether the word literature 20 In this connection, witli reference to the transformations English has undergone in the United States, it is worth wliile to point out an exceed- ingly useful and vivacious volume entitled The American Language, by Henry L. Mencken, New York, 1919. Mr. Mencken is a sober thinker, for all his occasional levity, and is one of the few stimulating critics writing in our countrv- today. He is very much alive to the changes going on daily in the structure, pronunciation and vocabulary of the English tongue as spoken (and even written) in this land, and has in his own book suggested more than one path that our more academic spirits would do well to follow. There i« something incongruous about the eagerness with which we study. for example, the evolution of the Romance tongues out of Vulgar Latin, neglecting similar phenomena in our ver)' surroundings. 100 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE may be applied to the literary products of Spanish and Por- tuguese America is largely academic; few readers, when roused by the strophes of some modem Tyrtaeus or en- tranced by the sheer musical beauty of a Guiterrez Najera, a Julian del Casal, an Amado Nervo, or a Gonzalez Martinez, stop to ask themselves whether they are reading part of a well-defined literature or not; the query is philo- sophical rather than literary. Yet if the term literature, in the philosophical sense, be denied to the past productions of Spanish Americans, the very reasons for that denial seem to be disappearing; for none could ask a clearer statement of conscious purpose than comes from spokesmen of literary Americanism today. That literary Americanism is an artistic precursor of a political unity. "If this unity is impossible in political affairs," says F. Garcia Godoy in his group of essays en- titled "Americanismo Literario," "let us labor to impart a common orientation to what is worth more and is m^ore durable than the political: the harmonic, coherent cultural vibration of peoples identified by blood, by speech and by history." The conditions of Mitre are thus well on the road to ful- fillment, and the vast dream of Bolivar is bom anew in the cradle of art. CHAPTER II RUBEN DARI'O (1867-1916) The life of Ruben Dario itself, quite apart from the poems which flowered out of it, reads with all the interest of a fictive account. In his own day he became, to more than one admirer, a god with a legend all his own. He is with little doubt, botli as person and as artistic creator, one of tlie most attractive figures in modern poetry. Perhaps such adulators as Vargas Vila have done him as much harm as good; he may not have been, as was asserted during his lifetime, the greatest poet that ever used the Castilian tongue. Such worship, however, is significant; the man impressed his personality upon the writers and readers of two continents; Tie was a servitor as well as a master of beauty; he has written works of dazzling technical perfec- tion and of penetrating vision; he is the outstanding repre- sentative of modernism in poetry; he is a chiseler of luminous, glittering prose rich alike in imagery, melody and substance. He is not merely a Spanish-American poet, nor a Castilian poet; he is of the consecrated few who be- long to no nation because they belong to all. I believe that many Spaniards, on both sides of tlie At- lantic, have stressed Dario's technical perfection and inno- vating significance at the expense of his essential humanity. I believe lliat despite his aristocratic search after flawless 101 '■'l.C^.:^ ^TU1)IES J^?' -SPANISH-AMERICAN LITER.\TURE form, despite his hatred of the crowd, despite his intellect- ual sybaritism, he was as human in a great part of his poetry as in his life. This wanderer sought to distil beauty from joy and sorrow, and at the bottom of this beauty the joy, the sorrow, the vain questioning, the doubt, the vacillations of the age are vibrant. There is another Dario, I know, — the Dario of the marquis's hands, of tlie pastels a la Wat- teau, of the insubstantial symbolism wafted to the reader upon winged words, — the Dario that had the weakness for vain display, for the anodyne of drink, for creature com- forts. Yet is it another Dario, or the same? In our crea- tions of beauty we transform ourselves as well as life. And has not a very wise Frenchman said that we differ mostly from ourselves? . . . At the root of Dario's work as a whole lies agitated, mul- tifarious life; without a knowledge of that life we may ap- preciate the beauty of his productions, but we miss much of their humanity. And without taking sides with Art for Art's sake or Art for Heart's Sake, it is easy to understand that beauty shorn of its human aspect is only half beautiful. Dario has left us a personal account of his career, written four years before his death; it is not a complete account, — there are intentional omissions and strange caprices of memory, yet by collating his own record with that of his contemporaries it is possible to arrive at a fairly complete knowledge of tlie man's career. The poet's personal account (La Vida de Ruben Dario, Escrita Por El Mismo) is on the whole a book of engaging candor, revealing the man behind the poet; Dario puts on RIIBEN DARIO 10,^ no airs, he assumes no role of an inspired prophet, nor does he, on the other hand, itn[)ai:t to his frankness a suspicion of paradiiiiz; pose, of sensational eonfession. He is aware of his faults, but takes them lor granted and wastes no time in futile repentanee or ostentatious "peccavis." He is generous in his appraisal of others, and charitable to those who have souglit to do him liarm. He displays a deep sense of humor, which, like most deep humor, has overtones of sorrow. His prose is simple, unpretentious, conversa- tional, yet melodious and rich in colorful words and happy phrases. It is not the prose of an Azul or a Los Raros, yet it is well matehtHl to its direct purpose. Here, as else- where, we come upon a spirit that is surely cosmopolitan, with a touch of the exotic, yet more than these, restless and migratory. In the cathedral of Leon, Nicaragua, he tells us, may be found the baptismal record of Felix Ruben, legitimate son of Manuel Garcia and Rosa Sarmiento. Following the Spanish custom of composing tlie family name from that of both parents, his name should have been Felix Ruben Garcia Sarmiento. Why, then, Dario? A great-grand- fatlier of his had borne that name, and was known in the hamlet as Don Dario; hence all his offspring were called the Darios. Ruben's own father did business under the name of Dario, so strongly had it become embedded. The marriage of Ruben's parents had been a loveless match of convenience; the couple had separated eight months later; the following month the child was bom. He soon passed imder the care of his maternal grandmother, Doiia Bernarda Sarmiento de Ramirez, whose husband had come to Hon- duras for him, and he was brought up as the child of Colonel 104 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Ramirez and his wife. Dario thus knew nothing of his mother; her image was early effaced from his memory; his earliest school books, indeed, contain as his signature Felix Ruben Ramirez. He was a child prodigy, it seems; he knew how to read at the age of three. At the death of the colonel, the child's education passed into the hands of his grandmother. The old house inspired the impressionable tot with terror. Added to the lugubriousness of the surroundings was the character of the superstitious tales he listened to from his grandmother's mother, an aged, quivering creature who told him stories of headless monks and mysterious hands, of sinful women carried off by the devil. "And thence my horror of nocturnal darkness, and the torture of ineradica- ble nightmares." The poet's fears, indeed, follow him all through life; he fears the darkness, he broods over death, he suffers neurotic torments. At elementary school he takes courses in which the prin- ciple of the rod is unsparingly applied, together with hazy notions of arithmetic, geography, a pinch of grammar, religion. As early as this he betrays a weakness for femi- | nine companionship, and his one whipping from the school- master comes from being discovered "in company with a precocious little girl." Among the first books he read (he came upon them in an I old closet) were Don Quijote, tlie works of Moratin, the Thousand and One Nights, the Bible, the de Officiis of Cic- ero, Mme. Stael's Corinne, some classic Spanish plays and a hair-raising novel called La Caverna de Str)»zzi. It was, indeed, as he says, a strange mixture for a child's brain. And how symbolic is this early conjunction of the Arabian • RUB6N DARIO 105 \iglits and the Bible! Was not tlie poet's life a continuous oscillation between the two? . . . "I never learned to make verses," he asserts, in recount- ing his earliest attempts. "It was organic, natural, innate in me." His first fame came to him as a writer of versified t'[)itaphs. But the tlioughts of the juvenile poet of death were far indeed from the graveyard. Soon his first sen- .■"ations of love were wakened in him by a distant cousin of his who came to live with the widow Ramirez, whom Dario considered his mother. ''The call of the blood!" exclaims the autobiographer. ''What a shabby, romantic figment! The only paternity is the habit of affection and care. He who suffers, struggles and watches over a child, even though he has not engendered it, is its real father." The future poet's melancholy character became rapidly evident. He was fond of solitude, fond of gazing medi- tatively at the sky and out to sea. Together with these recollections of juvenile sadness mingled memories of horri- ble scenes. Perhaps Dario's explanation of his fears is but half the story or less; most children hear fairy tales and ex- perience similar shocks, yet react to them more sturdily. \^1iatever the case, lliis neurotic sensitivity remains with Dario for the rest of his life, as does his amorous suscepti- bility, with which it may have had organic relation. Both these aspects are prominent in his poetry and he is early attracted to spirits of a similar nature. A third element now appears, the religious — and it is significant that the youngster is at first more impressed by the awe of the ceremonies than by their beauty. During his passionate adolescence he writes many love verses and suffers more than one disillusionment at the hands of die 106 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE "inevitable and divine enemy," love. One of these juv- enile flames so scorched him tliat even with the passing years he could remember the name of the little North American circus girl, — Hortense Buislay. Unable at that time to obtain the price of admission, he wormed into the friendship of the musicians and gained surreptitious en- trance by carrying their music or their instruments into the tent. Before he had reached his thirteenth year one of his verses had already appeared in a daily called El Termome- tro, published by Jose Dolores Gomez, in the city of Rivas. The poem was one of the rhymed elegies for which our Ruben had become locally famous; he recalls a stanza for us: Murio tu padre, es verdad, lo lloras, tienes razon, pero ten resignacion; que existe una eternidad do no hay penas. . . . Y en un trozo de azucenas Moran los justos cantando. . . . How blithely youth sings of eternity, and how sadly old age chants childhood! With the publication of more verse Dario became known throughout the republics of Central America as the boy poet. He took his calling with intense seriousness, allowing his hair to grow long and neglecting his studies. The poet who was to work wonders with complicated metres and have such an epoch-making effect upon the mathematical bases of poetics, failed disastrously in mathematics! The "boy poet" was soon called to the editorial office of ^ RUBEN DARIO 107 the political sheet La Verdad, where began his long com- panioii^^liip with jt)urnalisni. But this was an opposition j)api>r, and before long Dario was confronted with the in- evitable police, — inevitable because they figure, it seems, in the life oi' almost every Hispano- American writer of re- cent note, and not a few of Spain. The fourteen-year-old journalist left the position and became an instructor in grammar in a colegio. Here he happened upon a book of free-masonry and acquired a certain prestige among his companions because of his caballistic lore. His early mel- ancholy contiiuied to torment him; he experienced, with the coming of adolescence, a bodily and spiritual transforma- tion. "I felt an invisible hand thrusting me toward the unknown." And toward the known, too, for he was now visiting a large-eyed girl every Saturday. Induced to go to the capital, Managua, he soon acquired, through influential friends, a position in the National Li- brary. ''There I spent long months reading everything I could lay hands upon, and among these readings were — horrendo referens! — all the introductions in Rivadeneira s Bihlioteca de Autores Espanoles, and the chief works of almost all the classics of our tongue. Hence it comes that ... I am really very well versed in Spanish letters, as any one may see from my first published productions. . . . It was, then, deliberately that I later employed manners and constructions of otlier languages, exotic words and phrases, ni)t purely Spanish, with the desire of rejuvenating and rendering flexible the language." The excerpt is import- ant; it helps to bear out the contention that the exoticism of the modernists was not mere affectation, but a more or , less conscious (and here, as in the case of Gutierrez Najera, 108 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE very conscious) desire to enrich a language in need of ex- pansion. It is worth while noting, too, that the iconoclastic, or rather, innovatory program was based upon a knowledge of the old. These readings were varied with fresh amatory adven- tures. This time it was a green-eyed, chestnut-haired maiden of a gentle pallor. Wherefore new verses, some of which found their way into the public print and later even into some of his books. He was told that the girl had al- ready loved before, — loved no other than one of his own dying friends. Part of this torrid love and the consequent jealousy found its way into Abrojos, a rare predecessor of Azul, published in Chile. At fourteen years of age he an- nounces his intention to marry, and his friends, taking him at last in earnest, present him with a travelling bag and see him off to Corinto, where he takes the boat to El Salvador! Here he was charged with writing an ode in celebration of Bolivar's centenary, which, "according to my vague recol- lection was naturally very different from all my later pro- ductions." He returns to Nicaragua; love-affair follows love-affair, verse follows verse, journalistic experience grows, political duties multiply. Comes an especially bitter love-disap- pointment and he resolves to quit the land. Whither? The United States. But a friend induces him to go to Chile, and thither he sails, during an earthquake, on the good ship Kosmos. "At last the ship reaches Valparaiso. I purchase a paper. I read that Vicuiia Mackenna has died. In twenty minutes, before disembarking, I write an article. I land. The same thing as in El Salvador. What hotel? the best." This short paragraph reveals the RlBtN DARfO 109 ready journalist in Dario, as well as the man with the "hands of a marquis," who loved luxury with a fondness that made him hate money. His article is printed in the Valparaiso Mcrciirio; he f^ets a place upon the Santiago Le Epoca and becomes a member of the young intellectual group. From the Epoca he wins a prize of two hundred pesos for the best poem on Can>poamor, offered by the di- rector to the members of his staff. Dario's poem is a skil- full decima well concentrating the essence of a poet whom it is now the fashion to depreciate, but who exercised a po- tent influence and knew tlie secret of saying much in little. This was the winning poem: Este del cabello cano como la piel del arniiiio, junta su candor de niiio con su experiencia de anciano. Cuando se tiene en la mano un libro de tal varon abeja es cada expresion, que volando del papel deja en los labios la miel y pica en el corazon. Those who have enjoyed the concentrated, epigrammatic, piquant, worldly-wise, genially philosophic Humoradas and Doloras of Campoamor will agree to the vivid charact- erization, in the very style of the man whose literary por- trait he drew. From the Epoca Dario went to the Valparaiso Heraldo, there to write his first article on — sports! Which he did so very well that he was invited to leave. He had long cher- > ished a desire to figure as correspondent of La Nacion no STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE (Buenos Aires). It was this newspaper that taught him, he tells us, his journalistic style, and at the time of which we are speaking three divers influences aff^ected him in his perfection of prose: Paul Groussac, Santiago Estrada, Jose Marti. In these existed the spirit of France, and of the three, "Groussac was my real intellectual guide." Through the influence of his friend, the Chilean poet Eduardo de la Barra, he was accepted on La Nacion. This, however, is but the beginning of Dario's literary and amorous pilgrimage. He is attacked by small-pox, but left with few marks. He falls into one of his numerous early love affairs and is somehow or other invited to a party given to the maiden by his successful rival. Suddenly he commences to improvise verses in which the blackest things are said about the rival, the girl's family, and whom not else, and is packed off^. He finds himself at the head of a unionist newspaper. He makes an important friend in Francisco Gavidia, "who is perhaps one of the most solid humanists and certainly one of the first poets of South America." Through Gavidia he had, on his first visit to El Salvador, been introduced to Hugo; from their joint reading of the master's alexandrines, "which Gavidia, certainly, first wrote in Castilian in the French manner," he received the \ idea of the metrical renovation that he was later to develop. On the 22d of June, 1890, he was at last married, in civil : form, to Rafaela Contreras; the religious ceremony, which was to take place shortly after, was postponed by a revolu- tion that broke out in Salvador that same night. Becoming involved in a political issue, Dario fled to Guatemala, where he was named through President Barillas (a friend, RUBEN DARIO 111 of President Menemlez of Salvador, wlio liad been be- trayrd) ilircctor of A7 Correo de la Tarde. A lialf year later llie reUgious eoreinoiiy of marriage tt)olv place. He was sent to Spain shortly afterward (1892) as Nic- aragua's delegate to the celebration of the Columbus cen- tenary. The assignment was so sudden that he had time oidy to write to his wife and (Mnbark at onc(\ There he made important friendships with Menendez y Pelayo, Cas- telar ("the first time I went to the great man's home I felt llie emotions of Heine arriving at Goethe's house"), Nunez de Aree, who tried to keep him in Spain, Valcra (who had welcomed his Aziil with such perspicacious comment and unerring prophecy), Campoamor, Zorrilla. It was on his return from this commission that he visited Cuba and spent a few hours in Santiago de Cuba. This is not mentioned in his autobiography "despite the fact that he then made the personal acquaintance of Julian del Casal. Only in an article entitled El General Lachambre and in a public letter directed to Enrique Hernandez Miyares (La Habana Elegante, Ano. X. No. 24. Habana, 17 de Junio de 1894) has Ruben Dario recalled this visit to Cuba and his friendship with Casal. ^ Reaching Leon he was informed of his wife's death. For a week he resorted to the forgetfulness of drink in the face of the terrible blow. He does not seem, however, to have possessed any more paternal affection than his own father, for the bringing up of his child was entrusted to other hands; thus it had been for nineteen years at the time he wrote his biography. Now comes a strange episode in which the poet, recover- ' 1 M. E. UreSa. Rodd y Ruben Dario. Pages 128-129. 112 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE ing from his alcoholic lethargy, went to Managua to collect a half year's back pay from the government. "I arrived at Managua and took a place in a hotel. I was surrounded by old friends; I was given to understand that my salary would soon be paid, but the fact is, I had to wait many days; so many that during these days there occurred the most novel- esque and fatal episode in my life, but to which I may not refer in these memoirs, for powerful reasons. It is a sad page of violence and deception, which has prevented me from forming a home for more than twenty years; but there still lives the person who, like me, suffered the consequence of a familiar impetuous step, and I do not desire to increase a protracted grief with the slightest reference. The Mex- ican diplomat and writer, Federigo Gamboa . . . has for many years had this romantic, bitter page in writing, but has not published it because I was opposed to its inclusion in one of his books of memoirs. So that a gap is here necessary in my life's narrative." Conjecture is naturally rife about the episode ; Gamboa has not yet made his knowl- edge public; the lines refer to Dario's second marriage, to Rosario Murillo. Was the marriage, as Max Henriquez Ureiia suggests, the product of an alcoholic overindulgence and later pressure? At any rate, Dario's other son, Ruben Dario Sanchez, was the fruit of the poet's happy union to Francisca Sanchez, with whom Dario lived in Europe. We soon find Dario named Consul from Colombia to Buenos Aires. Wliat a weakness the great man had for outward trappings and uniforms! He did not proceed at once to Buenos Aires, however; his wish was first to go to New York, then to visit Paris, and only then to go to the capital of Argentina. So he took the boat to New York, RUB^N DARIO 113 wliere ho met Jose Marti in llio Cuban colony; the revolu- tionist was then at the height of his efTort. Dario's impres- sions of Marti"*s conversational powers are very vivid, "Xever have I met, even in Castelar himself, so admirable a conversationalist. He was harmonious, intimate and gifted with a prodigious memory, — swift and ready with (juotation, reminiscence, fact, image. I spent several un- forgettable moments with him, then left ... I never saw liim again." Before sailing for Paris the poet visited Niagara, but how different are his impressions from those o( Heredia and Bonalde. "My impression before the wonder, I confess, was less than might have been imagined. Although the miracle dominates one, the mind pictures it so much greater that in reality it possesses no such fantastic proportions." He does, however, recall Heredia's verses before tlie sight. How, indeed, should Niagara have im- pressed tlie Dari« of Azul? Paris, on the contrary, is sacred soil to him. "I had dreamed of Paris since I was a child, to such an extent that \shen I said my prayers I prayed to God not to let me die before I saw Paris. Paris, to me, was a sort of Paradise in which the essence of earthly happiness was breathed. It was the City of Art. of Beauty and of Glory; and above all, the capital of Love, the realm of Dream. And I was about to know Paris, to realize the greatest desire of my life. \^ hen I stepped on to Parisian earth in the station at Saint Lazare, I felt as if I were treading holy ground." Here he met, during his short stay, Verlaine, Jean Moreas, Maurice Duplessis and others. His picture of the great Faun is short, but vivid. He was introduced to Verlaine by Alejandro Sawa, as "poeta americano, admirador . . . 114 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE I murmured in bad French all the devotion I could express, and finished with the word 'glory'. . . Who could tell what had happened that afternoon to the unfortunate master? The fact is that, turning toward me, and without ceasing to thump the table, he said to me in a low and pectoral voice: 'La gloire! ... La gloire! . . . M. . . . M. . . . Encore!' I believed it prudent to withdraw and await a more propitious occasion." This was to prove hardly pos- sible, for Dario always found the poet in the same besotted state. "Pauvre Lelian!" At Buenos Aires the consul was most cordially received. It was at this time, upon the occasion of Queen Victoria's anniversary, that he dictated in the cafe of The Fourteen Provinces a small poem in prose to the sovereign. For lack of paper it was written upon the backs of four envelopes. If I translate it here, it is not because of its intrinsic worth as a piece of art, which is not great, as for its indirect light upon the Dario of that epoch, just before the publication of the Prosas Prof anas that were to create such a powerful im- pression on both sides of the Atlantic. The poem is entitled God Save the Queen (in English) with the English words as a refrain. At the time his autobiography was written, the poem had not yet appeared elsewhere in print. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN To ray friend C. E. F. Vale Because you are one of the most powerful lands of poesy; Because you are the mother of Shakespeare; Because your men are strange and bold, in war and in Olympic games ; Because in your garden blooms the best flower of springtide and in your heaven shines the saddest of winter suns; RUBEN DARIO 115 I sinjz to your queen, oh gjreat and proud Brilaiu, willi the verse that is repeated by the lips of all your children: God Save the Queen. Your women have the necJcs of swans and the whiteness of the white roses; Your mountains are drenched with legends, your tradition is a mine of pokl, your history a mine of iron, your poesy a mine of diamonds; [i On the seas your banner is known by every wave and every wind, so that the tempest might have asked for English citizenship; Because of your strengtli, oh England; God Save the Queen. Because you sheltered Victor Hugo on one of your islands; Because, above the seething of your laborers, the drudgery of your sailors and tlie anonymous toil of your miners, you have artists that clothe you in silk of love, in gold of glory; in lyric pearls; Because on your escutcheon is the union of fortitude and dreams, in tlie symbolic lion of the kings and the unicorn, friend of virgins and brother of the dreamers' Pegasus; God Save the Queen. For your shepherds who say the psalms and your fathers who, in the tranquil hours, read aloud their favorite poet by the fire- place; For your incomparable princesses and your secular nobility; For Saint George, conqueror of the Dragon; for the spirit of the great Will, and the verses of Swinburne and Tennyson; For your lithe maidens, made of milk and laughter, as fresh and tempting as apples; loT your sturdy youths who love physical exercise; for your scholars, familiarized with Plato, rowers or poets; i God Save the Queen. 116 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Envoi Queen and empress, adored by your great people, mother of kings, Victoria favored by the influence of the Nile; solemn widow garbed in black, adored by the beloved prince; Mistress of the sea, Mistress of the land of elephants, Defender of the Faith, pow- erful and glorious dame, may the hymn that greets you today be heard around the world : God save you ! Now, too, he commenced the publication, in La Nacion, of the series which was later to be published in volume form as Los Raws. He later agreed that there was too much enthusiasm in his criticism of the writers here repre- sented, but very sensibly he recognizes the creative power of enthusiasm. The verses penned during this epoch were likewise to be gathered later under the famous title Prosas Prof anas; the volume was first brought out at the expense of Dario's friend Carlos Vega Belgrano. It is at this period, indeed, that modernism may be said to have been definitely launched. At the end of the Spanish-American war the poet was sent to Spain by La Nacion, and out of his correspondence for that periodical grew the volume Espafia Contempo- ranea; his later visit to the Paris Exposition of 1900 like- wise resulted in his book Peregrinaciones; these continental travels were continued for the same enterprising organ, through England, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Austria-Hun- gary. The traveler Dario in his work shows the same spirit we have noticed in the more circumscribed travels of Gutierrez Najera; once more he proves the old dictum that one receives no more from foreign visits than he brings to them; and Dario brought much. Dario has left us a close view of Oscar Wilde, as the English poet appeared to RUBEN DARIO 117 liim when they mcl at tlie Paris Exposition. ". . . Some- what robust, shaved gentleman, with an ahhatial air, very engaging in manner, who spoke French with a marked Knglisli aeeent. . . . Rarely have I met a person of greater distinetion, a more elegant eulture, a more genteel urbanity. He had lately come out of prison. His former French friemls, who had showered him with adulation in his days of wealth and triumph, now ignored him. ... He had even changed his name at the hotel where he stopped, calling himself by a Balzaquian title, Sebastian Mcnmolth. All his works had been placed under the ban in England. He was living w ith the aid of a few London friends. For rea- sons of health he needed a trip to Italy, and with all respect he was offered the necessary expense by a barman named John. A few months later poor Wilde died, and I was unable to go to his burial, for when I learned of his death tlie unfortunate fellow was already under the sod. And now in England and all over the world his glory begins anew." Dario himself, as he appeared at the Paris Exposition, has been pictured by his friend Vargas Vila: "He was still young, well built, with a genius's glance and a sad air. It seemed that all the races of the world had placed their seal upon that countenance, which was like a shore that had received the kisses of all the waves of the ocean. It might have been said that he had the countenance of his poetry — Oriental and Occidental, African and Japanese, with a per- petual vision of Hellenic shores in his dreamy pupils. And he appeared, as always, sculptured out of Silence; he was his own shadow." Returning from his European travels, Dario was named 118 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AIMERICAN LITER.\TURE Nicaraguan consul to Paris, after having learned of a false report of his death. The poet, indeed, was twice falsely re- ported dead; one of the rumors brought forth a hardly flattering obituary notice from some irate priest, in the Estrella de Panama: "Thank God that this pest of Spanish literature has already disappeared. . . . With his death we have lost absolutely nothing. . . ." Being named, in 1906, Nicaraguan delegate to the Pan- American Congress at Rio de Janeiro, he proceeded to that country; the mission accomplished, he went to Buenos Aires, feeling the need of a rest. Thence he returned to the perennial Paris of his dreams, — "the center of neuro- sis," he calls it, in a poetic letter to the wife of the noted Argentine poet, Leopoldo Lugones. The letter, by the way, was written from Majorca, whither the sick poet had gone to avoid the Parisian winter, and where he visited spots consecrated by the memory of George Sand and Chopin, and the cave in which Raymond Lully prayed. Disgusted with the outcome of the boundary dispute be- tween Nicaragua and Honduras, which had been referred to Alphonso XIII as arbiter, and on which Dario, together with Vargas Vila, had been appointed members for Nica- ragua, the poet resolved to return to his native land, after an absence of eighteen years. He was received with the utmost enthusiasm and President Zelaya now named him Minister Plenipotentiary to Madrid, whereupon the eternal wanderer returned to Spain, where the King, after the official ceremony of receiving him, discussed his poetry with him. With diplomatic honors flying in the air, tliere now came an appointment to Dario (who may have deceived himself tliat he was a diplomat, even as Voltaire did tliat he RUB^N DARib 119 was a playwright) as Envoy Extraordinary to tlir govern- ment of Mexico on the occasion of tlie centenary of Mexican independence. However, Dario had once written a poem called To Rooscrclt, in whieli the Tnited States was looked upon as a possible invader of Spanish America; complica- tions were feared, and Dario never fulfdled his functions as P envoy. Provided with the necessary funds, the poet re- turned to that Europe which was really more his homt^ than America, for all his calling Argentina his second nation. j Shortly after his return he founded the review Mimdial; founding reviews is one of the literary amusements of Spanish-American poets. He was received by such emi- nent Frenchmen as Paul Fort, Anatole France, and Remy de Gourmont. Once again he made a tour of the conti- nents, being welcomed enthsiastically in Spain, Brazil and various nations of South America; then came the great war to interrupt the publication of his review and to accentuate tlie illness that was coming over the poet. Once again he turned to tliat Majorca which has been enshrined in one of Blasco Ibanez's best novels — Los Muertos Mandan. His final days were filled with an intense fear for France's fate. It would not be difficult indeed, however unfruitful all such discussions are. to show that Dario was intellect- ually French rather than Spanish. Dario's final homecoming is a gloomy one. Broken in health, he journeyed to New York on his way to Nicaragua; his coming was little noticed outside of intellectual circles. He was presented by the Hispanic Society of America — ^ itself too little known here — with its coveted medal of honor. Dario was stricken in New York with double pneu- 120 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE monia; he was able, however, to make his way to Guate- mala, thence to Leon, where he died on the sixth of Feb- ruary, 1916. Such was, in outline, the life of that strangely wrought figure who symbolizes the age of modernism in Castilian poetry. His inner existence is fully as agitated as his out- ward. "There was, in Dario," Vargas Vila has written,^ "the tendency, almost the necessity, to believe, which is in- herent in all weak creatures; he believed in everything, — even in the most absurd things; the supernatural world attracted him with an irresistible fascination, as did all the aspects of mystery. He believed in God ; he believed in the Devil. . . ." Dario, in fact, at one time of his life, de- sired to become a monk, and there is an interesting photo- graph of him taken in the monastic cowled gown. Indeed, with his photographs, as with his early readings, a signifi- cant juxtaposition might be made. Place this priestly pic- ture beside tlie vainglorious gold braid, plumed hat and sword of the photograph that adorns the Maucci edition of his autobiography, and you have the two dominant influ- ences between which Dario wavered all through his life: Paganism and Christianity, epicureanism and religion, the body and the soul, agitation and repose, eroticism and con- templation. This oscillation between contradictory im- pulses, so characteristic of the age itself as well as of its literary figures, is well portrayed by Vargas Vila in his lyric biography of his friend. "He never matured. He never became what we call a man, in the dolorous, brutal sense of the word. . . . He might have lived for centuries, and would have died the t 2 Vargas Vila's Ruben Dario. Madrid. Page 55. RUBEN DARIO 121 same sad, radiant rliild wc all knew. Life wounded hini, but did not stain him. — His soul possessed the oiliness of the uings of his heloved swans, over whieh tlie slime glides without adheriiijj; to them. . . . Never in a soul so pure was there lodged a body so sinful. . . ." ' It is from sueh a soul and sueh a body that Dario's poems proceed; now one aspect is uppermost, now another, now both aspects are fused in art's highest manifestations. But everywhere tliey are a human product, — tlie outpourings of a spirit that wandered through art as well as through life, and was, as much as a standard-bearer of innovation, a plastic personality who revealed humanity to itself in his own self-revelations."* s Vargas Vila. Op. cit. Pages ISO-lSl. ♦ Valuable autobiographic material is present in Dario's unfinished novel El Oro de Mallorca (published in the February-, 1917, number of Nosotros, Buenos Aires). Benjamin_ hashes, the hero, is recognized as Ruben Dario. This Itaspes "recitecT^his paternoster every night, for despite his restless, aggressive spirit and his wandering, agitated life, he had preserved many of the religious beliefs that had been instilled in him in his childhood." Itaspes is as little sociable as Dari'o, and as much aristocratic except in dealings with folk of untainted simplicity. It is "the fifth and third of the capital sins" that have most possessed, from his earliest years, his "sensual body and his curious soul." . . . '"If a diabolic drink or an ap- petizing food or a beautiful sinful body brings me in advance ... a bit of paradise, am I to let this certainty pass for something of which I have no sure notion?" (Note the characteristic mingling of faith and epicurean- ism in that passage.) In the same unfinished novel Dari'o speaks of the hero's "erotic temperament, incited by the most exuberant of imaginations and his morbid, artist's sensitiveness, his musical passion, which exacerbated him and possessed him like a divine interior spirit. In his anguish, at times without foundation in reason, he sought support in a vague mysticism. . . . His great love of life was placed against an intense fear of death. This, to him, was a phobia, a fixed idea." Itaspes, like Dari'o. is portrayed as a man with "the instincts and the predispositions of an archduke" (in the Pdlabras Preliminares to Prosas Profanas he spoke of his marquis's hands). The final years of Itaspes mirror Dario's concluding days. — neurotic, half athritic, half gastritic, haunted by inexplicable fears, "indifferent to fame / 122 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE II The poetic career of Ruben Dario is another striking proof that the great artist may not be hooped in by critical symbols. The progress of his labors exemplifies what I may call a creative eclectism. Is that not, too, Nature's method of improving upon herself, which we call natural selection? . . . From the study of Dario's poetry we may discover the spiritual counterpart of his wandering exist- ence, ranging from tlie earliest romantic efforts, through a renovation of prose technique, poetic technique, the acqui- sition of a more human outlook, and the final emergence of these combined powers in masterpieces that belong to world poesy. 1. Early Efforts. Dario's earliest efforts are contained in the collections Epistolas y Poemas (1885) and Abrojos (1887). In the first his great god is Hugo; in the second his affections have shifted to Becquer, Campoamor, Nuiiez de Arce and Zorr- illa, particularly the last. As may be expected, there is little in these lines from the pen of a youth between his eighteenth and twentieth years to reveal the dominant per- sonality of the future. He is as yet diffident as to his pow- ers and asks the Muses {El Poeta a Las Musas) whether his humble plectrum is better suited to martial hymns, or to harmonious eclogues. He knows surely tliat he longs for and loving money for the independence it confers; desirous of rest and solitude, yet tense with the desire for life and pleasure. . . ." Weary, dis- illusioned, the tool of self-seeking exploiters of his gifts, the target of false friendship, adulation, — such is Itaspes, and such Dario at the end. RUBEN DARK) 123 r.iiiit'. and \hc crown it awards to the priests of beauty. He K'cls tilt* influence nl tlic past, yet is tempted by the modern: Deciilnie si lir do alzar vocos altiva.s ensal/aiulo el espiritu modcriio, o si ei'luuulo al olvido cslas edadcs nie abamione a merced de los recuerdos. Hoy el rayo de Jupiter Olimpico es esclavo de Irauklin y de Ktlison; ya nada quede del flamante tirso, y el ruin Champagne sucedio al Falerno. Todo acabo. Decidme, sacras Musas, como eantar en este aciago tiempo en que hasta los humanos orgollosos pretenden arrojar a Dios del cielo. A most reactionary beginning, this, for the priest of mod- ernist beauty. The very fact that he should address such a question to the Muses shows that he inclines to the past, as does his complaint that science is attempting to rob the Lord of heaven. Young Dario's faith, however, does not prevent him from becoming unwittingly blasphemous when he voices his worship of Hugo in Victor Hugo y la Tumba, from tlie same initial collection. Hugo is represented as dying and seeking entrance into the abode of rest. He is refused admission. "Wait!" speaks the Tomb. "I know not whether you may enter my regions." For Hugo is more dian mortal. The Tomb asks advice of the winds, and the stars. The genius must not die, is the universal response. xPor que se va el profeta que al mal siempre hizo guerra? ;Teme Dio? que le aclamen y adoren como a el? 124 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE There is something comically juvenile about the image of God fearing Hugo's competition. At the same time the young poet reveals a deep appreciation of the great French- man, who to him appears in the guise of a universal savior of slaves, the singer of John Brown, "The great hope of the cursed race, the new Messiah who brings infinite light and a new decalogue for humanity." Though conservative in style, it is torrential in praise and gives us a glimpse of the deep inner life of the youth. But Hugo is not the sole influence in the Epistolas y Poemas. Such epistles as that to Juan Montalvo have been recognized as possessing genuinely Hellenic balance and sobriety. Andres Gonzalez Blanco in his voluminous, ex- haustive, exhausting, wandering, yet indispensable Estudio Preliminar, quotes part of the epistle (the works of Dario prior to Azul are very difficult to procure) and compares it for classic decorum and serene elegance to the work of Menendez y Pelayo, who was much read by the young Nicaraguan. This phase of Dario's first book is illustrated by the following excerpt: Noble ingenio: la luz de la palabra toca el animo y dale vida nueva, mostrandole ignoradas maravillas en el mundo infinite de los seres. La eternidad presentase asombrosa astrayendo al espiritu anhelante, y el ansia crece en el humano pecho al resplandor lejano de la aurora. Tu inspirado y, deseoso, alzas la frente, y con el diapason de la armonia Rl BEN DARIO 125 sabio sigucs scndero provechoso, extendiendo la pauta del idionia, y forinaiido el fulpor del pensaiuiento, si j^iibes nieli)dias unifornios conu) el ritino immoiial de las esferas. Thus early do wo fiiul indications of a certain "Amer- icanism," as in the poem El Porvenir; it is of interest as a germ that lies many years undeveloped. Thus early, too, do we discover the poet's Horatian hatred for the crowd, which is to him a mere beast to be discouraged every time it tries to raise its head. "The people is dull, filthy, evil; clap on tlie yoke; it complains of the taskmaster, then give it drubbings and more of them." ... To this little sociol- ogist (whose juvenile ideas are still unfortunately shared by more than one professor of economics), the common toiler was born for the yoke, must remain content with it and eat his bread and onions in silence. Equally enlightening are the poet's early views on women. Of course there is nothing cryptic in this mis- og)ny. We know Dario now better than he knew himself then; it is easy to see that his woman-hatred was sympto- matic of his excessive love of them, as is most misogyny. Tliat is why, when we read some of his early lines with the music and passion of his later ones ringing in our ears, we smile at such platitudinous condemnations as the verses in which he refers woman's beauty to alien aids, and tells them that though he covets their kisses, they are nothing but flesh and bone. "Came y huesos!" The very words which he was later to deify as the best incarnation of the Muses! Abrojos, as its name — Thistles — indicates, represents ' the varied reactions of the melancholy, love-sick adolescent 126 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE to the bitterness, grief and desires of his youthful career. It is now cynical, now humorous in the Campoamorian sense. It is aware of man's envious nature and his cruelty to his own species. Eres artista? Te afeo Vales algo? Te critico. Te aborrezco si eres rico Y si pobre te apedreo. Y de la honra haciendo el robo e hiriendo cuanto se ve, sale cierto lo de que el hombre del hombre es lobo. What are some of these thistles? Let us bind a few together into the Dario we know from his own confessions. "Consider whether so unfortunate a love was deep, when it hated an honest man and was jealous of a dying one!" . . . "I am a wise man, I am an atheist; I believe in neither god nor devil ( . . . But I'm dying. Send for a confessor.) " . . . "Speak no more to me, for another word like that could kill me!" . . . Platitudinous, naturally. But isn't the later Dario here, too, as well as the impres- sionable youngster? In his eagerness for fame he is sen- sitive to life's ironic attitude toward genius, and embodies his sarcastic views in a sparkling eight-line antithesis: Vivio el pobre en la miseria, nadie le oyo en su disgracia; cuando fue a pedir limosna le arrojaron de la casa. Despues que murio mendigo le elevaron una estatua. . . . RLBEN DARK) 127 Vivan los muertos, que no lian estomago ni quijados! Tliis is not poetry; it is, liowovcr, doubly instructive. It gives us to know the poet in his initial outpourings, and also helps us to understand that not all genius springs from the head of Zeus, full bom. There are, howev(T, in Abrojos, touches of beauty as 1 well as of youthful cynicism and disillusionment. Some of I these touehes have been coupled with the names of de Musset and Heine. On the whole, however, the collection is what its name implies; the verses, of uneven worth and of easily recognized parentage, are based upon the young poet's daily experiences. They indicate the storing j up of an immense hoard of emotions in the bosom of an I ideally-minded, little communicative, intense youth. Only gradually does Dario fully disburden himself of his inner life; his early Parnassianism, indeed, may have been an artistic symptom of his characteristic aloofness. Yet that inner life was too intense to dwell in the ivory tower; now and again it sought refuge there, but always it looked through and, seeing the world, came down. . . .^ * In Epistolas y Poemas (first called Primeras Notas) Dario under the influence of his friend Gavidia, makes ventures in adapting the French Alexandrine to Spanish meter. The innovation is really due to Gavidia, who first adapted the free form of the Alexandrine in a translation from Hugo. (See M. E. Ureiia, Rodo y Dario, page 102.) Regarding the Abrojos, Dario, in his A. De Gilbert, explains that they were genuine outpourings of bitterness actually experienced. "As for their technique, they were bom of Compoamor's Humoradas and above all, from Leopoldo Cano's Saetas. . . . .\s a first book, as a card of entree into the literary life of Santiago, it was hardly a propos. Above all, there is in it a skepticism and a black desolation which, if it be certain that they were true, were the work of the moment. To doubt God, virtue, good, when one is at the ver>- dawn of life, -no. If what we believe pure we discover to be sullied; 128 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE 2, Azul. }: What's in a name? And yet the name of this famous little book, a collection of poems and quasi-tal^s in poetic prose, has had much ink spilled about it and about. "Why this title Blue?" asks Dario in his Historia de Mis Libras. And then, in response to the erroneous attribution of Hugo's influence (the French master had said "I'art c'est I'azur") he adds: "I did not at that time yet know the Hugoesque phrase . . ., although I was acquainted with the musical stanza from Les Chatiments: Adieu, patrie, L'onde est en furie! Adieu, patrie, Azur! But blue was to me the color of dreams, the color of art, a Hellenic and a Homeric color, an oceanic and a firmamental color, the 'coeruleum' which in Pliny is the simple color re- sembling that of the heavens and the sapphire. . . ." And why should art be blue rather than any other color? asked if the hand that we judged friendly wounds or deceives us; if, enamored of light, of holiness and the ideal, we come face to face with the sewer; if social misery produces in us the terror of vengeance; if brother curses brother; if son insults father; if mother sells daughter; if the claw triumphs over the wing; if the stars above tremble for the hell below . . . thunders of God! here you are to purify everything, to arouse the dormant, to an- nounce the thunderbolts of justice. . . . Today, however much deceptions have destroyed my illusions, as a worshipper of God, a brother of men, a lover of women, I place my soul under my hope. . . ." How strange to hear a youth of twenty-two, already widely known for Azul when the above letter was written, speak of disillusions on the brink of a life that was to be filled with them, as well as with gnawing doubt and moments of despair! I RUB^N DARl'O 120 Juan Valcra, in his classic criticism of the collection. Why, indeed? And uliy not? Art is whatever color one will have it. And it nuist have hccn very hlue indeed to the rising generation of the day, for two years after the death of Gutierrez Najera, when the name Blue Review (whith had been endeared to the youth of Mexico hy the late master) was given to a magazine that ojijiosed tiic new piH'tic tendencies, there was an intellectual uprising which rcsuhi'il in the witlidrawal of the usurper. And did not that same tender poet write in one of his prose chronicles: "I cannot compare the sensation which the recollection of that lake proiluccs in me with anything except that which is produced upon me by the poetry of Lamartine: it is a blue sensation. Why not attribute color to sensations? It is color that paints, that speaks in loudest voice to the eyes, to the spirit. And I feel a rose color when I recall my first morning in the torrid land, the sunrise contemplated ' from the window of the palace of the Cortes; I feel a silver color when I recall my moonlit night on the sea, and I feel a blue color when there comes to my memory the lake of ? Patzcuaro." A late critic professes to see in Azul ... an • entire program of ideological revolution. It is a skilful I transmutation of the objective into tlie subjective. Some- ! thing of this may have been present in Dario's mind when he chose the title; he was always skilful in naming his works. The title, however, is the least important matter connected with the work; if another Dario can produce an- other book of the kind in the firm conviction that art is helio- trope, why, — art is heliotrope, and that is all. . . . Valera saw much further than the title. He noted at •» once the Gallicism of the author, — mental Gallicism, he 130 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE called it, — and his cosmopolitan spirit. He saw, too, the young man's essential originality, and freely predicted his advancement. To be sure, he feared the Gallic ele- ment, even as more than one other Spanish critic fears Gallicism in thought on the part of a Spaniard, through an exaggerated notion of national values in literature. Whiatever the faults with Valera's review of Azul — which is one of the important critiques to be read by all students of Dario, — despite a certain conservatism of outlook, a cer- tain preceptive attitude, — he saw far more clearly into the prose and poetry of the book than more than one "modern- ist" critic after him. His opinions have been stamped more or less deeply upon all subsequent criticism. This is not merely because of his priority, but because the genial old man knew too much about good literature not to recog- nize it in whatever form it presented itself. Dario's book came at a time when the cosmopolitan spirit was needed by the letters of Spanish America ; tlie work was revolutionary less in matter than in manner; it was the spark that ignited the modernist conflagration. In the prose tales of Azul . . . may be discerned the intense idealism of their youthful author. Whether the scene be the fabled land of The Bourgeois King, the realms of The Deaf Satyr, or the garret of the starved artists over which floats the Veil of Queen Mab, the real background is the land of the ideal, — a land where art reigns in the telling, even though it be defeated by the tale. And how much self-revelation there is in these seemingly impersonal, deli- cate, airy traceries of language! When, in El Rey Bur- gues, the stranger addresses the King of the commonplace, is it not Dario speaking? RUBEN DARK) lU "I have caressed great nature, and I have sought the warmth o( tlie ideal, tlie verse tlial is in the stars, in the depths of the sky, in the pearl, in the profimditics of tlie ocean. I have tried to forge ahead ! For the time of great revolutions is approaching, with a Messiah all light, all striving and power, and his spirit must he received with a poem that siuill he an arch of triumph with strophes of steel, strophes of gold, strophes of love" . . . The stran- ger tries to impress a higher standard of art upon the ruler. "Sir, as hetween an Apollo and a goose, choose the Apollo, even though the one he of terra cotta and the otlier of marhle." A similar situation, with a similar defeat for the stand- ard-hearer of the ideal, occurs in El Sdtiro Sordo. Before the satyr-ruler comes a poet to plead his right to remain in tlie forest Kingdom. The poet sings of the great Jove, of Eros, of Aphrodite; the plea is listened to by the ruler's counsellors, the lark and the jackass. \^'hen the poet concludes, he says to the satyr: "Do you like my song? If you do, I will remain with you in the forest." The satyr turns to his advisers, and from the mouth of the lark, the autlior addresses us: "Lord," said the lark, trying to produce the strongest voice from her throat, "let him remain witli us who so well has sung. His lyre is beautiful and potent. He has of- fered you the greatness and the light that you behold in your forest today. He has given you his harmony. Sire, 1 know of these things. When the naked dawn approaches 1 mount the high heavens and from the heights pour down the invisible pearls of my trills, and amid the morning brightness my melody fills the air and is the joy of all 132 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE space. And I tell you that Orpheus has sung well, — that he is one of the chosen of God. His music intoxicated the entire forest The eagles have descended to circle above our heads, the blooming bushes have gently swayed their mysterious censers, the bees have left their cells to come and listen. As for me, oh Sire, if I were in your place, I would yield him my garland of tendrils and my thyrsus. There exist tw^o powers: the real and the ideal. What Hercules would do with his wrists, Orpheus accomplishes with his inspiration. ... Of men, some have been bom to forge metals; others, to wrest from the fertile soil the ears of com ; others to fight in bloody wars, and others, to teach, to glorify and to sing." But there is the ass still to be heard from; he is not even heard; he shakes his head in negation, and the satyr cries "No!" This pessimistic note is somewhat tempered in El Velo de la Reina Mab. To be sure, we find the sculptor, the painter, the composer and the poet all starving in their lonely garret, but the blue veil of illusion is cast over them, and "ever since then, in the garrets of the gifted unhappy, where floats the blue dream, the future is thought of as an aurora, and laughter is heard that banishes sadness, and strange farandolas are danced about a white Apollo. . . ." El Cancion de Oro (The Song of Gold) is spiritually re- lated to tlie foregoing pieces. It is a bitter psalm, ironical and not without an alloy of sincerity, sung to the corrosive power of gold. The note is one that is often sounded by Dario at various stages of his life; he was always in need of money, yet usually a hater of it. La Muerte de la Em- peratriz de China (The Death of the Empress of China) is notable for at least two things; in the first place it contains RUBtiN DARlb 133 ! exquisite bits of exotic description thai outdo even the { Nipponese day-dreams with whicli Casal sought to sur- round liimself in daily lilc; it reveals, incidentally, that perhaps Dario, like more than one of his preilecessors and followers, received his idea of the Orient from Loti and Judith Gautier rather than any more intimate acquaintance, just as their neo-IIellenism was a Greek spirit that had fd- tered in through Italy and France, The tale seems, too, to represent, symbolically, the interference of woman in man's creative life. The empress in question is a gift statue to the artist husband; wife Suzette slays the statue, to which she fears her mate is becoming too closely devoted, and once more happiness reigns in the household, as a result of the ruined masterpiece. It is not part of my purpose to summarize the various productions under consideration; what is important, how- ever, is to seek the spirit that informs them. This, I be- lieve, is a glowing idealism, attended by the passing pessi- mism that all idealism must inspire. There is a mingling of styles, — Hellenism, realism even, — but at bottom it is the idealistic note that rings out loudly, whether the particu- lar bell, so to speak, be such a hymn to Moriier Earth as oc- curs in El Rubi or such a neo-Greek evocation as La Ninfa. There is an important autobiographical element which speaks very plainly from Palomas blancas y garzas mor- enas. in which tlie author's love affairs come to light. In addition to the prose tales, the non-poetic section of the book contains a dozen brief impressions of Chile, where the volume was printed. From the revolutionary standpoint, it is the prose part of ' Azul . . . that is more important; the language had become 134 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE swollen, limited in resources, artificial and stagnant in ex- pression; in these tales of Dario (which, if one must tell the truth, are of delicate fibre and contain little to set the literary world afire for either depth or intrinsic signifi- cance) the language flows with remarkable clarity. Not so much for what they say as for how they say it are the tales of Azul . . . worthy of notice. They represent an inno- vation in style, not in thought. The coming master is pre- paring his tools for the sculpturing of the new statue. . . . The poetic section of Azul ... is named the Lyric Year, from the four chief poems there included, one to each season. In each a varying phase of love is felt, even as the spirit of the ideal breathed in the prose tales. In Pri- maveral we are introduced to the month of roses; love is fresh and sweet, and life is given up entirely to it: No quiero el vino de Naxos ni el anfora de esas bellas, ni la copa donde Cipria al gallardo Adonis ruega. Quiero beber del amor solo en tu boca bermeja, oh, amada mia, en el dulce tiempo de la primavera. With Estival the springtide idyll becomes the ardor of the rutting season. And into the love of tiger and tigress intrudes the Prince of Wales, on a hunting expedition, which results in the death of the tigress; the tiger returns to his den to dream of wreaking vengeance upon the tender chil- dren of man. The poem, in consonance with its subject, departs from the even rhythms of Primaveral; it seems, in part, the poetic dramatization of a fraternal feeling for ' RUBEN DARIO 135 nature's creatures and a sense of man's brutal treatment of tlie brute. The third of the seasonal poems, Qional, bears as its epipjraph, in Latin, the words Love, Life and Liglit. It is th(* afternoon of the year, and of life as well; a fairy friend whispers tales to the poet, — tales filled with poesy, with what the birds sing and the zephyrs bear, what floats in the darkness, and what maidens dream. His tliirst for love eannot be sated; to every vision that the fairy re- veals, he has but one reply: ""More!" It is the thirst of the ideal, that may not be quenched. Higher and higher they flv, until, reaching the heights above all human yearnings, he rends the veil of mystery. Y alii todo era aurora, En el fondo se veia Un bello rostro de mujer, "A beautiful woman's face" — the vision that so often greets Dario as he seeks to rend the veil of life's mystery. Not even winter (Invernal) can extinguish the master passion. Let the winds howl without, so long as love reigns wuthin! Dentro, el amor que abrasa; fuera, la noche fria. Of the four seasonal pieces I find it easy to select a favorite: Otohal. It is the most original in conception and execution; it is most prophetic of the poet's later progress; it is most human. Of the remaining poems in the collection, it will be worth while to indicate a few, for their revelation of the poet as well as their variety of construction. Take, for example. 136 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE such a piece as Anagke, which the good Don Juan Valera found so blasphemous that he had to omit the final lines in his quotation. The poet is in a characteristic mood of pessimism — the mood of Estival, only one that expresses itself with less artistry if more point. A dove is singing an exultant song, whereupon a hawk swoops down and swallows the beautiful singer. And the Lord in heaven, meditating upon the scene, tells Himself that when He created doves he should not have created hawks. The in- dicative thing about the poem is not the shallow, the callow atheism, which was not characteristic of the mature poet, but the ideal element, — that same element which is so prom- inent in the prose tales of the volume; the young artist is obsessed with the ideal, and with the fear of its extinction by the hawks of life. There are sonnets worthy of attention, particularly that on Caupolican^ which Gonzalez-Bianco is anxious to make out as a testimonial of the poet's early "AiTiericani sm"' ' it is true, none the less, that the sonorous lines are worthy of Chocano, and seems to show that in later following the Peruvian poet, Dario was returning to an earlier style of his own that had long lain dormant. There is also a collection of five sonnets grouped under the title Medallones, and the men to whom these medallions are penned indicate various influences that the poet was under- going: Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendes, Walt Whitman (to whom he reverts time and again), J. J. Palma and Diaz Miron. Dario has himself told us in what manner he considers Azul ... a work of inno vatio n : "I abandon tlie usual -order, " Cf. Chocano's later sonnet on "Caupolican" in his "Triptico Heroico" {Alma America) . RUiEN 9ARf# 137 the conventional clirlu's; 1 give attention lo the interior nielotly, which contributes to the success of the rhythmical expression; novehy in the adjectives. ... In Primavcral ... I believe I have sounihnl a new note in tlie orches- tration of the romance, even thougli I count with sucli il- lustrious predecessors in this respect as Gongora and the Cuban Zenea. In Estival I tried to realize a tour de force." Among the metrical innovations critics have found tlie fol- lowing: the verse of fifteen syllables (cf. the sonnet Venus) ; the verse of twelve syllables (cf. sonnets to Walt Whit- man and Diaz Miron; M. E. Urena points out that this combination had been employed, tentatively, by Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda) ; the free sonnet, without subjection to iht^ traditional distribution of rhymes nor the invariable measure of the hendecasy liable. "What was the origin of the novelty?" asks Dario, in the short but highly instructive History of My Books. . . . "The origin of the novelty was my recent acquaintance with French authors of the Parnassian school, for at that time the Symbolist struggle had scarcely commenced in France and was not known outside, much less in our Amer- ica. My real initial inspirer was Catulle Mendes, — a trans- lated Mendes, — for my French was still precarious. Some of his lyrico-erotic tales, and one or another of the poems in the Parnasse Contemporaine, were a revelation to me." Dario mentions, too, Gautier, the Flaubert of La Tentation de St. Antoine, and Paul de Saint Victor, who brought him a new, dazzling conception of style. "Habituated to the eternal Spanish cliche of the Golden Age, and to Spain's indecisive modem poetry, I found in the Frenchmen I have quoted a literary mine to exploit: the application of their 138 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE manner of employing the adjective, of certain syntactic methods, and of their verbal aristocracy, to Spanish. . . . And I, who knew by heart Baralt's Dictionary of Gallicisms, understood that not only an opportune Gallicism, but also certain peculiarities of other languages, were most useful and of incomparable efficacy when appropriately trans- planted. Thus my knowledge of English, Italian and Latin was to serve me later in the development of my literary purposes. But my penetration into the world of French verbal art had not begun in Chile. Years before, in Cen- tral America, in the city of San Salvador, and in company of the good poet Francisco Gavidia, my adolescent spirit had explored the vast forest of Victor Hugo and had con- templated his divine ocean, in which everything is con- tained." It is important to remember that the innovations of Azul . . . were not so revolutionary but that Dario was most cordially received four years later, upon his first visit to Spain, by the standard bearers of conservative literature. During all this time he was making a study of foreign let- ters, particularly the French modems, and their influence was to appear not only in his critical collection called Los Raros, but in the next volume of poems, Prosas Prof anas. Of the Rimas by Dario, which were published in 1889, it is necessary to say but little; there is the same breath of Becquer as hovers over his earlier poetry; for the rest the publication is exceedingly difficult to procure. lUBEN DARfO 139 3. Prosas Profanas. ( 1896) Dario has been singularly fortunate in his critics. The name of Valera is indissolubly linked with Azul . . . ; the name of Jose Enrique Rodo is similarly inseparable from Prosas Profanas. And just as the first title roused a cer- ulean eontroversy, so the seeond, with its double contradic- tion, disturbed most and enchanted a few. I say double contradiction: first, because apparently the name means profane prose, which is disconcerting, to say the least, when applied to poetry; second, because in reality the title is of far deeper significance. "In his study of the Old Spanish poets Dario became familiar with their use of prosa in the sense of 'poem in the vernacular.' He knew, too, the sequences, or proses, Latin hymns that resulted in the setting of words to the music following the Alleluia in the Roman Catholic liturgy, a practise that became popular in tlie early 10th century. That the title was suggested by these sacred proses of the liturgy is clearly indicated by the second element, profanas, that is, 'not sacred.' . . . Just as the liturgical hymns, the 'sacred proses,' broke away from the quantitative meters of Latin verse and came to de- pend for their rhythms upon accent, so the 'profane proses' of Dario broke away from conventionality in form and con- tent. Rodo, like the tolerant, broad spirit he was, enters re- markably into die spirit of the poet; he follows him, and does not seek, like Valera, to lead; he analyzes with a ' George W. Humphrey. Ruben Dario. Hispania, March, 1919. Vol. II. No. 2. 140 STUDIES IN SPANISH- AMERICAN LITERATURE loving minuteness and out of the evaluation of a work of art, himself produces a genuinely creative masterpiece of criticism, such as virtually disarms later commentators. He seems to have said all that could be said, felt all that could be felt. Only because there was a later Dario, one that grew beyond the apostle of sheer grace and beauty whom Rodo knew in Proses Profanas, has Rodo's critique become, not out of date, but incomplete. To Rodo, in a phrase that has become famous, Dario was not the poet of America. But must poets have homes? The poet is moreover revealed as a lover of luxury, as a select spirit destined never to achieve popularity and as perhaps being little bothered by that probability. "Art is a fragile object and Caliban has rough, brusque hands." The crowd, however (and Rodo's point is of primary im- portance) may be abominated in art and yet loved in most Christian-like manner in reality. To tell the truth, how- ever, Dario, although later recognizing his need of the mul- titude, was always inclined to an aloofness that was mir- rored in his work. And if it be true, as Rodo declared, that Dario loved the people neither in art nor in reality, there was a change on the part of the poet, as we shall see very plainly when we consider his next volume of poetry. Not only did Rodo's critique stamp upon Dario his non- American character, but it also made him definitely the poet of the swan. "If we should be asked for the animate being that should symbolize the familiar genius of his poetry, it would be necessary for us to cite, — not the lion or the eagle that obsess Victor Hugo's imagination, nor even the nightingale beloved of Heine, — but the swan, the Wagnerian bird; the white and delicate bird tliat surges at ' KUBLN DARfO 141 each instant upon tlu> ii)ainy wave of his poetry, summoned by his insistent evocation, and whose image might be engraved, on that day when poets have coats of arms, in one of tlie quarters of his eseuteheon, even as upon Poe's eseuleheon tiiere would be engravetl the raven, and on Baudelaire's the pensive and hieratic cat." True, of Prosas I*iojanas; perliaps of Dario as a whole; but the later Dario knew the Higlits of the condor as well as the plaeid eleganee of the swan. Rodo saw clearly that Dario's Parnassianism was not mental. **It is not Parnassianism extended to the internal world, in which ideas and feelings play the role of canvas and bronze." He recognized that there was a broader sig- nificance to the modernist movement, for toward the close of his famous essay he confesses that "I, too, am a modernista ; I belong with all my soul to tlie great reaction that imparts character and meaning to the evolution of thought in the final years of tliis century; to the reaction which, originat- ing in literary naturalism and philosophic positivism, leads them, without a loss of their fecund elements, to dissolve in higher conceptions. And there is no doubt that the work of Ruben Dario responds to this higher meaning; it is in art one of the personal forms of our contemporary ideal- istic anarchism. . . ." There is in Prosas Prof anas a variety, a melody, a sup- pleness, that was not evident in the poetry of Azul. . . . Prosas Profanas, indeed, has been recognized as having ac- complished for poetry that same innovatory purpose worked by the prose of Azul. . . . The six intervening years have been active ones for the poet; tlirough the maze of sorrows, 142 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE travels and studies he has found himself. His spirit has become even more cosmopolitan, and at the same time more Gallicized. His art has become deep as well as broad, and tinged with that symbolist-decadentism that he trans- planted to Castilian soil. If I choose for comment certain of the poems, it is not so much that they reveal superiority to the rest, as that the chosen examples illustrate important attitudes. Thus, in Era Un Aire Suave, the poet feels the universal and eternal power of love, with its cruel golden laughter. His Eulalia is of yesterday, of today, of tomorrow, of all climes, but ever in the same attitude : Fue acaso en el Norte 6 en el Mediodia? Yo el tiempo y el dia y el pais ignore, pero se que Eulalia rie todavia, Y es cruel y eterna su risa de oro! Divagacion states plainly Dario's conception of Hellenism. "More than the Greece of the Greeks I love the Greece of France, for in France to the echo of laughter and play Venus pours her sweetest drink. . . . Verlaine is more than Socrates; and Arsene Houssaye surpasses old Ana- creon. Love and Genius reign in Paris. . . ." Once again it is universal love that absorbs the poet: Amor, en fin, que todo diga y cante; amor que encante y deje sorprendida a la serpiente de ojos de diamante que esta enroscada al arbol de la vida. Amame asi, fatal, cosmopolitana, universal, inmensa, unica, sola I RUBI^N DAHlb 143 y toilos; niisteriosa y crudita: amamo. mar y iiubr, ospuina y «>la. In El Rcino Interior, wliicli firsl reveals what lias been termed the mystie phase of Dario, there shines through the beautiful symbolism a sense of the inner unity between good and evil. The poet's soul gazes through the window of the tower in whieh she has dwelt for tliirty years. First appear seven white maidens, seven princesses, — the seven virtues. The seven white princesses give way to seven red youths, — the seven potent capital sins. And now the youdis gaze upon die maidens and the retreating rout is lost in the dis- tance. Which would his soul follow? But his soul makes no reply. Pensively she leaves the window, falling asleep in the tower where for thirty years she has dreamed. And what does she dream? Perhaps we may guess, for she speaks in her sleep and cries — Princesses, enfold me in your veils of white! — Princes, embrace with your arms of red ! It is easy, of course, to over-interpret such poems as these. Why interpret at all? Yet as one reads and re- reads El Reino Interior he feels without even seeking any esoteric meaning, that there is far more beauty than meets the eye. If a most rigid choice were made of Dario's lyrics, I should not hesitate to select this as one of the representative pieces that combines beauty of diction, va- ried artistry of metre and beauty of thought. This aspect of the collection appeals far more to me than the pictorial, vocalic effects of such a piece as the Sinfonia en Gris ^ Mayor. There is astonishing verbal skill, rare technical 144 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE facility, but it is the stuff of which poetry is made rather than poetry itself, — or, lest that sound too preceptive and imply a cramped definition of poetry, it is impersonally brilliant, and once its technique has been marvelled at, does not linger in the memory like other poems in the book. Not so, for instance, the beautiful sonnet Margarita, with its tender metaphor of the maiden who was plucked by Death even as she plucked the petals of the daisy, to find whether her lover loved her or not. It is in the Coloquio de los Centauros that the book reaches its highest point. For the Colloquy of the Cen- taurs is the essence of the poet's personality as it was de- veloped up to that date; it embodies and harmonizes the varied elements of the collection. It is classic in back- ground, yet modern in feeling; it betrays an impeccably refined taste, yet throbs with something deeper than formal perfection; it is rich in imagery as in meaning; it blends the old and the new in the eternal. What is the meaning of the poem? That is for every reader to decide for himself. It has many meanings, because tliere centaurs gather to dis- cuss our whole existence. They voice the poet's own queries before the enigma, and suggest his own inadequate reply which is but another question. "Death is the in- separable comp anion of Life." says Ameo. "Death is the vi ctory of the human race," asserts Quiron. "I)eath," ex- c laims Medo n, No es demacrada y mustia ni ase corva guadafia, ni tiene faz de angustia. Es semejante a Diana, casta y virgen conio ella; en su rostro hay la gracia de la nubil doncella y Ueve una guimalda de rosas siderales. ^ En su siniestra tiene verdes palmas triunfales, 1 RUB^N DARI'O 145 Y vn sii *lic>tia una I'opa con a'. One day Wagner said to Augusta Holmes, his disciple, 'First of all, imitate no- body, and least of all, me.' A great utterance." This, too, was Ibsen's attitude toward the pullulating "Ibsenites," was it not? 14S STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE thought. There is, of course, a natural explanation of Spanish preoccupation with Dario's technical aspect; he brought freedom, amplitude, and blazed new paths. But within that freedom he spoke of his age; over those paths he drew new vehicles of beauty. And after all, mankind feeds upon feelings and thoughts, not hexameters and hep- tasyllables. I would not be understood as underestimat- ing the technical aspect of art. The temple of technique is an imposing edifice, but a god must dwell within. By all means let the temple be beautiful, but do not leave it empty. . . . Among the poet's personal observations regarding Prosas Prof anas are his relating of Era Un Aire Suave to Ver- laine's musical theory, and to the music, not of Wagner (as has been written) but of Rameau and Lulli. Diva- gacion he describes as "a course in erotic geography." The Sonatina, the most rhythmical and musical of all the poems in the collection, proved most popular in Spain and in Spanish America. In El Reino Interior he points out the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and some of the French Symbolist leaders. Azul . . . had been a rosy dawn after a night of uncer- tain wandering and doubt. Prosas Profanas, a dazzling noon of brilliant, yet cold classic sunlight. The swan sails placidly over the lake, whose waters are now and then ruffled by an uneasy ripple. Over both the early books hovers now and then the shadow of the condor. The next volume, however, is deep afternoon; jjiexejs^e_sapj)flife^ the soul of hoj)ej pov^rj^_there^are^toOj^iiiQme^^^^ choly introspection. If, in the pr exiQll£Lyolume». Prance RUB^N DARlb 149 had tauglit him imich, here life is at once his slave and his master, his despair and his joy. 4. Cantos dc I ida y Espcranza { 1905) The nine years that intervened between Prosas Prof anas and the Songs of Life and Hope were fraught with many changes. The Spanish-American war had been fought and had induced in the younger generation of Spain a deep pessimi^nl that turned il laioreign channels. Modernism, with Prosas Profanas, had made, too, a successful invasion of Spain. At the same time that the Spanish-American na- tions sympathized with Cuba, they felt a fear of the United States whieli has as yet by no means been entirely allayed. Dario, by tlie force of world events, was being drawn closer to his continental brethren, and out of himself. The days of the ivory tower were over; his muse, while retaining the grace and elegance of the previous volume, gains in vigor and power. The poet, at bottom always personal, becomes more plainly so; his inspiration is more mature, his hand surer, his outlook broader. Quite futilely Dario, in his Prosas Profanas, had expressed dissatisfac- tion with the age into which he was bom. He would have been a poet in any age; he was rich in response to the most varied stimuli. This book, in which there is-more of life than hope, in whjch jhe intensity of the rn elancholy is more impr essive tha n the exultan t optimisrn^^should prove, even without the collection jyvhic h fo llowed, that Dariq^was not merely ^ihe _ poet of grace, d eljcacy and_subtle charm, hut a mndprn ppr^nnaljly ^ith mor e than nnp rhord tn his lyre^._ There is a surprising continuity of growth in the 150 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE man, as is shown by a reading of his works in chronological order. We have already noted his remarkable faculty of assimilation; add to this that the assimilation was com- plete; wherever the impulse came from, it had been trans- formed into Dario's own before it issued from his pen. In Cantos de Vida y Esperanza, then, we are to expect a poet of the multiform early twentieth century, afloat upon the turbulent waters of a ver}^ real and agitated life. It is just possible, too, that Dario was affected by Rodo's criticism of Prosas Prof anas, particularly in its statement (made without reproach) of Dario's non- Americanism, as well as by the rising note of Chocano. At any rate tlie poet himself is deeply conscious of the inner change, which, with greater concision and beauty than any critic could state it, he confesses in the affecting opening poem of the collection. ^^ 11 The various verses here quoted from this important poem may be read entire in Thomas Walsh's fairly adequate rendering of them in Eleven Poems of Ruben Dario, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1916, from which I take the following stcinzas, corresponding, in order, to those given above in the original: I I am the singer who of late put by The verse azulean and the chant profane, Across whose night a rossignol would cry And prove himself a lark at morn again. Within my garden stood a statue fair, Of marble seeming, yet of flesh and bone; A gentle spirit was incarnate there Of sensitive and sentimental tone So timid of the world, it fain would hide And from the walls of silence issue not, Save when the Spring released upon its tide The hour of melody it had begot — RUBEN DARIO 151 Yo soy aquel que ayer no mas decia el verso azul y la cancioii profaua, en cuya noclie un risucndr lialtia que era alondra de luz por la nianana. The very first lines announce a change; the poet of yester- day's blue and yesterday's profane proses prepares us for a new orientation in his verse; there are lines of sincere self-revelation and certain overtones of repentance or apol- ogy for previous divagations. There is, too, I believe, a protest against the narrow conception of his previous work which looks upon it as beautiful Parnassianism without any essentially human implications. The p»et realizes the various epochs of his progress as keenly as any biographer; this is but another indication of the self -consciousness with which the man proceeded in his labors, — perhaps not only self-consciousness but that mor- bid introspection so characteristic of neurotic natures. He knows that he has been dwelling in a dream garden, com- panioned by roses and swans; that he has been very much of tlie eighteenth century and very modern; audacious, cos- All longing and all ardor, the mere sense And natural vigor; and without a sign Of stage effect or literature's pretence — If there is ever a soul sincere — 'tis mine. As with the sponge that salt sea saturates Below the oozing wave, so was my heart.— Tender and soft, — bedrenched with bitter fates That world and flesh and devil here impart. But through the grace of God my conscience Elected unto good its better part; If there were hardness left in any sense It melted soft beneath the touch of Art. 152 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE I mopolitan; "with Hugo strong and ambiguous with Ver laine, and thirst of infinite illusions." H» has kno\vn grief from childhood, and his youth — "was mine youth?" — still sheds a f ragrancy of melancholy from its roses. He recognizes the element of chance in his success and then comes to a series of quatrains that is exceedingly important to the man's critics and admirers: En mi jardin se vio una estatua bella; se juzgo marmol y era carne viva; un alma joven habitaba en ella, sentimental, sensible, sensitiva. Y timida ante el mundo, de manera que encerrada en silencio no salia, Sino cuando en la dulce primavera era la hora de la melodia. . . . Does not this read very much like a protest against hav- ing been classed as a poet of swans, of marmoreal Pamas- sianism, of unfeeling quest of beauty? Does not this seem to proclaim the powerfully human impulses that were con- cealed behind a mask of aloofness? If any further proof be needed, it is furnished by a later quatrain : todo ansia, todo ardor, sensacion pura y vigor natural; y sin falsia, y sin comedia y sin literatura. . . . ; si hay un alma sincera, esa es la mia. From the knowledge of the man that has come to us through his autobiography and through his friends' comments, I believe we are justified in taking these words literally; more than a touch of imitation there may have been in the*^] Kl BEN DARK) 153 early work, but it was imtaiiitccl by inorely literary display; "if tliere is a siiicorc soul, that sdu! is mine/' Aiui is tbrre not a siliMit rcproaili in Dario's assertion that his labors were "witlunit a si«j;n of stage effect or literature's pre- tence"? lie himself could perhaps never understand why literature and sincerity should dwell apart, yet is here forced to make a distinction, suggested, most likely, by the famous line in Verlaine's Art Poetique: "Et tout le reste est litterature." The poet's desire for escape from tlie world is plainly re- vealed in his confession that he was tempted to climb into the tower of ivory; but once there he found the atmosphere ! depressing; he was seized with hunger for space, with I thirst for the heavens as he peered out of the shadows of I his own abyss. Como la esponja que la sal satura en el jugo de la mar, fue el dulce y tierno corazon mio henchido de aniargura por el mundo, la came y el infierno. Mas^^ or grac ia de Dios, en mi conciencia el Men supo elegir la mejdr parte; y si Imbo aspera hiel en mi existencia, melifico toda^critud efArtei " Again I choose to take these words quite literally; the poet's heart was in reality a sponge that absorbed all out- ward influences and returned them to the world purified and unified by the healing power of Art. It is just this sensi- tivity that made of Dario the universal poet he is; that kept him from becoming a mere absorber of foreign models; that rendered him responsive to conflicting cur- 154 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE rents of modern thought. Yet through it all he seems to have preserved not only a certain pantheistic faith (a faith with which his early religious teachings often mingled quite harmoniously) but a veneration for art that amounted almost to a religion, — that perhaps formed part of his faith. And when he seeks for a symbol that shall best express his conception of Art, the name of Christ occurs to him, and he writes: el Arte puro como Cristo exclama: I Ego sum lux et Veritas et vita! I Pure Art, like Christ himself, exclaims, ( I am light and truth and life! Sincerity is power, he proclaims; to this power must be i added tranquillity. And for that tranquillity there must be, too, that faith without which Dario could not have done. "On to Bethlehem . . ." concludes the poem. "The caravan passes!" Yet it is a halting caravan; his later poetry reveals the pauses. Much of his anguish during life, much of that duality of his nature, was caused by the struggle between such opposing attitudes as Christianity and Paganism. Some element of that strug- gle which we noticed in Gutierrez Najera was undoubtedly present in the poet; mingled with his religious feelings was more than a tithe of childish superstition, neurotic fear, need for solace. And this feeling, as the years went on, grew more intense rather than less, if the evidence of his poetry is to be credited. His optimism, to me at least, seems as often as not to be the clamorous assertion of a wish to believe rather than the exultant cry of the genuine believer. RUBEN DARIO 155 We have seen that tlic pool had been classed as non- American; to some tliis implied an unjust reproach, and Justo Sierra, in his Prologo to Dario's Peregrinaciones, written a few years before the publication of the present vt)luine, wrote a sort ot reply to Kodo. "Yes," he asserted, addressing tlie author of the book, "you are American, {)an-American, for in your verses, when they are attentively listened to, sound oceanic waves, the murmurs of forests and the roar of Andine cataracts; and if the swan, which is your heraldic bird, floats incessantly over your Hellenic lakes in search_of j^edaj_the_condor is wont to descend in winged fli ght, so aring ^rom crest to crest in your epic strophes; you are American because of the tropical ex- uberance of your temperament, through which you feel the beautiful; and you are from all parts, as we Americans are wont to be, because of the facility witli which on your poly- chord lyre there sounds all the human lyre, converted into your own music. . . . You desire to belong to nobody; the only words of prose that I found in the Prosas Profanas are 'praise my bri dge and enclose myself within myj ower of ivory, and these words clutch at the heart. Return to humanity, return to the People, to your father, despite your citizenship papers in tlie republic of Aspasia and Pericles. Poets should employ their lyres in civilizing, in dominating monsters, to draw them along to the summit of the sacred mount on which the Ideal is worshipped." \^ hether it was Rodo or Sierra (or, what amounts to the same thing, the opinion they represented), that brought Dario back to the People, the note is loud in Cantos de Vida y Esperanza. The poet seems to have abandoned his ivory tower and to have emerged into the hurly burly of life. 156 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE He has now become undoubtedly American in the sense that Sierra gives to the term, and signalizes not only his Americanism, but a certain type of Hispanism, in poems that are as remarkable for their metrical innovations as for the indication of a new orientation of the poet's thought. Chief among these is the Salutacion del Optimista, with its sonorous hexameters that sounded so new to Spanish ears, and much less acceptable than Longfellow's sim- ilar experiment in Evangeline to his English audience/^ Inclitas razas uberrimas, sangre de Hispania fecunda, espiritus fraternos, luminosas almas, salve! Porque llega el momento en que habran de cantar nuevos himnos lenguas de gloria. Un vasto rumor llena los ambitos; ondas de vida van renaciendo de pronto; retrocede el olvido, retrocede enganada la muerte; Se anuncia un reino nuevo, feliz sibila suena, y en la caja pandorica de que tantas desgracias surgieron encontramos de subito, talismanica, pura, riente, cual pudiera decirla en su verso Virgilio divino, la divina reina de luz, la celeste Esperanza ! The poem is a ringing call to all of Spanish blood; away 12 In his Prefacio to the Cantos de Vida y Esperanza Dario sends an arrow in the direction of the academists. Referring to his use of the hexameter, he writes: '"In aU the cultured countries of Europe the abso- lutely classic hexameter has been employed without causing any astonish- ment among the lettered majority and least of all among the well read minority. In Italy, for a long time, not to quote old writers, Carducci has authorized hexameters; in English, I should scarcely dare indicate, through respect for my readers' culture, that Longfellow's Evangeline is in the same verses that Horace used to express his best thoughts. As far as concerns modern free verse ... is it not truly singular that in this land of Quevedos and of Gongoras the only innovators of the lyric instrument, the only liberators of rhythm, have been the poets of the Madrid Comico and the librettists of the genero chico? ... I make this observation be- cause it is form that first appeals to the crowd. I am not a poet for the crowd. But I know that indefectibly I must go to it." RUBEN DARIO ir>7 with slotli, difTuloncM* and apathy; there is a renaissance of the ancient virtues that distinguished Hispania; it hreatlies in the two continents wherein repose the glorious l)ones of tlie great dead. The poet seems to have foreseen the cataclysm of 191 1; he speaks clearly, and without the haze of prophecy, of muffled roars heard in the entrails of the world, and the inmiinence of fatal days; amid this uni- versal upheaval it is no time for the Spanish race to re- main dormant; let tlie blood of Spain unite and yield glory as of yore. The same stirring note resounds from A I Rey Oscar: Mientras el mundo alicnle, mientras la esfira gire, mientras la onda cordial aliniente un ensueno; mientras haya una viva pasion, un noble empeno; un buscado imposible, una imposible hazana, una America oculta que hallar, vivira Espaiia! Dario's faitli in the Spain that will discover hidden Amer- icas as long as they exist to be discovered is a faith justi- fied by history and by contemporary events. Whence de- rives the inexhaustive fecundity of that wonderful nation? Now in the field of enterprise and discovery, now in the realm of creative art, the Spanish nation, despite obvious drawbacks, despite obvious retrogressive influences, bums with an inextinguishable flame. Retarded by illiteracy, by reactionary thought, it yet produces, in our o-vvn day, novels, dramas and poetry that are the delight and the wonder of all lovers of the beautiful. It is in this collection tliat Dario voiced a fear of the United States which he later modified. The early senti- I ments occur in his much-quoted ode A Roosevelt. 158 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE II is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman, that one should approach you, hunter! Primitive and modern, simple yet complex. With somewhat of Washington and more of Nimrod! You are the United States, you are the future invader of that ingenuous America in whom glows indigenous blood, and which still prays to Jesus Christ and speaks Spanish. You are a proud and powerful exemplar of your race; You are cultured, skilful; you oppose Tolstoi. And dominating horses, or assassinating tigers, You are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar. (You are a professor of energy as today's madmen declare.) You believe that life is a conflagration, that progress is an eruption; that wherever you send the bullet, You implant the future. No. The United States are powerful and great. When they shudder there is a deep trembling That passes along the enormous vetebrae of the Andes. When you cry there comes the roar of the lion. Hugo told it to Grant: "The stars are yours." (There scarcely shines, as it rises, the Argentine sun, and the star of Chile surges forth. . . .) \ou are rich. To the cult of Hercules you join the cult of Mammon; and lighting the way of facile conquest. Liberty raises its torch before New York. ' i ^- And against this conception of Northern America he places the fragrant America of Columbus, Catholic America, Spanish America, the America in which tlie noble Guatemoc said "I am in no bed of roses." ' RUBEN DARIO 159 That America Which trembles \\\l\\ hurricanes and lives on love; \nd with a final warning to Roosevelt, the personification (to him) of North American aggression, he places his ulti- nate faith in God.*^ Is it too great a fondness for the Dario of personal reve- .ation and of tlie inner struggle that makes us see, in such 3oems as the Salutacion and A Roosevelty more of the in- lignant recipient of outward suggestion than the pure poet? [ do not mean to question the genuineness of tlie writer's /iews, nor to deny the moments of intense poetry that he tchieves in the expression of them. They are poetic, how- ever, only at moments; they are, if I may so express it, the 3oeticization of views rather than poetry itself. Tliey are nore important as revealing the man's reaction to the times han for tliat intrinsic merit which all art should retain ifter the circumstances of its origin have disappeared, 't may be said that despite Justo Sierra, despite Gonzalez- bianco, despite some brilliant poems like the Canto a la Argentina, Dario is not the poet of America, and that Amer- — Dario's own America — gains by it. On the other .....il a good case may be made out for Dario not only as he poet of America, but as a poet who, in a few notable )oetic works, voices a Pan-Americanism that is less am- )iguous than Chocano's. The more one reads the later )ario, the more one feels that this is the true man in all lis expansion, — that he is in a very true sense universal, < 'ompare the similar spirit of the first poem in the group called Lo3 - (The Swanst in Cantos dc Vida y Esperanza. "Will so many mil- of us speak English?" Recall, however, the later change in Dario'a liiiiude. (See section on El Canto Errante.) 160 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE not merely in the statement of that universality (as in Cho- cano), but in the evidences of it as presented by poems of intensity and depth that are, in the words of Pedro Henri- quez Urena, "beyond art." ^■' There are indications in the volume under consideration that for all Dario's emergence from the ivory tower, he felt a nostalgia for it, — that his regret at having been bom into his age had a root of genuineness, — that his evocations of the past are but another proof of his attempt to escape the multifarious life about him. That longing is evident in such poems as the Letania De Nuestro Senor Don Quijote] and the beautiful sonnet to Cervantes. "Pray for us who are hungry for life, our souls groping and our faith lost . . . for we are without soul, without life, without Quijote,^ with neither feet nor wings, with neither Sancho nor God. And then comes a strange denial of his previous studies in foreign letters and the lore of contemporary science. De tantas tristezas, de dolores tantos, de los superhombres de Nietzsche, de cantos afonos, recetas que firma un doctor, de las epidemias de horribles blasfemias ^. de las Academias, R libranos, senor! x ! What is the poem but the cry of an agitated soul for a peace that it will never know, — for a peace which at bottom ii may not even desire? Cervantes it is who, like a good friend, sweetens his bit ter moments: 14 In a letter to the author. RUBEN DARlb 161 Though heavy hours I pass and mournful days In solitude, (Vrvantos is to mo A taillilul friend. He lijj;htens j^looni uilli ^Ice; A restful hand upon my head he lays. Life in the hues of nature he portrays; A golden helmet jewelled brilliantly, He gives my dreams, that wander far and free. It is for me he sighs, he laughs, he prays. The Christian and the lover and the knight Speaks like a streamlet clear and crystalline. I love and marvel at his spirit bright. Beholding how. by mystic Fate's design The whole world now drinks mirth and rich delight From deathless sadness of a life divine! Something of that "tristeza inmortal de ser divino" at- aches to Dario's ovm labors. I am most impressed by the autumnal spirit of the vol- jme. The poet realizes that youth is fast departing and ^ings it his sad farewell in a poem {Cancion de Otono en Primavera) that has been called the finest Spanish poem since the sixteenth century. That praise is not needed for he appreciation of its haunting beauty; it is instructive, 00, that the poet refers to that varied quality of his works ivhich has not yet been generally recognized. Juventud, divino tesoro, ya te vas para no volver! Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro. . . . y a veces lloro sin querer. . . . Plural ha sido la celeste hibtoria de mi corazon. 162 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Programa Matinal preaches an epicurean, yet utilitarian creed ; Melancolia presents an auto-diagnosis, in which the poet attributes his ailment to dreaming. Poetry becomes to him the iron shirt of the thousand points that he wears next his soul. Lo Fatal is another outburst of die age-long query addressed to the Sphinx of Life. \'iTience? Whither? Why? In his anguish he envies the tree that is scarcely sensitive, and even more the utterly insensitive rock, for there is no grief greater than that of living, nor more grievous woe than conscious life. To be and yet know nothing, to have no certain goal, and the fear of having existed, and a furdier terror. . . . and the certain horror of being tomorrow dead, and to suffer because of life and because of the shadows, And for that which we know not and scarcely suspect, and the flesh that tempts with its fresh clusters, and the tomb that waits with its funeral branches, and not know whither we go, nor whence we came . . .! So, in the Dulzura del Angelas, he reveals the search for a faith that he cannot feel, and in Otras Poemas XIII, the conflict between the Pagan and the Christian ideal. Was Dario one or the other, or was he both? I am inclined to the paradoxical solution. If ever an artist displayed an oscillation between opposing tendencies, Dario did. The poet's pessimism at times reaches such depths that he doubts whether life itself be worth while {A Phocas El Campesino) ; yet he is capable of swinging to the other extreme and glorifying woman in a most passionate, dar- RUBEN DARIO 163 ing, aphrodisiac hymn to ihc flcsli. {Otras Pocnms; . XVII.) Here one is more inclined to agree with Gon- i zalez-Blanco when he terms it the "most original thouglit, I woven into the most vibrating lyric hymn that may be culled from Spanish poetry since tlie epoch of Romanti- cism." How far are we now from the juvenile misogynist of Abrojos! Witli mastery of self-expression has come a deep sincerity- But not all is ardent passion, profound melancholy, sin- cere confession, in Cantos de Vida y Esperanza. There is something of the pure joy of creation, the joy of the artist in llie domination of his tools, such as rises with orchestral claJigor from the Marcha Triunfal: ^^ The cortege is coming! The cortege is coming! Now we hear the clarions shrill and clear! The sword-blades announcing themselves in vivid reflections! Now it comes, steel and gold, the cortege of warriors vic- torious ! Now it passes under the arches adorned with the white statues of Minerva and Mars — The arches of triumph where die figures of Fame stand with Uieir trumpets long and erect. The solemn glory of the banners Borne by the robust hands of athletic heroes. We list to the sound of the arms of the cavaliers, The rattle of harness masking the sturdy war-horses. Their trappings scarring the ground; And the timbals That accent tlie steps with their martial rhytlim. Thus pass the fierce warriors Under the arches of triumph! *5 Version by Sylvester Baxter. 164 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE In clearness the clarions are lifting their voices: Their chanting sonorous, Their calid chorus Which enfolds in its thunder of gold The flags with their august superbness. It speaks of the combat, of vengeance that's wounded, Of manes roughly flowing, Of plumes rudely tossing, the darts and the lances, The blood that in heroic crimson Has been laving the earth; The black death-mastiff's that come with War. The golden sounds Announce the triumphant Advance of glory; Deserting the peaks that guard their nests. Spreading their enormous wings to the wind, The condors arrive. And Victory has come! The cortege is passing. The grandsire points out the heroes To the child by his side: — Behold how like the old man's beard The golden curls are surrounded by ermine — Beautiful women bestow their garlands of flowers And imder the porticos their faces are showing like roses; And the most beautiful one Smiles on the fiercest of conquering heroes. Honor to him who bears captive the enemy's banner! Honor to the wounded and honor to the faithful Soldiers who died at the hands of the foe; Clarions! Laurels! The noble knights of glorious days Salute from their panoplies the new wreaths and laurels: The aged knights of the grenadiers, stronger than bears, i RUBEN DARIO 165 Brothers to the lancers who once were centaurs — The trumpets of war resound, I'illiiig the air with tlieir clamor — To those ancient knights. To those illustrious swordsmen Wlio incarnate past glories, Antl to liie sun that today illumines new victories won, And to tlie liero who leads his band of fiery youths, To him who loves the emblem of his maternal soil, To him who has struggled — rifle and sword in hand — Through the heats of red summer, The snows and the winds of frigid winter, Through the night, the frost, And hatred and death That his country may live immortal. They salute you with voices of brass, The trumpets of war tliat are sounding The March of Triumph. There is a lofty hope, not unmingled with that uncer- tainty which flecks all virile optimism. Deeply expressive of this aspect is the Song of Hope, which I present in the original Spanish and in Miss Blackwell's faithful version: In gran vuelo de cuervos mancha el azul celeste. Un soplo milenario trae amago de peste. Se asesinan los hombres en el extreme Este. iHa nacido el apocaliptico Anticristo? Se han sabido presagios y prodigios se han visto y parece inminente el retomo de Cristo. La tierra esta prenada de dolor tan profundo que el sonador imperial, meditabundo, ' sufre con las angustias del corazon del mundo. 166 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Verdugos de ideales afligieron la tierra, en un pozo de sombra la humanidad se encierra con los rudos molosos del odio y de la guerra. jOh, Senor Jesucristo! iPor que tardas, que esperas para tender tu mano de luz sobre las fieras y hacer brillar al sol tus divinas banderas? Surge de pronto y vierte la esencia de la vida sobre tanta alma loca, triste o empedernida que amante de tinieblas tu dulce aurora olvida. Ven, Seiior, para hacer la gloria de ti mismo. Ven con temblor de estrellas y horror de cataclismo, ven a traer amor y paz sobre el abismo. Y tu caballo bianco, que miro el visionario, pase. Y suene el divino clarin extraordinario. Mi corazon sera brasa de tu incensario. The blue is stained with a vast raven-flight; A wind blows, threatening pestilence's blight; In the far east, men slay in deadly fight. Has anti-Christ been bom within the land? Portents are seen, and marvels dire and grand. Christ's second coming seems to be at hand. The Earth is pregnant with so deep a smart, The royal dreamer, musing sad apart. Grieves with the anguish of the world's great heart Slaughtered ideals have brought sorrows great; Hmnanity is prisoned now by fate In a dark pit, with hounds of war and hate. RUBEN DARIO 167 Lord Christ, why dost thou wait to show thy might, To stretcli o'er these wild heasts tliy iiaiul of light, And in the sun display thy banners bright? Swiftly arise, ami poor life's essence free On souls that crazed or sad or hardened be. Loving the dark, forgetting dawn and thee! Come then, Lord, tliinc own true glory show! Come with stars' trembling and with earthquake's throe; Bring love and peace from out the gulf below! Let thy white horse the prophet saw, pass by. Thy wondrous clarion sound from heaven on high! My burning heart shall in thy censer lie. As a collection, the Cantos de Vida y Esperanza is the keystone of Dario's poetical arch. It most exemplifies the man that wrote it; it most reveals his dual nature, his in- ner sincerity, his complete psychology; it is the artist at maturity. There is a wider sweep, a subtler music, a closer approach to universal amplitude of expression and linguistic sonorit\\ In the Prosas Prof anas, says Gon- zales-Blanco, the poet's aesthetic was at its highest; in the Cantos de Vida y Esperanza it is his technique that tri- umph-^. Yet how much more than technique it contains in its pages! In his History of My Books Dario, considering this col- li ction, gives ample evidence of its source in a fuller life, of his struggle between Catholicism and Paganism, of an optimism that was, it seems, more a manifestation of will than of conviction. He proclaims himself a "Spaniard of \merica and an American of Spain," with an admiration 168 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE for the racels past that cries out "Hispania forever!" Prayer has always rescued him, he confesses, yet he acknowledges hours of doubt and rage. "Certainly there exists in me, from the beginning of my life, the profound preoccupation with the end of existence, the terror of the unkno\Mi, the fear of the tomb, or rather, of diat moment in which the heart ceases its uninterrupted task and life disappears from our body. In my desolation I have rushed to God as a refuge, I seized upon prayer as upon a parachute. I have been filled with anguish when I sounded the depths of my faith and found it insufficiently sturdy and rooted, when the conflict of ideas has caused me to waver and I have felt that I had no constant and certain support. All philosophies have appeared impotent to me, and some abominable and the work of madmen and male- factors. On the other hand, from Marcus Aurelius to Bergson, I have greeted with gratitude those who bring wings, tranquillity and pleasurable flights, and teach us to understand in the best way possible the enigma of our earthly existence. . . . And the principal merit of my work, if it possess any, is that of a great sincerity. . . ." Among tlie metrical innovations that have been noted are: free metre, both with and without a rhythmic basis; hexa- meters; the revival of the hendecasyllable without accent on the sixth syllable. With regard to the hexameter, Dario believed, despite authorities, that long and short syllables exist in Spanish. ^^ 16 Readers especially interested in Dario's technique will find in Cejador y Frauca, op. cit., pages 113 and 114, a detailed summary (quoted from Lauxar) of the poet's innovations in metre and metrical combination. RUBEN DARIO 16<; 5. ElCantoFrrantc {1907) And Otlicr Poems Before approaching Dario's fmal iu)tal)lc collection, let us pause for a moment upon the Oda a Mitre (1906) to express the opinion that it is on the whole, despite its lofty sentiments, but equal to the nmch earlier Ode to Hugo. Dario is more the poet than the statesman. The later ode seems labored, ''d'occasion," and lacking in the enthusiasm of tlie poem to the great poet. The very first lines, with their quotation from Whitman's ''Oh, Captain; oh, my cap- tain!*' as well as the epigraph, from Ovid, seem to reveal a groping inspiration. Dario die poet, however, will out, and it is the poet in Mitre that he most admires. Y para mi, Maestro, tu vasta gloria es esa; aniar los hechos fugaces de la hora, sobra la ciencia a ciegas, sobre la historia espesa, la eterna Poesia mas clara que la aurora. And when he recites his litany of glory to the master, whose name comes to his lips as the summit of human fame? Victor Hugo's. Gloria a ti que, provecto como el destine plugo, la ancianidad tuviste mas limpida y mas bella; tu enorme catafalco fuera el de Victor Hugo, si hubiera en Buenos Aires un Arco de la Estrella! The finale is a noble piece of writing and reveals Dario as a thinker whose vision could see beyond even continental frontiers. ''Rest in peace! . . . But no; rest not. Let your soul continue its labor of light unto eternity, and let 170 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE your inspiration guide our peoples, friend of the beauti- ful and the just, of the good and the true. Your pres- ence is gone; may your memory grow . . . and m.ay your labor, your name, your prestige, your glory, be like Amer- ica, for all Humanity!" The poet of El Canto Errante continues the varied man- ner of the preceding volume. He is outspokenly opposed to any narrowing conception of art, which he considers "not a combination of rules, but a harmony of caprices." He has no use for such terminology as old and new. "My verse has always been bom with its body and its soul, and I have applied to it no manner of orthopedics. Yes, I have sung old airs, and I have attempted to march toward the future, always under the divine rule of music: music of idea, music of verse." El Canto Errante secures Dario's reputation as a universal poet and emphasizes, perhaps, tlie pantheistic element in that universality. How far we are from the ivory tower of the Prosas Prof anas! As the poet says in his Ballad to Martinez Sierra, the exquisite stylist and translator of Maeterlinck, the best muse is of flesh and blood. Dario has now become a wandering Jew of poesy. He is the singer who journeys over all the world, "reaping smiles and thoughts, amid white peace and red war." Upon the elephant's back, through vast India, in palanquin through China, over the pampas of South America, — every- where he received the inspiration of his universal chant; Harmony and Eternity is his device. Here we may see why Dario is not the poet of America; his mission, like that which he discerns in the soul of Mitre, is to reach humanity; he feels himself, it is true, American in spirit and in ori- gin, but his patriotism does not blind him to the larger im- RUB^N DARlb 171 lance of the human unit. His travels, perhaps, havo alight him his own muhipliclty as well as the essential iiiiilarity that undorlirs human divorsity. That is why he 3 Majorcan as well as Oriental, Greek as well as Spanish. SLINGS I dreametl a slinger bold was I, Born 'ncath Majorca's limpid sky. With .^toncs I galliered by the sea I hunted eagles flying free, And wolves; and ^vhen a war arose, I went against a tliousand foes. A pebble of pure gold one day Up to the zenith sped its way, Wlien mid the heavens blue and wide A huge jerfalcon I espied. Attacking in the fields of air I A strange, bright bird, of plumage rare — I A wondrous bird; its course on high With ruby streaked the sapphire sky. I My stone returned not; but to me The Cherub-bird flew fearlessly. Straight to my side it came, and said: "Wounded, Goliath's soul has fled. I come to thee from out the sky: Lo, Davids radiant soul am If Apply this universality of humanity to the sphere of na- ture and a modern pantheism is the result. Measured by the totality of his work, which forms a rarely ordered ris- ing curve, Dario is notliing less tlian cosmogonic; he identi- 172 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE fies himself with all times, all moods, all animate nature, all peoples. It is this sense of his multiplicity that assails him in poems like Eheu. Here by the Latin sea, I speak the truth: « In rock, in oil and wine I feel my antiquity. Oh, how old I am, good God! Oh, how ancient I am ! . . . Whence comes my song? And I, wither am I going? The knowledge of myself Is costing me Many abysmal moments, and the how and the when . . . Nor was this mood a new one to Dario, in whom from the very first, as a collation of his poems witli his autobiography may show, existed the germs of all his later moods and manners. It seems that his frequent questioning of sell led to a deeper knowledge of humanity. It has been sajc that all genius is neurotic. Without pressing that point, ii is quite safe to assert that certain types of neuroticism en large appreciably the sufferer's view of himself as well aj of mankind. As early as 1893, in Metempsicosis, Daric had imagined himself the soldier lover of capricious Cle opatra, and had evoked the past through the mouth of the dead. This is but one of the examples, by the way, of th( poet's early control over that interior rhythm which h( rub£n dari'o n.i entioned in Prosas Profanas. And what a haunting v{- is achieved by the i if rain: "Eso fue todo," — That /as all! There is a must beautiful n-turn to tlic autochthi)nous heme in such an evocation of rare pictorial charm as ^utecotzimi, in which the beauty of tlie thought is l)y no neans llie least of the beauties. His poem to the pines re- eals him in an attractive mood of self-revelatory tree worship: SONG OF THE PINES pines, O brothers of the earth and air, 1 love you! Sweet, good, grave are all your words. You are a tree that seems to think and feel, Caressed by dawns, by poets and by birds. The winged sandal touched your lofty brows; You have been mast, and stage, and judge's chair, sunny pines, pines of Italy, All bathed in charm, in glory, in blue air! Mute, sombre, knowing not the sunlight's gold, Growing 'mid icy vapors gray and dull, On dreamy mountains vast — pines of the night, Pines of the North, ye too are beautiful! Like statues or like actors in your mien, Outreaching towards the kisses of the sea, pines of Naples, girt about with flowers, pines divine, ye haunt my memory! When in my wanderings the Golden Isle Gave me a place of refuge on her shore To dream my dreams, there too I met the pines — The pines my heart holds dear forevermore. 174 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Dear for their sadness, beauty, gentleness, Their monkish look, their hair spread wide above, Their fragrance, as of one enormous flower. Their sap, their voices, and their nests of love. ancient pines, which by the epics' wind Were swayed, of which the glowing sun was fain! O lyric pine trees of the Renaissance, And of the gardens in the land of Spain ! Their arms aeolian by the winds are stirred, Tossed by the gusts that wake there, as they roam, Sounds of soft plumage, sounds of satin robes. Sounds of the water and the ocean foam. night on which the hand of Destiny Brought me the grief that still my heart's depths hold! On a dark pine the moon her silver shed. And by a nightingale I was consoled. We are romantic. Who that lives is not? He that feels neither giief nor love divine. He that knows naught of kisses nor of song, Let him go hang himself upon a pine! Not I. I persevere. The past confirms My eagerness, my life that onward flows. A lover I of dreams and forms, who comes From far away, and towards the future goes. In A Colon the native note momentarily becomes one of pes simism at sight of the internecine strife amid the Spanish American peoples; the poet recalls the memory of the in digenous chiefs and compares them most favorably with the colonizing whites; he is sorry that the continent was evei discovered by the latter: RUBEN DARK) 175 IMuguiera a Dios las aguas, antes intactas no reflejaran nunca las blancas velas; ni vieraii las cstrellas stupcfactas arribar a la orilla tus taraholas! Crisloforo Colombo, pobrc vMiniranlc, ruega a Dios por el mundo que descubriste! "Christopher Columbus, poor Admiral, pray to Cod for the world that you discovered!" The image of Columbus, as of Hugo, accompanies him in all his thoughts, and when he salutes the volcano Momotombo he sees in it a symbol of tlie two great men: Your voice was one day beard by Chrislopber Columbus; Hugo sang your legendary geste. The two Were, like you. colossal, Momotombo, mountains inbabited by the fire of God. Dario's attitude toward the United States did not remain that which he so forcefully expressed in his address to Roosevelt. In his SaliUacion al Aguila, in hexameters that some of his countrymen have found superior to those of tlie Salutacion del Optimista, he intones a view expressive of greater confidence in the United States, as well as of its possibility as a model for the Spanish Americans in cer- tain respects. From the Yankees, he feels, the dreamy youtli of the southern continent, with so marked a weakness for rhetoric and ostentation, may learn constancy, strength, character. The Condor is not the Eagle's rival, but its brother. "May Latin America receive your influence, and may a new Olympus be reborn, peopled with gods and with heroes." The poem, while important because of re- 176 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE vealing Dario's altered attitude, does not strike that echo- ing note which rises from so much of his other work. The eagle is not Dario's heraldic bird; his swan is more sure, as is his condor. His Pan-Americanism at times seems an utterance made in compliance with outward cir- cumstances rather than an impulsive, spontaneous cry from within. Yet, at other times it strikes me as being of a powerful, resonant sincerity. The Canto a la Argentina (1910) is an inspiring, poly- phonic, vast hymn, — the longest of Dario's poems, in forty- five stanzas of a length varying from eight lines to seventy- six, with lines of from six to twelve syllables, — sung as much to liberty as to Argentina. The longer Dario lived the closer he drew to that crowd which he thought he de- spised, and the more Pan-American, as well as universal, he became. He acquired, too, a certain noble magnilo- quence that one might scarcely have suspected in the poet of an Azul ... or of Prosas Prof anas. As a celebra- tion of the centenary of Argentina's independence, the Canto is fully matched to its lofty theme. There is an epic sweep to the sonorous stanzas, which scatter upon the air a proclamation of freedom; there is a biblical fervor that welcomes the exiles of all nations to this new Promised Land. "Here is the region of El Dorado, here is the terrestrial paradise, here the longed-for good fortune, here the Golden Fleece, here the pregnant Canaan, here the resuscitated At- lantis. . . ." Here, too, is the land "of the visionary poets who on their Olympuses or Calvaries loved all the people," the land where "is reared the Babel wherein all may understand one another." RUBEN DAIUb 177 In strophes that scizo with rare skill upon saliont traits, e[iitomiziiig a national character in each, he calls upon the Russian, the Jew, the Italian, the Spaniard, the Swiss, the Frenchnum, the German, — all the disinherited of the earth — to come to the arms of this mother nation. To the Jews Argentina becomes Zion; to tlie Spaniard it becomes a new Spain; tlie Plata's shores are a mystic Eden on which new Adams shall arise; here all religions shall be free. All hail. Fatherland, for thou art mine, too, Since thou belongest to humanity; All hail, in the name of Poesy, All hail, in the name of Liberty! Tlie Argentina that Dario sings offers "homes and rights to the citizens of the world" — Ave, Argentina, vita plena! It is a nation of peace, arming itself only for defence: Be a sentinel over Life, Not an adjutant of Death. As the glorious song continues the harmonies swell. A beautiful bit of imagery visions the northern and southern Americas as the huge plates of a continental balance hav- ing the isthmus of Panama as the needle; into these plates each continent places its wealth of hope, all in the cause of liberty; this Pan-Americanism of imagery is in the same long stanza explicitly stated in terms of a fraternal union of the "Anglo-Saxon race with the Latin-American." The poet's aspiration rises higher in another long stanza de- voted to universal peace: "War, then, only against war! Peace, so that thought may rule the sphere, and sweep, like the biblical chariot of fire, from firmament to firmament. 178 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Peace, for the creators, the discoverers, inventors, seekers after truth. . . ." Tlie finale is a quotation from the national hymn, — at once the source and the goal of the stirring Canto: Old, mortales, el grito sagrado: Libertad! Libertad! Libertad! Hearken, mortals, to the sacred cry: Liberty! Liberty! Liberty! The poem is in more than one way remarkable. First, for its sustained flight and the genuine inspiration. It produces upon the reader the effect of having been written (even declaimed) in a single outburst. Then there is a human outlook which contrasts markedly with the early aristocracy of the singer. To me, at least, the interna- tional sentiments ring more genuinely from these lines than from earlier ones. The Dario who began as a Ro- mantic, then ranging tlirough Parnassianism and Symbol- ism, here seems to revel in the pure, untrammeled, uncat- alogued joy of creation. El Canto a la Argentina is a logical development of the two collections that preceded it. Later poems, as well as the various posthumous collec- tions issued, add little to the poet's fame. The master was capable of writing some most pedestrian verse, such as the poem to La Gran Metropolis, in which New York's con- trast of wealth and misery is sung in limping verses of i lustreless facture; of such pretty conceits as Dama, in which we encounter the startling metaphor The smile of the Gioconda Made by the Virgin Mary; RUBEN DARK) 179 \ he can become most iinpoetio in his politiral utterances, as witness tJie verses ol tarewell written to the actress Maria Uuerrero shortly after the publication of Prosas Prof anas. On the other hand, in his marvellous Poema del Otofio he intones a hymn to love that pulses with the passion of even- tide; for beneath its baeehanalian rhythm is the slackening gait of resignation. In two lines of luminous beauty he ^t'cnis to sum up the mystery and tlie enchantment of life: Tlie clove of Venus flies Above the Sphinx. Is so much often compressed in as many words? And in the final stanza of a poem that tempts one to complete transcription, he expresses what may be taken as the es- sence of his poetic career: En nosotros la Vida vierte Fuerza y calor. Vamos al reino de la Muerte Por el camino de Amor! We journey to the realms of Death Over the pathway of Love! 6. Prose Works \^lth the exception of the prose section of Azul . . . Dario's prose labors were the outgrowth of his journalistic career. In that characteristic tissue of paradoxes which Oscar Wilde has called The Critic As Artist, Ernest asks, "What is the difference between literature and journalism?" To 180 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE which Gilbert facetiously replies, "Oh, journalism is un- readable and literature is not read. That is all." Which explanation, if it be forgiven on the Wildean principle that an artistic untruth is preferable to an uninteresting verity, omits the consideration that literature and journal- ism sometimes become interchangeable terms. How differ- ent the attitude of another English paradoxical spirit, Ber- nard Shaw, who has told us in his Sanity of Art that I am also a journalist, proud of it, deliberately cutting out of my works all that is not journalism, convinced that nothing that is not journalism will live long as literature, or be of any use whilst it does live. I deal with all periods; but I never study any period but the present, which I have not yet mastered and never shall; and as a dramatist I have no clue to any historical or other personage save that part of him which is also myself, and which may be nine-tenths of him or ninety-nine hundredths, as the case may be (if, indeed, I do not transcend the creature), but which, anyhow, is all that can ever come within my knowledge of his soul. The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. The other sort of man, who believes that he and his period are so distinct from all other men and periods that it would be im- modest and irrelevant to allude to them or a^ume that they could interest any one but himself and his contemporaries, is the most infatuated of all egotists, and consequently the most unreadable and negligible of all the authors. And so, let others cultivate what they call literature; journalism for me! Not that Shaw has said anytliing really new in this gay paragraph. He has merely taken what most of us always called good literature and labelled it "Journalism" in order to emphasize the proposition that posterity can be interested only in those traits of man's writings which are RUBEN DARIO 1»1 always contemporary l)ccaiise always luimaii. Hut there is virtue in the paradox. It was journalism ol the Shavian sort that was produced by such reformers of j)rose as Gutierrez Najera, Marti and Dario. How remarkably little of what Dario wrote as the result of his various travels and studies is unworthy of preservation between covers! And how much our own journalists and magazine writers could learn from his paj];es in the way of enthusiasm, patience, human insight and a sincerity that makes few sacrifices upon the ahar of clever- ness and mere glitter. There is little necessity here for an extended considera- tion of the poet's prose works. Everywhere may be dis- cerned the mind of the poet which never quite lost its aris- tocratic cast, however much it recognized the value of tlie crowd as a background of art. If I mention Los Raws as my favorite, it is because in that book Dario the poet and Dario the extremely sensitive human being are most evident in Dario the writer of prose. It is question- able whether such a prose would prove acceptable to the majority of English readers; the non-Spanish element in it, of course, would not bother them. What might, how- ever, seem not fully acceptable, is the quasipoetic glow that shines from every page.^' It was of this book tliat William 1' "He has done more damage witti his prose than with his verse among the young writers, especially the Spanish-Americans." — Cejador y Frauca, op. cit., page 84. Of all prose, so-called poetic prose, which so easily de- generates into airy nothing, is most difficult to manage. How much harm has Maeterlinck worked, for example, even among our young United States writers, especially in the domain of the one-act play! And has not the influence of Dunsany led to what has most properly been dubbed "Dun- sanity"? But "youth, of course, must have its fling" and will cling to its prerogative, whatever the influence to which, parasitically, it attaches itself in quest of a personality. 182 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Archer said that from what he could half make of the work he would learn Spanish, to read it. 7. Summary Such is the remarkable figure who so dominated an epoch that his very name serves to characterize it. Can Dario really be pinned down in the critic's sample case like the entomologist's butterfly? Perhaps, by some refinement of the critic's art an appearance of inner unity may be im- parted to the man, his life and his labors. To me, how- ever, he is most human in his questionings, his fears, his vacillations, his wavering, his unresolved doubt. From the very first he reveals these dominant characteristics. He is of the past, of the present, of the future. From the very nature of poetry and its incapability of being transferred into another tongue it is inevitable that he will never be to other peoples what he will remain to Spaniards; that is one of the disadvantages under which the poet, more than any other creative artist, labors. He crystallized an epoch; he transformed a language; he infused new life into the Castilian muse; he retained his own personality while absorbing all the currents that ap- peared during his career; he became, as we have seen, a legendary figure even during his own life. He belongs Dario's chief prose works, outside of the prose section which forms the greater part of Azul . . . and the pamphlet A de Gilbert, 1889 (written on the death of his friend Pedro Balmaceda, the Chilean poet) are: Los Raros, 1893 Parisiana, 1908 Esparia Contempordnea, 1901 El Viaje a Nicaragua, 1909 Peregrinaciones, 1901 Letras, 1911 La Caravana Pasa, 1903 Todo al Vuelo, 1912 Tierras Solares, 1904 La Vida de Ruben Dario, escrita Opiniones, 1906 par el mismo, 1912. RUB^N DARI'O 1«3 not only with the greatest poets tliat have written in the Spanish tongue, but with the masters of universal poesy. For above the early Parnassianism, the later Symbolism anil the final eoini)l(>x humanism, is the eternally human of a poet who was peculiarly of his day and, by that same token, of all ages. CHAPTER III JOSE ENRIQUE RODO (1872-1917) In many respects the life and labors of Jose Enrique Rodo, the noted Uruguayan philosopher and litterateur, present a marked contrast to those of Ruben Dario. The Nicaraguan poet was himself a human lyre upon which the passing winds and events played their own subtle songs ; he responded in remarkable degree to the varying influences of his time, presenting, in that response, an organic, mental and spiritual growth. Rodo, no less responsive, was of a more Olympian nature; indeed, if we are to use a phrase- ology that Nietzsche made popular, Dario is the Dionysian spirit, Rodo 'the Apollonian. Yet they are both men of their age; both represent, in varying degree and in most diverse manifestation, the self-expansion that characterizes the times. Despite his static life (which was altered only toward the end by a voyage to Europe during which he died, at Palermo), and his classical serenity, Rodo was one of the most dynamic spirits of his day. More than any other he realized the fluidity of modern thought, the resurgent self that lay at the bottom of the modernist movement and the general overturn in the world of ideas. In his famous study of Dario's Prosas Prof anas he proclaimed, as we saw, 184 JOSE ENRIQl'K ROl)() 185 his own modernism, not in [he si*nsr of the word tiial con- aott's a prurionl curiosity for llio m'w, hut in tluil larger simiificance which aligns a man with die spirit of the ad- vancing age. Rodo's entire philosopliy of unending self- renewal is, indeed, one of the most striking aspects of the rch for self which, in latter days, has often assumed such ludicrous forms. He is the philosopher not only of mod- ernism, but of eternal youdi in the realm of thought. His work reveals how complex is that inner self which once {' personality. A thorough examination of the few hut preeious volumes he left will yield not only a fuller un- derstanding of him, hut of ourselves. Is not that one of the great tests of an artist? Let us consiih'r, chiefly, ArielA the clarion call to Hispano-American youdi which contains' the germ of the master's greatest work. Motives de Proteo; after a study of that treasure-house of counsel and sugges- i'Ui, we will turn to the Mirntlor de Prospero, wherein are itliered nmch of the audior's journalistic labors. Nor luill we pass over the great essays upon Dario, Bolivar, and Montalvo, which teem widi ardent apostrophes to that freedom, tolerance and expansion to which Rodo conse- ( rated his career.'^ In one of his first writings, — El Que Vendrd (He Who W ill Come) — Rodo, in whom the literary apostle was born very early, reveals a deep sense of optimism for the future. "Vihcn the impress of ideas or of present affairs inclines my soul to abomination," he declares to the new prophet whom his lines invoke, "you appear before my eyes in the guise of a sublime, wrathful avenger. In your right hand will shine the Archangel's sword. The purifying flame will descend from your mind. The symbol of your -oul will be contained in the cloud, which at the same time ^ The essays on Bolivar and Montalvo belong originally in El Mirador de Prospero; they are more easily accessible now, together with Ariel, D.irio, and Jacobinisrao y Liberali^mo, in the Cinco Ensayos published in Madrid f by the Editorial-America, of which the directing head is the author Kufino Blanco-Fombona. 194 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE weeps and fulminates. The iamb that flays and the elegy- composed of a constellation of tear$ will find in your thought the somber bed of their union. "At times I imagine you as a sweet, affectionate apostle. In your evangelical accent there will resound the note of love, the note of hope. Upon your brow will glitter the colors of the rainbow. Guided by the Bethlehem star of your word, we shall be present at the new dawn, at the re- birth of the Ideal — of the lost Ideal that we goalless trav- elers seek in the depths of the glacial night, through which we are journeying, — the Ideal that will reappear through you, to summon souls today chilled and scattered, to a life of love, peace, harmony. And at your feet the waves of our tempests will be hushed, as if a divine oil were cast upon the waters. And your word will resound in our spirits like the tolling of the Easter bell in the ear of the doctor bent over his draught of poison.^ "I behold only a hazy, mysterious vision of you, such as the soul intent upon rending the starry veil of mystery may picture to itself, in its ecstasies, the glory of tlie Divine Being. But I know that you will come. . . ." Was it not natural for many Spanish Americans to be- hold in Rodo the selfsame literary Messiah of which he spoke in this youthful invocation? For he, too, brought a renaissance of the Ideal; his word, too, rose like a star of Bethlehem upon a new dawn. Between El Que Vendrd and Ariel intervened but three years; yet in Ariel we almost feel that "he who will come" has already arrived. ^ An allusion to Faust. JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 10: 1. Ariel The purpose of the classic essay Ariel is at once ap- parent from its symbolistic title. It is a manifesto of , Ariel against Caliban, of beauty against ugliness, of the spirit against a myopic utilitarianism. I have said mani- festo, yet the word should be purged of its propagandislic, partisan flavor. Rodo is deeply, though not dogmatically or denominationally religious. Like so many of his con- tinental brethren, he broke away from the intellectual fet- ters of the epoch, but most unlike them, he acquired a serenity, a tranquillity, a spiritual harmony, that rescued him from the excesses and the morbidity of so many mod- t rnist poets. He reveals himself in Ariel that which he . asks his youtliful audience to become, — a glowing idealist, mindful of tlie utilitarian element in life, yet considering! it only the basis of a higher expansion. Ariel has been railed the intellectual breviary of Spanish-American youth. That is a beautiful phrase, indicative of tlie unobtrusively religious element in tlie master's injunctions; and if the youth of Spanish America, which is more or less naturally given to an aversion for tlic purely material considerations of life, is in need of the counsel, what shall we say of our own, to whom Ariel, with little change, might become no less an intellectual breviary? The thought of the United States, indeed, occurs power- fully to Rodo in the present essay as elsewhere, and he comments upon our country in a manner that reveals him as a keen student of modem civilization. He recognizes our power of carrying tlirough all projects of a practical nature, in which the will is the dominant force. He recog- 196 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE nizes, too, our lack, as a nation, of spiritual cultivation and 'refinement. "The will is the chisel that has sculptured this people out of solid rock. Its salient characteristics are two manifestations of the power of the will: originality and audacity. Its entire history is the manifestation of a virile ,, activity. Its representative personage is named / willy i like the superman of Nietzsche. If anything rescues it col- lectively from vulgarity, it is that extraordinary exempli- fication of energy which carries it everywhere and with which it imprints a certain character of epic grandeur even upon the struggle of interests and material life. . . . And this supreme energy ... is discoverable even in those individuals who present themselves to us as excep- tional in and divergent from that civilization. None will deny that Edgar Poe is an anomalous and rebellious indi- viduality within his people. His select soul represents an inassimilable particle of the national soul, which not with- out reason stirred among the others with the sensation of an infinite solitude. And nevertheless, as Baudelaire has deeply revealed, the fundamental note in the character of Poe's heroes is the superhuman temper, the indomitable resistance of the will. Wlien he conceived Ligeia, the most mysterious and adorable of his creations, Poe symbolized in the inextinguishable light of her eyes the Will's hymn of triumph over Death." Yet for all his admiration of our characteristics, Rodo feels a certain singular impression of insufficiency and emptiness about our life. Do not mistake his attitude for the carping and harsh, if, doubtless genuine, dislike of a Blanco-Fombona. Rodo holds up our life in general as an I example of a people without any deep traditions to orientate JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 107 it, — a people that has not been able to substitute for the inspired idealism of the past a disinterested conception of the future. "It lives for the immediate reality, and through it subordinat(\>^ all its activity to the egotism of personal and collective well-being. — Of the sum of the ele- ments of its riches and its powers, one might say what the author of Mcnsonges said of the intelligence of the Marquis ii(^ Nobert. who figures in one of his books: it is a h(\ip of wood which it has been impossible to ignite." The spark has been missing. To him we lack tlie poetic instinct; even the North American religion becomes nothing more than **an auxiliary force of penal legislation which wouM abandon its past on the day when it would be possible to u'ive to utilitarian morals that religious power which Stuart Mill was so desirous of endowing it with." "' From what we have read it is easy to see that it is not the United States tliat Rodo will point to as the inspiration of ■Spanish- American youth. He frankly considers us, for all our enormous development, as yet the embodiment of a will and a utility that, he hopes, will some day become intelli- gence, feeling, idealism as well. The reproach is a com- mon one, often levelled at this country through a sense of • nvy. if not from more practical motives not entirely dis- sociated from propaganda in its worst diplomatic meaning, but is there not some truth, — however much or little, — at the bottom? Is there not something about rapid material progress and the sense of power it confers which produces the illusion of intellectual superiority? I am no believer in chauvinism or narrow nationalism, yet I cannot share ' Rodo's acquaintance with the currents of our national t'lought is so * intimate that he quotes with disapproval the utilitarian moral of the once popular Pushing to the Front, by Orison Swett Marden. 198 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Rodo's thoughts as to our future. We are a young nation, a nation which, to make use of a paraphrase, is living its Odyssey before writing it, yet which contains every posibil- ity of a vast continental culture, to which it will eventually attain, either despite, or because of, its proud materialism. Rodo himself would be the first to recognize that it is after all an unhealtliy, anaemic spiritualism that does not rest upon a material foundation. However much mistaken he may have been in his views as to our immediate future, his objection to this country as a model for Spanish-Ameri- can youth had firmer foundations. There is, first of all, the racial difference, which naturally accounts for a good deal of the South-American preference for France as an intel- lectual leader; with that racial difference is bound up the cultural one which blossoms from it. Witliout agreeing then, to Rodo's details, we may lend a most respectful ear . to his general proposition, and yet not slight our own na- iH tion. As Dario and Chocano have realized, Spanish and English America may, as a union of complementary forces, accomplish great things. Just as readily may we assent to his views upon de- mocracy witliout thereby slighting the so-called common people. Rodo is no believer in the quantitative democracy of the politicians. He desires that genuine democracy which is inspired by a true appreciation of human super- iorities, — a democracy in which intelligence and virtue re- ceive their authority from prestige and liberty. And with the syncretistic method that is so characteristic of his eclec- ticism, he roots that democracy in both Christian and Pagan characteristics. "From the spirit of Christianity is born, in effect, the feeling of equality, vitiated by a certain as-' JOSE ENRIQUE RODO IW cetic scorn for spiritual selection and culture. From the lieritage of the classic civilizations is horn the feeling for orcjei, for hierareliy, and religious resi)eet for genius, vit- ialeii hy a certain aristocratic tlisilain for the humble and tlie weak." It is these two elements, shorn of their vitiat- ing factors, that will be harmonized by llie future civiliza- tion. . It is that future civiliz^ition whii'h concerns Rodo in ' Ariel. It is because he beholds the future in the youth be- fore him that he counsels them, in words that have reechoed over the continent, to consecrate part of their lives to the non-material. "Tliere were, in antiquity, altars for the 'unknown gods.' Consecrate part of your soul to the un- ' known future. In proportion as societies advance, the thought of the future enters in greater measure as one of the factors of its evolution and one of the inspirations of its labors. . . ." To Rodo's optimistic vision there is ever present the . sight of an immortal Ariel triumphing over the temporary j victories of Caliban. Ariel is eternal youth, which, as a nation, is symbolized by Greece. Yet is there not a subtler symbolism in Rodo's address, — something he himself may not have caiight? He imagines himself as Prospero in this speech, even as his collected journalistic articles have been sponsored by that same spirit of Shakespeare's Tem- pest. Tlie title of the famous address is likewise Shake- sperian. In the same breath with which he expresses dis- trust of one Anglo-Saxon people he extols the greatest genius who has written in their language! This is, of course, in- dicative of many things, — his broad culture, his high ideal- ism; but it indicates far more. The race that produced a 200 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Shakespeare has a worthy tradition ; the people out of whose midst grew the creator of Prospero and Ariel to furnish Rodo with a personality and a symbol, may look with con- fidence toward the future. If these digressions serve to suggest anything, it should be that no nation, no people, has a monopoly upon idealism, the manifestations of which are various and the results no less so. We have said that Ariel contained in germ the distin- guishing characteristics of Rodo's personality. What are these? A deep sense of life's uninterrupted continuity with the flame of its enthusiasm and its vigor. It is this sense that lies at the bottom of Rodo's eclecticism and enables him to attempt a harmonization of Pagan and Christian virtuesy-'^for pagans have their virtues as Christians their vices. Out of this sense, indeed, may grow all those other qualities we discern in the man, — his fine tolerance, his aristodemocracy, his cosmopolitan culture, his anxiety to effect a constant readjustment of the inner self with the outer world. Here there appear, too, the chief elements of that style which has so enchanted two continents, — a flow- ing, glowing prose that verges upon the poetic without dis- solving into sentimentality, illumined by similes and meta- phors organically related to the text. What a beautiful, placid close is that of Ariel in which the master, taking leave of his audience, hears the youngest of his disciples exclaim, as he points to the stirrings of the human multi- tude and then to the radiant beauty of the night: "While the crowd passes, I observe that, although it does not gaze at the sky, the sky gazes down upon it. And into its obscure, indiff"erent bulk, like the furrows of the JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 201 land, something falls from high. The vihration of the stars seems like llie movement of a sower's hands." Sueh a sower, in Ariel and in his other lahors, Kodo sought to he. Is it a deeper trust of the human flock and its instinctive impulse to justice and truth, that makes me see in Rodo's manner, if not in some of his actual admoni- tions, a residue of that aristocratic blood which he inher- ited from his pure Spanish ancestry? Is there not a world of truth in the perspicacious statement of the discerning poet-critic. Max Henriquez Urena, that "if in America tlie ignorant mass needs instruction, the directing class needs ideals"? ^ And although by America the author meant only Spanish America, I for one am willing to add 'the northern continent and make the statement unanimous. There is more in Ariel: that consciousness of Spanish America's vast potentialities which informed everything that sprang from Rodo's pen. For Rodo, remember, was a partisan of die Magna Patria, the continental dream of Bolivar. That vision inspired some of his noblest pages, even as it led him to interpret its spiritual parent. It is tliat spirit, too, which must have been present when he said that Dario was not the poet of America. One of the very last things, indeed, that Rodo wrote, in the city of Rome, was an article entitled The Spiritual Union of America, in which he called for the formation of the Hispano-American spirit, to sow in Uie consciousness of the peoples that idea of "our America as a common force, as an indivisible power, as a sole fatherland (patria linica). The entire future lies virtually in that work." " Rodu y Ruben Dario. Page 43. 202 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE We have already noted the literary aspect of this Amer- icanism. Let us for the present see how its broader impli- cations shine out of a series of notable essays in which Rodo, interpreting the great spirits of Spanish America that appealed to him, interpreted himself as well, — his opinions upon tolerance, democracy, liberty and justice. Pick up the essay on Montalvo or Bolivar and you real- ize almost at once that you have made a literary discovery. This writer, you tell yourself, has well merited compari- son with Emerson, Macaulay or Carlyle. In his essay upon the beloved Liberator, as in that upon the great Ecua- dorian, there glows Rodo's own ardent belief in the destinies of a Spanish America joined by the bonds of an enlightened solidarity. In revealing the nobility of Bolivar he re- veals his own as a firm priest of the higher democracy in which (as he explicitly states in Ariel), the people will rise above the mere fascination of their own numbers. Professor J. D. M. Ford of Harvard University, whose influence has been as potent as it has been silent and un- ostentatious in cultivating the study of Spanish and Spanish- American letters in this country, has, in his Main Cur- rents of Spanish Literature, ' registered an interesting con- trast between the literary fates of Bolivar and Washington. "Fate has shown herself far more kind to Bolivar than to Washington," he writes, . . . "for she raised up for the southern military genius a poet worthy to chronicle the suc- cess of his arms, while Washington, though first in the hearts of his countrymen, has yet to be commemorated in song, in a manner befitting his proportions." Rodo's essay upon Bolivar, whom many believe greater than Washing- 7 New York, 1919. Page 256. JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 203 ton, and who was certainly more versatile, is one of Fate's kindnesses to tlie great Spanish Aineriean. It reveals hitji as "great in thonght, great in aetion, great in glory, great in misfortune, . . . great because he endures, in abandon- ment and in death, the tragic expiation of greatness. There ar(> many human lives that are characterized by a more per- Itct harmony, a purer moral or a^stlielic order; few offer -o constant a character of greatness or power; few sub- jcet die sympathies of the heroic imagination to so dom- inating a rule." Is not that a superbly, yet simply, or- chestrated introduction to a study that amplifies upon the opening theme with illuminating virtuosity of thought and language? ''The tragic expiation of greatness." Is not lliat a memorable phrase, and does it not sum up the iso- lation of superiority? For Bolivar's life, multiple as it was, reveals at the close the tragedy of greatness and the irony of it. To the great Liberator, indeed, might have been inscribed the haunting lines that Dario wrote to an- other Liberator who built better than he knew: Cristoforo Colombo, pobre Almirante, ruega a Dios por el mundo que descubriste! "When ten centuries have passed," concludes this re- markable essay, "when the patina of a legendary antiquity extends from the Anahuac to the Plata, tliere where today Nature glows or civilization sinks its roots; when one hun- dred human generations will have mingled, in the mass of earth the dust of their bones with the dust of the forests that will have been a thousand times bereft of their leaves, and of the cities Uiat will have been twenty times recon- structed, and cause to reverberate in the memory of men 204 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE 'vvho would frighten us with their strangeness if we could imagine what they will look like, myriads of glorious names in virtue of deeds and victories of which we can form no conception; even then, if the collective sentiment of a free and united America has not lost its essential power, these men . . . will behold that in the extension of their rec- ords of glory there is none greater than Bolivar." No less sympathetic and laudatory is the essay on Mon- talvo, in whom Rodo sees the representative writer of his continent, a combination of Sarmiento's inspiration and Bello's art. With a skill all the more surprising because he had never visited the scene, Rodo reconstructs the com- plete environment into which the author of the Siete Tra- tados was bom and reveals himself eminently fair to his- torical characters embodying principles repugnant to him. Garcia Moreno is thus not merely a tyrant to be declaimed against, but a religious fanatic in whom obsession is to blame for his tyranny, rather than any innate perversity or distortion of human attributes. And when, in the midst of a most perspicacious criticism of Montalvo's literary pro- ductions we come upon the following paragraph, we are quite ready to transcribe Rodo's estimate of Montalvo and use it as our own of Rodo: "Another essential feature of his literature, because it was also one of his person and his life, is the tone of no- bility and superiority. This perennial agitator against false and petty authorities, had a deep feeling for tlie great and the true. He was liberal in the noble sense of the word; demagogue or plebeian, never. In quality of ideas, as in temper of spirit, as in taste of style, a caballero from head to foot. He loved liberty with the love of a JOSE! ENRIQUE RODO 205 111 art that turned to justice and of intelligence subjected to jnKr; never with tlie livid, loathsome passion of him who all Hers hunger for that which nature or fortune conceded to others." And in one of the finest passages in all of Rodo's works, which illustrates his gift for j)rodueing comparisons doubly beautiful for their intrinsic linguistic skill and their apt- ness of thought, the great Uruguayan suggests that it was the sight of Cotopaxi that first induced in Montalvo his love of ortler and beauty. The essay on Ruben Dario is no less revelatory of Rodo's remarkable gift of reaching the heart of his subject and casting upon it, from every angle, the light of a deep learning and a sympathy no less deep. Be not led astray by the paragraph I have quoted from the essay on Bolivar. Rodo is not given to superlatives. If anything, there is most of the time about his work a certain classic repose, an unmffled equanimity, that makes one long for an occa- sional outburst of passion. It was Rodo, as we have seen, that once and for all ' stamped the attribute of grace upon Dario's poetry. His analysis, limited to the Prosas Profanas, does not reveal the whole poet (nor, to my own way of thinking, the essen- tial poet), but within the limits of the single collection which it treats it has already become a classic and has, as we have remarked, literally rendered further analysis of Prosas Profanas superfluous. It is in Liberalismo y Jacobinismo that Rodo's fine tol- erance displays itself most fully. An order from the pjmision de Caridad y Beneficencia Publica of Montevideo had decreed that all the crucifixes of the city hospital he 206 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE cast out. Whereupon a controversy ensued in which our author took up the cudgels for the crucifix against one Emilio Bossi. It is by no means impossible (adopting a mite of Rodo's own syncretism), to assent to the general theses of both men. A liberation from the dogmas of all religions is by no means incompatible with a recognition of the need felt by many for religion's healing and soothing power. There is a fanaticism of atheism as well as of re- ligion, and fanaticism, wherever encountered, is to be de- plored. In arguing for the retention of the crucifixes Rodo revealed his deeply human understanding and his over- flowing sympathy. For all his equanimity he was a man of feeling, who realized that none has a monopoly of truth; he had no use for a liberalism that could itself become sectarian and intolerant. What is gained by a swapping of one intolerance for another? And what is gained by the imposition of an idea? The Rodo of Ariel and of the essays is a perspicacious, patient thinker, moderate in judgment, moderate in coun- sel, tolerant in attitude, glowing with a constant, rather than a volcanic, passion for justice and freedom. His style is eminently matched to his subject, Nowhere better than in such contrary temperaments as Rodo and Blanco-Fom- bona, united only by the same aspiration for a glorious continental future, is illustrated the oft-repeated yet little understood dictum that the style is the man. Rodo's rare laughter might have been discerned from his prose, in which that element of humor which so brightens the pages of Gutierrez Najera is absent. His deeply meditative nature blossoms in a thousand metaphors that illumine his mean-^ ing and not, as in so much fine writing, befog it. He is JOSL ENRIQUE RODO 207 not, like Blanco-Fombona, a volcano; not, like Dario, a flame; not, like Cliocano, a trinnpcl; he is a glow, — an in- tense, radiant, niaiiy-coloicd glow in the heart of things. He is no more of the crowd than Dario, yet he loves it more despite his stem interpretation of democracy; he is a dis- ciple, let us say, of nature's nobility, a leader of leaders. His influence will })erhaps penetrate not directly, but through its effect upon Hispano-American thinkers who will in tuni coinniunicate that influence, slowly but surely, to tlie thinkins: crowd. 'o 2. Motivos de Proteo It is in the Motivos de Proteo that Rodo's philosophy is developed to the point of a dynamic system. I do not know how deeply Rodo was acquainted with the methods of psycho-analysis, but his plumbing of our undreamed-of po- tentialities is not a little related, in both premises and con- clusions, to the methods, if not the aims, of Freudian psy- chologists. He deals, of course, with the normal mind ' (which, like the normal eyesight of which Bernard Shaw speaks in one of his logorrheie prefaces, is so rare), but his realization of the possibilities of the average man and of tlic paramount importance of the unconscious in every- day life ranges him with the foremost contemporary psy- chologists. He gives us a new realization of self; he dis- j covers, even to the most introspective natures among us, a [ veritable universe of new worlds within. He exhibits us 1 to ourselves not as a single being, but as the sum total of ' our entire past, worked upon by influences we know not of, » yet in a measure able to direct those forces. Self-knowl- 208 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE edge, self-adaptation in the light of that knowledge, con- tinuous re-adjustment in the light of newer knowledge, — self-renewal is Life. And why Proteus as the symbolic speaker? Here again, as in Ariel, in a single symbol the author concentrates his entire philosophy. Ariel is eternal youth; Proteus is eter- nal change guided by the essential unity of a dominant personality. For was it not Proteus who could at will assume new forms? "A form of the sea, a spirit of the sea, from whose restless bosom antiquity drew a fecund generation of myths, Proteus was he who guarded Posei- don's flocks of seals. In the Odyssey and in the Georgics is sung his venerable ancientness, his passage over the waves in the swift marine coach. Like all the divinities of the waters he possessed the prophetic gift and complete knowledge, fled all consultation, and in order to elude hu- man curiosity resorted to his marvellous faculty of trans- forming himself into a thousand divers forms. It was this faculty by which he was characterized in mythology, and it determines . . . his ideal significance. "When the Homeric Menelaus desires to learn through him what course his vessels shall follow; when the Aristaeus of Vergil goes to ask him the secret of the evil which con- sumes his bees, Proteus has recourse to that mysterious virtue with which he disorientated those who surprised him. Now he would change into a wild lion, now into a wriggling, scaly serpent; now, converted into fire, he would rise like a tremulous flame ; now he was the tree that lifted its crest to the vicinity of the heavens, now the brook that rippled rapidly along. Ever elusive, ever new, he ran through the infinity of appearances without fixing his most subtle es- JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 209 sencc in any of them. .\nd because of this infinite plas- ticity, being a divinity of the sea, he personified one of tlic aspects of llic sea: he was the miillifaiioiis wave, intract- ible, incapable of concretion or repose; the wave, which now rebels and now caresses; which at times lulls to rest, and at others tluuiders; which possesses all the volubilities of impulse, all the nuances of color, all the modulations of sound; wliicli never rises or falls in die same way, and which, taking from a:ul returning to the ocean the liquid which it gathers, impresses upon inert equality form, move- ment and change." Such is the invocatory foreword to the Motivos. By a masterful choice of a single word, as it were, Rodo sym- bolizes to us the Protean personality that we conceal within, — that personality of which most of us learn to know only a single form, and which is yet as latently multiform as the Greek divinity of the waters himself. Max Henriquez Urefia, in his excellent study of the in- spiring Uruguayan, has rather ingeniously (yet following a similar cue in such an essay as Rodo's ovm masterly one upon Montalvo) suggested that it was the ocean itself that helped to originate Rodo's philosophy of eternal change. For, ever before the scholar's sight, facing Uie city through which the noted figure (tall and recalling to many the swooping condor of the Andes) was wont to stroll, was the restless, ever-changing yet eternal ocean. "How often the immense sea changes color!" Rodo has written. "Who spoke of the monotony of the sea? The firm earth varies only in space; the sea changes and transforms itself in time. . . . This immensity is a perpetual becom- ing [Rodo here employs the French word devenir]. . . . 210 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE What scale like the scale of its sounds? What palette like that which supplies its hues? What imagination richer in forms than the wave, never resembling itself?" Once again I may recall the pregnant saying of La Roche- foucauld, which surely deserves to stand as one of the epigraphs of the Motivos: "We differ mostly from our- selves." A most protean saying in tlie light of Rodo's inner delvings, and one most rich in suggestions to the man who seeks self-knowledge. For, from the very fact that we are ourselves, we are all men. Must not such a notion have underlain Rodo's exemplary tolerance? To return for a moment to Henriquez Ureiia's suggestion. "After knowing this page," he writes^ (he has just quoted the passage from which I translated the above excerpts), "would it be rash to affirm that the constant vision of the sea served as inspiration and guide to Rodo's philosophic thought, by the sole process of transmuting the material ob- servation into a spiritual conception?" Such was Rodo's habit, as he himself has told us: "My imagination is of such cast that every material appearance tends to translate itself into an idea. Nature always speaks to me the lan- guage of the spirit." Surely enough, as we have seen, it is a divinity of the sea that Rodo invokes at the beginning of his masterwork. And was not Ariel himself somewhat of a sea sprite? Let us now follow, in outline, the rich content of the work in which the Uruguayan scholar entraps the elusive spirit of Proteus and compels him to yield a tithe of his fascinating lore. The great motto, as we have seen, is Reformarse es vivir, " Op. cit. Page 15. JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 211 — Sclf-rcncwal is Life. None more than Rodo realizes tlie compelling need for continual change; none more than he feels that life is not a definite, inalterahle result, hut a ^becoming. Is not this the negation of all that is static and reactionary'? Does not this principle, so easy to accept in theor)' and so difficult to countenance in practice, underly all progress? To Rodo, time is tlie greatest innovator, and hy that same token the ally of all change, which, whether we will or not, is ever going on within us. We may not heed ourselves, one might phrase it, hut our selves heed us. Each one of us is, successively, not one, but many. And these successive personalities, which emerge one from the other, offer themselves the rarest and most astonishing contrasts. And witliin us, nothing happens without a re- sult; everything leaves its trace. Our personalities are, then, in this constant flux, a "death whose sum is death; resurrections whose persistency is life. . . . We are the wake of the vessel whose material entity does not remain the same for two successive moments, because incessantly it dies and is reborn amid the waves; the wake, which is, not a persisting reality, but a progressive form, a succession of rhythmic impulses which act upon a constantly renewed object." We are, as it were, a vortex of incessant inner changes in an ocean of outer ones. And "he who lives rationally is he who, aware of the incessant activity of change, tries each day to obtain a clear notion of his internal state and of the transformations that have occurred in the objects that sur- round him, and in accordance with this knowledge . . . directs his thoughts and his acts." And here, at the very outset, the author comes upon a most important applica- 212 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE tion of his fecund principle to modem education, pointing out that one of our worst errors is the view that existence is divided into two consecutive and naturally separated parts, — that in which we learn and that in which we use the results of the accumulated knowledge. If life is a perpetual be- coming, it follows tha-t knowledge is a constant acquiring. "As long as we live, our personality is upon the anvil, . . . We must ivy, in the intellectual field, never to diminish or lose completely our interest, the child's curiosity, — that alertness of fresh ingenuous attention and the stimulus which is bom of knowing oneself ignorant since we are always that. . . ." That eternal youth which Rodo preached, and which he so well exemplified, is attained by the constant self-renewal without which life becomes worse than vegetative, sinking to the level of the mineral kingdom. Renovation, transformation, reintegration. "Is not this all the philosophy of action and life? Is this not life it- self, if by life we are to understand in the human sphere something other than the somnambulism of the animal and the vegetation of the plant?" / Rodo is an optimist, though not of the type represented / by Dr. Pangloss and his great-great-grandaughter Polly- anna. He sees, from the very multiplicity of our inner selves, ]the possibility of changing apparent failure or mis- fortune into a new orientation of our lives, the chance to obtain good out of evil. Nor is he content with cold coun- sel; patiently and with a readiness that attests his vast read- ing and retentive memory, he adduces example after ex- ample to sustain .his point, not to speak of secular parables that have passed into the anthologies for their illuminative beauty. There are so many latent powers within us, there JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 213 is such a wealth of spiritual reserves, that the frustration of any one power is compensated for by the discovery of an- other. Men cheated of a life of action (like Vauvcnar- gues) turn to fruitful contemplation; spirits opposed in their desire for diplomatic preferment (like Ronsard) de- velop poetic powers; a Prescott forced by illness to abandon the Forum becomes a glorious historian. Our self is an inexhaustible fund of potentialities. "Man of little faith, what do you know of that which dwells within you? . . ." Herein lies the fascination of our self-discovery, — the en- chantment of becoming our own Columbus. "Is there any- thing tliat interests you more than the discovery of what is within you and nowhere else: a land that was created for you alone; an America whose only possible discoverer is you yourself, without the need of fearing, in your gigantic design, either rivals to dispute your glory or conquerors to usurp your gain?" By this, however, Rodo does not mean sterile, morbid introspection, but fruitful contemplation, — he prefers Marcus Aurelius to Amiel. Thus we are aided to realize how many of our supposed personal beliefs are but the imposition of society; we are to strive, however, for the assertion of our true selves, without forgetting that originality, so-called, is but a returning of ideas to society, rather than a gift. The point is well worth dwelling upon. We call that liberty, that originality, genius, when it reaches a certain degree. But how often is "the contribution with which individual thought seems to bring new elements to the common horde in reality a restitution of ideas that have been slowly and silently absorbed! Even as one would be apt to judge, from outward appearances, that it is the rivers which supply the ocean with water, since they pour into it. 214 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE while it is the sea whence comes the water in which the rivers rise." A beautiful comparison and a true, which should make our "leaders" more humble and the flock more confident. In this philosophy of ego-culture there is little egotism; it is self, not selfishness, that Rodo is concerned with. The realization of our internal cosmos confronts him at every turn. "By a general law, a human soul may give of itself more than its consciousness believes and perceives, and much more than its will transforms into deed." In Peer Gynt the philosopher beholds the highest expression of the remorse that overtakes the spendthrift of personality. "Peer Gynt! Peer Gynt! You are a legion of legions!" The fluidity of self must form the basic principle of edu- cation, declares Rodo. "Any philosophy of the human spirit; any investigation into the history of man and peo- ples, any judgment upon a character, an attitude or a moral- ity; any proposal for education or reform, which does not take into account . . . this complexity of the moral per- son, may not flatter itself with the hope of truth or cer- tainty." Hence our contradictory natures (so well de- picted, says Rodo, in Shakespeare's characters) ; hence Rodo's own splendid tolerance in the vast, human sense of the word. Rodo realizes deeply that the soul of each of us is the sum of the souls of all our predecessors, back to countless generations. "All those who have passed from the reality of the world persist in you. . . . What is the mysterious mandate of the instinct that works in you without the inter- vention of your will and your consciousness, but a voice'] which . . . rises from the depths of an immemorial past JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 215 and compels you to perform an act preordained by the cus- toms of your ancestors?" It is out of these elements that wt* construct our pcrsotiality : the changes are often fore- casted by signs that we little heed or recognize at the time they first occur. No psychiatrist was ever more aware of the importance of the apparently least significant mental phenomena; our impulsiveness (so-called) possesses deep roots. No real understanding of our conscious selves is thus possible without some acquaintance with the sub- merged element. To Rodo there is no such thing as events great and small; all are potentially great. Did not the (light of birds (and what more poetically innocent than this?) determine the discovery of the North American con- tinent? And every act of ours, every thought, may be just such a flight. . . . A considerable part of the first half is devoted to the absorbing subject of human vocation, which the Uruguayan philosopher tenns "the consciousness of a determined apti- tude." Human aptitude is indeed an unfathomable well, as is shown by the Titans of the Renaissance. Yet if we may not all be Leonardos, how little of our garden do we cultivate! And in the matter of human potentialities Rodo is glowingly optimistic; we are all, so to speak, latent super- men, — not quite in the sense commonly attributed to Nietzsche's blond beast, but in the significance of a broadly developed, many-faceted personality. Rodo's lengthy argument on vocation should be studied not only by our so-styled vocational trainers (who, too often in practice, serve to stifle non-utilitarian gifts in favor of materialistic development) but by all teachers and parents. What a mine of suggestion there is in his anecdote about 216 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Pestalozzi, whose instructor could make no progress with him, "not suspecting surely that the bad pupil was destined to invent new and better" methods. Hence the need for fostering natural inclinations. It is difficult to believe the assertion of his friends that Rodo never loved ; for section LIV of the Motivos is devoted to an admirable exposition of Love as the motive power of art. "Love is the pole and the quintessence of sensibility, and the artist is sensibility incarnate." And further on: "He who loves is, in the intimate recesses of his imagina- tion, a poet and artist, althoufrh he may lack the gift of forming into a real and palpable work the divine spirit that possesses him." We have seen that Rodo has an intense and abiding faith in human capabilities, — that he does not tire of studying the methods of their cultivation and the reasons for their aber- ration; he has, too, a deep realization of how much talent, and even genius, is stifled by the harsh conditions of mod- em life. "How many forces capable of a lofty dynamism remain unknown, and are lost forever in the obscure depths of human society!" he exclaims, in lines that recall, at once, the imperishable beauty in which our own Gray has framed the same idea. "Is there a tliought more wortliy than this of deep, serious attention? . . ." And in the chaotic, opaque mass of tlie common people's spirit he thus sees, potentially, an excellent literature and a high art, a science impregnated with clarity, and tliousands of heroic battles, in such a manner that, according to the superb image of Tyndall, even the dramas of Shakespeare existed, like all things else, potentially in the nebulous haze of the world's beginnings. Is it not significant tliat every age JOSE ENRIQUE KODO 217 summons forth tlie heroes that it needs? Not that they arrivo in slcailv nnmbtM's, for "many more arc the seeds that the earth allows to go to waste than those it reeeives." \iul then this notable excerpt in whith the philosopher is a[ once humanist, scientist, conmioner and inspirer: "In tilt' eternal conflict which dt^tcrmines which shall be the chosen from the number that are called, since there is not ro.im lor all, the greater fitness or power prevails; superior- it\ triumphs and imposes its will; but this alone does not Svitisfy justice, for we still have to reckon with those who Avr among neither the chosen nor the called; those who may not even arrive at the arena of the contest, since they live in such conditions that tliey are unaware of their own selves or it is lorbidden them to bring forth the gold from tlitir own mine. And among these, ah! who knows whether there are not the first and the best?" . . . Consider the deep human sympathy this memorable pas- ture connotes. See how Rodo applies his philosophy of 1 -culture not alone to individuals but to society. Just as human personality is vibrant with countless potentialities, so is the social personality aquiver with innumerable latent gifts that never come to light. Much of this loss is inevit- able; much, however, is a direct effect of social and eco- nomic maladjustment. The cogent thinker carries his ideas into the realm of letters, witli the result that he perceives the folly of writers and personalities grouping themselves solely by "schools'* and thus achieving a false uniformity. Not for him the preceptive attitude of the taskmaster critic who seeks to teach the creative artist what to think and how to express it; he recognizes most explicitly the psychological root of such 218 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE "isms" as bristle in our forest of classification so densely that we cannot see the authors for the terminology. Pro- vided that the realism or the idealism, the subjectivity or impersonality of the author is a sincere, unforced, spontane- ous product, he would foster it most sympathetically. The mere imitator he with justice deplores, for such imitation is the very negation of personality. Such imitation should not be confused, however, with the natural attraction of kindred spirits to one another. It is surprising how, as Rodo develops his great theme, he manages to extract new meanings, new aspects, new ori- entations, from a simple statement that, when uttered, seems to demand little further elucidation. The fecundity of his central thought that self-reformation is life, thus mirrors the very fecundity of that self whose cultivation he preaches, — not the superficial self-culture of rapid cor- respondence courses, but a daily discovery of a new world within us. In the beauty of his diction and thought is a reflection of the author's own beauty; his was a life that discovered riches where others had seen only monotony. He was himself the best example of that "perfect and typ- ical exemplar of progressive life" which he mentions in section LXXXII, for "his philosophy is like the light of each dawn, a new thing, because it is born, not of a logical formalism, but from the living, seething bosom of a soul." Rodo was rightly the enemy of "schools" and "systems"; his dynamic philosophy is inconsistent with anything that attempts to place a seal upon human knowledge and activity, saying "Thus only is it, and this is all of truth"; he was that protean mentality of which he became the great expo-i JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 219 iicnt. Nor is liis niolhod an abstract one, dealmg in a pri- ori. The Motiios arc in a very vital sense a history of liiinian personality, — of the world's representative men. It is from the knowledge (and an intimate knowledge) of many lives in all ages that he evolved these notable thoughts. His Protcism, as tlie expression of man's unboundedly wealthy inner life, is nothing new; indeed, I am not certain that it is possible to place a finger on any specific passage in the Motiros and say "This is new." Is it even desirable? \\ hat is fresh, however, in Rodo, is the constant, patient delving into the personality, his examination of it from a liundred different angles, his renovation of ancient example, his transformation of the material into a self-revelation. His anxiety for self-renewal led him to consider the importance of travel. If self-reformation is life, travel is self-reformation. It serves to break us away from the roots that we naturally sink into our environment (and how the [)rotean master fears the immobility connoted in roots!) and to enrich our views. "The expatriation of voy- ages is therefore the supreme antidote for routine thought, for fanatic passion, for all manner of rigidity and blind- ness." Travelling, like solitude, is a method of with- drawal, which is so necessary for a summary of our inner state. Travel, too, (and this I consider a most important element in the protean philosophy of Rodo) leads to intel- lectual internationalism. Nations, like individuals, must know themselves to know each other; man is, at bottom, as Rodo asserts, "a citizen of the world." Is not the study of foreign literatures, too, a sort of mental travelling? The author is rich in examples of men whose travels have 220 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE wrought profound influence not only upon themselves but upon their generation, — Goethe, Gautier, Cervantes, Gib- bon, Irving. . . . Is it surprising, then, that Rodo should possess a protean conception of Truth? For truth itself, like life, is not a concrete entity, but a becoming; not a static measure but a dynamic force. Significantly enough, it was not truth, but love of truth, that Rodo sought to bring to his fellow man. In asserting the utility of a conviction or a belief as the guide of our will and our thought, he is characteristically careful to recall that such convictions or beliefs are not always present in some personalities, whereupon he adds, in italics, or a diligent and disinterested desire for truth that may guide our mind upon the road to acquiring them (i. e., conviction or belief.) There have been creative art- ists who have asserted that their very aimlessness is their goal; I am not sure that the paradox is an altogether futile one, but in all probability the Uruguayan would call such an "aim" the "sterile fatigue of a purposeless motion." Just as our ideas and acquisitions tend to crystallize about a certain conviction or belief (which should be the resultant and not the dictator of those ideas), so human aptitudes, though multiform within the same personality, are usually subordinated to a dominant gift. Alfonse the Learned, Dante, Raymond Lully and Leonardo da Vinci were all very versatile men, but it was the legislator who predominated in the first, the poet in the second, the philoso- pher in the third, and the painter in the last. Often one vocation suggests another; even hostile personal forces may be harmonized within the same individual or race; Rodo points out that primitive Christianity was thus born of a JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 221 ace in which the most fervent religious spirit was united > the finest economic lad. As usual, Rodo, whose interest J centered with untiring steadiness upon human beings nd not upon abstract principles, is plentiful in examples. Tiere is Wagner, in whom the literary faculty aided the lusical; there is Boito, poet and musician in one; there are ^eetiioven and Mozart, skilled alike as creators and inter- •reters; Plaulus, Shakespeare, Moliere, who could act as /ell as create. And Rodo is quite right when he flies in the ace of not only popular, but "intellectual" opinion, with ae assertion that ''it is a common error to imagine that the ift and energy of practice . . . inhibit or take away lower from the aptitude for theory." Here again he is ich in personal example of men gifted with both the cre- .tive and the critical powers. Does not all creation imply a form of criticism, — if not nconscious self-criticism? And is not criticism a form of reation? Indeed, do not many of our unsuspected powers ;o to waste, or rather, never rise to consciousness because ircumstances have never summoned them? I believe the Spanish people on both sides of the Atlantic furnish a triking proof of versatility called into being by necessity, low relatively often do we encounter, in one man, the poet, he statesman, tlie playwright, the journalist! May not his be due, in part, to the great percentage of illiteracv, md to the resulting fact that the various functions of the ntellectual life must be performed by the same few who lave received the advantages of an education? There are uch things as special gifts, of course; but there are in- ^nitely more gifts, special and general, that are submerged )eneath the waters of social and economic maladjustment. 222 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Rodo insists upon the potent influence of the unconscious, even when it never rises to the surface of the individual's consciousness. And returning to his theme of the direct- ing idea, — even, indeed, when that direction is vague, — he asks, in almost Tennysonian phraseology, whether, as a directive power in life, the absence of love is of more value than love devoted to one who is unworthy of inspiring it.^ "Let me gaze into the depths of your soul and see in what direction your love points, and I will tell you . . . whither you are going over life's paths, and what is to be expected of you in your thoughts and your works." He recognizes, too, the great releasing power of love as a liberator of ideas and acts, and that frequently it "triumphs over the inferiority of the object." Such a lover, then, is really in love with an ideal rather than with the real object, and it is the ideal tliat is his compass. The philosopher insists, then, upon the crystallization of thoughts around a central idea, whether that be love, a con- viction, or a belief. "How many a fecund thought, how many a happy invention, how many a new truth or new beauty, a victory for good, an amelioration in the condition of man has not Humanity lost in this manner!" (i. e. through lack of adhesion to a central thought-power). Even bootless search may prove fruitful in by-products, so to speak, so long as the guiding impulse is tliere. We must subject our ideas to a continual test in the light )|f of our new knowledge ; if they do not survive that test they * Far be it from me to intrude psycho-analysis into these studies. But, since Rodo's friends have noted that he never had a love affair, may not some of his lines, as here summarized, indicate that he had suffered a dis- appointment, whence he had sought to draw consolation? For one who * f3 has never loved, Rodo ascribes far too much potency to the passion. JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 223 nust disappear. Unwillingness to change is, in reality, |ilienation of personality. Nor does Rodo fear the cry of 'Apostate! Traitor!" For well he knows that "there is lo human creed that has not originated in an inconsistency, in infidelity. The dogma that is today a sacred tradition ,^as at its birth a heretic piece of daring. In abandoning t to attain to your truth, you do but follow the example of he master who, in order to founil it, broke the authority of he idea which in his day was dogma. . . ." Here we lave not only one of the noblest passages from a writer rich in such nobility, but one of the pivotal principles of lis entire philosophy. Is not this eternal heterodoxy which, none the less, may not be termed extremism because jf its deep sense of evolution) the fruit of Rodo's intense relief in the necessity of self -renewal? Is it not a natural jorollary of his conception of trutli, no less than life, as a becoming? From his beautiful parable of La Despedida le Gorgas (Gorgas's Farewell; section CXXVII of the Mo- ivos de Proteo) we may transcribe that master's words and nake them Rodo's own: "I was to you a master of love; I lave tried to impart to you the love of truth; not truth, vhich is infinite." Like the psychologist he was, Rodo mew Uiat beliefs may be abandoned, yet they leave some- hing of themselves behind. We are what we were, as well iS what we are. And when we are assailed by doubt — if ve are strong — that doubt is neither "epicurean idleness lor affliction or dejection, — it is the forerunner of a reinte- pration" — the germ of -a new truth. But the new truth must proceed farther than sterile cere- •ration; it must be translated into action. "It is not the ruth or the error Uiat convinces you which reforms your 224 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE soul; it is the truth and the error that impassion you." And more succinctly: "Reality is not a cold tablet upon which are inscribed sentences, but a live, palpitant engen- dering of feeling and action." Rodo's philosophy, of course, implies the utter negation of a false consistency, which many mistake for firmness of character. He would see no knighthood in the knight of whom it was written that "faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." He knows, too, the frequent intervention of accident in what we call virtue and vice. Paraphrasing a noted figure in English theology, he might well have said upon beholding a criminal led to the scaffold, "There, but for the grace of God, goes Jose Enrique Rodo." For this reason Rodo has no sympathy with the "uplift" nature of so much social education ; herein, too, lies the in- spirational character of his teachings, — or rather his sug- gestions. If Hope is his compass, Will (with the renewed consciousness of our manifold possibilities) is the vessel that carries us to the goal, and the first object upon which this will is applied is our own personality. Our wills, as our aptitude, may be dormant. Self-renewal unceasingly, — self-renewal of personality and of that group of personalities called a nation; therein lies the essence of the Uruguayan's philosophy, which, when carried to its logical conclusion (conclusion is too definite a word for so dynamic a conception) must inevitably lead to that international mind which corresponds to a full devel- opment of personality. Rodo hinted at such a mind, but did not develop die thought. The Uruguayan philosopher has been compared to Em-i| erson. Is not Rodo's masterpiece in a sense a vast araplifi- JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 225 cation of tlie essay upon Self -Reliance? Is not the great New Englaniler equally jealous of the seal of personality? "It is easy in the wDrkl to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; hut tlie great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Have we not here the essence of purpose that actuated Rodo's words about solitude and travel and the harmony of their teachings in the man of true originality? Is tliere not in Self-Reli- ance that same scorn of a false consistency? Has not Emerson in six words written what might well serve as the motto of the Motivos? ''Live ever in a new day." Does he not likewise declaim against the worship of the past? "The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and maj- esty of the soul." And nearer still to the essence of Rodo's entire system, long before tliat Bergson from whom Rodo is said to have received his suggestion: ''This one fact the world hates, that the soul beqomes (the italics are Emer- son's) ; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty; all reputation to a shame; confounds the saint with tlie rogue; shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside." Allowing for differences of style and Rodo's lack of the Emersonian vehemency, the resemblance is, to say the least, most striking. "Every new mind is a new classification." . . . '"Insist on yourself; never imitate." Of course such resemblance by no means implies iden- tity of thought or purpose. The resemblance may even be merely verbal. Yet Rodo's implications are far-reach- ing. He gives us, in that masterwork, not so much a fund of thought as a well of inspiration; not so much a goal as a direction; not so much a body as a spirit. This he achieves 226 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITEIL\TURE not by preaching but by furnishing abundant example; he fertilizes our personalities, so to speak, with the rich soil of others. The Motivos de Proteo should be known in every language and should form part of every educational system. 3. El Mirador De Prospero The collection of articles that goes under the title Through Prospefo's Window is valuable as casting light upon Rodo's application of his personality to the matters of the intellectual as well as to the political world. There has been some word of censure, I believe, about Rodo's having inserted a political essay in the collection; such political activity, which arose from the master's sense of duty to his nation, was in conformity with his own call for something more than pure thinking, — for the translation of action into thought. There are so many retrogressive or stagnant spirits in contemporary life who can tolerate or even applaud the dynamic conceptions which a man ex- presses in his poetry or his other creative literature, but who, when they find him intent upon bringing them about in reality, are seized with concern or dismay. Rodo was not what we could call a conservative; on the other hand, he was by no means an extremist; is was not in his nature to be extreme. His political views, aptly stated in a notable essay upon labor conditions in Uruguay, show his ten- dency to be a progressive one, — not so much socialistic (like Chocano's poetic internationalism and Blanco-Fom bona's active socialism) as patient reform. Yet, as wr shall soon note from an examination of the speech — whicl forms, in El Mirador de Prospero, an illuminative excep- JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 227 tion amid the more purely literary discussions — it is as iiuich a matter of patience, or time, as anything el-^e, that separates Kodo from his confreres. Besides, he was think- ing in terms of Uruguay. For the rest, we have noted in him a continental aspiration that is a logical step toward the international spirit. Had he lived to complete his AV/r Motircs of Proteus,^" who knows what changes he would have brought back from his trip to Europe at a time when an old world and an old economic system were crumb- ling in the fires of a vast crucible? The sights that Prospero beholds through his window comprise a varied yet unified panorama. The advantage of such a collection (organic only in the sense that it is composed of views as seen by a singularly composed and ordered spirit) is that tiie window may be closed at will, and our looking resumed whenever we please. Or, to quote tlie epigraph, from Taine: "J'aime, je I'avoue, ces sortes de livres. D'abord on pent jeter le volume au bout de vingt pages, commencer par la fin, ou au milieu; vous n'y eles pas serv^iteur, mais maitre; vous pouvez le traiter comme journal ; en effet, c'est le journal d'un esprit." And- in fact, these selections from Rodo's journalistic labors are in the best sense a "journal of a spirit." There are such sterling essays as that on Bolivar, on Juan Carlos Gomez, on Juan Maria Gutierrez and his epoch (an account that is indispensable to all who would understand the ori- gins of "literary Americanism" as well as the native contri- bution of Spanish America to Castilian letters,) on Samuel 1" Incomplete, and not yet published. A collection of articles written in I Europe, under the title El Camino de Paros, was published in 1918 in Valencia, bv the Editorial Valencia. 228 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Blixen, and other important literary figures of the conti- nent; there are inimitable cameos expressive of his attitude toward art, — its inspiration and its problems; there are re- views of novels and dramas that embody valuable state- ments; there are impressionistic gems, sheer poetry of thought, such as the piece on the sea which was quoted at the beginning. And wafting through every paragraph is the spirit of an Ariel, a Proteus, a Prospero. It is not only the beauty of language and thought that attracts one to Rodo, it is the beauty of his attitude; as much as what he says, as much a^ how he says it, is his outlook upon the world of thought and action, so truly symbolized in the ever-chang- ing yet constant sea. It is not necessary to analyze the book in detail. I shall choose just enough to complete an adequate knowledge of the harmonious personality, — ^his political views, his atti- tude toward the continental dream of Bolivar (a more than political question, implying all the spiritual outgrowths of an economic substructure), his beautiful cameos that seem the embodiment of a lyric intellec^^ Rodo's Del Trabajo Obrero en el Uruguay reveals him as a deep student of practical, world-wide problems. He is too well versed in economics to accept the shallow notion, promulgated by many politicians for purposes best known to themselves, that the struggle between capital and labor is a product of this age; he sees that our age intensified rather than originated that antagonism. He is also suffi- ciently cognizant of environmental influences to shun fiat legislation in favor of laws that take into account specified national conditions as well as general revolutionary aims.' Speaking for Uruguay, in which the acute problems of JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 229 capitalism and the proletariat had not yet appeared, he favored a social prophylaxis, — measures destined to antici- pate future contingencies. Altliougli his view of capital is, to many contemporary tliinkers, conservative, none was more aware that the interests of society are deeply hound up with justice to the lahorer, — a justice that has all too often been largely verbal or promissory. Students of our labor problems, especially of the length of the working day, will find excellent data in Rodo's speech, from which they may draw conclusions not entirely in consonance with those of tlie speaker. Rodo scores a good point when he indicates that terms like individualism and socialism, rather than antagonistic, are harmonious and complementary, just like authority and liberty, right and duty. He is very sensitive to the harm being worked by the exploitation of the toiler, — and insists that his moral as well as physical interests must be rigor- ously guarded. He is alive to the fallacy of the so-called "freedom of contract" — a fallacy into which many of our own workingmen have been led by some of our highest officials, themselves deceived or deceiving. "The op- pressed laborer to whom is granted the right to liberate himself (i. e., from his work) is not a slave; but if that flight or liberation which is conceded to him as a right is to him equivalent to hunger and death, what difference is there between his condition and that of a slave, unless it be the emptiness of a name?" And it might have been expected from the author of Ariel that his views upon child labor would be more enlightening than those which characterize our own ostensibly civilized mill-owners. Nor is Rodo's argument a "sentimental" one (have we really done with 230 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE sentimentality?) ; he regards the matter in the light of the nation's vital energies. Is not, after all, every victory for the ideal a practical victory as well, w^hen viewed in the broad light of universal welfare? Rodo wastes no time, similarly, with "woman's place is the home," — a slogan that sounds with such ill grace from the lips of so many of our own employers who, because of cheaper labor, have done their share to draw woman from that hypothetical hearth of domestic felicity. He knows that woman is in industry and that, like the child, she is being exploited physically, mentally, economically; with his ever-present sense of the future, he realizes the dangers to the race aris- ing from maltreatment of woman in industry; he pleads (to think that it should be necessary in the twentieth cen- tury!) for the official recognition of maternity among indus- trial workers, with compensatory privileges of adequate rest. Finally, as one would have foreseen from a study of Motives de Proteo, he reminds us — and how often we need the reminder, who enact laws that enslave us in their perpetuity, though they are but the creatures of our own very fallible selves — that "laws are rectifiable," and that they may be changed in the light of new knowledge. Rodo's speech is a thorough, sincere study of an all- important topic. He shows evidence of deep delving, and presents his opinions with a clarity and directness remark- able for a politico-economic essay. There are the same even style, broad humanity, fairness, tolerance that distin- guish everything he wrote. Before such a master as this, economics ceases to be the "dismal science" that abysmal ^ stylists have made it; it acquires, in fact, something of "la JOSE ENRIQUE R0D6 231 gaie science" itself! One need by no means assent to Rodo's premises or to all of his conclusions to see that his methoil of approach and his attitude are eniineiUly prefer- able to the insincere "radicalism" of the present day so fre- quently encountered in "labor leaders" and large em- ployers alike. Wherever he went, Roilo shed a soft, warm glow. In life, in speech, in thought, his was the golden medium; and if, at times, he did not advance far enough to please some of us. we should recognize that his medium was none die less golden. For evidence of his intense Hispano-Americanism one need but open the works of Rodo almost at random. El Mirador de Prospero teems with an ardent Spanish-Amer- icanism, — diere is now and then evident (see the paper on La Espana Nina) a certain Pan-Hispanism such as has been current in recent literature. In a speech delivered in Chile on October 8, 1905, upon the occasion of the return to the country of Juan Carlos Gomez's remains, he concluded with the significant declara- tion that "the idea of the fatherland is a lofty one; but among the peoples of Latin America, amid this living har- mony of nations bound by all the ties of tradition, race, institutions and language, such as were never presented by the history of the world in such union and comprising so vast an extent, we may well say that there is something loftier than the idea of nation, and that is, the idea of America; the idea of America conceived as a great and imperishable unity, as a glorious, vast fatherland, with its heroes, its educators, its tribunes; from the gulf of Mexico to the sempiternal ice of the South. "Sarmiento, Bilbao, Marti, Bello and Montalvo are not 232 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the writers of one or another part of America, but they are rather the citizens of (Spanish) American intellect- uality." Is this not a species of super-patriotism? Is this not, if not internationalism, at least intemationism? And by a lofty and logical expansion of the patriotic conception, is it not possible to reach an allegiance that embraces tlie world of humanity? To return, however, to Rodo: in Magna Patria he declares succinctly tliat "tlie fatherland of Spanish Americans is Spanish America. Within the feeling for one's nation resides the not less natural and indestructible sense of allegiance to one's province, region, district ; and provinces, regions or districts of that great Patria of ours are the na- tions into which it is divided politically. For my part, I have always so understood it, or rather, I have always so felt it. The political unity which this moral unity conse- < crates and incarnates — Bolivar's dream — is still a dream' the realization of which, perhaps, today's generations will not witness. What does that matter! Italy was not merely I Metternich's 'geographical expression' before Garibaldi's i sword and Mazzini's apostolate constituted it into a political ii expression. It was the idea, the numen of the fatherland, ii the fatherland itself consecrated by all the holy oil of tra- dition, justice and glory. United, personal Italy already; existed; less corporeal, but not less real; less tangible, but 50 not less vibrant and intense than when it assumed color and outline upon the map of the nations." And in La Espafia Nina: "I have never felt a doubt as to the future of this America bom of Spain. I have ever believed that in (Spanish) America, the genius of Spain, | Ai JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 233 and the most subtle essence of its genius, which is its Ian- age, possesses the firm bridge over whicli it will cross 1! • streams of the centuries. ..."... "My American p: i(l( — which is pride of land, and is, moreover, pride of race — is satisfied with nothing less than the assurance that the distant house, whence comes the escutcheon chiselled "It upon the door to my owii, will remain ever standing, ly firm, very beautiful and highly revered." ... "I have thus habituated myself to effacing from my imagina- tion the common image of an old, decrepit Spain, and to associate, with die idea of Spain, ideas of childhood, future, hope." Nor is Rodo's optimism strained. The current i(h\i that old Spain is decrepit becomes ridiculous in the ii^ht of its unceasing intellectual foment. Economically, — tliat is another question; but Cervantes wrote Don Quix- ote in poverty. . . . The short article upon I bero- America is important not only for its hint of a Portuguese- American and Spanish- American entente (beautifully symbolized in the Amazon and the La Plata rivers) but also for its contribution to a question of terminofogy that has only lately caused dis- cussion in Spain and in America. It will be noticed, in the excerpt quoted above from Rodo's speech on Juan Carlos Gomez, that he employed the term "Latin America"; the term, it seems, is a new one, and not at all to the liking of many Hispanophiles. The outlines of the arguments against the name "Latin America" and in favor of some such term as "Hispanic" or "Spanish" or even "Ibero- America" may be summed up as follows: 1. The adjective Latin as used in the objectionable term properly applies to the group of tongues and peoples de- 234 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITEIL\TURE rived from ancient Latium. In such a sense the word em- braces not only Spain and Portugal, who were chiefly re- sponsible for the colonization, civilization and Christian- ization of South America and Central America, but also France, Italy and Rumania, — countries which had little or nothing to do with the republics that have sprung up from the Spanish and Portuguese roots in the Western hemi- sphere. The use of the adjective Latin, then, works an injustice upon the mother countries by implying credit to France and Italy as well, and sinking Spanish and Portu- guese identity in the common term Latin. If it be argued that the linguistic basis surely is Latin, the opponents come back, quite properly, with the answer that proceeding on linguistic lines, the United States and Canada might be spoken of as Teutonic America — a term tlie falsity of which is at once evident. 2. The terms Spanish America and Spanish-American have been used for the past four centuries ; historically they are correct; they have been sanctified by usage. Why substitute an intruder like Latin America which has come to life only during the past ten years, partly through the desire of certain Latin countries to receive credit where it is not due them? 3. If it be objected that Spanish America seems to leave out Brazil, where the language spoken is Portuguese, the proponents reply that the term Spanish or Hispanic has long been recognized as including both Spanish and Por- tuguese; that so notable a Portuguese as Almeida Garrett has argued in its favor, and that Rodo has shown that the word Spanish is a geographical name originally, not one of nationality or political import. Rodo, too, asserts, in JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 235 the same paragraphs upon Ibero- America, that Almeida Garii'tt, the great national poet of Portugal, believed that the Portup:uese, without jin>jiidice to their independent spirit, eould call lhem:^elves Spaniards. It will be seen, then, that Rodo suggested the corrective to his own use of the objectionable term. But has a really salisfactor\' tenn Ik^i reached? Does "Hispanic Amer- ica" really fill the bill? Or "Spanish America?" Or even "Ibero-America"? The proponents of the new terms (and we may agree at once that the old term is somewhat of a misnomer) must recognize that there is certain to be confusion; Professor Elspinosa, the editor of Hispania, suggests that when Brazil is meant to be included the general term Hispanic America be used, while for the Spanish republics, Spanish America be employed. In support of his stand for "Hispanic" he points to the use of the word in its Spanish-Portuguese meaning as a name for historical reviews, school series, the Hispanic Society of America, and so on. It will be noted that all these cases are closely allied to scholarship rather than to popular usage. It is at this point that Espinosa and those who side with him will encounter trouble, if not opposition. There is no doubt that a good case is made out against the use of the adjective Latin in the designation. The characterization is too broad, too inclusive; this holds true whether any na- tions are trying to belittle the part played by Spain and Portugal or not. But the very reason for the growing prominence of this inadequate, misleading and unjust ad- » jective is also the reason why, in all probability, Espinosa's substitution or restitution of Hispanic or Spanish America, 236 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE will not find favor with the man in the street. And the man and woman in the street are to be considered if scholar- ship is to be anything more than a close intellectual corpora- tion. After all, no scholar would be for a moment in doubt as to what Latin America stood for, any more than a silver expert would imagine that German silver was actually pure silver from Germany. The use of "Latin America" origin- ated through a desire to distinguish between Brazil and the Spanish-speaking republics, and at the same time have a designation to cover them as a whole. "South America" is inadequate because inexact; it leaves out Central Amer- ica. Spanish America will not do, except for the scholar, who does not need it in the first place. To the average man and woman, regardless of four centuries of usage and of the historical connotations imbedded in the word, Spanish will mean pertaining to Spain. The same, in less degree, holds true for Hispanic, which, though more clearly inclusive of both Spain and Portugal, and used so by scholars, signifies Spanish to the average person, if it is ever used by that average person. "Ibero-America" might do, even if it does seem at first "high-brow" ; etymologically it is fully as good as Hispanic. And in regard to the term Spanish, as applied to both Brazil and the Spanish-speaking countries, it does not seem to have occurred to its defenders that, de- spite Almeida Garrett, to more tlian one Portuguese it might sound just as exclusive of Portuguese rights as the term Latin seems to the aforementioned defenders inappre- ciative of the efforts of Spain and Portugal together. For our present purpose, however, it is of greater im- portance to point out that Rodo's admirable little essay. is more than an argument about terminology; it is another JOSt ENRIQUE RODO 237 i-[)ect of his continental Uiouglit, — thought becoming truly niilinental in its embracing of a sister language and a sis- 1 1 civilization." 01 Pan-Anicricanisni, as \vc undcrstaiui it, there is little 3r none in Rodo. He does not underestimate us, but he feels strongly tliat imitation of us would run counter to raditional inheritances. Indeed, he is the avowed enemy )f imitation in every field, for as we may have divined iiiiu tlie lips of Proteus, mere imitation is the negation of ui-onality, national as well as individual. A better mu- ual understanding there well could be, — an understanding n which imitation need play no part, and one of the results )f which should be an advantageous cross-fertilization. ! Of the charmingly beautiful literary cameos in which j »i There is an easy way out of the matter. Why not be content to speak l)f Spanish America and Portuguese America? These designations mean i'xactly what they say; they are readily seized by the scholar and the aver- ige person alike; they require no knowledge of etymology, history, or lational jealousies. They are ideal terminologies, because they explain at he same time as they name. And while we are waiting for an ideal term hat shall include, at the same time, both the Spanish and the Portuguese elements of this hemisphere, will not someone arise and call to our atten- ion the complacent use we of the North make of the word American? For the rest of the continent, as well as all of the land south of the Isth- nus of Panama, is filled with Americans — of the South, to be sure, but \mericans none the less. The same state of affairs, reversed, might be railed to the attention of the other Americans, by whom the word '■.\mer- cano" is rarely meant, of course, to include us. Philology, too. it would seem, has its irredentists in the land of words, "or that reason it may be worth while, in most friendly spirit, to call to the tttention of Professor Espinosa that the quarterly which he edits — a fine nagazine that deserves to grow rapidly — is called Hispania: A Quarterly fournal Devoted to the Interests of Teachers of Spanish, etc. Not teach- ers of Spanish and Portuguese, you will notice. Now, when intellectual ioumals use the word Hispania in their titles to denote something exclu- jively Spanish, how can one reasonably expect its Spanish-Portuguese Tieaninp to become current among teachers, let alone the average man and it'oman ? 238 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Rodo is so rich, I shall translate two in full. The first re- 1 veals Rodo as a lover of formal beauty; the second initiates us into one of the most peculiar qualities of his style, — a certain religious hush that comes over lonely landscapes at twilight. From the Geste of Form we may easily gather an adequate notion of Rodo's verbal punctiliousness that would seem to modify the statement of some of his friends that his writings leaped full-grown from the forehead of the ^ great Uruguayan. Struggle there certainly was, though it I may not have been visible in the scrawls and scratches of the agonizing sheets that make the author's labor such a joy — and such a torture. THE GESTE OF FORM "What a prodigious transformation is that undergone by words meek and inert in the flock of common style, when they are convoked and commanded by the genius of ar artist. . . . From the very moment in which you desire tc make an art, — a plastic and musical art — of expression, you sink into it a spur that arouses all its rebellious im pulses. The word, a living, wilful being, looks at you ther from the nib of the pen, which pricks it in an attempt tc subject it; it disputes with you, compels you to meet it it possesses a soul and a physiognomy. Revealing to you in its rebellion, all its innermost content, it often oblige: you to return to it the freedom of which you desired t( deprive it, and to summon another, which comes, coyb and sullenly, to the yoke of steel. And diere are time in which the battle of these diminutive monsters exalts an< exhausts you like a desperate struggle for fortune an< JOSE ENRIQUE R0D6 239 ■ honor. All the voluptuousness of heroism is contained in this unknown contest. You feel alternately the intoxication of the conqueror, the qualms of the timorous, the wrathful exaltation of the wouiuletl. You understand, before the docility of a phrase that falls conquered at your feet, the ' savage cry of triumph. You learn, when the scarcely grasped form escapes you, how it is that the anguish of failure enters the heart. Your whole organism vibrates like the earth atremble with the crashing palpitation of battle. As upon the field where the struggle took place, I there remain afterward the signs of the fire that has passed, in your imagination and in your nerves. Upon the black- ened pages you leave something of your being and of your life. — What, besides this, is worth the complacent spon- taneity of him who opposes no personal resistance to the affluence of the colorless, unexpressixe phrase, no proud in- tractibility to the rebellion of the word which refuses to give up its soul and its color? . . . For the struggle with style shtjuld not be confused with llie cold pertinacity of rhetoric, which adjusts painstakingly, in the mosaic of its conventional correctness, words that have not been mois- tened by the warm breath of the soul. This would be to compare a game of chess with a combat in which blood flows and an empire is at stake. The struggle for style is an epic which has as its field of action our innermost nature, the I deepest profundities of our being. The poems of war do not speak to you of strength more superb, of carnage more cruel, nor, in victory, of jubilation more lofty or divine. . . . Oh, formidable, beautiful Iliad! Iliad of the heart of artists, from whose unknown combats are bom into the world joy, enthusiasm and light as from the heroism and 240 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AiMERICAN LITERATURE the blood of the true epics! You should some time have been written, so that, narrated by one of those who bore you witliin him, there would endure in you the testimony of one of the most moving human emotions. And your Homer might have been Gustave Flaubert." Is that not a page which Flaubert himself would have enjoyed? It was such external beauty (and is it really external when made, as in the case of Rodo, an organic part of thought?) that our author cast about the beauty of his ideas. By no means is this an idle dallying with style in its re- stricted sense. It is the worship of a silent prayer. And just as Rodo's verbal battles were a mute Iliad, so was his deep apprecation a speechless wonder. How eloquently has has expressed this silence in Los Que Callan! THOSE WHO ARE SILENT "One of the deepest feelings of respect I have ever ex- perienced in the world, is that which is produced upon me by a certain lineage of spirits, — certainly very rare, and difficult to recognize without having been received into their most chosen intimacy; a certain lineage of spirits who unite to an infallible, perfect, aristocratic sense of beauty in matters of Art, the absolute disinterestedness with which they silently profess their cult, immune to all stimulus of vanity, all purposes of criticism or creation, all simoniac greed for fame. They understand the work of art in its most delicate shades, with that fulness of intelligence and sympathy which is a second creation; they are the ideal, reader or spectator of which the artist has dreamed; they JOSt ENRIQUE RODO 241 offer up thoir entire soul in the religious sacrifice of the artistic emotion, in that absolute immolation of tlie person- ality whence the mysticism of Art lakes its origin. Tliey retain within them the perennial echo in which is prolonged tJie true, original accent of the poet and wliich the crowd perceives only in disturbed and incomplete fashion, — the cr>'stal clear reflection in which is reproduced, with the matutinal freshness of creative inspiration, the image of the painting or the statue. They compensate for triumph- ant, noisy vulgarity; for inferior boasts; for abominable snob ism. They cherish, in the cal?n and sheltered recess of tlicir devoted memory, names and works which the in- justice and the indolence of an epoch have condemned to common oblivion. For them the lie stamped upon the false coin of renown and glory has no currency. Within their secret disdain, animated by a serene and terrible certainty, they bear the hell whence those w^ill not be able to escape who attain success by committing crimes against beauty, against taste, against noble pride. And they keep silent. . . . And they pass through the world with an indifferent, almost common appearance. And as in tlie chapel of a mysterious, proscribed cult, they conceal, within their deep- est self, the tabernacle of this ideal love, which beautifi.es the myster>' like the modesty of a sweetheart. '*Do you doubt that such souls exist? ... I have come to know some, after having known only the opaque film that veiled them from my sight. And ever since I have discovered them their presence dominates me, subjects me with the sense of a superiority that I do not recognize, so Mmperious and of such high character is it, either in the creative artist whom I most admire or in the magisterial 242 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE wisdom that inspires me with most respect. For these souls of celestial silence are the only ones who have given me the complete intuition of how much there is that is vulgar and petty in all this struggle for notoriety, this sensualism of admiration and applause, — the coarse alloy that we of the literary comedy compound with the gold of our ideality of love and beauty. Only they know how to love you, Beauty, as you, oh Goddess, deserve to be loved! In the company of these souls I am overwhelmed by I do not know what noble shame of being an author, a profes- sional writer. And when I return to this task, they com- prise the unknown and unknowable public that most exalts and most tortures me. To this public I commend myself, with an austere and melancholy hope, as one who commends^ himself to the justice of a posterity that he will never be- hold, whenever I believe that a word of mine has not been understood in all its virtue and beauty; when a creature of my imagination has not found the loving bosom to receive it. And it is of this public that I think, filled widi an innermost disquietude, — as if anguished with the impossi ble desire of learning the truth from the lips of a marblt god, — when applause and praises v/ish to persuade me tha something good and beautiful has blossomed from my sou! "Ah, how many of these self-denying monks of beaut] pass you by without your recognizing them; perhap; scorned by you. . . . Perhaps there is one of them in tha indeterminate, colorless spectator who occupies his chair ii the theatre, not far from yours, applauding as much as th rest, assenting with trivial remarks to his neighbor's con: ments, being lost in the crowd as it leaves. Perhaps anolhe is hidden behind the mask of that traveler who, with th JOSE ENRIQUE KODO 243 appearance of a merchant, reads, opposite your seat in tlie train, a hook that may he a Bacih^kcr guiik- as well as a pot>m hy W ilile or a novel hy d'Annunzio. Perhaps you will discover still another in that fellow whom popular opinion — cruel irony! — judges as an unsuccessful poet, ii'cling deep disdain for his impotence; for it does not know his premature renunciation was spontaneous and most lofty ri'Iigiosity,'" and that in his aversion toward speaking of , art with those who were his rivals and friends there is only the delicacy of a transfigured sensihility and the conscious- ness of a stranger's solitude. ... In one or another dis- I'liise, they pass in tlieir irrevocable silence. And this si- li nee is neither humility nor pride. It is simply the com- plete possession of a boon that carries its end and its recom- pense within itself, and for this reason contains itself within t - own amplitude, without aspiring to break its bonds im- petuously; like die wine which, when it has matured, forgets the restlessness and the seedlings of fermentation, or like the -plendor of die serene night which, ecstatic in the soft glory of its lights does not publish it with the flashes of the light- , nins; or the music of the sun." This is one of the fundamental passages in Rodo; it gives us to behold in him just such a silent potent figure as he , speaks of, — just such a hushed worshipper of beauty as he describes. It is, in the original at least, an excellent ex- ample of a musical, suggestive, luminous prose that pro- I duced, in the words of one of his chief commentators,^^ "pages of so radiant a serenity that they inspire the same melancholy as days that are too beautiful." '2 ^lay this contain a hint as to Rodo's own early renunciation of poetry? •'Conzalo Zaldumbide, in Mercurc de France, July 16, 1917. 244 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE The ethical aspect of Rodo's work has been succinctly treated by Pedro Henriquez Urena in a lecture given be- fore the Ateneo de Mexico on August 22, 1910, and since reprinted in several Spanish publications. Sefior Henri- quez Urena considers that Rodo's great originality consists "in having joined the cosmological principle of creative evolution to the ideal of a standard of action for life." Much of Rodo is in Bergson, as it is in Goethe and many before him. This lay mystic is "of the family of Epic- tetus, and of Plutarch, of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, Luis de Leon, Raimonde Sebonde, Emerson, Ruskin, — the family over w^hich, sheltering it with one of his archangel's wings, the divine Plato presides." The most searching critique of Rodo's achievement is from the pen of Gonzalo Zaldumbide, in the Revue His' panique, (XLIII, 103, June, 1918, pp. 205-307). Seiior Zaldumbide's discussion is a wholesome corrective for the excessive praise that has been heaped upon the great Uru- guayan, although the critic's anxiet)^ not to overestimate Rodo leads him, I believe, to miderestimate such a cap- ital work as the Motives de Proteo. When he says that Rodo brought no new thoughts, and that his work will en- dure chiefly because of its language, he is on the whole right. But did Rodo aim to bring new thoughts? Was it not the love of truth, not truth, that Rodo aimed to instil? And is not Rodo's insistence upon continuous change new in its implications, and of necessity so? "The book (i.e., Motivos de Proteo) to which he desired to impart above all a dynamic virtue, a guiding impulse, becomes a static book, motionless in its perfection," writes Zaldumbide. But this, is little more than a play on words. Rodo's book is dy- JOSE ENRIQUE RODO 245 naniic, by virluo of" the sense of necessity for continuous growth whicli it instils. Nor is there any greater value to the critic's objection that only those who do not need that sense in tlie first i)laee, will be benefited by the dvnaniic view. For Rodo will penetrate to those who need his dy- namic ethics through tliosc others whose sense of the neces- sity for chan<;e has been quickened, if not inculcated, by the Motiios. Rodo was in a very true sense an inspircr, not a dogmatist. "If he proved the necessity and the po- etry of an ideal, he imposed no ideal as the true one, to the exclusion of others," objects Zaldumbide. But this would have been opposed to Rodo's cardinal tenet of the self-de- termination of personality, so to speak. There is more force to Zaldumbide's objection that Rodo "limited the drama of our destiny to the immediate problem of voca- tion. '■ Yet the Motivos contain the corrective to their own limitations, because of their indubitably dynamic effect. No one who wishes to know the complete Rodo may do with- out Zaldumbide's deeply penetrative study. Radiance, serenity, an insight that is none the less clear for its depth, classic repose combined with a dynamic con- ception of modernity, eternal intellectual youth — these are the distinguishing attributes of a power whose influence should not be confined to the Spanish tongue. CHAPTER IV JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO (1875-^) During the lifetime of Dario, Jose Santos Chocano was looked upon by many as his rival; after the death of the great Nicaraguan, the Peruvian was proclaimed his suc- cessor, although that distinction is by no means an undis- puted one. We may well afford to leave that particular matter to the politics of art. The two men were not rivals; it is enough to read Dario's generous poetic introduction to Santos Chocano's Alma America to dispel that notion. They were, in a great measure, complementary personali- ties, although one need not go so far (as has been done) as to pronounce Dario the feminine element and Chocano the masculine. \ In Chocano we find but a trace of the doubt that constantly assailed Dario during his agitated, neurotic career; in him we find nothing at all of the morbidity tliat consumed the author of Cantos de Vida y Esperanza. In this respect the Peruvian more resembles Marti and Blanco- Fombona; it would seem that a life of action in rebellion against political and economic institutions did not leave these spirits time for morbid introspection. We shall find in Chocano, too, a certain change of at- titude toward the United States, although it is not untem- pered by fear and veiled threat. He possessed, from tlie very first, an international outlook that was not limited to 246 JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 247 mere book reatliiigs, and that did not confine itself to ar- I Stic chaiinols. II" Dario was a vibrant lyre, Chorano is a riii!';inp; l)oll, a blasting; trumpet; look over liis \vritinp!;s from lis earliest jirotesls, wliicli landed him in the regulation t.ishioM bihintl the prison bars of an unfeeling tyrant, through to die very latest, and you will find a singular predominance of the exclamation point; the fact is sym- bolic of a large part of his proud, sonorous, arrogant, poly- plionic utterances. He is as much bard as poet, — as much (•j)ic as lyric, — as much universal as more restrictedly \incrican in the Spanish sense. And through all his la- irs, early and late, is evident a strange duality of mood, (ii.;liii)k and expression. He is at once, as we have seen, ej)ie and lyric; he seeks to reconcile the old Spain with its former colonies; to bring about a certain Pan-AjCQ£ rican i^m ' that includes the United States (although it is easy to exag- ■ rate this part of his labors, as I believe it has been ex- ijigerated) ; he is classic and romantic, most sensiblv deny- ing adherence to any artistic creed; he is savage and aris- tocratic; h^is the man of nature, in Rousseau's meaning^ and the man of refinement; he is at once the past, the pres- ent and die future; he combines power with delicacy; hei is pantheistic, yet devoutly and publicly a modern believer. The list of attributes might be extended indefinitely; be- neath the apparent contradictions lies a contemporaneity no less universal than Dario's, yet expressing itself through an entirely different personality. Like Dario, he feels that he has been bom out of his age, yet one feels the plaint more genuine in the case of the former, for Chocano is very much a man of the times; indeed, he came a little too early rather than, as he has complained, much too late; this r 248 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE it was that brought him to the prison cell at the age of eighteen in his native Callao. To paraphrase Patridk Henry's memorable sentence, Blanco-Fombona had his Gomez, Montalvo had his Garcia Moreno, Jose Marmol had his Rosas, and so, too, did Chocano wage battle against the entire social system. 1. Earliest Productions The earliest productions from Chocano's pen were Iras Santas (1895) ; En La Aldea (published later in the same year, although the poems were written two years earlier) and Azahares (1896). There is much in these youthful efforts that the author himself has since, with good judg- ment, repudiated ; a study of the verses, however, repays us for the insight they afford into the poet's thoughts and per- sonality, and for the further proof they offer that the poet- child is father to the man-poet. Iras Santas quivers with the holy rage of a passionate, ideally-minded youth against the maladjustments of _con- temporary society. The youngstef'Tiad evidently read a great deal; he was familiar with the same Hugo that in- spired so much of Dario's earlier efforts; he must, as even the work of his middle peripd shows, have literally swal- lowed not a few volumes of socialistic and anarchistic doc- trine. His conception of the poet is that of the proud spirit who must break yokes and sing the redemption, for Siempre al cantar Victor Hugo temblo Napoleon tercero. The poet bids Lazarus arise and Justice be born anew. Not JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 249 the ivory of the meditative tower, but tlie iron of labor and Mugglo is liis symbol; nor is our juvenile redeemer, who kfunvs Hisl^iblc well and possesses more than a smattering ul llio classics, very mocK^st in his pretensions. "If another Christ be necessary to succumb, here am I!" he proclaims I in his A Ldzaro; beneath the quasi-blasphemy of the utter- ance, however, flames a sincere purpose that lights up all I the verses in the collection of "sacred wraths." If life is a struggle, the poet must perform his share; by a universal law all roses have thorns, and "verses without thorns are not roses"! If verse-thorns could make verse-roses, Iras Santas would be a veritable conservatory. It should be emphasized, however, tliat beneath all the bombast of language and thought lies a redeeming sincer- ity. The youngster was a child of his age. Was it not tlie hey-day of colors? Then what more natural for his ardent spirit than to print these verses in red? Nor has the mania subsided; for some reason unknown to the public a certain Parisian composer of today prints his music in the same color. The singer of vengeance in Iras Santas is an enemy, not to organized societv,^ut to society ^S-^aL present or- c;;^n^ed; he is a fearless Samson who (in Excelsior!) warns Delila tliat it will be useless to shear his locks: Vano, vano sera que una Dalila recorte mi melena de poeta. . . . He demands {Para Todos) universa]_e^iiality, and demands it in picturesque metaphors tliaT cast an undeniably poetic glamor over communism. Yo quiero la igualdad, ya que la suerte es comun en punto de partida: 250 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE si todos son iguales en la muerte, todos sean iguales en la vida! "If all are equal in death, let all be equal in life!" The people is great, and if it be ignorant, that is the fault of the masters; we are all "the verses of a single poem." Such, then, is the mission of the poet, the mission of youth; for such an ideal would young Chocano borrow the lute of Hugo and the lash of Christ. His El Sermon de la M ontana (Sermon on the Mount) characteristically blends his own beliefs with those of Christ. It has been noted that the Savior of the poem speaks more like Bakounin and Reclus than the figure of the New Testament, — that He embodies the radical readings of an ardent young spirit; the coupling of the holy name with the doctrine so unholy to many, however, once more at- tests what we must henceforth accept as unquestioned fact, — the sincerity of a forceful personality bom into a world tliat he is intent upon bettering. Out of such a purpose grew, quite naturally, the early utilitarian beliefs as to the poet's function. When the Christ of the poem proclaims Crucificadme; iy bien? lYo hablo al presente? No: yo hablo al porvenir. La igualdad sacra sera el ideal de la futura gente. . . he speaks through the writer's mouth ; nor is his spirit so far removed from tliat of the Redeemer. jOh, la igualdad! iHermanos, no habeis visto al sol vertiendo rayos sobre todos? Asi alumbra tambicn el Dios del Cristo; « por eso nivelados en grandeza, JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 251 tencis, ante esle mundo, igual derecho (le recibir el Sol sobre la frente (]ue (le tcncr a Dios bajo del peclio! . . . Many a famous poet well above his twentieth year has written far worse poetry than young Chocano produced in this Sermon, which was dedicated to Ruben Dario. There is an occasional softer note in the collection, such a- rises from La Alomlra (The Lark), dedicated to Enrique (.I'lincz Carillo; it reveals the poet in a symbolj^ Uc-mood tluit was later developed in some of his best poetry, and has been well rendered into English by Miss Alice Stone Black- well, who has translated a large number of Chocano's poems into our tongue, as well as a notable series from his brotiier poets: "0 Romeo, go not yet away!" with love Thus Juliet murmurs, 'mid the thinning dark. And adds to that sweet call the tender words, " Tis not the lark!"' Lo, I have visited the heavenly nests. Struck the bright harps to which the angels hark. And pierced into the fair dream's horoscope — Tis not the lark. I face to face have seen the golden star. The prelude sweet I note by note could mark; I journeyed through the heavens inch by inch — 'Tis not the lark. The sacred chalice I have quaffed, and shared The Host, that wipes away earth's care and cark; Beneath its golden di|h I placed my soul — 'Tis not the lark. 252 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE And I have plucked the young bird from the egg, The beauteous almond from its covering dark, And from tlie lukewarm word the golden thought — 'Tis not the lark. And I at last have flung free words abroad Above the crowds, already hoarse with song, That go forth following the new Ideals, The virgin Longings, eager, deep, and strong — With all the flags of triumph now unfurled Of Dawn Eternal, which dispels the dark; Go, Romeo, go forth; there still is time. It is the lark! I have said that Chocano displays none of the morbidity that characterizes so many of the modernists; yet in his El Primer Adios (First Farewell) he speaks of Werther's a ilnient coursing through his veins; if it really did, it had little ill effect upon his tropical nature; in the very same poem, indeed, he gives ample evidence of a virility and an aggressiveness sadly lacked by Goethe's romantic hero. The century appears in the light of a battle and the poet hastens with prophetic fervor to the strife intoning "the Marseillaise of a yokeless love." There is a humorous side to this long farewell of some fifty-four eight-lined stanzas; just before setting out, the author was clapped into prison. Little daunted, however, he wrote verses of more than passing significance during his incarceration, and m one of the sonnets from En La Mazmorra (the underground dungeon of Casamatas, Callao) he sings his defiance in a couple of metaphors that sum up, with that peculiar powep Chocano wields over rhetorical fijures, his entire conception ]OSt SANTOS CHOCANO 253 (if [he poet as tlie enemy of the tyrant; as long as there It mains a tyrant on the tlirone the poet will continue to .-iiig his ire; he will sink his enemies into the dungeon of hi- verses, and his lyre shall form their prison bars! rhe Choeano of the I ra^^^utasAs^aAoicTcnUd], gushing, ili'orcle red, yet re ligiously ideal im..tginat ion, alread y giv- ing ample evidenee of his flashing me taphors an d dazzling jg^iigiis; beside the influence of tlic ubiquitous Hugo, it is instructive to point out that of Diaz Miron; read the Mex- ican's A Gloria, for example, and you will discover not only much of the Peruvian's indignation and arrogance, but not a little of his epigrammatic, arrow-like style. So libertar- ian a critic as Manuel Gonzalez Prada sees in such a poem as Juicio Final, a genuine summary of Peruvian social and political life; this is important, for one of Chocano's early attributes was his attempt to poetize everything he read upoM art, science and sociology; he lived up truly to his concept tion of the poet as a social redeemer. The epic spirit '\\ already evidenced by the long-winded farewell; the ten- derer strain is represented by the beautiful poem of the lark; there is a glimpse of love, which enters more fully, and more naturally, in the following collection. \ i^ Iras Santas had been printed in red ir^'^^n La Aldea \ t^ (In The Village) was printed in blue. The two colors symbolize most adequately the dominating spirits of the respective collections; En La Aldea, moreover, is furnished with a blue prelude. It is important to recall that these poems were written at about the same time as the more fiery ones; we thus have a further evidence of the poet's dual- 'ity. "In Iras Santas," says Gonzalez Prada quite vividly, "Choeano seizes poetry by the hair and gives it a rude tug"; 254 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the second collection takes us from prison walls and pas- ; sionate harangue to the softer moods of nature and of man. \ The collection is subtitled Poesias Americanas and is a dis- tinct precursor, in spirit, of Alma America; its blue tint, too, is not unmarred here and there by what Gonzales Prada calls a greyish hue. The cerulean prelude would serve to indicate also that young Chocano knew tyrants of a non- political nature, who wore petticoats. For at the conclu- sion he addresses a maiden with the remark that she will note from his verses, filled with bitterness as they are, the enduring memory of his love for her. "Now gentle, now violent my verses will sound to your ears; for within them the vulture and the dove possess the same nest!" (The ever- present duality, you will notice.) And then, to show that 6ur gallant is facile with the typically Spanish languishing simile: Lee mis pobres versos, ya que el yugo se constante llevar de tus amores; devoralos y exprimeles el jugo; porque acaso el mayor de mis placeres esta en verlos morir como esas flores que deshojan, jugando, las mujeres. . . . The comparison of his poems to the flowers that women pul apart as they play with them is worthy of an anthology. We must not imagine that because the poems are in spired by country life, they are utterly devoid of the poet' rebellious spirt. For the village possesses former battle fields as well as cemeteries, and the singer muses ove them, beholding a day when the tool of the laborer tha brings life will replace the instrument of the warrior thd brought death. The sight of the cemetery itself is not . JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 255 source of inelanclioly musings, but ralhcr a mystic conso- lation, rare in youth. "How green the field seems, stretciied out there in the distance . . . ! And why does it wear the color of hope?" The sight of the mills recalls the great Manchegan and inspires a symbolic sonnet. Note, in passing, how rich in sonnets is Chocano; Spanish- American modernists see little anachronistic in the use of the lorm that our own young spirits are fast abandoning. THE WIND MILLS Yonder, borne onward by the strong wind's breath. The village windmills' mocking sails are seen, Cir( ling with reckless haste and ardor keen, W ith panting fury and impelling faith. A music hovers o'er the sails, wind-caught; They raise towards heaven the song divine and free Of man triumphant over Destiny, The wild wind harnessed by our human Thought. \^Tien evening shades descend upon the earth. And yonder there I see the windmills stand, Kissed vainly by die great sun's glowing light. Then from their sails I look to see come forth, Upon his meagre steed, with lance in hand, A spiritual type, La Mancha's knight! For some reason or other it has pleased the poet, in his .later days, to insist upon his objectivity; from one who has been so sensible in the matter of schools and terminology >dbe insistence comes with a little unpleasantness. Cho- cano's conception of objectivity is quite his own; does he >mean that he is not subjective? That is hard to believe. Does he mean that he is, in a narrow sense, Paniassian? 256 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE That is equally hard to understand. No doubt the ad- vancing years, as we shall see, have chastened his spirit and refined his art, but they have not effaced his person- ^lity, his su bjectivity, his peculiarly dualist ic view of man and the universe. In some of the poems of trfLa Aldea, indeed, he hits upon _a.-Symbolistic pantheisr^ that he has never completely outgrown. Thus his Arholes Viejos looks upon the tree as possibly furnishing not only the cross for a Christ, but the branch upon which to hang a Judas. OLD TREES Even the old tree, fallen by the road, That has no leaves, no fruit, no blossorrs gay, Can give a seat where shepherds may repose, A staff to aid the pilgrim on his way. So the old man, experienced and wise. Gives maxims tliat ward off mishap and pain. He, without perfume, sap, or colors bright, Fulfills his law, and does not live in vain. workman, listen and give heed to me! Thou shouldst oppose as steadfastly as I Cutting off boughs, though they be bare of grace; Because there may come forth from some old tree Perchance the cross on which a Christ shall die. Perchance the gallows for a Judas base. Yet does tlie village bring him calm? No. He is th( eternal fighter. He sees the beauty of love, of nature, o. life, but there is something missing in that beauty if he i: not engaged in the struggle for the amelioration of man kind's lot. He thinks of death (Morir), but it is not i death such as Gutierrez Ncijera and Casal longed for. '^ JOS£ SANTOS CIIOCANO 257 I would wage battle with all my soul, With all my hKxxl, with every nerve! ' He woiiltl clio at llu* iiciyjit ol tlic strife, "vvilh his lyre in his haiuls. He knows, however, that while all may not be right with the world, God's in His heaven and "all pro- gresses toward the good." And just as all doubters have ' their motnents of faith, or an intense desire for it, so to this optimist eome his passing moments of doubt. In Ante El Abismo he voices tlic eternal query and receives the eternal reply: silence. The poet of En La Aldea, far more than he of the sacred wrath, reveals the singer of Alma America; the herald of its fauna and itJ flora, the idyllic painter of its birds and beasts, its landscapes and traditions; the familiar spirit of its ambient. Chocano's pantheism endows his beloved mountains not only with life, but wnth thought; it is as much nature in contemplation of man as Gonzalez Mar- tinez's man in contemplation of nature. Azahares (Orange Blossoms, 1896) is a lyric collection in which the lover pays tribute to his beloved; woman is at once his muse and his song; her very glance is a Fiat Lux! The poet {Ab Eterno) reveals himself as a believer in the life eternal for Traemos desde otros mundos, cual recuerdos de otros dias, inefables simpatias, resentimientos profundos. iLos oleajes iracundos chocan solo para chocar? ; Amar es tan solo amar? ; Donde el punto de partida 258 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE ^^^ esta para nuestra vida: en la playa 6 en la mar? Is not this the same as he who later feels himself of the past, present and future, all in one? Note how the grandiose attitude (which becomes at times grandiloquent in the best sense of the word and more often, in the early poems, rhymed bombast) does not abandon him even in the moods of love. When he is thrust from the heaven of his Beatrice's eyes he falls like Lucifer himself, and dreams in hell of redemption through his sweetheart's protecting hand. debe de ser hermoso y eloquente, ver entrar a los cielos nuevamente a Satan redimido y perdonado. (Regreso) When she weeps, her tears are pure pearl; when he weeps, he weeps oceans; the very human heart possesses the form of a tear (Rocio). On the seventh day {El Septimo Dia) the Lord proclaims "Let there be Love!" and "there sounded a thunder like an immense kiss!" . . . "Let there be love!" cried the Lord again; "but let it be worthy of Me" . . . "And woman was created!" Entonces cante amor. Quite los velos 5 de encima de los genesis profundos; y abri mi libro, como Dios sus celos; y vi mis versos, como Dios sus mundos. . . The youth who would placidly liken himself to Christ would not hesitate to carry the similarity to the Lord himself? but when he opens his book, "as God his heavens," and JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 259 ' beholds his verses, "as God his worlds," the celestial im- j agery has gone too far! . The early collections hy Chocano, then, reveal all the / attributes that distinj:^uish liis later work: an intense diial- ; ism of outlook, a radical conception of society, a gift for illuminating figures, a soft touch that represents the giant in repose, a communion with nature tliat endows it with his ovni personality, a deep feeling for the indigenous flowers, birds, beasts and trees, a religious spirit, a tendency to con- ceive things upon a grandiose scale and express them in a bold maimer commensurate with the conception. There is j as yet little sense of selection, altliough here and there ap- I pears a poem that proclaims the mature singer. There is ' as yet little technical innovation, although we find a cer- , tain mnsterv of conventional forms that renders the verse pliant to his thoughts. Yet the future Chocano is dis- , tinctly, if embn^onically, present. The labors that follow immediately upon those that we have scanned, leading to Alma America, are in a sense intermediary; there is an advance in technique and thought, a more ample sweep, a firmer grasp. Maturity is rapid in the tropics, and Cho- i cano is a tropical spirit. I 2. La Epopeya del Morro, El Canto del Siglo, Selva Virgen, El Derrumbe. In rapid succession, perhaps spurred on by the success of The Epic of the Morro, Chocano wrote the pneumatic Song of the Century, a finisecular poem, issued the collec- tion Virgin Forest and at first fragmentarily, tlie romantic- symbolic verse narrative. The Landslide or The Collapse. 260 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE La Epopeya del Morro (1899) celebrates, in quasi- epic style, the intense patriotism and heroism of the Peru- vians as brought out by the war with Chile, which lasted from 1879 to 1883. Written when Chocano was but twenty years of age, it was awarded a prize by the Na- tional Congress of Peru; in his reprinting of it (in Fiat Lux!, which is in part an anthology of all his poetic works previous to Alma America) he tells us that he considers it the highest exponent of his first artistic stage. And without going into the raptures that Gonzalez-Bianco feels for the youthful production, it is easy to consider it a remarkable work of combined patriotism and poesy. It would seem, too, that the youthful revolutionist was not so communistic in his fervors as to have lost all sense of nationality. The Epopeya^ in addition to the introduction and the 1 1 refer here to the revised form of the Epopeya as it appears in Fiat Lux! (1908). The earlier form is appreciably longer, consisting of ten parts in addition to the prologue. The revision has affected mainly the beginning. Thus, in the original first canto (called El Canto de Los Heroes) there is an irrelevant question whether progress is real or illu- sionary, and the firm belief that the memory of heroes will outlive that of all other human creatures. En medio de la noche, en que camina el mundo, hacia la aurora del mafiana, cada heroe, coronando cada ruina, es como cada antorcha que iluraina las noches de Neron. i Antorcha humana: llamarada infernal, lumbre divina! . . . There is likewise a strong note of that internationalism whose more pro- nounced characteristics seem to have been abandoned later by the poet. Thus, in the early version, the author sings the internation before ap- proaching the glorification of his nation's heroes. "Soon, soon, tomorrow, the idea of a fatherland that shall be the eternal union of the human spe- cies, will shine from the summits upon the sad and abject faces of the t fettered multitudes. The old fatherland will change name; and the new name dreamed of in the mind will triumph at last in a fierce battle. . . . , JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 261 epilogue, consists in its revised form, of six parts: In Wait- iiif);, tlie Last Carlridi^o, Before Tlic Assault, The Assault, The Death of the Hero, The End of tlie Assault. The epi- ode throbs with names that rouse a fierce pride in the heart of Peruvians, and the writer occasionally indicates the historical accuracy of the high deeds he eelcijrales. Uppermost in Chocano's mind seems to have been tlie tak- ing of the port of Arica, which occurred on June 7, 1880, — a sad date for Peru. The piece is characteristic of the autlior, although it displays a surer hand and a firmer grasp upon technical detail than do the earlier poems. It mingles classical with biblical allusion and at times falls into an exaggerated style that has never completely abandoned the Peruvian poet. Yet its beauties far outweigh any occasional lapses. Did not even the good Homer nod? The Hero, with his waning band of men, in a vain wait for reinforcements, is sadly disillusioned when he seems Oh. I'niversal Fatherland! Fatherland of man, an entire century, dying, salutes thee!" But since the song is of a national hero, he ends the canto iHoy canta al heroe de la patria vieja y al de la Patria Universal raanana! Sing, muse, today, the hero of the old fatherland, and him of the Universal Patria tomorrow! Chocano's rather erratic method of publication, in which it is very diffi- cult to follow his artistic progress, is perfectly justifiable in the case of the man desirous of giving only his best to the public, but it is hard on the critic who is interested in the creator's development. Nor is it quite right to present the Epopeya as it appears in Fiat Lux! (where it is atwut half the size of the original form) without a note calling attention to the changes; Qiocano (in Fiat Lux!) says that he regards the Epopeya as the highest point in his early poetry; very well, but the Epopeya as it appears there is not the original document, and hence misleads the reader and student as to just what degree of skill the poet had attained at the time the Epopeya was awarded national distinction. 262 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE to discern the long awaited succor arrive. The newcomers are not the longed for aid; they represent an added men- ace from the enemy. Soon a messenger is despatched from the hostile lines, bearing the news that the small force may escape with their lives if they will surrender in the face of sure defeat. The Hero's response is im- mediate; they will fight to the last cartridge; but before giving that as a definite reply he leads the messenger to the patriot chiefs and lets him hear the decision corro- borated by the full council. The messenger departs and soon the attack begins. Bravely the Peruvians wage com- bat, and as vainly, against superior forces. A woman is found fighting at her man's side, and in her death she becomes, for the poet, the symbol of tlie slain Patria. The Hero himself is at last slain, and the first night of captivity falls over the fortress. Thus was begun a war which represents a decisive and disastrous moment in Peruvian history, having set her back for many a year. The poem literally flames with ardor; even the meta- phors are drawn from the imagery of fire; time and again we come upon tlie felicitous phrases and figures of which Chocano alone, with all his tendency to overdo such things, possesses the secret. Thus, in the first canto, if we may call it such, the pa- triots discover that the enemy is five times as great as was believed; whereupon each Peruvian grows five times him- self in bravery. Cinco veces mayor el acampado enemigo es al fin . . . Y cinco veces crece dentro de si cada soldado. , Thus the woman discovered fighting in the Peruvian JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 263 ranks becomes an eternal symbol of tlie unfortunate fath- rrland. ; Y esa niujer, de came desgarrada por infame puiial, con la mirada de un Sol dc gloria en la pupila incierta; esa sobre el caiion sacrificada, esa . . . cs la iniacen dc la Patria mucrta! And wbat a splendid climax is tliat of ibe Epilogue, in which the nation is represented as making a pyre of the branches lopped from its tree of life, from which, when the flames have died, will rise the flag of the nation float- ing over the ruins "like a flame become a banner!" *& i y el patrio pabellon tenido en rojo, cuando ?e apaaue la gloriosa hoguera, flotera sobre el ultimo despojo como una llamarada hecha bandera! A single instance may suffice to illustrate the tendency to exaggerated statement. Chocano is speaking of his hero, whom he makes out as the synthesis of no less than lliree Homeric heroes: porque el gran Bolognesi era el resumen de Agamenon, de Nestor y de Aquiles: asi encarnaba el Heroe americano la majestad de Agamenon de Atreo la experiencia de Nestor el anciano y el arrojo del hijo de Peleo. La Epopeya del Morro, says Gonzalez-Bianco, "is an epic song in the ancient manner, as resonant and virile as the stamping hoofs of a war horse. Chorano's ^^tro[)hes 264 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE resound like lashes and cleave the air like arrows." Per- haps the Spanish critic, who is notable for his enthusiasm over things Spanish-American, has been infected by a little of Chocano's expansive spirit; yet his evaluation is indic- ative of the poem's high worth. The action moves sw^iftly, the language is luminous with imagery and occasional grandiloquence. La Epopeya del Morro went far to make Chocano the national poet of Peru, — the first step to his poetic conquest of the entire continent. When we come to the Song of the Century (1900), how- ever, we feel at once that we are in a different atmosphere, — a stifling ambient in which Pegasus kicks up so much dust that it is impossible to catch sight of him. The steed of poesy, possessing hoofs as well as wings, here elects to abandon his pinions and stick close to the earth; at times, being after all a steed, he runs at a mad gallop, but always he holds to the ground, — his wings lie idle. Chocano's project in this now disowned Canto del Siglo, was nothing less than to epicize the century. The muse, as he tells us in his prologue, comes down from high heaven to sing in the dust of tlie earth all that it sees worthy of song. And she begins with Napoleon, "the great man of the century," even as Chocano himself begins with the in- evitable biblical reminiscence: At the beginning of the century was darkness. Napoleon it was who rose from the depths to master the world. His labors were quite as great as the Lord's, "for God made his worlds out of chaos and out of the nothing you made yourself. . . ." Napoleon is thus greater than* the Alexanders and the Caesars, who shone with the re- JOSE! SANTOS CHOCANO 265 fleeted light of inherited glory and stimulus. Yet young ( hocaiK) knows Napoleon's faults as well as his virtues, and luis expressed the dioughts of many in two lines that are far superior to most in tlie exhausting Canto. Poiiia ser la Liberlad lu esposa; y solo llcgo a scr tu concubina. Liberty might have been your wife; she became only your mistress. !• Is there not a deal of history compressed into those two lines? But let us hasten through the "argument" of the fmisecu- lar epic before pausing for such analysis as helps us to understand the mature artist. Part I: Napoleon's career leads him from glory to ulti- mate failure; Part II: the independence of Spanish Amer- ica and the glorious names to which it gave birth; the for- mer colonies express their spiritual allegiance to the mother nation; Part III: the triumph of the sciences, which con- stitutes the greatest glory of the century. Man launches forth upon the quest of Truth, tlirough the idealism of Hegel and Krause, the positivism of Comte, the evolution- ary doctrine of Darwin, the new discoveries of psychophy- siology, die contributions of Pasteur, and so on; chemistry makes new conquests; Fulton invents the steamboat, Steph- enson perfects the locomotive, Lesseps initiates the era of canals; tlie wireless telegraph astounds human thought; Edison perpetuates the human voice in the phonograph; X-rays, magnetism, the superman of science. (Our young- ster has been reading heavily, it seemeth, and fain would 266 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE rhyme all his data!) ; Part IV: The Final Vision; the great poet of the century, Victor Hugo; the great painter, Dela- croix; the great sculptor, Rodin; the great composer, Wag- ner; the wonders of architecture, as represented in the Milan Cathedral, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Eiffel tower; the future path, universal peace. Socialism, Intellectuality, Mothers and Children, Science and Love. One could easily imagine that Chocano had procured a set of the numerous sociological works published in Span- ish versions by the radical firm over which Blasco Ibanez presides, and for which the author of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse himself furnished so many of the transla- tions, and had made up his mind to transform the prose of it all into poetic notes. As a whole, the Canto del Siglo possesses little, if any, artistic interest. It demonstrates an eager mind, a progressive spirit, a broad and all-em- bracing conception of humanity, a youthful fervor that all too frequently leaves little trace in the adult. It at- tests the author's cosmic interests; his identification of him- self with all mankind; his eagerness to absorb a multitude of influences; an eclectic mind. Only in fragments, and these but few in number, is it of significance as anything like poetry. One would prefer to believe that it had been written before La Epopeya del Morro, which is so far superior in inspiration and expression. As may be imagined from a knowledge of the poet's later work, it is the second part, — that dealing with Amer- ica's achievement of independence, — that is most striking to the reader of today. It is interesting to note how thus early Chocano forecasted the change of attitude toward the mother country which was to be definitely indicated JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 267 as one ol lliL" new orientations of tlie modernist movement in 1906, wlien Nervo read his E pilhalamium to the newly wed Spani.Nh monarch. Si Amrrira vencio, fuc su victoria or^uUo nuileriial para la Espana: arbol que einpieza a dar frutos de gloria se los dcbe al torrenle que lo bafia. There are still Spaniards who fmd it dilHcult to adopt Qiocano's ratlier in^^enuous idea that the victory of the colonists over the mother country should be a source of niatemal pride to Spain. Knowing the poet's tendencies, we are not surprised to iiiui the strength of Bolivar exalted above tliat of Hercules: Como en el mito en que Hercules membrudo, que no igualo en vigores ni en deseo al rebelde Bolivar. . . . nor to hear the name of the great Liberator palpitate like thunder in the womb of Eternity. (There is something of Hugo in the figure, — of a Hugo that we admire so much in our early days, and then learn to forget for the greater Hugo of tlie cosmic poems.) It is at the close of this section that Chocano's address to the mother country occurs. The last four lines were later employed as tlie conclusion of the Ofrenda a Espaha that opens Alma America. ancestress of nations, ancient Spain! Yield to the lovely law by which life grows — ^\hi^ll makes the roses break forth into buds, And makes of every bud another rose! 268 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE You gave example to America Of pride maternal, yet are not content Because you have passed on your courage high To all the nations of a continent. Admire the great exploits of your sons! To wish to punish them in wrath would be To Avish to tear your own deep entrails out. Our heroes, fit for tales of chivalry Inherit from their ancestors their blood; Within their veins the hot life-currents flow Of all your visionary Quixotes bold And all your champion Cids of long ago! noble Spain, receive me in your arms, And, to my song, renew the ties of old! When a gold ring is broken into bits. Although a ring no more, it still is gold! For the rest, let us content ourselves with selecting from the remaining sections an illuminating line here and there. Apostrophizing Truth, the young poet, most appropri- ately in a canto that treats of man's scientific search for truth in the nineteenth century, calls Truth "the x of des- tiny," which we strive to discover in our manipulations of the eternal equation. Hegel becomes a Columbus-like dreamer seeking an America of thought. Nor is it at all a bad touch when, treating of the Comtian positivism, the singer declares that the realists have made of matter a fallen god sunk lower than his very creatures. Schopen- hauer looms as an Attila Who flays God in the name of Nothingness! with Nietzsche following close upon his heels, "as if he were the Quixote of evil." And note this peculiar cosmic JOSI& SANTOS CHOCANO 269 nolo, — one thai sounds, now nuifHciI, now triumphant, from ahnost everything of significance that Chocano has written: ; Ah ! i Quicn sabe si es solo un organismo el Universo, inmovil en escencia, y que, aunque de apariencia en apariencia transforniamiose va, siempre es el luismo, y quien sabe si Dios es su conciencia? ; Cuanto organismo bulle en una gota de agua, de sangre, de sudor, de llanto! ; Cuanto grandeza flota en una pe<]uenez! Oh Vida, cuanto se niultiplica tu inmortal reflejo que en cada gota de agua reverbera, conio una eucarlstia del espejo que en mil pedazos te retrata enteral jDentro de cada vida hay tantas vidas! iNi quien podria refrenar la ola que en otras nuevas olas se convierte? Las chispas de una hoguera desprendidas hogueras pueden ser: cada corola es un bosque tal vez; y de esta suerte, la vida universal es una sola. This pantheism, which looks upon us all as atoms of God's consciousness, is a fundamental element of Cho- :ano's outlook upon life. He feels the world beyond the ienses; the mystery of the mystic unknown; the prick of loubt for a moment twinges him and he asks, "Who knows, it times, whether diere where we seek most we find noth- ing?" Yet here, as everywhere, he is elementally opti- *nistic, nor is it that melancholy optimism which de Icaza mentions with reference to the poems of Gonzalez Martinez. 270 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Out of the turmoil will come peace and order; out of the classicism that is Homer, the redeeming Christianity that is Dante, the free thought that is Hugo, will emerge a better world. From his tower (but Chocano's is not an ivory one, and often a red flag floats from the top), the poet gazes toward the future and beholds a harmonious de- mocracy in which Love, "the Host of souls," will rule over all. El Canto del Siglo is most valuable as a study in the growing mentality of Chocano; it shows that from the very beginning, whatever poetic form his studies assumed, he was imbued with a far stronger social sense than Dario or the other modernist poets of the day, — that he was bound sooner or later to identify himself with continental aspira- tions, — that not all the scientific lore he imbibed could stifle, though it tempered, his innate poetic gifts, — that his conception of the poet's mission was still a strongly utili- tarian one, aiming to teach the multitudes even as it in- spired them. As a successor to La Epopeya del Mono it represents a poetic retrogression but a mental advance. The national poet of Peru grooms his Pegasus to fly over continents and worlds. Selva Virgen (1900) is composed of poems written be- tween 1892 and the year of publication. It illustrates alJ the phases of the poet's art that we have thus far witnessed and contains more material that was later chosen from tha literary past which tlie author rejected than any of tlit other collections, as may be noted from a comparison oi Fiat Lux! with tlie youthful poems. Chocano's virgin for est is virgin only in the author's personal gift of being abl! to view modernity through the eyes of tlie primitive; thi JOS£ SANTOS CHOCANO 271 author has boon called an eternal child; there is something ot this childishness about all genius, although it should not be ciled to excuse llie gross exaggeration into which tlie poet is liable to fall at times. From the forest issues now a plaintive note of elegy, now Uie timorous voice of doubt; again tlie singer of love fills tlie wood with his pastoral I grievances or woos tlie Byronic muse with a long succession of Dantesque tercets; there are neo-Hamlet monologues, summonses to glorious strife, protests, self-assertions, in- vocations to the Future Verse (see El Verso Futuro, ad- dressed to Leopoldo Lugones and Ricardo Jaimes Freyre), Songs to Zola, to The New Dodecasyllable (addressed to Amado Nerw)), varied sonnets aplenty, Echegarayan dia- logues between tombs, album verses, quatrains a la Wat- teau, neo-Hellenic evocations as well as neo-Roman, and ( what not else. In the collection as a whole is discernible a delightful freedom from technical fetters, a liberty that roves at will through styles and subjects, gathering honey from every flower in the forest. Chocano the youtliful lover is tliere, well able to answer ' amorous disdain with darts of poesy. He can tell his scornful lady that though her eyes be heaven, diat heaven : lacks both a God and stars; he knows how to pay delicate , compliments in most approved Castilian style {Ante Un : Estatua Del Amor) and to lend a sting to farewells . {Punto Final). I He is, despite his numerous assertions of having been born out of his true age, a man of the epoch, responsive to I its conflicting currents, even though he does not allow him- ^ self to be swept along hither and thither by them. He, too, laughs before llie trembling idol-worshipper [Las Voces 272 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE de La Duda), yet recognizes that the priest must always have his cult and the warrior his motto. Yo, si duda mi siglo, tamLien dudo; yo, si niega mi siglo, tambien niego; pero no tenga liberatad en vano: jsea el siglo mi ley, no mi tirano! He doubts and denies, together with his century, but the century can be only his law and never his tyrant. The at- titude is characteristic of tlie poet; somewhere he has re- ferred to himself and to Dario as two of the few who in diis age of skepticism dared openly to profess a belief in God. Of the two, he is perhaps the more firm as well as the more joyous believer; Dario's doubt is more deep; it is like the ground bass of the organ over which the player may vary his harmonies and his musical textures, yet ever in consonance with the pedal note ; Chocano's doubt is exceptional, — the occasional dissonance necessary for har- monic contrast. He may be moved, at moments, to pro- claim that he expects nothing either of the world or of God, — that he is wear)" of struggles and would gladly plumb the depths of the open abyss, since Life is the road to Death, yet he soon alters his attitude, and at the end of the selfsame poem is ready to declare that it is stupid for the dog of blasphemy to bark before the grave, since Death, to man, is but the child's embrace widi the motlier. Cho- cano's doubt is purely intellectual; Dario's is part of his very emotional fibre. Just as the intellect of Chocano refuses to subject itseli to the tyranny of the century whose law it accepts, so the poet in him, for all his passionate love of tlie crowd, re- fuses to be encircled by the multitude. JOSE SANTOS CIIOCANO 273 Suya sera mi VDluiilad ciilcm, mi razon, mi ideal, mi ley, mi luio; ; pcro drjeme, en eamhio, (juc .siquiera puede decir : — ; I\li corazon es mio! . , . (Canto de Huelga) One may durll in his ivory tower, — if he must, — in the niidsl oi tlir crowd. And Chocaiio proposes, though his will, his reason, his ideal, his law, his enthusiasm all he- long to die people, to maintain a little corner of his heart as his very own. From such as this poem reveals, we are naturally to ex- pect the man more interested in the idea than in the form. It is the preponderance of the idea that injures so much of Chocano's early labors as poetry. Without being dog- matic one may express tlie belief that the best art, like the best body, is an indissoluble harmony of form and con- tent. The phrase is so trite, but how difficult its realiza- tion! \'^'ith Dario, Chocano's complementary personality, one may note the reverse: the young Nicaraguan was con- sciously preoccupied w^ith technique. Yet in this same Sella J'irgen we come upon such a sterling sonnet as Arqueologia, which flashes upon us with all the bril- liancy that strikes the eyes of the discoverer in the poem itself: ARCHEOLOGY Searching 'mid Eastern ruins, groping slow, When some explorer in our modern days His hand upon a hidden treasure lays — Gold idols heathens worshipped long ago — Then with what eager interest aglow The spirit of the Present backward strays 274 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE To that far age when priests raised hymns of praise To monstrous gods deformed, with foreheads low ! When our age too is dead, from tomb to tomb Some new explorer, groping in the gloom, Will search for what the ruins may afford. How great his fear, how strange his thoughts will be When, gleaming 'mid the shadows, he shall see. Rarest, most precious treasure trove, a sword ! In this sonnet's sweep of the centuries one feels some- thing of the similar, if superior, vision in Shelley's son- net, Ozymandias of Egypt. It is a good example of that Parnassianism which Chocano has claimed as his own. Chocano's ever present dualism is delightfully evident in the pair of poems entitled, respectively, La Vejez Vir- giliana and La Vejez Anacreontica, in which he sings two opposite views of old age. The English reader nat- urally thinks of Milton's similar antithetic pair, U Alle- gro and // Penseroso. As the old man of the soil ap- proaches death, he gazes upon the land and says, "You were mine yesterday . . . Today I shall be yours!" No such autumnal calm for the Anacreontic spirit. He has wine, even though Venus has deserted him, and will wait till his inanimate form falls upon the broken glass. Some- times the mingling of classic atmosphere and modernity produces a strange climax. Thus Nero, whose god is form, not meaning, who knows that though Venus may be un- learned she is yet fair, who cries "Praised be evil, if evil be beautiful!" can shout, at his death, "I'm dying . . . No, I'm not dying: I am reborn!" One will meet with disappointment, however, if he tries to distil unity out of the various essences from this virgin JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 275 forest; it is classic and romantic, iilcalistic and material, impassioned and impassive, — all at the will ol the po«*t. He writes, not to provide texts lor dissection, l)ut Irom an inner necessity. He is all men, because he is himself. That is the refreshing thing, even amid his most extrava- gant lines and his most violent metaphors. And, as his later attitude has shown, he who writes in haste may re- vise at leisure. El Derriimbe '~ exhibits the characteristic mingling of ; biblical and classical allusions, violent figures of speech and other well known traits of the early Chocano. As a whole it is a florid, rather prolix composition, not without spots of beauty and power, yet entangled in its own tropi- cal luxuriance, like the fabulous forests of the Ajnazon. It tells the tale of a savage who is led to civilization by a Christian missionary; the primitive man comes upon the white daughter of a colonist and is smitten with desire for her; she, however, is plighted to another, absent and ob- jected to by her father. In a symbolic dream he speaks to her. "Seek not nobility in origins," he urges, talking strangely like the idealist Chocano; "seek it in the aims of life." His love is vain, however, and he flees the civiliza- tion which has only taught him to yearn for that which may never be his. We are impressed with a sense of the Indian's idealism, yet also witli the feeling that conquest was necessary for the sake of progress. The poem, a symbol as an entirety, 2 I use, in this case, the original form of FA Derrumhe; under the title El Derrumbamientn it appears, shortened by almost a third, in Alma Amrr- ica. As with La Epopeya del Morro in Fiat Lux!, there is nothing to indi- 1* cate that it is the revision of an earlier work. 276 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE is likewise set with several passages of intense symbolic beauty. The opening {El Salmo de las Cumbres) is an appealing evocation of the majestic solitude of the mountains and at once provides the setting, both material and spiritual, so to speak. i Oh murmullos del bosque! j oh voz sagrada de la Naturaleza! j oh, queja honda de fiera agonizante! No, no hay nada que ensanche mas el corazon humano que, cuando vibra, el arpa de la fronda templada al diapason del oceano. Quien descubre una voz que lo enamora; Quien, una voz que la recuerda un canto; quien, una que lo arrulla 6 que implora; quien, que nunca oro a Dios, oyendo tanto rumor solemne, se arrodilla , . . ;y ora! This same religious atmosphere of the forest rises from the opening of the second part {La Oracion de las Selvas). With this poem may be said to close Chocano's early period, as distinguished from his own conscious change of I direction signalized by Alma America. It is a romantic, I individualistic, subjective period, in which youthful ex- I travagance, unchecked spontaneity and exuberant imagina- tion run rife. Between El Derrumbe and the following collection the poet became aware of a need for more re- straint, more artistic control of his gushing inspiration. The definite change fyom spon taneitv to artistry took place; perhaps this is what Chocano means when he caTTsTiimself, henceforth, an objective poet. But Parnassian? Neither JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 277 his native critic, V. (.arcia CaKlcion, nor his most enthu- siastic Spanish commentator, Gonzalez-Bianco, finds any- thing of the genuine Parnassianism of a Leconte de Lisle in him. 3. Alma America (1906) Allowing for personal differences, we may look upon Alma America as oeeupyinj^; a position of importance in Giocano's career similar to that occupied by the Cantos de Vida y Esperanza in the career of Ruben Dario; thai is, insofar as each collection stands for the summit of the poet's achievement and a synthesis of the entire man. Ever)' element in Alma America was already forecasted in the previous work of Chocano, as was every element in the Cantos de Vida y Esperanza present in Dario's anterior la- bors. But whereas the Dario volume represents an ethi- cal, as distinguished from an aesthetic advance ( sim aesthetics had reached their culmination in Prosas Pro- fanas), the Chocano collection stands for aesthetic, as dis- tinguished from ethical progress. The poet here says noth- ing he has not uttered before; but how much better he ex- presses it! He is the same complex individuality, but he has mastered his art. It will be noted that the sub-title of Alma America is Poemas Indo-Espaholes. We have thus, in the title and the sub-title a synthesis of the chief elements in the book: the sense of continental destiny, of the natives conquered by the Spaniards, and of the spiritual bonds that link the former colonies to the motlier nation. So universal is tlie poet in his sympathies, so contemporary with all the fac- tors, that he feels himself at will an Inca, a Conquistador, 278 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE a proud American. Even more : for he can behold, though not without certain reservations, a union of the Saxon and the Latin elements. He possesses an intense race pride that is at times incompatible with his early protestations of universal brotherhood. And although one need not stress too much the apparent incongruity of an author open- ing a book of American poems with an address to the monarch of that nation which long held the colonies in subjection, one may easily understand why some country- men should feel that the note produced an element of dis- harmony. Some of the prefatory material of Alma America (we should remember that by this time the poet has arrived in Spain), shows strikingly the change that has come over Chocano's outlook upon his expressional medium. For his heraldic proclamation "0 encuentro camino 6 me lo abro" (Either I find a path or I'll open myself one!) we are well prepared. The Hugoesque poetic swaslibuckling is an old trait. But directly after this sword-brandishing we reach the renunciation: "Tenganse por no escritos cutantos libros de poesias aparecieron antes con mi nom- bre." The poet of "let there be light" here asks "let there be darkness." . . . "Let all books that have previously ap- peared over my signature be considered as not having been written." And again: "My poetry is objective; and in such a sense alone do I care to be the Poet of America." Poets of America, however, are not made by the poets them- selves; they are chosen by the people; objective or not ob- jective, Chocano's poetry has made him Spanish America's poet. Here, too, appears the motto of Chocano which he has since repeated with emphasis: "En el arte caben todas JOSt SANTOS CHOCANO 279 las escuelas como on iin rayo dc Sol todas los colores," — in Art are contained all schools, even as all colors in a sunbeam." And here we have tiie n^fiitation of Chocano's own claims to objectivism. It is true that a more objective glint shines from some of tlie author's later poetry, par- ticularly some of the sonnets in Alnia America and some of the modernist verse in Fiat Lux! ; but this is only one of the colors in Chocano's poetic sunbeam. Why should poets bother with terminology? Aren't there enough critics to toy with names? Yet sometimes the poet makes the best critic — if not of himself, of his fellow poet. Witness the admirable Pre- ludio furnished by Dario to Alma America. Not only is it good poetry, but good criticism; Dario understood Cho- cano well, and in the thirty lines of his Prelude has said quite as much as the Peruvian's critics, and how much more beautifully! Dario sees Chocano's relationship to Pan, to the Sun, to the Ocean, his spokesmanship for the continent. He notes his unevenness, his tempestuousness; he notes, too, the compensatory vigor: Pero hay en ese verso tan vigoroso y terso una sangre que apenas vereis en otro verso; una sangre que cuando en el verso circula como la luz penetra y como la onda ondula. (Do you catch the penetration of the light and the undula- tion of the waves in Dario's very vowels and consonants of that last line?) The great Nicaraguan saw that Chocano's Pegasus was content, "for Pegasus pastures in tlie meadows of the Inca." He recognized Chocano's intimate acquaint- ance with nature, yet realized that the Peruvian's great power lay in his sonorous trumpeting. 280 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Pero su brazo es para levantar la trompeta hacia donde se annimcia la aurora del Prof eta; y es hecho para dar a la virtud del viento la expresion del terrible clarin del pensamiento. . . . He saw, too, the poet's essentially dual nature, and that he lived "on love of America and passion for Spain." There is all of Chocano in that Preludio, and not a little of Dario. Rodo, too, who had at once felt Dario's artistic inca- pacity (but is incapacity the right word?) for becoming the "poet of America," beheld the right man in Chocano. "I recognized in you," he wrote to Chocano, "the poet who, through a rare and admirable combination, unites the proud audacity of inspiration with sculptural firmness of form; and who, with generous purpose, proposes to return to poetry its arms of combat and its civilizing mission, thus hitting upon the path which, to my mind, will be that of (Spanish) American poetry." The praise of Dario and Rodo finds its full justification in Alma America, which is one of the most notable collec- tions of poems issued by a Spanish American. Let us consider the volume from three points of view: (1) its Hispanism, (2) its Americanism, (3) its revela- tions of the poet and his attitude toward his life and art. Its Hispanism, as we have seen from his earlier Canto del Siglo, is conciliatory, aiming at a spiritual unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples; his Americanism is not only po- litical, social, and at times Pan-American, not only con- cerned with nature, but also with history and the con- quered tribes. For that same Chocano who looks forward with hope to the conquered mother country, looks back JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 281 uitli atavistic regret at the eoiuiuerccl indigenous tribes;"^ a-; to his self, it is suffieient here to indicate that it is a It implex affair, identifying itself in remarkable degree with all \\\c obj<\'ts of its interest. Chocano may be obj(>ctive in style (and that only at times); he is essentially a personal poet. The opening poem, Ofrenda A Espaiia, at once strikes the Hispanic note; the poet eomes from across the sea, — lliat sea over which Columbus sailed in quest of the Indies, — and brings greetings from Spanish America. "Oh, Mother Spain, take all my life; for I have given you the Sun of my mountain, and you have given me the Sun of \ our banner. . . ." Even the language in which he speaks is hers. The same sentiment is brought out by means of a beautiful symbolism in one of the best poems of the col- lection, die Cronica Alfoiisina. On tliat sea which the poet has crossed to bring his of- fering to Spain two fantastic ships meet on their opposite course. One of them bears as its figurehead a great golden lion, the other a castle of silver. The lion, of course, is the heraldic animal of Leon and symbolizes strength; the castle is the emblem of Castile, the symbol of fancy, and castles in Spain. Both crews speak tlie same tongue: "Oh, lengua del Pais de la Utopia," — the language of the Land of Utopia. On one of the vessels, bound for the New World, is Dulcinea, "grave as an Ideal, sad as a Dream, mute as an Enchantment, well wrapped in her cloak." On the other, returning from America, is Jimena (she of the Cid), "on her feet the anklets of the savage, on her shoulder the ' The note is common in modern Spanish-American letters. Cf. some of the short stories by Ugarte, Ghiraldo, Ricardo Jaimes Freyre. 282 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE skin of the luxurious vicuna, and in her right hand a fan of rarest plumage." . . . The one bears to the New World all the idealism, all the faith, all the passion of the Old Spain; the other carries back from the New World the youthful power, the ardent prowess, the sacred wrath neces- sary to infuse new life. Don Quixote and Rodrigo (re- spectively, of course, the lover and the husband of Dulcinea and Jimena), experience a change of heart upon overhear- ing the mid-ocean colloquy; in Jimena's nature there is something that Don Quixote needs to complete his own; in Dulcinea's nature Rodrigo likewise beholds a complement- ary personality. Wliereupon Don Quixote returns to Spain with Jimena and Don Rodrigo fares forth to America in company of Dulcinea. The Lion of strength and courage has come to the Castle of dreams and ideals; old Spain and the new are once again united. Such a union of power and delicacy, of strength and grace, are ever present in the poet's mind. When he visits the Museo del Prado he beholds in Velazquez and Goya just such a distinction; the first evokes in his memory the scenes of the Conquest; the second, the days of the Colonial epoch. And thinking of his native mountains as he gazes at the gallery of paintings, he feels his double allegiance to America and Spain: y quise en el Museo, pensando en mi montana jser la mitad de America y la mitad de Espana! A similar, more beautiful evocation of the past occurs in the poem En La Armeria Real, where the sights in the royal armory more naturally recall to him the glorious deeds of Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic, thus forming yet JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO 283 another bond bclwoon the heroes in whom flow the same blood and the same traditions. ll is, er 2.5 of the hotel. You are, at bottom, Phili'tint-s. bourgeois; you love Paris. France, Europe; power, wealth, established things. Not I. I love America,— our America, even though it be poor, In- dian, savage, lousy, leprous^ I love it. . . ." 314 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE zons, a virgin department comprising between a sixth and a fifth of Venezuela, bordering upon parts of Brazil and Co- lombia, reveals him in the light of a brave pioneer. Sent thither as governor, he was through motives he has not yet amplified upon, subjected to an attempt at assassination, in which his enemies came out second best.'^ Blanco-Fombona's European residence, tlien, has for background a violent life of revolution, adventure and love- making in which poetry seems to be fused with action. The primitive man mingles strangely with the man of culture, — the Spanish hidalgo with the Venezuelan patriot. Some- what like Dario, he has become legendary in his own day. Poems are inscribed to him, — one by the well-known Ar- gentine poet Leopoldo Diaz, of whose work Blanco-Fom- bona has written an illuminating exposition. He has been likened, in one of Dario's finest bits of prose, to a denizen of the Italy of Cardinal de Ferrar, of Benvenuto Cellini. (Diaz's sonnet places him in the same company) ; yet Gon- zalez-Bianco is right in rejecting the imputation of an amoralism of the Renaissance in favor of a more constant, positive guiding principle. His multifarious life has a great purpose and he has given himself unstintingly to it. Not for him tlie sterility of complacent, negative virtue; life and poetry alike to him have meant action. He has written, and written often, the Word, but his words have flowered from tlie Deed. Would you understand the man with anything like completeness you must know his Bolivar- olatry, — his intense worship of die Great Liberator, to 3 For a valuable record of this period read, in El Ldmpara de Aladino (Madrid, 1915) the section entitled ''Viaje de Alto Orinoco," pages 33j to 393. RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 315 wIkwii he lias trioci to he true \sh\i pen ami sword. Has our own W ashiiigtoii inspired so whole-souled a (le\H)tion? Blanco-Fombona, then, is peculiarly hiinself in word and deed. Like those who do nuieh, lie has conunitted many an error, but the good far outweighs the bad. He is still a young man, and from his writings may be gleaned, not only a ile(>{) understanding of the remarkable man him- self, but a better comprehension of the new continental spirit that is forming in Spanish America. Since he him- self began as a poet, let us first consider him in lliat light, after^vards taking up his accomplishments in the fields of criticism, sociology, politics and fiction. n It is significant that Blanco-Fombona's first production was a poem entitled Potria, and as irony would have it, the poem, which received the prize in competition with other verses written upon the subject of Sucre's centenary, was I indited in Philadelphia, where he was then carrying on his studies. "The generation to which I belong," he has in- formed us in his interesting ''Historia de Libros" (Z,a'm/;«ra , de Aladino) was bom into literary life toward 1893. A hundred rose buds opened to the same dawn. In 1893 I was living in Philadelphia, where I was studying, and where I wrote practically in secret, and whence I sent to a contest, originating in Coro (1894) on the occasion of Sucre's centenary, a poem: Patria, flaming with youth and enthusiasm, in the lyric-epic vein. The very fact that I participated in a contest shows how young I must have been; I was, in fact, but twenty years old. ... I won tlie prize and acquired a reputation ... in Coro." It seems. 316 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE then, that Blanco-Fombona started on much the same path as Chocano, with a prize for a lyric-epic poem exalting national pride. Patria is today unprocurable, nor does the author seem desirous of resuscitating the poetic corpse. His first book was the collection of verse and prose entitled Trovadores y Trovas (1899). It has likewise fallen out of print and is generally recognized as a juvenile performance. "Already," says Gonzalez-Bianco, "one may discern a con- stant search for originality in expression and feeling, — an originality which is attested by the recherche metres and an avoidance of the spontaneous feelings that move all poets at that age." Manuel Diaz Rodriguez, now a recognized essayist and novelist — one of the finest prose artists Spanish America has produced in recent years, was at the time of the publication of Trovadores y Trovas one of the staff upon the Cojo Ilustrado, and greeted his companion's work as the evidence of a nervous, restless, sensual, sad spirit, of superior artistic gifts. It was not until 1904, however, that Blanco-Fombona was to give his true measure as a poet. It was then that the Pequena opera lirica appeared, in Madrid. It was then diat the author became conscious of his art and felt that he had found his path, "which is that of simplicity in expression, truth in feeling, literary sin- cerity, life truly lived, — in sum, without rhetorical trim- mings or verbal tinsel.'/* The passage is important, as are a number of others from La Ldmpara de Aladino, for with them, it reveals both tlie virtues and the shortcomings of his poetic work. Now he tells us that the poets, in truth, are the great philosophers, and three pages later (Op. cit. page 10) that "the lie is the gift of poets, priests, kings and* soothsayers. We who are neither soothsayers, kings, RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 317 priests, nor poets must content ourselves with the truth, *tlie humble truth,' as one of its apostles termed it." Do you find this, as you will find much else in his work, illog- ical, or inconsistent? '*Vi ill you say that what 1 sec within me, or the spirit in which 1 gaze upon my surroundings differs from one day to the next? No matter! That my eyes lack logic? No matter! I know that they obey a superior logic. One may ask only the mental anil senti- mental sincerity of tlie moment." This is the substance of Blanco-Fombona's sincerity; his "superior logic" is that larger truth, — not a dogma but a becoming, — which we have seen in Emerson and in Rod 6. Do you wonder that he should call Unamuno Spain's greatest living poet? Then wonder no longer when you read his conception of life and poetry as action. In the secular parable La J ida Que Pasa (As Life Passes By) he says: "I hear a voice that tells me: you don't write, you don't think, you don't dream. Yours is not an existence of contemplation nor of fecund leisure, nor of a taste for life; it is the hour that flies in childish chatter or in trivial love-making. Your youth, your energy, wing away, with- out your realizing it, and they fly off never to return; they fly off taking with them the sap and bloom of your Aprils, leaving you — ay! — mouldy, decayed, sterile. *'And I hear another voice which replies: "Complain not of squandering your life; you are liv- ing it." Both voices are Uiose of the autlior. It is one of these voices that later tells him (page 125) that the observer of "Nature will discover nothing if he is not something of a poet; it is the second that whispers to him during his 318 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE memorable trip to his savage seat of government in the Territorio Amazonas: "Can it be true that we poets are con- demned to dream, while the strong labor and create? No, no. The dream is noble, among other things insofar as it translates itself into action. The greatest poet is he who expresses himself in noble, transcendental acts. Perhaps because of this, and not alone because of his golden speech and his winged fancy Jose Marti wrote of the Liberator, 'The first poet of America is Bolivar.' " I have before remarked upon the similarity between Marti's conception of poetry and that held by Blanco-Fombona. In Marti's sentence the conceptions crystallize about the figure of their common idol. To them the poet is a doer. In his en- thusiasm the poet may often lack the spirit of justice. In- deed, in another of the brief pages that adorn La Ldmpara de Aladino (page 445, on the "Equity of Poets") our author recognizes that poets lack almost entirely the spirit of jus- tice. Theirs is passion, not equanimity. But, when they are genuine poets and not mere simulators, they instil such impetus, such fire, such passion into their views, that what they hate appears almost as great as what they love. Blanco-Fombona the good hater is in those words, even as he is in his poetry, his novels, his criticisms. For such as he art for art's sake seems a bootless renunciation of human passions. No wonder, then, that he can write, in consider- ing his Pequena opera lirica, that "more poetry is truly produced, simply as a result of their living, by a Benve^ nuto Cellini than by a Hugo Fosn:o1o, by a Heman Cortex than by a Nuiiez de Arce, by a Diaz Miron than by a Dario . . . The majority of poets are poets only in verse, anc have not lived, neither in love nor grief, danger, evil, good RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 319 I ^ hate, audacity, madness, an hour of true poetry. Every 1 man whose lile lends no inatfrial l\)r legeruls and poetry 5 is a secondary man, even though nature invest him witli the • gifts of a fabulous goldsmith and an enchanting rhetoric. Dario is the prototype of tliis caj)tivating poet of the imag- • ination; prosaic, nevertheless, in existence, colorless, meek, calculating, insignificant; null. But Dario is not alone. ■ A long horde of metriflers stretches out in both directions of ■ time — past and future — an entire horde that feels art more than life. Another vast multitude will prefer life and will behold in it the source not only of the beautiful, I but of good and evil, which in the hands of an artist are the proper material for art. To this number I belong." The man of power in life demands power in poetry. He is able to conceive only the strenuous life, to die point of I momentarily underestimating one of the greatest poets who has sung in the modern Spanish tongue. Yet at the bottom of his conception is there not a play upon words? May not beauty be its own excuse for being? For all Bolivar's glorious exploits could he have penned a glorious collection like the Canto de Vida y Esperanza? Why are worlds to ; be redeemed if not to grant the Darios their leisure, that they may in turn beautify our own? Life is not all action; • progress is not all w^ar; there is poetry in the flute as well as in the trumpet, in the blade of grass as well as in the i oak. Nor has Blanco-Fombona been immune to this ten- derer aspect; he has written excellent pages of nature love ' and calm repose. Essentially, however, he is the man of ' action; let us grant him his conception of poetry, — and this lis all-important, — if that is the banner under which he can ' sing best. 320 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE It was to the Pequeha opera lirica (1904) that Dario prefixed a short, imaginative study which showed its power of grasping the essential element in Blanco-Fombona's spirit. "I enjoy the verses of this Spanish-American poet," he wrote, "who is so much of Italy, so much of the Renais- sance, although he is very much of today, and has Spanish blood, and was born in Caracas, and dwells in Paris." The poet of intense personalism, the enemy of exoticism, was capable of an occasional excursion into eighteenth century elegance, despite his masculine, rigorous conceptions of life. The collection, although it has been later surpassed, produced a marked effect upon the youth of the day. A certain deceptive simplicity, as well as an ardent spon- taneity, were responsible for this influence. Again like Chocano, there is the epico-lyric tendency united to panthe- ism, — but characteristically enough, a pantheism that at times is imbued with the same indignation as is felt by the author. This is true especially of the poems that fol- lowed in Cantos de la Prision y del Destierro ( 1911 ) . The "Songs of Prison and Exile" are the author's favor- ite writings. They embody, literally, the spirit of the poem Explicacion in the Pequeha opera lirica: El mejor poema es el de la vida; de un piano en la noche la nota perdida; la estela de un barco; la ruta de flores que lleva a ciudades ignotas; dolores pueriles; mananas de rinas; sabor de besos no dados, y amor sin amor. The poems of prison and exile are such stuff as life is made* of ^ ^Every stanza is a moment of existence from the ter- 7^ I RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 321 riblo days of my last iinprisDimicnt bcUvcen 1909 and 1910, or from tlie first hours of my exile, whicli were the most hitler of this now so long expatriation." The verses were >vrilten down under the most trying circumstances, with the author surrounded by spies, manacled in a dungeon, without pen or paper. More even than Chocano, Blanco- Fombona imprisons his jailers behind the bars of his lyre. Like Marti, too, he declares that the lines were written willi his blood. "These verses will avenge me. I trust in ihein. While there exists a man of honor, a manly spirit, a victim of persecutors and a woman in love, my verses will be read, not because tliey are beautiful, but because they were writ- ten with blood, with tears, with gall, because they are of flesh and bone, because they are the human outcries of a man who has suffered." The author, as well as any critic, touches upon the chief appeal of his lines. They burn with rage, yet they shine with an occasional spirituality that lights up the gloom of the cell. Such an illumination is the Vuelo de Psiquis in which the radiant memory of diings beloved eases the bitter burden of the prisoner: Me abruma el calabozo. Cruzan mi alma inquieta pensamientos obscuros; Y rompense, al abrirse, mis alas de poeta contra los cuatro muros. En sepulcro; ;y viviente!; Son eternos los dias y las noches eternas! Las Penas me acompanan. En mi torno hay espias y grillos en mis piernas. Pero al ceriar los ojos: (luz, campo, cielo) rairo romperse las cadenas; 322 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE y al brazo de mi novia en al jardin respiro magnolias y verbenas. Gozo el aire, las nubes, y el chorro del estanque, frescor como mi amada . . ., Alguna cosa es bueno que el Despota no arranque ni tenga encadenada. So passes the poet from vindictiveness to elation, from gloom to sacred ire, ever impelled by an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. The early imprisonment of the au- thor explains in a large measure the development of his pugnacious nature into a torch of patriotism and hatred for every phase of oppression, even as the pugnacity of spirit may explain that inattention to the more graceful aspects of technique which is so often the concomitant of ardent sincerity. Yet it is that very sincerity which renders us willingly forgetful of the more delicate literary traits. Tyrants are not flayed with strips of silk lace or drowned in vases of cologne water. Against his tyrant the very trees turn in indignation; the mountain whither he has fled refuses him shelter; the soil is transformed into rock; the waters arc converted into blood. All nature rebels against the supplicating wretch. But there is a gentler aspect to the poet, — one in which he chooses to appear before us, for more than a moment, in his Cancionero del Amor Infeliz (1918). And so great capacity for indignation is that possessed by our singer, that he does not wait for attacks, but in a prefatory note launches forth to meet them. He does not deem it neces- sary to apologize for a book of love verses. (Wliy, indeed, should he? And why, indeed, raise the point?) And he RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 323 very sensibly reminds us that if Plato exiled poets riDin his Republic, Plato should have been the first to condemn him- self to oslracisny The poems of the Cancionero belong to various stages of the poet's career and mirror the chang- ing piiases of such love as even a man of action can feel. And despite his yielding to the gentler muse, Blanco-Fom- bona is still the man of arrogant, pugnacious sincerity. His love verse, he tells us, is not die word of flame that covers the heart of snow, but rather the word of snow that covers tlie heart of fire. In all his protestations as to the poetic art Blanco-Fombona himself seems to feel that he lacks certain of the more stylistic attributes, wherefore he combats tliem instead of remembering that the creative man is the master of his own style and that styles may be as many as men. He has himself, as a matter of fact, recog- nized, if not constantly kept this in mind. Speaking of his artistic ancestry, he has said, "From the French, as from other tongues, I have taken what I should have taken: the example of love of literary- independence, a thing which is in accord with my temperament. This does not signify the imitation of anybody. ... I hate schools. Neither in politics nor in literature have I been an ist of any sort. I am L . . . In the Siianish language Ruben Dario con- tinues, for me, to be higher than the horns of the moon; I admire Lugones, who is in fashion, and Diaz Miron (his first manner) who is not. In the various literatures I con- tinue to be fond of Verlaine, Moreas . . . d'Annunzio, without forgetting Byron, Musset, Becquer, Heine, Jose \-unci6n Silva, and above all, Hugo." The list of names ' attests a broad eclecticism upon the part of the exiled Vene- zuelan, — an eclecticism characteristic of his age as well as 324 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE of his temperament. If it is possible to quarrel with a man for not being himself, my only quarrel with Blanco-Fom- bona as a poet (or, more exactly, as the critic of poets) would be for his insistence upon the action element and his narrowing scorn for sheer beauty in men who have not been bom with his peculiar constitution. His own poetry is a torch that transmits his flame to us, thus eminently ful- filling his conception of its mission. Even his atheism is not the calm, philosophical acceptance of a hopeless out- look, but proud, unresigned defiance: LA PROTESTA DEL PELELE Locura? Bien. No me resigno; que se resignen los esclavos. Deme el Destine la cicuta, el Dolor me clave sus clavos. Yo no dire; "bendito seas, mi Dios, tu voluntad acato"; dire: "soy menos que el insecto bajo la suela de un zapato. pero no hay que beber mis lagrimas, ni placerse en mi desventura, 6 asistir con aspecto olimpico e indiferente a mi tortura; porque en mi, pelele, hay sufrir, y tengo un alma yo, el enano, y puedo pesar la injusticia, y puedo juzgar al tirano." I have called this atheism, and we know from plenty of tes- timony that Blanco-Fombona is not a believer. Yet do RUFINO BL/\NCO-FOMHONA 325 you see how his very anlagouisin calls fur ihc personifica- tion of tlie god that he denies? Ill Blanco-Fombona's e]ii«^f eontrihutions to eritirism are contained in two volumes: Letras y Letrados dc IJispano- America (1908) and Grandes Escritores dc America (1917). In them ajipears the fighter, the personalist, the lover of liberty and the patriot that was evident in his very first poems. He is a firm believer in "literary American- ism"; he exalts the autochthonous element, at times unmind- ful of exaggerations and of enthusiasm that ovcrflinvs its channel. Yet how discerningly he pierces to the heart of his subject! He possesses a modern, vital sense of the importance of background and epoch; he is deeply sensitive to a host of influences deriving from the past as well as the present; he is patience itself, and not often given to the snap judgments that one might have expected from so im- pulsive a spirit. He is, above all, creative in his criticism. Out of all his less admirable qualities rises that potent fact; and until mankind shall have become perfect, let us be content with the creative realities that grow as much from error as from so-called infallibility. For is not truth , but the sum of errors? 1 Take, for example, Blanco-Fombona's study of Leopoldo Diaz. At once he signalizes the two dominating traits of the artist, — traits to which the critic himself, as a poet, is often a stranger: delicacy of taste and structural beauty. ' And no sooner has he made this declaration, a propos of a * French translation of Diaz's poems, than he has launched I into a miniature disquisition upon the relative poetic poten- 326 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE tialities of French and Spanish. "The French language has been fashioned by great artists who imparted to it the flexibility which it possesses today. Not so with our lan- guage. It is the rude tongue of the Cid, the heroic tongue of the Romancero. It is we, the (Spanish) Americans who have placed it upon the anvil, who, by dint of much patience have wrought and polished this tongue of iron, and who, by an alchemy less mysterious than conscious, have changed it from bronze to gold. . . ." (Is not this somewhat exaggerated?) "We, bom in America, sons of that fecund and voluptu- ous soil, mingled with the indigenous races and with races from the south and north of Europe, are no longer the Spaniard of yore. We are a new race. And within the old tongue we have created a literary language of our own. . . . Remy de Gourmont — and his phrase has had great fortune — calls our tongue neo-espanol. And it should be noted and repeated, that Leopoldo Diaz, with the prestige of his name and his talent, has also contributed to this labor of renovation. "Just as Simon Bolivar, San Martin, Sucre and Hidalgo gave political liberty to America, Leopoldo Diaz, Gutierrez Najera, Dario, Casal and Lugones gave it linguistic liberty. The Liberator Bolivar, after the battle of Ayacucho, was able to exclaim: 'Soldiers! You have brought freedom to South America ; and a fourth part of the world is the monu- ment to your glory. Where have you not conquered?' "And the poet-conqueror Leopoldo Diaz may likewise ex- claim: 'Comrades! We have given wings to the thoughts of a fourth part of the world. In what lyric emprise have' we not conquered?' " RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 327 Blanco-Fombona's motluxl is here most a(l('(|iial(' to the purpose. It is a question, if not of a now literature, at least of a radical re-orientation. A comprehension of the continental background, political as well as geoj^raphical, ethnological and sociological, is more than usually neces- san'. All the more so since Blanco-Fombona, knowing both South America and the cultural centres of Europe, re- alizes the one-sided knowledge possessed by outsiders, of Spanish America. "In Europe we are judged very super- ficially. We are known for our revolutions more than for anything else; revolutions which are not caused by political incapacity, as Europe imagines, and which are explained perfectly by Hispano- American sociologists who should be studied by the European sociologist before we are con- demned with the customary doctoral emphasis. "\^ e are barbarians? Very well: yes, we are barbarous; but like the Italy of the republics. We produce harsh warriors, like Milan; but also wealthy merchants, like Genoa, and great artists, like Florence." Widi tliese patriotic evocations his indignation against political aggression swells. ''The United States," he de- clares, *'have seventy million inhabitants": (recall when this was written) "we, not counting Brazil, have as high as fifty. The sentiment of Americanism is very strong in our countries, despite our not being joined by a common political bond. The writer of any of our States, has the entire continent for his public. Offences directed against any of our nations wound us all; and if Europe or the United States, thinking us weak, should one day attack us, *this Latin-American race, *his race tlial is the grandchild ' f the Cid and the daughter of Morazan, Juarez, Sucre, 328 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE San Martin, holds tremendous surprises and cruel disil- lusionments in store for them." Not all his criticism resolves into polemical digressions, however. Thus, considering Diaz's neo-Hellenism, he makes the very pertinent observation (so self-evident that it is strange how many have overlooked it) that it is after all a neo-Hellenism, a view of Greece through nineteen cen- turies of Christianity, and not without its stylistic disad- vantages. Naturally, then, it is Diaz's collection of son- nets called Los Conquistadores which attracts our conti- nental patriot more than the Hellenic evocations. Where- upon another question arises in the critic's active mind: "Has there existed, in America, up to a short time ago, a national literature which is the blood of our blood, — which is ours as are our rivers, our plains, our mountains?" "What is sure," he replies to himself, "is that we have for a long time lived on borrowings. That we have imi- tated and rifled the Europeans, above all the Spaniards and the French. I do not censure this. That is our right. Only, from the foreign flowers we must, like skillful bees, make our own honey. Did not the Romans sack the Greeks and did not the Europeans steal from the Latins and Greeks? The first obligation is to live. Then let us live!" It is easy to note, from what I have translated, the lyric element in Blanco-Fombona's criticism. He does more than elucidate his subject; he maintains a running fire of commentary, suggestion, refutation, threat, glorification; he plunges his entire personality into the task. Little ho recks of academic unity and rhetorical prescriptions. But read the essay, then drop it, and you will be astonished to' RUFINO BLANCO-FOMKONA 329 I(\ini how much you luvc discovered. Blanco-Fomhona i> IK) Kodo as regards style; l)ul he possesses that irony, tliat pugnacity, tluit variety, whicli were hiekinj:; in tlie Uruguayan master. He is, as essayist, tlie eompU-ment of Rodo, just as we have found Chocano to be the poetic com- plement of Dario. He has a deep sense of beauty, but it is a rugged beauty, insofar as it is translated into prose style. Rodo's prose is the luxuriant, variegated plain; Blanco- F'ombona's is the sturdy sierra. It takes both to produce die Spanish-American landscape. For examples of Blanco-Fombona at his best as critic, 1 would point to such studies as those on Andres Bello and on Gonzalez Prada in his Grandes Escritores de America. No less than Rodo, he reveals himself in these estimates of his glorious predecessors, — his fiery passion for truth and freedom, even if it means, for a moment, to speak against his idol. And he is aware of this self-revelation. As he remarks in his prefatory note, "the author observes with pleasure, as he corrects the proofs, that all the per- sonages here treated are or were free men and free spirits. To no adulator of tyrants, no servile pen, no writer in livery is there here erected an altar. The author, then, without deliberate purpose, bowed in books, as in his life, only to those who bear their heads and their consciences erect. And he also observes, likewise with pleasure, that in his studies more stress is laid upon the man than upon the litterateur, and that the life and character of each author merit as much attention, at least, as his work." Blanco- Fombona, then, is an auto-critic as well. So widely read a student as Gonzalez-Bianco docs not hesitate to declare that 330 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AJVIERICAN LITERATURE the studies upon Sarmiento, Gonzalez Prada and Hostos may be considered among the excellent pages of Spanish criticism produced in the past twenty years. As a critic, tlien (and in this connection the brief, but by no means superficial criticism in the first part of La Ldmpara de Aladino in the section called Nombres should be taken into account) Blanco-Fombona is the familiar mordant spirit, penetrating in appreciation, lofty in ideal- ism, usually tolerant and never dogmatic in attitude, per- sonal without being merely impressionistic, and above all, creative. IV Blanco-Fombona's views upon the development of Span- ish America are compressed into a little book of remark- able concision. The Political and Social Evolution of His pane- America was written originally for the Revue des Revues, at the instance of its editor, Jean Finot, who found it too long for the purpose and desired to prune it with the editorial shears. Our author took back his contribution and decided to enlarge the essay instead. Out of this labor grew two lectures delivered in Madrid during the montli of June, 1911. The book was published in the same year. The author is thoroughly alive to the dangers of diplo- macy and the international character of his apparently Spanish-American subject, and in his introductory re- marks, by the simple suggestion of imagining die sudden disappearance of Spanish America, brings the point strik- ingly home. The study is divided into four main parts: The Colony, Independence, Organization of the New* States and the Republic. RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 331 Blanco-Fombona docnis il essential lor tlir Caucasian cle- ment to predomiiuile; the same man wlio is unsparing in his ilenunciation of the whites' maltreatment of the natives, finds none tlie less that posterity has been little ju>^t toward the work and the efforts of the conquistadores. It w is the Spanish conqueror who brought civilization, — character- ized at fust l)y joint theocratic and military power. De- spite legislation in favor of the natives, the latter were cruelly treated, as the laws were unheeded. With the im- portation of negroes from Africa came a new racial ele- ment, and the inter-marriage of Spaniards with negro and Indian women produced mulattos and mestizos. "These will merge with one another, the same as the white descend- ants of the conquistadores, and will produce an inextric- able confusion of hybridisms, a scale of colors tliat begins with the audientic black and the coppery Indian and ends with the white, passing through all the shades of chocolate and coffee with milk. 'It is not known to which branch of tlie human family we belong,' Bolivar was to write in his message to tlie Congress of Angostura, in 1819." As to the population, then, in this era, it is tlie same throughout America, even as are the methods of the Spanish conqueror. "The adventurers fare forth to conquest, with or without official support. The religious orders form missions and reduce die Indians. The Viceroy or Captain- General does not rule without counter-authority, although his power is great; and the Cabildos, by whom tlie cities are administered, are a foreshadowing of modem liberties." To the Spanish policy of exclusivism (it was a eouneillor of Felipe III who branded the interchange of products with any odier countr)- than Spain "an invention of the devil") 332 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE the spirit of contraband arose. The author quotes the Brazilian sociologist Manoel Bomfin to the effect that at this stage both Spain and Portugal were parasitic nations living upon Colonial America. The truth is, adds our author, that they were incapable, or at least unskillful, in their exploitation. Spain, in its effort to retard the intellectual progress of the colonies, used religion as its chief weapon. The found- ing of universities was prohibited, and an embargo placed upon every manner of book, even though it treated of secu- lar and fictive matter. "But it is impossible to sequestrate an entire people. The 'noble' Americans, despite the re- strictions, exposing their liberty and their lives, read Hume, Hobbes and even Voltaire, Rousseau and other encyclo- pedists." Some journeyed to Europe. "Independence was only a question of time and opportunity." Tlien came the great year of 1810 in which the revolution broke out in all the capitals. "In Caracas, the 19tli of April; in Buenos Aires, die 25th of May; in Bogota, the 20th of July; in Quito, the 2nd of August; in Mexico, the 16th of September; in Santiago de Chile, the 18th of the same month." Blanco-Fombona feels a fierce pride in that first date; it is his native city that began the great overturn. He is too much the historian, however, to reproach Spain for her conduct. "Besides being futile it is absurd, and proves ignorance of sociological laws. But," he adds, in the very next paragraph, "it would be ignorance of those same laws to condemn the Revolution." It was, in its be- ginnings, an oligarchic and municipal revolution, in which the people had no part. It was a superior minority that accomplished the work, utilizing the municipal power that RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 333 lad been transmitted tt) Iut American sons liy Spain, wlio lad inherited it from Rome* ''The revolution was munic- pal because it was in Uie Cabildos that tlie revolutionists /ere found." With strikini:; unanimity the revohitionists ecreed the abolition of slavery, the freedom of industries, reedom of commerce, liberty of the press, suppression f nobiliary titles, an open door to the men of every land, ace, religions and opinion. Ecclesiastical power was iken away, the tribute of the Indians was abolished. The Vew World was born anew. The war which followed was "at the same time civil and nternational." International as against Spain; civil be- ause of the differences that arose among the colonies, kmong the curious phenomena noted during the strife was le infiltration of the revolutionary ideas into tlie enemy amp. It was in Venezuela, as we have seen, that the bat- 'e lasted longest and was waged most violently. No sooner had the revolution got under way when the ueslion arose as to whether the new states should consti- ite themselves into a democracy or a monarchy. The s^ortherners desired a federal republic after our own attem; the Southerners, a monarchial form. The oppos- ig ideas were incarnated in Bolivar, the Republican, and 1 San Martin, monarchist. At the historic meeting at 'Uayaquil they held three secret conferences and then arted forever. The result was a triumph for Blanco- 'ombona's idol, Bolivar. And how valiantly and patiently as our author labored in tlie cause of the Liberator! ■lone better than he has fairly dramatized the vast work \\d the enduring influence of that epic figure, who antici- ,ated Buckle and Taine in his appreciation of the in- 334 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE fluence of environment, who so admired the English consti- tution, who as early as 1815 formed a great project for a league of nations, to meet at Panama. The author offers a thorough explanation of the numer- ous wars that have been fought upon Spanish-Americar territory since the struggle for Independence. These h( refers to four chief causes: (1) cross breeding; (2) pauc ity of population and scarcity of means of communication (3) lack of liberty; (4) ignorance. Coming to the inter national relations of Spanish America, and its spirit oJ solidarity, he finds it convenient to classify under thret headings : ( 1 ) the threat of monarchial Europe, which wa.' answered by a rebirth of Bolivar's continental ideas o) federation and solidarity, and by the Monroe Doctrine which was at the time of its promulgation well received ii Spanish America; (2) a growing mistrust of the Unitec States since 1845-1850 because of its "mutilation of Mex ico and its filibusterism in Central America, and a perma nent mistrust of Europe, which does not cease to tlireatei us." This endures until the final quarter of the nineteen*] century; (3) hatred and fear of tlie United States, and ; decreasing suspicion of Europe. At every outside threat the sense of solidarity is reborn. '"The history of ou ephemeral unions is the history of foreign aggression." During the final quarter of the nineteenth century, note Blanco-Fombona, two new currents appear: Pan-American ism, with Anglo-American influence predominating, am Pan-Hispanism, which tends to counteract the first. Witl the beginning of the twentieth century comes a spirit o friendship with Europe at all costs, to offset the imperialisn of the United States and even its mere approach, "sine RUFINO BLANCOFOMBONA 335 I that countr)', by its customs, its coiucplion of life, its inca- pacity Ii>r the Fine Ails aiul its lack ot ideals, is the oppo- site pole of South America." This approach to Europe * itself splits in two, one direction favoring England and : Gennany, tlie other Latin Europe. The last is the more powerful. Unfortunately this is the prevailing attitude toward the ' United States, so far as one may judge from the utterances '■ of representative figures. I say unfortunately, for several ' reasons. First, because tlie attitude is not wholly unjusti- I fied, however exaggerated it may become in certain temper- > aments; Professor Ford, referring to Mexico,"* speaks of ' "tlie events of a war, which not all our historians find it easy to regard with complacency." There are other, later ) events concerning our national relations with Spanish i America that are equally difficult to regard with compla- cency. Second, the opponents of the United Slates seem- ingly disregard the elements in it tliat are opposed to the I selfsame spirit of aggrandizement that the Spanish Amer- ' icans fear from our nation. Third, we have, as a people, done little to dispel false notions. We have no gifted men I like Blanco-Fombona, Manuel Ugarte and Francisco Gar- I cia Calderon. counteracting the acrimonious utterances and revealing whatever of fallacy they contain. For the view ' that Spanish America is entirely wrong is myopic, fatuous, dangerous. We are committing the blunder of underes- timating Spanish America, and there are many ways in which that blunder may be driven home to us. We must know the worst that Spanish America thinks of us and must strive to change that worst to best. If it takes two * Main Currents of Spanish Literature. Page 243. 336 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE to make a quarrel, it takes two to make a friendship. For that purpose a little more literature and much less politics will go a long way. There is as much patriotism in recog- nizing a wrong attitude as in boasting a right. By no means do I concede all that Blanco-Fombona says against the United States. More than once he is grievously wrong. But I insist that such opposition must be met witli some- thing more than silence. We are not alone in our misunderstanding of Spanish America. The statement made by Clemenceau to French- men on his return from his trip to South America is almost as applicable today: "We judge them more or less super- ficially; let us not forget that they judge us, too." This is all the more significant in view of the immense importance of French influence upon the cultural and intellectual de- velopment of Spanish America. Out of this important study by our most fanatic hater (whose attitude I respect because of his undoubted sincerity, even as I deplore it for its too universal application) rises the spirit of a nascent race and a continental soul. Both race and soul are as yet indistinct, yet acquire homogeneity with each passing year. Thus, from the continentalism ol a merely geographic accident Spanish America is attain- ing to the continentalism of a new race, a new soul, a ne\^ literature, new aspirations. From our studies of Chocanc and Rodo it is easy to see that the politico-economic phase is but the basis for a higher expansion. The career oJ Spanish America is yet at its beginning. It may be as on( of the great poets has said: "America es el porvenir de mundo." — (Spanish) America is the figure of the world All signs point to its immediate universal importance 1 1 RIIFINO Bl^XNCO-FOMBONA 337 From Asia to Furopr, from Europo to North Anifrira, and tliciu'o .soiitlnvanl, the coiiisc of progress wends its way. Our best response to Spanish-American suspicion is to give j - iheir fears the lie. Shall we? . . . V In connection with this phase ol his labors it is im- portant to k(^ep in mitnl Blanco-Fomhona's incessant re- searches dealing with every aspect of Bolivar's career. His Cartas dc Bolivar, 1913 (Letters of Bolivar) are as yet in their first volume, and represent four years of unremit- ting toil. "Although this work is not mine, hut that of the ' Liberator," he tells us, "it represents an accunuilation of effort twenty times greater than that required by any other • book hitherto published by me." It is from Bolivar, in- deed, that tlie ardent Venezuelan draws his unflagging fer- vor of continental patriotism. He is the spirit of Bolivar fighting in the world of contemporary tliought. He thinks with a Bolivarian sweep. His conception of the New World and its destinies is that of Bolivar. And he is a worthy paladin. Of the more purely polemical writings of Blanco-Fom- > bona it is not necessary to speak here at length. He can be I withering, sardonic, terrible, at will. Read the Introduc- tion to his Judas Capitolino (1912) and you will gather ' his purpose as fulfilled in the pages that follow. If words can nail tyrants to a cross, Blanco-Foinbona wields tin; mighty hammer. To foreigners whose literary interests are of a general nature it is Blanco-Fomhona's fiction that will prove of most intimate appeal. That fiction possesses tlie double 338 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE attraction of being autochthonous in inspiration as well as personal (though not subjective) in style. His very first tales {Cuentos de poeta, 1900) displayed his alignment with the modernist reformers of prose. "Today," says the author, in the history of his books which forms by no means the least interesting part of La Ldmpara de Aladino, "nobody recalls this book, nor do I desire it to be remembered. I repudiate those tales, I disown them, I do not care for them, I do not consider them mine. The only ones among them that I recognize I gathered after submitting them to pruning and orthopedy, in the Cuentos Americanos (Madrid, 1904) and in an augmented and definitive edition of Garnier, Paris, 1913." The Cuentos de Poeta appeared in a French edition under the title Contes Americains, but these are likewise denied by the author. The tales are characterized by a spirit of analysis, irony, even pessimism. As early as their appearance in French. Henri Barbusse recognized in them a touch of Maupassant for their brevity, Daudet for their emotion, and of Villiers d'Isle Adam for their tragic irony. "I leave to my fair readers," (i.e. lectrices, for M. Bar- busse then edited the Femina) wrote the author who has since given us Nous Autres, Le Feu, L'Enfer and Clarte, "the trouble of investigating whether it is not a token of personality to summon at the same time the thought of three so divers talents, and I add that the surprising va- riety of these short tales ... as well as the picturesque local color that saturates them all in a Venezuelan atmos- phere, imparts a highly individual character. . . ." The tales are told with a most self-critical economy of ' means and every refinement of contemporary technique. RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 339 [n such stories as Molinos de Maiz, El Canalla San An- 'onio and Democracia Criolla it is not merely the exotic •lenient tliat appeals to us, — and what, after all, is the Aotic, but a lesser kno\vn part of ourselves? Bcliind the \oticism is something peculiarly human, — something we iKiy note in the two novels that follow. The intense fa- :iaticism, the political warfare, the economic transforma- lions mirrored in these tales fuse admirably with the action itself. Not many tales that have come out of South America can match tlie masterpiece Creole Democracy. It is in his novels that the Venezuelan's power as a writer of fiction may be studied most completely. The Man of Iron {El H ombre de Hierro, 1907) and The Man of Gold {El Hombre de Oro, 1915) are best con- sidered together. Tliey form an ideological unity; al- (hough in no sense is the second the sequel of the first; t IS rather a natural outgrowth from the first, or a com- plement to it. Blanco-Fombona's novels, like those, for example, of Manuel Diaz Rodriguez, form a delightful contrast, in their limpid, pregnant brevity, to tlie oceanic tomes of the earlier days, — to the Amalia of Jose Marmol, the Manuela af Eugenio Diaz, the Martin Rivas of Blest Gana. The change is not only in length, but in style. Yet the inner spirit of revolt is there, etched in firm strokes that leave a cutting impression upon the reader. Blanco-Fombona is everywhere the passionate patriot, and often his passion rises higher tlian his patriotism. He pierces at once to tlie heart of his characters; he draws in the background with swift but sure strokes; he wastes little time upon purely literary graces. His pages, at times overdrawn, are never 340 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE dull ; competent witnesses declare that his pictures of Vene- zuelan manners are true to life; here, as every^where else, you get the impression that whatever else the man may be, he is intensely, even fanatically, sincere. Who is his "man of iron"? A mere creature of wax. Who is his "man of gold"? A creature of dross, being of the earth most earthy. The very titles of his two novels reveal the ironic substructure of so much of the author's work. He is deeply sensitive to the irony of life; he has undergone it in no small degree. More, indeed, than any of the writers considered in this book he possesses the gift of the scorpion sting. As often as not, whether in his poetry or his prose, it is his indignation, his rancor, that speaks its heart. His irony, however, is not that of a con- templative Hardy, with a smile in his eye and a very deli- cate, scornful curl upon his lip. Nor is it, on the other hand, a carping, withering sarcasm. It is true that the background of both novels is the writer's native Venezuela, and more particularly the city of Caracas. But the inner tale unfolded has all humanity as the pro- tagonist and tlie world as milieu. The triumph of evil over good is as old as sin, — precisely as old; the portrayal of this triumph in a work of art utterly devoid of preachiness and bringing to us a new, poignant realization of the old knowledge, is a triumph for Blanco-Fombona's skill. Nor should it be imagined that the noted exile from Venezuela is lacking in the more tender traits. There are pages of simple, haunting pathos in the two novels that are difficult to match for their directness, their unadorned, straightforward manner. One suspects, and not on the? evidence of these pages alone, that for all his early bragga- j RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA %i\ (locio and swashbuckling, Hlanco-Fomhona has, at hoftoni. a tciulor lioart, laden willi as niucli sorrow as vcnoni. .is much honey as gall. Kl Hombrc dc Ilierro was written in prison. The author, who had in lOQl- given up his position as Venezuelan eon- ' sul in Amsterdam, had returned to his native land, or, as he calls it, ''mi eonvulsiva tiernica." In I'H)."! lie was named governor of the Territorio Amazonas, a wild dis- ■ trict bordering upon Brazil, and it was here, as we have ' seen, that he underwent a series of strange adventures. Out of the attack upon the administration building grew charges against him for murder and assault. He was im- prisoned in Ciudad Bolivar, and later freed, having been found innocent. "Tlie Man of Iron," then, was bom in the cell, which has nurtured many a masterpiece. The writ- ' ing took eight weeks; the result was one of the author's most enduring book^ , Crispin Luz is the highly trusted book-keeper of the firm Perrin and Company. He is not only a model em- ployee, but a model person altogether. He is deeply \ devout; he is the incarnation of self-sacrifice; he respects, ' even worships, authority. He not only gives of his best to his employer within working hours, but takes work home, where he occupies a dubious position, because of his hum- ble, submissive nature. He is by no means the favorite child of his mother, a novel-devouring, yet practical woman who keeps an open eye upon the family budget. \^ hen the time comes for Crispin to marry, he is brought together with his future wife, by much the same method as plotting matchmakers may learn from "Much ' Ado About Nothing," Maria herself, though not so meek 342 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE as Crispin, is colorless and imitative enough to desire a hus- band because it is the regular thing, — because most maidens marry, because her giddy cousin is happily engaged to a vivacious dandy; because, in short, she is talked into the match. Crispin, however, worships her with the worship of the meek for unexpected joys. Yet early he feels, rather than detects, that all is not as it should be. Perhaps the advent of a child will tighten the bonds between husband and wife; yet when the child comes, it brings with its ugli- ness only more sorrow. The truth is that Maria has never known real love until it has been revealed to her through Julio de Najera, a Brummelesque Don Juan whose voluptuous epicureanism takes delight more in the quest than in the conquest, and who, once he has attained his egotistic ends, forgets Maria for another. In the meantime Crispin, blind to every- thing, toils away slavishly, undermining his fragile con- stitution. The inevitable occurs; he is stricken v/ith tuber- culosis of the lungs and soon dies as humbly and as meekly as he has lived. Life has made sport of him from the be- ginning to the end; in his family he was but a footstool; in business he was a tool; in love he was a dupe; he was the victim of the sum of his virtues, which consumed him like an overmastering vice. The man of iron, so named by Mr. Perrin because of his reliance upon the faithful employee, — his right arm, — - was really but a man of putty. Yet could anyone have pointed to a single characteristic of his and said "This is evil"? While he himself was saintly, all too saintly, he was victimized by the all too human. The author makes no concessions to the reader of popu- RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 313 lar novels. He begins at the end, alter the funeral of Crispin, and very skillfully glides hack into tlic clnoniele of events, leading at last to the death and burial in the linal chapter, thus completing the circle. His characterization is rapid, hut by no means superficial; his scenes are brief, but not blurred. From its technical aspect, indeed "The Man of Iron," together with its successor, is athletie both in strength and freedom from snperfluity. There is not a character, a scene, a situation, that may be dispensed with; every word, indeed, contributes its necessary share to the whole. From this standpoint, there is a world of difference between Rlanco-Fombona's novels and an Amalia or a Martin Ritas. His ability to compress a characterization, at its best, is indicative of intimate acquaintance with de Maupassant; at its worst it degenerates into caricature, though happily not very often. The patriot is evident in his satire against natives who have travelled abroad and must vent their superiority by depreciating tlie limitations of Caracas; the fair-m-inded critic is likewise revealed by the fact that one of the noblest figures in the book is a Roman Catholic priest, Father Iz- nardi, — so noble, indeed, that he is forced out of the coun- try by the hostile attitude of the organized church, wliich will have none of his civic and patriotic virtues. Whether he is describing an earthquake or the inception if a revolution, an excursion to the country or the death of 3ne of the meek who did not obtain his share of the inher- tancc of the earth, Blanco-Fombona seizes unerringly upon he essential traits. The earthquake is no mere piece of description, — it reveals the temper of the populace, the )ravery of the priest; the inception of the revolt is likewise 344 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE illuminating as to the Venezuelan background against which Crispin Luz plays his eminently virtuous, eminently ludi- crous role. Who are the happy in El H ombre de Hierro? The per- sons with hearts of iron. Julio de Najera, flitting from woman to woman, only occasionally piqued by a more de- termined resistance than he is wont to encounter; Rosalia, Maria's cousin, wilful, wily, superficial, unscrupulous; Ramon, Crispin's brother, ever scheming for new acquisi- tions, ready to squander his money upon dancers and act- resses; Perrin, the employer, in whose interest even Crispin consents to wink at wrong-doing. Virtue alone is victim- ized, by itself as much as by others; it becomes, not its own reward, but its own hangman. This is not all of life; no novel can hope to be. Crispin is not all of virtue, because he is too much of it. He forms, however, a notable type in modem fiction. We say an Oblomov when we refer to the Russian Hamlet, prodigal in words, fruitful in genuine intelligence, yet sterile or abortive in deed; we think of Caesar Moncada (Pio Baroja's Ccesar or Nothing) as the opposite type, — equally sterile in the end, yet as prodigal in busy-body futilities as in epi- grams; with such as these Crispin Luz belongs as the repre- sentative of victimized virtue. In this novel of Venezuelan life the author has epitomized a world, — a world filled with Crispins in every walk of life. And what of Maria? Is she any the less a victim for not being possessed of her husband's docility? In om trait, — an important one, — she resembles him; her ]acV of will. And one may question whether she or her husbani' is essentially the less "moral" of the two. RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 34"^ But I am entering a province wliich doi-s not concfin the author. His aim was to present a slice of life, not to sit in judgment, which is one of mankind's most ludicrous pos- tures. In tliis novel he produeed not i)nly a notahle piece of fiction, hut a notable work of art, untainted hy any too evident purpose of propaganda, yet illuminated by a human glow that warms tlie heart for all its cynicism; El H ombre de llicrro attests a deep, if unoj»tentatioiis. kiKuvledge of human passions and motives; it may not bring hope, hut it brings understanding. I The Man of Gold was begun in the summer of 1913 at Pomichet. a Breton seashore retreat; after an interruption it was finished at Madrid in the winter of 1914-15. "Per- haps." the author tells us, "it is up to the present moment my best book. ... Its background presents a picture which those will recall who desire to study the political and social customs of Venezuela during tlie epoch of Castro. There are many portraits from life." The Man of Gold, however, is far more; it is just as universal in application as its predecessor. Its generating spirit is essentially the same, only it presents the question from a different angle. In the preceding novel it is the vir- tuous man who succumbs to rascality and vice; in El I Hombre de Oro tlie passive saint yields to the active sinner. I Blanco-Fombona himself, commenting upon the protagon- ists of the novels, contrasts tliem thus: "Tlie first lacks the personal elements of combat, necessary in the society in which he dwells, — and fails; the second possesses qual- I ities lacked by the society in which he lives, — and imposes ? his will." We first meet the man of gold as a rising book-keeper, — 346 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Crispin's own profession. But Seiior Irurtia is a genuine, not a metaphorical, man of iron. His one passion is gain, and to this he subordinates every human attribute. He loans money at exorbitant interest; he cuts down his per- sonal expenses to the lowest margin, he drives the hardest bargains and at last becomes wealthy. During all this time, however, he has been, as most of his kind must be, anti-social in character. His fellow man existed only to be exploited; the government was an institution to be de- frauded ; woman, — the only woman he really knew was his rheumatic old housekeeper Tomasa, whom he had inherited along with other domestic articles. Yet it is a strange group of women that is destined to affect Irurtia's career. The three old-maid Agualonga sisters, a religious, high- minded trio whose ancestry contains noble as well as revolu- tionary blood, live entirely absorbed in their niece: Olga Emmerich, an eighteen-year-old pampered creature whose thoughts are centered only upon herself. Ever since she was left on their hands she has worked her will upon them; all their repressed maternal instincts vent themselves upon her, — they are, indeed, her three mothers. Does Olga con- ceive a violent desire for an Andres Rata, — a spineless, subservient, fawning creature who yields to her every caprice? They may object, but they yield, too. Does she need money to settle down with? They will sell their old mansion, peopled with so many treasured memories, or ex- change it for a smaller place and give Olga the cash re- ceived for the difference in value. Thus they have recourse to Irurtia, who deals in real estate. It suddenly enters Olga's head that this Irurtia would RUFINO BLANCO-FOMHONA :U7 make a good match lor Hosaura, one of the tlin-e sisters, with whom lie seems somewliat pleased. But this thought is hy no means connected with any concern for Rosaura's happiness. Olga is thinking of — Olga. Old Irurtia in repulsive, inwanlly and outwardly; but he is rich. Should he marry Rosaura, who has a special fondness for Olga, the latter will have access to much more money tlian that which will be realized by an exclumge of the old manse for a smaller place. To accomplish this end the young Machiavelli in petticoats sets a complicated human ma- chinery in motion. It is the stor)' of Crispin and Maria over again, only w ith more malice, more cruelly. Rosaura is thrust toward the old miser, — made to feel that it is a necessary sacrifice, — diat it would be selfish of her to refuse. Irurtia, as much as it is possible, falls in love with her quite genuinely, but she cannot countenance him. Not all the knavery of Olga, of the ridiculous ''General" Qiicharra, of the rodent-like Andres Rata, with his flatter- ing newspaper roguery, can bring about the union out of which tlie conspirators hope to reap profit at the expense of Rosaura's misery. Irurtia himself weighs Rosaura in the balance against his ounces of gold, and the gold wins. Besides, this man, whose entire career has been one of parasitical feeding upon society, is invited, because of his , riches, to a post in tlie President's cabinet, and we leave him at the close of tlie tale undermining the very office of the President. Like tlie previous boojc, this one is etched radier than written. The vitriolic characterization of Chicharra and ' Rata as well as parts of Olga's portrayal, fail of effect by the very excess of the autlior's passion. W ilhout his own 348 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE 1 testimony, it is easy to detect personal animosity against real characters. The portions dealing with local politics are, if true to life, a terrible condemnation of conditions in Venezuela. Yet the book as a whole suffers little by the caricature of a Chicharra. In every sense it is worthy of the volume to which it forms a spiritual companion. If one or two of the characters be somewhat overdra-wn, where, on the other hand, is it possible to find so well delin- eated, so neatly sketched, yet so fully vivified a trio of women as the three Agualonga sisters? As the last rem- nants of an old family, they form a tragic trio that stands out in luminous contrast against the self-seeking creatures who play upon tlieir pride and their good nature. Like Crispin, they, too, are the victims of their virtue. For Olga they abandon their mansion, for Olga they abandon their ideals, and in the end are left to face old age without even the presence of the scatter-brained, self-willed maiden for whom they have made one sacrifice after the other. It is the old triumph of evil over good. Cirilo Matamoros, the native doctor who refuses to accept money for his sei-vices, j lands in prison as a reward for all his public benefactions; Eufemia, oldest of the three sisters, dies of a broken heart i caused by the abandonment of the family home; Rosaura, who in her maiden days refused a man she really loved, be- cause he would not take Olga to live with them, is deserted at last by that Olga who tried to force her into marriage with the abhorrent, money-grubbing Irurtia. Irurtia, on the other hand, works his way up to the shadow of tlie presidential chair; Chicharra acquires new power in the government; Olga satisfies her every whim, unmindful alike* of wifely duty or human consideration. -Ill: RIIFINO BLANCO-KOMBONA :W The chapter depicting tlic departure of llie three sisters rom tlicir ancestral homes is one of the most affect iiig in u)tleni fiction. It n^veals, as do similar scenes in the receding book, a RIanco-Fomhona that, one hopes, will be iMie in evidence in his future works, — a writc^r who is i.i.-ter of llie deeper human emotions, prober into the (■(•per wells of feeling. /',/ Homhre de Ilirrro and Kl Hoinbrc do Oro are a net- tle couple; they contain, largely, the author's outlook upon t(\ — a life by no means devoid of what have been called ic fmer things, yet in which evil is triumphant more often an good. In such a sense, if we must use names, Blanco- 3mbona is a pessimist. But not in the sense that includes resigned acceptance of things, for Blanco-Fombona's en- • ' life is a denial of such resignation. He is a born jhter against the evil he discerns, and by that very kiMi in a certain sense an optimist. These books not mere ''literature"; they are life, — throbbing life. they are not all of life it is because Blanco-Fombona is nt all humanity, any more than are you and I. No ' '\iter tribute can be paid to his novels — and the statement lies to his work as a whole, except where he vents those ! rely personal grudges that other writers repress so far : letters are concerned — than to say that while we read I in we accept his world, his creatures, his attitude, and 1 (• through the scenes under the spell of his word. There i .1 great novelist in Blanco-Fombona, — a greater novelist, 1 iclieve, tlian poet or even critic. His two works estab- ] h his position firmly. It is La Ldmpara de Aladino, 1915 (Aladdin's Lamp) tit contains the quintessence of the author's rich personal- 350 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE ity. His diabolic spirit, in all its acrimony is here; his mundane curiosity, raised to a creative power, is here; the book, — one of the most curious of literary collections, — is the man in all his aspects. Though it is composed of bits written at various times and with not a thought of later assembling, it is strangely revelatory of the complex author behind the pen. Here is Blanco-Fombona the critic, the fiction writer, the poet, the sociologist, the polemist, — 1(1 the multiple man. Why "Aladdin's Lamp"? Because whenever you choose to rub it, the jinni appears, And because, like Aladdin, we may turn the page instead ol rubbing lamps, and at each page find a new spirit awaitint us. But let the audior interpret himself: "Aladdin, capricious Aladdin, rubs his magic lamp The jinni appears. Aladdin desires festive garb. Th' spirit accedes, and Aladdin, the orphan of a botching tailoi the son of an indigent widow, shines resplendent like ,, lord. He rubs his magic lamp again. The jinni appear] submissively. Aladdin asks a palace. And the most opt, lent castle is his. The ambitious youtli rubs once moni The spirit asks him: 'What do you desire?' The amb tious youth desires to behold the Sultan's daughter in h arms, languishing for love, and by virtue of die jinni sultan's daughter languishes for love in his arms. Bil Aladdin is insatiable. He desires more, ever more, an more slill. " 'Unhappy one, your desire will slay you,' warns tl spirit. 'Your present desire spells death; if I should Sc| isfy it, you would die.' RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 351 "Wo are all, at limes, are we not, the covetous son of ihr tailor? We all luive our Alacldiirs lamps. "But not always does famishing Desire, Insatiahility, rul) it. "At times, more frequently, Akuldin's lamp is Ima«z;ina- tion, of which we do not ask all because its gifts please only chimerical, unbalanced men, without any practical sj)irit, whom we call poets. As we rub the magic instrument the miracle occurs, and out of the clouds come women we love, landscapes gazed upon by our eyes, peoples that opened iheir doors to our curiosity. . . . Do you understand now how evocation of past life — memories, travels, emotions, I readings — may be christened with an Oriental title?" Accordingly the strange collection is divided into (1) Names, (2) Thoughts and Emotions, (3) Cities and Pano- ! ramas, (1) Italy, (5) The Trip to the Upper Orinoco, 190S, (6) Commentaries, (7) Confessions. Let us rub tlie lamp a few times and sample the jinni's compliance. Such an array of names as files by our eyes in the open- ' iiig section! And despite tlie brevity of his treatment, the author unfailingly presents us with a thought that lingers. There is a rich vein of imaginative humor, now gay, now • punning, now ironic, now swashbuckling, but never dull, ' With equal grace he flits from Maeterlinck to Loti, to : Wilde, to Lamartine, to Isadora Duncan, to Anatole France and whom not else, in a half dozen literatures, with a re- freshingly international outlook. For, despite the intense I patriotism he can feel aixl the intense national hatred that is i the outgrowtli of that patriotism, Blanco-Fombona is very much of an internationalist. _ 352 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Discussing Maeterlinck he can throw off the observation that France has never produced a single really great drama because it does not love exaggeration even in passion. "I am surprised that nobody should have observed this before. Shakespeare could not have been bom in France." In similar fashion he predicts (tliis was before the war, which has now delayed the fulfillment of his prophecy) a theatre that will be the glory of Russia and the envy and despair of other nations. So, too, referring to Oscar Wilde, he cannot resist a slap at the British pharisaic, "holier-than- thou" attitude and at literary sanctimoniousness. "Grief converted Wilde in his last days, to Christianity, without such Christianity having anything to do with sects, Protest- ant or otherwise. The author of De Profundis was the last Christian." Speaking of Isadora Duncan he is led to his rarely forgotten topic, — the United States. "The United States, which still lack a national music and poetry, likewise lack a typical dance. (The cake-walk is not Yan- kee, it is negro.)" Like Rodo, he considers the will our great virtue. From a consideration of Gogol's sparkling comedy Revizor he arrives at a definition of genius: "con- verting the small things of every day into the great things of all the centuries." I shall not make a minute analysis of his Names; it is sufficient to indicate that the man is peculiarly alive to every impulse of art and science; one need not agree with all he says to admire his many-faced curiosity, — a curiosity that, as I have said, is creative. This is no merely superficial versatility; it is the full utilization of the full man that, as we have learned from Rodo, we all carry within us. It| is literature with a deep root in contemporary life; it is RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 353 not Dario's lyric contemporaiuMty or Chocano's all agra in one; it is a passionate, belligerent contemporaneity that is strewn with the errors that accompany mairs striving. It is representative of a type of iniml that we lack in our own nation. Pensares r Sentires (Tlioughts and Emotions) is no less suggestive. IiuKvd. Blanco-Fombona cannot write detach- edlv. "The whole man thinks," said Lewes in his biog- raphy of Goetlie; when Blanco-Fombona works, the whole man writes. In his cynical moments he is capable of a bit like his *'best definition of a man," — "The best definition of a man would bo this: the only animal who can laugh, cry, and get drunk. Perhaps others have given it before. As I have lived in England, Germany, Holland and the United Slates, I find it a gem." At other times his cynicism combines with his sociological interest, and he gazes at the human panorama from an elevation of mingled scorn and optimism: '"The survival of the fittest," he declares, in his Los Arboles Sobre el Monte (The Trees Upon the Mountain), *'is a natural law in so far as it applies to all of nature. But in this vile, bourgeois society the fittest to live are the vilest. To change the environment, revolutionizing it widi what- ever means science places at our disposal, is to prepare a better world, whence better men will perforce issue, with- out any other equality being necessary than that of the right to eat and the right to forge ahead. ■'The serf desired to become a citizen and succeeded. The citizen of today lacks necessities and laughs at the sin- ister situation of going to the ballot box with an empty 354 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE stomach. The modem man is hungry. The great revolu- tion of the future is the revolution for bread. And when man will possess bread and rights, he will place his happi- ness in something else and will strive to obtain it. This is how humanity endures, through movements, change and interchange of ideals. Stagnant waters produce only slime and miasma. "When the people desired to conquer rights it flocked to the banners of a Mirabeau and listened to the great voices of the philosophers. Now it throngs about doctrines, — pregnant with the future, — of a Karl Marx; and always the people will seek a guide and will rally around some guiding banner. For, despite the fact that personalities are nothing without the group, the Carlylean conception of history con- tains much truth. "The people are mountains, but the great trees grow upon them." His views of democracy is the aristodemocratic view of Rodo, only that Blanco-Fombona is outspokenly socialistic. At times, indeed, his cult of the free personality leads him to what many would shrink from as anarchy. It is in this section that the author presents in succinct form his views upon Spanish America's contribution to Castilian literature. First of all, he contends, Spanish America has brought a revolutionary fermentation; then a deep love of nature, a more vivid feeling for landscape, the mountain coolness, the breath of pampas, virgin forests and seas. Too, a cult of form, a love of elegant things, a dynamic prose, and verses free of the old, pneumatic elo- quence. Finally, an intense aesthetic emotion, — tenderness' and sensualism in art. "In tliis last respect, Manuel Guti- RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 355 errez Najera, for example, is the Castilian poet witliout predecessors. . . . One of tlie most pithy and dislml)- ling of contem[U)rary ihinivers, Don Miguel de Unainuiio, has truly written: *Our tongue speaks things to us from beyond the great sea that it never spoke here.' " We will pause long enough upon the Ciudades y Pana- Tonias to note that Blaneo-Fombona is no mere j)arlor tour- ist. He sees beyond tlie lithographed pamphlets of the traveling agencies. Commenting upon Mother Spain he returns to his favorite themes. He entertains high hopes for a genuine renaissance of Hispanic grandeur. He sees, too, die undoubted influence of the younger Spanish- Amer- can writers upon Spanish literature, especially the effect of Dario, Lugones, Jose Asuncion Silva, Herrera Reissig, and of Ricardo Palma, die venerable Peruvian scholar, poet and chronicler. With perspicacious patience he indicates cases of almost servile imitation, and reproves Spain for its neglect of the Spanish-American intellect, not to speak of its envy and jealousy. Yet these words, so easily mis- understood, are not mere acrimony for its own sake. Un- denieath them, as the writer himself assures us in a note, lies a genuine desire for a mutual understanding. Blanco- Fombona is not so black as he paints himself with his caustic habit of utterance. More interesting tlian the Italian travels is the exception- ally vivid account of his trip to assume charge of his guber- natorial duties in the wilds of Venezuela. The tale reads like fiction, with a background as exotic as it is picturesque. The entire expedition had somediing of the Quixotic about Mt. Blanco-Fombona tlie roisterer is there, becoming drunk and endangering the life of his few companions; the poet 356 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE is there, too, inspired by the ambient into the extemporiza- tion of poetry, — into Alexandrian ecstasies — a la Chocano: Yo tengo el alma antiguo de los conquistadores; Orinoco, los Andes. . . . the economist is there, with the realization that here may be situated the future centre of the world's commerce. So is the sociologist. What is the first thing Blanco-Fombona does in his official capacity? He constitutes the Muncipal Council amid his desert territory; he founds schools; he studies the various Indian dialects with the purpose of pub-" lishing vocabularies of the indigenous tongues. And here we come upon one of the numerous instances of the fair- ness that underlies all his proud extravagances, — a fairness comparable with that of Blasco Ibaiiez, whose social ideas run in similar channels. Blanco-Fombona at once sets about to protect the exploited Indians; as a reward for his civilizing influences he is made the target of assassination, which he escapes by his own right arm. The governors of the province have rarely enjoyed great ease. Venancio Pulgar was slain; Melendez Carrasco was wounded; Taveraj Acosta was put to flight; Diaz, whom Blanco-Fombona suc- ceeded, was poisoned, and Blanco-Fombona's o^vn successor,! Maldonado, was shot to death. While correcting the proofs of his book the author learned that the new governor. Gen- eral Roberto Pulido, had been assassinated togetlier with! twenty-five or thirty companions. Is it any wonder, then, that our writer inveighs against the lawless whites of the dangerous territory? He finds the Indians, on the whole. an industrious kind, contrasting most favorably with tliei; riff^-rafl" of the Caucasians that have there assembled from? i it RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 357 all the corners of the earth. There is a grim humor in liis statement that despite the undoubted existence of gold mines in tlie East, the whites fnvjuently rob from one an- other and even slay, all joining in the plundering and the persecution of the Indians. The author while (hfuiing man, might have added another attribute: the sole creature who robs his fellow in plenitude, impelled by desire of gain ratlier than hunger. For a moment, in his quasi-Chateau- briandian exahation of the Indian, he becomes a sort of devil's advocate. "As to their religious beliefs," he re- marks, "tlie Indians are more logical than other peoples. They give feasts to the Devil. They aver, and with reason, that since die Almighty is the Supreme Good, He is incap- able of wishing evil upon His creatures, so that it is unnec- essarv' to present Him w^ith adulation or feasts. These they reserve for the Spirit of Evil, who must be maintained propitious. . . ." The Viaje al Alto Orinoco (1905) is a moving, novel- esque, at times poetic description of a madcap, if patriotic, epoch in the writer's multifarious career. All of the writer is in its colorful pages. The Comentarios are often words turned swords, glisten- ing before they stab. Ask not Blanco-Fombona for con- sistency; ask of him the self of the moment. Do you imagine that his anti-United States utterances are the product of a blind, unreasoning hatred? Then read what he can say of all Europe and its hypocritical cant about civilization when the purpose of diplomats is to be effected {La Justicia Inmanente, page 398) ; read what he can say of France, the nation he adores, in his article upon Xeno- phobia (page 431) ; the trutli is that, williout fear he attacks 358 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE evil wherever he sees it. His sight may often err, but rarely his aim or his sincerity. In this connection, easily one of the finest of the Comentarios is his virile attack upon F rasas Hechas (Stock Phrases). "Sound Germany," "Tranquil Holland," "The Model Republic," "Spanish Indolence" and "Mad France" rouse his ire. Is it not be- cause at bottom, these stock phrases represent, as do most, a crystallization of thought that is the enemy of fluid opin- ion and that deeper knowledge without which no lasting national friendship may be effected? Confesiones presents a difference only of degree; almost everything that has come from the autlior's pen is in one way or another a confession. The writer may, at times, achieve a certain Parnassianism of form; essentially, how- ever, he is personal, — one might almost say, at the risk of adding to the intricate mesh of terminology, that he is es- sentially projective. Yet he is such a master of word and style that we are very apt to be carried along in the current of his thought. It is number XV of the Confessions that contains the probable keynote to Blanco-Fombona's personality as it is revealed in his literature. "There comes from Colombia a letter that produces a powerful impression upon us," he writes, "in that it recalls the hours of anguish spent in tor- ture in the prison of Caracas (1909-1910). And I who, illumined by a ray of love, tliought myself five hundred years away from that darkness of yesterday! But no. My heart cannot forget. That unmerited and protracted grief, that violent and hate-blinded persecution, this exile that cuts my life in two, all this drama of barbarocracy let j RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA 359 loose against nie, lias darkoiiod my rharactrr, poisoiicil mv SI '11 1. . . . Here, then, is one oi tlie sourees of a virulence that dis- tiirhs many a page of our author, — that renders him un- wiltinglv unjust, — that alienates the reader who seeks merely tlie amenities of "polite" literature. Some may wish it absent, but that is to wish Blaneo-Fombona to he I somebody else. We must accept him for what he is, a thor- ( oughly human, sincere, passionate fighter in causes that he I deems just. j From the same letter (sent by Satiirio Gonzalez) we ob- i tain an interesting glimpse of that prison life which Blanco- i Fombona has sung in his poems. There was many a sleep- I less night, in which the noted author read manuscripts of ! his own which were later confiscated and lost for good, I including a diary of his imprisonment. The book concludes with a history of the author's works. The account is rich in anecdote, in humor, in self-analysis, in literary interest. It seems organically impossible for Blanco-Fombona to be dull. Following the account is that short obituary note with which I opened this chapter, — a note of death that rings with life. It is too early to attempt a definite evaluation of Blanco- Fombona's position in Spanish-American literature. He is yet a young, if altered, man. Unless future events should embroil him in pure polemics, he seems destined to produce fiction and poetry of distinctive and lasting wortli. He is a man of the new age, and that age is emerging from the ;' chaos of battle and international misunderstanding. TRANSLATIONS The poetry quoted in the text and not made clear by the sur- rounding matter is here translated quite literally. The citations are indexed under the author in whom they occur, preceded by the first line of the original. MANUEL GUTIERREZ NAJERA No soy poeta, etc. I am not a poet; you can see that. In vain you flatter me with such a title, for neither is the nest a thrush or a night- ingale, nor is the piano a tenor or a baritone! Por que es preciso, etc. Why is it necessary for happiness to end? Why does the sweetheart remain at the window, and to the note which says, "Till tomorrow," why does the heart reply "Who knows?" Recorder . . . perdonar . , . haber amado. . . . To recall, to pardon, to have loved, to have been for a mo- ment happy, to have believed . . . and then, to recline wearily upon the snowy shoulder of oblivion. El templo colosal, etc. The colossal temple, with its immense nave, is dank and dreary; there are no flowers upon the altar; all is dark, so dark. The candles are extinguished ! Lord, where art tliou? I seek thee in vain! . . . Wliere art thou. Christ? I call thee in fear, because I am alone, even as the frightened child calls his father! . . . And there is nobody at the altar! No- body in the nave! All is submerged in sepulchral gloom! Speak! Let the organ sound! Let me see the candles bum upon the altar! ... I am drowning in the darkness. ... I am drowning! Arise from the dead, oh my Lord! " 360 TRANSLATIONS 361 JOSE \URTi Un beso! etc. "A kiss." — "Wait." — That clay as they parted, lliey lovcM each other. "A kiss!" — "Take it!" That ilay as they parted, they wept. Entro la nina en el basque. The maiden entered tlie forest arm in arm with her wooer, and there was lieard one kiss, and another, and then notliing more was heard. She was in the woods an hour, and emerged without her lover. There was heard a :pl^h;— a sigh, and then nothing more. JULIAN DEL CASAL Ver otro cielo, otro vionte. To behold another sky. a different mountain, another shore, another horizon, a different sea. Other peoples, other races, with different habits of thought. Ignea columna sigue mi peso cierto! A pillar of fire follows my certain steps! A redeeming faith saves my soul! I know that beyond the waves the haven awaits me! I know that after the night will rise the dawn. ... If we had lived longer together, our separation would not be so painful. You cultivate your ills, and I forget. You see everything black, and I see it rose color! JOSE ASUNCION SILVA Jnfancia, valle ameno. Childhood, fair valley of blessed repose and coolness, where the ray of the sun that scorches the rest of life is gentle. How saintly is your pure innocence, and your fleeting, transi- tory joys; how sweet it is in hours of bitterness, to look to the past and evoke your memories! 362 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE cuentos mas durables que las convicciones Tales more enduring than the convictions of solemn sages and sapient schools, and who surround with your fictions the gilded cradles of our great-grandmothers. campanas planideras . . . plangent bells that speak to the living of the dead. Una noche On a night, on a night permeated with murmurs, perfumes and the music of wings; on a night in which the fantastic glow-worms gleamed in the moist and mystical shadows. . . . SALVADOR DIAZ MIRON t No intentes convencerme de torpeza Attempt not to convict me of baseness with the delirium of your madness! My reason is at once light and firmness, firmness and light, like the rock crystal! Like to the noc- turnal pilgrim, my immortal hope does not gaze upon the ground: beholding on my path naught but shadow, I con- template only the splendor of the heavens! . . . Erect under all blows, in my persistence I feel superior to victory. I have \ faith in myself: adversity may cheat me of triumph, but not of glory! Let the abject persecute me! I desire to attract envy, though it vanquish me! The flower to which the insects swarm is rich in colors and in perfume. . . . To il- il luminate is to burn! A burning inspiration will be the'" flame that consumes me! . . . The pearl blossoms from the wounded mollusc, and Venus is born of the bitter foam! Conform, then, woman! We have come to this vale of tears that overwhelms us, — You, like the dove, for the nest and I, like the lion, for the combat. En mi el Cosmos intima senales. In me the Cosmos suggests tokens and is a congeries o^i mental impressions. . . . For me, as an objective spirit,^ everything exists as I behold it. And the nuance lends itsi t TRANSLATIONS 363 own lyric element to the gay talent; this it is that imparls character and tone, novelty and worth to the product. AMADO NERVO Sois rey, etc. You are king of America, still, in a certain manner, even as before. King, as long as the divine tongue of Cervantes sweetens the lips and sings in the songs of eighteen republics and fifty millions of beings; as long as the austere ideal of Castilian honor guides our souls and our hands. ENRIQUE GONZALEZ MARTINEZ Busca en tod as las cosas. Seek in all things a soul and a hidden meaning; limit not yourself to mere appearances; scent and follow the trail of the secret truth, with a piercing glance and a sharj) ear. Love life's tender aspect, — the calm of the swaying flower, color, the landscape; gradually you will learn to decipher their language. . . . Oh, divine colloquy of things and the soul! There is in all tlimgs a tender smile, an inefl'able grief or a sombre mystery. Do you know whether the drops of dew are tears? Do you know what secrets are sung by llie zephyrs? RUBEN DARIO Murio tu padre, es verdad . . . Your father has died, it is true; you weep for him, and are right; but resign yourself, for there exists an eternity where there is no suffering . . . and the just dwell in song amid white lilies . . . Este del cabello cano . . . This sage with hair as white as ermine, merged his childhood candor- with his old age's experience. \^lien you hold sudi a man's book in your hands, each expression is a bee, whi< h, flying from the paper, leaves its honey on your lips and its sting in your heart. 364 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Decidme si he de alzar voces altivas. Say whether I shall raise ray voice proudly in praise of the modern spirit, or whether, casting these times into oblivion, I shall give myself up entirely to recollections. . . . Today the bolt of Olympic Jupiter is the slave of Franklin and of Edison; nothing remains of the glorious thyrsus, and vile champagne has dethroned Falernian wine. . . . All is over. Tell me, sacred muses, how shall I sing in these gloomy days, in which human pride attempts to cast God out of heaven. Noble ingenio: la luz de la palahra . . . Noble spirit, the light of the word touches the soul and im- parts new life to it, revealing to it unknown wonders in the infinite world of beings. Eternity appears in all its majesty, attracting the eager spirit, and anxious hope grows in the human bosom at the distant splendor of the dawn. You, inspired, yearnful, raise your brow and, with the diapason of harmony, wisely follow a fruitful course, extending the standard of the language, forming the flash of thought, pro- ducing imiform melodies like the immortal rhythm of the spheres. Eres artista? Te afeo. Are you an artist? I disfigure you. Are you worthy? I criticise you. I abhor you if you are rich and if you are poor I stone you. And pillaging honor, and wounding everything in sight, it appears certain that man is a wolf unto man. Vivid el pobre en la miseria. The poor man dwelt in poverty, none gave ear to him in his misfortune; when he asked an alms they cast him from the house. TRANSLATIONS 365 After he died a pauper they rai^ed a statue to him. . . . Long live the dead, for tlicy have neither stomach nor jaws! No quiero el vino de Naxos. I ask not tlie wine of Naxos, nor the urn of those beauties, nor the glass in which Venus woos hamlsoinc Ailoiiis. I wish to drink love only from your crimson lips, oh beloved mine, in the sweet springtide. Fue acaso en el \orle 6 en el Mediodia? . . . Was it perchance in the North or in the South? I do not know the day nor the season, but I know that Eulalia still laughs, and her golden laughter is cruel and eternal! Amor, en fin, que todo diga y cante. Let love, then, say and sing all: let love enchant and fascinate the serpent with diamond eyes that is coiled about the tree of life. Love me thus, fatal, cosmopolitan, universal, vast, unique, alone, and all; mysterious and erudite: love me, sea and cloud, crest and wave. No es demacrada y mustia. . . . It is not emaciated and withered, nor does it grasp a crooked scythe, nor does it wear an anguished expression. It re- sembles Diana, as chaste and virgin as she; in its coun- tenance there is the grace of the nubile maid and on its brow a garland of starry roses. In its left hand it holds green, triumphal palms, and in its right, a vase filled with the water of oblivion. At its feet, like a dog, lies a love, asleep. Amico. The gods themselves seek the sweet peace Death sheds. Quiron. The grief of the gods is their inabil- ity to die. Inclitas razas uberrimas, sangre de Hispania fecunda . . . Glorious, numerous races, blood of our fertile Hispania, Valiant fraternal spirits, luminous souls, all hail! 366 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Come is the moment long yearned for, when voices aquiver with gladness New hymns will chant. All about us the air is alive with vast portents, Magical waves of life surge in the immanent throes of new birth. Backward oblivion totters, backward flees death in her error; Heralds proclaim a new kingdom, — the sybilline dream is fulfilled, And here in the box of Pandora, whence issued so many misfortunes, Suddenly we have discovered, smilingly pure, talismanic. As our divine Vergil might say it, writing his verses im- mortal. The heavenly queen of light, — Hope that descends from \h.( skies ! Mientras el mundo aliente, mientras la espira gire . . . Wliile the world endures and the sphere rotates, while th< cordial wave nourishes a dream, as long as there is a livi passion, a noble task; an impossible quest, an impossibl deed, a hidden America to discover, Spain will live! Jwentud, divino tesoro ... Youth, divine treasure, now you are leaving never to return When I desire to weep, I cannot, and at times, without wisl: ing to, I weep. . . . The heavenly tale of my heart has bee plural.^ Y para mi. Maestro, tu vasta gloria es esa: To me. Master, your vast glory is this: you loved the fleetin deeds of the hour; above groping science, dense histor you loved eternal Poesy, brighter than the dawTi. Glory to you, who, driven about at the whim of destiny, live to the clearest and most beautiful old age; your enornioi 1 See the translation of this entire poem in Eleven Poems of Ruben Dan G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1916. IK TRANSLATIONS 7,67 catafalque would be that of Victor Hugo, if there were iti Buenos Aires an Arch of the Stars! Pluguiera a Dios las aquas, antes intactas . . . Would to God that the waters, before untouclied by man, had never rellected the white sails; that the astounded stars had never witnessed tlie arrival of your caravels upon these shores ! JOSE SANTOS CHOCANO Siempre al cantar Victor Hugo. Ever, when Victor Hugo sang, Napoleon Third trembled. vano, vano sera que una Dalila. in vain, in vain, will it be for a Delilah to shear my poet's locks. yo quiero la igualdad, ya que la suerte. I ask equality, since our lot is the same at the beginning; if we are all equal in death, let us all be equal in life. crucificddme, y hien? jYo hablo al presente? Crucify me — Well? Do I speak to the present? No; I speak to the future. Sacred equality will be tlie ideal of the future race. . . . Oh, Equality! Brother, have you not seen the sun, shedding its rays upon all? Thus, too, does the God of Christ illuminate; therefore, levelled in greatness, you have the same right of receiving the sun on your fore- head, as of holding God in your bosom! Lee mis pobres versos, ya que el yugo. Read my poor verses, since I wear the constant yoke of love for you; devour them and extract all their sap, for the great- est of my pleasures is to see them die like those flowers which women tear apart as they play with them. Traemos desde otros mundos. We bear from other worlds, like recollections of former days. 368 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITEIL\TL RE ineffable sympathies, deep-rooted antipathies. The wrathful waves, — do they break against the rock for the mere sake of breaking? Is love but loving? Where is the point of de- parture of our life, — the shore or the sea? debe de ser hermoso y eloquente. It must be beautiful and eloquent to behold entering the heavens anew, a Satan redeemed and pardoned. Entonces cante amor. Then I sang love. I rent the veils of the profound genesis. I opened my book, as God his heavens, and beheld my verses, as God his worlds. En medio de la noche, en que camina. (Note to La Epopeya del Motto.) Amid the night in which the world journeys toward tomor- row's dawn, each hero, crowning each ruin, is like each torch that illumines Nero's nights. Human torch, infernal flame, divine light! Cinco veces. Five times greater, at last, has the encamped enemy grown. '| . . . And five times within himself grows every soldier. y esa mujer. And that woman, her flesh rent by an infamous dagger, with the glance of a glowing sun in her wavering pupil; that] woman, sacrificed upon the cannon, — is the image of the dead j Fatherland. Hf^ii y el patTio pabellon. 1 and the nation's flag, stained in red, when the glorious pyrej shall be extinguished, will float above the dying embers likej a flame become a banner ! porque el gran Bolognesi. For the great Bolognesi was the sum of Agamemnon, Nestor,! TRANSLATIONS .-^6') Achilles. Thus the American incarnated the majcsiy ,,f Atreus's Agamemnon, the experience of Nestor the old, and the fearlessness of Peleus's son. Si America. If America conquered, her victory was a source of maternal pride to Spain; liie tree which hegins to give forth fruits of glory, owes it to the stream that bathes it. Como en el mi to. As in the myth in which sinewy Hercules, who neither in strength nor in desire equalled the rebellious Bolivar. . . . I Ah! Quien sabe. . . . Ah, who knows whether the universe is onlv an organism, immovable in essence, and which, although from appearance to appearance it keeps on undergoing transformation, is ever the same, — and who knows whether God is not its con- sciousness. . . . How many organisms stir in a drop of water, of blood, of sweat, of tears! How much greatness floats in littleness. Oh, Life, how much is your immortal reflec- tion multiplied, which in each drop of water reverberates like the eucharist of the mirror which in a thousand frag- ments reflects you entire! . . . Within each life diere are so many lives! Who could prevent the wave from changing into other waves? The sparks from a flame may become fires in themselves; each corolla is a forest perhaps; and thus universal life is one complete existence. Yo, si duda mi siglo. I, if my century doubts, doubt too. I, if my century denies, likewise deny. But not in vain do I possess liberty. Let the age be my law, but not my tyrant. Suya sera mi voluntad. To it will belong all my will, my reason, my ideal, my law, my spirit. But let me at least be able to say, on tlie other hand, "My heart is my own!" 370 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE I Oh murmullos! Oh, murmurs of the forest! Oh, sacred voice of Nature! Oh, deep plaint of the agonizing beast! No, there is nothing that more swells the human heart than, when it vibrates, the harp of the foliage, attuned to the ocean's diapason. . . . One discovers a voice that enchants him; another, a voice that recalls a song; another, a voice that lulls or implores; yet another, w^ho never prayed to God, hearing such solemn sounds, falls to his knees and prays! Pero hay en ese verso. But there is in this vigorous, terse verse a blood that you will scarcely find in any other, — a blood that, when it cir- culates in the verse, penetrates like light and undulates like the wave. Pero su hrazo. But his arm is made for lifting the trumpet toward there where the Prophet's dawn appears. And he is made to give to the winds the expression of the terrible trumpet of thought. y guise en el Museo. And in the Museum, thinking of my mountains, I wished to' belong half to America and half to Spain. Ave que hoy se ahre. Bird that today rends its bosom in the numerous cares of its love, — why be surprised, if it is to still the hunger of your children? You, like that bird, with your own beak, are rending your entrails to give life to an entire world. La Paz fue. Peace was made. The decisive triumph of the yellow Court! was not good for the Republic of the North, nor was thel former rule of the Czars over such eagerly-sought lands andl coveted seas. . . . Thus, in the making of peace, the Unitedj States conquered, — and with sure aim, astute, agile, fore- TRANSLATIONS 371 seeing, they trepanned the hinds, cut the Andes, united two oeeans and felt their greatness. i OHIO rs licmbra. Since Life is a female, she loves the strong man; and yields to his embrace because she rejoices to surrender to strent^lh. Will, ancient soul; we must triumph! Where there have been laurels, there must have been will-power. RUFINO BLANCO-FOMBONA / ' mejor poema cs el de la rida. The best poem is tliat of life; the lost note of a piano in the night; the wake of a vessel; the flowery road that leads to unknown cities; childish sorrows; mornings of quarrel; the taste of ungiven kisses, and loveless love. Me abruma el calabozo. The dungeon crushes me. My soul is crossed by dark thoughts. My poet's wings, as they open, break against the four walls. In a tomb, and alive! The days are eternal, and eternal the nights! The Griefs keep me company. About me are spies, and chains upon my legs. . . . But as I close my eyes (light, fields, sky) I feel my fetters break; arm in arm with my sweetlieart in the garden I breathe the scent of magnolias and verbenas. ... I take delight in the air, the clouds, the waters of the pond, as refreshing as my beloved. . . . There is yet something good that the Despot cannot take from me or fetter. Locura? Bien. No nve resigno. Madness? Very well. I refuse to resign myself. Let slaves do that. Let Destiny make me drink hemlock, and Grief drive its nails through me. ... I will not say; "blessed art Thou, my Lord, Thy will be done." I will say, "I am less ' than the insect under the sole of a shoe. But there is no use in gulping down my tears, nor in trying to make a pleasure of my misfortune, or to look upon my torture with an 372 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE Olympic, indifferent expression. For in this P^Pf *^' / anTiere is the capacity for suffering, and I, the dwarf possess a soul and can weigh injusUce and can judge the tyrant." THE END INDEX Acosta, 356 lit' Alarcuii, Juan Ruiz. 17 Alfonso Xlll, 74, 118 Alfonso the Learnoii, 220 Amiel. 213 Almeida-Garrelt, 234, 235 Anacreon, 142 Andueza, 311 dAnnunzio, 1, 41, 74, 186, 243, Archer. 182 Argolagos, 51 Azorin, 190 Bakounin, 250 Balmaceda, 182 (ie Banville. 9 liaralt. 138 liarbagelata. 188, 189, 190 Harbusse, 338 Barillas, 110 Haroja, 72, 344 Ac la Barra, 110 Baudelaire, 6, 9, 41, 52, 57, 63, 141, 196 Baxter, 163 B.'cquer, 20, 70. 122, 138, 323 l)ecu, C. A.. 146 Beethoven. 221 Belgrano, C. V., 116 IVIlo, Andres, 204, 231, 329 Benavente, 72 Benvenuto (see Cellini) Bergson. 168, 186, 225, 244 Bilac, Olavo, x Bilbao. 231 Bjoernsen, 1 Blackwell, x, 25, 29, 32, 80, 85, 251 Blanco-Fombona, 11, 48, 93, 193, 20f). 207, 226, 2'16, 2'iS, 2%. 297. 307-359 Blasco Ibiinez. 66, 356, 119. 266 BlestGana. Albt-rto, 339 Blixen, S., 187. 22i! Boito, 221 Bolivar. 98. 100, 108. 201. 201. 205. 227, 228, 232. 297. 314, 318, 319. 323 326, 331. 333, 33-V, 337 Bomfin, Manoel, 332 Bossi, E., 206 Brandos, 74 Brown, John, 124 Buckle, 333 Byron, 323 Calderon, 49 Cano, 127 Campoamor, 20, 21, 50, 109, 111, 122. 127 Carducci, 41 Carrillo, A. E.. 299, 301 Carlos Gomez, Juan, 227, 231, 233 83, Carlos I, 17 Carlyle, 202, 300 Carrasco, 356 Casal, 12, 34, 52-57, 58, 100, 111. 133, 146, 256. 328 Castelar, 21, 111, 113 Castillo, 297 de Castro, 41 Castro, 345 Cejador y Frauca, Julio, 8, 10, 52, 71, 72 Cellini, 67, 314, 318 Cervantes, 49, 220 Chaide, Malon de, 19 165, Qiaikovsky, 299 Chekhov, 1 196, Chocano, Jose Santos, 11. 12, 18, 373 374 INDEX 64, 66, 67, 73, 74, 75, 136, 150, 159, 160, 198, 207, 226, 246-295, 297, 321, 329, 336, 353 Chopin, 118 Clemenceau, 336 Cicero, 104 Coester, Alfred, ix, 97 Columbus, 175 Comte, 265 Contreras, Rafael, 110 Coppee, 6 Cortes, Heman, 17, 318 Dante, 38, 220, 270 Dario, Ruben, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 21, 23, 25, 41, 48, 51, 56, 57, 58, 64, 65, 70, 72, 73, 75, 82, 108-183, 184, 191, 198, 201, 205, 207, 246, 248, 251, 272, 273, 277, 279, 280, 283, 290, 294, 301, 304, 311, 312, 313, 314, 318, 319, 320, 323, 328, 329, 353, 355 Dario Sanchez, Ruben, 112 Darwin, 265 Daudet, 338 Dehmel, 4 Delacroix, 266 Diaz, Eugenio, 339 Diaz, 356 [Venezuelan official] Diaz. Leopoldo, 92, 314, 325, 326, 328 Diaz Miron, Salvador, 12, 18, 64-71, 136, 137, 253, 318, 323 Diaz Rodriguez, Manuel, 92, 316, 339 Dickens, 74 Dufoo, 22 Duncan, Isidora, 351, 352 Dunsany, 181 Duplessis, 113 Echegaray, 21, 271 Edison, 265 Eguren, Jose Maria, 296-306 Emerson, 11. 202, 224, 214, 317 Epictetus, 244 Espinosa, 235, 237 Espronceda, 94 Estrada, 110 de Ferrar, Cardinal, 314 Finot, 330 Flaubert, 137, 240 Fombona, E., 309 Ford, J. D. M., X, 95, 202, 335 Fort, Paul, 119 Foscolo, 318 France, A., 41, 119, 351 Fulton, 265 Galdos, 190 Gallegos, 93 Gamboa, F., 112 Garshin, 1 Garcia, Manuel, 103 Garcia Calderon, Francisco, 92, 93, 335 Garcia Calderon, Ventura, 277, 295 Garcia, Godoy, F., 100 Garcia Gutierrez, 94 Garcia Moreno, 204 Garibaldi, 232 Gautier, Judith, 52 Gauthier, Th., 8, 23, 133, 137, 220 Gavidia, 110, 127, 138 Ghil, 8, 9, 11, 147 Ghiraldo, 281 Gibbon, 220 Gilbert, W. S., 28 de Gilbert, 127, 182 Goethe, 4, 9, 111, 220, 244, 252, 353 Gogol, 352 Gomez, J. D., 106 Gomez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis. 137 Gomez Carrillo. E., 251, 312, 313 Gomez Restrepo. Antonio, 63, 64 Gongora, 68, 137, 156 Gonzalez Blanco, Andres, 124. 159, 163, 167, 190. 260. 263. 277. 286, 295, 311, 312, 314. 316. 329 Gonzalez Martinez. Enrique, 18, 82- 92, 100, 257, 269 i delci INDEX 375 Gonzalez Prada. M.. 253. 296, 297, ;i29. 330 GonzAlcz, Saturio, 359 Corki. 1 i\e Courmonl, Jean, 10 de Gourmont. Rcmy. 91. 99. 119. 147, 326 Goya. 282 Groussar, 110 Gutit'rrez. J. M.. 227 Gutierrez Najcra, Manuel. 12. 13. 16-46. \8. 51. .52. 53. 57. 53. 59. 60. 93. 100. 107. 129. 136, 154. 131, 206, 256, 304, 328, 355 Hardy. 3^10 llartmann. 10 Hauptmann. I Hegel. 10. 265. 268 Heine, 13. 70. Ill, 127, 140. 323 Henley, 4 Henriquez I'rena. Max. 23. 111. 112, 127. 137. 146, 201. 210 Henriquez L'refia. Pedro. 160, 244 Henr>. Patrick. 248 Heredia. J. M. (Cubat, 13. 113, 295 Heredia. J. M. (France), 52. 83 Hernandez Miyares. Ill Herrera y Reissig. Julio, 92, 187, 355 Herrick, 35 Hidalgo, 326 Hoijbes, 332 HofTmann. 9 Holmes. Augusta, 147 Homer, 270 [Horace, 156 iHostos, 330 Houssaye, 142 Hugo. 22, 44. 57, 65, 66, 110. 122. 123, 124. 138, 140, 152, 169, 175, 248, 250, 253, 266, 267, 270, 323 Hume, 332 , Humphrey, G. W., 139 Ibsen, 1. 41, 74, 147 de Icaza, 83, 269 de I'Isle Adam, 338 Ir%ing, 220 Jackson. Helen Hunt. 49 Jaimes Freyre, Ricardo. 92, 146, 271, 281 Jammes, Francis, 83, 301 Jimenez. 72 Juarez, 327 Kant, 10 Kipling. 1 Kline. Burton, x Korolenko, 1 Krause, 265 Lachambre. Ill Lamarline. 83, 129. 351 La Rochefoucauld, 210 de Leon. Luis, 244 Leonardo da Vinci, 67, 220 Lesseps. 265 Lewes. 353 Lewisohn. 4. 8 de Lisle, 6, 41, 136, 277 Longfellow, 156 Loti. 133, 351 Lugones, 92, 118, 271, 323, 328 Lulli, 148 Lully, R., 118, 220 Macaulay. 11. 202 Machado de Assis. J. AL, x Maeterlinck, 10, 170, 181, 300, 351. 352 Maldonado, 356 Mallarme, 6, 8, 57, 301 Marcus Aurelius, 168, 213, 244 Marden, 197 Marmol. Jose, 248, 339 Marti, 12, 46-52, 68, 89. 110, 113, 181, 192, 231, 246, 288, 318, 321 Martinez Sierra, 170 Martinez Vigil, 189 Marx, Karl, 354 Maupassant, 63, 338, 343 Mazzini, 232 376 INDEX Mencken. 99 Mendelssohn, 299 Mendes. 5, 136, 137 Menendez, 111 Menendez y Pelayo, vii, 93, 111, 124 Metternich, 232 Mill, J. S., 197 Milton, 274 Mirabeau, 354 Mitre, 97, 98, 99, 100, 169 Moliere, 221 Montalvo, 124, 204, 231, 248 Moratin, 104 Morazan, 327 Moreas, 62, 113, 323 Mozart, 221 Murillo. Rosario, 112 de Musset, 21, 127, 323 Nabuco, 98 Napoleon III, 6, 20 Neno, 18, 25, 74, 75-81, 100, 267, 271 Netto, Coelho, x Nietzsche, 1, 41, 67, 74, 184, 196, 215, 269 Nordau, 53 Novalis, 10 Nuiiez de Arce, 111, 122, 318 Ovid, 169 Palma, J. J., 136 Palma, Ricardo. 355 Pardo Bazan, 190 Pasteur. 265 „ ,,^ Perez Bonalde. J. A., 13, 48, 113 Perez Petit, 187, 189 Pestalozzi, 216 Plato, 186, 244, 323 Plautus, 221 Plutarch, 244 Poe, 13, 40, 61, 74, 83, 141. 196, 301 Prescott, 213 Pulgar, 356 Pulido, 356 Quevedo, 49, 156 Quintana, 93 Rambaud, 8, 11, 147 Rameau, 148 Ramirez, 104 Reclus, 250 de Regnier, 4 Reja, 72 Renan, 41, 186 Reyles, 187 de Ricard, 5 Richepin, 52 de Rivas, 93 Rodin, 266 Rodo^U, 14, 48, 82, 92, 93, 139, 140, 14iri50, 155, 184-245, 280, 317, 329, 336, 352, 354 Ronsard, 213 Roosevelt, 157, 15^ Rousseau, 332 Rossetti, D. G., 1, 41, 148 Rueda, 72, 146 Ruskin, 244 de Saint Victor, 137 San Juan de la Cruz, 19 San Martin, 326. 328, 333 Santa Teresa, 19, 49 Santos Chocano (See Chocano) Samain. 83 Sanchez. Francesca, 112 Sand. 118 Sarmiento, Pomingo F., 204, 231, ooO Sarmiento. Rosa, 104 Sawa, 113 Schopenhauer, 10, 269 Sebonde, 244 Seneca, 244 Shakespeare, 199, 200, 214. 216. 221, 305, 352 Shaw, 180 Shelley, 4 Shepherd, 312 Sierra, 26, 27, 93, 97, 155. 156, 189 Silva,' 355 Sociatf SorJi' de Sui Stepki SteveJii Snares, Sucr?. U INDEX 377 Silva, 12. 52, 53. 57-64. 305. 323. 355 Socrates, U2. 185 Sot J nana Ines de la Cruz, 17 de Stael. 104 Slep!'tMist)n, 205 Stevejjson, 1 Suares. 63 Sucr-. 297. 315, 326, 327 "^ 'crmann, 1 .Surne, 1 Tablada, 69 ic. im. 300, 333 .-i ;i, 74 a^ .; 281. 335 UP ..... :«. 304. 305, 317, 355 T ,,! r, 20, 67. 94 If. < . [•:. F., 114 iirazui-u, 25 tlcjr:.. n:i , 111, 129, 130, 139, 190 Vallc-lnclan, 74, 190 Vurpis Vila. 25. 101. 117, HI!, 120. 191 Vauvenargurs, 213 Vi-Iasqucz, 282 Veris.'iinio, x. 9S, 99 Verlaine, 6. 7. 8. 14, 15, 41, 52, 57, 82, 83, 113. 142, 148, 152, 153, 323 Vicuna Mackenna, 108 Villaespesa, 68 Villergas, 91 Voltaire, 118, 332 Wagner, 51. 147, 148, 221, 266 Walsh, 1,50 Washington. 202, 315 Watteau. 102, 271 Whitman, 1, 4, 49, 73, 74, 136, 137, 169, 290, 295 Wilde, 1, 116, 117, 179, 243, 351 J52 Zaldumbide, 243, 244, 245 Zenea. 137 Zola, 271 ZorriUa, 111, 122 Zulen, 299 J" 'a. -i-*^' RETURN TO LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 4 CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 202 AAain Library^ ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS f.'ionrh loons moy be ^^-^^^^^X b -".ng books to Grculot.on Desk ^ylAliTAMPEDjEl^ 27J982 >. FORM NO. DD6,60m, .2/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720 . Berkeley >/ / ' r CDMfi'^SSfiSS