Introducing Spanish Literature

“With us”, writes Salvador de Madariaga in his Spanish version of his own English book, The Genius of Spain and Other Essays on Spanish Contemporary Literature, “With us, criticism is almost completely divorced from creation”. This terse remark touches the very pulse of the tremendous and intensely rich genius of Spain. Far from being derogatory, the remark explains much of the exuberance and impetuosity of Spanish literature, its vigour and colour.

A language of wonderful force and resourcefulness, Spanish discovered early those metres and forms which suited it best, those predominantly imbued with dramatic power; and the sense of the dramatic is most characteristically of the genius of Spain. It is natural, then, that the literature should have blossomed almost more prodigiously in the drama than in the other forms, fine and plentiful though these undoubtedly are. The dramatic content of life rather than its philosophy is the burden of this literature; and life, for Spain, connotes Man in the various situations in which he may find himself. Man having to deal with three constant factors that he may maintain himself in his exalted position, duelling with Death the constant enemy, finding inspiration in Love the inexorable force, and steering his course by Honour his most prized attribute; these are the motives that dominate all action. Thus pre-occupied, the Spanish genius has no inclination nor concern for analytical studies, philosophical dissertation, adventurous explorations into the workings of the mind; it has no gift for criticism of self, understandably enough, for neither Death nor Love nor Honour submit satisfactorily to such a test. Man is indeed so much the king of life that, as de Madariaga also puts it, attacks on him by Death, though inevitable, constitute almost a crime of lese majeste.

And it is true that in few literatures does one find Death treated–allow me the paradox–so much as a living force, with such familiarity. A recent novel by a young Basque writer is an instance: the main character is a sort of waif who becomes an undertaker, and whole story is treated from the point of view of a man for whom death is wealth, death is his life, it is to be welcomed not as a release but as an asset, a tool of vengeance against unfeeling society. The theme is only incidentally gruesome. The same genius gave birth to Don Juan and to the death Commendador at the banquet; likewise those grave yet not gruesome paintings in which the skull figures as an important element of the intention. There are many traits in the Spanish character–reflected, of course, in the literature–which are not at all Western as this term is usually understood; one often has the distinct impression that Spain is only accidentally and imperfectly a part of Europe; its roots were nourished elsewhere with other nurture.

Alongside the exuberance of the language with its easy flowering and fertile generosity and imagery, stand the almost numberless proverbs and wise sayings of the folk–marvels of wit, conciseness, and wisdom. These proverbs and wise sayings may be said to constitute the reserves of material from which the literature draws its strength and plots. Indeed, a surprising proportion of the body of Spanish writings is, as it were, an amplification of and a commentary on the race’s store of proverbs. Such titles taken at random through the pages of a history of the literature are examples: Walls have Ears, You must fall before you rise, Who can be a father being a King. These plays form part of the serious drama, and are not mere comedies for the delectation of a moment, and for the populace. The most celebrated men of letters have taken such themes to clothe them in the melody and grace of their verse, and create characters taken from real life–for the country’s genius is more at home with immediate portraiture, which it does admirably.

This unconcern for psychological problems, this realistic approach of transferring to the stage or the novel the ordinary life of Man, brought with it a keen sense of local colour; this is perhaps what makes Spanish literature so intensely personal. It is one of the most documentary of literatures. Anybody following. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on their fantastic peregrinations through Spain, is travelling through Spain itself and meeting all sorts of perfectly plausible people on the way. Perhaps the only times when literature was unrelated to reality, was artificial in its tone and setting is when literary fashions from Italy and France were introduced–at several intervals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Though such fashions did affect writers for more or less time; they never found support in the folk who, as theatre managers complained, crowded to see ordinary Spanish playlets and themes while the elegant plays from France were performed to rows of empty seats.

It was only with the nineteenth centnry, after the French Revolution which, in spite of everything, did have some repercussions on the far side of the Pyrenees, that writers became deeply impressed with the thought of the Romantics in other countries; with this spiritual storm came a reaction against the fashions of other countries and a reflex of national consciousness that sought its themes in the country’s past, that turned once more to the folk genius and introduced it to serious contemporary writing. With this period also came a consciousness of social problems; and attempts at psychological studies in verse, drama, and prose were made. Incidentally, a notable break from the Golden Century (the seventeenth), was the essay in prose taking the place of the rhymed epistle as an instrument of satire or comment. The Romantic writers of the first decades of the nineteenth century in Spain–over which this movement swept more tempestuously than elsewhere–had no tradition of psychological studies or social problems, with the result that their works have all the spontaneity and immature formlessness and downrightness of adolescence. Characters in plays and novels ceased being the Spanish folk called upon to play certain roles, but became types: the type of evil, the type of goodness, the type of jealousy–Othello and Lear had recently been introduced to the reading public–and so forth. Accumulations of circumstances, the imminence of doom, the consonance of natural elements with human emotions, a quite Gothic stress on the sombre, all fill the works of the times almost to the exclusion of the subtleties and flowing humour and humanity of the earlier periods. A famous name of the Romantic period is that of the Duke of Rivas, a vigorous writer of tragedies unbarring the intolerance of society and the force of destiny.

Gradually, however, this turbulence and ebullience settled down to create literature of a solid and permanent value, readable at all times and in different languages; criticism started working its way, pruning, analysjng; examining. To the latter part of the nineteenth century are owed solid works of scholarship and the translation of contemporary literature into the European languages. Spain was herself again, in that her literature was Spanish, but schooled in a sterner manner; in different vein, there was a coming to the skill of the great seventeenth century with its Calderons, Quevedos, Rojas, a coming to the vigour of a Lope de Vega and the humanity of a Cervantes. To this latter period of the nineteenth century belong Blasco Ibanez, Valle Inclan, Unamuno, Perez Galdos, Pereda, and others who have so magnificently increased the fascinating body of Spanish letters.

In the branch of speculative writing, which is to akin to philosophy and scholarship, the record of Spain is one of lost opportunities–not surprising in view of the national character. Right down the centuries Spain produced great thinkers, yet they were thinkers in the sense that their capacity for thinking was tremendous and their imagination and intuition outstanding; they were not capable of pursuing their thoughts to a logical end. Earlier than most of the great European brains who helped in the advance of science, Spain produced men who already had written on such things, pointing a way to later discoveries; these men never themselves pursued their discoveries to make any change in contemporary thought. This volatility that throws out indications, that has visions and instinctive apprehensions of scientific truths is part of the country’s genius; the present age, apparently, is more and more turning to pressing that virtue to the service of life.

These are only some scant notes on a vast subject on which it is only too easy to generalise and, thereby, fall into many errors. So far, the purpose has been to introduce the character of this literature so that its reading may become all the richer with attributes. Lorca, for instance, has been acclaimed as one of the European poets of the present times, but only those who know Spain can realize how very spanish he is and, knowing this, his work becomes all the more beautiful; it illuminates the scene of life from the Spanish angle and thus becomes universal. Of the luxuriant early centuries with their Saracenic Christian cycles of lays, their pastorals, their plays of social customs, their interpretation of proverbs, and the unbelievable manipulation of language such as reached its most fantastic forms during the late Golden Century,–of all this there is still everything to tell. It is hoped that these notes may bring some to learn something about this wealth.