Doña Perfecta | Page 2

and the novel, however, the case is very different. Here
Spain has had writers universally placed among the great artists of the
world. Calderón and Lope de Vega, with the crowd of lesser dramatists
of the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century
(the period Spaniards call their siglo de oro), produced a body of
dramatic literature, which for extent, variety, poetic force, and original
national feeling and conception can be compared only with the Greek
and the English drama. Of their own motion these poets learned all the
essential secrets of the dramatic art. They acquired the faculty of telling
upon the stage any story they chose in such a way that it should seem a
picture of life itself to their audience; and, at the same time, they
managed to fuse with their tales all their accumulated reflection upon
men and things, all the various play of fancy, all the fine gold of the
imagination, and all the humor, gay or grotesque, which the plain prose
of life itself does not contain. Working freely, unawed by classic
models whose perfection they would attain, they were easy in their
motions, frank of conception, and ready to follow their matter wherever
it might lead them. They had no dread of being dull or unpoetical or
undignified; the best of them were constantly all these. But for this very
reason they were large and free and powerful, scornful of trivial
difficulties and obstacles, and able to attain success where all the
chances were against them. The thought and feeling, the hopes and
aspirations, the delusions and absurdities of Spain in the period of her
greatest power and splendor are all mirrored in their verse. Like the
Elizabethan dramatists, furthermore, they exacted tribute from all other
literatures and spent it as they would. And though their work has

seldom the rare distinction of ultimate perfection of form (indeed, in
this respect falls below the best Elizabethan standard), no one can read
it without perceiving that he is engaged with the rich and vital utterance
of artists who are masters of their craft.
Hardly less remarkable than the Spanish drama is the Spanish novel.
Obviously, much the same qualities are demanded for success in the
one form as in the other; and from the earliest period Spanish
story-tellers have known how to do their work well. There are tales in
the fourteenth-century collection by Don Juan Manuel, known as El
Conde Lucanor, that are as skillfully contrived as could possibly be. In
spite of its prolixity, the once famous romance of Amadis of Gaul,
which was given its Spanish form in the end of the fifteenth century,
must still be regarded as a highly successful piece of narration. At the
close of the same century, the often indecent, but never dull
'tragi-comedy' of Celestina (a novel in fact, though dramatic in form)
proved its excellence as a piece of literary workmanship by attaining
speedily a European reputation. The sixteenth century saw the
evolution of so-called novela picaresca, or rogue novel, one of the
most important and influential of modern literary forms. And, finally,
in 1605 Cervantes published the first part of one of the greatest of
modern books, Don Quixote,--a novel in which the art of story-telling
is brought to almost unrivaled perfection.
In more recent times, the Spanish novel has, of course, suffered from
the general intellectual decline of Spain as a whole. Its originality has
been impaired by the inevitable and generally baneful influence
exercised by foreign models upon the taste of a people not confident in
its own strength and superiority. The eighteenth century, in particular,
produced little deserving even casual mention. Yet in no period have
evidences of the old power been entirely lacking; and as soon as the
intellectual, no less than political, agitations that attended the opening
of the present century began, these evidences at once became more
numerous and more significant. The task of acquiring modernity has, to
be sure, proved longer and more difficult in Spain than in any other
great European nation, and the earlier literary work of the century has
about it too much of the general spiritual and artistic uncertainty of

such a period of confusion and change to possess enduring excellence.
But the trained observer can detect even in the unequal and hesitating
essays of the first half of our century indications of a renewal of the old
skill and of the gradual evolution of a new type of novel, which, while
modern in its methods and materials, still allies itself with what is best
in the older tradition.
The fruition of this period of growth has been seen since the middle of
the century, and to-day Spanish novelists easily hold their own with the
best of the world. Indeed,