Modern Spanish Lyrics | Page 3

classes
of Leon and Castile, who
had previously thought Galician
the only proper tongue for that use,
but the influence of
the Galician school persisted long after. The first
real
lyric in Castilian is its offspring. This is the anonymous
_Razón
feyta d'amor_ or Aventura amorosa (probably
thirteenth century), a
dainty story of the meeting of two
lovers. It is apparently an isolated
example, ahead of its
time, unless, as is the case with the Castilian
epic, more
poems are lost than extant. The often quoted _Cántica de

la Virgen_ of Gonzalo de Berceo (first half of thirteenth
century),
with its popular refrain Eya velar, is an
oasis in the long religious
epics of the amiable monk of
S. Millán de la Cogolla. One must pass
into the succeeding
century to find the next examples of the true lyric.
Juan
RUIZ, the mischievous Archpriest of Hita (flourished ca.

1350), possessed a genius sufficiently keen and human to
infuse a
personal vigor into stale forms. In his _Libro de
buen amor_ he
incorporated lyrics both sacred and profane,
_Loores de Santa María_
and _Cánticas de serrana_, plainly

in the Galician manner and of
complex metrical structure.
The serranas are particularly free and
unconventional.
The Chancellor Pero LÓPEZ DE AYALA
(1332-1407), wise
statesman, brilliant historian and trenchant page

xiv satirist, wrote religious songs in the same style and
still more
intricate in versification. They are included
in the didactic poem
usually called _El rimado de
palacio_.
Poetry flourished in and about the courts of the monarchs
of the
Trastamara family; and what may be supposed a
representative
collection of the work done in the reigns
of Henry II (1369-1379),
John I (1379-1388), Henry III
(1388-1406) and the minority of John
II (1406-1454), is
preserved for us in the Cancionero which Juan
Alfonso de
Baena compiled and presented to the last-named king.
Two
schools of versifiers are to be distinguished in it. The
older
men, such as Villasandino, Sánchez de Talavera,
Macías, Jerena, Juan
Rodríguez del Padrón and Baena
himself, continued the artificial
Galician tradition, now
run to seed. In others appears the imitation of
Italian
models which was to supplant the ancient fashion.
Francisco
Imperial, a worshiper of Dante, and other
Andalusians such as Ruy
Páez de Ribera, Pero González de
Uceda and Ferrán Manuel de
Lando, strove to introduce
Italian meters and ideas. They first
employed the Italian
hendecasyllable, although it did not become
acclimated
till the days of Boscán. They likewise cultivated the

metro de arte mayor, which later became so prominent
(see below, p.
lxxv ff.). But the interest of the poets of
the Cancionero de Baena is
mainly historical. In
spite of many an illuminating side-light on
manners,
of political invective and an occasional glint of

imagination, the amorous platitudes and wire-drawn
love-contests of
the Galician school, the stiff allegories
of the Italianates leave us cold.
It was a transition
period and the most talented were unable to master
the
undeveloped poetic language. page xv
The same may be said, in general, of the whole fifteenth
century.
Although the language became greatly clarified
toward 1500 it was
not yet ready for masterly original
work in verse. Invaded by a flood
of Latinisms, springing
from a novel and undigested humanism,

encumbered still
with archaic words and set phrases left over from
the
Galicians, it required purification at the hands of the
real poets
and scholars of the sixteenth century. The
poetry of the fifteenth is
inferior to the best prose of
the same epoch; it is not old enough to be
quaint and not
modern enough to meet a present-day reader upon
equal
terms.
These remarks apply only to artistic poetry. Popular
poetry,--that
which was exemplified in the Middle Ages by
the great epics of the
Cid, the Infantes de Lara and
other heroes, and in songs whose
existence can rather be
inferred than proved,--was never better. It
produced the
lyrico-epic romances (see Notes, p. 253), which,
as far
as one may judge from their diction and from
contemporary
testimony, received their final form at
about this time, though in
many cases of older origin. It
produced charming little songs which
some of the later
court poets admired sufficiently to gloss. But the

cultured writers, just admitted to the splendid cultivated
garden of
Latin literature, despised these simple wayside
flowers and did not
care to preserve them for posterity.
The artistic poetry of the fifteenth century falls
naturally into three
classes, corresponding to three
currents of influence; and all three
frequently appear in
the work of one man, not blended, but distinct.
One is
the conventional love-poem of the Galician school, seldom

containing a fresh or personal note. Another is the
stilted allegory
with erotic or historical page xvi content, for whose many sins Dante
was chiefly
responsible, though Petrarch, he of the Triunfi, and

Boccaccio cannot escape some blame. Third is a vein of
highly moral
reflections upon the vanity of life and
certainty of death, sometimes
running to political satire.
Its roots may be found in the Book of Job,
in Seneca and,
nearer at hand, in the Proverbios morales of the Jew
Sem

Tob (ca. 1350), in the Rimado de Palacio of Ayala, and
in a
few poets of the Cancionero de Baena.

John II was a dilettante who left the government of the
kingdom to
his favorite, Álvaro de Luna. He