Modern Spanish Lyrics | Page 5

holding of foreign
models before his eyes, and he was
not a man of genius;
yet his verse kept to a loftier ideal than had
appeared
for a long time and his effort to lift Castilian poetry
from
the slough of convention into which it had fallen was
successful.
During the rest of the century the impulse
given by Boscán divided
Spanish lyrists into two opposing
hosts, the Italianates and those who
clung to the native
meters (stanzas of short, chiefly octosyllabic, lines,
for
the arte mayor had sunk by its own weight).
The first and greatest of Boscán's disciples was his close

friend

GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (1503-1536) who far surpassed
his
master. He was a scion of a most noble family, a
favorite of the
emperor, and his adventurous career,
passed mostly in Italy, ended in
a soldier's death. His
poems, however (_églogas, canciones_, sonnets,
etc.),
take us from real life into the sentimental world of the

Arcadian pastoral. Shepherds discourse of their unrequited
loves and
mourn amid surroundings of an idealized Nature.
page xx The pure diction, the Vergilian flavor, the classic finish
of
these poems made them favorites in Spain from the
first, and their
author has always been regarded as a
master.
With Garcilaso begins the golden age of Spanish poetry and
of
Spanish literature in general, which may be said to
close in 1681 with
the death of Calderón. It was a period
of external greatness, of
conquest both in Europe and
beyond the Atlantic, but it contained the
germs of future
decay. The strength of the nation was exhausted in

futile warfare, and virile thought was stifled by the
Inquisition,
supported by the monarchs. Hence the
luxuriant literature of the time
runs in the channels
farthest from underlying social problems;
philosophy and
political satire are absent, and the romantic drama,
novel
and lyric flourish. But in all external qualities the
poetry
written during this period has never been equaled
in Spain. Its polish,
color and choiceness of language
have been the admiration and model
of later Castilian
poets.
The superficial nature of this literature is exhibited
in the controversy
excited by the efforts of Boscán and
Garcilaso to substitute Italian
forms for the older
Spanish ones. The discussion dealt with externals;
with
meters, not ideas. Both schools delighted in the airy
nothings
of the conventional love lyric, and it matters
little at this distance
whether they were cast in lines of
eleven or eight syllables.
The contest was warm at the time, however. Sá de Miranda


(1495-1558), the chief exponent of the Italian school in
Portugal,
wrote effectively also in Castilian. Gutierre de
Cetina (1518?-1572?)
and Fernando de Acuña (1500?-1580?)
are two others who supported
the new measures. One whose
example had more influence is Diego
Hurtado de page xxi Mendoza (1503-1575), a famous diplomat,
humanist and
historian. He entertained his idle moments with verse,

writing cleverly in the old style but turning also toward
the new.
His sanction for the latter seems to have proved
decisive.
Cristóbal de CASTILLEJO (1490-1556) was the chief defender
of the
native Spanish forms. He employed them himself in
light verse with
cleverness, clearness and finish, and
also attacked the innovators with
all the resources of
a caustic wit. In this patriotic task he was for a
time
aided by an organist of the cathedral at Granada, Gregorio

Silvestre (1520-1569), of Portuguese birth. Silvestre,
however, who is
noted for the delicacy of his poems in
whatever style, was later
attracted by the popularity of
the Italian meters and adopted them.
This literary squabble ended in the most natural way,
namely, in the
co-existence of both manners in peace and
harmony. Italian forms
were definitively naturalized in
Spain, where they have maintained
their place ever since.
Subsequent poets wrote in either style or both
as they
felt moved, and no one reproached them. Such was the habit

of Lope de Vega, Góngora, Quevedo and the other great
writers of
the seventeenth century.
A Sevillan Italianate was Fernando de HERRERA
(1534?-1597),
admirer and annotator of Garcilaso. Although
an ecclesiastic, his
poetic genius was more virile than
that of his soldier master. He
wrote Petrarchian sonnets
to his platonic lady; but his martial,
patriotic spirit
appears in his canciones, especially in those on the

battle of Lepanto and on the expedition of D. Sebastian of
Portugal in
Africa. In these stirring odes Herrera touches
a sonorous,
grandiloquent chord which rouses the page xxii reader's enthusiasm and

places the writer in the first
rank of Spanish lyrists. He is noteworthy
also in that
he made an attempt to create a poetic language by the

rejection of vulgar words and the coinage of new ones.
Others,
notably Juan de Mena, had attempted it before, and
Góngora
afterward carried it to much greater lengths; but
the idea never
succeeded in Castilian to an extent nearly
so great as it did in France,
for example; and to-day the
best poetical diction does not differ
greatly from good
conversational language.
Beside Herrera stands a totally different spirit, the
Salamancan monk
Luis DE LEÓN (1527-1591). The deep
religious feeling which is one
strong trait of Spanish
character has its representatives in Castilian
literature
from Berceo down, but León was the first to give it fine

artistic expression. The mystic sensation of oneness with
the divine,
of aspiration to