Spanish Stories of the Romantic Era Page 2
The “Historia de dos bofetones” has a bouncy style, full of wit and irony, and many colorful scenes. It indulges in mild satire on the mindless devourers of the new “mythology” developed in the Romantic era. The references to unusual old books and documents testify to the author’s own extensive bibliographical knowledge.
Hartzenbusch’s stories are usually either historical reconstructions (sometimes couched in an unfortunate “ye olde” style) or varied accounts of life in the Madrid of his day: a gentleman in love with a shopkeeper’s daughter; the difficulty of rural life for big-city dwellers (and vice versa); and even some studies of the working class.
Mariano José de Larra (1809–1837)
Larra is considered not only the outstanding author of severely critical artículos de costumbres, but also the best Spanish prose writer of the Romantic era as strictly defined (1830s and 1840s). It has been said wittily that his style, formed on that of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, was not truly Romantic, whereas his own life certainly was!
He was born in Madrid on March 24, 1809 (my reason for specifying the date will be apparent to readers of the piece “La Nochebuena de 1836”). His father was a doctor in Napoleon’s invading army, and had to flee to France in 1813 to escape Spanish fury. Young Larra attended school in Bordeaux, returning in 1818 to Madrid, which was to remain his home base (though, again for political reasons, he lived in Navarre from 1820 to 1824). After attending various secondary schools, he matriculated in the universities of Valladolid (1825) and Valencia.
In 1829, at age twenty, he made a disastrous marriage; he and his incompatible wife separated in 1834, which has been seen as a watershed year for Larra’s psyche (he also had a brief, unhappy affair in that year with the great soprano Giulia Grisi, who had created the role of Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma in 1831); from then on, he became more grimly pessimistic and caustic.
Meanwhile, Larra had begun writing by 1827, and in 1828 became a permanent fixture in the world of Madrid journalism, a five-year ban on newspapers having been lifted in that year. Before long he was being given lucrative contracts, becoming not only the most famous, but also the best-paid, writer of artículos de costumbres and of theoretically eclectic, but very shrewd and perceptive, drama reviews. He used a number of pseudonyms, the one that is best remembered by posterity being “Fígaro,” in homage to Beaumarchais’s vivacious barber of Seville. Larra also wrote a novel, a play, and poetry, but these all pale into insignificance beside his articles, which he himself collected into five volumes, published by Repullés, Madrid, from 1835 to 1837, under the title Fígaro; Colección de artículos dramáticos, literarios, políticos y de costumbres.
In 1835 Larra traveled in France, England, Belgium, and Portugal. In 1836 his political ambitions were cruelly crushed when a parliament (Cortes) he had been elected to was dissolved on a technicality before it ever met. In 1837 he killed himself over his disappointments in politics and love (at the end of 1836, in his “Nochebuena,” he had already contemplated his death, staring at the yellow case that obviously contained pistols). The twenty-year-old José Zorrilla, later an extremely famous poet and playwright, first made a name for himself by unexpectedly reciting an elegy at Larra’s funeral.
Larra’s articles were serious, logically developed on the basis of a leading idea, unified, artistic, written in a very correct style, unrelenting but free from personal attacks. He hoped for a better future for Spain, preaching an overhaul of local customs and practices in emulation of France. His great reputation has hardly ever waned. Between 1835 and 1845 there were numerous editions of his writings even in Hispanic America. He was admired by the Realist novelists of the late nineteenth century, and idolized by the Generation of 1898, who saw in him an articulate precursor in their mission to “regenerate” Spain. There was a successful Spanish television series about his life ca. 1980.
The artículos de costumbres included here have been chosen not only for their fame, but also for their relatively more extensive narrative content, making them closer to our current criteria for the designation “story.”
“El casarse pronto y mal” was first published on November 30, 1832, in the second of Larra’s own periodicals, El Pobrecito Hablador (The Poor Little Talkative Fellow; this was one of his pre-“Fígaro” pseudonyms). The fourteen or fifteen issues of the paper (sources differ) appeared between August 17, 1832, and March 26, 1833. The piece reflects Larra’s own marital disappointments and his deep-seated concern with education and child rearing. The other nephew he mentions was a character in the article “Empeños y desempeños” (In and Out of Hock; El Pobrecito Hablador, September 26, 1832), a callow young dandy and spendthrift who must borrow money from his uncle to redeem a pawned watch that its rightful owner is expecting back (it had been unethically borrowed on the pretext of having it cleaned); the pawnbrokers turn out to be substantial citizens carrying on this usurious trade clandestinely.
“El castellano viejo” was first published in issue 8 of El Pobrecito Hablador on December 11, 1832. In this case, the connotation of “Old Castilian” is that of a vulgarly hail-fellow-well-met petty bourgeois who mistakes boorishness for frankness and bonhomie. Larra himself, though, comes off as being neurotically fastidious (just think of how lovingly Dickens might have described the same party); he not only looks his gift horse in the mouth, but kicks it in the rump.
“La Nochebuena de 1836” was Larra’s only contribution to El Redactor General (The General Editor), appearing there on December 26, 1836. It reflects his ultimate state of dejection, and clearly forecasts his suicide of a few months later.
The texts reprinted and translated here are the ones that appeared in the above-mentioned Colección de artículos, for which Larra himself pruned away some of the excrescences of the first periodical versions. In these three pieces, the only change worth mentioning is the omission of a rather lengthy prelude and postlude to the narrative portion of “El casarse pronto y mal.” In the sections he decided to omit, Larra directly addresses his readers, countering various criticisms of his work with the argument that no one author can please everybody; he intends to continue discussing any topic he wishes in the frame of mind he wishes, even if it means attacking sacrosanct social institutions; the Spanish education of his day affords just a smattering of knowledge, and Spain must adopt solid, not merely fashionable, improvements from abroad.
Enrique Gil y Carrasco (1815–1846)
Gil y Carrasco’s critical star is in the ascendant. His poetry, long neglected, is now seen as particularly quiet and subtle, as opposed to the more declamatory, loudly emotional verse of such traditionally acclaimed contemporaries as Espronceda and Zorrilla; and his novel El señor de Bembibre (The Lord of Bembibre) is now generally regarded as the best Spanish historical novel of the Romantic era.
He was born in Villafranca del Bierzo in 1815 (El Bierzo is a district in the region of León in northwestern Spain, close to Galicia). His father was a landowner’s steward. In 1824 the family moved to nearby Ponferrada, a larger town, where young Enrique studied humanities in an Augustine school until 1828, and then pursued secondary schooling until 1831. In 1832 he began law courses at the University of Valladolid. Apparently, his father was ruined financially in 1835, and Enrique had to leave his beloved native district and his sweetheart. From 1836 on, he was in Madrid, where he continued his law studies.
In Madrid he soon became a friend of such leading Romantic authors as Larra, Espronceda, Zorrilla, and the Duque de Rivas (author of the play Don Álvaro, on which Verdi’s La forza del destino is based); Gil y Carrasco had achieved local celebrity by 1837, especially with his sensitive poetry. He contributed pieces to such outstanding periodicals as Mesonero Romanos’s Semanario Pintoresco Español. In 1839 he received his law degree, but late that year he also suffered his first serious attack of tuberculosis.
In 1840, when he obtained a position in the Biblioteca Nacional, he began writing El señor de Bembibre. The novel was published in installments in El Sol (The Sun) during 1843, and as a volume (the only volume publication of any of the author’s works in his lifetime) the following year. The novel, which achieved even greater fame for him, takes place in El Bierzo in the early fourteenth century, and concerns star-crossed lovers in a period when the Templars, already crushed in France, were mortally threatened in Spain as well. In this book Gil y Carrasco is said to have created the first great lyrical landscape in Spanish literature.
In 1844 he was sent, with others, on a diplomatic mission to Berlin, ostensibly to study the local culture and economy, but also to sound out the Prussian government with regard to the formal recognition of Queen Isabel II, whose minority was coming to an end. Gil y Carrasco was very well received there, being fêted by such intellectuals as Alexander von Humboldt. Unfortunately, his illness became much worse, and he died in Berlin in 1846. Besides his novel and his poetry (one sample of which is contained in the story included here), he had written some shorter fiction, artículos de costumbres, dramatic criticism, and travel pieces, and had maintained an interesting diary.
“Anochecer en San Antonio de la Florida” (also known as “El anochecer de la Florida”) was originally published in Nos. 270 and 271 of El Correo Nacional (Correo can be translated as either Courier or Post), November 12 and 13, 1838. Said to be the author’s first work of fiction, it is very autobiographical, concerning a young provincial poet who has suffered family misfortunes and feels out of place in Madrid. The ermita (hermitage) of Saint Anthony of Padua is located on the banks of the Manzanares, to the west of the heart of town, in the neighborhood called La Florida. At the celebration held there every June, single women traditionally prayed for a husband, seamstresses offering one of their needles. The chapel was built by the Italian architect Fra
ncesco Fontana between 1792 and 1798, when it was decorated with now world-famous frescoes (the chief one, in the dome, depicts a miracle of the saint performed before an audience of angels) by Goya, whose remains were moved there in 1919.
This story is the first one so far in this Dover volume to exhibit some of the most characteristic traits of arch-Romanticism: an impassioned, ecstatic flow of verbiage; childlike, visionary piety; and a confrontation between a “disinherited” hero and a deified virginal heroine in a setting of peerless beauty.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1870)
Bécquer, all of forty years younger than “Fernán Caballero,” is obviously of a later generation than the other authors in this anthology, and before his premature death Realism had already established itself, but Bécquer, the leading Spanish Postromantic, prolongs many aspects of the early Romantic movement and, as a writer of prose fiction, represents the loftiest achievement of that aspect of Romanticism in Spain.
The writer was born in Seville in 1836. His real family name was Domínguez Bastida, but his father, a painter, had already adopted the Flemish-derived name Bécquer used by another branch of the family. (The writer’s brother Valeriano, 1833–1870, later an eminent painter and illustrator, and his lifelong companion, also called himself Bécquer.) Gustavo’s early training in art and music is very much in evidence in his later writings. He began to write while still in secondary school. He came to Madrid in 1854 and was soon contributing to periodicals. The only volume he published in his lifetime was the 1857–1858 Historia de los templos de España (History of the Churches of Spain). In 1857 he had a serious attack of tuberculosis, after which he took a number of rest cures in different parts of Spain, incidentally gathering local lore for his stories.
In 1859 he wrote his first rima (rhyme; poem), continuing to write seventy-odd rimas until 1868, only fifteen of which were published in his lifetime. These (chiefly) love poems of quiet despair; with a strong Heine influence, are among the most famous in Spanish literature, and inspired modernista poets, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and many others. Both the poems and the legends (to be discussed very soon) were first collected in the posthumous 1871 Obras (Works; published by T. Fortanet, Madrid) by friends of the author, who unfortunately felt called upon to introduce certain “corrections” which later editors have had to nullify on the basis of surviving manuscripts.
Between 1865 and 1868, Bécquer, as the protégé of a cabinet minister, served as a censor of novels. The revolution of 1868 ended that, and in the same year Bécquer separated from the woman he had been married to for seven years (his close attachment to his brother had been a factor contributing to the estrangement). Thereafter he spent a lot of time in Toledo, a city he was already extremely fond of. He died of tuberculosis in 1870.
For many years, the term leyendas (legends) was applied to all of Bécquer’s twenty-odd stories, but more recently various editors have restricted that appellation to the sixteen (or so) stories with supernatural, historical aspects; so that, of the three stories included here, the first two would be legitimate leyendas, but the third would not, since it is autobiographical and takes place in the author’s day. Bécquer’s stories were published in periodicals between 1858 and 1864. Those now strictly called “legends” are from various written or oral European and Asian sources, and exhibit the influence of Poe and E. T. A. Hoffmann. Their language is poetic, their vocabulary rich, with an element of archaism. Even the other stories, though, have a distinctly dreamlike, poetic atmosphere.
All three stories in this Dover anthology were first published in the Madrid El Contemporáneo (The Contemporary), which ran from December 20, 1860, to October 31, 1865. Bécquer was a frequent contributor, and even managed the periodical for three months in 1864–1865.
“Los ojos verdes” was published in the December 15, 1861, issue. The Mount Moncayo region, near Soria, is connected with both Bécquer’s wife’s home and a monastery at which he recuperated in 1863–1864, writing there his famous Cartas desde mi celda (Letters from My Cell), combining autobiographical data, records of local excursions, and retellings of local legends. The destructive water nymph in the story is a well-known feature of worldwide folklore, and many great authors have used the theme in prose and verse to symbolize the deadlier aspects of obsessive love. Incidentally, Bécquer’s Rima XII concerns a beloved woman with green eyes.
“Maese Pérez, el organista” was published in two issues of El Contemporáneo, December 27 and 29, 1861. All the churches in Seville mentioned in the story are real, though some are no longer extant. Bécquer’s musical training comes to the fore in this story. The extensive historical background is delivered to the reader in the lighthearted form of a stream of babble emitted by a singularly poetic and well-informed neighborhood gossip, whose dialogue is nevertheless as colloquial as Bécquer ever gets.
“Tres fechas” was published sometime in 1862. It clearly shows Bécquer’s admiration of Toledo, and its long, detailed descriptions of architecture and public spaces could only have been written by a trained artist. The story is typically Romantic in its daydream quality, its quest for an ideal woman, and its deep feeling of eternal regret for lost opportunities.
CONTENTS
“Fernán Caballero” (1796–1877)
Las ánimas / The Souls in Purgatory
Doña Fortuna y don Dinero / Lady Luck and Mr. Money
Juan Soldado / Soldier John
Ramón de Mesonero Romanos (1803–1882)
La posada o España en Madrid / The Inn; or, Spain in Madrid
Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1806–1880)
Historia de dos bofetones / A Story of Two Slaps
Mariano José de Larra (1809–1837)
El casarse pronto y mal / Marrying in Haste
El castellano viejo / The Old Castilian
La Nochebuena de 1836 / Christmas Eve, 1836
Enrique Gil y Carrasco (1815–1846)
Anochecer en San Antonio de la Florida / Nightfall in San Antonio de la Florida
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1870)
Los ojos verdes / The Green Eyes
Maese Pérez el organista / Master Pérez, the Organist
Tres fechas / Three Calendar Dates
“FERNÁN CABALLERO” (1796-1877)
Las ánimas
Cuento andaluz
FERNÁN.—Tío Romance, aquí me entro, aunque no llueva.
TÍO ROMANCE.—Bien venido, señor D. Fernán. Viene su mercé a su casa como el sol: para alegrarla. ¿Qué tiene su mercé que mandarme?
FERNÁN.—Necesito un cuento como el comer, tío Romance.
TÍO ROMANCE.—¡Otra te pego! Señor, ¿se ha figurado su mercé que son mis cuentos como los dictados de D. Crispín, que no tenían fin? Su mercé me ha perdonar; pero hoy estoy de mala vuelta; tengo la memoria aliquebrada y los sentidos más tupidos que caldo de habas. Pero voy a llamar a mi Chana para que complazca a su mercé. ¡Chana! ¡Sebastiana! . . . ¡Caramba con la mujer! que le va sucediendo lo que al marqués de Montegordo, que se quedó mudo, ciego y sordo. ¡Chana!
LA TÍA CHANA.—¿Qué quieres, hombre, con esas voces tan desamoretadas que parecen de zagal? ¡Ay! que está aquí el señor D. Fernán. Dios guarde a usted, señor; ¿cómo lo pasa su mercé?
FERNÁN.—Bien, tía Sebastiana. ¿Usted tan buena?
TÍA CHANA.—¡Ay, no señor!, que me he caído como horno de cal.
FERNÁN.—¿Pues qué ha tenido usted?
TÍO ROMANCE.—Lo que la otra que estaba al sol:
Una vieja estaba al sol,
y mirando al almanaque,
de cuando en cuando decía:
ya va la luna menguante.
LA TÍA SEBASTIANA.—No, señor D. Fernán, no es eso; que Dios y su madre no quitan carnes, sino el hijo al nacer y la madre al morir; y mi hijo, el alma mía . . .