Chapter 11

By his contemporaries Luis de Leon was perhaps more esteemed as a theologian or a scholar than as a man of letters. This judgement has been reversed by posterity mainly on the strength of the Spanish poems which were little known during the author's lifetime beyond a small circle of his personal friends.[263] Experts tell us that as a theologian he ranks below his master Melchor Cano; and in the annals of scholarship Luis de Leon is less conspicuous than Benito Arias Montano and than Francisco Sanchez (_el Brocense_). Few now read for pleasure the treatises which Luis de Leon composed in a dead language: in any case these treatises can add nothing to his reputation as a writer of Spanish, and it is solely as a Spanish author that he concerns us here and now. He was by no means the earliest of devout writers to use Spanish as a literary medium. There is a long and illustrious bead-roll of authors from Bernardino de Laredo to Saint Theresa to prove the contrary. Much less was Luis de Leon the first post-Renaissance scholar to recognize that Spanish had a great future before it. Yet, if we take leave to assume that Luis de Granada was an ascetic rather than an extatic, we may account Luis de Leon as perhaps the first professional scholar to perceive that Spanish was adequate to convey the subtleties of theology and the ravishments of mysticism. His chief prose works in Castilian include the _Exposicion del libro de Job_, a commentary dedicated to Madre Ana de Jesús, but not published till near the end of the eighteenth century (1779). The _provenance_ of this work calls for no explanation. Apart from the quotation of a passage in Jorge Manrique's _Coplas_, the _Exposicion del libro de Job_ offers few indications of Spanish origin and fewer personal touches. Equally Biblical in origin are a rendering of the _Song of Songs_ and a corresponding commentary; the existence of both has a personal interest inasmuch as they prove that Luis de Leon was enabled to carry out a long cherished design by means of which he hoped, as he declared at Valladolid, to counterbalance the indiscreet prying of Fray Diego de Leon. _La Perfecta Casada_ (1583) and _De los nombres de Cristo_ (1583-1585) likewise have their roots in Scripture. _La Perfecta Casada_ is avowedly based on the thirty-first chapter of _Proverbs_, and _De los nombres de Cristo_, the first part of which appeared simultaneously with _La Perfecta Casada_,[264] discusses the various symbolic names applied to the Saviour in the Bible.

_La Perfecta Casada_ is dedicated to Maria Varela Osorio, a recently wedded bride, who may have been a distant kinswoman of the author's.[265] Nowhere more clearly than in this treatise does Luis de Leon justify the statement that he had a Hebrew soul. He takes for granted the Oriental point of view, and illustrates his imperious thesis with ample quotations from writers of all types--pagans, Christians, saints, and laymen. There are references to Simonides, to Sophocles, to Euripides, to Plutarch, to Saint Clement of Alexandria, to Saint Cyprian, to Saint Ambrose, to Garcilasso de la Vega. It seems likely that _La Perfecta Casada_ was written after _De los nombres de Cristo_, which was almost certainly begun in prison. But there is perhaps nothing in the internal evidence of the style which would point to that conclusion. The style of _La Perfecta Casada_ is vigorous and clear; but it is marred by gusts of rhetoric and by an excess of copulative conjunctions. These peculiarities produce the effect of relative inexperience, and might easily mislead a too confident critic.

_De los nombres de Cristo_ is cast in the Platonic form of dialogue, and, in the section entitled _Pastor_, Plato is quoted by name. But the Hellenic influence, though present, is not dominant. Already Alonso de Orozco had anticipated Luis de Leon with _De los nueve nombres de Cristo_,[266] and there are points of contact in the handling as is inevitable from the similarity of the subject. But it cannot be denied that Luis de Leon's work is suffused with a warmer, more human interest than Orozco's brief sketch. These more intimate personal elements are present on almost every page of _De los nombres de Cristo_. Nobody can read far without perceiving that Marcello, hindered by his _poca salud y muchas occupaciones_, is manifestly a double of Luis de Leon; there are passages which gloss themes developed metrically elsewhere; there are retrospicient glances at the Valladolid trial; the scene of the dialogue is laid within view of La Flecha, and the details of the landscape are reproduced with exact fidelity; Luis de Leon has a freer hand in _De los nombres de Cristo_ than in his other prose works, but here again in his paraphrases of the Biblical passages relating to Christ his interpretation is at one with the interpretation of the prophets. And this identity of sentiment has in it nothing dramatic. Those who have alleged that Luis de Leon came of Jewish stock may have been--apparently were--mistaken; but their mistake is comprehensible, for more than any contemporary Spanish poet--more even than Herrera in his odes--is he saturated with the Jewish spirit. In all his work Luis de Leon adheres closely to the Bible. In the _De los nombres de Cristo_ he is also a Platonist within limits: not so much as regards the manner (which tends to an oratorical pomp more reminiscent of Cicero) as in his conciliatory method. With the Jewish and Hellenic blend of influence we must rate the Latin influence--that of Horace and of Virgil. The influence of Horace on Luis de Leon has been often noted. It exists no doubt, but has perhaps been exaggerated: why should we suppose that his love of moderation was learnt from Horace and was not partly, at least, temperamental? May not the references to Horace be a characteristic of humanism? An opinion backed by the weight of classical authority must reach us with irresistible force, must it not? However this may be, the predominant influence in _De los nombres de Cristo_, as in all Luis de Leon's prose, is Scriptural and Christian. In maturity of development, in intellectual force, in beauty of expression, and in general adequateness, _De los nombres de Cristo_ exhibits Luis de Leon's prose at its culmination. The book is dedicated to Pedro Portocarrero,[267] Bishop of Calahorra, who had previously twice been rector of Salamanca University. It seems probable that Luis de Leon's friendship with him dates back to 1566-1567, when Portocarrero held the office of rector for the second time. Besides _De los nombres de Cristo_ Luis de Leon dedicated to Portocarrero _In Abdiam prophetam Explanatio_ (1589) and the manuscript collection of his poems. For some reason not very obvious this collection of verses was not published till 1631 when it was issued by Quevedo, who hoped that it would help to stem the current of Gongorism in Spain. The poems, printed forty years after the author's death, appeared too late to affect the public taste. Góngora himself had died in 1627, but his influence was undiminished. Quevedo, who had obtained his copies of Luis de Leon's verses from Manuel Sarmiento de Mendoza, a canon of Seville cathedral, did his share as editor by writing two prefaces, one addressed to Sarmiento de Mendoza, and the other to Olivares who was manifestly expected to pronounce against Gongorism. Olivares, however, had no reason to love Quevedo, and was resolved to take no active part in what he doubtless regarded as a scribblers' quarrel. Gongorism pursued its way unchecked. Quevedo's edition, though incomplete and disfigured by certain errors, was reprinted at Milan during the same year (1631), and then all interest in Luis de Leon flickered out for a while.

In the prefatory note of the 1631 Madrid edition--entitled _Obras propias, y traduciones latinas, griegas y italianas_--Luis de Leon speaks of his poems slightingly as mere playthings of his youth, now brought together at the request of an anonymous friend--perhaps Benito Arias Montano--to whom they had been ascribed. Luis de Leon arranges the material in three books, containing respectively his original compositions, his translations from authors profane, and his versions of certain psalms, a hymn, and chapters from the Book of Job. But, beyond the general statement as to the early date of composition, Luis de Leon gives no precise information as to when individual poems were written. The assertion that the poems date back almost to the author's childhood is contradicted by concrete facts. Take, for instance, the celebrated _Noche serena_ dedicated to Oloarte. If, as I conjecture, the dedicatee of the _Noche serena_ is identical with the Diego de Loarte, archdeacon of Ledesma, who gave evidence at Salamanca on January 27, 1573, and who on that date had known Luis de Leon for fourteen years, the _Noche serena_ cannot have been composed earlier than 1559 when Luis de Leon was thirty-one--youthful, indeed, but long past his _niñez_. On January 17, 1573, Francisco Salinas testified at Salamanca to having known Luis de Leon for six years: whence it follows that _El aire se serena_ cannot have been written before 1567, when Luis de Leon was bordering on his fortieth year. As Don Carlos died on July 24, 1568, the _Cancion a la muerte de don Carlos_ and the _Epitafio al túmulo del príncipe don Carlos_ must necessarily have been composed after that date; that is, when Luis de Leon was just forty and had left his _niñez_ far behind him. Besides a general dedication to Portocarrero, the collection includes three individual poems which are dedicated to that personage: (1) _Virtud, hija del Cielo_; (2) _No siempre es poderosa_; (3) _La cana y alta cumbre_. In _La cana y alta cumbre_ there is a reference to

la cruda guerra que agora el Marte airado despierta en la alta sierra.

These verses can scarcely allude to anything but the Alpujarras rising of 1568-1571, and the conjecture hardens into certainty in view of the mention of Alonso and Poqueira: this is clearly the Alonso Portocarrero who, as Hurtado de Mendoza records, perished at Poqueira, 'trabado del veneno usado dende los tiempos antiguos entre cazadores'. This poem must have been written when Luis de Leon was at least forty-one. _Virtud, hija del cielo_, in mentioning the _Miño_, refers to Portocarrero's appointment in Galicia; and as Portocarrero's term of office appears to have lasted from 1571 to 1580, the poem cannot be dated earlier than 1571 when Luis de Leon was over forty-three. If the mention of _la morisca armada_ in the lines _A Santiago_ glances at the battle of Lepanto which was fought on October 7, 1571, then the poem must have been written after that date, when the author was close on forty-four. The verses dedicated to Juan de Grial, with their closing reference to the writer's trials:

Que yo, de un torbellino traidor acometido, y derrocado del medio del camino al hondo, el plectro amado y del vuelo las alas he quebrado;

the fervent entreaty _A todos los santos_ and its unreserved lament:

No niego, dulce amparo del alma, que mis males son mayores que aqueste desamparo; mas cuanto son peores, tanto resonaran mas tus loores;

the very beautiful and justly renowned _Virgen que el sol mas pura_, with its heart-rending supplication:

los ojos vuelve al suelo y mira un miserable en cárcel dura cercado de tinieblas y tristeza:

possibly[268] the song _Del conocimiento de si mismo_, with its significant simile:

el gusanillo de la gente hollado un rey era, conmigo comparado;

and assuredly the famous _quintillas_ beginning _Aqui la envidia y mentira_: these compositions were probably composed during, or after, the writer's imprisonment at Valladolid, that is to say between the spring of 1572 and the winter of 1576, when Luis de Leon was from forty-four or forty-five to forty-eight or forty-nine. _Del mundo y su vanidad_ glances at

la grave desventura del lusitano, por su mal valiente, la soberbia bravura de su animosa gente desbaratada miserablemente.

This passage obviously recalls the disastrous defeat of Sebastian I, King of Portugal, at Al-Kaor al-Kebir in August 1578, when Luis de Leon was more than fifty years of age. If these inferences are valid, it would follow that many of his original poems were not composed till he was nearly forty or more. It is difficult to reconcile these conclusions with the author's categorical assertion that the poems were produced during his early years. As Luis de Leon was the least vain, as well as the most truthful of men, an explanation must be found, and it is perhaps permissible to suggest that Luis de Leon wrote a prefatory note to Portocarrero intending it to be placed at the beginning of the Second Book which contains his poems translated from Roman and other authors. By some mischance the poet's intention was frustrated; perhaps a leaf was out of place in Sarmiento de Mendoza's copy; perhaps Quevedo is directly responsible for what occurred. At any rate, the letter dedicatory was bisected, the greater part of it being transferred to the beginning of the First Book, while a mere morsel came to be printed at the beginning of the Third Book. This surmise may serve till a better explanation is forthcoming.

It is not to be inferred from the foregoing summary that all Luis de Leon's original and graver compositions were written during his maturity, but there is some reason to think that his earlier efforts in verse took the form of translations. Though it is undoubtedly true that his poems as a whole were not published till 1631, four isolated pieces of his strayed into print as early as 1574 when they were included by Francisco Sanchez, _el Brocense_, in the notes to his edition of the _Obras del excelente poeta Garci-Lasso de la Vega_.[269] At that date Luis de Leon was in the secret prison-cells of the Inquisition at Valladolid. Sanchez had been a colleague of his at Salamanca for some six years, was on friendly terms with him, knew the exact turn things were taking, felt that no good, and possibly some harm, might be done by mentioning the prisoner's name, and accordingly gave a version of an Horatian ode with the comment: 'vn docto destos reynos la traduxo bi[~e]'[270]. This needs interpretation. There can be no doubt that Luis de Leon was a very competent Latin scholar; neither is there any doubt that he had a profound admiration for Horace. At his best, his Horatian versions, if somewhat lacking in polish, are remarkably faithful and vigorous. But when we find him in his translation of the eighteenth ode of the Second Book rendering _salis avarus_ by _de sal avariento_--the second person singular of the present indicative of the verb _salire_ being mistaken for the genitive of the substantive _sal_[271]--we may perhaps conclude that a boyish exercise has somehow escaped destruction.

It is sometimes alleged against Luis de Leon that he is restricted in his choice of themes, and it is impossible to deny that his sacred profession acted as something of a limitation to him. Still, when the mood was on him, he rent his chains asunder as readily as Samson broke the seven green withs at Gaza: 'as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire.' Perhaps nobody would guess off-hand that the _Profecia del Tajo_ was the handiwork of a sixteenth-century monk, a dweller in the rarefied atmosphere of mysticism. It only remained for a friar in the opposition camp to discover nearly three hundred years later a tendency in Luis de Leon to treat sensual themes in a sensual fashion.[272] To deal seriously with a belated judgement based on malignant ignorance would be a waste of time. It is the very irony of fate that the poem which has been the subject of severe censure should prove to be a translation from Cardinal Bembo.[273] The standard of the twentieth century is not the standard of the sixteenth, and it is certain that Luis de Leon has not the unfettered liberty of a godless layman. He is restrained by his austere temperament, by his monk's habit, by Christian doctrine. Nevertheless he moves with easy grace and dignity on planes so far apart as those of patriotism, of devotion, of human sympathy, of introspection. His patriotism finds powerful expression, as already noted, in the _Profecia del Tajo_, besprinkled with sonorous place-names, these growing fewer as the movement is accelerated, and Father Tagus describes with a mixture of picturesque mediaeval sentiment and martial music the onset of the Arabs and the clangour of arms as they meet the doomed Gothic host. In the sphere of devotional poetry Luis de Leon nowhere displays more unction, more ecstatic piety than in the verses on the Ascension beginning with the line:

Y dexas, Pastor santo.

It will be observed that the conjunction _y_, so superabundant in _La Perfecta Casada_, is the first word of this poem, of which Churton has supplied a well-known rendering:

And dost Thou, holy Shepherd, leave Thy flock in this dark vale alone, In cheerless solitude to grieve, Whilst Thou to endless rest art gone?

The sheep, in Thy protection blest, Untended wilt Thou leave to mourn? The lambs, once cherished at Thy breast, Forlorn,--oh! whither shall they turn?

Where shall those eyes now find repose, That pine Thy gracious glance to see? What can they hear but sounds of woes, Sad exiles from discourse with Thee?

And who shall curb this troubled deep, When Thou no more amidst the gloom Shalt chide the wrathful winds to sleep, And guide the labouring vessel home?

For Thou art gone! that cloud so bright That bears Thee from our gaze away, Springs upward into dazzling light, And leaves us here to weep and pray.

Four additional stanzas, accepted as authentic by perhaps the most painstaking of Luis de Leon's editors, are thus Englished by Churton:

Our life has lost its richest store, The balm for sorrow's inward thorn, The hope, that, gladd'ning more and more, Out-brighten'd all the springs of morn.

Ah me! my soul, what hateful chain Holds back thy freeborn spirit's flight? Oh break it, disenthrall'd from pain, And mount those azure depths of light.

Why should'st thou fear? What earth-born spell Is on thee, with thy choice at strife The soul no dying pang can quell, But loss of Christ is death in life.

Dear Lord, and Friend, more dear to me Than all the names Earth's love hath found, Through darkest gloom I'll follow Thee, Or cheer'd with beaming glory round.

Now there is no question of mere executive skill and simple craftsmanship in Luis de Leon's poems. He is, indeed, always sound and competent in these respects; but artistry is not his supreme virtue as a poet. He is ever prone to be a little rugged in his manner, and this ruggedness has proved something of a trap to the unwary. Luis de Leon has no real mannerisms, and is no more to be parodied than is Shakespeare. Yet it is sometimes difficult to distinguish him at his worst from his imitators at their best. Though withheld so long from the public, Luis de Leon's poems, while still in manuscript, were repeatedly imitated--especially by Augustinians. To my way of thinking, he is most nearly approached by his friend Arias Montano. But it should be said that this is not the general verdict. That goes decisively in favour of Miguel Sanchez, _el Divino_. Miguel Sanchez is the author of a beautiful _Cancion de Cristo Crucificado_, a poem which, though not published till 1605 with the real writer's name attached to it, has constantly been ascribed to Luis de Leon.[274] The _Cancion_ is no doubt a composition of great charm and mystic unction; but it lacks the concentrated force of Luis de Leon. Luis de Leon has a lofty dignity of his own; he outstrips all rivalry by virtue of his nobility, by virtue of his intellectual vigour, by virtue of sheer excellence rather than by curious refinements of technique. These positive qualities defy reproduction by even the most accomplished of imitators. It has been said that Luis de Leon's verse, as well as his prose, has noticeable roughnesses; but let us not derive a wrong impression from this assertion. Luis de Leon is not 'finicking'. Withal he is a master of his art. Retrograde as we may perhaps think him in some matters, he was on the side of the reformers in the matter of metrics. He was a partisan of Boscan's innovating methods: so much might be expected from a man of his period. It is to be noted that, in his best poems, he shows a decided preference for _liras_, a form apparently invented by Bernardo Tasso before it was transplanted to Spain by Garcilasso de la Vega. Luis de Leon was of opinion that those who violate poetry, using it for purposes of a meretricious kind, deserved punishment as public corrupters of two most sacred things: poetry and morals. It is one of the curious ironies of art that the measure which the seductive Garcilasso used for amatory purposes should have appealed to Luis de Leon as the vehicle most suited to enraptured chants and hymns of philosophic meditation.

It is obvious that Luis de Leon took a keen interest in all the real essentials of his art. It is no less obvious that he saw matters in their actual perspective, that he attached no undue importance to technique, as such, and that he gave no less weight to the choice of matter than to the choice of form. Luis de Leon was not incapable of metrical audacities: as when he divides into two separate words adverbs in _-mente_ occurring at the end of a line. This practice was audacious, but it was not an innovation. Juan de Almeida defended it by citing a host of precedents from other literatures and, had Almeida been a prophet, he might have foretold that this device was destined to be repeated hundreds of years later by that innovating genius Rubén Darío. But Almeida was not a prophet. His titles to remembrance are that he was learned, and that he may rank with Miguel Sanchez, with Alonso de Espinosa, and with Benito Arias Montano as among the least unsuccessful of Luis de Leon's followers. They often follow his lead with undeniable adroitness. Yet they never attain his incomparable concentration, his majestic vision of nature and his characteristic note of ecstatic aloofness. Nowhere is he more himself than in the immortal stanzas dedicated to Oloarte under the title of _Noche serena_ of which Churton has bequeathed us an English version which I will quote, though it gives but a far-off echo of the original's magic melody:

When nightly through the sky I view the stars their files unnumber'd leading, Then see the dark earth lie In deathlike trance, unheeding How Life and Time with those bright orbs are speeding:

Strong love and equal pain Wake in my heart a fire with anguish burning; The tear-drops fall like rain, Mine eyes to fountains turning, And my sad voice pours forth its tones of mourning:

O mansion of high state, Bright temple of bright saints in beauty dwelling, The soul, once born to mate With these, what force repelling Hath bound to earth, its light in darkness quelling?

What mortal disaccord Hath exiled so from Truth the mind unstable? Why of its blest reward Forgetful, lost, unable, Seeks it each shadowy fraud and guileful fable?

Man lies in slumber dead, Like one that of his danger hath no feeling, The while with silent tread Those restless orbs are wheeling, And, as they fly, his hours of life are stealing.

O mortals, wake and rise; Think of the loss that on your lives is pressing; The soul, that never dies, Ordain'd for endless blessing, How shall it live, false shows for truth caressing?