Chapter 19
The Cuban poet Don José María Heredia (1803-1839) is better known in Europe and in the United States than Bello and Olmedo, since his poems are universal in their appeal. He is especially well known in the United States, where he lived in exile for over two years (1823-1825), at first in Boston and later in New York, and wrote his famous ode to Niagara. Born in Cuba, he studied in Santo Domingo and in Caracas (1812-1817), as well as in his native island. Accused of conspiracy against the Spanish government, he fled to the United States in 1823, and there eked out a precarious existence by giving private lessons. In 1825 he went to Mexico, where he was well received and where he held several important posts, including those of member of Congress and judge of the superior court. In Heredia's biography two facts should be stressed: that he studied for five years in Caracas, the city that produced Bolivar and Bello, respectively the greatest general and the greatest scholar of Spanish America; and that he spent only twelve years, all told, in Cuba. As he lived for fourteen years in Mexico, that country also claims him as her own, while Caracas points to him with pride as another child of her older educational system.
Heredia was most unhappy in the United States. He admired page 293 the political institutions of this country; but he disliked the climate of New York, and he despaired of learning English. Unlike Bello and Olmedo he was not a classical scholar. His acquaintance with the Latin poets was limited, and seldom does a Virgilian or Horatian expression occur in his verses. Rather did he stand for the manner of Chateaubriand in France and Cienfuegos in Spain. Though strictly speaking not a romantic poet, he was a close precursor of that movement. His language is not seldom incorrect or lacking in sobriety and restraint; but his numbers are musical and his thought springs directly from imaginative exaltation.
Heredia's poorest verses are doubtless his early love-songs: his best are those in which the contemplation of nature leads the poet to meditation on human existence, as in _Niágara_, _El Teocalli de Cholula_, _En una tempestad_ and _Al sol_. In these poems the predominant note is that of gentle melancholy. In Cuba his best known verses are the two patriotic hymns: _Á Emilia_ and _El himno del desterrado_. These were written before the poet was disillusioned by his later experiences in the turbulent Mexico of the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, and they are so virulent in their expression of hatred of Spain that Menéndez y Pelayo refused to include them in his _Anthology_. Heredia undertook to write several plays, but without success. Some translations of dramatic works, however, were well received, and especially those of Ducis' _Abufar_, Chénier's _Tibère_, Jouy's _Sila_, Voltaire's _Mahomet_ and Alfieri's _Saul_. The Garnier edition (Paris, 1893) of Heredia's _Poesías_ contains an interesting introduction by the critic Elías Zerolo (_Poesías_, N.Y., 1825; Toluca, 1832; N.Y., 1875; Paris, 1893).
The mulatto poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, better known by his pen-name "Plácido" (1809-1844), an uncultivated comb-maker, wrote verses which were mostly commonplace and often incorrect; but some evince remarkable sublimity and dignity (cf. _Plegaria page 294 á Dios_). Cf. _Poesías_, Matanzas, 1838; Matanzas, 1842; Veracruz, 1845; Paris, 1857; Havana, 1886. The greatest Cuban poetess, and perhaps the most eminent poetess who has written in the Castilian language, is Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga (1814-1873). Since Avellaneda spent most of her life in Spain, an account of her life and work is given in the _Introduction_ to this volume, p. xxxviii. Next only to Heredia, the most popular Cuban poet is José Jacinto Milanés y Fuentes (1814-1863), who gave in simple verse vivid descriptions of local landscapes and customs. A resigned and touching sadness characterizes his best verse (_Obras_, 4 vols., Havana, 1846; N.Y., 1865).
A lawyer, educator and patriot, Rafael María Mendive y Daumy (1821-1886) wrote musical verse in which there is spontaneity and true poetic feeling (_Pasionarias_, Havana, 1847; _Poesías_, Madrid, 1860; Havana, 1883). Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces (1826-1867) was more learned than most Cuban poets and fond of philosophizing. Some of his verse has force and gives evidence of careful study; but much is too pedantic to be popular (_Poesías_, Havana, 1857). A poet of sorrow, Juan Clemente Zenea,--"Adolfo de la Azucena" (1832-1871),--wrote verses that are marked by tender melancholy (_Poesías_, Havana, 1855; N.Y., 1872, 1874).
Heredia was not the only Cuban poet to suffer persecution. Of the seven leading Cuban poets, often spoken of as "the Cuban Pleiad," Avellaneda removed to Spain, where she married and spent her life in tranquillity; and Joaquín Luaces avoided trouble by living in retirement and veiling his patriotic songs with mythological names. On the other hand José Jacinto Milanés lost his reason at the early age of thirty years, José María Heredia and Rafael Mendive fled the country and lived in exile; while Gabriel Valdés and Juan Clemente Zenea were shot by order of the governor-general.
Since the disappearance of the "Pleiad," the most popular page 295 Cuban poets have been Julián del Casal, a skeptic and a Parnassian poet who wrote pleasing but empty verses (_Hojas al viento_, _Nieve_, _Bustos y Rimas_); and Francisco Sellén, whose philosophy is to conceal suffering and to put one's hand to the plow again (_Libro íntimo_, Havana, 1865; _Poesías_, N.Y., 1890). José Martí (1853-1895) spent most of his life in exile; but he returned to Cuba and died in battle against the Spanish forces. He wrote excellent prose, but few verses (_Flor y lava_, Paris, 1910(?)).
References: Menéndez y Pelayo, _Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Am._, II, p. 1 f.; Blanco García, III, p. 290 f.; E.C. Hills, _Bardos cubanos_ (contains a bibliography), Boston, 1901; Aurelio Mitjans, _Estudio sobre el movimiento científico y literario en Cuba_, Havana, 1890; Bachiller y Morales, _Apuntes para la historia de las letras y de la instrucción pública de la Isla de Cuba_, Havana, 1859; _La poesía lírica en Cuba_, M. González del Valle, Barcelona, 1900; _Cuba poética_, Havana, 1858; _Parnaso cubano_, Havana, 1881.
Heredia: see preceding note.
5. This is quite true. On the coast of central and southern Mexico the climate is tropical; on the central plateau it is temperate; and on the mountain slopes, as at the foot of Popocatepetl, it is frigid.
13-14. =Iztaccíhual= and =Popocatepec= are the popular names of these mountains, but their official names are _Iztaccíhuatel_ and _Popocatépetel_. These words are of Nahuatlan origin: see in _Vocab_.
16--18. =do... teñirse= = _donde el indio ledo los mira teñirse en púrpura ligera y oro_.
=181=.--3. This poem was written in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, when Mexico was torn by civil war. There was peace only when some military leader assumed despotic power.
21. Note that the moon set behind =Popocatepec=, a little to the south of west from Cholula, while the sun sank behind =Iztaccíhual=, a little to the north of page 296 west from the city. This might well occur in summer.
=182.=--14. =Fueron= (lit. _they were_), _they are no more_. In this Latinism the preterit denotes that a thing or condition that once existed no longer exists. Cf. _fuit Ilium_ (_Æneid_, II, 325), "Troy is no more."
=186.=--4-5. =Que... seguir= = _que, en su vuelo, la turbada vista quiere en vano seguir_.
=190.=--"Plácido": see note to p. 179.
=Plegaria á Dios=: this beautiful prayer was written a few days before the poet's death. It is said that "Plácido" recited aloud the last stanza on his way to the place of execution, and that he slipped to a friend in the crowd a scrap of cloth on which the prayer was written.
=191.=--4. =del... transparencia= = _á_ (in) _la clara transparencia del aire_.
Avellaneda: see _Introduction_, p. xxxviii.
19. =No... modelo= = _(la historia) no [dió] modelo á tu virtud en lo pasado_.
21. =otra= = _otra copia_.
=192.=--1-2. =Miró... victoria= = _la Europa miró al genio de la guerra y la victoria ensangrentar su suelo_. The =genio= was Napoleon Bonaparte.
4. =Al... cielo= = _el cielo le diera al genio del bien_. Note that =le= is dative and =al genio= accusative. This otherwise admirable sonnet is marred by the numerous inversions of the word-order.
=193.=--=Ecuador= is a relatively small and mountainous country, lying, as the name implies, directly on the equator. The two principal cities are Guayaquil, a port on the Pacific coast, and Quito, the capital. Quito is beautifully situated on a plateau 9300 feet above the level of the sea. The climate is mild and salubrious, and drier than at Bogotá. The early Spanish colonists repeatedly wrote of the beautiful scenery and the "eternal spring" of Quito. page 297 All of the present Ecuador belonged to the Virreinato del Perú till 1721, after which date Quito and the contiguous territory were governed from Bogotá. In 1824 Guayaquil and southern Ecuador were forcibly annexed to the first Colombia by Bolivar. Six years later Ecuador separated from Colombia and organized as a separate state.
In the territory now known as Ecuador the first colleges were established about the middle of the sixteenth century, by the Franciscans, for the natives, and by the Jesuits, as elsewhere in America, for the sons of Spaniards. Several chronicles by priests and other explorers were written during the early years of the colonial period; but no poet appears before the seventeenth century. In 1675 the Jesuit Jacinto de Evia published at Madrid his _Ramillete de varias flores poéticas_ which contains, beside those by Evia, verses by Antonio Bastidas, a Jesuit teacher, and by Hernando Domínguez Camargo, a Colombian. The verses are mediocre or worse, and, as the date would imply, are imbued with culteranism.
The best verses of the eighteenth century were collected by the priest Juan de Velasco (1727-1819) and published in six volumes under the title of _El ocioso de Faenza_. These volumes contain poems by Bautista Aguirre of Guayaquil, José Orozco (_La conquista de Menorca_, an epic poem in four cantos), Ramón Viescas (sonnets, _romances_, _décimas_, etc.) and others, most of whom were Jesuits.
The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 caused the closure of several colleges in Ecuador, and for a time seriously hampered the work of classical education. But even before the edict of expulsion scientific study had been stimulated by the coming of French and Spanish scholars to measure a degree of the earth's surface at the equator. The coming of Humboldt in 1801 still further encouraged inquiry and research. The new spirit was given concrete expression by Dr. Francisco Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo, a physician of native descent, in page 298 _El nuevo Luciano_, a work famous in the literary and the political history of South America. In this work Dr. Espejo attacked the prevailing educational and economic systems of the colonies, and his doctrine did much to start the movement toward secession from the mother country.
Although the poetry of Ecuador is of relatively little importance as compared with that of several other American countries, yet Ecuador gave to the world one of the greatest of American poets, José Joaquín de Olmedo. In the Americas that speak Castilian, Olmedo has only two peers among the classic poets, the Venezuelan Bello and the Cuban Heredia. Olmedo was born in Guayaquil in 1780, when that city still formed part of the Virreinato del Perú. Consequently, two countries claim him,--Peru, because he was born a Peruvian, and because, furthermore, he received his education at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima; and Ecuador, since Guayaquil became permanently a part of that republic, and Olmedo identified himself with the social and political life of that country. In any case, Olmedo, as a poetic genius, looms suddenly on the horizon of Guayaquil, and for a time after his departure there was not only no one to take his place, but there were few followers of note.
Olmedo ranks as one of the great poetic artists of Spanish literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He is of the same semi-classic school as Quintana, and like him devoted to artistic excellence and lyric grandiloquence. The poems of Olmedo are few in number for so skilled an artist, and thoroughly imbued with the Græco-Latin classical spirit. His prosody nears perfection; but is marred by an occasional abuse of verbal endings in rime, and the inadvertent employment of assonance where there should be none, a fault common to most of the earlier Spanish-American poets. Olmedo's greatest poem is _La victoria de Junín_, which is filled with sweet-sounding phrases and beautiful images, but is logically inconsistent and improbable. Even page 299 Bolivar, the "Libertador," censured Olmedo in a letter for using the _machina_ of the appearance at night before the combined Colombian and Peruvian armies of Huaina-Capac the Inca, "showing himself to be a talkative mischief-maker where he should have been lighter than ether, since he comes from heaven," and instead of desiring the restoration of the Inca dynasty, preferring "strange intruders who, though avengers of his blood, are descendants of those who destroyed his empire."
The _Canto al general Flores_ is considered by some critics to be the poet's most finished work, though of less substance and inspiration than _La victoria de Junín_. This General Flores was a successful revolutionary leader during the early days of the Republic; and he was later as bitterly assailed by Olmedo as he is here praised. Of a different type is the philosophic poem, _Á un amigo en el nacimiento de su primogénito_, which is filled with sincere sympathy and deep meditation as to the future. With the coming of middle age Olmedo's poetic vein had apparently been exhausted, and the Peruvian bard Felipe Pardo addressed to him an ode in which he sought, though to no avail, to stimulate the older poet to renewed activity (_Poesías_, Valparaíso, 1848, Paris, 1853; _Poesías inéditas_, Lima, 1861).
For a time after Olmedo's muse had become mute, little verse of merit was produced in Ecuador. Gabriel García Moreno (1821-1875), once president of the Republic and a champion of Catholicism, wrote a few strong satires in the style of Jovellanos. Dolores Veintemilla de Galindo (1831-1857), who committed suicide on account of domestic infelicity, left a short poem, _Quejas_, which is unique in the older Spanish-American literature by reason of its frank confession of feeling. The reflexive and didactic poet Numa P. Llona (1832-___) was the author of passionate outpourings of doubt and despair after the fashion of Byron and Leopardi (_Poesías_, Paris, 1870; page 300 _Cantos americanos_, Paris, 1866; _Cien sonetos_, Quito, 1881). The gentle, melancholy bard, Julio Zalumbide (1833-1887), at first a skeptic and afterwards a devout believer in Christianity, wrote musical verse in correct language but of little force. Juan León Mera (1832-1894) was one of the most prominent literary historians and critics of the Republic. Besides his _Poesías_ (2d ed., Barcelona, 1893), León Mera left a popular novel, _Cumandá_ (Quito, 1876; Madrid, 1891), an _Ojeada histórico-crítica sobre la poesía ecuatoriana_ (2d ed., Barcelona, 1893), and a volume of _Cantares del Pueblo_ (Quito, 1892), published by the Academia del Ecuador, which contains, in addition to many semi-popular songs in Castilian, a few in the Quichua language.
A younger generation that has already done some good work in poetry includes Vicente Pedrahita, Luis Cordero, Quintiliano Sánchez and Remigio Crespo y Toral.
References: Men. Pel., _Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Amer._, III, p. lxxxiii f.; Blanco García, III, 350 f.; _Ensayo sobre la literatura ecuatoriana_, Dr. Pablo Herrera, Quito, 1860; _Ojeada histórico-crítica sobre la poesía ecuatoriana_, Juan León Mera, Quito, 1868, 2d ed., Barcelona, 1893; _Escritores españoles é hispano-americanos_, Cañete, Madrid, 1884; _Lira ecuatoriana_, Vicente Emilio Molestina, Guayaquil, 1865; _Nueva lira ecuat._, Juan Abel Echeverría, Quito, 1879; _Parnaso ecuat._, Manuel Gallegos Naranjo, Quito, 1879; _América poética_, Juan María Gutiérrez, Valparaíso, 1846 (the best of the early anthologies: contains a few poems by Olmedo); _Antología ecuat._, published by the Academy of Ecuador, with a second volume entitled _Cantares del pueblo ecuat._ (Edited by Juan León Mera), both Quito, 1892.
=Peru.= The literature of Ecuador is so closely associated with that of Peru, that the one cannot be properly treated without some account of the other. The Virreinato del Perú was the wealthiest and most cultivated Spanish colony in South America, and in North America only Mexico rivaled it in influence. Lima, an attractive city, thoroughly Andalusian in character and appearance, was the page 301 site of important institutions of learning, such as the famed Universidad de San Marcos. It had, moreover, a printing-press toward the close of the sixteenth century, a public theater by 1602, and a gazette by the end of the seventeenth century. The spread of learning in colonial Peru may be illustrated by the fact that the Jesuits alone, at the time of their expulsion in 1767, had twelve colleges and universities in Peru, the oldest of which dated from the middle of the sixteenth century and offered courses in philosophy, law, medicine and theology.
The Peruvians seem to have been content with their lot as a favored Spanish colony, and they declared for independence only when incited to do so and aided by Bolivar of Colombia and San Martin of Buenos Aires. After the revolution, Peru was torn by internal discord rather more than other Spanish-American countries during the period of adolescence; and it was its misfortune to lose territory after territory. Bolivar took northern Peru, including the valuable seaport of Guayaquil, and made it a part of the first Colombia; and largely through the influence of Bolivar much of Upper Peru was made a separate republic, that of Bolivia. Lastly, Chile, for centuries a dependency of Peru, became independent and even wrested a considerable stretch of the litoral from her former mistress. It is hard to realize that Peru, to-day relatively weak among the American countries, was once the heart of a vast Inca empire and later the colony whose governors ruled the territories of Argentina and Chile to the south, and of Ecuador and Colombia to the north. With the decline of wealth and political influence there has come to Peru a decadence in letters. Lima is still a center of cultivation, a city in which the Castilian language and Spanish customs have been preserved with remarkable fidelity; but its importance is completely eclipsed by such growing commercial centers as Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile, and by page 302 relatively small and conservative towns such as Bogotá.
In the sixteenth century Garcilasso Inga de la Vega (his mother was an "Inga," or Inca, princess), who had been well trained in the Latin classics by Spanish priests, wrote in excellent prose his famous works, _Florida del Inca_, _Comentarios reales_ and _Historia general del Perú_. The second work, partly historical and largely imaginary, purports to be a history of the ancient Incas, and pictures the old Peru as an earthly paradise. This work has had great influence over Peruvian and Colombian poets. Menéndez y Pelayo (_Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Amer._, III, _Introd._) considers Garcilasso, or Garcilaso, and Alarcón the two truly classic writers that America has given to Spanish literature.
In the Golden Age of Spanish letters several Peruvian poets were known to Spaniards. Cervantes, in the _Canto de Calíope_ and Lope de Vega in the _Laurel del Apolo_ make mention of several Peruvians who had distinguished themselves by their verses.
An unknown poetess of Huanuco, Peru, who signed herself "Amarilis," wrote a clever _silva_ in praise of Lope, which the latter answered in the epistle _Belardo á Amarilis_. This _silva_ of "Amarilis" is the best poetic composition of the early colonial period. Another poetess of the period, also anonymous, wrote in _terza rima_ a _Discurso en loor de la poesía_, which mentions by name most of the Peruvian poets then living.
Toward the close of the sixteenth century and in the early decades of the seventeenth century, several Spanish scholars, mostly Andalusians of the Sevillan school, went to Peru, and there continued literary work. Among these were Diego Mexía, who made the happiest of Spanish translations of Ovid's _Heroides_; Diego de Ojeda, the best of Spanish sacred-epic poets, author of the _Cristiada_; Juan Gálvez; Luis de Belmonte, author of _La Hispálica_; Diego de Avalos y Figueroa whose page 303 _Miscelánea austral_ (Lima, 1603) contains a long poem in _ottava rima_ entitled _Defensa de damas_; and others. These men exerted great influence, and to them was largely due the peculiarly Andalusian flavor of Peruvian poetry.
The best Gongoristic _Poetics_ came from Peru. This is the _Apologético en favor de D. Luis de Góngora_ (Lima, 1694), by Dr. Juan de Espinosa Medrano.
In the eighteenth century the poetic compositions of Peru were chiefly "_versos de circunstancias_" by "_poetas de ocasión_." Many volumes of these were published, but no one reads them to-day. Their greatest fault is excessive culteranism, which survived in the colonies a half-century after it had passed away from the mother country. The most learned man of the eighteenth century in Peru was Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo, the erudite author of some fifty volumes of history, science and letters. His best known poem is the epic _Lima fundada_ (Lima, 1732). He wrote several dramas, one of which, _Rodoguna_, is Corneille's play adapted to the Spanish stage, and has the distinction of being one of the first imitations of the French stage in Spanish letters. All in all, the literary output of Peru during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is disappointingly small in quantity and poor in quality, in view of the important position held by this flourishing colony. The Peruvian writers, then and now, lack in sustained effort.
During and immediately following the revolutionary period, the greatest poet is Olmedo, who was born and educated in Peru and became a citizen first of the primitive Colombia and then of Ecuador, only as his native city, Guayaquil, formed a part of one political division after another. It is customary, however, to consider Olmedo a poet of Ecuador, and it is so done in this volume.