Chapter 21

Poetry in Venezuela begins with Bello, for the works of his predecessors had little merit. Andrés Bello (1781-1865) was the most consummate master of poetic diction among Spanish-American poets, although he lacked the brilliancy of Olmedo and the spontaneity of Heredia. Born in Caracas and educated in the schools of his native city, Bello was sent to England in the year 1810 to further the cause of the revolution, and he remained in that country till 1829, when he was called to page 316 Chile to take service in the Department of Foreign Affairs. His life may, therefore, be divided into three distinct periods. In Caracas he studied chiefly the Latin and Spanish classics and the elements of international law, and he made metrical translations of Virgil and Horace. Upon arriving in England at the age of twenty-nine years, he gave himself with enthusiasm to the study of Greek, Italian and French, as well as to English. Bello joined with the Spanish and Hispano-American scholars in London in the publication of several literary reviews, notably the _Censor americano_ (1820), the _Biblioteca americana_ (1823) and the _Repertorio americano_ (1826-27), and in these he published many of his most important works. Here appeared his studies of Old French and of the _Song of My Cid_, his excellent translation of fourteen cantos of Boiardo's _Orlando innamorato_, several important articles on Spanish syntax and prosody, and the best of all his poems, the _Silvas americanas_.

In 1829, when already forty-eight years of age, Bello removed to Chile, and there entered upon the happiest period of his life. Besides working in a government office, he gave private lessons until in 1831 he was made rector of the College of Santiago. In the year 1843 the University of Chile was established at Santiago and Bello became its first rector. He held this important post till his death twenty-two years later at the ripe age of eighty-four. During this third and last period of his life Bello completed and published his _Spanish Grammar_ and his _Principles of International Law_, works which, with occasional slight revisions, have been used as standard text-books in Spanish America and to some extent in Spain, to the present day. The _Grammar_, especially, has been extraordinarily successful, and the edition with notes by José Rufino Cuervo is still the best text-book of Spanish grammar we have. In the _Grammar_ Bello sought to free Castilian from Latin terminology; but he desired, most of all, to correct the abuses so common to writers page 317 of the period and to establish linguistic unity in Spanish America.

Bello wrote little original verse during these last years of his life. At one time he became exceedingly fond of Victor Hugo and even tried to imitate him; but his classical training and methodical habits made success impossible. His best poetic work during his residence in Chile, however, are translations of Victor Hugo, and his free metrical rendering of _La Prière pour tous_ (from the _Feuilles d'automne_), is amongst his finest and most popular verses.

It is interesting that Andrés Bello, the foremost of Spanish-American scholars in linguistics and in international law, should also have been a preëminent poet, and yet all critics, except possibly a few of the present-day "_modernistas_," place his _American Silvas_ amongst the best poetic compositions of all Spanish America. The _Silvas_ are two in number: the _Alocución á la poesía_ and the _Silva á la agricultura de la zona tórrida_. The first is fragmentary: apparently the poet despaired of completing it, and he embodied in the second poem an elaboration of those passages of the first work which describe nature in the tropics. The _Silvas_ are in some degree imitations of Virgil's _Georgics_, and they are the best of Spanish imitations. Menéndez y Pelayo, who is not too fond of American poets, is willing to admit (_Ant._, II, p. cxlii) that Bello is, "in descriptive and Georgic verse, the most Virgilian of our (Spanish) poets." Caro, in his splendid biography of Bello (in Miguel Antonio Caro's introduction to the _Poesías de Andrés Bello_, Madrid, 1882) classifies the _Silvas_ as "scientific poetry," which is quite true if this sort of poetry gives an esthetic conception of nature, expressed in beautiful terms and adorned with descriptions of natural objects. It is less true of the _Alocución_, which is largely historical, in that it introduces and sings the praises of towns and persons that won fame in the revolutionary wars. The _Silva á la agricultura_, page 318 which is both descriptive and moral, may be best described in the words of Caro. It is, says this distinguished critic, "an account of the beauty and wealth of nature in the tropics, and an exhortation to those who live in the equator that, instead of wasting their strength in political and domestic dissensions, they should devote themselves to agricultural pursuits." Bello's interest in nature had doubtless been stimulated by the coming of Humboldt to Caracas in the first decade of the nineteenth century. In his attempt to express his feeling for nature in poetic terms, he probably felt the influence not only of Virgil, but also of Arriaza, and of the several poems descriptive of nature written in Latin by Jesuit priests, such as the once famous _Rusticatio Mexicana_ by Father Landivar of Guatemala. And yet there is very little in the _Silvas_ that is directly imitative. The _Silva á la agricultura de la zona tórrida_, especially, is an extraordinarily successful attempt to give expression in Virgilian terms to the exotic life of the tropics, and in this it is unique in Spanish literature. The beautiful descriptive passages in this poem, the noble ethical precepts and the severely pure diction combine to make it a classic that will long hold an honored place in Spanish-American letters (_Obras completas_, Santiago de Chile, 1881-93).

During the revolutionary period the most distinguished poets, after Bello, of that part of the greater Colombia which later formed the separate republic of Venezuela, were Baralt and Ros de Olano. Rafael María Baralt (1810-1860) took part in the revolutionary movement of secession from the first Colombia; but later he removed to Spain and became a Spanish citizen. His verses are usually correct, but lack feeling. He is best known as a historian and maker of dictionaries. Baralt was elected to membership in the Spanish Academy (_Poesías_, Paris, 1888).

General Antonio Ros de Olano (1802-1887) also removed to page 319 Spain and won high rank in the Spanish army. He joined the romantic movement and became a follower of Espronceda. Besides a volume of verses (_Poesías_, Madrid, 1886), Ros de Olano wrote _El doctor Lañuela_ (1863) and other novels. Both Baralt and Ros de Olano were identified with literary movements in Spain rather than in Venezuela.

José Heriberto García de Quevedo (1819-1871) was a cultivated and ambitious scholar who collaborated with Zorrilla in _María_, _Ira de Dios_ and _Un cuento de amores_. Among his better works are the three philosophical poems: _Delirium_, _La segunda vida_ and _El proscrito_ (_Obras poéticas y literarias_, Paris, 1863). Among the lesser writers of this period are Antonio Maitín (1804-1874), the best of Venezuelan romanticists (cf. _El canto fúnebre_, a poem of domestic love); Abigail Lozano (1821-1866), a romanticist and author of musical but empty verses ("_versos altisonantes_"); José Ramón Yepes (1822-1881), an army officer and the author of legends in verse, besides the inevitable _Poesías_; Eloy Escobar (1824-1889), an elegiac poet; and Francisco G. Pardo (1829-1872), a mediocre imitator of Zorrilla.

Next to Bello alone, the most distinguished poet of Venezuela is José Pérez Bonalde (1846-1892), who was a good German scholar and left, besides his original verses, excellent translations of German poets. His metrical versions of Heine, especially, exerted considerable influence over the growth of literary feeling in Spanish America (_Estrofas_, N.Y., 1877; _El poema del Niágara_, N.Y., 1880). At least two other writers of the second half of the nineteenth century deserve mention: Miguel Sánchez Pesquera and Jacinto Gutiérrez Coll.

Among the present-day writers of Venezuela, Luis López Méndez was one of the first to introduce into Spanish America a knowledge of the philosophy and metrical theories of Paul Verlaine. Manuel Díaz Rodríguez (1868-___) has written little verse; but he is the best known Venezuelan novelist of to-day [_Sangre page 320 patricia, Camino de perfección_ (essays), _Ídolos rotos_, _Cuentos_, 2 vols., _Confidencias de Psiquis_, _Cuentos de color_, _Sensaciones de viaje_, _De mis romerías_]. The most influential of the younger writers is Rufino Blanco-Fombona, who was expelled from his native country by the present _andino_ ("mountaineer") government and now lives in exile in Paris. At first a disciple of Musset and then of Heine and Maupassant, he is now an admirer of Darío and a pronounced _modernista_. His _Letras y letrados de Hispano-America_ is the best recent work of literary criticism by a Spanish-American author. Blanco-Fombona is a singer of youthful ambition, force and robust love. His verses have rich coloring, but are at times erotic or lacking in restraint (prose works: _Cuentos de poeta_, Maracaibo, 1900; _Más allá de los horizontes_, Madrid, 1903; _Cuentos americanos_, Madrid, 1904; _El hombre de hierro_, Caracas, 1907; _Letras y letrados de Hispano-America_, Paris, 1908. Verses: _Patria_, Caracas, 1895; _Trovadores y trovas_, Caracas, 1899; _Pequeña ópera lírica_, Madrid, 1904; _Cantos de la prisión_, Paris, 1911).

References: Menéndez y Pelayo, _Ant. Poetas Hisp.-Amer._, II, p. cx f.; Blanco García, III, p. 321 f.; _Reseña histórica de la literatura venezolana_ (1888) and _Estado actual de la literatura en Venezuela_ (1892), both by Julio Calcaño, Caracas; _La literatura venezolana en el siglo XIX_, Gonzalo Picón Febres, Caracas, 1906; _Parnaso venezolano_, 12 vols., Julio Calcaño, Caracas, 1892; _Biblioteca de escritores venezolanos_, José María Rojas, Paris, 1875; _Parnaso venezolano_, Barcelona, 1906.

Bello: see preceding note.

1. The _Lion_ symbolizes Spain, since from the medieval kingdom of Leon modern Spain sprang. The battle of Bailén (see in _Vocab._) took place in 1808 when Bello was twenty-seven years of age and still loyal to Spain.

=214.=--16 to =215.=--3. =Que... concibes= = _que circunscribes el vago curso_ =al= _(= del) sol enamorado, y (tú), acariciada de su luz, concibes_ =cuanto page 321 ser= (= every being that) _se anima en cada vario clima._

18. The use of =quien= referring to inanimate objects is now archaic.

=216.=--19 to =217.=--3. It is said that the banana gives nourishment to more human beings than does any other plant. The fruit is taken when it is still green, before the starch has turned to sugar, and it is boiled, or baked, or it is ground and made into a coarse bread.

6-8. =En que... bondadosa!= = _en que (la) naturaleza bondadosa quiso hacer reseña de sus favores..._

9. The student should compare this and the following lines with _Vida retirada_ by Fray Luis de León, p. 9.

19. The rime requires =habita=, instead of _habitad_.

22-23. =Y... atada= = _y la razón va atada al triunfal carro de la moda, universal señora_.

=219.=--10-16. =¿Esperaréis... ata?= = _¿esperaréis que (el) himeneo forme más venturosos lazos do el interés, tirano del deseo, barata ajena mano y fe por nombre ó plata, que do conforme gusto, conforme edad, y_ (= both) _elección libre y_ (= and) _mutuo ardor ata los lazos?_ Note that, by poetic license, =ata= agrees in number with the nearest subject, although it has two.

=220.=--8-11. As this poem was written after the Spanish-American colonies had revolted against the mother country, Bello no longer rejoices at the success of Spanish arms nor grieves over their losses, as he had done when he wrote _Á la victoria de Bailén_.

Pérez Bonalde: see note to p. 214.

=222.=--5. The Venezuelan flag is yellow, blue and red with seven small white stars in the center.

=225.=--=La carcelera=: the words and music of this song and of the first that follows are taken from the _Cancionero salmantino_ (Dámaso Ledesma), Madrid, 1907.

=227.=--=La cachucha=: the words and music of this song and of the five that immediately follow are taken page 322 from _Poesías populares_ (Tomás Segarra), Leipzig, 1862.

=238.=--=El trágala=: (lit., _the swallow it_) a song with which the Spanish liberals taunted the partizans of an absolute government.

=242.=--=Himno de Riego=: a song to the liberal general, Rafael de Riego (1784-1823), who initiated the revolution of 1820 in Spain and proclaimed at Cabezas de San Juan the constitution of 1812. Cf. _Versification_, p. lxxix.

=251.=--=Himno Nacional de Cuba=, called also the =Himno de Bayamo=, on account of the importance of Bayamo (see in _Vocab._) in the Cuban revolution of 1868. Note the ternary movement of this song, and see _Versification_, p. lxxiii.