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Menéndez Y Pelayo and America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
Thirty-three years have passed since there was laid in the tomb, shrouded in humble Franciscan garb, one of the most glorious ornaments of Hispanic letters, and one of the greatest literary critics that Spain has had. His name, nevertheless, is glorious and is still revered in Hispanic countries along with those of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón. While still alive, he had been raised to the category of the classics. His watchful spirit still dwells in the halls of universal culture, for his simplicity and modesty as a tireless worker gave him, even in his lifetime, the crown of the immortals. Don Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo in a period of criticism and reflection produced a literary work which has been idolized. “The studies of Menéndez y Pelayo,” wrote Edmundo González Blanco, “on literature and history have not only been used extensively in themselves, but have been elaborated and developed; and if they are not so much read today, it is because they were entirely absorbed into the spirit of the times and penetrated into every vein of contemporary Spanish culture, and it may be justly stated that in the last thirty years not a single important line has been written on topics treated in his studies in which his influence is not recognized.”
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1945
References
1 Don Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo was born at Santander, Spain, November 3, 1856. In 1878 he won the Chair of Critical History of Spanish Literature at the University of Madrid; he became deputy and senator; he belonged to the Academies of Language, of History, of Moral and Political Sciences, and of Fine Arts, and in 1910 he became Director of the Academy of History; he died at Santander, May 19, 1912. For a complete biography of Menéndez y Pelayo see Bonilla y San Martín, A. : Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, 1914).Google Scholar
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19 The italics are mine.
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36 Address delivered at the University of Barcelona, May 18, 1913.
37 This phrase must be taken in its historic sense, as Menéndez y Pelayo wrote to Hugo Schuchardt, August 21, 1881: “You know well that the name of barbarian applied to the ideas of the peoples of the north is a stock phrase…”
38 Menéndez y Pelayo, Estudios y Discursos de Crítica Histórica y Literaria, Volume V, p. 386.
39 Epistolario de Juan Valera y Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, pp. 188–242.
40 The italics are ours.
41 Epistolario…, pp. 240–242.
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43 Op. cit., pp. 393–394.
44 Rudolph Schevill: Menéndez y Pelayo and the Study of Spanish Civilization in the United States, in the “University Chronicle”, University of California, Volume XXII (January, 1920), pp. 33–46.