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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
During the romantic era Spain enjoyed for perhaps the first time in her history a genuine European vogue. The theorizers of romanticism in Germany, England, and France—especially Germany—discovered in Spanish literature, as they imperfectly knew it—chiefly the Don Quixote, the ballads, and the theatre of Calderón—ammunition for their critical and anticlassical campaign, while the creative writers of these countries found in the land and its people, their history, legends and letters, a new and rich store of themes and settings, made as if to order in response to the demand of the moment for the picturesque and the passionate, the chivalresque and the medieval. But having little interest in Spain for herself nor (Mérimée excepted) any real knowledge of her language, history, or culture, they recreated a conventional, literary Spain according to their own needs, desires and imaginations, that “romantic” Spain best typified perhaps in the Carmen of Mérimée and of Bizet, a conception which has persisted in the popular mind down to the present and against which Spaniards and Hispanophiles—then and now—have reacted more or less violently and in vain. (And, may I add, not with complete justification, for creative artists are hardly to be censured for not being exact historians or archeologists.)
1 In this brief survey stress is laid on trends and characteristics, on underlying forces and factors, rather than on the details of literary history as such. These may be found in the standard manuals and in the reference works listed in the Bibliographical Note appended to this paper. As a consequence, footnotes and other references have been limited to the strictly necessary. Bibliographical indications, in particular, have been restricted to those not given or not easily located in the works of Farinelli (1927) and Peers (1939).
2 In the second number of his journals El duende satírico del día, republished by E. Cotarelo y Morí in his Postfígaro (Madrid, 1916), i, 27–51. (See the author's “Larra's Duende Satirico del día” in M. P., xxvi (1928), 31–46.—The Spanish translator of Ducange was none other than the supposed “arch classicist” Gallego.
3 The repertory of the Madrid stage from 1793 to 1819 will be found in E. Cotarelo y Mori Isidoro Máiquez y el teatro de su tiempo (Madrid, 1902), pp. 574–837, and from 1820 to 1833 in the unpublished dissertation (North Carolina) of Dr. A. K. Shields. Professor N. B. Adams, of North Carolina, is compiling the repertory from 1833 to 1850, and Dr. J. K. Leslie, of Northwestern, from 1850 to 1870. An adequate introductory idea of the theatre at the time of the introduction of romanticism may be gained from the following: N. B. Adams, “Notes on Spanish Plays at the Beginning of the Romantic Period,” Romanic Review, xvii (1926), 128–142, and P. P. Rogers “The Drama of Pre-Romantic Spain,” Romanic Review, xxi (1930), 315–324.
4 The details of Böhl's polemics with the young neoclassicists Antonio Alcalá Galiano and José Joaquín de Mora may be found in C. Pitollet, La quérelle caldéronienne de Johan Nikolas Böhl von Faber … (Paris, 1909). Both Alcalá Galiano and Mora, it should be noted, later became “converts” to the modified form of romanticism that was to triumph in Spain: the resuscitation of traditionally national themes and forms. It was Alcalá Galiano who wrote the unsigned prologue—advocating in the name of the national tradition a compromise between neoclassic doctrine and standards and romantic forms and themes—to his friend the (later) Duque de Rivas' El Moro Expósilo (Paris, 1834), the first definitely romantic poem of the long narrative type in Spanish. It was Mora who contributed with a volume of Leyendas espanolas (1840) to the final triumph of the leyenda and ballad form (see below). Just as Alcalá Galiano's timid and middle-of-the-road prologue, when compared with its French predecessor and (to some extent) counterpart the “Préface de Cromwell,” is eloquent of the differences between French and Spanish romanticism, so the literary careers of these two figures (Alcalá Galiano and Mora), as well as those of their more important contemporaries Martínez de la Rosa and the Duque de Rivas, are symbolic of the course and character of romanticism in Spain.
5 In 1828, the same year as Larra's review of Ducange's melodrama, but several months later, the critic and scholar Augustín Durán published the first volume of his monumental collection of the Spanish ballads and issued his famous Discurso, in which, following Böhl, Mme de Staël, the Schlegels, and Herder, he belabors the neoclassic precepts and practice in the theatre as contrary to the Spanish national genius (reflected in the comedia of the Golden Age of Lope de Vega and Calderón) and as, consequently, the cause of the contemporary decadence of the Spanish stage. He deplores the lack of knowledge in Spain of contemporary European romantic authors and doctrine, which for him means essential by—and simply—freedom to follow the national genius and traditions. Although by no means immediately accepted or causing even a mild furore among critics, Durán's position is the one soon to become popular, especially his finding the origins of European romanticism (in the drama, of course) in the comedia of the Golden Age. The year 1828 is a significant date in the history of the attitude—both pro and contra —in Spain towards romanticism: it records not only one of the high-water marks of the prestige of neoclassicism, but also the beginning of its ultimate decline. (As well as an anticipation of the later “eclectic” attitude, in Gallego's anonymous translation of Ducange.) And it should be noted that both Larra's opposition to and Durán's advocacy of what each conceives to be romanticism have their roots in literary patriotism, the force which resolves and explains the contradictions and the course of romanticism in Spain.
6 For initial bibliography of influences and translations see Farinelli and Peers (Bibliographical Note). J. R. Spell's recent Rousseau in the Spanish World before 1833 (Austin [Texas], 1938) provides the most complete study to date of the difficult problem of Rousseau's influence in Spain, much more extensive and significant in political and social questions than in literature.
7 The earliest (1814) form of the term is romancesco, followed by romanesco (in the Böhl-Mora polemic—see note 4) and romántico (first used exclusively in El Europeo —see note 8). See E. A. Peers, “The Term ‘Romanticism’ in Spain,” Revue Hispanique lxxxi (1933), 2e partie, 411–418.
8 For a discussion of El Europeo and its articles on romanticism, see Mario Casella, “Agli Albori del Romanticismo e del Moderno Rinascimento Catalano,” Rivista dette Biblioteche e degli Archivi, xxix (1918), 81–120, and later articles by Peers (see Bibliographical Note). —One of the editors, López Soler, later (1830) took the initiative in deliberately adapting the novel of Sir Walter Scott to Spanish soil and themes in his Caballero del cisne o los bandos de Castilla. Another of the editors, B. Carlos Aribau, played a leading rôle in the Catalán “Renaixensa”—not the least and one of the most lasting fruits of romanticism in Spain—as well as being the moving spirit in the unique and monumental collection known as the Biblioteca de autores espanoles, 71 vols. (1846–80).
9 The romantic and pre-romantic novel of Spain is one of the many topics needing further investigation and synthesis. A. González-Blanco's Historia de la novela en España desde el romanticismo … (Madrid, 1909) is of little value. The best discussion will be found in Blanco García, Alonso Cortés and Peers (see Bibliography) with additional material in Cejador (see Bibliography) and in M. Chaves D. Mariano José de Larra … (Sevilla, 1899), pp. 164–165. The vogue and influence of Scott have been studied by E. A. Peers and P. H. Churchman in their “Survey of the Influence of Sir Walter Scott in Spain” in Revue Hispanique, lv (1922), 227–310, continued by Professor Peers alone, (Rev. Hisp., lxviii (1926), 1–160. See also W. C. Zellars in Revista de Filología Española, xviii (1931), 149–162. The same author's La novela histórica en España, 1828–1850 (New York, 1938) adds little or nothing to our knowledge.
10 Espronceda fought in the barricades of Paris during the July Revolution. Martínez de la Rosa's French play is cited below. Previous to this another emigrado, J. M. Maury y Benítez, had published (1826) his Espagne poétique, an anthology of Spanish verse in French metrical translation. See also A. Sarraith, “L'emigration et le romantisme espagnole,” Revue de littérature comparée, x (1930), 17–40.
11 See E. A. Peers, “The Literary Activities of the Spanish Emigrados in English,” M.L.R., xix (1924), 315–324. The most complete contemporary list of the remarkable scholarly and literary productivity of this group was published in the last number (17, for May 31, 1834) of the rare and ephemeral Madrid daily Diario del comercio (later El Mensajero de las Cortes). This document, undoubtedly compiled by one of the group—perhaps even by Alcalá Galiano or the Duque de Rivas, who were both connected with this journal, according to Hartzenbusch (A puntes para un catálogo de los periódicos madrilenos … Madrid, 1894, p. 45)—is one of those which the author hopes to be able to reprint when circumstances are more favorable.
12 The “local color” of the artículo —and, to a large extent, that of the cuadro, too—is not derived from abroad, but is rather a manifestation and continuation of the “comic realism” so characteristic of Spanish letters. It is distinctly related in types, scenes, and language to the sainete (the short dramatic sketch, humorous and satirical, of picturesque Madrid types and scenes, the one original and popular creation of the eighteenth century theatre in Spain), as is likewise the “local color” of the romantic dramas (e.g., in Don Álvaro of the Duque de Rivas, where it exists in its most pronounced form).