Books: The Interdependence of Literature
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Georgina Pell Curtis >> The Interdependence of Literature
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Tournaments first originated among the Arabs, and thence found
their way into France and Italy. Gunpowder was known to them a
century before it appeared in Europe, and they were in possession
of the compass in the eleventh century, and this notwithstanding
the fact that a German chemist is supposed to have discovered
gunpowder a century after the Arabs made use of it, while the
compass is more frequently supposed to be a French or Italian
invention of the thirteenth century.
Botany and chemistry were more familiar to them than they were to
the Greeks or Romans. Bagdad and Cordova had famous schools of
astronomy and medicine, and here in the tenth and eleventh
centuries the Arabians were the teachers of the world. Students
came to them from France and other parts of Europe; and their
progress, especially in arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, was
marvellous. The poetry of the Arabs is rhymed like ours, and is
always the poetry of passion and love; but it is in their prose
works, the Arabian tales of the Thousand and One Nights, that
they have become most famous. Their richness of fancy in these
prose tales is different from that of the other chivalric
nations. The supernatural world is identical in both; but the
moral world is different. The Arabian tales, like the old
chivalric romances, take us to the realms of fairyland, but the
human beings they introduce are very unlike. Their people are
less noble and heroic, more moved by love and passion, and they
depict women by turn as slaves and divinities. The original
author of the Arabian Nights is unknown; but the book has become
a household possession in every civilized country in the world.
SPANISH.
For six centuries before the advent of the Arabs in Spain the
country was under the Roman yoke, and had adopted the language
and arts of the Romans; but in the eighth century the overthrow
of the Romans, the coming of the Arabs, and contact with Arabian
civilization--as well as the struggle against their Moorish
invaders--began to develop in the Spaniards a spirit that was the
foundation of their national literature. No other people have
ever possessed in so strong a degree the true national feeling-
-no other has produced such a uniformly pure, deeply religious,
and elevated tone, in poetry and literature. Their poetry
remained at all times free from any foreign influence, and is
entirely romantic, while the Christian chivalric poetry of the
Middle Ages remained with them longer than with any other nation,
and received from their hands a more finished and elegant polish.
After the Moorish conquest the Spaniards withdrew to the
mountains of Asturias; they took with them a corrupted form of
the Latin language, as they had received it from the Romans;
reaching these mountains, they found themselves thrown with the
Iberians (the earliest of the Spanish races). These people had
remained half barbaric, had resisted both Romans and Goths, and
retained their original or Basque language. Coming now in contact
with them, the Christian Spaniards learned their language. Later
they met with another tribe of their own race who had remained
with the Arabians, known as the Mocarabes, a people of superior
refinement and civilization. Hence a new dialect from these
contending elements was gradually formed, and became known, like
the other languages of southern Europe, as the Romanic. The
distinguishing feature of Spanish literature, from its birth, to
the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, is religious faith and
knightly loyalty. Qualities which sustained the whole nation in
its struggle against the infidel Moors.
The first great Spanish work is the poem of the Cid. It is the
only epic Spain has ever produced, and is the most ancient of any
in the Romance language. It is also valuable as a faithful
picture of the manners and characters of the eleventh century.
Indeed, the chief characteristic of Spanish song and poetry is
its delineation of the national life. It is said that the Cid is
the foremost poem produced in Europe from the thousand years that
marked the decline of Greek and Roman civilization, to the
appearance of the Divine Comedy. The Count Lucanor, a work of the
fourteenth century, was one of the earliest prose writings in the
Spanish tongue, as the Decameron, which was written about the
same time, was the first in Italian. Both are narrative tales;
but their moral tone is very dissimilar--the Decameron was
written to amuse, while the Count Lucanor is addressed to a grave
and serious nation. These stories have frequently been
dramatized, and one of them gave Shakespeare the outline of his
Taming of the Shrew.
Alfonso the Wise, in the thirteenth century, was the author of a
legislative code known as Las Sieta Partides, or the Seven Parts.
It forms the Spanish common law, and has been the foundation of
Spanish Jurisprudence ever since; and being used also in the
colonies of Spain, it has, since the Louisiana Purchase, become
in some cases the law in our own country.
Juan Ruiz, who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
wrote a poem, partly fiction and partly allegorical, called the
Battle of Don Carnival, which strongly resembles Chaucer; both
poets found their material in northern French verse.
Santob, a Jew in the fourteenth century, wrote a poem called the
Dance of Death, which became a favourite subject with both
painters and poets for several succeeding ages.
The literature of Spain may be divided into four classes--the old
Ballads, the Chronicles, the Romances of Chivalry, and the Drama.
The most interesting of the old ballads are historical; but there
are also ballads that have to do with private life wherein appear
the effusions of love, the shafts of satire, the descriptions of
pastoral life, and the oddities of burlesque. One and all,
however, faithfully represent Spanish life. No such popular
poetry is found in any other language. The English and Scotch
ballads belong to a more barbarous state of society, and their
verse is less dignified and lofty than that of the Spaniards, who
were uplifted by a deep religious sense, and an unswerving
loyalty to their sovereign. A state of feeling that elevated them
far above the men and events of border feuds, and the wars of
rival Barons.
The great Spanish heroes, the Cid, Bernardo del Carpo, and
Pelayo, are to this day a vital part of the belief and poetry of
the lower classes in Spain, and are revered as they were hundreds
of years ago. The wandering Mulateers still sing of Guarinos and
of the defeat at Roncesvalles as they did when Don Quixote heard
them on his way to Toboso; and the street showmen in Seville
rehearse to this day the same wonderful adventures that the Don
saw in the Inn at Montesinos. The Chronicles developed among the
more refined and educated classes. The most celebrated is the
Chronicle of Spain, written by Alfonso the Wise. It starts with
the creation of the world, and ends with the death of Alfonso's
father, St. Ferdinand. It contains all the time-honored
traditions of the country, as well as exact historical truth. The
story of the Cid is supposed to be taken from this work.
From the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles V
(or from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth), Spain was
flooded by romantic chronicles. The most celebrated is that of
Don Roderick, or an account of the reign of King Roderick in the
eighth century, the conquest of the country by the Moors, and the
efforts to wrest it from them. On this chronicle Robert Southey
has founded most of his poem of Roderic the Last of the Goths.
Whether resting on truth or fable, these old records struck their
roots deep down in the hearts of the people; and their romance,
their chivalry, their antique traditions, and their varied
legends, form a rich deposit from which all the nations of Europe
have drawn material for their own literature. It was not until
the fourteenth century that the romances of chivalry--known in
France two centuries earlier in the stories of Arthur and the
Round Table, and the deeds of Charlemagne--found their way across
the Pyrenees.
Spain, so essentially the land of knighthood, welcomed them
eagerly, and speedily produced a number of like romances which
were translated into French and became famous. The most
celebrated is Amadis, written by de Lobeira, a Portuguese. Its
sole purpose is to set forth the type of a perfect knight, sans
peur et sans reproche. Amadis is an imaginative character; but he
is the first of a long line of doers of knightly deeds,
culminating in Don Quixote, whose adventures have charmed and
delighted the Spaniards, as well as the men of other nations.
Provencal literature began to have an influence on the Spanish in
1113, after the crown of Provence had been transferred from Arles
to Barcelona by the marriage of the then Provencal heiress to
Beranger, Count of Barcelona. This introduction of the Provencal
literature into northeastern Spain had a beneficial result on the
two literatures, fusing them into a more vigorous spirit.
Spain had always maintained the closest relations with the See of
Rome, and numerous Spanish students were educated at the Italian
Universities, hence the Italian literature had some influence on
the Spanish, more lasting as a whole than the effects of
Provencal literature. From 1407 to 1454 King John II tried to
form an Italian school in Spain, gathering around him a poetical
court. This Italian influence extended into the sixteenth
century. Diego de Mendoza, during the reign of Charles V wrote a
clever satirical prose work called Lazarillo de Tormes, which
became the foundation of a class of fiction of which Gil Blas, by
Le Sage, is the best known and most celebrated example.
Except for the Cid, Spain had no historical narrative poems of
any account, and her prose historical works, especially on the
discovery and conquest of America, are of a purely local
character, and had no influence outside of Spain. The beginning
of the eighteenth century saw the accession to the throne of
Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV; and this brought a strong
French influence into the country, which for a time dominated the
national literature.
A new poetical system founded on Boileau was introduced by Luzan
in his Art of Poetry; but it did not seem to bring about any real
advance in literature; and it was not until Spain threw off this
foreign yoke, that any revival in her literature took place. It
is due to a monk, Benito Feyjoo, in the middle of the eighteen
century that a renaissance in Spanish literature took place.
Feyjoo, a devout Catholic, labored to bring to light scientific
truths, and to show how they harmonized with the true Catholic
spirit. In the same century Isla, a Jesuit, undertook with entire
success, to purify the Spanish pulpit, which had become lowered
both in style and tone. His history of Friar Gerund, which
slightly resembles Don Quixote, aimed a blow at bombastic
oratory, causing it soon to die out. Proverbs which Cervantes had
styled "short sentences drawn from long experience," have always
been a distinctive Spanish product, and can be traced back to the
earliest ages of the country. No fewer than 24,000 have been
collected, and many more circulate among the lower classes which
have not been recorded in writing.
PORTUGUESE.
The earliest imitators in Europe of the bucolic poetry of Virgil,
were the Portuguese; and as a people they thought that the
pastoral life was the ideal model for poetry. This idea is
strongly brought out by Ribeyro in the sixteenth century.
The great number of Mocarbians that settled in Portugal infused
into them as a nation, a stronger Orientalism than is found
elsewhere in Europe, and their poetry was of an enthusiastic
order, more marked than that of the Spaniards.
Henry of Burgundy, who married a daughter of Alfonso XI of Spain,
in the eleventh century, introduced Provencal poetry. The
Cancioneros, or courtly ballads, in imitation of the Provencal,
were sung by wandering minstrels, and Portuguese poetry retained
its Provencal character until the end of the fourteenth century.
In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese invaded Africa, and
Vasco de Gama pointed out to Europe the new and unknown route to
India. Fifteen years later, toward the close of the century, a
Portuguese kingdom was founded in Hindostan, causing a strong
counter-current of Orientalism to invade Portugal. The people
awoke to a desire for greatness; and poetry and the arts
flourished. This period, extending into the sixteenth century, is
called the golden age of Portuguese literature.
The Os Lusiades, an epic poem, that has been called "one of the
noblest monuments ever raised to the national glory of any
people," was written by Luis de Camoens, a Portuguese of the
sixteenth century. It is intensely patriotic, although it is
touched by both Greek mythology, and the Italian style, which
during this epoch had been slightly blended with the Portuguese.
Portugal had little or no influence on the literature of any
nation but her own, receiving her strongest impressions from
outsiders. In the eighteenth century she was dominated both in
taste and manners by the French, and the beginning of the
nineteenth century found her a great admirer and imitator of
English literature.
National songs are known to have been sung in Portugal during the
earliest times; but none of them have come down to us. They were
doubtless similar to the other bardic songs of Europe.
FRENCH.
It is in the first ages of national existence that the
foundations of national character and poetry are laid; and the
farther back that history is studied, the more closely do we find
the different peoples of the world united in their literature.
Its first history in France is undoubtedly that of the
Troubadours. Provence, where it originated, early became an
independent kingdom, while in the north the literature of the
Trouveres became the foundation of the national literature of
France. Latin was the language of the country after its conquest
by Julius Caesar; then came the Northern hordes, when language
became corrupted, until, in the time of Charlemagne, German was
the Court language, Latin the written language, and the Romance
dialect, still in its barbaric state, was the speech of the
people. The Gauls in the North, who used the Romance, were also
called the Roman-Wallons; they were distinguished from
Charlemagne's German subjects, while in the South the natives
were called the Romans-Provencaux.
In the tenth century the Normans invaded France, and infused
another element in the language, which gradually became Norman-
French; and from the twelfth century the two dialects were known
as Provencal and French. The Provencal dialect, although much
changed, is still spoken in Provence, Languedoc, Catalonia,
Valencia, Majorca, and Minorca, while the French was brought, by
gradual polish, to its present perfection.
The Troubadours who flourished for three centuries, from 950 to
1250, used the Romance language in their poems. The brilliance of
this period of literature, its sudden rise, and as sudden
disappearance, is not unlike the rise and fall of the Arabian
literature.
Among the thousands of poets who flourished during this time,
none ever wrote anything of any special note. The love, romance
and imagination of these poems breathes that chivalry toward
women, amounting almost to veneration, which was a feature of
this class of poetry. It is therefore to be regretted that as
actual tales, shorn of the poetical and chivalric setting, there
was something left to be desired. The immorality of the
incidents, and the coarseness of the language, makes this "Gay
Science," as the Troubadours called it, unfit to be classed with
the best literature. In 1092 the crown of Provence passing to the
Count of Barcelona brought a more refined taste into the
Provencal poetry; the arts and the sciences of the Arabians
obtained a foothold in the country; rhyme--the method used in
Arabian poetry, was adopted by the Troubadours, and from them has
been handed down to the nations of modern Europe.
This period has been described as "one that shone out at once
over Provence and all the south of Europe, like an electric flash
in the midst of profound darkness, illuminating all things with
the splendor of its flame."
During the Crusades many of the Troubadours departed for the Holy
Land. In the history of the world there is no event that fired
the poetry and imagination of the people like these holy wars,
and religious enthusiasm began to influence the poetry of the
time. When the Plantagenet kings of England assumed by right the
sovereignty over Languedoc (as Provence was called), a new
impetus was given to the Provencal poetry, as well as a wider
scope, when it was introduced into England. Chaucer, the father
of English literature, found in the Provencal literature all his
first models.
With the decline of the Troubadours occurred the rise of the
Trouveres in northern France.
In the tenth century Normany was invaded by Rollo the Dane, who
incorporated himself and his followers with the Normans. They
adopted the Norman-French; but gave it a power and scope it had
hitherto lacked. While the Romance-Provencal in the South was a
language of sweetness and beauty, the Northern language after the
advent of Rollo, was strong and warlike. Its poetry, which
differed from the love chansons of the South, was the song of
brave warriors, recounting the heroic deeds of their ancestors.
The Langue d'oui, as this Northern speech was called, became, in
the twelfth century, the universal medium of literature. The
poets and story writers called themselves Trouveres, and they
invented the fabliaux, the dramatic mysteries and romances of
ancient chivalry. The first great literary work of this class is
a marvellous history of the early kings of England, commencing
with Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, who, sailing among many
enchanted Isles, at length settles in England, where he meets
Arthur of the Round Table, and the old wizard, Merlin, one of the
most popular creations of the Middle Ages. Born of this legend
were some of the best known of modern romances. The word romance,
which in the early history of France was used to distinguish the
common dialect from the Latin, was later applied to all
imaginative and inventive tales. Of this class was "Tristam de
Leonois," written in 1190; the "San Graal," and "Lancelot." In
the same century appeared "Alexander," a poem which became so
celebrated that poetry, written in the same measure, is to this
day called Alexandrine verse.
A poetess known as Marie of France, wrote twelve lays to
celebrate the glories of the Round Table. She addresses herself
to a king supposed to be Henry VI, and has made extensive use of
early British legends. Chaucer and other English poets, have
drawn many inspirations from her poems.
The Trouveres not only originated the romances of chivalry; but
they also invented allegorical poems. The most celebrated is the
"Romance of the Rose," written in the thirteenth century. It
consisted of 20,000 verses, and although tedious, because of its
length, it was universally admired, and became the foundation of
all subsequent allegory among the different nations. The poetry
of the Trouveres was unlike anything in antiquity, and unlike,
too, to what came after it. It dealt with high-minded love and
honor, the devotion of the strong to the weak, and the
supernatural in fiction. All this, which formed part of its
composition, has been attributed to both the Arabians and the
Germans; but it was in truth a peculiar production of the
Normans, the most active and enterprising people in Europe, a
nation who pushed into Russia, Constantinople, England, France,
Sicily and Syria. A treasury of a later date, from which the
Trouveres drew their fabliaux in the thirteenth century, was a
collection of Indian tales that had been translated into Latin in
the tenth century. These fabliaux show that inventiveness,
gaiety, and simple, yet delightful esprit, which is found nowhere
but among the French. The Arabian tales, which had found their
way into France, were also turned into verse, while the anecdotes
that were picked up in the castles and towns of France, furnished
other material for the fabliaux. These tales were the common
property of the country at large, and are the source from which
Boccaccio, La Fontaine, and others drew their inspiration. Some
of them became famous and have been passed down from one age to
another.
The Renard of Goethe, and the Zaire of Voltaire were taken from
the old fabliaux. In the fourteenth century the coming of the
Popes and the Roman Court to Avignon introduced an Italian
element, and the language of Tuscany took the place of the
Provencal among the upper classes.
La Fontaine, called the "Prince of Fablists," appeared in the
seventeenth century. Many of his fables were borrowed from
ancient sources; but clothed in a new dress. He has been closely
imitated by his Confreres and by the fablists of other nations;
but has easily remained the most renowned of them all.
The philosophy of Descartes in the sixteenth century prepared the
way for Locke, Newton and Leibnitz; and his system, although now
little used, was really the foundation of what followed. He is
said to have given new and fresher impulse to mathematical and
philosophical study than any other student, either ancient or
modern.
Pascal, a contemporary of Descartes, is renowned for his
Provencal Letters, a book that has become a classic in France. It
is full of wit, and of exquisite beauty of language; but its
teaching is pure sophistry. Pascal first set the example of
writing about religion in a tone of mock levity, especially when
by so doing, he could abuse the Jesuits. In the end this weapon
of keen and delicate satire was turned against Christianity
itself, when Voltaire in the eighteenth century recognized its
possibilities, and made use of it.
The older French literature in the sixteenth century had become
so neglected, and was so lacking in cultivation; so little
adapted to poetry, that the nation seemed in danger of losing all
its earlier traditions. For a hundred years France was given over
to profane and light literature. Montaigne, Charyon, Ronsard and
de Balzac are some of the names of this period. The death of a
cat or dog was made the subject of a poem that was no real
poetry. It is due to the women of France--to Madame de
Rambouillet and her confreres, and to the literary coteries that
arose in the middle of the seventeenth century--that French
literature acquired a deeper and more serious tone. This period
was followed by the founding of the French Academy, of which
Cardinal Richelieu was the chief patron. The tragic dramatists,
Corneille and Racine, now appeared on the literary horizon.
Racine's language and versification was said to be far superior
to either Milton in English or Virgil in Latin.
In tragedy the French stand pre-eminent; but it is matter for
regret that their subjects are never taken from their own
nation--they rarely represent French heroes; and it is a weakness
of their literature that they make no direct appeal to the
national feeling. There is a close connection between the
classical dramas of Racine and Corneille, and such works as
Pope's Iliad, Addison's Cato and Dryden's Alexander's Feast,
showing the general interest in Greek and Roman subjects during
their time.
The older poetry of the chivalric period was entirely discarded,
though it would have been possible to unite the old chivalric
spirit, the freedom and romance of mediaeval times, with the
later renaissance, as was done by other nations. The French
literature is more closely formed on the model of the earlier
refined nations of antiquity, as the Roman was on the Greek.
The later French poetry of the seventeenth century came into
opposition with the teaching of Rousseau, this gave birth to a
taste for English poetry and the classic poetry of France was a
copy of the descriptive poetry of England. In the eighteenth
century prose writings superseded verse. At this time the English
had taken the lead in literature, and modern French philosophy
was built on that of Bacon and Locke. It was no part of the plan
of the English philosophers, however, to inculcate such ideas as
the French philosophers drew from their writings. Bacon, who was
profoundly Christian, believed that man alone was the type of
God, and nature the work of God's hands; but the French leaders
in philosophy went beyond this, they deified nature, and threw
aside as mysticism whatever could not be proved by sense.
Voltaire made use of all the wonderful greatness of science, as
revealed by Bacon and Newton, not to exalt the Creator; but to
lower man to the level of the brute. Like the old Greek sophists,
who defended first one side of a question, and then the one
diametrically opposed to it, Voltaire would write one book in
favor of God, and another to deny Him; but it is not difficult to
see which is his real belief. This perverted philosophy of
Voltaire in turn reacted on the English mind, and particularly on
history. We see its workings in both Gibbon and Hume. The "little
philosophy" which "inclineth a man's mind to atheism," led the
eighteenth century philosophers to fancy that Newton's
discoveries meant that everything could be attained without
religion, and that the only true and wide vision could be reached
by the senses alone. They taught a pure materialism, to their own
undoing; for it is not possible to thus lightly throw aside our
great links with the past, in which both Christian and heathen,
knowingly and unknowingly, in mediaeval poetry, in heroic ballad,
and in Egyptian prose, testified to the existence of God.
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