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Spanish RomanceSpanish Romance
Spanish Romance
In the latter part of my sojourn in the Alhambra, I made frequent
descents into the Jesuits` Library of the University; and relished more and
more the old Spanish chronicles, which I found there bound in parchment. I
delight in those quaint histories which treat of the times when the Moslems
maintained a foothold in the Peninsula. With all their bigotry and occasional
intolerance, they are full of noble acts and generous sentiments, and have a
high, spicy, oriental flavor, not to be found in other records of the times,
which were merely European. In fact, Spain, even at the present day, is a
country apart, severed in history, habits, manners, and modes of thinking,
from all the rest of Europe. It is a romantic country, but its romance has
none of the sentimentality of modern European romance; it is chiefly derived
from the brilliant regions of the East, and from the high-minded school of
Saracenic chivalry.
The Arab invasion and conquest brought a higher civilization and a nobler
style of thinking, into Gothic Spain. The Arabs were a quick-witted,
sagacious, proud-spirited, and poetical people and were imbued with oriental
science and literature. Wherever they established a seat of power, it became
a rallying place for the learned and ingenious; and they softened and refined
the people whom they conquered. By degrees, occupancy seemed to give them
an hereditary right to their foothold in the land; they ceased to be looked
upon as invaders, and were regarded as rival neighbors. The peninsula, broken
up into a variety of states, both Christian and Moslem, became, for centuries,
a great campaigning ground, where the art of war seemed to be the principal
business of man, and was carried to the highest pitch of romantic chivalry.
The original ground of hostility, a difference of faith, gradually lost its
rancor. Neighboring states, of opposite creeds, were occasionally linked
together in alliances, offensive and defensive, so that the cross and crescent
were to be seen side by side, fighting against some common enemy. In times of
peace, too, the noble youth of either faith resorted to the same cities,
Christian or Moslem, to school themselves in military science. Even in the
temporary truces of sanguinary wars, the warriors who had recently striven
together in the deadly conflicts of the field, laid aside their animosity, met
at tournaments, jousts, and other military festivities, and exchanged
the courtesies of gentle and generous spirits.
Thus the opposite races became frequently mingled together in peaceful
intercourse, or if any rivalry took place, it was in those high courtesies and
nobler acts, which bespeak the accomplished cavalier. Warriors, of opposite
creeds, became ambitious of transcending each other in magnanimity as well as
valor. Indeed, the chivalric virtues were refined upon to a degree sometimes
fastidious and constrained; but at other times, inexpressibly noble and
affecting. The annals of the times teem with illustrious instances of
high-wrought courtesy, romantic generosity, lofty disinterestedness, and
punctilious honor, that warm the very soul to read them. These have furnished
themes for national plays and poems, or have been celebrated in those
all-pervading ballads, which are as the life-breath of the people, and thus
have continued to exercise an influence on the national character, which
centuries of vicissitude and decline have not been able to destroy; so that,
with all their faults, and they are many, the Spaniards, even at the present
day, are, on many points, the most high-minded and proud-spirited people of
Europe. It is true, the romance of feeling derived from the sources I have
mentioned, has, like all other romance, its affectations and extremes. It
renders the Spaniard at times pompous and grandiloquent, prone to carry the
pundonor, or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober sense and sound
morality, disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect the grande caballero,
and to look down with sovereign disdain upon "arts mechanical," and all the
gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but this very inflation of spirit, while it
fills his brain with vapors, lifts him above a thousand meannesses, and though
it often keeps him in indigence, ever protects him from vulgarity.
In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low
levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when
the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic
feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would
not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of
prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very
lips in old Spanish romance.
With these preliminary suggestions, the fruit of a morning`s reading and
rumination, in the old Jesuits` Library of the University, I will give him a
legend in point, drawn forth from one of the venerable chronicles alluded to.
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