I have translated a number of poems from Spanish into English and Chinese some of which I have already posted in either this blog or in a previous blog but the majority of which, those related to the Spanish dramatist and poet Garcia Lorca have not yet been published. I have also given brief comments on those translated poems when I published them on the net. But never have I given any kind of historical and cultural background to any of those translated poems. Since it is now weekend and I have a little time before attending first a funeral and then a wedding, I might as well give a brief introduction. I claim no originality for what I say here. Any credit should go to Willis Barnstone's Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet (1993) and D. Gareth Walters' The Cambridge Introduction to Spanish Poetry-- Spain and Spanish America (2002) which I have read and from which I have learned what little that I do about Spanish poetry.
Perhaps I should start at the beginning. But as in any historical survey, there will always be disputes as to which poem should be considered the very first "Spanish" poem. Should the criteria be the land which we now call Spain ? Should we consider Catalan or Castilian as "the" Spanish language? Catalan gradually became the chief language in Spain with the publication in 1492 of the first Spanish grammar or indeed the first book of grammar in any language, Arte de la lengua castellana by Antonio de Nebrija. But beforee then, from around the 10th century, poets of Al-Andalus (the lands occupied by Arabs or Moors in presentday southern Spain, the moors having occupied Spain for about 800 years from the 7th century on ) had written what has been called muwashashas in Classical Arabic and later in Hebrew that contained a final section in Vulgar Arabic or Mozarabic called kharja (literally going away) which show some resemblance to the subject matter and themes in the poetry in north-western Iberia in the 13th and 14th centuries and certain popular songs prevalent in the 15th and 16th centuries. But in 1492, the moors were driven out of Spain and the last Islamic kingdom of Granada fell before the armies of the Catholic kings in 1610, when the last moriscos (forced Islamic converts into Christianity ) rebellion in Granada was crushed and with it the loss of a valuable poetic tradition, until it was revived some 400 years later by Garcia Lorca in early 20th century by the publication of his El diván del Tamarit modelled after the Arabic or Persian casida and gacela. In addition, there is another tradition of Galician-Portuguese in north-western Spain with the common origin of a female narrator. As in all cultures, there is an oral epic tradition. The earliest example of this is the Poema/Cantar de mío Cid, a blend of oral and written traditions, written by either a cleric, lawyer or a semi-literate minstrel, probably written at the start of the 13th century. Another is the Siete infantes de Lara which dates from around the start of the 11th century and was revised three centuries later. The third tradition is that of the villancicos which is the only one truly written in what we now regard as Spanish.
The most famous name in Spanish poetry of the 13th century is that of Gonzalo de Berceo (c 1196-1260?), a Rioja ( those who drink Spanish red will know which region) monk who wrote poetry with a different metrical scheme from that of the oral epic, for recitation, the mester de juglaria: this metrical scheme depends on rhythmic patterns, the number of rhythmic accents and length of time for recitation:
de los sos ohos tan fuerte mientre llorando from his eyes so strong whilst crying
tornava la cabeça y estava los cantando he turned his head and was singing them
In Berceo’s most famous poem the Milagros de Nuestra Señora ( The miracles of our Lady) , the rhythm is obviously different:
Divan olor sovejo las fores bien olientes
Refrehscavan en omne las carnes e las mientes;
Manavan cada cano fuentes claras corrientes,
En verano bien frias en ivienro calientes
The sweet smelling flowers gave off their perfume
They refreshed all the bodies and the minds
Issued from each song bright flowing fountains
In summer so cold in winter so warm
Here we find that the two halves of the lines ( or hemistichs) are of equal length, so unlike the oral epic lines. This is an example of what has been called mester de clericía. What is decisive is the number of syllables: each line has 7 syllables with an unchanging rhyme scheme of aaaa bbbb cccc, in contrast to the epic rhyme-scheme which relies on assonance, achieved by repetition of similar vowel sounds (vocalic rhyme). They use what is called the cuaderna vía (four-fold way). This cuaderna via metre is still being used by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita (1282-1350?) about a century later in his Libro de buen amor, supplying connective threads between a variety of other verse forms and a constant narrative rhyme.
According to Walters, we usually think of poetry as related to nationality but in the Middle Ages, the concept of nationality was not fully developed and people in those days placed more emphasis on the poetic genre. In lyric poetry, they used the Galican-Portuguese not Castilian language. Therefore though Berceo wrote Milagros in Castilian, the songs he wrote at the court of King Alfonso X in Galician-Portuguese. In this regard the most published songs are the Cancienero general, compiled by Hernando de Castillo, from 1511 onwards.
Another important influence on Spanish poet was Italian, due largely to political reasons arising from various dynastic alliances by kings and emperors because of the changing policies of the united crowns of Castile and Aragon and later the territorial legacy of Charles V. Italian poetry was first introduced into Spain from mid-14thth century to early 15th century by Franciso Imperial and Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458). But it was really only in the 1520s that the Italian sonnet with its hendecasyllabic line and with a rhyme scheme of abba abba cdecde became the norm. The pioneer of this form was Juan Boscán (1501/3-36), as part and parcel of the general importation of Italian Renaissance ideas into Spain, when he met Andrea Navagero the Italian ambassasor to Spain, at the banks of the Darro in Granada, whilst accommpnying Carlos V on a state visit to Alhambra and urged Boscan, who translated Castiglione's Cortegiano prescribing courtly etiquette, to write sonnets and other forms used by good Italian authors, on the emphasis being placed on the Aristotelian poetic of mimesis. Boscán then started to compose canzoni, ottava rima and sonetos. In this period, Spanish poets started to imitate the classical forms of ancient Greece e.g the pastoral poem of Eclogues of Theocritus and Virgil. Thus Garcilaso, an intimate friend of Boscán with a marvellous talent for words, used the Italian form to create poetry of perfect harmony e.g his Egloga tercera closely imitated Virgil’s Seventh Eclogue.
Flérida, para mi dulce y sobrosa Flérida, for me sweet and tasty
Más que la fruta del cercada ajeno, more than the fruit of the adjacent near
Más blanca que la leche y más hermosa whiter than milk and more beautiful
Que'l prado por abril de flores lleno than the April meadow full of flowers.
In 1543, the widow of Boscan published the Obras de Boscan y algunas de Garcilaso de la Vega and went through 16 editions by 1610. Gacilaso's poetry became the model of Italian poetry in Spain. He wrote 38 sonnets, 5 canciones and three églogas and an epistle in verse. His sonnets and eclogues gave Spain its ideals of Petrarchan love and Virgilian pastoral imagery. He has a painfully pure sensitivity to beauty and love and he portrays real passion beneath an exterior of pastoral and mythological allusions and disguised his Italian origin so well, following in the tradition of Provençal courtly love poetry. Garcilaso's sonnets express an elegant despair, his young man is endowed with all good qualities, handsome, high born, amorous, poetic but he constantly meets with frustration, the cruelty of time and the slow poision which is life itself. The beauty of grief is turned into an art. But his poetry was not immediately accepted. His followers were criticized as self-pitying, lacking in humor, foreign, distant from the common people and the popular anonymous songs and verse. By the end of the 16th century, the dispute between the Italianist and the Castilian forms had disappeared and we find splendid use of both formal and popular modes by the same authors like Lope de Vega, Luis de Gongora, Francisco Quevedo, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and all the way to Antonio Machado and Federico Garcia Lorca and Jorge Luis Borges in the 20th century.
But in the meantime, it became usual to include classical allusions as illustration or as metaphors e.g Midas for greed and Icarus for rashness, a kind of literary shorthand with rich built in associations. Their model was the love sonnets of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) whose Canzioniere was rediscovered in early 16th century and widely imitated by the poets of the Siglo de Oro (Spanish Golden Age) e.g by Franciso de Quevedo (1580-1945):
Rizas en ondas ricas del rey Midas You laugh in rich waves of King Midas
Lisi, el tacto precioso, cuando avaro; Lisi, the precious touch, when greedy;
Arden claveles en su cerco claro, Carnations burn in her bright ring,
Fragrante sangre, esplendididas heridas. Fragant blood, wonderful wounds.
The waves of Midas refers to the golden tresses of her hair. However, minas” is linked to Midas only phonetically. This kind of use is sometimes referred to as "baroque”style . But even more, the Spanish poets attempted to imitate the classical style of the Latin poets in both syntax and rules e.g the poetry of Luis de Góngora (1561-1627) in the style called cultismo. The Spanish sonnet remains in essentially the same form until some 300 years later, it was changed by the Argentian Jorge Luis Borges, one quarter English through his paternal grandmother, when he adopted the Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.
(to be con’d)
"Nothing like Spanish, but spinach and spaghetti, Like the sun, the moon and the sea, I, me and her, Spanish guitar getting ready to play, sing me a song, But the red heat, the cool wind and mild waves... Spinach green and bouncy spaghetti, yummy ... And tomato sauce and cheese powder, for fun... Spaghetti western ready to watch, for joy only..." Good afternoon, my dear friend, I don't know any Spanish, and please excuse my poor poem...!
回覆刪除[版主回覆08/02/2010 19:59:00]You may not know Spanish. But I am sure you know flamenco, cha cha, tango, bossa nova and salsa and of course amor, amor and amor. You're an inexhaustible source of invention. I really look forward to the kind of "new film" that you say you will produce! You're always welcome, with or without poem and in the latter case, whether you consider your poem good or bad or indifferent! Did you have a productive/relaxing weekend?
I didn’t realize that the inception of Spanish poetry dates back to such a recent century (13 th ) as compared with Chinese poetry which has a history of more than three or four thousand years. It’s interesting to know that Spanish poetry, having been influenced by the neighboring nations and civilizations throughout the centuries, is more of a hybrid. Chinese poetry seems to be a thoroughbred. I don’t know how Chinese poetic forms would evolve had they gone through the same kind of evolution
回覆刪除Or maybe I am wrong. Contemporary Chinese poetry did go through changes in the last century as can be witnessed by the emergence of New Poetry ( 新詩、白話詩 ), etc., especially during the 六四 period, a time when the literary circle was taking the full brunt of western civilization.
[版主回覆08/03/2010 18:02:00]Spain was at the outskirts of European civilization, which at the time was dominated by the Holy Roman Empire. Spanish people, like the French and the English were then considered outside the pale of Latin civilization. Most people were illiterate, and poetry had to rely on the oral epic tradition. Local dialects like Celtic, Anglo-Saxon (English) and Galican-Portuguese, and French did not really come into their own until the era of the Renaissance, when the Holy Roman Empire began to break up and local noblemen and kings grabbed power and as part of the power game made use of their local dialect as a political rallying point. That was the time when the idea of the nation-state, based on local customs, culture and language was born. England too did not have any poetry to speak of until Chaucer in the 14th century when English was an amalgam of German (northern Saxon) and Norman French plus local variations of words of Latin origin!