Francis Jammes: Silencio

SILENCIO

Silencio. Luego una golondrina en un postigo
hace un sonido de cielo en el aire fresco y azulado,
sola. Luego dos cascos pasan despacio por la calle.

El campo luce pálido, pero en el cielo gris que cambia
ya se percibe el azul que ha de entibiar el día.
Pienso en los amores de otros tiempos, en los amores
de los que vivían en los parques de los países hermosos
llenos de viñas, de trigo, de heno y de maíz. 
Los pavos reales azules se agitaban en los verdes prados,
y las hojas verdes se reflejaban en los cristales verdes
en el despertar del cielo que se había vuelto verde.
Las cadenas en el establo donde la sombra estaba abierta
producían un ruido tembloroso de entrechocar de vasos.
Pienso en el viejo castillo de la finca,
en los cazadores que salían en las mañanas de verano,
en los ladridos largos de los perros rastreadores que avanzan arrastrándose...
En la enorme escalera encerada estaba la barandilla.
Alta era la puerta, desde la cual los recién casados,
al escuchar que se iban los abuelos, se reían,
se abrazaban y unían sus hermosos labios,
mientras que en las madrigueras de plata temblaban las liebres.

Qué hermosos eran esos tiempos en que los muebles Imperio
brillaban con el lustre y las manijas de bronce...
Era algo encantador, muy feo y simétrico
como el sombrero de Napoleón primero.

Pienso también en las tardes en que las niñas
jugaban al volante cerca de la alta reja.
Llevaban pantalones que iban más abajo
de sus vestidos decorosos y les llegaban a los pies:
Herminie, Coralie, Clémence, Célanire,
Aménaïde, Athénaïs, Julie, Zulmire;
sus grandes sombreros de paja tenían largas cintas.
De pronto, un pavo real azul se encaramaba en un banco.
Una raqueta lanzaba un último volante
que iba a morir en la noche que dormía entre las hojas,
mientras se oía el retumbar de la tormenta en ciernes.

FRANCIS JAMMES

Traducción de Carlos Cámara y Miguel Ángel Frontán

SILENCE

Silence. Puis une hirondelle sur un contrevent
fait un bruit d’azur dans l’air frais et bleuissant,
toute seule. Puis deux sabots traînassent dans la rue.

La campagne est pâle, mais au ciel gris qui remue
on voit déjà le bleu qui chauffera le jour.
Je pense aux amours des vieux temps, aux amours
de ceux qui habitaient aux parcs des beaux pays
riches en vigne, en blé, en foin et en maïs.
Les paons bleus remuaient sur les pelouses vertes,
et les feuilles vertes se miraient aux vitres vertes
dans le réveillement du ciel devenu vert.
Les chaînes dans l’étable où l’ombre était ouverte
avaient un bruit tremblé de choquement de verres.
Je pense au vieux château de la propriété,
aux chasseurs s’en allant par les matins d’été,
aux aboiements longs des chiens flaireurs qui rampent...
Dans l’énorme escalier cirée était la rampe.
La porte était haute d’où les jeunes mariés,
en écoutant partir les grands-pères, riaient,
s’entrelaçaient et joignaient leurs jolies lèvres,
pendant que tremblaient, aux gîtes d’argent, les lièvres.

Que ces temps étaient beaux où les meubles-Empire
luisaient par le vernis et les poignées de cuivre...
Cela était charmant, très laid et régulier
comme le chapeau de Napoléon premier.

Je pense aussi aux soirées où les petites filles
jouaient aux volants près de la haute grille.
Elles avaient des pantalons qui dépassaient
leurs robes convenables et atteignaient leurs pieds:
Herminie, Coralie, Clémence, Célanire,
Aménaïde, Athénaïs, Julie, Zulmire;
leurs grands chapeaux de paille avaient de longs rubans.
Tout à coup un paon bleu se perchait sur un banc.
Une raquette lançait un dernier volant
qui mourait dans la nuit qui dormait aux feuillages,
pendant qu’on entendait un roulement d’orage.

Robert Lowell y Alberto Girri: Donde termina el arco iris

DONDE TERMINA EL ARCO IRIS

Vi descender el cielo, negro y blanco,

no azul, sobre Boston donde los inviernos reducían

las calaveras a fuegos fatuos sobre las pizarras,

y los escuálidos perros de presa del Hambre desgarraban

el paro y el alcaudón. El espino aguarda

a su víctima y esta noche

los gusanos devorarán las ramas secas hasta los pies

del Ararat: los segadores, el Tiempo y la Muerte,

langostas acorazadas, se posan sobre el árbol del aliento;

el olivo silvestre injertado y la raíz

están mustios, y un invierno es arrastrado allá donde

el Pepperpot, irónico arco iris, atraviesa

el río Charles y sus escamas de millas de tierra chamuscada.

Vi mi ciudad sobre la Balanza, subir y bajar

los platos del juicio. Montones

de hojas muertas carbonizaban el aire,

y yo soy una flecha roja en este gráfico

de Revelaciones. Cada paloma es vendida;

el águila de garras filosas de la capilla cambia su apoyo

sobre el Tiempo-serpiente, el epitafio del arco iris.

En Boston las serpientes silban al frío.

La víctima sube las gradas del altar y canta:

"Hosanna al león, al cordero y a la bestia

que apantalla con las alas el horno del rostro de aquel que es Es:

yo respiro el aire de mi fiesta de bodas."

En el altar mayor, oro

y un lienzo inmaculado. Me arrodillo y las alas golpean

mi mejilla. ¿Qué puede darte ahora la paloma de Jesús

sino la sabiduría, oh exiliado? Levántate y vive,

la paloma ha traído una rama de olivo para comer.

ROBERT LOWELL

Traducción y notas de ALBERTO GIRRI

Where te Rainbow Ends: El arco iris como señal del pacto establecido entre Dios y los hombres: "Mi arco he puesto en las nubes, el cual será por señal del pacto entre mí y la tierra" (Génesis, 9:13).

V. 10. wild ingrafted olive and tbe root: "Porque si tú fuiste cortado del que por naturaleza es olivo silvestre, y contra naturaleza fuiste injertado en el buen olivo, cuánto más éstos, que son las ramas naturales, serán injertados en su> propio olivo" (Epístola de San Pablo a los Romanos 11:24).

V. 14. I saw my city in the Scales: El símbolo de la Balanza aparece con frecuencia en las Sagradas Escrituras: "Pesado has sido en balanza, y fuiste hallado falto" (Daniel 5:27); "Pesándolos a todos igualmente en la balanza serán menos que nada" (Salmos 62:9).

Publicado originariamente en The Nation, en 1946, Where the Rainbow Ends está inspirado por un tipo de violencia e intenciones similar al de As a Plane Tree by the Water. Nuevamente, la escena es Boston, nuevamente se nos hace asistir al momento en que merced al abandono espiritual, a la omnipotencia de Mammón, el pacto de Dios con los hombres toca a su fin; la promesa de salvación contenida en el arco iris ha terminado ya, y la ciudad es puesta sobre la Balanza donde suben y bajan los platos del Juicio.

WHERE THE RAINBOW ENDS

I saw the sky descending, black and white,

Not blue, on Boston where the winters wore

The skulIs to jack-o'-lanterns on the slates,

And Hunger's skin-and-bone retrievers tore

The chickadee and shrike. The thorn tree waits

Its víctim and tonight

The worms wilI eat the deadwood to the foot

Of Ararat: the scythers, Time and Death,

He1met Iocusts, move upon the tree of breath;

The wild íngrafred olive and the root

Are withered, and a winter drifts to where

The Pepperpot, ironic rainbow, spans

Charles River and its scales of scorched-earth miles.

I saw my city in the Scales, the pans

Of judgment rising and descending. Piles

Of dead leaves char the air—

And 1 am a red arrow on this graph

Of Revelations. Every dove is sold;

The Chapel's sharp-shinned eagle shifts its hold

On serpent-Time, the rainbow's epitaph.

In Boston serpents whistle at the cold.

The victim climbs the altar steps and sings:

"Hosannah to the lion, lamb, and beast

Who fans the furnace-face of IS wirh wings:

1 breathe the ether of my marriage feast,"

At the high altar, gold

And a fair cloth. 1 kneel and the wings beat

My cheek. What can the dove of Jesus give

You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live,

The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge y Enrique Luis Revol: Sobre Don Quijote

SOBRE DON QUIJOTE

[Notas (pues no ha quedado otra cosa) del guión de la conferencia pronunciada por el autor en Londres el 20 de febrero de 1818. La conferencia, que fue la octava del ciclo (con el que puso fin Coleridge a su actividad de conferenciante), aparece así sumariada en el syllabus de la serie: “De la vida y obra de Cervantes, pero especialmente de su Don Quijote. Mostrar que el ridículo del caballero andante ha sido sólo un objeto secundario en el espíritu del autor, y no la causa principal del deleite que la obra continúa produciendo a los hombres de todos los países, cualesquiera que sean sus costumbres e ideas.”]

Don Quijote no estaba encadenado a la tierra por la miseria ni estaba aprisionado por los abrazos de la riqueza; de modo que, con la sobriedad propia de su pueblo, como español, tenía demasiado poco y a la vez en exceso para hallarse obligado a pensar en ello. Asimismo, su edad, los cincuenta años, bien puede suponerse que impedirían a su mente caer en la tentación de cualquiera de las pasiones inferiores; en tanto que sus costumbres, de gran madrugador y vehemente deportista, eran tales como para conservar su cuerpo enjuto en duradera servidumbre a su voluntad y, con todo, por acción de la esperanza que acompaña a la busca, no sólo le permitía sino que ayudaba a su fantasía a forjar lo que quisiera.

La flacura y las facciones acentuadas son felices exponentes del exceso que había en él (Don Quijote) de lo formativo o imaginativo, contrastando con la rotundidad rolliza de Sancho y su receptividad de las impresiones externas.

Don Quijote finalmente llega a convertirse en un hombre que ha perdido el juicio; su entendimiento se halla trastornado; y de ahí, sin la menor desfiguración a la verdad de la naturaleza, sin perder el menor rasgo de individualidad personal, que se convierta en una sustancial alegoría viviente o personificación de la razón y el sentido moral, despojado del juicio y el entendimiento. Sancho es a la inversa. Es el sentido común sin razón ni imaginación; y Cervantes no sólo muestra la excelencia y poder de la razón en Don Quijote, sino que tanto en él como en Sancho muestra los males que resultan de la separación de los dos elementos principales de la acción intelectual y moral sana. Juntadlos a él y su amo, y formarán un intelecto perfecto; pero están separados y sin vínculo, y de ahí que, necesitando cada uno del otro para su propia integridad, cada uno domine a veces al otro. Pues el sentido común, aunque puede ver la inaplicabilidad práctica de los dictados de la imaginación o de la razón abstracta, no puede menos de someterse a ellos.

Estos dos personajes poseen el mundo y alternativa y recíprocamente son el engañador y el engañado. Personificarlos, combinando lo permanente con lo individual, constituye una de las mayores creaciones del genio, y casi únicamente ha sido logrado por Cervantes y Shakespeare.

P. I. Cap. III. — Los grandes elogios que Don Quijote hace de sí mismo —“¡El más valeroso andante!”—; pero no es su figura misma la que tiene en el pensamiento, sino al ídolo de su imaginación, al ser imaginario que está representando. Y este hecho, el de que se trata por completo de una tercera persona, le disculpa de la acusación de vanidad egoísta, que de otro modo sería inevitable.

Cap. IV. — Los mercaderes de Toledo.

“Y cuando llegaron a trecho que se pudieron ver y oír, levantó Don Quijote la voz y con ademán arrogante dijo:

—Todo el mundo se tenga, si todo el mundo no confiesa que no hay en el mundo todo, etc.”

Nótese la presunción que sigue a la satisfacción de sí mismo en el último acto. Mientras aquél era un honrado intento de reparar un verdadero entuerto, ésta es una determinación arbitraria de imponer a todos sus semejantes un ideal de Brissotine o Rousseau.

Esta historia tan divertida concluye, para compasión de los hombres sensatos, con un cabal molimiento de las costillas del idealista por el mozo de muías, la canalla. ¡Y feliz de ti, pobre caballero, de que la canalla estaba en contra tuya! Pues de haber estado contigo, por un quítame allá esas pajas te hubieran cortado la cabeza.

Cap. X. — “—Pero dime por tu vida: ¿has visto más valeroso caballero que yo en todo lo descubierto de la tierra? ¿Has leído en historias otro que tenga ni haya tenido más bríos en acometer, más aliento en perseverar, más destreza en el herir, ni más maña en el derribar?

—La verdad sea —respondió Sancho— que yo no he leído ninguna historia jamás porque ni sé leer ni escrebir; mas lo que osaré apostar es que más atrevido amo que vuestra merced yo no le he servido en todos los días de mi vida, etc.”

Este requerimiento a Sancho, y la respuesta de Sancho, son de un humorismo exquisito. Es imposible dejar de pensar en los boletines y proclamas franceses. Observad la necesidad que nos domina de sentirnos halagados, de volar lo más alto posible en lo abstracto, y con qué constancia la imaginación es restituida al suelo de nuestra baja humanidad.

Cap. XI. — El discurso ante los cabreros: “Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos, etc.”

Nótese el ritmo y la admirable belleza y sabiduría que tienen los juicios en sí mismos, pero también la total falta de juicio en Don Quijote al dirigirlos a semejante auditorio.

Cap. XVIII. — “Más bueno era vuestra merced —dijo Sancho— para predicador que para caballero andante”.

Justamente. Ésta es la verdadera moraleja.

Cap. XXII. — La aventura de los galeotes. Pienso que éste es el único episodio en que Cervantes hace a un lado la máscara de su héroe y habla por sí mismo.

Cap. XXIV. — Cardenio es el loco de la pasión que encuentra y derrota fácilmente, por un momento, al loco de la imaginación. Y nótese el contagio de la locura de cualquier clase, al interrumpir Don Quijote la narración de Cardenio.

Cap. XXV. — ¡El asombroso crepúsculo de la mente! Y obsérvese el coraje de Cervantes al atreverse a presentarlo y confiar en una distante posteridad para la apreciación de su fidelidad a la naturaleza.

P. II. Cap. XLI. — El relato que hace Sancho de lo que ha visto yendo en Clavileño es, a su modo, una contraparte a las aventuras de Don Quijote en la cueva de Montesinos. Esta última es la única imputación al carácter moral del caballero; Cervantes sólo da un ejemplo del fracaso de la veracidad ante los deseos vehementes que siente la imaginación por  algo real y externo; sin esto, la descripción no hubiera sido completa; y, sin embargo, está tan bien llevado que el lector no queda con la desagradable sensación de que Don Quijote ha contado una mentira. Es evidente que él apenas sabe si fue un sueño o no; y por eso va hacia el encantador para averiguar la verdadera naturaleza de la aventura.

Cervantes fue el inventor de las novelas entre los españoles, y en su Persiles y Sigismunda los ingleses pueden hallar el germen de su Robín- son Crusoe. Para él, el mundo era un drama. Sus pensamientos, a pesar de la pobreza y la enfermedad, perpetuaron en él los sentimientos de la juventud. Describía sólo lo que conocía y había observado, pero conocía y había observado mucho, en verdad; y su imaginación siempre estaba pronta a adaptar y modificar el mundo de su experiencia. Hizo fábulas de amor exquisito, pero con una virtud inmaculada.

Traducción de Enrique Luis Revol

Revista Sur, diciembre de 1947.

DON QUIXOTE

Don Quixote was neither fettered to the earth by want, nor holden in its embraces by wealth ;—of which, with the temperance natural to his country, as a Spaniard, he had both far too little, and somewhat too much, to be under any necessity of thinking about it. His age too, fifty, may be well supposed to prevent his mind from being tempted out of itself by any of the lower passions ;—while his habits, as a very early riser and a keen sportsman, were such as kept his spare body in serviceable subjection to his will, and yet by the play of hope that accompanies pursuit, not only permitted, but assisted, his fancy in shaping what it would. Nor must we omit his meagreness and entire featureliness, face and frame, which Cervantes gives us at once : “It is said that his surname was Quixada or Ouesada,” &c. —even in this trifle showing an exquisite judgment ; —just once insinuating the association of lantern-jaws into the reader’s mind, yet not retaining it obtrusively like the names in old farces and in the Pilgrim’s Progress,—but taking for the regular appellative one which had the no meaning of a proper name in real life, and which yet was capable of recalling a number of very different, but all pertinent, recollections, as old armour, the precious metals hidden in the ore, &c. Don Quixote’s leanness and featureliness are happy exponents of the excess of the formative or imaginative in him, contrasted with Sancho’s plump rotundity, and recipiency of external impression.

He has no knowledge of the sciences or scientific arts which give to the meanest portions of matter an intellectual interest, and which enable the mind to decypher in the world of the senses the invisible agency—that alone, of which the world’s phenomena are the effects and manifestations,—and thus, as in a mirror, to contemplate its own reflex, its life in the powers, its imagination in the symbolic forms, its moral instincts in the final causes, and its reason in the laws of material nature : but—estranged from all the motives to observation from self-interest—the persons that surround him too few and too familiar to enter into any connection with his thoughts, or to require any adaptation of his conduct to their particular characters or relations to himself—his judgment lies fallow, with nothing to excite, nothing to employ it. Yet,—and here is the point, where genius even of the most perfect kind, allotted but to few in the course of many ages, does not preclude the necessity in part, and in part counterbalance the craving by sanity of judgment, without which genius either cannot be, or cannot at least manifest itself,—the dependency of our nature asks for some confirmation from without, though it be only from the shadows of other men’s fictions.

Too uninformed, and with too narrow a sphere of power and opportunity to rise into the scientific artist, or to be himself a patron of art, and with too deep a principle and too much innocence to become a mere projector, Don Quixote has recourse to romances :—

His curiosity and extravagant fondness herein arrived at that pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on of that kind ! C. I.

The more remote these romances were from the language of common life, the more akin on that very account were they to the shapeless dreams and strivings of his own mind a mind, which possessed not the highest order of genius which lives in an atmosphere of power over mankind, but that minor kind which, in its restlessness, seeks for a vivid representative of its own wishes, and substitutes the movements of that objective puppet for an exercise of actual power in and by itself. The more wild and improbable these romances were, the more were they akin to his will, which had been in the habit of acting as an unlimited monarch over the creations of his fancy ! Hence observe how the startling of the remaining common sense, like a glimmering before its death, in the notice of the impossible-improbable of Don Belianis, is dismissed by Don Quixote as impertinent :—

He had some doubt as to the dreadful wounds which Don Belianis gave and received : for he imagined, that notwithstanding the most expert surgeons had cured him, his face and whole body must still be full of seams and scars. Nevertheless he commended in his author the concluding his book with a promise of that unfinishable adventure ! C. I.

Hence also his first intention to turn author ; but who, with such a restless struggle within him, could content himself with writing in a remote village among apathists and ignorants ? During his colloquies with the village priest and the barber surgeon, in which the fervour of critical controversy feeds the passion and gives reality to its object—what more natural than that the mental striving should become an eddy ?—madness may perhaps be defined as the circling in a stream which should be progressive and adaptive : Don Quixote grows at length to be a man out of his wits ; his understanding is deranged ; and hence without the least deviation from the truth of nature, without losing the least trait of personal individuality, he becomes a substantial living allegory, or personification of the reason and the moral sense, divested of the judgment and the understanding. Sancho is the converse. He is the common sense without reason or imagination ; and Cervantes not only shows the excellence and power of reason in Don Quixote, but in both him and Sancho the mischiefs resulting from a severance of the two main constituents of sound intellectual and moral action. Put him and his master together, and they form a perfect intellect ; but they are separated and without cement; and hence each having a need of the other for its own completeness, each has at times a mastery over the other. For the common sense, although it may see the practical inapplicability of the dictates of the imagination or abstract reason, yet cannot help submitting to them. These two characters possess the world, alternately and interchangeably the cheater and the cheated. To impersonate them, and to combine the permanent with the individual, is one of the highest creations of genius, and has been achieved by Cervantes and Shakspeare, almost alone.

Observations on particular passages,

B. I. c. I. But not altogether approving of his having broken it to pieces with so much ease, to secure himself from the like danger for the future, he made it over again, fencing it with small bars of iron within, in such a manner, that he rested- satisfied. of its strength ; and without caring to make a fresh experiment on it, he approved and looked upon it as a most excellent helmet.

His not trying his improved scull-cap is an exquisite trait of human character, founded on the oppugnancy of the soul in such a state to any disturbance by doubt of its own broodings. Even the long deliberation about his horse’s name is full of meaning ;—for in these day-dreams the greater part of the history passes and is carried on in words, which look forward to other words as what will be said of them.

Ib. Near the place where he lived, there dwelt a very comely country lass, with whom he had formerly been in love ; though, as it is supposed, she never knew it, nor troubled herself about it.

The nascent love for the country lass, but without any attempt at utterance, or an opportunity of knowing her, except as the hint—the OTI ESTI—of the inward imagination, is happily conceived in both parts ;—first, as confirmative of the shrinking back of the mind on itself, and its dread of having a cherished image destroyed by its own judgment; and secondly, as showing how necessarily love is the passion of novels. Novels are to love as fairy tales to dreams. I never knew but two men of taste and feeling who could not understand why I was delighted with the Arabian Nights’ Tales, and they were likewise the only persons in my knowledge who scarcely remembered having ever dreamed.

Magic and war—itself a magic—are the day-dreams of childhood ; love is the day-dream of youth and early manhood.

C. 2.       “Scarcely had ruddy Phoebus spread the golden tresses of his beauteous hair over the face of the wide and spacious earth ; and scarcely had the little painted birds, with the sweet and mellifluous harmony of their forked tongues, saluted the approach of rosy Aurora, who, quitting the soft couch of her jealous husband, disclosed herself to mortals through the gates of the Mauchegan horizon ; when the renowned Don Quixote,” &c.

How happily already is the abstraction from the senses, from observation, and the consequent confusion of the judgment, marked in this description ! The knight is describing objects immediate to his senses and sensations without borrowing a single trait from either. Would it be difficult to find parallel descriptions in Dryden’s plays and in those of his successors ?

C. 3. The host is here happily conceived as one who from his past life as a sharper, was capable of entering into and humouring the knight, and so perfectly in character, that he precludes a considerable source of improbability in the future narrative, by enforcing upon Don Quixote the necessity of taking money with him.

C. 3.       “Ho, there, whoever thou art, rash knight, that approachest to touch the arms of the most valorous adventurer that ever girded sword,” &c.

Don Quixote’s high eulogiums on himself—“ the most valorous adventurer ! ”—but it is not himself that he has before him, but the idol of his imagination, the imaginary being whom he is acting. And this, that it is entirely a third person, excuses his heart from the otherwise inevitable charge of selfish vanity ; and so by madness itself he preserves our esteem, and renders those actions natural by which he, the first person, deserves it.

C. 4. Andres and his master.

The manner in which Don Quixote redressed this wrong, is a picture of the true revolutionary passion in its first honest state, while it is yet only a bewilderment of the understanding. You have a benevolence limitless in its prayers, which are in fact aspirations towards omnipotence ; but between it and beneficence the bridge of judgment—that is, of measurement of personal power—intervenes, and must be passed. Otherwise you will be bruised by the leap into the chasm, or be drowned in the revolutionary river, and drag others with you to the same fate.

C. 4. Merchants of Toledo.

When they were come so near as to be seen and heard, Don Quixote raised his voice, and with arrogant air cried out : “Let the whole world stand! if the whole world does not confess that there is not in the whole world a damsel more beautiful than,” &c.

Now mark the presumption which follows the self-complacency of the last act! That was an honest attempt to redress a real wrong ; this is an arbitrary determination to enforce a Brissotine or Rousseau’s ideal on all his fellow creatures.

Let the whole world stand!

‘If there had been any experience in proof of the excellence of our code, where would be our superiority in this enlightened age? ’

“No! the business is that without seeing her, you believe, confess, affirm, swear, and maintain it ; and if not, I challenge you all to battle.”

Next see the persecution and fury excited by opposition however moderate! The only words listened to are those, that without their context and their conditionals, and transformed into positive assertions, might give some shadow of excuse for the violence shown! This rich story ends, to the compassion of the men in their senses, in a sound rib- roasting of the idealist by the muleteer, the mob. And happy for thee, poor knight ! that the mob were against thee! For  had they been with thee, by the change of the moon and of them, thy head would have been off.

C. 5. first part (Probably this should be ch. 4, last part.] —The idealist recollects the causes that had been accessory to the reverse and attempts to remove them —too late. He is beaten and disgraced.

C. 6. This chapter on Don Quixote’s library proves that the author did not wish to destroy the romances, but to cause them to be read as romances —that is, for their merits as poetry.

C. 7. Among other things, Don Quixote told him, he should dispose himself to go with him willingly ;—for some time or other such an adventure might present, that an island might be won, in the turn of a hand, and he be left governor thereof.

At length the promises of the imaginative reason begin to act on the plump, sensual, honest common sense accomplice, —but unhappily not in the same person, and without the copula of the judgment,—in hopes of the substantial good things, of which the former contemplated only the glory and the colours.

C.7. Sancho Panza went riding upon his ass, like- any patriarch, with his wallet and leathern bottle, and with a vehement desire to find himself governor of the island which his master had promised him.

The first relief from regular labour is so pleasant to poor Sancho!

C. 8. “I no gentleman! I swear by the great God, thou best, as I am a Christian. Biscainer by land, gentleman by sea, gentleman for the devil, and thou best : look then if thou hast any thing else to say.”

This Biscainer is an excellent image of the prejudices and bigotry provoked by the idealism of a speculator. This story happily detects the trick which our imagination plays in the description of single combats : only change the preconception of the magnificence of the combatants, and all is gone.

B.II. c. 2. “ Be pleased, my lord Don Quixote, to bestow upon me the government of that island,” &c.

Sancho’s eagerness for his government, the nascent lust of actual democracy, or isocracy!

C.2. “ But tell me, on your life, have you ever seen a more valorous knight than I, upon the whole face of the known earth ? Have you read in story of any other, who has, or ever had, more bravery in assailing, more breath in holding out, more dexterity in wounding, or more address in giving a fall ? ” —“ The truth is,” answered Sancho, “ that I never read any history at all ; for I can neither read nor write ; but what I dare affirm is, that I never served a bolder master,” &c.

This appeal to Sancho, and Sancho’s answer are exquisitely humorous. It is impossible not to think of the French bulletins and proclamations. Remark the necessity under which we are of being sympathized with, fly as high into abstraction as we may, and how constantly the imagination is recalled to the ground of our common humanity ! And note a little further on, the knight’s easy vaunting of his balsam, and his quietly deferring the making and application of it.

C. 3. The speech before the goatherds :

“Happy times and happy ages,” &c.

Note the rhythm of this, and the admirable beauty and wisdom of the thoughts in themselves, but the total want of judgment in Don Quixote’s addressing them to such an audience.

B. III. c. 3. Don Quixote’s balsam, and the vomiting and consequent relief ; an excellent hit at panacea nostrums, which cure the patient by his being himself cured of the medicine by revolting nature.

C. 4. “Peace ! and have patience ; the day will come,” &c. The perpetual promises of the imagination !

Ib. “Your Worship,” said Sancho, “ would make a better preacher than knight errant!”

Exactly so. This is the true moral.

C. 6. The uncommon beauty of the description in the commencement of this chapter. In truth, the whole of it seems to put all nature in its heights and its humiliations, before us.

Ib. Sancho’s story of the goats:

“Make account, he carried them all over,” said Don Quixote, “and do not be going and coming in this manner; for at this rate, you will not have done carrying them over in a twelvemonth.”

“How many are passed already? ” said Sancho, &c.

Observe the happy contrast between the all-generalizing mind of the mad knight, and Sancho’s all-particularizing memory. How admirable a symbol of the dependence of all copula on the higher powers of the mind, with the single exception of the succession in time and the accidental relations of space. Men of mere common sense have no theory or means of making one fact more important or prominent than the rest ; if they lose one link, all is lost. Compare Mrs. Quickly and the Tapster. And note also Sancho’s good heart, when his master is about to leave him. Don Quixote’s conduct upon discovering the fulling-hammers, proves he was meant to be in his senses. Nothing can be better conceived than his fit of passion at Sancho’s laughing, and his sophism of self-justification by the courage he had shown.

Sancho is by this time cured, through experience, as far as his own errors are concerned ; yet still is he lured on by the unconquerable awe of his master’s superiority, even when he is cheating him.

C. 8. The adventure of the Galley-slaves. I think this is the only passage of moment in which Cervantes slips the mask of his hero, and speaks for himself.

C. 9. Don Quixote desired to have it, and bade him take the money, and keep it for himself. Sancho kissed his hands for the favour, &c.

Observe Sancho’s eagerness to avail himself of the permission of his master, who, in the war sports of knight- errantry, had, without any selfish dishonesty, overlooked the meum and tuum. Sancho’s selfishness is modified by his involuntary goodness of heart, and Don Quixote’s flighty goodness is debased by the involuntary or unconscious selfishness of his vanity and self-applause.

C.10. Cardenio is the madman of passion, who meets and easily overthrows for the moment the madman of imagination. And note the contagion of madness of any kind, upon Don Quixote’s interruption of Cardenio’s story.

C.11. Perhaps the best specimen of Sancho’s prover- bializing is this:

“And I (Don Q.) say again, they lie, and will lie two hundred times more, all who say, or think her so.” “ I neither say, nor think so,” answered Sancho ; “let those who say it, eat the lie, and swallow it with their bread : whether they were guilty or no, they have given an account to God before now : I come from my vineyard, I know nothing ; I am no friend to inquiring into other men’s lives ; for he that buys and lies shall find the lie left in his purse behind ; besides, naked was I born, and naked I remain ; I neither win nor lose ; if they were guilty, what is that to me ? Many think to find bacon, where there is not so much as a pin to hang it on : but who can hedge in the cuckoo ? Especially, do they spare God himself ? ”

lb. “And it is no great matter, if it be in another hand ; for by what I remember, Dulcinea can neither write nor read,” &c.

The wonderful twilight of the mind! and mark Cervantes’s courage in daring to present it, and trust to a distant posterity for an appreciation of its truth to nature.

P. II. B. III. c.9.1 [Part II, ch. 41. This book division of Part II is not usual.] Sancho’s account of what he had seen on Clavileño is a counterpart in his style to Don Quixote’s adventures in the cave of Montesinos. This last is the only impeachment of the knight’s moral character ; Cervantes just gives one instance of the veracity failing before the strong cravings of the imagination for something real and external ; the picture would not have been complete without this ; and yet it is so well managed, that the reader has no unpleasant sense of Don Quixote having told a lie. It is evident that he hardly knows whether it was a dream or not ; and goes to the enchanter to inquire the real nature of the adventure.

SUMMARY ON CERVANTES

A Castilian of refined manners ; a gentleman, true to religion, and true to honour.

A scholar and a soldier, and fought under the banners of Don John of Austria, at Lepanto, lost his arm and was captured.

Endured slavery not only with fortitude, but with mirth ; and by the superiority of nature, mastered and overawed his barbarian owner.

Finally ransomed, he resumed his native destiny, the awful task of achieving fame ; and for that reason died poor and a prisoner, while nobles and kings over their goblets of gold gave relish to their pleasures by the charms of his divine genius. He was the inventor of novels for the Spaniards, and in his Persilis and Sigismunda, the English may find the germ of their Robinson Crusoe.

The world was a drama to him. His own thoughts, in spite of poverty and sickness, perpetuated for him the feelings of youth. He painted only what he knew and had looked into, but he knew and had looked into much indeed ; and his imagination was ever at hand to adapt and modify the world of his experience. Of delicious love he fabled, yet with stainless virtue.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

William Wordsworth y Juan Rodolfo Wilcock: Laodamia

LAODAMIA

«With sacrifice before the rising morn 

Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired; 

And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn 

Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required: 

Celestial pity I again implore;— 

Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!» 

 “Con sacrificios celebrados antes del amanecer, he solicitado a mi esposo, muerto en la lucha; en la espesa tiniebla, entre sombras solitarias, lo he pedido a los dioses infernales. Y ahora imploro nuevamente la piedad celestial: ¡devuélvelo a mis ojos, gran Júpiter, devuélvelo!”

So speaking, and by fervent love endowed 

With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands; 

While, like the sun emerging from a cloud, 

Her countenance brightens—and her eye expands; 

Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows; 

As she expects the issue in repose. 

Con estas palabras, y con la fe de su ferviente amor, la suplicante alza sus manos hacia el cielo; su aspecto se ilumina, como el sol que emerge de una nube, y sus ojos se expanden; su pecho agitado se eleva, su estatura aumenta; inmóvil, espera la decisión.

O terror! what hath she perceived?—O joy! 

What doth she look on?—whom doth she behold? 

Her Hero slain upon the beach of Troy? 

His vital presence? his corporeal mould? 

It is—if sense deceive her not—'tis He! 

And a God leads him, wingèd Mercury! 

—¡Oh terror!, ¿qué ha percibido? ¡Oh dicha!, ¿qué mira?, ¿a quién ve? ¿Al héroe muerto en la playa troyana? ¿Es su imagen viviente, su forma corpórea? ¡Es él; si los sentidos no la engañan, es él! ¡Y un dios lo conduce: el alado Mercurio!

Mild Hermes spake—and touched her with his wand 

That calms all fear; «Such grace hath crowned thy prayer, 

Laodamía! that at Jove's command 

Thy husband walks the paths of upper air: 

He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space; 

Accept the gift, behold him face to face!» 

 El bondadoso Hermes le habla, y la toca con su caduceo que calma todo terror: “La merced de Júpiter ha coronado tu plegaria, Laodamia; por su orden, tu esposo pisa los senderos de la atmósfera superior; viene a pasar tres horas contigo. ¡Acepta el don; míralo cara a cara!”

Forth sprang the impassioned Queen her Lord to clasp; 

Again that consummation she essayed; 

But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp 

As often as that eager grasp was made. 

The Phantom parts—but parts to re-unite, 

And re-assume his place before her sight. 

La apasionada reina se abalanza para abrazar a su señor; nuevamente intenta consumar el abrazo, tantas veces como lo intenta, ansiosamente, tantas veces la elude la insustancial imagen. El fantasma se divide; pero se divide para reunirse, y reasumir su presencia ante la vista de su esposa.

«Protesiláus, lo! thy guide is gone! 

Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice: 

This is our palace,—yonder is thy throne; 

Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will rejoice. 

Not to appal me have the gods bestowed 

This precious boon; and blest a sad abode.» 

“¡Mira, Protesilao: tu guía ha desaparecido! Confirma con tu voz esta visión, te lo ruego. Éste es nuestro palacio, aquél nuestro trono; habla, y hasta el suelo que pisas se alegrará. Los dioses no me concedieron esta dádiva preciosa, y bendijeron una triste morada, para aumentar mis sufrimientos.”

«Great Jove, Laodamía! doth not leave 

His gifts imperfect:—Spectre though I be, 

I am not sent to scare thee or deceive; 

But in reward of thy fidelity. 

And something also did my worth obtain; 

For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain. 

 “El gran Júpiter, Laodamia, no deja nunca imperfectos sus dones; aunque espectro, no he sido enviado para atemorizarte o decepcionarte, sino en recompensa de tu fidelidad; aunque también algo ayudaron mis méritos, pues la virtud intrépida siempre logra ilimitado premio.”

«Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold 

That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand 

Should die; but me the threat could not withhold: 

A generous cause a victim did demand; 

And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain; 

A self-devoted chief—by Hector slain.» 

“Tú sabes que el oráculo délfico predijo que el primer griego que pisara la costa troyana moriría; pero la amenaza no me detuvo: una causa generosa requería una víctima; decidido, salté sobre la arenosa llanura; fui un jefe fiel a su causa, y morí luchando con Héctor.”

«Supreme of Heroes—bravest, noblest, best! 

Thy matchless courage I bewail no more, 

Which then, when tens of thousands were deprest 

By doubt, propelled thee to the fatal shore; 

Thou found'st—and I forgive thee—here thou art— 

A nobler counsellor than my poor heart. 

“¡Supremo entre los héroes, el más audaz, el más noble, el más eminente! Ya no lamentaré tu valentía inigualable, que te impulsó hacia la costa fatal, cuando decenas de miles vacilaban oprimidos por la duda. Tú supiste encontrar —y ahora que estás junto a mí te lo perdono— un consejero más noble que mi pobre corazón.”

«But thou, though capable of sternest deed, 

Wert kind as resolute, and good as brave; 

And he, whose power restores thee, hath decreed 

Thou should'st elude the malice of the grave: 

Redundant are thy locks, thy lips as fair 

As when their breath enriched Thessalian air. 

“Pero no sólo eras capaz del acto más valiente: también eras tan amable como resuelto, y tan bueno como audaz; y Aquél cuyo poder te restaura, ha decretado que burles la malicia de la tumba; opulentos son tus rizos, y tus labios tan hermosos como cuando el aire de Tesalia se enriquecía con su aliento.”

«No spectre greets me,—no vain Shadow this; 

Come, blooming Hero, place thee by my side! 

Give, on this well-known couch, one nuptial kiss 

To me, this day a second time thy bride!» 

Jove frowned in heaven: the conscious Parcæ threw 

Upon those roseate lips a Stygian hue. 

“No es un espectro el que me saluda; ésta no es una sombra vana; ¡ven, héroe floreciente, extiéndete a mi lado! ¡Dame en este día, y en este lecho que tan bien conoces, el beso nupcial; nuevamente seré tu desposada!” Pero Júpiter frunció el ceño en el cielo; y las atentas Parcas extendieron un color de muerte sobre esos labios sonrosados.

«This visage tells thee that my doom is past: 

Nor should the change be mourned, even if the joys 

Of sense were able to return as fast 

And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys 

Those raptures duly—-Erebus disdains: 

Calm pleasures there abide—majestic pains. 

“Este rostro te dice que mi sentencia ya fue dictada; recuerda que la virtud no sería virtud, si los placeres del sentido pudieran volver tan rápida y tan seguramente como desaparecen. La tierra destruye a su debido tiempo esas voluptuosidades; el Erebo las desdeña; allá sólo existen placeres tranquilos, sufrimientos majestuosos.”

«Be taught, O faithful Consort, to control 

Rebellious passion: for the Gods approve 

The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul; 

A fervent, not ungovernable love. 

Thy transports moderate; and meekly mourn 

When I depart, for brief is my sojourn—» 

“Aprende, ¡oh fiel consorte!, a controlar la pasión rebelde: los dioses aprueban la profundidad, y no el tumulto del alma; el fervor, no la impotencia del amor. Modera tus arrebatos, y conduélete humildemente cuando yo me aleje, pues breve es mi estadía...”

«Ah wherefore?—Did not Hercules by force 

Wrest from the guardian monster of the tomb 

Alcestis, a reanimated corse, 

Given back to dwell on earth in vernal bloom? 

Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years, 

And Æson stood a youth 'mid youthful peers. 

        “¡Ah!, ¿por qué? ¿Acaso Hércules no arrebató a Alcestes por la fuerza —reanimado cadáver, restituido a la tierra para vivir en la flor de su belleza— de manos del monstruo guardián del sepulcro? Los conjuros de Medea dispersaron el peso de los años, y Aeson volvió a ser un joven entre sus jóvenes compañeros”.

«The Gods to us are merciful—and they 

Yet further may relent: for mightier far 

Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway 

Of magic potent over sun and star, 

Is love, though oft to agony distrest, 

And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast. 

“Los dioses nos son misericordiosos, y quizá se apiaden más aún; pues mucho más poderoso que la fuerza del nervio y del músculo, o que el potente influjo de la magia sobre el sol y las estrellas, es el amor; aunque tan frecuentemente soporta las angustias de la agonía, y aunque su asiento preferido sea el débil pecho de las mujeres.”

«But if thou goest, I follow—» «Peace!» he said,— 

She looked upon him and was calmed and cheered; 

The ghastly colour from his lips had fled; 

In his deportment, shape, and mien, appeared 

Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, 

Brought from a pensive though a happy place. 

“Pero si te vas, te sigo...” “¡Calla!”, dijo él. Ella lo miró y se calmó, consolada: el color espectral había huido de sus labios; en su porte, en su forma y en su semblante, una gracia elísea reaparecía: una gracia melancólica, traída de un lugar pensativo, pero feliz.

He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel 

In worlds whose course is equable and pure; 

No fears to beat away—no strife to heal— 

The past unsighed for, and the future sure; 

Spake of heroic arts in graver mood 

Revived, with finer harmony pursued; 

Él le hablaba de amor; el amor que sienten los espíritus en otros mundos cuyos cursos son puros y uniformes; donde no deben vencerse los temores, ni conciliar las contiendas; donde no se suspira por el pasado, y el futuro está asegurado. Hablaba como testigo de ese segundo nacimiento entre todo lo que en la tierra es lo más perfecto.

Of all that is most beauteous—imaged there 

In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, 

An ampler ether, a diviner air, 

And fields invested with purpureal gleams; 

Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day 

Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey. 

Hablaba de las cosas más hermosas, que allá aparecían con más afortunada belleza; de corrientes más traslúcidas, de un éter más amplio, un aire más divino, y campos revestidos de esplendores purpúreos; de climas que el sol más brillante de la tierra sería indigno de iluminar.

Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath earned 

That privilege by virtue.—»Ill,» said he, 

«The end of man's existence I discerned, 

Who from ignoble games and revelry 

Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight, 

While tears were thy best pastime, day and night; 

Pero allá sólo entra el alma cuya virtud ha ganado ese privilegio. “Nefasto”, decía, “me pareció el término de la existencia de aquellos que después de nuestra partida solicitaban un vano deleite a sus innobles juegos y a sus orgías; cuando tu pasatiempo mejor eran las lágrimas, noche y día.”

«And while my youthful peers before my eyes 

(Each hero following his peculiar bent) 

Prepared themselves for glorious enterprise 

By martial sports,—or, seated in the tent, 

Chieftains and kings in council were detained; 

What time the fleet at Aulis lay enchained. 

“Así pensé durante todo ese tiempo que nuestra flota estuvo anclada en Áulide, mientras mis juveniles compañeros se preparaban ante mí, mediante marciales de portes, para las gloriosas empresas futuras (de acuerdo a la inclinación particular de cada héroe), y mientras los jefes y los reyes, sentados en sus tiendas, deliberaban en concejo.”

«The wished-for wind was given:—I then revolved 

The oracle, upon the silent sea; 

And, if no worthier led the way, resolved 

That, of a thousand vessels, mine should be 

The foremost prow in pressing to the strand,— 

Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand. 

“El anhelado viento nos fue concedido; consideré minuciosamente nuestra ruta futura sobre el silencioso mar; y resolví, si nadie más digno que yo se adelantaba, que mi proa fuera la primera en tocar la playa, y que mi sangre fuera la primera en teñir la arena troyana.”

«Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang 

When of thy loss I thought, belovèd Wife! 

On thee too fondly did my memory hang, 

And on the joys we shared in mortal life,— 

The paths which we had trod—these fountains, flowers: 

My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers. 

“Pero amargo, frecuentemente amargo era el dolor cuando pensaba en tu pérdida, amada esposa; demasiado afectuosamente volvía el recuerdo hacia ti, y hacia las alegrías que compartíamos en nuestra vida mortal; los senderos que habíamos hollado, estas fuentes y estas flores, mis ciudades recién proyectadas y mis torres inconclusas.”

«But should suspense permit the Foe to cry, 

'Behold they tremble!—haughty their array, 

Yet of their numbers no one dares to die?' 

In soul I swept the indignity away: 

Old frailties then recurred:—but lofty thought, 

In act embodied, my deliverance wrought. 

 “¡Acaso la indecisión debía permitir este grito al enemigo!: «¡Mirad cómo tiemblan! Orgullosa es su pompa, pero nadie entre tantos se atreve a morir». Mi alma rechazaba esa indignidad; las antiguas debilidades retornaban, pero mi altivo pensamiento, corporizado en la acción, consiguió libertarme.”

«And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak 

In reason, in self-government too slow; 

I counsel thee by fortitude to seek 

Our blest re-union in the shades below. 

The invisible world with thee hath sympathised; 

Be thy affections raised and solemnised. 

“Y tú, aunque fuerte en amor, eres demasiado débil en razón, y demasiado lenta en dominar tus actos; yo te aconsejo más fortaleza, para procurar nuestra beata reunión entre las sombras inferiores. El mundo invisible ha simpatizado contigo; que tus afectos, entonces, sean elevados y solemnizados.”

«Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend— 

Seeking a higher object. Love was given, 

Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end; 

For this the passion to excess was driven— 

That self might be annulled: her bondage prove 

The fetters of a dream opposed to love.— 

“Aprende a elevarte hacia un objeto superior, mediante un anhelo mortal; el amor fue concedido, alentado y sancionado especialmente con ese fin; por eso la pasión es acompañada por el exceso, para que la materia se anule, y sus ligaduras demuestren ser las cadenas de un sueño, que impiden el amor.”

Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes re-appears! 

Round the dear Shade she would have clung—'tis vain: 

The hours are past—too brief had they been years; 

And him no mortal effort can detain: 

Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day, 

He through the portal takes his silent way, 

And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse She lay. 

Laodamia lanza un grito estridente, porque Hermes ha reaparecido. Vanamente quiere aferrarse a la sombra querida; las horas han pasado —demasiado breves aunque hubieran sido años— y ningún esfuerzo mortal puede detenerlo. A través del pórtico, él se encamina rápida y silenciosamente hacia las regiones que desconocen el día terrenal. Laodamia ha caído sin vida sobre el piso del palacio.

Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved, 

She perished; and, as for a wilful crime, 

By the just Gods whom no weak pity moved, 

Was doomed to wear out her appointed time, 

Apart from happy Ghosts, that gather flowers 

Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. 

¡Ah, juzgad sin rigor a quien tan profundamente ha amado! A quien, contra toda razón, pero sin pecado, supo desaparecer en un arrebato de pasión, y se liberó del irritante yugo del tiempo, y de estos frágiles elementos materiales, para ir a juntar flores de beata tranquilidad entre jardines inmarcesibles.

—Yet tears to human suffering are due; 

And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown 

Are mourned by man, and not by man alone, 

As fondly he believes.—Upon the side 

Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) 

A knot of spiry trees for ages grew 

From out the tomb of him for whom she died; 

And ever, when such stature they had gained 

That Ilium's walls were subject to their view, 

The trees' tall summits withered at the sight; 

A constant interchange of growth and blight! 

Sin embargo, el sufrimiento humano merece ser llorado; las esperanzas mortales, vencidas y destruidas, son lamentadas por el hombre, y no sólo por el hombre, como él siempre ha pensado. Al borde del Helesponto (así era la creencia general), un grupo de esbeltos árboles creció durante siglos sobre la tumba de aquel por quien murió Laodamia; y cada vez que los árboles alcanzaban la altura necesaria para divisar los muros de Ilión sus elevadas cimas se secaban; constante intercambio de destrucción y crecimiento.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
JUAN RODOLFO WILCOCK