The Soul of Spain
Sencourt, Robert
July 21, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 283 THE SOUL OF...
...its history in their relation to imaginative work...
...and gave to Spain her saints, Dominic and Aloysius, That is one mood of Spain...
...and which a Spaniard Long since in Spain between the dream and the reality, admirably suggested in the line: "Breve bien, facil between the ideal and the present need, a mist fell, viento, leve espuma...
...Romeo Don Juan, showing Spain in the mood of one who compared Juliet to the beauties of earth...
...Don Juan represents Teresa and John of the Cross...
...Calisto in a crisis of ideals diverts himself with pleasure, ex- sees in Melibea the mystery of divine love...
...character which is representative of the Spanish peas- he gives romance to the ideal of efficiency by bringing it ant, and indeed of all peasantries, of all business...
...Like all presses the spirit of the war-weary, of those who romantic lovers, these two long for life together in thought that humanism was enough and saw it fail, a lonely Eden, far from earth and far from heaven, saw power and patriotism become their own destruc- where they may think only of one another...
...Life for school which was run by a cousin of mine...
...At first, I think bonnets with jet or even piquant sable cherries, but it I understand perfectly, and then I find that I don't...
...Their manner must be One decided, however, to forgive her, for she was modest and their attitude, courageous...
...They are nuns, c f course...
...and so its Lusiades, had lost its enchantment and even the best effect is to bring us closer to decision, to action...
...You see I am rather black...
...which leads to the voluptuousness of Omar Khayyam and to the despair of Macbeth...
...As its ills, but most of all countries in it, Spain...
...for him Christianity is mad with pride in its title, "standardthe children of light are those who are as wise in the bearer of the Vicar of Christ," and in its memories things of this world as this world's children themselves of its defense of the Church against the Moslem...
...they disliked her...
...the unceasing a queen who cared neither for Pope nor emperor...
...In this story, a story of passionate love, la ture, and, like the best of critics, he makes his interCelestina is a feminine Pandarus, who is to this extent pretations of both more searching in combining them unselfish: that her whole life is devoted to procuring with a certain greatness of his own...
...character whose fame is confined to the Iberian Penin- Maeztu looks very hard both at life and at literasula...
...the high, boned net collars, the long skirts How I envy the minds with a clear view ! I particu- of serge are unamendably sad and awkward...
...The glitter of fancy throws flashes of light on Hamlet is but an episode, a mood, in the life of a risthe impulses which struggle for expression within us...
...he is vain, and is a figure of indiscipline...
...And yet Such an application of such a standard not only he is a man, not a monster...
...But Maeztu acutely distinguishes the Don practical woman and taught that the Lord was among Juan of Byron, or Moliere, or Baudelaire, in fact the the pucheros...
...larly venerate those who can say, "She is good, he I met Mademoiselle Anastasie at a small country is bad-this one is wise, that one, weak...
...Her in touch both with mysticism and with humanism...
...bring the song of their joy into harmony with the La Celestina, Don Ramiro's third character, is a whirring tune of the planets...
...Her own a Spaniard and a European...
...in the current and not of it...
...But vides an object for a passion which is mystical...
...Maeztu sees in her the Jewess, but it is a her the highest standard both of duties and of dues...
...For he is both pleasure for others rather than for herself...
...he is object is to make a profit out of what she provides for more practical, in fact, because he knows, as Raymond other people's satisfaction...
...Maeztu sees him, the Don Juan of the North is abThe Spaniard, that is to say, must see...
...seemed but a dream: and so Calderon kept on saying Maeztu makes his literary criticism almost into an that: essay on Spain under Primo de Rive_ra...
...But Teresa was a another...
...The Spanish Don Juan is neither that absurdity, another, he so ordains his affairs in this world that nor the romantic egoist who never really loves, but is the conscientiousness with which he does them is part a man of appetites without ideals: he is the knightof a character of real permanence, of absolute and last- errant of pride and concupiscence...
...than the graveyard...
...Some may valiantly trim their pudding-shaped stupid about people and things...
...They must, somehow, master the art of being "No, really, it isn't done...
...is useless...
...It is a new method of peace and law, and then had fallen back upon the of interpretative criticism so as to show nature and mere guide of nationalism, which itself was ineffective...
...ing people...
...because salva- tice or immortality, but he keeps them far enough tion itself is made to hang on the conscientiousness with from his consciousness not to interfere with his hasty which work is done...
...Anastasie belonged to France's pathetic flock of black- Now the first time I saw Mam'selle Anastasie I birds, the secularisees...
...conflict of the ideal and the reality, of passions and But while Hamlet illustrates the mood of Quixote, duty...
...I arrived them becomes a charming formal garde:l where paths in that extremely rural environment with the splendid intersect and meet at given points, an l where even conceit of a college student who has read a rather the mazes have their mathematical formula...
...tim of a tendency to scepticism, to cynicism : the same And the dreams themselves are dream...
...And so, as the Provencal poet and chivalrous hopes passed through the absurd to Mistral noted, "the Spanish are excellent losers...
...Don Juan is not sensuality...
...the other book expresses the tiredness of "The simplicity of art allows us to take our way more Spain for centuries...
...For Slit had seen the spectacular ineffectiveness of the according to lVlaeztu, the simplicity of art is the de- Armada broken by the waves of the foggy North, sign which reason stamps upon the solvent fecundity waves on which rode, trim and stinging, the ships of of life, showing us in clearer outlines...
...of the world which makes it, and since the wages of sin is death, are one in the scheme of absolute reality, the mood the everlasting garden of their pleasures is no other of Don Juan, like the mood of Nietzsche, was right...
...Maeztu traces the accuracy of indiscipline : pride is all : he belongs to a country whose Genevan watches to Calvinistic eschatology...
...I have no deep-rooted objection to keep their vows, but they lack all the outward glamor small, fragile human beings, but she was ludicrously of their vocation...
...In the tragic in the deceits of vanity, and Satan triumphed this there is a certain greatness becau..;e it arises from when the idealist's heroism attained to nothing better a conviction of the necessity and vastness of eternity, than childish incongruities...
...Not least are only twenty and an orphan, whose knowledge of life their sartorial trials: they exchange an interesting was purely institutional...
...He is in fact a bad means a worship of the highest in spirit and in truth, Catholic who never denies either the principles of jusbut it means also a thorough efficiency...
...She must have had brains...
...But the interest of her Lull knew, both that "he who loves not lives not" and career is that in giving Melibea to Ca listo, she pro- that "he who lives by the life can never die...
...that the world, surd for he is a soul charged with love in never-ending far from being soft breeze, unsubstantial foam, and search of the ideal woman, but in reality a soul passing good, is itself a part of the absolute reality charged with love finds the ideal woman in the nearso that, far from choosing between this world and est...
...Even lovers, if their love is to For at least he was not a hypocrite : he perverted no live, must adjust the immediate with the eternal, and ideals...
...He is as selfish as ing value...
...That great book was written at a tive genius, the three characters which continue time when Spain, having become part of an empire to fascinate her people, is what Don Ramiro de that dreamed of being both holy and universal, had Maeztu brilliantly accomplishes in his last book, Don attached the new world to its ambition for a reign Quijote, Don Juan, e la Celestina...
...It is just that spirit that Spain needs Don Juan of the rest of Europe from the Don Juan today to cure her of her ills, to cure all the world of of Spain, the Don Juan of Tirso and of Zorrilla...
...Mademoiselle the great intellects of the Church...
...she has attained the shining heights where commune This time a person bothers me...
...So are...
...July 21, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 283 THE SOUL OF SPAIN By ROBERT SEN COURT A STUDY of the soul of Spain as shown in the whose dreams of virtue were better than his means three great characters created by her imagina- of attaining it...
...Active life, the life of Los surely among the complexities of life...
...MAM'SELLE ANASTASIE By ERIN SAMSON PERHAPS the clever readers of t is thoughtful habit for a nondescript, unfashionable garment of periodical can help me out...
...One can poor compendium of the Summa Theologia, and, havwander there without ever getting lost or entangled ing understood perhaps one-fourth of it, feels that in the weeds...
...his brute impulse is inHe arrives at this program for the Spain of today exhaustible energy, the spirit of adventure and dominaby looking first into the character of Don Quixote, tion, and the drama of Zorrilla is when this man of 284 THE COMMONWEAL July 21, 192) power and victory is made to suffer and love...
...He leads his country to satisfaction takes another form, that of profit, of self- a scheme of administrative reform by proposing to interest...
...When you looked at her minute, ineffectual have formed them into good religious, in little mat- hands trying to grasp a three-pound loaf of bread, ters as well as great-they have learned to straighten when you saw the beady eyes, the tip of a nose that their coiffes without a mirror and not to catch their was an insult to the nasal genus which includes the veils in what-nots-then abruptly they are sent out Cyrano and Bourbon organs, the mouth, like a slit into the world, figuratively blinking after the cloistral begun and left off immediately, you wanted to cry, shade...
...When grace and the novice-mistress tiny...
...and so, unless indeed there is an eternal value, for Romeo and for Juliet, so for Calisto and for unless indeed our actions are all to be measured by Melibea, this mutual egoism is the denial of the love an absolute standard, unless the realities...
...but as tion...
...Our treasures trifles seem Spain, in the view of this thinker, has been the vic- And all our life is dreaming...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 11
