Shadow of the Cathedral

Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Description

There are three cathedrals which I think will remain chief of the Spanish cathedrals in the remembrance of the traveller, namely the Cathedral at Burgos, the Cathedral at Toledo, and the Cathedral at Seville; and first of these for reasons hitherto of history and art, and now of fiction, will be the Cathedral at Toledo, which the most commanding talent among the contemporary Spanish novelists has made the protagonist of the romance following. I do not mean that Vincent Blasco Ibanez is greater than Perez Galdos, or Armando Palacio Valdes or even the Countess Pardo-Bazan; but he belongs to their realistic order of imagination, and he is easily the first of living European novelists outside of Spain, with the advantage of superior youth, freshness of invention and force of characterization. The Russians have ceased to be actively the masters, and there is no Frenchman, Englishman, or Scandinavian who counts with Ibanez, and of course no Italian, American, and, unspeakably, no German.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 23 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819900795
• Langue: English

Extrait

INTRODUCTION
There are three cathedrals which I think will remainchief of the Spanish cathedrals in the remembrance of thetraveller, namely the Cathedral at Burgos, the Cathedral at Toledo,and the Cathedral at Seville; and first of these for reasonshitherto of history and art, and now of fiction, will be theCathedral at Toledo, which the most commanding talent among thecontemporary Spanish novelists has made the protagonist of theromance following. I do not mean that Vincent Blasco Ibañez isgreater than Perez Galdós, or Armando Palacio Valdés or even theCountess Pardo-Bazan; but he belongs to their realistic order ofimagination, and he is easily the first of living Europeannovelists outside of Spain, with the advantage of superior youth,freshness of invention and force of characterization. The Russianshave ceased to be actively the masters, and there is no Frenchman,Englishman, or Scandinavian who counts with Ibañez, and of courseno Italian, American, and, unspeakably, no German.
I scarcely know whether to speak first of this bookor the writer of it, but as I know less of him than of it I maymore quickly dispatch that part of my introduction. He was born atValencia in 1866, of Arragonese origin, and of a strictly middleclass family. His father kept a shop, a dry-goods store in fact,but Ibañez, after fit preparation, studied law in the University ofValencia and was duly graduated in that science. Apparently henever practiced his profession, but became a journalist almostimmediately. He was instinctively a revolutionist, and wasimprisoned in Barcelona, the home of revolution, for some politicaloffence, when he was eighteen. It does not appear whether hecommitted his popular offence in the Republican newspaper which heestablished in Valencia; but it is certain that he was elected aRepublican deputy to the Cortes, where he became a leader of hisparty, while yet evidently of no great maturity.
He began almost as soon to write fiction of thenaturalistic type, and of a Zolaistic coloring which his Spanishcritics find rather stronger than I have myself seen it. Everyyoung writer forms himself upon some older writer; nobody beginsmaster; but Ibañez became master while he was yet no doubtpracticing a prentice hand; yet I do not feel very strongly theZolaistic influence in his first novel, La Barraca , or TheCabin, which paints peasant life in the region of Valencia, studiedat first hand and probably from personal knowledge. It is not avery spacious scheme, but in its narrow field it is strictly a novela de costumbres , or novel of manners, as we used tocall the kind. Ibañez has in fact never written anything but novelsof manners, and La Barraca pictures a neighborhood where astranger takes up a waste tract of land and tries to make a homefor himself and family. This makes enemies of all his neighbors whoafter an interval of pity for the newcomer in the loss of one ofhis children return to their cruelty and render the placeimpossible to him. It is a tragedy such as naturalism alone canstage and give the effect of life. I have read few things sotouching as this tale of commonest experience which seems as trueto the suffering and defeat of the newcomers, as to the stupidinhumanity of the neighbors who join, under the lead of theevillest among them, in driving the strangers away; in fact I knownothing parallel to it, certainly nothing in English; perhaps The House with the Green Shutters breathes as great ananguish.
At just what interval or remove the novel which gaveIbañez worldwide reputation followed this little tale, I cannotsay, and it is not important that I should try to say. But it isworth while to note here that he never flatters the vices or eventhe swoier virtues of his countrymen; and it is much to their honorthat they have accepted him in the love of his art for thesincerity of his dealing with their conditions. In Sangre yArena his affair is with the cherished atrocity which keeps theSpaniards in the era of the gladiator shows of Rome. The hero, asthe renowned torrero whose career it celebrates, from hisfirst boyish longing to be a bull-fighter, to his death, weakenedby years and wounds, in the arena of Madrid, is something absolutein characterization. The whole book in fact is absolute in itsfidelity to the general fact it deals with, and the persons of itspowerful drama. Each in his or her place is realized with an artwhich leaves one in no doubt of their lifelikeness, and keeps eachas vital as the torrero himself. There is little of thehumor which relieves the pathos of Valdés in the equal fidelity ofhis Marta y Maria or the unsurpassable tragedy of Galdós inhis Doña Perfecta . The torrero's family who havedreaded his boyish ambition with the anxiety of good common people,and his devotedly gentle and beautiful wife, – even his bullyingand then truckling brother-in-law who is ashamed of his professionand then proud of him when it has filled Spain with his fame, – aremade to live in the spacious scene. But above all in her lust forhim and her contempt for him the unique figure of Doña Solastounds. She rules him as her brother the marquis would rule amistress; even in the abandon of her passion she does not admit himto social equality; she will not let him speak to her in thee andthou, he must address her as ladyship; she is monstrous withoutceasing to be a woman of her world, when he dies before her in thearena a broken and vanquished man. The torrero is morallybetter than the aristocrat and he is none the less human though amere incident of her wicked life, – her insulted and rejectedworshipper, who yet deserves his fate. Sangre y Arena is abook of unexampled force and in that sort must be reckoned thegreatest novel of the author, who has neglected no phase of hisvaried scene. The torrero's mortal disaster in the arena isno more important than the action behind the scenes where the goredhorses have their dangling entrails sewed up by the primitivesurgery of the place and are then ridden back into the amphitheatreto suffer a second agony. No color of the dreadful picture isspared; the whole thing passes as in the reader's presence beforehis sight and his other senses. The book is a masterpiece far inadvance of that study of the common life which Ibañez calls LaHorda ; dealing with the horde of common poor and thoseaccidents of beauty and talent as native to them as to the classescalled the better. It has the attraction of the author's frankhandling, and the power of the Spanish scene in which the actionpasses; but it could not hold me to the end.
It is only in his latest book that he transcends theSpanish scene and peoples the wider range from South America toParis, and from Paris to the invaded provinces of France withcharacters proper to the times and places. The Four Horsemen ofthe Apocalypse has not the rough textures and rank dyes of thewholly Spanish stories, but it is the strongest story of the greatwar known to me, and its loss in the Parisian figures is made morethan good in the novelty and veracity of the Argentinos who supplythat element of internationality which the North American novelistsof a generation ago employed to give a fresh interest to theirwork. With the coming of the hero to study art and make love in theconventional Paris, and the repatriation of his father, a cattlemillionaire of French birth from the pampas, with his wife anddaughters, Ibañez achieves effects beyond the art of Henry James,below whom he nevertheless falls so far in subtlety and beauty.
The book has moments of the pathos so rich in thework of Galdós and Valdés, and especially of Emilia Pardo-Bazan inher Morriña or Home Sickness , the story of a peasantgirl in Barcelona, but the grief of the Argentine family for thedeath of the son and brother in battle with the Germans, has theappeal of anguish beyond any moment in La Catedral . I do notknow just the order of this last-mentioned novel among the storiesof Ibañez, but it has a quality of imagination, of poetic feelingwhich surpasses the invention of any other that I have read, andmakes me think it came before Sangre y Arena , and possiblybefore La Horda . I cannot recall any other novel of theauthor which is quite so psychological as this. It is in fact asort of biography, a personal study, of the mighty fane at Toledo,as if the edifice were of human quality and could have its lifeexpressed in human terms. There is nothing forced in the poeticconception, or mechanical in the execution. The Cathedral is notonly a single life, it is a neighborhood, a city, a world initself; and its complex character appears in the nature of thedifferent souls which collectively animate it. The first of theseis the sick and beaten native of it who comes back to the worldwhich he has never loved or trusted, but in which he was born andreared. As a son of its faith, Gabriel Luna was to have been apriest; but before he became a minister of its faith, it meantalmost the same that he should become a Carlist soldier, and fighton for that cause till it was hopeless. In his French captivity heloses the faith which was one with the Carlist cause, and inEngland he reads Darwin and becomes an evolutionist of the ardorwhich the evolutionists have now lost. He wanders over Europe withthe English girl whom he worships with an intellectual rather thanpassionate ardor, and after her death he ends at Barcelona in timeto share one of the habitual revolutions of the province and tospend several years in one of its prisons. When he comes out it isinto a world which he is doomed to leave; he is sick to death andin hopeless poverty; he has lost the courage of his revolutionaryfaith if not his fealty to it; all that he asks of the world isleave to creep out of it and somewhere die in peace. He thinks ofan elder brother who like himself was born in the precincts of theCathedral where generations of their family have lived and died,and his brother does not deny him. In fact the kind, dull gardenerwelc