The Araucaniad

Alonso De Ercilla Y Zuniga, Paul Thomas Manchester, Charles Maxwell Lancaster

Description

Now back in print! The first English translation of this epic masterpiece of Chilean poetry.

Sujets

• Latin American Studies
• Hispanic
• Poetry
• American
• Latino

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826590039
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Araucaniad
A version in english poetry of Alonso De Ercilla y Zúñiga's

Alonso de Ercilla Y Zuniga
Charles Maxwell Lancaster
Paul Thomas Manchester
Copyright 1945 THE VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS NASHVILLE, TENN.
9780826590039
Table of Contents
Title Page Copyright Page Dedication HIGH FLIGHT PREFACE INTRODUCTION TO THE ARAUCANIAD ALONSO DE ERCILLA’S DEDICATION TO PHILIP THE SECOND OF SPAIN - TO HIS ROYAL HOLY CATHOLIC MAJESTY PROLOGUE OF ALONSO DE ERCILLA ALONSO DE ERCILLA’S DECLARATION CONCERNING SOME THINGS IN THIS WORK THE ARAUCANIAD - PART ONE
CANTO I CANTO II CANTO III CANTO IV CANTO V CANTO VI CANTO VII CANTO VIII CANTO IX CANTO X CANTO XI CANTO XII CANTO XIII CANTO XIV CANTO XV
THE ARAUCANIAD - PART TWO
DEDICATION OF THE SECOND PART - (SACRED S. C. R. A. CATHOLIC ROYAL MAJESTY) CANTO XVI CANTO XVII CANTO XVIII CANTO XIX CANTO XX CANTO XXI CANTO XXII CANTO XXIII CANTO XXIV CANTO XXV CANTO XXVI CANTO XXVII CANTO XXVIII CANTO XXIX
THE ARAUCANIAD - PART THREE
DEDICATION OF THE THIRD PART - TO THE KING, OUR LORD CANTO XXX CANTO XXXI CANTO XXXII CANTO XXXIII CANTO XXXIV CANTO XXXV CANTO XXXVI CANTO XXXVII
DEDICATION TO JOHN SPEIER MANCHESTER,
Bomber pilot of the United States Navy Air Force, who, on the twelfth of November, nineteen hundred and forty-four, at Manila Bay, gave his life to glory, and in the hall of American heroes received his immortal wings.
HIGH FLIGHT
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never lark, or even eagle, flew; And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
—John Gillespie Magee, Jr. ( The New York Herald - Tribune )
PREFACE
The lack of an English version of the great epic literature of Chile has long been felt by students of literature and history. In presenting for the first time a complete version in English poetry of Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem La Araucana, the authors feel a pride pardonable, they hope, in having been the first to gather and add to the muses’ hoard the earliest fruits of Chile’s epic harvest. The publication of similarly executed English versions of Pedro de Oña’s Arauco Domado and of Álvarez de Toledo’s Purén Indómito will complement this work, which in the original is the sublimest expression of the cultural heritage of Latin America. The authors have already completed Arauco Tamed , and are at work on Purén Indomitable . These three works combined should constitute a strong link in the spiritual union of all the republics of this hemisphere.
The Araucaniad faithfully recreates the martial and picturesque atmosphere of the State of Arauco and the fervor of the conquistadores. The authors have sought to capture the spirit, the poetic vigor, and the beauty of imagery of the soldier-poet’s creation, rather than to ladle out for pedantic critics a pot-pourri of literal drivel neither English nor Spanish, neither the penny jewel of jingling verse, nor the infecund pebble of polished prose.
The metre chosen, trochaic tetrameter, has two justifications. It is the heroic metre used in Finland’s national epic, The Kalevala , and it is also the Hiawatha metre, which like a plashing waterfall sings in the ears of America the immemorial romance of the Indian.
We wish to express our gratitude to Peabody College, Scarritt College, and Vanderbilt University for subsidizing the publication of this long poem. We have been greatly heartened by the enthusiastic cooperation of Chancellor Oliver Cromwell Carmichael of Vanderbilt University, President Hugh C. Stuntz of Scarritt College, and President John E. Brewton of Peabody College, whose deep interest in Pan-American solidarity is here given visible expression. We are indebted to Mr. Marion Junkin of Vanderbilt University for the frontispiece and for the benefit of his artistic supervision of the arrangement of this book. Research in Chilean literary history has been facilitated by grants-in-aid from the Research Committee of the Humanities Division of Vanderbilt University.
Legend has it that, although French, German, and Dutch versions of La Araucana have been widely known, other authors, attempting an English translation of the 21,072 lines of Ercilla’s masterpiece, have flagged in the race, one committing suicide and another going insane; but the kind words of encouragement given us by men of accredited good judgment have been to us quickening draughts of God-speed. These men are Dr. J. D. M. Ford of Harvard University; Dr. L. S. Rowe, Director of the Pan-American Union; Mr. John Heard, Editor of Poet Lore; Mr. Dudley Wynn, Editor of The New Mexico Quarterly Review; Professor John Crowe Ransom, Editor of The Kenyon Review; Dr. John M. Hill of Indiana University; Dr. Sturgis Leavitt of the University of North Carolina, Sr. Arturo García Formentí, Rector of the University of Sinaloa, Mexico; Dean Philip Davidson, Mr. Hill Turner, Dr. C. F. Zeek, Dr. Walter Clyde Curry and Professor Donald Davidson of Vanderbilt University.
Selections from The Araucaniad have appeared in the following publications:

World Affairs, 1941.
Our Heritage of World Literature , The Dryden Press, 1942.
The American Weekly , 1943.
The New Mexico Quarterly Review , 1943.
The Peabody Reflector , 1943.
Poet Lore , 1945.
C. M. L. P. T. M.
INTRODUCTION TO THE ARAUCANIAD
Three tomes of gold-spun verse were saved from the bonfire of Don Quijote’s library by the priest’s passing judgment: “Preserve them as the finest jewels in Spain’s diadem of poetry.” The Knight of the Woeful Countenance had delved into the shining deeds of Palmerín and Amadís de Gaula, and his brain was seared with the flickering flame of medieval chivalry, to him the flame of a deathless torch.
Metric romances and epic poems, burgeoning in Homeric style and bound by Aristotelian rules, had passed their heyday when Cervantes, even though recognizing the positive historical worth of Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana, changed for all future time the epic poem into the modern novel. The fabulous legends of Bernardo del Carpio and the fantastic scenes adorning Tasso’s story of the First Crusade had become taboo to the priest, the barber, and the housekeeper. The simple and familiar verse of Ercilla, telling of his compatriots’ real deeds of valiance, had in faithful historical narrative epitomized and destroyed the classic epic, as through his Don Quijote, Cervantes was to “laugh away” the high-flown romances of anointed knighthood and derring-do.
Small wonder that Spain received with enthusiasm Ercilla’s maiden effort, a poetic narrative of the conquistadors’ struggle with the untamed savages of Arauco! Both court and public were satiated with rhapsodists and romancers “beating a dead donkey and calling him Pegasus.” How natural it was for readers, craving a new exoticism, to wait avidly for the publication of the second and third volumes of a soldier’s epic, recapturing a magic world where reputedly El Dorado bathed in gold-dust, where the earth shook and opened to swallow men, where the mountains belched hot death, and fierce, freedom-loving Indians breasted the steel of “civilization” on the march! Nor is it strange that when Cervantes spoke so highly of La Araucana , it had already gone through seventeen editions. Hence we may understand today why it is known in fifty standard editions, and has been translated into French, German, and Dutch.
An endless series of polemics followed its publication. Critics debated for centuries over its classic qualities, its epic dimensions, the taste and elegance of its rime and diction, the authenticity of the narrative, and Ercilla’s unprecedented audacity in putting a modern eye-witness account of actual happenings into a poem of epic grandeur. In Spain and throughout Latin America La Araucana served as model for numerous historical poems treating of American themes during the colonial period. Lope de Vega’s auto sacramental , also entitled La Araucana, and his play, Arauco Domado , head a long list of Spanish versions of Ercilla’s original opus. Romances, plays, and novels based on plots, characters, and incidents taken from this first great poetic production concerning the Americas, have appeared in large numbers through the centuries.
Fragments of the poem in translation were widely known in Europe during the eighteenth century, and it became the subject of many essays discussing its epic merits and shortcomings. Voltaire compared Colocolo’s speech in Canto II with Nestor’s harangue in The Iliad: “In this passage Ercilla surpasses Homer.” The liberties taken by Ercilla elicited denunciation as well as praise. Homer in his Iliad had not neglected the glories of a fallen enemy, stingless and buried before his time, but never before had a poet consecrated his enduring masterpiece to the immortalization of an unvanquished race of fighting foes. For the first time a great soldier-poet sang in epic measures of what he himself had seen, and used the spontaneous and natural language