Chapter XIV The Port of Columbus
The Scene is a bare height over a little town, white huddled with shard roofs. Coppery, the río Tinto widens and swirls through sands into the Gulf of Cádiz. Upon the height, stand two old men, bare-headed. They are clad in the gentility of their days. But the cloth is thread, the brocade is dim, the velvet shines and yellow is the lace. The one is tall. He holds behind his back, martially, an arm with a crippled hand. He is erect. His features are hard and large: only his mouth, too delicate and his eyes, tender and dark as a womb, belie the warrior. The second man is short. Beaked is his nose, and the eyes have a watery gleam. His hair is silken white above the swarthy skin. The tall man speaks:
CERVANTES—Why did you ask that I should meet you here?
COLUMBUS—This is Palos de la Frontera. [There is a pause in which with a hard hand he wipes his watery eyes.] From here the first time we sailed. Here, seven months later, we returned. Bringing back——
CERVANTES—A world.
COLUMBUS—Nay. Bringing back a Grave.
CERVANTES—[Regarding the town and not COLUMBUS’ words.]—Here, now, is nothing.
COLUMBUS—Look beyond the fat sands of the Gulf. Look beyond the sea.
[They stand in silence toward the west. The low sun swims above the brooding water, vaults the hard roofs, and lights the shabbiness of the watchers.]
COLUMBUS—[Nervously.] Well? Are you looking? Tell me what you see.
CERVANTES—I see America.
COLUMBUS—[Rubbing his hands in ironic satisfaction.] They robbed it of my name, because they thought I did not know what I had found. They robbed me of my kingdom, because they thought I aspired to be a king. Because my eyes kept watch, they are dim.
CERVANTES—I shall tell you, friend, what I see.
COLUMBUS—Be careful of your eyes!
CERVANTES—A City of White Towers! The men who live in it are little motes. Yet they uphold these Towers! And in their hand, they wield a golden weapon making them the world’s master.
COLUMBUS—Look sharp.
CERVANTES—They are not masters of themselves. They are full of chaos——
COLUMBUS—Spain?
CERVANTES—Within this serried, glittering Order—Chaos! Chaos of races, traditions, dreams. They are uneasy. They build the Towers higher. The Towers are high, in order to enclose them safely from their chaos. Towers of stone, machines of subtle iron—to shut out bloods, dreams, words, making this Confusion which they hate.
COLUMBUS—[Smiling shrewdly.] Are you looking at America, or Spain?
CERVANTES—They have lost sight of the True God. Yet they are full of God-hunger, of God-search. To their own works they turn—and worship God in these.
COLUMBUS—Look beyond: beyond the Towers.
CERVANTES—[Heeding only what he sees.] They ban new pioneers! Lusting for Unity they crush what is not One. They shut out thoughts which might rise loftier than the highest Towers.
COLUMBUS—[Chuckling.] Leap from your Spain, I tell you. Beyond the Towers——?
CERVANTES—Continents!
COLUMBUS—Now you hold me!
CERVANTES—What childish peoples, there! Beyond the Towers one can see them clearer, although they are the same as those beneath the Towers. Savages, who can not even speak, who can not even think—who spin about in quaint machines.
COLUMBUS—Where do you see them?
CERVANTES—Everywhere. Upon two Continents I see them, like an Itch on the rugose World. Yet within them, there is a world of Desire. I can hear their clamor; though they use words English, Spanish, Portuguese, I cannot read their reason. They are dumb as children.
COLUMBUS—They have their Inquisition, I suppose? They drive out the Infidel? They go to their Cathedrals, and would bind all men in Christ?
CERVANTES—Their names for these are different. And unlike Spain, I see that they have not succeeded.
COLUMBUS—[Quickened.] There is my hope! If I could go and tell them: therein is their hope! They shall not, like Spain, succeed.
CERVANTES—[Not turning.] Your voice rings glad?
COLUMBUS—Why should I not be glad? The New World is in them, underneath the Towers. When they have learned that they can not succeed: that all the Towers and all the machines and all the gold on earth can not crush down this unborn need in them for a true New World—then it will arise.
CERVANTES—[turns and looks at COLUMBUS.] You speak in Parables.
COLUMBUS—I am a practical man.
CERVANTES—I am sick of parables and stories.
COLUMBUS—Good. You want history? The Book of Moses—is that history enough for your hard sense? Well, do you recall how the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt? They too crossed a Sea. But did they come into their promised land, their new world flowing with milk and honey, when they had crossed the sea?
CERVANTES—Yes. After forty years.
COLUMBUS—You are a shallow reader. Not one came into the Promised Land—not even Moses! They went into the wilderness, and they died. From Marah to the wilderness of Sin, from Horeb to the wilderness of Moab—they roamed, and rotted, and were dead forever! Not Aaron the Priest, not Miriam the mother, not Moses the Prophet came to the Promised Land. For it is written that the Seed shall die, ere Life may be reborn.
CERVANTES—[Incredulous.] If that is Death yonder across the sea, it is a death most stable and most splendid.
COLUMBUS—Death is the most sumptuous song. This golden-towered America is but the Grave of Europe.
CERVANTES—I do not understand.
COLUMBUS—What do you find there?
CERVANTES—Mighty stones——
COLUMBUS—Are not stones of Europe?
CERVANTES—Gold——
COLUMBUS—Is not gold a lust of the old world?
CERVANTES—Marvelous machines——
COLUMBUS—Did you, then, not know England, that you should think them new?
CERVANTES—Never with us were gold and stone and iron of so high a glory.
COLUMBUS—Does not Europe merit a high Sepulcher?
CERVANTES—Still you speak in parables, my friend.
COLUMBUS—[Testily.] What would you have me say? Teach me the words for the New World, if you have them! Since its gold and its stones and its machines are unknown to the Old, what words can the old tongues give us?
[CERVANTES looks in silence to the west, while the weak eyes of COLUMBUS watch him. Suddenly, CERVANTES clutches at the short man’s arm.]
CERVANTES—Look! Can’t you see?... No!... God, the Towers are falling!
COLUMBUS—Glory to Jehovah!
CERVANTES—They veer, they twist. They have sunk in this mire of men.
COLUMBUS—The Seed shall rot.
CERVANTES—They are a turmoil of blind maggots. Their world is become as were their souls—a quicksand. The gleaming Towers are gone!
COLUMBUS—Now shall be the birth of the World which I discovered.
CERVANTES—[Sternly gazes west in a deep silence. Then he turns to his friend.] Gone is the city. Continents of chaos. What shall rise?
COLUMBUS—The Dream of the Old World, at last—a New World!
CERVANTES—Spain?
COLUMBUS—Nay. Spain’s Grave is over there, with Europe’s.
CERVANTES—I shall believe your dim eyes. Tell me, mariner, what your dim eyes see.
COLUMBUS—[With a laugh.] Then keep your sharp eyes westward.
CERVANTES—[He turns again, complying, to the west.] It is easy to look away from Spain, when one has loved Spain.
COLUMBUS—You shall not be alone, in loving Spain.
CERVANTES—Prophetic Spain.
COLUMBUS—Spain which, creating life, has never lived.
CERVANTES—Her fields are shrunken and her eyes are hot.
COLUMBUS—God has begotten on her, and He has passed her by.
CERVANTES—She is a mother.
COLUMBUS—A mother of beginnings.
CERVANTES—Always the Seed in her—never the life itself?
COLUMBUS—It was ever so. When Rome lived, Spain did not live in Rome: she bore her Stoics and her Saints for Holy Rome. When Holy Rome was hale, Spain was not holy. She bore, with her Jews and Arabs, the death of Christ. When Holy Rome was dead and Modern Europe flourished, Spain was not modern and Spain was not Europe. She bore America.
CERVANTES—Europe has used my mother! Even you, landless mariner, have used her.
COLUMBUS—God has used her.
CERVANTES—Why then are her fields hungry?
COLUMBUS—All worlds have come in, unto her: of all worlds, she has begotten worlds. And she has lain untouched.
CERVANTES—My tragic mother.
COLUMBUS—[Suddenly remembering and exalted.] But the White Towers have toppled. Ready, Spain! You must stir again. You must give again. Europe has rotted at last into the Grave they called America. Your work is not quite done. You, most broken mother of all Europe, you have preserved a Seed.
... [CERVANTES has turned from the west, and facing inland, kneels. COLUMBUS does not heed him.]
COLUMBUS—Your spirit, Spain. They above all will need it, in the north: they whose speech is English and who have led in the building of the Towers which are the Grave of Europe. For it is written that these shall also lead in the birth of the true New World—the true America which I discovered. Let them see you, Spain; let them take from you, O mother. For their spirit is weak and childish. They are cowards, not masters, before life. But you, Spain, dared to be what you believed: you knew the wisdom of what small men call “madness.” You dared to make of life itself the Body of your Vision, the Word of your Prayer. You did not flinch, proud Spain, from being laughed at—from being wrong—from being right! Give to the New World now your spirit, that it may surpass you.
[There is a silence, Columbus still facing west, while his comrade kneels toward Spain.]
CERVANTES—[Still kneeling and praying.] I understand, my mother, why we have always loved Our Lady. What this man says is true. Unpossessed, you have borne a Word. And the Word, even as Christ unto His mother, has turned and has denied you.
COLUMBUS—[Lifting CERVANTES up.] Look again. You are sure? The White Towers—?
CERVANTES—[Rises and looks again westward, standing beside COLUMBUS.] The City of Towers is gone.
As they gaze in silence, CERVANTES seeing, COLUMBUS
understanding, the sun goes down in the sea. And
over their shoulders to the east, the sky is
suddenly aflame with sunrise.
FINIS
1921-1925
Notes
1 The so prevalent notion that in Mohammedanism women have no souls and cannot gain heaven is false.
2 To the west, sprawls another Fez which the old ruler would not know. This is Fez-el-Djidid—Fez the New—a Fez of the sixteenth century. It is a squat, chalk town filled with Bedouin types—Syrians, Arabs, Negroes, Spaniards, Jews: a conglomerate of squalid shops and louche cafés. It is like Tangiers, the invaded and corrupted Moorland. Farther west, there is a third Fez—still stranger. Here are a railroad station, a wireless tower, and a garnison for “Frankish” troops. Since 1911—this visitation of the wrath of Allah.
3 One of a family tracing descent from Mohammed.
4 Mohammed is generally supposed not to have been able to read; and his Chapters, brought to him haphazard by the angel Gabriel, were dictated to his disciples. These chapters (Suras) were not compiled until after the Prophet’s death.
5 As mathematics becomes non-Euclidean, it tends toward the religious. In place of the pagan straight-line, we have the geodesic-line which meets its source and completes a body for gravitational and inertial forces.
6 “The Iberians are the most warlike of all the barbarians.” Thucydides.
7 The native women of Seville.
8 Italian imitations of Tirso were innumerable. Doubtless through them Molière took his turn. Mozart, Byron, Zorrilla followed. Among the moderns who have rewritten him is Rostand. Tirso’s real name is Gabriel Téllez (1571?-1648).
9 The desire to conform with foreign notions has produced a Spanish export in which the true genius of the Spanish dance is lost. To see Seville or Córdoba, you must go to Andalusia. To see the Andalusian dance, you must do likewise.
10 Of the many explanations for this strange use of flamenco, that of Federico de Onís strikes me as plausible. He believes that flamenco was first applied to the dress of Flemish courtiers of Carlos I. Nobles of Spain imitated these styles; the people of Andalusia finally adopted them, and so at last flamenco was applied to the song and dance accompanying a style.
11 To the reader who fears the difficulty of the old Spanish, I recommend a modern Castilian version of this perennial poem in which none of the flavor is lost: it is by Alfonso Reyes, the Mexican poet, and is published in the Collección Universal of Madrid.
12 It must not be forgotten that the Jesuits of France who contributed so greatly to the creation of the Catholic strongholds of Canada were the instruments of a spirit and of a method born in Spain.
13 Must I assure the reader that this is pure legend? The historical Cid was probably raiding “on his own” in Valencia when his king, who had exiled him, entered Toledo.
14 El Gréco: ou Le Secret de Tolède.
15 Author of the authoritative life of El Greco, and one of the world’s few truly great art critics.
16 Like many other major works of art, the Escorial has its imperfections. The murals on the vaults of the Church are absurd; the murals in the cloisters of the Patio de Los Evangelistas are monstrous; and the pretty interiors of many of the Palace chambers are impertinent. But the blame for these defects does not lie with Philip II: they are the deed of successors. There is another flaw in the Escorial more significant, and miraculously appropriate. It is the presence of the San Marcial of El Greco in the Salas Capitulares. Philip ordered this painting; and when it was delivered he disliked it and refused it admission. The story goes that El Greco insisted on being paid. Philip paid him and thrust the work into the cellar. It is customary, on this point, to make sport of the bad taste of the King. El Greco is the greatest of Spanish painters; the San Marcial is perhaps his greatest picture. But Philip was right. This luminous and parabolic life did not belong in the frozen rigor of El Escorial. Today it serves with its gyrant aspirant forms to offset the brooding stillness in which it lives: a flame in an impenetrable night.
17 The relatively great importance of honor to women in all lands is perhaps to be explained by analogue. The inherent social sense in women (beyond the family sense) is weaker than in men: hence their need of social approval is the more intense.
18 There was of course Ramón Lull, the great scholastic poet and mystic of Majorca.
19 A. S. Oko, the Hebrew scholar, is certain that the original was in Italian. José Ortega y Gasset, Professor of metaphysics in the University of Madrid, assured me of his personal conviction that an original Castilian MS. was lost.
20 A mighty lineage of masters who made of the Castilian an immortal language. Among them are the Dominican Luis de Granada; the Franciscans Juan de los Angeles, Diego de Estella, San Pedro de Alcántara; the Carmelites San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa, Jerónimo Gracián, Miguel de la Fuente; the Augustinians Malon de Chaide, Alonzo de Orozco; and the Jesuits Nieremberg (Juan Eusebio) and Alonzo Rodríguez.... At the same time a literary æsthetic was developed (Ausias March, Fernando de Herrera de Sevilla) whose creative liberality rings refreshingly modern, beside the poetics of Boileau. Writes Herrera: “So long as a language lives and is spoken, it cannot be said to have run its course: for its constant tendency is to surpass itself and to leave behind what was formerly esteemed. We must constantly essay new forms....” This was the spirit which made possible El Greco and Góngora and Cervantes. It was one outcome of the monasteries and of the religious universities of the Age of Isabel. It proves how strong, in a way, the Renaissance was in Spain until the reactionary time of Philip II.
21 The Jansenist belief in predestination and the Jesuit doctrine of free will appear to contradict this. The paradox is only of the surface. Acceptance of predestination and of pre-determined grace rests on acceptance of the inviolable autonomy of the individual soul and minimizes all objective—i. e., social—effect on it. The Jesuit free will actually puts the stress on possible change in the individual soul through social forces, thus minimizing the soul’s autonomy. That this interpretation is correct is borne out by the developments of Jesuit practice on the one hand and of French-Calvinist-Protestant cultures on the other.
22 “When we lose our dominions, it will be said: You came here to evangelize and to commit outrage. It will not be said: You came here to mine coal.” Angel Ganivet.
23 It must be added that this realistic art, and this realistic Europe, are doomed today. Cézanne, a disciple of El Greco, marks the turn of the tide, in the domain of painting.
24 I hope it will be clear that in these parallels I am suggesting not identity but analogy. Elements of the Renaissance and of the modern world definitely distinguish these Spaniards from the true medievals. The beauty and the irony of the Spanish scene lies precisely in this.
25 The elements which go to the making of a great corrida in Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, Zaragoza, San Sebastián, are intricate and varied. If any of them fails, the consummation fails. The rearing of perfect bulls is a science in Spain. Only a few preëminent ranches—ganaderías de toros bravos—are equipped to supply them. They are either in the province of Salamanca or in Andalusia. The toreros study the bulls in the field, coöperating in their upbring. Experts breed and train them, and prepare them for their supreme moment in the sun of the arena. And before the conflict, they are examined by veterinary surgeons. If they are one jot less than perfect, they may not enter the ring of a true corrida. They are then consigned to the corridas de novilleros: the innumerable encounters of the apprentice fighters—who must go through several seasons and win the applause of the most exacting critics ere they are admitted to the rank of espada.
Yet despite this care, imperfect bulls (bulls who refuse to fight, who fight erratically, who flinch at crucial moments) do enter the best corrida and blot out the artistry of the most expert matador. Indeed, the skill of the torero lies in great measure in his ability to control the bull. The genuine artist must possess hypnotic power. He must compel him in the instant of confrontation to forget the multitude, the flashing capas, the banderillas that bite his flesh: to concentrate upon his own frail grace all the bull’s hate and all the bull’s vigor. He must compel a brute to be the partner of an exquisite dancer.
He must control his own body as perfectly as any artist on a stage. Utter purity of form, of pace, of measure must be preserved within this threat of death. There is no virtuosity like this in all the world. Beyond is the crowd, not at all loth to seeing him undone: before him, his colleague, is a maddened bull whose horns are more terrible than swords. He must control the crowd; he must model the lunges of the brute into the design of an essential dance. And all this he must do in coolness.
The torero who can achieve this, not one time in a career but with reasonable frequency, and before the most savagely critical—and the most savage—audience in the world, comes not often in a decade’s passing. Most toreros are at the mercy of the bull. If he behaves they acquit themselves with credit. If he baulks, they must trust to luck—to the saving capas of the banderilleros—even to their heels. Hisses are more frequent in the plaza than cheers.
All artists must labor against the inclement will of their materials. The temper of the bull, the action of the cuadro de banderilleros, the mood of the crowd present the common problem of technique. What distinguishes the art of the torero is the immediacy of death. If the dancer slips, he fails and that is all: if the acrobat misses, he lands in a net: if the actor forgets his line, he hears the prompter. If the torero makes a false step, he is dead.
And the corrida will go on without him! for he is never alone. But he is alone with his skill and with his nerve. The slightest trace of haste or sign of fear will spoil the pure line of his style. If for an instant he breaks from the perfection of his pose to save his life, he loses his art. And if in that moment he elects rather to hold to his art, he may not live to reap its glory.
In recent years, two toreros of genius have arisen in Spain. One, Joselito, died on the horns of the bull: and the corrida went on despite the mourning of the nation. Joselito shared with Belmonte the summit of his art. He was an Apollonian classicist. Chance and inspiration were reduced to a minimum. He had control over the brute: but it appeared to be less of hypnosis than of reason. He operated on the bull with so cool an accuracy that the infuriated beast was soothed into an obedient opposition to the torero. Joselito was exact, unostentatious. But when he had coupled with his enemy, his art became ornate. He moved facilely, he gave delicate steps. When he was killed in Valencia, Spain lost the most exquisite if not the profoundest of her tragic dancers.
Nature has aided Belmonte with its abstruse law of compensation for inferiorities. In this abnormally frail body live courage, rhythmic articulation, dionysian gesture. When Belmonte steps out to meet his bull the mind falls into heroic channels. For the head is brooding. And when, as once when I saw him, there is a white bandage across the brow with a touch of blood upon it, the effect is magic.
Belmonte at his worst is an ugly boy vaguely at odds with an unwieldy task. At his best, he is the propounder of rapture. He does not abstract the individuality of the bull like Joselito, and then perform his cold objective art. He measures the foe. He accepts him as he is. He plunges into the bull’s fury. And thence, he rises to his high victory. There is always a moment in Belmonte’s act when he is lost. The crowd gasps. Gone altogether beneath the fury of the brute, he emerges. His body sways in the prepossessive grace of one who has come through death. His art is perhaps greater than that of Joselito because its content is greater. Joselito excluded from his victory the reality of defeat. Psychologically, he crushed his foe first, and then worked on him at ease. Belmonte begins by submitting to the bull’s might. And then, from this submission of the man, from this faltering of the god, he creates a form sculpturally superb.
26 In the winter of 1924 the Dictator of Spain, Primo de Rivera, on his own initiative conferred the municipal suffrage upon women. They did not agitate for it; and it seems clear that if they exercise this new privilege it will be in the same spirit of compliance with which they accede to all the demands of men.
27 This statement is not literally correct. The Basques became eminent navigators in the sixteenth century; their American settlements ranged from Canada to the Argentine. Yet, intellectually and spiritually, they remained, as a people, rooted.
28 The Basque language.
29 The bookies serve as middlemen between the individual bettors. Each bookie has a little rubber ball with a hole. In this hole, he places a slip of paper declaring the odds of the moment, and by tossing the ball to the man who has laid odds and to the man who has taken him on, the bet is established. The true pelota fan does not wager once: he wagers a dozen times as the game progresses: he concocts an intricate system of varying odds: his mind is on the betting and his balance: he is aware of the game only as the machine that automatically shifts the chances. Indeed, to go to a pelota match and observe the game, and refrain from betting, is so anomalous as to attract attention. The sport is still there: the Basque players enact it: but the Spanish public does not participate.
30 Born 1870.
31 Born 1874.
32 Born 1875.
33 Born 1881.
34 Another remarkable expression of this state is the Valencian Gabriel Miró (born 1879). Miró makes gorgeous word-tapestries of legendary life, such as the Mystery of Christ. In his prose are lurid and elementary colors that suggest some medieval canvas protected for ages from the sun, together with pale modern water-tints of psychological introspection.
35 Ramón, as he calls himself, was born in 1891. His works already fill sixty volumes. And yet his true artistic unit is the paragraph—when it is not the sentence or the phrase.
36 1873-1874.
37 1839-1915.
38 1865-1898.
39 Born, 1864.
40 To go beyond Unamuno—into the present constructive period of Spain’s waking, into the transition from her “old ordered sleep” to the new ordered consciousness now dawning, would be to turn this chapter into a discussion of writers and young literary movements: and this would be to digress from the formal province of my book. Since Unamuno answered Ganivet, there have arisen leaders in æsthetic and social criticism, in the novel, in the drama, in the field of creative erudition, whose aggregate work makes the contemporary literature of Spain perhaps the most pregnant of the West. I regret that this is not the place to analyze these younger men. The modern writers whom I have mentioned at all I have chosen arbitrarily for the distinct formal purpose of my portrait of Spain. It must be understood that whereas I consider them important, I have been silent about others equally important. Throughout, I have felt called on, no more to discuss all of Spain’s great men, than to describe all her cities.
41 A third name might be added: that of Manuel de Falla, Spain’s leading composer and a pure Andalusian, also. Falla in tonal structures hard, fluid, irreducible, conveys into æsthetic form elements of life that are very close to those which we shall consider in Picasso and Jiménez. He may be said to recreate the body of Andalusian folk-song, as Picasso recreates physical shapes and Jiménez physical sensations, into a new arabesque.
42 I—at least—know of no Forms, in the east, so great as (to choose haphazard) the Medieval Church of Rome, the Gothic Cathedral, Dante’s Poem, the music of Palestrina and of Bach, the Ethic of Spinoza. Yet the concepts in these Forms are invariably of the east.
43 Æsthetic creation is an act from the unitary self upon the objective world. It is the contrary of analysis which breaks up that world—unreally. But analysis may precede creation, if the elements broken up by it are reabsorbed and fused into a new subjective unity.
44 Born in 1881.