Chapter XIV Literature and Art
As in most young countries, the Muses have in Argentina and Uruguay had to be content chiefly with the imported offerings of foreign writers, artists and composers; while native science has principally been confined to medicine and surgery and various branches of rural productiveness. Still the River Plate Territories have always had their historians and poets, and recent generations have produced some painters, sculptors and composers.
The Histories of Mitre and Araújo are admirable literary monuments to the glory of the River Plate Territories and the memory of their authors. The poetry of the lately deceased Guido y Spano and of the still living Zorrilla de San Martin occupies a deservedly high place in modern literature; while the names of Juan Cruz Varela, José Mármol and José Hernandez (the author of the Lyrics of Gaucho life published under the title of “Martin Fierro”) will ever remain household words on the River Plate.
Godofredo Daireaux and Leopoldo Lugones are typical and delightful writers whose sketches are faithful vignettes of the manners and customs, landscapes and sentiment of a century and half a century ago, of times of heroic battles and early peaceful progress. For the rest, one must, with the Muses, wait with such patience as one may for the appearance of National types of literature and art; types probably only to be formed when the National types of men and women have reached their fully distinct development out of existing cosmopolitan chaos. At present Argentine and Uruguayan Art and Literature47 are chiefly imitative; music, painting and novels being mostly exaggerations of, often not the best, ephemeral European taste and fashions, while architecture usually alternates fidelity to stucco with trivially fantastic French “Villa” and “Château” styles.
Novelists seek to make one’s flesh creep; Painters to outvie either incomprehensibility or banality; Architects achieve futility and Musicians are reminiscent of everything except the sad charm of melody which is their natural inheritance, through the Payadores, from Moorish Spain. The old intervals and harmonies are carefully eschewed in favour of anything, no matter what, which may seem to have a piquant flavour of “art nouveau.”
Nevertheless, nature sometimes will out and the old-time moods now and again penetrate the covering of pseudo-Viennese melody and modern Italian harmonies under which the composer has sought to hide his natural gifts and atavistic inspiration.
It is only in the theatre that the true native genius is allowed full play. Some of the real Argentine dramas and comedies are refreshingly delightful in their truth of characterization, sentiment and humour. All is of the soil, true to type and racy. But such things are only played at minor houses and in rural districts. Fashion knows them not, nor desires to know them, while Italian and French operatic and dramatic companies hold the boards of the leading theatres at prices which make it quite obligatory for all the best people to be seen frequently in their boxes or stalls. Still the minor theatre is the casket of the one true jewel in Argentine Art which shines with its inherent native brilliance.
Unless, perhaps, florid oratory may be termed an Art. If so, it is one which has a wide vogue throughout South America. Few events are there allowed to pass without lengthy and vigorous “Discursos”; the real or simulated passion of which rings strangely false in Anglo-Saxon ears. Much virtue, however, lies in accepted convention, and the South American sees nothing comic or discordant in a frock-coated orator doing his best to turn over a sheaf of manuscript with one hand whilst he indulges in what to us is painfully exaggerated gesticulation with the rest of his body. On the contrary, the bravas of the audience which punctuate the barn-storming enunciation of the most high-flown sentiments are evidently and whole-heartedly sincere expressions of admiration for, at least, the speaker’s mastery of the declamatory art. Discursos are, in South America, the inevitable accompaniment of every event of any mark, from a funeral to the announcement of a dividend.
It is part of the Hero Worship which has so large a place in the Latin nature. A worship none the less fervent because the enjoyment of it by its living object is frequently as brief as it must be sweet. Once dead, of course, a hero is one for ever if he have attained his niche at some prominent period of his country’s history. Great Presidents live perennially in the knowledge of every school child, and one bad one is still honoured by reference to his name and attributes in the comic journals whenever an unflattering comparison to a living politician is sought. Rozas and Artígas have their true meed of mingled praise and blame.
But all this digresses from the heading of this chapter; through, perhaps, an unconscious effort on the author’s part to eke out an as yet somewhat barren subject.
The truth is that no country nor individual has ever produced much art of any account during its or his infancy. And Argentina and Uruguay are still in the barely adolescent stage of their economic and political development. The many sympathetic, though often contrasted, characteristics of the true Argentine and Uruguayan hold out, however, good hope for artistic achievement in the future. The facts that Argentina has already one truly native sculptress of more than mediocre talent in Lola Mora, and one master of the art of word-painting in illustration of the old-world charm of some of the people and scenery of various distant parts of the Republic in Leopoldo Lugunes must not be lost sight of. Nor must the further one that the poetic spirit of the past which still broods over the wide Pampa has been caught and crystallized by Godofredo Daireaux in his Tipos y Paisages Argentinos and other delicate allegories and sketches. The River Plate awaits a native W. C. Cable to write a rosary of tales of the Old Colonial Days of the Puerto de Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires, of Vice-Regal balls, of high-combed, mantilla-coifed and beflounced belles in seringa and orange blossom scented gardens; of sighs and vows breathed between window bars; of times the politely veneered roughness of which has been softened for us by the haze of remoteness; a haze which soon will have produced complete obliteration if some living, understanding brain does not quickly record their outlines and fill these in with appropriate tints.
Someone will, must, do this. But no stranger. Only a native genius, daintily contemplative, can, as a labour of love, bring back to life the dolce far niente days of South America before its Colonists awakened to the shrill call of Liberty and Independence.
Footnotes
1 Tipos y Paisajes Argentinos, by Godofredo Daireaux.
2 Though see Mr. Herbert Gibson’s opinion, quoted later.
3 Still the following words, which occur in an anonymous work on Uruguay issued by authority of the Consulate-General of that country in London in 1883, are as essentially true to-day as they were then.
“It cannot too often be repeated that only two classes of emigrants are fitted for the New World: those who are accustomed to manual labour … and those who have capital to invest. Clerks and penmen should know to whom and in what capacity they are going.”
Argentines and Uruguayans can themselves supply all the book-learning and clerkly devices as yet needed on the River Plate.
[4] The chiripá, or primitive native substitute for trousers, is formed of a shawl-like blanket. This is wrapped round the loins, kilt-fashion; after which it is brought up between the legs, from back to front, and the end tucked through the girdle, to hang again down in front.
5 The first cattle on the River Plate Territories were seven cows and a bull, brought down through Paraguay from Brazil by two Portuguese, the brothers Cipriano and Vicente Goes.
6 The crop has been a good one as regards wheat. As regards maize, it is uncertain at the time of writing owing to some early rains.
7 In the case of each of these items Mr. Tornquist gives the facts and reasons on which his calculation has been based.
8 With the commencement of 1916, however, capital is flowing into both countries from the United States for both public works and private enterprise.
9 The 1915-16 harvests are reported excellent.
10 Who concluded his term of office as President of the Republic in March, 1915.
11 See, e.g. Spanish, Llegar: Portuguese, Chegar.
12 In both countries Congress consists of a Senate and Chamber of Deputies. In Argentina the term of office of the President of the Republic is six years, in Uruguay four years.
13 Dr. Leopoldo del Campo, a high authority on Argentine Constitutional Law, once publicly stated that Provincial revolutions were sometimes stimulated by superior influences, with the idea of provoking the Presidential intervention.
14 A present breach of this custom has already been referred to.
15 Señor Batlle has now been succeeded in the Presidential chair by Dr. Viera, formerly his very able Minister of Finance.
16 A long, narrow, stone-paved court with the doors of single dwelling-rooms leading into it and a portal opening on to the street.
17 One immediate result of this in Argentina was a crop of private failures. The occurrence of these has since, however, steadily decreased in number. None at all were recorded during December, 1915. The year 1916 has begun in both countries with a good financial situation and a promising outlook.
18 The substance of this advice has recently been embodied in a Foreign Office Report.
19 The entry of Italy into the war has stopped this.
20 Already well begun. As will be seen from the latest statistics, given in another chapter.
[21] United States Banks have recently opened and are opening branches in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
22 These approximate figures relate to the three years immediately preceding the commencement of the war.
23 If the Province has lately found difficulty in paying the interest on its debt, this has been on account of large expenditure on Public Works; coupled with mismanagement of its large revenues.
24 In regard to the outlying Provinces it should always be borne in mind that the number of head of Live Stock possessed by them need not and usually does not afford any indication of value, for the farther one gets from Buenos Aires the less careful breeding one finds, and therefore the greater predominance of native cattle and sheep.
25 L’Argentine telle qu’elle est.
26 Native riding whip of solid hide, straight and tapering.
27 The boleadora consists of two or of three round stones encased in hide and attached, each by an independent thong, to the end of a lasso. The thongs with the stones are swung round the head and, suddenly released, twine themselves round the legs of the animal to be caught; which is thrown down by the jerk of the tightened lasso.
28 Monograph attached to Argentine Agricultural and Live Stock Census, 1908.
29 This is largely due to the heavy cost of transport even from the mines to the railway head at the City of San Juan.
30 The Jesuits also had settlements in Neuquen.
31 The National Government is now taking active steps to put Rivadavia petroleum on a sound commercial footing and has recently issued 5% Bonds to the value of 1¼ millions sterling for that purpose.
32 Those of Guayra, in Brazil, are rather rapids than falls.
33 This volume is subject to great fluctuations.
34 Mate seed must either be picked while it is very young and soft or else be chemically treated to soften it before planting.
35 Most of the sugar produced in these Northern Territories goes to make CAÑA, or native rum.
36 Prior to the War, Germany imported large quantities of Quebracho logs for extract-manufacturing and other tanning purposes.
37 The alarm caused by the realization of this menace has been fruitful of measures taken by breeders to maintain the increase of stock: and it is just to add that these measures are already showing good results.
38 Monograph attached to National Census, 1909.
39 It is to these newly born “hoppers” that the most rigorous sweeping and burning is usually applied. They present the greater facilities for this treatment, and are, as has been indicated, more destructive than their parents, who may be said to be at the end of life’s span when they arrive.
40 In Uruguay, the Ministry of Industries is concerned with all agricultural matters.
41 1000 hectares = 3861 square miles, and 1 hectare = 2·4711 (or a little less than 2½) acres.
42 At present most of these supplies go direct to Havre for the use of the allied troops.
43 Uruguay can still be roughly divided into two parts by drawing an almost straight line from, say, Mercedes on the River Uruguay to San Vicente on the Atlantic, the chief cereal areas lying south of this line, while the land north of it chiefly carries live stock.
44 At the moment of writing (February, 1916) the demand by the Allied Governments has become less.
45 A letter, received by the author during the preparation of this book, from one of the great Cold Storage Companies, says: “Much regret that we cannot give you any reliable information in regard to the Export Value (for 1914), and do not even care about hazarding a guess.”
46 It is only fair to add that lack of transport from the chief forestal areas at present offers economic difficulties.
47 Uruguayan literature is the less open to adverse criticism in this regard.