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Poetry in the second half of the nineteenth century 451

Literary polemics of the Restoration period: the end of lyric poetry

The clash between conservatives and liberals is in evidence in the literary polemics of the Restoration.6 The traditionalist Pedro Antonio de Alarcon defended, in his entrance speech to the Real Academia Espan˜ola in 1877, didactic art, while at the Ateneo, Manuel de la Revilla, a liberal with Republican tendencies, declared his support for art for art’s sake. Barely hidden within these polemics on Realism and Naturalism is an ideological debate. The status of lyric poetry and its possible inferiority to prose inspired Gaspar Nun˜ez de Arce to write on the topic in his speech entitled Del lugar que corresponde a la poesia lirica en la literatura moderna y juicio acerca de algunos de sus mas preclaros cultivadores (“The Place of Lyric Poetry in Modern Literature and an Evaluation of Some of its Most Prescient Cultivators,” 1887). Leopoldo Alas “Clar´ın” also addressed the topic in Folletos literarios IV. Mis plagios. Un discurso de Nunez de Arce (“Literary Pamphlet iv. My Plagiarism. A Speech by Nun˜ez de Arce,” 1888). These publications touch upon a theme which concerned not only Spaniards, and posed a fundamental question: faced with the new reality of science and progress, should poetry remain distant from the present and, with time, disappear completely? Melchor de Palau proposes that poetry should ally itself with science and become an expression of a natural and material reality, newly underscored by science. He put this new alliance into practice in his book Verdades poeticas. La poesia y la ciencia. A la geologia. El rayo. El polo drtico (“Poetic Truths. Poetry and Science. To Geology. The Ray. The Arctic Pole,” 1881). Joaqu´ın Mar´ıa Bartrina offers another point of view7 in his book Algo (“Something,” 1876). This poet, in accordance with the ideas of Nun˜ez de Arce, and using Becquer-style rhythms, writes in the poem “De omni re scibili”:

Todo lo se! Del mundo los arcanos ya no son para m´ı

Lo que llama misterios sobrehumanos el vulgo balad´ı . . . Mas ay! que cuando exclamo satisfecho:

Todo, todo lo se!

Siento aqu´ı en mi interior, dentro mi pecho, un algo. . . un no se que!

6 M. Lopez, “Los escritores de la Restauracion y las polemicas literarias del siglo XIX en

Espan˜a.” Bulletin Hispanique 81 (1979), pp. 51-74.

7 Jose-Carlos Mainer, “Del corazon y la cabeza: sobre la poes´ıa de Joaqu´ın M. Bartrina.” In

Pensamiento y literatura en Espaiia en el siglo XIX. Idealismo, positivismo, espiritualismo.

Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1998, pp. 110-122.

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452 The Forging of a Nation: The Nineteenth Century

(I know it all! Of this world secrets / are no longer to me / what are called supernatural mysteries / by a trivial layman. . . / But, ah, when I exclaim with satisfaction: / All, I know it all! /I feel within me, within my chest, / something. . . something I don’t know!)

This contradictory relationship with positivism and science in general arises from a Romantic feeling of loss. Federico Balart, poet and literary and art critic, in his essay El prosaismo en el arte (“Prosaism in Art,” 1893) reflected on Romanticism, Naturalism, and the relation between scientific knowledge and creation: “si el arte pudiera morir, el prosa´ısmo reinante ser´ıa su postrera enfermedad” (“if art could die, the prosaism that reigns today would be its last disease”).

Authors, works, and poetic genres

If we are to identify different moments in the poetry of the second half of the nineteenth century, the first would come as a result of the conservative backlash against liberal Romanticism that took place toward the middle of the century (1850-1854) and that translates in poetry as a type of sentimental Romanticism, represented by poets who should be regarded as predecessors to Becquer, although inferior to him (Jose Selgas, Antonio Arnao and Antonio de Trueba) and also inferior to other Becquer-inspired contemporaries such as Augusto Ferran, author of ha soledad (“Solitude,” 1861), or Ar´ıstides Pongilioni, author of Rdfagas poeticas (“Poetic Gusts,” 1865). Another key factor is the political instability of the period between 1868 and 1874. This shift is in evidence in Gritos del combate (“War Cries,” 1875) by Gaspar Nun˜ez de Arce. In his aforementioned 1887 speech, one finds a reference to “suspi-rillos germanicos” (“Germanic sighs”), directed not at Becquer but rather at the overly sentimental authors mentioned above suspected of having been too heavily influenced by German Romanticism. However, Nun˜ez de Arce, a revolutionary in 1854 and 1868, and an enemy of the Republic, found himself in 1874 amongst the supporters of the Bourbon Restoration of Alfonso XII and never again would be counted among the more progressive elements of the political spectrum led by Antonio Canovas del Castillo (followers, for example, of Ruiz Zorrilla or Castelar). As would be the case with Espronceda and other liberal-progressive writers between 1836 and 1842, Nun˜ez de Arce struggled with the contradictions and the evolution of Spain’s liberal bourgeoisie: he shied away from revolutionary ideals. Due to this, Nun˜ez de Arce would, as did Campoamor - albeit in a less politically compromised manner - document and define in his verses the limits of this bourgeoisie, whose moral horizon was becoming saturated with displays of anguish or religious doubt provoked by the miasmas del siglo (“miasmas of the century”): science, positivism,

• In his translations published in the newspaper El museo universal…

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 Poetry in the second half of the nineteenth century 453 And materialism. The moral abyss created by reason and a possible lack of religious beliefs is accompanied in Gritos del combate by attacks leveled at Darwinist and scientific philosophies, as well as at bloody

• Sister Luz, upon one day seeing Rosaura /marrying Blas, / “Oh, what…

(THE TWO WIVES. Sister Luz, upon one day seeing Rosaura /marrying Blas, / “Oh, what a handsome husband!-” she said. / “But mine is even more handsome!” / Later, she saw in the mortal’s bride / the laughter of love, / and, unable to prevent it, / the Lord’s wife

• Looking back over the century, the theatre tells a tale…

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 446 The Forging of a Nation: The Nineteenth Century One of the most notable, and not to be forgotten, characteristics of Spanish nineteenth-century drama is its penchant for parody, satire, and slapstick. High Art became, naturally, the subject of literary discourse, theatre criticism, and

• Coleccio´n de e´glogas e idilios realistas y de epigramas…

It is difficult to define Realist poetry in this period, even if it is done in a fashion as provisional and methodological as that proposed by Urrutia: “La poes´ıa realista es la que se escribe entre el final del romanticismo y This chapter has been translated from the Spanish by Matthieu

• He wrote eclogues (“Batilo,” 1780) and an abundance of odes. In all his work…

In a literary context it is possible to view erotic works like Samaniego’s Eljardin de Venus (“The Garden of Venus,” c. 1790) or Morat´ın’s Arte de las putas as yet another aspect of Neoclassicism, since allusions to Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, and Catullus abound. Equally present are contemporary philosophical and scientific