Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive/Literary Mexico: A Group of Novels
CHAPTER VII
LITERARY MEXICO: A GROUP OF NOVELS
Before leaving that domain of the picturesque to which its natural scenery and poetic expression belong, it may not be out of place to take a passing glance at the lighter literature of Mexico, as represented in the works of its better known novelists. Choosing, then, as specimens, three or four books from the somewhat limited list at the service of the reader, one is first struck by a certain number of general traits which form a foundation for the superstructures of differing styles and authors. There is, to begin with, an almost universal absence of the finer analytic and subjective writing. Character is painted broadly rather than by delicate touches of detail, and the motives of action are only suggested by the accomplishment of the act. There is a tendency towards epigrammatic terseness in sentence and paragraph; and, except in very rare cases, any close study of psychological phenomena in connection with the conduct of personages is left to the reader himself. He may form his own conclusions, or he may read his tale without drawing therefrom any moral. One finds invariably a deep admiration for nature, expressed in delicate word-painting of scenery, and loving reminiscences of favorite spots. The material environment is always luminous and forceful; there can never be any doubt, in this fine glow of local color, as to where the action of the drama is laid. And there is an immense impulse of patriotic spirit which seems, in spite of time and distance, to propel the author toward the days of revolution and struggle for his mise en scène. In the twelve novels we have chosen as a basis for observation, eleven are placed, as to time, amid the complications arising from the events of the years between 1860 and 1867. They might all be historic as well as the two which bear this distinctive title. The single exception is a chronicle of life and customs more than a hundred years ago.
For many reasons this exceptional story is of interest. Purporting to be the garrulous narrative of a man drawing near the limit of extreme age, and relating to children and grandchildren the history of his earlier career, it is as remarkable for minuteness of detail, as are its companion volumes for large generalizations. After the fashion of "Gil Bias," it is interspersed with accounts of the adventures of this or that comrade whom chance has brought into contact with the hero. With much less elegance of style than the celebrated story of Le Sage, it more than repairs this shortcoming by the purity of incident and superior moral tone which pervades its many chapters. With utmost exactness it relates the trivial incidents of infancy, childhood, and youth; each passing event is made the subject of a new disquisition. Mistakes of the time regarding the rearing of children, the sending out of the infant to nurse, the relegating of early training to servants and irresponsible persons, the absurd ignorance of the village schoolmaster, all receive their share of castigation. Laxness of discipline in seminary and college, the strange mingling of trivialities and superstitions which finally assumed the place of education, the misusages of society which condemned the offspring of well-to-do parents to the temptations of idleness, each has its own long chapter in the nine hundred pages of this interesting but endless volume. Life on the haciendas, with its private bull-ring, and slow recurring village festas; life in the city, its sole idea of amusement centering about the gambling-table, and the disgraceful orgy of the public ball; life in the home, languid, dull, unoccupied by sense of duty beyond the sluggish routine of domestic affairs, or elevation of purpose save the endeavor to uphold traditions of caste at expense of probity and comfort, all these are delineated with affecting realism. Compared with this picture of customs and manners a century ago, the Mexico of to-day is a land of impetuous progress; but, at the same time, one is surprised to find amid the old-fashioned moralizing of the venerable penitent some of the most approved modern ideas concerning social problems. He declaims against round dancing; he scourges the fashion of wearing mourning graded to express the infinitesimal steps in the passage from deep black grief to pale mauve melancholy; he criticises prison discipline as means of reformation; he castigates the misrule and ignorance of ordinary hospital management. And so through a series of homilies upon affairs of Church and State; of groanings over his own wickedness, tempered by mild senile enjoyment of these youthful escapades; of love and marriage; of vivid interjectional description ; and of quotations from Livy, from Horace, from Pliny, from Cicero, from Tacitus and Marcus Aurelius, — the old philosopher gossips over infirmities of time, and hope of immortality. He carries minutiae of detail even beyond the grave, and leaves behind a Latin inscription to adorn his tomb. The photographic minuteness with which life in those earlier days is depicted makes "El Periquillo Sarniento" an admirable yardstick by which to measure reform.
Among more modern stories, "Guadalupe," by Irenio Paz, editor of the daily paper "La Patria," may be taken as a fair example of the popular novel. Senor Paz is a voluminous writer. The series of bulky volumes bearing his name on the titlepage must tantalize his Northern editorial brother with suggestions of possibilities of leisure with which the latter is perforce unacquainted. Fancy the managing head of the "New-York Herald" indulging in literary distractions which should result in a score of books! The style of this author is simple and direct. The characters are introduced at once in their true colors, with an amiable frankness which precludes possibility of mistake. There can be no doubt as to the identity of polished villain, or poor but virtuous hero. There is no complication of mixed personality in which good and evil struggle for the mastery, and sympathy swings like a pendulum between disgust and admiration. The narrative moves through quiet regions of commonplace until some lofty trait or some deep wickedness needs illustration, when it suddenly bounds into the mazes of melodrama, and the reader finds himself tossed upon stormy billows of heroism, passion, or remorse, as the case may be. In justice, it must be acknowledged that these transitions are infrequent; otherwise the sensation would be too much that of mental seasickness. The quiet, homely life which "Guadalupe" depicts, speaks well for the people who furnish such a record; and the popular taste which accepts such placid chronicles of gentle love and religiously tempered hate is, at least, evidence of a purer and more wholesome temperament than that which subsists upon the vicious sensationalism of the American dime-novel or the outrageous vulgarity of "Peck's Bad Boy." The interpolated heroics are too obviously constructed for effect to be capable of producing any. They are like the crashing and flashing of a stage thunderstorm. One acknowledges their worth as settings, but they would never perturb the spirit nor turn milk sour.
The picture of home-life among the middle classes, as gathered from this and other works of the same author, is sound and healthy. There is deference to parental authority; there are simple amusements, and close guardianship which watches over intercourse between the sexes; there is naïve expression of opinion in matters of faith and philosophy; and, permeating all, the serenity of easy, unhurried existence, which gently bears rich and poor upon its placid surface. Extremely pleasing are these after the turbid and motley variations which are required to spice parallel histories in our own progressive centres. It is food for pride, as well as patriotism, to observe that a commission of importance to los Estados Unidos, and a subsequent tour through that region of high civilization, is the reward reserved for the brave young man who has raised himself by his own efforts from poverty to the position of colonel in "the Army of the Republic," — that Mexican Legion of Honor.
The plot of "Guadalupe" is simple in the extreme, and the dramatis persona old friends, in spite of Spanish mantilla and reboso, — the adopted daughter of a pious widow, who loves in silence and secret the artist son of her benefactress; the youth who in turn worships the heartless sister of his false friend; the futile machinations of the latter to move the orphan girl from the path of duty; the triumph of her fervent and lovely spirit, and the foregone conclusion which changes brotherly affection into devotion of the lover. The incidental glimpses are full of local traits: the pompous pride of the newly rich, as opposed to the graceful virtue of the poor household; the quaint worldliness and naïve reflections of the foolish little worldly maid Amelia, and the equally quaint sweetness of the wild-rose Guadalupe, — are all charming. A certain sketchiness leaves an after-effect of having been introduced to silhouettes, rather than solid figures; still the sense of vagueness only helps that of pleasure. The atmosphere is pure, if not bracing. The heroine reminds one somewhat of Octave Feuillet's "Sybilla;" but she lacks that breath of life which stirs in the veins, and animates the action, of the beloved French girl. Nor has the Mexican author more than a hint of the exquisiteness and verve of the Frenchman. He has, however, the cleverness to win popularity, and each of his twenty books runs through two to five editions.
Vicente Riva Palacio, who holds a first place by the elegance and purity of his language, has been also a prolific writer. His prose is imbued with the spirit of poetry. Many of his paragraphs are full of delicate imagery and rhythmic force; with the essence, but without the material form, of the poem. Yet, in an even more marked degree than those of Paz, his books present to a stranger a startling combination of diverse traits. To a loving and tender sympathy with nature, which overflows in descriptive passages of great beauty, and to a spirit of gentle revery, developed with genuine delicacy through a thousand light touches, he adds at times an almost rabid exuberance of melodramatic intensity. These baleful and lurid periods are in strange antithesis to his limpid and earnest utterances. They are like an alarm-fire kindled upon a quiet hillside on a peaceful summer evening. In his "Calvario y Tabor" the reminiscences of the suffering of the people through the years of struggle which culminated in the overthrow of foreign intervention, and the fall of Maximilian, are given with a clear directness that forces them upon the consciousness of the reader as realities. But to this heroic portrayal of suffering and misfortune he attaches so many impossible episodes, and such a climax of romantic and unreal horrors, that the genuine emotion aroused by the simplicity of truth and the touching events of history is in danger of being lost in repulsion. There is something so incongruous in this combination, which can trace the most refined and wholesome impressions, and an imagination which can conceive and revel in a delirium of horrors, that the result is a series of shocks. To a foreigner, at least, it is like touching the two poles of a battery at irregular intervals. The current of admiration and sympathy is being constantly broken up, and as constantly renewed. In the seven hundred pages of this particular book there is a climax of death-scenes which are veritable nightmares. Foreseeing that a certain number of dangerous and unnecessary personages must be gotten rid of, one stands appalled at the ingenuity displayed in making the first taking off so circumstantially terrible. But the author's power is equal to the strain. With magnificent audacity he proceeds and runs through a rising scale of accident, suicide, and murder, which swells on triumphantly to the perfect artistic end. Yet this is but one view of the picture. Side by side with this dark and tragic story moves the peaceful and tender tale of village life and quiet homes and humble affection. It is as if the same hand could write at the same time "Monte Cristo" and the "Vicar of Wakefield," and the frenzied outbursts of the one revenge themselves for the gentle serenity of the other.
"Calvario y Tabor," as the name implies, is a story of suffering and triumph, — the death-agony of the old empire, and the transfiguration of the new republic. With the vivid and thrilling record of sacrifice and heroism, which forces the reader into profound sympathy with the purpose of the people, are interwoven two love-stories, — one dark with passion and intrigue, the other as touching and gentle as the soft beauty of the sylvan landscape in which it is set. Here is the opening note of the pastoral symphony. The scene is laid in the tierra caliente on the shore of the Pacific.
"It was an evening in January; and the sun, slowly sinking behind the immense mass of waters, shone like a globe of burning gold through the luminous haze which filled the atmosphere with glory. It appeared to float upon the surface of the waves, which, lifted in long, swelling billows on the high seas, broke in undulations on the sand, bearing into shore curving ripples of shining foam, white as the petals of a lily and brilliant as the stars in the sky of the tropics. Along the banks of a small inlet, running deep into the land, the night air gently bent the graceful crowns of palm-trees, and the feather-like leaves swayed gently over their reflections in the tranquil water beneath, broken by the slow ripples into a thousand mirrored splinters of flower and foliage. From time to time the sinister form of a crocodile glided slowly by, without disturbing the silence. At the entrance to the wood, where the little strand lost itself in a soft carpet of moss, a few huts built of branches, and thatched with leaves, showed through the deeper shadow. Farther back slender columns of smoke, outlined against the paling sky, showed the vicinity of an Indian village; and a murmur of voices, mingled with snatches of song and tinkle of music, blended confusedly, like the notes of a wind-harp.
"By the seaside all the world sings. The deep undertone of the waves fills in the background of harmony. It is impossible to listen to its ceaseless pulsation without feeling the desire to mingle one's voice with the concert which immensity eternally offers to God. The breaking of the billows against the rocks, the lisping of the ripples against the beach, weave the strands of melody; and the soul, by them moved to remembrance, falls into reveries of the past which are either prayers or aspirations, which are like the memory of the lullabies of our mother over the child at her breast, or the lingering notes of the favorite air of the woman one first loved.
"As if in unison with this universal impulse towards harmony, a young girl of fifteen years emerged, singing, from one of the wood-paths, and turned in the direction of a spring of pure water which bubbled up from a tangle of shrubbery beyond. She was a slight and graceful brunette, wearing the common dress of the women of the coast; her great eyes, dark and brilliant, shone under long, curving lashes; her white teeth and small red lips made enchanting contrast with the pale olive of her cheek; and in the perfect oval of her face was that blended expression of purity and sensitiveness which marks the temperament of a painter or a poet. A loose white camisa, covered with the delicate embroidery in which the gentler sex delight to satisfy their love of adornment, and a simple blue petticoat, formed her attire. But around her throat hung necklaces of gold and coral, on her arms were bracelets of shells and pearls, and her slender fingers bore a profusion of glittering rings. She was doubtless the daughter of a rich house; but among this simple people every woman works, and she bore upon her head one of the huge water-jars of the country, balanced without aid from her hands, and without impairing the dignity and elegance of her carriage. An artist looking upon her might have imagined a new Rebecca; for nothing is more faithful to the biblical idea than the young girls of the coast who come to the wells for water, poising their great red jars upon the head without disturbing in the least their lightness or freedom of motion."
Thus Alejandra, the beautiful brown girl of Acapulco, enters upon the scene of her future trials and triumphs. The idyllic story of homely country life, wherein rich differs from poor only in that the bounty of one supplies the need of the other; the benignant village padre and his almost puritanic sister; the loves of Alejandra and Jorge; and the family of strolling players, poor and despised, but happy in virtue, — make a story full of refined sentiment in the midst of the most sensational and forbidding realism. One is introduced to the intimate habits of the people; to the hospitality which makes every house an inn for the stranger; to the charity which adopts the orphan, comforts the unfortunate, and looks upon the idiot as "beloved of God." But there is at the same time an awful picture of corrupt law, distorted justice, and almost absolute want of fixed principle in the government of society.
The historical portion of the novel is superb. We who profess admiration for the qualities of valor and perseverance, who consider ourselves allied in bonds of brotherhood with the oppressed of every land, should be ashamed of our ignorance in regard to the Mexican struggle for independence. The vicissitudes of our own Revolution are tame, the sufferings even of the winter at Valley Forge sink into insignificance, compared with the events of 1864 and 1865, in this tragedy of dolor and endurance. Whole towns were swept out of existence. The population, flying through night and storm, sought asylum in unbroken forests, filled with wild beasts and noxious reptiles, or amid the rocks and caves of desert places. "Ashes marked the location of homes; the direction of roads was outlined by corpses." Menaced by hunger and thirst, decimated by pestilence, the small and lessening band of Republicans melted like smoke before the advancing Imperialists, whose conquering forces carried all before them. Buffeted by every rudeness of fortune, they still persevered in the unequal struggle, and snatched victory at last from the very jaws of death. Like eagles who build their nests upon inaccessible peaks, "the apostles of liberty fled to the mountain tops, to fight and to wait; and too often upon the summits these martyrs found their Calvary." Sometimes, impelled by a sudden fury of passion, a band of devoted men crept down from their fastnesses, cut their way through the midst of the enemy, and perished to a man, joyful in the destruction they dealt in dying. Without money, without clothes, without other arms than the guns in their hands, they fell by the roadside in forced marches, tortured by fatigue and famine, "and were left unburied, for beasts of the field and birds of the air. ... If a laurel or a palm had been planted to commemorate the memory of each of these, the land would be one impenetrable jungle from end to end." Still they continued on, "a new man stepping into the place of the comrade who had dropped before him, hurrying to new strife, to new sacrifice, in order to convince Napoleon and Maximilian, France and the world, that a people who could so struggle for independence was a people invincible and worthy of being free."The book, as one might expect from the reputation of its author, is full of fine, sonorous Spanish, glowing with descriptive eloquence and declamatory force.
"Liberty is like the sun. Its first rays are for the mountains; its dying splendor falls likewise upon them. No cry for freedom has first arisen from the plains, as in no landscape is the valley illumined before the heights which surround it. The remnant of the defenders of a free people flies ever to the crags and hills for final security, as the last light of the sun lingers upon the summits when the lowlands are veiled in obscurity." "Never were there heard, after these annihilating combats, the groans and cries of the wounded, which so often find a place in descriptions of deserted battle-fields. Our soldiers suffered and died without appeals for aid or lamentation over life; as heroes expire, valiant and resigned." "Toward the east, only a labyrinth of mountains, which, arid and desolate, lost themselves in the distance; infinite in form, suggesting inexpressible and awful contortions; full of deep, sad shadows, lonely, terrifying, like a sombre and tempestuous ocean, suddenly petrified with awe at the whisper of God." "Nations, like Christ, have their Tabor and Calvary. Only, while the Son of God passed first to transfiguration and thence to the cross, it is the contrary with them. For nations are composed of mortals; the Spirit of God can alone support the sorrow of Calvary after the glory of Tabor." "Our wars have been like the bloody but beneficent operations of the surgeon, who amputates the gangrenous member through kindness to the sufferer; not like the wounds given by an assassin, who seeks to destroy his victim. Europe condemns without understanding us; America understands without condemning, but she remains silent. God, history, and the future will acknowledge our purpose and our triumph."
Ignacio Manuel Altamirano is equally well known as orator and author. His "Paisajes y Leyendes," records of the customs and traditions of Mexico, is as marked for its temperate and even style as Palacio's work for vehemence and contrast. Confining himself principally to the religious festivals of the country, with their earlier as well as later observances, he gives us charming pictures of the fervor of a primitive race, carrying into their observance of Christian rites many suggestions of the more innocent forms of their old worship. He is evidently as widely read in the modern classics as El Periquillo Sarniento was in the ancient, French, English, German — all literatures have laid their flowers at his feet, and his versatile fancy culls from each in turn to adorn his page. But it is when he relies upon himself that he is most attractive. The legend of "Our Lord of the Holy Mountain" is enriched by a sketch of the holy friar. Father Martin de Valencia, of whom it is recorded, that "every morning, as he went out of his cave, after passing the night in prayer and meditation, the little birds did gather in the trees above his head, making gracious harmony, and helping in praise of the Creator. And as he moved from place to place, the birds did follow; nor, since his death, have any been ever seen there."
Reminiscences of the author's boyhood in the little city of Tixtla, with the entire population following the procession of Corpus Christi through streets arched with green boughs, and garlanded with blossoms, remind one of the Passion Play of Oberammergau. Such ardor of devotion, such reverent silence, such echo of sweetness from the low-chanting Indian choristers, flower-crowned, and bearing branches of new-budded orchard trees, in order that their fruits might find favor in the eyes of God, form an ideal picture of religious enthusiasm. It reads like a sketch of the Middle Ages. So does the description of the houses, decorated with every treasured atom of color and drapery; and the generalissimo marching at the head with his band of native troops. So, too, does the story of Holy Week, beginning before dawn on Palm Sunday with young men and maidens scouring fields and woods for the first wild-flowers, with which to decorate their palm-branches. The account of the lifting up of these palms, braided and knotted with flowers, during the canon of the mass, corresponds precisely with what we saw in the Cathedral of Mexico last year.
Juan Mateos is famous not only at home, but abroad. He has reached the point at which a man becomes a prophet in his own country. His brother authors quote him as they would Goethe or Lord Byron. His novels are mainly historical. The style irresistibly recalls the elder Dumas; even the look of the page has that abrupt brevity of sentence which is so characteristic of the French novelist. In "El Cerro de las Campanas" he gives intense and dramatic expression again to the story of the "Usurpation." With only a thread of narrative to sustain interest, he places before us a careful résumé of the "episode of Maximilian." It is pleasant to note, that, in spite of evident and deep sympathy with the republic and the leaders of the people, he speaks of the hapless emperor more with sorrow than anger, and gives a touching pathos to the death-scene on the lonely "Hill of the Bells," which has so often moved the sympathy of strangers. His hatred and scorn are reserved for the Cæsar of the Tuileries, "who sacrificed on the altar of ambition an unfortunate and lovely princess, as well as the young Archduke of Austria, whose ensanguined corpse cries yet for vengeance from the imperial tomb at Vienna, wherein it waits the vivifying breath of the resurrection." Dramatist as well as artist, his actors naturally group themselves upon the stage of history or fiction; and each succession of scenes culminates in a tableau. The rush and power of his expression sweep one most eloquently toward the author's conclusions.
In outward appearance, the Mexican novel is exceedingly unattractive. Like the French and German brochure, it is usually unbound; like many of our own, it is printed in poor type, on miserable paper. It has ragged edges; and it stretches beyond any normal limit, reaching from seven hundred to a thousand pages in almost every case. The books are evidently not intended for summer reading, nor for a people living on the high-pressure principle that obtains in America, which makes the incessant and furious activity of the steam-engine the highest example for human imitation. When illustrated, the cuts are so poor, and of such ludicrous horror, that they would turn the deepest sentiment into ridicule. Above all, they are enormously dear. Such a scale of prices would not be possible in a country which counted a large number of readers of fiction among its population. With the appetite for such intellectual refection comes a garnishing of the dish in which it is served, as well as a cheapening of the cost of refreshment. I am not altogether sure but that the demand for these books, although so small in proportion to the number of individuals, does not show a higher degree of appreciation than our omnivorous devouring of odds and ends. When, in despite of coarse texture, rude letterpress, very low art, and very high prices, a book runs through six or eight editions, it is reasonable to suppose some higher motive in its perusal than the criminal one of killing time. And in the face of melodramatic tendency, and archaic mixture of sentiment and common-place; in the face of incoherence of action, and want of subtle analytic power; yet with its deference to the ideal of womanhood, its large love of nature, its tribute to the home virtues, its loyalty to national traits, its admiration for simplicity and purity of character, and its enthusiastic patriotism, — the Mexican novel would seem to have found this more elevated plain, and based upon it a recognized right to existence.
The list of Mexican authors stretches almost indefinitely. Besides those already mentioned as novelists, Manuel Payno, Pedro Castera, Peon Contreras, Vicente Morales, and Jose Maria Esteva are well known as brilliant and forcible writers. Upon more serious topics, whether of political or social importance, one finds the names of Zarco, Prieto, Baranda, Siliceo, Arriaga, Ocampo, Alcaráz, Lerdo, Montes, Zamacono, Yañes, Mariscal, and many others, who have contributed largely to the education of the people. As poets, a still greater number of popular and celebrated men and women find honorable place in the ranks. Guillermo Prieto is probably best known in what might be called national songs, full of originality and patriotism. José Maria Esteva follows him closely in giving expression to the natural traits and habits of the country. Acuña, Luis G. Ortiz, Silva, Gutierrez-Najera, Dias-Miron, Covarrubias, Juan Valle, Eduardo Zárate, Francisco Colina, Firso de Córdova, Apapite Silva, Manuel Romero, Esther Fapia, Rosa Carreto, Refugio Argumeda de Ortiz, and Miguel Ulloa. Justo Sierra, one of the most virile and forceful singers, and Manuel Flores, by his tenderness and sweetness, have taken high rank among Spanish poets, even outside their own country. In view of the impression which is now gaining ground among literary people, that the writing of poetry is the best school for the formation of purity of style in prose, it may be interesting to note that almost every popular Mexican romancist is also a popular poet. Among famous religious writers are Sister Juana de la Cruz, Señor Carpio-Pesado, Arango, Bishop Montesdeoca, and others. As dramatists, Gorostiza and Alarcon rank well among Spanish classics; while Calderon, Rodriguez-Galvan, Chavero, Mateos, Contreras, Acuña, and others have produced much skilful and remarkable work. Señors Juan de Dios, Pesa, and De las Rosas hold an enviable place as poets of the home and domestic life. As linguists, Señors Altamirano, Yscalbalceta, and Pimentel are best known, the latter having made important studies upon the Indian dialects of the country; while Orozco y Berra, in his "History of Ancient Mexico," has excelled all previous writers upon the same subject. The best author upon constitutional subjects, or those relating to political economy, is probably Señor Vallarta; but each of these lists of authors could be re-enforced by number-less names. These given are, perhaps, enough to disabuse the American mind of any feeling that Mexico lacks the expression of literary tastes, or suffers in comparison with other lands from want of scholarly interpretation.