The appeal of Chekhov

Nabokov says in Strong Opinions: 

“The word “genius” is passed around rather generously, isn’t it? At least in English, because its Russian counterpart, geniy, is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers, Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin, Tolstoy. To such deeply beloved authors as Turgenev and Chekhov Russians assign the thinner term, talánt, talent, not genius. […] Genius still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of phrase, a unique, dazzling gift, the genius of James Joyce, not the talent of Henry James.” 

And yet: 

“Mr. Karlinsky has put his finger on a mysterious sensory cell. He is right, I do love Chekhov dearly. I fail, however, to rationalize my feeling for him: I can easily do so in regard to the greater artist, Tolstoy, with the flash of this or that unforgettable passage (“…  how sweetly she said: ‘and even very much’ ”—Vronsky recalling Kitty’s reply to some trivial question that we shall never know), but when I imagine Chekhov with the same detachment all I can make out is a medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, repetitions, doctors, unconvincing vamps, and so forth; yet it is his works which I would take on a trip to another planet.”

Nabokov makes a similar point in Lectures on Russian Literature: 

“Russian critics have noted that Chekhov’s style, his choice of words and so on, did not reveal any of those special artistic preoccupations that obsessed, for instance, Gogol or Flaubert or Henry James. […] Thus Chekhov is a good example to give when one tries to explain that a writer may be a perfect artist without being exceptionally vivid in his verbal technique or exceptionally preoccupied with the way his sentences curve. […] The magical part of it is that in spite of his tolerating flaws which a bright beginner would have avoided, in spite of his being quite satisfied with the man-in-the street among words, the word-in-the-street, so to say, Chekhov managed to convey an impression of artistic beauty far surpassing that of many writers who thought they knew what rich beautiful prose was.”

Unlike Nabokov, I do think Chekhov has genius—like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Gogol—whereas Turgenev has talent. But I too find it difficult to talk about Chekhov’s greatness, to rationalise my love for his writings.

When I read Alice Munro for the first time last year—a darling of Book Twitter, until the recent explosion—I enjoyed the stories a lot, but I remember thinking she’s very good but not Chekhov good. Alice Munro is also a subtle writer, writing about the lives of ordinary people and the little moments that are full of meaning. In a way, she should perhaps appeal more to me, writing about women, and she’s contemporary—TSK on Twitter said “being closer to us in time, her stories are fresher and more alive”—and yet I have never felt a connection with Alice Munro the way I feel about Chekhov (and now I clearly won’t). 

But it’s not just Alice Munro. I just love Chekhov more than any other short story writers; and in literature in general, I feel closer to Chekhov than anyone else, even Shakespeare and Tolstoy. 

Why? 

Part of it must be the authorial persona. Some writers—like Chekhov, Cervantes—have a more lovable persona than others—like Tolstoy, George Eliot. Tolstoy the artist may be able to depict a wide range of perspectives and inhabit the mind of more or less any character* but you can tell—you can feel on the page—that Tolstoy the man is judgemental. Same with George Eliot. 

It’s not that Chekhov doesn’t judge or doesn’t condemn. That is something people like to repeat when they talk about Chekhov, but all you have to do is to read “Ward No.6” or “In the Ravine” and you can see that isn’t true—Chekhov’s moral sense is clear, as he writes about people’s egotism, callousness, and cruelty to each other. But he is compassionate and humane. He makes us feel understood. He provides solace in moments of despair. 

He conveys, better than anyone, those brief moments of sadness that we sometimes feel. Take, for example, this passage from “The Beauties”: 

“I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstacy, nor enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful though pleasant sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as a dream. For some reason I felt sorry for myself, for my grandfather and for the Armenian, even for the girl herself, and I had a feeling as though we all four had lost something important and essential to life which we should never find again. My grandfather, too, grew melancholy; he talked no more about manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pensively at Masha.” 

Later, in the same story: 

“On the platform between our carriage and the next the guard was standing with his elbows on the railing, looking in the direction of the beautiful girl, and his battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly beefy face, exhausted by sleepless nights and the jolting of the train, wore a look of tenderness and of the deepest sadness, as though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, soberness, purity, wife, children; as though he were repenting and feeling in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for him, with his premature old age, his uncouthness, and his beefy face, the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far away as heaven....” 

(translated by Constance Garnett) 

I’m not a guard with a “battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly beefy face”, but I recognise that melancholy feeling.

This is why, when I feel down, I turn to Chekhov. 

Chekhov appeals to me also because he’s a humanist, and humane. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky constantly write about God and constantly wrestle with their faith; Chekhov doesn’t pretend to know the answers to any of those big questions, but he’s capable of depicting goodness without faith, and conveying—in life as well as in writings—a sense of purpose without religion. He also rejects ideology, and rejects extremes. 

If anyone asks who my literary heroes are, my immediate answer would be Chekhov. I might perhaps also mention Vasily Grossman or Primo Levi—it might be a bit too early to say—but my one literary hero would be Chekhov. 

What about you? Why do you like Chekhov? 

*: except Hélène. 

Chekhov’s “The Horse-Stealers” and some strange imagery

When people talk about Chekhov, they usually talk about him as a subtle writer, depicting with sensitivity and compassion ordinary people’s loneliness, regrets, and sorrows. People focus on his range of characters, his ability to convey the subtlest shades of emotions, and his scepticism of ideas and meaning.

As though there’s nothing interesting about his imagery.

But I have just read “The Horse-Stealers”, in Volume 10 of Constance Garnett’s 13 volumes of Chekhov, and look! 

“The wind howled in the stove; something growled and squeaked as though a big dog had strangled a rat.

“Ugh! the unclean spirits are abroad!” said Lyubka.”

This one is simple—someone like Flaubert or Flannery O’Connor might come up with a more unusual simile—but it does vividly set up the dark tone of the story, and “The Horse-Stealers” is rather dark.

““What a flame of a girl!” thought Yergunov, sitting on the chest, and from there watching the dance. “What fire! Give up everything for her, and it would be too little . . . .”

[…] The sharp tapping, shouts, and whoops set the crockery ringing in the cupboard and the flame of the candle dancing.

The thread broke and the beads were scattered all over the floor, the green kerchief slipped off, and Lyubka was transformed into a red cloud flitting by and flashing black eyes, and it seemed as though in another second Merik’s arms and legs would drop off.”

Yergunov yearns for Lyubka but she’s only drawn to Merik, one of the horse stealers, who treats her abominably. Then he finds that in the snowstorm, his horse has been stolen. 

“The snowstorm still persisted. White clouds were floating about the yard, their long tails clinging to the rough grass and the bushes, while on the other side of the fence in the open country huge giants in white robes with wide sleeves were whirling round and falling to the ground, and getting up again to wave their arms and fight. And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: “God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?”” 

Now that is a strange image. Those are the sentient trees that Tom (Wuthering Expectations) has written about. Tom has trained me to notice the trees. And huge giants in white robes! 

“He strained his eyes to the utmost, and saw only the snow flying and the snowflakes distinctly forming into all sorts of shapes; at one moment the white, laughing face of a corpse would peep out of the darkness, at the next a white horse would gallop by with an Amazon in a muslin dress upon it, at the next a string of white swans would fly overhead. . .” 

That is even stranger.

I should perhaps write more about this aspect of Chekhov. Wonderful writer. 

Light in Chekhov

As a little break from Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels, I’ve been reading Chekhov (who can be a better companion when one’s got the morbs?). 

One thing struck me: 

“The shades of evening were already lying on the station garden, on the platform, and on the fields; the station screened off the sunset, but on the topmost clouds of smoke from the engine, which were tinged with rosy light, one could see the sun had not yet quite vanished.”

This is from “The Beauties” in Volume 9 (Constance Garnett). Note the light. 

Now look at this passage in “Panic Fears”:

“The forest road was covered with pools from a recent shower of rain, and the earth squelched under one’s feet. The crimson glow of sunset flooded the whole forest, coloring the white stems of the birches and the young leaves.” 

I like that.

“There was a pale light from the afterglow of sunset; a streak of light cut its way through a narrow, uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like a boat and sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt....

I had driven a mile and a half, or two miles, when against the pale background of the evening glow there came into sight one after another some graceful tall poplars; a river glimmered beyond them, and a gorgeous picture suddenly, as though by magic, lay stretched before me.” 

Just a few strokes—Chekhov doesn’t spend pages describing nature as Proust does. 

“The moon and two white fluffy clouds beside it hung just over the station, motionless as though glued to the spot, and looked as though waiting for something. A faint transparent light came from them and touched the white earth softly, as though afraid of wounding her modesty, and lighted up everything—the snowdrifts, the embankment.... It was still.”

That comes from “Champagne”. Same story:

“A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness like a giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and dejectedly, as though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood a long while looking at it.”

Tom of Wuthering Expectations would talk about the sentient trees, a motif he has noticed recurring in many of Chekhov’s stories, but I want to draw your attention to “the bluish darkness”. 

These stories are all in Volume 9. Let me grab Volume 7 and look at “The Steppe”, perhaps Chekhov’s most famous description of the Ukrainian landscape: 

“On the right there were the dark hills which seemed to be screening something unseen and terrible; on the left the whole sky about the horizon was covered with a crimson glow, and it was hard to tell whether there was a fire somewhere, or whether it was the moon about to rise. As by day the distance could be seen, but its tender lilac tint had gone, quenched by the evening darkness, in which the whole steppe was hidden like Moisey Moisevitch’s children under the quilt.” 

Chekhov’s eyes are particularly sensitive to colours: “crimson glow”, “tender lilac tint”. 

These descriptions of the light—the tint of the light—struck me because you don’t find such descriptions in Cervantes. 

Nabokov writes in Lectures on Don Quixote: 

“If we follow the evolution of literary forms and devices from the remotest antiquity to our times we notice that the art of dialogue was developed and perfected much earlier than the art of describing, or better say expressing, nature. By 1600 the dialogue with great writers in all countries is excellent—natural, supple, colorful, alive. But the verbal rendering of landscapes will have to wait until, roughly speaking, the beginning of the nineteenth century to reach the same level as the dialogue had reached 200 years before; and it is only in the second part of the nineteenth century that descriptive passages referring to outside nature were integrated, were merged with the story, ceased to stick out in separate paragraphs, and became organic parts of the whole composition.” 

I wonder why that is—is it the transition from plays to novels? 

For various reasons, I have always objected to the idea that literature progressed over time, but Nabokov seems to be right when he makes a similar point about colours in Lectures on Russian Literature: 

“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things. Before his and Pushkin’s advent Russian literature was purblind. What form it perceived was an outline directed by reason: it did not see color for itself but merely used the hackneyed combinations of blind noun and dog-like adjective that Europe had inherited from the ancients. The sky was blue, the dawn red, the foliage green, the eyes of beauty black, the clouds grey, and so on. It was Gogol (and after him Lermontov and Tolstoy) who first saw yellow and violet at all. That the sky could be pale green at sunrise, or the snow a rich blue on a cloudless day, would have sounded like heretical nonsense to your so-called “classical” writer, accustomed as he was to the rigid conventional color-schemes of the Eighteenth Century French school of literature. Thus the development of the art of description throughout the centuries may be profitably treated in terms of vision, the faceted eye becoming a unified and prodigiously complex organ and the dead dim “accepted colors” (in the sense of “idees recues”) yielding gradually their subtle shades and allowing new wonders of application. I doubt whether any writer, and certainly not in Russia, had ever noticed before, to give the most striking instance, the moving pattern of light and shade on the ground under trees or the tricks of color played by sunlight with leaves.” 

Let’s see how this is going to affect my reading—and noticing—when I return to Cervantes. 

The countries we know

It is no surprise that the country I know the best in literature is Britain. The 19th century especially: from Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, the Bronte sisters… to Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Sherlock Holmes, Lewis Carroll, Dracula, Frankenstein…; my main blind spot is poetry, apart from a handful of poems by John Keats, John Clare, Wordsworth, the Brownings, Christina Rossetti, the Brontes… The 20th century I know less well: mostly Virginia Woolf (with preference for the essays), Muriel Spark, and Wodehouse; Daphne du Maurier, George Orwell, one E. M. Forster, one D. H. Lawrence, one John Fowles, one Graham Greene, one A. S. Byatt, one Kazuo Ishiguro, one or two by Hanif Kureishi… The more I list, the more ignorant I’ve realised I am. The late 16th century, early 17th century: Shakespeare particularly (The Rape of Lucrece left to read), and some of his contemporaries like Marlowe, Webster, Jonson; a bit of John Donne—my greatest humiliation is Milton (attempted a few months ago). I look through my reading of British literature, the 18th century glares back at me and a certain reader of this blog is going to shout, but take it easy, it is in the plan this year. 

But apart from being able to read things in the original, I’ve also got the advantage of going back and forth between London and Yorkshire. London is the city of Dickens and Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes and plenty of great writers and historical figures. Yorkshire is Bronte Country, not just Haworth and the moors: I go to Filey and Charlotte has stayed there; I take a trip to Scarborough and that’s where Anne was buried; I visit Oakwell Hall and the house inspired one of the settings for Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley. 

(me at Oakwell Hall recently)

American literature is next, again because I’m not hindered by (lack of) translation. Mostly 20th century: back when I was still reading a lot from the 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison…; Edith Wharton, though she feels more like the 19th century; and in the recent years, Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor. Some of the 19th century: mostly Herman Melville and Henry James, The Awakening, The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…

It is interesting to realise that British literature is the only literature I know through a relatively long span of time (some of you are going to bring up Beowulf and Chaucer, but late 16th century – 20th century is not too bad, yes?). I can roughly see the big picture. With other countries, I only see a small piece. 

Take Russian literature. I think I could say I know the 19th century quite well and with some depth, having read not only Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, and Turgenev, but also Lermontov and Leskov (I know my greatest humiliation is Pushkin). But the 20th century I only know a bit: Vladimir Nabokov, Vasily Grossman, Doctor Zhivago, a minor Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog), Isaac Babel, plus a few Soviet writers I read back in Vietnam like Maxim Gorky, Paustovsky, Ostrovsky’s How the Steel Was Tempered. The interesting part is that Tolstoy and Chekhov are the two prose writers closest to my heart, despite me knowing no Russian. 

Japanese literature I have read with some range but not much depth, I think. 20th century: Soseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata, Tanizaki, Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami, Ryu Murakami… Heian literature: Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji and her diary), Sei Shonagon, and Sarashina Nikki (known in one translation as As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams). But what happened between the 11th century and the 20th? No clue. All I know is a couple of Basho’s poems from the 17th century. My Japan is mostly cinema. 

It is even worse when I look at other countries. 

See Spain, for instance. I only know the first half of the 17th century: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, Tirso de Molina… What happened afterwards? No idea. And even if we talk about 17th century Spain, I’ve only read a couple of plays by Calderón and Lope de Vega when these madmen wrote hundreds.

More embarrassing is the case of France. Whereas Russian literature or American literature has had quite a short period, French literature has a long, rich history like English literature. But I’ve only read a couple of French books from the 19th century: three from Flaubert, one from Zola, one from Balzac. A tiny bit from the 20th century, like Albert Camus. No excuse except my long-held prejudice against the French. 

I haven’t even mentioned the rich literary traditions with which I haven’t got acquainted. 

But perhaps the worst, most embarrassing for me is my ignorance of Vietnamese and Norwegian literatures, considering my background. With Vietnamese literature, I can tell you next to nothing about the books I read as I was growing up in Vietnam; the only thing that helps me score more than zero is that I have read Truyện Kiều, Chinh phụ ngâm, Cung oán ngâm khúc, and quite a bit of Hồ Xuân Hương, and Hàn Mặc Tử is one of my favourite poets. As for Norwegian literature, those of you who have followed this blog for a long time probably remember that I have mentioned multiple times and failed to do a Norwegian literature challenge, but forgive me, at least I have read Henrik Ibsen and plan to get to know well his plays. 

Why did I decide to take a long hard look at my reading? How narrow! How ignorant! 

Brief thoughts on Exemplary Novels, the first 4 tales

I read the Edith Grossman translation, which includes all 12 tales/ novellas.

1/ “The Novel of the Little Gypsy Girl”: 

This one is all right. I was thinking why did wiki count it among the more realistic tales of the collection, considering the contrived plot and improbable coincidence, and then remembered that these elements were common in Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte. The moral standards as seen in the ending are rather dubious—murder is murder, even if done for honour, no? 17th century Spain was strange. Fun read though. 

I will not reveal what the improbable coincidence is—I will be a good girl and spoil nothing—but one detail reminds me of The Winter’s Tale and makes me wonder about the 17th century’s ideas of nobility, of nature vs nurture. 

2/ “The Novel of the Generous Lover”: 

This one, like “The Captive’s Tale” in Don Quixote, seems to be inspired by Cervantes’s experience as a slave in Algiers. It’s basically a Romance, with lots of twists and turns and a fantastical story, with a beautiful woman and lustful men and slave drivers and schemes and shipwrecks, but me likey. These stories make me wonder, what distinguishes a short story from a tale? I can’t explain why this one feels more like a tale than a short story. In some sense, the tales in Exemplary Novels feel like One Thousand and One Nights— just without the frame story. 

3/ “The Novel of Rinconete and Cortadillo”: 

Whilst the two previous tales have no elements of comedy, this one has some funny bits. You can also see that Cervantes is fascinated by the act of renaming, of reinventing ourselves: in Don Quixote, Alonso Quixano adopts the new identity of Don Quixote, then he gets nicknamed The Woebegone Knight in Part 1 but reinvents himself as The Knight of the Lions in Part 2, and at the end, gets reborn as Alonso Quixano the Good; in “The Novel of the Little Gypsy Girl”, Don Juan de Cárcamo (or Don Juanico) falls in love with Preciosa the little gypsy, so he becomes a gypsy and calls himself Andrés Caballero; in this story, two boys meet and work together as thieves, then get “baptised” in the gang under new names—Rincón (the card sharp) becomes Rinconette and Cortaldo (the cutpurse) becomes Cortadillo.

One complaint I have is that Rincón and Cortaldo are not quite distinguishable from each other—they’re quite blurred together like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But Cervantes does paint the world of gangsters and prostitutes in very vivid colours, and the story is captivating. 

4/ “The Novel of the English Spanishwoman”: 

This one begins in a promising way: “Among the spoils the English carried away from the city of Cádiz, Clotaldo, an English gentleman and captain of a squadron of ships, took to London a girl approximately seven years old…” The girl, Isabella, is raised as a Catholic and the family are secret Catholics. Clotaldo’s son Ricaredo has been in love with Isabella since he was 18 and she was 12 (ew) but his parents want him to marry some Scottish girl and she doesn’t dare to go against their will—she’s a dependent, which is reminiscent of Sonya in War and Peace—but Cervantes’s story is not War and Peace and moves in a different direction, which is interesting. 

However, this story has too much plot—it becomes more and more ludicrous—Cervantes seemingly wants to outdo Romances in imbecility and preposterousness. If anything, “The Novel of the English Spanishwoman” shines a different light on Don Quixote, confirming my impression that Cervantes didn’t hate Romances, even if he set out to kill off the genre when he started writing Don Quixote. 

I was going to read the whole book or at least take a break after 6 tales, but now I’m out of breath following all the twists and turns in this one, I’m going to go read something else for a bit.

The second and third tales are very good. 

Separating the art from the artist

The art vs artist subject pops up again after the Alice Munro news—on one side are people who can no longer read Alice Munro, condemning her for having compassion for fictional characters but not for her own daughter; on the other side are those who call for separating the art from the artist, saying that we shouldn’t have to approve of the writer’s personal behaviour in order to enjoy their work—but is it always so clear-cut and simple? I don’t think so. 

Are the unpleasant things present in their works? 

You can read Dickens’s novels and ignore the stuff he wrote elsewhere about Indians, but you can’t read Edith Wharton without seeing her attitudes about Jews. You can enjoy Gabriel García Márquez’s novels and ignore his friendship with Fidel Castro, but you can’t watch many 60s French films without seeing their naïve enthusiasm for communism and the Soviet Union. Much harder to focus on merit and ignore an author’s unpleasant side if it’s present in their works. 

Things could also be complicated. You can see on the page Tolstoy’s sexist views on women and unhealthy relationship with sex, but at the same time, he created some of the finest female characters in literature, such as Anna, Dolly, Natasha, Marya, Sonya, Vera, and so on. 

Then what do you do with films? You can ignore Hitchcock’s treatment of his actresses, but could you watch Last Tango in Paris (again) once you know what’s actually happening to Maria Schneider on the screen? 

Talent and importance 

I’m happy never watching another Jackie Chan film for the rest of my life. I probably won’t bother with Sean Penn either. But to never watch a Roman Polanski film would be a much harder choice to make—Chinatown is a masterpiece. 

Most people would agree that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are in many ways nasty, or have nasty views, but you would miss out on a lot if you refused to read them, or read them and only focused on the nastiness. But I’m not convinced it’s a huge loss that I haven’t got to Solzhenitsyn—he wrote some important books and people read them despite many wrong-headed views—but I’ve got Vasily Grossman, I don’t get the impression Solzhenitsyn is a must-read.

Time 

There’s a difference between being antisemitic in the 19th century and repeating antisemitic tropes and blood libel today. There’s a difference between having sympathy for communism in the 1960s and praising Stalin or Mao Zedong today. 

I would add, especially after reading a piece recently about Roger Waters, that there is nothing naïve and embarrassing about being unable to separate the art from the artist if the artist is alive and being vile before your very eyes. 

The deader the artist, the better.

Among the writers who mean the most to me, Shakespeare and Cervantes died 400 years ago—they’re no longer capable of surprising and disappointing us, but if something resurfaces, I wouldn’t even flinch—their contemporary Caravaggio after all was a murderer, it doesn’t matter.  

We all draw a line somewhere 

As long as people don’t call for censorship and other forms of cancelling, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to dismiss someone as philistine or naïve if they’re unable to read a writer—Alice Munro for example—after a shocking and disappointing revelation.

We all draw a line somewhere. For some people, it’s sexual abuse (and its complicity). For some, it’s betrayal of children. For some, it’s racism (especially towards their own group). For some, it’s condonation of terrorism. For some, it’s denial of genocide. And so on and so forth. Certain things are more personal, certain things are felt more strongly.

For example, due to my background, I have no interest in writers who praise communism, or Vietnamese writers who live in Western countries but never say anything critical about the communist government. 

If some people are no longer able to read Alice Munro, why condemn them? Nobody is obliged to read Alice Munro. 

Separating the art from the artist is the ideal—we should appreciate the great works of art that very flawed people have nevertheless given us—but it’s not always possible and that’s fine. 

Love after Death by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Originally Amar después de la Muerte, also known in English as To Love Beyond Death. I read the translation by Roy Campbell, in The Classic Theatre: Volume III (edited by Eric Bentley), which also contains The Trickster of Seville, Life Is a Dream, The Siege of Numantia, and a play adaptation of Celestina (though I read a different translation of Life is a Dream—Gwynne Edwards).  

1/ The good thing about reading many different authors from the same country and the same period is that you get to see different perspectives and the larger context. In Don Quixote, Cervantes writes about the expulsion of the Moors (1609-1614). In this play, Calderón writes about the period before the expulsion, the period of discrimination and conflict and rebellion. He especially focuses on the perspective of the Moors. 

“MALEC […] though it was just 

That Arab speech and customs must, 

In the long run, give place to Spanish, 

Yet such a harsh and furious thrust 

Some few surviving traits to banish 

Which of their own accord would vanish 

I thought excessive and unjust, 

And begged them to restrain their zeal 

Lest violence prove resort to steel, 

When ancient custom’s spurned as dust…” 

(Act 1) 

Malec is an old Moor, and he’s physically struck by Don John of Mendoza. 

“MALEC […] I’ll go around, persuading all. 

It would be infamous disgrace 

Such wrongs as mine in vain should call 

Demanding vengeance from our race.” 

(ibid.) 

This is good. Like Cervantes, Calderón portrays the Moors sympathetically. Don John of Mendoza, he depicts as hateful. Now you may argue that I’m looking at it through modern eyes, but Love After Death begins with the Moorish characters and when we get Mendoza’s words “The Moors—despicable and vile!”, they’re quoted by Matec and seen through his perspective. 

Calderón later depicts Mendoza in his own voice, and Mendoza sounds like a racist, especially in that scene where Zuñiga (the magistrate) tries to make peace between Don John of Mendoza and Matec by getting him to marry Matec’s daughter Doña Clara. 

“MENDOZA […] It’s indecent to mix Mendoza blood with 

The blood of the Matecs. They do not ring

Together in the same selfsame sort of key—

“Mendoza” with “Malec” cannot agree!

VÁLOR Don John Malec’s a man…

MENDOZA And one like you! 

VÁLOR Yes, for his ancestors were a whole line 

Of kings on either side, and so were mine. 

MENDOZA Yes, but my own, although they were not kings

Were higher than the kings of Moors; they were 

Castilian highlanders and mountaineers.” 

(Act 1) 

How vile. 

And yet, it’s not so simple. Whereas Lope de Vega writes two-dimensional villains and unambiguously good characters, that’s not the case with Calderón. Don John of Mendoza, everyone will agree, is racist towards the Moors, and yet he has a secret love affair with Doña Isabel Tuzaní, sister of Don Alvaro Tuzaní, and a Moor who converted to Christianity. 

2/ Look at Garcés, a Spanish soldier:  

“GARCÉS […] No soon were we by those crags surrounded 

Than he gave tongue, and all the rock resounded 

With Moorish horns responding to his yelp. 

Like dogs they rushed their fellow-cur to help…”

(Act 2) 

Calderón depicts (some of) the Spaniards as hateful and barbaric, and the Moors as vengeful—but justifiably so. 

“GARCÉS […] Have then no pity 

On children, let the old men not escape, 

And let the women be for spoil and rape—

It is this last I’m recommending chiefly.” 

(ibid.) 

I don’t doubt that Calderón has sympathy for the Moors (even if the comic character of Alcuzcuz might be seen as problematic). It is more obviously sympathetic than Shakespeare’s attitude about the Jews. 

Calderón also has sympathy for women: 

“CLARA […] How base of Nature and how cruel 

To trick us out for ear and eye 

With wit and beauty, each a jewel, 

And honour, too, with them to vie, 

A blazing diamond, brighter yet—

But ah! how insecurely set! 

What greater woe is there to feel 

For women, than that we can steal 

A husband’s honour, or with shame 

Besmirch even a father’s name—

Yet not restore or wash the same…” 

(Act 1) 

That’s good. That’s very good. 

3/ I read Shakespeare’s history plays and saw there were too many Henrys. Now Calderón’s play has too many Don Johns: Don John Malec (“New Christian” of Moorish descent), Don John of Mendoza (the Spanish racist), and Prince Don John of Austria. 

4/ I don’t want you to think that Love After Death is only interesting for its social themes and progressive attitudes—Calderón’s poetry seems great, even though I only read it in translation. 

For example: 

“DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA Insulting, bold, rebellious mountain range

Whose wild uncultured ruggedness, whose strange

Outlandish height, whose awful weight, whose horrid

Monstrous build and overwhelming forehead 

Fatigue the ground, expand the air and earth, 

And make the sky conceive a monstrous birth! 

Primeval lair of bandits, thieves, and vandals, 

Whose breast, a thundercloud of plots and scandals, 

Gives forth seditious lightings, word for word, 

That striking here, in Africa are heard!...” 

(Act 2) 

Striking imagery. 

Or this passage, when Don John of Mendoza points at the landmarks: 

“MENDOZA […] That other, there, they call Galera, maybe

Because its keeled foundation’s like a galley’s 

Or that it rides an ocean of scrolled rocks, 

Curling like waves, and heaves a foam of flowers 

Spuming around, like a shawl of spray. 

It looks as though, subjected to the winds,

It turned and veered with them above the world.” 

(Act 2) 

If only I could read all this in the original! 

“GARCÉS […] Any moment

You can expect the mountain-side to burst 

And fill the sky with thunderclouds of dust…” 

(Act 2) 

All this is a very good. The translator himself, Roy Campbell, is a poet. 

Look at Don Alvaro Tuzaní’s description of war and destruction: 

“ALVARO […] All adders 

The houses are, of coiling flames, 

Of spiral smoke, gyrating screams 

That go on winding up the ladders 

Of their own ruin till it seems 

They re-establish there on high 

A capital of ghastly dreams 

And ghoulish nightmares in the sky!...” 

(Act 3) 

This could fit in a Shakespeare play. 

The greatest scene in Love After Death is probably after Don Alvaro Tuzaní watches his beloved Doña Clara Malec die:

“ALVARO […] You heavens that look down upon my pain, 

You mountains that behold my wrongs in vain, 

You winds that hear my sorrow and you fires

Who witness this the wreck of my desires, 

How could you have permitted that the best 

Light of this world, the star of all the west, 

Should be put out? The fairest flower grow pale? 

The sweetest breath be missing from the gale?

[…] My sole belief, 

Creed, faith, hope, or religion is my grief…” 

(Act 3) 

What a magnificent monologue. 

“ALVARO It is the most unearthly grief, 

A sorrow that surpasses all belief, 

Beyond alleviation or relief, 

To have seen die (how lamentably! how 

Piteously!) the partner of one’s vow, 

The person that one loves! It is the summit 

Of icy, piercing grief. It is the plummet 

That deepest sounds the gulf of black despair…” 

(ibid.) 

I don’t see such depth of feeling in Lope de Vega, at least not in the plays I have read. Calderón is my boy.  

This is a great play. Spanish Golden Age drama doesn’t get much attention in the English-speaking world, methinks—if you read only one play, go for Calderón’s Life Is a Dream; if you want to read two plays, add Love After Death or The Dog in the Manger. 

The Siege of Numantia, a play by Cervantes

I can hear you asking “Cervantes? Miguel de Cervantes?”. Yep, that’s him, the author of Don Quixote. 

But first, context. The Siege of Numantia, if Wikipedia can be trusted, was written circa 1582—before Lope de Vega’s career, before the Spanish Armada, before the first play by Christopher Marlowe. This is important to keep in mind. 

1/ Scipio, the new Roman general, finds morale low among his troops so he scolds them: 

“SCIPIO From your fierce mien, and from your sprightly show, 

Comrades, that you are Romans, well I know—

Romans both strong and lusty for the fight—

But in your hands so delicate and white, 

And in that pink that’s on your face written, 

Why, anyone would you think you reared in Britain…”

(Act 1) 

Excuse me??? 

The year is 135 BC. This makes The Siege of Numantia very different from the Spanish Golden Age plays I’ve been reading. 

2/ There are good bits in the play. 

“SCIPIO […] I do not wish the wasted blood 

Of any other Romans to discolour 

This ground again. Enough blood has been shed 

By these cursed Spaniards, in this long, hard war, 

Now let us all exert our hands in breaking 

And digging this hard earth. Let friends be friends

Be covered with the dust they raise, no longer 

Covered with blood by enemies…”

(ibid.) 

This version is translated by South African poet Roy Campbell. 

Cervantes starts with the Roman point of view, then writes an exchange between the Roman general Scipio and a few Numantines, and then switches to the Numantine point of view. 

“FIRST PRIEST With a pure thought and spirit cleansed of sin 

Just as I plunge and stain my knife within 

This ram’s pure blood, so may Numantia stain 

Her hard earth with the blood of Romans slain, 

And prove a mighty grave to whelm them in! 

[…] 

SECOND PRIEST But who has reft the victim from my hands? 

Ye gods, what’s this? What monstrous prodigies 

Are these we see? Have our laments not touched 

Your hearts, though coming from a tribe afflicted 

And full of tears? Have our harped hymns not softened 

Your hearts? No! they have hardened them the more

To judge from all these signs of cruel wrath. 

The remedies of life are fatal to us: 

Neglect of prayer would profit us far more. 

Our good is alien, but our ills are native.” 

(Act 2) 

That’s good. I wish I could read it in the original. 

3/ As I wrote at the beginning of the blog post, The Siege of Numantia was written around 1582—before the advent of Lope de Vega—so in many ways, it is old-fashioned. For example, there is a character representing Spain, with one representing the River Duero and three boys representing Tributary Streams. There are also personifications of War, Pestilence, Hunger, and Fame, as in morality plays.  

My impression is that Lope de Vega has a better sense of structure, pacing, and tension than Cervantes—the latter’s medium is the novel—Cervantes writes too many long speeches that the characters sometimes seem to be talking at rather than talking to each other and it affects the pacing, and the transition from one thing to another is often messy. The play as a whole, I think, is a bit of a mess. There’s even a scene involving a Numantine magician (Marquino) and a corpse! 

But there are good moments in it. The exchange between Marandro and Leonicio about love, for instance. The scene where some Numantine soldiers want to “break through the hostile wall, and rush to die” and get stopped by their wives is also good. 

I like many images throughout the play, and the descriptions of war and famine and the burning. 

“SECOND NUMANTINE […] Already 

Up in the central square they’ve made a huge 

Blazing and hungry conflagration, which, 

Fed with our riches, soars to the fourth sphere. 

There with sad, fearful haste runs everyone, 

As with a sacred offering, to feast, 

The roaring flames with his own goods and chattels, 

Sustaining them with households and estates. 

[…] The roaring mad inferno of the flames—

And not with green wood or with dried-up straw 

Nor with such things as men consign to flames

But with the homes and properties and wealth 

They can no longer live with or enjoy.” 

(Act 3) 

Some characters’ speeches before they die are also moving. 

Overall, the play is okay. 

The King the Greatest Alcalde by Lope de Vega

Originally El mejor alcalde, el rey, it is another of Lope de Vega’s famous plays. I read the 1936 translation by John Garrett Underhill. 

1/ The play begins with a poor man named Sancho (not Panza) wanting to marry Elvira, daughter of a farmer named Nuño. Elvira loves him and Nuño approves of the marriage but Sancho has to ask for blessings from his employer Don Tello, who generously gives him a bunch of sheep and cows as a present. 

Troubles begin when Don Tello, the most powerful man in Galicia, shows up during the preparations for the wedding and sees Elvira and wants her for himself. It is a very good scene. 

He calls off the wedding, and then abducts her. 

Look at this exchange: 

“DON TELLO […] How then, Elvira, could your cruel rage 

Treat me thus foully? Cannot your rigor see 

That this is love? 

ELVIRA Never, my lord, for love 

That is deficient in a true respect 

For honor, is but vile desire, not love, 

And being evil, love never can be called. 

For love is born of loving what one loves 

In mad desire, 

And love that is not chaste 

By no name of love is graced 

Nor ever can to love’s estate aspire.” 

(Act 2) 

She explains: 

“ELVIRA […] Last night you saw me, Tello, for the first; 

Why, then, your love was such a sudden thing 

That you had scarce a moment to consider 

What that thing was which you so much desired; 

Yet in that knowledge all true love resides. 

For love is born of a great-grown desire, 

And love goes mounting then the steps of favor 

Even to its own end and exercise. 

So this you feel was never love we see 

In simple truth—mad lust and longing rather…”

(ibid.) 

Isn’t this so good? Jane Austen would have loved this, and I can’t help thinking that these speeches would have fit rather well in a Shakespeare play. 

2/ Don Tello imprisons Elvira in a tower, and when Nuño has a chance to speak to his daughter, what does he say? 

“NUÑO I never thought to see your face again, 

Not that these bars have confined you prisoner 

In cruel duress, but rather in my sight 

I held you for dishonored. So foul a thing 

Dishonor is in honorable minds, 

So vile, so loathsome ugly, even to me 

Who brought you to the world, even to me 

It must forbid that I should see you more. 

[…] Let her who renders count of her soul’s treasure

In faithless wise, call me no more father. 

Because a daughter of like infamy—

And all too weak are these the words I speak—

Upon a father has one single claim, 

That he shall shed her blood!” 

(Act 3) 

This is even worse than Hero’s father’s reaction to Claudio’s accusations in Much Ado About Nothing! 

I’m getting irritated with the way 17th century Spaniards keep harping on about a woman’s honour. Look at the plays I’ve been reading: 

A Dog in the Manger (Lope de Vega): X 

Fuenteovejuna (Lope de Vega): ✓ 

The Surgeon of Honour (Calderón): ✓

Life Is a Dream (Calderón): ✓

The Trickster of Seville (Tirso de Molina): ✓

And now, The King the Greatest Alcalde (Lope de Vega): ✓ 

It’s getting rather tiresome. 

3/ I shouldn’t be comparing Lope de Vega to Shakespeare, but I can’t help noticing the parallels between The King the Greatest Alcalde and Measure for Measure: in both plays, there is a tyrant; in both plays, the tyrant wants to possess a woman but she refuses; in both plays, a more powerful person walks around in disguise to uncover the truth and restore justice.

However, Measure for Measure is in many ways a deeper and more sophisticated play: Elvira has a vivid existence, especially in the conversations with Sancho at the beginning, but she’s unambiguously good, not complex and problematic (for lack of a better word) like Isabella; Don Tello shows his generosity at the beginning, but from the moment he lusts after Elvira, he’s purely tyrannical and monomaniacal; we don’t see Don Tello question himself or struggle with his conscience, as Angelo does in Measure for Measure; it depicts tyranny and the conditions of women, but Shakespeare’s play raises questions about power, justice, mercy, virtue, goodness, and so on. The King the Greatest Alcalde is a fun play, satisfying—when Don Tello gets his comeuppance—but like Fuenteovejuna, it’s an unambiguous play between the evil tyrant and the good lower class. There isn’t much depth or complexity. 

But I will be fair and say that one thing complicates the play, whether or not it’s Lope de Vega’s intent: Nuño’s speech to Elvira (quoted above) shows the fanatical obsession with a woman’s honour and the unfairness to women. Lope de Vega himself might not have intended it to be a condemnation of Spanish culture, but that detail is there and it darkens the play—what if the King doesn’t intervene? 

The King the Greatest Alcalde is a play feminists (in the Anglophone world) would love (if they know about it).