Garcı ́a Lorca was pleased, as he stood in the
street one night before a wine-shop in Seville,
to hear the words of acoplawhich he himself
had written sung word for word by an illiterate
guitarist, syllable for syllable in the mode of the
12th century epic.
And I remember one night in 1910 in Toledo
listening in the same way before a cubicle open-
ing onto one of the plazas where a few men were
sitting drinking. One of them was singing to the
beat of a guitar. I went in, a young man not very
familiar with the language and an obvious
stranger, but they became self-conscious so that
I took my drink and left soon after. They looked
like the shepherds I had seen coming in that
afternoon across the narrow bridge with their
big wolfish dogs.
Toward the middle of the 13th Century
Alfonso X, called the Wise, first gave due honor
to the language of the country by ordering all
public documents to be written in the common
tongue rather than in Latin as formerly. It is
typical of Spain that many blamed precisely this
change for the disorder and disasters which fol-
lowed. It was Alfonso who, in 1253, gathered a
whole book ofCantigasorletrasto sing, in the
dialecto gallego. He was dethroned by his own
son and driven an exile to die neglected in Seville,
after which for close to a hundred years, ‘‘in that
miserable epoch,’’ so it is said, ‘‘the men of Castile
seemed to possess hearts only to hate and arms
only with which to kill.’’
Yet it was appositely enough during this
distressed period that there appeared the second
of Spain’s great early poems,Libro de Buen
Amor, the Book of Good Love, the work of
that most arresting personality in Spanish medi-
aeval literature: Juan Ruiz, arch-priest of Hita.
This is the portrait he gives of himself among the
many contained in his famous work: corpulent, a
big head, small eyes under heavy eyebrows black
as coal, a big nose, the mouth big also, thick lips,
a short, thick neck, an easy gait—a good musi-
cian and a gay lover.
If Lorca has rested his poetic inspirations
firmly in the structural forms established by
Poema del Cidmuch of his mood and spirit can
be discovered in the nature of the old reprobate
archpriest of Hita.
Juan Ruiz was a priest of that disorderly
type which his time tolerated, his favorite com-
pany the people, always the people, and partic-
ularly that part of the Spanish population, says
Madariaga, ‘‘which it is so difficult to imagine
today, in which Jews and Moors and Christians
mixed in an amiable fraternity of mirth and pleas-
ure.’’ Such a population is perhaps less difficult to
imagine today in the south, where Lorca was at
home, than those not fully initiated might have
supposed. For it is the home of the Andalusian
folksong which Lorca so ably celebrated, that
curious compound of the ‘‘philosophical desper-
ation of the Arab, the religious desperation of the
Jew, and the social desperation of the gypsy.’’
With these elements he was thoroughly familiar.
The major work of the fourteenth century in
Spain, Ruiz’Libro de Buen Amoris in reality a
picaresque novel in verse and prose, much of it in
dialogue full of laughter, full of movement and
full of color, a vast satirical panorama of medi-
aeval society. The poet, for all the faults and
indignities of the priest, is a great one. He
knows the secrets of that direct plunge into
action which is typical alike ofPoema del Cid,
of Spanishromancesno less than of Spanish
comedies, and, nowadays, of popular song, to
all of which Lorca owes much of his inspiration.
To understand fully all that is implied in
Lorca’s poetic style, what he rejected and what
he clung to, the development of Spanish poetry
subsequent to the work of the early masters must
be noted. There was a sharp revulsion from the
‘‘old taste’’ which they exemplified up to the time
of Juan de Mena. As always in matters of this
character geography must be recognized as play-
ing a leading part.
Spain is a peninsula dependent from the
extreme lower corner of Europe, cut off from
Europe by the Pyrenees which make of it virtu-
ally an island. It is, besides, far to the west of all
direct European influences. From the south the
Moorish invasion, with its softening influences,
failed, being driven back after four centuries of
temporary supremacy into Africa whence it had
come, though its mark remains still in a certain
quarter of Spanish and all European thought.
Lorca whose home was Granada knew this inher-
itance. The Moorish invasion stopped short and
receded while Latin thought, following the tracks
of Caesar, had in the main gone east of Iberia up
the Rhone valley through France to the north.
Thus the flexibility and necessitous subtlety of the
French, their logic and lucidity of ideas, remained
unknown to Spain. Enclosed within themselves
Spaniards have remained basically limited to a
reality of the world at their feet from which there
was no escape (save across the sea, which failedLament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as