The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - Pedro Calderón de la Barca (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📗

the Introduction to my volume, p. 6).

This surely is unquestionably true, and the argument used by Sir F. H. Doyle to controvert it does not go for much. These Autos, no doubt, were, as he says, "composed in the first instance to gratify, and did gratify, the uneducated populace of Madrid". Yes, the crowds that listened delighted and entranced to these wonderful compositions, were, for the most part, "uneducated" in the ordinary meaning of that word. But in the special education necessary for their thorough enjoyment, the case was very different. It is not too much to say that, as the result of Catholic training, teaching, intuition, and association, the least instructed of his Madrid audience more easily understood Calderon's allusions, than the great majority of those who, reared up in totally different ideas, are able to do, even after much labour and sometimes with considerable sympathy. Mr. Tennyson says that he counts-

"The gray barbarian lower than the Christian child",

because the almost intuitive perceptions of a Christian child as to the nature of God and the truths of Revelation, place it intellectually higher than even the mature intelligence of a savage. I mean no disrespect to Sir F. H. Doyle, but I think that Calderon would have found at Madrid in the middle of the seventeenth century, and would find there to-day, in a Catholic boy of fifteen, a more intelligent and a better instructed critic on these points, than even the learned professor himself. I shall make no further comments on Sir F. H. Doyle's Lecture, but give his remarks on Calderon's Autos to the end.

"At the same time", says Sir F. H. Doyle, "Dr. Lorinzer's knowledge of his subject is so profound, and his appreciation of his favourite author so keen, that for me, who am almost entirely unacquainted with this branch of literature, formally to oppose his views, would be an act of presumption, of which I am, as I trust, incapable. I may, however, perhaps be permitted to observe, that with regard to the few pieces of this kind which in an English dress I have read, whilst I think them not only most ingenious but also surprisingly beautiful, they do not strike me as incomprehensible at all. We must accept them, of course, as coming from the mind of a devout Catholic and Spanish gentleman, who belongs to the seventeenth century; but when once that is agreed upon, there are no difficulties greater than those which we might expect to find in any system of poetry so remote from our English habits of thought. There is, for instance, the Divine Philothea, in other words, our human spirit considered as the destined bride of Christ. This sacred drama, we may well call it the swan-song of Calderon's extreme old age, is steeped throughout in a serene power and a mellow beauty of style, making it not unworthy to be ranked with that Oedipus Colonaeus which glorified the sun-set of his illustrious predecessor: but yet, Protestant as I am, I cannot discover that it is in the least obscure. Faith, Hope, Charity, the Five Senses, Heresy, Judaism, Paganism, Atheism, and the like, which in inferior hands must have been mere lay figures, are there instinct with a dramatic life and energy such as beforehand I could hardly have supposed possible. Moreover, in spite of Dr. Lorinzer's odd encomiums, each allegory as it rises is more neatly rounded off, and shows a finer grain, than any of the personifications of Spenser; so that the religious effect and the theological effect intended by the writer, are both amply produced-yes, produced upon us, his heretical admirers. Hence, even if there be mysterious treasures of beauty below the surface, to which we aliens must remain blind for ever, this expression, which broke from the lips of one to whom I was eagerly reading [Mr. Mac-Carthy's translation of] the play, 'Why, in the original this must be as grand as Dante', tends to show that such merits as do come within our ken are not likely to be thrown away upon any fair-minded Protestant. Dr. Newman, as a Catholic, will have entered, I presume, more deeply still into the spirit of these extraordinary creations; his life, however, belongs to a different era and to a colder people. And thus, however much he may have been directed to the choice of a subject by the old Mysteries and Moralities (of which these Spanish Autos must be taken as the final development and bright consummate flower), he has treated that subject, when once undertaken by him, entirely from his own point of view. 'Gerontius' is meant to be studied and dwelt upon by the meditative reader. The Autos of Calderon were got ready by perhaps the most accomplished playwright that ever lived, to amuse and stimulate a thronging southern population. 'Gerontius' is, we may perhaps say for Dr. Newman in the words of Shelley,

'The voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought';

whilst the conceptions of the Spanish dramatist burst into life with tumultuous music, gorgeous scenery, and all the pomp and splendour of the Catholic Church. No wonder therefore that our English Auto, though composed with the same genuine purpose of using verse, and dramatic verse, to promote a religious and even a theological end, should differ from them in essence as well as in form. There is room however for both kinds in the wide empire of Poetry, and though Dr. Newman himself would be the first to cry shame upon me if I were to name him with Calderon even for a moment, still his Mystery of this most unmysterious age will, I believe, keep its honourable place in our English literature as an impressive, an attractive, and an original production"-pp. 109, 115.

I may mention that the volume containing Belshazzar's Feast, and The Divine Philothea, the Auto particularly referred to by Sir F. H. Doyle, has been called Mysteries of Corpus Christi by the publisher. A not inappropriate title, it would seem, from the last observations of the distinguished Professor. A third Auto, The Sorceries of Sin, is given in my Three Plays of Calderon, now on sale by Mr. B. Quaritch, 15 Piccadilly, London. The Divine Philothea, The Sorceries of Sin, and Belshazzar's Feast are the only Autos of Calderon that have ever been translated either fully, or, with one exception, even partially into English.

D. F. MAC-CARTHY. 74 Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin, March 1, 1870.


* AUTOS SACRAMENTALES: THE DIVINE PHILOTHEA: BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. Two Autos, from the Spanish of Calderon. With a Commentary from the German of Dr. Franz Lorinser. By Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, M.R.I.A. Dublin: James Duffy, 15 Wellington Quay, and 22 Paternoster Row, London.

+ LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1868. By Sir F. H. Doyle Bart., M.A., B.C L., Late Fellow of All Souls', Professor of Poetry. London: Macmillan & Co., 1869.


THE TWO LOVERS OF HEAVEN.[1]

INTRODUCTION.


IN the "Teatro escogido de Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca" (1868), at present in course of publication by the Royal Academy of Madrid, Calderon's dramas, exclusive of the autos sacramentales, which do not form a part of the collection, are divided into eight classes. The seventh of these comprises what the editor calls mystical dramas, and those founded on the Legends or the Lives of Saints. The eighth contains the philosophical or purely ideal dramas. This last division, in which the editor evidently thinks the genius of Calderon attained its highest development, at least as far as the secular theatre is concerned, contains but two dramas, The Wonder-working Magician, and Life's a Dream. The mystical dramas, which form the seventh division, are more numerous, but of these five are at present known to us only by name. Those that remain are Day-break in Copacabana, The Chains of the Demon, The Devotion of the Cross, The Purgatory of St. Patrick, The Sibyl of the East, The Virgin of the Sanctuary, and The Two Lovers of Heaven. The editor, Sr. D. P. De La Escosura, seems to think it necessary to offer some apology for not including The Two Lovers of Heaven among the philosophical instead of the mystical dramas. He says: "There is a great analogy and, perhaps, resemblance between "El Magico Prodigioso" (The Wonder-working Magician), and "Los dos amantes del cielo" (The Two Lovers of Heaven); but in the second, as it seems to us, the purely mystical predominates in such a manner over the philosophical, that it does not admit of its being classified in the same group as the first (El Magico Prodigioso), and La Vida es Sueno (Life's a Dream)". Introduccion, p. cxxxvii. note. Whether this distinction is well founded or not it is unnecessary to determine. It is sufficient for our purpose that it establishes the high position among the greatest plays of Calderon of the drama which is here presented to the English reader in the peculiar and always difficult versification of the original. Whether less philosophical or more mystical than The Wonder-working Magician, The Two Lovers of Heaven possesses a charm of its own in which its more famous rival seems deficient. In the admirable "Essay on the Genius of Calderon" (ch. ii. p. 34), with which Archbishop Trench introduces his spirited analysis of La Vida es Sueno, he refers to the group of dramas which forms, with one exception, the seventh and eighth divisions of the classification above referred to, and pays a just tribute to the superior merits of Los dos amantes del cielo. After alluding to the dramas, the argument of which is drawn from the Old Testament, and especially to The Locks of Absalom, which he considers the noblest specimen, he continues: "Still more have to do with the heroic martyrdoms and other legends of Christian antiquity, the victories of the Cross of Christ over all the fleshly and spiritual wickednesses of the ancient heathen world. To this theme, which is one almost undrawn upon in our Elizabethan drama,-Massinger's Virgin Martyr is the only example I remember,-he returns continually, and he has elaborated these plays with peculiar care. Of these The Wonder-working Magician is most celebrated; but others, as The Joseph of Women, The Two Lovers of Heaven, quite deserve to be placed on a level, if not higher than it. A tender pathetic grace is shed over this last, which gives it a peculiar charm. Then too he has occupied what one might venture to call the region of sacred mythology, as in The Sibyl of the East, in which the profound legends identifying the Cross of Calvary and the Tree of Life are wrought up into a poem of surpassing beauty".[2] An excellent German version of Los dos amantes del cielo is to be found in the second volume of the "Spanisches Theater", by Schack, whose important work on Dramatic Art and Literature in Spain, is still untranslated into the language of that country,-a singular neglect, when his later and less elaborate work, "Poesie and Kunst der Araber in Spanien und Sicilien" (Berlin, 1865), has already found an excellent Spanish interpreter in Don Juan Valera, two volumes of whose "Poesia y Arte de los Arabes en Espana y Sicilia" (Madrid, 1868), I was fortunate enough to meet with during a recent visit to Spain.

The story of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria (The Two Lovers of Heaven), whose martyrdom took place at Rome A.D. 284, and whose festival occurs on the 25th of October, is to be found in a very abridged form in the "Legenda Aurea" of Jacobus de