Front matter

CONTENTS FOOTNOTES TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

VIRGIN SPAIN

by WALDO FRANK

COPYRIGHT 1926 :: BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES First printing, March, 1926 Second printing, June, 1926

Often, meditating on the fervor with which Spain has ever defended and proclaimed the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, I have thought that in the depths of this dogma there must be a mystery akin with the mystery of our national soul: that perhaps this dogma is a symbol ... of our being. ...

Angel Ganivet.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

¶ The wanderer upon the face of the earth will love these lands whose drama is the burden of my book, if for no other reason for the pure hospitality of their peoples. To move from the Sahara of the Arabs to Biscay of the Basques, is to move from hospitable home to hospitable home: is to be chained forever in the remembrances of kindness. Unto all my friends, whose names are not too numerous to mention but whose grace would feel itself abused by public thanks, my thanks, then.

¶ Acknowledgments more intellectual are more easy. Above others, I am indebted to Federico de Onís, Head of the Department of Spanish Literature at Columbia University. Professor de Onís, whom I was fortunate to find in Spain, carried me to his native Salamanca (whence alas! Unamuno had just been exiled). After my book was written, he took time to read the proofs and to give me the unstinted, generous, invaluable aid of his erudition. I must name also José Ortega y Gasset, the outstanding intellectual master of the younger generation in Spain; Juan Ramón Jiménez, the poet; Luis Araquistáin, the satirist and social critic; Manuel Cossío, the authority on Greco; Azorín and Pío Baroja, Spain’s leading novelist; Ramiro de Maeztu and Enrique Díez-Canedo, critical leaders in Spain’s cultural renascence; Ramón Carande, the historian, and Pedro Salinas, the poet. All of these eminent men of Spain, in long conversations, helped me with a hospitality truly of their land, to my search for understanding of a people notoriously poor in critical and historical tradition. Nor can I neglect to mention Alfonso Reyes, the Mexican poet and Ambassador to the Argentine Republic, and Baldamiro Sanín Cano, the Colombian essayist, who helped to clarify for me that so urgent aspect of the Spanish spirit which is American. It must, however, be understood that none of these men is to be held responsible for the conception or for any of the ideas of this book.

¶ Much of the materials of my work has appeared in article form in magazines. To the Editors of The Commonweal, The Dial, The Menorah Journal, The Nation, The New Republic, The North American Review, La Revista de Occidente (Madrid), The Saturday Review and The Virginia (University) Quarterly, my acknowledgments, also.

¶ Finally, a word by way of explanation. What I have attempted might be called a Symphonic History. Spain is a complex integer: some of the elements which compose it are known commonly under such terms as climate, geography, historical events, literature, manners, custom, laws and art. Since I felt the Personality of Spain to hold all of these immediately, as a body holds all its organs, I have essayed, not to discuss them severally, not to relate their passage and chronological order, not primarily to picture or to dissect them. But I have let them come, each in its measure and its turn, upon the scene: and like actors in a play, like themes in a symphony, they have spoken their parts. If I could have my way, the pages of my book would come unto my reader as a drama he sees acted in an evening, or as a work of music he hears performed in an hour. I cannot command this proper and impossible hearing. I can but pray my reader, in some such spirit and attention, to take the book which lies now in his hand. Let him do this for me, and I shall gladly leave to him the judgment of my failure or success.

W. F.

New York, December, 1925.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Prelude: The Sky of Spain5

PART ONE: Spain

CHAPTER

I.Hinterland in Africa11

a.Oasis13

b.Moghreb24

c.Ishmael and Israel34

II.Hinterland in Spain43

III.Andalusia49

a. El Andalús51

b.The Eye57

c.The Bowels64

d.A Goddess and Don Juan70

e.The Gypsies Dance80

f.Spain Dances82

IV.Aragon89

a.The Atom91

b.The Way of the Atom96

V.Castile101

a.The Castle of the Cid103

b.The Stones of Wisdom110

c.The Water Bridge117

d.The Miracle of El Greco121

e.The Tomb132

VI. The Dream of Valencia137

PART TWO: The Tragedy of Spain

VII.The Will of the Catholic Kings141

VIII.The Will of Saint and Sinner155

a.Irony and Honor157

b.The Mystic159

c.The Jesuit167

d.The Jurist173

e.The Rogue178

f.Velázquez183

IX.The Will of Don Quixote189

a.The Birth of the Hero191

b.The Career of the Hero201

c.The Book of the Hero218

X.The Will of God227

a.The Bull Fight229

b.Man and Woman239

c.Madrid250

PART THREE: Beyond Spain

XI.The Rift in Barcelona255

XII.The Comedy of the Basque261

XIII.Two Andalusians273

a.The Sleepers275

b.The Awakeners280

c.The Sleepless Spirit287

XIV.The Port of Columbus293

PRELUDE THE SKY OF SPAIN

The sky of Spain is high. It is above earth very high. It is above Spain very high. It is separate from Spain.... It is a clear white sky. Sunlight is white in it. And the clouds are white.... It is a still sky. The clouds stand still in a great height and fixed as in a crystal.... The light of the sun becomes the light of the sky, becomes the light of the clouds, far from the dark red earth of Spain. Spain is her earth and her sky.... I am within the pasture plains of Extremadura. Behind me lies Badajoz....

. . . . . .

I have walked at dawn upon an ancient bridge of granite across the summer-shrunken river. The water curls and swerves through gold sand. In little steel-blue pools it lies deep; then it runs off in thinning saffron ribbons. Soldiers sit on black horses who drink the water silkening at their knees. The bridge swings in yellow arches. There is a bastioned gate cut with the conquering arms of Leon and Castile.

In the east, a low sun. Its horizontal hand touches my face. It is hot, striking across cool dawn. Badajoz is houses gray and gold over shut streets around a Gothic church. The sun is outside the cool city. On the Cathedral porch sit two old women. Their day has begun: it is to sit with open claw and to close on coin and to bless the giver of coin.

In my pocket is naught but the moldy paper of Portugal and the silver duros of Spain. I shake my head at the two aged women. “No tengo suelto. Lo siento.” I smile. She to my left smiles back. The other frowns and mutters. They are one, save for the difference between a frown and a smile.

Hairy goats clatter, swinging creamy udders. Burros pass with men and women, stolid, on their haunches. Through the crevice of leaning walls the sun lays a hot finger on my brow. My body is chill.

The bread in the fonda tastes coarse. It is sour and hurts my mouth. The coffee is tasteless ... a sort of gray heat ... good. Now I have a pocket full of coppers. I cross to the Cathedral porch. The two old women ... one, split by a frown and a smile. To the frown, I give five coppers, to the smile I give one. The smile and the frown do not change. I am in Spain!

The shut town is expanding. The sun is still outside; streets twist to avoid it. But the sun works. The city expands. Men and women are a melting on the street. Men and women are motes of life within the melting city....

. . . . . .

Badajoz is behind. The sun is high, and here the pasture plains. The Guadiana treeless wanders to the south. It is a thirsty river. It is a river homesick for the hills of its youth; moved by a dream of coolness southward, languidly stirred to win this dream in the south. Cities have no sky. Beyond the walls of Pax Augusta which centuries have mellowed from the Roman Camp holding harsh soldiers to this Badajoz ... now the sky of Spain....

I have never seen a sky so far from my head: I have never seen a world so sharp in my eye. The sky lifts me to a realm of visions. And as I pass into its moveless search, still I stand fixed within this graphic world.... Sheep bleat in a wave of dust.... The dust is dense. Curling, swirling, puffing, streaking down, the dust is clear as glass. The sheep are solid masses of tempestuous wool; each sheep is a writhe about four feet, about stalks of sinewed bone jerking it on. Here’s a man. A solid body. Hands crustaceous; face crisp skin drawn on a gaping skull: and over the skin porous as soapstone, bristles of separate hair, sweat, huddles of dust. The smoke from the cigarette cuts rising through the air. Over his shoulder, miles and miles away, a ruined village rests on the hump of a hill. Barbary figs stand at the walls of a splintered chapel. Solid Spain! The earth is clotted, corrugation, furrow. In a red gulch a blackish water drips. And there are flowers, purple like shreds of morning.

Everywhere sky. So far away, and everywhere. Its apartness is a force lifting the broken things of Spain as in a great dance Godward. Dust and sheep-hoof, ash of cigarette, pound of the shepherd’s staff on the earth, swish of his chaps, the dog’s soft pads against stone ... rise all in this various clarity, as in a dance, to the sky.

. . . . . .

I have a vision which has not left me. I shall love this people and this world. For in my vision I have been born as they.... There is a Funnel. Its walls are the round, white sky. It is thewed together by the rays of the sun. And at the Funnel’s mouth is the mouth of God, speaking the words which are the things of earth. Down this Funnel as in birth, we fall. Until we strike upon the land of Spain.