Part 21

Novels which give us the souls of races and the ancient historical progression of peoples such as: Reymont’s _Peasants_, Hamsun’s _Growth of the Soil_, are precious, powerful things. In no other way can we know thoroughly other lands and them who dwell there. A series of novels is being published in South America by that accomplished artist and man of letters, Manuel Galvez, which does just that. He is writing a series of fascinating historical novels of the wars in Paraguay, and of life in that great rich country Argentina. At this moment the Paraguay Trilogy is ready. The books are _Los caminos de la muerte_, _Humaitá_ and _Tierra de espectos_. One of his earlier books, _El solar de la raza_, won the Argentine Prize. It is a travel book of old Spain. There are eloquent pages about Castile, strong, proud, noble, profound, whose glories Galvez says he has faith to believe will be duplicated again in Argentina. In this, Galvez has written as eloquently of time-stained, tragic Toledo as Zorilla, or Blanco-Fombona. As prelude to his description of the old stronghold of Spanish cities he says: “Now we are living in an epoch of transition; it is the imperialism of energy under two expressions, namely, will and muscle, while the older civilization of Spain was founded upon imperialism of the spirit. There the soul dominated. In modern cities of the New World people live preoccupied exclusively with material things; sensual pleasures, health, fashion, the acquiring of wealth. In the old days, in old cities such as Toledo, people were preoccupied with questions of the soul, God. Today we have the combative man, the pioneer, the self-made. We have epics of multitudes, whose interests are wholly material.”

“Toledo affirms for us the indelible quality of grief. It is one more illustration of the sudden end of things human. Even the stones of Toledo keep telling that life is continuous death. Cities, philosophies, glories of empire, books—everything—die. In time the civilization of Europe will pass into oblivion too. Later, American civilization will disappear, and with it the civilization of Argentina. Then some writer a thousand years hence will make a soulful and elegiac description of the end. He will find in the abandoned streets of my beloved Buenos Aires the same lofty sorrow, the same memories of the past, which, in nights I can now never forget, the stones of Great Toledo have revealed to me.”

Galvez is the author of many powerful novels of Argentina of today. Among them _El mal metafísico_, _La vida multiple_, _La sombra del convento_, _La tragedia de un hombre fuerte_, _Nacha Regules_. To me his most powerful book is _El cántico espiritual_. A book that has qualities which permit it to rank with the great novels of the world. It is the story of a young South American artist who goes to Paris to live, to continue his profession. There he falls in love with a rich, beautiful, but married woman from his own Argentina. For many years this love dominates his life. He pays court to her. He tries to make her his mistress, but without success. There are pages and pages of noble and inspired writing, rich revelations into the depths of an impassioned heart. After the years they both go back to Argentina again, to Buenos Aires, and here he finds out that she is ready to yield to his pleas and become his mistress. Then he finds his love for her is a thing of the spirit not of the flesh. He finds that she was merely the protective star that watched over his ambitions, his art. These years of sorrow had without his knowing it become years of progression for him, in which he had left behind forever his longing for the inferior beauty and had passed on to a nobler thing. Beauty Absolute, which is divine. In _El cántico espiritual_, Galvez writes (the close of the novel) the triumph of the spirit over the material, the triumph of an ideal world over a world of reality. It is the long pilgrimage of the soul toward the Absolute, the love of Dante for Beatrice, the philosophy of Socrates in the Banquet. It should be the hymn of a love that was pure, love eternal, a thing of comprehension of the soul, powerful enough to disdain the flesh. At their last meeting when he takes farewell of her, Suzanna, in his studio in Buenos Aires, he says: (This is the close of the novel.) I quote: “For this work which I wish to create, Suzanna, we must be pure. We must forget the flesh and the body. We must be able to life up our souls to the Great Beauty.”

“The darkness was drawing closer about them. They did not light the light. After Morris touched her brow fleetingly with his lips, his face again wore its noble ecstatic expression, his eyes too were strangely revealing of some richer happiness that seemed foreign, far.... With the eyes of the spirit he had confronted the Beauty which is Absolute. He had progressed from the love of one woman toward love of all human things, and from old art which was limited, to a comprehension of the essence of all art, the Divine.”

This book is nobly felt, nobly executed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Quotation marks have been added to the following paragraphs to be consistent with similar occurrences within the text: Pg 7: “There is ... national soul.” Pg 8: “Lima! Your ... of Spain.” Pg 27: “Il y a dans ... Dame Reality.)” Pg 31: “Il me fallut ... and Vitellius.” Pg 41: “Figure aux ... last God.”

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 3: ‘Eightheenth Century’ replaced by ‘Eighteenth Century’. Pg 5: ‘a Portugese critic’ replaced by ‘a Portuguese critic’. Pg 7: ‘some the same’ replaced by ‘some of the same’. Pg 11: ‘of great variety’ replaced by ‘of a great variety’. Pg 17: ‘the Pyranees and’ replaced by ‘the Pyrenees and’. Pg 17: ‘Pyranean village’ replaced by ‘Pyrenean village’. Pg 25: ‘a sered and wasteful winderness’ replaced by ‘a seered and wasteful wilderness’. Pg 26: ‘irridescent, like the’ replaced by ‘iridescent, like the’. Pg 29: ‘Lamertine wrote’ replaced by ‘Lamartine wrote’. Pg 30: ‘unbelieveable charm’ replaced by ‘unbelievable charm’. Pg 31: ‘of Eighteenth’ replaced by ‘of the Eighteenth’. Pg 32: ‘Gallilean Prophet’ replaced by ‘Galilean Prophet’. Pg 35: ‘English clerygman’ replaced by ‘English clergyman’. Pg 41: ‘shores of Gallilee’ replaced by ‘shores of Galilee’. Pg 46: ‘Salâmmbo’ replaced by ‘Salammbô’. Pg 64: ‘by many seiges’ replaced by ‘by many sieges’. Pg 69: ‘the hysop of the’ replaced by ‘the hyssop of the’. Pg 74: ‘Heine’ day was’ replaced by ‘Heine’s day was’. Pg 75: ‘in the quartrain’ replaced by ‘in the quatrain’. Pg 79: ‘exclamed with joy’ replaced by ‘exclaimed with joy’. Pg 79: ‘thanks to me like’ replaced by ‘thanks to men like’. Pg 81: ‘quartrains of Persia’ replaced by ‘quatrains of Persia’. Pg 82: ‘After period of’ replaced by ‘After the period of’. Pg 82: ‘born on the crest’ replaced by ‘borne on the crest’. Pg 82: ‘in his Rubiayat’ replaced by ‘in his Rubaiyat’. Pg 84: ‘into a quartrain’ replaced by ‘into a quatrain’. Pg 87: ‘loved banks of’ replaced by ‘loved the banks of’. Pg 95: ‘with new irridescence’ replaced by ‘with new iridescence’. Pg 96: ‘at stated intervales’ replaced by ‘at stated intervals’. Pg 97: ‘Man of Weimer’ replaced by ‘Man of Weimar’. Pg 98: ‘Pagannini is a good’ replaced by ‘Paganini is a good’. Pg 99: ‘Zucker und Zaubar’ replaced by ‘Zucker und Zauber’. Pg 101: ‘Marcel Schwab’ replaced by ‘Marcel Schwob’. Pg 112: ‘accused Bryon of’ replaced by ‘accused Byron of’. Pg 113: ‘of metamorphasis’ replaced by ‘of metamorphosis’. Pg 115: ‘dust of milleniums’ replaced by ‘dust of millenniums’. Pg 117: ‘Aristophenes’ replaced by ‘Aristophanes’ (twice). Pg 118: ‘L’Enchanteur Pourissant’ replaced by ‘L’Enchanteur Pourrissant’. Pg 119: ‘que Nietzche’ replaced by ‘que Nietzsche’. Pg 119: ‘entusiasm por’ replaced by ‘entusiasmo por’. Pg 125: ‘of connoiseurship’ replaced by ‘of connoisseurship’. Pg 128: ‘crumbling Colisseum’ replaced by ‘crumbling Colosseum’. Pg 130: ‘Riccarda Huch’ replaced by ‘Ricarda Huch’. Pg 132: ‘die Fusze eines’ replaced by ‘die Füsse eines’. Pg 133: ‘his is virtuousity’ replaced by ‘his is virtuosity’. Pg 135: ‘Aristophenes’ replaced by ‘Aristophanes’. Pg 142: ‘laisser choir dans’ replaced by ‘laissé choir dans’. Pg 148: ‘he is priest’ replaced by ‘he is a priest’. Pg 149: ‘in French journels’ replaced by ‘in French journals’. Pg 149: ‘It is case’ replaced by ‘It is a case’. Pg 152: ‘in ancestry of’ replaced by ‘in the ancestry of’. Pg 159: ‘been throughly’ replaced by ‘been thoroughly’. Pg 161: ‘Are you ambitions’ replaced by ‘Are you ambitious’. Pg 164: ‘is Schumanesque’ replaced by ‘is Schumannesque’. Pg 166: ‘quote him verbatum’ replaced by ‘quote him verbatim’. Pg 166: ‘Aristophenes’ replaced by ‘Aristophanes’. Pg 166: ‘From Chauteaubriand’ replaced by ‘From Chateaubriand’. Pg 182: ‘the Saumurai Creed’ replaced by ‘the Samurai Creed’. Pg 183: ‘Chauteaubriand’ replaced by ‘Chateaubriand’. Pg 189: ‘The superanuated’ replaced by ‘The superannuated’. Pg 194: ‘as critisicm, but’ replaced by ‘as criticism, but’. Pg 195: ‘almon-eyed beauties’ replaced by ‘almond-eyed beauties’. Pg 200: ‘Hanson’ replaced by ‘Hamsun’.