Lope's daughter, the
lovely and gifted Marcela de Carpio, was rich in the genius of her
father and the beauty of her mother, the high-born Maria de Lujan.
Cervantes's child glided from obscurity to oblivion no one knew when,
and the name she assumed with her spiritual vows is lost to tradition.
But the mystic espousals of the sister Marcela de San Felix to the
eldest son of God - the audacious phrase is of the father and priest Frey
Lope - were celebrated with princely pomp and luxury; grandees of Spain
were her sponsors; the streets were invaded with carriages from the
palace, the verses of the dramatist were sung in the service by the
Court tenor Florian, called the "Canary of Heaven;" and the event
celebrated in endless rhymes by the genteel poets of the period.
Rarely has a lovelier sacrifice been offered on the altar of
superstition. The father, who had been married twice before he entered
the priesthood, and who had seen the folly of errant loves without
number, twitters in the most innocent way about the beauty and the charm
of his child, without one thought of the crime of quenching in the gloom
of the cloister the light of that rich young life. After the lapse of
more than two centuries we know better than he what the world lost by
that lifelong imprisonment. The Marquis of Mo-lins, director of the
Spanish Academy, was shown by the ladies of the convent in this year of
1870 a volume of manuscript poems from the hand of Sor Marcela, which
prove her to have been one of the most vigorous and original poets of
the time. They are chiefly mystical and ecstatic, and full of the
refined and spiritual voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose
pulsations had never learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins
is preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one
of the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent
fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon the
theme of her wasted prayers: -
Let them say to my Lover
That here I lie!
The thing of his pleasure,
His slave am I.
Say that I seek him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold;
I have all, my Beloved,
When thee I hold.
Hope and devotion
The good may gain,
I am but worthy
Of passion and pain.
So noble a Lord
None serves in vain, -
For the pay of my love
Is my love's sweet pain.
I love thee, to love thee,
No more I desire,
By faith is nourished
My love's strong fire.
I kiss thy hands
When I feel their blows,
In the place of caresses
Thou givest me woes.
But in thy chastising
Is joy and peace,
O Master and Love,
Let thy blows not cease!
Thy beauty, Beloved,
With scorn is rife!
But I know that thou lovest me,
Better than life.
And because thou lovest me,
Lover of mine,
Death can but make me
Utterly thine!
I die with longing
Thy face to see;
Ah! sweet is the anguish
Of death to me!
This is a long digression, but it will be forgiven by those who feel how
much of beautiful and pathetic there is in the memory of this mute
nightingale dying with her passionate music all unheard in the silence
and shadows. It is to me the most purely poetic association that clings
about the grave of Cervantes.
This vein of mysticism in religion has been made popular by the recent
canonization of Saint Theresa, the ecstatic nun of Avila. In the
ceremonies that celebrated this event there were three prizes awarded
for odes to the new saint. Lope de Vega was chairman of the committee of
award, and Cervantes was one of the competitors. The prizes it must be
admitted were very tempting: first, a silver pitcher; second, eight
yards of camlet; and third, a pair of silk stockings. We hope
Cervantes's poem was not the best. We would rather see him carry home
the stuff for a new cloak and pourpoint, or even those very attractive
silk stockings for his shrunk shank, than that silver pitcher which he
was too Castilian ever to turn to any sensible use. The poems are
published in a compendium of the time, without indicating the successful
ones; and that of Cervantes contained these lines, which would seem
hazardous in this colder age, but which then were greatly admired: -
"Breaking all bolts and bars,
Comes the Divine One, sailing from the stars,
Full in thy sight to dwell:
And those who seek him, shortening the road,
Come to thy blest abode,
And find him in thy heart or in thy cell."
The anti-climax is the poet's, and not mine.
He knew he was nearing his end, but worked desperately to retrieve the
lost years of his youth, and leave the world some testimony of his
powers. He was able to finish and publish the Second Part of Quixote,
and to give the last touches of the file to his favorite work, the long
pondered and cherished Persiles. This, he assures Count Lemos, will be
either the best or the worst work ever produced by mortal man, and he
quickly adds that it will not be the worst. The terrible disease gains
upon him, laying its cold hand on his heart. He feels the pulsations
growing slower, but bates no jot of his cheerful philosophy. "With one
foot in the stirrup," he writes a last farewell of noble gratitude to
the viceroy of Naples. He makes his will, commanding that his body be
laid in the Convent of the Trinitarians.
