Modern Poets and Poetry of Spain/Memoir of Jose Maria Heredia
X.
JOSÈ MARIA HEREDIA.
The people of Cuba have good cause to be proud of a poet born in their island, whose genius seems always to have found its highest inspiration in expatiating on the charms of the place of his birth.
Heredia was born the 31st December, 1803, at Santiago de Cuba, in which city his family had taken refuge when driven away by the revolution from the island of Santo Domingo, where they had been previously settled. His father, whose profession was that of the law, was shortly afterwards appointed a Judge in Mexico, where he accordingly went with his family, taking his son there for his education under his special superintendence. This duty he had the privilege allowed him to accomplish, when he died in 1820, leaving a reputation for ability and uprightness so eminent as to prove highly advantageous to his son in his subsequent necessities. On his father's death, Heredia returned with his mother and three sisters to Cuba, where he had an uncle and other relations residing, and there he engaged in a course of study for the profession of the law, at the termination of which he was, in 1823, admitted an Advocate in the Supreme Court of the island. From his earliest years he had always shown himself possessed of a very studious disposition, and some of his poems seem to have been written when only eighteen years of age.
In the pursuit of the profession he had adopted, with his talent and energy, Heredia might have hoped soon to acquire a very honourable position; but unfortunately for his future comfort in life, he had imbibed too strongly the principles then prevailing to consider the domination of Spain as an evil which ought to be removed. It is stated, that there was a conspiracy even then formed to declare the independence of the island, in which he was implicated; and that on his being denounced to the government in consequence, he was obliged to fly from the island. Proceedings under this charge were notwithstanding instituted against him, under which he was formally declared banished. He thereupon went, in November 1823, to New York, where he passed the following three years, appearing, from the accounts that reached his friends, to have lived there during that time in great privations. These, and the variableness of the climate, operating severely on his constitution, as a native of the tropics, were no doubt the causes of his becoming a victim to that fatal disease which terminated his existence a few years afterwards.
In New York he acquired soon an accurate knowledge of the English language, which enabled him also to become familiarly acquainted with English literature. Of this he showed no inconsiderable tokens, in a volume of poems which he published there in 1825, having included among them several translations from the English, though he has not acknowledged them generally as such. He continued the same neglect in the edition of his works published subsequently in Mexico in 1832, which was a much superior edition to the former, being more than doubled in regard to its contents, and having the poems formerly published now much corrected and improved.
Not finding his residence in New York offering him any hopes of advancement in life, and despairing of being able to return to his family in Cuba, he determined to go thence to Mexico and seek the assistance of his father's friends in that city. He accordingly went there in 1826, and had scarcely arrived when he was at once appointed to a situation in the office of the Secretary of State. From this minor post he was soon afterwards promoted to discharge various important offices in the provinces, and finally to be named one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Mexico and a Senator of the Republic. It was while holding one of those appointments as a local judge at Toluca that he published there the second edition of his works just mentioned.
After the death of Ferdinand VIL, in 1833, the Regent, Queen Christina, wisely accorded a general amnesty to all expatriated Spaniards, when Heredia, notwithstanding the favourable position he held in Mexico, where also he had married in 1827, wished to take advantage of it to return to his family. On making application, however, for permission to do so, he was refused it by the Captain-General of Cuba, and all he could obtain was permission to go there for two months to visit his aged mother and other relatives, subject to the observation of the police. He went there accordingly in 1836, when, by a singular coincidence, he joined his family again on the same day of the month that thirteen years before he had parted from them.
On his arrival in Cuba, he was subjected to some of those petty annoyances which military governments too often impose on people under their sway. A friend of his who had gone to meet him, found him, notwithstanding his rank in the Mexican republic, or his reputation as a literary character, or his evident state of ill-health, seated on a bench in the court of the government office, to wait his turn at the pleasure of the official, who thought he was showing his dignity by exposing to unnecessary delay those whom he had to note under his inspection. Heredia was so altered that his friend could scarcely recognize him, and his relatives soon had to become apprehensive that his health was seriously endangered. He had given the most solemn assurance to the authorities that he would not in any way during his visit interfere in the public questions of the day, and he fulfilled his promise. If he really had entered in his youth into any plot against the government, the most dangerous conspirator in it could scarcely have been a young man of nineteen, who seems to have been the principal sufferer. But in any case, he had by time and reflection become very altered in sentiment, and his failing strength would not admit of any extraordinary exertion, even if he had remained the same enthusiast for political liberty as he was in his youth. He would have wished to stay the remainder of his life with his family, but it was his duty to return to Mexico after the expiration of the period allowed him, and there he died of consumption on his return, the 6th May, 1839. After his death, his widow and her children came to Cuba, where she died the 16th June, 1844, leaving a son and two daughters in the kindly charge of his relatives.
The Toluca edition of Heredia's poems in two volumes, 1832, does great credit to the Mexican press, being one of the best printed Spanish works to be found. But it is extremely scarce, and therefore deserves a more detailed account of it than might be requisite with works better known. In addition to those contained in the first edition, which is yet comparatively frequently to be met with, it contains his phi losophic and patriotic poems, some of which are very spirited, and one, the 'Hymn of the Banished,’ an extremely fine one. The copies of the work sent to Havana had these patriotic poems taken out, as otherwise they would have been seized by the authorities; so that most of the copies of the work existing are deficient with regard to them. In the place of the odes thus taken out, another poem, 'On Immortality,’ was inserted, which, however, is principally taken from the Seventh Book of Young's Night Thoughts, though not so stated. The other principal poems, in respect of length, are, 'On the Worth of Women,’ and 'the Pleasures of Melancholy,’ Of another very fine ode, 'To Niagara,’ a very excellent translation into English blank verse has appeared in the United States Review.
In the preface to the second edition, he states that he had been induced to undertake it, upon finding that several of the poems in the first had been reprinted in Paris, London, Hamburg and Philadelphia, and had been received with much favour in his own country, where the celebrated Lista had pronounced him "a great poet." There can be no doubt that other editions would have met with very favourable reception, had it not been for the circumstance of his being considered an author obnoxious to the Spanish government. As it is, the Creoles of Cuba have manuscript copies of his poems circulating amongst themselves, generally faulty as dependent on the taste of the individuals who had copied them. The effect of this is apparent in the only edition I am aware of, that has been published in Spain, that of Barcelona, in 1840, acknowledged to be taken from a manuscript copy, in which not only are some of his best compositions omitted, such as the 'Lines to his Horse/ and the poem entitled, 'The Season of the Northers/ but some others, for instance, the ' Ode to the Sun/ are given imperfectly. In return, it gives a poem on receiving the portrait of his mother, which had not appeared in the former editions, and which is not unworthy of being compared with Cowper's on the same subject, though treated differently.
In the prologue to this edition the editor observes, that "in all his productions is seen an excellency of heart and an imagination truly poetical, enabling us to assert with Lista that he is a great poet, and one of the best of our day." He adds, "the poems of Heredia have, in our judgement, the merit of a purity of language, which unfortunately begins to be unknown in Spain. They are of a kind equally apart from the monotony and servileness, ascribed perhaps with reason to the classicists, and from the extravagant aberration of those who affect to be called Romanticists, and believe they are so, because they despise all rules in their compositions, substituting words and phrases unknown to our better writers and poets."
The language of Heredia in his poems is by the concur- rent opinion of all Spanish critics very pure, and even strangers can feel its simplicity and nature in connexion with the truly poetical thoughts they contain, free from all conceits or affectations. In his best original compositions, the sentiments expressed are generally of a tender and melancholy character, as might be expected from his history, of one banished from his country and family, while suffering from privations and ill-health, and at length sinking under a fatal disease. Like many other poets, he thus also writes most affectingly when dwelling on his own personal feelings, as if to verify the declaration of Shelley, that
. . . . most men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
The 'Lines to his Horse' and 'The Season of the Northers' bear intrinsic evidence of their origin, and also the Ode entitled 'Poesy.' This one bears a strong resemblance in its general tone to the 'Epistle to His Brother' and the poem of 'Sleep and Poetry' by Keats, whose character and fate also were in some degree the same as his. They have the same sentiment, as conscious of fame awaiting them, common to all poets, but peculiarly to those of more sensitive temperament, the 'non omnis moriar,' the hope of immortality,—
'Ελπίδ' ἔχω κλέος εὑ-
pέσθαι κεν ὐψηλὸν πρόσω.
If the extravagant eulogiums bestowed on the merit of the Sonnet, as a form of verse, by some Italian writers, and echoed by Boileau and others, be at all deserved, Heredia's claims to superiority may be put forward very confidently, in respect of that to 'His Wife' in dedication of the second edition of his works. It contains all the conditions required for a perfect composition of this kind, in the poetical statement of the subject, the application of it, the beautiful simile given as a counterpart, and the strikingly appropriate idea with which it closes. Of this idea, the classical reader will at once perceive the elegance and force; but he cannot do so fully, unless he have also seen in the churches of seaport towns on the continent, as for instance, that of Santa Maria del Socorro, at Cadiz, the votive offerings of gratitude for deliverances from danger.
The 'Ode to Night' might have been considered worthy of equally unqualified commendation, were it not for the circumstance that twelve out of the nineteen stanzas it contains are almost a paraphrase from the Italian of Ippolito Pindemonte. At the time of making the translation hereafter given, I had not read that very pleasing writer, but have since found the source of the poem in his ' Poesie Cam pestri, Le quattro parti del giorno,' to which, therefore, justice requires the acknowledgement to be given. It is much to be regretted that Heredia did not distinguish his original compositions in all cases from imitations, as there is no statement with regard to this one, of its having been taken from another author. There are other instances of the same neglect, as in a close translation from Campbell of 'The Ode to the Rainbow,' equally unacknowledged. The interests of literature require that such acknowledgements should be uniformly made, that we should know gold from imitations, and give every one his right and place. As the same Italian poet remarked in his 'Opinioni Politiche,'
Conosco anch'io negli ordini civili
L'oro dal fango, ed anch'io veggio che altra
Heredia's original poems, many of them written to, or respecting his near relatives or other friends, betoken so much true poetic feeling, as well as flow of poetical ideas, that we cannot suppose the neglect of which we have complained to have been more than an oversight. He might even in some cases have lost remembrance of his obligations, and repeated from memory when he thought he was writing from inspiration. The latter part of his first volume is entirely taken up with "Imitations;" but those we have noticed above are in the second volume, without any distinction from the original poems.
He had, however, in early life so many privations to endure, and so many daily necessities for which to make a daily provision, that we may not be surprised at his inexactness in minor matters. In the preface to the second edition, he says, that "the revolutionary whirlwind had made him traverse over a vast course in a short time, and that with better or worse fortune he had been an advocate, a soldier, a traveller, a teacher of languages, a diplomatist, a journalist, a judge, a writer of history, and a poet at twenty-five years of age. "All my writings," he observes, "must partake of the variableness of my lot. The new generation will enjoy serener days, and those who then dedicate themselves to the Muses will be much more happy." On his first going to Mexico, it is to be supposed that he had to enter on military duties in the unsettled state of the country, and that he had some diplomatic commissions entrusted to him by the government, of which, however, we have no other account. This, in fact, may be said to be the first biographical notice of him published, obtained from information given by his relatives, who, having been long separated from him, could not explain the particular references more fully.
As a writer of history, he had published, also in Mexico, a work in four volumes, 8vo. which was chiefly a compilation from Tytler, but with additions in Spanish and Mexican history, suited to the community, for whose benefit it was intended. In this respect, as in so many other parts of his career, the knowledge he had acquired of the English language was of essential assistance to him, while it was no less evident that his knowledge of English literature had improved his taste and strengthened his powers of mind also in his own compositions.
In private life Heredia appears to have been a most amiable character: courteous, generous, and possessed of the most lively sensibility, he made himself beloved by all who had to enter into communication with him. He was also remarkable for the exceeding great ingenuousness of his disposition, which, while it rendered him incapable of vanity in himself, made him at the same time as incapable of dwelling on the faults of others. Several of his poems show further a religious feeling, which no doubt enabled him to bear with becoming equanimity the various trials to which he had been subjected.
Those trials it seemed were appointed to attend him further, even if it had pleased the Almighty to prolong his existence. Shortly before his death, the Mexican legislature passed a law declaring that no one should hold any office under the republic who was not a natural born citizen; and thus he was, among others, deprived of the offices he had held with credit to himself and advantage to the state. If the measure were directed against him personally, it was of short operation, and political intrigues could not avail to deprive him of the consciousness of having fulfilled his duties honourably, or of the claim he had to leave on the remembrance of future ages.