The Soul of Spain: A General History of the Third State

◎ Lu Dapeng

If you are interested in a people or a civilization, it is necessary to find a suitable general history to read. This will help you build a basic framework of knowledge (first with a building skeleton, then slowly adding bricks and tiles) and quickly understand the ins and outs.

In my opinion, there are many types of general history. One is academic, such as various "Cambridge ×× History" and "Oxford ×× History", and I was recently reading the "New Cambridge History of India". Such books are often voluminous, co-authored by many people (the authors are generally experts in various fields), absorb the latest academic achievements, and are highly authoritative, but may be boring.

The second is the "deductive type" of Johann Julius Norwich, which emphasizes vivid and engaging narratives, such as his Byzantine History, Venetian History, Sicily and French History, which are good choices, but often imprecise or outdated at the historical level.

The third, which is not much, is John Crowe's Soul of Spain, which I call "literary and philosophical."

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Why? First, Crowe was not a historian, but a literary scholar who had been a professor of Spanish literature at UCLA. His focus and entry points are mainly literature and culture, and he does not talk much about the succession to the throne, the change of power, etc., nor does he describe the "high-level" history favored by traditional historiography such as war and diplomacy. So, after reading Norwich's book, you will have a clearer grasp of the order of succession of the Byzantine emperors, the succession of the Capetian dynasty to the Valois dynasty to the Bourbon dynasty, but in Crowe's book, especially in the medieval part, you will not know exactly who inherited whom, who was the minister of power, and what the process of the Battle of Lepanto was like. From the long term of history, these may indeed not be so important, and Crowe is not here.

Crowe devotes a great deal of space to Spanish literature and art. Academic general histories tend to do the same, but tend to be more academic. The "deductive" general history, on the other hand, does so less, focusing on how to tell a better story.

To understand the history of a nation and a civilization, it is certainly necessary to understand its literature and culture. As Crowe said, "Literature is the essence of national history and the human spirit, eternal." Every great writer racked his brains and worked hard to create his own universe, each pursuing eternity. Isn't civilization itself the accumulation of these artistic remnants? ”

Crowe was an accomplished literary scholar, so he must have been a trusted literary "guide." But he also did not give literature lessons to everyone in a serious and scripted manner, but poured out a lot of his enthusiasm and personal experience. It is no wonder that, after all, he himself is a footnote to Spanish modern and contemporary literature. During the Spanish Second Republic, he studied at the University of Madrid on the eve of the Civil War, where he received his doctorate, during which time he had a conversation with the best contemporary writers in Spain, such as Lorca, Machado, Juan Ramón Jimenez (Nobel Laureate), and met masters such as Unammuno. Therefore, the Spanish literature that we learn from Crowe is flesh and blood, subjective, private, and intimate. Many of the passages he tells, out of his own experience and witness, probably do not appear in a serious literary history, such as the literary critic Damaso Alonso who likes to sleep naked, and his students who mischievously sprinkle salt on his bed.

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The Soul of Spain consists of seventeen chapters, from prehistory to the post-Franco era, with several complete chapters [Chapter VIII" "Literature of the Golden Age", Chapter IX "Art at the End of the Golden Age", Chapter XI "The Main Currents of Thought in Spain (1870-1931)"] on literature (as well as fine arts, philosophy, etc., but mainly literature), and Spanish literature is often discussed in other chapters, such as in chapter V, "Medieval Town Life". He devotes a lot of space to the Spanish medieval ballads:

These ballads were originally written for people to sing and dance. They are the blossoming flowers of traditional poetry; short, pithy, strongly twisted, usually with sincere emotions, showing great political power, always speaking to the hearts of the people. They are like Homer's Iliad, which captures a moment of life, a fragment of history, in a concise way. Their themes are varied: wars with the Moors, the lives of the Cid and his contemporaries, the exploits of traditional heroes, the love stories of the nominee or king nobles, the joys and sorrows between Christians and moors, and even the mysterious songs of the sirens tempting men to dive into the deep sea. The Jews took hundreds of ballads with them when they were expelled from Spain in 1492, an amazing thing about Spanish literature, and they loved Spain so much that they now exist in Sephardic Jewish communities around the world from Los Angeles to Albania.

I say that this is a "literary" history book, one of the reasons is that it has a large amount of weight for introducing literature; the second reason is that Crowe is brilliant, and many of the descriptions are quite poetic, immersive, and the atmosphere is excellent. So this is both a history book and an excellent literary work.

The author himself appears in the book as a tourist and observer, and many of the chapters are quite travelogue-flavored. Crowe's Spain is reminiscent of William Darlingpur's India. Academic history books will certainly not be written this way, and Crowe's approach will seem very subjective and "unscientific", but for the reader, poetic depictions and lyricism are certainly more attractive and more impressive than academic charts and data. For example, Crowe described the ruins of the Medina Asahara Palace near Cordoba:

The last time I saw the ruins of this beautiful palace was on a sweltering hot August day... The driver who carried me was an old man, judging by the appearance, and his car was probably as old as his... After we moved away from the last few low white houses with gray and red roof tiles, the countryside landscape unfolded in front of us like a fan, and the hillside surrounding the city appeared in front of us... To our left is the whole valley of Córdoba, blooming like a flower in the sun. A wonderful mixture of man and history takes root in these rocky wildernesses, these round hills, and the city in the distance shines by the Guadalquivir River. It is home to Many others, including Abdul-Rahman III, the great poet Gongora, the Jewish philosophers Maimonides, Almansar and Manolette Cordoba.

On the other hand, I think it's also a "philosophical" history book with many surprising philosophical discussions, such as the following analysis of Don Juan:

Many commentators have explained Don Juan's psychology in terms of the Spaniard's over-inflated ego and strong impulse to trample on the rights of others. The Divine Self is constantly driven to reveal the power of blind recklessness within itself, regardless of the consequences. Some critics, such as Kierkegaard, have argued that Don Juan's story was an attempt by medieval Christianity to express two incompatible loves, spiritual love and sensual love. But there is another side to Don Juan's character, which can be found in the philosophical and realistic concepts of the Hebrew-Arab-Castile fusion. This idea simply means that external reality itself does not exist. When you go forward and catch it, it retreats and disappears without a trace. So the individual's life is to skim over the ever-changing reality that doesn't really exist. So Don Juan is a bit like a wandering Spanish picaro who repeatedly tries to catch the phantom. As far as he is concerned, this apparition is a woman, a microcosm of the ideal of love, of beauty. But since no woman can fully embody this concept, he must carry out an endless search, moving from one victim to another.

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The book's Chinese title, The Soul of Spain: The Sorrow and Glory of a Civilization, is not faithful to the English title Spain: The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish People, but I think the title of the Chinese edition is very appropriate and appropriate. The author is not very concerned about the traditional topics of history such as imperial generals and military diplomacy, but pays more attention to the "soul" of this nation. It's a bit like Orlando Figgis's The Dance of Natasha, which seeks and seeks the "soul" of the Russian nation.

However, Crowe clearly discusses "grief" more than "glory", and criticizes Spain quite a bit, and is quite harsh. It is understandable that the foreign general history books we often see like to "hide evil and promote good", for example, an Iranian who writes a general history of Iran for foreigners is often more willing to highlight the "glorious" side of Iran. However, I think that when we read foreign history, we should still read more critical works. For example, I don't want to read a book that tells the whole story of how great Iran is a great ancient civilization, how brilliant its poetry, miniature paintings, and architectural art are. I prefer to read a book that analyzes why Iran's modernization has failed. In other words, let's talk less about "ancient civilizations" and "ancestors who have been broad", less gold, less bragging, more about the real dilemma, and more about everyone's respective "flaws".

From "The Soul of Spain", crowe's american love for Spain can be truly felt, although crowe does not shy away from exposing and criticizing the dark side of Spanish history (authoritarian traditions, religious shackles, closed ideas, etc.), as well as the ugly side of Spanish nationality (if there is indeed such a thing as "nationality") (braggart, laziness, idleness, intoxication with "ancestral excesses", etc.). For example, the following quotations and evaluations, although harsh, I can feel the author's good intentions: "In Spain, everyone actively avoids hard work. "Manual labor is equivalent to inferior status" "Individual Spaniards, although outstanding, on the whole, Spaniards are a group of people who are difficult to control and discordant in the midst of unresolved differences. ”

Another example is Crowe's evaluation of King Philip II of Spain. Philip II was a very important monarch, extremely diligent and "responsible", close to the kind of despotic "virtuous" that many people fantasize about, he won many glorious victories but created many disasters, so everyone has always praised him differently. Looking at it this way, he is very much like Emperor Wu of Han. Crowe's assessment of Philip II was very negative: "He blindly followed the skeptical despotism of his father, convinced that he was a divine ruler. His methods of governance were rigid and lacked flexibility. He's no new to espionage and duplicitous games. He was anxious to take control of everything, exhausted by the tedious handling of political affairs. ”

As for the Monastery complex of El Escorial built by Philip II (roughly equivalent to the Palace of Versailles in Spain), Crowe also unceremoniously commented: "There is a world of difference between the dirty green reflecting pool and the clear water of the Moorish garden, and the intimidating huge granite wall is more like a huge prison than a palace or cathedral... This building is as cold and rigid as the Spanish Inquisition, as serious and melancholy as the king of the sonatas (Philip II) himself, as gray and gloomy as the heart of the king in the second half of the 16th century... Lack of imagination and very dull..." Most of the visitors to El Escorial today should be full of admiration, and El Escorial is generally regarded as a masterpiece of Spanish architecture. Crowe's negative evaluation of El Escorial was probably that he hated House and U, influenced by his ill feelings toward Philip II.

Crowe is by no means a condescending critic of poor and backward Spain as a "foreigner" from a rich and civilized advanced country. His attitude toward Spain was more like "lamenting its misfortunes and angering it", so he gave a sympathetic evaluation of the 19th-century Spanish essayist and social critic Mariano José de Larra. I think Lara has some Lu Xun's color:

Lara developed a pithy, spicy style... In many articles, Spain's exaggerated boasting and complacency are punctured, revealing the dry entity behind it. He said: "Writing in Madrid makes people cry. "This is because writing for spaniards is a waste of ink and soul. No flaw in the state escapes the tip of his pen: the snobbery of the French-style clumsy, the crude nature of false patriotism, the well-known laziness of the Spaniards, the general desire to live an old-fashioned tramp by fraud, the backwardness of the social, economic and political system, the futility of idealism in Spain, etc.

We don't necessarily need to agree with Crowe's many assessments of Spanish history and people. I would like to remind you that such a general history of "literary and philosophical" is very subjective, very focused on private experience and praise. But I'd still love to recommend this book to anyone wishing to have a preliminary understanding of Spanish history.