Iberia (10 page)

 

to write about a foreign land, remember this. Don’t pepper the

 

page with foreign words printed in italic. That’s pedantry and

 

accomplishes little. But when thee has compiled a list of foreign

 

words which thee thinks necessary, identify those which thee will

 

be using at least three times in the chapter at hand or a dozen

 

times in the book as a whole. These are the words thee really

 

needs. Use them. But define them very carefully when thee first

 

introduces them. Then define them by allusion on second use.’

 

The significance of this advice was somewhat lost on me at the

 

moment because of the extraordinary thing he said next: ‘I

 

discovered this principle by necessity. I was trying to teach

 

graduate students about strange lands and I could see they were

 

being drowned in words. So I asked myself, “What is the most

 

successful expository material available today?” And I read the

 

Bible to see how St. Paul expounded his ideas and I read the

 

Tarzan books to find out why people who knew nothing of Africa

 

were finding them so easy. I studied other works as well, but those

 

were the two that taught me how to write.’

 

In dealing with Spain one is especially tempted to scatter italics.

 

Spanish words are easy to pronounce, are often self-explanatory

 

and do have an attractive power of suggesting to the reader that

 

he is listening to castanets. I have never considered this an

 

honorable way of writing and have followed Dr. Smith’s advice,

 

but in writing of Spain certain words are inescapable. Without

 

them I do not see how one can come even close to explaining this
country or his reactions to it. Herewith, then, the words which I
intend to use throughout this book, for they relate to the soul of

 

Spain and are indeed of its essence.

 

Duende
. In my recent visits to Spain I have heard no other word

 

so frequently used to express important ideas, whereas years ago

 

I did not hear it at all. In fact, my rather large Spanish-English

 

dictionary, compiled originally in 1852, does not even contain

 

the word, and one issued as late as 1959 offers several irrelevant

 

meanings like
elf, ghost, hobgoblin, hypochondriac, the restless one,
, but no connotation resembling the

 

glazed silk, small copper coin

 

one which now dominates Spanish conversation. I find myself

 

unable to define duende, yet it seems to have become the sine qua

 

non of Spanish existence. Without duende one might as well quit

 

the game, and I mean this seriously. To say that a friend or

 

performer has duende is the highest praise one can bestow, and

 

an experience which I prized came one night in Badajoz when we

 

had been drinking late in the public square before the ugly

 

cathedral and I made a painstaking observation in garbled

 

English-Spanish, at the conclusion of which a student said

 

solemnly, ‘Sir, you may be a norteamericano but you have

 

duende.’ What was it I had? Let me refer to Japan in an attempt

 

to explain. The Japanese have a word which summarizes all the

 

best in Japanese life, yet it has no explanation and cannot be

 

translated. It is the word
shibui
, and the best approximation to

 

its meaning is ‘acerb good taste.’ For example, a bright yellow

 

could never be shibui but a dusty purple might be. A kimono

 

decorated with golden dragons would not have the slightest chance

 

of being shibui, but a gray-black one with single silver crest the

 

size of a half-dollar might have. Architecture, landscaping, theater

 

art forms, total personal appearance, conduct—all can be shibui

 

if they are properly acerbic, restrained and in the great tradition

 

of Japan, but what the word finally means no one can say, for it

 

relates to the soul of Japan, which is itself undefinable. Duende

 

is a word like that, but since Spain is not a country given to acerb

 

restraint, the connotation is different. The dictionary of the Real

 

Academia de la Lengua (language) defines it as ‘mysterious and

 

ineffable charm.’ A night club has duende if all things are in
proportion, all properly Spanish, and if a sense of lovely, swinging
motion pervades. A singer possesses duende if suddenly she can
tilt her voice in such a way that everyone automatically cries ‘!Ole!’
(Bravo!) A bullfighter has duende when he displays not bravery
but unmistakable class. The essence of the word lies in its peculiar
usage, as in the sentence I heard not long ago describing a dancer,
‘My God! He has duende upon him.’ I judge from that that
duende is something that no man can will upon himself, but
occasionally, when he is one with the spirit of a place or with the
inherent quality of Spain, it rises from some deep reserve within
him. I am aware of its presence when I see it, and I would suppose
that the indulgent scholar at Badajoz was wrong when he
conferred duende upon me. I know of no foreigner in Spain who
has ever shown me duende except that extraordinary American
John Fulton Short, whom we shall meet later. In areas where he
yearned for duende, I suspect he did not achieve it, but one night
during the fair in Sevilla, in a high attic where some dancers,
guitarists and singers had gathered, Short danced in such a way
that duende shone upon him. It was something to see. I’m sure
that when Hemingway was young and in the first blush of his
exploration of Pamplona he had duende. In his last crumbling
years when he was trying to retrace his steps he wasn’t even close.
García Lorca compiled a considerable essay on duende in which
he suggested that the best definition was one given accidentally
by Goethe when speaking of other matters: ‘Paganini had that
mysterious power which all sense but no one can explain.’ Lorca
cites other quotations which indicate an understanding of the
word. Of Manuel de Falla’s music: ‘Whenever it is composed of
black sounds it has duende.’ And of a flamenco singer: ‘You have
the voice, you have the style, but you will never triumph because
you have no duende.’ Duende, then is the essence that makes

 

something Spanish.

 

Gracia
. This is a lovely word, which my Spanish friends use a

 

good deal and which for a long time I was unable to understand.

 

‘Does it mean grace?’ I asked. That and much more. ‘Is it a sense

 

of humor?’ Without one you could not have gracia, but it would

 

have to be a very gentle sense of humor, one that smiled quietly
at the inanities of the world. ‘Sometimes you use the word as if
it meant good judgment or breeding.’ It includes all of that and
much more. Spaniards are fond of saying, ‘Our coins state that
Franco is caudillo by the grace of God. Fact is, Franco is caudillo
because God has a sense of gracia.’ I didn’t catch the implication,
and then one day while I was wasting time in the plaza at
Pamplona, waiting for the bullfight to begin, I saw a fat girl with
almost no neck and strangely cocked eyes, a girl one would not
normally bother with, except that she had some peculiar charm
that was immediately apparent to all who saw her, and the young
man who sat with her knew this, for obviously he loved her. She
radiated a warmth that made itself felt across the plaza, and I was
so captivated that I had to raise my glass to her and nod. She must
have thought that I was making fun of her, although that was not
my intention, for she looked at me with a frank and melting charm
that many beautiful women never attain, and smiled at me and
raised her glass with an awkward gesture, making fun of me in
her way. To my friends who had been trying to explain words, I
said, ‘That girl has gracia,’ but they corrected me. ‘That one is
gracia.’ We saw her often during the fair and noticed that she was
never without male companions who seemed to find her
fascinating. When the feria ended and was gone, my friends and
I never referred to the beautiful Swedish girls we’d seen nor the
German blondes who had decorated the city, but we often recalled
the fat girl with no neck, for she had gracia, and when a girl has
this she illuminates a plaza and gives it character. There is much

 

in Spain that has a gracia which cannot be found elsewhere.
Ambiente
. I once hired a car and took a Badajoz family for a

 

picnic. I provided the wine, the cheese and the anchovies. They

 

brought the bread, the meat, the cake, the utensils and the

 

blankets. We were in high spirits and the countryside was

 

beautiful. This was bound to be a great picnic in a land where

 

picnics are a way of life. We drove first toward the Portuguese

 

border and I saw several spots that were, to my thinking, ideal

 

for an outing, but the wife, who was by no means the head of this

 

family and who usually kept silent, said firmly each time, ‘No hay

 

ambiente,’ which meant that the spot I was suggesting had no
ambiance. Well, with the aid of the driver I uncovered some
half-dozen other spots, but in the opinion of the woman none
had ambiente, so we turned around, retraced our route and
headed south, where a series of equally desirable spots unfolded,
each to be dismissed with that scornful ‘No hay ambiente.’ Finally
we came to an old farm beside a stream, with large olive trees, a
grassy meadow, ducks on the water and cattle in the opposite
field. Immediately we saw this spot, so gracious in the midday
sun, with shade for all and room to move about in, we realized
that our critical woman had been right. The other spots had not
had the proper ambiente for a picnic. This one did. It longed for
people to enter into it and spread their blankets beside its stream
and upon its flowers. A Spaniard would willingly travel an extra
fifty miles to find a spot with ambiente. Let word get around that
a restaurant has ambiente and it is filled. If a vacation spot has
ambiente its registration is crowded. The antique bullring at
Ronda has ambiente, so that even though it lies perched in almost
inaccessible mountains, people from all over Spain willingly travel
long distances to see a fight there. The entire city of Sevilla has
ambiente and is loved therefor. Madrid is too young to have
achieved ambiente yet, but since it has power it is respected. What
bestows ambiente upon a place? I don’t know. But I have often
been with Spaniards who have walked into what outwardly
appeared to be a rather ordinary place and have been struck
instantly by its charm. ‘This place has ambiente!’ they have cried,
and in that split second I have known that it did. How did they
know? How did I know? No one can explain, but without
ambiente a thing can scarcely be Spanish. With ambiente it needs

 

little else.

 

Pundonor
. Many languages have cultivated special meanings

 

for the word honor, and nations using those languages have

 

developed particular connotations for this word. I think one

 

would agree that in France, with its tradition of dueling, the

 

concept of honor has had a rather more delicate definition than

 

in America. In imperial Germany, where the dishonored infantry

 

officer was left with a revolver as the only solution for having

 

transgressed the code, the definition was also specialized, and no
other nation has been able to enforce the strict interpretations
that England observes regarding a businessman’s word of honor.
In Japan a whole culture, the samurai’s, grew up around this word.
However, in other countries in which I have lived but had better
not name, none of the above concepts has any currency, and in
the United States we have been rather more lax in our application
than Germany and France and markedly more lax than England
and Japan. But it has been left to Spain to cultivate not only the
world’s most austere definition of honor but also to invent a
special word to cover that definition. Of course, Spanish has the
word honor, which means roughly what it does in French, but
also the word pundonor, which is a contraction of punta de honor
(point of honor). At any rate, it is not sufficient for a meticulous
Spaniard to worry about his honor. Many things that an American
man can in all decency forgive, the Spaniard cannot. If he is a
man of pundonor, he must take action against insult. A young
man with four unmarried sisters had better cultivate a nice sense
of pundonor. A politician, a businessman engaged in intricate
dealings, a stage idol and above all a bullfighter must be studious
of their pundonor, and in this book, where I deal with several
men noted for their pundonor, I shall make use of this uniquely
Spanish word, for I have found that whenever I am perplexed
about what a Spaniard might do under certain circumstances, or
the nation as a whole for that matter, it is instructive to ask,
‘Under these circumstances what would a man do who subscribed
to an acute or even a preposterous sense of honor?’ And from
endeavoring to answer this question I often find clues as to what
the Spaniard will do. After all,
Don Quixote
is an engaging study
of Spanish traits not only because it lampoons the concept of
pundonor but also because it demonstrates that no man ever

 

possessed pundonor to a greater degree than the doleful knight.
Sinvergüenza
. Sin="without." Vergüenza="shame." A

 

sinvergüenza is a man the precise opposite of one with pundonor.