Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (54 page)

Soon, the advertisements declare, there will be festivals, jousts, and tourneys, and perhaps courts of love. It is a pity that all those necessary things were not ready today, so that the visitor might not leave the place a bit unsatisfied after a walk through the unfinished city. Among those things that call one’s attention now are the varied shops’ signs and the kiosks, copied from old engravings. As one passes by, names from bygone ages call to one: Villon, Flamel, Renaudot, Etienne Marcel. Perhaps in a few days these things will have a soul, and as we stroll past Molière’s house we will be persuaded that we actually see the old fellow, and in another place believe we spy the editor of the
Gazette,
and in front of the church of Saint-Julien-des-Ménétriers hear the sounds of a viol and the cries of
saltimbanques.

My readers would not forgive me if I slipped in a dissertation here on architecture and began a technical explanation, with nomenclature, of the buildings, streets, and
quartiers.
But I beg their indulgence for a first, quick impression, on a peaceful golden afternoon, when the pleasant, archaic panorama passed before my eyes.

From afar, the colors of the vast decoration softened, the vision of the Pont d’Alma and the Palais des Armées of land and sea is delightful. As one’s bateau-mouche advances, one recognizes, in the gold of the setting sun, the Archbishop’s tower and the two naves of the chapel, the picturesque construction of the Palais, with its Grand Salle; the Moulin, the Gran Chatelet, with its sharp tower, the Cour de Paris café and, near the hôtel of the Ursinos, the Coligny mansion; Louis XII’s great Chambre des Comptes; the church of Saint Julien-des-Ménétriers and a good number of other buildings that my reader will have seen in engravings and on maps, even the door of Saint-Michel and the portal of the charterhouse of Luxembourg.

And as the spirit gives itself over to this pleasant return to the past, in one’s memory appear the thousand events of history and legend associated with all those names and places: love affairs, acts of war, the beauty of times when life was not wearied with practical prose and progress as it is today. The lays and villanelles, the rondels and ballads that poets composed for beautiful, chaste ladies who held another ideal for love and poesy than that we hold today, were not drowned out by the noise of industry and modern traffic.

At night, it will be a pleasant refuge for lovers of dream-visions. I know not whether the passersby who love their Baedeckers, those angular Englishmen and others from all parts of the globe who come to amuse themselves in the most
swell
sense of the word, will delight in the imaginary recreation of so many scenes and canvases. . . . As for the poets, the artists, I am certain that they will find there a free field for more than one sweet reverie.

So much the worse for those who, amidst the agitations of turbulent, overwhelming life, cannot have, even once, the consolation of extracting from their gold mines one enthralling illusion.

[ON WOMAN]

In modern times, all civilized societies have become aware of the vast importance of the education of women, given their immense influence on a nation’s citizens.

It becomes necessary not simply to impart instruction, but also to ensure that those who have inherited from God the privilege to live without work, learn to live honorably.

The benefit goes especially, and directly, to the poor. In the home of the “people,” heroines from the Age of Romance are impossible; in the workingman’s house, what is needed is a worker.

Work gives moral beauty to poor women, and endows them with a certain domestic, homely strength that somewhat alleviates their natural weakness.

Today, all the nations of the world believe in work as a way to the aggrandizement of woman. And nowhere so much as in the United States.

The woman of the United States wishes to compete with the man. There, she may set her sights on all professions and public offices. The number of female inventors there is incalculable. The American woman has made, and is continuing to make, great contributions to the progress and greatness of the land of Washington.

Germany, as the
thinking
country, now has some five million women in its factories.

England, where poverty is rampant, has fewer: four million five hundred thousand; France, three million seven hundred thousand; Austria and Italy, three million five hundred thousand working women each.

In Spanish America, Chile has the most female workers. Aside from their special labors, Chilean women work in telegraph and telephone offices and in railway companies. And that is good. Keeping occupied, having a profession keeps women out of brothels; it increases marriage among the working classes and allows a breath of well-being, which is tonic and refreshing, to blow through the soul of the people.

The working mother will make hardworking children, and good citizens.

March, 1900

 

A few days ago, during the recent Carnival, in the palace of a distinguished lady married to a millionaire Mexican diplomat, there took place a most elegant, if spur-of-the-moment, masked ball, the praises of which have been widely sung by the usual chroniclers of society, especially my tireless, pleasant friend the Marqués de Valdeiglesias. What most distinguished the party was the attendance by many of those beautiful, aristocratic women who affect the picturesque
mantilla
and other no less national adornments. And the enthusiasm was immense: there were even those who exclaimed
Olé!,
with the excuse, of course, of days of celebration. But the enthusiasm was only natural. It is so difficult among the Spanish aristocracy to find a purely Spanish beauty! For Spanish high society, like all the upper classes of the world, has been invaded by Britainism on the one hand and Parisianism on the other. It is lamentable. A Goya
maja
⁸¹
dressed by Chaplin is enchanting and disconcerting, but my reader will, I am sure, confess that a Goya
maja
dressed by Goya is infinitely better. Not that I would have these modern-day
duquesas
return to the high comb, perpetual mantilla, and strolls along the tree-lined avenues of San Antonio de la Florida, but foreseeable to all lovers of living human statuary is the disappearance of one of the most beautiful
types
that have ever graced art: the
type espagnol,
whose line has been bastardized and confused (and ourselves, confounded) by French curves and English angularity. Fashion—
that
is the enemy! And in that appreciation I am buttressed by a talent who, more than perfectly aesthetic, is a woman: Emilia Pardo Barzán. Doña Emilia considers that heavy English attire with its masculine cut a traitor to the classic Spanish grace: those long “mackintoshes” and overcoats, certain shoes, and, above all, those
chapeux formidables
from Paris.

Nature proceeds and teaches logically; Nature has ordered the creatures and things of the earth according to their place on it, and Nature knows why the Scandinavians are blond and Abyssinians black, why the English have swan’s necks and Flemish women opulent handholds. Spanish females were given several models, depending upon their region in the Peninsula, but the true type, the type best known through poetry and art, is the olive-skinned beauty, somewhat
potelée,
⁸²
neither tall nor short, with wondrous large dark eyes and wavy black hair that falls in cascades, all this animated by a marine, Venusian quality that has no name in any other language:
sal.
⁸³

In his time Gautier said that to see real Spanish dancing one had to go to Paris; today, in painting, those who cause the world to wonder at the feminine grace of Spain are foreigners such as Sargent and Engelhart. Will we be content, in a few years, to find in old canvases and prints what was once the original graceful Hispanic beauty? Fashion has begun to do its damage in our education. For every young woman of good family who plans to go off and study abroad, the indispensable “governess,” almost always English or German, sometimes French, is brought in. The governess begins her molding, and the native Spanish grace is forced into the angular cage of discipline, usually one that is “veddy English.” Clothing, of an equally angular cut, aids in the reformation of the original curvilinear charm. Once the girl is grown, her tastes and customs will tend toward the foreign.

There was once a “Spanish” elegance; now, it is remembered once in a rare while at a costume ball. Today, because fashion demands it, the opulent black locks are dyed blond or red; the proud, elegant carriage of yesteryear is transformed, gestures are “learned.” First our Spanish females turned
chic,
then
vlan,
then
pschut,
then
smart,
and now
swell.
They do not read good Spanish books—yet what
señora
would not blush if she had not read Ohnet in the original? One travels, one summers, one adores Worth, Laferrière, Doucet. Our ladies dress in great luxury, yet are seldom confused with a Parisian; disdaining their own wealth, they still cannot seem to find the other country’s treasure. . . .

The court is so sad because the shadow of the Queen falls over it. That huge, gloomy, lavishly bedecked old palace that so startled and frightened the fine French canary named Réjane, is in fact a vast basilica of sadness, which—if it is not to infect the entire country with its witchy spell—needs gay, cheery queens, like Isabella, and easy, gallant kings, like Alfonso. The Regent, who from the time of her religious duties as an unmarried woman still preserves the convent’s gravity, and whose married life was not pleasant with respect to its private moments, and whose life has been so hemmed in by caretakers and managers, penalties and misfortunes, has little reason, in truth, to dress in pinks and pastels. The only thing that adds its note of gaiety to the royal mansion is the Infanta Isabel, the people’s Infanta—a friend to artists, a bit of a virago, a lover of the hunt, of horseback riding, a valiant sportswoman, a generous, charitable very
Madrid
sort of woman who loves music and whose spontaneousness makes her attractive and
simpática
everywhere she goes, especially among the people. . . .

There are no literary
salons
in the French sense of the word. Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán often invites guests to soirées at which there is no hint of the intellectual, and don Juan Valera has had his
samedis
which, outside the ladies of his family and the daughters of the Duque de Rivas, only men have attended. From time to time the dukes of Denia invite certain artists and men of letters to share their table, as does the Baron del Castillo de Chirel. But the intellectual barometer indicates the level of conversation: the aristocracy’s favorite poet is Grilo. There are cultured, intelligent ladies who, as I have said, travel and gain an education, but they are the black pearls or blue roses of their kind. The Duquesa de Alba takes an interest in works of scholarship and history, and she puts her house’s inexhaustible archives at the disposal of scholars; the Duquesa de Mandas is quite knowledgeable in the sciences; the duquesas de Medinaceli and de Benavente are patronesses of letters; the Condesa de Pino Hermoso and the Marquesa de la Laguna bring their spirituality to gatherings. Gloria, the daughter of this last-named lady, is famous for having added new salt and pepper to the grace she has inherited from her mother.

The middle class, whether well-to-do or not, follows the lead of the upper class. All it takes is the slightest observation to see that since the time, in the not too distant past, when a young lady hardly knew how to read and write, great strides have been made in primary education. I refer, of course, to the common run, because both before and after Oliva Sabuco of Nantes and St. Teresa there have been notable Spanish females who could compete with the males in the mental disciplines. . . . In this century, there has been an army of female literati and poets, so many in fact that one author has published a volume with a catalog of them—which does not include them all! Among all the dense and useless foliage, one discerns a few great trees: Coronado, Pardo Bazán, Concepción Arenal. These two last-named authors, particularly, with their virile minds, honor their nation. As for the countless majority of affected, romantic, sentimental Corinnas and confectionery Sapphos, they are part of the abominable international sisterhood to which Great Britain has contributed so many “authoresses.” In order to arrive at the palace of that much-talked-about Eve of the future, they will have to exchange their Pegasus for a bicycle. . . .

The Nicaraguan woman is not markedly different from those of the rest of Central America, but there is something special about her that distinguishes her from the others. It is—and I have remarked on this elsewhere—a kind of Arabian languor, a native-born insouciance, joined to a natural elegance and looseness in her movements and her walk. As in the Antilles, as in almost all the South American republics, the skin color is olive, the hair black, and yet blonds are not rare—although the climate does not allow the gold of the early years to last very long. Thus, the golden or light blond turns chestnut, the wavy locks darken, leaving only the enchantment of blue eyes. The mane of ebony or jet is of copious richness. The Spanish legacy is clear: the ancestors from Extremadura, Castile, or Andalucía. One is pleasantly surprised by the great number of tall, svelte bodies, which walk with remarkable elegance. “In a way,” says Have-lock Ellis, “the gait of the Spanish woman can be attributed to her anatomical peculiarities. Her walk—which is seen also everywhere women have the custom of carrying bundles on their head, such as in the steelyards of the Albanian hills and some parts of Ireland—is erect and dignified, accompanied with sober movements, like a priestess bearing the sacred vessels. At the same time, the Spanish woman’s walk, not lacking proud human dignity, has something of the grace of a feline animal, whose body is still quick and whose movements are measured, with no excess or superfluity whatever.”