2i6 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE 



probably outlive his other pieces. The brothers, Serafin Alvarez Quintero (b. 1871) 

 and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero (b. 1873). have fulfilled their early promise: in El Genio 

 Alegre their collaboration has contrived a masterpiece which depicts with seductive 

 exactitude the joy of life in an Andalusian atmosphere. 



Fiction. The most conspicuous novelist of the day is Felipe Trigo (b. 1868), : a 

 physician whose autobiographical reminiscences enhance the value of El Medico Rural. 

 He recounts the course of criminal passion with an unsentimental, scientific precision 

 unprecedented in Spanish literature, and he writes with a profusion of detail which has 

 laid him open to the charge of licentiousness. Though deliberately incorrect at times, 

 his style is plastic, and he can evoke a landscape in terms of pellucent beauty. La 

 Sed de Amar (1903), Sor Demonio (1908) and El Medico Rural (1911) are among his 

 most popular books. Ricardo Leon (b. 1877) has captivated the public with Casta de 

 Hidalgos (1908) and Alcald de los Zegries (1910) ; racy of the soil, fastidious, intentionally 

 archaic at whiles, his limpid phrasing tends to become monotonously symmetrical. 

 Abounding in ideas, Pio Baroja (b. 1872) works on a large scale, not in single volumes, 

 but in trilogies, the ample scope of which is implied by such titles as La Raza, La Tierra 

 Basca, El Mar and Las Ciudades. His attempt to dissimulate his emotions produces 

 a momentary impression of cynicism: his diction is metallic, harsh and rigid. 



Literary History. Scholarship and literary history have lost their foremost repre- 

 sentative in Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo (1856-1912), who leaves behind a vast body 

 of useful work, unfortunately incomplete. His successor as Director of the National 

 Library is Francisco Rodriguez Marin (b. 1855), whose biographies of Barahona de Soto 

 (1903) and Pedro Espinosa (1907) are authoritative. The death of Joaquin Costa (1846- 

 1911) deprives Spain of a patriot, an orator and a courageous thinker, who alienated the 

 upholders of secular tradition by his propaganda to induce Spain to enter into the 

 current of European culture. 



Journalism. The talents of several admirable writers are absorbed by journalism: 

 thus Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (b. 1864) employs an alert intelligence well adapted to 

 discuss questions that press for an early solution; Jose Maria Martinez Ruiz (b. 1876), 

 best known by his pseudonym of " Azorin," portrays certain phases of Spanish culture 

 with rare felicity, knowledge and picturesque conciseness; Jose Ortega Gasett discusses 

 with the stimulating freshness of a trained dialectician, the ideas and theories which bid 

 fair to affect mankind in the near future. (B. SANIN CANO.) 



PORTUGUESE LITERATURE l 



During the past five years Portugal has been passing through a revolutionary period, 

 and the prevailing unrest has been disastrous to letters. A decline had already set in 

 during the closing years of the igth century and became evident to all at the beginning 

 of the present. Among the poets and prose writers who shed lustre on the reign of King 

 Carlos, Joao de Deus, Antonio Nobre and Eca de Queiroz died, while Ramalho Ortigao, 

 Guerra Junqueiro, Gomes Leal and Fialho d'Almeida produced nothing comparable to 

 their earlier work. Their successors, lacking faith and high inspiration, have attempted 

 no sustained flights. The destructive theories preached throughout the last thirty years 

 hastened and have accompanied the national decadence, which is reflected in an anarchy 

 of thought and a profound pessimism. Certain Republicans have striven to react 

 against the disease by announcing a new gospel, but as it consists of French radical ideals 

 without a sound philosophical or moral basis, they have but added to the confusion. 

 Others of their co-religionists have entered public life and become lost to letters. Polit- 

 ical journalism, being the easiest road to fame and fortune, largely absorbs the energies 

 of the younger writers, and never was the press so intellectually sterile. The Revolu- 

 tion has raised no echo in literature, for the pamphlets it has suggested are without 

 value, save as historical documents. 



Were it not for Brazil, where twenty millions speak the language of Camoens, the 

 output of imaginative books, other than poor romances and commonplace verse, would 



1 See E. B. xxii, 155 et seq. 



