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An Essay on the Life and Genius of Calderon
An Essay on the Life and Genius of Calderon Author:Pedro Calderón de la Barca Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE GENIUS OF CALDERON. (HIS AUTOS.) I Have spoken more than once of the admiration of Augustus Schlegel for Calderon. While he extends this ... more »admiration to all his works, he has reserved his most enthusiastic praise, the loftiest flights of his most passionate eloquence, for the setting forth the glories of his autos. In these he sees, and perhaps justly, the most signal evidences of the poet's genius, his truest title-deeds to immortality, herein forming a different estimate of their worth from that of a Quarterly Reviewer, who writes, 'We shall dismiss the autos entirely from our consideration'—as unworthy,that is, of being taken into estimate and account. The passage, which occurs in the Dramatic Lectures, has been often and justly admired ; although it must be confessed that, despite of all the pomp and magnificence of words which he casts over his theme, the reader not otherwise instructed rises up having learned exceedingly little of what these are, or what in them deserves the praise which sounds to him so extravagant. Martin Panzano, an Aragonese priest settled in Italy, who about the middle of the last century wrote a brief work in defence of Spanish literature, which he thought unduly depreciated abroad, has expressed himself in the same language. Speaking of Calderon, he says (De Hispanorum Literaiurd, Turin, 1758, p. 75): ' Certe inter primi subsellii poe'tas clarissimum hunc virum adnumerandum, nemo unus qui ejus libros legerit inficiabitur; praesertim si acta quae vulgo sacramentalia vocantur diligenter examinet ; in quibus neque in inveniendo acumen, nee in disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut majestas desiderabitur.' t Vol. xxv. p. 21. Auto, or 'Act,' was a name given at the first to almost any kind of dramati...« less