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Literary Contributions of Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Francis Borgia Steck O.F.M.
Francis Borgia Steck O.F.M.*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
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Extract

A New era in the history of nineteenth-century Mexico began with the collapse of the Second Empire in 1867 and the re-founding of the Republic. Naturally, the first decade or so of this new era were years of transition. Then followed what is correctly termed the Díaz era, ending in 1910 with the overthrow of President Porfirio Díaz who for so many years, beginning in 1876, controlled the political affairs of Mexico and by his policy of peace, as González Peña points out, made it possible for Mexican literature to flower as it never had flowered before. For the Church, too, despite the existing “Reform” laws, the policy of Diaz meant comparative peace and greater freedom of action in promoting the common good of the nation. Correspondingly, as might be expected, Catholic “conservatives” in matters of religion began to feel more at ease also in the temple of Mexican culture and participated with renewed enthusiasm in the literary life of their native land.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , April 1945 , pp. 456 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1945

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References

1 Peña, Carlos González, Historia de la Literatura Mexicana, 2nd ed. (México, 1940), 204 Google Scholar.

2 Sosa, Francisco, Biografías de Mexicanos Distinguidos (México, 1884)Google Scholar, 3 80.

3 Pimentel, Francisco, Historia Crítica de la Poesia en México, 2nd ed. (México, 1892), 835–836 Google Scholar.

4 Sosa, op. cit., 620.

5 Quoted from Antonio Castro Leal, Las Cien Mejores Poesías (Líricas) Mexicanas (México, 1935), 631; printed also in Antología de Poetas Mexicanos, 2nd ed., (México, 1894), 150; Sosa, op. cit., 631; Pimentel, op. cit., 845; Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología de Poetas Hispano-Amerícanos, Tomo I: México y América Central (Madrid, 1927), Introducción, CXLIII. Translation:

I am pruning my secluded orchard,
since from the rigors of winter
even the larger trees have suffered
and the garden became an arid desert.
When April, arrayed in grace and splendor,
comes passing by and scatters flowers,
my trees revived by the warmth of the sun
will assuredly yield their fruit.
Could I perform the interior pruning,
here in my heart and in my soul,
with how great pleasure and eagerness
would I in the mystical orchard
cull flowers of filial love for Mary,
fruits for eternal life in heaven!

6 Deut., 31:17.

7 Quoted from Sosa, op. cit., 631. Translation:

What deeply stirs within my soul
and racks it fiercely night and day,
converting happiness into grief
and peace into gloom profound;
what makes me shed unceasing tears
of life-consuming agony;
what rends my spirit into shreds
and adds to the weight of pain;
what fills me ever with bitterness
and, putting terror into my heart,
draws from my lips a mournful sigh;
’tis the absence of God, kind and good,
Who in anger waited for me so long
and now withdraws from my rebel heart.

8 Quoted by Sosa, op. cit., 817.

9 Pimentel, op. cit., 846.

10 Quoted from La Sociedad Católica (México), IV (1871), 237. Translation:

On the crest of Golgotha hanging,
Like a criminal on the cross of shame,
Pale and rigid, His countenance gory
And pierced His side, is the Son of God.
His people have forgotten the miracles
They witnessed in Salem and in the desert;
They have seen Him expire and now see Him dead,
A prey to the fury their hatred had fanned.
But the earth from pole to pole is recoiling,
And the sea is emitting a frightful cry,
While the sun in fear is concealing its face.
Shut thy eyes, ungrateful son of Adam!
Thou hast murdered Jesus and for thy crime
With blood shalt thou pay and not with tears.

11 Agüeros, Victoriano, Escritores Mexicanos Contemporáneos, (México, 1880), 101–110 Google Scholar.

12 Ibidem, 105. Translation:

The mists of dawn,
The shades of dusk
Ascend to the crystalline spheres.
Thither the spirit wings its flight:
Thither ascend, holy prayer, with trembling
The cherubs there are dancing with joy,
For the home of the angels is heaven.

13 Ibidem, 106. Translation:

Come to me, memories of childhood;
Come, memories of the tranquil years,
When my days, like a fountain stream over the marble,
Through innocence sped on their way!
Come, pass in review before me,
Reflecting your visage in my soul
As life-like as the crimson clouds
That float in the sky and their image cast
On the quiet water of the lake:
As these, floating on, mar not the ripples
With faintest trace of their shadow,
So pass ye on without impressing
The unhallowed mark of your traces.

14 Ibidem, 108. Translation:

Thou whose countenance soars to the sky,
Emulating its mighty orbs of light,
Whose brow is encircled
By a luminous crown of eternal snow,
Sun-tanned Venus of Indian land,
Sprung from the ferment of two seas,
Hear thou the voice of a grateful bard
Who twice loves thee for thy beauty and blight:
Perchance, as the shade of the ash tree,
Helps one forget weariness in balmy June,
The faltering hymn that my love entones
For a moment thy misfortune will conceal.
That through the offering of a seer
Heaven again thy desires might bless!

15 Quoted from Icazbalceta, Joaquín García, El Alma en el Templo, 8th ed. (México, 1881), 21 Google Scholar. Translation:

Sweet faith! Under thy eternal influence
The heart revives, reduced to lifeless stone
By the iron hand of grief and pain;
It tempers the horror of terrible death
And beneath the shelter of its golden wings
The soul finds rest, permitting sleep
To wipe from eyes the bitter tears!
My spirit in Thee, O Lord, confides!
On faith and on hope
It lightly ascends
To the region eternal and takes refuge in Thee;
Much like the bird that at death of day
Arranges the elegance
Of its feathers
And in the gentle evening breeze
Seeks shelter in its mother’s nest.

16 Ibidem, 244. Latin original and English translation:

17 Agüeros, op. cit., 25–34.

18 Pimentel, op. cit., 911.

19 Idem.

20 Quoted from Castro Leal, op. cit., 137–13 8; 205–206. Translation:

21 Quoted from Pimentel, op. cit., 910. Translation:

His haughty brow he crowned with roses
threw open his heart to sensual pleasures,
and handed around the poison of error
in a handsome goblet of glittering metal.
He boldly demolished the sacred altars;
giving rein to the rashness of evil,
he looked on the world as a heap of rubbish,
while his cursing lips wore a smile of contempt.
Shacklement, not freedom; dense darkness,
not noon-day light; and ills without number,
these the reward for so much crime.
Grant heaven it may teach our children
how vainly he thinks himself free and enlightened
who ventures to divert his gaze from the Cross!

22 Agüeros, op. cit., 30.

23 Pimentel, op. cit., 882.

24 tepidus, Henry, The History of Mexican Journalism (Columbia: The University of Missouri Bulletin, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1928), 55 Google Scholar.

25 Leal, Castro, op. cit., 189–193; Antología de Poetas Mexicanos, 163–167 Google Scholar. Translations:

(a) Rich fountain of love,
source of solace and hope,
complete fulfillment
of noble lovers,
cheer and reliance of sinners;
Thou wast the sacred vessel
for the blood of the Lamb of God,
didst feel it stir
in thy breast, inflamed
on seeing it spilled for my ransom.
(b) But who, O Lord, would be able
to count the magnificent deeds
by which Thy love is wont
to enchain the winds
and to quiet the troubled earth;
in bounteous pity
to feed the famished crowds,
to restore full health
to the leper and the blind
and the one in the sad throe of Satan?
(c) Sorrowing Martha, tell us;
relate to us, generous Mary,
how divine sighs
of anguish escaped
the Lord of Life in front of that tomb.
(d) Dwelling of peace,
throne of holiness, fount of life,
in the flame of love
make my soul catch fire
and breathe unceasing in union with Thee.

26 Agüeros, op. cit., 57–58.

27 See Antología del Centenario (México, 1910)Google Scholar, “Estudio Preliminar,” CCXLVI.

28 Pimentel, op. cit., 914.

29 Lepidus, op. cit., 45.

30 See Agüeros, op. cit., 59.

31 Pimentel, op. cit., 916.

32 La Sociedad Católica, V (1871), 71–78. Translation:

May then the goddess of Cyprus,
The brothers of Helen, resplendent stars,
Aeolus and the fair wind
Guide thee through the channels of the sea.
Man stops at nothing:
Unafraid he rebels against heaven;
We act in a way even Jove
In anger unleashes his lightning.

33 Pimentel, op. cit., 913.

34 Quoted from la Sociedad Católica, VI (1872), 21. Translation:

My heart is all overrun with weeds,
Like a field lying waste and untilled;
My timorous spirit is cold and slack,
Like a listless bow with loosened strings.
If Thou turn Thy eyes in compassion on me,
With courage anew I shall be filled;
The cockle will burn as in summertime
The leavings are burned away on the field.
As is done by the skillful husbandman,
Thou wilt sink new seed into my soul
That by Thy grace will bear rich fruit.
And sinners will then behold with awe
How Thou, in Thy power, the sterile waste
Hast fashioned a garden of fragrant blooms.

35 Quoted from Antología de Poetas Mexicanos, 151. Translation:

The fair Salome is dancing to grace
The feast of the monarch whom she delights;
And her azure tunic rustles and sways
To the insane mirth of the birthday guests.
Wouldst have my riches? he proudly asks;
Thine will they be, Judea’s delight!
By the shameless Herodias schooled in crime,
She makes request for the head of John.
The villainous mother and adulterous jade
Makes bold to set a sacrilegious foot
On the blood the martyred prophet shed.
The banks of the Jordan tremble with fear
On seeing that sacred and venerable head
Becoming the price of a harlot’s feet.

36 My sources of information on Rafael Gómez are Emeterio Téllez, Valverde, Apuntaciones Históricas sobre la Filosofía en México (México, 1896), 323–332, 349–350, 414 Google Scholar; notes furnished by Alberto María Carreño of Mexico City; La Sociedad Católica (México), IV (1871), 63.

37 Antología de Poetas Mexicanos, 282–284.

38 La Sociedad Católica, II (1870), 62. Translation:

Thou wast pretty, my child,
Thy dawn was serene, thy complexion of face
And whiteness of dress
Than ermine more fair,
Smoother than marble, and purer than snow.

39 Ibidem, IV (1871), 41–43.

40 Ibidem, IV (1871), 43. Translation:

Already a corpse, he has a care
Not to lose the atom of life that remains;
He opens and shuts the idolized chest,
That hordes his gold and in iron is set.
He takes the scales, and bit
by bit He proceeds to correct what error he finds;
No peace at daytime, in terror at night,
When keeping vigil or lying in bed.
At last he adverts the moment has come
for him to die, and in fruitless tears
He bathes his face that is livid with rage:
He wishes to bid his treasures farewell,
Panting he locks and unlocks his chest
And is buried beneath his heap of gold.

41 Ibidem, IV (1871), 196–199, 238, 301, 344.

42 Ibidem, IV (1871), 344. Translation:

In my poor little garden a poppy I cherish
That not as yet has unfolded its petals,
Enclosing within its cup a fragrance
That envelopes its corolla with sweetness.
Near me it is growing, alone and graceful,
And anxious each day I refresh it with water;
My hand is extended in tender protection,
When a gust of the northwind threatens to kill it.
But a cold wind suddenly blows and brings it
Nigh unto death and robs all its colors,
And cruelly rumples its garb and adornment.
Yea, daughter mine, thou art this flower …
If the warmth of my love is not sufficient
Thy life to sustain, may mine be taken.

43 Ibidem, V (1871), 86–88.

44 Ibidem, V (1881), 88. Translation:

(a) That fragrance, the voice of the dear one told me,
Is the soul of thy daughter on her way to heaven.
(b) I heard the voice, distinctly and clearly,
Like the vibrant chord
Of a golden harp,
And she heard it too, the loving mother
Who, bathed in tears,
Approached to tell me the mournful tidings
And on hearing the voice, stood still in silence.
Then, joyful of heart, we both were saying:
“Another angel in the choir of heaven!
A new-born hope, O Christian parents!”

45 Ibidem, II (1870), 295–298.

46 Ibidem,II (1870), 298. Translation:

Now the clock of eternity strikes the hour
That the echoes of time repeat and repeat,
The solemn and terrible hour.
And to the mount of the seer
The mortal turns his wavering gaze
And outlined on the horizon beholds
Three crosses, fatal sign
Of reproach, malediction, and shame;
And fastened to them with sharp
And burning nails of iron
Two malefactors, on right and left,
And between them the Innocent One.

47 Ibidem, IV (1871), 254. Translation:

1
The butterfly flutters
At night round the fire
That brightly burns,
And among the roses
That scent the meadows,
At eventide.
2
In light it seeks and in fragrance
The bliss of its dreams and desires,
The lovely thing;
But lo! the fire consumes it
And the cruel thistles wound it.
Poor little thing!
3
Thus too am I wistfully seeking
In thy words of love and endearment
My happiness,
When the sun is ablaze with radiance,
When its brilliant beams are smothered
By the shades of night.
4
The fiery flames of thy anger
Are reducing my hopes to ashes,
Thou fair ingrate;
Not heeding my cry and entreaty,
While the thorn of thy disdain,
Yea, kills me!