The Capt. Alatriste Novels of Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Like most aesthetes, your correspondent is slavishly addicted to novels of swashbuckling romance.  A good swashbuckler has a tremendous sense of style, is written with élan and thrives on a heightened sense of drama, emotion and plot.

So, it’s natural that many people have pushed on me the historical romances of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of several novels about solider and swordsman-for-hire Captain Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, and his young companion, Íñigo Balboa y Aguirre.  With these novels, Pérez-Reverte clearly shows his ambition to create a series that rivals the D’Artagnan romances of Alexandre Dumas.

Pérez-Reverte (born 1951), author of the excellent The Fencing Master already covered in these pages, has set a laudable goal for himself with these books.  The author admits to being horrified at the lack of depth in the coverage of Span’s Golden Age in contemporary schools, and sought to correct this with a series of historical romances that fully detail the glory that was Spain.

However, it is his very ambition that sinks the Alatriste novels, as Pérez-Reverte forgets the romancer’s pledge to recreate history, rather than teach it.  I have just finished the fourth in the corpus (The King’s Gold), and, at this point, despite my devotion to the genre, could not possibly go back for a fifth (or seventh, as that is where the novels now stand with no sign of letting up) helping.

Pérez-Reverte does not wear his erudition lightly, and the novels stop regularly for Alatriste or one of the supporting characters (often real-life historical personages) to rattle off long bits of poetry, historical detail or antiquated epigrams and aphorisms.  This is amusing in small bits, but page after page is rather like a historical romance written by a Spanish Charlie Chan – very little goes a long way indeed.

Moreover, the great masters of the form (talents as diverse as Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rafael Sabatini) had a wonderful flair for intricate plotting.  Indeed, one of the deep joys of swashbuckling romance is its complexity of plot, almost for its own sake.  That love of plot is usually married to a depth of emotion – not just love, but hate, lust, the thirst for revenge, envy and self-respect.  However, the Alatriste novels never deliver this density of plot; indeed, they have more the plodding feel of 17^th Century police procedurals, where Alatriste and Íñigo make a bloody path from point A to point B. 

Missing, too, is that sense of style, that distinct touch of panache so essential to the genre.  Perhaps this is because Alatriste is a taciturn battle-weary survivor, or that Íñigo, our narrator, is too young for such embroideries.  But this ennui prevents the books from ever really taking off – they cannot inhabit the more expansive corners of our imagination because they have no appeal to our sense of fun.

It is often with the supporting characters – the various aides, schemers and villains – that the author of romances truly shines, and here, too, Pérez-Reverte fails.  The recurring villain of the piece, Gualterio Malatesta, an Italian fencing master, is clearly the Basil Rathbone part.  However, like Alatriste, he never really comes to life – we know he’s the villain because he gets to sneer quite a bit, but there is never that passion for naughtiness, that sheer delight in vileness, that essential theatricality, that marks a great swashbuckling heavy.  Angélica de Alquézar, who spends most of her time in the books alternately trying to seduce or murder Íñigo, is weak tea indeed, never becoming more than a pale shadow of Dumas’ Milady de Winter, her most obvious influence.  Historical figures, such as Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645), come off more like name dropping than fully rounded characters, a trick Dumas, for example, admirably pulled off with Cardinal Richelieu.

Part of the problem may be inherent in the series itself – because they are set in Spain of the 17^th Century, the Alatriste novels cannot help but escape a whiff of provincialism.  While most European nations at the time were unified under one strong ruler, Spain was in essence broken up under various feudal lords who served the King.  In addition, both royalty and the Catholic Church used religion to keep the people pliable, ignorant and afraid.  Spain simply had not the expansive, intellectually exploratory or cohesive feel of England or France at that time. 

I must confess that the shortcomings of 17^th Century Spain detailed in The King’s Gold inspired extremely uncomfortable comparisons to the present-day United States as I read the novel.  Here’s a passage that I found disconcertingly familiar:

Most political activity, therefore, consisted in a constant to-and-fro of haggling, usually over money; and all the subsequent crises that we endured under Philip IV – the Medina Sidonia plot in Andalusia, the Duque de Hijar’s conspiracy in Aragon, the secession of Portugal, and the Catalonia War – were created by two things: the royal treasury’s greed and a reluctance on the part of the nobility, the clerics, and the great local merchants to pay anything at all.  The sole object of the king’s visit to Seville in sixteen twenty-four and of this present visit was to crush local opposition to a vote in favor of new taxes.  The sole obsession of that unhappy Spain was money, which is why the route to the Indies was so crucial.  To demonstrate how little this had to do with justice or decency, suffice it to say that two or three years earlier, the Cortes had rejected outright a luxury tax that was to be levied on sinecures, gratuities, pensions, and rents – that is to say, on the rich.  The Venetian ambassador, Contarini, was, alas quite right when he wrote at the time, “The most effective war one can wage on the Spanish is to leave them to be devoured and destroyed by their own bad governance.”

Perhaps my overarching problem with the Alatriste novels is that their setting – 17^th Century Spain – has too, too many similarities with the worst components of 21^st Century American life: an exploitive over-class, unquestioning religious devotion, a hawkish international stance and the crippling provincialism of many of its people.  Hardly my recipe for romance.

Christmas Wishes From Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Painted By John Singer Sargent

Any man who creates the Master of Ballantrae, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the palmy shores of Treasure Island must be a romantic.  All swashbucklers, both real and literary, have something warm-spirited and generous in their nature, and as such, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was not a writer to let the Christmas season pass unremarked.

Christmastime 1887 found Stevenson in Saranac Lake, mostly miserable.  The temperature was freezing, the weather was wretched and Stevenson found himself “grey and harsh.”  He was recovering from a lung ailment there, under the care of Dr. E. L. Trudeau, and writing much of his masterpiece, The Master of Ballantrae.  The bleak and uncompromising weather may have had significant influence on some of the gloomier set pieces of the novel, including the wonderful moment where the two brothers nearly kill each other during a midnight swordfight and the closing moments in a desolate and deserted American forest.

He also wrote many essays, among them, A Christmas Sermon.  Stevenson’s sermon is available on the invaluable Manybooks.net for download to your Kindle or e-reader, and can also be found in its entirety here:  http://www.thefullwiki.org/A_Christmas_Sermon_(Stevenson).  It can be read in a single sitting and comes highly recommended.

I think what is so refreshing about Stevenson’s Christmas thoughts is just how little Christmas is to be found in them.  Instead, Stevenson questions the motives of professional moralists, those who seek to control or condemn the behavior of others without taking time to think of the wrongs they do themselves.   In this age when questions of morality have taken down one presidential hopeful and counting, it is a refreshing change.  As Stevenson says, if your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say ‘give them up,’ for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

Stevenson is one of the great novelists of the 19^th Century; initially a popular writer who has eventually been embraced by academia and the literati (a process that can sometimes take a surprisingly long time.)  Readers seeking literary art along with concise and vivid storytelling could hardly do better than Stevenson.  Ballantrae (written in 1889 and already covered in these pages) is highly recommended, as are Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886).

Let’s close with a few more Christmas thoughts from the man who was both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavor springs in some degree from dullness. We require higher tasks, because we do not recognize the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unraveled.

To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.

The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Readers with a taste for historical fiction (or simply fine novels) could do no better than The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte (born 1951).  Though it has been several days since I’ve finished the book, it has been echoing through my head with the persistence complicit of a fine novel.

Perez-Reverte came to my attention first through his series of swashbucklers about Captain Alatriste, set in the 17^th Century Spain.  My taste for swashbucklers and meticulously researched historical fiction, mixed with the author’s reputation, led me to believe that there was a tasty dish in store for me.  However, I must confess that I find the Alatriste novels to be very weak tea, indeed.  Alatriste never comes to life as a character, and the novels lack plotting both deft and dense which is the hallmark of good swashbucklers. 

So it was with some trepidation that I approached The Fencing Master, first published in 1988.  This novel is not part of any ongoing series, and in it Perez-Reverte manages to create a tale both touching and chilling, complex in its machinations and simple in its humanity.

Don Jaime Astarloa is the fencing master of the title.  The year is 1868 and the place is Madrid.  Don Jaime’s place in the world is rapidly shrinking: the ascendance of revolvers and rifles have made the art of fencing obsolete and his aristocratic clients now use the foil for sport and exercise rather than on the field of honor.

Don Jaime is a true aesthete: the art of fencing is the center and core of his existence.  Intertwined with that art are all of the things that make fencing his religion – honor, chivalry, elegance, justice and discipline.  However, time has not been not been kind to the maestro.  Working in the silent devotion of his craft, the world has largely passed him by.  Not only is the sword becoming obsolete, but huge political forces are at work in Spain, deep and complex intrigues that could topple the monarchy.

Don Jaime spends much of his free time working on his monumental Treatise on the Art of Fencing, and spending time with a small circle of friends at the local café.  He believes that his life is largely over, and that he is marking time (and saving money) for the day when he would descend into the care of some religious order that cares for the elderly.

All of that changes dramatically when a beautiful woman, Adela de Otero, comes to him for fencing lessons.  At first Don Jaime is reluctant – teaching the art of fencing to a woman is simply not done – but when he learns of her already considerable prowess, he relents and the lessons begin.

From this simple premise, Perez-Reverte creates both a thrilling melodrama and a poignant meditation on change and the insularity of our lives.  Though Don Jaime has lived beyond his time, he is a man of honor, of discipline, and chivalry.  But what do these qualities mean in a world that no longer values them?  And is Don Jaime a fool, an easily manipulated codger without a clue as to how the ‘real world’ works, or a hero who manages to live life by his own ethical and artistic lights?

Perhaps what is most affecting is Perez-Reverte’s generosity of spirit while writing about Don Jaime.  This is an affecting portrait of a good man without the capabilities necessary to navigate a world increasingly ugly and corrupt.  Here is Perez-Reverte describing his weekly café visit:

Fausto arrived with the toast.  Don Jaime dunked his thoughtfully in his coffee.  The interminable polemics in which his colleagues engaged bored him enormously, but their company was no better or worse than any other.  The couple of hours he spent there each afternoon helped him salve his loneliness a little.  For all their defects, their grumbling, and their bad-tempered ranting about every other living being, at least they gave one another the chance to give vent to their respective frustrations.  Within that limited circle, each member found in the others the tacit consolation that his own failure was not an isolated fact but a thing shared to a greater or lesser measure by them all.  That above all was what brought them together, keeping them faithful to their daily meetings.  Despite their frequent disputes, their political differences, their disparate moods, the five felt a complex solidarity that, had it ever been expressed openly, would have been hotly denied by all of them but that might be likened to the huddling together for warmth of solitary creatures.

The Fencing Master is on par with the finest works of Dumas.  Heady praise indeed, but if that will induce you to buy this book, then let it stand.  You will not be disappointed.

The Lute Player by Norah Lofts

Norah Lofts (1904-1983) has a loyal and respectful readership among those who actually read books, rather than talk about them.  There is a small and passionately devoted reading class (Robertson Davies called them the clerisy) for whom the reading of novels is nearly an act of devotion and your correspondent hopes to number himself among this blessed few.

So when fellow travelers of the printed page recommended Norah Lofts, attention had to be paid.  Quite a successful novelist in her time, Lofts wrote three novels set in the same country house in Suffolk, England, a number of mystery novels under the pen name Peter Curtis, and several historical novels.  My introduction to Lofts was her deeply moving novel about Richard the Lionhearted, The Lute Player (1951).

Usually, there are two types of historical fiction.  One strings momentous events into some kind of narrative, usually propelled by a key historical figure.  (An excellent example of this would be Anouilh’s Becket.)  The other type usually focuses on some kind of personal drama involving fictional characters played out against the backdrop of history.  (My favorite example here is Rostand’s Cyrano, where the battle of Arras is largely a matter of who loves whom.)  The Lute Player is actually a wonderful synthesis of both approaches.

The novel is the story of Richard Plantagenet and the Third Crusade into the Holy Land.  His vision was to Christianize Jerusalem and thereby create a multi-national Christian kingdom.  (Imagine the changing tides of history had he succeeded.)  It is told through three vastly different viewpoints, that of Duchess Anna Apieta (a wholly fictional character), Richard’s mother, the historical Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Blondel the lute player (a character of disputed historicity).

The Lute Player is a novel of thwarted passions, sexual and otherwise.  Anna Apieta loves the lute player Blondel.  However, Blondel loves Berengaria, princess of Navarre; she, in turn, loves Richard Plantagenet.  But Richard loves both Blondel and, more importantly, a vision of what his kingdom would be once he has secured the Holy Land.

This simplistic summation may be misleading – rest assured that The Lute Player is no Harlequin Romance in armor.  The passions of the key characters drive their personalities, and are often the root causes of decisions that change the course of history.  Lofts writes with keen psychological insight and deep sympathy for her characters; her gaze is steady and critical, but charitable nonetheless.

Here is a snippet where Blondel awakes, wounded on the battlefield.  On one side of him is a dead man, on the other, a man whose mouth and jaw have been hideously damaged by a sword:

Presently I was conscious of a smell of boiled mutton mingling with and then overpowering all the other smells.  I opened my eyes again and saw two men, one carrying a great steaming bucket, the other a ladle and a number of bowls.  “Who’s for mutton stew, fresh mutton stew?” cried the man with the bucket.

“Dead,” said the one with the bowls, peering at my right-hand neighbor and moving on to peer at me.  “The next is all right.  Hi, boy, want some fresh mutton stew?  Put you on your legs in no time.”

“No, thank you,” I said, and ridiculous fresh tears came into my eyes as I thought how welcome, how wonderful, fresh mutton stew would have been last night; to me with an unsickened stomach, to the man on my right who would never enjoy anything again, to the man on my left who last night had had his teeth and his lips and his tongue as God made them.

Good stuff.  Even better is how Lofts can delineate character in a few deft strokes.  Here is Anna Apieta on an abbess:

She had a keen brain and, in any matter disconnected with the religious life, a sense of justice, a gift of logic.  Professionally – and religion with its many ramifications was to her a profession rather than a vocation – she was unjust, illogical, dictatorial to an unimaginable degree, and unbearably superior.  So armored, so immune, that often words failed me and I longed with childish fury to smack her smooth plump face.

The Lute Player is most deeply satisfying as an investigation into the mystery that is Richard the Lionhearted.  For a mainstream novel of 1951, it treats his homosexuality in a surprisingly nonjudgmental way, and one of Blondel’s major difficulties is his own inability to respond to Richard: …I began to reckon his many virtues, his great courage, his justice, his attention to detail, his lively mind, his fortitude in adversity; even the fact that he was, when he chose, a minstrel without peer leapt up to give me a sharp stab.  I had always preserved a sense of proportion in my attitude towards him, had never fallen into the state of hero worship as many diverse kinds of men had done.  In the great days of his triumphs and resounding exploits some corner of my mind had stayed sour.  Now in the days of his failure, with his fatal weakness exposed, my cursed minnesinger’s art set to work on him and I saw him as a great man, a hero – rebuffed by a sniffling, prudish little lute player.

But Richard also uses people indiscriminately to achieve his own ends, mercilessly slaughters captives, and is responsible for the death and mutilation of legions his own men and his enemies.  At what point, Lofts seems to ask, are the great deeds of great men not worth the horrible price that accompanies them?  It is a timeless question, and we are no closer to an answer now than was Lofts, nor even Richard the Lionhearted.

The Master of Ballantrae

My recent musings on the movie Black Magic cast my mind back to one of my favorite swashbuckling novels, The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) written in 1889.

Ballantrae is the story of two brothers, one good, the other bad, and the conflict between them that mars their lives. (Think of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde turned into a familial drama).   This novel is a great, Gothic-flavored adventure featuring a fascinating villain, Jamie Durie, the Master of Ballantrae.

Jamie Durie is the most colorful character in the book; as is often the case in swashbuckling adventure tales, the villain gets all the best parts.  Like the Cagliostro of Black Magic , Ballantrae features the villain as the main protagonist.  The attainments of Jamie are formidable: master swordsman, soldier of fortune, athlete, dandy, scholar and possessor of a fatal charm.  Jamie is aggressively charming – and his is a fatal charm.  He treats people badly, but it doesn’t matter.  He is more highly regarded than his decent (and publicly despised) brother Henry because Jamie’s charm is charged with color and vitality and energy.  Life around him is an event, leaving even his bitterest enemies entranced.

Think of what the great charmers of the classic movie era would’ve done with him!  John Barrymore may well have made the definitive Ballantrae.  Or Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  Or George Sanders or Basil Rathbone or even Louis Haywood.  All, for different reasons, would’ve been great.

It is notable that the most memorable swashbuckling characters, and characters who define what it is to be a swashbuckler, are the villains. It is almost as if there is something in the makeup of the swashbuckling hero – the theatricality, the dandyism, the artifice, or some other quality (the freedom, perhaps?)  – that reads more effectively outside the realm of angels.  The best swashbuckling villains often embody the attributes of the best swashbuckling heroes – almost as if these qualities in abundance lead to villainy.

Like Cagliostro, Jamie is undone by his own overarching passions.  Jamie lacks Cagliostro’s Gothic flourishes – he would never hypnotize a woman to make him love him, he’d move on to the next wench.  But he has insouciance, a sense of fun, a delight in his own villainy that makes Master of Ballantrae, the book and the man, delicious.

There are two movie versions of Ballantrae.  The first, starring Errol Flynn as Jamie, was released in 1953.  It is a very disappointing affair.  Flynn (1909-1959) famous as a screen hero, could not play an out-and-out villain, and the screenplay by Herb Meadow had a last-reel turnaround to clean up the character.  The other, infinitely superior, adaptation was in 1984, a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.  That starred Richard Thomas as good-boy Henry, and a wonderful Michael York as Jamie.  (York exuberantly portrayed D'Artagnan in the Richard Lester Musketeer films, again proving that the line between charming hero and beloved rogue is a thin one).  Sadly, this version is not currently available on DVD, but it can sometimes be found on eBay.  It is worth searching for.