The expedition to Ancud concludes with a poetic snapshot that continues the travel narrative beyond the narrator’s return to La Imperial:
Pasé y volví a pasar estas regiones
y otras, y otras por ásperos caminos;
traté, y comuniqué varias naciones,
viendo cosas, y casos peregrinos:
diferentes y estrañas condiciones,
animales terrestres y marinos,
tierras jamás del cielo rociadas,
y otras a eterna lluvia condenadas. (XXXVI. 41)
[I passed through and through these regions and others, and others again, by rough paths; I dealt and communicated with various nations, seeing strange things and events: different and foreign conditions, terrestrial and marine animals, lands barely dampened by the sky, and others condemned to eternal rain.]
It is a fabulous odyssey, which very deliberately alludes to the opening of Homer’s poem and sets the narrator up as the wandering and politically astute hero, but one that occurs
after his return from the New World, in Europe, and after the end of his epic narrative – a typical surprise on the part of the author.
1 The Odyssey was well-known in Gonzalo Pérez’s translation, La Ulyxea de Homero (Venice, 1562), which is worth quoting here: ‘Dime de aquel varón, suave Musa, | Que por diversas tierras y naciones | Anduvo peregrino, conociendo | Sus vidas y costumbres, despues que huvo | Ya destruydo à Troya la sagrada: | Que navegó por mar tan largo tiempo | Passando mil trabajos y fortunas’ [Tell me of that man, gentle Muse, who through various lands and nations wandered, getting to know their lives and customs, after he had destroyed sacred Troy: who navigated a long time on the sea, experiencing a thousand labours and storms], fol. A1r. Such reversal of expectations is, as I hope this chapter has gone some way to demonstrate, peculiarly characteristic of what we might call Ercilla’s thought experiments with the peoples he narrates, continually holding up the Araucanian rebellion (and, in the
Tercera parte, the study of other political communities) as a mirror to the world as seen from Spain. Here, in a final irony, it is Europe that is made strange and worthy of consideration. The study of the three parts of the epic comparatively allows a clearer picture to emerge of how the poem arrives at this point, and several conclusions to be drawn, which in their turn enrich the reading of later poems in the tradition.
Firstly, La Araucana is explicitly concerned with the nature of the political community, in the first instance the republican community. This is explored in terms of problems stemming directly from Machiavelli’s writings, primarily the Discorsi, which in their turn are played against more conventional juridical theories of just warfare represented by Vitoria: the relationship between laws and force; internal stability; the consequences of imperial expansion; and the suppression of rebellion. While the ideas of the Florentine hold an evident fascination for the author, they are never used passively. In 1569, there is an implication not only that the ideal republic must expand, as Machiavelli had insinuated, but also that this expansion will be accompanied by decline. In 1578, the theorist’s advice on pacifying a newly annexed state is shown to be ineffective as well as horrifying. In 1589, the Machiavellian model of rulership and the evil act performed well again fails repeatedly to establish security. This critique of Machiavellian ideas, more definite in the final part than in the first, is devastating precisely because it is constructed on a shared ground of empirical, historical, pragmatic observation and experience. It is stimulated, I suggest, by the accumulating experience of Spain’s own difficulties in maintaining control over the frontiers of its empire. Such anxieties might well have been more acute in 1578 than 1569, during a period of crisis in Flanders, and more universal in 1589, with the threat of English and Turkish overseas aspirations.
Secondly, while the physical presence of the monarch and his virtues is an alternative to permanent war, these are not capable of being fully or adequately transmitted to the king’s representatives.
Thirdly, in tune with historical events, the interest of the poem shifts from rebellion, in the first two parts, to a more general consideration of the relationship between independent communities of differing religious and political complexions in the third. While Ercilla’s treatment is indirect, the parallels to contemporary concerns would be specific and accessible to at least some contemporary readers. Their logic increasingly suggests the barrenness of existing theories of conflict when faced with these more ill-defined threats; military success does not necessarily correlate to political success and often results in the prospect of a bleak, indeterminate prolongation of violence. While the Vitorian and Machiavellian vocabulary of legitimacy and historical contingency remains a powerful form of expression, then, both are shown to provide incomplete solutions to the contemporary dilemmas of war. An extension of tolerance and clemency appears to be not so much the most just as the most pragmatic alternative.
Although this intellectual context deeply rooted in the humanist culture of the mid-sixteenth century does not altogether transmit itself to the poetry of Lima considered in the next two chapters, the analysis of this chapter establishes several productive ways of reading epic after Ercilla. Like La Araucana, these poems represent indirect forms of engagement with perceived threats to internal or external security. Particular scenes – the sacking of a city, the storming of a fort, the council of war among the citizenry – appear with conscious allusion to Ercilla in subsequent epics, which supports the hypothesis that certain motifs assumed a particular political as well as literary charge in their original, provocative treatment. The central questions raised by Ercilla often persisted in different forms in the colony, most notably the threat of rebellion; the nature of the political community; and the possibility of the ruler’s moral and practical intervention across large and heterogeneous territories, whether monarch or viceroy. Fundamentally, however, as a figure of substantial literary prestige after 1569, on a secure financial footing and at the periphery of courtly life, Ercilla possessed a level of independence and autonomy quite distinct from these later authors. The negative presentation of the influential García Hurtado de Mendoza in the Tercera parte, for instance, explicitly divulging the author’s resentment of the former commander who had sought to have him executed and using the character as one instrument of a sustained political critique, is a liberty to which they could scarcely aspire. At the turn of the century epic poets nevertheless still tended to rework these political themes directly, and often contested their predecessor, addressing problems that had by this time become part of a tradition.