Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga

Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533–1594)

Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (born August 7, 1533 in Madrid , † November 29, 1594 ibid) was a Spanish nobleman , soldier and writer and is one of the outstanding representatives of the Spanish literature of Siglo de Oro . As the first European poet , in his main work La Araucana , he dealt with the topic of the colonial wars on the newly discovered American continent and with the indigenous peoples living there, and is therefore considered to be the founder of Hispanic American literature and the "inventor" of the Indian novel .

Life

Philip II as Crown Prince 1551 (painting by Titian )

Alonso de Ercilla came from one in Bermeo based biskaischen noble family. His father, Fortún García de Ercilla, who worked as royal advisor at the Spanish court, died a year after Alonso's birth. His mother Leonor de Zúñiga received a position as lady-in-waiting of the future Empress Maria , the daughter of Charles V (Charles I of Spain), and in 1548 gave Alonso as a page in the service of Prince Philip (the future King Philip II ) . . Under the direction of the prefect of the page, the Latinist Cristóbal Calvete de la Estrella , he received a well-founded classical education, which in addition to reading the literature of antiquity , such as the works of Virgil or Lucan , as well as the then highly valued Renaissance poets such as Dante and Ariost and Boccaccio also included the study of astronomy and astrology . Here Alonso also got to know the works of the Spanish soldier and poet Garcilaso de la Vega , which had a lasting influence on him. From 1552 the young gentilhombre (nobleman, " gentleman ") accompanied Crown Prince Philip on trips to Italy , Flanders , Vienna and England , which broadened his educational horizon. He was also present at the wedding of the prince and Queen Mary I of England in London in the summer of 1554 . Soon after, he decided to travel to America , and for this purpose first returned to Spain, where in 1555 he joined the expedition of the newly appointed Viceroy of Peru , Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza , in whose company he was accompanied by various royal officials and Dignitaries also found the conquistador Jerónimo de Alderete as governor- designate for Chile , who, however, died on the trip.

Alonso reached Peru via Panama in the course of 1556 with the new viceroy and became a member of the expedition that was sent under his son García Hurtado de Mendoza to what was then Reino de Chile (later the general captaincy of Chile including Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego ) to bring the conditions there under military and administrative control. On January 9, 1557 García Hurtado set out with a well-equipped force from Callao . Ercilla was commissioned to document the actions of his superior. In the following two years, Alonso de Ercilla took the Spaniard against a soldier and chronicler in the operations Mapuche - Indians participate in Southern Chile. According to his own testimony, he wrote down his observations and experiences daily on the back of letters, leather scraps and tree bark, although these war diary-like notes are said to have already contained entire verses of his later main work. The novel La Araucana , which emerged from his notes, denounces the atrocities of the conquistadors and their greed for gold and power and tries, as Ercilla herself asserts, to be truthful.

At the beginning of the campaign, the Spaniards first built a fort on the Bío Bío river on the ruins of the city of Concepción, which was destroyed by the Indians the previous year (north of the modern city center in the area of ​​today's municipality of Penco) and then moved south with bloody fighting. After several losing battles against the numerically far superior Mapuche under their war chief Caupolicán , the advance came to a standstill. Although the Indian leader was ultimately captured and killed and the city of Arauco was reoccupied, the Spaniards were not able to keep the forts built further south. After hard fighting, the remnants of the Spanish units retreated north.

Previously, a group of soldiers who, under the leadership of Governor García Hurtado , undertook an expedition to the Strait of Magellan , apparently reached the island of Chiloé in February 1558 . In the posthumously published XXXVI. Singing the Araucana describes Ercilla how he himself "in a small, discarded sloop " with only ten men, separated from the rest of the troops, was the first to arrive on this island, to which, as he adds with a certain satisfaction, "others couldn't" . In this way, Ercilla tries to stylize himself (instead of García Hurtados) as the discoverer of the island, which is probably unhistorical. According to the romanticizing descriptions in Ercilla's late work, the Spaniards found a peaceful alternative world far away from the cruel reality of war. However, there are still more than 1000 kilometers through the fjords of southern Chile between Chiloé and the Strait of Magellan , so that this attempt at discovery - if it should have taken place - was ultimately a failure. The historically unsecured journey could also have been invented by Ercilla (possibly as a modification of the expedition of the explorer Juan Fernández Ladrillero to the Strait of Magellan, which was actually realized in 1557-59 on behalf of Hurtado ). The travelogue of the otherwise unknown Spanish soldier Gerónimo de Vivar (in the CXX. Chapter of his chronicle written in 1558, discovered in Valencia in the 1930s and first published in 1966), who was on a voyage of discovery under Francisco de Ulloa at the turn of the year , also reports on a similar expedition 1553/1554 had participated. This group had actually entered the Strait of Magellan from the northwest and had discovered several islands on the way there - probably including Chiloé. It is conceivable that Ercilla, through his informants, had knowledge of details of this trip, which had largely been forgotten in the turmoil after the death of Pedro de Valdivia .

Map of the war zone in southern Chile from 1610 ( Archivo General de Indias ). North is on the left; above is the Andes mountain range, below the Pacific coast. Destroyed settlements (crossed out symbols) can be seen in the south (far right). The island of Mocha is shown at the bottom left . The Arauco war in the south of the colony consisted of a barely interrupted series of uprisings by the Indians, which lasted for many decades after the war events described by Alonso de Ercilla and only with the recognition of an independent Mapuche nation by the Spaniards in the Treaty of Quillín ( 1641) came to a temporary end.

After the celebrations for the founding of the city of Osorno , there was an incident in La Imperial that was significant for Alonso's further fortune in March 1558 , when he lost his composure in front of his commander García Hurtado and had a spontaneous duel with an officer named Pineda he was personally enemies. Ercilla fell out of favor with the governor and was sentenced to death together with his opponent, then pardoned and exiled to Peru after several months in prison at the end of 1558 . The pardon is attributed to the intercession of two women who, at the instigation of the concerned citizens, broke into the governor's house the night before the planned execution and are said to have induced the governor to reverse his harsh decision. One of those lifesavers was an Indian who Hurtado famously liked; she is supposed to be the real reason that Alonso de Ercilla chose a female figure as the title character for his novel.

Title page of the edition of Araucana published in Salamanca in 1574 (Part I, 2nd edition)

Before he left for Peru, Ercilla was probably present at the Battle of Quiapo in December 1558, at which a surprising attack for the Spaniards by the Indian forces believed defeated after Caupolican's death, which had built three ingenious fortifications and threatened the Spanish camp, with difficulty could be repelled. After this defeat of the Araucans, a temporary armistice came into force, in the course of which García Hurtado was replaced as commander.

In 1562 Ercilla returned to Spain and based on his notes, minutes of conversations and memories he wrote the first part of his epic verse novel La Araucana ("The Araucanian Woman"), which he dedicated to Philip II and published in 1569 at his own expense. The second edition appeared in Salamanca in 1574 .

Alonso de Ercilla undertook various trips through France , Italy, Germany, Bohemia and Hungary and in 1570 married María de Bazán, who came from a well-to-do family, whose charms and virtues he praised in several places in his poem. With this connection, the writer gained a certain economic independence. The couple settled in Madrid , where Ercilla worked on the sequels of his from the start very successful novel. In 1578 and 1589, respectively, he published the second and third parts of the work; In 1590 the novel was first published as a whole in Madrid.

In recognition of his great success, Don Alonso was made Knight of the Royal Order of Santiago in 1571 . As such, he took part in a diplomatic mission in Saragossa on behalf of the king in 1578 . For a while he served as chamberlain to Emperor Rudolf II , but returned to Madrid in 1580 at the latest. From 1580 he worked as a book censor for the Crown of Castile and thus assumed an important position in the literature of the time . From 1580–82 he took part as a soldier in Spain's military expeditions to Portugal and the Azores , as did Miguel de Cervantes, who was 14 years his junior , which is why some researchers speculate that the two writers may have known each other personally.

Although Ercilla had complained all his life about his poor living conditions and repeatedly expressed his disappointment that the king did not allow him a more lucrative career in civil service, he left behind a considerable sum of money on his death. He died childless in 1594 at the age of 71 in his Madrid domicile.

Presumably he had worked on the fourth part of the Araucana (promised to his readers) until his death , because in 1597 a complete edition of all three parts of the work was published posthumously under the direction of his widow, along with individual corrections and insertions in the 35 chants already published contains two additional chants with a different ending, which is now mostly regarded by researchers as a product of Ercilla's work in the last four years of his life.

"La Araucana"

Autograph with the poet's signature

Among the “three best verse novels in Castilian”, which he describes as “highlights of Spanish poetry”, Cervantes named the novel La Araucana first in the first part of his own major work Don Quixote , published in 1605 . The ballad-like poetry in the Renaissance style is written in the fashion genre of the time, the so-called “heroic epic ” in eight-line stanzas ( octavas reales ). With the consistent use of this verse form taken from the Italian Renaissance poetry, Ercilla established its important epic tradition in Spain, where it developed into the standard form of the artistic epic of the Siglo de Oro and was widely used in epic and dramatic poetry from 1585 to 1625 .

Subject of poetry

According to the author's announcements in the prologue, Ercilla's epic should deal with the war of the Spanish conquerors in the distant "province of Chile", the most distant part of the then known world "near the Strait of Magellan". The older criticism accused the novelist of having often deviated from the topic in the treatment of his material and not adhering to the resolutions expressed in the prologue: There he verbally justified that he did not want to write about love but about war but then whole chants to the amorous entanglement of individual characters. He says he deals with the war in Chile, but also describes very different wars in different parts of the world; he promises to adhere closely to the truth, but reports fairytale encounters and supernatural experiences. In order to properly appreciate the overall narrative composition, the long time it took to write the novel must be taken into account, the 37 songs of which were composed over a period of more than 20 years and the subject of which occupied the author for more than 30 years. His approach to the material and the author's interpretations of history developed during this time.

Despite all the supposed digressions, war remains the dominant theme of the novel. Michael Murrin notes that the parts of the novel La Araucana that are not directly concerned with fighting and war events make up only about one sixth of the work (six and a half chants) and that Ercilla literally fights with the wealth of material that his material offers him for military descriptions . The groundbreaking new thing about Ercilla's war poetry is the lively and realistic portrayal of his own experiences without having to rely exclusively on pre-defined literary models, which, in Murrin's judgment, makes him the most original epic poet of his time and explains the popularity of his novel and the many attempts at imitation. Horrible descriptions of the changing military successes and failures and mutual excesses of the warring parties pervade the entire work and stand alongside precise geographical and regional descriptions, fabulous depictions of the country and its inhabitants and fantastic experiences of the narrator. In many places, the poet emphasizes the heroism of the Araucans (the name for the later Mapuche people ) and does not spare the sometimes ironic criticism of the behavior of the European conquerors.

characters

Ercilla speaks to Tegualda (illustration from the Edición ilustrada der Araucana , published in Madrid in 1884 ). In the XX. and XXI. Singing tells the poet about his encounter with the Indian Tegualda, who is desperately looking for the corpse of her husband, Crepino, who has only been married to her for a month on the battlefield at night. Ercilla lets her tell the story of her love, helps her find the dead person and then lets her go unmolested with her husband's body. The episode is a well-known example of the portrayal of the suffering of Indian war widows in Ercilla's work.

The title character of the work ("The Araucanian") is usually Fresia, the wife of the war chief Caupolicán , who was captured by the Spaniards during the 1558 campaign and cruelly impaled . Especially this chief, whose in XXXIV. Singing for martyrdom formed death forms the climax and the original end of the third part of the novel, is stylized in Ercilla's work to the prototype of the " noble savage ", a motif that should become almost classic in later literary history and whose creator Ercilla can be considered.

What is striking, however, is the lack of a real main character whose story is told. That is why literary scholarship also spoke of the “riddle of the Araucana”: an epic poem without protagonists. The Chilean historian Diego Barros Arana (1830–1907) therefore considered Ercilla's work to be more of a chronicle than a novel and wanted to take it seriously as a historical source . According to the Chilean poet Fernando Alegría (1918–2005), the “riddle” can be resolved by recognizing the real protagonists of the verse in the two collectives that face each other in a fierce and fatal battle, the Spaniards and the Araucans. The main Indian protagonists of the epic are usually the Araucanian war leaders Colocolo, Lautaro , Caupolicán and Tucapel. On the Spanish side, the focus is on the often critically commented behavior of commanders and soldiers, including the very negatively portrayed Pedro de Valdivia and Ercilla's client García Hurtado de Mendoza, whose quick-tempered temperament and frivolous brutality are sometimes exaggerated in caricatures, even if Ercilla on direct criticism largely dispensed with and usually simply ignores his leader and leaves it unmentioned. Criticism has often attributed this to a generally bad relationship between the two of them or to Ercilla's anger over his conviction and imprisonment. In research, there is no uniform answer to the question of whether Ercilla wants to criticize the Spanish policy of conquest as such or only criticizes its excesses and the personal misconduct of individuals. Most of the interpreters agree that the Indian characters in the novel function as the central main actors and are literarily designed much more artificially and carefully and are depicted with more character than the Spanish novel characters, whose portrayal seems more chronistic, sober and significantly more realistic, so that the work with it Can be rightly described as an "Indian novel". Ercilla himself explains in his prologue:

«Y si alguno le pareciere que me muestro algo inclinado a la parte de los araucanos, tetrando sus cosas y valentías más estendidamente de lo que para barbaros se requiere, si queremos mirar su crianza, costumbres, modos de guerra y ejercicio della, veremos muchos no les han hecho ventaja, y que son pocos los que con tan gran constancia y firmeza han defendido su tierra contra tan fieros enemigos como son los españoles. »

“And if someone thinks that I have shown myself to be very fond of the Araucanian Party by treating their things and exploits in more detail than is necessary for barbarians: If we look at their upbringing, customs, war customs and their practice, we will see that they are many have not grown and few have defended their country with such perseverance and firmness against such terrible enemies as the Spaniards are. "

- Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga : Prologue of the Araucana

Female characters are in the foreground in several episodes that are not dedicated to the actual fighting, but are clearly integrated into the narrative program and always associated with the love theme, including Fresia and the war widow Tegualda, above all Lautaros, who is concerned about his well-being, lover Guacolda (XIII. Song), the beautiful Kazik daughter Glaura, who is fleeing from two dark-skinned Spanish soldiers who want to rape her, and is then handed over by the first-person narrator to her lover Coriolano, who came to her aid (XXVIII. Song), and Lauca, who wants to follow her husband, who has been killed by Spanish cannons, to his death and is stylized as a model of marital fidelity beyond death, so that she turns Ercilla into a long, excursus-like defense speech for the mythical Queen Dido of Carthage accused in Virgil's Aeneid of infidelity to her deceased husband inspired (XXXII. – XXXIII. chant). With the help of classic pastoral motifs , these women, some of whom are modeled after Ariostus , are idealized following the Petrarkist conception of love of the Renaissance poetry.

Another special feature of the novel is Ercilla's pseudo-autobiographical narrator-self, in which the role of the writer and the figure of the narrator merge so much that the author is not only able to report to the reader ostensibly from his own perspective, but also to the reader in some places even participates in the process of the novel's creation (Atero Burgos names verses XX, 79.5-8 and XII, 57.5-8 as examples, where Ercilla consults with his readers about what should be told next).

Content of each part

Part I (1569)

Chile at the time of the novel

The focus of the first part of the rhyming chronicle, consisting of 15 chants, in which Ercilla tries to provide an informative presentation, is the history of the "province of Chile" and its inhabitants as well as the description of the battles with the invading Spanish conquerors under Pedro de Valdivia, Francisco de Villagra and Pedro de Villagra until the death of the Araucanian war chief Lautaro in the spring of 1557. According to the author, the description of the events is based on his notes and conversations he had with older comrades and veterans in Peru . In addition, he has probably also evaluated written reports; In particular, the chronicle of Gerónimo de Vivar, which was only rediscovered in the 20th century, shows very close parallels in the course of events with the plot of the novel and can be regarded as a prose model for the parts of the epic depicting the historical processes.

Ercilla reports in the prehistory first of all of the arrival of the Spaniards in Chile and describes the customs, the art of war and the character of the indigenous people living there, with many fantastic elements being incorporated. The opening scene, as the first plot element of the novel in Canto II, describes Lautaro's election as war chief as part of an archaic test of strength among Indian hero warriors, which the author designed based on the model of Basque power games that are common in his own homeland. He then describes the bloody battles of the Arauco War and weaves the story of the deeds and fate of Lautaro and the other main characters into the representation. The first part ends with the arrival of the narrator on the theater of war, which is effectively linked to the first victory of the Spaniards against the insurgents and Lautaro's death by a stray arrow. As expressly announced, the first-person narrator Ercilla only takes part in battles that are victorious for the Spaniards during the course of the novel, while he describes the defeats in the form of stories from third parties. At the end of the XV. The beginning of the singing storm is designed as a cliffhanger scene, to which the action in the second part follows seamlessly, since Ercilla planned the continuation of the story, which appeared nine years later, from the beginning.

Part II (1578)

In the second part of the novel (XVI. – XXIX. Canto), which begins the treatment of the events that Alonso de Ercilla witnessed as a soldier, the historical representation is taken up again in the style of an eyewitness account, with romantic visions and other poetic plot elements enriched and supplemented with descriptions of various other contemporary events such as the battle of Saint-Quentin (1557) and the sea ​​battle of Lepanto (1571). In narrative terms, the juxtaposition of the old and the new world is made possible by the ascent of the first-person narrator to an Andean peak, which is stylized as the counterpart of the mythical Mount Parnassus . There he meets the Roman goddess of war Bellona , who grants him a dream vision of Europe through which he learns of the events there. During a break in the fight, a visit to the Indian seer Fitón, who lives in an underground tunnel system and through whose glass ball the narrator can embark on an imaginary journey around the world by flying over all the continents of the known world, gives him an even more extended magical view . On the Chilean theater of war, the military focus is on the Battle of Millarapue (XXV. And XXVI. Chant), in which Caupolicán appears for the first time as an active military leader.

What is particularly striking is the contrast between Ercilla's glorifying descriptions of Spain's European war successes, which are shown to the reader as ethically justified and honorable, and the immediately subsequent descriptions of indescribable atrocities and injustices, which the Spaniards in the cruel fight against the (von Ercilla as "defender of their country") were perpetrated by Indians and which the poet criticizes as "exceeding the limits permissible for Christians". In doing so, he evokes the image of a great power failing because of its own ideals in the new context of the colonial war .

Part III (1589)

In the third and shortest part of the epic, Ercilla continues the comparative juxtaposition of American and European events. In the Chilean theater of war, the focus is on the fight for the Fort of Ongolmo and the newly founded city of Cañete (XXX. – XXXIII. Canto), during which Caupolicán is the victim of a betrayal from his own ranks, drawn by Ercilla based on models from ancient literature and can be captured by the Spaniards. In the European arena, the author deals with the causes and consequences of Spain's declaration of war on Portugal (1580). In doing so, reflections on international law and legal philosophy are incorporated, in which he deals with the teaching of Francisco Suárez and the School of Salamanca on the “ just war ”. The legal and ethical justification of the Spanish war against Portugal, which is indispensable and carefully pursued according to the Christian-Western understanding of law, is contrasted with the conditions in the colonies, where, in the opinion of the relevant actors, the Spanish war of conquest apparently requires no justification and any breach of law seems to be permitted. The narrator increasingly openly condemns the warfare of the Spaniards, "who inhumanly exceeded the laws and limits of war and committed enormous and unheard-of atrocities in their discoveries and conquests." , he subtly points out unanswered basic questions and exposes the concrete behavior of the belligerents in Chile as morally unjustifiable war crimes . Ultimately, he draws the conclusion with a certain sarcasm:

"Todo le es justo y lícito al que vence."

"Everything is allowed and fair to the winner."

- Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga : La Araucana XXXII, 5d.

Ercilla demonstrates this in his portrayal of the “brutal execution” ( cruda ejecución ) of the Araucanian novel hero Caupolicán by the victorious power that the hero endures unimpressed. Even after death, "he remained seated with his eyes open and looked alive, without the horrible way of execution being able to disfigure him." The heroic courage of the Araucans is particularly evident in defeat. The fact that Caupolicán was baptized before the execution made him the opposite of Taíno chief Hatuey , of whom Bartolomé de Las Casas reported that he had refused baptism in order not to go to the same heaven as the Spaniards. Caupolicán's baptism cannot be interpreted as submission in Ercilla, because he dies reconciled with God but unreconciled with the opponent, to whom he announced in his last speech before the condemnation that there will "soon be a thousand new Caupolicáns" who will continue the fight and not get captured. Rather, the acceptance of Christianity in the eyes of viewers and readers underlines the equality of the Indian war leader with a Christian war hero. Ercilla makes him an equal opponent who shares the warlike and moral ethos of the Spaniards. According to Beatriz Pastor, the baptism of Caupolicán's failure makes it comparable to that of Pedro de Valdívia, whom the Araucans captured and killed in a similarly shameful way. Instead of disqualifying him as “savage”, Ercilla makes his heroes similar to a European warlord, so that “savages” and “civilized” cannot be distinguished, at least in the logic of war. He even assumes that he intends to conquer Spain soon and set up a colonial empire there similar to that which the Spaniards are trying to do in his country. Everything could be the other way around, there is no necessary subordination of the Indians to Spanish rule, they are even superior to the explorers in heroism. Pastor recognizes in this method of representation, which emphasizes the similarity of the exotic counterpart, a characteristic dichotomy of the Araucana between idealization and satire, which makes the work an allegorical counter-narrative of the colonial conquest of America. Other commentators, such as Barbara Held or Michael Murrin, do not see this ironic break and consider Alonso de Ercilla unreservedly to be a propagandist of Christian-Spanish universalism.

Conclusion (1597)

In the (posthumously added) final chapters of the work, which presuppose the death of Caupolicán and, at the same time, the moral defeat of the Spaniards, the poet tries to draw a conclusion about the colonial expansion of Spain and for the third time in his novel addresses the Strait of Magellan, which he calls Each time puts the cipher for the striving for discovery in a different light. In the paradisiacal-innocent conditions that the Spaniards find in the wilderness near the island of Chiloé, discovered by the first-person narrator, among the natives who are peaceful and hospitable in contrast to the Araucans, who live in perfect harmony with nature and know no malice, research has that want to recognize utopian counter-image of a golden age that shows the reader an alternative to the tiring and excessive war of conquest and defense. While Barbara Held emphasizes that Ercilla only drew these “ideal savages” from the end of the novel and not the indomitable Araucans as bon sauvages in his work , Beatriz Pastor sees in this excursion an allegory of the Conquista as a whole and Ercilla's hidden attack on the original motifs of the Spanish conquests: the greed for expansion of rule to ever new possessions and their exploitation. Ricardo Padrón also considers the episode to be a satire on the Spanish plans for world domination, which is shown, among other things, by the unrealistic objectives of the expedition. Even the intended goal of taking possession of the Strait of Magellan (which is 1000 kilometers further south) has proven to be unattainable in reality. But Ercilla's intimate enemy García Hurtado de Mendoza not only promises this in his address to the men before they set off, but also wants to penetrate across the strait to " Australia " ( Terra Australis )! In reality, however, the commander in the novel does not even "make it" across the Sound of Chacao to the island of Chiloé, which the narrator reserves the right to discover himself and has his superiors wait with the main group left behind.

At the same time, Padrón sees an almost unbroken return of the plot back to the beginnings of the epic, as if none of the parties had learned from the events: As at the beginning of the novel Lautaro, after the death of their second war captain Caupolicán, the Araucans elect a leader again expected to resume the war soon. The Spaniards, on the other hand, are returning to their original occupation as explorers of untouched landscapes in order to acquire wealth and to expand the kingdom of their king to the borders of the earth. Ricardo Padrón has therefore emphasized the deceptive appearance of the idyll described by the poet, since it already bears the seeds of new corruption and violence through the greed of the colonizers and the persistent defense of the Araucans.

Effect and adaptations of the novel

The monument to Alonso de Ercilla in the city center of Santiago de Chile in the year of its inauguration (1910)

According to Michael Rössner , Ercilla's Renaissance heroic epic can be understood as a first attempt to “Europeanize” America and to describe the Conquista against the backdrop of the ancient Iliassage . Nonetheless, due to his biography and the subject matter of his poetry, Alonso de Ercilla is considered to be the national poet of Chile, alongside Pablo Neruda , who refers to him several times in his work . In this context, reference is made to the fact that although all three parts of the work were written and published in Spain, according to the author's own testimony they were largely based on the minute diary entries Ercilla wrote during his stay on Chilean soil. The philosopher and international lawyer Andrés Bello (1781–1865) was the first to describe Ercillas Araucana as the national epic of Chile. The Chilean writer and national prize winner Roque Esteban Scarpa (1914–1995) compared the importance of the Araucana for Chile with that of the medieval heroic epics of the Cid for Spain, the Roland song for France or the Nibelungenlied for Germany . The verses with which the poet praises the fearful and respectful call of the warlike Indians of Chile at the beginning of the first part of his work are still often quoted today:

                                           Übersetzung (Horst Pérez)
                                           -------------------------
 Chile, fértil provincia y señalada        Chile, das edle und fruchtbare Land,
 en la región Antártica famosa,            in der berühmten Antarktis gelegen,
 de remotas naciones respetada             von fernen Nationen respektvoll genannt:
 por fuerte, principal y poderosa;         Macht, Stärke, Bedeutung sind ihm gegeben.
 la gente que produce es tan granada,      Ein Volk wie Granaten bringt es hervor,
 tan soberbia, gallarda y belicosa,        so aufsässig, kriegstoll und ungezwungen,
 que no ha sido por rey jamás regida       denn niemals beherrschte ein Fürst es zuvor
 ni a extranjero dominio sometida.         noch hat je ein Fremder es niedergerungen.

The contemporary portrait of Alonso de Ercilla as a poet prince documents his great success as a " bestselling author " (around 1595; the picture was long ascribed to El Greco ).

The priest and writer Juan de Castellanos (1522–1607) tried to imitate Ercilla's poetry.

The Araucana inspired subsequent authors to write a number of later Conquista heroic epics, which emerged into the 17th century. The rhetorical poem Arauco Domado (“Tamed Araukaner ”) by the Chilean poet Pedro de Oña (1570–1643), who was born in the New World and which is part of colonial literature and deliberately contrasts with the original, is known, published in Lima in 1596 the violent submission ("taming") of the natives, which Oña understands as a just punishment for the misdeeds of the rebels he portrays as repulsive savages, justifies and glorifies (his poem was commissioned for the Peruvian viceroy García Hurtado de Mendoza , who with his Representation in Ercilla's novel was dissatisfied and requested a revision). Oña's work also stands out for its novel rhyme scheme as well as numerous erotic connotations that are reminiscent of pastoral poems, as they are already recognizable as topos in Ercilla, but are strongly expanded here with entertaining intent (e.g. in a love scene between Caupolicán and Fresia in the bathhouse) .

A well-known imitator of Ercilla was the Andalusian farmer's son and later priest and writer Juan de Castellanos (1522–1607), who came to America as a conquistador in 1541 and had lived as parish priest and canon in Tunja in today's Colombia since the 1560s . His Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias ("Elegies of Famous Men of America"), published in Madrid in four parts from 1589 and stylistically closely based on Ercillas Araucana , are considered an attempt to create a similarly ambitious and successful work on the subject of the other Spanish conquests in the New Age World next to Chile on the market. Castellanos had initially written a chronistic model in prose and, after the Araucana became known, reworked it into the form of a poem over a period of ten years. According to Hermann Schumacher's judgment, his poetry is characterized “less by poetic momentum than by the richness of its content and the careful, almost pedantic conscientiousness of the reporting.” Unlike Ercilla, Castellanos' Indian image is also strongly different from the conventional views of the Creole colonists and encomenderos . Castellanos is the first writer to describe the work of Bartolomé de las Casas , who died in 1566 , without identifying with his goals.

An imitation work that cannot be compared in terms of its poetic quality, but is not insignificant as a chronistic source and not insignificant in terms of the history of its effects, which also adapts the title of La Araucana , is the “historical poem” printed in Portugal in 1602 by the Spanish deacon Martín del Barco (* 1535) with the Title La Argentina . In a representation based on Ercilla, he describes the conquest and colonization of the Spanish colony in the Río-de-la-Plata area , which emerged from 1536, first from the city of Asunción on the Río Paraguay and later in its southern part by the city of Buenos, which was re-established in 1580 Aires was managed from. The author, who himself lived as a conquistador and cleric in Asunción and in the silver mining area of Potosí , had to leave the New World in 1590 due to a conviction and settled in Lisbon. The name " Argentina " ("Silver Land"), under which the country he described later became known and independent, is mentioned for the first time in Del Barco's work title and was chosen by him as a modification of Ercilla's novel title.

A continuation of Ercilla's epic written by the Spanish poet Diego de Santisteban and consisting of two additional parts under the title La Araucana, quarta y quinta parte ("The Araucana, fourth and fifth parts") was published in Salamanca in 1597 and in 1733 with the original work published together. Ercilla's poem subsequently saw numerous reprints and was included as the 12th volume in the national literary text collection Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (BAE) published from 1846 . The linguist and translator Christian Martin Winterling (1800–1884) provided a translation of the verse into German ; it was published in two volumes in Nuremberg in 1831 . In the 1960s, gave in Canada living literature and Militariasammler Horst Pérez several self-made German translations of individual songs in the self-publishing out.

Work editions

Critical edition of the original Spanish text

• La Araucana. Edited by Isaías Lerner . Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid 1993. 5th corrected and revised edition 2009, ISBN 978-84-376-1151-8 (critical study edition with an introduction to literary history and ongoing commentary in Spanish)

German translation

• The Araucana, translated for the first time from the Spanish by Don Alonso de Ercilla. German by Christian Martin Winterling. Nürnberg 1831 (The translation of the epic is not entirely complete, as Winterling omits several stanzas in each song without comment. It is available online as a digital version (books.google.de): Volume 1 , Volume 2 )

Online versions of the original Spanish text

• La Araucana at Wikisource : transcribed text of the complete works (parts I, II and III)
• La Araucana in the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes : various electronically recorded editions of the work can be consulted as facsimile or digital copies
• La Araucana in the library of the National Congress of Chile : transcribed text of the complete works (parts I, II and III) as hypertext (HTML) with explanatory notes and facsimile (PDF) of a rare edition of part I of the work (2nd edition, 1574)

literature

• Carlos Albarracín Sarmiento: Arquitectura del narrador en La Araucana . In: Dámaso Alonso (ed.): Studia hispanica in honorem R. Lapesa. Volume 2 . Cátedra-Seminario Menendez Pidal, Madrid 1974, pp. 7-19 (Spanish)
• Hugo Montes Brunet: Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga . ( Memento of September 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) In: Gran Enciclopedia Rialp. Madrid 1991 (Spanish)
• Cedomil Goic : Letras del reino de Chile . Iberoamericana, Madrid 2006, ISBN 84-8489-254-9 , chap. III to IX (Spanish), limited preview in Google Book search
• Barbara Held: Studies on the Araucana of Don Alonso de Ercilla: ideas about law, state and history in epic form. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-88129-672-7
• Werner Huber: La Araucana. In: Kindler's new literary lexicon . Volume 5. P. 248 f.
• Dieter Janik : The view of the Indians in the epic La Araucana by Don Alonso de Ercilla. In: ders .: Stations in Spanish-American literary and cultural history. Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 27-47
• Frank Pierce: Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga. Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam 1984, ISBN 90-6203-965-0 (English), limited preview in Google Book Search
• Ingrid Simson: America in the Spanish literature of the Siglo de Oro: report, staging, criticism . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-89354-891-2 . At the same time: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 1998
• Christian Wentzlaff-Eggebert : La Araucana como poema épico . In: Frauke Gewecke : Estudios de literatura espanola y francesa: siglos XVI y XVII; homenaje a Horst Baader . Vervuert, Frankfurt / Main 1984, pp. 237–254 (Spanish)
• Miguel Zugasti: Pedro Ordóñez de Ceballos en America: un nuevo en torno a la prueba del tronco (La Araucana, canto II) . In: Ingrid Simson (Ed.): América en España: influencias, intereses, imágenes . Iberoamericana, Madrid 2007, pp. 69–116 (Spanish)

Web links

Commons : Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga  in the German Digital Library
• Literature by and about Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b} Memoria Chilena (digitization project of the Chilean state libraries): Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533–1594) (Biographical Introduction), accessed in December 2015. - Whether Ercilla's claim that his notes had already composed stanzas (like he e.g. regarding the episode of his arrival on Chiloé in XXXVI. Gesang says), applies or only served to give his work even more authenticity afterwards, is however controversial. What is certain is that he used extensive written material and did not reconstruct the plot of his poetry completely freely from memory.
2. ↑ “Literature and historiography have always been closely related in Latin America. Historiographical works such as the crónicas of the 16th century are considered today to be the beginning of Latin American literature. ”(Walter Bruno Berg: Literature of the Andean Countries: Breaks and Breaks. In: Michael Rössner (Ed.): Latin American Literature History. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, ISBN 3-476-01202-6 , pp. 445-465)
3. ↑ La Araucana XXXVI, 29
4. ↑ See Beatriz Pastor : The Armature of Conquest: Spanish accounts of the Discovery of America, 1492–1589. Engl. Übers., Stanford University Press 1992, lectured by Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2004. pp. 217 and Note 49.
5. ↑ Jerónimo de Vivar : Crónica y relación copiosa y verdadera de los reinos de Chile (1558). In: Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina , Volume 2. Instituto Geográfico Militar, Santiago de Chile 1966.
6. ↑ Ángel Barral Gómez: Introducción ( Memento of February 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (“Introduction”). In: Jerónimo de Vivar: Crónica de los reinos de Chile. Edition by Ángel Barral Gómez, 1st edition, Madrid 1987.
7. ↑ Mapa del Reino de Chile , published by Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2004. p. 81.
8. ↑ La Araucana XXXVI, 33 f .; XXXVII, 70
9. ↑ ^{a b} About the question of the relationship between this woman and Ercilla and whether it is possibly the same warrior woman, called "Fresia" by Ercilla, who allegedly had a 15-month-old child with Caupolicán, who she was sheerless after his capture Anger and despair killed her father in front of her eyes by throwing him down a slope (the chronicler Gerónimo de Vivar reports this incident independently of Ercilla, who defused the episode in the novel and allowed the child to survive), has been widely speculated. Regardless of the historically unlikely and unexplained assumption, it is worth noting how often and intensely Ercilla addresses the suffering of Mapuche women, whose husbands were killed in battle or murdered by the conquistadors.
10. ↑ This assumption was made in 1917 by José Toribio Medina ; see. Library of the National Congress of Chile: Introducción a "La Araucana", de Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (Introduction to the work of Alonso de Ercilla, accessed December 25, 2015).
11. ↑ Karl Friedrich Merleker: Musologie. Systematic overview of the development of languages. Leipzig 1857, p. 230:

    Rufo's, Austriade ', Virues ', Monserrate 'and Ercilla's (born 1533), Araucana' (German von Winterling, 1831) are described by Cervantes as the most excellent epic works in the Castilian language.

12. ↑ In the 6th chapter of the First Book of Don Quixote it says:

    Que me place, respondió el barbero; y aquí vienen tres todos juntos: La Araucana de Don Alonso de Ercilla, La Austríada de Juan Rufo, jurado de Córdoba, y El Montserrat de Cristóbal de Virués, poeta valenciano.- Todos estos tres libros, dijo el cura, son los mejores que en verso heróico en lengua castellana están escritos, y pueden competir con los más famosos de Italia; Guárdense como las más ricas prendas de poesía que tiene España .

    Translation by Ludwig Braunfels :

    "Agreed," replied the barber. "And here three come together: The Araucana by Don Alonso de Ercilla, The Austríada by Juan Rufo, the City Councilor of Cordoba, and The Monserrate by the Valencian poet Christóbal de Virués." - "All these three books," said the priest, “Are the best, written in eight-line punches in Spanish, and compete with the most famous in Italy; they should be kept as the richest pledges of poetry that Spain possesses. "

13. ^ ^{A b} Rudolf Baehr : Spanish verse theory on a historical basis. Tübingen 1962, p. 207 u. Note 194.
14. ↑ Cedomil Goic: Los mitos degradados: ensayos de comprensión de la literatura hispanoamericana. Amsterdam and Atlanta 1992, p. 312 f .:

    La crítica tradicional ha puesto de relieve la falta de unidad que hay en los propósitos del narrador, que rechaza el tema del amor y acaba por darle lugar en el poema; que dice ocuparso con las guerras de Chile y acaba narrando variadas guerras; que dice luego ceñirse a la verdad y concluye por narrar hechos maravillosas y extraordinarios.

15. ↑ Virtudes Atero Burgos: 'La Araucana' en la literatura española de los siglos de oro: un panorama crítico. In: Festschrift Braulio Justel Calabozo ( Estudios de la Universidad de Cádiz ofrecidos a la memoria del profesor Braulio Justel Calabozo. ), Cádiz 1998, pp. 341–353; here: note 3 (p. 350). Like Lucía Invernizzi Santa Cruz: Ercilla, narrador de La Araucana. (" Ercilla, narrator of the Araucana "), online publication 2011.
16. ↑ In detail Beatriz Pastor: The Armature of Conquest: Spanish accounts of the Discovery of America, 1492–1589. Engl. Transl. V. Lydia Longstreth Hunt, Stanford University Press 1992 (Spanish first edition Havanna 1983, last Barcelona 2008), pp. 218–222 ( limited preview in Google book search ): "In La Araucana the action revolves about war."
17. ↑ ^{a b c} Virtudes Atero Burgos: 'La Araucana' en la literatura española de los siglos de oro: un panorama crítico. In: Festschrift Braulio Justel Calabozo ( Estudios de la Universidad de Cádiz ofrecidos a la memoria del profesor Braulio Justel Calabozo. ), Cádiz 1998, pp. 341–353; here: p. 345.
18. ↑ Michael Murrin: History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994, p. 119.
19. ↑ Murrin (1994), p. 99f.
20. ↑ ^{a b} Cf. Francisco Ramírez: Conquista, raza y religious en el episodio de Tegualda: cantos XX y XXI de La Araucana ( Memento of May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (“Conquest, race and religion in the episode of Tegualda: XX. And XXI. Canto of La Araucana ”). In: Revista Chilena de Literatura , No. 74 (2009), pp. 251-265.
21. ↑ See Sirinya Pakditawan: The stereotyping representation of Indians and their modification in the work of James Fenimore Cooper . Dissertation at the University of Hamburg, March 2008, p. 41 u. Note 127 ( full text  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), PDF; 4.29 MB). Limiting the bon sauvage motif : Barbara Held: Studies on the Araucana of Don Alonso de Ercilla. Frankfurt am Main 1983, p. 144.
22. ↑ Cf. Memoria Chilena: Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga: La Araucana (introduction). Accessed December 2015.
23. ↑ Fernando Alegría: La Araucana y sus críticos. In: La poesía chilena, orígenes y desarrollo, del siglo XVI al XIX. (Chapter 1), Fondo de Cultura Económica, México 1954.
24. ^ ^{A b} José Manuel López de Abiada: De voces y polifonías: escritores hispanos, percepción de América y V Centenario. In the S. u. a. (Ed.): El peso del pasado: Percepciones de América y V Centenario. Madrid 1996, p. 67.
25. ↑ Virtudes Atero Burgos: 'La Araucana' en la literatura española de los siglos de oro: un panorama crítico. In: Festschrift Braulio Justel Calabozo ( Estudios de la Universidad de Cádiz ofrecidos a la memoria del profesor Braulio Justel Calabozo. ), Cádiz 1998, pp. 341–353; here: note 9 (p. 350).
26. ↑ Barbara Held ( Studien zur Araucana des Don Alonso de Ercilla. Frankfurt 1983, p. 181 f.) Sees Ercilla as a supporter of Christian-Spanish universalism and considers the “revolutionary” tendencies emphasized by some studies to be unintentional entries resulting from the takeover ideological orientations of his poetic models (especially Lucans ) result, which he tries to closely imitate. Ricardo Padrón ( Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. Chicago 2004, pp. 190–215), following Beatriz Pastor, gives Ercilla's triumphalistic portrayals, which emphasize the expansion of Spanish world domination under King Philip II , for superficial and parodistically broken through the contrasting juxtaposition of the ideology of rule and cruel reality. He speaks of a "counter-cartography" which Ercilla subterraneanly opposes the Spanish ambitions for a world empire despite all the hymns of praise (p. 215). Isaías Lerner (Introduction to La Araucana , Madrid 1993, 4th ed. 2005, p. 38 f.) Wants to know that Ercilla, despite all sympathy for the Indian uprising and criticism of García Hurtado and other Spaniards, the indigenous rebellion for a holds a doomed undertaking that has no long-term prospect of success, because the universal expansion of Spain can ultimately not be met with permanent resistance. Michael Murrin, who basically regards Ercilla as an advocate of the Spanish imperial idea, states, on the other hand, that the very uncertain outcome of the permanent conflict, the successful end of which was not in sight during Ercilla's lifetime, confronted the poet with the problem, unlike his poetic models, not a definitive military one To be able to present victory, which forced him to his original overall conception and at the same time offered the chance for new sequels ( History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic. Chicago 1994, p. 99 f.).
27. ↑ Virtudes Atero Burgos: 'La Araucana' en la literatura española de los siglos de oro: un panorama crítico. In: Festschrift Braulio Justel Calabozo ( Estudios de la Universidad de Cádiz ofrecidos a la memoria del profesor Braulio Justel Calabozo. ), Cádiz 1998, pp. 341–353; here: p. 346.
28. ^ Frank Pierce: Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga. Amsterdam 1984, p. 53.
29. ↑ Barbara Held ( Studies on the Araucana of Don Alonso de Ercilla. Frankfurt 1983, p. 147 and note 110) shows in this connection the racist clichés in Ercilla's stylizations. So later on, the amiable "good savages" of Chiloé are described as white-skinned, unlike the "war studs" Araucans:

    White like the Spaniards and not black like the Negroes, drawn as beasts in human form by Ercilla (110). - Cf. Canto XXVIII, 23 ff .: the beautiful Glaura has to flee from two negroes who want to rape her; Canto XXXIV, 24: Ercilla's poet-Ich describes it as an insult to Caupolicán that a negro should execute him; Caupolicán himself defends himself against this "shame".

30. ↑ ^{a b c} Isaías Lerner: Introducción (Introduction). In: ders. (Ed.): La Araucana. 4th edition, Madrid 2005, p. 38 f.
31. ↑ David Quint: Epics of the Defeated: The Other Tradition of Lucan, Ercilla, and d'Aubigne, in: ders .: Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1993, pp. 131-209; here: p. 182 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
32. ↑ Virtudes Atero Burgos: 'La Araucana' en la literatura española de los siglos de oro: un panorama crítico. In: Festschrift Braulio Justel Calabozo ( Estudios de la Universidad de Cádiz ofrecidos a la memoria del profesor Braulio Justel Calabozo. ), Cádiz 1998, pp. 341–353; here: p. 341 f.
33. ↑ Isaías Lerner: Introducción (Introduction). In: ders. (Ed.): La Araucana. 4th ed., Madrid 2005, p. 36.
34. ↑ See James R. Nicolopulos: The Poetics of Empire in the Indies: Prophecy and Imitation. In: “La Araucana” and “Os Lusiadas”. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, p. 91; Lecture by: Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. University of Chicago Press, 2004. pp. 203 et al. Note 32.
35. ↑ La Araucana , XVII. – XVIII. Singing.
36. ↑ La Araucana , XXIII. – XXIV. Singing.
37. ↑ La Araucana XXVI, 8d
38. ↑ La Araucana XXVI, 7a-b
39. ↑ Cf. Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2004, pp. 200-203.
40. ↑ In detail Barbara Held: Studies on the Araucana of Don Alonso de Ercilla: ideas about law, state and history in epic form. , Frankfurt 1983, pp. 23-73.
41. ↑ La Araucana XXXII, 4; here paraphrased from Ricardo Padrón, p. 216:

    The narrator becomes increasingly frank in his condemnation of the Spanish fighters, who “in an inhuman manner have exceeded the laws and limits of war, committing in their explorations and conquests, enormous and unheard of cruelties” (32.4).

42. ↑ See Isaías Lerner (2005), p. 38; Barbara Held (1983), p. 182 and more often.
43. ↑ La Araucana XXXIV, 31h.
44. ↑ La Araucana XXXIV, 32a – d:

    Quedó abiertos los ojos y de suerte / que por vivo llegaban a mirarle, / que la amarilla y afeada muerte / no pudo aún puesto allí desfigurarle.

45. ↑ La Araucana XXXIV, 18 f.
46. ^ Lawrence A. Clayton: Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas. Wiley-Blackwell , Oxford et al. a. 2011, p. 45 f.
47. ↑ La Araucana XXXIV, 10cd.
48. ↑ Beatriz Pastor: The Armature of Conquest: Spanish accounts of the Discovery of America, 1492–1589. Stanford University Press 1992, p. 233 ( limited preview in Google Book search )
49. ↑ La Araucana XXXIII, 77f.
50. ↑ See Beatriz Pastor (1992), p. 253; Barbara Held (1983), p. 182; on pastor cf. Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. Chicago 2004, p. 217.
51. ↑ See Barbara Held (1983), pp. 144-148; Ricardo Padrón (2004), pp. 215-228.
52. ↑ See Beatriz Pastor (1992), pp. 253-262.
53. ↑ Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. Chicago 2004, p. 217 f.
54. ↑ See Michael Rössner: Die Hispanoamerikanischer Literatur. In: Kindlers new literature lexicon (CD-ROM edition, 2000).
55. ↑ See María Maluenda: Neruda y Arauco. Santiago de Chile 1998, p. 57 ff.
56. ↑ Cf. Memoria Chilena: Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533–1594) - Palabras a Alonso de Ercilla (quotations and documents). Accessed May 2013.
57. ^ Gerhard Drekonja-Kornat: Frontier - Frontera. Of the difficulties of comparing North and South in America. In: Thomas Fröschl, Margarete Grandner, Birgitta Bader-Zaa (Ed.): North American Studies . Historical and literary research from Austrian universities on the United States and Canada. Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7028-0364-5 , p. 353:

    Strangely enough, La Araucana, although it lyrically documents the victories and defeats of the Spaniards against the Mapuches, is considered the Chilean national epic.

58. ↑ Cedomil Goic: Los mitos degradados: ensayos de comprensión de la literatura hispanoamericana. Amsterdam and Atlanta 1992, p. 307, note 2.
59. ↑ Esteban Scarpa writes in the foreword to the selected edition of the Araucana (1982):

    Chile tiene el honor, gracias a don Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, de ser la única nación posterior a la Edad Media cuyo nacimiento es cantado en un poema épico como lo fueron España con el "Poema del Cid", Francia con "La Chanson de Roland "o el pueblo germano con" Los Nibelungos ".
    (“Thanks to Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, Chile has the honor of being the only nation since the Middle Ages whose birth was celebrated in an epic poem in the same way as Spain in Poema del Cid , France in Chanson de Roland or the German people in Nibelungenlied . ”) Cf. De Prólogo Breve (“ As a short preface ”), in: Alonso de Ercilla: La Araucana. Selección y notas de Roque Esteban Scarpa (Selection and remarks by Roque Esteban Scarpa). Editorial Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile 1982. Quoted from: Library of the National Congress of Chile: Introducción a "La Araucana" (accessed December 25, 2015).

60. ↑ In Winterling's 1831 translation (which imitates the rhyme scheme more closely, but is less textual) the stanza reads:
    Spread through the southern regions,
    Chili is a famous and fertile land,
    feared and shied from all nations,
    Since it always had the upper hand in
    war . The people who inhabit this beautiful country
    are known to be arrogant, proud and bellicose,
    Since they never showed obedience to any king,
    Still bowed their necks under a foreign yoke.
61. ^ So Ricardo Padrón: Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2004. p. 185.
62. ↑ Memoria Chilena: Pedro de Oña: Arauco Domado , accessed December 2015.
63. ↑ Cf. Ingrid Galster : Aguirre or Die Willkür der Nachwelt. The rebellion of the Basque conquistador Lope de Aguirre in historiography and historical fiction (1561–1992) . Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 119.
64. ↑ Hermann Schumacher (ed.): Hamburg festival to commemorate the discovery of America. Hamburg 1892, p. 16 (Introduction by the editor, online edition ( Memento from April 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive )). The font contains the biographical sketch of Juan de Castellano. A picture of life from the Conquista period by Hermann Albert Schumacher , the editor's father.
65. ↑ Wolf Lustig: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. On the poetic appropriation of the Apóstol de las Indias in Hispano-American literature . In: Mariano Delgado (Ed.): Bartolomé de las Casas: Selection of works. Vol. III / 2, Paderborn 1997, pp. 29-46 (here: pp. 30 f.); Online publication .
66. ↑ Winterling, who came from Schwarzenbach an der Saale , taught modern languages ​​and literature in Erlangen from 1823 until his death (initially as a private lecturer and from 1834 as an associate professor) and was a prominent member of the Pegnese Order of Flowers at the time .