Literary criticism has such a bad reputation—as an art of esoteric hair-splitting—among the practitioners of other disciplines that a historian may hesitate to open a book with poetry in the title appearing in a literary studies series. In this case, however, such hesitation is soon overcome. Antonio Cussen writes clearly and succinctly, and generally holds one’s interest even when he is wringing political significance, as he does with some frequency, from Andrés Bello’s views on Roman literature.
Cussen’s own surprisingly lucid ventures into literary criticism seem quite plausible, though a professor of Spanish (or Latin) might better pass final judgment in this respect. The specialist in history will applaud Cussen’s persistent effort to put literary analysis into historical context. True, the historiographical underpinnings of the study are not its strongest point. The historical sources cited are curiously scattered and are often dated; an extreme example is the citing of a work by Diego Barros Arana and Miguel Luis Amunátegui, reprinted in Havana in 1967, in support of a highly misleading discussion of ecclesiastical censos during the revolutionary period (p. 121). One can quarrel with other points of historical background too, but these are usually of quite minor importance.
Cussen states frankly in the preface that the book is written from Bello’s perspective, not Bolívar’s. He does devote space to the Liberator’s own foray into literary criticism of Bello, but for the rest Bolívar enters intermittently into the discussion as reference point or foil. One does not, in the end, learn much, if anything, new about Bolívar himself. On the other hand, Cussen presents a view of Bello that may not be new in its broad outline but is full of nuances based on textual analysis of Bello’s poetry and prose—almost as much of the latter as of the former, despite the title. We see an educated creole, whose true preference was for enlightened reformism under Spanish rule, ultimately forced to embrace outright independence; and a constitutional monarchist who accepted with misgivings the inevitability of liberal republicanism. There were undoubtedly many more such reluctant patriots than are identified as such in the standard history texts. Nor would it be easy to find a more perfect exemplar of conservative liberalism—or liberal conservatism—than what Bello in his Chilean exile finally became. Curiously, the book never mentions the one thing most historians will first associate with Bello’s name: his role in Chilean legal codification. But then law codes probably do not have much in common with poetry.
