to the prestige of his rank. How well this language fits seignorial pomp, the noble manner, the courtly gesture and knightly surrender, and how appropriate it is to all the science of chivalry, the codes, traditions, heraldry, and ceremony of the knights errant! With what evident delight and skillful mastery he showers forth the treasure of his smiling and antiquated erudition! But this language in which the most noble models are reflected and mingled is not that of Cervantes alone. It is the language, the style of Montalvo, well adapted

to Cervantic subjects. It is the style and the language of the Siete Tratados and El Espectador. Therefore if Montalvo used this manner of speech in other works before and after this, it was not as a mere experiment that he began his imitation of the inimitable book.

"It is the firm belief of the author that he has written a course in ethics," Montalvo himself said. Expounding moral questions in eloquent language and describing examples of conduct, especially of the chivalrous behavior which mirrored his own code, he clearly displays here not only literary elegance but also his most cherished criterion. "The writer whose purpose is not the improvement of his

fellow men would do them a favor by throwing his pen into the fire: universal moral benefit should be his aim-not that preached by the pseudo-wise." From the mouth of Don Quixote fall in lofty and resounding phrases those reflections which give value to the book and satisfy Montalvo's character. Elevated by the chivalric ideal, the noble commonplaces of a traditional code of morals acquire a new flavor and a new meaning on the lips and in the deeds of Don Quixote, who gives them reality and grandeur through his heroic candor, his sublime sincerity and his inspired vision.

"If it were the author's purpose to write a course in ethics, as he himself suggests, how does it happen that he chose the most difficult manner?" Montalvo queries. Rising above the artist and lover of noble form, he sometimes enjoyed considering himself as a kind of magistrate or Roman senator wrapped in the toga of solemnity and rhetoric, a kind of priest or seer enveloped in the majesty of sacred oratory, and was often tempted to write an eloquent treatise in which the soul's gravity and greatness should have untrammeled scope. But he possessed in equal or even greater degree than that solemn gift the gift of burlesque invention, of enormous laughter, of mock-serious emphasis, of epic buffoonery and superlative irony. In the creation. of his Don Quixote, with innate and surpassing skill he makes admirable use of this dual power of his genius. No one has better perceived or more accurately caught both the humorous charm and the greatness of Quixote. No one could with greater art revive the Knight of the Rueful Countenance to embark on new adventures from which he emerges as usual vanquished but invincible.

If it is true that while perusing Don Quixote every reader shares Cervantes' experience while writing it; if from the mockery and laughter inspired at first by a too-mad Don Quixote and a too-sane Sancho, one passes insensibly to commiseration, sympathy, and the warmest and most human friendship, this affection was decisive in the case of Montalvo. For him, even more than for the author of the Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, the Knight really existed, as an actual living person. In the solitude of Ipiales, set on a desolate plain like La Mancha, Montalvo kept Don Quixote at his side as companion, confidant, solace, and example. He saw his friend among real men, taking part in local affairs, and in his hallucination disclosing, behind the fallacious truth of our reality, his higher and more veracious truth. Montalvo is indignant because Avellaneda reviles Don Quixote; he grieves because Cervantes himself ridicules him in one passage. Montalvo shields him from every predicament which might be derogatory; and although he exposes him to the mockery, troubles, and hazards of fortune connected with knight errantry, he is never false to the sensitive and intimate admiration which he professes for his hero. The irony of the tale therefore brings to the most doughty deeds and the most serious discourses not "the laughter of

the buffoon," but a smile from the heart, full of comprehension and sympathy, in wisely implicit understanding with the reader. The insane hero diverts him with his madness, and captivates him with his nobility and wisdom.

Montalvo made the Quixote his constant school. From his early youth he knew it almost by heart. He did not have to reread it to feed himself upon it in his bookless solitude. He carried it into exile not with him, but in him. What better counselor in his adversity than Cervantes? But Montalvo was a devotee of Don Quixote rather than of Cervantes.

Sympathy and similarity of genius revealed to him the living secret, the human charm of the greatness and misery of Don Quixote: thus he could resuscitate him in body and soul without profanation. Rather than an imitation or a mechanical reproduction of the masterpiece, Montalvo's work is, as it were, the natural development and continuation of the life infused into the original and here imprisoned with the glowing love of one who felt himself possessed by that immortal spirit.

Montalvo extends his understanding to the good squire Sancho; the latter appears not as a voracious glutton but as the affectionate servant, who in his heart is fascinated by the great soul of his mad master, an overgrown child in need of his care. The detestable Sancho is the cautious and self-assured man, who will not abandon his home to follow any knight-errant, but rather leaves him alone, slanders and discourages him. The good Sancho fulfills an ideal mission by faithfully serving the master whose madness he shares, notwithstanding all his proverbs. Yet there is a certain quixotism in Sancho, who prefers to a peaceful meal with Teresa and Sanchica what seems to him an absurd and vaguely glorious life following Don Quixote. The philosophy of the book is found in the contrast not so much between the two figures as between the sanity of their words and the madness of their acts; this is true not only of Don Quixote but of Sancho as well.

The philosophic interpretation of Quixotism, set forth in El Buscapié and interrelated with the story, does not hinder the freedom and animation with which the fabled and real knight continues his adventures. Although Montalvo's purpose was to write a didactic. work, these chapters are an extravaganza, full of reality and realities; an admirable novel, perhaps the first in merit in Hispanic American literature, as well as one of the first in time.

To pass the enforced leisure of exile, Montalvo might have amused himself with another Don Juan de Flor as romantic as that brief composition written elsewhere. He always felt the allure of the Byronic fascination for seduction, the poetry of the ill-omened beauty of evil and passion: iridescent reflections of that imaginative

eroticism are to be found in some very curious pages. But despite the longing with which he recalled the Manfreds and Childe Harolds, the chaste and beloved figure of the Knight always had a profound attraction for Montalvo. Of the two prototypes (not so contradictory in their virile temper as might be thought), which were the alternate objects of Montalvo's romantic dreams, the "righter of wrongs" was more akin to his belligerent and generous nature. He had in him more of Don Quixote than of Don Juan. As he himself said, "The man who is not something of a Don Quixote does not deserve the respect or the affection of his fellow-beings."

While in all Montalvo's writings the author and the man go hand in hand, here we have his complete image in its most finished form, in both the moral and the literary sense. This bold attempt shows him in the fullness of his gifts. Not even here, not even in this book of pure enjoyment, of the most expansive intellectual recreation, could Montalvo renounce any of his characteristic traits. He himself confesses to taking from real life, for satirization under a thin veil of fiction, persons or events offering to his sense of justice or desire for revenge a butt for epic laughter. Therefore his delight in controversy persists here in the constant caricaturist, who lurks behind the circumspect philosopher and the magnanimous idealist.-Who these personages may have been matters little to the meaning and the interest of the novel; to ascertain their identity would have merely a local, gossipy, and transitory importance. Furthermore, so general in type and vague in outline are their characters that they make no especial mark on the book. The essential feature is the admirable interpretation or prolongation of Don Quixote and Sancho, who are of universal interest. This was, in fact, the point of view of the author who, as is known by his confidences to a friend, removed from the Capítulos, years after they were first written, a considerable number of allusions and personalities, altering names, omitting, correcting, forgiving. When he remarks: "I have written a Quixote for Spanish America, and by no means for Spain," it should be understood that he is moved by modesty, or by the misgivings which would have been banished if he could have foreseen the welcome which such Spanish authors as Valera, Núñez de Arce and others had in store for his book. It is true that neither the characters, the environment, nor the atmosphere is peculiarly American. At most, just as Flaubert saw in the Quixote those Spanish roads which are never described, there may be felt here, in one scene or another, a passing breeze from Ecuadorean peaks. It is perhaps to be regretted that Montalvo never seriously thought of giving us the Don Quixote of America, or at least the Tartarin of the Andes. However, this is no less than Don Quixote de la Mancha redivivus. How can we complain?

POSTPONEMENT OF THE SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

B

OF AMERICAN STATES

Y resolution of the Governing Board of the Pan American Union at its session held on May 4, 1932, the Seventh International Conference of American States, scheduled to meet at Montevideo, Uruguay, was postponed from December, 1932, to December, 1933. The Government of Uruguay was requested to indicate the precise date for the opening of the Conference.

The action of the Governing Board followed a suggestion made at the meeting held in April that the Conference be postponed for a year and the receipt of the following communication from the Government of Uruguay concurring in the suggestion:

The Government of the Republic of Uruguay has taken note of the communication of the Governing Board of the Pan American Union transmitted through the intermediary of the Chargé d'Affaires of Uruguay at Washington, and has decided on its part to approve the suggestion that the Seventh International Conference of American States be held in December, 1933. The Government of Uruguay resolved not to take the initiative with respect to a change in date of the Seventh Conference, either to advance or to postpone it, because the City of Montevideo having been honored as the seat of the next Conference, it devolved upon this Government to be ready to receive the delegates of the Sister Nations of the Continent, on the date that might be most convenient, in view of the international situation and in accordance with the regulations; the tranquil atmosphere of Montevideo and the cordial sentiments of the Government of Uruguay toward all the nations of America being favorable to this procedure.

In approving the resolution on the postponement of the Conference, the Governing Board adopted an explanatory statement reading as follows:

The program of the Seventh International Conference of American States contains many questions, especially under the heading of juridical and economic problems, which will require prolonged preparatory study prior to the assembling of the Conference. The Pan American Union has requested the preparation of technical studies and draft projects by the American Institute of International Law, the Permanent Committee on Public International Law at Rio de Janeiro, the Permanent Committee on Private International Law of Montevideo, and the Permanent Committee on Uniformity of Legislation and Comparative Legislation at Habana.

It has become apparent to the Governing Board that even with the exercise of the greatest industry it will not be possible to complete these preparatory studies and projects in time to submit them to the Governments sufficiently far in advance of the meeting of the Conference.

Under the headings of Economic Problems, and Transportation, there are also a number of questions which call for the submission of well-considered projects long in advance of the coming together of the delegations at Montevideo.