Books: Cortes & Co.

CONQUISTADOR—Archibald MacLeish— Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). To Octogenarian Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a conquistador retired to his estate in Guatemala, there came from Spain Francisco Lopez de Gomara’s account of Cortes’ Mexican expedition of 1519. The old lion Bernal was aroused. Who was this fine young Professor de Gomara, to be making charts out of battles and histories out of men? Old Bernal fought those battles, knew those men. He could make them live again—blood, bones, the light in their eyes, the sand in their boots. To prove it, he wrote his True History of the Conquest of New Spain, which remains the best first-hand story of the great conquistadors. From this first-hand material Poet MacLeish has developed an exciting, 2,000-line narrative poem. His terza rima stanzas have no rhyme, but instead a subtle assonance. The story opens with Cortes’ embarkation at Santiago de Cuba for the west, against the command of Velasquez, the Spanish Governor. Across the Gulf, in the teeth of Velasquez’ organized opposition, they work their way to Cempoala on the Mexican coast. Here the weary men, learning that all of the ships but one have been destroyed to prevent their deserting, grow mutinous. Cortes, bidding them to go back if they will, quiets them with his taunts: ‘Why should you waste your souls in the west! You are young: ‘Tell them you left us here by the last water ‘Going up through the pass of the hills with the sun: ‘Tell them that in the tight towns when you talk of us ‘The west is dangerous for thoughtful men: ‘Eastward is all sure: all as it ought to be: ‘A man may know the will of God by the fences. . . .’ Shamed, his men swashbuckle down to their jobs, fight their way over the mountain passes to the valley where the fabulous island-city of Montezuma “lay on the lake like sleeping gulls.” Here they lead an idyllic life, described by Poet MacLeish in beautiful detail. But their attempt to make their security more secure, by holding Montezuma hostage, leads to their ruin. When Cortes goes back to Cempoala, to fight off some Spaniards sent after him by Governor Velasquez, Alvarado, left in charge at Mexico City, gets into trouble with the natives. When Cortes returns, Montezuma is slain by his own people who, hornet-mad, drive the conquistadors from their paradise. The following spring the vengeful conquistadors raze the city, build a Spanish town, with streets squared “and the church conspicuous.” Spanish settlers follow with their goats, babies, greasy pots. Old Eagle Bernal sickens to remember how, for all the conquistadors’ labor, they only succeeded in fouling a paradisaical nest. The Author. Born in Chicago in 1892, Archibald MacLeish dates the beginning of his life from 1923, when with his wife and two children he sailed for France to write the poems he wanted to write. Before this second birth he had studied at Yale, Harvard Law School, practiced law for three years in Boston. He now spends much of his time on his northern New England farm. In 1929 he traveled on foot and muleback Cortes’ route in Mexico, to get first-hand impressions for Conquistador, a first-magnitude effort and suc cess. Other poems: The Happy Marriage, The Pot of Earth, Streets in the Moon, The Hamlet of A. MacLeish, New Found Land.