“No era el hombre mas honesto ni el mas piadoso, pero era un hombre valiente…”
“He was not the most honest of men, nor the most pious, but he was a brave man…”
That’s the opening line to Arturo Perez-Reverte’s famous series of novels, the Adventures of Captain Diego Alatriste y Tenorio. The series is apparently very popular in Spain and is somewhat known here. I like them enough that they are one of the few books I buy brand new and in hard copy. The Alatriste novels are historical adventures, swashbuckling books ala Three Musketeers, but unlike the refined and playful atmosphere of Dumas (soirees with swords, really), Perez-Reverte decided to write about the dark underbelly of El Siglo de Oro, the Golden Age of Hapsburg Spain, when the tercios– of which Alatriste is a member– were the terror of the world and Spain was Europe’s superpower.
According to the long appendix in the first Alatriste novel, El Capitan is one of the men behind the horse.
The Alatriste novels are both conventional and unconventional. They are conventional because they are historical novels, a genre that has been very popular recently, with the success of novels like The Girl in the Pearl Earring or The Other Boleyn Girl. Arturo Perez-Reverte is himself partially responsible for the recent popularity of these historical books– his El Maestro de Esgrima for instance. The military air and clearly masculine audience of the Alatriste books also obviously invites comparisons with either Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series or Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin series.
What makes Alatriste so unconventional is the subject matter and setting– Spain in the 17th century that, for a change, doesn’t involve conquistadores or the Armada. I may write about this more later, but suffice it so say for now that I’ve become incredibly, heartily sick of the Anglo-centrism of history here in America and it’s fantastic to be able to read about someone else in history for a change. It’s especially frustrating for me since my research into Philippine history has led me to do a LOT of reading on Spanish history and I’ve developed a certain sentimental attachment to the place. It’s the Old Country, in a way, and I’ve found its history to be a topic of great interest both academically and just aesthetically.
Perez-Reverte seems to have much the same motivation in writing these books. In the fourth book, El Oro del Rey, The King’s Gold, the books’ narrator (more on him later) remarks rather bitterly that the English love to make a big deal of their defeat of the Spanish Armada, ignoring the many other times when the British tried the same trick– a seaborne raid or invasion of Spain– and failed. As Perez-Reverte very rightfully points out, the Spanish army was well-nigh invincible for almost 200 years, defeating the Flemish, the British and the French in open battle, defying the world and perhaps only being defeated after centuries of being worn down by war. It is therefore annoying that all people remember the period is the Armada or Elizabeth being all virginal and heroic.
The books are also sort of unconventional in that they do not focus on any great heroes or figures of the day. Alatriste is a poor, ordinary soldier– just a grognard in a tercio, or army unit. Perez-Reverte created a character who is that which is so beloved in these times which are obsessed with “grittiness” and moral ambiguity– Alatriste is an “anti-hero.” When not involved in brutal, savage wars with either Turks or the Dutch, Alatriste is a sword for hire, willing to kill or duel with anybody for a few gold pieces. As Perez-Reverte said, Alatriste was willing to fight and kill for “otros que no tenian la destreza o los arrestos para solventar sus propias querellas“– “for others who did not have the skill or mettle to solve their own quarrels.”
So there’s a lot of swordplay in the books– a lot of violence, either in the field of battle or in dark alleys in places like Madrid or Seville. There’s lots of unsavory characters, duels, robberies and all the other acts of legal and illegal derring-do you can think of. Alatriste finds himself ranging up and down the early modern world, fighting for or in the Spanish empire. He fights in Breda, in Holland, he fights the Inquisition, he fights assassins in Madrid, he robs a galleon in Seville, he fights the Turks on a galley in the Mediterranean and he even fights Philip IV, king of Spain, over a famous actress. In short, Perez-Reverte uses Alartriste to paint a picture of Hapsburg Spain in all of its grit and glory.
Alatriste was played by the multi-talented and multi-lingual Viggo Mortensen in the 2006 adaptation of the books. I liked the movie and I like Mortensen but honestly, he was pretty much Aragorn en Espanol.
Perez-Reverte is a good writer who is also a good researcher. He writes tight story lines where the history doesn’t seem forced– you don’t get the impression he is just trying to show off his erudition by mentioning famous names like Francisco de Quevedo, the sword-fighting poet, or Gaspar de Guzman, the king’s famous and powerful advisor (see what I did there, HA). Instead, these characters get woven into the story quite skillfully and they are given personalities that make them amusing to read. I particularly enjoy Quevedo, who is shown as a prickly, passionate writer who despite his seemingly benign profession and limp is one of Alatriste’s most useful allies in a swordfight. This is all par for the course for Perez-Reverte, however. Anybody who has read his other books like the aforementioned Fencing Master or The Club Dumas will know that he has a talent for intellectual, historical or history-laden novels.
His writing style is also excellent, and his books are deeply textured– you get a feel of the grandeur and tragedy of Spain in this era, how this powerful, haughty country with its wealth, its hidalgos and its armies was slowly collapsing because of, ironically, her wealth, hidalgos and armies. The whole book is very baroque in tone, and Perez-Reverte is probably intentionally imitating this style since it was the literary movement of the period in which the Alatriste books are set (Quevedo is apparently a member of this school of literature). So the series has an atmosphere of echoing, grand ballrooms with dark wooden floors, but also a sort of bitter sadness, of wasted years and fading banners. The whole Alatriste series has a strong feel of a Jorge Manrique poem: “Nuestras vidas son los rios/que van dar en la mar/que es morir“– ” Our lives are rivers that flow to the sea that is death.”
Speaking of language and style, I read the books mostly in English, generally reading the Spanish originals only for practice. The translator of the books, Margaret Jull Costa is fantastic. She captured the mood and style almost perfectly and makes the English version good works on their own. Sometimes, I find that Spanish translates very poorly into English, tending towards literary histrionics or towards being overly florrid. Costa captures the elegiac, Old World charm of Perez-Reverte’s prose without seeming stilted and or awkward.
Juan Echanove as Don Francisco de Quevedo, poet, swordsman, crotchety, faithful friend.
The books are not without their flaws. Perhaps one big one is the fact that by the third book, Perez-Reverte is practically beating you on the head with his oft-repeated refrain of “Ah poor, Spain, your corrupt and lazy people will lead to your demise…” Yes, we get it. Spain declined because of contradictions in her own society. It gets to be VERY tedious, like Perez-Reverte decided to write in a very tiresome, nagging, passive-aggressive Greek chorus. I mean, seriously, Perez-Reverte could give Robert Jordan, with his “sniffs” and “snorts” a run for his money for sheer repetitiveness.
The other major weakness of the books is that as the series progresses, the character of Captain Alatriste becomes rather dull and uninteresting. Perez-Reverte wanted Alatriste to be an anti-hero, not some Galahad, so Alatriste kills and threatens and does all that other good (bad) stuff. But he also wanted to make Alatriste to be a hero still, so he Alatriste has his own stubborn morals, and is someone who is aware of the corruption and decadence around him and tries to maintain his own strict code of honor to balance the sins of his own life. So Alatriste in fact becomes a Gary Stu– an overly perfect character who has to have it all. He’s both dark and gritty, but also honorable.
More than that, Perez-Reverte wanted to contrast Alatriste to the empty flamboyance or fake bravery he keeps encountering in Hapsburg Spain. It seems like every other secondary character that Alatriste encounters is some fake rogue or thief who talks a big game but is actually a coward, or is some puffed nobleman full of arrogance and pride. So Alatriste becomes a laconic, brooding hero who is much given to staring into space with his cold green eyes– an oft-repeated description– or his “aquiline profile.” He’s always striking a pose that is a combination of macho, world-weary, and pensive. It actually gets incredibly tiring. Basically, as the books progress Alatriste is simply reduced to practically a caricature, a kind of ideal combination of old school quiet and stoic macho man and modern day sensitive thinking man. It also becomes wildly unrealistic, with Alatriste boldly unafraid of high court officials or even the king himself. Perez-Reverte tries too hard to turn his character into the last honorable man in Spain, and into a kind of latter-day El Cid, a faithful soldier just yearning for a good leader. It just makes him unrealistic and unsympathetic.
I get the impression that Perez-Reverte, whose books often ooze with both disdain and regret for the ancien regime, has also written Alatriste as some kind of paean to old-fashioned masculinity. Maybe Perez-Reverte doesn’t like these kids with their rap music, or these metrosexuals, or these stay-at-home dads and he kind of yearns for a sort of Marlboro Man where it was okay to be all rugged and pithy and stoic.
That being said, Alatriste is not always uninteresting. Perez-Reverte is usually too good a writer for that, and you can either ignore or gloss over the character flaws in Alatriste because of the action going on around him or because of the other, more interesting characters in the books. Generally, Alatriste often just becomes predictable, which isn’t so bad, and he’s at least better than the wildly unrealistic and utterly colorless Richard Sharpe of Bernard Cornwell. But then again, Perez-Reverte is a much better writer than Cornwell.
Unax Ugalde as Inigo de Balboa.
In fact, the most interesting character in the book is probably the narrator– the young boy Inigo de Balboa y Aguirre. Inigo is Alatriste’s “squire” and something of an adopted son– the boy was the son of a war buddy of the Captain, and he takes care of him with great and touching affection (Alatriste is at his most interesting and sympathetic when he shows affection and concern for Inigo). The books are also supposedly written by an aged Inigo decades after the fact so his descriptions of Spain and Alatriste are colored by a combination of hero worship, affection and regret. The boy starts the series as 11 or 12 and in the last book he is about 18 or 19. He seems to end the series in his mid to late 20s.
The books are therefore also a bildungsroman, a coming of age story. In fact, one can even see them as not so much the story of Capitan Alatriste, but of Inigo himself. Alatriste serves more as a guide and model for the young Inigo, someone who he first worships and emulates and then grows to resent, before becoming his partner and friend. In short, one way of looking at the Alatriste books is that they are actually very cleverly written coming of age books of a young boy’s relationship with his father. Because of the narrator’s viewpoint you get the impression that Alatriste is the hero when, in fact, it is Inigo– the one who shows the most character development and the one who actually gets into a lot of the most interesting scrapes.
And Inigo is a very sympathetic character. He’s a one a young guy like me can relate to– he shows all the brazenness, arrogance and idiocy of youth but he learns and gets better. He tries to mimic Alatriste’s cold stoicism and often fails, but you seem him maturing and becoming more and more like his father figure not because of imitation but simply because of experience. He also becomes better and better at fighting. In the movie adaptation, Inigo is the one who kills Alatriste’s arch-nemesis, the Italian swordsman/assassin Gualterio Malatesta and the books do hint this might be the case at one point. If he is the one who kills Gualterio, then it’d be fascinating and cleverly written piece of Freudian or Joseph Campbellian literature– the son killing his father (since Malatesta is the mirror image of Alatriste).
In the 2006 movie, Alatriste is grievously wounded by Gualterio Malatesta. Inigo avenges him by killing Malatesta. This does of course practically beg for the line: "Hello, my name is Inigo de Balboa, you almost killed my father figure. Prepare to die."
The books are not for everybody. For one, they might not appeal to those looking for interesting female characters. These are, as I pointed out, masculine books. Indeed, they are even somewhat misogynistic. There are only three, maybe four women who are really mentioned in them: Angelica de Alquezar, Maria de Castro, Caridad le Lebrijana and the queen of Spain, Elisabeth of France. The Queen tends to show up only to be shown as an object of pity– she’s beautiful and charming but largely ignored by her philandering, overly dignified husband. If she’s supposed to be some allegory for Spain, it’s a very ham-handed one. Maria de Castro is central to the plot of the fifth book, but only as a plot device– she is an actress-prostitute over whom the king and Alatriste fight. Caridad le Lebrijana is a former whore who owns the tavern where Alatriste lives, and she’s useful since she’s wildly in love with the Captain and lets him stay there on cheap rates– often for “free” (wink, wink). Angelica de Alquezar is sort of interesting in that she’s something of a Lolita femme fatale. She starts the books at 15 and is shown as an unpredictable, beautiful, scheming and wicked girl whose plots get Inigo de Balboa– and by extension, Alatriste– into trouble. She’s also Inigo’s love interest, so Perez-Reverte is trying to be clever here, although it’s rather predictable. Who hasn’t seen the lover-enemy femme fatale?
Indeed– you notice that in the books, women are either scheming whores or victims. Like I said, the books are practically misogynistic. Alatriste does not show much respect for women or really, does not have much to do with them. He sleeps with them but Perez-Reverte doesn’t particularly portray him as overly enjoying it. He barely talks to them. His advice to Inigo regarding women isn’t nearly as pithy and insightful as Perez-Reverte thinks: Alatriste seem more helpless and bewildered by them more than anything. His struggles with the king over Maria de Castro weren’t because he was in love with her (as the movie suggests) but as a point of pride– he wasn’t going to back down even for a king. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason why Alatriste is so stoic and quiet is because he’s actually secretly gay and is unhappy about it and always struggling with himself.
"For Frodo! I mean.. Viva Espana!"
These criticisms aside, I still think these are very entertaining, very well-written books. The trick is not to read them all at once, otherwise you’ll get sick of Perez-Reverte’s repetitions– it’s like listening to John Mayer, don’t listen to his whole album at once or you’ll realize that, hey, these songs all sound alike.
But if you are willing to overlook their flaws, the books are exciting– the swordplay is excellently written, the descriptions are vivid and Hapsburg Spain comes very much alive. These books are the sort of best-sellers that you’ll likely still find interesting years later, not the king of Dan Brown crap you’ll leave on an airport lobby. I highly recommend them and there’s an added bonus that there’s a movie with very nice visuals to go with them.
