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T H E I R S O N
THE NECKLACE
BY EDUARDO ZAMACOIS
TRANSLATED BY GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND
NEW YORK
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
1919
For valuable assistance given in the rendering of localisms and obscurepassages in the following stories, I wish to return acknowledgment andthanks to Miss Dolores Butterfield and Doña Rosario Muñoz de Morrison.
George Allan England.
EDUARDO ZAMACOIS
Artist—Apostle—Prophet
FEW writers of the tremendously virile and significant school of modernSpain summarize in their work so completely the tendencies of theresurgimiento as does Eduardo Zamacois. "Renaissance" is really thewatchword of his life and literary output. This man is a human dynamo, arevitalizing force in Spanish life and letters, an artist who is morethan a mere artist; he is a man with a message, a philosophy and avision; and all these he knows how to clothe in a forceful, masterly andcompelling style, which, though not always lucid, always commands.Zamacois sees life, and paints it as it is, sometimes with humor,often with pitiless, dissecting accuracy.
To me, Zamacois seems a Spanish Guy de Maupassant. He tells a story inmuch the same way, with that grace and charm which only genius, coupledto infinite hard work, can crystallize on the printed page. Hissubjects are often much the same as those of de Maupassant. Hissympathy for what prigs call "low life"; his understanding of the heartof the common people; his appreciation of the drama and pathos, thehumor and tragedy of ordinary, everyday life; his frank handling of thereally vital things—which we western-hemisphere hypocrites callimproprieties and turn up our noses at, the while we secretly pry intothem—all mark him as kin with the great French master. Kin, notimitator, Zamacois is Zamacois, no one else. His way of seeing, ofexpressing, is all his; and even the manner in which he handles theCastillian, constructing his own grammatical forms and words to suithimself, mark him a pioneer. He is a hard man to translate. Dictionariesare too narrow for the limits of his vocabulary. Many of his wordsbaffle folk who speak Spanish as a birthright. He is a jeune