Translating Baltasar Gracián's "El Héroe"

I couldn't find the translation I wanted so I decided to do it myself.

During trying times I prefer to do deliberate, repetitive things. Very long walks are my default. When I was younger I was into meditation. Before kids, I’d go to the gym to do deadlifts (I have no excuse now other than sheer laziness for not using my perfectly good dumbbells at home. Perhaps admitting this publicly will shame me into action). But, if I’m feeling particularly out of sorts, I might decide to translate a 17th-century Spanish book called “The Hero” that I’ve been wanting to read for the past twenty-ish years. I’ve waited so long because I needed someone to translate it for me. Seeing as there aren’t many takers, I figured why not take a shot at it?

Si pudiera ser tu héroe…

Baltasar Gracián y Morales was born in 1601 in Zaragoza, Spain. He joined the Jesuit order as a young man and spent his life as a priest and writer. He had more than a few run-ins with his Order over the years—they had concerns about some of his writings, and he received sanctions after publishing one of his works against their wishes. He is known today for his 1647 work Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, often translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom, or The Pocket Oracle and the Art of Prudence. It is a handbook of 300 aphorisms on the themes of practical wisdom, discretion, and generally making one’s way in a world dominated by self-interest. Fortunately, it is still being translated and is available in a number English editions. El Héroe was Gracián’s first book, written ten years earlier in 1637 and, like most of his others, was authored under a pseudonym (“Lorenzo Gracián”). Unfortunately, along with his other works El Político, El Arte de Ingenio, El Discreto, and El Criticón, El Héroe has been largely forgotten in the English-speaking world.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom was more than enough to preserve Gracián’s reputation, however. It was translated widely across Europe. Schopenhauer translated the entire text into German, the manuscript found amongst his papers when he died. Part of his note on his translation reads:

It is the only one of its kind and no other has ever been written on the same subject…It teaches the art which all would fain practice, and is therefore a book for everyone; but it is especially fitted to be the manual of those who live in the great world, and peculiarly of young people who wish to prosper in that world. To them it gives at once and beforehand that teaching which they could otherwise only obtain through long experience. To read it once through is obviously not enough; it is a book made for constant use as occasion serves—in short, to be a companion for life.¹

This is one of those times I agree with Schopenhauer. I picked up my first copy of The Art of Worldly Wisdom from a used bookstore as a teenager and still reread it regularly. To give a sense of Gracián’s style, here are two aphorisms from The Art of Worldly Wisdom which clearly echo some of the themes in the sections of El Héroe I’ve translated below:

§3 Keep matters in suspense. Successes that are novel win admiration. Being too obvious is neither useful nor tasteful. By not declaring yourself immediately you will keep people guessing, especially if your position is important enough to awaken expectations. Mystery by its very arcaneness causes veneration. Even when revealing yourself, avoid total frankness, and don't let everyone look inside you. Cautious silence is where prudence takes refuge. Once declared, resolutions are never esteemed, and they lie open to criticism. If they turn out badly, you will be twice unfortunate. If you want people to watch and wait on you, imitate the divinity.

§98 Write your intentions in cipher. The passions are the gates of the spirit. The most practical sort of knowledge lies in dissimulation. The person who shows his cards risks losing. Let caution and reserve combat the attentiveness of others. When your opponent sees into your reasoning like a lynx, conceal your thoughts like an inky cuttlefish. Let no one discover your inclinations, no one foresee them, either to contradict or to flatter them.²

After a while I started looking for translations of Gracián’s other works. Results were not encouraging. For El Héroe, I couldn’t find any that were both (a) complete and (b) written in the last 350-ish years. So, not knowing Spanish became a bit of a problem, though one that can be gradually rectified with some time and effort.

El Héroe falls into the literary genre of “mirrors for princes”, books which seek to instruct future rulers on politics, governance, and personal conduct. The style goes back to ancient times and has examples from diverse cultures, although the majority seem to be found in Europe in the medieval and renaissance periods. In El Héroe, Gracián is concerned with forming the ideal Christian monarch, as he understood it. It is composed of twenty short sections—Primores or skills/excellences/refinements—each illustrating a characteristic of his ideal hero, with various historical examples peppered throughout. For those interested, Gracián’s thought in general, and this work in particular, is at least in part a response to Machiavelli’s outlook in The Prince.

Translating Gracián has been challenging, in a good way. His aphoristic style is terse, yet grandiose. His wording is almost reliably ambiguous. He is, to use his term, oracular (For Gracián, this was a sign of sophisticated art. That one’s work appealed to the masses was often not a mark in its favor). The pace is rapid and rhythmic. He doesn’t waste time with lengthy explanations, digressions, or philosophical argumentation. Although each of the twenty Primores maintains a consistent theme, his transitions within them can be jarring. Sometimes a clear line of thought is interrupted by an obscure reference seemingly out of nowhere. His tone and focus can shift from the personal to abstract and back again. Some of the historical references will be clear to us, others less so (his praising of Spanish royalty can sound excessive to our sensibilities, and stands out even more because he was writing at the time when Spain was transitioning from being the foremost global power at the peak of her cultural and military might, into a country increasingly seen as backward and lagging behind the rest of Western Europe in nearly all domains).

L. B. Walton gives a good summary—

[Gracián’s] style is characterized by the following outstanding features: (1) careful avoidance of the simple and obvious idea or word; (2) forced antitheses of ideas and/or words; (3) comparisons and parallelisms; (4) plays on words; (5) inversion (subject placed after the verb); (6) constant use of metaphors, many of them forced and obscure; (7) use of words in a different sense from the normal one; (8) use of neologisms; (9) Latinisms (e.g. suppression of the article); (10) use of ellipsis; (11) use of odd epithets.

In spite of these mannerisms, most of his works have a superficial and deceptive appearance of simplicity, owing to the brevity of the sentences as compared with the long, meandering clauses so common in Spanish literature of the 'Golden Centuries.' Everywhere…we sense an effort towards extreme concision. A maxim of the Oráculo is rather like one of those Chinese boxes which were fashionable playthings in the Edwardian era. It appears to be a complete object in itself but on opening it another box is revealed, and on opening that, another, and so on until one reaches the core, a miniature so small that it can scarcely be handled.³

And, I was quite reassured when I read—

The task of rendering him into English is, in some respects, similar to that which confronts a would-be translator of an ancient classical author. The idiom of Gracián is so entirely remote from that of modern English that a literal rendering of the original is frequently impossible; impossible, that is, if the result is to be anything approaching tolerable English.

For this post I’ve polished up the preface of El Héroe and its first three Primores into something hopefully presentable (and not too error-ridden). I’ve tried to strike a balance between fidelity to the text while still capturing the essence of Gracián's meaning, as well as his characteristic style. Given that it isn’t possible to render his ideas in English with the same sharp punchiness of the original Spanish, I have often needed to add clarifying words or alter the structure of a sentence to make it more readable. I’ve taken some liberties when I think a particular English word or phrase conveys Gracián's meaning even if it departs from the Spanish more than I’d like. In the original, many sentences are formatted as their own little paragraphs. For ease of reading, I considered combining some of the one-line sentences that I thought could form “natural paragraphs”, but figured that was too editorially intrusive.

I also want to thank two of the wonderful Spanish interpreters I work with at the hospital for their help on some very tricky parts of the translation. I haven’t yet asked if I can name them, so for now they’ll be Ms. L and Ms. M. Thank you for accepting my unusual and impromptu consult request.⁴

El Héroe de Lorenzo Gracián

To The Reader:

How singular I want you to be! With this dwarf of a book I want to craft a giant of a man, and with brief teachings, immortal deeds. To bring forth from within a paragon of man: this is a miracle of perfection and, though not a king by nature, he will be adorned with his preeminent virtues.

Seneca made him prudent; Aesop, shrewd; Homer, warlike; Aristotle, a philosopher; Tacitus, a politician; and the Count, a courtier⁵.

By copying some gems from such great masters, I aim to sketch him as a hero and a universal prodigy. To that end, I forged this mirror, a handbook of others’ insights and my own errors. Perhaps it will flatter you and give you counsel; perhaps in it you will see either what you already are, or, what you should be.

Here you will find, not a political or even economic lesson, but a regime of self-government, a compass for navigating toward excellence, an art of being illustrious with a few rules of discretion.

I write succinctly because your understanding is great; briefly, because of my limited mind. Nor do I want to detain you, as you must progress onward.

---

Primor I

~ Be Known for Your Incomprehensible Depths⁶ ~

Let this be the first skill in the art of the wise: taking measure of the situation using his own artifice⁷. It is a great stratagem to display your knowledge, without revealing the depths of your comprehension; to bait expectations, but never fully satisfy them. Let abundance promise even more, and let the best deeds whet the appetite for even greater. 

The true gentleman cannot let everyone plumb his depths if he wants to be revered. A river was formidable until a ford was found; a man was revered until the limits of his capacity were known. For depths presumed or unfathomed, reputation is always maintained via suspicion.

It was considered a mark of refinement to call domination “discovery”, alternating victories among the subjects; if the one who comprehends commands, the one who conceals himself never yields⁸.

Let the circumspect one’s skill in tempering himself compete with the observant one’s curiosity, which often redoubles at the outset in its attempt to understand him.

One who is skilled at banishing the bar never does so on the first throw, rather he goes from one to the next, continually advancing them.⁹

The advantage belongs to an infinite being capable of making substantial bets while still retaining an infinite reserve. The first rule of greatness advises that, if not actually infinite, at least appear to be, which is no trivial subtlety.

With this understanding, we won’t hesitate to applaud the tough paradox of the sage of Mytilene: The half is more than the whole, because one half on display and another committed in reserve is more than a whole that is fully revealed.¹⁰

He was surpassed in this, as in all other skills, by that great king, the first of the New World, the last of Aragon, if not the non plus ultra of its heroic kings.¹¹

This Catholic monarch’s fellow kings, always attentive, were beguiled more with the qualities of his spirit, which shone anew each day, than with the new crowns he wore.

But the one bedazzled most by this radiant beacon of prudence¹², that great restorer of the Gothic monarchy, was, above all, his heroic consort; and after her were the gamblers¹³ of the palace, subtle in compassing the new king, sleeplessly sounding his depths, attentively measuring his worth.

But how circumspect Fernando was in allowing them in, yet also restraining them; how cautiously he would give in to them, yet deny them. And, in the end, he won them over.

Oh, naive man of fame! You, who aspire to greatness, be alert to excellence. Let everyone know you, but none fully comprehend you; and with this stratagem, the moderate will seem much, and the much infinite, and the infinite even more.¹⁴

---

Primor II

~ Encrypt the Will ~

Art would be lacking if, while counseling discretion regarding the limits of our capabilities, it didn’t also ensure the concealment of the impetus of our emotions.

This aspect of subtlety is so well-established that Tiberius and Louis built their entire political machinery upon it.¹⁵

If every surplus in secrecy equates to abundance, then sanctifying the will is akin to achieving sovereignty. Infirmities of the will are cracks in a reputation, and if they declare themselves, usually lead to its death. 

First, strive to overpower [the infirmities]; second, to disguise them. The former is more about courage; the latter, cunning.

Whoever surrenders to them descends from man to brute; whoever conceals them preserves, at least in appearance, his credibility.

It may be a sign of eminent ability to penetrate anyone else’s will, but true superiority stems from concealing one's own.

Discovering a man’s emotions is the same as opening a breach in the fortress of his depths, for through it come perceptive political plotters whose attacks often succeed. Once the passions are known, the entrances and exits of a will are known, with mastery over it at all times.

The inhuman pagans deified many who had not achieved half the exploits of Alexander, yet denied the laurelled Macedonian the rank or company of deities. To the one who occupied so much of the world, they did not assign even a little bit of heaven. But why such scarcity in granting him his due, and such prodigality in bestowing it on others?¹⁶

Alexander darkened the illustriousness of his exploits with the vulgarity of his rage, and he contradicted himself, so often triumphant, by surrendering to the baseness of passion. Conquering a world served him little if he lost the patrimony of a prince, which is reputation.

The Charybdis of excellence is excessive irascibility, and the Scylla of reputation is unchecked desire.

Therefore, let the excellent man first subdue his passions; or at the very least, conceal them with such skill that no counter-stratagem can decipher his will.

This refinement helps one appear knowledgeable even if you are not actually so, and goes even further to hide every defect, discrediting the sentinels of carelessness and dazzling the lynxes who see through other people’s opacity.

That Catholic Amazon—since whom Spain has no need to envy Zenobia, Tomyris, Semiramis, and Penthesilea—could have been the oracle of these subtleties. She would lock herself in the darkest chambers to give birth and, guarding her natural decorum, her innate majesty would seal up her sighs within her royal breast, without a single groan being heard, with a veil of darkness over her face that covered any signs of pain. But one who was so meticulous in such excusable matters of decorum, how much more would she scruple in those of her reputation!¹⁷

For Cardinal Madrucio, the fool is not one who aborts a folly, but one who, having committed it, does not then know how to drown it.¹⁸

This refinement is available to the man of silence; a qualified inclination, improved by art; a token of divinity, if not by nature, then by resemblance.

---

Primor III

~ The Greatest Quality of a Hero ~

Great parts are needed for a great whole, and great qualities for the workings of a hero.

Passionate people assign first place to the understanding as the origin of all greatness; and just as they do not acknowledge a man as great without an excess of understanding, so too they know of no man exceeding in understanding who is not also great.

Of all visible things man is best, and in him the understanding; thereby his victories are greatest.

This capital gift is adapted to two others: depth of judgment and elevated intellect, which if combined form a prodigy.

Philosophy lavishly delineated two potencies: recollection and understanding. It is left to politics which, with greater authority, introduces a division between judgment and intellect, between synderesis and acuity.¹⁹

Only this distinction of intelligences conveys the precise truth, denouncing such excessive proliferation of intellects that lead to confusing the mind for the will.

Judgment is the throne of prudence, and intellect is the sphere of acuity. Whose eminence and whose mediocrity should be preferred is a dispute before the court of taste. I adhere to she who thus prayed: “Son, may God grant you understanding of the good.”

The bravery, the quickness, the subtlety of intellect are the sun of this world in cipher; if not a ray, then a glimpse of divinity. Every hero was possessed of an abundance of ingenuity.

The sayings of Alexander [reflect] the splendors of his deeds. Caesar was as swift in thinking as in doing.

But, [while] appreciating true heroes, Augustine mistakes the august for the acute, and in the Latin that Huesca gave to crown Rome, constancy and sharp wit competed.²⁰

Quick flights of wit are as happy as those of the will are hazardous. They are wings for greatness, with which many ascended from down in the dust to the center of the sun, in brilliance.

The Grand Turk sometimes deigned [to appear] from his balcony to commoners in a garden rather than to the public square (which is the prison of majesty and the shackles of decorum). He began to read a paper which the wind, either as a joke or to disillusion him of his great sovereignty, whisked straight from in front of his eyes and into the trees. Here the page-boys, emulating the wind and each other, flew down the stairs on wings of flattery. One of them, a Ganymede of ingenuity, saw a shortcut through the air: he threw himself off the balcony. He flew, caught it, and was rising while the others were descending; and he rose in good form, and even soared, for the king, duly flattered, raised him to his favor. ²¹

That wit, if it does not reign, deserves to share the throne.

It is in every way the wild card of your talents, the great herald of reputation; the greater the luster, the more sublime the foundation.

Wit is crowned [even in] the ordinary words of a king. Great treasures of monarchs perished, but their sayings are preserved in the jewel box of fame.

A sharp saying was perhaps worth more to many champions than all the iron of their armed squadrons; the reward for wit: victory.

It was a test, it was a declaration of the great repute of that king of the wise and wisest of kings: his concision and alacrity of wit in that most extreme of disputes, where [the women] had come to litigate over a child. Justice endorses ingenuity. ²²

And even in barbarian courts, the sun’s rays of wit are in attendance. The alacrity of the Grand Turk competes with that of Solomon. A Jew once sought to cut an ounce of flesh from a Christian, a penalty concerning usury. He insisted on it, as obstinate toward his prince as he was perfidious to his God. The great judge ordered a scale and knife to be brought: threatening [the Jew] with beheading if he cut either more or less [than an ounce]. He acutely cut through the dispute, and gave the world a miracle of wit in the process.²³

I quick wit is an oracle in the greatest doubts, a sphinx in enigmas, a thread of gold in the labyrinth; it has the character of a lion, which saves its greatest show of strength for the greatest trouble.

But there are also those who dissipate their wit as badly as their wealth: like sparrowhawks they waste their sharp edge for use on sublime prey, but for base fodder they are like biting and satirical eagles. If cruel wits were kneaded with blood, these were kneaded with venom. In them is a subtlety with a strange contrariness, for a flighty and frivolous wit brings them down, burying them in the abyss of contempt, in a place of anger.

Up to this point, nature's gifts; from now on, the enhancements of art. Nature begets wit, art nourishes it, whether from the salt of another, or from prepared foresight.

In a fertile mind, the sayings and deeds of others are the seeds of wit, from which fertilized ingenuity multiplies the harvest of quickness and the abundance of wit.

I don’t need to argue in favor of good judgment, since it speaks for itself well enough.

---

1. A. Schopenhauer, Literarische Notiz vor seine Übersetzung

2. tr. Christopher Maurer, 1992. Gracián condensed material from his other works into many of the aphorisms of The Art of Worldly Wisdom.

3. Walton, 1953, pp. 21-22.

4. A cultural observation I found kind of interesting: of the two interpreters, the younger is a woman from Mexico, and the older is a woman from Columbia. The Columbian interpreter had read Gracián in school as a child, the younger Mexican interpreter hadn’t, and was familiar with him pretty much by name only. The Columbian interpreter took a little pride in this, but also lamented how “they don’t teach things in school these days with the same rigor as when I was a kid”, “school is too soft”, “they don’t teach kids to read anymore”, etc. Sounds familiar. Maybe every generation everywhere does this. Or maybe it isn’t just US schools not teaching kids how to read?

5. “The Count” must refer to Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico (1478-1529), author of The Book of the Courtier.

6. Each section (Primor), has a subheading. Some are more straightforward than others.

7. artificio, one of many important words for Gracián. Artifice, art, skill, ingenuity, cunning: often contrasted with natural ability, and something that refines and perfects it.

8. My guess is this refers to the strategy of some Spanish Conquistadors in the Americas in their dealings with the native people.

9. This looks like an expression or figure of speech. I think the most likely meaning, in keeping with the themes of this section, is that the expert doesn’t immediately satisfy expectations by showing everything he’s got right at the outset, rather he always makes sure he is progressing from one accomplishment to the next, which keeps people guessing as to just how far he can go. This might seem to contrast with the principle of acting decisively, or achieving total victory, when the opportunity presents itself (why not hit it out of the park when you have the chance?). Gracián often gives advice which seems to contradict something he said somewhere else. However, as he is talking about practical wisdom, something for which there are no algorithms, the apparent contradictions are reflective of the infinite variety of situations we find ourselves in.

10. Pittacus of Mytilene (c. 640 – 568 BC) was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. The others were Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Cleobulus of Lindos, Myson of Chenae, and Chilon of Sparta.

11. A bit of an odd comparison and transition, but I guess “he” is referring to Pittacus, whereas the great last king of Aragon was Ferdinand II, who became the first king of a unified Spain with his wife Isabella I of Castile. The Latin non plus ultra is in Gracián’s original.

12. literally “center of the rays of prudence”.

13. Presumably referring to courtiers and other palace gossips.

14. Less literally, but the same idea: let everyone see you, but none see through you.

15. Tiberius was the second Emperor of Rome. There were many Luis’ between a few different countries so I’m not sure which one this refers to, but it may be Louis XI of France, aka “Louis the Prudent” and apparently also “the universal spider”.

16. Alexander the Great, 356-323 BC

17. The “Catholic Amazon” is presumably Queen Isabella I of Castile, wife of the aforementioned Ferdinand II. The four women are all once well-known exemplars of female strength: Zenobia, a 3rd century AD self-proclaimed Queen of Palmyra who attempted to take over much of the Eastern Roman Empire; Tomyris, an Asian queen who, according to Herodotus, defeated Cyrus the Great in battle, cut the head off his corpse, and submerged it in a vessel filled with blood so he could “have his fill”; Semiramis, a queen of the neo-Assyrian Empire with all kinds of legends about her; and Penthesilea, the legendary Greek Queen of the Amazons, daughter of the war god Ares, killed by Achilles while fighting to defend the last of the Trojans.

18. There are at least three Cardinal Madrucios. Unclear which this is referring to.

19. This dense section introduces a few crucial words in Gracián’s lexicon. Juicio is pretty straightforwardly sound judgment, good sense. Ingenio and agudeza are closely related terms both having to do with “wit”. Ingenio refers to our faculty of understanding or intellect, but with an emphasis on creativity, ingenuity, perceptiveness, cleverness, and quick wit. Agudeza means acuteness or sharpness, quick-wittedness, the ability to perceive clearly. Synderesis is not a recurring theme in the same way, and refers to the Christian idea of an innate moral sense or knowledge of moral action. So, here Gracián is drawing a parallel between juicio/judgment and synderesis/moral sense on the one hand, and ingenio and agudeza on the other.

20. A good example of Gracián’s puns and wordplay. “Mas, apreciando los héroes verdaderos, equivócase en Augustino lo augusto con lo agudo, y en el latino que dio Huesca para coronar a Roma compitieron la constancia y la agudeza.” Huesca is a province in Aragon, where El Héroe was first printed.

21. Ganymede, from Greek mythology, a Trojan boy of legendary beauty, who was abducted and whisked up to Mount Olympus by Zeus to serve as his cup-bearer. Gracián is giving a backhanded compliment, as the myth of Ganymede notably relates to ancient Greek pederasty (the English word “catamite” comes from the Latin form of Ganymede).

22. King Solomon and his famous judgment, from 1 Kings 3:16-28.

23. Oy vey.