LUIS DE GóNGORA

'Luis de Góngora y Argote' (July 11, 1561 – May 24, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet. Góngora, and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, were the most prominent Spanish poets of their age.

Contents

Biography

Works

Poems

Soledades

Theater

Curiosities

References

Biography

Góngora was born to a noble family in Córdoba, where his father, Francisco de Argote, was ''corregidor''. In a Spain where purity of Christian lineage (limpieza de sangre) was needed to gain access to education or official appointments, he adopted the surname of his mother, Leonor de Góngora. She claimed descent from an ancient ''hidalgo'' (lesser nobility) family. At the age of 15 he entered as a student of civil law and Canon law at the University of Salamanca, but was content with an ordinary degree. He was already known as a poet in 1585 when Miguel de Cervantes praised him in ''La Galatea''; in this same year he took minor orders and shortly afterwards was nominated to a canon position at Córdoba.
As a ''canónigo'' benefitted from catedral, in whose assignment]] he traveled in diverse commissions to Navarre, Andalusia and both Castille. His travels included Madrid, Salamanca, Granada, Jaén, and Toledo. Around 1605, he was ordained priest, and afterwards lived at Valladolid and Madrid, where, as a contemporary remarks, he "noted and stabbed at everything with his satirical pen".
While his circle of admirers grew, the acknowledgment of his genius by patrons was grudging. Ultimately, in 1617 through the influence of the Duke of Lerma, he was appointed honorary chaplain to King Philip III of Spain, but did not enjoy the honor long. He sustained a long feud with Francisco de Quevedo, who matched him in talent and wit. Both poets composed lots of bitter, sometimes satirical pieces attacking each other, with Quevedo criticizing Góngora's defects such as his penchant for flattery, his large nose, passion for gambling, and even accusing him of sodomy, which was a capital crime in XVII century Spain. This angry dispute came to a nasty end for Góngora when Quevedo bought the house he lived in for the only purpose of kicking him out of it. In 1626 a severe illness, which seriously impaired the poet's memory, forced him to return to Cordoba where he died the next year. By then he was broke from trying to obtain positions and win lawsuits for all his relatives.
An edition of his poems was published almost immediately after his death by Juan López de Vicuña; the frequently reprinted edition by Hozes did not appear until 1633. The collection consists of numerous sonnets, odes, ballads, songs for guitar, and of certain larger poems, such as the Soledades and the Polifemo, the two landmarks of a highly refined style called culteranismo. Many of his poems exhibit his characteristic extravagant elaboration of style (''estilo culto'') that became known as 'Gongorism'.
Velazquez painted his portrait, and numerous documents, lawsuits and sátiras of his rival Quevedo, paint a picture of a man jovial and talkative, very sociable and loving of the luxury and the profane diversions, for example card-playing and bullfights. He was often reproached for activities undignified for an ecclesiast. At the time satire was had by teacher of, although it did not arrive at the expresionistas ends of Quevedo nor at negrísimas red of Juan de Tassis and Peralta, second Count of Villamediana, that was friend his and one of his poetic disciples.
In its poetry they were used to distinguish two periods: the traditional one, in which it makes use of the short meters and slight subjects.
For it it used songs, tercetos, décimas, romances, letrillas, etc. This period 1610 went until the year , in which it changed fully to become culterano, making use of metáforas, many hipérbaton|hipérbatos mitológicas references, cultismos, etc. difficult; but Dámaso Alonso demonstrated that these difficulties were already present in his first time and that second it is only one intensification of these resources made by reasons estéticos.Ina this looking for with breast consolation.

Works

Although Góngora did not publish his works (he failed in 1623), manuscript copies were circulated and compiled in song books, romanceros and anthologies published with or without his permission. During a time the most authorized manuscript was the call ' ' Chacón' Manuscript ' (copied by Antonio Chacón, Mr. of Polvoranca, for Conde-Duque de Olivares), since it contains explanations of the own Góngora and the chronology of each poem; but this had manuscript account of the high personage to whom it goes destined, does without satirical and vulgar works. The same year of its death, nevertheless, Juan Lopez Vicuña already published ' ' verse Works of the Homero español' ' that is also considered very trustworthy and important in the fixation of corpus gongorino; their attributions usually are accurate; even so, was gathered by [ [ Inquisición ] and later surpassed by the one of Gonzalo de Hoces in 1633 .
On the other hand, the works of Góngora, like previously those of Juan de Mena and Garcilaso de la Vega, widely enjoyed the honor being glossed and being commented by personages of the stature of Diaz de Rivas, Pellicer, Salcedo Coronel, Salazar Mardones, Pedro of Valencia and others. Although in its initial works already we found typical conceptismo of Baroque, Góngora, whose will was the one of a descontentadizo esteta ("the greater public prosecutor of my works I am", used to say), it was left inconforme and it decided to try according to his own words "to do something does not stop many" and to intensify still more rhetorical and the imitation of numerous the classic Latin poetry introducing cultismos and a syntax based on hipérbaton and on the symmetry; also he was very kind to the loudness of the verse, that took care of like an authentic musician of the word; he was a great painter of the ears and epicúreamente filled his verses of sensorial shades of color, sound and tact.
It is more, by means of which Dámaso Alonso, one of its main students, called ' ' elusiones' ' and ''allusions'', it turned each one of his smaller and greater last poems a dark exercise for wide-awake and erudite minds, like a species of riddle or intellectual emblem that it causes to please in his deciphering. He is aesthetic barroca that was called in its honor ' ' gongorismó ' or, with word that has made better fortune and than it had in his origin a contemptuous value by his analogy with the word luteranismo, Culteranismo, since their adversaries considered to authentic the culteranos poets herejes of the poetry.
Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo has distinguished traditionally two epochs in the work of Góngora: the "Prince of the Light", which first stage like poet would correspond to his, where it composes simple romances and letrillas praised unanimously until Neoclásica time, and the "Prince of the Darknesses", in which as of 1610, in which it composes oda ' ' To the taking of Laraché ' becomes author from dark and ininteligibles poems. Until romantic time this part of its work hard was criticized and even censured by same neoclassic Ignacio de Luzán. This theory was refuted by Dámaso Alonso, that demonstrated that the complication and the dark already are present in his first time and that as fruit of a natural evolution arrived at the bold ends that as much have been reproached to him. In romances as the ''Fable of Píramo and Thisbé ' and in some [ letrillas appears games of words, references, concepts and a latinizing syntax, although these difficulties appear masked by the brevity of their verses, their traditional musicality and rate and by the use of forms and subjects.

Poems

Usually one groups his poetry in two blocks, poems smaller and greater, corresponding more or less to two successive poetic stages. In its youth, Góngora composed numerous romances, of literary inspiration, like the one of ' ' Angelica and Medoró', captives, piratesco subject or more personal and lírico tone, some of them of autobiographical character in which it narrates his infantile memories, and also numerous letrillas líricas and satirical and Romance burlesque. The great majority is a constant accumulation of conceptistas, ambiguous games, paronomasias, hipérboles and typically baroque games of words.
Among them the long romance is located 'Fable of Píramo and Tisbe ' ' (1618), very complex poem that was the one that cost more work to its author and had in more esteem, and where [ is tried to elevate parody, typically baroque procedure, to as artistic category as the others. Most of letrillas is directed, like in Quevedo, to escarnecer to the ladies pedigüeñas and attacking desire of wealth. The satires against different writers also deserve their place, specially Quevedo or Lope de Vega. Next to these poems, throughout his life not left Góngora to write perfect sonetos mainly type of subjects (loving, satirical, moral, philosophical, religious, of controversial, laudatory, funeral circumstances), authentic objects verbal independent by his intrinsic quality aesthetic and where the Cordovan poet explores different expresivas possibilities from the style that is forging or gets to foretell coming works, like famous "Mistaken, ill, the travelling one...", which the Soledades'' announces ' '.
Between the usual topics (' ' carpe diem'', etc.) they emphasize, nevertheless, like more genuine the last ones, of autobiographical subject, in which the subject of the decrepitude, the oldness and the passage of time acquire a tragic greatness. The greater poems were, nevertheless, those that caused the culterana revolution and the tremendous subsequent scandal, caused by the great dark of verses of this aesthetic one. They are ' ' the Fable of Polifemo and Galateá ' (1612) and incomplete and misunderstood ' ' the Soledades' ' (first composed before May of 1613). First [narrates by means of estrofa eighth real a mitológico episode of ' ' the Metamorfosis' ' of Ovid, the one of the loves of cyclop Polifemo by the nymph Galatea, that it rejects to him.
In the end, Acis, enamored with Galatea, is turned into a river. There one tries or the complex and difficult culterano, full style of symmetries, pure transpositions, metaphors of metáforas or metaphors, hipérbaton, perífrasis, Latin turns, cultismos, references and elusiones of terms, trying to suggest more to name and expanding the form so that the meaning vanishes as it goes being deciphered.

Soledades

★ ' ' the Soledades' ' was going to be a poem in silvas, divided in four parts, corresponding each one allegorically to an age of the human life and to a station of the year, and would be called ' ' Solitude of campos'', ' ' Solitude of riberas'', ' ' Solitude of selvas' ' and ' ' Solitude of yermó'.
Góngora dedicated the first two poems to the Duke of Béjar and only left unfinished second, of as last the 43 verses were added enough time later. Estrofa was not new, but it was the first time that was applied to a so extensive poem. Its form, of aestrófico character, was the one that gave more freedom to the poet, who of that way approached the free verse more and more and made progress the poetic language until ends that the poets of [would only reach Parnasianismo and French Symbolism in century XIX.
The argument of ' ' the Solitude will primerá ' is rather little conventional, although it is inspired by an episode of ''The Odyssey'', the one of Nausicaa: a young shipwreck arrives at a coast and is gathered by goatherds. But this argument is only a pretext for an authentic descriptive frenzy: the value of the poem is lírico than more narrative, as it indicated Dámaso Alonso, although more recent studies vindicate their narrative relevance. Góngora offers a arcadian nature, where everything is wonderful and where the man can be happy, aesthetically purifying its vision, that nevertheless are rigorously materialistic and epicúrea (it tries to impress the senses of the body, not only the spirit), to make disappear all ugly and the disagreeable one.
Of that way, by means of the elusión, a perífrasis makes disappear an ugly and disagreeable word (the cured meat is transformed into "purple threads of seeds fine" and "the spun" snow table cloths, for example).
''Las Soledades'' caused to a great scandal by their aesthetic audacity and hypercultured obsurity; Francisco de Quevedo attacked , Lope de Vega, Count of Minas de Sal and Juan de Jáuregui (that composed weighed ' ' an Antidote against the Soledades' ' and ' ' Exemplary poéticó ' against them, but nevertheless ended up professing the same one or very similar doctrine), among other many talents, but also had great defenders and followers, like Francisco Fernandez of Cordova (Abbot of Rute), Count of Villamediana, Gabriel Bocángel and, beyond the Atlantic, Thorny Juan de Medrano and Juana Ines de la Cruz.
With ''Las Soledades'', the Castilian lyricism became rich with new words and new and powerful expressive instruments, leaving the syntax loosest and frees that until then. The poems of Góngora deserved the honors of being commented shortly after their death like classic contemporaries, since it those of [had been time back Juan de Mena and Garcilaso of the Fertile valley in century XVI. The most important commentators were Jose Garcia de Salcedo Coronel, author of an edition commented in three volumes (1629-1648), Jose Pellicer de Ossau, that composed ' ' solemn Lessons to works of Don Luis de Gongora and Argoté ' (1630) or Cristóbal de Salazar Mardones, author of one ' ' Illustration and defense of fabula of Piramo and Tisbé ' (Madrid, 1636).
In century XVIII and XIX, nevertheless, he reacted himself against this extreme baroque style, at a first moment using the style for low and burlesque subjects, since Agustín de Salazar did, and shortly after, in century XVIII, relegating the second greater phase of the gongorina lírica and its poems to the forgetfulness. Nevertheless, through work of Generation of the 27 and in special by its student Dámaso Alonso, the Cordovan poet happened to constitute itself in a model also admired by its complex greater poems.
At so extreme the admiration that even tried the continuation of the poem, with fortune in the case arrived from Alberti (''Solitude will tercerá ') Several modern editions of the work of Luis de Góngora exist; they emphasize in special ' ' Góngora and the Polifemó', ed. of Dámaso Alonso) (Madrid, Gredos, 1974, 3 vols.); ' ' Sonetos completos' ' ed. of Biruté Ciplijauskaité (Madrid, Castalia, 1969); ' ' Romances' ' ed. of Antonio Carreño (Madrid, Chair, 1982); ' ' Soledades' ' ed. of John R. Beverley (Madrid, Chair, 1980) and mainly ed. of Robert Jammes) (Madrid, Castalia); ' ' Fable of Polifemo and Galateá ' ed. of Alexander To Parker (Madrid, Chair, 1983); ' ' Letrillas' ' ed. of Robert Jammes (Madrid, Castalia, 1980); ' ' Songs and other poems of art mayor'', ed. of Jose M.ª Micó (Madrid, spasa Calpe, 1990) and ' ' Anthology poéticá', ed. of Antonio Carreira (Madrid, Didactic Castalia, 1986).

Theater

Luis de Góngora also composed two theater pieces, ' ' the firmnesses of Isabelá ' and ' ' doctor Carlinó', this last unfinished one.

Curiosities

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