A History of Spanish Literature

by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

Is neither heaven nor blue! Sad pity then

That so much beauty is not truth as well."

Lupercio's manifold interests in politics, in history, and in the theatre left him little time for poetry, and a large proportion of his verses were destroyed after his death; still, partially represented as he is, the pretty wit, the pure idiom, and elegant form of his lyrical pieces vindicate his title to rank among Castilian poets of the second order. As for Bartolomé, he resembles his brother in natural faculty, but his fibre is stronger. A hard, dogmatic spirit, a bigot in his reverence for convention, an idolater of Terence, with a stern, patriotic hatred of novelties, he was regarded as the standard-bearer of the anti-Gongorists. Too deeply ingrained a doctrinaire to court popularity, he was content with the applause of a literary clique, and had practically no influence on his age. Yet his precept was valuable, and his practice, always sound, reaches real excellence in such devout numbers as his Sonnet to Providence.

Much meritorious academic verse is found in the works of other contemporary writers, though most rivals lapse into errors of taste and faults of expression from which the younger Argensola is honourably free. But no great leader is formed in the school of prudent correctness, and by temperament, as well as by training, the Rector of Villahermosa was unfit to cope with so virile and so combative a genius as Luis de Argote y Góngora (1561-1627), the ideal chief of an aggressive movement. Son of Francisco de Argote, Corregidor of Córdoba, and of Leonora de Góngora, he adopted his mother's name, partly because of its nobility and partly because of its euphony. In his sixteenth year Góngora left his native Córdoba to read law at Salamanca, with a view to following his father's profession; but his studies were never serious, and, though he took his bachelor's degree, he gave most of his time to fencing and to dancing. To the consternation of his family, he abandoned law and announced himself as a professional poet. So early as 1585 Cervantes names him in the Canto de Calíope as a rare and matchless genius—raro ingenio sin segundo—and, though flattery from Cervantes is too indiscriminating to mean much, the mention at least implies that Góngora's promise was already recognised. Few details of his career are with us, though rumour tells of platonic love-passages with a lady of Valencia, Luisa de Cardona, who finally entered a convent in Toledo. His repute as a poet, aided by his mother's connection with the ducal house of Almodóvar, won for him a lay canonry in 1590, and this increase of means enabled him to visit the capital, where he was instantly hailed as a wit and as a brilliant poet. His fame had hitherto been local; with the publication of his verses in Espinosa's Flores de Poetas. ilustres (1605), it passed through the whole of Spain. In the same year, or at latest in 1606, Góngora was ordained priest. His private life was always exemplary, and this, together with his natural harshness, perhaps explains his intolerance for the foibles of Cervantes and of Lope. When the favourite, the Duque de Lerma, fell from power, Góngora attached himself to Sandoval, who nominated him to a small prebend at Toledo. As chaplain to the King, the poet's circle of friends enlarged, and his literary influence grew correspondingly. In 1626 he had a cerebral attack, during which the physicians of the Queen attended him. The story that he died insane is a gross exaggeration: he lingered on a year, having lost his memory, died of apoplexy at Córdoba on May 23, 1627, and is buried in the St. Bartholomew Chapel of the cathedral.

An entremés entitled La destrucción de Troya, a play called Las Firmezas de Isabela (written in collaboration with his brother, Juan de Argote), and a fragment, the Comedia Venatoria, remain to show that Góngora wrote for the stage. Whether he was ever played is doubtful, and, in any case, his gift is not dramatic. He was so curiously careless of his writings that he never troubled to print or even to keep copies of them, and a remark which he let fall during his last illness goes to show his artistic dissatisfaction:—"Just as I was beginning to know something of the first letters in my alphabet does God call me to Himself: His will be done!" His poems circulated mostly in manuscript copies, which underwent so many changes that the author often knew not his own work when it returned to his hands; and, but for the piety of Juan López de Vicuña, Góngora might be for us the shadow of a great name. López de Vicuña spent twenty years in collecting his scattered verse, which he published in the very year of the poet's death, under the resounding title of Works in Verse of the Spanish Homer. A later and better edition was produced by Gonzalo de Hoces y Córdoba (1633).

Góngora began with the lofty ode, as a strict observer of literary tradition, a reverent imitator of Herrera's heroics. His earliest essays are not very easy to distinguish from those of his contemporaries, save that his tone is nobler and that his execution is more conscientious. He was a craftsman from the outset, and his technical equipment is singularly complete. So far was he from showing any freakish originality, that he is open to the reproach of undue devotion to his masters. His thought is theirs as much as are his method, his form, his ornament, his ingenuity. An example of his early style is his Ode to the Armada, of which we may quote a stanza from Churton's translation:—

"O Island, once so Catholic, so strong,

Fortress of Faith, now Heresy's foul shrine,

Camp of train'd war, and Wisdom's sacred school;