Cav.My secrets then remain with me to write.
Poet.Your secrets? Why?
Cav.For, with refinement penned.
Their meaning sure no soul shall comprehend.[110]
In another play, a lady describing her rival, ridicules her as,
"She who writes in that high polished style,
That language so charmingly Greek,
Which never was heard in Castile,
And her mother ne'er taught her to speak."[111]
In addition to these quotations, there are many more chance arrows let fly at the absurdity, in his volume of burlesque poetry, written under the name of Tomé de Burguillos, in the shape of parodies on this style. We select one which however ridiculous it reads, is a very moderate representation of the bombast Gongora brought into fashion.
"TO A COMB, THE POET NOT KNOWING WHETHER IT
WAS OF BOX OR IVORY.
"Sail through the red waves of the sea of love,
O, bark of Barcelona, and between
The billows of those ringlets proudly move,
And now be hidden there, and now be seen!
What golden surges, Love, who lurks beneath,
Weaves with the windings of that splendid hair!
Be grateful for thy bliss, and leave him there,
In joyance unmolested by thy teeth.
O tusk of elephant, or limb of box,
Gently unravel thou her tangled locks,
Gently the windings of those curls unfold,
Like the sun's rays, in parallels arrange them,
And through the labyrinth shape thy paths of gold,
Ere yet to silver envious time shall change them."[112]
While Lope on these occasions, and on many others, takes occasion to reprehend and satirise this new system, his disciples held it up as the wonder of the world; they called it the estilo culto, or refined style, and themselves cultoristos: each phrase was to be twisted, each word to receive a new and deeper meaning, while mythology, and all sorts of phantastic imagery, gave a bombastic gilding to the whole; and when they had written verses high in sound, but obscure and simple in meaning, they fancied they had arrived at sublimity. Thus, a petty hill assumes the proportions of a mountain in the evening mist. We may look at it with wonder, we may lose our way or tumble into a ditch in endeavouring to reach it; but; once at its summit, and we find ourselves scarcely elevated above the plain.
The "Polyphemus" and the "Solitudes" of Gongora, are, as has been mentioned, the poems written in his most exaggerated style. The "Polyphemus" begins with a description of the giant, who "was a mountain of members eminent." His dark hair was a "knotty imitation of the turbid waves of Lethe; and, as the wind combs them stormily, they fly dishevelled, or hang down disordered: his beard is a torrent, the dried-up offspring of this Pyrenees! Trinacria has no wild beast in its mountains armed with such cruelty, shod with such wind, whose ferocity can defend, nor whose speed may save! Their skins, spotted with a hundred colours, are his cloak; and thus he drives in his oxen to their stall, treading the doubtful light of morn." His "Soledades" or "Solitudes," commence even more in the estilo culto, and with such very refined phrases and images that no one can make any thing of it. We give a short passage with Sismondi's translation, and the Spanish, that the reader may judge in what a jungle of interminable words, and heterogeneous ideas, this mistaken poet lost himself:—