The intimate connection between Spain and Italy during the period when the armies of the Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain: reigned 1516-1555) were overrunning the latter country gave a new stimulus to the imitation of Italian meters and poets which we have seen existed in a premature state since the reign of John II. The man who first achieved real success in the hendecasyllable, combined in sonnets, octaves, terza rima and blank verse, was Juan BOSCÁN ALMOGAVER (1490?-1542), a Catalan of wealth and culture. Boscán was handicapped by writing in a tongue not native to him and by the constant holding of foreign models before his eyes, and he was not a man of genius; yet his verse kept to a loftier ideal than had appeared for a long time and his effort to lift Castilian poetry from the slough of convention into which it had fallen was successful. During the rest of the century the impulse given by Boscán divided Spanish lyrists into two opposing hosts, the Italianates and those who clung to the native meters (stanzas of short, chiefly octosyllabic, lines, for the arte mayor had sunk by its own weight).
The first and greatest of Boscán's disciples was his close friend GARCILASO DE LA VEGA (1503-1536) who far surpassed his master. He was a scion of a most noble family, a favorite of the emperor, and his adventurous career, passed mostly in Italy, ended in a soldier's death. His poems, however (églogas, canciones, sonnets, etc.), take us from real life into the sentimental world of the Arcadian pastoral. Shepherds discourse of their unrequited loves and mourn amid surroundings of an idealized Nature.
The pure diction, the Vergilian flavor, the classic finish of these poems made them favorites in Spain from the first, and their author has always been regarded as a master.
With Garcilaso begins the golden age of Spanish poetry and of Spanish literature in general, which may be said to close in 1681 with the death of Calderón. It was a period of external greatness, of conquest both in Europe and beyond the Atlantic, but it contained the germs of future decay. The strength of the nation was exhausted in futile warfare, and virile thought was stifled by the Inquisition, supported by the monarchs. Hence the luxuriant literature of the time runs in the channels farthest from underlying social problems; philosophy and political satire are absent, and the romantic drama, novel and lyric flourish. But in all external qualities the poetry written during this period has never been equaled in Spain. Its polish, color and choiceness of language have been the admiration and model of later Castilian poets.
The superficial nature of this literature is exhibited in the controversy excited by the efforts of Boscán and Garcilaso to substitute Italian forms for the older Spanish ones. The discussion dealt with externals; with meters, not ideas. Both schools delighted in the airy nothings of the conventional love lyric, and it matters little at this distance whether they were cast in lines of eleven or eight syllables.
The contest was warm at the time, however. Sá de Miranda (1495-1558), the chief exponent of the Italian school in Portugal, wrote effectively also in Castilian. Gutierre de Cetina (1518?-1572?) and Fernando de Acuña (1500?-1580?) are two others who supported the new measures. One whose example had more influence is Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575), a famous diplomat, humanist and historian. He entertained his idle moments with verse, writing cleverly in the old style but turning also toward the new. His sanction for the latter seems to have proved decisive.
Cristóbal de CASTILLEJO (1490-1556) was the chief defender of the native Spanish forms. He employed them himself in light verse with cleverness, clearness and finish, and also attacked the innovators with all the resources of a caustic wit. In this patriotic task he was for a time aided by an organist of the cathedral at Granada, Gregorio Silvestre (1520-1569), of Portuguese birth. Silvestre, however, who is noted for the delicacy of his poems in whatever style, was later attracted by the popularity of the Italian meters and adopted them.
This literary squabble ended in the most natural way, namely, in the co-existence of both manners in peace and harmony. Italian forms were definitively naturalized in Spain, where they have maintained their place ever since. Subsequent poets wrote in either style or both as they felt moved, and no one reproached them. Such was the habit of Lope de Vega, Góngora, Quevedo and the other great writers of the seventeenth century.
A Sevillan Italianate was Fernando de HERRERA (1534?-1597), admirer and annotator of Garcilaso. Although an ecclesiastic, his poetic genius was more virile than that of his soldier master. He wrote Petrarchian sonnets to his platonic lady; but his martial, patriotic spirit appears in his canciones, especially in those on the battle of Lepanto and on the expedition of D. Sebastian of Portugal in Africa. In these stirring odes Herrera touches a sonorous, grandiloquent chord which rouses the reader's enthusiasm and places the writer in the first rank of Spanish lyrists. He is noteworthy also in that he made an attempt to create a poetic language by the rejection of vulgar words and the coinage of new ones. Others, notably Juan de Mena, had attempted it before, and Góngora afterward carried it to much greater lengths; but the idea never succeeded in Castilian to an extent nearly so great as it did in France, for example; and to-day the best poetical diction does not differ greatly from good conversational language.
Beside Herrera stands a totally different spirit, the Salamancan monk Luis DE LEÓN (1527-1591). The deep religious feeling which is one strong trait of Spanish character has its representatives in Castilian literature from Berceo down, but León was the first to give it fine artistic expression. The mystic sensation of oneness with the divine, of aspiration to heavenly joys, breathes in all his writings. He was also a devoted student of the classics, and his poems (for which he cared nothing and which were not published till 1631) show Latin rather than Italian influence. There is nothing in literature more pure, more serene, more direct or more polished than La vida del campo, Noche serena and others of his compositions.