SOURCE: Edwards, Gwynne. “On Góngora's Angelica y Medoro.” In Studies of the Spanish and Portuguese Ballad, edited by N. D. Shergold, pp. 73-94. London: Tamesis Books, 1972.

[In the following essay, Edwards traces the inspiration for “Angelica y Medoro,” a ballad that displays Góngora's poetic genius and anticipates many of the themes of his later masterpieces, Polifemo y Galatea and the Soledades.]

Góngora's Angélica y Medoro, written in 1602, is undoubtedly one of the most difficult and ambitious of his romances. It invites study, on the one hand, as an excellent example of the new treatment of the ballad form which emerged at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, and, on the other, as a poem which, stylistically and thematically, anticipated the two great poems of the years 1613-14, the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea and the Soledades. At the same time it is worth remembering that Góngora, far from being a typical Baroque poet, as traditional criticism would often have us believe, is really someone who represents a stylistic extreme in that movement, and that in studying Angélica y Medoro we are considering a ballad which, while it possesses many obvious features of the new vogue, represents the latter in its more extreme and ambitious form. This nevertheless has the advantage of illustrating just how far a ballad of this kind has moved away from the tradition of the romances viejos.

The decline of the old tradition of ballads by the beginning of the seventeenth century is proved by their exclusion from the Romancero general. As C. C. Smith observes: ‘… the collection consists entirely of romances artificiosos and the viejos are excluded’.¹ In the cancioneros de romances of the mid-sixteenth century the old ballads had, of course, achieved tremendous popularity, while the second half of the century saw them playing a new and vital role in the theatre of that time and even making a contribution slightly later to the composition of Don Quijote. Taste was, however, bound to change, and from about 1580 pastoral ballads, with a greater refinement and lyricism, and morisco ballads, depicting the defeated Moor in a much more romantic and idealized light, were making their appearance. In short, the romance viejo, with its distinctive characteristics of simple narrative, concision, dramatic atmosphere and linguistic simplicity, was giving way to the more sophisticated and complicated romance artificioso. As in painting and architecture, the age was one which had tired of the old values. Heinrich Wölfflin observes of art that ‘the too-often-seen was no longer effective and that jaded sensibilities demanded a more powerful impact’.² As far as the Spanish ballad is concerned, his words are more or less echoed by Menéndez Pidal: ‘… la causa de la vieja naturalidad romancística estaba irremisiblemente perdida por agotamiento. La reacción barroca había de triunfar, y el mismo Lope cedía ya a ella más de una vez’.³

In addition, the ballad form was undoubtedly affected by certain Baroque attitudes to poetry. If the ballad had been considered in earlier times as the most perfect example of ‘natural’ art and could be regarded for those very reasons as a superior form of poetry—in Lope's words, ‘que eran mejores las cosas que la naturaleza hacía que las que el arte perficionaba’⁴—, the early seventeenth century saw the rapid growth and consolidation of culteranismo which placed Art above Nature and made poetry, amongst other things, a vehicle whereby to emulate and even surpass the great achievements of Greece and Rome in richness of language and imagery and complication of syntax. In the hands of the culteranistas, therefore, the ballad, previously the province of the simple and direct, became a much more elevated and literary form altogether, incorporating much more sophisticated techniques. Of Góngora in particular Arthur Terry observes that by this time ‘… the presence of sophisticated metaphors … suggests the cross-fertilization of styles which leads to Góngora's more complex poems in the ballad form, Angélica y Medoro (1602) … and the semi-burlesque Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe (1618)’.⁵

It seems strange, in the light of all this, that for such a long time Angélica y Medoro should have been praised for its naturalness, simplicity and clarity. The Neo-classicist Quintana roundly condemned Góngora for abandoning in his later poetry the qualities of ‘naturalidad’, ‘pureza’ and ‘facilidad’ which he so clearly saw exemplified in a poem such as Angélica y Medoro, and his view is echoed in the nineteenth century by Menéndez Pelayo, hater of all artifice and artificiality in literature.⁶ Not until the revaluation of Góngora by the Generation of 27 and by Dámaso Alonso in particular was the traditional idea exploded that the poetry belongs to two ‘épocas’, the one embracing the simple poetry exemplified by the ballads, the other the difficult poetry of the Polifemo and the Soledades. Yet valuable as Dámaso Alonso's contribution has been in helping us to see Góngora's poetry in the right perspective, his remarks on Angélica y Medoro (pp. 21-28) are concerned more with style, imagery and syntax than with theme. The latter aspect has been dealt with to some extent by E. M. Wilson in a paper on the poem, and by R. O. Jones who sees in the so-called minor poems some of the themes of Góngora's major works.⁷ No-one, however, seems to me to have undertaken an analysis of the poem which fully explains its meaning or which suggests to what extent it anticipates in content as well as style Góngora's two great masterpieces. The following observations will, I hope, go some way to achieving that.

In order to evaluate fully the greatness and originality of Góngora's poem, it is essential to compare it first with its immediate source, stanzas 16-37 of the nineteenth Canto of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and secondly with the other Angélica-Medoro romances which appeared along with Góngora's poem in the Romancero general and which were also influenced directly by the Italian poem. The comparison reveals very clearly the extent of Góngora's debt to Ariosto, the new emphases which he chose to give to the story, particularly in terms of theme, and the manner in which, in the Romancero general, his romance towers above the others on the same subject like a great peak in an otherwise even and mildly interesting landscape.

Dámaso Alonso, in his comparison of Góngora's poem with its Italian source, seems to me to do less than justice to Ariosto. He observes that Ariosto is ‘un narrador, un novelista en verso (no un poeta épico) con, unas veces, destellos, y otras, remansos líricos. Pero es el novelista lo predominante …’(36). And he adds: ‘A Góngora, en cambio, la historia (que todo el mundo se sabía entonces) no le sirve sino de material para una nueva intensificación’ (36). The Spaniard's treatment of his source-material is a predominantly lyrical one: ‘… pone todo su empeño en darnos un cuadro de la libertad y el goce de la belleza en amor …’ (37). And the overall effect is quite different: ‘Por cualquier parte que en esta historia se quiera comparar a Góngora con Ariosto saldrá lo mismo: el intento estético de Góngora es en absoluto distinto del de su antecedente italiano’ (38).

In fact, a close comparison of the relevant section of Ariosto's poem with Angélica y Medoro reveals that the relationship between the two is much more than a superficial one, that Góngora found many of his themes and ideas in the source-poem, and that only then did he proceed to develop his material in that highly personal and original way to which Dámaso Alonso draws our attention. By concentrating too much on the characteristics of Góngora's style—parallelisms, metaphors, images, hyperboles, «cultismos», etc.,—the Spanish critic underplays the thematic relationships, as the following examples will indicate. To ignore this aspect of the poem is, I believe, to fail to appreciate much of the significance of Góngora's poem.

The beginning of Góngora's ballad, depicting Medoro bleeding to death on the battlefield, is a clear echo of Ariosto's sixteenth stanza:

Giacque gran pezzo il giovine Medoro,
spicciando il sangue da sí larga vena,
che di sua vita al fin saria venuto,
se non sopravenia chi gli diè aiuto.(8)

Angelica's pride and disdain, another of Góngora's principal themes, is alluded to in Ariosto's eighteenth stanza:

          Poi che'l suo annello Angelica rïebbe,
di che Brunel l'avea tenuta priva,
in tanto fasto, in tanto orgoglio crebbe,
ch'esser parea di tutto'l mondo schiva.

Stanza 19, describing Cupid awaiting an opportunity to avenge himself upon her, is a clear anticipation of the incident in Góngora's poem:

Tant'arroganzia avendo Amor sentita,
piú lungamente comportar non vòlse:
dove giacea Medor, si pose al varco,
e l'aspettò, posto lo strale all'arco.

And stanza 20, in which Angelica is moved to pity by Medoro's plight, is another forerunner of an episode in the Spanish poem:

          Quando Angelica vide il giovinetto
languir ferito, assai vicino a morte,
che del suo re che giacea senza tetto,
piú che del proprio mal si dolea forte;
insolita pietade in mezzo al petto
si sentí entrar per disusate porte,
che le fe' il duro cor tenero e molle,
e piú, quando il suo caso egli narrolle.

The next two stanzas allude to Angelica's knowledge of medicinal herbs and to the particular one which will stop Medoro's bleeding, while stanzas 23 and 24 describe her meeting with the shepherd—another anticipation of Góngora's poem—and the application of the precious herb. The next two stanzas then contain numerous incidents which look forward to the Spanish poem—Medoro's recovery, his being placed on the shepherd's horse, and their arrival at the shepherd's humble cottage—, while stanza 27 alludes to an idea which is certainly one of the most important in Góngora's ballad: as Medoro has been wounded in war, so Angelica, tending him, becomes a victim of the war of love:

Quivi a Medoro fu per la donzella
la piaga in breve a sanità ritratta:
ma in minor tempo si sentí maggiore
piaga di questa avere ella nel core.

The next two stanzas very clearly underline the contrast between his physical recovery and her surrender to the assault of love which Góngora was to develop so fully:

Il giovine si sana: ella languisce
di nuova febbre, or agghiacciata, or calda.

In stanza 30, as in Góngora's romance, Angelica reveals her feelings to Medoro before, in stanza 33, yielding to him completely:

          Angelica a Medor la prima rosa
coglier lasciò, non ancor tocca inante …

The wedding ceremony which follows significantly forms no part of Góngora's poem, but the lovers' pleasure in the world of Nature and in the shady cave, described by Ariosto in stanza 35, certainly does:

          Se stava all'ombra o se del tetto usciva,
avea dí e notte il bel giovine a lato:
matino e sera or questa or quella riva
cercando andava, o qualche verde prato:
nel mezzo giorno un antro li copriva,
forse non men di quel commodo e grato,
ch'ebber, fuggendo l'acque, Enea e Dido,
de' lor secreti testimonio fido.

And finally, Ariosto's portrayal, in stanza 36, of the lovers' joy and pleasure in carving their names on tree-trunks is yet another anticipation of Góngora's ballad:

          Fra piacer tanti, ovunque un arbor dritto
vedesse ombrare o fonte o rivo puro,
v'avea spillo o coltel subito fitto;
cosí, se v'era alcun sasso men duro:
et era fuori in mille luoghi scritto,
e cosí in casa in altritanti il muro,
Angelica e Medoro, in varii modi
legati insieme di diversi nodi.

In short, the whole framework of Góngora's poem can be found in Ariosto and many of the Spaniard's themes clearly have their origin there—the transformation of Angelica through love, the way in which the wars of men become the war of love, Angelica its victim, and the lovers' undeniable pleasure in their love and in the world of Nature. These are, as we shall see, the predominant themes of Angélica y Medoro. Góngora, as Dámaso Alonso suggests, handled his material in a very personal and characteristic way, but we can fully appreciate that originality, I believe, only by recognising his debt to Ariosto.

In the Romancero general there are five ballads, excepting Góngora's, entitled Angélica y Medoro and several others which deal with one of the two characters, some of them anonymous, some the work of known poets.⁹ Those ballads which deal with Angélica and Medoro are, like Góngora's poem, derived from Ariosto, but the following examples will show quite clearly how straightforward and direct their treatment of the subject matter is. Nos. 408 and 409, for example, begin with a simple description of Medoro bleeding to death from his battle wounds:

408

Envuelto en su roja sangre
Medoro está desmayado;
que el enemigo furioso
por muerto le había dejado …

409

Sobre la desierta arena
Medoro triste yacía,
su cuerpo en sangre bañado,
la cara toda teñida …

Both then continue with a monologue by Medoro which is equally straightforward:

408

… Rey y señor mío,
perdona que no te he dado
la sepultura debida
a cuerpo tan esforzado;
mas yo muero por cumplir
con lo que estaba obligado.

409

¡Grande ha sido mi desdicha!
¡Por ser leal a mi Rey
pierdo cuitado la vida!
No me pesa tanto d'esto,
que muy bien está perdida,
como de ver que he quedado
muerto en esta arena fría.

And they end by depicting Angélica's arrival on the scene and her compassion and love for Medoro:

408

Y estando en esta congoja,
Angélica que ha llegado,
que por caminos y sendas
huyendo andaba de Orlando,
reparó viendo á Medoro,
y el cuello y rostro mirando,
sintió un no sé qué en el pecho,
que el corazón le ha robado …

409

Y hablando tristemente
con las ansias que sentía,
vido a Angélica la bella
que de su amor se rendía;
y como vio a su Medoro
tendido en la verde orilla,
movida de compasión
para él derecha se iba …

In both romances narrative and speech combine to produce a directness and simplicity which are, indeed, very much in the tradition of the romances viejos.

Some of the other romances—for example, Nos. 410 and 413—begin at a different point, with Angélica tending Medoro, and go on, in lyrical fashion, to express the envy with which the world regards him:

410

Regalando el tierno vello,
de la boca de Medoro,
la bella Angélica estaba
sentada al tronco de un olmo …
‘¡Ay moro venturoso,
que a todo el mundo tienes envidioso!’

413

Con aquellas blancas manos
que quitaron tantas vidas,
curando Angélica estaba
de Medoro las heridas …
‘¡Ay, dulce vida mía,
detén el alma que a salir porfía!’

While all these romances have their own individual charm, the inclusion of Góngora's poem amongst them—“No. 411”—effectively reveals the true scope and stature of his version.

E. M. Wilson, unlike Dámaso Alonso, has attempted to approach the poem from a more thematic viewpoint, ‘to see what it is in itself and to attempt an appreciation’.¹⁰ He draws attention, for example, to the contrast between war and peace, court and country, and to Góngora's insistence on the basic virtues of country life which give it its own code of courtesy and refinement, unsullied by the vices of palaces. Wilson observes that ‘… the implicit idea seems to be: lovers who love in conformity with nature display the advantages but not the defects of more artificial ways of living’ (90). He adds: ‘Carpets, pavilions and music, artificially produced in courts, are here provided by fields, trees, nightingales. … So, Góngora implies, the splendours of court life can also be found in the life of nature, but the defects—vanity, ambition, envy, slander—have no place’ (91). For Wilson this is the principal theme of the poem inasmuch as a theme is its predominant feature. He concludes: ‘Angélica y Medoro expresses the intensity and precariousness of human happiness. The finest experience of all, it implies, is that of lovers who live at one with Nature. That life is compared and contrasted with the courts in which Angelica had been brought up and the battles in which Medoro had fought. The contrasts are directly stated, the comparisons metaphorically implied. … And though the pleasures it portrays are more intense than any we can hope to enjoy, even these too come to an end when the mad Count starts to hack down the trees’ (93-94). At the same time Wilson does not neglect to consider the conceptual subtlety of the poem and what seems to him to be Góngora's deliberate ambiguity: ‘I feel as I read this poem that Góngora deliberately chose to mystify the reader who looks at it only once. There seems to be a calculated ambiguity or confusion with which we have to grapple; it is not a defect in the poetry, for, once the true meaning is grasped, the confusion lends a kind of descant to the real meaning’ (92).

R. O. Jones similarly draws our attention to theme. In the introduction to Poems of Góngora he concludes that in his poetry as a whole ‘… two themes stand out: transience and mutability in human affairs; and the permanence and beauty of Nature. The two themes are intimately related’ (16). Of Angélica y Medoro Jones observes that Góngora ‘… presents Nature as a refuge from the two evils of courtly life and war. … Nature offers the lovers its bounty, more beautiful than the luxuries of the Court. … But danger threatens. … Orlando will lay all waste. Góngora introduces thus, with the skill of genius, a quiet comment on the precariousness of human happiness’ (19-20).

We have considered both the various treatments of the Angelica-Medoro theme and some critical appraisals of Góngora's romance. We are now in a position to examine the latter in greater detail than has hitherto been the case and subsequently to estimate Góngora's achievement.

The first twelve lines of Góngora's ballad present in embryonic form all the themes and ideas which will constitute the often complex and intricate development of the whole. The ‘pastoral albergue’ which war has by-passed on account of its remoteness or humble character, where the simple and peaceful life is the very essence of things, is the abode of a happy youth who has been badly wounded in war but restored to health by love, which has crowned him with favours rather than made him suffer. As E. M. Wilson has indicated, the ‘contrast of war and peace is brought before us at the start, and peace is identified with the shepherd, typifying those who pursue ordinary occupations while his betters hack one another to pieces in war’ (85). The contrasts between ‘paz-guerra’ and ‘country- (and by implication) Court’ are certainly key motifs here in a way that they were not in Ariosto's treatment of the incident, but towards the end of the section Góngora is already beginning to develop a theme which had its origin in the Italian poem and which becomes central to Angélica y Medoro—the theme of love which restores as opposed to war which destroys. A contrast is drawn between the wars of men in which Medoro has been ‘mal herido’ and the experience of love which has not made him suffer, which has not destroyed him with its arrows, but which has, in fact, restored and cured him. In the tradition of love-literature, love is, of course, just as much a war as the wars of men. We think at once of the courtly-love tradition, for example of Jorge Manrique's Castillo de amor or his Escala de amor with their moats, battlements, towers and assaults. For the courtly lover the war of love indeed contained much suffering. Góngora, on the other hand, while skilfully retaining in our minds the image of man-made war which destroys, begins to turn our attention to the war of love from which the ‘dichoso joven’ has emerged not ‘mal herido’ but ‘bien curado’. The stylistic antitheses and cross-references of this first section underline the themes and point to the direction in which they are going to be developed. Already there is a much greater subtlety—of content as well as language—than is evident in Ariosto's poem.

Another interesting feature of Góngora's opening section is the rather symbolic significance given to Medoro who is not mentioned by name until line seventy-five. It is, of course, perfectly clear that many of Góngora's readers would be familiar with their Ariosto and with other romances on the same subject so that from this point of view the identity of the ‘dichoso joven’ would be obvious—quite apart from the indication given in the title of the poem itself. But I do not feel that the poet's procedure is entirely due to the familiarity of the subject-matter. By first contrasting the ‘pastoral albergue’ with the clamour, the strife and the wars of the world beyond, and secondly by denoting the male protagonist of the poem simply as a ‘joven’, a ‘mal herido’, Góngora makes him a representative of that world who has found his way to the pastoral refuge. In this sense he clearly anticipates the wanderer of Góngora's Soledad primera, the ‘peregrino’ who, ‘náufrago y desdeñado’, reaches the solitary island where, far from the world of the Court, of which he too is a representative, the simple life goes on as it has done from the beginning of time. The ‘pastoral albergue’ of the ballad looks forward to the island paradise of the later poem:¹¹

¡Oh bienaventurado
albergue a cualquier hora,
templo de Pales, alquería de Flora!

(94-6)

And the young man of the romance, like the protagonist of the Soledad primera, becomes, in short, each one of us, taken out of our complex and often destructive society and set down in a world of natural innocence. We will see shortly how Angélica is presented in the same symbolic manner.

The first twelve lines are thus the exposition from which the remainder of the poem develops. The next eight, based on Ariosto, describe Medoro's discovery by Angélica, and in them Góngora sustains the double-meaning of the war idea to which I have alluded above. Medoro, bleeding to death, is discovered in ‘el campo’ by a woman here referred to as ‘vida y muerte de los hombres’, the traditional image used of woman whose beauty may inspire men with hope, give them new life, but whose coldness or disdain may equally destroy them through despair. On the one hand the allusions to ‘campo’, ‘vida’, ‘muerte’, as well as the picture of Medoro half-dead, keep vividly in our minds the idea of man-made war, but on the other Góngora is subtly shifting our thoughts to the new war of love in which Medoro and Angélica will soon participate, the new ‘campo’ from which he will emerge restored, not destroyed. The theme of destruction is thus giving way to the theme of rebirth and regeneration through a very clever interplay of images and ideas which, while evoking one set of associations, also suggest another. The reader's imagination is called upon to retain at one and the same time two contrasting situations which in turn give off distinctive echoes and reverberations, opening up new vistas while not obscuring the old. Such is the effect of Góngora's concise and subtle art, so apparently simple on the surface yet so dense and full of meaning.

In association with the introduction of the new theme of creativity, I should like to consider the possible meaning of lines nineteen and twenty which may well look forward to an important idea in Góngora's major poems:

                                                  … la hierba
tanta sangre paga en flores.

Góngora makes a very daring conceit out of the simple fact that Medoro's blood seeps into the ground which is covered with flowers. Dámaso Alonso, in his versión explicitiva of the poem, takes this to mean that the soil, moved by the beauty of Medoro, offers flowers as a compensation for his wounds (58). I would go further than this and suggest an even more daring explanation that is certainly in accordance with Góngora's major poems. The contrast between the dying of Medoro and the abundance of Nature, symbolized here in the flowers, is clear enough, but the fact that Medoro's blood is actually being absorbed by the soil which, in turn, is rich in flowers also suggests, not too fancifully I think, the idea of continuity in the world of Nature whereby death is not only accompanied by life but life actually emerges out of death in an ever-continuing cycle. There seems to me to be a similarity here with that passage in the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea where Acis, crushed by the giant Polyphemus, is changed into a river which, in turn, is absorbed into the sea. If the precise situation is somewhat different, the fundamental idea seems the same. As R. O. Jones has pointed out, the death of Acis is not an extinction but a transmutation. The whole is a process of continuity, and ‘Compassionate Nature receives all things back into herself, and every death is compensated by a new birth’.¹² C. C. Smith has observed that in the Polifemo, both Acis and the other figures who inhabit the island have a special relationship with the world of Nature, and that by means of a series of water-images in particular Góngora suggests that ‘the human figures merge into the natural scene’.¹³ The conceit in Angélica y Medoro, when taken in conjunction with the theme of the close proximity between Man and Nature which dominates the later stages of the poem, may indeed anticipate the major poems. It suggests that there is very little in Góngora's poetry which should be taken at face value and that by scrutinizing his lines with care and attention, we are at least granting to his poems that seriousness which he felt should be its objective.

The emphasis of the ballad is placed for the next twenty-eight lines—21 to 48—on Angélica, firstly on her compassion for Medoro, secondly on her binding of his wounds, both incidents based on Ariosto. But again it is a section which develops, in terms of theme and imagery, and in a quite subtle and complex way, all the ideas mentioned so far. Góngora's poem has a superb structure and logic which are nowhere apparent in the Italian poem.

Angélica, as we have seen, has been introduced with the same kind of symbolic anonymity as that granted to Medoro. If he is simply the ‘joven’, she is ‘aquella / vida y muerte de los hombres’, woman in general rather than a particularized individual. In addition we are given clear insight into her character prior to her arrival in the ‘pastoral albergue’. The key image here is undoubtedly that of the ‘diamante’ in line twenty-seven: ‘el diamante del Catay’. Angélica, like so many literary heroines, has hitherto been the unfeeling, hard-hearted beauty, joyfully rejecting the advances of her many suitors. The image of the diamond, supremely beautiful but extremely hard, is then echoed in line 33 by that of the ‘pedernal’, ‘flint’, and the two combine effectively to portray Angélica as someone who is either incapable of feeling sympathy for others or who chooses not to do so. That the latter is the truth of the matter is, of course, proved by the pity which Medoro now inspires in her. Her hardness of heart, her cold and stony nature, are, Góngora suggests, associated with her former life at Court. In the game of love in court or palace circles, such are the weapons with which woman defends herself from the manoeuvering, the sieges and assaults of men. Angélica is, indeed, exactly like that lady of the Soledad segunda to whom the ‘peregrino’, ‘desdeñado’, directs his lament, and the ballad is again seen to look forward to the later poem.¹⁴

The initial portraits of Medoro and Angélica can now be seen to have distinct similarities. He, the warrior, symbolic of man-made war and civilized society, is struck down, his armour pierced, and left for dead on the field of battle. Angélica, participating in the equally deadly game of courtly love, has built around herself a protective armour of coldness and disdain which has left her unfeeling, spiritually if not physically dead. Brought together now by chance, not in a courtly but in a country setting, a new war of love will begin which will bring about not their destruction but their salvation.

The first blow in this new war is struck by Cupid who wounds Angélica with his dart. She wipes the blood from Medoro's face and, says Góngora, feels love concealed behind his cheeks:

siente al Amor que se esconde
tras las rosas …

(21-2)

E. M. Wilson observes that here ‘rosas’, in addition to its conventional Golden-Age meaning, could also be taken to mean real roses ‘flowering nearby, and that Love is in ambush behind them’ (92). To this I would add that the suggestion of Cupid lying in ambush, his arrows at the ready, again evokes in our mind the image of a warrior and sustains the idea of the kind of war of which Medoro is already a victim, but that it also clearly marks the beginning of the new and creative war of love. Unlike Medoro, who is dying from the arrows of man-made war, who has literally been violated by them—note the double meaning of ‘violando’ in line twenty-four—, Angélica will be made alive. Here, indeed, we have a perfect example of an incident which Góngora borrowed from Ariosto—the vengeance of Cupid—but to which he brought a striking originality of mind.

The creative power of love is heralded by the awakening of pity in the breast of someone formerly so cold and unyielding, yet compassion penetrates that tough, protective armour only with great difficulty:

ya le entra, sin ver por dónde,
una piedad mal nacida …

(30-1)

The awakening of true feeling and new life is suggested by the image of the spark struck from the flint that was Angélica:

          Ya es herido el pedernal,
ya despide el primer golpe
centellas de agua.

(33-5)

The flint struck emits sparks; Angélica, smitten by compassion, weeps. The boldness of Góngora's image co-ordinates the creative spark of love with the humanizing power of pity. Angélica is now in the process of being reborn spiritually and she, in turn, will bring about both the physical and the spiritual recovery of Medoro.

At this point—‘Hierbas aplica a sus llagas’—, the poem moves more fully into its country setting and palace associations are rejected more and more. Herbs, not artificial concoctions, are applied to Medoro's wounds. But the physical cure is merely an anticipation of his spiritual reawakening through love of Angélica. She has the power to heal him on both counts, and we should observe the extremely clever and subtle way in which Góngora denotes her new curative role by boldly employing a verb which is normally associated with courts and palaces:

en virtud de tales manos
lisonjean los dolores.

(39-40)

The old associations, while they keep in our mind impressions of fawning and flattery, are given new meaning. They underline the new role and the new power of Angélica.

To bind Medoro's wounds she tears her veil. Compassion takes the form of more deliberate action, but the removal of the garment is also the first sign of the discarding of civilized dress which is associated with the ‘pastoral albergue’ and which becomes more and more important as the theme of love is taken to its triumphant conclusion. In passing, we might also note the reference to the ‘nudos’ of the bandage with which Angélica binds Medoro's wounds—‘Los últimos nudos daba’ (45)—since Góngora later uses the word in a different context and may well intend a deliberate contrast.

The complete transformation of Angélica from a ‘diamante’ and a ‘pedernal’ to a woman of feeling and humanity is suggested by lines 49 to 52:

          Enfrénanle de la bella
las tristes piadosas voces,
que los firmes troncos mueven
y las sordas piedras oyen …

Like Orpheus she is able, with her pleas, to move to pity the trees and stones. However conventional the image, it suggests that she, who was once stone-like herself, unmoved by the plight of others, now has sufficient compassion to move those very objects with which she had a similarity.

The regeneration of Angélica is now complete, and Góngora returns to Medoro. Line 59—‘un cuerpo con poca sangre’—evokes memories of line thirteen—‘Las venas con poca sangre’—, but line 60—‘pero con dos corazones’—is already an anticipation of Medoro's transformation from his earlier death-like state. And the setting in which this takes place is, significantly, the peasant's cabin which again looks forward to the Soledad primera. The associations between the two poems are very clear here. In the ballad ‘… el sol deja su horizonte’ (62). In the later poem:

No bien pues de su luz los horizontes. …

(42)

… desdorados los siente (el peregrino) …

(45)

In the ballad it is the cabin's smoking chimney which, like the north star, guides the travellers to their destination:

y el humo de su cabaña
les va sirviendo de norte.

(63-4)

In the Soledad primera the light in the window of the cottage is the traveller's guide:

                    tal, diligente, el paso
                    el joven apresura,
                    midiendo la espesura
                    con igual pie que el raso,
fijo—a despecho de la niebla fría—
en el carbunclo, norte de su aguja,
o el Austro brame o la arboleda cruja.

(77-83)

If Góngora's major poem elaborates in much greater detail, the links with the ballad are clear enough, and the symbolic significance of Angélica and Medoro as the world-weary travellers who, like the ‘peregrino’, find refuge and spiritual solace in the world of Nature cannot be doubted.

Medoro's restoration is achieved in two stages which are nevertheless inextricably linked. The bed is firstly the scene of his physical recovery, but secondly a ‘tálamo’, the setting for his physical pleasure with Angélica. But both are, of course, really inseparable because healing is largely achieved through her compassion and love. Furthermore, the scene again calls attention to the complete transformation of Angélica who, far from being the scourge, the ‘muerte’ of men, has now become the healer.

Lines 81 to 136 represent in no uncertain terms the triumph of love which is derived yet again from Ariosto but which Góngora transforms completely, as we shall now see. He first depicts a swarm of little cupids surrounding the cottage in what might initially appear to be a rather sugary and sentimental style:

Corona un lascivo enjambre
de Cupidillos menores
la choza, bien como abejas
hueco tronco de alcornoque.

(81-4)

It seems to me, however, that the key word here is ‘lascivo’ in its sense of ‘lasciviousness’, and that it is the lasciviousness and sensuality of love which Góngora wishes to emphasise and with which the rest of the poem deals. E. M. Wilson sees in Góngora's depiction of the triumph of love in the world of Nature a refinement and idealization which stresses the ‘courtly splendour’ of the lovers while removing all courtly defects (91). To me the cupids are those which we see in Rubens' The Triumph of Silenus, the great fat sensual presider over the Bacchanal, epitome of merriment and sensuality. And this interpretation of the lines is, I believe, backed up by the allusion to the bees producing honey in the hollow tree-trunk and therefore symbolizing the creative processes of Nature, one of Góngora's favourite symbols, in fact, for suggesting the fertility and creativity of Nature, as the more extended passage in the Soledad segunda indicates:

Cóncavo fresno—a quien gracioso indulto
de su caduco natural permite
que a la encina vivaz robusto imite,
y hueco exceda al alcornoque inculto—
verde era pompa de un vallete oculto,
cuando frondoso alcázar no, de aquella,
que sin corona vuela y sin espada,
susurrante amazona, Dido alada,
de ejército más casto, de más bella
república, ceñida, en vez de muros,
de cortezas; en esta, pues, Cartago
reina la abeja, oro brillando vago,
o el jugo beba de los aires puros,
o el sudor de los cielos, cuando liba
de las mudas estrellas la saliva;
burgo eran suyo el tronco informe, el breve
corcho, y moradas pobres sus vacíos,
del que más solicita los desvíos
de la isla, plebeyo enjambre leve.

(283-301)

The cupids, crowning the cottage of Angélica and Medoro, symbolise a love-force which will be uninhibited in an unrestricted natural setting. And in this sense we are able to look forward yet again to one of Góngora's major poems, the Polifemo, where the love-making of Acis and Galatea forms the climax of their meeting and mutual attraction. Lorca observed that ‘La fábula del Polifemo y Galatea es un poema de erotismo puesto en sus últimos términos’.¹⁵ Dámaso Alonso's view is that ‘Las estrofas 40, 41 y 42 constituyen, sin duda, el pasaje más sensual de toda la poesía española clásica’.¹⁶ And C. C. Smith, in a long article containing further points to which we will return, observes that ‘The love-making of Acis and Galathea (stanzas 41, 42) has no emotional content, and it is even performed without a word being spoken. There is a fine biological beauty about it, a sort of animal simplicity and a Lawrentian purity’.¹⁷ The note of refinement and idealization should not, I feel, delude us with regard to the eroticism of Angélica y Medoro either, just as the apparent refinement of courtly love poetry should not delude us with regard to its sexual undertones.

Before love in its most unsullied and uninhibited form can be celebrated, the setting must be pure, untouched by any court or palace associations. But the idyllic love of Angélica and Medoro awakens envy, that symbol of Court life, which ties knots in the asp, one of its attributes, as it contemplates the cooing and billing of the two doves:

          ¡Qué de nudos le está dando
a un áspid la invidia torpe,
contando de las palomas
los arrullos gemidores!

(85-8)

The juxtaposition of envy, symbolic of a life with which Angélica and Medoro were once associated, and pure love, symbolic of their new life, is an effective pointer to the transposition of roles. It may not be accidental, either, that the ‘nudos’ which envy ties in the asp recall to mind the ‘nudos’ of the bandage (45) with which a compassionate and pitying Angélica bound Medoro's wounds. Yet again one image, used in a particular context, carries an echo of the same image used in a different one, and makes us draw a comparison between the two. At all events Envy is unceremoniously banished from the scene by Love which seizes Envy's symbol, the asp, and uses it as a whip with which to drive Envy out. This is certainly one of Góngora's most bold and graphic images, and it reminds one a great deal, I think, of El Greco's picture of Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple. The whip is, of course, common to both poem and picture, while traders or moneylenders are, like avarice, ambition and envy, synonymous with civilized society. Christ is, in a sense, purifying the temple of a corrupting influence just as love purifies the ‘pastoral albergue’ which is now to be a temple of love for Angélica and Medoro:

¡Qué bien la destierra Amor,
haciendo la cuerda azote,
porque el caso no se infame
y el lugar no se inficione!

(89-92)

The celebration of love in its most natural and uninhibited form is now the poem's dominant theme and is associated with a casting-off of all the remaining trappings of civilized society. If Medoro is to be a participant in the combat of love which heals and restores, not destroys, he can now lay aside the destructive weapons of man-made wars:

el lunado arco suspende,
y el corvo alfanje depone.

(95-6)

Similarly, the once disdainful Angélica, the impeccable and well-dressed jewel of Cathay, casts aside her clothes and lets her hair down, literally, with complete abandon:

Desnuda el pecho anda ella,
vuela el cabello sin orden;
si le abrocha, es con claveles,
con jazmines si le coge.

(101-4)

The figures do not appear to be completely nude here as they are in the Polifemo, but they clearly look forward to that poem:

          El ronco arrullo al joven solicita;
mas, con desvíos Galatea suaves,
a su audacia los términos limita,
y el aplauso al concento de las aves.
Entre las ondas y la fruta, imita
Acis al siempre ayuno en penas graves:
que, en tanta gloria, infierno son no breve,
fugitivo cristal, pomos de nieve.(18)

(321-8)

C. C. Smith has observed of the latter: ‘This nudity instantly serves to mark the Polifemo off from sixteenth-century pastoral, in which a few nymphs may incidentally display hair, shoulders or limbs, but in which the principals are clothed. Although nudity is not unknown in other Spanish poems of the Golden Age, most of them mythological fables like this one, it is nowhere insisted upon as here. The nudes startle as much as Velázquez's solitary nude, Venus and the mirror, startles in the rather puritanical history of Spanish Renaissance painting. Moreover, the nudes are, at one point in the Polifemo, not merely decorative and static (as is Velázquez's), but active’ (222). The nudity and the movement of the later poem are both, therefore, already anticipated in Angélica y Medoro. And there can be no denying the sensuality of the ballad as it draws to its conclusion. There may be a great delicacy and refinement in the presentation of Nature in terms of the elegance of Court life:

          Los campos les dan alfombras,
los árboles pabellones,
la apacible fuente sueño,
música los ruiseñores.

(113-6)

The lovers may rather romantically inscribe their names on the trunks of trees, as they do in Ariosto:

          Los troncos les dan cortezas
en que se guarden sus nombres,
mejor que en tablas de mármol
o que en láminas de bronce.

(117-20)

But the true eroticism and sexuality of the finale surely lie in the stanza:

          Cuevas do el silencio apenas
deja que sombras las moren
profanan con sus abrazos
a pesar de sus horrores.

(125-8)

And here again is a clear anticipation of both the setting and the sensuality of the Polifemo:

          Más agradable y menos zahareña,
al mancebo levanta venturoso,
dulce ya concediéndole y risueña,
paces no al sueño, treguas sí al reposo.
Lo cóncavo hacía de una peña
a un fresco sitial dosel umbroso,
y verdes celosías unas hiedras,
trepando troncos y abrazando piedras.

(305-12)

None of the elegance of either poem can disguise the uninhibited passion or the primitive and animal nature of physical love. Moreover, this is the triumphant conclusion of the ballad. Góngora leaves us with a vivid impression of the physical pleasure of Angélica and Medoro in a world where only the physical processes of Nature are at work. The world of the Court, its ambition, its envy, its sophisticated code of love, together with the wars and conflicts of men, have been left far behind as the lovers achieve their victory in the war of love, waged in a setting where only the sounds of Nature accompany their caresses. And yet again Góngora, in both the ballad and the Polifemo, uses an image which, while looking backwards to the destructive wars of men, now underlines the triumph of love in all its uninhibited majesty. In Angélica y Medoro:

          Tórtolas enamoradas
son sus roncos atambores …

(97-8)

In the Polifemo:

          Sobre una alfombra, que imitara en vano
el tirio sus matices (si bien era
de cuantas sedas ya hiló, gusano,
y, artífice, tejió la Primavera)
reclinados, al mirto más lozano,
una y otra lasciva, si ligera,
paloma se caló, cuyos gemidos
—trompas de amor—alteran sus oídos.

(313-20)

The war of love thus has a triumphant conclusion, and if, in the ballad, the final allusion to the fury of Orlando, which will lay waste the idyllic setting, is a reminder of the precariousness of human pleasure, it is the intensity of that pleasure which gives the finale of the poem its note of intense rapture.

This analysis of Angélica y Medoro will, I hope, have suggested the way in which Góngora transformed the material which he borrowed from Ariosto and the highly personal interpretation which he brought to it, as well as its immense superiority over contemporary ballads on the same subject. I hope to have made clearer too the relationship between the ballad and the Polifemo and the Soledades, and it is with these two poems in mind that I should now like to reach the conclusion of this paper. In attempting this, some preliminary remarks are, however, necessary concerning three papers which appeared in recent years in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies: ‘Neoplatonism and the Soledades’ by R. O. Jones; ‘An Approach to Góngora's Polifemo’ by C. C. Smith; and ‘Góngora and Neoplatonism Again’, a rejoinder by Jones to Smith's paper.

Jones' view of the Soledades, quite simply, is that it is a poem in which Góngora depicts the immense variety of life, ‘the continuity of Nature, Nature's harmony and Nature's plenty’.¹⁹ And he concludes that the themes of the poem, ‘taken as a whole … point ineluctably to Neoplatonic philosophy’, (12) particularly as expounded by Plotinus. In short, the enormous vitality and variety of the universe, including evil as well as good, is a reflection of the hand that shaped it. Smith's objections to this view are inspired by some allusions in Jones' paper (14-15) which bring the Polifemo into the same category as the Soledades. He argues that neither poem contains any intellectual persuasion. In the Polifemo ‘Góngora shows us man living in the closest possible contact with Nature …’ (221). Rather than speculate about the mysteries of the universe, ‘Góngora preferred to make poetry out of the tangible beauties of the natural world …’ (233). Smith refuses to acknowledge that Góngora relates ‘harmony and beauty to the Idea’ (235), and concludes that to the poet ‘Nature is difficult, multifarious and anarchical, full of warring elements (among them the humans), possibly created and certainly still evolving, lacking a grand design, although possessing a sort of Darwinian completeness; always fascinating and always beautiful’ (238). In his reply to Smith's view of the ‘animism’ and the primitiveness of the world which Góngora depicts, Jones argues that these characteristics are perfectly compatible with Neoplatonism which may at first sight appear to be a rather refined and high-flown concept. And to illustrate this point he quotes what seems to me a very convincing passage from Plotinus which is also relevant to my conclusions about Angélica y Medoro: ‘Those that desire earthly procreation are satisfied with the beauty found on earth, the beauty of image and body; it is because they are strangers to the Archetype … Those that love beauty of person without carnal desire love for beauty's sake; those that have—for women of course—the copulative love, have the further purpose of self-perpetuation: as long as they are led by these motives, both are on the right path, though the first have taken the nobler way’.²⁰

The great value of this tripartite debate is that, if we are convinced by the arguments, we are able to see the interpretations of Jones and Smith not as conflicting but as complementary and as allowing us to see the poetry of Góngora in a new light. This is, in fact, how I should finally like to consider Angélica y Medoro inasmuch as it anticipates the themes and concepts of the major poems.

Góngora's ballad is, like the Soledades, a return to Nature and, like the Polifemo, an exaltation of the theme of love in Nature. There is no mistaking the note of intense rapture which characterises the love of Angélica and Medoro as the poem proceeds and which Góngora, as their creator, clearly shares. He loses himself in this world of his own creation as much as they do. And if he does not, as Jones admits, ‘set out solely to teach a doctrine’,²¹ then it seems equally clear to me that in his self-immersion in the beauty of Nature and of love, albeit on a physical and emotional plane, Góngora does realize one of the levels of Platonic experience described by Plotinus. This explains, perhaps, why his poetry has so often been thought of as appealing to the senses alone. Indeed, it may even be that through this kind of aesthetic experience, this self-immersion in a world of beauty, Góngora was made aware of and may have experienced that higher truth to which the more refined Platonists aspired.

In conclusion, the ballad of Angélica y Medoro is a world removed from most, if not from all, other Golden Age ballads. Góngora has taken over what had been a popular and oral tradition and has raised it, thematically and stylistically, to the level of high art. And in so doing he has revealed two things: the immense versatility and adaptability of the ballad tradition and his own immeasurable poetic genius.

Notes

1. Spanish Ballads (Oxford, Pergamon, 1964), 22.

2. Renaissance and Baroque, trans. Kathrin Simon (London, 1964), 73.

3. Romancero hispánico (Madrid, 1953), II, 196.

4. Quoted by Pidal, op. cit., 160.

5. An Anthology of Spanish Poetry 1500-1700 (Oxford, Pergamon, 1968, 2 vols), II, xxiii.

6. Quoted by Dámaso Alonso, Romance de Angélica y Medoro (Madrid, 1962), 18-19. For Menéndez Pelayo's views see Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (3rd ed., Madrid, 1961), II, 324 sq.

7. E. M. Wilson, ‘On Góngora's Angélica y Medoro’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XXX (1953), 85-94; R. O. Jones, Poems of Góngora (Cambridge, 1966), 16-22.

8. All references are to the edition by Lanfranco Caretti (Turin, 1966).

9. A. Durán, Romancero general, o colección de romances castellanos anteriores al siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1945), I, 268-73. This is a reprint of the first B. A. E. edition (vol. X) of 1849.

10. Art. cit., 85.

11. References to the Soledad primera are to Jones' version in Poems of Góngora, 39-71.

12. ‘Neoplatonism and the Soledades’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XL (1963), 13-14.

13. ‘An Approach to Góngora's Polifemo’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XLII (1965), 224 sq.

14. All references to the Soledad segunda are to Dámaso Alonso's edition (Madrid, 1956). For the lament see lines 116-71.

15. ‘La imagen poética en Góngora’, in Obras completas, (3rd ed., Madrid, 1957), 69.

16. Góngora y el Polifemo (Madrid, 1961), II, 207.

17. ‘An approach to Góngora's Polifemo’, 222.

18. References to the Polifemo are to Jones' edition of it in Poems of Góngora, 72-86.

19. ‘Neoplatonism and the Soledades’, 2.

20. ‘Góngora and Neoplatonism Again’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XLIII (1966), 117-20.

21. Ibid., 120.