SOURCE: Lehrer, Melinda Eve. “Introduction” and “Góngora's Innovations in the Polifemo.” In Classical Myth and the Polifemo of Góngora, pp. 1-17. Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1989.

[In the first excerpt that follows, Lehrer argues that three minor works by Góngora, the sonnet “Mientras por competir con tu cabello,” the romance “En un pastoral albergue,” and the canción “!Qué de invidiosos montes levantados,” all contain hallmarks of Góngora's greatest poetry, the Polifemo y Galatea and the Soledades. In the excerpt, Lehrer demonstrates how Góngora altered Ovid's story of Polifemo to emphasize themes of contrast, tension, and resolution.]

INTRODUCTION

While critics recognize the Polifemo (1613) and the Soledades (1612-13) as Góngora's two major works, they have argued about which is the greater poem. Dámaso Alonso has called the Polifemo Góngora's “indiscutible obra maestra”¹ and David Foster has written recently that the Soledades may be more innovative than the Polifemo but they are unfinished and thus not unified. The Polifemo, on the other hand, “represents more of a complete, organic whole.”² Robert Jammes, recognizing the “perfection formelle” of the Polifemo, insists nevertheless that when it is seen against all Góngora's work, it can only be considered a step toward the Soledades, which represent “le sommet” of Góngora's poetic career.³ While we may question the validity of saying that an incomplete poem is the better one, it is tempting to speculate about why Góngora finished the Polifemo but not the Soledades.⁴ Was his genius one that could make beautiful metaphors and build dramatic effects in poetry, but which needed an established narrative structure or model to work from? And if so, why in this case did he choose Polyphemus and Galatea as a model? My study will show that it was not just the popularity of Polyphemus' song in Renaissance-Baroque Europe that attracted Góngora, or that the Polyphemus-Galatea theme had a long Classical tradition behind it, or that a younger Spanish poet, Luis Carillo de Sotomayor, had recently written a poem on the same theme. Góngora was attracted also because the story had the potential for showing violent contrasts, for elaborating and then destroying something beautiful, and for presenting an alienated outsider to act against a fortunate pair of lovers. These characteristics responded to conflicts in Góngora's life and are present in other poems of his. I analyze three smaller poems than the Polifemo to make these characteristics evident.

It is difficult to know how Góngora put together the Soledades because, while we can identify individual tropes and figures, there is no overall model that it follows. The Polifemo, on the other hand, has a whole tradition behind it. My study examines how Góngora used these Classical sources when he wrote the Polifemo. In order to understand how he worked in this large poem, however, it is helpful to look first at some smaller texts where we can see how Góngora uses clearly indentifiable received material. My research begins with three of Góngora's smaller poems, works which antedate the Polifemo and the Soledades but are among his most successful poems in the opinion of critics. These poems have the same themes as the Polifemo and are an economical way of showing how Góngora's worked, on a smaller scale than the Polifemo. The sonnet “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” is based on the carpe diem tradition in general and specifically on the sonnets “Mentre che l'aureo crin v'ondeggia intorno” of Bernardo Tasso⁵ and “En tanto que de rosa y azucena” of Garcilaso de la Vega.⁶ In his sonnet, Góngora recapitulates the tradition and carries it to its logical extreme in the famous ending. How he does this and what it tells us about his interest in the theme is important for my reading of the Polifemo. Similarly, the romance of Angelica and Medoro has as its basis a well-known episode from Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Góngora is faithful to the story but compresses it and, again, turns the ending his own way. In the canción “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !”, Góngora uses the canzoni of Petrarch and Torquato Tasso as material for a sensual portrait of two lovers. At the traditional ending of the canzone, where the poet addresses his song, Góngora again makes it a personal expression of something important to him.

These three minor works tell us about the kinds of situations that attracted Góngora and the way he worked. He liked topics with which the reader was familiar, perhaps because he could underplay the narrative and concentrate on metaphors. He also liked situations which offered contrasts. There are contrasts of beauty and ugliness in the beautiful woman of “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” and what she turns into; contrasts of beauty built up and then shattered in the same woman and her disintegration into nothingness, and in the carefully described pastoral environment of Angelica and Medoro which is undone in the last two lines; and there are contrasts between ecstatic lovers and an alienated outsider in Angelica and Medoro and the narrator of the romance, and in the two lovers visualized by the narrator in “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !” and his final bitter comments. It is not surprising, then, that Góngora was drawn to the Polyphemus-Galatea story. There was a well-known model to work from, and all the inherent contrasts were present: beauty and ugliness (Galatea and Polifemo), beauty built up and shattered (the Acis-Galatea interlude followed by Acis' death), and ecstatic lovers and a despondent outsider (Acis, Galatea, and Polifemo). The same situation is present in Góngora's romance burlesco of Pyramus and Thisbe, which he said was the poem he liked best.⁷

Considering these factors, we can hypothesize why Góngora was able to finish the Polifemo but had difficulty finishing the Soledades. The story of Polyphemus and Galatea was one which all of Góngora's learned readers could be expected to know and had, in fact, been retold by many poets before Góngora. Thus, he did not have to be concerned with outlining the plot. The Soledades had no guiding model behind them and probably required an epic poet to be made into a finished poem. Góngora's genius was lyrical, and he seems to have bogged down when he had to write a complete, original story.

Critics give as sources of “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” (1582) the sonnet “Mentre che l'aureo crin v'ondeggia intorno” of Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569) and Garcilaso's sonnet, “En tanto que de rosa y azucena,” though the critics tend to favor Tasso as the direct source.⁸ In the Tasso sonnet, both quatrains begin with “Mentre che;” the first quatrain describes the golden hair and rosy face of the lady, while the second urges her, “cogliete o giovinette il vago fiore / de vostri più dolce anni.” The first tercet warns that winter will come to dress the hills with snow and cover the rose, and the second tercet repeats the warning, “Cogliete ah stolte il fior.” The sonnet ends, “e veloce a la fin corre ogni cosa.” Garcilaso's sonnet echoes Tasso's “Mentre che” with the “En tanto que” of each quatrain, and similarly describes the lady's rosy skin, golden hair, and fair neck. The first tercet admonishes, “coged de vuestra primavera / el dulce fruto” and warns that winter will come. The second tercet ends, “todo lo mudará la edad ligera / por no hacer mudanza en su costumbre.”

The carpe diem sonnet, which gives poets the opportunity to contrast youth and age, beauty and ugliness, allows Góngora to surpass the genre by showing an actual transformation take place. In his sonnet, “Mientras por competir con tu cabello,” the basic structure and content of the Tasso and Garcilaso sonnets are present. Each quatrain begins with “Mientras” and presents the lady with golden hair, fair skin, and a graceful neck; the two tercets tell her to enjoy her beauty before it is too late. But Góngora does not stop there; he intensifies these elements. In the two quatrains, there is a new sense of competition, triumph and defeat, and scorn, which gives the picture of the lady a bitter edge:

Mientras por competir con tu cabello,
oro bruñido el sol relumbra en vano;
mientras con menosprecio en medio el llano
mira tu blanca frente el lilio bello;
                    mientras a cada labio, por cogello,
siguen más ojos que al clavel temprano;
y mientras triunfa con desdén lozano
del luciente cristal tu gentil cuello. …

(italics mine)

In the first tercet, Garcilaso's verb “coged” is intensified to “gozar,” defined by Covarrubias as “Gozar una cosa, poseerla y desfrutarla.”⁹ The lady is commanded to possess and delight in her lovely features. The poet's recapitulating these features in series form,

                    goza cuello, cabello, labio y frente,
antes que lo que fue en tu edad dorada
oro, lilio, clavel, cristal luciente,

gives a hammering emphasis to each noun in the series and prepares for its disintegration “en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada.” In progressing from “tierra” to “nada,” the woman vanishes before our eyes. Góngora has transformed something beautiful into something as horrifying as nothingness. One reason why we have selected this sonnet is that its ending points to the ending of the Polifemo. There also, something beautiful—Acis and his love scene with Galatea—is elaborately constructed and then destroyed, and one thing is changed into another through a verbal process.

The romance of Angelica and Medoro (“En un pastoral albergue,” 1602) is a longer poem than the sonnet but works in a similar way. Here Góngora is using a well-known episode from Ariosto's Orlando furioso, Canto 19, st. 16-37, as his subject. Like the carpe diem sonnet, this narrative offers Góngora an opportunity for contrasts and transformation. Ariosto begins with the young Moorish soldier, Medoro, lying severely wounded in the woods. He is discovered by a young woman on horseback, Angelica, the beautiful daughter of the Emperor of Cathay.¹⁰ Ariosto then gives one and one-half stanzas of exposition, reminding us of Angelica's history and amorous vicissitudes in the court of Charlemagne.¹¹ Góngora compresses the narrative into metaphors:

                    Las venas con poca sangre
los ojos con mucha noche,
lo halló en el campo aquella
vida y muerte de los hombres.

(st. 4)

Here, as in the sonnet, life and death are juxtaposed, both in Medoro's being alive but near death (cf. also the contrast “poca sangre” / “mucha noche”), and in Angelica's being the “vida y muerte de los hombres.” There are no middle terms. The process by which Angelica falls in love with Medoro, in Ariosto st. XX and XXVI-XXX, is also compressed into metaphors by Góngora:

                    Ya [Medoro] le regala los ojos
ya le entra, sin ver por dónde,
una piedad mal nacida
entre dulces escorpiones.
                    Ya es herido el pedernal,
ya despide el primer golpe
centellas de agua. ¡Oh, piedad,
hija de padres traidores!

(st. 8-9)

The oxymoronic “dulces escorpiones,” Góngora's contrastive way of describing the effects of love, is like the “dulce veneno” which Love gives Galatea in the Polifemo. The “centellas de agua” driven from the flint of Angelica's heart is a similar contrastive metaphor. Góngora also contrasts Medoro's lying on the grass, near death, with the arrival of the healthy and beautiful Angelica, on horseback. He does not use Ariosto's contrast of Angelica's progressive healing of Medoro while her own wound, from love, is progressively deepening (st. XXVII-XXX), but instead compresses their relationship suddenly into lines like “un cuerpo con poca sangre, / pero con dos corazones” (st. 15) and “un mal vivo con dos almas, / y una ciega con dos soles” (st. 17). Góngora does contrast Medoro, the dark-skinned “africano” who hangs up his bow and puts down his sword (st. 24), with the fair young woman who goes about “Desnuda el pecho” and puts jasmine in her hair. This juxtaposed contrast of steel and flesh images—an oxymoron, really—has a visuality about it which is like looking at a painting. Any contemporary reader of Góngora would have seen such paintings, and thus more information is available to the reader's imagination. The description of the nude woman and the man with armor, along with the references to Mars and Adonis (st. 20)—two lovers of Venus—and to Venus herself (st. 25), evokes for us the paintings of Venus and Mars by, for example, Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521) and Veronese (1528-88).¹² Góngora's allusion to the icon of Venus and Mars instructs us how to imagine this scene. Góngora has taken a literary passage from Ariosto and presented it to us as if it were a painting. This distances us from the episode because we are looking at one reality through another. We, like Góngora, become viewers of a painting, watching from a distance rather than participating in the action. In that sense we join him as “voyeurs” of this episode.

Just as Venus and Mars were caught by Vulcan, the affair of Angelica and Medoro has its potential dangers. In st. 22, an allegorized Envy spies on the lovers and threatens to make a scandal of their lovemaking:

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

Envy is driven away by Love:

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

(st. 23)

but the poet's creating such an incident suggests envy and anxiety on his part toward the lovers. We will see the same anxiety in the Acis-Galatea interlude in the Polifemo (there the lovers are caught by the Cyclops) and in a poem which Góngora wrote at about the same time as the romance of Angelica and Medoro, “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !” (1600).

Other details from Ariosto which Góngora leaves out of his poem—Medoro's grieving for his dead king, whose body he was carrying, and his refusal to leave before his king was buried (st. XX-XXV); the marriage ceremony of Angelica and Medoro (st. XXXIV); Angelica's decision to return to Cathay and have Medoro crowned king (st. XXXVII); and Ariosto's direct addresses to the reader (st. XVII) and to Orlando and other suitors (st. XXXI-XXXII)—suggest that Góngora preferred to omit anything outside the intimate meeting and falling in love of the two young people. He selects one part of Ariosto's episode and creates a lyric poem from it, a poem where he can express concerns which are important to him.

Góngora adds details of his own to the poem which reflect concerns of his apparent in other poems. The kindness of the villager who takes in Angelica and Medoro (Ariosto, st. XXIII and XXVII), for example, gives Góngora the opportunity to muse on the virtuous country life as opposed to life at court:

                    y la que mejor se halla
en las selvas que en la corte,
simple bondad al pío ruego
[el villano] cortesmente corresponde.

(st. 14)¹³

Gongora's most striking addition to the episode from Ariosto, however, is the surprising ending:

                    Choza, pues, tálamo y lecho
cortesanos labradores,
aires, campos, fuentes, vegas,
cuevas, troncos, aves, flores,
                    fresnos, chopos, montes, valles,
contestes de estos amores,
el cielo os guarde, si puede,
de las locuras del Conde.

(st. 33-34)

The last line refers to Canto XXIII, st. 100-136 of the Orlando furioso, where Count Orlando, who loves Angelica, happens on the woods and the villager's house where Angelica and Medoro became lovers. He learns of their activities and in a fit of despondency and rage destroys the trees, cave, and stream that had witnessed their passion. Just as in the last tercets of the sonnet, “Mientras por competir con tu cabello,” Góngora recapitulates the lady's beautiful features and then transforms them “en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada,” here Góngora recapitulates all those elements which had been the delight of Angelica and Medoro and then destroys them in our imagination by reminding us and warning the lovers of Orlando's subsequent rage and devastation. In both poems, poetic elements (the lady's features, the witnesses to the love of Angelica and Medoro) are literally piled up and then undone. In the romance of Angelica and Medoro, Góngora depends on the reader's knowing what happens in the Orlando furioso and keeps in just enough of the story to give the reader his bearings.

Góngora's canción, “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !” (1600), gives us a look into his psychology and suggests why the carpe diem sonnet, the Angelica and Medoro episode, and ultimately the Polyphemus, Acis, and Galatea story would appeal to him.

Dámaso Alonso gives as sources of Góngora's canción Petrarch's canzone 37 (“Sì è debile il filo a cui s'attene”)—for the first stanza and the general “tema de la ausencia”—and Torquato Tasso's rima 569 (“Già el notturno sereno”) for the concrete description of the pleasure of the lovers.¹⁴ Petrarch's canzone is a poem of 120 lines written during the absence of the speaker from his lady. Every stanza echoes his sorrow, from the first lines,

                    Sì è debile il filo a cui s'attene
la gravosa mia vita
che s'altri non l'aita
ella fia tosto di suo corso a riva,(15)

to the penultimate ones,

                    et non so s'io mi speri
vederla anzi ch'io mora;
però ch'ad ora ad ora
s'erge la speme et poi non sa star ferma,
ma ricadendo afferma
di mai non veder le che'l ciel onora. …

(11. 105-110)¹⁶

In another place, the speaker states, “io son un di quei 'l pianger giova” (1. 69). In the last stanza, he addresses his poem:

                    Canzon, s' al dolce loco
la donna nostra vedi,
credo ben che tu credi
ch' ella ti porgerà la bella mano
ond' io son sì lontano;
non la toccar, ma reverente ai piedi
le di' ch' io sarò la tosto cho' io possa,
o spirto ignudo od uom di carne et d'ossa.

(11. 113-120)¹⁷

Dámaso Alonso, like Góngora's early commentator Salcedo Coronel, states that the first lines of Góngora's canción,

¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados,
                    de nieves impedidos,
me contienden tus dulces ojos bellos!
¡Qué de ríos, del yelo tan atados,
                    del agua tan crecidos
me defienden el ya volver a vellos!

(11. 1-6)

come from Petrarch's lines in canzone 37,

                    Quante montagne et acque,
quanto mar, quanti fiumi
m'ascondon que' duo lumi
che quasi un bel sereno e mezzo 'l die
fer le tenebre mie. …

(11. 41-45)¹⁸

Even in these first lines we can see how great is the change in tone from Petrarch to Góngora. Petrarch's montagne suddenly become “invidiosos” in Góngora, and instead of merely “hiding” the eyes of the beloved, they contentiously “do battle” (contienden) with the poet for them. The rivers “defend” her eyes from being seen as if she were a fortress being besieged. Góngora has intensified Petrarch's lines as he did the quatrains of B. Tasso and Garcilaso in “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” (see p. 4). He sees his attempts to find love as a bitter competition which demands either triumph or defeat, just as the beauty of the woman in the sonnet triumphs temporarily but will ultimately be defeated. Petrarch continues,

a ciò che 'l rimembrar più mi consumi,
et quanto era mia vita allor gioiosa
m' insegni la presente aspra et noiosa

(11. 46-48)¹⁹

while Góngora writes,

                    ¡y qué, burlando de ellos,
                    el noble pensamiento
por verte viste plumas, pisa el viento!

(11. 7-9)

Rather than expending the poem in self-pity, this speaker creates his “noble pensamiento” which penetrates all barriers and imagines a scene between the lady and her lover. Góngora's novelty is the speaker's actively mobilizing himself in this way. Just as the lady in “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” is told to gozar her beautiful features, the speaker here is invited to possess and enjoy the picture of the sleeping lovers. Also visible from the beginning is the envy that motivates Góngora's speaker and at the same time creates his despondency. The “invidiosos montes levantados” of the first stanza and the “invidiosa pluma” of his pensamiento in the fourth stanza reflect back on him as much as his direct statement, “ni emprenderá hazaña / tu esposo, cuando lidie, / que no la registre él [el pensamiento], y yo no invidie” (st. 2). As we will detail below, Góngora's speaker is a self-conscious voyeur of the two lovers; thus the term invidia, besides meaning “envy,” is apt because it takes on its original Latin sense of “looking”: “invideō, -ēre, to look askance at, to look maliciously or spitefully at, to cast an evil eye upon.”²⁰ In Góngora's poem, the tension is between the speaker's enormous desire to witness the lovemaking scene which he has created, and the envy and despondency this desire creates in the speaker. For that reason he states that his is a “rabiosa ausencia” (st. 3) and the poem has a bitter edge.

According to Alonso, the sensual picture of the lovers which Góngora creates is taken from Torquato Tasso's poem, “Già il notturno sereno” (Rime, 569), celebrating the marriage of don Alfonso and donna Marfisa d'Este. Alonso states that “la voluptuosidad física [of the Tasso poem] es lo que predomina … y las delicias de los amantes esposos se describen con un atrevimiento que resulta mucho menos violento que en España en la sensual Italia, pero que aun para allí, es notable.”²¹ The first twenty-six lines of Tasso's poem describe the evening sky, the arrival of Hymen, and the romantic quiet of the landscape:

s'ode tra fronde e fronde,
qual di colombe, un roco
dolce interroto mormorar di baci;
con nodi più tenaci
l'edera el tronco abbracia,
e circondan le viti
gl' infecondi mariti:

(11. 17-23)²²

Lines 27-39 are an invocation to Hymen. In 11. 40-52, the yet “unconquered” bride is called a “bella guerriera” in the manner of Diana; the bridegroom is also described (11. 53-57) and their encounter is compared to a battle. The bridegroom is advised—and here may be some of the explicitness Dámaso Alonso refers to—

rapisci: più graditi
sono i baci rapiti
e più soavi son quanto più casti;
non cessar fin che 'l sangue
non versa e vinta a te sospira e langue.

(11. 87-91)²³

Tasso's speaker continues:

                    Sacra lieto trofeo
del bel cinto disciolto
e de le spoglie sue di sangue sparte,
e i giochi d' Imeneo
rinnova in nodi accolto
più bei di quei ch' unir Ciprigna a Marte.

(11. 92-97)²⁴

As an example of a passage which influenced Góngora's description of the lovers, Alonso quotes Tasso 11. 108-117:

Facciasi a questa
lusinghiera fatica
tregua ch'a pugna invita e riconforta;
e la fanciulla accorta
gli occhi tremanti abbassi,
e su l'amato fianco
appoggi il capo stanco.
Versi fiori Imeneo su' membri lassi,
e lor temprin gli ardori
col ventilar de l'ale i vaghi Amori.(25)

These are the only lines that might have directly influenced Góngora, for most of Tasso's 121 lines describe the evening setting and the arrival of Hymen (11. 1-39), compare the “unconquered” bride to Diana (40-53), and describe the lovers' night as a hunt or a battle (54-84). Góngora's poem is shorter and creates a picture of the lovers while alluding to other pictures: “la blanca hija de la blanca espuma” (1. 31) recalls the famous painting of Venus by Botticelli; “no sé si en brazos diga / de un fiero Marte, o de un Adonis bello” (11. 32-33) recalls other paintings of Venus and Mars (see p. 7, above) and of Venus and Adonis which were rendered during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The speaker's address to the lovers in 11. 43-45—

                    Dormid, que el dios alado,
                    de vuestras almas dueño,
con el dedo en la boca os guarda el sueño—

conjures up the putti that often appear in paintings of Venus and Mars, one of which in Góngora's picture has now turned toward us with his finger to his lips. The picture of the lovers' embrace, the putti, and the references to Venus, Mars, and Adonis all bring to mind the love scene of Angelica and Medoro in Góngora's romance, st. 20-22. And just as Angelica and Medoro and their pastoral setting were undone by Góngora in the last stanza, so in “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !”, Góngora will efface the picture of the two lovers, as if watching it disappear.

One characteristic that distinguishes “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !” from Petrarch's poem and Tasso's is that Góngora's speaker so sharply asserts himself and the power of his pensamiento to penetrate all geographical barriers and even the intimacy of the lovers themselves. In this way, the speaker becomes a self-conscious voyeur of the love scene which he has created. He proudly tells the lady,

no hay guardas hoy de llave tan segura,
                    que nieguen tu persona
que no desmienta [mi pensamiento] con discreta maña.

(st. 2)

In the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas, the speaker's pensamiento continues to be the subject. Like a bird, it alights in the bedroom of the two lovers (st. 3), but has arrived too late:

                    Tarde batiste la invidiosa pluma,
                                        que en sabrosa fatiga
vieras (muerta la voz, suelto el cabello)
la blanca hija de la blanca espuma,
                                        no sé si en brazos diga
de un fiero Marte, o de un Adonis bello;
                                        ya anudada a su cuello
                                        podrás verla dormida,
y a él casi trasladado a nueva vida.

(st. 4)

The speaker's ambivalent desire to witness the lovemaking is clear here, as his thought arrives “too late” and finds the lovers already asleep.

Like the sonnet, “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” and the romance of Angelica and Medoro, the canción “¡Qué de invidiosos montes levantados … !” has a surprising end. In the last stanza, the speaker is wishing the lovers well when he suddenly reflects angrily upon himself:

Dormid, copia gentil de amantes nobles,
…
mientras yo, desterrado, de estos robles
                    y peñascos desnudos
la piedad con mis lágrimas granjeo.

The stress of the words “yo” and “desterrado,” falling on the third and sixth syllables of this hendecasyllabic line, receives a jarring emphasis and puts the speaker in direct opposition to the scene he has created. The bitterness of the speaker that was inherent in shattering the beautiful woman in the sonnet and the pastoral landscape in the romance appears also in this canción and sets it apart from the poems of Petrarch and Tasso.

The reference to “robles / y peñascos desnudos” at the end of the poem should call our attention back to the beginning lines of the poem, where the speaker described another landscape. There he spoke of “invidiosos montes levantados, / de nieves impedidos” and “ríos, del yelo tan atados / del agua tan crecidos” which prevented him from going to the lady. The mountains covered with snow and the oaks and “naked” peaks, given the subject of this poem, together begin to suggest the sexual embrace of the lovers, and their embrace is as inaccessible to the poet as the mountains and the rivers. The fact of the speaker's being “desterrado” (1. 49) from this erotic landscape suggests someone who feels exiled from the love act. A priest (or racionero like Góngora) might feel this way. He is isolated from earthly reality and can visit it only with his imagination.

Another part of the poem's surprising ending is the speaker's address to his song in the last three lines:

Canción, di al pensamiento
que corra la cortina,
y vuelva al desdichado que camina.

Both Petrarch and Tasso ended their poems with an address to the canzone, but the functions of those addresses were different from Góngora's. Petrarch's song was to tell the lady he would come to her as soon as he could, while Tasso's was given the ornamental function of awakening the swans of the Po.²⁶ Góngora uses this traditional way of ending a canzone to close himself off completely from the scene he has created, underlining his alienation from something too beautiful for him.

Thus we see in three of Góngora's minor works characteristics of his signature which are visible in the Polifemo. There are rapid and surprising transformations, quick reversals with no middle terms, and the presence of an alienated voyeur figure.

In order to understand what Góngora does with the Polyphemus-Galatea theme, we also have to see what he has inherited from his predecessors.

.....

GóNGORA'S INNOVATIONS IN THE POLIFEMO

Góngora made many innovations in the myth which he inherited from Ovid. Some of them have a merely ornamental function, while others are organically essential to Góngora's poem.

The cameo portraits of animals of the hunt in stanza 2: the preening falcon, the horse champing on a golden bit, the hound whining on a silken leash, are ornamental but striking details. Like the other cameos in the poem—of the eagle circling her nest (st. 33) and the kingfisher on a calm day (st. 53)—they show Góngora's penchant for such descriptions. In the Soledades, for example, Góngora described the goats in the wedding procession (I. 297-302), the various birds of prey (II. 745-790), and the owl, a “grave globo de perezosas plumas” (II. 791), with the same energetic fondness.

Other ornamental innovations appear in Polifemo's song. There are his phantasy of Galatea's undersea environment in st. 48:

o dormida te hurten a mis quejas
purpúreos troncos de corales ciento,
o al disonante número de almejas
…
coros tejiendo estés, escucha un día
mi voz, por dulce, cuando no por mía;

and Polifemo's description of his bees in st. 50:

cuyos enjambres, o el abril los abra,
o los desate el mayo, ámbar distilan
y en ruecas de oro rayos de sol hilan.

There is the anecdote of the shipwrecked Genoese merchant and his exotic gifts in st. 55-58. These are excellent details and they give an appealing if superficial originality to the poem, but they are not crucial for its development.

Of somewhat greater interest, Góngora altered parts of the plot which he received from Ovid. These plot alterations are different from the previously-described innovations because they show where Góngora's purposes for the poem begin to diverge from Ovid's. For example, Góngora leaves out the Telemus incident (Met. XIII. 770-77), where the seer predicts that Ulysses will take away Polyphemus' eye. Polyphemus' punning response (“altera iam rapuit”) was a source of humor in Ovid. Such humor, however, would not fit in with Góngora's design for contrasting forces of tension and their resolution, in his poem. The absence of Ovid's humor here, as well as Góngora's omission of Polyphemus' combing his hair with a rake and trimming his beard with a sickle (Met. XIII. 764-67), has the effect of intensifying Góngora's portrayal of Polifemo as a serious, monumental force.

Another alteration of plot appears at the end of Polyphemus' song. In Ovid, Polyphemus concludes his song, runs around in a frenzy, and then comes upon Acis and Galatea. In Góngora, Polifemo's song is interrupted by his untended flock of goats trampling his grapevines (st. 59, a reassertion of the chaos created by the shepherds' love for Galatea in sts. 21-22) and Polifemo discovers Acis and Galatea when they are routed by his shouts and the stones from his slingshot. The interruption of Polifemo's song is a jog in timing which hastens the denouement of the poem, but is not a major change in direction. The interruption of a speaker is in fact a motif that occurs in Góngora's first Soledad and suggests displacement and alienation. What displacement and alienation could have meant for Góngora will be taken up in Chapter VII.

In contrast to the ornamental innovations and smaller plot alterations, Góngora has made many innovations which are crucial to the interpretation of the Polyphemus-Galatea theme. The portentous setting of the poem in sts. 4-6 is such an innovation:

                    Donde espumoso el mar siciliano
el pie argenta de plata al Lilibeo
(bóveda o de las fraguas de Vulcano,
o tumba de los huesos de Tifeo),
pálidas señas cenizoso un llano
—cuando no del sacrílego deseo—
del duro oficio da. Allí una alta roca
mordaza es a una gruta, de su boca.
                    Guarnición tosca de este escollo duro
troncos robustos son, a cuya greña
menos luz debe, menos aire puro
la caverna profunda, que a la peña;
caliginoso lecho, el seno obscuro
ser de la negra noche nos lo enseña
infame turba de nocturnas aves,
gimiendo tristes y volando graves.
                    De este, pues, formidable de la tierra
bostezo, el melancólico vacío
a Polifemo, horror de aquella sierra,
bárbara choza es, albergue umbrío
y redil espacioso donde encierra
cuanto las cumbres ásperas cabrío
de los montes, esconde: copia bella
que un silbo junta y un peñasco sella.

Stanza 4 locates Polifemo's cave near the sea on an ashen plain, lying at the foot of a volcano.²⁷ Stanza 5 describes the cave as being garnished by robust tree trunks with suffocating “matted hair” (greña). The dark cavern is the “caliginoso lecho … / … de la negra noche,” and its ominousness is indicated by an “infame turba de nocturnas aves, / gimiendo tristes y volando graves.” In Theocritus, Polyphemus' cave was downright pleasant (Id. XI. 42-49: “There are laurel trees there, there are slender cypresses, there is black ivy, there is the vine bearing sweet fruit”), and in Ovid the cave was at least comfortable (Met. XIII. 811-812: “quibus nec sol medio sentitur in aestu / nec sentitur hiems”). In Góngora, Polifemo's cave and environs seem to personify the Cyclops himself. The cave lies beneath a volcano because part of the mythological tradition is that the Cyclopes lived beneath Mt. Aetna, and there they forged Zeus'/Jupiter's thunderbolts and lightning.²⁸ Góngora, however, might have sensed an additional correspondence between Polifemo's living underneath a volcano and his explosive, “volcanic” nature. There are “troncos robustos” with a “greña” of leaves, which parallel Polifemo's huge body (very much a tronco robusto) and his matted hair. The cave and its surroundings are portrayed with suffocating darkness, which parallels Polifemo's being a dark force in the love affair of Acis and Galatea. In Góngora, there is an accumulation of images from sts. 4 to 6, as the cave is called a gruta (st. 4); an escollo, caverna profunda, seno obscuro, caliginoso lecho de la negra noche (st. 5); and a formidable bostezo de la tierra, choza bárbara, and albergue umbrío (st. 6). This innovation, along with the innovation of mountain and torrential river imagery to describe Polifemo in sts. 7-8, is an intensification of the figure of the Cyclops as compared with Theocritus and Ovid. Its purpose, as described in Chapter II, is to push to the limit the contrast between the unlucky lover and his beloved.

Immediately following the description of Polifemo is the description of his knapsack overflowing with fruit and nuts (st. 10-11). Where stanzas 9 and 12 describe violence (the cruelty of the wild beast in 9, the deafening sound of the pipes in 12), the two stanzas they frame (10 and 11) describe gentleness:

                    Cercado es (cuanto más capaz, más lleno)
de la fruta, el zurrón, casi abortada,
qu el tardo otoño deja al blando seno
de la piadosa hierba, encomendada:
la serba, a quien le da rugas el heno;
la pera, de quien fue cuna dorada
la rubia paja, y—pálida tutora—
la niega avara, y pródiga la dora.
                    Erizo es el zurrón, de la castaña,
y (entre el membrillo o verde o datilado)
de la manzana hipócrita, que engaña,
a lo pálido no, a lo arrebolado,
y, de la encina (honor de la montaña,
que pabellón al siglo fue dorado)
el tributo, alimento, aunque grosero,
del mejor mundo del candor primero.

Stanza 10 especially has abundant feminine imagery (in gender and metaphor) and personifications: “el blando seno / de la piadosa hierba,” “la serba,” “la pera de quien fue cuna dorada / la rubia paja,” etc. The phrase “la fruta … casi abortada” in st. 10, however, is an exception, suggesting violence in this golden world, and in this sense it would go along with the contrasts of light and dark throughout the poem (Although Theocritus, Vergil, and Ovid created a number of oppositions between the Cyclops figure and his beloved, there was no contrast of light and dark in these oppositions). Polifemo's knapsack (zurrón), an innovation by Góngora, is called an enclosed orchard of overflowing fruit in stanza 10. In stanza 11, it is the “husk” enclosing chestnuts, quinces, apples, and acorns (“de la encina … el tributo”). The Golden Age, to which the acorns allude (“el tributo, … / del mejor mundo del candor primero”), is a further image of gentleness. The description of Polifemo's knapsack connects with the description of the agricultural abundance of Sicily (sts. 18-19):

                    Sicilia, en cuanto oculta, en cuanto ofrece,
copa es de Baco, huerto de Pomona:
tanto de frutas ésta la enriquece,
cuanto aquél de racimos la corona.
En carro que estival trillo parece,
a sus campañas Ceres no perdona,
de cuyas siempre fértiles espigas
las provincias de Europa son hormigas.
                    A Pales su viciosa cumbre debe
lo que a Ceres, y aún más, su vega llana;
pues si en la una granos de oro llueve,
copos nieva en la otra mil de lana.
De cuantos siegan oro, esquilan nieve,
o en pipas guardan la exprimida grana,
bien sea religión, bien amor sea,
deidad, aunque sin templo, es Galatea.

These two descriptions (of the knapsack and of Sicily) are an important innovation because the abundance and the overwhelming harvests make a sharp contrast with the dark, isolated forces of Polifemo. Similarly, the adoration of the Sicilians for Galatea (sts. 19-20), her additional suitors Glaucus and Palaemon (sts. 15-16), and the young men abandoning their plows and flocks for love of her (sts. 21-22) are substantial innovations because they intensify her role in the myth.²⁹ A figure of this much beauty and power is a worthy love object for the mountainous Polifemo (but as we shall see below, there is another side to this beauty). With such innovations, Góngora has made the myth of Polyphemus and Galatea a study in contrasts and opposing forces—a baroque rendering of a classical work.

Polyphemus' piping is a detail that comes from Theocritus (Id. XI. 38: “And I know how to play the syrinx as none of the Cyclopes know how …”). Ovid suggested that Polyphemus' pipes were made of 100 canes and could be heard by the mountains and the waves (Met. XIII. 784-786). Góngora innovates by making the effect of Polifemo's piping disastrous:

La selva se confunde, el mar se altera,
rompe Tritón su caracol torcido,
sordo huye el bajel a vela y remo:
¡tal la música es de Polifemo!

(st. 12)

This innovation styles Polifemo as a figure of disorder and supports the contrast between himself and Galatea.³⁰ Polifemo does claim to have calmed the wind and sea with his music on one occasion (st. 54), and it is true that his song to Galatea, which the “thunder” of his voice “blasts” to the hills (st. 45), is in fact a most elegant and refined composition. But instead of being an inconsistency, this contrast represents a dialectic of order-disorder which makes up the characters of both Polifemo and Galatea. Polifemo has an ugly body and is capable of disrupting nature with his piping, but at the same time he is a productive farmer and sings a beautiful song. Galatea has a beautiful body, but her beauty and harmony disrupt the lives of the young men of Sicily (sts. 21-22) while eliciting the beautiful song from Polifemo. She causes him who is disorder to sing a beautiful song. The forces and contrasts of these two characters are continually in motion. In this regard, the last stanza of the Dedication (st. 3) has two interesting plays on words. Dámaso Alonso has remarked in his commentary to stanza 3 that the Count of Niebla's “ocio atento, silencio dulce” could more logically be read as “ocio dulce, silencio atento.”³¹ In the same stanza, Góngora writes of “del músico jayán el fiero canto,” hyperbaton for “el fiero canto del músico jayán.” These adjectives can also be inverted, to “el músico canto del fiero jayán,” which is a more accurate description of Polifemo and his song. Polifemo is fierce (Cf. st. 43, “cuando, de amor el fiero jayán ciego,” and st. 59, the oxymoronic “el fiero pastor”) but his eloquent song to Galatea definitely is not. There is a contrast inherent in the way “el fiero canto del músico jayán” is written.

The twenty-stanza Acis-Galatea interlude is another substantial innovation made by Góngora. It is an extrapolation of Met. XIII. 750-58 (Acis' parents and youthfulness) and 1. 752, “nam me sibi iunxerat uni.” … this interlude allows Góngora to intensify the contrast between the love of Acis and Galatea and the desire of the isolated Polifemo. Góngora also sets the silence of the love interlude against the beautiful song that the Cyclops sings. As was stated previously … the tension between Polifemo and the lovers explodes in Polifemo's murder of Acis and is resolved by Acis' transformation into a river.

A final striking change that Góngora makes in Ovid's poem is his leaving out the details of Acis' transformation. In Met. XIII. 887-96, Ovid describes how the red gore flowing from Acis' crushed body was first turned to murky river water and then to clear water; how the boulder on top of Acis then cracked open to reveal a tall reed and dancing waves, and finally how a young man, a sea-blue river god, emerged from the middle of the water. Góngora skips these steps and effects an almost instantaneous change of Acis into a river:

Sus miembros lastimosamente opresos
del escollo fatal fueron apenas,
que los pies de los árboles más gruesos
calzó el líquido aljófar de sus venas.

(st. 63)

Clearly, Góngora is not interested in this story for the same reason as Ovid. Ovid considered that he was writing a mythological epic poem, from the beginning of the world to his own time, and the transformation of mortals into other living things and into immortals was of key and unifying importance. The story of Polyphemus and Galatea was just one link in a chain. Góngora, on the other hand, was interested in this particular story for the contrasts, tensions, and resolutions of these forces which it offered, and his innovations and alterations were directed toward that purpose.

Notes

1. Góngora y el “Polifemo,” 6^a ed., 3 vols. (Madrid: Gredos, 1980), I, p. 207.

2. Luis de Góngora (New York: Twayne, 1973), p. 96.

3. Études sur l'oeuvre poétique de Don Luis de Góngora y Argote (Bordeaux: Univ. de Bordeaux, 1967), p. 572.

4. Both Pellicer and Díaz de Rivas, contemporary commentators of Góngora, stated that his intention was to write four Soledades. Alonso says, “Quedaron sin hacer la Soledad Tercera y la Cuarta; y sin acabar, la Segunda. A esta última fueron añadidos aún por el poeta, en época posterior, cuarenta y tres versos, a instancia de un amigo que le animaba a concluir la obra.” (Góngora, Las Soledades, ed. Dámaso Alonso, 3^a ed., Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1956, p. 9).

5. In J. Fucilla, Estudios sobre el petrarquismo en España (Madrid: C.S.I.C., 1960), quoted by A. Carballo Picazo, “El soneto ‘Mientras por competir con tu cabello’ de Góngora,” in Revista de Filología Española, XLVII (1964), p. 384.

6. Obras de Garcilaso de la Vega, con anotaciones de Fernando de Herrera (Sevilla: Alonso de la Barrera, 1580), p. 175, quoted by A. Carballo Picazo, op. cit., p. 382.

7. Millé makes the following note in his edition of Góngora's works (Góngora, Obras completas, 4^a ed. Madrid: Aguilar, 1956, p. 1112, n. 74): “La presente Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe … fué comentada por Cristóbal de Salazar y Mardones (Ilustración y defensa de la Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe, Madrid, 1636) … Dice Salazar, en su dedicatoria, que era la obra ‘que más lima costó a su autor, y de la que hacía mayores estimaciones’.”

8. See J. P. W. Crawford, “Italian Sources of Góngora's Poetry,” in Romanic Review, XX (1929), 122-130; A. Carballo Picazo, op. cit.; and Dámaso Alonso, Góngora y el “Polifemo,” II, 133-34. Crawford, p. 126, states that while Góngora was acquainted with Garcilaso's sonnet, “he made independent use of Bernardo Tasso's poem.” Carballo Picazo, on the other hand, states, “Poesía más cercana la de Garcilaso que la de Góngora a la del italiano” (p. 388). Dámaso Alonso states only, “Sobre este soneto [“Mientras por competir con tu cabello”] … se ha señalado la influencia de uno de Bernardo Tasso” (p. 133). Herrera, in his commentary to Garcilaso's sonnet, had given the Tasso sonnet as its source. See Appendix of this study for the texts of the Tasso and Garcilaso sonnets.

9. Sebastián de Covarrubias, Tesoso de la lengua castellana o española (1611; rpt. Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1979), s.v. “gozo,” p. 652.

10. “Giaque gran pezzo il giovine Medoro,
    spicciando il sangue da si larga vena,
    che di sua vita al fin saria venuto,
    se non sopravenia chi gli diè aiuto.

    Gli sopravenne a caso una donzella,
    avolta in pastorale et umil veste,
    ma di real presenzia e in viso bella
    d'alte maniere e accortamente oneste.

    Tanto è chi'io non ne dissi più novella,
    ch'a pena riconoscer la dovreste:
    questa, se non sapete, Angelica era,
    del gran Can del Catai la figlia altiera.”

    (Canto XIX, st. 16, 1. 5-st. 17)

    From Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, ed. L. Caretti (Milan: R. Ricciardi, 1954), p. 462.

11. “Poi che 'l suo annello Angelica riebbe,
    di che Brunel l'avea tenuta priva,
    in tanto fasto, in tanto orgoglio crebbe,
    Ch'esser parea di tutto 'l mondo schiva.
    Se ne va sola, e non si degnerebbe
    compagno aver qual più famoso viva:
    si sdegna a rimembrar che già suo amante
    abbia Orlando nomato, o Sacripante.

    E sopra ogn'altro error via più pentita
    era del ben che già a Rinaldo volse
    troppo parendole essersi avilita,
    ch'a riguardar si basso gli occhi volse.”

    (Canto XIX, st. 18-st. 19, 1.4)

12. The icon of Venus and Mars pervaded European art through the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. A. Pigler (Barockthemen, 3 vols. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 166-169), for example, cites over ninety European art works on this theme produced during this period.

13. This was, of course, a topos during Góngora's period, but it is of special relevance to him because of his own conflict about the court and the aristocracy. Góngora had a desire to be at court and part of the aristocracy during most of his life. Indeed, his “preocupaciones de honra y abolengo” (M. Artigas, Don Luis de Góngora, Biografía y estudio crítico [Madrid, 1925], p. 32) date from his early years (1579-80) at the University of Salamanca. At the same time, however, his bitterness toward the aristocracy is apparent in such early letrillas as “Que pida a un galán Menguilla” (1581) and “Ande yo caliente” (1581), and his disillusionment with the court would play a large role in the Soledades (1613).

14. Góngora y el “Polifemo,” II, pp. 202-204.

15. “So weak is the thread by which hangs my heavy life that if someone does not aid it, it will soon be at the end of its race. …” The English translation is by Robert Durling in his book, Petrarch's Lyric Poems (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1976), pp. 96-103. All subsequent lines from Petrarch and their translations are from this source.

16. “and I do not know if I can hope to see her before I die; for from time to time my hope lifts itself up, but then it cannot maintain itself and falling down again it affirms that it will never see her whom Heaven honors. …”

17. “Song, if in her sweet place you see our lady, I believe that you believe that she will reach out to you her hand, from which I am so distant; do not touch it, but reverently at her feet tell her that I shall be there as soon as I can, either a disembodied spirit or a man of flesh and bone.”

18. “How many mountains and waters, how much ocean, how many rivers hide from me those two lights, which made my darkness into a clear sky at noon. …”

19. “so that remembering might destroy me the more, and that I might learn from my present cruel and burdensome life how joyous my life was then!”

20. Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), “invideō.” See also Covarrubias, op. cit., s.v. “invidia.”

21. Góngora y el “Polifemo,” II, p. 203.

22. “One hears between fronds, as if from doves, a cooing, sweet, interrupted murmuring of kisses; with more tenacious knots the ivy embraces the trunk, and the vines encircle their sterile husbands.” Translation mine, from Torquato Tasso, Opere, ed. Bruno Maier (Milan: Rizzoli, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 571-575. I wish to thank Professor Laurie Shepard of Boston College for her assistance with this translation.

23. “Seize her: more pleasant are stolen kisses, and more sweet the more chaste. Do not cease until she spills her blood and, conquered, sighs to you and languishes.”

24. “Consecrate a happy trophy of the lovely belt untied and divide her spoils of blood, and renew the games of Hymen in knots more beautiful than those which united Venus to Mars.”

25. “Let there be made a truce to this ardent but deceptive fatigue which invites battle and gives comfort; and the shrewd young lady, her trembling eyes lowered, on his beloved flank rests her tired head. Let Hymen throw flowers on their loose limbs and let delightful Love temper their passion with a fanning of his wings.”

26. Tasso ended his poem in this way:

                                            Desta, canzone, i cigni
                        cui dolce il Po da l'ombra e l'esca e l'onda,
                        ché debil canto gran voce seconda.

    (“Song, wake the swans, to whom the Po sweetly gives shade and bait and waves, for a big voice gives favor to a weak song.”)

27. The giant Typhoeus, whom Góngora refers to in 1. 4, was supposedly buried under Mt. Aetna. See D. Alonso, Góngora y el “Polifemo”, III, p. 52.

28. See, for example, Vergil, Aeneid 8. 416-453 and Georgics 4. 170. Góngora locates Polifemo's home under Mt. Lilybaeum, a promontory on the southern coast of Sicily, rather than under Aetna. Dámaso Alonso (Góngora y el “Polifemo”, III, pp. 55-56) believes that he did this mainly for the improved phonetic qualities of the word “Lilibeo,” and that in any case Mt. Lilybaeum should be understood as synecdoche for the entire island of Sicily.

29. Farmers' abandoning their plows and flocks was a common topos in classical literature, denoting the end of the golden age. Cf. P. A. Johnston's commentary on Catullus 64. 35-42, in her Vergil's Agricultural Golden Age: A Study of the Georgics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), pp. 38 and 44. Góngora may or may not have been aware that this was a topos, but in the Polifemo he uses it to intensify Galatea's presence and to indicate the forces of order and disorder which characterize both her and Polifemo.

30. Galatea is initially (st. 13-14) a figure of beauty and harmony. Later on we will see that there is a certain amount of disorder in Galatea and harmony in Polifemo.

31. Dámaso Alonso, Góngora y el “Polifemo”, III, pp. 49-50, referring to Andrés Cuesta's early commentary to this line.