[In the following essay, Hanak discusses the life, work, and influence of Góngora.]

Don Luis was born on July 11, 1561 into an illustrious family in Andalusian Córdoba. His father was one of the judges of the Inquisition in charge of adjudicating confiscated property. He received his early education at a Jesuit College (a grammar and prep school) in his hometown. His maternal uncle don Francisco de Góngora, prebendary of the Cathedral of Córdoba, conveyed to the young man ecclesiastic benefices accruing to him in several different locations outside Córdoba. Don Francisco advanced his protégé sums of money to cover study expenses at the University of Salamanca in Old Castile.

Studies of ecclesiastic law and classical literature (1576-80) did not claim his main interest and dedication; though destined for a church career, the future composer of sonnets, lyrical poems, odes, ballads, panegyrics, and epic poetry became absorbed in the ferment of lexical experimentation typical of the Salamancan ambience of his day. He excelled among his peers in the games of ingenio, genial inventiveness of lexical and image-heaping virtuosity. He knew, of course, Latin, and could read Italian and Portuguese. There exists a manuscript of festive poetry prepared years later by Antonio Chacón for the Conde-Duque Olivares, privado (Prime Minister) of Philip IV; Góngora's contributions to this MS. bear the date 1580, the earliest of his work on record.

In this earliest period Góngora produced a mixed bag of poetic experimentation: imitations of folk genres like the Spanish romance (an octosyllabic, ballad-like composition with assonated even-number verses), letrillas consisting of usually short verses, festive, amorous, or satirical, divided in stanzas each of which end in a refrain; there is little in this simple folk genre to indicate the ornate Baroque imagery and structure which were to become Góngora's hallmark.

One of Góngora's early sonnets prefaced Juan Rufo's La Austriada (The Austriad, 1584), an epic celebrating the Spanish Habsburgs. A visit to Granada in 1585 inspired the sonnet “A Córdoba” (“To Córdoba”), a tribute to his native city and example of early poetic excellence, as well as ornateness. About that time uncle Francisco ceded his prebend at Córdoba to the promising poet, who at the time received “major orders” of the Church. Between 1589-96 Góngora undertook several business trips on behalf of his Córdoba chapter: Palencia, Madrid, Salamanca; in 1603 he visited in the same capacity Cuenca and, finally, Valladolid, the then capital of Spain, where he stayed until 1606. It was at the royal court that Góngora's genius for writing satire and elegant ornateness found a responsive and stimulating audience. The city of Valladolid became the target of his derisive invective; in the famous poet and wit Quevedo he found a lifelong rival and enemy. It was also at Valladolid that the now well-known poet acquired a habit for sumptuous living, gambling, and debt accumulation. His fame grew with the publication of Flores de poetas ilustres (Flowers of Illustrious Poets), edited in 1603 by Pedro Espinosa; Góngora's poetry outnumbered the selections from poems of all of his contemporaries.

During his continued residence in Córdoba, Góngora hoped to gain the patronage of the Marqués de Ayamonte; he visited with the marqués at the latter's residence in Lepe (in the province of Huelva), and dedicated several sonnets to him.

The year 1609 found Góngora once again traveling: Madrid, Alcalá, Alava, and Pontevedra in Galicia. Each of these travels prompted new poetic activity. Among other things, these verses reflect his disappointment with Galicia, and his amazement at the rapid growth of Madrid. The occupation of Larache in North Africa (Morocco) by Spanish troops in 1610 moved him to write La oda a la toma de Larache (Ode on the Taking of Larache). This major work marks an increment in cultist extravagances and encoded allusions of what some consider the second period of Góngora's creative process. Actually, as Dámaso Alonso has repeatedly pointed out, these elements have been present in the earlier compositions, occurring often even more frequently early on, than in the period of so-called maturity. (Dámaso Alonso, Góngora y el “Polifemo,” I, 41).

If there is a change in the direction of the poet's endeavors, it sets in after 1611. As indicated, there is no major transformation or even expansion of the lexical figurative-structural apparatus. What changes is the scope of works undertaken. Through 1612 and through a part of 1613 he worked simultaneously on the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea) and Las Soledades (Solitudes). Excerpts from Polyphemus were being read in Madrid at private gatherings; of the four planned Solitudes, only the First and a part of the Second were ever completed. … Góngora dedicated his Polyphemus to the Count of Niebla, the same patron to whom Carrillo de Sotomayor dedicated a few years earlier his version of the Polyphemus myth. Góngora was evidently driven by the spirit of competition (Alonso, op. cit., 195) in choosing the same patron. The Polyphemic theme, especially Ovid's version, was extremely popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth century; Alonso enumerates seven versions besides Góngora's, by such prolific and famous writers as Lope de Vega, Castillejo, the above-mentioned Carrillo, and Sánchez de Viana. Alonso emphasizes Góngora's revolutionary treatment of the myth:

He shows us Sicily burning with fever [as men and deities] seek Galatea's favor; her meeting with [the demigod and hunter] Acis; the timid advances of her love; their bliss amidst the Baroque, exuberant Sicilian vegetation; he describes with genial novelty the giant Polyphemus; he comes up with new variations [on the motif] of Polyphemus's song. Góngora refines and intensifies the hues to the point of frenzy, rises to the sky of the hyperbole, seizes with the thrust of genius the most striking, most exciting metaphors, and … impresses on each stanza and verse the hallmark of his genial intuition so that this [i.e. Polyphemus] theme, that went from hand to hand, became essentially his, and the work is indisputably his masterpiece.

(op. cit., 195)

The first of the planned four Soledades recounts the mental turmoil of a jilted lover who lands, holding onto a board after shipwreck, at a coast that turns out to be an Arcadian Shangrila. Cared for by goatherds, he eventually joins a wedding party of highlanders, among whom an old man acts as a surrogate father of the star-crossed youth. An invective against ambition, cause of all human evils, interrupts the action; Góngora delights with elaborate ornateness in the colorful descriptions of simple rustic bliss, wedding ritual, athletic competition. The second, unfinished Solitude describes the art of fishing on an idyllic island full of domestic harmony. It breaks off with a falconing party. The Soledades are cast mostly in silvas, stanzas of 7 lines, of alternately 11 and 7 syllables in a freely chosen order such as 11-7-7-11-11-11-7 (or any other combination) which may rhyme a bb c aa c (or any other configuration of 3 different rhyme endings).

Among sonnets, a masterful tour de force is one entitled “Mientras por competir con tu cabello” (“While in Vain with Your Hair Insists on Vying”); it goes back to the earliest period (1582). It should serve as an example of Góngora's prowess as sonneteer of the Baroque topos of “vanity of vanities”:

While in vain with your hair insists on vying
Burnished gold in the sun that angry flashes,
While scornful looks at you the lily dashes,
Your immaculate forehead's white defying;
While just to glimpse your lips more eyes are trying
Than can the first carnation open lashes,
And, while with shining crystal's challenge clashes
Your neck, its triumphs haughtily denying;
Your neck, hair, lips, and brow go on esteeming,
Before what once your golden youth has flattered,
As lily, gold, carnation, crystal gleaming,
Not only into silver, violet battered,
Have been transformed, but theirs with your fate teaming,
As earth, smoke, shade, dust, nothing, you are scattered.

(My translation)

As for the assonated octosyllabic folk genre of the romance, a very early one (1583) “Amarado a un duro banco” (“Lashed to a Hard Bench”) does credit to Góngora the evoker of nostalgia: A Spanish slave on a Turkish galley yearns for his homeland as the ship approaches the coast of Andalusian Marbella, so near, yet so far. … Another romance, one starting with “Entre los sueltos caballos” (“Among Freely Roaming Horses,” 1585) is typical of the morisco sub-genre, elaborating on the deadly darts of Cupid; another early romance (1587) which starts with “Servía en Orán al Rey” (“There Served the King at Oran”) is a tribute to Spanish gallantry, both on the field of battle and on that of amorous dalliance. “Lloraba la niña” (“There Cried a Young Girl”), is a romancillo, an assonated sub-genre which abbreviates the romance's eight syllables to six; the theme is that of a beloved, abandoned by her lover; a long romance “En un pastoral albergue” (“In a Shepherd's Shelter”) retells in Gongorine fashion the episode of Angelica and the Moor Medoro, two characters that figure in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (The Raving Roland, Canto XIX, stanzas 16-37). It deals with Angelica's indiscretion with a beautiful wounded Moor, and its effects on Roland's sanity. One of the earliest romancillos “Hermana Marica” (“Sister Marica,” 1580) shows the other face of the Gongorine coin: the simplicity of the world of infantile games.

A very early letrilla (1581) is “Andeme yo caliente y ríase la gente,” (“Let Me Do My Thing in Comfort and Let People Laugh”). It is written in octosyllables which may end in consonated rhymes, of the a bb aa cc pattern, in which the last of the 7 verses is shortened to 7 syllables. The second verse of the title, “And Let the People Laugh,” returns as a refrain in the last verse ending in c. “No son todos ruiseñores” (“Not All of Them Are Nightingales,” 1609) is a morning serenade of rather elaborate stanza structuring; the number of verses in the first stanza is again 7, with an aa bc dc cd rhyme pattern; the third and last stanzas are simply repetitions of the first, with stanzas two and four structured in an analogous rhyme pattern, except that the length of these two stanzas is reduced to six lines.

The later Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe (Fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, 1618), written in romance, is a fine example of Góngora's treatment of a topic subject selected from the public domain of myths that has been treated, among others, by Shakespeare; an unadulterated skepticism of this poem may surprise a reader who sees Góngora only as the archetypical festive idealizer of reality along the lines of the Soledades and the Polyphemus fable.

As could be expected, even Góngora's contemporaries differed sharply in their reactions to the two major epic works of the master, the Polyphemus and the Solitudes. Their attitudes were dictated then, as they were to be in generations of future readers, by their reaction to the tension-fraught lexical innovations and daringly suggestive figures of speech. Only rarely is this suggestiveness meant to be erotic; most of the time, it taxes heavily the imagination and mythological and historical erudition.

The need to broaden the number of noble patrons dominated the years of the poet's maturity. This need prompted the writing of the Panegírico al Duque de Lerma (Panegyric to the Duke of Lerma), the Prime Minister of Philip III. The year was 1617; it marks the establishment of Góngora's permanent residence in Madrid, and his ordination. Eventually, and not without hesitation, the Duke of Lerma had Góngora appointed to the office of His Majesty's Chaplain. By 1618, Lerma's position and influence at Court came to an end, as did those of Philip III's favorite Rodrigo Calderón, confidant of Lerma and, until briefly before his disgrace in 1619, one of the most powerful public figures in Spain.

Góngora's declining years were plagued with bad luck, personal rivalries, compulsive gambling, illness, and the deaths of his patrons. His need to live in a style worthy of a Court Poet perpetuated embarrassing financial difficulties. After the accession of Philip IV in 1621 he tried to gain the favor of the new Prime Minister, the Conde-Duque Olivares; in this Góngora was at first partially successful. But in October 1621 one of his patrons, Rodrigo Calderón, was executed on account of political and financial irregularities committed while he was Philip III's favorite. Less than a year later (August 1622), another patron, the Conde de Villamediana was assassinated; the Count of Lemos died in October of the same year. Olivares's secretaries kept on putting off Góngora's petitions for help. In 1625 his Madrid home went on the block; Góngora's worst enemy and rival Francisco Quevedo y Villegas was the buyer. The Conde-Duque wanted Góngora to publish his poems in book form (they were circulating in manuscript) but Góngora insisted he receive a pension first. The poems were destined to survive in manuscript form.

Sick unto death, Góngora returned to Córdoba. His memory was waning, but not enough to lose awareness of the shabby treatment he had received from his male relatives whom he had been always helping to gain posts and charges thanks to his influence at Court. The question of his prose works remains a mystery. We do not even possess their titles. He died on May 23, 1627. His nephew don Luis de Saavedra never made a serious effort to publish his uncle's works posthumously, being too busy assuring for himself succession in his uncle's prebend of the Cathedral of Córdoba.

Góngora's influence on Western poetry in the centuries to come was uneven, if at times strong. Most of his prominent contemporaries came, at least to some extent, under his influence in choice of imagery, figures of speech, and structure. Foremost among these were Lope de Vega, and even his archrival Quevedo. Juan de Jáuregui, in spite of his public censure of cultist Gongorism, engaged in fully Gongorist practices in his mythological fable Orfeo (Orpheus, 1624). The same applies to Góngora's friends Villamediana, Paravicino, Pedro Soto de Rojas. Gabriel Bocángel y Unzueta, though heavily indebted in style to Jáuregui, shows also a decided impact of Gongorism in his Fábula de Leandro y Ero (Fable of Leander and Hero, 1627). As a user of cultist devices must be counted Polo de Medina, in spite of his cruel derision of these same devices in his Academias del Jardín (Academies of the Garden, 1630). Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera has been accused by José María de Cossío of “the most servile imitation of Gongorism.” (Alonso, 227). Another patent imitator was Tamayo Salazar with his Fábula de Ecco [sic] (Fable of Echo) published by Pellicer together with Ribera's work.

Among later seventeenth-century Gongorists figure Francisco Trillo y Figueroa and Miguel de Barrios. But cultismo, though of a more subdued and stately variety, also enters into the majority of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's plays: symmetrical sentence-building, parallelisms, multimembered correlations do occur, but are never abused in terms of frequency and violent leaps of imagination.

In the eighteenth century, Gongorist cultismo survived in the work of Gerardo Lobo, in the romances and letrillas of the Conde de Saldueña, in García de la Huerta and even in some of the passages by Nicolás Fernández Moratín, the indisputable Neoclassicist among Spanish writers of the pre-Romantic era.

In Portugal, Faría y Sousa was one of the most violent detractors of Góngora in the first half of the seventeenth century. His attacks were triggered by resentment of Góngora's fame, which, as Faría y Sousa believed, flourished at the expense of Camões, the national poet of Portugal. A five-volume collection entitled Fénix Renascida (Phoenix Reborn, 1716-1728) was published in Lisbon containing the works of most of Portugal's Gongorists. It was edited by Pereira da Silva; one third of the collection represent verses in Castilian. Antonio Barbosa Bacelar edited a collection entitled Saudades (Solitudes), ostensibly inspired by Góngora's Soledades. Following faithfully his model, Barbosa Bacelar utilized the silva verse structure. Another Portuguese inspired by the Soledades was Manuel de Melo. In 1650 appeared from his pen Pantheón … Poema Trágico dividido en dos Soledades (Pantheon … A Tragic Poem Consisting of Two Solitudes, 1650). Paulo Gonçalvez de Andrada also cultivated the silva genre; three silvas in Castilian are found in his Varias Poesías (1629). As for the myth of Polyphemus, four versions in Portuguese appear in Fénix Renascida. There even exists a satirical version of the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea in 73 octavas by Francisco de Vasconcelos. The myth receives burlesque treatment also in another Portuguese version by Jacinto Freire de Andrade.

In the New World, the most prominent admirer and imitator of Góngora was in the second half of the seventeenth century Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a native of New Granada; Gongorist phraseology dominates her Primero [sic] Sueño (First Dream).

In pre-Romantic Spain, Manuel Quintana, after some youthful experimentation with the Gongorist mode, ultimately assumed a negative attitude. He speaks of Góngora falling “into an abyss of extravagances and deliriums.” This negative attitude, concludes Dámaso Alonso, was to be, by and large, shared by nineteenth-century critics (op.cit., 249). Menéndez Pelayo's monumental Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (The History of Aesthetic Ideas in Spain, 1884) pronounced another blanket condemnation of Góngora and Gongorism. However, in France Paul Verlaine declared Góngora one of the “accursed poets” whose stature, exceeding the average norm of humanity, draws censure from the insensitive masses used to mediocrity. Verlaine thought to have discovered a common denominator between Góngora's violent, distended imagery and daring language, and the formal devices of French fin-de-siècle literary décadents.

On the threshold of the twentieth century the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío discovered during his Paris sojourn the Góngora cult. He introduced the poet's name in his prologue to the Cantos de Vida y de Esperanza (Songs of Life and Hope, 1905). Alonso calls Darío's Trébol (Trefoil, 1899) a pastiche of Gongorine style” (op. cit., 251). Spanish modernistas (spiritual descendants of Darío) and French symbolists thought, mistakenly, to have found a parallel between themselves and Góngora, (Dámaso Alonso, Estudios y ensayos gongorinos, 541-549).

In Spain Alfonso Reyes was the first serious scholar of modern times to subject Góngora's work to serious, indepth scrutiny in Cuestiones gongorinas (Questions Concerning Gongorism, 1927). L. P. Thomas brought out in 1909 Le lyrisme et la préciosité en Espagne (Lyric Poetry and Preciosity in Spain, 1909) and Góngora et le gongorisme (Góngora and Gongorism, 1911). R. Foulché-Delbosc edited the Obras poéticas de Góngora (Poetic Works of Góngora), published in 1921 in New York. This edition is based on the Chacón MS. that appears to be the definitive version; Millé edited Góngora's works in Madrid in 1932. Miguel Artigas brought out a Góngora biography in 1925.

The so-called Generation of '27 of Spanish writers, poets, and intellectuals rekindled the Góngora cult with their concern for literary “purity,” eliminating modernista and any other sentimentality from poetic creation. They found their concerns fulfilled to a great extent by the Góngora phenomenon. Dámaso Alonso was the leader among them in editing and analyzing it in its broadest implications. First came Góngora y la literatura contemporánea (Góngora and Contemporary Literature, 1928). Gerardo Diego published an Antología poética en honor de Góngora (Poetic Anthology in Góngora's Honor, 1927). J. J. Cossío edited the Romances; again Dámaso Alonso edited the Soledades with notes and a prose version (1935, 1956); then came Lengua poética de Góngora (Góngora's Poetic Language, 1935); he re-edited the Soledades as a part of vol. 1 of Góngora y el “Polifemo” (Góngora and the “Polyphemus,” 1961); a year earlier appeared his Estudios y ensayos gongorinos (Studies and Essays on Gongorism, 1960). García Lorca delivered a speech on the tercentenary of Góngora's death.

The enthusiasm of Alonso's generation helped to spread Góngora's fame abroad. The Soledades were translated in verse into English by Edward M. Wilson; into German, by H. Brunn; into French, by P. Darmangeat. W. Pabst wrote an aesthetic evaluation entitled Gongoras Schöpfung (Góngora's Creative Artistry). The eminent Romanist Leo Spitzer undertook textual studies and style analyses of Góngora's work; Ernst Robert Curtius, H. Petriconi, Helmut Hatzfeld (in the U.S.), W. Mönch and others dealt critically with the phenomenon. Alda Croce published in Italy “La poesia di Luis de Gongora” in the journal Critica. In England Góngora attracted the attention of E. M. Wilson, W. J. Entwistle, T. E. May, and R. O. Jones. In the U.S., J. P. W. Crawford, Elisha Kane, L. Grismer, I. A. Leonard, E. E. Uhrhahn, and Eunice Joiner Oates wrote on the Baroque poet. Among Hispanists in the New World essays and books appeared by Alfonso Méndez Plancarte in Mexico, R. Oriz in Chile; in Cracow, Poland, Zdislaw Milner contributed a book in French entitled La Formation des figures poétiques dans l'oeuvre cultiste de Góngora (The Formation of Poetic Figures in the Cultist Work of Góngora).

Two literary scholars and one philosopher of world renown turned their energies to the examination of Gongorism: Vossler contributed a commentary of the Soledades; Ramón Menéndez Pidal wrote an essay on the obscurity of Góngora's language; José Ortega y Gasset used the analytical prowess of a philosopher for a general evaluation of Góngora the poet.

Among the scholars of the Sixties Benítez Claros, A. Gallego Morell, Josefina G. Aráez came out with comparative studies tracing Gongorism to other Spanish poets of the seventeenth century; Emilio Orozco Díaz's Góngora (1953) offers insights into Baroque art in general. Antonio Vilanova focuses on the Polyphemus myth in Las fuentes y los temas del Polifemo (Sources and Themes of Polyphemus). It is conceivable that the interest in the Góngora phenomenon will not die in the Eighties, although it is quite likely that the final word on the meaning and value of Góngora's art will never be spoken.

Notes

1. Dámaso Alonso, Góngora y el Polifemo (Madrid: Gredos, 1961), I, 27.

2. In my article “The Emergence of Baroque Mentality and Its Cultural Impact on Western Europe After 1550,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XXVIII / 3, Spring 1970, 315 ff. For Hatzfeld, see Helmut Hatzfeld, Estudios sobre el Barroco (Madrid, 1964).

3. Op. cit., 316.

4. Alonso, Góngora, I, 28. My italics.

5. Op. cit., 78.

6. Alonso, 87.