The figure of Luis de Góngora y Argote has prompted critical polemics for the last three centuries. For a long time, critics divided his poetry into two categories: the easy-to-understand popular poems and the culteranos, complex works that are difficult to comprehend because of distorted syntax and a new poetic language. To quote a famous expression, Góngora became known as “Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness.” Research indicates, however, that his poetry developed in one constant line, culminating in the integration of opposing stylistic tendencies. The year 1613 marked the beginning of a literary controversy, yet unresolved, when the first manuscript copies of Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea were distributed at court. Literary circles in Spain were shocked, and opinion was drastically divided. On one hand, Góngora’s ardent admirers proclaimed him to be the prince of poets. On the other hand, his enemies accused him of destroying both language and poetry. It is important to mention that among his severest critics were two of the leading Spanish poets of the Golden Age: Lope de Vega and Francisco de Quevedo. With Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea and the first part of The Solitudes of Don Luis de Góngora, distributed in 1613, Góngora nevertheless became the central figure of Spanish poetry. The impact of his complex style, culteranismo, was so powerful that even his worst enemies were ultimately influenced by...

Góngora was the author of at least 166 sonnets; some fifty more are attributed to him. The sonnets, like the romances, span his entire literary life. It is important to remember that the sonnet form had not only a literary function in the Golden Age, but also a social one. Poets were expected to write for various special occasions, and most of the time the sonnet was the chosen form; it was short and had a flavor of enlightenment and culture. Thus, Góngora often was compelled to write occasional sonnets. Many such poems were written for special festivities, such as births, weddings, and hunting parties, or were merely encomiastic compositions to celebrate sayings or actions of the nobility. Góngora managed to overcome the limitations imposed upon him, composing masterpieces based on these stock themes. Not all of his sonnets, however, were occasioned thus; many were born in the soul of the poet and offer lyrical expressions of his persona.

It is impossible to consider the sonnets individually, but the “Inscripción para la tumba de El Greco” (“Epitaph for the Tomb of El Greco”) deserves mention. Critics have noted that there is a relation between Góngora’s poetry and El Greco’s art. Both responded to a distorted vision of the world that was typical of the Baroque period. Góngora’s admiration for El Greco’s painting is easy to understand in the light of his poetry. Both artists were successful in creating a new code and a new mode of expression.

Góngora frequently employed traditional Renaissance topoi. The carpe diem and brevitas vitae themes combine in a sonnet written in 1582 to create a typically Baroque worldview. The poet describes a beautiful woman in the spring of her life; the Baroque spirit emerges in the last stanza, when the poet asserts that the gold of her hair will become silver, that the freshness of her face will become a crushed violet, that beauty, youth, and the lady herself will become “earth, dust, smoke, shadow, nothingness.”

Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea

Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea is Góngora’s masterpiece. The text is a recreation of Ovid’s fable of Acis and Galathea. Góngora transforms the 159 Latin hexameters into sixty octaves. The poem also contains an introduction of three octaves, for a total of sixty-three (504 hendecasyllabic lines). The argument of the poem is basically the same as Ovid’s: The horrible Polyphemus loves Galathea, a beautiful nymph, but she falls in love with the young and beautiful Acis. In a jealous rage, the Cyclops grabs a gigantic rock and crushes Acis under it. The young lover is changed into a river by Galathea’s mother, Doris.

In Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, Góngora created a completely new poetic language. The border between everyday and lyrical language had never before been so clearly delineated. Góngora found his tools in the rhetorical devices of the classical Roman and Greek writers, learning from them not only a new vocabulary but also a new syntax. His use of this new grammar offered the best means of giving the language a new...