Francisco de Quevedo: Analysis of a Baroque Sonnet on Time
The Baroque Context and Quevedo’s Sonnet Structure
The seventeenth-century Baroque art and cultural movement broke away from the schemes of the Renaissance, creating a profound style characterized by exaggeration and disproportion. It was during this period that Francisco de Quevedo wrote this sonnet.
Formal Structure of the Work
The work is a sonnet, composed of two quartets and two tercets. Each verse contains 11 syllables (hendecasyllable), a meter often used to mimic natural speech patterns, making the language seem more natural. The rhyme scheme is consonant and crossed (ABBA ABBA CDE CDE). The central theme is the author’s confrontation with death.
Thematic Division and Pessimism
The work is divided into two thematic parts:
- Part One (The Quartets): Focuses on the looming battle between life and death, showing how the author weakens over time.
- Part Two (The Tercets): Represents the state after death, where the author speaks as if his soul.
Quevedo maintains a profoundly pessimistic view, constantly addressing the inevitability of death.
Rhetorical Figures and Conceptismo
Quevedo employs several rhetorical devices characteristic of Conceptismo:
Analysis of the First Quartet
- Verse 1: The use of hyperbaton (e.g., “was sleeping yesterday, yesterday was a dream”) immediately establishes the author’s pessimism.
- Verse 2: Features anaphora (“Shortly before, nothing, shortly after, smoke”) and antithesis, contrasting the past and the future. This emphasizes the rapid decay associated with the theme of fugit tempus (time flies).
- Verse 3: Contains anaphora (repetition of “and”) and a striking paradox (“destiny ambitions”), highlighting the impossibility of fulfilling earthly desires when facing mortality.
Metaphors in the Second Quartet
The second quartet develops the central metaphor of life as a war against death, showing a downward gradient of vitality:
- Verse 1: “Short unwelcome bout war” is a metaphor where a single day is seen as a brief battle within the larger war that is life.
- Verse 2: “In my defense, I am high risk” is another metaphor for the fight against death, suggesting that Quevedo is still defending himself well, implying his time has not yet fully arrived.
- Verse 3: “And while I use my arms” is a metaphor for the passage of time, illustrating the gradual process of dying.
- Verse 4: The final verse contains a metaphor signifying death’s victory, where the soul has left the body and the “war” is lost.
This quartet functions as a downward gradient, moving from metaphors that imply life and struggle toward those that confirm death and defeat.
The First Tercet: Disorder and Personification
The entire first tercet is structured as a major hyperbaton, disrupting chronological order:
“is no longer happening yesterday and was today and tomorrow is not reached, with movement that brings me headlong death”
This symbolic disorder suggests that the soul, facing death, loses its sense of linear time. Crucially, death is presented through personification, treated as an active, moving entity.
The Final Tercet: Paradox and Monument
The last stanza also utilizes extensive hyperbaton, resulting in a complex, disorganized structure. The central image is a powerful paradox and metaphor:
“Hoes is the time and the time that, by the day of my grief and care, Dig in my live my monument.”
The phrase “the time and date are hoes” is paradoxical because time cannot physically dig. This suggests that the passage of time itself is the instrument of the author’s demise, constructing his monument while he is still alive. “The wages of my grief and care” serves as a metaphor for life’s struggles. This final tercet strongly reinforces the fugit tempus theme, asserting that the process of dying is inherent in the process of adult life.
Conclusion: Baroque Themes and Quevedo’s Message
Quevedo conveys the stark reality that life is a constant war against death, a war that death inevitably wins. Key Baroque characteristics evident in the poem include:
- The personification of death as an active entity.
- The pervasive theme of fugit tempus (the fleeting nature of time).
- Profound pessimism regarding human existence.
- The extensive use of complex metaphors and rhetorical figures, hallmarks of Conceptismo, the literary style championed by Francisco de Quevedo.