Luis de Góngora: Life, Poetry, and Legacy
Luis de Góngora: A Life in Poetry
Early Life and Career
Born in Córdoba in 1561, Luis de Góngora’s life presents a stark contrast between the man and the artist. A brilliant poet with economic concerns, personal ambitions, and family ties, Góngora studied at the University of Salamanca in 1576. Returning to Córdoba in 1586, he held a council position. His travels took him to Madrid, Salamanca, Valencia, and Cuenca in 1603. In 1613, the publication of his two masterpieces, Polyphemus and Solitudes, in Madrid caused a scandal that prompted his move to the capital. Ill and disillusioned by his unfulfilled ambitions as a courtier, Góngora returned to Córdoba in 1626, where he died in 1627. In 1927, a group of poets, including Dámaso Alonso, Vicente Alexandre, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guillén, and Federico García Lorca, commemorated the tercentenary of his death, reclaiming his poetic legacy.
Poetic Evolution
Góngora’s poetic career is marked by an intensification and accumulation of stylistic devices, culminating in the complexity of Polyphemus and Solitudes (1612). His work can be divided into two distinct periods: a clear and simple style (“Prince of Light”) and a dark and contrived style (“Prince of Darkness”). This evolution represents a qualitative change, marked by the intensification of lexical and syntactic devices, including learned words, metaphors, and hyperbole.
Letrillas and Romances
Góngora’s literary production is almost exclusively poetic, encompassing hundreds of romances, sonnets, letrillas, and two major long poems: The Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea and Solitudes. His poetic activity began during his student years in Salamanca, where he followed traditional poetry, romances, letrillas, and fashionable Italianate sonnets and songs. Even his early poems reveal a complex and mature poet with mastery of stylistic resources. His letrillas satirize the vices of his time, including the frivolity of women, the presumption of heartthrobs, the avarice of doctors, lawyers, and clergymen, the power of money, and the miseries of life. Góngora contrasts these societal ills with the ideal of a comfortable and easy village life. He uses romances ironically, departing from traditional heroic themes to address topics such as prisoners, pastoral matters, mythology, and even autobiographical elements.
Sonnets
Góngora’s sonnets reflect the harmonious decompensation characteristic of Baroque and Renaissance architecture. They explore themes of love’s disappointments and parodies of Renaissance ideals. He also cultivated occasional and courtly verses, composing ornamental poems on religious subjects or in praise of prelates, artists, and friends. His satirical vision extends to the court, evident even in poems written on the eve of his death.
Polyphemus and Solitudes: Masterpieces of Baroque Poetry
Polyphemus and Galatea
With Polyphemus and Galatea, Góngora achieves the fullness of his original poetic style. This lyric-narrative poem, consisting of 63 stanzas (ABABABCC), draws on the mythological tradition of the Renaissance. Based on Ovid’s fable, it recounts the love of the shepherd Acis and the nymph Galatea, who is also pursued by the Cyclops Polyphemus. Polyphemus kills Acis, who is then transformed into a river by the gods. The poem is notable for its lush Baroque descriptions of Sicily, its vegetation, and the giant himself, as well as its ingenious metaphors and ornate style.
Solitudes
Solitudes, Góngora’s most ambitious and complex work, is a cyclic long poem intended to be divided into four parts, representing the four stages of life (youth, adolescence, manhood, and old age) or the stages of a pilgrim’s journey through the desert (fields, rivers, forests, and wilderness). The project remained incomplete, with only the first and a portion of the second part written. The near absence of a plot and the use of silva (an indefinite series of seven-syllable lines rhyming with heroic and varied verses) grant the poet absolute freedom to dilute the action and enrich the verse with complex stylistic procedures.
Style and Themes
The tenuous plot serves as a pretext for showcasing various aspects of reality: nature in all its manifestations (seas, rivers, mountains, islands) and the simple life of shepherds and fishermen, with their loves, games, and labors. These are contrasted with the world of the disillusioned pilgrim, frustrated by political and courtly ambitions. The poem is characterized by an accumulation of descriptions, lists, and long speeches by characters entangled in a puzzling narrative sequence. The verse is laden with stylistic resources, resulting in a stunning, albeit challenging, poem. Solitudes stands as one of the peaks of Spanish literature of all time.