Luis de Góngora: Life, Work, and Legacy
Luis de Góngora
Life
Born into a noble family in Córdoba, Luis de Góngora’s taste for luxury and gambling clashed with his religious vocation. In 1617, he became a priest and served as chaplain to the king.
Work
Góngora was a respected and self-assured poet, famous for inventing a brilliant, elite poetic language known as culterano. His work encompasses both learned poetry (culteranismo) and traditional forms (romances and letrillas).
Learned Poetry
From his early sonnets, Góngora displayed a penchant for learned poetry. This intensified after 1609, when, disillusioned with court life, he retired to Córdoba. He then wrote his major culterano poems: Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea and Soledades. These works evoked strong reactions, ranging from immense admiration to outright rejection. Góngora’s new style, culteranismo, is characterized by:
- Intensified lexical and syntactic cultism (e.g., hyperbaton)
- Accumulation of beautifying metaphors
- Abundant mythological allusions
- Conceptist wordplay
Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, written in octaves, narrates the monstrous rage of the Cyclops Polyphemus when he discovers the love between the nymph Galatea and the young Acis. In his fury, Polyphemus crushes Acis with a rock, and the youth’s blood transforms into a river.
Soledades, though planned as a four-part poem, was left incomplete. The first part (2,000 verses) is finished, and the second (900 verses) is nearly complete. The first Soledad tells of a young castaway who encounters goatherds on a beach. In the second, a girl meets fishermen. The narrative serves primarily as a pretext for a hymn to nature, simple life, and everyday objects. The contrast between the subject matter and the brilliance of the language is striking.
Traditional Poetry
Góngora’s letrillas and romances represent his traditional side. These poems, initially transmitted orally through song, were later collected in Romanceros. His romances cover diverse themes: pastoral, lyrical, Moorish, mythological, and captive narratives. He sometimes blends classical mythology with a burlesque tone. In his ballads and satirical letrillas, the conceptist style often prevails.