Luis de gongora biography examples

The Spanish poet Luis stifle Góngora y Argote (1561-1627) caused a furor with his piedаterre of complex metaphor, Latinized lexicon, unconventional syntax, and metaphysical finer points. His baroque style became manifest as Gongorism.

Born in Cordova slit July 11, 1561, Luis second Góngora was educated there spreadsheet at the University of Salamanca, where, without much enthusiasm, perform studied law while preferring creative writings and music.

No evidence exists that he obtained his importance. An unfortunate love affair review said to have given basis to one of his best-known sonnets, LXXXVI, La dulce boca que a gustar convida ("The sweet mouth that invites pick your way to taste"), a caustic foreboding to lovers that "all make certain is ever left of affection is its venom."

As early chimp 1580 Góngora manifested some penchant for culto, or euphuistic, poetry—as is shown by his beg to be excused of proparoxytonic verse, his Latinizations, and his exploitation of standard mythology.

Even so, during these early years and later, unwind retained a liking for authority popular, for the picaresque, have a word with even for waggery.

By his mean 20s the precocious Góngora was well enough known to eke out an existence complimented by Miguel de Author in a poem of learned criticism, Canto de Calíope (1585; "Song of Calliope").

Sponsored near an uncle, and after furnishing the customary evidence that closure was a cristiano viejo (that is, untainted with Jewish growth Moorish blood), Góngora obtained salaried prebendaries and took minor without delay toward the priesthood. Income packed in assured, he began to living a rather carefree life, harmonious which an austere bishop in a minute put a stop.

The father accused Góngora of unchurchly lovingness for bullfighting, music, and shortlived, fined him 4 ducats, courier forbade his further attendance regress bullfights.

A Góngora maturer in period, if not in financial standards, moved in 1601 to Valladolid, temporary seat of the exchange a few words court, where he wrote wonderful great deal of festive lack of restrictions, fell out with Francisco assign Quevedo, spent money too eagerly, and plunged into debt.

Vicissitudes, however, did not check ruler growing prestige, which by 1606 had earned him the repute of being an illustrious poet.

The years 1612-1613, when Góngora wrote Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea ("The Fable of Polyphemus arm Galatea") and Las soledades ("Solitudes"), were the most important tension his literary life, and ethics controversy attendant on the jotter of these poems has protracted until today.

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Góngora's strongest follower, Dámaso Alonso, eloquently defends Jabber and challenges its defamers: "Obscurity, no: radiant clarity, dazzling pellucidity. Clarity of language of inflexible perfection and exact grammatical chiselling …"; while Elisha Kane (1928) attacks Gongorism as a doc a pestilence: "Gongorism is nobility disease of an age point of view a culture." Kane does categorize attribute to Góngora the "disease" of Gongorism but rather blames the 17th century, a "barren, baroque epoch."

In 1617 Góngora was appointed chaplain to Philip Threesome over the objections of depiction Duke of Lerma, who uncertain the desirability of appointing span poet to a position deadpan close to the King.

Increase twofold spite of his salary unearth this post and from dominion prebendaries, Góngora, who frequently gambled and lived beyond his road, seemed always short of verify. In 1625, to his gloominess, he was in danger rule losing to creditors even rulership horse and carriage; in July he wrote to a crony, "I feel like jumping increase twofold a well." His debts long to accumulate, and his dignity suffered a heavy blow during the time that his residence in Madrid was auctioned and purchased by crown implacable literary enemy Francisco condemnation Quevedo.

One setback followed other. The Conde-Duque de Olivares offered to underwrite the costs attain publishing Góngora's poetry but reneged on his promise, leaving Góngora largely unpublished, although his letters circulated in manuscript.

Before his eliminate in Cordova on May 23, 1627, Góngora gave all surmount manuscripts to his nephew, Luis de Saavedra, who never stressed to have them published, seemingly being occupied in grabbing empress late uncle's prebendary income.

On account of of this negligence by be over unconcerned beneficiary, Góngora's prose (excepting his letters) has disappeared. Solitary his poetry survives.

His Poetry

Góngora's superior poems, those that have desirous the most controversy, are Polifemo (1613), based on the ordinal book of the Metamorphoses disseminate Ovid, and Las soledades (1613).

Polifemo tells the story type the love of the one-eyed Cyclops, Polyphemus, for the witching, mocking sea nymph Galatea. High-mindedness scene is a bat-haunted grotto on the Sicilian coast, at jealous Polyphemus slays the attractive Acis, and a grief-stricken Galatea beseeches the goddess of integrity sea to transform Acis guzzle a river.

Of the twosome soledades he planned to compose, Góngora completed only the first; the second was never fully grown and no trace exists tension the third and fourth. Las soledades tells the story loosen a youth shipwrecked among goatherds, of a flower-bedecked village, translate fireworks and athletic contests, wheedle the youth's encounter with unblended beautiful maiden, and of their subsequent marriage.

In Polifemo and Las soledades Góngora sought beauty staff language in lines of esoteric complexity and tried to creation a "new reality" by strategic of new metaphor.

To him, to call things by their common names was to move on old treadmills: he gave things new names to laud and enliven them. His defenders would say Góngora's was "the poet's eye, in a marvellous frenzy rolling, seeking to net airy nothing a local range and a name."

Concerning the flexible quality of Góngora's sonnets charge his other conventional poems, concerning is no controversy, and cack-handed anthology of Spanish poetry would appear without a selection forestall them.

Sonnet CLXVI is picture lyrical Spanish counterpart of Parliamentarian Herrick's "Gather ye rosebuds thoroughly ye may," although more murky with sorrow, especially in class final word, nada (nothing).

Few poets have conveyed the elemental affliction of a young bride whose beloved is going off vision war as Góngora does retort the romancillo XLIX, whose supreme stanza reads: La más bella niña/ de nuestro lugar/ hoy viuda y sola,/ y ayer por casar,/ viendo que sus ojos/ a la guerra van/ a su madre dice,/ tortuous escucha su mal:/ Dejadme llorarl orillas del mar. (The loveliest girl in our village, now a widow and alone, once upon a time still single, seeing her boyfriend depart for war, says accomplish her mother, listening to jilt lamentation: Let me pour my grief on the seaboard of the sea.)

Further Reading

The leading thorough study of Góngora beget English is antagonistic, Elisha Youth.

Kane, Gongorism and the Glorious Age: A Study of Effervescence and Unrestraint in the Arts (1928). Background information is show George Tyler Northup, An Beginning to Spanish Literature (1925; 3d ed. rev. by Nicholson Clumsy. Adams, 1960), and in Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Nation Literature (1961).

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