Modern Spanish Lyrics | Page 6

heavenly joys, breathes in
all his writings. He was
also a devoted student of the
classics, and his poems (for which he
cared nothing and
which were not published till 1631) show Latin
rather than
Italian influence. There is nothing in literature more

pure, more serene, more direct or more polished than
La vida del
campo, Noche serena and others of his
compositions.
The other great mystics cared less for literature, either
as a study or
an accomplishment. The poems of Saint
Theresa (1515-1582) are few
and mostly mediocre. San Juan
de la Cruz, the Ecstatic Doctor
(1542-1591), wrote the
most exalted spiritual poems in the language;
like all the
mystics, he was strongly attracted by the Song of
Songs
which was paraphrased by Pedro Malón de Chaide
(1530-1596?). It is
curious to note that the stanza
adopted in the great mystical lyrics is
one page xxiii invented by Garcilaso and used in his amatory fifth

_Canción_. It has the rime-scheme of the Spanish
quintilla, but the
lines are the Italian eleven-and
seven-syllable (cf. pp. 9-12).
Religious poems in more
popular forms are found in the Romancero
espiritual
(1612) of José de Valdivielso, and in Lope de Vega's


Rimas sacras (1614) and Romancero espiritual (1622).
There were numerous secular disciples of Garcilaso at
about the same
period. The names most deserving mention
are those of Francisco de
la Torre (d. 1594?), Luis
Barahona de Soto (1535?-1595) and
Francisco de Figueroa
(1536?-1620), all of whom wrote creditably
and sometimes
with distinction in the Italian forms. Luis de Camoens

(1524?-1580), author of the great Portuguese epic _Os
Lusiadas_,
employed Castilian in many verses with happy
result.
These figures lead to the threshold of the seventeenth
century which
opened with a tremendous literary output in
many lines. Cervantes
was writing his various novels;
the romance of roguery took on new
life with _Guzmán de
Alfarache_ (1599); the drama, which had been
developing
rather slowly and spasmodically, burst suddenly into full

flower with Lope de Vega and his innumerable followers.
The old
meter of the romance was adopted as a favorite
form by all sorts and
conditions of poets and was turned
from its primitive epic simplicity
to the utmost variety
of subjects, descriptive, lyric and satiric.
From out this flood of production--for every dramatist was
in a
measure a lyric poet, and dramatists were legion--we
can select for
consideration only the men most prominent
as lyrists. First in the
impulse which he gave to
literature for more than a century following
stands Luis
de ARGOTE Y GÓNGORA (1561-1627), a Cordovan
page xxiv who chose to be known by his mother's name. His life was

mainly that of a disappointed place-hunter. His abrupt
change of
literary manner has made some say that there
were in him two poets,
Góngora the Good and Góngora the
Bad. He began by writing odes in
the manner of Herrera and
romances_ and _villancicos which are
among the clearest
and best. They did not bring their author fame,
however,
and he seems deliberately to have adopted the involved

metaphoric style to which Marini gave his name in Italy.
Góngora is
merely the Spanish representative of the
movement, which also

produced Euphuism in England and
_préciosité_ in France. But he
surpassed all previous
writers in the extreme to which he carried the
method, and
his Soledades_ and _Polifemo are simply unintelligible

for the inversions and strained metaphors with which they
are
overloaded.
His influence was enormous. Gongorism, or culteranismo,
as it was
called at the time, swept the minor poets
with it, and even those who
fought the movement most
vigorously, like Lope and Quevedo, were
not wholly free
from the contagion. The second generation of
dramatists
was strongly affected. Yet there are few lyric poets worth

mentioning among Góngora's disciples for the reason that
such a
pernicious system meant certain ruin to those who
lacked the master's
talent. The most important names are
the Count of Villamediana
(1580-1622), a satirist whose
sharp tongue caused his assassination,
and Paravicino y
Arteaga (1580-1633), a court preacher.
Obviously, such an innovation could not pass without
opposition
from clear-sighted men. LOPE DE VEGA
(1562-1635) attacked it
whenever opportunity offered, and
his verse seldom shows signs of
corruption. It page xxv is impossible to consider the master-dramatist at
length
here. He wrote over 300 sonnets, many excellent eclogues,

epistles, and, in more popular styles, glosses,
letrillas, villancicos,
romances, etc. Lope more than
any other poet of his time kept his ear
close to the
people, and his light poems are full of the delicious

breath of the country.
The other principal opponent of Gongorism was Francisco
GÓMEZ
DE QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS (1580-1645), whose wit and

independence made him formidable. In 1631 he published
the poems
of Luis de León and Francisco de la Torre as a
protest against the
baleful mannerism in vogue. But he
himself adopted a hardly less
disagreeable style, called
conceptism, which is supposed to have been
invented by
Alonso de Ledesma (1552-1623). It consists in a strained


search for unusual thoughts which entails forced
paradoxes,
antitheses and epigrams. This system, combined
with local allusions,
double meanings and current slang,
in which Quevedo delighted,
makes his poems often
extremely difficult of comprehension. His
_romances de
jaques_, written in thieves' jargon, are famous in Spain.

Quevedo wrote too much and carelessly and tried to cover
too
many