GONGORA'S ECHOES, WAVES AND MIRRORS
LA SOLEDAD PRIMERA, 669 -76
La gaita al baile solicita el gusto,
a la voz el salterio;
cruza el Trión más fijo el hemisferio,
y el tronco mayor danza en la ribera;
el eco, voz ya entera, (1)
no hay silencio a que pronto no responda;
fanal es del arroyo cada onda, (2)
luz el reflejo, la agua vidrïera. (Sol.I 669 - 76)
Trión refers to Polaris, the most stable ("cruza") star of the Oso Minor, represented on earth by the semaphors which surround an Oso Mayor on the riverside, activated by the light of Trión (in space) to perform a dance during a wedding (on earth).
Why la agua vidrïera? Answer: don Luis wanted the verse to rhyme with entera, and avoid a Greek accusative. The glass enables, the semaphors guide, the light delivers.
The verse may be read as: luz el reflejo, la vidrïera agua. Or: luz el reflejo, el agua vidrïero. Or: luz el reflejo, vidrïera el agua.
Don Luis took the best option. A monotonous repetition of el would not have been right: el eco, el arroyo, el reflejo, el agua, el vidriero. He did not even reiterate la voz, but chose ya to maintain the ever present "a" in this fragment.(3)
Don Luis took the best option. A monotonous repetition of el would not have been right: el eco, el arroyo, el reflejo, el agua, el vidriero. He did not even reiterate la voz, but chose ya to maintain the ever present "a" in this fragment.(3)
The event is surrounded by the shapes and sounds of nature (with some mysticism) impregnated by the music of Northern Spain, composed by the poet in the satisfying scale of A Major.(4)
1) Góngora should have written "en" here, but instead wrote down (by candle light) a comma. The same occurs a few lines later.
Quite a dominant voice (double / two-way): the echo. Even with the sounds produced by the gaita and psaltetrio completely gone the echo still produces this music perfectly.
In line 674 "no" appears twice: another echo. This perfect echo neutrolises every silence.
Góngora could have written "always" here, but wrote no ... no instead, in order to terminate responder in "a".
2) Alonso, in his interpretation (1927), states: el agua de vidriera. Carreira (Antología Poética, 2009) writes: el verso 676 es quiásmico. Pellicer interpretes Góngora's visualization of the creek in detail.
Initially Góngora wrote a cada onda in line 675. (See text below).
3) & 4) In the Dedication Góngora played with the a, u, o and e.
(*) Jammes published in 1984 (in Criticón no. 27, University Le Mirail, Toulouse) a handwritten copy of a Góngora manuscript (dated 17th century) obtained by Prof. Antonio Rodriguez-Moñino. It contains 779 lines of the first Soledad, in a very early construction. Góngora's early texts often contain spelling errors. (Here: "frio", "fijo", the comma in line 671). Trión is the North Star Polaris, the most stable one of the "Oso Minor". After that Góngora writes "más frío, el emisferio" (the cold spotlight of Trión) in combination with a "tronco maior" mirrored by the moving lighthouses of a creek. Góngora might have read the studies of Ptolomeo, and study the stars while staying overnight in the fields of Spain. "Trión" refers to: evening, night. "Gaita", "psalterio": Galicia.
Of course the "Rodríguez Manuscript" is an early version of the first Solitude, and Góngora might have altered the text later on. (In the text below he leaves out "gaita". "Emisferio" features in order to rhyme with "psalterio" to musically describe the wedding. After that the visual part emerges). We could translate "mas" (in line 671) as but, and interprete the line as: from a cold hemisphere the star (the handle of the "Oso Minor" (in the shape of a ladle) descends to the warmer ambience of the creek.
* Trión also refers to an Italian card game.
* Fanal derives from the Greek phanárion.
* The Soledades mainly originate from the Greek language, translated by Valencia to Latin, by Góngora to old Spanish and by us to modern Spanish. Further translations are unlikely to be successful.
* The interpretations above are very likely, but with don Luis: "who knows?" (Paper written between January and June 2026 in various countries.)
Books consulted: Alonso, Pellicer, Carreira, Jammes.