.

 THE PERPETUAL CONCEPT OF MIRRORS AND ECHOES

 Góngora's pasos versus Valencia's versos

Jack de Groot

Góngora and his benefactor

Luis de Góngora y Argote (Córdoba: 1561 - 1627), one of Spain's most prominent poets, precedes his masterpiece "Las Soledades" with a magnificent, imaginative Dedication to his sponsor and protector don Alonso Diego López de Zuñiga y Sotomayor (1578 - 1619), VI Duke of Béjar and Plasencia.

The Duke's castle on the Plaza Mayor de Maldonado in Béjar overlooks the ancient "Ruta de la Plata", which derives its name from the Arabic al-balat: cobbled paving. Initially this "Ruta de la Plata" (now "Vía de la Plata") served to transport tin from Tartessos to other parts of Europe, but since the Middle Ages it guides pilgrims from Andalucía through Extremadura, Castilla y León and Galicia to the tumb of one of Christ's Apostles in Santiago de Compostela.(1)

Ducal Palace, Béjar.

The Duke's home.

Béjar in the 1600s (without the light bulb).

In the thirty seven lines of the Dedication(2) Góngora describes the Duke's hunting activities. The brave nobleman combats giant, snowy mountains and kills large numbers of dangerous animals. The blood sweating javelins, used by the Duke and his assistants to kill these creatures, are named fresno: the species of tree and type of material from which they are made. Góngora often transforms objects to a universal color or consistency. Therefore, snowy mountains are gigantes de cristal, while the blood soaked snow, which eventually reaches the river Tormes, is coral, not similar in color only.

The Dedication to don Alonso may be divided up into segments which should not be excessively interpreted nor translated, because this would deny the reader a valuable, personal interpretation. In the initial stanza the narrator describes the pasos and versos of the peregrino errante. Although Góngora mentions pasos and versos, he alludes to the versos only: some lost, some inspired (see also lines 30-32). Remarkable is the application of violent hyperbaton in the second line to interrupt the monotonous rhythm of the steps. The presence of the peregrino (not the peregrinus, mentioned later on) would attract the Duke's attention, and possibly persuade him to continue his sponsorship and protection.

 

          AL DUKE DE BÉJAR

 

         Pasos de un peregrino son errante

         cuantos me dictó versos dulce Musa,

         en soledad confusa

         perdidos unos, otros inspirados.

          (lines 1-4) 

 

In the succeeding verses the Duke becomes an almost Mythological warrior(3) who explores gigantic, armed mountains while being severely hindered by walls of trees with diamond battlements. This significant section of the narrative (surrounded by exclamation marks) is constructed with vocabulary containing the pervasive vowel "e". Although Góngora initiated with dulce, venablos, confusa, Musa and pasos ("u", "o" and "a"), he subsequently achieves a proper perspective through gigantes, eco, errante, los teme el cielo, versos, términos and fieras.(4) The dramatic climax arrives in espumoso coral le dan al Tormes!

The "gigantes de cristal" near Béjar. (Picture taken in May.)

         

          ¡Oh tú que, de venablos impedido,

          --muros de abeto, almenas de diamante-- 

          bates los montes que, de nieve armados,

          gigantes de cristal, los teme el cielo,

          donde el cuerno, del Eco repetido,

          fieras te expone que, al teñido suelo,

          muertas pidiendo términos disformes,

          espumoso coral le dan al Tormes!

          (lines 5-12)(Chacón states: Eco)

 

El solícito montero  in términos disformes

Góngora appears to express humor when he states that the horn blown by the unicorn (in line 9) is mirrored, and doubled, by its echo. However, he may well have mirrored fieras to expose the bicornuous, bullish hunters themselves, including the Duke. (Donde el eco del cuerno fieras te expone). Having transmitted this rather intimate message to the reader, Góngora now interrupts the narrative with al teñido suelo and the adjective muertas (here subject) to refer to dead animals in términos disformes only. (Why should hunters need to blow their horns to encounter espumoso coral?) Earlier on the poet wrote down errante in a similar manner to deal with the intricate issue of the versos and the pasos. The hyperbolized términos disformes (in line 11) refer to numerous dead animals, predominantly stacked up bears, today virtually extinct in Spain (except in the Pyrenees and recently emerging from Asturias). Over the centuries some serious killing was done by hunters like don Alonso and his companions (who could exit the multiple story palace in Béjar unnoticed through a labyrinth of lower ground corridors.)(5)

 

          arrima a un fresno el fresno cuyo acero,

             sangre sudando, en tiempo hará breve

          purpurear la nieve, 

          y en cuanto da el solícito montero

          al duro roble, al pino levantado,

          --émulos vividores de las peñas--

          las formidables señas

          del oso que aun besaba atravesado

          la asta de tu luciente jabelina,

          (lines 13-21) 

 

Here Góngora mentions the fiera by its name, and also divulges the true nature of the Duke's fresno: the luciente jabelina. The same javelin is being kissed by the formidable mouths of the bears killed by el solícito montero: the Duke and many others. Does Góngora express humor through the application of synecdoche and alliteration (in lines 13-14) when he writes down arrima a un fresno el fresno cuyo acero, sangre sudando, or does he refer to waste and destruction?

 

          o lo sagrado supla de la encina

          lo augusto del dosel, o de la fuente

          la alta cenefa lo majestüoso

          del sitïal a la deidad debido,

          ¡oh duque esclarecido!

          templa en sus ondas tu fatiga ardiente,

          y entregados tus miembros al reposo

          sobre el de grama césped no desnudo,

          déjate un rato hallar del pie acertado

          que tus errantes pasos ha votado

          a la real cadena de tu escudo.(6)

          (lines 22-32) 

 

Conventional (Majestic) imagery describes the sunray protection provided by the mighty oak, the relaxing nature of the stream, and the lawn littered with (white) flowers (el de grama césped no desnudo). Although the Duke is spoken to in the second person singular, Góngora emphatically expresses admiration in "enlightened" and "Majestic".

 

          Honre süave, generoso nudo

          libertad de Fortuna perseguida

          que a tu piedad Euterpe agradecida

          su canoro dará dulce instrumento,

          cuando la Fama no su trompa, al viento.

          (lines 33-37) 

  

In the concluding lines the poet refers to the real cadena which features on the Duke's coat of arms. He reveals a sense of history when he writes down dulce, instrumento, agradecida, Fortuna, su trompa, süave and cuando ("u" and "i"). "Protect me, Duke, so that Euterpe, thankful for your generosity, may offer her praise by playing her dulce instrumento (flaute) in your honor, long after Fame has stopped blowing the trumpet."

 

La primera verdad  revealed

Although Góngora wrote a brilliant Dedication in honor of his sponsor, the text contains ambiguous imagery with adjectival and adverbial clauses which would have challenged the Duke's comprehension. As always Góngora revels in the application of hyperbaton and the use of Cultisms such as formidable and purpurear. It is unlikely that the thirty-four year old Duke would have (instantly) understood the lengthy, handwritten Soledades, read to him by a fifty-one year old veteran poet in his castle in the provincial town of Béjar. The Duke wasn't known as a cultural man, and his (Iberian and North African) hunters were illiterate vagabunds. The expulsion of the Moriscos later on would not have interested Góngora, in poor health. Having said that, we are eternally grateful to the Duke of Béjar, who sponsored the writing of the Soledades, and the first part of Cervantes' Don Quijote, as well as Espinosa's Flores de poetas ilustres. Unfortunately His Majesty died in 1619 before Góngora completed the projected four parts of his Soledades.

Góngora's complex, Culteranist poetry was deliberately not written for the masses when he stated in a letter (written in 1615) in defense of his Soledades that "the pearls were not meant for the swine." His primera verdad (mentioned in a letter written in 1613) may well be nature itself: God. Do not try to combat or even destroy nature. The priest and lyrical poet Luis de Góngora was centenaries ahead of his time. Three, to be exact.

 

 NOTES

 

(1) The "Via de la Plata" joins the historic and more-commonly known camino francés in Astorga. In particular the scenery around Béjar is tough to walk. Góngora would have traveled on his mule, entering the region via the mountain crossing past Baños de Montemayor. The narrative explored by the lyrical poet is predominantly nature, not pilgrimage. The routined activities of religious pioneers - walk, eat, sleep - would not have given him much food for thought.

(2) The prominent Mexican writer and researcher (in particular of the fifteenth-century Cordovan poet Juan de Mena) María Rosa Lida de Malkiel describes the Dedication as follows: "A pesar de su covencionalismo esta dedicatoria es una maravilla donde <<El período de Góngora, con el serpenteo de sus aposiciones, con su intercalares, con sus disyuntivas, con sus relativas, intenta reproducir una simultaneidad pictórica, resulta inextricablemente complejo porque el poeta no quiere perder uno solo de los detalles de la rica pintura.>>" (Góngora, 1986, 411.)

(3)  Carreira refers to Gigantomaquia. (Góngora, 1986, 411). (In some interpretations the Duke is surrounded and hindered by the spears - muros de abeto - of his assistants. Later on he calls them fresno.) The "gigantes de cristal" are horizontal statues to cover the tumbs of the "fieras": the dead animals (or even the daring hunters) "pidiendo términos disformes". Only their "espumoso coral" escapes. Góngora would have seen many adorned tumbs inside churches. The theme of the Soledades could be described as "Nature Plus".

(4) Góngora's Andalusian accent would have added more drama.

(5) The ducal palace was built by the Zuñiga family in the sixteenth century on top of the remains of an Arabic fortress. Initially it was connected to small houses and other buildings; nowadays a large staircase dominates its entrance after a fire destroyed part of the castle.

More on the ducal palace here:

www.salamancartvaldia.es/not/151333/periodico-bejar-madrid-solicita-fotografias-antiguas-actos/

and:

ccasconm.blogspot.com/2014/12/sobre-los-subterraneos-secretos-de-bejar.html 

(6) The many reiterations of "o" remind of Juan de Mena.

***

On a final note: don Luis's pearls fed to the boars.

Don Luis' poetry would have been of little importance to the Duke, a big-business man from the textile industry. (In a letter written in 1615 Góngora mentions the "swine". Was his plan to write a third and fourth Solitude rejected by the terminally ill Duke?) The road from Andalucía to Béjar  in Castile is monotonous on horseback, a light yellow landscape, so the idea of the peregrino in the Soledades may well derive from texts written or translated by Pedro de Valencia. (The lyrical poet and priest Góngora converted Valencia's peregrinus to a rather sterile peregrino, maybe well before the year 1612.) The Spanish peregrino in the Dedication (the author himself) was created as precursor to the Greek/Latin one in the two Soledades. Hopefully it would please the Duke, and convince him to part with some of his textile income. Góngora's complex financial life forced him into an uncomfortable relation between a genius and a bear hunter.

The main setting of the Soledades may well be Greece, inspired by the works of Dio Chrysostom according to Malkiel. Although there were no Catholic pilgrimages during Chrysostom's lifetime, this does not imply a total absence of Spanish pilgrim imagery in the Soledades (The opening lines of Sol. II. The descriptions of birdlife. The Guadalquivir as it flows through Córdoba. Etc.) Articles were also written by American academics who did not even bother to visit inner Spain to purchase the State of the Art: Béjar? Plasencia? Córdoba? Salamanca? One of them quotes dozens of academics including John Beverley and Esther Joiner Gates. Who is that?

Plasencia

According to critics who knew Góngora personally he intended to divide the poem into four parts: "Soledad de los campos" (Solitude of the fields), "Soledad de las riberas" (Solitude of the riverbanks), "Soledad de las selvas" (Solitude of the forests), and "Soledad del yermo" (Solitude of the wasteland). Fragments of the Soledades already feature in poetry written in 1593. References to the expulsion of the Moriscos (around 1610) are not impossible but very ungongoresque. A quick lyrical journey from a peregrinus to a peregrino to an expelled non-catholic might have been one step too far.

***

 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

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..... (ed.) Soledades de Góngora. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1927. 

ARROYO, Anita. Poesías de Góngora. Mexico D.F.: Editorial Porrúa, 1978.

CARREIRA, Antonio. Gongoremas. Barcelona: Peninsula, 1998.

CERVANTES, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona: Pareja, 1981.

DȀLLENBACH, Lucien. Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme, Paris, Seuil, 1977.

DE PAZ, Amelia. "La huerta de don Marcos". In: Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica. LX, no 1. pp. 181-98. (Also in www.researchgate).           

DIEGO, Gerardo. "Crónica del Centenario de Góngora  (1627 - 1927)". In: Lola, nrs. 1 & 2. December 1927 / January 1928.

DIEZ DE REVENGA, Francisco Javier. La tradición áurea: Sobre la recepción del Siglo de Oro en poetas contemporáneos. Spain: Biblioteca nueva, 2003.

GARCIA LORCA, Federico. Obras completas. 23rd Edition. First reprint 1993. Tomos II - III. Madrid: Aguilar, 1990.

..... "Romance apócrifo de D. Luis a Caballo." In: La Gaceta literaria, no. 11. June 1927, p.1.

..... "La imagen poética de don Luis de Góngora". In: Residencia, no. 4, 1932, pp. 94 - 103.

GONGORA Y ARGOTE, Luis de. Obras de don Luis de Góngora. [Manuscrito Chacón]. Edición de José Lara Garrido. Tomos 1-3. Ronda: Real Academia Española, 1991.

..... Antología poética. Edición de Antonio Carreira. Barcelona: Castalia, 1986.

GROOT, Jack de.  "¿Existía una relación intertextual entre Lorca y Góngora?" In: Actas del Congreso Internacional Federico García Lorca, Clásico Moderno, 1898 - 1998. Granada: Diputación de Granada, 2000, pp. 312-16.

..... Intertextuality Through Obscurity. The Poetry of Federico García Lorca and Luis de Góngora. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2003. 

..... Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Chronicle of Love. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2007.

GUILLEN, Jorge. Lenguaje y Poesía. Segunda edición. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1972. (Primera edición: 1962). 

JAMMES, Robert. Soledades. Madrid: Castalia, 1994.

_____ "Reseña de Soledades edición de John Beverley". In: Criticón, nr. 14, 1981, pp. 105-15.

JAUREGUI, Juan de. Antídoto contra la pestilente poesía de las Soledades (1624). Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2003.

LAIN ENTRALGO, Pedro. "Poesía, ciencia y realidad." In: Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, no. 31, julio de 1952, pp. 13 - 30. 

LIDA DE MALKIEL, María Rosa. Juan de Mena, poeta del Prerenacimiento español. Mexico D.F.: El Colegio de Méjico, 1984. (First edition published in 1950).

Mc GOW, John R. "Review of Intertextuality through Obscurity. The Poetry of Federico García Lorca and Luis de Góngora. In: Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, TOMO XXXVIII, No. 3. St. Louis: Washington University, October 2004, pp. 595 - 96.

Mc GRADY, DONALD. "Otra vez el soneto <<Descaminado, enfermo, peregrino>> de Góngora." University of Virginia.

MENA, Juan de. El Laberinto de Fortuna. Edición de Louise Vasvari Fainberg. Madrid: Editorial Alhambra, 1976.

PELLICER DE SALAS Y TOVAR, José de.  Lecciones solemnes de las obras de don Luis de Góngora. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1971.

ROSES LOZANO, Joaquín. Soledades habitadas. Málaga: Universidad de Malaga, 2007.

..... Una poética de la oscuridad. London: Tamesis, 1994. 

SALCEDO CORONEL, José García de. Soledades de D. Luis de Góngora comentadas por don García Salzedo Coronel. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1636.

SANCHEZ ROBAYNA, Andrés. "Góngora y el texto del mundo." In: Tres estudios sobre Góngora. Barcelona: Ediciones del Mall, 1983. 

SARDUY, Severo. "Sobre Góngora: la metáfora al cuadrado." In: Escrito sobre un cuerpo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1969.

VALENCIA, Pedro de. Obras completas. (Various publications). Universidad de León.

VELASCO, Joseph. "Góngora et Lorca." In: Criticón, no. 6, France-Ibérie Recherche, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1979, pp. 47 - 83.

..... Lorca. Poesie, d'une vie.  New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1996.

Also: https://caminojack.blogspot.com