The Solitudes by Luis de Góngora y Argote

First published:Soledades, 1627 (English translation, 1931)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Few writers have left so decisive a stamp upon the literature of their own and of successive ages as Luis de Góngora y Argote. Góngora is the embodiment of the Spanish baroque. His name also survives as a style, gongorismo, or Gongorism. Born in the city of Córdoba into a prosperous and cultivated family, he indifferently studied canon law at the University of Salamanca, although he is said to have led there the life of a dissolute poet rather than that of a student of theology. Returning to Córdoba, he took deacons’s orders and in 1577 was made a prebendary of the cathedral. However, he seems to have remained incorrigibly devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, since, in 1589, he is recorded as having received a reprimand from his bishop for a disreputable lifestyle, which included too-frequent attendance at bullfights and consorting with actors of both genders.

By then, he had already attracted the notice and approbation of Miguel de Cervantes for his writing, but with the circulation of his Romancero general of 1600, his reputation as a poet was assured. In 1612, he left Córdoba for Madrid, seeking, like other Golden Age writers and artists, the fount of patronage at the royal court. He was appointed chaplain to Philip III, no discriminating judge of literature, and, following the latter’s death, served Philip IV in the same capacity. The real source of patronage became the royal favorite, the count-duke of Olivares, who seems to have recognized Góngora’s merits, but by whom the poet seems to have felt neglected in his last, rather unhappy years in the capital city, where he failed to acquire the material rewards he felt were his due.

Góngora’s writing is generally opulent and baroque. He adopted the theory of culteranismo, first enunciated by the soldier, scholar, and poet Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor. Culteranismo, as conceived by Carrillo, advocates the elevation of literature and especially of poetry. The hallmarks of culteranismo are excessive Latinization of the Castilian language, profound erudition, and learned allusion, that, together with deliberate obscurity, restrict comprehension to only the most learned readers. Perhaps no other Spanish poet has been so reviled, so praised, and so imitated. In approaching The Solitudes, it is important to be aware of culteranismo and gongorismo; the reader must work to understand Góngora’s intricate, complex, and highly allusive work.

Góngora’s years in Madrid, although less rewarding than he anticipated and leading eventually to decay of his physical and mental capacities, saw the composition of his most notable works. Góngora’s writings circulated anonymously and were not published under his name until after his death, although everyone knew they were by him. Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (1627; Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, 1961) and The Solitudes began to circulate in 1613. Perhaps his greatest achievement, the “Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe,” began to circulate in 1618. In these works, his pursuit of culteranismo was further honed by his adoption of the theory of conceptismo. Conceptismo, which originated with Alonso de Ledesma, and which at times is difficult to distinguish from culteranismo, seeks to achieve in prose, as much if not even more than in poetry, flashes of wit (concepto). Such flashes of wit are excessive and often of obscure subtlety. Again, they are aimed primarily for intellectual effect and addressed to a refined readership accustomed to epigram and wordplay. In conceptismo, it is the idea that is all-important, while in culteranismo, it is the use and play of language: figures of thought, it has been suggested, in contrast to figures of speech. Conceptismo appealed to many of the greatest writers of the Spanish Golden Age—for example, Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas, Baltasar Gracián y Morales, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Conceptismo also was a pervasive fascination for Góngora, whose many admirers and imitators applied the word gongorismo to his uniquely complex melding of culteranismo and conceptismo. Góngora’s famous style is displayed conspicuously in The Solitudes. His complexity, obscurity, Latinizations, and neologisms were denounced by some contemporaries such as Quevedo, despite his use of his own version of conceptismo, and Lope de Vega Carpio. Vega Carpio, it should be acknowledged, sometimes emulates Góngora’s style. For centuries, Góngora’s writings have been mined by critics and commentators who, perhaps only in the first quarter of the twentieth century, began a consistent interpretation of his intentions.

Góngora’s great aspiration was to so expand the possibilities of Spanish poetry that the Spanish language could reach the same state of “perfection and sublimity” he believed characteristic of Latin, and he believed that in The Solitudes he was accomplishing his goal. Indeed, he is said to be the particular voice that fully and finally changed Spanish literature at a time when the readership was demanding more from poetry. In Spanish poetry, one idiom had until Góngora’s time prevailed—the Italianate, in accord with Renaissance poetic dictates. With the publication of The Solitudes and Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, a new school of poetry was introduced, and few if any poets of Góngora’s language have not since been influenced by his aristocratic, elevated poetic style.

The first modern edition of The Solitudes was brought out in 1927, the tercentenary of Góngora’s death. In The Solitudes, a poem of about two thousand lines written in the silva meter (seven- and eleven-syllable lines in free pattern), Góngora defies convention and takes as his subject matter the exact opposite of what was expected in Spanish letters in his time. Instead of using the highest level of poetic diction to praise the most heroic and noble of subjects, Góngora employs it to praise the beauties of nature and the virtues of the country and of natural life, while deprecating the artificiality and the vices of the court. The characters who speak with wisdom and live with integrity and nobility are the peasants, not the nobility.

It is a paradox of Góngora’s art that, while his focus is on the rural and the natural as the authentic and the desirable, he expresses this vision in poetry of the most complex syntax and of allusively and metaphorically dense qualities accessible only to the intellectually trained reader of poetry, and certainly not accessible to the peasants whom he extols. The Solitudes describes rustic life in the most ornate diction.

Many commentators on Góngora, beginning with those in the seventeenth century, have said that The Solitudes was to have consisted of four parts, only two of which were written, and only one of which, the first, was completed. Although much has been written on The Solitudes, Góngora’s critics have failed thus far to determine a thematic, narrative cohesion. It may be suggested, therefore, that the poem works in an associative manner rather than in a linear, narrative manner, and that this quality, along with that of the play of language for its own sake, may have made the poem attractive to the Spanish poets of the Generation of ’27.

The Generation of ’27 is so named for an important year, 1927, of that group’s history. This year marks a high point in the careers of many of that generation, not the year of their birth. The key event in 1927 was the observation of the third centennial of Góngora’s death. Góngora’s influence may be seen in the work of such members of the Generation of ’27 as Vicente Aleixandre and Gerardo Diego.

The first poem of The Solitudes begins with a dedication to the duke of Béjar, replete with images of the hunt. The first thirty-seven lines establish the tone and set the themes of loneliness and of the questionable status of humanity in relation to nature. The poet invokes the muse, acknowledging that some parts of his work, “lonely images,” will be as evanescent as the “wandering pilgrim’s” footprints on the sand, while others will “live inspired.” In typical Renaissance fashion, the poet then dedicates his work to the immortality of his patron, expressing the notion that the arts can make mortals immortal because it is in art that people can live on.

The plot is one thing that is not very intricate. The reader should look to the brilliance of Góngora’s prosody for inspiration. There is no cleverly developed plot or characterization in the modern sense of the word. The action opens with reference to spring and to “a pilgrim of love,” a nobleman cast out of court life, rejected by a young and false woman, shipwrecked, and washed up on shore thorough the empathy of the “winds and waves.” He is able to move a personified nature to sympathize with him and save him from drowning. This young pilgrim serves as the observer of the entire action of both of The Solitudes. This is not, however, a psychological narrative, and although readers see the world through his wanderings, he is not the focus of the story. Rather, readers should observe, through the voice of the poet and the vision of the young pilgrim, the life of rural beauty and of the state of unspoiled innocence that Góngora sets before the readers to admire. Góngora states that if the poem’s difficulties engage the readers, the readers may then find the truth.

The pilgrim’s initial action introduces a major motif of the poem: On shore, he wanders until he sees a light in the distance, and he cries out in hope. It is his task to wander until he finds some kind of metaphorical illumination of the primary truth of the universe. He follows the light to a cottage where a band of rustic goatherds welcome him. The “fortunate retreat” of the refrain is a “pastoral temple and a floral bower,” a place where “Flattery’s voice is banned,/ Siren of royal courts.” He stays the night, and in the morning the goatherds show him the beauties of natural vistas. All that he sees, such as vines growing over a castle in ruin, reinforces the notion that nature is enduring while things of this world are fleeting. They observe “mountain maidens” playing “melodious strings” and ornamenting themselves with roses and lilies. A bucolic procession to a wedding feast follows.

An old shepherd, whose son drowned, invites the young pilgrim (also described as a youth) to the wedding and discourses on the dangers of the sea. Most likely, this is a personal, political interjection by Góngora to show that the sea can be literally as well as figuratively consuming in its providing venues for human greed. When the procession stops by a stream, there follow several lines of praise to the beauties of nature in spring. When finally the procession reaches a village by nightfall, the village is filled with lights. The wedding ensues, and the youth enjoys watching the festivities, the young women dancing and the young men engaging in athletics. A lovely epithalamium is sung, said by many to be the high point of The Solitudes. The first of The Solitudes ends with the bride and groom going off to their wedding night. The bride is compared to a phoenix ascending over the static works of humanity, and thus becomes emblematic of the capacity of life to regenerate itself eternally.

The second part of The Solitudes begins at daybreak, when many of the wedding guests leave on a boat and the youth joins two fishermen on another boat. Music still plays a large part in creating atmosphere. Overall, the tone changes from one of celebration to one of contemplation. In contrast to the youth’s life-affirming attitude of the first part, he sings of the sadness of star-crossed love, of how he suffered in lonely wandering for five years, and of how he wants to be buried at sea. At the home of the fishermen, they are greeted by their father and six sisters, who garden and whom the father later characterizes as competent fishers also. Another bucolic scene follows, with the father introducing the youth to the beauties of their island home and with the daughters serving a dinner outdoors among the beauties of nature. They all are relaxed and refreshed by the sounds of birdsong and water. Grace after the meal is followed by the youth’s imploring the father to be content with his life. Two of his daughters, Leucipe and Cloris, are beloved of two fishermen, named Lycidas and Micón, who bemoan in song the possibility of dying of love and of being entombed in their own boats.

A personified Night, along with Cupid, the daughters, and others, are moved by the mournful singing of the fishermen. At the youth’s pleadings, the father agrees to allow his daughters to marry. Góngora interjects an authorial aside: The poet speaks to Cupid of the effects of his actions.

The next morning, the youth and the two fishermen depart on a boat, from which they hear the trumpet sounds announcing a hunt. There follows a description of the hunt, of a flycatcher who leads a flock of birds away from the hunters, but who is killed by a sparrowhawk. Ravens try to trick an owl into flying during the day by blocking the sunlight to make it think it is night. The ravens envy the owl the color of his eyes. One raven is killed by hawks, and the hunters, their horses, and birds find deserted shelters. The poem stops at this point.

Góngora’s great editor and critic Dámaso Alonso has shown him to be the writer in whose works all the great strains of poetry of the Spanish Renaissance reach their artistic culmination. Difficult as The Solitudes is to read, it rewards perseverance, especially when the reader can reach that level that reveals Góngora’s great “mysterious quality,” as Góngora himself described it.

Bibliography

Chemris, Crystal Anne. Góngora’s “Soledades” and the Problem of Modernity. New York: Tamesis, 2008. An in-depth look at The Solitudes, describing how it addresses issues of concern to the Baroque era while also serving as a precursor to Hispanic literary modernism.

Collins, Marsha S. “The Soledades,” Góngora’s Masque of the Imagination. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002. Collins likens The Solitudes to a court masque, a theatrical genre that combined a variety of cultural forms.

De Groot, Jack. Intertextuality Through Obscurity: The Poetry of Federico García Lorca and Luis de Góngora. New Orleans, La.: University Press of the South, 2002. Compares the two Spanish poets, describing how and why obscurity is an important element in their work. Includes analysis of The Solitudes.

Foster, David William, and Virginia Ramos Foster. Luis de Góngora. New York: Twayne, 1973. Includes a chapter on The Solitudes and a good annotated bibliography, which has entries for several studies in English.

Guillén, Jorge. “Poetic Language: Góngora.” In Language and Poetry: Some Poets of Spain. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961. An essay on Góngora that Guillén, one of the great poets of the Generation of ’27, delivered at Harvard University.

Jones, R. O. Introduction to Poems, by Luis de Góngora y Argote. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1966. This edition has an introduction by a noted expert on Spanish literature.

McCaw, Robert John. The Transforming Text: A Study of Luis de Góngora’s “Soledades.” Potomac, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 2000. McCaw argues that The Solitudes conveys a well-defined message that is consistent with seventeenth century Counter-Reformation philosophy. He demonstrates how that message is one of change, of material and spiritual transformation, and of a code of personal conduct.