Luis de Góngora

Luis de Góngora (born July 11, 1561, Córdoba, Spain—died May 23, 1627, Córdoba) was one of the most influential Spanish poets of his era. His Baroque, convoluted style, known as Gongorism (gongorismo), was so exaggerated by less gifted imitators that his reputation suffered after his death until it underwent a revaluation in the 20th century.

The son of a judge, Góngora profited from his father’s fine library and from relatives in positions to further his education. He attended the University of Salamanca and achieved fame quickly. He took religious orders so that he might receive an ecclesiastical benefice but was not ordained priest until he was 55 years old, when he was named chaplain to the royal court in Madrid. His letters, as well as some of his satirical verse, show an unhappy and financially distressed life vexed by the animosity that some of his writings had evoked. He had strong partisans—Lope de Vega was an admirer—and equally powerful enemies, none more so than his rival Francisco de Quevedo, who outdid even Góngora in mordant and unrelenting satire.

Góngora was always successful with his lighter poetry—the romances, letrillas, and sonnets—but his longer works, the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (circulated in manuscript in 1613; “Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea”) and the Soledades (circulated in manuscript in 1613; “Solitudes”), written in an intensely difficult and purposely complex style, provoked the scorn and enmity of many. There has been a temptation to divide his work into the light-dark and easy-difficult, but 20th-century criticism has shown his compositions to have a unity that is perhaps clouded by the compactness and intensity of style in the longer ones. Gongorismo derives from a more general base, culteranismo (q.v.), a Latinizing movement that had been an element in Spanish poetry since the 15th century. In the Polifemo and the Soledades Góngora elaborated his style by the introduction of numerous Latinisms of vocabulary and syntax and by exceedingly complex imagery and mythological allusions. In these long poems Góngora applied his full energies to enhancing and augmenting each device and decoration until the basically uncomplicated story was obscured. The same devices are found in his more popular lyrics.

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The 19th century found little to like in the obscure and difficult Góngora, but his tercentenary in 1927 reestablished his importance. The cold beauty of his lines at last found an appreciative and receptive audience willing to see the value of verse that shunned intimate emotion but that created the purest poetry for its own sake. An English translation by R.O. Jones of selected poems was published in 1966.