Calderón and the "Décimas a la muerte"

Abstract

Early texts of some poems attributed to Calderon are hard to find. The Decimas a la muerte (which begin: ‘i0 tu que estas sepultado …’), attributed to him by Hartzenbusch and by Picatoste, were printed in an unfindable collection of pious poems; another version of the same poem, but attributed to Lope de Vega, figures as a sort of appendix in some editions of a famous ascetic work by Father Eusebio Nieremberg; a manuscript copy from the Escorial provides a third text; there was also a now lost, undated broadside which stated that the poem was written by ‘vn hidalgo de la Ciudad de Cuenca’. Two early texts, then, are lost. The purpose of this article is to establish a provisional text, in the hope that the lost versions will be recovered, and to examine critically the attribution of these noble stanzas to Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca.