Góngora in Arcadia: Sannazaro and the Pastoral Mode of the Soledades

Abstract

The Soledades stands as one of the most revolutionary and innovative poems of the Spanish Golden Age. Gongora created a sophisticated world in which he showed more interest in intellectual beauty and aesthetic pleasure than a moral or didactic message, subverting the classical balance between docere and delectare. Thus the Soledades is often considered an important precedent of modern poetry, and it has even been compared to the work of Mallarme. (1) But Gongora's originality was not made out of nothing. He used his literary culture to imitate classical, Italian, and Spanish authors borrowing from their images, topics, and leitmotifs. The importance of Italian literature is especially noteworthy in his work. (2) In the poetas written in Gongora's youth be shows he is acquainted with this tradition, especially the Petrarchist lyric; but even in his most famous cultist works, the Polifemo and the Soledades, one can detect the influence of Giovan Battista Marino, Tommaso Stigliani, or Luigi Tansillo. It is also common to include Iacopo Sannazaro among the list of Gongora's sources; however this influence has not been studied sufficiently. (3) My purpose here will be to analyze the relationship between the Soledades and the Arcadia by highlighting aspects of the generic hybridization and literary typical of the pastoral. Gongora's indebtedness to Italian authors is mentioned by seventeenth-century commentators (Romanos). Two of the first readers of his Polifemo and Soledades, Pedro de Valencia and Fernandez de Cordoba, abbot of Rute, reproached him for the excessive presence in bis works of Latinisms and expressions taken from Italian authors. The abbot tells Gongora that he makes too much uso de palabras peregrinas, digo derivadas de latin y toscano (Parecer 140). And Pedro de Valencia is even more critical: usa de vocablos peregrinos i otros del todo Latinos [...]. En estos vicios digo que cae v. m. de proposito i haziendose fuerca, por estranarse i imitar a los Italianos (Carta 76). Also his detractors used similar arguments to attack him. In his Rimas de Tome de Burguillos (1634), Lope de Vega insinuates that Gongora in fact plagiarized Tommaso Stigliani and Gabriello Chiabrera: (4) Cierto poeta de mayor esfera, cuyo dicipulado dificulto, de los libros de Italia fama espera. Mas, porque no conozcan por insulto los hurtos de Estillani y dei Chabrera, escribe en griego disfrazado en culto. (Burguillos 75, 9-14) Apart from these possible influences, the Soledades shows remarkable similarities with one of the most refined and elegant works of the Italian Renaissance, namely, the Arcadia of Iacopo Sannazaro, the first complete edition of which was published in 1504. This best seller of the Renaissance and Baroque age represents the first and more relevant model of the pastoral novel that was to be imitated by several European writers. The author conceived of the Arcadia as a learned combination of different sources, in particular Petrarch's Canzoniere and Virgil. (5) Sannazaro, cultissimo i castigadissimo poeta, as Herrera called him (Anotaciones 693), used bis rich classical background to generate a complex literary palimpsest full of intertextual references that are channelled by ornate language made up of Latinisms, accumulations of superlatives, and chains of epithets. (6) This verbal aestheticism (Folena 105) has numerous things in common with the style and the structure of the Soledades. Although some of Gongora's seventeenth-century commentators quoted the name of Sannazaro, the most eloquent statement of the relation between the Arcadia and Gongora is found in a satirical sonnet written by Quevedo attaching the cultist poems of bis rival, ?Que captas, nocturnal, en tus canciones ...?-: (7) Tu forasteridad es tan eximia, que te ha de detractar el que te rumia; pues ructas viscerable cacoquimia farmacopolorando como mumia, si estomacabundancia das tan nimia metamorfoseando el Arcadumia. …