The Solitudes of Góngora: brief analysis

The Solitudesby Góngora, supposes the culmination of the culterano style, because under the pretext of a narrative they practice all the resources of this style to carry out an intricate idealization of the nature. It is an unfinished work; four o'clock Solitudes plannedSolitude of the fields, Loneliness of the banks, Solitude of the jungles Y Wasteland loneliness), Góngora wrote the first and left the second unfinished. In this article by a PROFESSOR we will contextualize and explain the work of this poet and we will focus on making a brief analysis of Solitudes by Góngora.

We begin this brief analysis of the Solitudes de Góngora to talk about the historical and cultural context of said work. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the heyday of Spanish culture took place, known as the Golden age. During this period, one went from Renaissance art to Baroque; writers like Fernando de Rojas, Cervantes or Calderón de la Barca and painters like the Greco or Velazquez belong to this period.

Góngora belongs to Baroque (1600-1750), a movement that, despite continuing with the artistic change that began with the Renaissance, reacts against its ideological and aesthetic presuppositions.

Regarding the historic context, Spain was governed by the so-called minor Austrias: Felipe III, Felipe IV and Carlos III. It was a time of crisis as a consequence of the following factors:

• Economic crisis, since the opportunity to properly invest the wealth that came from the New World was lost.
• Decline, since Spain was losing weight in Europe as a result of bad governments.
• Emigration to America, which resulted in the depopulation of some areas.

Artistic postures in the Baroque

Therefore in Baroque art we find many signs of pessimism and disappointment, since faith in the Renaissance ideals of balance, serenity and calm was lost. Given this, different positions were developed:

• Rebellion and nonconformity present in political, moral and religious treatises, as well as in satirical and picaresque literature.
• The evasion through the contents inherited from the Renaissance (love stories and mythological epics) or national historical or legendary events.
• The conformity and stoicism, present above all in the theater.

In terms of aesthetics, Baroque literature was characterized by a shapesdistorted and violent, a verbal exuberance that was born from the use of ingenuity to get out of vulgarity, artificiality and the dynamism.

In poetry, Renaissance themes evolved: love acquired a transcendent meaning, nature became a moralizing object, and mythology began to be parodied. The theme, fruit of pessimism, it used to be one of the following:

• The transience weather.
• The dream, symbolizing life and death.
• The mirror, symbolizing falsehood and deception.
• The Spain problem, viewed critically or satirically.

Tendencies of cultured poetry in the Baroque

In the cultured poetry we found several trends:

• 1. The classicists, which continued with the Renaissance aesthetic ideal.
• 2. Those who broke the classic balance between content and expression.
• 2.1. The conceptists, who took care of the content and used rhetorical figures of thought. The highest representative of him was Quevedo.
• 2.2. The culteranos, who sought beauty and expression of form by resorting to complex resources that hid the content. The highest representative of him was Gongora.

The Cordoba Luis de Gongora and Argote (1561-1627) served at court as a chaplain. Throughout his life he maintained contact with literary circles; his work provoked admiration and attacks, among which his famous rivalry with Francisco de Quevedo stands out.

The main features of his poetic work are the following:

• Great musicality, thanks to the masterful use of verses and stanzas.
• Metaphors and intricate allegories.
• Poetic transformation of language through cultism and of the rhythmic loudness.
• Mythological theme.
• Syntactic complication by means of hyperbaton.

To conclude with this brief analysis of the Solitudes of Góngora we will have to talk about the plot of these poems. On The Solitudes we find culteranismo in its maximum expression, since its narrative character is hidden under an intricate poetic ornamentation. Throughout the work, the author carries out an idealization of nature, which is opposed to the corrupt and noisy court.

• TheFirst Solitude, based on the Nausicaa episode of the Odyssey, tells of the arrival of a castaway on an island and how he is picked up by some goatherds. After meeting some mountain people, he attends a wedding.
• On Second Solitude the man joins some fishermen, to whom he tells of his loves and the disdain of his beloved. Along with them he is present at the fishing activities.