Baroque poems commented and explained

Baroque literature is known as that produced in the period that begins at the end of the 16th century, and that reaches its full development in the 17th century.

The term baroque was applied for the first time in the 18th century to the plastic arts. It alluded to an extravagant, ornate and dynamic art that challenged the values ​​of the Renaissance.

Over time, the ideological veil that prevented the appreciation of the baroque, especially rich for Hispanic culture, has been removed. Not in vain, the period that goes from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th century, where the Baroque was refined, was called the Spanish Golden Age.

Although Baroque literature gives continuity to the forms and interests of Renaissance literature, it is registers a significant change in sensitivity, expressed in his pessimistic or disappointed manner of look at them. Satirical criticism, sarcasm, cultism and the exacerbated use of literary or rhetorical figures appear, the same in narrative as in theater and poetry.

In poetry, the writers took advantage of the forms inherited from the Renaissance: the sonnet, the silva, the octave. They also used popular poetic forms such as romances, chants or work songs. All this was touched and transformed by the new baroque sensibility that sought to flaunt the ingenuity.

Two major trends develop in this period: the culteranismo and the conceptism. The first, devoted to the forms of discourse, that is, to the splendor of style; the second, devoted to the expression of ideas.

Let us now know some examples of the most distinguished baroque poets and their poetry. We will present examples of the Baroque in Spain, Latin America, England, Italy and France. Most of the selection is made up of sonnets. Sonnets are called a succession of fourteen hendecasyllable verses, grouped into two groups of four and two groups of three.

Spanish baroque poetry

Lope de Vega (1562-1635)

In this sonnet, Lope de Vega represents love from a disappointed look at his vain seductions. The tensions between reason and desire are reflected in the poems.

When I imagine my brief days

When I imagine my brief days
the many that the tyrant love owes me
and in my hair anticipate the snow
more than the years my sorrows,

I see that they are their false joys
poison that reason drinks in the glass
for whom the appetite dares
dressed in my sweet fantasies.

What herbs of oblivion has given the taste
to the reason that without doing his job
you want against reason please?

But he wants my displeasure to console himself,
What is the desire for the remedy?
and the love remedy to want to win.

Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645)

Death is also a recurring theme in the Baroque. It is presented with anguish. The poet laments over the passage of time, which announces the cruel fate of each and every one. This sonnet reflects on a topic in literature: tempo fugit. Time goes by, it runs, and nothing can stop it. With him, life awaits its last breath.

Know the forces of time, and the executive collecting death

As my hands you slip!
Oh, how you slide, my age!
What mute steps you bring, oh cold death,
Well, with quiet foot you equalize everything!

Fierce from earth the weak wall scales,
in whom lush youth trusts;
more already my heart of the last day
attend the flight, without looking at the wings.

Oh mortal condition! Oh hard luck!
That I can't want to live tomorrow
without the pension to procure my death!

Any moment of human life
It is a new execution, with which it warns me
how fragile it is, how miserable, how vain.

Love is once again present in Francisco de Quevedo, who points out the contradictions of the feelings of a lover who, surrendered, sees the efforts of love to bend him useless.

Useless and weak victory of love, in which he is already defeated lover

Much courageous and hard-working,
and who will show it in a surrendered;
enough, love, to have thanked you
Sorrows, that I could have complained about.

What blood from my veins have I not given you?
What arrows in your quiver have I not felt?
Look, that the patience of the sufferer
he usually conquers the weapons of the angry.

With another of your equal I would like to see you,
that I feel burning in such a way,
that greater was the evil of making me strong.

What is the use of lighting the one who is a bonfire?
If it is not that you want to put death to death,
introducing in me that the dead die.

Luis de Góngora (1561-1627)

Góngora is part of the line of culteranismo, in which he emphasized in such a way that the term was coined gongorism. In this sonnet that we present, Góngora reviews vivid images of the youth and lush beauty of the admired woman, whom he reminds of duty to enjoy life, because despite any effort, soon the virtues of youth, like life itself, will be transformed into nothing.

The author synthesizes in this poem the representation of the great topics of literature. First of all, the collige virgo roses, which translates as 'cut the roses, maiden' aimed specifically at young women who are to take advantage of their youth. Second, the Carpe Diem, which implies the evaluation of each moment. Third, and to end the poem, Góngora introduces the tempo fugit, which recalls the inevitability of the passage of time and the arrival of death.

Sonnet CLXVI

While for competing with your hair,
sun-burnished gold glitters in vain;
while with contempt in the middle of the plain
look at your white forehead the beautiful lilio;

while to each lip, to catch it,
more eyes follow than the early carnation;
and while triumphing with lush disdain
from the shining crystal your gentle neck;

enjoys neck, hair, lip and forehead,
before what was in your golden age
gold, lilium, carnation, shining crystal,

not only in silver or viola truncated
it turns, but you and it together
on the ground, in smoke, in dust, in shadow, in nothing.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681)

Pedro Calderón de la Barca was especially known for his dramatic work, a fundamental reference in Hispanic literature. He was trained with the Jesuits, he devoted himself to military life in his youth and, in his mature stage, he abandoned his arms to take up the habit. Among his poetry, one of the pieces that stands out is the Sonnet of the wounded sinner, dedicated to the spiritual experience of a sinner, which reminds us of the Sonnet to Christ crucified, anonymous text from the 16th century that reads like this:

It does not move me, my God, to love you
the sky that you have promised me
nor does hell move me so feared
to stop offending you.

Sonnet of the wounded sinner

If this blood, by God, could do
that the wound to the eyes will pass,
before she poured it she cried,
out of choice and not violence out.

Not even the interest of Heaven would move me,
nor from Hell will harm force me;
just for being who he is will spill it
when there was neither reward nor punishment.

And if here Hell and Heaven my agony
open to see, whose sorrow or whose
glory was in me, if I prevented

be the will of God to destroy me,
hell out of mine
and will not enter Heaven without yours.

Tirso de Molina (1579-1648)

Tirso de Molina was a Mercedarian friar who articulated his spiritual life very well, quite calm, with the writing comedies, of which he wrote about four hundred, despite the fact that today they are only known around sixty. Of his work How should friends be, we have extracted this sonnet, which exposes the pain that false friendships produce.

Of how friends should be

Day II, GASTÓN

False friendship, sneaky thief,
that flatters the one who steals seeks;
dog that flatters what the delicacy lasts,
to bite down after it's finished.

How is it possible that you brought down
with the vain interest of a beauty
the strongest and most secure friendship
that France has ever seen and Spain has given?

Carve the nest in the palace in the summer
the swallow, which seems eternal,
but flee in the winter and seek shelter.

Of the false friendship symbol has been.
He worked the summer, but he fled the winter
of my works the greatest friend.

You may also like: Baroque: characteristics, representatives and works.

Baroque Novohisopan poetry

Diego de Hojeda (1570-1615)

Diego de Hojeda, although he was born in Seville, he went from an early age to Peru, where he entered the Dominican order of Lima and developed his literary work. The christian It is his best-known work, an authentic epic poem dedicated to the passion of Christ. From this work, we extract a fragment.

From The christian

Give me, Lord, that when the beautiful dawn
the blue sky with white clouds orne,
your cross I embrace, and I delight in it,
and with her illustrious purple I adorn me;
and when the most beautiful and clear star
to give its new light to the air,
my soul finds the tree of life,
and to you, the healthy fruit of it, hold on.

And when the sun for the sublime summit
in the midst of her swift race,
The holy light, with its divine fire
hotter than the sun, my chest hurts;
and as the night rises higher
with black feathers in the fourth sphere,
I at the foot of your cross, devoted and wise
I kiss your wounds with a humble lip.

When the dream in the eyes important
close them, there your cross is presented to me,
and when I wake up to wake up,
she your sweet cross represents me:
when I dress, dress the glittering
shining cross ornament,
and wet, when I eat, on your side
the first and the last bite.

When I study in sovereign art
learn from your cross the humble lesson;
and in that chest, what sweetness flows,
your tasty and tender love understands;
and all glory seems vain to me,
if it is not the one who loves and learns on your cross;
and the richest treasure, great poverty,
and the greatest delight is vileness.

See also The passion of Christ in art.

D. Juan Luis de Alarcón y Mendoza (1581-1639)

D. Juan Luis de Alarcón y Mendoza was widely recognized for his work as a playwright. Researcher D. Luis Fernández Guerra y Orbe, in a book about Alarcón published in 1871, wrote that he, who never married or He became a priest, he spoke of women in such a way that he seemed to give them more credit than Quevedo did. give.

Everything is adventure

Act III

What do we condemn the most
in the women? Being
of inconstant seem?
we teach them.
That the man who comes to be
of the blind God most wounded,
does not stop being lost
for him trope vary.
Have love for money?
it is a thing of very good taste,
or throw a stone the just,
which does not incur this error.
Be easy? What are they to do,
if no man persists,
and everyone on the fourth day
get tired of pretending?
To be harsh, that we complain,
if we are all extreme?
hard we hate it,
and easy we do not estimate.
Well, if the men are
teachers of women,
and without them the pleasures
they lack perfection.
Bad easter have anyone
of such a beautiful animal
says bad, nor does it hurt,
and who does not say, amen.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is known for becoming a nun in order to develop an intellectual life, at a time when this was reserved for men. Her excellent work includes dramatic works, poetry, and letters. Among many of his themes, the virtue of hope had a place. As is typical of the baroque sensibility, it shows a disbelieving tone.

XXIX - To hope, written in one of his portraits

Green rapture of human life,
crazy hope, golden frenzy,
intricate waking dream,
as of dreams, of vain treasures;

soul of the world, lush old age,
decrepit greenery imagined,
the today of the happy awaited
and tomorrow for the wretched:

follow your shadow in search of your day
those who, with green glasses for glasses,
They see everything painted to his desire:

than me, saner in my fortune,
I have both eyes in both hands
and only what I touch I see.

Also by Sor Juana, we can refer here to this sonnet, which reviews the contradictions of love, which insists on loving without being reciprocated, and ignoring those who love it.

XVIII - The same matter continues and determines that reason prevails over taste

He who leaves me ungrateful, I look for a lover;
The one who follows me, I leave ungrateful;
I constantly adore those who my love mistreats;
I mistreat whom my love constantly seeks.

To whom I treat with love I find a diamond;
and I am a diamond who treats me with love;
triumphant I want to see the one who kills me
and I kill whoever wants to see me triumphant.

If to this payment, my wish suffers:
if I pray that one, my pundonor anger:
I look unhappy in both ways.

But I choose for the best game
of whom I do not want, to be violent employment,
that of those who do not love me, vile dispossession.

The world of appearances is also a theme developed by Sor Juana, appearances that are vain and untrustworthy to her. With this in mind, she writes the following poem referring to a portrait they made of her.

This one you see, colorful deception,
that, of art showing the beauty,
with false syllogisms of colors
it is a cautious deception of sense;

this one, in whom flattery has pretended
excuse the horrors of the years,
and overcoming the rigors of time
triumph over old age and oblivion,

it is a vain artifice of care,
she is a flower in the delicate wind,
she is a useless safeguard for fate:

she is a foolish erroneous diligence,
she is an outdated desire and, all things considered,
it is corpse, it is dust, it is shadow, it is nothing.

See also:

• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: biography, work and contributions of the New Spain writer.
• Poems by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

English baroque poetry

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Actually classifying William Shakespeare is quite difficult. She is a figure of great weight that is part of the transition between the 16th and 17th centuries, between the Renaissance and the Baroque.

Ángel Rupérez, in his book Anthology of English Poetry, notes that Shakespeare's sonnets were written in the last decade of the 16th century and only published in 1609. In the sonnet that we present here, the topic appears again tempo fugit, as well as comfort in the memory of a friend.

Sonnet XXX

When in sweet sessions, to meditate silently,
I summon in my memory the things already past,
I sigh when evoking so many dear things
and I blame with regrets the time I have wasted.

So, I pour out the cry, not used to the use,
for those friends who swallowed the night
and I renew my crying, with sorrows already forgotten
lamenting the loss of blurred images.

I regret past sorrows and misfortunes
and I count again from pain to pain
the sad account of renewed tears,
paying again, what I already paid before.

But if in the meantime, I think of you, (dear friend),
I repair my pains and end my sorrows.

John Milton (1608-1674)

The researcher and translator Santiago García-Castañón argues in an essay entitled Rewriting Milton: Six Sonnets in Spanish, that Milton's work has been obscured by the absence of translations that rescue not only the content of his sonnets, but the musicality that is his own.

With this reflection in mind, he proposes a new translation of the well-known sonnet When I consider how my light is spent ..., which Milton wrote in his later years, when glaucoma had blinded him, unleashing a spiritual crisis in him. As he is typical of the baroque sensibility, Milton responds to himself by pondering the mysteries of the divine will and the Christian sense of suffering.

When I think how my light has gone
half existence in this dark world
and my talent that in my death hurry,
I am useless; my spirit downcast

serving the Creator, giving meaning
to my life, of all guilt I abjure,
God denies me the light, which is a hard trance,
and he inquired with a rueful tone:

"What can I do without light?" And he answers me:
“God does not need boastful gifts;
who better bears the yoke, the less it takes. "

His cause is just and thousands run where
by land and sea they seek him in haste,
but it also serves him who only waits.

John Dryden (1631-1700)

John Dryden was a poet, playwright, and critic. Many of his poems were set to music, such as Alexander's Feast Y Ode to Saint Cecilia, with music by Georg Friedrich Haendel.

The Baroque era was marked by the tension between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, although in England Anglicanism dominated, which, although distanced from Catholicism as a structure, did not Protestantism. Dryden, an Anglican by origin, ends up assimilating himself into the ranks of the Catholic Church, to which he dedicates the poem that we present below.

The catholic faith

Like the pale moon and the stars
To the weary, wandering, lonely traveler,
With borrowed brilliance they shine in vain,
The same to the soul Reason. If those
Erratic lights discover us
Far space, but not the way
That there leads, Reason to man
Most beautiful region in the distance announces,
Without teaching him the path of health;
And which stars go out, when
The king of the day ascends to this hemisphere,
Such when the soul. Religion to the world
Pours light and heat, its weak flame
It humiliates Reason and disappears;
.... .... .... .... .... .... ... .
Merciful God! You prepare
Infallible guide to fallible judgments.
In abysses of light veiled center
It is your throne; glory lightning
Stop the eyes from penetrating your essence.
Oh, teach me to worship your hidden self!
It is enough to my understanding what man
Reveal you deigned, and don't pretend
Bold save the prescribed limit!
Guide my steps only that
Universal teacher, whom glorious
Promise you made that missing can not! -
My neglected youth yearnings
Vanos fed. My mature age
Fascinated by false gleams,
He ran after them. When he fled the decoy,
My proud spirit, of itself
He drew illusions for new deception.
Such was, such is my vicious nature;
Yours the glory, my shame!
But doubts ceased; and just
To consecrate I owe my strength to virtue.

Italian baroque poetry

Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625)

Also known as Giambattista Marino, this writer was widely imitated both in his native Italy and in France, Spain and Portugal. He created a style of his own called marinism, characterized by the excessive use of concepts. However, in modern times Marini or Marino was considered to represent baroque bad taste.

The researcher Juan Luis Estelrich collects in his book Anthology of Italian lyrical poets, a poem dedicated to the famous work Pityby Miguel Ángel. The poem was translated by D. Francisco Pacheco.

To a painful, work of Michelangelo

This lady is not stone
Holding pious, reclining
In his arms, the dead frozen Son;
More stone you are now
You whose sight of his mercy does not cry,
Before you are tougher;
That to death such stones with terror
They broke down, and they still cry often.

Vincenzo da Filicaja (1642-1707)

Vincenzo da Filicaja's work is said to suffer from inequality due to the various influences that he received. Of the Anthology of Italian lyrical poets by Juan Luis Estelrich, we have extracted this sonnet by Filicaja, dedicated to hypocrisy, with a translation by Manuel del Palacio. In it the baroque sensibility of disappointment is very clearly expressed.

Hypocrisy

What to do if they are dressed in one color
Vice and virtue? With what look
Will make out the troubled mind
Of the pure affections the pretended?

Smiles of pleasure, woes felt,
Are you what you should be, or are you nothing?
Who guesses the longed-for truth
When does the heartbeat lie?

Disguise boldness as wit,
The cunning of courage, and among the people
The crime shows the appearance of chivalry.

Such of the Indian sea in the currents
Thousand streams drain with persistence,
That looking like streams, are torrents.

The best-known sonnet of this author, considering himself the best achieved, was the one he dedicated to his native Italy. Let's read Clemente Althaus's translation.

Italy, Italy! Oh you who was lucky
the fatal gift of beauty and in it
of a thousand evils and vile dowry dowry!
Oh! The less beautiful you were or the stronger!

So or you will make yourself invincible
or you will not tempt with your modest light
the greed of the one who detests you
pretending to love you; and that challenges you to death.

I did not see the Alpe then a thousand torrents
of armed Gauls pour out wherever you want
and may your noble blood the Po color!

Nor by the arm of foreign people
uselessly fight, I saw you,
to serve, defeated or victorious.

French baroque poetry

Jean Racine (1639-1699)

The French writer Jean Racine is part of the classical current of French literature, like Corneille and Molière. He was known especially as a playwright, although he dabbled in poetry. One of the best known poetic pieces of him is the Invocation to Christ, a very characteristic theme of counter-reform spirituality.

Invocation to Christ

The sun dispels the dark darkness,
And penetrating the deep realm,
The veil tears that covered Nature,
And the colors and beauty return
To the world universe.

Oh, of the souls, Christ, only fire!
To you only the honor and adoration!
Our humble prayer reaches your summit;
Surrender to your blissful servitude
All hearts.

If there are souls that waver, give them strength;
And do that joining innocent hands,
Worthily your immortal glories
Let's sing, and the goods that in abundance
Dispensations to the people.

Molière (1622-1673)

His real name is Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, but he is popularly known as Molière, who was a playwright, actor, and poet. It seems to be related, once again, to the literary topic collige virgo roses,

Gallant stays

Let Love reveal you now.
With my sighs let yourself be inflamed.
Sleep no more, seductive creature,
Well, life is sleeping without loving.

Do not worry. In the love story
more evil is done than the evil one suffers.
When there is love and the heart sobs,
evil itself embellishes its sorrows.

The evil of love consists in hiding it;
To avoid it, he speaks in my favor.
This god scares you, you tremble when you see him ...
But do not make a mystery of love.

Is there sweeter sorrow than to be loving?
Can a more tender law be suffered?
That in every heart always reigning,
love reigns in yours as king.

Surrender, then, oh, heavenly creature;
gives command of fleeting Love.
Love while your beauty lasts,
that time passes and does not return again!

References

• Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library.
• García-Castañón, Santiago: Rewriting Milton: six sonnets in Spanish. On Journal of Philology and Linguistics of the University of Costa Rica, Volume 42 - Number 2, July - December 2016.
• Estelrich, Juan Luis: Anthology of Italian lyrical poetstranslated into Castilian verse (1200-1889). Palma de Mallorca: Provincial Typographic School. 1889.
• Fernández Guerra and Orbe, Luis: D. Juan Ruíz de Alarcón and Mendoza. Madrid: Printing and stereotyping of M. Rivadeneyda. 1871.
• Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz: Select work, volume 1, Caracas: Ayacucho Library. 1994.
• Rupez, Angel: Essential Anthology of English Poetry. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, Austral Collection, 2000.