Mientras Por Competir Tu Cabello
Luis de Góngora (1561-1627): Sonnet clxvi: Mientras por competir… 1582.
1. Mientras por competir con tu cabello,oro
bruñido al sol relumbra en vano;
mientras con menosprecio en medio el llano
mira tu blanca frente el lilio bello;
5. Mientras a cada labio, por cogello,
siguen más ojos que al clavel temprano;
y mientras triunfa con desdén Lozano
del luciente cristal tu gentil cuello:
ix. Goza cuello, cabello, labio y frente,
antes que lo que fue en tu edad dorada
oro, lilio, clavel, cristal luciente,
12. No sólo en plata o viola troncada
se vuelva, mas tu y ello juntamente
en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada.
Prose Translation:
While burnished golden gleams in vain in the lord's day to compete with your hair;/ while in the heart of the plain your white brow gazes on the fair lily with disdain;/ while more eyes follow each lip to buss them [each lip] than follow the early on carnation;/ and while your slender cervix triumphs over gleaming crystal with cocky-assured scorn: savor your neck, hair, lips and brow, earlier what was in your golden youth, aureate, lily, carnation, gleaming crystal not merely turns to silver or to drooping violet but you lot and all of it together [plough] into globe, fume, dust, shadow, cipher.
Commentary.
This verse form is asonnet, i.eastward. 14 hendecasyllabic lines (i.due east. 11 syllables each line). It has 2 quatrains, (each quatrain contains four lines), and 2 tercets (each made upward of three lines). Sometimes nosotros talk of the two quatrains together every bit an octave, and the two tercets together as a sestet. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, ABBA, CDC, DCD.
Mientras por competir… is one of Góngora's most pop sonnets and appears in virtually all anthologies of Spanish poesy. Although the theme is common (the urgent appeal to a young woman to relish her youth before time destroys it), the poem'south significance is based on the art with which it is written.
The source is classical: the Carpe diem ("Enjoy the solar day") of Horace, and the Collige, virgo, rosas ("Assemble, maiden, the roses") from Ausonius. We can see howGarcilaso de la Vega handled the topic in his En tanto que de rosa y de azucena… and it is this poem that Góngora had in mind when he penned Mientras por competir…
The thematic similarity invites us to compare both sonnets in what nosotros call intertextuality. Garcilaso's sonnet is the "pre"text or implied text for Góngora and the context inside which he writes his ain sonnet. This raises the question: to what degree does Góngora imitate Garcilaso and in what way is he different?
One of the features of Renaissance poesy was fake, and the poet's "originality" was measured by his power to select skilful models for inspiration. No tengo por buen poeta al que no imita los excelentes antiguos, ("I don't consider anyone who does not imitate the excellent ancients to be a good poet"), said Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas (improve known equally El Brocense), the commencement to write a commentary on Garcilaso's poetry (1574).
El Brocense's commentary was recognition of Garcilaso'south stature as a model worthy to be imitated, equal to the bang-up Latin and Italian poets (eastward.thou. Virgil, Horace, Petrarch). In another commentary, published in 1580, the Andalusian poet, Fernando de Herrera, goes a pace further, urging poets non only to choose good models but also to aspire to surpass them in the pursuit of poetic excellence.
It was in this vein of imitating and striving to exceed what Garcilaso had written in En tanto que… that Góngora wrote his sonnet. He does this in two ways: one) in his handling of the theme, and 2) in his treatment of the imagery and rhetoric that he employs.
Theme: Fourth dimension and beauty.
In Garcilaso'due south sonnet, the lady's beauty is compared to that of nature ("rose," "lily," "gold") and her youthful qualities evoked past metaphors of "fruit" and "bound" (lines 9-10). At that place is a blending of nature and feminine beauty, with each equal to the other.
Góngora, on the other hand, emphasises the superiority of the lady's beauty over that of nature (lines i-8). We read that burnished gilt can't "compete" with the lady'southward hair (lines one-2); her white brow "looks down" on the lily (lines iii-4); "more" eyes are stock-still on her lips than on the carnation (lines five-half dozen; and her neck "triumphs" over the gleaming crystal (lines 7-8). As a result, Góngora's lady appears more vibrant, and her beauty more intense and colourful, more in keeping with baroque aesthetics of marked contrasts..
Fourth dimension is a constant in both sonnets, its destructive force becoming more than evident with the ladies' loss of beauty. Indeed, in the last half dozen lines of Garcilaso's sonnet, the verse form becomes progressively more a meditation on time itself, and the lady –the "yous" whom the poet (or poetic voice) addresses– disappears completely in the 2nd tercet (lines 12-14).
Such is not the case in Góngora's sonnet. The lady (the "y'all") remains integral to the terminate, where the effects of fourth dimension on her accomplish their logical conclusion: fourth dimension consumes her and everything (tú y ello) leaving behind only "globe," "smoke," "grit," "shadow" and "pettiness" (line 14).
Garcilaso takes the states no further than quondam age; Góngora carries us to extinction. Where Garcilaso projects us into the hereafter in the second tercet (marchitará, mudará), Góngora avoids the time to come tense, creating thereby a much more than intense style of conveying the urgency of the appeal to the lady to relish her youth while she can. This dramatic jump from dazzler to disuse/extinction, life's pleasures to decease, advent to reality belongs to the baroque sensibility of illusion and disillusion, and is a characteristic of the great literature at the turn of the 17th century.
Imagery and Rhetoric:
The structure of Góngora'due south sonnet parallels that of Garcilaso's: the anaphoric conjunctions of time (en tanto que in Garcilaso, mientras in Góngora), the appeal to bask youthful days, followed by another conjunction of time (antes que in both poems) which then leads united states of america to the conclusion. Simply that's where the similarity ends. Garcilaso'southward determination is a resigned recognition of the changes wrought by time: y'all'll abound old; Góngora's ending is much more difficult hitting: you lot're going to end upwardly every bit nothing!
The two-fold function of the anaphora, i.e. the repeated conjunction of time, is similar in both poems: it creates suspense as we wait the main verb, and it is a abiding unifying harmoniously the ladies' hair, brow, eyes, lips and neck into an impressionistic, beautiful prototype.
The structure of Góngora's sonnet, nevertheless, is more highly-crafted and complex. For case, the utilize of anaphora is more prolonged with mientras existence used iv times while Garcilaso uses en tanto que twice and an abbreviated form que one time. This increased repetition of the anaphora (in lines 1, three, 5, 7) intensifies our expectation and underlines, more than in Garcilaso's sonnet, time's attendance.
Associated with each use of mientras and following in regular order from peak down are: "pilus," "brow," "lips" and "neck." The indicate here is the logical order (something not followed by Garcilaso: "brow," "eyes," "pilus," "cervix"), which increases the feeling of harmony and, past extension, dazzler.
Ii farther devices add to the awareness of harmony: ane. each body part is evoked over 2 lines (couplets) and 2. each has a respective element fatigued from nature: "hair/gold", "brow/lily," "lip/carnation," and "neck/crystal." So, by the terminate of the octet (lines 1-eight), we have a harmonious, colourfully impressionistic image of feminine dazzler, enclosed in a structural symmetry of 4 parallel and counterbalancing couplets, each beginning with mientras.
Then nosotros finally come to what appears to be the main verb and its message: "enjoy" (goza line 9). Simply we accept scarcely absorbed that exhortation when we are apace whisked forward by another conjunction of time, "before," (antes que). The same is used by Garcilaso, but in Góngora's sonnet information technology is more emphatically placed at the beginning of the line. Where does this last conjunction of time lead u.s. to? To the sobering truth that we all face decay and extinction (line fourteen).
The first tercet (lines ix-11) is very clever, condensing inside its three lines the trunk parts and their corresponding natural elements, extended over the octet. The enumeration of previously mentioned elements into one line (as in lines ix and 11 here) is called correlation or recapitulation and was a device much favoured by baroque writers ordinarily to convey lodge/ symmetry.
But Góngora overturns that principle here, because the symmetrical correspondence of lines 1 to 8 is ruptured in two ways. First, the lady's beauty is no longer evoked in an orderly manner from "pilus" to "neck," but is now "neck," "hair," "lip" and "brow," i.east. the image is no longer harmonious, but fractured like a Picasso face up. Second, although the natural elements correlated in line 11 do follow their order in the octet, they no longer correspond to the parts enumerated in line 9.
This at present asymmetrical prototype prepares u.s.a. for onetime age (2nd tercet), metaphorically depicted as "silver" and "drooping violet." But every bit the "Non only" (No sólo) at the beginning of line nine suggests, there is more than to come up. By now Garcilaso has arrived at the main message ("you'll abound old"), but Góngora carries the suspense right to the last line, and what a line it is! Information technology looks longer than all the other lines, but thanks to synalepha** it is in fact a hendecasyllable like the others. Thus: e(ane)n ti ͜(2)erra, ͜(three) en hu(4)mo, ͜(5) en po(vi)lvo, ͜(seven) en so(8)mbra, ͜(9) en na(ten)d(11)a.
**Synalepha occurs when a discussion ending in a vowel
is followed past a give-and-take beginning with a vowel. The
ii vowels count as one syllable.
The enumeration of five colourless nouns underlines the dark world of decay that leads to pettiness. And the preponderance of labial consonants "m", "p", "5", "b", and the soft intervocalic "d" which combined with several open vowels, evokes superbly the sensation of tomblike silence. Finally, the repetition of the preposition en, with each of the 5 nouns, echoes along the line like a spade tamping the earth covering the grave.
What started off as a call to a young woman to enjoy her youth (carpe diem) ends equally a "menacing Baroque memento mori" ("recollect you must dice") (Gaylord 223).
How do Garcilaso and Góngora's sonnets compare? Both are excellent poems, but Góngora's holds together better. The focus is on the "y'all" and time together throughout the poem; in Garcilaso'due south sonnet, the poetic voice strays from the "you" in the final tercet to stop with a semi-philosophical meditation on time.
Structurally Mientras por competir … is denser, with a remarkable display of symmetry, order and harmony which underline the beauty of the lady. That symmetry collapses with the appearance of quondam age, and regular anaphora, parallel couplets, and correlation requite way in the last line to enumeration, which leads us inexorably to nothingness.
Like Garcilaso's sonnet, Góngora's is not a beloved poem but a poetic exercise applied to a common theme. It was a daring suggestion to compete with Garcilaso, the great Spanish model, all the more so if we consider that Góngora was simply 21 when he wrote his version. It was a measure of his brilliance that he was able to pull it off.
Sources.
Rivers, Elias edRenaissance and Baroque Poetry of EspanaProspect Heights Illinois 1988 (With English language prose translations of the poems.)
Gaylord, Mary Malcolm "The Making of Baroque Poetry" inThe Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, ed. David T Gies Cambridge 2009, pp. 222-37
Jones, R. O.Poems of Góngora Cambridge 1966
Wardropper, BruceCastilian Poetry of the Gilt Historic period New York 1971
Image of Góngora from Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_de_G%C3%B3ngora
Mientras Por Competir Tu Cabello,
Source: https://www.spainthenandnow.com/spanish-literature/gongora-mientras-por-competir
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