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Quevedo Against "Culteranismo": A Note on Politics and Morality

1997; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 112; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mln.1997.0027

1080-6598

Elías L. Rivers,

Historical Studies on Spain

Quevedo Against “Culteranismo”: A Note on Politics and Morality Elias L. Rivers The attacks and defenses associated with Góngora’s “new poetry” began in 1613, as soon as the manuscripts of the Polifemo and the Primera Soledad had reached Madrid. In his catalogue of polemical texts, however, Jammes lists 38 different items before reaching Quevedo’s first documented intervention (676): his witty Aguja de navegar cultos, con la receta para hacer “Soledades” en un día, written in 1625 and published in 1631. Jammes adds this comment: “Merece quizás reflexión el carácter tardío de la aparición de Quevedo en esta palestra.” It seems that Quevedo was disturbed not so much by Góngora’s own major poems as by the fact that ten years later, about the time of Góngora’s death, the high new style was being explicated by scholars and widely imitated by many other poets; he saw this dominant literary vogue as yet another component in the moral, social, and cultural corruption of his country. Shortly after 1625 we find similar parodic and burlesque treatments of “culteranismo” in his Discurso de todos los diablos, o infierno enmendado, written in 1627 and published in 1628, and in his La culta latiniparla, catecisma de vocablos para instruir a las mujeres cultas y hembrilatinas (1629). But in these satirical pieces, full of wit and sarcastic humor, Quevedo, as Jammes remarks (684), hardly mentions Góngora by name or uses such words as “gongorizar” or “gongorismo”; Jammes (676–77) furthermore questions the authenticity of several poems attacking Góngora more personally. In that same year of 1629 Quevedo, with no mention at all of Góngora by name, wrote a serious, scholarly critique of the new style, an earnest critical onslaught to be found in the preliminary pages of his editions of poetry by [End Page 269] Fray Luis de León and by Francisco de la Torre, both published in 1631. He dedicated these editions to the Count-Duke of Olivares and to this powerful man’s young son-in-law and political associate Ramiro Felipe [Pérez] de Guzmán, Duke of Medina de las Torres. For Quevedo was above all a political animal, and, from 1621 on, Olivares was at the center of his political world. 1 At the very beginning of Philip IV’s reign, Quevedo had sent Olivares a manuscript of his Política de Dios, Gobierno de Cristo, and when it was published in 1626, he dedicated this book to the privado. To the early stage of their relationship belongs Quevedo’s famous poem entitled “Epístola satírica y censoria contra las costumbres presentes de los castellanos, escrita a don Gaspar de Guzmán, conde de Olivares, en su valimiento.” Later on, in January of 1629, after a brief exile, Quevedo was brought back to Madrid and began “his period of closest association with Olivares and his circle”; “there is no doubt that Olivares needed his services in 1629 as never before” (Elliott 1982: 232–33). Quevedo immediately wrote a romance and a comedia in eloquent, or blatant, defense of Olivares. In collaboration with another court poet, Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, Quevedo “developed what was to be the official party line of the Olivares regime. They portrayed a king who had wisely placed his confidence in a vigilant and disinterested minister, doing his best to save the Monarchy while subjected to intolerable attacks and calumnies” (Elliott 1982: 240). In the midst of this intensive political activity, on 21 July 1629, Quevedo completed his long and deadly serious dedicatory essay, addressed to Olivares, as a preface to his important edition, the princeps, of Fray Luis’s poetry. 2 His second sentence praises these poems in the following terms: Son en nuestro idioma el singular ornamento y el mejor blasón de la habla castellana, con inclinación tan severa a los estudios varoniles que, aun en el desenfado de las vigilias positivas y escolásticas (de esto le sirvieron los consonantes), nos dio fácil y docta la filosofía de las virtudes y dispuso tan apacibles a la memoria los tesoros de la verdad que con logro...