Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A NOTE ON THE FIRST PUBLISHED VERSION OF THEEPÍSTOLA A D.JOSÉ MANUEL QUINTANA, BY JOSÉ MARÍA BLANCO

1974; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382742000351365

1469-3550

Brian John Dendle,

Early Modern Spanish Literature

Blanco White's Elegía i a a D. Manuel José Quintana first became known to scholars in 1943, when M. V. de Lara published in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies a text of the poem based on two manuscript copies—one of which is incomplete—owned by the Library of the University of Liverpool. The Liverpool manuscripts also provided the text for a more recent version of the Elegía, that of Vicente Llorens, who offers minor corrections to the text established by Miss de Lara. Lara and Llorens, in their brief comments on the Elegía a Quintana, differ markedly in their interpretation of the poem. Lara, claiming that the Elegía reveals a ‘pesimismo dulce y resignado’, discusses the work in terms which would seemingly suggest the enlightened sensibility of the late eighteenth century: ‘Sosteniendo el tema del desengaño vigorosamente, en tono melancólico, pero sin desesperanza, y sin exagerar la nota trágica, se trata de una melancolía de buen gusto, contenida en la arquitectura del verso, sin desbordarlo, con más propósito artístico que sinceridad, y todo ello expresado en un lenguaje florido y suave.’ Llorens, on the other hand, sees the poem as more akin to those of the Romantic period, terming the Elegía ‘confesión personal cercana a la elegía romántica de la desilusión’.