Poesía moral (Polimnia) by Francisco de Quevedo (review)
2002; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 97; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mlr.2002.a827931
ISSN2222-4319
Autores Tópico(s)Early Modern Spanish Literature
ResumoMLR, 97.4, 2002 1007 (p. 118). At a price of a dollar for only three pages, more should have been spent on copy-editing, and on the provision of a subject index (the index is of names and book titles only). Yet that should not distract us from the great merits of this book: Castells has provided a great deal of valuable background information, and he has emphasized the importance of the melancholic temperament as a key to understanding Calisto's actions. Queen Mary, University of London Alan Deyermond Poesia moral (Polimnia). By Franciscode Quevedo. Ed. by Alfonso Rey. 2nd edn. Madrid: Tamesis. 1999. 406 pp. This second edition of one of the parts of El Parnaso espanol comprises a substantial revision, by addition rather than by amendment. There are more elucidatory notes, two extra indexes, and a bibliography of secondary sources?a surprising omission from the firstvolume. Alfonso Rey also corrects various errors in the 1992 edition. As a tool for reading a majority of Quevedo's moral poems it is consequently improved. But in one crucial respect this edition is as deficient as the other because, in the editor's own words, '[el] estudio textual, primera parte de este libro, mantiene las premisas, el metodo y las conclusiones de 1992' (p. 11). These constitute a set of assumptions about Quevedo's intentions in respect of his poetry, and the notion that Jose Gonzalez de Salas is not only the first,but seemingly, too, the last, that is to say, definitive, editor of his poetry. Rey's edition is one of a series that aims to duplicate the division of Quevedo's verse into nine parts, corresponding to the nine Muses, such as had been started with El Parnaso espanol (1648) and completed, after Salas's death, by Pedro Aldrete with the publication of Las tresMusas ultimas castellanas in 1670. J.M. Blecua, along with other twentieth-century editors, eschewed this division into Musas. His reasons were, and remain, sound in that his own editions supplied a coherent and better-organized picture of Quevedo's vast and varied output, avoiding the incongruities, dispersals, and repetitions of the seventeenth-century editions. Blecua's procedures were questioned initially by J. O. Crosby in a review article in 1973, and the recent collective editorial initiative takes its cue from Crosby in a wrong-headed attempt at authenticity. In the process, facts are either overlooked or tendentiously interpreted. In the firstplace it cannot be claimed that El Parnaso espanol is as conceived by Quevedo. Indeed, Salas himself admits to having made significant changes ('Admiti yo, pues, el dictamen de don Francisco, si bien con mucha mudanza') and in one place refers to himself as 'coautor'. More seriously still, it is not at all as obvious as Rey and others would like to pretend that even the overall concept was Quevedo's. Few are the poet's references to his own verse, and there is no surviving correspondence with Salas. But in two letters to Francisco de Oviedo, written in the last year of his life,Quevedo does allude to his desire to have his poetry published. In both of these he also refers specifically to his late prose work, the Vida de Marco Bruto, but rather than referto his poetry by the title that allegedly he was conceiving in collaboration with Salas, he uses a general term: 'obras de verso' in the earlier letter, 'obras de versos' in the later. If Quevedo's involvement in El Parnaso espanol was as great as the apologists for the 1648 edition claim, then it is strange that he does not call it by its name at the very time when he is seriously working to complete it, almost on his deathbed. As a consequence Rey's introductory sections are a blend of supposition and assertion with disconcerting leaps from the one to the other. The abundance of words and phrases like 'posiblemente' (p. 16), 'es de suponer que' (p. 18), 'en mi opinion' (p. 18) and the recourse to conditional sentences are tell-tale signs. Indeed, what is most 1008 Reviews unfortunate about this approach is its lack of proportion and perspective, a hallmark of...
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