Background

Gongora was born on July 11, 1561 to a noble family in Córdoba, where his father, Francisco de Argote, was corregidor, or judge.

Education

After attending the University of Salamanca, where he paid less attention to the study of law than to gaming and other amusements, Gongora returned to Cordoba about 1585.

Career

He accepted a post with the Inquisition which required him to travel to all parts of Spain to investigate the religious antecedents of suspected persons. His convivial disposition and his strong vein of irony in these early years are reflected in his light and satirical verse. In 1617, with most of his best-known works written and his poetic reputation at court already established, Góngora moved to Madrid where, with the support of the Duke of Lerma and another royal favorite, Rodrigo de Calderon, he was ordained a priest in the same year and later appointed chaplain to Philip III. In Madrid, Góngora engaged in the bitter polemic which raged around his new and difficult poetic style, culteranismo. He was furiously attacked by Lope de Vega and Quevedo among other writers and wrote satirical sonnets in return; the result was a long and virulent literary battle.

The first edition of Gongora's poetical works was printed in the year of his death although they had been widely read in manuscript long before that time. Beneath the overall incisiveness and precision of his style there can be discerned, if not two periods, at least two basic characteristics, one arising from his interest in the popular and festive and the other based on his use of sheer poetic wit to create an ultimate beauty of verbal structure. In the former type may be included such poems as the letrilla beginning "Andeme yo caliente y ríaseriase la gente" ("If I go warm let them laugh as they will") and his many ballads. In the latter type belong what are considered the two major works of his style of culteranismo, the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (c. 1613) and the famous Soledades (c. 1613) (The Solitudes of Don Luis de Góngora, 1931). A definition of the style of culteranismo must base itself on the fact that the poet is concerned neither with the narrative content of his poem nor with holding the interest of the casual reader. He does not aspire to communicate events or emotions, and both story and listener, although necessary elements, must subordinate themselves to the poetic attempt to create an absolute formal beauty from words and their images. The stylistic means to Góngora's aesthetic end are many. Among them the following may be listed: the use of a highly Latinate vocabulary for tonal effect; the rearrangement of customary Spanish word sequence in order to isolate the word from its continuity and so stress its value as an entity; the continual use of antithesis; and finally, the frequent use of mythological reference in such a way as to evoke with a single word long vistas of pictorial connotation. Góngora's use of metaphor and hyperbole for the arresting creation of images is perhaps the most important of all his stylistic devices; this allows him both to avoid the ordinary word ("table" becomes "squared pine, " giving at once a natural image and the very substance of the article) and to create a special language of symbols ("water" is always "crystal") which can be arranged and displayed by his poetic wit. Although these techniques were at times exaggerated, there is scarcely a stanza of the Soledades which does not yield a witty poetic assertion on the order of the often quoted "a batallas de amor campo de pluma" ("for battles of love, a field of feathers"). Góngora's influence, though it became less during the 18th century, experienced a revival in the 20th, where it had a definite effect on contemporary poetry in Spanish. The range of this influence is further indicated by E. M. Wilson's translation of the Soledades (the first since Thomas Stanley's in 1651) and by the intensity of critical interest both in the man and in his art.

Achievements

• Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered the most prominent Spanish poets of all time. His Baroque, convoluted style, known as Gongorism (gongorismo), was so exaggerated by less gifted imitators that his reputation suffered after his death until it underwent a revaluation in the 20th century.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora: A Bilingual Edition

    ( Making Luis de Góngora’s work available to contemporary...)

  • Poesias: Romances, Letrillas, Redondillas. Decimas. Sonetos, Soledades, Polifemo y Galatea, Panegirico, Poesias sueltas (Spanish Edition)

    (Brand New. Ship worldwide)

Connections

Uncle:

Don Franscisco

He was a prebendary of Córdoba Cathedral, renounced his post in favor of his nephew, who took deacon's orders in 1586.