Luis de León's development, via Garcilaso, of Horace's Beatus ille

146 Jacques M a r x - Une liaison dangereuse etc.

A vindication of the Histories o f the OldandNew Testament. Compte rendu �9 Biblioth~que impartiale, mai-juin 1753, article VI, pp. 427-450.

42. Ibid, p. 432. 43. La Haye, 1753. Rrcusre par Voltaire, elle a 6t6 publire dans le volume L (2" m e

pattie). La Bibliothdque impartiale l'annonce en mars avril 1753, article VII, pp. 314-319. 44. Elles ont &6 rrimprimres dans La Guerre littdraire ou choix de quelques pidces de

M, de V . . . . 1759. La Bibliothdque impartiale en donne l'extrait en mars-avril 1754, article IX, pp. 279-297. La Ddfense. . . fut 6galement rrfutre par l'abb6 Guyon dans l'Oracle des Nouveaux philosophes . . . . Berne, 1759-1760.

45. Sur la participation de Forrney ~t l'Encyclopddie, voir les articles de Marcu, For- meyet sa collaboration d l'Encyclopddie, dans la R.H.L.F. , juillet-septembre 1953, pp. 296-305; et de Georges Roth, Samuel Formey et son projet d'encyclopddie rdduite, darts la R.H.L.F. , juillet-septembre 1954, pp. 371-374.

46. Lettre du 10 frvrier 1756, citre par Roth, p. 373.

L U I S D E L E O N ' S D E V E L O P M E N T , V I A G A R C I L A S O , O F H O R A C E ' S B E A T U S I L L E

Luis de Le6n's Castilian version of Horace 's Beatus ille is a tribute to the great influence of that epode on vernacular lyric poetry in the sixteenth century. One earlier and more famous tribute to the same poem is Garcilaso's "paraphrase" 1 in Eclogue I I (lines 38-76). This paper will at tempt to show how that paraphrase influences Luis de Lern, not only in his translation of Beatus ille but in his original poems and, especially, in Vida retirada.

But first of all it must be stressed that, on the whole, Fray Luis is very faithful in this translation to the Latin original. Metrically, he reflects the Horat ian composition closely, substituting (in accordance with the prosodic exigencies of the day) alternating hendecasyllabic and heptasyllabic lines for the alternating Latin dodecasyllabic and octosylla- bic ones. He also uses full rhyme instead of blank verse which, though attempted by Bosc~in and Garcilaso, never found general favour among Spanish Golden-Age poets. Verbally, too, the translation stays close to the Latin text. Moreover, he completes his version in 70 lines, the length of the original.

The following lines, however, do include a significant, albeit brief, departure from Horace:

E1 agua en las acequias corre y cantan los pdjaros sin due~o; las fuentes al murmullo que levantan despiertan dulce sue~o

(lines 25-8; my italics).

They correspond to the following lines from Garcilaso's paraphrase:

Patrick Gallagher - Louis de Ledn's development, etc. 147

Convida a dulce sue~o aquel manso rtiido del agua que la clara fuente envfa, y las ayes sin due~o con canto no aprendido hinchen el aire de dulce arrnonia

(lines 64-9; my italics),

The original runs thus:

labuntur altis interim ripis aquae, queruntttr in silvis aves, fontesque lymphis obstrepunt manantibus, somnos quod invitet leves

(lines 25-8).

Luis de Le6n follows Garcilaso in translating somnes leves as "dulce suefio", and departs with him from the original in his use of the qualifying phrase sin due~o. Sin duego may well have occurred to Garcilaso as an amplification dictated by the need to find a rhyme for sue~o. But this in turn necessitated the expansion of the amplification, sin duego by itself having been presumably considered to warrant elucidation. Horace 's simple ,,queruntur aves" thus becomes ,,las aves sin duefio / con canto no aprendido / hinchen el aire de dulce armonia". In Garcilaso such licence is unremarkable, sonce his three-stanza "paraphrase" is a free and partial adaptation of Horace, but in Fray Luis the use of sin due~o demonstrates a debt to Garcilaso which one would perhaps not expect to find in so meticulous a version. The attraction of Garcilaso's amplification proved stronger than Fray Luis's scruples as a translator 2.

I t could be objected, of course, that if dulce sueho suggested sin duego in Garcilaso's paraphrase it was bound to have the same effect on Luis de Le6n's translation. But Fray Luis was not obliged to translate somnos leves 3 by ,,dulce suefio", nor to put the adjective first.

That his use of the same phrases is not fortuitous is in any case confirmed by two famous lines f rom his Vida retirada:

Despi6rtenme las aves con su cantar sabroso no aprendido

(31-2).

For here, echoing Garcilaso, he incorporates part of the expansion of the latter's amplification - ,,con canto no aprendido". Nor does the remainder, ,,hinchen el aire de dulce armonia", necessarily escape Fray Luis's emulative attention, since he appears to adapt it as two separated lines of the ode to Salinas:

Traspasa el aire todo

mli id una'ciulds' a'armonia (16 and 25).

148 Patrick Gallagher - Luis de Le6n's development, etc.

These lines occur in the description of the ecstatic spiritual flight to the Empyrean, a flight inspired by the harmonies of Salinas's music which have reawoken in the soul the memory of its divine origin. Fray Luis adjudges the singing of the birds delightful (sabroso) but does not follow Garcilaso so far as to call it harmonious. He had a loftier idea of harmony than that. But the aural "harmony" of Garcilaso's line so impressed him that, though rejecting the predication, he felt impelled to adapt the phrase to a poetic context in which the use of the word armonfa would do no violence to his own exact apprehension of it.

To put the position in general terms: in the lines under discussion, Garcilaso adds something to Horace and Fray Luis apparently incorporates the additions, not only into two of his original poems, but also into his otherwise reasonably strict translation of Beatus ille.

Of far greater importance, however, is the astonishing fact that although Beatus ille is often considered the most important single literary ante- cedent of Vida retirada 4 it alludes only very briefly to material power and wealth:

Forumque vitat et superba civium potentiorum limina

(7-8).

Garcilaso, stressing the spiritual dangers of pursuing wordly ambitions, departs from Horace:

y vive descuidado, y lejos de empacharse en lo clue al alma impide y embaraza! Ne ve la llena plaza, ni la soberbia puerta de los grandes sefiores, ni los aduladores a quien la hambre del favor despierta; no le sent forzoso rogar, fmgir, temery estar quejoso

(41-50).

All of this, except the three lines in the middle (44-6), glosses the opening of Horace's poem in language dearly inspired by verses from Virgil and Seneca 5. Fray Luis translates:

huye la plaza y la soberbia puerta de la ambici6n esclava

(7-8).

Now it does not really matter whether in writing ,,la soberbia puerta" Fray Luis was once again echoing Garcilaso or just fortuitously rendering in identical fashion Horace's superba limina. What does matter is Garci- laso's departures from Horace, since it is in them, and not in the Horatian

Patrick Gallagher - Luis de Le6n's development, etc. 149

text, that we should seek the most significant influence on Fray Luis's poem. For just as Fray Luis follows Garcilaso out of Horace 's text in the echoes cited above, so, in Vida retirada, does he follow his fellow- Spaniard in the latter's lengthier departures from the epode. I t is a curious fact that whereas Horace refers to power and wealth in two lines only 6, almost hal f of Garcilaso's 39-line paraphrase is devoted to a moral assessment of the lust for wordly estate. The rest of the poem praises the simple joys in communion with nature of those who scorn power and wealth. The one life is contrasted with the other - in almost equal pro- portions. I t is once more chiefly in Virgil and Seneca that we should seek the sources of Garcilaso's inspiration; for there we can see similar notions alternately - though disproportionately - contrasted. Garcilaso's origina- lity, as is so often the case, is to be found in his artistry, not his ideas. He introduces symmetrical alternation into the first two stanzas by dividing each into similarly contrasting passages of 6 q- 7 lines, while devoting the entire final stanza to evoking restful communion with nature; hence a formal structure of counterbalancing reiterated contrasts is built. And that, precisely, is the basic pattern of Vida retirada. Fray Luis's poem is certainly more complex in its structure and ideas, and the latter are organised in a more contrapuntal fashion and developed to their conclusion - the final consequences of choosing or rejecting the hidden path. But this complexity could be no more than an elaboration of Garcilaso's pattern, since that kind of symmetry is not anywhere evident in the Latin texts to which both Renaissance poets are indebted.

What is most conspicuously absent in Horace 's poem and most insis- tently present in Luis de Le6n's is the constant harping on what had become a medieval sermonising topos: the idea that in this world all is vanity. Jorge Manrique's coplas on the death of his father which appeared so many times in print throughout the sixteenth century helped to keep the theme alive in poetry 7. But it was Garcilaso's gloss of Horace that seems most immediately to have inspired Fray Luis's use of the theme. Thus

T6nganse su tesoro

A mi una pobrecilla mesa, de amable paz bien abastada me basta, y la vajilla de fino oro labrada, sea de quien la mar no teme airada

(Vida retirada, 61 and 71-5)

recalls

el ganado contando de su manada pobre,

plata cendrada y fina, oro luciente y puro, baja y vii le parece

(Egloga 11, 54-5 and 57-9)


though it seems possible that both passages, independently, may owe something to Jorge Manrique's

� 9 edificios reales llenos de oro, las vaxillas tan febridas, los enriques y reales del tesoroS

(Coplas . . . . 218-222);

and though ultimately both recall a number of passages from Virgil and Seneca 9. Even the idea that wordly ambition is spiritually dangerous is clearly present in Garcilaso's adaptation of Horace 's opening lines:

y vive descuidado, y lejos de empacharse en lo que al alma impide y embaraza!

(41-3).

The idea itself was not, of course, exclusively medieval and both authors owe much to Virgil and Seneca for the contrast between ostenta- tious wealth and the simplicity of a bucolic existence. Nevertheless, some of the comparisons adduced in this paper will perhaps demonstrate an additional debt by Fray Luis to Garcilaso. Moving on from there to gloss superba limina, Garcilaso writes contemptuously of the ,,aduladores" motivated by ,,la hambre del favor", leaning rather heavily this time on Seneca's ,,non aura populi et vulgus infidum bonis, / non pestilens invidia, non fragilis favor; / non ille regne servit aut regno imminens / vanos honores sequitur aut fluxas opes" (Hippolytus, 488-91). In the following stanzas Fray Luis seems directly indebted to the same source and, indeed, to follow Seneca even more closely than Garcilaso did:

No cura si la fama canta con voz su nombre pregonera, ni cura si encarama la lengua lisonjera 1o que condena la verdad sincera. ~,Qu6 presta a mi contento si soy del vano dedo sefialado? /,si en busca deste viento ando desalentado, con ansias vivas, con mortal cuidado?

(11-20)

Garcilaso goes on immediately to complete his amplification and the first stanza of his apostrophe in words the metre, rhythm and meaning of which are surely paralleled in the conclusion of stanza viii in Vida retirada. Compare

no le ser~i forzoso rogar, fingir, temer y estar quejoso

(Egloga lI, 49-50)

and

Patrick Gallagher - Luis de Ledn's development, etc. 151

libre de amor, de celo, de odio, de esperanzas, de recelo 10

( Vida retirada, 39--40).

He who escapes Fray Luis's mundanal ruido and finds Garcilaso's dulce soledad or Fray Luis's escondida / senda is not perturbed by what the world values. Line 5 of Garcilaso's piece runs ,,y lejos de empacharse"; line 6 of Luis de Le6n's poem runs ,,Que no le enturbia el pecho" 11. The frenetic pursuit of wordly ambitions is seen by Fray Luis as a senseless clamour leading to spiritual disaster (lines 61-70: the shipwreck) 12. The resolution of this discord in a final harmony - the reward of the spiritual life in communion with nature - is the note on which his poem ends:

tendido yo a la sombra est6 cantando. A la sombra tendido, de hiedra ,y lauro eterno coronado, puseto el atento oido al son dulce, acordado del plectro sabiamente meneado

(81-5).

The whole of Garcilaso's third stanza is devoted to the evocation of a delightful and harmonious natural world with which man himself, if he is sane 13, can feel in harmony. The first five lines of the stanza are based on lines 25-8 of Beatus ille; the remaining eight continue the evocation. In Fray Luis's picture of tranquil communion the simple yet striking line ,,A la sombra tendido" probably recalls Horace 's ,,libet iacere modo sub antiqua ilice" (line 23) even though the latter made no explicit reference to the shade. Garcilaso does, twice - firstly in his rendering of Horace 's line, thus:

A la sombra holgando de un alto pino o robre

(51-2)

and secondly in the harmonious amplification of Horace with which the piece ends:

Mceles compafila, a la sombra volando, y entre varios olores gustando tiernas flores, la solicita abeja susurrando; los firboles y el viento al suefio ayudan con su movimiento

(70-6).

The idea of resting under the branches of a tree is Horace's, but the specific concentration on shade is Garcilaso's 14. Thus, in writing ,,tendido yo a la sombra est6 cantando", Luis de Le6n was simultaneously recalling the Horat ian picture and - both verbally and phonetically -


echoing Garcilaso's , ,A la sombra holgando". The echo is, as it were, reverberated by Fray Luis's repetition, in the next line, of the phrase already repeated by Garcilaso. The line ,,A la sombra tendido", like the preceding one, recalls Horace 's restful picture while corresponding, by virtue of its position in the poem, to Garcilaso's ,,A la sombra volando".

But we have not quite finished with ,,A la sombra volando". Garcilaso ends his adaptation of Beatus ille, as we have seen, by amplifying the Latin evocation of drowsiness in a setting of birds and streams and fountains - conventional props of the locus amoenus. Echoing Virgil once more 15, he adds the diligent bee, who accompanies the birdsong with his steady drone; and the whole concert of harmonious nature together with the sound of the wind in the trees is propitious to sleep. In Vida retirada the harmony of nature is enhanced and complemented by the musical skill of man: the ,,son dulce, acordado / del plectro sabiamente meneado". We are not lulled by nature into idyllic unconsciousness but, on the contrary, awakened by man 's music (,,puesto el atento oido") to a keener perception of the consonance of creation and of our unique place in it. The difference is instructive since it can serve to illustrate the fact that Luis de Le6n's aesthetic sense, unlike that of many lyric poets, was formed by an avid intellectual curiosity, which drove him to seek ever more intense degrees of awareness and enlightenment. To Fray Luis both sinking into a lethargic oblivion and merging into nature itself would have seemed - as aspirations - quite incomprehensible 16. This distinction apart, there seems little doubt that Luis de Le6n was influenced by the last stanza of Garcilaso's adaptation. We have seen how Horace 's un- qualified ayes became ,,sin duefio / con canto no aprendido" in Garcilaso, and how clearly this amplification was echoed in Fray Luis's translation of Horace as well as in Vida retirada 17. But there is reason to believe that the last eight lines of the Garcilaso piece are echoed in a different part of Luis de Le6n's poem and, if this is indeed the case, the thesis that it is not Horace but Garcilaso'sVirgilian/Senecan gloss of Beatus ille or, occasion- ally, Georgics I I and Hippolytus themselves which are the more important sources of Vida retirada will find further illustration. Though the lines are Garcilaso's final departure from the text of Beatus ille the corresponding passage in Vida retirada occurs before the description of the shipwreck. Let us juxtapose and compare the two passages:

a la sombra volando y entre varios olores gustando tiemas flores la soltcita abeja susurrando los hrboles y el viento al suefio ayudan con su movimiento

Y luego sosegada el paso entre los ~irboles torciendo

y con diversas flores va esparciendo. E1 aire el huerto orea y ofrece rail olores al sentido los ~irboles menea con tm rnanso riJido

(Vida retirada, 51-2 and 55-9).

Compare:


a la sombra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . entre los ~irboles entre varios olores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ofrece mil olores tiemas flores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . diversas flores susurrando . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . manso riiido los lirboles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . los ~boles con su movimiento . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . menea

The importance of Garcilaso's amplifications of Horace so far detailed in this paper renders unlikely the possibility that the similarity of these two passages is accidental. Further instances of possible indebtedness of Fray Luis to Garcilaso might be cited, but they are too inconclusive to support a thesis in favour of which, in any case, it is hoped, enough evi- dence has already been shown.

That Luis de Le6n's debt to Garcilaso's accommodation of Horace has not previously been recognised and assessed seems incredible. Indeed, a comprehensive explanation for this state-of-affairs eludes the present writer. But a clue to part of the answer, at least, may be adduced from the fact that he himself, before comparing Beatus ille with Garcilaso's treatment of it, was not sufficiently familiar with the Latin text to be aware of the precise extent to which both sixteenth-century authors actually deviate from it and take inspiration from the serious moral com- mitment of Virgil and Seneca to a bucolic ideal. And that Fray Luis, a distinguished Latinist and scholar, should show himself to have been poetically inspired in a neo-Horatian ode by his fellow-Spaniard's departures from Beatus ille rather than the text itself, must surely rank as an example of the most eminent kind of homage which a famous Golden- Age poet could pay to ,,el Principe de los poetas castellanos".

Finally, it should be stressed that Beatus ille did not profoundly influence either Garcilaso or Luis de Le6n for the very good reason that it is not a profound poem. The inevitable moral implications of the theme, emphatically drawn by Virgil and Seneca, impinge lightly on Horace's ode, in which the delights of the wealthy landowner's life on a rural estate are (as the poet and his readers appreciate with irony) momentarily coveted by a harassed moneylender as a refuge from urban clamour - the circumstances are not readily compatible with serious aspirations to spiritual betterment via an existence of ascetic unpretentiousness in communion with nature. Since such notions, usually inseparable from the theme itself, are advanced in Georgics H and Hippolytus, it is hardly surprising that Garcilaso and Fray Luis should remember relevant passages from those two works. Fray Luis's development of the moral philosophy in the Virgilian and Senecan poems consists in a canalisation to Christian ends of their anti-materialistic predilections. In this process he would not have been hindered by his clear familiarity with Garcilaso's three stanzas which, though lacking the inescapably Christian symbolism of the Augus- tinian's poem, contain nothing that is not in keeping with Christian morality. Indeed it seems most improbable that the moral contrast pre- sented itself to Garcilaso precisely as it did to any of his Latin sources. In

154 Patrick Gallagher - Luis de Lern's development, etc.

none of these, for instance, though similar ideas may be implicit, do we find a line like ,,en 1o que al alma impide y embaraza". Why then did Garcilaso write these words? The damage done by worldliness to man's spiritual nature is already stressed in Virgil and Seneca. It seems to me that the additional emphasis by Garcilaso in that line can have one pur- pose only: to strengthen the stoic condemnation of worldliness in his classical sources by introducing Christian morality. If that is not the sense of the line, then it is entirely superfluous. But if, in writing alma, Garcilaso was thinking of the Christian soul, it is easy to see what he is adding to the pagan strictures: the idea of jeopardising, through "occasions of sin" or actual sinfulness, the soul's chance of salvation and supernatural beatitude. That he could introduce Christian beatitude into his bucolic poetry is unequivocally demonstrated by the apotheosis of Elisa in Eclogue ! 18. Fray Luis concentrates on charting the spiritual consequences of choosing or rejecting the hidden path, of following Christ or the world. Though its external lyricism in inspired by a delight in nature and expressed with echoes of Latin bucolic literature, the poem is mainly about the spiritual life or death of the soul. It follows the soul's progress, after the choice has been made, to harmony or discord, as the case may be. The final discord is mortal: those who, rejecting the path, have devoted their lives exclusively to the pursuit of worldly wealth and distinction, die, when the storm wrecks their ship, in a shrieking cacophony of hysteria. We have come a long way from Horace's moneylender who fancied a spell in the country; quite a long way even from Virgil and Seneca who appreciated as an ideal the moral innocence of the country- man's simple and contented life. We are now shown that it is spiritually vital to make the right choice, since failure to abandon worldly pursuits leads inexorably to catastrophe: the soul's damnation. Seen in a Christian light, then, the choice is not the most important one but the only important one that man can and must make. Hence Vida retirada is, above all, a religious poem. Garcilaso's gloss of the Beatus ille theme is not, and properly belongs to the pastoral convention. But it seems scarcely possible that Garcilaso, in writing of the moral superiority of a simple life in communion with nature could avoid being to some extent aware of the overwhelming support for this view to be found in Christian teaching and Christian ascetic traditions. By exploiting his own keen awareness of this support Luis de Lern developed the theme in a direction which imparted a contemporary urgency and relevance to the classical nostalgia for the Golden-Age of pre-urban peace and innocence.

Dublin P A T R I C K G A L L A G H E R

Notes

1. The term "paraphrase", often used to describe the lines in question, is not exact. As we shall see, Garcilaso takes very little from the text of Beatus ille: he merely glosses his own version of a few lines of Horace's poem. With this caveat the word 'paraphrase' is


a useful rough-and-ready description since it helps to keep clear the general distinction between Garcilaso's three 'Horatian' stanzas (which are not in fact as Horatian as they are often assumed to be) and the translation of the epode by Fray Luis.

2. Tautology notwithstanding: "con canto no aprendido "repeats the idea implicit in "sin duefio" - the spontaneous and voluntary nature of birdsong- an idea which Garci- laso could have derived from a line of Virgil. See note 17.

3. The words are used by Seneca in a very similar context: . . . . . caespite ant nudole- ves/duxisse somnos, sive fons largus citas/defundit undas sive per flores novos/fugiente dulcis murmurat rivo sonus", (Hippolytus, 511-13); Virgil prefers a different adjective in an evocation of a kindred idyllic somnolence: 'mugitusque boum mollesque sub arbore somni/non absunt', (Georgics II, 470-1).

4. Gareth A. Davies's important article, "Luis de Le6n and a passage from Seneca's Hippolytus", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XLI (1964), 10-27, successfully invalidates this traditional assumption. As Dr. Davies remarks (p. 11), the differences between the two poems were stressed by Father Angel C. Vega, Luis de Le6n, Poesias (Madrid 1955), 27. Exaggeration of Fray Luis's general indebtedness to Horace is deplored by Father F61ix Garcia, Luis de Le6n, Obras completas castellanas (Madrid 1951), 1405-07.

5. Virgil, Georgics II, especially lines 458-68 and 505-10; Seneca, Hippolytus, especially lines 483-502 and 525-30. See also Davies, art. cit. and, by the same author, "Notes on some classical sources for Garcilaso and Luis de Le6n", Hispanic Review, XXXII (1964), 202-216.

6. Apart from the phrase procul negotiis in line 1. 7. Many lines of his famous poem illustrate the topos, the truth of which is confirmed

by the medieval view of Fortune. The following examples, which stress the ephemeral character of wordly power and wealth, are typical enough: 'Ved de cufin poco valor/son las cosas tras que andamos/y corremos,/que, en este mundo traidor,/ann primero que muramos/las perdemos' (85-9); 'los estados y riqueza,/que nos dexan a deshora,//,qui6n lo duda?/No les pidamos firmeza,/pues que son de una sefiora/que se muda' (121-6); 'No dex6 grandes tesoros,/ni alcan~6 grandes riquezas/ni vaxillas' (337-9). Several 15th- century manuscript copies of the poem have survived. It appeared in print a number of times before the end of the century and was frequently reprinted from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, especially after the publication in 1564 in Alcakt of a version glossed a 1o divino by a Carthusian monk. The poem itself had already been printed outside Spain, in Ferrara (1554) and Antwerp (1558), but the Carthusian gloss was reprinted-with apparently indefatigable fervour-up to the late 18th century, not only in Alcahi but also in Cuenca, Huesca, Madrid, Medina, Seville and Valencia. Details in Jos6 Sim6n Diaz, Bibliografia de la literatura hispdnica III (Madrid, C.S.I.C., 1953) pp. 704-8.

8. Obviously, the comparison with Manrique, whose poem has no direct links with any bucolic literary convention, must not be taken too far. Indirectly, however, there could be a connexion, through the Marquis of Santillana's adaptation of Beatus ille in his Comedieta de Ponea. This neo-Horatian piece, cited by Herrera in his notes on the Second Eclogue (see Antonio Gallego Morrell, Garcilaso y sus comentaristas, Granada 1966, p. 485) begins ,,Benditos aqueUos, que con el azada / sustentan la vida, e viven contentos" and ends ,,ca estos con safia no son conmovidos, / ninguna codicia los tiene sujetos; / ni quieten tesoros, ni sienten defectos, / nin turba fortuna sus lihres sentidos". Hence, if Fray Luis, in his use of the theme, is indebted to Garcilaso and if both poets are indebted to Jorge Manrique and if the latter is indebted to Santillana (and all of these debts are certainly possible) then we are confronted with an interesting illustration of the transmission of a classical topos in Castilian poetry from the late Middle Ages to the Golden Age-a transmission rendered more remarkable still by the following genea- logical coincidences: (1) Santillana was Garcilaso's great grand uncle (the brother of his great grandmother, Elvira Lasso de la Vega); (2) Garcilaso was the great great grandson on his mother's side of Fermin Perez de Guzmfin (whose Generaciones y semblanzas expresses an austere distaste for ostentation and the vanity of wordily magnificence); (3) he was also related to G6mez and Jorge Manrique (the former being the author of a verse elegy on the death in 1458 of Garcilaso's great uncle, Garcilaso de la Vega). I have been unable to discover precisely in what degree Garcflaso was related to Jorge Manrique, but it appears to have been established that they were both related to Santillana [see Jorge Manrique, Cancionero, ed. Augusto Cortina, Ckisicos castellanos (1929), 31, and Antonio Serrano de Haro, Personalidady destino de Jorge Manrique (Madrid 1966), 56 and 58-9].


9. Virgil, Georgics 11, 461-10; 495-71 ; Seneca, Hippolytus, 486--498, 517-30, 540-3. 10. According to G.A.Davies, Luis de Le6n's lines are an amplification of Seneca's

"spei metusque liber" (Hippolytus, 492), whereas for Garcilaso's 'rogar' , etc., a number of Senecan parallels, including line 492, is adduced. There is certainly little reason to doubt that Garcilaso's source was the Senecan passage, and it is therefore not essential to establish the validity of the parallels suggested by Dr. Davies. But I am bound to question his assertion that Garcilaso's line "by its very awkwardness, betrays a depen- dence on an outside source" (art. cit., Hispanic Review, XXXII, p. 205). 'Rogar, fingir, t emery estar quejoso' seems to me a memorable line, in which the device of asyndeton is used for artistic ends, among which the following might be included: (1) Emphasis-the device has the effect of 'spelling out' evils and simultaneously of suggesting that the list could be extended. The insistent iambic stress and the four infinitives together with the words themselves help to convey distaste, monotony and a weary exasperation. This is ultimately an imitation of living speech in which, for example, details of a ' run of bad luck' are often listed and declaimed in the same emphatic and extendible fashion; (2) Onomatopoeia-the halting line, the two iotas and, again, the four infinitives convey the futile efforts of the favour-seeker. Stress and pauses combine with a marked phonetic harshness (here one must add to the two iotas the fricative intervocalic g of rogar and the velar plosive k of quejoso) to suggest panting anxiety, breathless speech, etc. Exam- ples of effective asyndeton abound in Garcilaso: of 'vinos acedos, camareras feas, [ varletes codiciosos, malas postas, / gran paga, poco arg6n, largo camino' (Epistola, 74-6), or Salicio's famous refrain in Egloga I, 'Salid sin dueIo, l~lgrimas, corriendo', or ' iOh bienaventurado, que, sin ira, / sin odio, en paz est~s, sin amor ciego' (Elegla 1, 289- 90); other examples include Egloga I, 256, 239, 279-81,308-9, 392-3, Elegia I, 469-71, Canci6n IV, 164, Cancion II, 51-2, Soneto IV, 12-13. Similar examples abound in Quevedo: 'Breve suspiro, y ultimo, y amargo, / es la muerte, forzosa y heredada' (Todo tras si lo lleva el ago breve, 13-14), ( 'Nada, que, siendo, es poco, y ser~i nada / en poco tiempo, que ambiciosa olvida' (Vivir es caminar poca jornada, 5-6), 'soy un fue, y un ser~i, y un es cansado' ('iAh de la v ida! ' . . , i, Nadie me responde?', 11), ' iFue suefio ayer; mafiana ser~i tierra! iPoco antes, nada; y poco despu6s, humo! ' (iFue sue~o a y e r , . . ! , 1-2), 'Ya no es ayer; mafiana no ha llegado; boy pasa, yes, y rue con movimiento' (ibid., 9-10). G6ngora also pratised the device, taking it to its inexorable conclusion: 'en tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada ' (Mientraspor competir con tu cabello, 14).

Fray Luis is surely recalling and amplifying the sense of Seneca's,,spei metusque liber" while formally echoing Garcilaso's asyndeton which is, in any case, closely related to the Senecan idea.

11. 'Empacharse' and 'enturbia ' are accounted for by Horace's 'excitatur' (line 5) which, however, is used in a different context: that of the soldier roused to battle by the clarion. But Seneca's 'non ilium avarae mentis inflammat furor' (Hippolytus, 486) is closer to the sense of Garcilaso and Fray Luis.

12. Cf Virgil's 'sollicitant alii remis freta caeca' (Georgics II, 503). 13. Garcilaso himself, in the second stanza of this Horatian adaptation, stresses the

sanity of the man who has rejected the pursuit of power and wealth in favour of the pastoral life. See lines 57-63, the last two of which are as follows: 'y como est~i en su seso, / rehuye la cerviz del grave peso'.

14. It is true, however, that shade is mentioned once in a similar context in Virgil's poem: 'o qui me gelidis convallibus Haemi / sistat et ingenti ramorum protegat um- bra! ' (Georgics 11, 488-9).

15. The celebrated passage in the classical author 's Eclogue 1, 51-5, the last line of which-'saepe leui somnum saudebit inire susurro'-clearly inspired Garcilaso's allitera- tive onomatopoeia ('la solicita abeja susurrando', 74).

16. The desmayo dichoso and dulce olcido experienced by the poet's soul transported to ecstasy by keen attention to Salinas's Mltsica estremada have little in common with the pleasantly sensuous relaxation of Garcilaso's siesta.

17. Verbally, Fray Luis was undoubtedly echoing Garcilaso, but the idea (applied not to birdsong but to the fruit of trees) that the delights of the natural world are all the more delightful for not having been produced under constraint is contained in Virgil's Georgics 11: 'quos rami fructus, quos ipsa volentia r u r a / sponte tulere sua, carpsit' (500-01).

18. See Otis H.Green, "The Abode of the Blest in Garcilaso's Egloga Primera", Romance Philology, VI (1952-'53), 272-8.

Luis de León's development, via Garcilaso, of Horace's Beatus ille

Documents

Transcript of Luis de León's development, via Garcilaso, of Horace's Beatus ille