Fray Luis, San Juan, Garcilaso, and Góngora: Spanish Poetry
Alma Lucent Region
Fray Luis was an essentially religious poet who developed various moral topics. His biggest concerns, stemming from a dramatic view of earthly existence, found comfort in two ways: retired life and the dream of the celestial dwelling. Around the prison, small works scream his anguish and the need for freedom in different poems. Cosmic harmony is present in the work *Serena*. Fray Luis hopes that man will forget his anguish and achieve harmony with the Universe. The helplessness, or lack of fulfillment of man on earth, inspires poems like *Ode to Ascension*. The ideal life is withdrawn, for example, in *Song to Solitary Life*. The foreshadowing of the life of the sky is, among others, in the *Ode to Salinas*.
Living Flame of Love
The poem has four stanzas of six lines with a lyre structure: two lines of seven syllables combined with one of eleven syllables with a consonant rhyme (aBCaBCdEFdEF… and so on). The theme of the poem is the mystical union with God and the love that the poet feels for Him. In the first verse, the poet asks God to finally break the barrier between the divine and the earthly and allow him to join with Him.
In the third stanza, San Juan explains how the love of God has influenced his life: Before falling for Him, he was dark and blind, but after falling in love, this love gives light and color to his life. Finally, in the fourth stanza, the poet tries to explain (because he knows that it is impossible to reflect in a statement all his mystical feeling) how the love of God manifests in him, how he feels in his chest and sighs with longing for the time when his love can be consummated.
In this poem, composed after his lover and muse Isabel Freire married Antonio de Fonseca, Garcilaso is looking for a place where the rocks and trees serve as witnesses to their suffering.
After a Lovely Set
For many, San Juan is the leading lyric poet of Spanish literature. He manages to express with great intensity the passion of love (divine), desire, and achievement of union with the Beloved. It is fundamental to his use of the creed: when an experience cannot be expressed (because there are no words for it), words are given new meanings. Symbols are words that in ordinary language have their own meaning, but in poetic language mean something different, lacking any words to express it—thus distinct from metaphor.
On the command “Bird alone”, López-Baralt notes the reference in San Juan itself, like a hawk looking for prey, in the first stanza of one of their songs to the divine. He points out how, in the Sufi context of Persia, the prevailing image is of a hawk or a solitary bird for the aspiring soul, or for love.
Luis de Gongora was a Spanish Golden Age poet and playwright, an exponent of *culteranismo*.
The Most Beautiful Girl
Theme: Love lamentations of a young bride to her mother for the departure of her husband.
Summary: A newly married, very pretty young woman is left alone because her husband goes to war. She vents to her mother, her confidant, telling her to stop mourning for how little the pleasure and companionship of her husband have lasted.