Garcilaso de la Vega and Fray Luis de León: Renaissance Poets
Garcilaso de la Vega
2.1. Garcilaso de la Vega
He is the poet who best embodies the new style of poetry in the Renaissance. Born in Toledo in 1501, he was a nobleman, expert in arms, and a man of letters.
He served Emperor Charles I, which led him to travel as a diplomat and participate in various military campaigns. The inspiration for his poetry was not his wife, Elena de Zúñiga, whom he married in 1525, but a Portuguese lady named Isabel Freire. The emperor banished him to an island in the Danube, from where he returned to Naples and encountered Italian culture. He died in Nice in 1536 from injuries sustained in the assault on the fortress of Le Muy, France.
Work
Garcilaso’s work was not released until after his death (1543), when the widow of his friend Juan Boscán published both their poems in a single volume. His production, though not very extensive, includes sonnets, songs, elegies, a letter, and three Eclogues.
His works are collected in a songbook that represents the whole process of Garcilaso’s love for Isabel Freire. These compositions reflect different times in his life and love, combining the knowledge and scholarship expected of a cultivated poet with the genuine sentiment of a man in love.
The organization of these compositions poses a problem: the poems were grouped metrically, but for a better understanding of the process to which they relate, they should be placed in chronological order by date of composition. For example, the first sonnet cannot fulfill the role of a “sonnet-prologue” since, according to its content, it constitutes a pause in a journey already begun.
His main theme is love for Isabel Freire, integrated with the other two major themes of the Renaissance: nature and mythology. The tone is melancholy and sometimes painful. Nature is poetically idealized, a peaceful and harmonious scene that witnesses the suffering of the poet’s love and sometimes participates in his feelings. Mythology is used, sometimes for aesthetic reasons and other times as an expression and projection of feelings.
The style is simple and clear, devoid of rhetoric. It features precise and often sensory adjectives. The sincerity of his feeling stands out, giving great lyricism to the compositions.
The Eclogues
The eclogue is a genre popular in the Renaissance in which shepherds converse about their pains of love in a space that represents the locus amoenus, and of which Garcilaso wrote three.
Fray Luis de León
2.2. Fray Luis de León
Fray Luis de León was born in Belmonte (Cuenca) in 1527. A man of wide knowledge, he taught at the University of Salamanca and belonged to the Augustinian order. He was imprisoned in 1572, accused by the Inquisition of not meeting the standards of the Church in his translations of the Bible. He died in 1591.
He summarized in his person humanism and religion, and also represents the national religious spirit that Philip II would give to the second half of the sixteenth century.
Work
His work consists of less than forty original compositions and many other translations that are due to his knowledge of languages like Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and Italian.
His most important works in verse are:
- Vida retirada: In it, Fray Luis recreates the topic of the beatus ille of Horace. The poet aspires to harmony and union with God, thus achieving spiritual peace.
- Ode to Francisco Salinas: This composition presents the music of his friend Salinas as a way of releasing the soul closer to God.
- Noche serena: In the contemplation of heaven, he feels a desire for harmony and detachment.
- In the ascension or Abode of heaven: In these two works, the world appears as an exile for people.
In prose, he translated the Song of Songs and the Book of Job, adding personal comments. In addition, he composed The Perfect Wife, a didactic work on the virtues of a Christian wife, and The Names of Christ.
His themes are the desire for solitude (beatus ille) and contemplation of the natural balance, the desire for spiritual peace, and the harmony of the universe as a reflection of God.
You can see the influence in his works of medieval Christianity and classical culture, the Bible, and Spanish and Italian literature.
His style is plain and simple, full of musicality. His emotion is expressed through questions and exclamations. He is also distinguished by the use of a very Renaissance verse: the lira.