Quevedo’s Poetic Legacy: Themes, Style, and Influence
Quevedo’s Poetic Legacy
Francisco de Quevedo’s work was well-known, although he was a very young poet in his time. He failed to see his poetry published in his lifetime. In 1648, his friend Gonzalez de Salas published a good number of them, excluding the compositions that did not seem relevant, and corrected in his own hand the ones that were edited. A nephew of the writer published in 1670 another part of his poetic texts, but also with various disorders. All of this means that Quevedo’s poetry has come down to us with numerous textual problems. As they were not organized and edited by their author into several books, they are usually grouped by their themes: philosophical, moral, religious, loving, satirical-burlesque, and circumstantial poetry. Baroque typically addresses issues such as death, the brevity of life, the transience of time, censorship of various services, or disillusionment, usually from a perspective that blends Christianity and Senecan Neostoicism. His poetry is steeped in Petrarchan love and Neoplatonism. Compositions are common in addressing love in a satirical, ironic, parodic, comic, or openly erotic way. The satirical-burlesque poems, in which the octosyllabic predominates, are those that most clearly demonstrate Quevedo’s capacity for wit and linguistic ingenuity. The objects of his satire are varied: women, deceived husbands, Jews, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, judges, writers, fashion, the power of money, etc.
Key Themes in Quevedo’s Poetry
Much of these issues are literary topics, but Quevedo always imprinted his trademark on them. His love poems are clearly serious, in the tone of the courtly tradition debtors. In the seventeenth century, Petrarchism was already exhausted. Its language, burdened by cliches, was unable to express the ideology and emotions that originally inspired it.
In his confrontation with the limitations of conventional topics of love arises a poetry of extraordinary intensity, both aesthetic and spiritual. When expressed in the lyrics, Quevedo’s metaphysical love concerns make the woman disappear. Death is a constant concern in the poetry of Quevedo, who always expresses his horror of nonbeing. His poetry is a constant meditation on the brevity of life, about the transience of time that nobody is able to stop.
Stylistic Features of Quevedo’s Work
Style particular features logically apply to the poetry of the writer in Madrid, which are constant puns, misunderstandings, dilogy, polysemy, paranomasias, hyperbole, antithesis, paradox, grotesque deformities, etc. Quevedo admirably mastered the language in its most varied registers while known to perfection resources lyrical discourse of the Renaissance, including those of a metric. His poems show a consummate mastery of the various forms he uses, which is particularly significant in more than five hundred sonnets. He achieves brilliant designs both through his masterful use of language and through his formal perfection, bound to condense the maximum expression. He comes with them to the termination of the conceptualist principle of saying much with few words, as is required by the limitation of syllables, verses, rhymes, and accents. The sonnet is the ultimate example of this poetic perfection. A peculiar characteristic of Quevedo’s poetic language is its emotional intensity. Quevedo’s temper, restless, violent, and tormented, abruptly breaks out sporadically in his poetry, breaking the Renaissance harmony and balance inherent to traditional motifs and forms part of the writer. His poetry is deeply original because the personal experience of the poet fills his poems.