Renaissance Poets: Garcilaso de la Vega and Fray Luis de León
Garcilaso de la Vega: Soldier and Poet
Garcilaso de la Vega (1501-1536) is the prototype of the Renaissance gentleman: a soldier and intimate poet who embodies the ideals of arms and letters. His poetic career can be divided into three stages:
- The influence of the poetry of the songbooks (a compilation of songs) in compositions alternating with the first eight-syllable verses of Italian forms. His verses are without Petrarchan elements and are full of common love topics and puns.
- The Petrarchan stage, in which, in imitation of Petrarch, he internalizes love, describes his feelings, and uses nature as a framework for discussion and a means to portray his beloved.
- Creative fulfillment, the result of his stay in Italy and his approach to classical authors.
Works of Garcilaso de la Vega
His work includes a letter in verse, two elegies, three eclogues, five songs, thirty-eight sonnets, and some samples of traditional poetry. His sonnets primarily deal with the subject of love. The works with the greatest artistic perfection are Eclogue I and Eclogue III. The first is written in placements, while the second is in octaves and recreates his own experience of love.
Themes in Garcilaso’s Poetry
Predominantly, love, with Neoplatonic and Petrarchan traits: the indifference of the beloved, the mistress’s pain, oscillating between hope and despair, and secret love. Nature, where the characters show their love troubles, is the confidant that listens and comforts the shepherds in their grief.
Garcilaso’s Style
In the first stage, he uses antithesis, opposition, and word games. Later, he seeks harmony, naturalness, and elegance. He gives his poems a simple and fluid expression.
Fray Luis de León: Classical and Renaissance Harmony
Fray Luis de León reconciled the previous poetic heritage with classical and Renaissance religion.
Works of Fray Luis de León
His work is fairly short, comprising less than forty poems that circulated in manuscript form until Quevedo published them in 1637. They are grouped into three periods:
- Poems written before prison (1572): Ode to the Retired Life and The Prophecy of the Tagus. They show the desire for solitude and contempt for worldly pleasures.
- Verses composed in prison: Quiet Night and Ascension, religious works. Leaving Prison, in which he complains of the injustice of his imprisonment.
- Works written after prison: Ode to Salinas or Ode to Felipe Ruiz, reveal a certain mysticism, a nostalgic yearning for harmony and inner peace.
Poetic Ideas and Influences on Fray Luis
The motives in his poetry are nature, longing for the countryside, music, and night. Their origins are:
- From Neoplatonism, he takes the ideal vision of a universe ruled by harmony, where divine music is only imitated by human music.
- From the Pythagoreans, he agrees that everything can be reduced to numbers.
- From Stoic philosophy, he adopts aurea mediocritas, living according to the natural order.
From these ideas comes the search for a restful life, the topic of beatus ille, and the theme of flight from the world. As a result, the desire for union with divinity.
Fray Luis’s Style
He employs the lyre, invented by Garcilaso. Several of his poems are addressed to a second person, a resource that provides a conversational character, with enumerations, exclamations, and rhetorical questions.