Spanish Renaissance and Baroque Poetry: Fray Luis, San Juan, Quevedo, Lope
Fray Luis de León
Fray Luis de León’s works in verse consist of 34 poems, none of which were published during the author’s lifetime. Poems are often divided into three groups: translations of classic versions of sacred texts and 23 original poems. In adopting Italianate forms in the line of Garcilaso, he replaces the theme of love with moral and religious subjects. Fray Luis glosses Bible passages with themes of classical antiquity, such as locus amoenus (Virgil) and beatus ille (Horace). In his poetry, he fuses Christianity with Neoplatonism. Almost all his poetry revolves around the theme of spiritual peace and harmony, the search for happiness and inner peace, and the rejection of worldly concerns. Among his most famous works are:
- Retired Life: Summarizes the vitality of the poet, who lives in a sea of struggles and aspires to spiritual peace, harmony, and union with God.
- Serene Night: A song of the starry night and the desire to escape from this world.
- To Francisco Salinas: Dedicated to a blind musician, a friend of his.
- To Felipe Ruiz: Expresses the desire to know the truth and absolute purity.
Fray Luis was an excellent translator of classic poets and some Biblical texts, such as the Song of Songs.
San Juan de la Cruz
San Juan de la Cruz conceived poetry as a means of communicating with God. Therefore, his poems are the expression of mystical doctrine and personal experience in the field. He wrote some traditional-type poems, but the most important of his production are three great mystical poems in which he employs the lyre:
- Dark Night of the Soul: Symbolically describes the process of mystical union with God’s love – the ‘girl-soul’ and God, the ‘beloved.’
- Spiritual Canticle: Inspired by the Song of Songs. The beloved goes in search of her beloved and finds him reflected in a fountain; the union of love occurs. In the poem, the three mystical ways appear: the purgative way, the illuminative way, and the unitive way.
- Living Flame of Love: In an exclamatory tone, describes the state of the soul scorched in the flame of divine love.
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo’s poetry: Most of his poetic orientation is conceptual: expressive ingenuity, condensation of thought, the play of ideas and concepts, misconceptions, antitheses, paradoxes, paronomasias, neologisms, and so on. Although very wide and varied, his poems can be classified into three groups: philosophical, moral, loving, and satirical-burlesque.
- A) Full philosophical-moral pessimism expressed by the author and of the time, so his vision is disillusioned with the world and life: over time, transience…
- B) The subject of love: the best are poems that deal with the subject of love and death together.
- C) Full satirical-burlesque: the best-known facet of Quevedo. Characteristic of these poems are caricature, irony, distortion, hyperbole, contrast, and comedy. These poems have varied meters: letrillas, ballads, sonnets…
Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega cultivated all literary genres, highlighting lyric and drama. His compositions include popular-type and cultured lyrical production. In his poetry in cultured meters, Lope wrote 3,000 sonnets of varied subjects in which he meets Petrarchan and conceptualist aspects. Among his cultured works, Human Rhymes and Sacred Rhymes stand out. Unlike Quevedo’s pessimism, these poems are impregnated with vitalism and spontaneous sincerity.