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Rodrigo Cacho Casal GÓNGORA IN ARCADIA: SANNAZARO AND THE PASTORAL MODE OF THE SOLEDADES he Soledades stands as one of the most revolutionary and innovative poems Tof the Spanish Golden Age. Góngora created a sophisticated verbal world in which he showed more interest in intellectual beauty and aesthetic pleasure than a moral or didactic message, subverting the classical balance between docere and delectare. Thus the Soledades is often considered an important precedent of modern poetry, and it has even been compared to the work of Mallarmé.1 But Góngora’s originality was not made out of nothing. He used his literary culture to imitate classical, Italian, and Spanish authors borrowing from their images, topics, and leitmotifs. The importance of Italian literature is especially noteworthy in his work.2 In the poems written in Góngora’s youth he shows he is acquainted with this tradition, especially the Petrarchist lyric; but even in his most famous cultist works, the Polifemo and the Soledades, one can detect the infuence of Giovan Battista Marino, Tommaso Stigliani, or Luigi Tansillo. It is also common to include Iacopo Sannazaro among the list of Góngora’s sources; however this infuence has not been studied suffciently.3 My purpose here will be to analyze the relationship between the Soledades and the Arcadia by highlighting aspects of the generic hybridization and literary aestheticism typical of the pastoral. Góngora’s indebtedness to Italian authors is mentioned by seventeenth- century commentators (Romanos). Two of the frst readers of his Polifemo and Soledades, Pedro de Valencia and Fernández de Córdoba, abbot of Rute, reproached him for the excessive presence in his works of Latinisms and ex- pressions taken from Italian authors. The abbot tells Góngora that he makes too much “uso de palabras peregrinas, digo derivadas de latín y toscano” (Parecer 140). And Pedro de Valencia is even more critical: “usa de vocablos 1. Carreira (225–37). On the comparison between Góngora and Mallarmé, see Sánchez Robayna (57–74). 2. The Italian sources of Góngora’s poetry have been studied, among others, by Alonso (“Notas”), Arce (Tasso 87–91), Crawford, Fucilla (252–57), Jammes (La obra poética 307–11, 368–72), Micó (67–110), Poggi, Trambaioli, and Vilanova (Las fuentes, Erasmo 410–55). On the other hand, Thomas’s main goal is to demonstrate that there is no infuence of Marino or other marinisti on Góngora. 3. The relationship between the Arcadia and the Soledades has been pointed out, among others, by Ruiz Pérez, Walker, and especially Waley. The Romanic Review Volume 98 Number 4 © The Trustees of Columbia University 436 Rodrigo Cacho Casal peregrinos Italianos i otros del todo Latinos [. .]. En estos vicios digo que cae v. m. de propósito i haziéndose fuerça, por estrañarse i imitar a los Italianos” (Carta 76). Also his detractors used similar arguments to attack him. In his Rimas de Tomé de Burguillos (1634), Lope de Vega insinuates that Góngora in fact plagiarized Tommaso Stigliani and Gabriello Chiabrera:4 Cierto poeta de mayor esfera, cuyo dicipulado difculto, de los libros de Italia fama espera. Mas, porque no conozcan por insulto los hurtos de Estillani y del Chabrera, escribe en griego disfrazado en culto. (Burguillos 75, 9–14) Apart from these possible infuences, the Soledades shows remarkable simi- larities with one of the most refned and elegant works of the Italian Renais- sance, namely, the Arcadia of Iacopo Sannazaro, the frst complete edition of which was published in 1504. This best seller of the Renaissance and Baroque age represents the frst and more relevant model of the pastoral novel that was to be imitated by several European writers. The author conceived of the Arcadia as a learned combination of different sources, in particular Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Virgil.5 Sannazaro, “cultíssimo i castigadíssimo poeta,” as Herrera called him (Anotaciones 693), used his rich classical background to generate a complex literary palimpsest full of intertextual references that are channelled by ornate language made up of Latinisms, accumulations of superlatives, and chains of epithets.6 This “verbal aestheticism” (Folena 105) has numerous things in common with the style and the structure of the Soledades. Although some of Góngora’s seventeenth-century commentators quoted the name of Sannazaro, the most eloquent statement of the relation between the Arcadia and Góngora is found in a satirical sonnet written by Quevedo attaching the cultist poems of his rival, “¿Qué captas, nocturnal, en tus canciones . .?”:7 4. Although the imitation of Stigliani in some passages of the Polifemo is clear, the infuence of Chiabrera on Góngora was very slight, as Scorza and Alonso (“Los hur- tos”) have shown. 5. As argued by Saccone, Petrarch and Virgil are “i due auctores, le due guide, dietro cui programmaticamente, ma direi anche necessariamente, si pone lo scrittore dell’Arcadia” (54–55). On the structure of the Arcadia see Saccone and Corti (281–304). In her view, the Arcadia “si confgura come un mosaico, una summa in cui confuiscono la tra- dizione classica e quella quattrocentesca del genere bucolico” (289). 6. The language and style of the Arcadia have been studied at length by Folena. See also Corti (305–23). 7. Cacho Casal. García Rodríguez and Conde Parrado (114–16) choose rather to asso- ciate Quevedo’s parody with the alchemical concept of voarchadumia; nevertheless, one explanation does not entirely rule out the other. Góngora in Arcadia 437 Tu forasteridad es tan eximia, que te ha de detractar el que te rumia; pues ructas viscerable cacoquimia farmacopolorando como mumia, si estomacabundancia das tan nimia metamorfoseando el Arcadumia. (9–14) Among other insults and accusations, Quevedo insinuates that his rival has plagiarized the Arcadia. The term Arcadumia may be an allusion to the title of Sannazaro’s work, Arca-dia, in combination with the word dumi (from Latin dumus, “bramble”) used by the Italian writer: “mentre serpenti in dumi / saranno, e pesci in fumi” (Ve, 61–62). The sixteenth-century editors of the Arcadia, Tommaso Porcacchi and Francesco Sansovino, explain in their notes that this word means “Spini” or “Luoghi spinosi.” Thus Quevedo is accusing Góngora of copying and ruining Sannazaro’s novel, of transforming its beauti- ful and harmonic language into a confused and incomprehensible mixture of obscure sentences. Leaving aside the satirical content of the sonnet, it seems that Quevedo was not completely wrong when he established this link be- tween the Arcadia and Góngora. The frst indebtedness of Góngora to the Arcadia can be found in his choice of the pastoral genre.8 The question of the generic adscription of the Soledades has been debated ever since the poem frst appeared: some have considered it a bucolic piece, others an epic.9 In the dedicatory lines Góngora declares that the Soledades is not an epic (“trompa”), but a composition made for the pastoral fute of the Muse Euterpe:10 “que, a tu piedad Euterpe agradecida / su canoro dará dulce instrumento, / cuando la Fama no su trompa, al viento” (35–37). But the plot also has epic elements, such as the pilgrim’s shipwreck 8. About the pastoral and its theory see Egido (“Sin poética”), Gómez, López Bueno (“La égloga”), López Estrada (424–78), Pérez-Abadín Barro, Poggioli (1– 41, 153–65), and Schnabel (1– 46). 9. Roses Lozano (Una poética 121– 41) has documented this generic discussion in the Golden Age. On the relationship between the Soledades and the pastoral, see Callejo, Collins (52–69), Jammes (La obra poética 251), Poggioli (182–93), Roses Lozano (“Hibridaciones”), and Ruiz Pérez (417–24). Beverley (59–69) and Walker study the mixture of bucolic and epic elements in the Soledades, while Bultman analyzes the controversial rewriting and disintegration of Renaissance epic in Góngora. 10. Euterpe was the fute-playing Muse: “Una de las nueve musas, a la qual atribuyen la invención de las fautas o de las matemáticas” (Covarrubias Tesoro 574); and, as Covarrubias explains, this instrument has always been associated with the pastoral context since it was created by Pan, the god of the woods: “Todos dan la invención deste instrumento a Pan, dios silvano. [. .] El uso de las fautas, que por lo dicho parece averse inventado en los campos, se truxo al poblado” (Tesoro 599). Salcedo Coronel offers a similar explanation: “Euterpe, una de las Musas, fue inventora de las fautas, instrumento pastoril [. .]. Por esto don Luis la introduce en este su poema” (Ed. Soledades 10). 438 Rodrigo Cacho Casal that echoes the Odyssey or the athletic contests to celebrate the wedding in the frst Soledad that can be linked to the funeral games in the Aeneid and the Iliad. On the other hand, it also has an obvious pastoral frame, since the protagonists are shepherds and fshermen portrayed in idyllic country life. Góngora’s friend Antonio de las Infantas must have taken into consideration this last aspect when he referred to the Soledades as an “égloga cuya natura- leça introduce varios personajes” (Carta 252). This was also the case of the anonymous author of the Carta de un amigo de D. Luis de Góngora en que da su parecer acerca de las Soledades when he explains that there are no great characters in this poem: “de lo qual infero no convenir a la Soledad nombre de heroica, por hauer sido el intento principal de vuesa merced describirnos la vida pastoral” (Carreira 242). He comes to the following conclusion: “Resta, pues, demos nombre a la Soledad, ya que la excluimos de la épica, y según a mi ver ninguno otro le quadra como el de bucólica, égloga o pastoral” (Carreira 243). Fernández de Córdoba frst used similar arguments when he wrote in his Parecer that the Soledades was “un Poema (quando no lyrico de materia humilde) bucólico en lo que descubre hasta agora” (138).