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Arboreal Figures in the Golden Age Sonnet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

E. George Erdman Jr.
E. George Erdman Jr.*
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Binghamton
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Abstract

The tree beset by natural forces, the embrace of elm and vine, and the antithesis of mulberry and almond are related figures which Spanish sonneteers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries frequently used when structuring agudezas por semejanza. The extent to which these stock figures are revitalized in unique poetic artifacts reveals each poet s ability to work within the limitations of an aesthetics of invention through imitation. Moreover, to follow the varying fortunes of these topoi is to assess the efficacy of the modes of correlation (simile, allegory, adequate symbol, or objective correlative); to witness the interplay of the Petrarchan and emblematic traditions; to note the variations on a theme exploited first by the erotic poets, later by the moralists; and to highlight the shift of emphasis from the discursive to the pictorial which marks the transition from the aesthetics of the Renaissance to that of the Baroque. Finally, the precise delineation of the specific context or whole, of which each sonnet is an integral part, permits a more comprehensive exegesis of that sonnet's alma de sutileza, for Gracian the essence of the craft and criticism of poetry.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , May 1969, pp. 587 - 595
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 Obras complétas, ed. Arturo del Hoyo (Madrid, 1960), p. 275. Subsequent passages from this edition will be identified by page number in the body of the text. The same procedure will be followed whenever two or more poems are reproduced from the same edition.

2 Luis de Gongora, “Del palacio de la primavera,” Obras complétas, ed. Juan and Isabel Mille y Giménez (Madrid, 1937), p. 149; Francisco de Quevedo, Epistolario complete, ed. Luis Astrana Marin (Madrid, 1946), pp. 254–255.

3 The choice of the specific figures to be studied is, of course, arbitrary. But to restrict the study to the sonnet is justifiable. Natural figures were most readily available to Golden Age poets through emblem and epigram. And the sonnet played an important role in the romanic diffusion of the latter. Only the octave proved more useful than the sonnet in the translations from the Greek Anthology, Martial, Ausonius, and Alciat of Juan de Mal Lara's Philosophia vulgar and Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias' Emblemas morales. The final section of the Discursos, eplstolas y epigramas de Artemidoro (Zaragoza, 1605) is entitled “Sonetos, o Epigramas.” Finally, the similar functions of the two forms are noted by the preceptist Diaz Rengifo: “El soneto sirve ... para todo aquello, que sirven los Epigrammas latinos” (Arte poêtica espanola, Salamanca, 1592, pp. 48–49).

4 Estudios sobre el petrarquismo en Espana (Madrid, 1960).

5 As Fucilla notes, the sonnet is a paraphrase of Tansillo's “Come querela talhor alta ed annosa” (p. 135). In connection with this sonnet, he discusses Cetina, “Como teniendo en tierra bien echadas” (p. 35); Garcilaso, “jO hado executivo en mis dolores!” (pp. 10–12, where he also discusses secondary sources); and Herrera, “Cual planta que pidiendo el alto cielo,” which I reproduce above.

6 This sonnet and Herrera's “Pues la flor do crescia mi esperanza” are linked by Fucilla to Tansillo's “Qual arbor che, nascendo a riva a l'onde” (pp. 152–153). The image of the Tree of Hope, common to most of the early arboreal sonnets, may be traced to Petrarch's “Amor co la man dextra il lato manco,” through Lomas Cantoral's “Abriome Amor, con diestra mano, el lado” (pp. 120–121). Similar sonnets based on the figure of the tree beset by natural forces are Herrera, “Despoja la hermosa i verde frente,” Poeslas, ed. Vicente Garcia de Diego (Madrid, 1952), p. 42; Anonimo, “Quién, cargada de fruto, por octubre,” Cancionero Ante-guerano, ed. D. Alonso and R. Ferreres (Madrid, 1950), p. 132; and Fray Fernando Lujân, “Arbol lozano, que el octubre enluta” in Juan Antonio Calderon's Flores de poêlas iluslres, ed. Quiros de los Rios and Rodriguez Marin (Sevilla, 1896), p. 180.

7 Poesias, ed. Cayetano Alberto de la Barrera y Leirado (Madrid, 1867, Sociedad de Bibliófilos EspaSoles), ii, 198.

8 Poesias complétas, ed. Dâmaso Alonso (Madrid, 1936). p. 63. With minor variants, the sonnet is reproduced by Graciân as an example of an agudeza pot semejanza (p. 279). It is also found, with more extensive variants, in Suârez de Figueroa's La constante Amarilis. See Erasmo Buceta, “Carrillo y Soto-mayor y Suârez de Figueroa,” RFE, vi (1919), 299–305.

9 Obras escogidas, ed. José Maria de Cossio (Madrid, 1931, Los Clâsicos Olvidados), x, 336. The sonnet, from A Lelio, Govierno moral (Murcia, 1657), is appended to Discourse iii, “Discreta reportacion,” in which the moralist glosses the text “Llegarâs hasta lo que merecieras. En passando de lo justo, lo demasiado derriba la balança.”

10 Obras poélicas, ed. Rafael Benitez Claros (Madrid, 1947–48), ii, 199. The editor gives line 6 as “mi esplendor a mis pies hallo eclipsado,” an obvious erratum.

11 See E. R. Curtius' excursus, “Grammatical and Rhetorical Technical Terms as Metaphors,” in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York, 19S3).

12 In Vol. in of W. R. Paton's translation of the Greek Anthology (Loeb Classical Library, London, 1917) are numerous arboreal epigrams based on this rhetorical figure, e.g., Nos. 3–6, 78, 79, 130, 231, 247, 256, 282, 414, and 563.

13 See Paul R. Olson, “An Ovidian Conceit in Petrarch and Rojas,” MLN, lxxxi (1966), 217–221.

14 Graciân reproduces the sonnet as one which “aunque comienza por la conformidad asimbola, concluye con la diversidad contraria” (p. 293). He gives line S as “, Y a que la edad no humilia? Derribado,“ and line 14 as ”jQue en esto solo basta el ser dichoso!“

15 Obras, ed. Antonio Gallego Morell (Madrid, 1951), p. 17.

16 For a detailed account of the historical development of the motif, see Peter Demetz, “The Elm and the Vine: Notes toward the History of a Marriage Topos,” PMLA, lxxiii (1958), 521–532. Mario Praz briefly considers these and other correlative possibilities of the figure in Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery (London, 1939), i, 87, 103, 197–198. Typical of the figure in Spanish poetry are Francisco de la Torre's sonnet “Viua yo siempre ansi con tan cenido / laço, Filis, contigo, como aquesta / yedra inmortal en esta enzina puesta, / que le enreda su tronco envejecido” and the more extensive elaborations of the canciones “Solo y desamparado” and “Verde y eterna yedra” (Poesias, ed. Alonso Zamora Vicente, Madrid, 1956, pp. 43, 31, and 53, respectively).

17 Obras complétas, ed. J. M. Blecua (Barcelona, 1963), i, 531.

18 In the Siha de varia lecciôn, Pedro Mejía writes “Así como la yedra se cria cabe el arbol, y cresce en la hermandad y fuerza de él y al cabo lo destruye; así el que es malo se hace grande con el favor del principe, y después le es traidor y desagradecido” (Bk. i, Ch. vi).

19 Andreae AlciatiEmblematumflumen abundans, ed. Henry Green (London, 1861, facsimile of the Lyons edition of Bonhomme, 1551), p. 172. The source of the epigram (Antipater of Thessalonica, The Greek Anthology, Bk. ix, No. 231) concerns not amicilia but amor: “I am a dry plane-tree covered by the vine that climbs over me; and I, who once fed clusters from my own branches, and was no less leafy than this vine, now am clothed in the glory of foliage not my own. Such a mistress let a man cherish who, unlike her kind, knows how to requite him even when he is dead.”

20 Poesias, ed. F. Rodriguez Marin (Madrid, 1910), p. 199.

21 “La poesia clasicista del siglo XVII,” Historia general de las literaluras hispánicas, in (Barcelona, 1953), xxxiii.

22 Obras, ed. T. Navarro Tomâs (Madrid, 1963), 11. 35–40.

23 Obras, ed. Antonio Gallego Morell (Madrid, 1950), p. 214. Lope de Vega uses the figure in a different context in a dedicatory sonnet to Juan Antonio de Herrera Temiño's Lusvs pueritiae Libri très (Madrid, 1599).

La verde yedra al olmo antiguo asida, con tantos laberintos la guarnece, que sus estremos excéder parece, siendo en sus verdes ramas sostenida.

Tal, Juan Antonio, vuestra tierna vida de vuestro padre entre Ios braços crece, que ya a su estremo, el de su ingenio ofrece anticipada en el estar florida.

O verdes afios bienauenturados,

que bien se ve que os tiene el docto Herrera

sobre las fuerças de su ingenio graue.

Creced juntos los dos tan abraçados, que nunca la villana embidia fiera tal yedra corte, ni tal olmo acabe.

(Florentino Zamora Lucas, Lope de Vega: Poestas preliminares de libros, Madrid, 1961, No. 16.)

24 See also Gângora's “De las muertes de don Rodrigo Calderon, del Conde de Villamediana y Conde de Lemos” (p. 539). Puns and conceits based on the name of the patron are frequent in dedicatory poetry. See the correlative use of nogal and higuera in the preliminary poems of Francisco de Figueroa to Vicente Noguera in the former's Poeslas, ed. Angel Gonzalez Palencia (Madrid, 1943, Sociedad de Biblio-filos EspaSoles, 2a época), xiv, 21–33.

25 Rimas de Lupercio Leonardo y Bartolomê Leonardo de Argensola, ed. J. M. Blecua (Zaragoza, 1951), ii, No. 112.

26 Varias poesias sagradas, y profanas (Madrid, 1732), p. 58.