Comparison of Two Sonnets

These two sonnets have similar themes: the poet's assertion that death, which is clearly approaching, should not be feared but welcomed, because it is the gateway to eternal life. Like all Golden Age sonnets, these have lines of eleven syllables. The rhyme schemes of the quatrains are identical: ABBA, ABBA (rima abrazada). Góngora's tercets use a form of rima encadenada with three rhymes (CDE, CDE), while Quevedo uses a rima encadenada with two rhymes (CDC, DCD).

As we look at the two sonnets more carefully, we realize that while the themes are very similar, there is a definite difference in emphasis. Góngora stresses the idea that one should prepare oneself intellectually for death, while Quevedo's focus is on the emotional conflict between fear and anticipation.

We can see this difference quite clearly in the quatrains. Góngora's first quatrain presents the terrifying nature of old age in terms of things, quite literally, "going downhill." This is accomplished by establishing a logical "chain," by means of a clímax to illustrate the dangers of old age: "todo mal afirmado pie es caída/toda fácil caída es precipicio." Quevedo, on the other hand uses his first quatrain to emphasize, through the senses of sound, sight, and touch the element of fear that death brings:

Ya formidable y espantoso suena
dentro del corazón el postrer día;
y la última hora, negra y fría,
se acerca, de temor y sombras llena.

In the second quatrain each poet introduces the second component of his view of death. Góngora refers specifically to intellectual preparation ("Ilústrese el jüicio") and then goes on to declare what the logical reaction should be to total physical collapse:

Desatándose va la tierra unida;
¿qué prudencia del polvo prevenida
la rüina aguardó del edificio?

Quevedo's second quatrain, on the other hand, serves to contradict the tone of fear he established in the first. There is a kindness in death that will bring us emotional rewards:

Si agradable descanso, paz serena
la muerte en traje de dolor envía,
señas da su desdén de cortesía:
más tiene de caricia que de pena.

Góngora, in his first tercet, again appeals to the intellect, partly by means of hiperbole: we are guilty of faulty of "blind" reasoning, he says, if we assume that we can emulate the snake which, according to Góngora, in shedding its skin also renews its youth. Quevedo's first tercet, referring to fear as something "out of tune" ("desacordado"), and to death in terms of a rescue from physical bonds, continues his appeal to the senses to make his point:

¿Qué pretende el temor desacordado
de la que a rescatar piadosa viene
espíritu en miserias anudado?

It is only in his final tercet that Góngora explains the point of his argument:

!Oh aquel dichoso, que la ponderosa
porción depuesta en una piedra muda,
la leve da al zafiro soberano!

Here he uses a series of techniques. The tercet contains two antitheses, contrasting both heavy with light (ponderosa, leve) and the mute stone with the sovereign sapphire. Moreover, none of these four terms involved in these antitheses can be taken literally. The "heavy part" is a periphrasis, an indirect reference to the body, just as the "light one" ("la leve") refers in a similar manner to the soul. The "mute stone," also a periphrasis, refers specifically to a tombstone, and perhaps more generally to the earth itself, while the "sovereign sapphire" is a metaphor in which elements of color, beauty, value, and power refer to heaven in terms of a precious blue (for the sky) stone.

In Quevedo's final tercet we also see a series of poetic techniques that bring the poet's statement to its conclusion.

Llegue rogada, pues mi bien previene;
hálleme agradecido, no asustado;
mi vida acabe, y mi vivir ordene.

Each line is divided into two phrases, setting up a parallel structure in which the first half of each line contains an indirect command, and the second half a reaction to that command. In the final line both halves contain indirect commands. The two final lines also contain antitheses: thankful/afraid (agradecido/asustado) and "end my life"/"arrange my living" (mi vida acabe/mi vivir ordene).

The sonnet's last line is exceedingly complex. It contains an example of dilogía, in which the word ordene clearly retains both of its possible meaning, comparable to the verb "to arrange" in English. On the one hand, says Quevedo, death orders, or mandates, or arranges for a new kind of life. On the other hand, death also puts into proper order, or arranges in that sense, one's life. Double meaning is also evident in the use of vida and vivir as antithetical elements: the first refers to phyisical life, the life of the body; the second refers to spiritual life, the life of the soul.

3. Interestingly enough, Góngora's thematic focus on the intellect is also reflected in his approach to the reader, while Quevedo's whose theme stresses feeling, has a more emotional effect on the reader. Góngora's language is exaggeratedly erudite and is organized using a series of extreme hipérbatos which add a sense of linguistic disconnectedness to Góngora's view of old age as the time when physical connections break down.

En este occidental, en este, oh Licio,
climatérico lustro de tu vida

Góngora's first hipérbaton separates two excessively erudite and latin-sounding adjectives, occidental and climactérico, with an apóstrofe directed toward an imaginary listener with a similarly latin-sounding name. The noun lustro, to which the adjectives refers, also has a latin ring to it. These are all words chosen for their sound and their inaccessibility to the ordinary reader, rather than for their meaning. None of these words would normally be used in the sense Góngora gives them in ordinary, spoken Spanish, and the reader has to work pretty hard to figure out just what Góngora is talking about. "Occidental" is not in itself an uncommon word, but here it is being used as a perífrasis. The west (Occident) is the place where the sun sets, and the "occidental" moment in one's life is its time of losing light or force: old age. The word "climacteric," whose roots, from the Greek word meaning "ladder" are the same as those of the word "climax," refers to a period in a person's life in which a major physical change occurs. While it is being used in a literally correct manner in this sonnet, it is not, to say the least, a word with which the reader would be familiar.

Desatándose va la tierra unida;
¿qué prudencia del polvo prevenida
la rüina aguardó del edificio?

Góngora's assertion that everything is falling apart unites, metaphorically, the wholeness of the physical world (tierra) to that of the human body, and is followed by two lines that seem to fall apart before our eyes. Rearranged without the hipérbatos those lines would read: "Qué prudencia, prevenida del polvo, aguardó la ruina del edificio?" And once we have unravelled the word order we realize that the reader must again work hard to understand what Góngora is referring to. With the word prudencia Góngora uses the noun "prudence" in a metonimia to mean "prudent person," while the word polvo (dust) is being used in a similar fashion to refer to death: both dust in a biblical sense and the real dust that remains when all physical things fall apart. In the final line, once again, a ruined building stands in metaphorically for a decrepit body.

La piel, no sólo, sierpe venenosa,
mas con la piel los años se desnuda,
y el hombre, no. ¡Ciego discurso humano!

The hipérbatos in the passage above are the most extreme in the poem. They would be reordered in comprehensible prose as follows: La sierpe venenosa no sólo se desnuda [i.e. pierde] la piel sino [también] los años. If human reason was blind before working on this passage, the very act of deciphering it --not to mention its message-- must in itself be somewhat illuminating. In fact, to make any sense at all out of much of this sonnet, the reader must follow Góngora's advice: Ilústrese el jüicio. Even the word muerte is absent in the poem. The reader will have to figure it out.

The Quevedo sonnet involves a very different sort of reading experience. While Góngora's approach might be said to overload the intellect, Quevedo's permeates the senses and emotions. Relatively free of hipérbatos, Quevedos lines have a ponderous, resonant, quality designed to produce a somber tone. The disconnectedness in Góngora is contrasted by a sense of continuity in Quevedo. The reader reacts strongly to this sonnet as a whole, rather than having to decipher it in pieces.

How, we are asked, does death make us feel? If in the first quatrain Quevedo attributes to the heart a sense of fear and loathing with such words as espantoso, negro, frío, sombras, and temor, in the second quatrain a new set of feelings is introduced with agradable descanso, paz serena, cortesía, and caricia:

Si agradable descanso, paz serena
la muerte en traje de dolor envía,
señas da su desdén de cortesía:
más tiene de caricia que de pena.

In the first tercet, the feeling of relief is added:

¿Qué pretende el temor desacordado
de la que a rescatar piadosa viene
espíritu en miserias anudado?

Finally, in the second tercet Quevedo adds a feeling of urgency:

Llegue rogada, pues mi bien previene;
hálleme agradecido, no asustado;
mi vida acabe, y mi vivir ordene.

It is worth noting, as we come to the end of this comparison, that our conclusions with respect to these two sonnets give us a very different view of Góngora and Quevedo than what we get from the general statements we find in literary histories and anthology introductions. Góngora, we are told, is the sensualist; Quevedo is the intellect. Góngora, they say, is more concerned with the musicality of his language, while Quevedo relies more on the ingenious interplay of ideas. While we do find some confirmation of these views in our comparison (e.g., the confused "rhythm" of Góngoras hipérbatos; Quevedo's final statement of theme with a dilogía), this exercise has also served to make an important point: that each poem needs to be analysed in its own context and without reliance on the general summaries that are not based on concrete examples.