Poetry
The Solitudes
Soledades
Luis de Góngora · 1613
Synopsis
A young castaway is washed up on the shore of an island; guided by the glow of a fire, he is taken in by goatherds and spends the night with them. The next day, he meets a band of mountain people on their way to the wedding of two shepherds in a neighbouring village, and an old man, recognising him as a castaway, laments against greed and navigation. The poem follows the young man far from the court and the cities, among the shepherds and then along the shores; it recounts almost nothing and consists entirely of the description of nature.
Context
Composed in 1613 in silvas, verses of eleven and seven syllables, the poem was to have four parts, the fields, the banks, the forests and the wasteland; only the dedication to the Duke of Béjar and the first two parts exist, the second unfinished. The quarrel was immediate: the Count of Salinas and Juan de Jáuregui attacked it, while Salcedo Coronel, Pellicer, the abbot of Rute, Villamediana and, in the Americas, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz defended it. Salcedo Coronel published an annotated edition of it in Madrid in 1636.
Who it is for
A long poem, reputed to be difficult, with Latinate syntax and laden with mythological allusions; a bilingual translation helps in following it.
Prizes and reception
The quarrel they provoked gave a name to the author's style, Gongorism; in 1927, the tercentenary of his death gave theirs to the poets of the Generation of '27.