Brown-Lope Defending Poetry vs Lope Writing Poetry

Lope Defending Poetry vs. Lope Writing Poetry: The Conflictsof "donde habla amor puro"

Gary J. Brown

MLN, Volume 124, Number 2, March 2009 (Hispanic Issue), pp.350-371 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/mln.0.0129

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MLN 124 (2009): 350–371 © 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

Lope Defending Poetry vs. Lope Writing Poetry: The Conflicts

of “donde habla amor puro”❦

Gary J. Brown

Lope’s defense of poetry, Cuestión del honor debido a la poesía, has attracted little attention from scholars, due in no small part to the difficulty of reading a text that appears overburdened with excessive catalogs and recondite allusions, but also to its deceptive patina of counter-reformation moralism resolutely displayed in the form of a rhetorical exercise. It is my reading that Lope, rather than merely adopting panegyric convention aligned with moral conservatism, entertained more pragmatic motives stemming from a need to jus-tify Spanish amorous poetry under insistent moral attack, and more significantly to claim validity for his own love poetry (“donde habla amor puro” Epistolario III: 330). Lope’s Platonism both in defending and writing poetry was compromised, however, when it came into conflict with his literary embraces of eros and the imposition of a Scholastic-Aristotelian psychology. In effect Lope’s “discurso” can be considered a conventional yet ambivalent early reflection on poetics, rhetoric and literary theory.1

1 Annotated editions by Carreño (Rimas humanas) and Pedraza Jiménez (Rimas) explicating the plethora of allusions in La cuestión del honor debido a la poesía provide a foundation to pursue a broader consideration of Lope’s defense. I have used Car-reño’s text of La cuestión del honor . . . throughout (Rimas humanas 590–600); Latin translations are my own. Perhaps lack of interest in Lope’s defense is due to his own seemingly ambivalent opinion of the essay given its disappearance from all but one of the nine subsequent editions of the Rimas. As an early manifestation of Lope’s thoughts on the nature of poetry, restricted by the formal subject matter and tradition of an

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apologia, it seems that it has been silently passed over. See the work of Luisa López Grigera (“Teorías” 189), Porqueras-Mayo (La teoría poética en el renacimiento I: 56–57), Ernst Robert Curtius (“Theological Art-Theory” 547–58 ), Pedro F. Campa (“Defense of poetry” 91–94).

2 Opening notes of Carreño and Pedraza Jiménez alert us to the many Spanish treatises of the genre: Juan del Enzina, Arte de poesía castellana, Alonso de Valdés, “Prólogo en alabanza de la poesía” (1591), Gaspar de Aguilar, “Discurso en alabanza de la poesía” (1591–94), Bernardo de Balbuena, “Compendio apologético” (1604), Pedro Soto de Rojas, “Discurso sobre la poética” (1612), Fernando de Vera y Mendoza, “Panegyrico por la poesía” (1627). To this list we should also include Santillana as Curtius maintains (549). Porqueras-Mayo adds Alfonso de Baena’s prologue: “primer eslabón cronológico importante, que curiosamente, no cita Curtius” (La teoría poética en el manierismo II: 424). We can also add to the broader tradition of encomia the panegyrics of Justus Scaliger, Contra poetices calumniatores declamatio (1600), and Torquato Tasso, “Apologia in difesa della Gerusalemme Liberata” (1585) and DuBellay, La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549). Although in his defense of poetry Lope does not refer to Boccaccio directly, the allusion to the Geneologia deorum in his companion epistle, “Para escribir Virgilio de las abejas” (Carreño, Rimas humanas 575–589) indicates his familiarity with the work: “Pues se leen de Júpiter más de dos mil doncellas violadas, de que se hallarán en Bocacio más de otros tantos hijos. . . .” Carreño points out the popularity of the Geneologia in Spain (Rimas humanas 584 n78, and 1037 n293.78).

To understand Lope’s motivation for undertaking a defense of poetry it helps to place it not only in the tradition of Spanish encomia (Alfonso de Baena, Prólogo Cancionero de Baena; Marqués de Santillana, Proemio y Carta and later Spanish examples) but also in the broader tradition of Boccaccio’s Geneologia deorum gentilium (defense of poetry in Books XIV and XIV) and Sir Philip Sydney’s Apologie for Poetry. Boccaccio’s defense, which addressed the condemnation of pagan mythology and set down arguments for and against poetry, served as background for Lope’s exposition of traditional ideas which he often alludes to tangentially or assumes as understood in the face of criticism leveled by moralist Spanish preceptists.2

Aside from the conceptual and literary tradition that frames Lope’s defense of poetry, issues of his reputation and status most likely played a role in his motivation. Margaret Ferguson maintains in a psycho-social study of the work of DuBellay, Tasso and Sidney that “Renais-sance authors of defenses create arguments and allegorical apologues” defining themselves “against what is contrary” in a struggle “to bring forth works which will have power and authority” (17)—an evocative perspective from which one could hypothesize about Lope’s literary motives and social-political context. Lope was forty years old when his defense of poetry was published and it is not difficult to speculate about a continuing desire to extend his reputation beyond that of popular

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playwright to lyric poet-philosopher in competition with his luminary contemporaries—Góngora, Quevedo, and Cervantes.

The genre of a Defense of Poetry

Lope’s Cuestión del honor debido a la poesía can be viewed as an oratorical exercise presumably delivered in some form or another to the liter-ary circle of Juan de Arguijo in Seville. Such a framework focuses on Lope’s rhetorical designs utilized to address his perceived audience. Both the Cuestión del honor debido a la poesía and its companion Para escribir Virgilio de las abejas appeared together as dedicatory epistles to Arguijo in Lope’s first collection of two-hundred sonnets added to a volume that contained the texts of La hermosura de Angélica and La Dragontea published in Madrid, 1602.3 Whereas Lope’s first epistle to Arguijo (Para escribir . . .) was a defense of his own poetic practice in the face of “murmuraciones” and sniping criticism, the Cuestión del honor debido a la poesía belongs to the broader genre of traditional defenses of poetry often undertaken as a badge of honor by serious poets and scholars. With a flamboyant display of erudition Lope attempts to establish his credentials as a “poeta-philosophus” fully aware of the classical, humanistic and 16th-century discussions of the place of poetry in society, its ancient, medieval, religious and esoteric heritage and the varied roles of poetry as ars, scientia, philosophia, and theologia. Lope shows particular concern for the ethical responsibilities of mimesis and poetry’s influence on morality as framed by Spain’s post-tridentine political, social and religious values. As such he follows the conventions of citation and exempla, the cataloguing of poets, the classical topoi from Ovid, Horace, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Strabo et al. while conveniently quoting and summarizing from available compendia—the Syntaxeon of Pierre Grégoire, the Polyanthea of Nani Mirabelli, the Pegma of Pierre Coustau, and the work of Pietro Crinito, De honesta disciplina.

3 Pedraza Jiménez conjectures that: “Presumiblemente ambos [Lope’s defense along with its companion epistle] se escribieron pensando en el círculo literario que se reunía en torno a Arguijo” (Rimas 630). Rozas, following Vossler, construed the orientation of Lope’s Arte nuevo as an Horatian epistle (266) structured by rhetorical demands and expectations of the learned audience of the Academia de Madrid. By extension one would assume that it would also include as Rico Verdú relates “todos los recursos (voz, gestos) propio de la oratoria y de la representación teatral . . . (“Epistolografía” 156). I maintain that the defense of poetry, although obviously not an Horatian epistle, shares this same orientation.

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As a panegyric oration drawing upon epideictic concerns of praise or blame, Lope utilized the necessary rhetorical conventions to convince his audience of the value of poetry—whether putative listeners or subsequent readers. The tradition of religious and secular concepts that Lope appropriates were the intellectual capital of the elite group that he saw himself addressing. The pleasure of citation, the reference to authority, the listing of detractors and notable defenders were thus part of the rhetorical design of argumentation and persuasion by proof (Chria) as well as an inherited requirement from the broader horta-tory genre known by the Greek term, protreptikos, which as Curtius reminds us utilized conventional catalogs of heroes and detractors in its attempt to persuade.4

The organization of persuasion

In contrast to Sidney’s Apology for Poetry which was organized around the traditional divisions of a classical oration—exordium, narratio, propositio, partitio, confirmatio, reprehensio and peroratio (Myrick 46–83)—or Soto de Rojas’ Discurso sobre la poética organized by the Scholastic-Aristotelian construct of the four causes (material, formal, efficient, final), Lope selects a less rigorous structure for his ora-tion. One feels Lope is more comfortable as poet than philosopher developing ideas through the flow of rhyme and verse, a preference carried from his early schooldays as notably recounted by Juan Pérez de Montalbán (Fama póstuma 28) and at the end of his career alluded to literarily as “lo que mayor le tenía era para los versos; de suerte

4 Curtius points out the “catalog of notable persons (as substitute for the catalog of heroes). . . ,” adding that “. . . there is another [formal element] which is borrowed from a particular antique oratorical genre: the Protreptikos (hortatory oration, adhoratio, cohortatio, exhoratio) . . . two parts of protreptikos were distinguished—the ‘endeictic’ and the ‘apelentic:’ in the former the advantages of philosophy were demonstrated, in the latter its ‘opponents’ or ‘detractors’ . . . were exposed” (“Theological Art-Theory” 548). Mark D. Jordan studies the protreptikon in ancient Greece and argues for its status as a genre working its influence on later generations. Xavier Tubau discusses the Renais-sance pedagogical background and the practice of citation as formative motivation for Lope’s use of citation (11–18). Fumaroli’s concept of a “rhetorique de citation” looks upon such ornamental citation as a stylistic or baroque penchant (489–92). Carreño’s introduction to his edition of Laurel de Apolo insightfully characterizes Lope’s use of cita-tion: “Como vimos, de siempre le viene a Lope el citar, enumerar, acumular nombres, genealogías a lo humano y a lo divino; elogiar, incluir e incluirse en los preliminares de los libros de sus amigos y de los suyos” (40). See also Lia Schwartz (“La retórica de la cita”) and my discussion of Lope’s enumerative cataloguing (“Lope de Vega’s Evolving Rhetoric and Poetics”).

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que los cartapacios de las liciones me servían de borradores para mis pensamientos, y muchas veces los escribía en versos latinos o castel-lanos” (Fernando in La Dorotea Acto IV, I).

His argument in the defense appears to evolve from an exposition of loci that present thematic subjects loosely organized in traditional oratorical divisions which can be described as follows:

exordium—few give honor to poetry; the question of honoring poetry is like the question of the knowledge of God where in different nations some adore the sun, others adore animals or men, yet no nation denies that a higher power exists; and also, like the questions of astrology, there are differing opinions about truth and falsity (Carreño, Rimas humanas 590).

propositio—a statement of the nature of poetry “Ser arte es infallible, pues consta de sus preceptos” followed by an overt recognition of the proposition statement “Y en honra suya a este propósito basta que Platón . . .” concepts conveniently appropriated from Pierre Grégoire. (590–91)

narratio—1) the traditional moral and classical arguments against and for poetry with examples taken from the works of Grégoire, Coustau and Crinito, and references to classical writers, ancient philosophers and patristic theologians (591–94). 2) current censorship eliminates scandalous writers even though there are those prose works (Heliodorus and Apuleius and many modern writers) that contain affectionate parts taken from the license afforded poetry; some early Spanish poets are like these works “en los encarecimientos atrevidos como en las virtudes poco honestas” (594–95). 3) presentation of the case in favor of amorous verse—“poesía casta, limpia, sincera aunque sea amorosa, no es ofensiva”—as apparent in the work of Italians (“amorosos, honestísimos poetas”) and bolstered with citations from Spanish poets of the Cancionero General, followed with a lengthy catalog of praise for twenty-four Spanish poets (595–99).

conclusio—a discussion of metrics focused on the sonnet (599–600).

Poets, Poetry and Platonism

While the essays of Boccaccio, Sidney or the Compendio apologético of Bernardo de Balbuena for example, are detailed and carefully reasoned expositions, Lope prefers to present his thoughts through a code of conceptual signposts and mutually accepted “topoi.” He allows himself the license of supposition and allusion since he assumes that the well-worn commonplaces of Plato’s position on poetry are understood by his audience—principally, but not exclusively, the banishment of poets who corrupt youth by their false fictions of the gods. In this sense Lope follows the tenets of conventional Platonic criticism (a tradition

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exemplified by Boccaccio and sixteenth-century Italian critics) taken up by Spanish preceptists as discussed by Porqueras-Mayo (I: 28–29) who reinstate and defend poetry on the basis of its origins in ancient poets (Homer, Hesiod) and its moralistic value as a first philosophy teaching mores and passions mingled with allegorical interpretation and the Horatian concept of the utility of poetry—a significant part of the ideal of dulce et utile—which “is inextricably mingled with the thinking of the Platonists” (Weinberg I: 255).

Lope draws the thesis for his defense from the Platonic discussion on the nature of poetry and poetic talent: art vs. nature, inspiration vs. precepts. His borrowed proposition iconically summarizes the issues: “Ser arte es infalible, pues consta de sus preceptos” (591)—a trans-lation from Pierre Grégoire’s Syntaxeon (XIX, 188: “Constat autem, poesim esse artem, quia suis praeceptis perficitur”). Adding a qualifier which Lope leaves in the original Latin sharpens the components of the topic—poetry is not entirely a learned art, but also by implica-tion the result of inspiration and furor; poets create fiction not truth: “quamquam non ita verum omnia quae canunt poetae, arte cani, nam miranda canunt, sed non credenda” (591: “Not everything that poets sing is accomplished by art alone for they sing things to be marveled at but not believed”). In the formalism of his defense Lope ultimately leaves the issue of art vs. nature open-ended just as in earlier less formal renditions, where he embellished the topic with touches of literary irony (La Arcadia) or positioned it in the context of Christian inspiration in praise of humility and sanctity (Isidro).

Lope’s earliest reflections on the topic of poetry occurred in the Arcadia (1598) a pastoral narrative that would provide the venue for a feigned dramatization of literary theory. In Book III “doctos pastores” and in Book V the song of personified Poesía rehearse the nature of poetry and poetic inspiration embellished with the topoi of renaissance poetics.

In the personified monologue of Poesía, Lope repeated and poeti-cized his favorite statement from Grégoire—“Ser arte es infalible, pues consta de sus preceptos”—balancing the role of precepts and inspiration. In a sense the poem adroitly exemplifies the harmony of skill and innate talent (vena as Carvallo and others traditionally refer to it) mirrored in Lope’s fluid rhyme and verse of the personified Poesía’s rhythmic rendition of poetic theory:

Consta por sus preceptos la poesíaser arte de ingeniosa preeminencia,aunque naturaleza su armonía

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primero infunde con mayor violencia;ayuda el arte, y juntos a porfíavienen a tal extremo de excelencia,que parece furor divino y raro,y de sus fuerzas instrumento claro.

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Arte, preceptos and naturaleza come to their full extreme of excellence (“juntos a porfía/ vienen a tal extremo de excelencia”) as implied and exemplified by Lope’s own talent which he consistently and profusely demonstrates throughout the many verse forms of the Arcadia.

In an arcadian academy (Book III) Lope contrives a literary dis-cussion that his shepherd-philosophers embark upon. Plato, Horace, Plutarch, Ovid, Cicero and Aristotle function as well-known anchors for the discussion. Frondoso praises poetry as “pintura que habla” (Horace, Plutarch) whose purpose Benalcio in Horatian fashion reminds us is “enseñar y deleitar.” Danteo avers that poets are divine because they write inspired by a frenzy, (“estaba algún dios con ellos”) beyond that of artifice and learning (ehoes of Ovid—“deus est in nobis” in Ars amatoria; Plato—“furor poeticus” in Phaedrus, Ion; Cicero—“afflatus divinus” in Pro Archia); the poet, like the painter, “va imitando a la naturaleza los actos, la semejanza de hombre” (Aristotle in the Poetics); poetry is a “genero de ciencia” which, in the humanist view requires theoretical as well as practical knowledge: “No solo ha de saber el poeta todas las ciencias, o a lo menos principios de todas, pero ha de tener grandísima experiencia de las cosas . . .” (268). In a sardonic finale to the literary postulates of this pastoral academy Lope introduces the Rústico who boldly declares that there are many who don’t even know what his dog and sheep know about art and nature: “No sé qué deciros . . . de arte y naturaleza, que yo he visto muchos que saber de lo primero lo que mi mastín sabe de canto de órgano, ni tener de lo segundo más que mi manso de tañer vigüela de arco . . .” (269).

Yet in the face of this posturing about literary inspiration and its radication in the classical commonplaces, one wonders if Lope is not toying with the idealism of Platonic frenzy as he cleverly avoids step-ping out of character and expressing ideals as fact or precepts for the writing of poetry. The injected humor of the Rústico attempting to produce his own songs of poetry highlights Lope’s covert stance that the effort of ars (or the lack thereof) is an absurd substitute for the inspired talent bequeathed by natura. In the face of it all, however, throughout the narrative skein of the Arcadia, Lope has little need

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for theory and demonstrates his ingenious practice of poetry (implic-itly exemplifying how art is inspired by nature) in the abundance of metrical and formal examples: sonnets, romances, redondillas, quintillas, liras, estancias, décimas, la oda horaciana.5

In the prologue to Isidro, however, despite declaring an attempt to write a popular poem in the plain style of octavas castellanas, Lope relies upon classical origins of inspiration for his hagiographic song mixing secular with sacred: “por la mano de Polidoro Virgilio . . . en que atribuye el origen y principio del verso al mismo Dios, que no viene mal lo que Ovidio dijo: Est Deus in nobis” (207). Drawing upon the religious tradition of a “poetica biblica” that rests alongside classicist rhetorical poetic theory, Lope relies upon Polydore Vergil and Ovid to signify the fusion of sacred and pagan, appealing also to another of the early pagan poet-theologians to show the celestial nature of verse: “Pitágoras hizo armonía y metró las cosas celestiales” (207).

In relying upon the common Renaissance application of Ovid’s statement to the furor of poetic inspiration, Lope extends the concept and juxtaposes it to precepts and doctrines (arte) versus the inspired workings of the mind (entendimiento), citing Cicero’s Pro Archia: “Cice-rón honra la poesía con decir que las otras ciencias se aprenden por doctrinas y preceptos, y que ésta se mueve con las fuerzas del enten-dimiento” (207). Lope thus effectively secularizes divine inspiration (entendimiento); “utiliza la tradición clásica del genio, basada en la posesión de furor poético o entusiasmós . . . asociándolo con una tradición cristiana: la inspiración divina y la santa ignorancia . . .” (Sánchez Jiménez 81).

5 Trueblood maintains that over the course of Lope’s artistic development the scale tips in favor of naturaleza over arte: “In the last analysis, as Menéndez Pidal showed, the Platonic and Renaissance idealization of nature always holds the edge over art in Lope’s allegiance. Spontaneity of inspiration, inborn endowment, individual temperament, native literary tradition, modern culture took precedence over acquired craftsmanship and over the forms and standards of classical antiquity. . . . Art and nature, far from being discrete categories, are more and more viewed as interpenetrating. . . . We find Lope resorting to such terms as “artificiosa naturaleza” (“artificial nature”) and “natural arte” (“natural art”)” (508–09). Montesinos, as Rozas points out, tempers the position of Menéndez Pidal “Tal vez también se exceda el maestro [Menéndez Pidal] en el concepto de lo natural frente al de arte. Froldi se lo ha criticado, y Montesinos, sin explicitarlo, también, al reexplicar una idea de Lessing” (266). Froldi (29 n.31) cites Lope’s own words: “El arte poético, aunque es verdad que tiene principio de la naturaleza, ¿qué bárbaro no sabe que el arte la perfecciona? (La Dorotea IV, escena II).” “Que si arte y natural juntos no escriben, / sin ojos andan y sin alma viven (La Andrómeda, BAE Vol 38, 494).” For the history and evolution of the concepts see Anthony J. Close (“Com-monplace Theories”) and Antonio García Berrio (Formación 237–83).

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6 Don Cameron Allen addresses Renaissance attitudes in his classic study Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance from which I have taken my orientation. B.W. Ife maintains that counter-arguments in favor of fiction were mainly Aristotelian: “the counter-arguments . . . in Spain, as elsewhere, were for the most part Aristotelian in form” (24). In contrast Lope argues his case for poetry relying on Platonist not Aristotelian positions. Weinberg also presents the case for Platonist defenders of poetry in Italy (I: 250–96). However, when reflecting upon the writing of his love poetry, Lope shifts to an Aristotelian-Scholastic mindset in contrast to the formal Platonism of his defense.

The underlying assumption that supports and motivates these obser-vations as well as those of his formal defense of poetry is the traditional Christian justification of classic “pagan” writing and inspiration. Lope silently relied upon the apologetic tradition of the early Fathers (Justus, Tatian, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Clement, Origen and Basil)—a process that Augustine in the De doctrina christiana characterized as the taking of rhetorical spoils from the Egyptians (II.xl.60). In this respect Lope reflected the thoughts of his Platonist contemporaries absorbing the conservative religious and literary currency of his day.6

In the formality of Lope’s rhetorical panegyric, however, these ele-ments of a Platonically inspired defense are not immediately evident; one deciphers his thought process by access to his heavily cited original source. When we read the measured exposition of the Syntaxeon, we understand the intent of Lope’s selective appropriations of authori-ties used to substantiate his proposition. At the same time one could imagine Lope posturing eruditely before an audience not of shepherds, but of humanist scholars in Arguijo’s circle. In this discursive venue Lope freely abbreviates academic positions. Where he simply states: “Y en honra suya a este propósito basta que Platón llame a los poetas insignes, y a la poesía preclara, y más adelante, sacra . . .” (591), we find clarification and exposition in Grégoire’s encyclopedic entry; namely Plato’s ideas regarding the nature of poetry and the role of divine inspiration which he maintains is more significant than the craft of ars. Grégoire writes:

Et Plato in Ioue, Omnes, inquit, carminum poetae insignes, non arte sed diuino afflatu mente capti, ista praeclara poemata canunt: vt Corybantes, non sana mente canunt. additque, res levis, volatilis atque sacra, poeta nec canere prius potest, quam Deo plenus & extra positus, & a mente alienatus. neque fingere carmina, neque dare oracula quisquam potest, haec ibi Plato. (Gregoire 188, italics added: “As Plato states in the Ion, All distinguished poets of verse, sing their magnificent poems not by art but seized by divine inspiration; and like the Corybantan priests, sing with a frenzy. Plato adds

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7 In the introduction to his translation, Maximus of Tyre: The Philosophical Orations, Michael B. Trapp studies Maximus’ work and its influence upon later generations. Of import to us is his discussion of Cosimo de’Pazzi’s Latin translation and its use by Renaissance critics. See his introductory comments on Maximus’ concepts of poetry, the influence of Homer and Hesiod, the allegorical interpretation of poetry and its role as first philosophy in Orations (Sermones) that Trapp numbers as 4 (31–33); 17 (149–50); and 26 (213–14). Carvallo in Cisne de Apolo refers to Maximus and his well-known statement (also mentioned by Grégoire 189): “Y Maximo Tiro Platónico dice: Quid est aliud Poetice, quam Philosophia vetus, metricis numeris consonans, & c. “¿Qué otra cosa (quiere decir) es la poesía, sino la antigua filosofía, consonante y sonora, con los números del verso?” Porqueras-Mayo provides an illuminating note: “Este texto de Máximo de Tiro (125–85) es muy famoso y a veces citado por los defensores o explicadores de la poesía. Se trata del sermón 29 en su libro Maximi Tyri Philosophi Platonici, sermones e greca in Latinam linguam verso, Cosmo Paccio Archiepiscopo Florentino interprete” (140 n.133).

that the poet is not able to sing about anything frivolous, transitory or sacred unless filled with God, nor conceive poems unless ecstatic nor issue any oracles unless alienated from himself.”)

Although Plato’s condemnation of poets and poetry in the Republic (377a; 398a; 595a) stands as the iconic threat against which defenses of poetry marshal their arguments, Lope needs only to refer to this in passing: “Muchos la han aborrecido en la parte que también Platón la reprehende cuando imita enojosamente las costumbres” (591). Where Grégoire (189) discusses the influence of Homer and Hesiod on Plato at length in the “Sermones” of Maximus of Tyre (Sermones 16, 21, 29), Lope simply states that Plato was esteemed for having taken his philosophy from Homer: “. . . argumento es de la estimación dél estuvo, hallarse escrito que toda su Filosofía tomó de Homero” (591).

This observation is significant because the basis for exonerating Plato from his condemnation of poetry is substantiated by Maximus’ conten-tion that Plato nevertheless recognized Homer as poet- theologian and drew from his philosophy. Platonist defenses of poetry and mythol-ogy in the Renaissance rested upon the use of allegory and it was the allegorical import of Homer’s poetry that provided a stimulus for the love of virtue (“ad virtutis amorem stimulum” according to Maximus) and the best nourishment for youth (“optiman nimurum adolescentis animi nutricem” Grégoire 189), ideas that also become commonplace among Platonist critics who sought to defend poetry (Weinberg I: 254). Maximus along with Plutarch considers poetry a first philosophy and useful (the Horatian dictum of dulce et utile comes into play).7 Lope emphasizes similar points in the Cuestión del honor debido a la poesía by calling upon Cicero and Plutarch just as he had

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rehearsed in his arcadian academy of shepherd philosophers but here adding a well-known concept from Strabo (which Lope appropriates from Grégoire 189). He writes:

Plutarco los tiene [a los poetas] por útiles y Tulio en la oración pro Archia poeta los encarece, y muchas de sus obras adornó de lugares suyos. Las palabras de Estrabón son notables: Antiqui poeticam primam quondam philosofiam perhibent, quae ab ineunte nos aetate ad vivendi rationes adducit, quae mores, quae afecciones doceat, quae res gerendas cum iucunditate praecipiat. (591–92: “The ancients hold that poetry is a kind of first philosophy, which, from a very early age, brings us to the art of living and instructs us, with pleasure to ourselves in character, emotions and actions.”)

At the argumentative level of his panegyric Lope invokes Strabo to provide the moral justification of and ultimate basis for the defense of poetry. Reference to Strabo was commonly made by Platonist crit-ics to present antique poets as originators of a first philosophy that provided rules and morals for behavior and hence exonerate them from Plato’s castigation. But I maintain that there was more to Lope’s strategy as demonstrated below.

Poetry and morality

When Lope began his defense of poetry he acknowledged a long tradi-tion of discussion and varying opinion (“Es de manera vintilada en el mundo esta cuestión del honor debido a la poesía”)—an awareness he repeated at the beginning of his “Elogio al licenciado Soto de Rojas” prefacing Soto’s Desengaño de amor en rimas (“Han sido tantas y tan varias las opiniones que la Poesía ha tenido. . .” 100). This tradition of thought, preoccupied with the moral issues surrounding the praise and condemnation of poetry, is assumed when Lope digresses in the exordium. For us as modern readers Lope’s comparison involving belief in God and the worship of nations and Levinio Lemnio’s vari-ous opinions about astrology at first may appear strangely unrelated to the praise of poetry: “Y sucédele como a las diversas naciones en materia del conocimiento de Dios que puesto que unas han adorado al sol, otros a los animales y algunas a los hombres, ninguna tan bár-bara que haya negado que le hubiese; lo que sucede por momentos a la Astrología con las varias opiniones, como se vee en lo que de su verdad o mentira escribió Levinio Leminio” (590).

Yet the learned participants in the circle of Arguijo would have recog-

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8 Balbuena’s panegyric begins with a lengthy catalog of commonplaces about the defense of poetry. Regarding origins he writes: “S. August. refiere que los poetas an-tiguamente fueron llamados Teologos, por auer cantado diuinos versos y alabanças a Dios, como parece en Orfeo, Hesiodo, Homero, Horacio y otros, y Macrobio lib.2 de Somno Scipionis quiere que en los sacrificios y alabanças de los Dioses fuese costum-bre antigua cantar hymnos y versos” (144). Vera y Mendoza paraphrases Strabo: “los antiguos afirmauan no ser la Poesía otra cosa, sino la Filosofía principal, que enseña las razones y costumbres de viuir bien” (25). See Sidney’s references and characteriza-tions of antique poets of Greece and Rome (82–83, 122–25 notes). See also the classic study of Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, particularly the chapter “From Theologia Poetica to Theologia Platonica” (II: 683–721).

nized the implied relationship between poetry and the issues of belief and astrology (“sucedele como,” “lo que sucede por momentos . . . como”). This recognition is grounded, of course, in early Christian apologetic discussions of poetry as ancient theology, originating from pagan beliefs and manifestations of divinity in astrology (e.g. Origen, Lactantius, Augustine) and echoed in Boccaccio’s discussion of poetry as an early process of myth-making. In those discussions the ancient poet-theologians—Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Homer and Hesiod—who created fables and myths about the gods and the heavens were not liars but storytellers adumbrating a first philosophy of the divine hierarchy. Aside from Lope’s sources in the Syntaxeon, this tradition and the divine origin of poetry was also reflected in Spanish treatises: Carvallo’s religious motives in the Cisne de Apolo (Porqueras-Mayo II: 421–32), Balbuena’s catalogs of authorities and Vera y Mendoza’s Pan-egyrico por la poesía. The tradition did not know geographic boundaries as Sidney’s use of the commonplaces demonstrates.8

Lope relies upon this tradition as the signifying background against which he specifies allusions to Augustine, St. Paul, Jerome and Democritus, Terrence, Plautus, Cato, Cicero and Coustau when he enumerates a catalog of customary objections to ancient and contem-porary poetry in order to confirm the conventional Platonist stance that poetry is morally acceptable and socially useful. The catalog of objections is laid out as the case against poetry but explained away by Lope’s placing them in context.

El lugar en que San Agustín llama error, Demócrito insania, San Pablo, fábulas vanas y San Jerónimo la reprehende, debe ser entendido por aquel tiempo en que los poetas antiguos llamaban a Júpiter Omnipotente, escribían los vicios y torpezas de sus dioses, juraban por Cástor y Hércules, como se ve en Terencio y Plauto, que imitaban el lenguaje de entonces, y otras cosas que a nuestra Religión pueden ser ofensivas. (593)

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Lope’s allusion to the text where Augustine condemns the “error” of his teachers was a seminal reference for the debate about poetry and morality. Augustine had criticized the morally corruptive fictions of ancient poet-theologians that glorified pagan myth and lascivious behavior used by inebriated teachers of youth. The commonplace ref-erences “vinum erroris” and “Jovem Tonantem” (“error” and “Júpiter Omnipotente” in Lope) became code words for leading youth astray by the attractive language of pagan stories and myths. The context of Augustine’s “vinum erroris” reveals the nature of the concern:

Non accuso verba quasi vasa electa atque pretiosa, sed vinum erroris, quod in eis nobis propinabatur ab ebriis doctoribus, et nisi biberemus, caede-bamur nec appellare ad aliquem iudicem sobrium licebat. (Confessionum I: 16: “I do not blame the words themselves. They are like select and costly vessels; but I do fault the wine of error they contain which was poured out for us to drink by drunken teachers; and unless we drank from it, we were beaten, without recourse to a sober judge.”)

In the De Civitate Dei Augustine had called into question the glo-rification of a thundering Jupiter and the description of his lascivi-ous behavior (a commonplace Lope had also used per Boccaccio as noted previously, note 2). Augustine relates that “istum deum dicere et tonantem et adulterantem, et totum mundum regentem et per tot stupra diffluentem” (VII: 9,1: “They described this god [Jupiter] thundering and committing adultery, ruling over the world, dissolute with licentiousness”).

The positive point to be drawn from these and other examples cited by Lope is emphasized by reference to Pierre Coustau who insists that those poets who, not banished by Plato, move us to good not evil: “que no solamente no mueven los espíritus a mal, pero que deseando igualar la virtud de los que celebran, con aquella emulación se incitan a hacer bien” (593) and from whom Lope adds a quotation in French from the Pegma. The quotation leads to Lope’s underlying agenda that involves more than the justification of a long tradition of amorous poetry.

The moral-religious contradictions of “poesía amorosa”: theory vs. practice

The core of Lope’s concern for the moral issues of poetry derives not so much from the preferred Platonist commonplaces and the argument of Horace (poetry as utile) but more personally from a need to justify

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his own commitment to poeticizing lived amorous experience—“¿Que no escriba decís, o que no viva?/ Haced vos con mi amor que yo no sienta,/ que yo haré con mi pluma que no escriba” (Rimas humanas, Sonnet 66). The subtext upon which Lope builds his defense of poetry rests on a compelling need to provide a simple, convincing justification of amorous poetry in general and his own in particular.

As a result Lope’s seemingly innocuous statement “La poesía casta, limpia, sincera, aunque sea amorosa, no es ofensiva” (595) allows him to substantiate his own efforts, but also to provide cover for his own aberrations from the post-tridentine norms of accepted morality and occasional excursions from traditionally designed conventions of amorous, petrarchan poetic—what Lope referred to as “versos castos.” Having exonerated antique authors (Stesícoro, Cratino, Aristophanes) as well as Spanish poets (“A esto se parecían algo los españoles antiguos, así en los encarecimientos atrevidos como en las virtudes poco honestas” 594–95), Lope complacently asserts that cur-rent works do not follow their lascivious style since “ni las censuras dellos los permiten escandalosos” (594) implicitly including his own poetry and those works for which in the future he would become an official censor de libros. He showcases examples of acceptable amorous poetry elevating Petrarch and his followers as exemplars along with Vergil’s account of Dido and Aeneas cherished by Augustine: “ que no lo ha parecido [ofensiva] la del Petrarca a ningún recatado ingenio; la del Serafino Aquilano, el Cardenal Bembo, Luis Alemani, Aníbal Nozolino, Vulteyo, francés, los dos Tassos y otros, aunque amorosos, honestísimos poetas. Ni dejó San Augustín de leer y encarecer el libro cuarto de la Eneida por ser tierno . . .” (595).

An extended catalog of twenty-four Spanish poets provides Lope with the opportunity to critique and praise elements of their poetry that substantiate his own current poems in the collection of the Rimas. Lope emphasizes the legitimacy of their plaintive verse by repeatedly utilizing the critical vocabulary of moral restraint, chasteness, gravity and purity—terms similarly employed to describe “los buenos versos, castos y medidos” of his Isidro (209). The poems of earlier poets (Jorge Manrique and Juan de Mena to cite the better known among the list) are singled out as “Castísimos . . . versos,” “aquellos conceptos amorosos dichos con la blandura de los pensamientos . . . no ofendi-endo la gravedad de los que sentían.” Contemporary poets (among them Figueroa, Pedro Laynez, Fernando de Acuña) are praised for “muchas canciones castísimas” and their “gracia, primor, erudición y puro estilo” (598). Herrera is “divino” for his erudition and “por

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9 Lope’s toying with eroticism has been addressed in different contexts. José Lara Garrido (“Columnas de Cristal”) discusses Lope’s sonnet and an anonymous ballad. By way of orientation see the study of Martin Schatzmann Willvonseder that addresses the

la castidad de su lenguaje” (599). And finally, praise for the verse of Arguijo his benefactor: “dudo que se hayan visto más graves, limpios y de mayor decoro . . .” (599).

In juxtaposition to Lope’s exoneration of amorous poetry stands the question of practice versus theory. Lope’s own poetry, inspired by his private love affairs, sometimes navigated a dissimilar moral course. Conveniently enough he sought protection as it were for such erotic subject matter under the cover of poetic language, allegory and recondite metaphor while in the case of his personal behavior, secrecy and private confidences provided the veil of impunity, exemplified by a comment to the Duque de Sessa: “Carne tengo yo, . . . si bien de días a esta parte no la exerçito; y por opinión de Nerón todos son ygualmente lascivos que sólo está en saberlo encubrir, unos más que otros . . .” (Epistolario III: 198).

In metaphorical excursions to regions of love accompanied by the genius of inspiration (“regiones voy de un genio acompañado/ que me enseña de amor ciencias divinas” La Circe 258) or in arcadian shepherds musing about the writing of poetry, poetic furor can be cloaked in the language of Platonic idealism. Yet in Lope’s reflections and letters one perceives inspiration arising from momentary flights of passion and the eros of poetic creation. Divine frenzy unavoidably becomes identified with and takes on the human trappings of passionate, erotic love (traces that are likewise intimated by Alonso López Pinciano, “el furor poético . . . las más vezes es ayudado de otro furor natural más baxo” [I: 226–27]). In this respect consider two examples of Lope’s literary expressions of poetic “furor venereo” (Ficino’s phrase): the first a joyful, voyeuristic description of naked nymphs bathing in La hermosura de Angélica (Canto XIII, stanzas 4–12) and the second, veiled eroticism allegorized in Sonnet 64 of the Rimas (1602): “Yo vi sobre dos piedras plateadas,” “colunas gentiles sostenidas,” “de mis brazos levantadas,” “sobre mis hombros os llevara,” “porque cayendo vuestro templo, diera/ vida a mi muerte y muerte a mis deseos.” Pedraza Jimenez considered this sonnet “un poema semipornográfico que . . . tuvo un enorme éxito entre los aficionados” (Rimas 326) an opinion that Carreño tempers: “Tal vez su sutil simbolismo erótico (de ningún modo ‘semipornográfico’) ayudó a su popularidad” (Rimas humanas 199).9

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issue of eroticism and amor in the cancioneros as predecesor to later sixteenth-century poetry. See also the studies by Teresa J. Kirschner, Milagros Torres, Weber de Kurlat and essays in Amor y erotismo en el teatro de Lope de Vega, ed. Pedraza Jiménez.

In the privacy and intimacy of a letter to the Duque de Sessa, Lope unmasks his “furor poeticus” and expresses its creative force in the erotic energy of writing. Lope titillates his attentive reader by identify-ing the act of writing with the act of love—his quill working over the paper like “el varón” over the out-stretched “hembra”—engendering matter: “como todo se remite a la pluma, no puede la tinta tanto; que [se] echan ella y el papel como la hembra y el varon, el papel se tiende y la pluma lo trabaxa, como la forma y la materia, que todo es uno” (Epistolario III: 315).

In contrast to the ethereal pretensions and safe morality of Lope’s Platonic aspirations, the final simile of the statement (“como la forma y la materia, que todo es uno”) reveals a Lope who appropriates the concepts of Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy in order to identify the creative force of eros with poesis and the ratiocination of both as one—mirrored in the conviction that “amar y hacer versos todo es uno” (Dorotea, Acto IV escena I). Peter Dunn points out the dramatic richness of the related topos materia/forma in some of Lope’s comedias “with the carnal sense so ready to rise up and displace the technical sense” of the analogue. Dunn intimates what I view as Lope’s penchant for poeticizing the contradictions and conflicts of amor and eros, body and soul veiled in the language of metaphor and conceit: “it is not surprising that the thread joining the metaphysical idea [form and matter] and the sexual relation should become taut to the degree that a range of notes can be played upon it. In other words, it is a ready-made ‘metaphysical conceit’” (193).

In a letter to the Duque de Sessa, Lope presents as paramount the question of capturing amorous experience in writing, emblematically expressing the rhetorical dichotomy of res and verba with the enumera-tive simile “así me pasaba, así lo escribía.” He discusses his love letters to Amarilis and the true source for the expression of “amor puro”—which is not reasoned morality nor the chaste stylistics of rhetoric: “. . . donde habla amor puro no hay cosa más estranjera que los colores retóricos; así me pasaba, así lo escribía, solicitando más a la voluntad que al entendimiento . . .” (Epistolario III: 330, italics added). But at the same time Lope explicates “amor puro” by rationalizing his creative act of writing with scholastic philosophical terms—efeto, mayor eficacia,

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el sujeto, mover la potencia, apetito, imaginación, concluding by simply urging the use of “palabras amorosas y fáciles”:

me parece siempre que en esta materia lo que más mueve es lo más seguro, y haciendo este efeto lo más claro más presto, y lo más dulce con mayor eficacia, nunca gusté de desvanecer el sujeto, sino de mover la potencia que estuviese más de mi parte; que el apetito altera la imaginación, y ésta se dispone mejor con palabras amorosas y fáciles. (Epistolario III: 330)

Whether writing a love letter for the Duque or composing a love sonnet to Celia, Lucinda or Amarilis, persuading love and engender-ing love in poetry is one thing, but writing about either requires recourse to the descriptive language of philosophy and the implied concepts of amoral rhetorical and poetic theory. Lope’s effort, in this instance, need not draw from the language of Platonism nor the allu-sion to divine inspiration and the furies, but by way of contrast relies upon Aristotelian metaphysics that is conceptualized in Scholastic pyschology.

Conclusion: Some implications for Siglo de Oro poetic theory

In a thought-provoking essay Sofie Kluge introduces her analysis of Golden Age literary theory and criticism with a reassessment of the traditional critical orientation:

Like almost every cultural phenomenon of the period, Golden Age criti-cism appears as a peculiar mixture of classical and Christian elements. The Horatian and Aristotelian influence is often stressed by critics in order to legitimize their views by adopting a classicist attitude. However, in order to understand Golden Age classicism . . . we need to acknowledge its deter-mination by what may be termed the “Platonic-Christian bias” of Golden Age criticism (251).

When Kluge speaks of “The moral-ethical and ontological critique of literature with its warning against the deceitful and dangerous charms of poetry” (257) as the basis for reaction to the “heresy of Góngora” the correspondence of these perspectives, at least in their description of a post-tridentine ethos, is not indifferent to formula-tions by Curtius (551–58), as Kluge recognizes, and Porqueras-Mayo (I: 28–72). Although my observations about Lope’s defense of poetry find a recognizable frame of reference in what Kluge’s describes as a Platonic-Christian bias, my analysis in contrast is intended to be illustrative of the variability of moral absolutism particularly when practiced rather than professed by Baroque temperaments. Lope’s

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contradictory postures are exemplified by his poetic expressions of passion, love and eroticism in conflict with the moral, socio-religious views he sometimes professed and sometimes rejected. Viewing Lope’s defense of poetry as such serves to contextualize and refine his own critical postures on the one hand and at the very least call into ques-tion the staunch moralism of some of his contemporaries—given what Kluge describes as their “Platonic-Christian bias of moral-ethical ontology.” A legitimate question can be asked: to what extent did an extreme moral suspicion of poetry play a role in the reflections and critical practice of poets as compared to theoreticians such as Cascales, Carvallo and Pinciano—taking as examples, Herrera, Lope himself and Cervantes?

Although Lope is far removed from a theoretically organized and morally coherent system of thought about his own poetry and drama (much less the poetry of Góngora), he nevertheless draws eclectically from fundamentally conservative currents of criticism, formed by religious commitment and belief. His acute self-reflexiveness about the process of writing poetry and assessing its worth—revealed in a passing reference to Aristotle in the Papel de la nueva poesía—underlies the evolving and changing critical postures Lope adopted toward experimentation, the writing of poetry and by extension his reflec-tions on the changing scenery of rhetoric and poetics: “procuraré con la mayor brevedad que me sea posible decir lo que siento, que pues Aristóteles en el libro primero de sus Tópicos dejó advertido que los filósofos, por la verdad, debent etiam sibi contradicere, bien puede el arte de hacer versos, pues todo su fundamento es la filosofía. . .” (Filomena 837).

The exonerating statement about philosophers and poets contra-dicting themselves characterizes Lope, the putative poet-philosopher, attempting to change established literary canons as well as refashion his life and loves in verse, a process of writing that Spitzer notably characterized as literizing life (literarisierung des lebens). In a previous study on Lope’s companion epistle to Arguijo, I alluded to Lope’s poetic syncretism indicating that conceptually at the end of his poetic career Lope tries on a scholastic view that assigns poetry’s place to the rational sciences—ideas conveniently appropriated from Savonarola that can be repeated here: “. . . pues ser filósofo y ser poeta son con-vertibles. Parte de la filosofía racional la llamó Savonarola . . . ‘impos-sibile est (dice en su compendio) quemquam logicam ignorat vere esse Poetam’” (Elogio al licenciado Soto de Rojas 101: “It is impossible [he says in his compendium] for anyone who ignores philosophy to truly be a

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poet”). Paradoxically, it was Savonarola who took the most vitupera-tive moral posture against poetry bequeathing his intolerant views to counter-reformation preceptists. Conveniently enough Lope could rely on the resonant appeal of Savonarola’s ecclesiastical moralism as an ambiguous veil for any ulterior motives he might entertain—to be remorsefully assuaged by subsequent examinations of conscience and sacred rhymes. Menéndez Pidal perceived Lope’s dilemma: “hombre en todo contradictorio: fervoroso creyente en las eternas leyes de la moral y atrevido pecador contra ellas; venerante de los milenarios preceptos del arte e infractor profesional de los mismos” (70).

But Lope’s core of inspiration is not philosophy and its license for contradiction, nor an ethically inspired defensiveness before his peers, nor ultimately an exclusive desire for fame, but as he repeatedly avers it is the engendering power of love, an amorously inspired ingenium that motivates his writing and expression of amorous experience. His defense of poetry taken in this context proffers the views of a playwright and poet drawing upon established traditions of rhetoric and Platonist apologetics in order to elevate the role of amorous poetry in general and his own contributions in particular—replete as they were with moral, amoral and provocative expressions of love, divine as well as human, firmly supported by reflections drawn from an Aristotelian-Scholastic construct.

Independent scholar

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