Las Soledades de Luis de Gongora Argote

Soledades page 13

  1. contra la seca hoja
  2. que el viento repeló a alguna coscoja.
  3. Durmió, y recuerda al fin cuando las aves,
  4. esquilas dulces de sonora pluma,
  5. señas dieron süaves
  6. del Alba al Sol, que el pabellón de espuma
  7. dejó, y en su carroza
  8. rayó el verde obelisco de la choza.
  9. Agradecido pues el peregrino,
  10. deja el albergue, y sale acompañado
  11. de quien lo lleva donde levantado,
  12. distante pocos pasos del camino,
  13. imperioso mira la campaña
  14. un escollo, apacible galería,
  15. que festivo teatro fué algún dia
  16. de cuantos pisan Faunos la montaña.
  17. Llegó, y a vista tanta
  18. obedeciendo la dudosa planta,
  19. inmóvil se quedó sobre un lentisco,
  20. verde balcón del agradable risco.

Commentary

Dámaso Alonso

176 - 193
Durmió, por tanto, y se despierta sólo cuando las aves (como dulces esquilas de pluma sonora) empezaron a dar con sus voces señales del alba al Sol, el cual, asi avisado, salió del mar, que es su lecho de espuma, y rayó de luz la cabaña, verde obelisco de retamas y roble.
182
Después de haber dado gracias a sus huéspedes, deja el peregrino la cabaña y sale acompañado de un cabrero que le lleva hasta unas rocas, levantadas a pocos pasos del camino, que dominan desde su altura, como una atalaya, todo el campo, apacible galería hoy, que en otro tiempo sirvió de teatro para celebrar sus fiestas a todos los faunos habitadores de la montaña. Llega el joven y, obedeciendo su pie a la amplia vista que se descubre, se queda inmóvil de admiración sobre un lentisco que sirve como de verde balcón a la agradable atalaya.

Salcedo Coronel

Primera Soledad page 13, line 177
Esquilas ...Campanas dulces de sonora pluma. Llama assi a las aves, porque despertaron con su canto al Sol, avisándole que había salido la Aurora; aludiendo a los despertadores que en los reloxes se usan, para avisar la hora en que quiere despertar el que usa dellos.
Line 181
Y saliendo de las ondas en su carro de oro, rayó de luz el verde obelisco de la choça. Llamó obelisco a la choza, porque estaba hecha en aquella forma, y verde por estar cubierta de retama. El obelisco es una piedra al modo del que nosotros llamamos término , o mojón; su fundamento comiença anchíssimo, después como se va levantando se adelgaça proporcionadamente en quadro hasta la punta.

Analysis

179 - 181
Dawn is expressed through the dynamic image of the sun's/Apollo's chariot rising from the sea. The verb rayar suggests rayos, so we can think of shafts of sunlight crossing the landscape. The obelisco reminds Salcedo Coronel of the stone columns (Egyptian) that taper towards their top (like Cleopatra's Needle in the London Embankment). He could have added that the obelisks of Egypt were associated with sun-worship. So he visualises the cottage in the morning sun as being like such a monument, because its roof tapers towards the top, and green because it is thatched. But there is another pertinent and highly evocative reference. The obelisk was an architecture feature in the Roman Circus; they were part of the great masonry wall that divided the track around which the chariots were driven. This association adds a further dimension to the image of the sun's chariot: that of the race (energy, violence and time). Rayar, with its meaning roughly of to draw lines, suggests, too, the tracks of the speeding chariot as its drives past the obelisco/cottage. This is a way of visualising a landscape and the natural forces at work in it by drawing on the associations of language. There is a further association; the obelisco was a printer's sign, that was placed in the margin of a page, and drew attention to something of note. Rayar, with its sense of to draw lines across fits well with the idea of the countryside as a page in the margin of which stood the cottage and across which the rays of the rising sun were cast.

Notes

  • Obelisco

    The obelisk: part of the masonry wall that separated the two tracks of the Roman circus. The small-scale picture gives an idea of the whole structure of the circus; on the left, the gates from which the chariots emerged at the beginning of the race.

  • The Chariot

    Góngora's image of the sun's chariot reminds one of the representations of natural forces that you find in paintings by Nicolas Poussin. On the right, you see Poussin's The Temple of Flora. In the garden of Flora, at the centre of which Flora dances, we see various figures and their stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The dying protagonists are being transformed into flowers. Above the garden, Apollo drives his chariot of the sun across the sky: this stands for time, but also as the source of fertility. This correspondence between the painting and the poetry suggests how classical material was being tapped by a seventeenth-century painter and a poet not out of nostalgia for a lost world of paganism but for their evocation of our natural world.