Harry Chalet 4092474 Discuss Garcilasos approaches to the theme of love in his poetry.

Garcilaso de la Vega was a Spanish soldier and a poet from Toledo. He enlisted in the household guard of Emperor Charles V at the age of twenty. He fought in the Civil war in 1521, he was knighted, and in 1525 he married, setting up home in Toledos Calle Real and having 5 children. In the years following 1529, Garcilaso was sent on diplomatic and military missions to Italy, Germany and France. In 1532, against the express orders of the empress, he became involved in the elopement of his nephew with the eleven-year-old daughter of the duke. This lead to Garcilaso being arrested and exiled from Spain. He tried to seek a pardon from the emperor, but the sentence was stretched to permanent exile from Spain Following his exile, he met a brilliant circle of writers and critics, and began to study and write. In 1535 Garcilaso was called up to fight for the Emperor again, where he was wounded. In 1536 Garcilaso received orders to march against the French as maestre de campo of 3000 troops. Garcilaso died later on in 1536. Garcilaso is best known for his tragic love poetry, and I will highlight the reasons for this.

Garcilaso approaches the theme of love in many different ways throughout his work. Soneto XXXVIII, Soneto XXII, Soneto VIII, Soneto XV, Soneto XXIII show Garcilaso working through various approaches to love, from the introspective chivalric devotion of Petrarch and medieval cancioneros to Platonism and pagan classicism. The first poem gives a masochistic self-dramatization of the lovers suffering typical of medieval courtly love. The second is about the problematic boundary between outer and inner, carnal and spiritual love.

Harry Chalet 4092474 Soneto VII and XXVIII portray the middle-aged poet, to his dismay, falling in love once more. The first poem begs Cupid, with a rueful smile, to spare the poet from renewed tortures of desire: I have suffered your storms so often without com- plaint, this time I shall drown. Soneto VII

Jones writes in the idea of love in Garcilasos second eclogue how he believes that it is a little strange that little direct study has been devoted to the idea of love in the second eclogue, which he believes to be Garcilasos most dramatic treatment of the theme (Jones, 1951)

Garcilaso approaches the theme of love using his own experiences of love, as I will show in the following examples. He writes: Corromperse sent el sosiego y libertad pasada, y el mal de que muriendo est, engendrarse, y en tierra sus races ahondarse tanto, cuanto la cima levantada sobre cualquier altura hace verse. El fruto que de aqu suele cogerse, mil es amargo, alguna vez sabroso, mas mortfero siempre y ponzooso.

Harry Chalet 4092474 These lines he has written are clearly an expression of the poets own experience. Here Garcilaso is dramatizing a Renaissance idea exemplified in his own life. (Jones, 1951)

Many people have believed that Albanio represents the Duke of Alba and Camila, his future Duchess, that he is Garcilaso himself. If these ideas are infact true and Garcilaso is in fact describing the growth of amor insane, then this poem causes some problems. There are some passages which can shed some light on this idea, and whether or not it is in fact the case. The first example is when Albanio describes the birth of his passion, and at first he is telling of how his love was innocent:

Iba de una hora en otra la estrecheza Hacindose mayor, acompaada de una amor sano y lleno de pureza.

In the words sano y lleno de pureza, I see one can see more than a description of a naive, juvenile love, a love which is a spiritual one but also fully mature. Albanio then proceeds to explain how this love became an obsession that he could hardly control.

Basta saber que aquesta tan sencilla y tan pura Amistad, quiso mi hado en diferente especie convertilla, en un amor tan fuerte y tan sobrado y en un desasosiego no credible, tal, que no me conozco de trocado. El placer de miralla con terrible

Harry Chalet 4092474 Y fiero desear sent mezclarse, que siempre me llevaba a lo imposible. La pena de su ausencia v mudarse, no en pena, no en congoja, en cruda muerte, y en fuego eterno el alma atormentarse.

These lines are seen to give us an account of how powerful and obsessive the love is that he has. (Jones, 1951) This view is however in conflict with Garcilasos cancion IV, and Garcilasos known admiration for Il Cortegiano. Salicio begins to argue with Albanio, pleading with him accept advice from him, and to share his pain, but Albanio rejects his pleads. Camila comes into the scene as the other two leave, and she too starts talking about the loss of her innocent friendship with Albanio:

Sabes qu me quitaste, fuente clara? Los ojos de la cara, que no quiero menos un compaero que yo amaba, mas no como l pensaba. Dios ya quiera que antes Camila muera que padezca culpa por do merezca ser echada de la selva sagrada de Diana.

She is asleep, and then Albanio comes and wakes her up. She then proceeds to accuse him of: T no violaste nuestra compaa, Querindola torcer por el camino

Harry Chalet 4092474 que de la vida honesta se desva?

After reading these series of passages there is no doubt that what was described by Albanio and what Camilla accused him of is physical love. (Jones, 1951)

Perhaps one of the most significant themes to come through Garcilasos work is lust. Central to this theme is how Garcilaso had an affair with a Portuguese gentlewoman called Isabel Freyre, and fell in love with her in 1526. Garcilaso never mentions Isabel by name in his work, but it is thought that in the first eclogue she is mentioned, and similar references can be found elsewhere in his work. Isabel was Garcilasos one true love, and where Isabel is concerned, the argument seems to be circular: his best poetry is superior because it expresses an emotion that is strong and sincere, and that can only be his love for Isabel, Isabel therefore inspired his best poetry. (Dent-Young, 2009)

Brocense stated that a detail in the portrayal of Elisas death in gloga I, and another in gloga III identified her as the empresss Portuguese lady-in-waiting Isabel Freire de Andrade, who married Antonio de Fonseca in Toledo in 152728 and died there in 1533. The fact that Garcilasos love for Isabel was intense and sincere is revealed in every line of his works that mentions her; indeed it is often this quality of sincerity that distinguished his real poetry from his imitative verses. The love of Garcilaso for Isabel Freire floods his work from beginning to end; it is she who inspired all of his verses that still have power to move and charm his readers. Perhaps the most human touch in all his work is this infinite yearning for an ultimate union with her, expressed in the closing lines of the sonnet written at her tomb.

Harry Chalet 4092474 Divina Elisa, pues ahora el cielo con inmortales pies pisas y mides, y su mudanza ves, estando queda, por qu de m te olvidas y no pides que se apresure el tiempo en que este velo rompa del cuerpo y verme libre pueda, y en la tercera rueda, contigo mano a mano, busquemos otro llano, busquemos otros montes y otros ros, otros valles floridos y sombros donde descanse y siempre pueda verte ante los ojos mos, sin miedo y sobresalto de perderte?

This can be translated as, Divine Elisa, for now it is the sky you tread and measure with immortal feet, and watch its changes while remaining still, have you forgotten me? Why do you not ask for that time to come more quickly when this veil of the body will be torn and I be free? Then in the third heaven, with you hand in hand, we will seek another plain, other mountains, other flowing rivers, other flowering shady valleys, where I can rest forever and ever have you before my happy eyes, without the fear and shock of losing you.

Although most people believe that the affair with Isabel did happen, the problem is not that the legend of an affair with Isabel is false (which we shall never know), but that it

Harry Chalet 4092474 is not important. Garcilaso intended a far more indirect approach to the expression of emotion in gloga I, one in which imitatioitself several removes from autobiography played a leading role (Iglesias Feijo, 1983) The poem should be read for what it is: a fantasy set in an artificial landscape of the imagination that contrasts two kinds of loss in love, through jealousy and death, leading to an amazing climax: the Neo- platonic idea of apotheosis, love beyond life and out of this world.

In Soneto XV, the theme of lust comes up again. He talks about how the womans gaze is burning, yet pure. He lusts after this womans gaze.

Perfected by Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid, Roman love elegy was the genre responsible for what Tom Stoppard called the invention of love (Like everything else, like clocks and trousers and algebra, the love poem had to be invented. After millenniums of sex and centuries of poetry, the love poem as [...] the confessions of the poet in love, immortalizing the mistress, who is actually the cause of the poemthat was invented in Rome in the first century before Christ, 1997, 13). (Stoppard, 1997) Tom Stoppard explains how the love poem was invented, and how it is the confessions of the poet in love. This is certainly the case in much of Garcilasos poetry, as much of his work relates indirectly to his life.

Elega II, A Boscn, was written at Trapani in Sicily, where the fleet anchored on 22 August 1535 on the return voyage from Tunis, where Garcilaso was wounded. This poem which is written on the intertwined themes of Mars and Venus, war and sexual

Harry Chalet 4092474 jealousy, combines the discursive style of the epistle with the self-mocking tone of sonnets to produce yet another generic experiment: a narrative of the poets sentimental life in the manner of Roman love elegy. Elegy differs from lyric by treading the boundary where private feeling intersects with public life. That is, it considers the self from the outside with ironic detachmenta balancing act reflected by the occurrence for the only time in Garcilasos poetry of his own name, but in the third person.

Love is a central theme in Garcilasos poetry. It is something that appears in some form in the vast majority of his work throughout his life. Garcilaso draws on his own experiences of love, and refers indirectly to his own life in his work.

Bibliography Dent-Young, J. (2009). Selected Poems of Garcilaso de la Vega: Bilingual Edition. Chicago: Univesity of Chicago Press. Iglesias Feijo, L. (1983). Lectura de la gloga I. In V. Garca de la Concha, Garcilaso: Actas de la IV Academia Literaria Renacentista (pp. 61-82). Salamanca: Universidad. Stoppard, T. (1997). The Invention of Love. London: Faber and Faber .