La Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea

The poem, though borrowing heavily from prior literary sources of Greek and Roman Antiquity, attempts to go beyond the established versions of the myth by reconfiguring the narrative structure handed down by Ovid.

Through the incorporation of highly innovative poetic techniques, Góngora effectively advances the background story of Acis and Galatea’s infatuation as well as the jealousy of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

As made evident in the opening of the poem, the Polifemo was dedicated to the Count of Niebla, a Castilian nobleman renowned for his generous patronage of 17th century Spain’s most preeminent artists.

Góngora wrote his Polifemo in honor of Luis Carillo y Sotomayor's Fabula de Acis y Galatea, which was a contemporary poem depicting the same mythological account.

In his Libro de la Erudición Poética, Carillo formally denounces both clarity and straightforwardness, particularly when such artistic ideals placed parameters on poetic expression in an effort to make "oneself intelligible to the half-educated.

[4] The primacy of ingenio contradicted the claims of more traditional critics who sought to tame instinct by imposing a rigorous aesthetic framework of poetic regulations derived from the ancients in order to establish a more coherent dialogue with the audience or reader.

[6] The sophisticated metaphors displayed in the Polifemo would later inspire French symbolists such as Paul Verlaine[7] as well as modern Spanish poets such as Federico García Lorca and fellow members of the Generation of '27.

Throughout the poem there is an abundance of poetic correspondences (i.e. organic or interior referencing), which contrast sharply with the abstruse quality of the cultismos (i.e. highly idiosyncratic linguistic modifications, classical lexicon and scholarly references) themselves.

Additionally, the ornamentality and detail of the work is further complicated by a profuse usage of classical symbolism and external referencing (i.e. relevant mythological accounts communicated through metaphors and anecdotes).

A cultismo, though often intuited as an umbrella term for a particular display of culteranismo, can be thought of as a poetic device that abandons the precision of ordinary language for the sake of artistic expression.

The interspersing of the unsavory and the melancholic with the idyllic deviates from the Renaissance ideal, which differentiated forms by establishing boundaries, namely foregrounds and backgrounds where central objects or figures displaced the prominence of other things.

In turn, this new awareness and appreciation of form in-itself became the chief artistic concern for culteranists, a group of like-minded poets who furthermore celebrated and, at the same time, critiqued the Western Humanist and Hermeneutic traditions of this epoch.

All of these forms serve an aesthetic purpose of preeminent importance as both capture the melancholic sense of longing and neglect that Góngora attempts to develop and incorporate into the overall narration.

[12] Acis expresses his desire through means of luxurious material offerings, hinting at the old pagan practice of the Anathema, as well as unadulterated “erotic passion” that is not transcendent and thus, anti-intellectual.

A hollow rock forms a shady cover for a cool, inviting settee with ivy twines serving as green shutters, climbing around trunks and embracing rocks.” (English Prose Translation by Miroslav John Hanak[13]) Contrary to Acis, Polyphemus represents failed self-cultivation, convention as opposed to nature, and the fruitless application of the virtues of neo-platonic thought, which stressed upward progression, refinement, beauty and universal harmony[14] Unlike the usual burlesque representations of Polyphemus and Galatea (as seen in Theocritus), the words of the Góngora's Cyclops are incongruous with his outward appearance and his essential barbarism.

The emphasis on the intellect, the dialectical or, the ancient rationalism Aristophanes satirically labelled as "thinkery" (Phrontisterion - from The Clouds) as well as the vigilance against moral and bodily corruption are central to neo-platonic understanding that finds its way into this bucolic landscape through the most unlikely of characters.

Sorda hija del mar, cuyas orejas A mis gemidos son rocas al viento: O dormida te huerten a mis quejas Purpúreos troncos de corales ciento, O al disonante numero de almejas —marino, si agradable no, instrumento— Coros tejiendo estés escuchas un día Mi voz, por dulce, cuando no por mía.

Though the mythological characters themselves can be traced to various pre-Hellenistic sources, such as book 9 of the Odyssey, the comprehensive artistic representation of the fabled lovers’ tryst, the rejection and consequent dejection of Polyphemus and the subsequent murder of Acis was realized much later in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Though other imitations and related works exist, the primary inspiration for Góngora was undoubtedly Ovid who portrayed the tale in a way that conformed to the Metamorphoses's integral theme of transformation where beginnings and ends that feed into one another.

Though the narrative structure differs substantially from that found in Ovid's version, Góngora assumes a similar plot with the Cyclops's murder of Acis followed by the young boy's transformation.

In addition to ornamental descriptions giving life to the Cyclops' mundane possessions, Góngora often incorporates anecdotes that detract from the overall narration as in St. 50-53 regarding the shipwrecked Genoese merchants.

Given his highly sensorial lyrics and his reluctance to directly engage or placate the reader's understanding, literary critics, such as Dámaso Alonso, have labeled Góngora's style as particularly impressionistic.

Viendo el fiero jayan, con paso mudo Correr al mar la fugitiva nieve (que a tanta vista el Líbico desnudo Registra el campo de su adarga breve)— Y al garzón viendo, cuantas mover pudo Celoso trueno, antiguas hayas mueve: Tal, antes que la opaca nube rompa, Previene rayo fulminante trompa At last, the giant spied the muted paces Of fleeing snow, as to the sea she hurried (Such might sight a Libyan buckler traces, A brief defense, by naked tribesmen carried)— On seeing Acis, through as many races His voice beech trees as jealous thunder harried: So, too, before the livid cloud will sunder, Before the lightning, trumpets come of thunder This underlying difference hints at Góngora's primary concern with form and his concern in capturing the full aesthetic effect through his representation of the emotional torrents of love, jealousy and murder.

Instead of relying upon a preexisting cosmological force and the doctrine of Original Sin, the pagans offered a much more rational explanation that rested in the philosophical categorization that delineated the good.

As Lehrer goes on to state in her mythological analysis of the Polifemo, “interruption of a speaker is in fact a motif that occurs in Góngora’s Soledad Primera and suggests displacement and alienation.

The interruption of Polifemo’s song resembles a “jog in timing which hastens the denouement of the poem.”[19] Thus, while it does not deviate from the unfolding of the plot, it definitely elicits an aesthetic effect not present in its Roman predecessor.

The zero-sum metaphysical assumptions maintained throughout the narrative foment a pervasive sense of competition that prompt egocentric feelings of vanity and jealousy, which together predicate violence and destruction.

Presupposing the belief that the world resumes under a cyclic progression of infinite transformation, as propounded in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the situation that originally gives rise to feelings such as love is likewise just as ephemeral or predisposed to change.

The very self-contained and immutable reality of things propounded during the height of the Renaissance, in which entities remained suspended in their particular web of semblances and associations, is portrayed as a specious and unavailing contraption or constraining dogma that thoroughly undermines Immanence and the Present by denigrating the very sensibility of phenomena.

The liberal use of hyperbaton, antithesis, arcane classical allusions, abstruse metaphors and intricate witticisms mark a genuine distinction from Renaissance poetry (see Euphuism, Culteranismo, Marinismo, Préciosité).