Francisco de Quevedo

Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas

Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas (September 17, 1580–September 8, 1645) was a writer of the Spanish Golden Age. The son of hidalgos, he was born in Madrid. He is one of Spain's most important Baroque poets.

Biography

He came from a family of hidalgos -a class of landed gentry just below the nobility- who came originally from the northern mountainous region of Cantabria (the family house of his ancestors is in Vejorís de Toranzo; Quevedo spent his childhood in the Court surrounded by potentates and nobles, since his parents held high positions in the Palace.

Quevedo's father, Francisco Gómez de Quevedo, was the secretary of Princess María, wife of Maximilian of Germany, and his mother, María de Santibáñez (from Madrid), was lady-in-waiting to the queen. The boy Quevedo was superequipped, of deformed feet, lame of one, fat and very short-sighted. He was orphaned at the age of six and took refuge in books with the Imperial School of Company of Jesus in Madrid.

In 1596, Quevedo joined the University of Alcalá de Henares, where he studied until 1600. By his own account, he also delved in philosophy, classic languages, Arab, Hebrew, French and Italian. He was transferred to Valladolid in 1601 following the Court that had transferred there. Once in Valladolid, Quevedo also studied Theology, to which he would make some contributions at a later dae, like the treaty against atheism: Providence of Dios.

By that time he was honoured as a poet and had already appeared in the generational anthology of Thorny Pedro ' ' Flowers of ilustrous poets' ' (1605). The core set of its poetic work was published posthumously and can be classified within Baroque Conceptismo.

Quevedo also cultivated the prose, writing like cortesano game in which the most important era to exhibit talent, the first written by hand version of one picaresque novel, ' ' the Life of the Buscón, and a certain number of short burlesque opuscules that gained certain celebrity to him between the students and of that would be to apostatize in its mature age like youth pranks; also by those dates ] maintains a very erudite interchange to epistolar with humanista Right Lipsio, deploring the wars that shake Europe, according to can be seen in ' ' the Epistolarió ' reunited by Luis Astrana Marín.

Returned the Court to Madrid, above to her Quevedo in 1606 and resides there until 1611 given to the letters, gaining the friendship of Felix Lope de Vega (are numerous praises to Quevedo in books of ' ' Rimas' ' of the Fénix and human Quevedo approved ' ' the Rimas and divinas' ' of I took Burguillos, heterónimo (of the Fénix) and of Miguel de Cervantes (Viaje of the Parnaso is praised to him in ' ' ' ' of alcalaíno and Quevedo corresponds in ' ' the Perinolá '), with those who it was in the Brotherhood of Slaves of the Santísimo Sacrament; on the contrary, [attacked without mercy the dramatists Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, whose physical defects did grace to him (pelirrojo was and jorobado), being he himself deformed, as well as Juan Perez de Montalbán, son of a bookseller with whom Quevedo had certain disputes.

Against this last one the Perinolá', cruel wrote ' ' satire of its misceláneo book ' ' For todos. Nevertheless, the most attacked without a doubt was Luis de Góngora, to which it directed a series of terrible satires accusing to him to be a priest I infuriate, of homosexual, of dirty and dark writer, given to the deck and indecente. Quevedo, blatantly, did violence to the relation putting until with its aspect (like in its satire To a nose, in which it shows no mercy with the nasal appendix of Góngora, because in the time it thought that the physical characteristic more accusing of the Jewish ones was to be narigudos).

In his unloading, it is possible to say that Góngora corresponded to him almost with the same violence. At that time he narrows a great friendship with the great Pedro Téllez Girón, Duke of Osuna, to which he will accompany like secretary to Italy in 1613, carrying out diverse commissions for him which they took to Nize, Venice and finally to Madrid, where will intrigue in the surroundings of Duke of Lerma, in order to always obtain to its friend the one of Osuna the appointment of virrey of Naples, which to the aim will obtain in 1616. Returned to Italy again with the Duke, this one ordered to direct and to organize the Property to him of the Virreinato and carries out other missions, some related to the espionage to Republic of Venice, and obtains in compensates the habit of Santiago in 1618.

Fallen the great Osuna, Quevedo it is also dragged as one of its men of confidence and is exiled to him in 1620 to Tower of Juan Abbot (Real City), whose señorío had bought its mother with all its savings for him before passing away. The neighbors of the place, nevertheless, did not recognize that purchase and Quevedo will interminably pleiteará with council, although the lawsuit will be only solved to its favor after its death, in the person of its heir and nephew Pedro Alderete. Arrived at backs from its jaca "Scoto", call thus by the subtle thing that was, as ] counts in there Romance, and isolated or of the stormy ones you intrigue cortesanas, solo with its conscience, will write Quevedo some of its better poetries, as the Retired soneto "to La Paz of these deserts..." or "Is the towers of Joray..." and finds consolation to their cortesanas ambitions and their affective tear in the doctrine estoica of Séneca, whose works study and comment becoming one of the main exponents of Spanish Neoestoicismo. The enthronement of Felipe IV supposed for Quevedo the rise of its punishment, the return to the policy and great hopes before the new valimiento of Count Duke of Olive groves.

Quevedo accompanies to the young king in trips Andalusia and Aragón, some of whose amused incidences it counts in interesting letters. At that time [Inquisición denounces its works to Inquisición, since the booksellers had printed without their permission many of their satirical pieces that ran written by hand becoming rich to their coast. Quevedo wanted to scare them and to frighten them of that way and to prepare the way to a definitive edition of its works that never got to appear. On the other hand, it takes to a private life something disordered of solterón: it smokes much, it frequents the taverns (Góngora attributes to him to be borrachín completed and in a satirical poem ' Don Francisco de Quebebó ' is called to him ') and frequents the brothels, although it lives cohabited with one such Ledesma.

Nevertheless, secretary of the monarch, who is not less skull, in 1632 is named even, which supposed the summit in its cortesana race. It was a subject position to all type of pressures: his friend, Duke de Medinaceli, is harassed by his woman so that he forces it to marry against his will with Doña Esperanza de Aragón, Mrs. of Cetina, widow and with children, and the marriage, made in 1634, as soon as he lasts three months. In counterpart, they are years of a febrile creative activity. In 1634 it publishes ' ' the cradle and it will sepulturá ' and the translation of ' ' the introduction to the life devotá ' of Francisco de Sales; from between 1633 and 1635 they date works like ' ' From the remedies of nobody fortuná', ' ' the Epictetó', ' ' Virtue militanté', ' ' the four fantasmas, the second part of ' ' Political of Dios, ' ' the Visit and anatomy of the head of the cardinal Richelieu ' ' or ' ' the Letter to Luis XIII.

In 1635 appears in numerous the most important Valencia of one of libelos destined to defame to him, ' ' the court of the right revenge, erected against writings of Francisco de Quevedo, teacher of errors, doctor in desvergüenzas, licensed in bufonerías, bachelor in dirts, university professor of vices and protodiablo between hombres. In 1639, in the occasion of memorial appeared under the napkin of the Sacred, catholic, Caesarean King ' ', real Majesty..., where the policy of the Count Duke is denounced, stopped to him, confiscate its books and, without hardly getting dressed, [ is taken to the cold [ convent of San Marcos of Leon ] ] until the fall of the court favorite and its retirement to Loeches in 1643.

In the Quevedo monastery it was dedicated to the reading, as it counts in ' ' the moral Letter and instructivá', written to its friend, Adam of the Parra, painting to him per hours its prison and the life that in her did: ::

Since the ten to eleven prayer some devotions, and from this hour to the one of the twelve I read in good and bad authors; because there is no book, by despicable that is, that does not have some good thing, like nor some note spot the one better. Catulo has its errors, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus its arrogance, Cicerón some absurd one, Séneca enough confusion; and in short, Homero its blindness, and the Juvenal satirist its desbarros; without it needs to Egecias some concepts, to Sidonio medium subtilities, Ennodio success in some comparisons, and to Aristarch, with being so dullest, property in enough examples. Of and others I try to take advantage of the bad ones not to follow them, and the good ones to try imitarlos.

But Quevedo had left the frail and very ill confinement already, and resigns to the Court definitively to retire in Tower of Juan Abbot.

It is in its neighborhoods, and after writing in its last letter that "are things that only are a name and a figure", passes away in the convent of the Dominican parents of Villanueva of the Infants, the 8 of September of 1645.

One tells that its tomb was violated days later by a horseman who wished to have the gold spurs whereupon he had been buried and that this horseman died to little in right punishment by such audacity.

Their works were very bad collections and published by humanista Jose Antonio González de Salas, that does not have shyness in altering texts, in 1648: ' ' the Spanish Parnaso, mounts in two summits divided, with the nine Musas' '; also very badly done it is the edition of the nephew of Quevedo and addressee of his inheritance, Pedro Alderete, in 1670: ' ' the three Musas last castellanas' '; in century XX Jose Manuel Blecua has published them with rigor.

In 1663 he print the first biography of Francisco de Quevedo, the one of Pablo Antonio de Tarsia, abundant in anecdotes; later] will come those from Aureliano Fernandez War in century XIX, where it is painted to him like a state man, and the one of Pablo Jauralde Pou in century XX, dry and faded.

Analysis of his work

Most original of the literary work of Quevedo baroque Conceptismo is in the style, assignible to and therefore very friend of the concision, elipsis and of the cortesano game of talent with the words by means of the abuse of amphibology. Sometimes loving of the rhetoric, oratorio of symmetries tried a full style, antithesis and isocola that shone more than ever in his ' ' Brutó' Frame.

Of very abundant lexicon, [created in addition manyneologismos by derivation, composition and estereotipia and remarkably made flexible the mechanism of Castilian apposition especificativa in ("clergyman blowpipe, shoes galleons..."), mechanism that the later baroque writers imitated of him. Sometimes in his satire approaches aesthetic of expresionismo when degrading to the people by means of reificación or cosificación, and animalización. It has been indicated, in addition, like a characteristic characteristic of its verse, esticomitía, that is to say, the tendency to transform each verse into a sentence of complete sense, which does to its very dense poems of meaning, like was high-priority in its poetic one, been in the principles of baroque conceptismo.

Most of the poetic production of Quevedo is satirical, but as already [warned the FatherJose Marchena its satires badly are directed and, although conscious of the true causes of the general decay, it is for him plus a mere exercise of style that another thing and is spilled more against the low town than against the nobility, in which it did not have the audacity of, for example, the other great satirist of its time, Juan de Tassis and Peralta, second Count of Villamediana. [also cultivated a fine cortesana lírica making cancionero Song book petrarquista in subjects, style and topics, practically perfect in technique and bottom, around the figure of Lisi, no that there is to identify since it has been wanted with no concrete lady, but with a quintaesenciado archetype of woman.

They mainly emphasize its Metaphysical sonetos and their psalms, where his is exposed more intimate existencial grief. The vision that gives its philosophy is deeply pessimistic and of preexistencialistas characteristics. The channel preferred for the abundant satirical vein of which it made finery is mainly Romance, but also letrilla ("Powerful Horseman is gift money"), vehicle of a social critic to which the deepest reasons for the decay of Spain do not hide to him, and the soneto.] detested of aesthetic of Culteranismo whose leader, Luis de Góngora, violently was attacked by Quevedo in personal satires.

Against pedantería and darkness that imputed to him it also proposed to publish works of the Renaissance poets Francisco de la Torre and Fray Luis of Leon. The loving poetry of Quevedo, considered most important of Century XVII, is the most paradoxical production of the author: misántropo and misógino, was, nevertheless, the great singer of the love and the woman.

It wrote numerous loving poems (they are conserved more than two hundred), dedicated to several names of woman: Flora, Lisi, Jacinta, Filis, Aminta, Dora. It considered the love like an unattainable ideal, a fight of opposites, a sore and painful paradox, in where the pleasure is discarded.

Works

Monumento a Quevedo en Madrid (A. Querol, 1902).

Political Works

Political of God, government of Cristó. His first part was written towards 1617 (in the dedication to Olive groves, of 1626, it says to him that "it is the book that I wrote ten years has") and printed in 1626 with the title of ' ' Political of God, government of Christ and tyranny of Satanás. The second part, written around 1635, was published in 1655. The two together parts published under epígrafe ' ' Political of God, government of Christ, removed from the Sagrada Scripture for success of the King and the kingdom in their actions. * The translation of ' ' He Rómuló', the Marquess Virgilio Malvezzi, published in 1632. * ' ' Life of Brutó' Frame, 1644, glosses of the life corresponding to famoso June of Caesar written by Plutarco, written with algebraic rigor and an elevation of conceptista style than little less inimitable.

• World I expire and deliriums of edad (1621, ed. 1852)
• ' ' Great annals of fifteen días' ' (1621, ed. 1788), analysis of the transition between the reigns of Felipe III and Felipe IV. Memorial by the patronage of Santiagó ' (1627, ed. 1628).
• ' ' Lynx of Italy and zahorí español' ' (1628, ed. 1852).
• ' ' Hush of Tarabillas' ' (1630), often printed with the title of ' ' Strip the stone and it hides manó'. It defends the economic dispositions of Conde-Duque de Olivares, of whom soon would be distanced.
• ' ' Execración against judíos' ' (1633), plea anti-semitic that a veiled accusation against Don Gaspar de Guzmán contains, Conde-Duque de Olivares and been worth of Felipe IV.
• ' ' Letter to the calmest, very high and very powerful Luis XIII, king cristianísimo of Franciá ' (1635). * ' ' Brief comprendio of the services of Francisco Go'mez de Sandoval, Duke of Lermá ' (1636).

Ascetic Works

• Providence of Dios, 1641, treated against the atheists who try to unify stoicism and Christianity. * ' ' Life of san Pabló', 1644. * ' ' Life of Santo Tomás de Villanuevá', 1620.

Philosophical Works

• the cradle and will sepulturá it ' (1635).
• ' ' the four plagues of the world and the four ghosts of vidá ' (1651).

Critical literary

the needle to sail cultured with the prescription to make Solitudes in díá ' (1631), satirist attacked against the poets who use the gongorino or culterano language.

• ' ' the cultured latiniparlá ' (1624), burlesque manual to speak in gongorino language.
• ' ' the Perinolá ' (1633, ed. in 1788), attacks against For all of Juan Perez de Montalbán.
• ' ' Story of cuentos' ' (1626), reduction to the absurd one of the emptiest coloquialismos of meaning.

festive Works

• ' ' general Premática and tariffs that are to keep the hermanitas from sinning, done by the faithful of putas, ' ' Advice to keep the fly and to spend prosá', ' ' Premática of tiempó', ' ' Capitulations matrimoniales' ' and ' ' Capitulations of the life of Corte' ' are satires of habitual the bureaucratic sorts in the chancelleries and that are applied to grotescos subjects.
• ' ' Letters of the horseman of the Tenazá ' (1625), humoristic description of the epistles interchanged between a horseman extremely tacaño and his lover, whom it loves to remove money to him by any means.
• ' ' Book of all the things and other many more. Made up of the scholar and experienced in all matters. The only teacher malsabidillo. Directed to the curiosity of the entremetidos ones, turbamulta of the talkative ones, and to the sonsaca of the viejecitas ".

Satirist-moral Works

the Sueños, composed between 1606 and 1623, circulated manuscripts abundantly but they were not printed until 1627. One is five short narrations of Lucianesca inspiration where it is reviewed to diverse customs, offices and popular personages of his time. They are, by this order, ' ' the Dream del Final' Judgment ' (called to start off of the publication of ' ' Toys of niñez, the purged version of the 1631 ' ' dream of calaveras' '), ' ' the bailiff endemoniadó ' (redenominado ' ' the bailiff alguaciladó '), ' ' the Dream del Infiernó ' (this is, ' ' zahúrdas of Plutón' ' in its purged version), ' ' the world by dentró ' (that always maintained its name) and ' ' the Dream of the Muerté ' (well-known as ' ' the visit of chistes' '). * Of the ancestry of ' ' the Sueños' ' "moral fantasies" are two calls, ' ' the Speech of all diablos' ' and ' ' the Hour of todos.

Both are also lucianescas satires of characteristic tone jocoserio, although in his invoice and creativity they surpass to ' ' the Sueños' ':

• • Speech of all the devils or hell emendadó ' (1628), published in some versions like ' ' the worse hiding place of muerté ' and, as of 1631, in the purged version in which they also appear the five ' ' Sueños' ' with the titles changed that are enumerated above, with the title of ' ' entremetido and the owner and soplón. ** the hour of all and the Fortune with sesó', variation on the subject of the world the other way around in which the Fortune recovers the judgment and gives each person which really deserves, causing so great upheaval and confusion that the father of the Gods must return it everything to his primitive disorder.
• The picaresque novel ' ' Historia of the life of the called Petty thief the Pablos, example of vagabonds and mirror of tacaños, appeared printed in Zaragoza in 1626, but three versions more of the work with great textual divergences exist.

The problem is complex, because everything seems to indicate that Quevedo altered its work several times. The oldest version is manuscript 303 bis (' ' olim' ' Artigas 101) of the Library of Menéndez Pelayo because of I collate of the variants and the way in which testimonies are grouped others as opposed to. The 1626 impression was assumed, if not controlled, by Quevedo, according to the own author declares in its memorial ' ' Its sword by Santiagó ' (1628) and the sincerity of its words is confirmed by other data, so in fact it cannot be maintained that it became without permission of the author. But this version was not the last one, because Don Francisco returned on her to alter some narrative details, to amplify the satirical picture of several secondary personages and to palliate the expressions that judged irreverent or blasfemas the editors of two antiquevedia­nos libels, ' ' the Memorial' ' sent to the Inquisición against writings of Quevedo (1629) and ' ' the Court of the Venganzá Joust ' (1635).

Of these adjustments they give to faith the other manuscripts. ' ' the Petty thief a divertimento in which the author is pleased in ridiculing the vain efforts of social ascent of a poor devil pertaining to the low town; for it cortesanamente exhibits its talent by means of a shining conceptista style that degrades everything what touches cosificando it or animalizing it, using an aesthetic preexpresionista that comes near to Goya, Solana and Valle-Incla'n and not backing down before the most repugnant thanks. The characterization as soon as it exists: one is only a vehicle for the aristocratic lucimiento of the author.

lost Works

The second part of ' ' the Life of Brutó' Frame, mentioned by Quevedo in its last letters, 1644.

• ' ' History of Don Sebastián, king of Portugal.
• ' ' polilla of repúblicas' ' * ' ' History of year 1631
• ' ' Sayings and facts of Duke de Osuna in Flandes, Spain, Naples and Siciliá'.

Translations

Quevedo closest frequented to humanists like distant Right Lipsio and Jose Antonio González of Rooms; both transmitted their fervor to him by Propercio.

Like helenista, the translations of Quevedo of the Greek leave enough that to wish; one dared, nevertheless, to terribly translate to Anacreonte (translation which it circulated written by hand and not imprimió in life of Quevedo, but in 1656), to the pseudo Focílides and ' ' the Life of Brutó Frame ' of Plutarco for his ' ' Brutó' Frame. Greater merit Lamentaciones' ' of ' ' Jeremías ' ' from the Hebrew, or its versions of excellent latinista of the satirists Martial, Persio and Juvenal; their works are also enameled of reminiscencias of Virgilio, Propercio, Tibulo, Ovid, Estacio and Séneca, authors whom, like the satirical mentioned ones, it not little frequented.

Also their versions of Italian and the French are excellent; in this last language, it knew the work líricos as Joachim du Bellay and read and it admired the one of Montaigne and it is even possible that it translated the first book of his ' ' Essais. In his salary they are counted: Introduction to the life devotá', of San Francisco de Sales.

• ' ' Of the remedies of nobody fortuná ' (1638), free version of Séneca. * ' ' the Rómuló', 1632, of the Marquess Virgilio Malvezzi.

Celebrated Quotes

Those that of heart they are wanted only with the heart speak.

Where there is little justice is a danger to be right.

Nobody offers so much as the one that is not going to fulfill.

If beams affluent so that you they thank for it, merchant you are, nonbeneficent; codicioso, noncharitable.

Many are the good ones, if credit occurs to the witnesses; few, if declaration to its conscience is taken.

The love is faith and nonscience.

It can well have stab without lisonja, but not very often there is lisonja without stab.

It envies it goes so skinny and yellow because it bites and it does not eat.

He is not wise the one that knows where is the treasure, but the one that works and removes it.

If you want that they follow the women to you, ponte ahead.

One becomes much little just by to wish little other more.

The possession of the health is like the one of the property, that is enjoyed spending it, and if it is not spent, it is not enjoyed.

All we wished to arrive at old; and all we denied that we have arrived.

There are short books that, to understand them as they are deserved, are needed a very long life.

It lives only for you if you will be able, because only for you if you die, you die.

The brave one is scared of the opposite; the cowardly one, of its own fear.

It never improves his state that dumb only of costumary place and not of life and. Easier it is to write against the pride that to overcome it.

It is always had to conserve the fear, but never one is due to show. He is not happy that one to that the fortune cannot give more, but that to that cannot clear nothing.

The excess is the poison of the reason.

A single stone can wear down a building. Powerful horseman is Don Money.

The leisure is the loss of the wage.

To diminish itself is virtue, power and humility; to let itself diminish is vileness and crime.

The naked truth is not due to show, but in shirt.

It guesses right well who suspects that always she is mistaken.

Thank heavens the delinquents do who badly a judge.

Woman who lasts a month returns plague.

I will grease my verses to you with bacon so that you do not bite me Gongorilla.

See also

• Spanish Literature
• Siglo de Oro

External links

• Author's page on the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library (in Spanish)
• Portal dedicated to the author on the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela website (in Spanish)
• Quevedo y la crítica on the Centro Virtual Cervantes (in Spanish)
• Works by the author (in Spanish)
• El Colegio Imperial y el Instituto de San Isidro, Quevedo's high school (in Spanish)
• Analysis of Francisco de Quevedo: Life and Works (in Spanish)
• Biography and short analysis of his works by Paul Bitternut (in Spanish)