PEDRO DE ESPINOSA AND THE PRAISE OF CREATION

Abstract

In a recent lecture Professor E. M. Wilson draws attention to the techniques of religious meditation which lie behind certain types of seventeenth-century poetry. This is an important question, though, as far as Spain is concerned, it has yet to be studied with anything like the interest shown in poetry of the Italianate tradition. The work of Pedro de Espinosa, which is the subject of this article, is a case in point.

BSS Subject Index:

• CREATION [AS LITERARY/CULTURAL THEME]
• ESPINOSA, PEDRO DE (1578–1650)
• RELIGION [AS LITERARY, CULTURAL & IDEOLOGICAL THEME]

Notes

¹“ Spanish and English religious poetry of the seventeenth century”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, IX (1958), 38–53.

²Texts in Obras de Pedro de Espinosa, ed. F. Rodríguez Marín, Madrid, 1909. Psalmo I is included in Sr. J. M. Blecua's recent anthology, Floresta lírica española, Gredos, Madrid, 1957, 227–29 ; there is a good edition of the Soledad de Pedro de Jesús by J. A. Muñoz Rojas and Alfonso Canales (Málaga, 1950).

³Two recent books are indispensable for a study of this kind ; they are Professor Louis Martz's The Poetry of Meditation (Yale and Oxford, 1954) and the late Ruth Wallerstein's Studies in Seventeenth-Century Poetic (Wisconsin, 1950), to both of which I am indebted for certain points.

¹Quoted by Martz, op. cit., 152.

¹Cf. Rodríguez Marín, Pedro de Espinosa, estudio biográfico, bibliográfico y critico, Madrid, 1907, 204 and Obras …, 412. I quote from the following editions ; Luis de Granada, Introducción al Símbolo de la Fe, in Obras de L. de G. I, B.A.E., Madrid, 181–733 ; Francisco de Osuna, Tercer Abecedario Espiritual, in Escritores Místicos Españoles I, ed. Mir, N.B.A.E., Madrid, 1911, 319–587.

¹ Erasmo y España (Mexico, 1950), I, 196.

¹These lines incorporate an earlier passage from Ai Bautismo de Jesús. Referring to the waters of the Jordan, Espinosa had written ; “ Unas, pues, con devota diligencia y paso/ medio humano ” (Obras, 19).

¹This vocabulary is of three kinds, which often overlap ; (a) paradox ; ” sabroso fuego “ (8) ; ” fuego bravo y suave “ (30) ; (b) fire and burning ; ” l'alma/ que ahora pide fuego “ (18–19) ; ” ardiente rayo “ (24) ; ” Anégame y escóndeme en tus llamas “ (25) ; ” ¿ Porqué, si el cielo abrasas y la tierra,/ fuego bravo y suave …? “ (29–30) ; (c) wounding : ” tu rayo me deshaga “ (10) ; ” la honda llaga de tu saeta ardiente “ (11–12) ; “ Rómpeme el pecho ” (24) ; “ herido ciervo ” (47).

²Cf. Wilson, loc. cit, 39–40.

³See Rosemond Tuve, A Reading of George Herbert (London, 1952), 114–15, for a fuller discussion.

¹For details of the various editions, see Bataillon, op. cit., I, 55.

²Op cit., I, 56. This is less expressive than St. Augustine's sentence ; “ et in ista formosa, quae fecisti, deformis inruebam ”. Espinosa's version is closer to the Soliloquies.

¹Cf., for example, J. M. de Cossío's comment ; “ Cuando, en el primero de sus espléndidos salmos (Espinosa) se dirige a Dios interrogándole ; ‘ ¿ quien te enseñó el perfil de la azucena? la misma ingenuidad de la pregunta, el sorprender en la flor lo menos dicho y lo más pro digioso de su ser, el rapto religioso preciso para la interrogación, infunde al verso una tensión, una temperatura poética, un tono que es poético por sólo el ademán, aun sin considerar el concepto.” Cruz y Raya 33 (Madrid, 1935), 62–63.

² La Poesía de la Soledad en España (Buenos Aires, 1946), 243.

¹In the introduction and notes to his edition of the poem, J. Muñoz Rojas refers to the “ literary ” origin of some of these descriptions ; “ Asi, una estrofa entera se dedica a enumerar plantas antivenenosas, que allí (i.e. in the region of Antequera) pudieran existir, contra alimañas, que allí ciertamente no existían, como ese azul y misterioso zelidro, o ese ceraste, propios de las libias y tebáidas de verdad ”. (The opening of the poem suggests that Espinosa had in mind the famous epistle of St. Jerome to Heliodorus, urging the latter to flee the Court and join the author in the desert. This interpretation of the name “ Heliodoro ‘ ‘ is supported by the allusion in line 2 to another of the Desert Fathers, Arsenius ; ” Quién te diera volar con plumas de oro,/ que David deseó, que batió Arsenio, …”.) I have been unable to see Sr. Muñoz Rojas’ essay, “ La trayectoria poética de Pedro Espinosa” in Homenaje a Pedro Espinosa (Seville, 1953).

¹Cf. Góngora ; “ aquel Icón fiero/ del tribu de Judá, que honró el madero” (De la Armada que fué a Inglaterra, Millé, 490).

²The passages I have quoted display a kind of ambivalence in the use of sensuous and devotional elements which is characteristic of much seventeenth-century poetry. Such attempts to combine the pastoral and ascetic traditions require a separate study, though the question has often been discussed in relation to the English Metaphysical poets. See, for example, Professor William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (London, 1935), 119–45 and Ruth Wallerstein, op. cit., 302, 336.

¹I should like to express my gratitude to Professor A. A. Parker for his valuable criticisms of the first draft of this article.