Garcilaso's Flower of Nido   Notes by Michael Smith

In 1543 in Barcelona there appeared a volume of poetry described on the title-page as Las obras de Boscán y algunas de Garcilaso de la Vega en quatro libros. It was a book that was to have enormous and crucial influence on the future development of Spanish poetry. Briefly stated, through the influence of this book, in particular the work of Garcilaso which it contained, Spanish poetry was to be transformed into a high literary art comparable with any produced anywhere in Europe during its period of greatest achievement, that is to say, from the middle of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th, which is known to hispanists as the Siglo de oro.

The story behind this book is intriguing. The Venetian Signoria sent as their ambassador to the Spanish Imperial Court of Charles V, one Andrea Navagero, a brilliant man of the Renaissance: classical scholar, poet, connoisseur of painting and sculpture, diplomat and admirer of architecture and fine gardens. In his poetic exercises, Navagero, among many other Italians, had experimented with Italian prosody with the object of expressing in his native language the Latin rhythms of Horace and Virgil. And he had achieved much success.

In Spain, Navagero met and befriended a young Spanish 'man of the Renaissance', one Juan Boscán, whom he strenuously persuaded to try what had not been attempted before (so far as they knew; for the Marqués de Santillana had attempted sonnets, though they were not then in print): the writing in Spanish of 'sonnets and other forms' employed by good Italian authors. Boscán was persuaded. As poetry, his efforts may not strike us now as very successful; but formally they broke new ground for Spanish poetry.

Boscán had a younger friend, equally brilliant and many faceted. This was Garcilaso de la Vega. Encouraged by Boscán, Garcilaso followed his friend's example, and the lira form of 'Flower of Nido' is one of the many splendid achievements that can be traced back to the wonderful juncture of friendships and literary influences embodied in that shared volume of Garcilaso and Boscán.

Garcilaso was killed in an insignificant military engagement on September 19, 1536, in Provence. Boscán set about collecting his friend's poems with the intention of publishing them with his own. Boscán, however, died in 1542 without having seen the joint venture into print. It was left to his widow, Doña Ana Girón de Rebolledo, to accomplish this in 1543. Within a few years this marvellous book was being printed and reprinted in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and the Low Countries.

Garcilaso is a poet of the Renaissance. His models are the Virgil of the Eclogues and the Horace of the Odes. More than Boscán, he stayed close to these classical models while at the same time learning from their Italian imitators, Petrarch and Tasso. The chief characteristics of Garcilaso's poetry, consequently, are restraint, elegance and respect for form. His nearest counterpart in English is probably Sir Philip Sidney.

Garcilaso combines the Nido of Naples with the Cnidus of Cyprus, where Venus was worshipped and her most famous statue by Praxiteles was to be seen in the temple of Euploea (another name for Venus at Cnidus).

As there can be no doubt that Garcilaso had in mind Horace's Ode XXX from Book I when writing his own own, it seems worthwhile to give it here.

O Venus, regina Cnidi Paphique,
sperne dilectam Cypron et vocantis
ture te multo Glyceras decoram
   transfer in aedem.

fervidus tecum puer et solutis
Gratiae zonis properentque Nymphae
et parum comis sine te Juventas
   Mercuriusque.

O Venus, Queen of Cnidus, Paphos,
give up your favourable haunt of Cyprus
and to Glycera's temple come,
who calls to you with heavy incense.

Bring with you your fiery Cupid,
the Nymphs, the Graces with loose girdles,
and Youth that has no charm without you,
and Mercury bring also with you.

The occasion of Garcilaso's Flower of Nido was the attempt by his friend Mario Galeota to attract the attention of a lady, one Violante Sanseverino, whose palace was in the noble quarter of Nido in Naples. This lady, it seems, was not amenable to Galeota's advances, and Garcilaso endeavoured to further his friend's cause by writing this poem to Violante.

The first two stanzas of the poem allude to Orpheus who received a lyre from Apollo, which he played with such power that even the fastest rivers stopped flowing, the savage beasts of the forests forgot their wildness and the mountains moved to listen to his song.
The fair flower of Nido is Violante (viola = violet) Sanseverino. Garcilaso says that he will not direct the power of his verse toward the celebration of martial arts (Mars, god of war, triumphal processions, etc.), but rather to love, to Violante's beauty and her resistance to Galeota's pleas.

While Violante is unresponsive to Galeota's advances, he, for his part, is neglecting his many duties in the field of battle, and as a poet is writing elegies instead of love poems. He is a captive of Venus (daughter of the sea), a galley-slave (galeote) in her ship of love (Venus' shell).

Galeota has lost his reason through the frustration of his infatuation with Violante, and he has become a nuisance to Garcilaso. Violante, for her part, Garcilaso says, is like Anaxarete, a girl of Salamis who scorned the advances of Iphis, a youth of humble birth; this youth consequently hanged himself at her door. Anaxarete beheld this sad spectacle without pity and for this she was changed into a stone.

Having pointed out the terrible fate she can expect for withholding her love from Galeota, Garcilaso finally exhorts the lady to turn to love and become by virtue of her outstanding beauty, the subject of poets' amatory verses.

 

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'Sonnet I' gives some idea of the polished elegance that Garcilaso brought into Spanish poetry. Although this particular sonnet owes something to native Spanish poetry, it is easy enough to see from it what Góngora and Quevedo and many others owe to Garcilaso.

Garcilaso's editor, Elias L. Rivers, has drawn attention to the poem's use of the traditional 'life-as-a-journey' conceit and also the poem's play on the word acabar ('to end, to finish, to exhaust, to make an end of an affair, etc.).

The word pasos of the poem's second verse in the original hints of the erotic and it is not over-speculative to understand malos accompanying by suggestion pasos. A Spanish friend of mine recalls from his experience many years ago in a Castilian village, a non-native servant girl being promptly dismissed from her employment for flirting with a local womaniser: he remembers that the girl was judged guilty of malos pasos ('wicked ways', so to speak).