If one reads the verses that Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645) dedicated to Luis de Góngora (1561-1627), one will be left with the feeling that the art of insult is on the decline today. There is something worse than lying to one's mother, which is hiding the invective behind euphemisms, Latin words, ellipses or dissemias, forcing the recipient to rack his brain, only to realize that, yes, they are lying to his mother, and on top of that They make you look stupid.
It is the core of Baroque literature, complicated because the intention of its authors was to boast of their acuity to a demanding public. As Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658) said, “the more difficult the truth is, the more pleasant it is, and the knowledge it costs is more valued.”
Well, for the authors of the Golden Age, the insult, elevated to the category of a literary genre, was another way to show off. That's why they liked to confront each other, sometimes for the most forced reasons.
What happened between Góngora and Quevedo, which is the most famous duel with a pen in the history of Spain, was started by the latter when they both met in Valladolid, in 1603. According to some biographers, it was the excuse of a young student to gain celebrity at the expense of a renowned author.
Others, however, believe that “Miguel de Musa” who appeared in the libels was not our writer. If he wanted to make himself known, why use a pseudonym? Who knows. The fact is that the man from Córdoba took the hint, discrediting his opportunism and accusing him of being a false Apollo, the god of artists: “Muse who blows and does not inspire / and knows what is traitor / to put his fingers better / on me bag that on his lyre / is not from Apollo, which is a lie.”
It happens with many of Quevedo's invectives against Góngora, which cast doubt on his authorship. As Literature professor Isabel Pérez Cuenca explains in the article “Quevedo versus Góngora” (2014), their enmity, which could not last too long, was exaggerated in the following centuries – almost mythologized – only because it summarizes well the existing division in the era between the conceptistas and the culteranistas.
The first, among whom Quevedo belonged, strove to be concise, concentrating the maximum meanings in the fewest possible words. Culteranism, on the other hand, also called “gongorism” because the Córdoba author inaugurated it with the Soledades (1613), fills the discourse with metaphors, periphrases, cultisms and Latin expressions with the sole objective of embellishing it, fleeing from the clarity of the classics.
It is worth asking if this distinction is realistic, since we know that Quevedo knew and appreciated both styles, and that Gongorism is nothing more than the sublimation of conceptism. Ultimately, it is a different way of doing the same thing: impressing the audience.
The fact is that this confrontation left us with a string of insults attributed to Quevedo that, real or not, are great. Before reading them, pay attention to the dissemias (double meanings) that he uses to accuse the Cordoban of being homosexual, a hustler or a Jew. When necessary, to comment on them we will use the work of Dr. María Pilar Celma Valero, who in “Invectives conceptistas: Góngora y Quevedo” (1982) broke down some of these verses.
