Santillana and the Problem of the Renaissance

S A N T I L L A N A A N D T H E P R O B L E M O F T H E R E N A I S S A N C E Ignacio N a v a r r e t e University of California, Berkeley The place of the Marques de Santillana in the definition and history of the Spanish Renaissance is a complicated one. While as a writer and a patron he undoubtedly contributed to the extension of erudition in the fifteenth century, both his poetry and his poetic theory are firmly tied to the conventions of that time. His sonnets are particularly problematic: metrically deficient and stylistically close to contemporary cancioneropoetry, they reflect an eclectic approach to imitation, and while permeated with petrarchisms as decorative devices, they do not struggle to appropriate Petrarch as a single, privileged model. Because of their limited diffusion, they were largely forgotten, and were not a source of inspiration to Boscan, Garcilaso, and the other poets who reintroduced the form in the second quarter of the following century, for whom direct competition with Petrarch symbolized the iranslatio of empire and culture from Italy to Spain. Yet an excessive critical emphasis on close imitation of Italian models overlooks the importance of eclecticism in Santillana's theory and practice, the Italian theoretical antecedents for the eclecticism, and the distancing effect from the Petrarchan sources introduced by Santillana's eclectic borrowing. Santillana's eclecticism receives implicit theoreticaljustification in the literary principles expounded in the "Proemio e carta," where the list of modern poets is linked by analogy to the poets of the ancient past. As is well known, this prologue served as a preface to an anthology of his own works that the poet sent to Peter, the Portuguese constable, in the late 1440s. At this point Santillana had completed most of his literary works and was at the height of his political and military fortunes. Thus, although the prologue accompanied a gift of poems that Santillana modestly referred to as "youthful," it represents the mature views of one of the major literary figures of the century.1 The prologue has three parts: an introductory theory of poetry, a history of classical poetry, and a description of modern vernacular poetry, and each section in its own way provides theoretical ground for his eclecticism. The modest disclaimer, apologizing for sending these youthful works, quotes from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians on the passage from childhood (13:11, "When I was a child ..."); Santillana declares that these small poems ("obretas," 439) CALfOPE Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 (2000): pages 217-235 218 «5 Ignacio Navarrete were a nobleman's pastime, and hopes that the slim volume will please the recipient. He then provides a Horatian explanation of the nature of poetry: ^E que cosa es la poesia—que en el nuestro vulgar gaya sckncia' Uamamos—syno un fingimiento de cosas utyles, cubiertas o veladas con muy fermosa cobertura, conpuestas, distinguidas e scandidas por cierto cuento, peso e medida? E giertamente, muyvirtuoso senor, yerran aquellos que pensar quieren o dezir que solamente las tales cosas consistan e tiendan a cosas vanas e lascivas: que bien commo los fructiferos huertos habundan e dan convenientes fructos para todos los tiempos del afto, assy los onbres bien nasgidos e doctos, a quien estas sgiencias de arriba son infusas, usan deaquellase del tal exergigio segund las hedades. (439-440) Santillana here enters a dialogue with those who would condemn poetry for moral reasons; what is interesting is that he does not defend it because of an intrinsic moral value, acknowledging that each poet might use his skill in accordance with his age (perhaps again alluding to the youthful works the original cancionero contained), and thus conceding that some poetry might indeed contain "cosas vanas e lascivas." Rather, the defense of poetry is based on its heterogeneity, the possibility of its being used for "cosas utyles." As such the content of poetry is not the distinguishing issue for Santillana, but instead the formal question of casting a discourse into verse. As Julian Weiss suggested, "fingimiento" here does not necessarily entail fiction or false...