Francisco De Borja, Príncipe De Esquilache: Ruins Poet

FRANCISCO DE BORJA, PRÍNCIPE DE ESQUILACHE: RUINS POET David H. Darst Florida State University O ne of the most blatant misstatements in the old Pequeño Larousse ilustrado had to be the following: “Esquilache (Francisco de Borja y Aragón, príncipe de), poeta español (1581-1658),1 de gusto culterano, a quien se deben varias Obras en verso y el poema épico Nápoles recuperada” (1280).2 To call a poet “de gusto culterano” when he was acclaimed by all his contemporaries to be the paragon of Castilian verse representing precisely the opposite values is simply not to know anything at all about Francisco de Borja, Príncipe de Esquilache. His real role was as the model of what I have called in another place “el estilo llano.”3 Lope de Vega, who was a close acquaintance of Borja from at least as early as 1598,4 dedicated his play La pobreza estimada to Borja in 1623 and praised him for his support in the dispute with the Cultistic poets, “pues a unos llaman Culteranos, deste nombre, Culto, y a los otros Llanos, eco de Castellanos, cuya llaneza verdadera imitan” (La pobreza estimada n.p.). Borja himself, in a verse epistle to the Conde de Valdereis, Governor of Portugal, referred to his own works as “de pies en los linderos Castellanos, / esto que os digo aquí, borro y escribo / con puros versos en cultura llanos (188).”5 Furthermore, Borja was a close acquaintance of the other Madrid poets of the time, and was on intimate terms with the likewise anti-Cultistic twins Bartolomé and Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, to whom he dedicated a number of his poems (del Arco). Given the above well-known facts, why would the anonymous encyclopedist who wrote the entry for “Esquilache” have declared so adamantly that the poet was “de gusto culterano”? The fault lies indisputably withAntonio Gallego Morell, who included his comments on “El Príncipe de Esquilache” within the section La escuela gongorina in Historia General de las Literaturas Hispánicas.6 Since then, those who read the histories of literature rather than the works themselves simply assume that Borja is a Cultistic poet. Nothing could be farther from the truth, which I hope to show herein by examining the seven ruins poems included in the final edition (1663) of Borja’s Obras en verso. I have chosen these works because they are either unknown or ignored by most twentieth-century scholars, CALÍOPE Vol. 10, Number 2 (2004): pages 23-34 24 David H. Darst D D D D D even by those who have written extensively on ruins poetry7 and who have published supposedly complete anthologies of the poems in the genre,8 and this despite the fact that Borja wrote more poems to ruined cities than anyone else in the Golden Age and has the only generic poem dedicated simply “Aunas ruinas.” These poems will reveal that Borja is indeed a poet who practices “el estilo llano,” yet one who also belongs to the stoic desengaño school of philosophy along with his better-known friends Francisco de Quevedo and Gabriel Bocángel.9 Indeed, there is a consistent moral theme of disillusionment throughout most of Borja’s serious poetry, and it is invariably associated with nature and the effects of time on the landscape. The first ruined-city poem in Borja’s Obras is Soneto V, “Ala codicia de juntar riquezas”: Estos del Duero líquidos cristales, parto de un monte de la antigua Soria, Numancia un tiempo, que su ilustre historia conservan de los siglos los anales, por blanca arena o peñas desiguales, a serle lleva su ambiciosa gloria parte del mar, y en él tan acesoria que va a morir con pasos naturales. No hay fuente o río, en cumbre o vega llana, que no los lleve ufano de perdellos entre el furor de la inclemencia cana. Con ansia corre siempre de acogellos. Lo mismo quiere la codicia humana cargar de bienes para hundirse en ellos. (3) The sonnet plays on the nacer / morir theme by describing the water that emerges from the very city of Numancia and eventually becomes part of...