“If Garcilaso returned, / I would be his squire; / what a good gentleman he was.” These verses by Rafael Alberti collected in his book ‘Marinero en tierra’ are some of the most beautiful literary references and best demonstrate the legacy of an author who marked modern poetry and who was the most important precedent of the Golden Age. He was born in Toledo. He is buried in Toledo. But only a statue and a rather deteriorated plaque – and in the wrong place – remember him in the city. There is almost no activity or tribute at an institutional level that recovers his work and his exciting (and short) life.
Precisely, this week a theater, music and poetry show inspired by the life and work of Garcilaso de la Vega was held in the city. It was in the old church of San Pedro Mártir, current auditorium of the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), where the remains of the famous Toledo poet and soldier are buried.
It is one of the “few” activities that are carried out “from time to time” in the city where the creator of modern poetry was born, considered the father of the Renaissance style imported from Italy that revolutionized Spanish literature. He continues to be, in fact, a mandatory author in Spanish literature teachings.
The person who says it is Jesús Román, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and a true lover of the busy life and revolutionary work of Garcilaso de la Vega. He has been in charge of adapting the text of this latest show by the ‘Garcilasos Company’, in collaboration with the Vice-Rector for Culture of the UCLM.
Dozens of people came to see this work, under the name ‘Garcilaso. Well, you love, what a thing love is!’, which was premiered at the Teatro de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 2019. In it, three emblematic figures of Spanish culture and civilization meet in a no man’s land that has the privilege of welcoming them. : it is Mount Parnassus, a place where “only verses, music and joys fit.”
The text prepared by Jesús Román based on creations by Garcilaso and his friend, writer and literary executor, the Catalan Juan Boscán, is the result of meticulous bibliographical, historical and musical research on these “very important” characters about whom, unfortunately, “The citizen knows so little.”
The professor refers to the fact that in the city of Toledo, the Renaissance author is “forgotten.” Only a statue in the city’s Plaza de San Román, a very deteriorated plaque with references to his birthplace in the wrong place (it was not there where he was born) and the remains of the poet who rest in San Pedro Mártir, whose sculptural ensemble Furthermore, it cannot be accessed, they are the vestiges of Garcilaso in the city.
“There is not a single museum in Toledo or in all of Spain dedicated to his figure, nor does his supposed birthplace practically remain standing,” the professor tells elDiarioclm.esregretting that the City Council also does not celebrate any type of tribute or reminder on an annual basis, on the occasion of his birth (between 1491 and 1503) or his death in 1536.
“Thousands of things” could be done, he proposes. “From recitals and poetic jousts to the valorization of his work and his life through a museum, even if it was through facsimiles and reproductions. Anything would be worth it, because no one, except the University of Castilla-La Mancha, has done anything,” the professor emphasizes.
The first sentimental and secular poet
Jesús Román remembers very passionately that Garcilaso de la Vega was an author who broke literary molds in 16th century Spain. “He loved the classics and his poems began with the Castilian meter of the time, but later he transformed his literature into the Renaissance style and was one of the first to make it sentimental and totally secular, because in his work there is no mention of religion. neither to gods, nor to virgins. “A lay poet in times of great Catholic fervor.”
The turning point in his lyrics comes from a day in 1526 in Granada, near the palace of Charles I, also Emperor of Germany. Juan Boscán says in a dedication that the Venetian writer and politician Andrea Navaggero suggested that he “try in the Spanish language” the sonnets “and other arts” of Italian authors. The proposal was based, among other things, on adapting Castilian poetry, where dodecasyllables (verses of twelve syllables) prevailed, to the complicated Italian metrics of hendecasyllables.
This is what Boscán did, not without difficulty, a test that Garcilaso later joined, “just approving me with his example, because he also wanted to follow this path.” In this way, the Toledo author not only ‘converted’ to the Renaissance, but was also the main literary heir in Spain of the poet and philosopher Petrarch.
That was his particular literary revolution. But his military and love life is also full of adventures, anecdotes and ups and downs. That is why Jesús Román cannot explain why there are “endless queues” in Stratford, Shakespeare’s hometown, to visit his birthplace, “which is not even documented,” while in Toledo Garcilaso is barely remembered.
The show performed in San Pedro Mártir is proof that initiatives such as those requested by this expert could have a large influx of public. “During the five minutes in which the old church of San Pedro Mártir was opened, an impressive queue of people formed to be able to enter and visit the tomb. But nothing, we need to take care of what is ours.”
Garcilaso’s tomb also has great aesthetic value. In the sculptural group that adorns it is one of the few images (“invented”, because there are no real ones) of the poet, along with the aforementioned statue in the Plaza de San Román.
In the mortuary sculpture he is in a prayer posture along with his son Íñigo de Guzmán. A curious representation given the poet’s secularism. “By belonging to the court of Charles I and being part of the intellectual elite of his time, he was inevitably recognized as Catholic, but he was not.”
Even the poet’s remains have their story. Although he was initially buried in the monastery of Santo Domingo de Niza, where he died in a fight, his body was ordered to be brought to Toledo by his widow Elena de Zúñiga two years later, in 1538. More than three centuries later, in 1869, the remains They were exhumed to be taken to the Pantheon of Illustrious Men of Madrid, in the church of San Francisco el Grande.
The initiative was frustrated amid the political ups and downs, so the remains remained in the Madrid temple for six years, being returned to Toledo at the beginning of 1875. The issue is that they were not returned to the family chapel of San Pedro Mártir until 1900. “They were in a box, forgotten for several years, in the basements of the Town Hall of Toledo (today the Town Hall), without anyone caring about the relics.”
Among common family members
The professor also considers that in Toledo, where there is already a monument to Juan de Padilla, the link between Garcilaso’s brother, Pedro Laso, and the community members could be remembered, and the problems that this entailed for the poet and soldier. In fact, for attending the wedding his nephew was arrested in Toulouse and confined to an island in the Danube near Regensburg, in Germany. However, this allowed him, once his exile was over, to settle in Naples and continue soaking up Italian authors.
“A documentation center could be made about these events and also about the conflicts of the community members. Explain who won, who lost, tell the role of Garcilaso and his brother, and make history with all of this,” he adds.
One of the most curious aspects of Garcilaso’s work is that it was known very shortly after his death. It was not common at the time. It was thanks to his friend Juan Boscán. As executor of his work when Garcilaso died, the Catalan author and his wife signed a contract in 1542 for the publication of a volume titled ‘The works of Boscán and some of Garcilaso de la Vega’. The following year, under the direction of the widow, printing was completed in Barcelona and the book was published.
It became a classic a few years after his death.
Later, Garcilaso’s solo works would begin to be published and his fame came in a very short time. “At that time, poets did not publish while they were alive and those who became famous came much later. But he became a classic a few years after his death.”
Garcilaso’s shadow is long although in the city where he was born he is not a historical protagonist of its cultural life or at an institutional level. In ‘The Lost Grove’, one of Rafael Alberti’s memoirs, this poet narrates his initiation rite with the ‘Order of Toledo’ founded by the filmmaker Luis Buñuel and which basically had the objective of exploring Toledo at night in search of adventure. Alberti was left alone at a certain time of the night, among the “thin corridors” of the city, and narrates how he had a dream in which he thought he saw Garcilaso de la Vega.
“And then it seemed to me as if Garcilaso, a Garcilaso with fresh, dark leaves, broke away from that vine and began to walk with me through the nocturnal silence of Toledo waiting for dawn,” Alberti relates, then including a stanza from the Eclogue. III by the Renaissance author, perhaps his most Toledo verses: “Near the Tagus, in pleasant solitude / of green willows there is a thicket / all of ivy covered and full, / which along the trunk goes to the height / and thus weaves it up and chains it / that the sun finds no way to the vegetable; / the water bathes the meadow with sound, / gladdening the grass and the ear.”
Professor Jesús Román insists that the city of Toledo is “deeply linked” to this Renaissance poet. By introducing the meter and innovations of Petrarch and Italian authors into his work, he contributed to poetry in Spanish having, after him, its Golden Age, with a clear influence on Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega, among many others.
Garcilaso de la Vega also spent long periods in what is now the Toledo town of Cuerva, then his father’s manor. “Nor is he or his family remembered there in any way. It is also an incomprehensible oversight. I hope that over time his figure will be remembered again.”
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