We explain who Garcilaso de la Vega was, what his contributions were to Spanish literature and how his diplomatic and military career unfolded.
Garcilaso’s works largely reflected the duality between his literary and military professions that marked his entire life.
Who was Garcilaso de la Vega?
Garcilaso de la Vega was a Spanish poet, diplomat and military manl, whose literary work is considered among the most outstanding of the Spanish Golden Age (15th to 17th centuries). Coming from a noble family, he became a field master in the imperial army of King Charles I of Spain (1500-1558), and died fighting the Ottoman forces before reaching the age of forty.
His compositions, not very numerous and strongly influenced by those of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), largely reflected the duality between the literary and military professions that marked his entire life.
Garcilaso’s work was appreciated by his contemporariessuch as Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), who considered him the ideal model of a poet, as well as later poets such as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870), Luis Cernuda (1902-1963) or Rafael Alberti (1902-1999), who dedicated honorary compositions to him.
Birth and youth of Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega was born in the city of Toledo and was the second of seven children of an aristocratic family with a literate tradition.There is no consensus regarding the exact date of his birth; different authors suggest the year 1498, 1501 or 1503.
His father, García Laso de la Vega (1455-1512), was Spanish ambassador in Rome and member of the Spanish Royal Council; while her mother, Sancha de Guzmán, was the granddaughter of the chronicler and poet Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (c. 1377-c.1460).
At the age of nine, Garcilaso was orphaned by his father.His mother then took it upon herself to ensure his education and sent him to the Royal House of Castile, where he became familiar with Latin, Greek, Tuscan and French. At a young age, Garcilaso already had a place at court and by the age of seventeen he was skilled in the arts of the zither, the lyre and the sword.
His entry into the court of Charles I built bridges with the other noble families of Toledo, among them that of the poet and translator Juan Boscán (1487-1542), with whom he maintained a close friendship throughout his life.It was Boscán who introduced him to Renaissance Italian poetry, and with whom he visited Naples between 1522 and 1523.
Garcilaso was also part of the entourage of the Duke of Alba de Tormes, Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Enríquez (1460-1531), during the War of the Communities of Castile (1520-1522), for which he was received into the Order of Santiago and named gentleman of the House of Burgundy.
His service to the Duke of Alba continued in 1523 during the siege of the fortress of Fuenterrabía, with the purpose of expelling the French. This cemented the friendship between the young soldier and the heir to the Duchy of Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel (1507-1582).
After his return to Toledo in 1526, Garcilaso married Elena de Zúñiga.who was a lady-in-waiting to the king’s sister, Eleanor of Austria (1498-1558), which placed Garcilaso in an even more advantageous position within the court. Garcilaso had five children with Elena. After his death, it was discovered that he had also had, in 1521, an unrecognized son with the Toledo native Guiomar Carrillo.
In 1526, moreover, Garcilaso fell platonically in love with a Portuguese lady of the queen: Isabel Freyre de Andrade (c. 1507-c.1536). It is said that she is referred to in Garcilaso’s poetry, when he speaks of the shepherdess Elisa.
The first poems of Garcilaso
Garcilaso’s first poems were published in 1547 along with other verses by his friend Juan Boscán.
Garcilaso began to write his first poems around 1521, guided by traditional lyrical aesthetics, that is, that of medieval songbooks. Soon, however, He discovered other poetic styles, such as the sonnet, through his friend Juan Boscán, during their trip together to Naples in 1522..
From then on, Garcilaso devoted himself to producing poetry influenced by the reading of Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) and Jacopo Sanazzaro (1458-c. 1530). This poetry was both classicist in style and clear in language, far from pomposity, and therefore appeared intimate, almost confidential. 1526 is considered to be the year of change in his poetic tendency.When he was in Granada, he proposed to his friend Boscán that they try “sonnets and other trova arts used by the good authors of Italy in the Spanish language.” This is what Boscán tells it in his Nuncupatory Epistle to the Duchess of Soma (1543).
Garcilaso’s writing, however, was interrupted by his military obligations: in 1529 he embarked on a journey through various Spanish and Italian cities with the king’s court. Before leaving, in Barcelona, he wrote his will, in which he acknowledged his illegitimate son and allocated money for his support, and gave his friend Boscán a collection of his poems to publish. This poetic selection was published after Garcilaso’s death in 1543..
Garcilaso accompanied Charles I on his trip to Italy, where he was crowned by Pope Clement VII (1478-1534) as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, on 24 February 1530. And, later, he joined the capture of Florence, a city that resisted imperial authority.
After his victory in Italy, the Emperor allowed Garcilaso to return to Spain with a life annuity of 80,000 maravedis as a reward for his services. That same year, he was sent to France on diplomatic and espionage duties.
Garcilaso’s second stay in Naples
In 1531, however, Garcilaso fell into disgrace with his king, after he assisted his nephew, also called Garcilaso de la Vega (and often confused with the poet), in his marriage to Miss Isabel de la Cueva, a union which the emperor was against.
Garcilaso then received a letter from the king demanding explanations. The poet tried to escape without success and was finally arrested in the city of Tolosa. and sentenced to a prison located on an island in the Danube River, near the German city of Regensburg, in Bavaria. From there he was freed in 1532 thanks to the intermediation of the III Duke of Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, who held Garcilaso in high esteem.
During his imprisonment, Garcilaso wrote a famous poem entitled “Canción III,” in which he describes his feelings about exile:
“Here I was standing,
or to put it better,
imprisoned and forced and alone in a foreign land;
well they can do this
who can suffer
and in whom he condemns himself.”
Taken from Complete Castilian poems (1972)
After his release, Garcilaso was assigned by the emperor to Naples, where he was to serve the imperial cause until further notice. In that city he was welcomed by the viceroy Pedro de Toledo (1484-1553) and soon became involved in the intellectual life of the city, which was his second contact with the Italian literary tradition. This was a decisive stage in the development of Garcilaso’s poetry..
In Naples, Garcilaso befriended renowned local poets and thinkers such as Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569), Luigi Tansillo (1510-1568), Jerónimo Seripando (1493-1563), Mario Galeota (c. 1499-1585) and Antonio Sebastiani Minturno (1500-1574).
In 1533, he returned temporarily to Spain and there he met up with his friend Boscán, who was working on his famous translation of The courtier by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529). The translation appeared the following year with a text by Garcilaso as a prologue: his letter To the very magnificent lady Jerónima Palova de Almogávar.
In 1534 there was a second trip to Spain, where Garcilaso met his wife.. During the way back to Naples, he learned of the death of Isabel Freyre, for whom he composed his first eclogue. Already at that time he had permanently resided in Italy, to the point that he had been appointed warden of the castle of Reggio.
The last years of Garcilaso de la Vega
Portrait of Garcilaso published in 1842 in The Spanish Picturesque Weekly.
Garcilaso returned to war in 1535, when he took part in the Jornada de Túnez, an expedition aimed at expelling the forces of the Ottoman corsair Jeireddín Barbarroja (1475-1546) and restoring Spanish influence in the region. Over there, During the siege of the Tunisian town of La Goulette, Garcilaso was wounded.
After the victory in Tunisia, Garcilaso returned to Sicily to recover from his wounds, and while there he composed his Elegy IIaddressed to Boscán, where he tells him of the misfortunes that exile caused in his personal life and envies his stable life in his homeland.
Back in Italy, he was also able to briefly dedicate himself to study and social relations, since the following year the Italian War of 1536-1538 broke out., where Charles V of Spain and Francis I of France faced each other. Garcilaso was summoned to the military campaign against the French, through Provence, and given his heroism in Tunisia, he was appointed in Genoa field master of a third of the infantry of 3000 men.
In this region, during the siege of the Muey tower, Garcilaso was seriously injured when trying to climb the walls of the fortress, at the end of September 1536.His battle companions took him to Nice, where he died on 14 October and was buried in the monastery of Saint Dominic.
Two years later, his body was claimed by his widow, and deposited in Toledo in the Rosario chapel of the convent of San Pedro Mártir. Much later, in 1869, the poet’s remains were exhumed and taken to the Pantheon of Illustrious Men (renamed the “Panteón de España” today) and in 1900 they were returned to the family chapel.
The legacy of Garcilaso de la Vega
The tomb of Garcilaso de la Vega is located in Toledo, in the Rosario chapel of the convent of San Pedro Mártir.
Garcilaso never saw his work published and celebrated, nor did he ever understand how important it would be for the Spanish literary tradition.. His first published poems appeared in March 1542, when his friend Boscán and his widow Elena published a selection of them in a book titled The works of Boscán and some of Garcilaso de la Vega.
It was not until 1574 that Garcilaso’s entire work was published, comprising thirty-eight sonnets, eight couplets, five songs, three eclogues, two elegies and one epistle. These texts were quickly accepted as classics and exerted an enormous influence on later authors of the Spanish Golden Age.
References
- Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library. (n.d.). Biography of Garcilaso de la Vega. https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/
- Boscán, J. (1999). “Nuncupatory Epistle of Juan Boscán to the Duchess of Soma” in Plays, pp. 229-233. Chair.
- Fernandez de Navarrete, E. (1850). Life of the famous poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Printing…