page_title: Francisco de Quevedo
section_title: Poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Francisco de Quevedo / Works / Poetry
caption_attribution_description: Español: Placa dedicada al Buscón de Quevedo en Segovia.
context_page_description: Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, KOS was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo. This style existed in stark contrast to Góngora's culteranismo.
context_section_description: Quevedo produced a vast quantity of poetry. His poetry, which was not published in book form during his lifetime, "shows the caricature-like vision its author had of men, a vision sometimes deformed by a sharp, cruel, violently critical nature." This attitude is of a piece with the "black seventeenth century" he lived in. Despite his satirical work, however, Quevedo was primarily a serious poet who valued love poems.
  His poetry gives evidence not only of his literary gifts but also of his erudition (Quevedo had studied Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, French and Italian). One of his sonnets, "A Roma sepultada en sus ruinas" (1650), was an adaptation of a French poem by Joachim Du Bellay, "Nouveau venu qui cherches Rome en Rome," from Les Antiquités de Rome (1558). His poetic works range from satirical and mythological subjects to love poetry and philosophical pieces.
  Quevedo constantly attacked avarice and avaricious people. His "Cartas del Caballero de la Tenaza" attack a notorious miser.
  He also attacked apothecaries, who had a reputation for adulterating and badly preparing medications.
  His love poetry includes such works as "Afectos varios de su corazón, fluctuando en las ondas de los cabellos de Lisi" ("Several reactions of his heart, bobbing on the waves of Lisi's hair"). As one scholar has written, "Even though women were never very much appreciated by Quevedo, who is labeled as a misogynist, it is impossible to imagine that there was anyone else who could adore them more." The first four lines run as follows:
  Within a curly storm of wavy gold
  must swim great gulfs of pure and blazing light
  my heart, for beauty eagerly athirst,
  when your abundant tresses you unbind.
  His work also employed mythological themes, typical of the age, though it also employs satirical elements, for example in his "To Apollo chasing Daphne":
  Ruddy silversmith from up on high,
  in whose bright beams the rabble pick their fleas:
  Daphne, that nymph, who takes off and won't speak,
  if you'd possess her, pay, and douse your light.
  Quevedo's poetry also includes pieces such as an imagined dedication to Columbus by a piece of the ship in which the navigator had discovered the New World:
  Once I had an empire, wanderer,
  upon the billows of the salty sea;
  I was moved by the wind and well-respected,
  to southern lands I forged an opening.
caption: Plaque dedicated to El Buscón in Segovia.
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