Guillen Says Poetry Of Gongora Creates Reality by Metaphor

Jorge Guillen characterized the Spanish Seventeenth Century humanist poet Luis de Gongora as "a poetic architect" who "constructed an art comparable to the works of Picasso," in his third and final Charles Eliot Norton Poetry Lecture last night.

Guillen, speaking on "Gongora: poetic language," said that the humanist was especially gifted in using words to create symbols. He told his audience at Longfellow Hall that "by the use of metaphors, a new reality is created--a reality to the second power."

Gongora obtained this "new reality" by fusing poetic objects, regardless of their former relations to each other or their former composition, according to Guillen. The new object is as much a reality as the original ones.

Guillen said that the poet was particularly difficult to interpret and understand, since he wrote "a very special poetry for the specialists of his era."

Gongora was a Seventeenth Century mystic, "impassioned by the beauty of the world," who tried to generally reform the Church intellectuals of his time.