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devotion to gambling, bullfights, and other
recreational activities. Góngora possessed a
quick and capacious mind that enabled him
to accumulate a vast store of learning and
to display an amazing range of religious,
mythological, and natural references in his
poetry. In his later years the enemies he
had made in literary controversies and
those who were the objects of his satires
plagued him, as did his numerous debtors.
He was also tormented by deteriorating
health (apparently arteriosclerosis), which
caused loss of memory and ultimately a
fatal stroke.
Góngora has been one of the most con-
troversial figures in Spanish poetry, with
his reputation and critical standing chang-
ing over the centuries. In his younger days
he was admired for light and popular
themes and seemed to have a special affin-
ity to the average reader and mundane life.
From about 1610 or 1611 onward he pro-
duced increasingly complex poetical works
featuring elaborate metaphors and loaded
with arcane, learned references. His inter-
weaving of allusions that baffled all but the
most acute reader led to accusations that he
was inventing a self-referential vocabulary.
The term
gongorismo
(Gongorism) was
increasingly applied to his poetic style by
hostile contemporaries, such as F
RANCISCO
DE
Q
UEVEDO
, who made Góngora the butt
of many satires. This image of Góngora as a
ponderous pedant or perhaps even an
incipient madman persisted over many
generations, and it was not until the tercen-
tenary of his death that his style began to
find support among the rising poets known
as the G
ENERATION
OF
'27. Critics now favor
the idea that Góngora's work did not suffer
a sharp break in its inspiration after 1612
but rather evolved from a simpler style of
expression into one that was more complex
in its expression yet consistent with his ear-
lier themes and concepts.
In his earlier period Góngora was a suc-
cessful author of numerous lighter poems
in several formats including
letrillas
(brief
lyrical or satirical poems divided into sym-
metrical stanzas that end in one or two
verses expressing the same thought), son-
nets, and romances. His later, more com-
plex creations include
Fábula de Polifemo y
Galatea
(Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea,
1612) and
Soledades
(“Solitudes”).
González, Julio
(1876-1942)
Spanish sculptor
Born in B
ARCELONA
of a family of metal-
workers, he learned the craft in his father's
workshop but also studied painting at night
at the Institute of Fine Arts. When the fam-
ily moved to Paris in 1900 González
renewed his acquaintance with P
ABLO
P
ICASSO
and taught him the techniques of
welding that enabled Picasso to experiment
with metal sculpture. González was, him-
self, already investigating the potential of
this medium and was undoubtedly influ-
enced by Picasso in a cubist direction, one
of several influences evident in his art.
Emotionally wounded by the death of his
brother in 1908, González retreated to a
reclusive life in the suburbs of Paris, emerg-
ing during World War I to work on a pro-
duction line in the Renault factory. When
he returned to artistic preoccupation after
the war it was with the determination to
focus on sculpture rather than painting. His
iron sculptures became increasingly well
known during the 1920s, and he was rec-
ognized as a dominant figure in the use of
metal sculpture as a field of abstract art.
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