Any day is a good day to remember and read Don Francisco de Quevedo and Villegas, one of the most famous writers of the Golden age and of all times. But today there is a greater reason why a new anniversary of his death in 1645. It was in Villanueva de los Infants, a beautiful La Mancha town close to mine, where he is buried. So there goes this schoice of 7 of his sonnets.
Sonnets
DEFINING LOVE
It's burning ice, it's frozen fire
it is a wound that hurts and cannot be felt,
it is a dreamed good, a bad present,
it's a very tiring short break.
It is an oversight that gives us care,
a coward with a brave name,
a lonely walk among the people,
a love only to be loved.
It's an imprisoned freedom
that lasts until the last parasism,
disease that grows if it is cured.
This is the Love child, this is your abyss:
look what friendship he will have with nothing
he who is contrary to himself in everything.
IT WAS A DREAM YESTERDAY, TOMORROW WILL BE EARTH ...
It was a dream yesterday, tomorrow it will be land.
Shortly before nothing, and shortly after smoke!
And destiny ambitions, and I presume
just point to the fence that closes me!
Brief combat of importunate war,
in my defense, I am a great danger,
and while with my weapons I consume myself,
the less the body that buries me hosts me.
It is no longer yesterday, tomorrow has not arrived;
today happens and is and was, with movement
that leads me to death.
Hoes are the time and the moment
that on the pay of my pain and my care
they dig into my living my monument.
DEFINITION OF LOVE
Beg her? Disdain me? Love her
Follow her? Fend? Grab it? Get angry?
Wanting and not wanting? Letting yourself touch
already a thousand persuasions stand firm?
Have it good? Try to detach?
Fight in his arms and get angry?
Kiss her in spite of herself and she get offended?
Try, and not be able, to fire me?
Tell me grievances? Reprimand my taste?
And finally, to the beateries of my haste,
stop frowning? Show no disgust?
Allow me to remove the shirt?
Find it clean and fit it just right?
This is love and the rest is laughter.
IN VAIN SEEKS TRANQUILITY IN LOVE
I give hugs to fugitive shadows,
in dreams my soul gets tired;
I spend fighting alone night and day
with a goblin that I carry in my arms.
When I want to tie him more with ties,
and seeing my sweat it deflects me,
I return with new strength to my stubbornness,
and themes with love tear me to pieces.
I'm going to avenge myself in a vain image
that does not leave my eyes;
Make fun of me, and from making fun of me, run proudly.
I start to follow her, I am lacking energy,
and how to reach it I want,
I make the tears run after her in rivers.
WITH EXAMPLES SHOWS FLORA THE BRIEF
OF THE BEAUTIFUL, NOT TO DAMAGE IT
The youth of the year, the ambitious
shame of the garden, the incarnate
fragrant ruby, shortened shot,
also of the beautiful presumption year:
the lush ostentation of the rose,
deity of the field, star of the hedge,
the almond tree in its own snowy flower,
what to anticipate to the heats osa:
reprimands are, oh Flora! mute
of beauty and human pride,
which is subject to the laws of flower.
Your age will pass while you doubt it,
from yesterday you will have to regret tomorrow,
and late, and with pain, you will be discreet.
COMPARE THE SPEECH OF HIS LOVE WITH THE
OF A STREAM
Crooked, uneven, soft and loud,
you secretly slip among the flowers,
stealing the stream from the heats,
white in the foam, and blond as gold.
In crystals you dispense your treasure,
Liquid plectrum to rustic loves,
and tuning by ropes nightingales,
you laugh to grow up, with which I cry.
Glass in funny flattery,
joyful you go to the mountain, and precipitous
frothy graying with moan.
Not otherwise the careful heart,
to prison, to crying has come,
cheerful, inadvertent and confident.
LOVING LAMENTATION AND POSTERIOR
LOVER'S FEELING
I am not sorry to die, I have not refused
finish living, nor have I pretended
lengthen this death, which has been born
at the same time with life and care.
I'm sorry to leave uninhabited
body that loving spirit has girded,
desert a heart always on
where all love reigned hosted.
Signs gives me my eternal fiery burning,
and from such a long heartbreaking history
my tender cry will only be a writer.
Lisi, the memory is telling me,
because I suffer from hell your glory,
that calls glory when suffering torments.