Felix Lope de Vega (1562-1635) was one of the most important poets and playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age. Just met 455 years from his birth and it is always worth remembering but, above all, reading it.

His works are countless. Several hundred comedies, some 3.000 sonnets and three novels or nine epics, among others. Fuenteovejuna, Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña, The Knight of Olmedo, The silly lady, Punishment without revenge, The dog in the manger, To mention a few, they would be the most prominent and represented.

Lope was from a humble family, but his life was full of extremes and passions. Those who lived the most were writing and women. He was married twice and had six recognized lovers with whom he fathered fourteen children. He died in 1635 at the age of 73 and was buried with all the pageantry and fame of the greatest. But of course his heritage in art is immortal. Live again every time we read it.

Phrases

• Wanting is not a choice because it must be an accident.
• When the aggrieved peoples are upset, and they resolve, they never return without blood or revenge.
• I do not know that there are words in the world as effective or speakers as eloquent as tears.
• Jealousy is children of love, but they are bastards, I confess.
• The Castilian language did not want that from married to tired there was more than one letter of difference.
• The root of all passions is love. Sadness, joy, happiness and despair are born from him.
• What else kills to wait for the good it takes
  to suffer the evil that you already have.
• It is forced to speak to the vulgar in a foolish way to please them.
• There are no words in the world so effective or speakers so eloquent as tears.
• That a thousand good things are learned from a woman who is good.
• God save me from enmities of friends!
• Where there is love there is no lord, that love equals everything.
• With wind my hope sailed;
  the sea forgave her, the port killed her.
• Poetry is painting of the ears, like painting poetry of the eyes.
• What counts is not tomorrow, but today. Today we are here, tomorrow perhaps, we will be gone.
• That there is no remedy to forget love
  like another new love, or land in between.
• The more wine it ages, the hotter it has: contrary to our nature, the longer it lives, the cooler it gets.
• But life is short: living, everything is missing; dying, everything is left over.
• There is no pleasure that does not have pain as its limits; that with the day being the most beautiful and pleasant thing, the night finally has.
• I do not know the reason for the unreason that my reason afflicts.

Verses

Love verses, scattered concepts,
begotten of the soul in my care,
deliveries of my burning senses,
born with more pain than freedom;

foundlings to the world, in which lost,
so broken you walked and changed,
that only where you were begotten
were known by blood;

[...]

***

I go to my solitudes,

I go to my solitudes,
I come from my loneliness,
because to walk with me
my thoughts are enough for me.

I don't know what the village has
where I live and where I die,
than to come from myself,
I can't go any further.

[...]

• Of his religious poetry we cannot forget these:

Christ on the cross

Who is that gentleman
wounded by so many parts,
that is expiring so close,
and no one helps him?

"Jesus Nazareno" says
that remarkable label.
Oh god, what a sweet name
does not promise infamous death!

[...]

***

What do I have, that you seek my friendship?

What do I have, that you seek my friendship?
What interest do you follow, my Jesus,
that at my door, covered with dew,
Do you spend the dark winter nights?

• And possibly the most beautiful love sonnet in Spanish literature:

Faint, dare, be furious,
rough, tender, liberal, elusive,
encouraged, deadly, deceased, alive,
loyal, traitorous, cowardly and spirited;

not find outside the good center and rest,
be happy, sad, humble, haughty,
angry, brave, fugitive,
satisfied, offended, suspicious;

flee the face to the clear disappointment,
drink poison by süave liquor,
forget the profit, love the damage;

believe that a heaven fits into a hell,
give life and soul to disappointment;
This is love, whoever tasted it knows it.

• And this, the most famous:

A sonnet tells me to do Violante
that in my life I have seen myself in so much trouble;
fourteen verses say that it is a sonnet;
mocking, mocking, the three go ahead.

I thought I couldn't find a consonant
and I'm in the middle of another quartet;
but if I see myself in the first triplet,
there is nothing in quartets that scares me.

For the first triplet I am entering,
and it seems that I entered on the right foot,
Well, end with this verse I am giving.

I'm already in the second, and I still suspect
I'm going through the thirteen verses ending;
count if there are fourteen, and it is done.