Cuando pasamos página del libro de arena de Shakespeare,
parece que algo hemos culminado, que no quedan
en la cordillera cumbres mayores que la que hemos, si no ascendido, visitado.
Observemos que Shakespeare muere cuando Jacobo lleva 13 años
en el trono y quedan nueve para su muerte. Y es que Shakespeare fue un
dramaturgo isabelino y también jacobino. Y en cualquier caso al teatro inglés
del período aún le quedaba fuelle. Aun incompleto (¿Puede el lector recordar
algún dramaturgo importante no incluido en el gráfico?), el siguiente gráfico
que hemos encontrado en la Wikipedia es muy ilustrativo.
(En https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Renaissance_theatre)
Nótese, por cierto, que la actividad en el reinado de Carlos
I desciende considerablemente.
Se dice en ocasiones que la mayor obra en prosa inglesa del
período es la Biblia del Rey Jaime. Puede valer la pena echar un vistazo a cómo
resultan algunos fragmentos conocidos en esta versión.
Y en cuanto a la poesía se habla de no pocos poemas que a
veces se clasifican en metafísicos y en caballeros, lo que no deja de tener
algo de la enciclopedia china de Borges, de la que no sé si hemos hablado ya.
Es interesante ver cómo se forman las categorías en la historia literaria, algo demasiado parecido a lo que Borges hace cuando fabula sobre el profesor Franz Kuhn, histórico que es.
Echemos un vistazo a la reseña que Eliot publicó del libro de J. C. Grierson. Léase como introducción esto.
En cuanto a los cavalier poets, lo de ‘cavalier’ es
por el estatus cortesano de la mayoría de quienes se ven incluidos bajo la
rúbrica.
Un poema de Donne
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass
mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refin'd,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.
Un poema de Marvel
To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
