Hernando de Acuña: su poética y su «sabrosa historia del alma»

Abstract

Poet of solitude in the nidst of war, Hernando de Acuña belongs to the first generation of neoclassical emulators of that «certain rule» that characterized the work of the Spanish classic Garcilaso de la Vega. Acuña’s locution is marked by that happy marriage of the plainness of popular language and the simplicity of polished classicism that is the hallmark of fifteenth-century Spanish literature. Most notable in Acuña’s individual style is a fruitful interplay between plainness and the feeling of the sublime; the poet reflects on his style in his poems. Acuña conceives the whole of his poetic work as the history of his soul. Through the content of the latter the extraordinary sympathy of the poet soldier is revealed, and through the structure of his history one discovers his unsuspected talent as a narrator. The order that he gave his poems is instrumental for their narrative vein.