[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

If "teje" is a verb, what is the subject of that verb?

In my reading, Amor is the third person singular subject of "teje."

Untangling the English a bit more, so that the word order is closer to the usual English pattern of subject + verb + direct object, with some adverbial modifiers added (in orange and purple):

          Love no longer weaves/crafts (golden) arrows, (but) golden waves, from his/her splendid tresses;

I too, am often at a loss to parse what's going on in baroque and baroque-influenced poetry, but I'm 90% confident that I've figured out this particular snippet.

Okay, maybe 85%.

LL7-8 are trickier. I'll tackle those next.

[Roger Slater]

Many versions of the Spanish online place a comma after flechas (ya no flechas, Amor, ... ) for what it's worth. I'm not sure what it means, except perhaps that editors in Spanish are not entirely sure what to make of it.

You may be right, but the syntax does not suggest to me that the subject that is doing the teje-ing is Amor. So I'd take it down maybe to 80%.

[Julie Steiner]

Góngora and Quevedo (when Quevedo is making fun of Góngora) often invert subjects and objects. It's a baroque thing. (They're trying to emulate Latin and Greek, which lets you put things in almost any order without confusion, since the word endings generally announce "I'm the subject" and "I'm the object.")

The following quoted article is not very relevant per se, but I wanted to see if Góngora wrote any poems about combing hair, in case Lope de Vega was parodying any specific sonnet. I found two, written years apart, both with very similar (and in some regards identical) first quatrains. That recycling might have something to do with Lope de Vega's choice of two identity rhymes in his own sonnet.

Here's my quick English translation of an article discussing Góngora's two hair-combing sonnets:

Otros dos sonetos áulicos, el primero                    Two other courtly sonnets, the first
dedicado a la hija del marqués de Ayamonte          dedicated to the daughter of the Marqués of Ayamonte
en 1606, el segundo a la futura reina doña                     in 1606, the second to the future queen, Doña
Isabel de Borbón, en 1620, comienzan                    Isabel of Bourbon, in 1620, begin
también casi con el mismo verso: el primero,          also with almost the same verse: the first,
«Al sol peinaba Clori sus cabellos», el                    "In the sun, Clori was combing her hair," the second,
segundo, «Peinaba al sol Belisa sus cabellos».           "Belisa was combing her hair in the sun."
En ellos se varía tan solo el orden de                    In them is varied only the order of
palabras y el nombre de la dama. Pero lo más           words and the name of the lady. But the most
notable es que los tres versos que siguen                    notable thing is that the three verses that follow
son comunes, lo que arrastra la rima de los cuartetos:          are shared, which carries along the rhyme of the quatrains:

Al sol peinaba Clori sus cabellos                    In the sun, Clori was combing her tresses,
          con peine de marfil, con mano bella,                    with comb of marble, with beautiful hand,
          mas no se parecía el peine en ella                    but the comb in it didn't seem
          como se escurecía el sol en ellos.                    as if it were squeezing the sun out of them.
Cogió sus lazos de oro, y al cogellos,                    It seized her knots of gold, and on seizing them,
          segunda mayor luz descubrió, aquella                    it discovered a second, greater light--that one
          delante quien el sol es una estrella                    before which the sun is (but) a star
          y esfera España de sus rayos bellos:                    and Spain (but) a firmament for its beautiful rays.
divinos ojos, que en su dulce oriente                    divine eyes, which in their sweet rising
          dan luz al mundo, quitan luz al cielo,                    give light to the world, (and) take light from heaven,
          y espera idolatrallos occidente.                    and hope to worship them on setting.
Esto Amor solicita con su vuelo,                    This is what Love's seeking with his flight,
          que en tanto mar será un arpón luciente                    that in such a great sea will be a shining harpoon
          de la Cerda inmortal mortal anzuelo.                    from the immortal Cord/String/Horsehair a mortal fishhook.

Evidentemente, es un tour de force reelaborar           Obviously, it is a tour de force to rework
el soneto desde el mismo tópico, para          the sonnet from the same topic, to
construir otro que diverge de él por completo,          construct another that is completely different from it
a pesar de introducir al dios Cupido también al final:          in spite of also introducing the god Cupid at the end:

Peinaba al sol Belisa sus cabellos                    Belisa was combing her hair in the sun
          con peine de marfil, con mano bella,                    with comb of marble, with beautiful hand,
          mas no se parecía el peine en ella                    but the comb in it didn't seem
          como se escurecía el sol en ellos.                    as if it were squeezing the sun out of them.
En cuanto, pues, estuvo sin cogellos,                     While, then, I was without knowledge of them,
          el cristal solo, cuyo margen huella,                    only the (white) crystal, whose edge (makes footprints???, maybe the Milky Way?)
          bebía de una y otra dulce estrella                    I was drinking, from one sweet star and another
          en tinieblas de oro rayos bellos.                    the beautiful rays, in ignorance of gold.
Fileno en tanto, no sin armonía,                     Whereas Fileno, not without harmony,
          las horas acusando, así invocaba                     was blaming the hours, thus he was invoking
          la segunda deidad del tercer cielo:                    the second deity of the third heaven: (???)
«Ociosa, Amor, será la dicha mía,                    "Worthless/lazy, Love, will be my luck,
          si lo que debo a plumas de tu aljaba                    if that thing which I owe to the feathers of your quiver
          no lo fomentan plumas de tu vuelo».                    the feathers of your flight do not encourage."

El soneto encarece la impaciencia del príncipe Felipe,           The sonnet emphasizes the impatience of Prince Felipe,
ansioso por consumar su matrimonio, lo que           eager to consummate his marriage, something that
también hacen dos romances de la misma fecha.           two romances [by Góngora?] of the same date also do.
Y así como en el segundo terceto del anterior           And just as in the second tercet of the earlier
se aprovechaba el apellido de la dama para           the family name of the lady was being taken advantage of to
enlazar con el arpón o anzuelo, que entonces          connect with the harpoon or fishhook, which then
solía pender de una cerda, poco visible en           used to hang from a cord/string/horsehair, little visible in
el agua, el segundo de este aprovecha,                     the water, the second takes advantage of this,
si no la bisemia, sí la bifuncionalidad           if not two meanings, then indeed the bifunctionality
de las plumas, comunes a las flechas           of feathers, common to both the arrows
y a las alas de Cupido.                               and the wings of Cupid.

Antonia Carreira, Góngora y su aversión por la reescritura, CRITICÓN, 74, 1998, pp. 65-79.
https://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/...74/074_067.pdf

[Edited to add: I couldn't figure out how "in the second tercet of the earlier (sonnet) the family name of the lady was being taken advantage of," so I researched a bit more and found out her name was Doña Brianda de la Cerda.]

[Susan McLean]

I can't comment on the Spanish, since I don't know it, but in myth Amor (Cupid) uses arrows as a weapon and would probably fletch his own arrows. I assumed that the meaning in the poem is that he has turned now from fletching arrows to combing the curls of the woman, since her hair is now his weapon for making people fall in love.

Susan

[Julie Steiner]

Okay! Draft Three posted above. Almost everything's new (and, I hope, improved). I am pretty happy with it, but have taken some liberties that you lovely people might not let me get away with.

My main sin is probably straightening out the wrenched syntax so it reads far more smoothly. Modern English-speaking audiences have very little patience for puzzling out convoluted language. Making them puzzle out complicated metaphors is onerous enough.

I also had to get rid of the elephant, alas. No room.

I found a few other precedent poems about hair-combing. The main one of interest is a Spanish translation by Don Juan de Tarsis, Count of Villamediana (1582-1622), of an Italian original by Giambattista Marino (1569-1625). Wikipedia says that Lope de Vega was foremost among Marino's many Spanish admirers/imitators.

I'll probably workshop a translation of the Marino. Villamediana's version is full of Tonto-isms (omitted articles) and wrenched syntax, so it's not worth the bother, but it's the sort of thing Lope de Vega might have parodied. Villamediana didn't publish any poetry books while he was alive, but courtly poets had other ways of circulating or performing their material, and after his assassination there was a lot of interest in his collected works, published in 1629.

Villamediana also wrote another sonnet on the hair-combing theme that incorporated the word "Cerda" ("cord, string, or horsehair"), as Góngora had above. In the Italian original, Marino depicts himself as a shipwrecked sailor, thus perhaps inspiring other surname references like those with Doña Brianda de la Cerda.

These courtly poets were constantly rewriting each other's sonnets--sometimes to emulate and honor poems they admired, sometimes to make rivals' poems more ridiculously ornate and impenetrable, and sometimes just to prove that they could do a better job. This sonnet by Lope de Vega clearly isn't a complete farce.

[Susan McLean]

Julie, I think it reads better now. I think I preferred "visible" to "showing through them" in L4. L7-8 still sounds a bit confusing to me. I had to read your crib to understand what they meant. I might suggest some slight changes to L9-11:

Untie those tangles with propriety;
let the beams fall in straight rows from my sun,
you box-tree wood or Moorish ivory;

Susan

[Roger Slater]

I just realized that "lazo" is mainly defined as a bow, like a bow in one's hair, so perhaps you should go with that meaning. I like the sense in the original that the ship/comb has to "navigate" among islands of bows in her hair.

In the first stanza, I think maybe you've lost the sort of pun on "altivo" -- which as you know means both "haughty" and something that is on top. Lope is in effect calling the comb arrogant, since he has said that it is "altivo" even when hidden.

[Susan McLean]

Roger, people don't comb their hair while the bows are still on it. They would take the bows off first, if they have any sense.

Susan

[Roger Slater]

That may be true, but the word does mean "bow" and its use in connection with hair is a strong suggestion that it is the meaning Lope intended. Perhaps Lope was as ignorant about proper hair grooming as I am?

[Roger Slater]

Julie, I'm wondering why you went for riding/hiding instead of ride/hide. I'd consider switching, maybe something like:

Plow the sea of Love’s blond billows, ride
high amid those pretty tangles, O
ship from Barcelona, even though
you sometimes show yourself and sometimes hide.