The Solitudes - (Penguin Classics) by Luis de Gongora (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A towering figure of the Renaissance, Luis de Góngora pioneered poetic forms so radically different from the dominant aesthetic of his time that he was derided as "the Prince of Darkness." The Solitudes, his magnum opus, is an intoxicatingly lush novel-in-verse that follows the wanderings of a shipwrecked man who has been spurned by his lover. Wrenched from civilization and its attendant madness, the desolate hero is transported into a natural world that is at once menacing and sublime. In this stunning edition Edith Grossman captures the breathtaking beauty of a work that represents one of the high points of poetic achievement in any language.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review Quotes

"Remarkably lucid . . . [Grossman's] lines often achieve a mesmerizing shimmer. . . . Reading Góngora is like traveling by hot-air balloon- you'll get somewhere eventually, but all the pleasure is in the elevation (and occasional vertigo). . . . It's hard to imagine a better effort to capture [this] poem." --The New York Times Book Review

"Edith Grossman has surpassed even her magnificent version of Don Quixote by the far more difficult translation of Góngora's Solitudes. Few European poems are as sublime as The Solitudes, and Grossman illuminates this truth." --Harold Bloom

"This is true alchemy: to change the gold of one language into the gold of another. Such things are miracles: the baroque architecture of Góngora's poem has been given a shining equivalent in twenty-first-century English through the art of Edith Grossman." --Cees Nooteboom

"Edith Grossman has accomplished the formidable literary labor of translating into elegant, contemporary English Góngora's Soledades, the highest poetic achievement in the Spanish language." --Roberto González Echevarría, Yale University; author of Celestina's Brood

"In Latin America, Góngora influenced much of the writing of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, of Borges, and (in lesser measure) of Gabriel García Márquez. Above all, he is the 'origin and source' of the great Cuban literature, that of Alejo Carpentier, Severo Sarduy, and Lezama Lima. In Spain he became the precursor of the best poets of the early twentieth century, from García Lorca to Luis Cernuda. Perhaps, in the brilliant translation of Edith Grossman, he might have a similar effect." --Alberto Manguel, from the Introduction

"The Solitudes is the most refreshing poem of seventeenth-century European literature, and Góngora is the seventeenth century's Picasso, a rebel fountain that makes new water out of old. Edith Grossman's translation is the river that carries this new water across centuries and continents, and that allows us to drink of Góngora's genius." --Joaquín Roses, University of Córdoba

"Luis de Góngora was one of the great surprises of the Spanish Renaissance. He proved to be a poet of world stature, a figure comparable, say, to John Donne and George Herbert in English and a wildly imaginative and deeply rewarding poet of the senses. Edith Grossman has splendidly brought his Solitudes to life in English." --Edward Hirsch

About the Author

Edith Grossman (translator) is the acclaimed translator of Don Quixote, as well as books by Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes. She is the recipient of the inaugural Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize, the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature, and a Guggenheim fellowship.

Alberto Manguel (introducer) is the bestselling author of dozens of books, including A History of Reading and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places.