Note 687 — Chapter XXI
Reading edition
For the earliest editions of the Coplas, 1492, 1494, and 1501, see Mendez, Typog. Española, p. 136. I possess ten or twelve copies of other editions, one of which was printed at Boston, 1833, with Mr. Longfellow’s translation. My copies, dated 1574, 1588, 1614, 1632, and 1799, all have Glosas in verse. That of Aranda is in folio, 1552, black letter, and in prose.
At the end of a translation of the “Inferno” of Dante, made by Pero Fernandez de Villegas, Archdeacon of Burgos, published at Burgos in 1515, folio, with an elaborate commentary, chiefly from that of Landino,—a very rare book, and one of considerable merit,—is found, in a few copies, a poem on the “Vanity of Life,” by the translator, which, though not equal to the Coplas of Manrique, reminds me of them. It is called “Aversion del Mundo y Conversion á Dios,” and is divided, with too much formality, into twenty stanzas on the contempt of the world, and twenty in honor of a religious life; but the verses, which are in the old national manner, are very flowing, and their style is that of the purest and richest Castilian. It opens thus:—
Away, malignant, cruel world, With sin and sorrow rife! I seek the meeker, wiser way That leads to heavenly life. Your fatal poisons here we drink, Lured by their savors sweet, Though, lurking in our flowery path, The serpent wounds our feet. Away with thy deceitful snares, Which all too late I fly!— I, who, a coward, followed thee Till my last years are nigh; Till thy most strange, revolting sins Force me to turn from thee, And drive me forth to seek repose, Thy service hard to flee. Away with all thy wickedness, And all thy heartless toil, Where brother, to his brother false, In treachery seeks for spoil!— Dead is all charity in thee, All good in thee is dead; I seek a port where from thy storm To hide my weary head.
I add the original, for the sake of its flowing sweetness and power:—
Quedate, mundo malino, Lleno de mal y dolor, Que me vo tras el dulçor Del bien eterno divino. Tu tosigo, tu venino, Vevemos açucarado, Y la sierpe esta en el prado De tu tan falso camino. Quedate con tus engaños, Maguera te dexo tarde, Que te segui de cobarde Fasta mis postreros años. Mas ya tus males estraños De ti me alançan forçoso, Vome a buscar el reposo De tus trabajosos daños. Quedate con tu maldad, Con tu trabajo inhumano, Donde el hermano al hermano No guarda fe ni verdad. Muerta es toda caridad; Todo bien en ti es ya muerto;— Acojome para el puerto, Fuyendo tu tempestad.
After the forty stanzas to which the preceding lines belong, follow two more poems, the first entitled “The Complaint of Faith,” partly by Diego de Burgos and partly by Pero Fernandez de Villegas, and the second, a free translation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, by Gerónimo de Villegas, brother of Pero Fernandez,—each poem in about seventy or eighty octave stanzas, of arte mayor, but neither of them as good as the “Vanity of Life.” Gerónimo also translated the Sixth Satire of Juvenal into coplas de arte mayor, and published it at Valladolid in 1519, in 4to.