An Oxford researcher finds two lost Garcilaso poems in the Czech Republic

Two poems by Garcilaso de la Vega

1501-1536) were lost.

One was known to exist through references in other texts, but both had gotten lost in the twists and turns of history.

Now those two poems, two odes written in Latin, have been found by the research philologist at Oxford University Maria Czepiel, as she exposed this Wednesday at the international congress

, held this week in Naples.

“I found the poems in a printed book,” Czepiel relates, “an anthology of Italian poets.

Other hand-copied texts appear in the final pages of that book, many of which are by Iberian poets.”

And among those hand-copied poems were the two lost odes, one dedicated to the Italian cardinal and humanist Pietro Bembo and the other to the highly regarded but little-reported German humanist Brassicanus.

It is presumed that the book has a certain link with the city of Alcalá de Henares, probably with the university, due to an anecdote that the copyist also left written in the book, which recounts the arrival of the Venetian writer Andreas Navagero in the Madrid town.

The discovery will soon be published in the specialized journal

and a Spanish version of the Latin originals is in preparation.

At the moment, the researcher advances only a few verses: "Intentos humilis Bembe sonus lyrae / Sensus forte tuos si avocat arduis / Ingratum a studiis, parce, precor".

In her translation into Spanish: "Bembo, if perhaps the sound of my modest lyre diverts the strained senses of your lofty studies, forgive me, I beg you."

The discovery occurred when the researcher was consulting Latin poetry prints and manuscripts in various libraries, since her doctoral thesis deals with Latin Renaissance poetry, specifically the work of the humanist and biblical scholar Arias Montano.

Thus, between book and book, diving into the depths of past literature, she recognized in a library in the Czech Republic one of the three Latin odes by Garcilaso that are preserved.

But in those pages she had expected something more.

“Then, as I was familiar with the manuscripts of Garcilaso's odes and I saw that this testimony [as one of the copies of an ancient book is called] was not known by the researchers, I looked at it more deeply: I realized that there were two odes of the poet that until now were unknown”, he explains.

Eureka.

The philologist Maria Czepiel, this Wednesday at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, where the conference on Garcilaso de la Vega was held.

The other three Latin odes that were in the public domain had been transmitted in non-original copies of the author that had copyist errors and even missing verses.

In the testimony that Czepiel found, these errors do not appear and, in addition, the two hitherto unknown odes are also included.

There was news of the ode dedicated to Bembo, because it is mentioned in the correspondence between the two, but it was lost.

"Regarding the Brassicanus, its existence was not even known, nor was there a friendship between Garcilaso and this important poet of the imperial court of Maximilian I", adds the researcher.

Czepiel prefers not to reveal the library where this case of serendipity took place, at least until his academic article is published.

These texts by Garcilaso are in the wake of the imitation of the great classical lyricist Horacio, which is the research topic of this congress organized by the research team of the University of Girona dedicated to

directed by Eugenia Fosalba.

Horacio is the author of the most valued odes of Antiquity, influenced by Epicureanism and Stoicism.

Garcilaso was a great practitioner of this type of poetry, which he knew before arriving in the kingdom of Naples, but which he cultivated with great success in that place.

“It is there that he perfects his art of imitating Horatian poetry”, explains Eugenia Fosalba, organizer of the congress, “and that is why later the Neapolitans themselves, such as Paolo Giovio or Gerónimo Seripando, value his very smooth Horatianism, that is, for how well he imitates Horacio”.

The congress has dealt precisely with how the poet was received in the Italian city and how in the last stretch of his life he became that great imitator of Horace admired in Italy "and who even improved the Italian poets", in the words from the expert.

Some of the themes that are collected in the texts found are the praise of friendship, the ability of poetry to immortalize its objects (as demonstrated by this finding, which makes us speak of Bembo and Brassicanus centuries later), a certain anxiety for harboring the feeling of not being up to the classics or the nature of poetry itself.

Another issue is the character of lyrical poetry, which often opposes the traditional themes of epic poetry: "Garcilaso even says that he prefers to write a poem about a nymph to a poem about war," explains Czepiel.

The poems deal precisely with the relationship between the military life and the poetic life of Garcilaso.

A man of arms and letters

Garcilaso was a poet and a soldier.

He was banished by Emperor Carlos V for attending as a witness the wedding of his nephew in Ávila, with which the emperor did not agree due to lineage issues.

The poet was arrested in Tolosa and sentenced to confinement on an island in the Danube (which the poet describes in his

).

"On that island he was not confined in a tower, but camped with the soldiers", explains Fosalba, "during that time he surely had a lot of time to dedicate to poetry".

He went to Regensburg, where a large army was gathering to fight the Ottoman Empire in Vienna.

It is believed that he established a relationship with Brassicanus while in Germany, when he accompanied the Duke of Alba, with whom he had a great friendship forged in the Hondarribia campaign.

The duke had to insist very much so that only after five months of isolation he was allowed to continue his exile in Naples.

He arrived there with the duke's uncle, Don Pedro de Toledo, who had been entrusted with the position of viceroy, and "where there was a very aristocratic court and a cultural flow of great impact," explains Fosalba.

Garcilaso's poetry is part of a type of poetry that is not popular, it is cultured poetry that humanists write and that is not within the reach of ordinary people.

"They are very learned humanists: they may be military, but also poets, they have in their heads the great classical poets, contemporary neo-Latin poets and all poetry in vulgar, Spanish or Italian, they were extremely wise", explains Fosalba.

The relationships between them are respect, praise, adulation, as shown in the rescued odes.

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