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Jorge Manrique (ca1440 – 1479) was a Spanish poet who actively participated in the conflicts of the era of Enrique IV and Isabel I of Castile on the side of Isabel, but died in a battle at the castle of Garcimuñoz in 1479 after Isabel gained the crown. Manrique was a great-nephew of Iñigo López de Mendoza (marquess of Santillana), a descendant of Pero López de Ayala, chancellor of Castile, and a nephew of Gómez Manrique, corregidor of Toledo, all important poets of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He was, therefore, a member of a very important noble family that was related to the house of Trastámara and known as much for his military prowess as he was for his poetry. He wrote about forty poems, almost all about love, and one poem about the death of his father called Coplas a la muerte de su padre (Stanzas about the Death of his Father). In terms of popularity, the Coplas is by far the most enduring text of fifteenth-century Castilian letters. Not only has it been glossed and commented on from its first appearance, it has remained in print ever since and has been translated into many languages.
The Minor Lyrics Jorge Manrique wrote love lyrics in the courtly-love tradition and two satires. These called canciones (songs), esparsas (short poems, generally of a single stanza), preguntas y respuestas (questions and answers), and glosas de mote (glosses of mottoes). The first edition of the Cancionero general of Hernando del Castillo (1511) has the most complete selection of Manrique's poems, but some of the lyrics appear in other early editions and manuscripts. Coplas a la muerte de su padre Coplas a la muerte de su padre is Jorge Manrique's best composition. It is a funeral elegy dedicated to the memory of Rodrigo Manrique, who died on 11 November 1476 in Ocaña. Jorge thought that his father led a life worth living, and his poem contrast types of life (or death):
Stanzas 1-24 talk about an excessive devotion to earthly life from a general point of view, but features some of the most memorable metaphors in the poem. Among other things, life is compared to a road filled with dangers and opportunities and to a river that ends in the sea: I The section invokes general examples of human waywardness that one may encounter along the road leading to heaven or hell, but then gives some examples of infamous deaths drawn from contemporary Spanish history. These examples are introduced by the rhetorical questions called ubi sunt (Where are they?) in stanzas 15-24:
The last part of the poem is devoted to his father and talks about the life of fame and the possibility of continuing to live in the memories of the living, when one is great and has accomplished great deeds while living (stanzas 25-32). The poem ends with a small dramatic dialogue in which don Rodrigo confronts a personified Death, who deferentially takes his soul to Heaven (stanzas 33-39). A final stanza (40) gives consolation to the family. The language Manrique uses is precise, exact, without decoration or difficult metaphors. It appears to focus on the content of what is said and not on how it is said. The poem has forty stanzas, each composed of twelve eight- and four-syllable lines that rhyme Abc ABc DEf DEf. Every third line is a quebrado (half line). The verse form is now known as the copla manriqueña (Manriquean stanza), because his poem was so widely read and glossed that he popularized the meter. Its alternation of long and short lines, and their punctuation, made the verses flexible enough to sound somber or light and quick. Coplas por la muerte de su padre has been translated at least twice, once by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The translations of stanzas I, III, and XVI provided above are by Longfellow. Reference Domínguez, Frank A. Love and Remembrance: The Poetry of Jorge Manrique. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1989; Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique. Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833; _____. "Jorge Manrique" in Castilian writers, 1400-1500 Vol. 286. Detroit: Gale, c2004. (The article can be accessed as well in electronic format through the database Literature Resource Center at Gale in participating libraries.); Serrano de Haro, Antonio. Personalidad y destino de Jorge Manrique. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1966. | ||||||||
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