We can see how Garcilaso de la Vega handled the topic in his En tanto que de rosa y de azucena… and it is this poem that Góngora had in mind when he penned Mientras por competir… The source is classical: the Carpe diem (“Enjoy the day”) of Horace, and the Collige, virgo, rosas (“Gather, maiden, the roses”) from Ausonius.
Although the theme is common (the urgent appeal to a young woman to enjoy her youth before time destroys it), the poem’s significance is based on the art with which it is written. Mientras por competir… is one of Góngora’s most popular sonnets and appears in virtually all anthologies of Spanish poetry. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, ABBA, CDC, DCD. Sometimes we talk of the two quatrains together as an octave, and the two tercets together as a sestet. It has two quatrains, (each quatrain contains four lines), and two tercets (each made up of three lines). Portrait of Góngora by Diego de Velázquez While burnished gold gleams in vain in the sun to compete with your hair / while in the middle of the plain your white brow gazes on the fair lily with disdain / while more eyes follow each lip to kiss them than follow the early carnation / and while your slender neck triumphs over gleaming crystal with self-assured scorn: enjoy your neck, hair, lips and brow, before what was in your golden youth, gold, lily, carnation, gleaming crystal not only turns to silver or to drooping violet but you and all of it together into earth, smoke, dust, shadow, nothing. Mientras con menosprecio en medio el llanoĮn tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada. Luis de Góngora (1561-1627): Sonnet clxvi: Mientras por competir… 1582.ġ.
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