Sophisticated Vulgarity From Arturo Pérez-Reverte
I finished reading Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte last week, and am just now remembering I wanted to post a bit from the book that got me to laughing out loud while reading. Given the text I'll be transcribing is a few pages long, I'll put it all behind a cut.
The narrator is Íñigo, a boy who took to serving Alatriste after his father was killed in battle. I stated earlier that don Francisco de Quevedo frequented the steps of San Felipe; and in many of his paseos he was accompanied by such friends as Licenciado Calzas, Juan Vicuña, or Captain Alatriste. His fondness for my master was based, among other factors, in practicality. The poet was always involved in quarrels rooted in jealousy and exchanging obscenities with various rivals-something very typical in that day, and in all epochs of this benighted country of ours, with its Cains, calumny, trickery, and envy, where words offended, even maimed, as surely as or more surely than the sword. Some, like Luis de Góngora and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, were always belittling each other, and not merely for what they wrote.
Góngora, for example, said of Francisco de Quevedo: Muse that babbles inanities
Can earn no ducats or hope to inspire;
His fingers know better to rob my purse
Than pluck at that unmelodious lyre.
And the next day it would be the other way around. Don Francisco would counterattack with his heaviest artillery: This Góngora, who blasts a mighty fart,
This acme of vice and fanfaronade,
This asshole, in flesh and also in art,
Is a man even buggerers seek to evade
And along with these lines, he fired off other verses, as famous as they were ferocious, that flew from one end of the city to another, portraying Góngora as filthy in both body and lineage. In person-and breeding-so far from clean,
In fact, so precisely the opposite,
That never, as far as I have heard,
Did a word leave his mouth that wasn't shit.
Such sweet sentiments. He also turned out cruel lines aimed at poor Ruiz de Alarcón, whose physical impediment-a hunchback-he loved to deride with pitiless wit. Sacks of meal on back and chest.
Who's the one with those effects?
Alarconvex!
Such verses circulated anonymously, in theory; but everyone knew perfectly well who had composed them-and with the worst intentions in the world. Naturally, other poets did not hold back: sonnets and décimas flew back and forth. To sharpen his claws, don Francisco would read his aloud in the mentideros, attacking and counterattacking, his pen dipped in the most corrosive bile. And if he wasn't defiling Góngora or Alarcón, it might be anyone at all; for on those days when the poet woke up spewing vitriol, he fired randomly at anyone who moved. In regard to those horns you are forced to wear,
Don Whoever You Be, who put them there?
Your unfaithful wife, and if they are trimmed
She will help you grow them all over again!
Lines of that nature. So many that even though Quevedo was courageous, and skillful with the sword, having a man like Diego Alatriste beside him when he strolled among prospective adversaries was comforting for him. And it happened one morning when don Francisco was out with Captain Alatriste, Señor Whoever You Be of the sonnet-or someone who saw himself so portrayed, because in God's Madrid the cuckolded walked in double lines-escorted by a friend, came up to seek an explanation on the steps of San Felipe. The matter was resolved at nightfall with a taste of steel behind the wall of Los Recoletos, so thoroughly that both the presumed betrayed husband, as well as the friend-once their respective chest wounds had healed-turned to prose and never looked at a sonnet for the rest of their lives.
Fans of either or both Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Viggo Mortenson will be pleased to know that a tale of Captain Alatriste is taking the form of a motion picture even as I type this. Alatriste [IMDb / Official Site (en Español) / brego.net] is filming in Spain, a Spanish production and Spanish language. I'm hopeful Alatriste will not take so long to cross the Atlantic as the book (part of a five book series) on which it's partly based.
The narrator is Íñigo, a boy who took to serving Alatriste after his father was killed in battle. I stated earlier that don Francisco de Quevedo frequented the steps of San Felipe; and in many of his paseos he was accompanied by such friends as Licenciado Calzas, Juan Vicuña, or Captain Alatriste. His fondness for my master was based, among other factors, in practicality. The poet was always involved in quarrels rooted in jealousy and exchanging obscenities with various rivals-something very typical in that day, and in all epochs of this benighted country of ours, with its Cains, calumny, trickery, and envy, where words offended, even maimed, as surely as or more surely than the sword. Some, like Luis de Góngora and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, were always belittling each other, and not merely for what they wrote.
Góngora, for example, said of Francisco de Quevedo: Muse that babbles inanities
Can earn no ducats or hope to inspire;
His fingers know better to rob my purse
Than pluck at that unmelodious lyre.
And the next day it would be the other way around. Don Francisco would counterattack with his heaviest artillery: This Góngora, who blasts a mighty fart,
This acme of vice and fanfaronade,
This asshole, in flesh and also in art,
Is a man even buggerers seek to evade
And along with these lines, he fired off other verses, as famous as they were ferocious, that flew from one end of the city to another, portraying Góngora as filthy in both body and lineage. In person-and breeding-so far from clean,
In fact, so precisely the opposite,
That never, as far as I have heard,
Did a word leave his mouth that wasn't shit.
Such sweet sentiments. He also turned out cruel lines aimed at poor Ruiz de Alarcón, whose physical impediment-a hunchback-he loved to deride with pitiless wit. Sacks of meal on back and chest.
Who's the one with those effects?
Alarconvex!
Such verses circulated anonymously, in theory; but everyone knew perfectly well who had composed them-and with the worst intentions in the world. Naturally, other poets did not hold back: sonnets and décimas flew back and forth. To sharpen his claws, don Francisco would read his aloud in the mentideros, attacking and counterattacking, his pen dipped in the most corrosive bile. And if he wasn't defiling Góngora or Alarcón, it might be anyone at all; for on those days when the poet woke up spewing vitriol, he fired randomly at anyone who moved. In regard to those horns you are forced to wear,
Don Whoever You Be, who put them there?
Your unfaithful wife, and if they are trimmed
She will help you grow them all over again!
Lines of that nature. So many that even though Quevedo was courageous, and skillful with the sword, having a man like Diego Alatriste beside him when he strolled among prospective adversaries was comforting for him. And it happened one morning when don Francisco was out with Captain Alatriste, Señor Whoever You Be of the sonnet-or someone who saw himself so portrayed, because in God's Madrid the cuckolded walked in double lines-escorted by a friend, came up to seek an explanation on the steps of San Felipe. The matter was resolved at nightfall with a taste of steel behind the wall of Los Recoletos, so thoroughly that both the presumed betrayed husband, as well as the friend-once their respective chest wounds had healed-turned to prose and never looked at a sonnet for the rest of their lives.
Fans of either or both Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Viggo Mortenson will be pleased to know that a tale of Captain Alatriste is taking the form of a motion picture even as I type this. Alatriste [IMDb / Official Site (en Español) / brego.net] is filming in Spain, a Spanish production and Spanish language. I'm hopeful Alatriste will not take so long to cross the Atlantic as the book (part of a five book series) on which it's partly based.