Poetry lesson

Poetic lesson or Satire against the vices introduced in Castilian poetry, in tercetos is a satirical poem by Leandro Fernández Moratín. In it he questions the poetic uses of certain Spanish authors of his time. In this work he criticizes contemporary and past authors and exposes his point of view on literary genres, lyric, epic and drama.
When talking about the lyric he speaks out against exaggeration. Attack too

• violent metaphors,
• redundancies,
• word games,
• misunderstandings,
• vulgarity,
• the use of cultisms (which he takes advantage of to attack Góngora)
• and archaisms.

Moratinian censorship not only reviews in a negative way the Spanish Baroque past and modern followers of it. He criticizes the poets who were his contemporaries who used archaisms and Gallicisms. At the same time, this Poetic Lesson defends his neoclassical aesthetics, which is his personal interpretation of the theoretical ideas that Moratín read in Horace, Boileau and, above all, in the Poetics of Luzán and his eighteenth-century successors.

Satire against the vices introduced in Castilian poetry

Just barely, Fabio, what you say I think,
And reading your letter every day,
The more I get confused the more I read it.
Do you think that this thing they call poetry,
Whose primores become so expensive,
Is it a toy thing or fruslería?
Or that the holy numen can be acquired?
From the god of Delos by way of climbing,
Or by combination or by charm?
If you didn’t learn anything in school
If in the power of that pedantic dominance
Your band was always the unfortunate,
Why keep trying to keep going?
A plough, a hoe, a weed
For who you are it was quite
From anger you turn yellow;
Truths make you bitter, I warn you;
You don’t want a frank and simple consultant.
Well, let’s talk in peace, which is wrong
Disabuse the one who wants the error:
Wherever you go, straight or one-eyed.
Tell me, in short, that it is admirable idea
In your gray age caress the Muses,
And climb to the pegasea fountain.
Well, if oil and work do not excuse
And thou hast gone on fearless and steady,
In you his graces will rain infusal.
The concepts will walk in front of you,
Verses thou shalt spurt out,
You will have the consonant in the inkwell.
What romances you will make, and what songs!
And what nice matters I promise myself!
What for your booklets you have!
How funny he must be, and how discreet,
A sonnet to Belisa’s yawn,
To the slip of Inés another sonnet!
A lady you will have, thing is precise;
Beautiful must be, has no remove,
And you will call her Philis or Marfisa.
Tell it it’s snow when it irritates you the most:
Snow that burns your whole heart,
And the fire of your love does not melt it.
And if perhaps in scarce affection,
He utters with sonorous disdain ice;
Brief disgust that bothers and passes.
You will say that the ignition Mongibelo
From your breast, among flames and ashes,
Corusca crackles and reaches the sky.
If your loving passion solemnizes,
Don’t forget networks, ties and prisons,
Where you volunteer you enslave.
Well, if the hair to celebrate you wear,
More than the rays of beautiful Titan,
What merit you will find, what perfections!
Tell the soul, oblivious to rest,
Nothing gulfs of fiery and pure light,
In crespa storm of undoso gold.

Fragment of the work