line 4: Leiva is a fictional name for the “friend” and the poem’s addressee, i.e., the mine. line 42 [47]: desvelo can also mean “vigilance,” “worry,” “anxiety.” 11 El reloj de arena / The hourglass [#139]: This poem first appeared in the Segunda parte de las Flores de poetas ilustres de España (1611). Like many of his baroque contemporaries, Quevedo was fascinated by clocks and other time-keeping devices. See also Reloj de campanilla [#140], El reloj de sol [#141], and, in a satiric vein, the wonderful sonnet, Fragilidad de la vida, representada en el mísero donaire y moralidad de un candil y reloj juntamente [#552]. In the Renaissance, the hourglass was a reliable means of measuring time at sea; sometimes it appeared on pirate flags as a sign to potential victims that their time was up. Hourglasses were also common images on coffins in early modern England. In praising the poem’s beauty, Crosby (PV ) points to the analogous image of polvo in “Love constant beyond death” (poem 30). line 1: contar can mean both to count and to narrate. line 4: Here jornada is a “road that can be walked in a day.” line 10: This is a typically Quevedean conflation of space and time. line 36: For all its brilliance, the final conceit describing a metamorphosis of sand / dust into glass offers no greater security for the speaker. 12 Juicio moral de los cometas / Moral verdict on comets / quintillas [#148]: A foe of all forms of superstition and charlatanry, Quevedo marks here a fundamental epistemological tension in the baroque between an astrological worldview and more rationalist, astronomical one. (He also enjoyed mocking alchemists.) Intriguingly, he uses quintillas (a popular verse form that has stanzas of five lines rhyming in consonance according to various patterns) to skewer popular beliefs about comets, which were commonly treated as prodigies or augurs of doom. The themes of this poem are also explored in the satirical La presunción vana de los cometas [#525]. A more conventional Renaissance take on the effects of comets is epitomized by Calpurnia’s lines in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “When beggars die there are no comets seen; / The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes” (2.2.30–31). lines 24–25: Quevedo’s pen often targeted the quackery of doctors. See, for example, Médico que para un mal que no quita, receta muchos [#544] or The Dream of Hell in the Sueños.
198