Góngora and the Blur Aesthetic. Once again the Sonnet to El Greco

Abstract

Combining philology and philosophy, this article analyses the aesthetics of formlessness in Góngora and El Greco taking as point of departure the well-known sonnet “An Inscription for the Tombstone of Domenikos Greco”. The paper is divided into five parts: 1) a critical review of the scholarship around the sonnet underlining the systematic misunderstanding of the specialized artistic term “softness” or morbidezza in the phrase “soft brush”; 2) a step-by-step explanation of the development of the concept of formlessness in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian and Spanish artistic theory; 3) an analysis of formlessness in Gongora’s sonnet; 4) and a comparison between Morpheus dream and the pittura di macchie. 5) The fifth and last section makes a plea on behalf of the aesthetics of formlessness and invites the reader not to interpret Góngora over and beyond his quasi-mystical babbling. From a methodological point of view, the paper would like to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between traditional philology and aesthetics.