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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
At first sight, Fray Luis's attitude towards his own poetry seems puzzling. In the dedication he wrote for his collection of original poems and sacred and secular translations he assumes the thin disguise of ‘Luis Mayor’ and, as the name implies (‘mayor’ can mean ‘adult’, ‘grown-up’), introduced his poems as an indulgent father viewing his youthful aberrations:
Entre las ocupaciones de mis estudios en mi mocedad, y casi en mi niñez, se me cayeron como de entre las manos estas obrecillas, a las cuales me apliqué más por inclinatión de mi estrella que por juicio o voluntad.
(Obras II, 737)Among the occupations of my studies in my youth, almost in my childhood, these little works slipped as it were out of my hands, and I applied myself to them more by the inclination of my star than through judgement or will.
He pretends to have been persuaded to gather them together by an old friend who, through the allusions made to his suffering, must also be Fray Luis. The dedication has a light, playful tone and need not be taken at face value; it is more in the nature of a conventional disclaimer, in which the older, wiser author apologizes for the follies of his younger self, rather as in ‘Padre del siglo futuro’ Marcelo regrets his inability to forsake his ‘less useful’ works. Yet it is not devoid of serious comment.
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