“Acoged blandamente mi suspiro”: El beso de almas en la poesía petrarquista española del siglo XVI

Abstract

The study of the soul-in-kiss motif in 16th century Spanish petrarchist poetry in relation to the main Neoplatonic treatises of the Renaissance (Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Bembo, Castiglione, Leo the Hebrew) allows the formulation of a hypothesis regarding Neoplatonism, the “official” doctrine on love of 16th century petrarchism. Michel Foucault argues that in Plato’s Symposium there is a confrontation between love as the quest for the self in the other through sexual intercourse (the androgynous conception) as opposed to love as the quest for truth beyond the other and his/her body (the Diotimic conception). In the comment of sonnets by Gregorio Silvestre, Fernando de Herrera and Francisco de Aldana, it will be pointed out how the treatment of the kiss shows the choice for one or the synthesis of the two conceptions just as Renaissance Neoplatonism understood them. Moreover, the kiss is very adequate to explore love doctrines, for it is the encounter of body and breath, which is spirit and language at the same time. Therein the comment of a chanson by Francisco de Figueroa where the kiss is the linguistic exchange between lovers.