Here is a Spanish contribution to "sonnets about sonnets". I would adventure that no Spanish schoolchild ever memorises what are the metric rules for a sonnet. It is much easier to memorise this one, and then to work them out from there...
The sonnet is by Lope de Vega, a sixteenth century Spanish poet. This is a translation done by Alix Ingber, a professor of Spanish at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. They are found at
http://sonnets.spanish.sbc.edu/Vega_Repente.html Soneto de repente
Un soneto me manda hacer Violante,
que en mi vida me he visto en tal aprieto;
catorce versos dicen que es soneto,
burla burlando van los tres delante.
Yo pensé que no hallara consonante
y estoy a la mitad de otro cuarteto,
mas si me veo en el primer terceto,
no hay cosa en los cuartetos que me espante.
Por el primer terceto voy entrando,
y parece que entré con pie derecho
pues fin con este verso le voy dando.
Ya estoy en el segundo y aun sospecho
que voy los trece versos acabando:
contad si son catorce y está hecho.
Instant Sonnet
A sonnet Violante bids me write,
such grief I hope never again to see;
they say a sonnet's made of fourteen lines:
lo and behold, before this line go three.
I thought that I could never get this far,
and now I'm halfway into quatrain two;
but if at the first tercet I arrive,
I'll have no fear: there's nothing I can't do!
The tercets I have just begun to pen;
I know I must be headed the right way,
for with this line I finish number one.
Now I am in the second, and suspect
that I have written nearly thirteen lines:
count them, that makes fourteen, and look -- it's done.
(©Alix Ingber, 1995)
Marianna
