Rhymes of 1871 |
We know that Gustavo was a follower of Alberto Lista and friend of another Sevillian Narciso Campillo and of Julio Nombela from Madrid, whom he met in Seville.
It was with them that he wrote his first literary essays, partially conserved, and with whom he decided to go to Madrid in 1854.
Life in the capital involved a few years of misery and hunger. The theatre and zarzuela (light opera) were the genres which allowed one to earn a modest living. Then the History of the Temples of Spain project arose, which had to be interrupted due to lack of subsidies after the first volume was published in 1857. |
Photograph of
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer |
During these years, Gustavo met the artist Julia Espín, although little is known about their friendship. Also during this time, he suffered a life-threatening illness, the origin of which has been disputed.
In 1859, the future Rhyme XIII was published in the magazine El Nene and in 1860, Rhyme XV in the Album of fashionable young ladies and couriers. The same year saw the start of his literary letters in El Contemporáneo, where he edited his Prologue to Solitude by Augusto Ferrán in 1861, a book of poems which imitated the popular verse. Here, Bécquer expressed his ideas about poetry and its different types. This year saw the appearance of Rhymes LXI, XXIII and LXII. He married Casta Esteban from Soria, whom he met during his travels around Soria and Aragon. They were to have several children and a turbulent relationship and various separations and a brief final reunion.
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Rhyme XV,
according to the
Book of the Sparrows |
By 1868, Gustavo had published various pieces of prose - Legends, the Letters from my Cell-; the future Rhymes XXVII, V, XI, XXIV, II, XVI and LXIXIX and finally, he re-edited Rhymes XV and XXIII twice. During his lifetime, only Rhyme IV would be published, in 1870.
Portrait of Bécquer
by his brother Valeriano |
1868 was the year which precipitated the crisis. The minister
González Bravo, who was willing to publish Bécquer´s Poetry at his own cost, lost the poet´s manuscript as a consequence of the ransacking of his house during the Revolution of that year. Gustavo´s marriage ended for good and father lived with his children, accompanied by his brother Valeriano, whose personal situation was very similar to that of the poet´s.
In Toledo, in 1869, Gustavo tried to recuperate his lost poems from memory, which he copied into a manuscript entitled Book of the Sparrows and which was practically lost in the National Library in Madrid from its acquisition in 1896 until 1914. |
Cover of
Book of the Sparrows
(on click Rhyme I) |
In September 1870, his brother Valeriano died, which plunged Gustavo into a crisis he was never to be able to come out of. His wife returned to his side, and in December the poet became gravely ill. He died on the 22nd December of that year in Claudio Coello Street, in Madrid.
Gustavo Adolfo draw |
As a result of his death and in order to help his widow and fatherless children, his friends published some Works, some of which were published in 1871 in two volumes. The LXXVI Rhymes took up a few pages in the second volume.
The Book of the Sparrows, which was intended to be a source for the edition, contained three more poems which were not included in the Works of 1871, but were published under the control and care of his friend Ramón Rodríguez Correa.
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4.b.- Bécquer´s poetry impressed from the outset. The charm of his verses is inexplicable. They speak of its evocative power, of its bareness, of its apparent simplicity, etc. What is certain is that Gustavo was a poet, painter and probably musician too. These are some of the values which can be read in his works: musical quality, imagination and a spirituality so overwhelming that it can only be explained through spiritualism, a theosophical trend which started in Spain during this epoch. The syntactic parallelism, use of personal pronouns, the conciseness and populism always found themselves depending on the deepest human values, which cannot be totally explained by talking of presymbolism. Bécquer was a man observant of the changes of his time, anxious about tongues and civilisations - he was interested in Sanskrit -, absorbed in and sensitive to nuances and feelings in his own soul. Perhaps his relationships with influential characters like Narváez and definitely González Bravo also opened paths for him to follow, which we still do not totally know today.
Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo |
5.- Apparently, Bécquer´s death created a void which could only be filled by the contribution of the new Hispano-American Modernist poetry. However, it was not all a literay desert.
We remember that several top ranking poets were still alive in 1870, like Zorrilla or Campoamor and that Rosalía de Castro still hadn´t published her masterpiece in Castilian.
The classicist poets bear mentioning, at the head of which we find Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (1856-1912) from Santander, who wrote on a wide variety of subjects, who was a follower of Horace and a critical literary influence.
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Beginning of a poem
by Zayas Beaumont |
But the most vital trend in poetry is that which we know as Premodernism, represented by names such as Ricardo Gil (1855-1908), Manuel Reina (1856-1905) from Cordoba, Salvador Rueda (1857-1933) from Malaga, or Antonio de Zayas Beaumont (1871-1941). With these we were to see a new aesthetic doctrine and a new century.
D.Miguel Pérez Rosado.
Ph. D. in Hispanic Philology.
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