Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Life and Romantic Works

A Spanish poet and storyteller, born in Seville in 1836, Bécquer is one of the most important figures of Romanticism. His Rimas are considered the starting point of modern poetry in Spanish, alongside his contributions to studio arts and painting.

His personal life was marked by unfortunate love.

Literary Contributions

He drafted "Letters from My Cell," a collection of beautiful scenic descriptions, and "Letters to a Woman," in which he expressed his theories on poetry and love.

He struggled financially, working for small newspapers before moving to larger publications where he wrote social commentary and his famous legends. By 1867, he wrote his famous Rimas and prepared them for publication. However, following the Revolution of 1868, he lost the manuscript and had to reconstruct it, in part, from memory.

He died at 34 from a serious illness, likely tuberculosis.

The Rimas and Legends

The Rimas, a collection of seventy-six poems, were published the following year under the original title "The Book of Sparrows." These short poems utilize assonant verses to explore:

• Lived experience and memory
• Transformed feelings
• Love and disappointment
• Desire to escape, despair, and death

The Legends bring together all of Bécquer's prose narratives. Originally published in newspapers, they reveal an important aspect of Romanticism, characterized by a spirit of the mysterious, the supernatural, and the magical.

Legacy and Structure

Bécquer's literary reputation is primarily based on his Rimas. While eighty-six compositions exist today, seventy-nine were first published in 1871 by friends who made corrections and altered the order of the original manuscript, which is now kept in the National Library of Madrid.

The content of the Rimas is divided into four groups:

• Rhymes I to XI: Reflections on poetry and literary creation.
• Rhymes XII to XXIX: Love and its effects on the poet's soul.
• Rhymes XXX to LI: Disappointment and disillusionment.
• Rhymes LII to LXXXVI: The poet facing death, lost love, and the world.