Life and Rhymes of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: A Poetic Journey

Bécquer's Biography

Two constants dominated the short life of the greatest Spanish lyrical poet of the nineteenth century: poverty and suffering. Gustavo Adolfo Domínguez Bastida was born in Seville, Andalusia, in 1836, to a respectable but financially modest family. His father, José Domínguez Bécquer Isausti, was a painter of some distinction, and his mother, Joaquina Bastida Vargas. Both brothers later adopted the surname Bécquer.

His father died when Gustavo was only five, and four years later, his mother passed away. At eighteen, he moved to Madrid, enduring hardship while writing articles and inconsequential plays. At twenty-one, he contracted tuberculosis.

Later, after attending the Nautical School of San Telmo, he lived with his godmother, Manuela Monahay, a cultured woman of fortune. Initially working with various journals, he founded the short-lived magazine Artistic Spain. In 1857, he suffered a bout of hemoptysis, an ailment that plagued him for the rest of his life. While recovering in a monastery, he wrote his famous Letters from My Cell for several newspapers.

Back in Madrid, he met Julia Espín, the daughter of a Conservatory professor and organist at the royal palace. He fell deeply in love, but the affair was brief, likely due to his illness. He sought treatment from Dr. Francisco Esteban and subsequently married the physician's daughter, Casta, with whom he had a son. For his health, they moved to Cadiz, but later separated due to an alleged affair between Casta and Bécquer's brother. Bécquer died in Madrid on December 22, 1870, at the age of thirty-four.

Characteristics of Bécquer's Rhymes

Debate continues as to whether Bécquer's poetry belongs to Post-Romanticism or Pre-Modernism. While he bares his feelings, he also serves as an inspiration for Modernists. His poetry is honest and unadorned, using only the necessary resources to create sound, musicality, and rhythm, often employing anaphora, parallelism, and gradation, as seen in Rhyme IV and Rhyme XII.

Another key characteristic is the absence of proper names. The poet uses "I" to represent himself and "you" to address the subject of his poetry. Bécquer blends popular verse forms (couplets and songs) with religious verses. Most of his rhymes combine octosyllabic and heroic verse lines, forming stanzas of no more than eight verses, grouped into one, two, three, or four stanzas.

Bécquer's Work: Rimas

Although he lived during the Realism era, Bécquer was a Romantic author, out of step with his time. Romanticism, a dominant European movement in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, emphasized individual expression and independence from classical precepts.

Dissatisfied with their surroundings, Romantic artists sought refuge in their inner selves, exploring intimacy (feelings, emotions, and dreams), rebelling against constraints on freedom, and resisting limits on imagination. They clashed with a hostile reality indifferent to their dreams, leading to deep disappointment and pessimism.

Key Features of Romanticism:

• Individualism and subjectivism
• The search for the singular, original, and unique
• Defense of freedom in life and art, implying rebellion
• Exaltation of feelings, sensitivity, and imagination
• Rejection of reason
• Presence of inaccessible, wild landscapes reflecting the poet's feelings