Spanish Literature: Bécquer's Rhymes and Clarín's La Regenta

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and His Rhymes

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born in 1836 and who died in 1870, belonged to the Romantic movement of the first half of the nineteenth century in Spain. This period was historically marked by three events that determined the literary tradition and the orientation of the authors: the War of Independence, the reign of Fernando VII, and the reign of Elizabeth II. The latter's start was stormy due to power struggles that generated political instability. Romanticism is characterized by the rejection of reality and escape into an imaginary world, the analysis of privacy, defense of the author's freedom, and the importance of landscape and environment.

Bécquer's Rhymes were written between 1857 and 1868 but were not published until after his death, in 1871. Bécquer started writing after he arrived in Madrid in 1854, first as a journalist for Historia de los Templos de España, and then later with his Legends and, in 1863, Letters from My Cell.

Bécquer's poetry, epitomized in his Rhymes, is intimate, delicate, sensitive, and dreamlike. His poetry is devoid of artificiality. We can structure the Rhymes thematically into four groups:

• The first group (Rhymes I to XI) exalts poetic creation as something irrational and subjective, and love as something ideal, ethereal, and unattainable.
• The second group (Rhymes XII to XXIX) focuses on love, hope, lived fully, and reflects the idealized and virtuous beloved.
• The third group (Rhymes XXX to LI) presents love as a failure, and the woman becomes the executioner of the poet's illusions.
• The fourth and last group (Rhymes LII to LXXIX) reflects the loneliness and anguish experienced by living in a hostile world.

Regarding style, it is necessary to highlight the brevity and condensation of the Rhymes. The strophic form is free, with a predominance of seven-syllable lines and heroic verse, with assonance being the dominant rhyme. Bécquer's tone is conventional and intimate, symbolic, and subjective, reflecting his feelings. Despite the apparent simplicity, the work reflects formal rigor and constructive care in its compositions.

In conclusion, the figure and work of Bécquer are crucial in later literature, influencing both the Modernists and the Symbolists.

Leopoldo Alas "Clarín" and La Regenta

Leopoldo Alas, who signed all his works under the pseudonym "Clarín," is the author of the most important and representative novel of the nineteenth century, La Regenta. This, along with Su Único Hijo and several short stories, constitutes his entire literary work.

La Regenta tells the story of Ana Ozores, a beautiful woman full of feelings and passions, trapped in a hypocritical and conservative society, Vetusta (a pseudonym for Oviedo). Ana Ozores, even knowing that marriage would condemn her to subordination to her husband, chooses to marry the suitor she should not: Don Víctor Quintanar, the Regent of the Provincial Court. Later, she will be disputed between an ambitious canon, Don Fermín de Pas, and Álvaro Mesías, a provincial Casanova who has begun his conquest as if it were a walled castle.

The novel has two distinct parts and a very noticeable novelistic pace. The first part happens in just three days, indicating a much slower pace. In the second part, three years pass, so you can see a much more hurried pace.

It is noteworthy in this novel how the reader becomes immersed in the life of the Vetusta gentry in a way so real and vivid. Through the judge's wife, her old and kind husband, her lover, the clergy, and the wide range of characters, we enter the life of the ancient provincial city. The author confessed to having been inspired by the walkers of the streets.

The end of the book could be none other than the inevitability of a realistic novel: any expression of desire is dangerous because it can alter the social order and should be punished. Ana is rejected by Fermín and, therefore, by the "good society." Her lover is punished with banishment.