Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida (Seville, February 17, 1836-Madrid, December 22, 1870), better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, was a Spanish poet and narrator of Post-Romanticism. Although in life he already achieved a certain fame, it was only after his death and after the publication of all his writings that he obtained the prestige he has today.
His Rhymes and Legends, a collection of poems and stories gathered together, constitute one of the most popular books in Hispanic literature.
Family origins
The surname Bécquer or Bécker was and is quite common in Germany and Flanders. It comes from the trade of "baker" (in Dutch bakker and in German bäcker). Around 1588, the Catholic Enrique Bécquer moved with his sons Miguel and Adam from the German city of Moers, hotly contested during the Eighty Years' War, to Seville. Miguel and Adam were buried next to the altar of Santa Justa and Rufina de la Seville Cathedral, completed under the patronage of this family in 1622. Miguel acquired farmland in Tomares and the Troya de Utrera farmhouse, as well as houses in Seville. He married Catalina Vants, of Flemish origin, and they had Guillermo as their son, who was a twenty-fourth knight of Seville (equivalent to a councilor). With Guillermo the family reached its greatest economic peak and his children entered military orders or managed to hold positions in the Inquisition.
The Bécquers lost social status in the 18th century and in the first decades of the XIX. When Gustavo was born in 1836, the family assets had been diluted by breaking the chain of estates and they could no longer live off the income.
The first familiar artist was Juan José Bécquer, active engraving at the end of the XVIIIth century.
The painter José Domínguez Insausti, Gustavo's father, took the surname Bécquer from his paternal family when signing his works, evoking his origins and the illustrious past of his family. He was considered one of the most outstanding Sevillian painters of his time, he painted traditional paintings and portraits. Many of these works were exported to England or bought by English travelers.He also dedicated himself to teaching, teaching painting to Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer, Manuel Cabral Bejarano, Eduardo Cano de la Peña and others. José achieved a good economic situation thanks to his work as an artist. On January 25, 1827, she married Joaquina Bastida Vargas, with whom she had eight children: Eduardo (in 1828), Estanislao (in 1830), Jorque Félix (in 1832), Valeriano (in 1833), Gustavo Adolfo (in 1836), Ricardo (date unknown), Alfredo (date unknown) and José (posthumous, in 1841). Three maids and a servant were in charge of taking care of them. The family owned a car, which was a luxury back then.
Both Gustavo Adolfo and his brother, the painter Valeriano Bécquer, adopted Bécquer as their first surname when signing their works.
Biography
In Seville
Gustavo Adolfo was born in Seville on February 17, 1836, at 28 Conde de Barajas street (formerly 9 Ancha de San Lorenzo street). He was baptized in the parish of San Lorenzo. His godmother was Manuela Monnehay Moreno, of French origin. The family moved to various homes over time. In 1838 they moved to number 27 Calle del Potro. The father died at the age of 36, on the 26th January 1841, when he was at his home at number 2 Alcoy street, then called Las Cruces street. Gustavo was five years old then.
There are indications that Manuela Monnehay helped her orphaned godson financially. Her father had her house and a perfumery in the Plaza del Duque and she would inherit these properties in 1849.
In 1841 Gustavo began his studies at the Colegio de San Francisco de Paula, which was also located in Plaza del Duque. On March 1, 1846, at the age of ten, Gustavo Adolfo went on to study as an intern at the Colegio Naval de San Telmo de Sevilla, where his brother Estanislao had studied since 1843. In San Telmo, it coincided that a disciple of the poet Alberto Lista, Francisco Rodríguez Zapata, was a teacher at that time. He was also a teacher, specifically French, Italian Francisco Zoleo.
In San Telmo, Gustavo met his great friend and companion of literary efforts Narciso Campillo, also an orphan of his father. Campillo taught him to swim in the Guadalquivir and to handle the sword. Even at such a young age the two begin to write together, for the first time, the "frightful and crazy drama" Los conjurados, which came to be represented at school on a festival, began a jocular novel entitled El bujarrón en el desierto. One afternoon, in addition, they burned thousands of verses that they had composed.
On February 27, 1847, the Bécquer brothers also lost their mother. In July 1847, by Royal Order of Isabel II, the Colegio de San Telmo closed.
Gustavo and his siblings went to live at the house of their maternal aunt, María Bastida, married to Juan Vargas. The house was located at number 37 of Alameda de Hércules. Estanislao was released from military service for having to support five brothers under the age of 16 and began working at the Board of Works of the Port, giving with his salary sustenance for all of them. At that time his brother Ricardo had died and, shortly after, two brothers left for Cuba.
Gustavo approached his brother Valeriano, from whom he had separated while he was in San Telmo. He was also welcomed into the home of her godmother Manuela, a woman who had had the opportunity to travel and who had a large library in her house. In it, Gustavo was able to read the classics (Horacio and Shakespeare) and the contemporaries (José Zorrilla, Víctor Hugo, Lord Byron, Walter Scott).
In 1848, the young Gustavo tried to compose a poem in homage to Alberto Lista, who had died that year, but did not finish it.
At this stage, Valeriano and Gustavo came under the protection of their relative, Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer. This was a successful painter who wanted to guide them towards painting. In 1848 Gustavo entered the School of Fine Arts, then located inside the Provincial Museum. The school and the museum were directed by Antonio Cabral Bejarano. In 1850 he abandoned his studies at the School, which seemed routine to him, and went to Joaquín's workshop, where his brother Valeriano had been for a couple of years. As Joaquín was a painter for the Duke of Montpensier, his workshop was at the halt of the Palacio de San Telmo, where he had lived since 1849.
Gustavo was better at drawing than painting. Joaquín even told him "You will never be a good painter, just a bad writer". Joaquín paid for his high school studies, so called "latinidad", due to the great weight that Latin had in them.
Gustavo attended high school at the Colegio de San Diego, probably between 1851 and 1853. When he entered, his brother Valeriano was also there as a student. In San Diego, Gustavo met again with professors Francisco Rodríguez Zapata and Francisco Zoleo. This school was located on Calle de las Armas, currently called Alfonso XII.
Some works from adolescence have been preserved, most of them in the so-called Account Book. This was a book that his father used to keep track of his painting classes. When he died, Gustavo dedicated himself to filling in the pages and the blank spaces with poetry and drawings. The longest work in the Account Book is a version of Shakespeare's drama Hamlet.
There is evidence, through his diary, that Bécquer had feelings for some girls during his adolescence. For example, he wrote in her diary that when he saw a girl at the inauguration of the Triana Bridge on February 23, 1852, he felt attracted to her and also wrote a poem to a certain "Miss Lenona" # 3. 4; that same year, regretting that he left the city. His brothers maintained relations with the daughters of Antonio Cabrera Cortés. His brother Estanislao married Adelaida Cabrera, Valeriano was Nicolasa Cabrera's boyfriend and there is a possibility, supported by biographer Rafael Montesinos, that Gustavo had an affair with Julia Cabrera, although there is no proof of this.
According to Julio Nombela, with whom the poet became friends from August 1853, Bécquer was an absolute fan of Italian opera and knew numerous arias by Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini by heart.
In 1853 Bécquer published in the Seville magazines La Aurora and El Porvenir.
The throne and the nobility was a magazine founded by the historian Manuel Ovilo y Otero in 1848 in Madrid. Ovilo was a friend of Rodríguez Zapata, Bécquer's teacher. Possibly thanks to the influence of this professor, Bécquer was able to publish a sonnet in December 1853 and a romance in March 1854 in this magazine.
Gustavo made an album of political cartoons, in which Valeriano also collaborated, entitled Los contrastes or Album of the revolution of July 1854, by a patriot. It consists of 120 plates and 131 sheets. The album is critical and mocking of those who participated in that event, known as the Vicalvarada.
Already in Madrid, in 1859, he described Seville as "the lost Eden" and he spoke of it as & # 34; the city in which I was born and of which I always kept the memory so alive & # 34;. Two of his legends are set in Seville. The one about Maese Pérez the organist, about an organist who played in the Convent of Santa Inés, and the one about La Venta de los Gatos, about a painter who goes to a tavern from the San Jerónimo neighborhood where they drank, sang and danced. It coincided that his father, José Bécquer, had painted a picture of the Venta de los Gatos. The Venta de los Gatos still exists, although it is abandoned. In 1928 a commemorative plaque by José Suárez Durán was placed on it, which it was stolen in 2022. In its vicinity a monument was placed with a bust of Bécquer made in 1967 by the sculptor Antonio Illanes Rodríguez.
In Madrid
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Julio Nombela, and Narciso Campillo began composing verses with the intention of going to Madrid to publish them. His friend Julio Nombela left for Madrid in June 1854. In October 1854 Gustavo followed him. He had 30 duros that Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer had given him. He settled in a pension at 35 Calle de la Hortaleza, in a small and poorly furnished room. trip his mother had to come to take care of him and then she returned with him to Seville. In November 1854 Valeriano arrived in Madrid with a sum that Juan Vargas had given him and which allowed him and Gustavo to settle in a pension in the Plaza de Santo Domingo. He also brought Gustavo a letter of introduction from the lawyer Juan José Bueno, very well connected in Seville and Madrid. Shortly after, Valeriano returned to Seville, although he would return to Madrid in 1861, remaining since then with his brother.
Campillo and Bécquer distanced themselves in 1854. Campillo ended up calling Gustavo almost illiterate, merely intuitive, lacking in culture and studies. Campillo boasted of having trained better than him at the Provincial Institute of Seville and of having taught him some things that he learned there.He also said that Bécquer was dirty and careless, which is denied by his manifest interest in dressing well.
In 1859 he wrote that his feeling upon arriving in Madrid was very negative: "I found myself alone in the world". In 1861 he wrote: "Madrid, dirty, black, ugly as a emaciated skeleton, shivering under its immense shroud of snow." And in 1865 he wrote the following: & # 34; We are already in court. I have needed to be told and repeated a hundred times to believe it. Is this Madrid? Is this the paradise that I dreamed of in my village? My God! What a horrible disappointment!". To these sensations he had to add the miseries of bohemian life.
A friend from Seville who was also in Madrid, the writer Luis García de Luna, recommended a pension where a woman named Soledad treated the guests very well, and Gustavo moved there. Bécquer, García Luna and Nombela formed a trio of young writers who wrote on request. One of these was writing the biographies of the deputies for Jean Gabriel Hugelmann.
In Madrid, Bécquer also resumed his friendship with the civil servant Federico Álcega, whom he knew from San Telmo.
In the autumn of 1854 he became part of the editorial staff of the magazine La España musical y literaria, together with García de Luna and Nombela. The editors of the magazine assumed the edition of a book dedicated to the poet Manuel José Quintana. This work was given as a gift to those present at an act of Quintana's coronation as a national poet by Queen Isabel II in the Senate on March 25, 1855. The Bécquer poem included in this work is entitled A Quintana. La corona de oro. This magazine ceased to exist, due to lack of financial resources, that same year.
In 1856 he met Ramón Rodríguez Correa. That year Bécquer wrote, along with García de Luna, the comic play La novia y el pantalón under the pseudonym Adolfo García. Madrid. The two collaborated again in 1857 on the verse libretto for La venta encantada, signed with the same pseudonym. This work, inspired by Cardenio's episode of Don Quixote, was performed for the first time as an opera with music by Miguel Planas on February 9, 1871 at the National Theater of Mexico and as a zarzuela with music by Antonio Reparaz on November 21, 1871 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid.
In 1856 Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Juan de la Puerta Vizcaíno directed an ambitious work entitled History of the temples of Spain. The objective was to describe all the temples in Spain from a historical, artistic and religious point of view. This work would be published in installments, in a luxurious and expensive format.On June 21, 1857, Bécquer and Puerta were received by Isabel II and her husband, Francisco de Asís, to whom they explained the project. The kings agreed to lead the list of subscribers and purchase a few copies for the royal library. According to Campillo, the doorway was drawn by Gustavo himself and shows architectural pieces, flowery Gothic-style images and, in the center of a lintel, the Spanish crown.
The newspaper La Época noted that the History of the Temples of Spain was under the patronage of the Patriarch of the Indies, Tomás Iglesias y Barcones. Another of the promoters was the Archbishop of Toledo, Juan José Bonel y Orbe, who died before the publication of the first installment. In this it was specified that the work had the support of 38 bishops. Among those who collaborated with their writings there were 12 historians and a group of 52 people who, for the most part, were journalists and writers. The first installment came out in the middle of August 1857, with a prologue by Bécquer.
For the History of the temples of Spain, Bécquer dedicated himself to writing temples of Toledo. He completed what Manuel de Assas had written about the cathedral, devoting himself to writing especially about the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes and also writing about other convents, churches, sanctuaries and chapels. Bécquer visited that city numerous times and got to know it thoroughly. In this city he set a story, Three Dates (1862), and four of his legends: La ajorca de oro (1861), El Cristo de la Skull (1862), The Kiss (1863) and The Passion Rose (1864).
Bécquer believes that medieval Catholic temples evoke a glorious past that must be revived through the imagination. This conception of Christian monuments is also present in the work The Genius of Christianity by François-René de Chateaubriand from 1802 and in Hegel.
In 1857 Bécquer and Rodríguez Correa began working at the Directorate of National Assets. According to Nombela, Bécquer was a clerk and was fired for drawing pictures of Shakespeare's works in his spare time.
At the same time, Eulogio Florentino Sanz was in Berlin and, on his return, published in El Museo Universal in 1857 fifteen translations of the German poet Heinrich Heine into Spanish rhymes and rhythms, which, according to testimony of Julio Nombela, turned himself and his friend Bécquer into imitators of the German romantic. Of these translations, ten belonged to the work Intermezzo lírico.
In 1858 Bécquer fell seriously ill, which caused a temporary interruption in deliveries of the Historia de los templos de España. This illness caused him great medical expenses and his friend Rodríguez Correa searched for texts de Bécquer to publish them and get him some money. It was then that he found the first of the legends, The caudillo with the red hands, about the situation in India. Rodríguez Correa worked as an editor in the newspaper La Cónica of Madrid, which published this work in eight installments, from late May to mid-June 1858. The legend was published almost simultaneously in the Barcelona newspaper La Corona, linked to Francisco Carles, who at the end of In 1857 he had bought the publishing house that published Historia de los templos de España.
Gustavo had a relationship with a young woman named Julia Espín, brunette and with black eyes, between 1858 and 1860. She lived with her family at numbers 21 and 23 of Calle de la Justa (number 5 of the current calle of the Booksellers). According to Nombela, Gustavo saw the sisters Julia and Josefina Espín for the first time leaning out on the balcony of their house, falling in love with one of them. They passed more times along the same street and were able to contemplate them again on the balcony. Nombela said that he offered to introduce her, since he knew her father, the composer Joaquín Espín y Guillén, but that Gustavo did not want to. The reality is that, as shown by an album by Julia with drawings and writings by Bécquer, both did they met. According to the writer Eusebio Blasco, Bécquer idealized Julia and fell in love with her, although this love was not reciprocated. It has been speculated that Julia became the muse of Bécquer's rhymes and it is possible that she inspired some Julia would become an opera singer in 1867, at the age of 28, and would marry someone else in 1874. In an ambum of her sister Josefina, blonde and blue-eyed, there is an autograph by Bécquer that coincides with the rhyme 63: "Wake up, I tremble when I look at you...".
Between 1859 and 1860, in collaboration with García de Luna, he made an adaptation of the novel by Víctor Hugo entitled Nuestra Señora de París as a zarzuela under the name Esmeralda, with music by the composer Joaquín Espín y Guillén. However, it was never released because it did not pass censorship. In 1874 it was renamed The Talisman.
Bécquer and García de Luna wrote the farce Distractions. It was the arrangement of a French work, Las ausencias del señor, by N. Fournier and M. Laurencin from 1836. It premiered, with music by Antonio Gordón, at the Teatro de la Zarzuela on the 2nd of May 1859 quite successfully.
In the summer of 1859, Bécquer worked for a month and a half as a literary critic in the newspaper La Época.
Bécquer was influenced by the English poet Lord Byron. In fact, his first rhyme, published in El Nene on December 17, 1859, where the verse "Your pupil is blue", was titled Imitation of Byron and is inspired by the poem I saw the cry of the English.
In 1860 the Historia de los templos de España ceased to be published, weighed down for financial reasons.
Bécquer, with his writer friends García de Luna and Rodríguez Correa and the composer Antonio Reparaz entered into a company, established in September 1860, which took over the Teatro del Circo. These would charge 10% of the collection of the tickets.
Bécquer and García de Luna wrote the play Tal para cual, premiered, with music by Lázaro Núñez Robles, at the Teatro de la Zarzuela on October 5, 1860.
Bécquer and García de Luna also wrote La Cruz del valle for the first time, with music by Antonio Reparaz, on October 22, 1860 at the Teatro del Circo. This is the most ambitious zarzuela in which Bécquer collaborated, due to its large number of actors, changes of scenery and variety of scenes.
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Between 1859 and 1860, he passionately loved a "lady of direction and management" from Valladolid, who for many years identified with Elisa Guillén, a character who is now known to be non-existent. But the mistress, whoever she was, grew tired of him and her abandonment plunged him into despair. Experts do not agree on which of them could have been his most constant muse, or if none of them, conceiving some ideal type of woman.
In 1860, with the support of the Marquis of Salamanca, the newspaper El Contemporáneo was founded, directed by José Luis Albareda and with Juan Valera as editor-in-chief. Rodríguez Correa, a friend of the Marquis of Salamanca, managed to get Bécquer given a post as editor. This newspaper, a supporter of the Moderate Party, criticized the Unión Liberal party. Bécquer regularly wrote parliamentary chronicles in El Contemporáneo. He also wrote, anonymously, three texts for this newspaper, under the name Semi-political Letters, where he criticized the Liberal Union and its leader, Leopoldo O'Donnell.
Between the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861, Bécquer published Literary Letters to a Woman in the variety section of El Contemporáneo. to write reflects on what poetry is. One of her reflections is "poetry is the feeling, and the feeling is the woman". The woman is defined as "the poetic verb made flesh". This is reminiscent of rhyme 21, in which he says:
- What is poetry, you say as you claw
- in my pupil your blue pupil;
- What is poetry! And you ask me?
- Poetry... it's you.
Bécquer met a woman named Casta Esteban Navarro. It is unknown how they met. His father, Francisco Esteban Ayllón, was a bleeding surgeon. In 1857 it is recorded that he applied a new method against "syphilitic, scrofulous, rheumatic, herpetic, etc." In 1858, it is recorded that a crecepelo ointment was sold in his house.
Bécquer asked Casta for her hand in April 1860. Gustavo and Casta were married in the church of San Sebastián in Madrid on May 19, 1861, and they had three children with her. After the wedding, Francisco Esteban, bankrupt, delinquent in the Treasury and without prestige, left Madrid and returned to his town in Soria, Noviercas.
As his wife's family was from the province of Soria and Bécquer's uncle, Curro, lived in Soria, Gustavo was closely linked to this province. Four of his legends are set in the province of Soria: El Monte de las Ánimas (1861), Los ojos verdes (1861), El rayo de luna (1862) and The Promise (1863).
In January 1861, Bécquer published in El Contemporáneo an extensive review of the book of poetry La soledad, by his friend Augusto Ferrán. In this text he establishes a difference between the "magnificent and sonorous" poetry, which was in fashion, and his own, "natural, brief, dry, springing from the soul";.
Although he was never in Catalonia, during these years he composed two legends set there: in 1861 he wrote the legend La Cruz del diablo, set in Bellver de Cerdanya, and in 1862 he wrote Creed in Dios, about a feudal lord who commits all kinds of abuses and who is punished by God. Since his description of Bellver de Cerdanya is so correct, some have come to believe that Bécquer was there between October and November from 1860 and there is a plaque from 1970 that says this in the diner where he supposedly stayed.
Between June and September 1861, Bécquer passed through the Nuevos Baños de Fitero spa, Navarra. That place is currently called Hotel Bécquer. He stayed in room 314, which has a commemorative plaque. Two of his legends are set in Navarre: El miserere (1862), set in the Monastery of Santa María la Real de Fitero, and La Cueva de la Mora (1863), a love story between a Christian and a Muslim.
On May 9, 1862, his first son, Gregorio Gustavo Adolfo, was born in Noviercas.
In 1863, under the pseudonym Adolfo Rodríguez, Bécquer and Rodríguez Correa wrote the zarzuela El nuevo Fígaro, which was an adaptation of the operetta by Luigi Ricci. It premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela on September 19, 1863 with great success.
During these years, Bécquer made contributions to various publications, among them the weekly El madrileño, published between 1860 and 1863, and to the weekly Gaceta literaria, published between 1862 and 1865.
In 1863 Bécquer and Rodríguez Correa wrote the libretto Clara de Rosenberg, based on a novel by Madame de Genlis entitled The Site of La Rochela or The Misfortune of Conscience, from 1807. It premiered as a zarzuela, with music by Luigi Ricci, on June 10, 1863 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. The play was a critical failure and was Bécquer's last play.
In 1863 Gustavo suffered a lung disease, which required him to breathe fresh air. Gustavo moved with his wife and son, as well as Valeriano and his family, to the Monastery of Veruela, located on the slopes of Moncayo, in the Aragonese province of Zaragoza. This monastery had been confiscated in 1835 and its rooms could be rented. The writer Dionisio Gamallo Fierros mentions that it was not a continuous stay, but that Gustavo was in Veruela three times between 1863 and 1864. Gustavo could have traveled to Seville in April from 1864, where he could have written a chronicle about the fair that appeared unsigned in El Contemporáneo, written by someone who said he had spent the happiest years of his life in that city. It is known with certainty who went, in mid-July 1864, with his brother Valeriano to bathe in the sea in Algorta, a neighborhood in the Basque municipality of Guecho. It was the first time that Bécquer saw the sea.There is also evidence that he was in Madrid in August 1864 and that, at the end of that month, he was a correspondent at the inauguration of the Northern Railway, from Madrid to San Sebastián. In September 1864 Gustavo was in Madrid to see if it was possible to get a public position after the change of government.
His brother Valeriano made drawings during his stay in Veruela, in some of which Gustavo Adolfo appears. The first of these drawings is dated December 1863. These were grouped into two volumes in 1864. Gustavo wrote nine letters to El Contemporáneo, being published between May 3 and October 6, 1864, with the title From my cell. In addition, two of his legends are set in Aragon: El gnomo (1863) and La corza blanca (1863).
In March 1864, a review appeared in El Contemporáneo of a concert with music by Chopin that had taken place in the Salón del Conservatorio in Madrid. The person in charge of the newspaper's musical and theater criticism at this time was Bécquer. It is said that in Chopin's education "the principles of the Sebastian Bach school predominate" and that for this reason he can be linked to the "musical movement started by Weber and Beethoven", but always highlighting his "artistic individuality".
In October 1864 Gustavo was no longer in Veruela, but had settled permanently in Madrid. In November he was appointed director of El Contemporáneo.
Bécquer was from the most conservative wing of the moderates, which was led by Luis González Bravo, and a good friendship was forged between the two. González Bravo, who also had an interest in literature, was his patron and invited him to his parties.
Luis González Bravo, who had been Minister of the Interior since September, appointed him censor of novels on December 9, 1864. This was a prevarication on his part, since the law established that the censor must have a lawyer's degree. The salary was 24,000 reais a year.
In February 1865, he left El Contemporáneo when he realized that his friends and colleagues from the newspaper, among whom was Rodríguez Correa, had come closer to the ideology of the Liberal Union.
In April 1865, the newspaper Los Tiempos was founded and Bécquer became editor. This newspaper defended the moderate government, going so far as to defend its actions on the Night of San Daniel on the 10th of April, where 14 students died due to government repression. The progressive press published that the Ministry of the Interior paid the members of the Los Tiempos newsroom with public money, specifying that Bécquer received 35,000 reais annual.
On June 20, 1865, the moderate government led by Narváez fell, which was replaced by that of O'Donnell, of the Liberal Union, and Bécquer lost his position as censor of novels.
Los Tiempos began to criticize the newspaper El Contemporáneo and the Unión Liberal government, which was also done by the republican journalists of the satirical weekly Gil Blas. O'Donnell's wife was called Manuela Bargés y Petre and, at the beginning of September 1865, Gil Blas published that she was the one who directed her husband's policy. On September 26, 1865, the first and only installment of Doña Manuela, political newspaper came out. A good part of its cover had a drawing of the Republican Francisco Ortego where a lady appeared giving orders to the ministers. This publication was highly controversial and was soon linked to the political faction of González Bravo, with the newspaper Los Tiempos and with Bécquer. Bécquer denied in several Madrid newspapers that he had anything to do with Doña Manuela, political newspaper.
On September 15, 1865, his second son, Jorge Bécquer, was born in Madrid.
From 1865 Bécquer increased his collaborations in El museo universal, an apolitical publication of "sciences, literature, arts, industry and useful knowledge". In January 1866 Bécquer was appointed director of this publication, holding this position until July of that year.
In July 1866 O'Donnell suppressed a military uprising in the San Gil Barracks with numerous executions, but he did not have the support of the queen and ended up resigning. On July 10, the moderate Narváez returned to government and González Bravo returned to the Ministry of the Interior. On July 12, González Bravo reappointed Bécquer as censor of novels. The official Manuel Tomé Vercruysse opposed the appointment because Bécquer did not have the necessary law degree. González Bravo said that it was not necessary, because according to a royal decree approved by him, it was enough that he be a person of "noria suitability." The official objected again, so González Bravo argued that the print censor did have to be a lawyer but that it was not necessary for theater and soap operas to be, and that the rule did not apply to Bécquer because he was not a first-timer, but that he had already been a censor and was recovering his post. Finally, Bécquer took office as censor of novels on July 23.
At the beginning of 1867, Bécquer was appointed by the government as a member of the jury of the painting section of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts.
At the end of September 1867, García de Luna, then editor of El Imparcial, died. Bécquer and Nombela accompanied his coffin and participated in a meeting in the editorial office of El Imparcial in which a commission was formed to publish all his works and help his family. In February 1868 the cartoonist died Federico Ruiz, who had collaborated with Bécquer on the illustration for El Museo universal, and Bécquer wrote an emotional obituary.
Bécquer decided to found a Society of Writers for "mutual aid" in case of illness or to help families in case of death of someone. Bécquer, Nombela and other writers met for this at the Ateneo de Madrid. The meeting was attended by González Bravo. The society received 200 adhesions. However, in September 1868 a revolution took place, González Bravo went into exile and the management commission for the constitution of the society agreed in October to postpone its creation, to adapt the statutes to the new environment. For the publication La Discusión, the company's project failed because González Bravo had a hand in it. In 1871, when Bécquer had already passed away, the Society of Writers and Artists was created, with 72 members and Nombela on the board of directors.
Between the end of 1867 and the beginning of 1868, Bécquer was criticized by the neo-Catholics, a Spanish conservative movement, for having allowed the publication of the novel El señor Camors, by the Frenchman Octave Feuillet.
In August 1868, Bécquer was in San Sebastián. In September 1868, a few days before the revolution and perhaps anticipating what was going to happen, Bécquer left his position as censor of novels.
In September 1868, a revolution took place that dethroned Elizabeth II. The queen and González Bravo went into exile in France.
Francisco Laiglesia said that around June 1868 he gave Bécquer an album so that he could write everything that occurred to him. Bécquer wrote on the cover Book of Sparrows. The section destined to house poems Bécquer wrote "Poems I remember from the lost book", referring to his book of poems lost in the revolution of 1868. The Book of Sparrows is the main existing manuscript of Bécquer and allows us to have the autograph version of the Rhymes. The order of the poems was not respected in the posthumous edition made by the poet's friends in 1871, where they were arranged by subject and numbered with Roman numerals.
González Bravo must have had a copy of the Rhymes, because in March 1868 it is known that he was going to write the prologue. In September the revolution took place and he went into exile. In October, more than fifty boxes and trunks belonging to the former minister were discovered deposited in a house in the Salamanca district of Madrid. They contained objects and documents that, after being inventoried and deposited for a time at the civil government headquarters, were returned to the relatives of González Bravo. Therefore, it does not seem likely that Bécquer's work would have been lost in this way. Perhaps González Bravo took the work with him into exile in France, where he died.
Gustavo's niece, Julia Bécquer, said that in 1868 her uncle brought her gifts from Paris. This is the only testimony of this trip to the French capital. For her, the reason for the trip had been to meet González Bravo, who was in Paris in November. At this time, the ex-minister met with Isabel II and arranged with others for the publication of a pamphlet entitled Isabel II and Spain, intended to justify his recovery of the crown. It is possible that Bécquer had participated in the writing of this brochure.
According to Julia Bécquer, in Noviercas a Casta ex-boyfriend named Hilarión Borobia, nicknamed El Rubio, looked at her constantly and she looked back at him. Gustavo realized that "mute dialogue of love" and both had a duel in the town square. There were tensions between Gustavo and Casta that broke out in the summer of 1868 in Noviercas, where the families of Gustavo and Valeriano were. Julia Bécquer says that Gustavo left the family home with his two children to go to a large house. Casta, five months pregnant, showed up at the house to try to get her children back, but Gustavo prevented her from doing so and they had a strong clash. According to Julia, a hatred towards the Bécquer brothers developed in the town and some even paid two people to kill them. Gustavo and Valeriano moved to Uncle Curro's house in Segovia, safe and sound.
Between Gustavo and Casta letters were exchanged in a friendly tone, so everything seems to indicate that there was a cordial separation. On December 15, 1868, his son Emilio Eusebio would be born in Noviercas, and Gustavo recognized him as his own in the baptism certificate, so the theories that the son was the result of infidelity have no basis.
To avoid reprisals from the new revolutionary regime, Gustavo Adolfo and Valeriano, with their respective children, settled in Toledo between October 1868 and December 1869, in house number 8 on San Ildefonso street. According to Julia Bécquer, Gustavo had an affair with a very beautiful woman from Toledo named Alejandra.
The Bécquer brothers settled in the Quinta del Espíritu Santo in Madrid at the end of 1869. Their neighbors were Francisco Laiglesia and Augusto Ferrán.
On one of his trips between Toledo and Madrid, Bécquer spoke with the editor Eduardo Gasset about creating a publication that would give priority to historical and artistic issues from a patriotic perspective. Thus, at the beginning of 1870 La Ilustración de Madrid was born, directed by Gustavo Adolfo and featuring drawings by Valeriano. The newspapers El pensamiento español and La regeneración accused La Ilustración de Madrid of being favored by the government, which paid 125 monthly subscriptions. In addition, La Ilustración de Madrid received an annual subsidy of 12,000 reais for "protection of the art of Spanish drawing and engraving," while La Ilustración Española y Americana received no grant. To solve the latter, the general director of Public Instruction, Manuel Merelo, divided the amount in two and distributed it between both magazines, but La Ilustración de Madrid did not agree with the decision and did not accept that decision. amount.
At the beginning of 1870, Gustavo also took over the direction of El Entreacto, a four-page weekly magazine that included current information on plays, operas, zarzuelas, etc. It was presented as an organ of the theater agency Araujo y Compañía. The first issue came out on December 3 and contained the first installment of Bécquer's story entitled A tragedy and an angel.
In the summer of 1870, according to Julia Bécquer, her father Valeriano had a liver disease and was in bed for about a week. He was treated by the doctor Santiago Encinas. On September 23, 1870 he passed away. According to the death certificate, his death was due to acute hepatitis. The impact of the event on Gustavo's spirit was very strong. Francisco Laiglesia made the arrangements for the burial and paid the expenses. Valeriano was buried in the cemetery of the Sacramental Brotherhood of San Lorenzo, in the Madrid neighborhood of Puente de Toledo.
Valeriano and Gustavo's wife, Casta, did not get along and her family had attributed the breakup of their marital relations to her. Gustavo sided with his brother. After Valeriano's death, Casta and Gustavo reconciled.
The Marquis of Salamanca gave Ramón Rodríguez Correa a house free of charge as a wedding present. This was on the second floor of number 7 (today 25) Claudio Coello street. Through the mediation of Rodríguez Correa, the marquis gave another house to Bécquer, located on the third floor of the same street and number. Bécquer moved with his family to the new home in October 1870.
Rodríguez Correa indicates that Gustavo was in Toledo for three days in December 1870, twenty days before he died. Therefore, it can be deduced that he was fine then. Upon his return to Madrid, he must have fallen seriously ill and on December 10 he was still in bed. It is possible that his illness was related to a cold wave that took place in Europe in December 1870, which can cause lung diseases, colds, liver inflammation, etc. On December 6, there was a heavy snowfall in Madrid and temperatures were minus 5 degrees Celsius at night and 9 degrees Celsius at noon. On December 22 there were torrential rains that flooded numerous streets of the city and then there was a greater snowfall than on the 6th. Bécquer died on December 22. The doctor Joaquín de Higuera, professor at the Faculty of Medicine, attributed Gustavo's death on the death certificate to "a large liver infarction, complicated by a malignant or pernicious intermittent fever".
He was buried the following day in niche number 470 of the Patio del Cristo, in the Sacramental de San Lorenzo y San José cemetery in Madrid. On April 9, 1913, the remains of Gustavo and Valeriano were transferred by train to Seville and were buried in the university crypt, which is called the Pantheon of Illustrious Sevillanos. Bécquer's wish, manifested in life, was to be buried in Seville next to the Guadalquivir and in 2013 a cenotaph dedicated to Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer next to the Guadalquivir river, in the Alamillo Park.
On December 23, 1870, the painter José Casado del Alisal offered his studio as the venue for a meeting to publicize Bécquer's work and help his family financially. The press spread the call. The meeting took place on December 24. A commission was created to edit the works of Bécquer, which included José Casado del Alisal, Eduardo Cano, Augusto Ferrán, Narciso Campillo and Eduardo Mariátegui. Campillo's contributions to the edition of Bécquer's works were minimal. On December 29, the preparation of the texts began. The Rhymes were grouped together in the Book of Sparrows. With regard to prose, Ramón Rodríguez Correa helped to compile forgotten texts published in newspapers or magazines, most of them without a signature. Bécquer's Works began to be sold in the summer of 1871 and the economic benefits went to the widows of Gustavo and Valeriano. In the economic aspect, donations were collected in Madrid and Seville. Notable were the donations of 2,000 reales from the engineer Manuel Pastor y Landero, 1,000 reales from Amadeo I, 1,000 reales from the landowner José Suárez Argudín and 500 reales from the politician Manuel Silvela.
Bécquer's Works were republished numerous times. By 1915 they had already gone through eight editions, despite the emergence of new literary trends at the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX.
Analysis of his work
When Bécquer writes, realism is in full swing; Other authors attached to this trend (Campoamor, Tamayo and Baus, Echegaray) share the public's favor. Triumphant poetry is tailor-made for the bourgeois society that will consolidate the Restoration, and it is prosaic, pompous and falsely transcendent. But a notable portion of lyricists resisted joining that current, and they also found the poetry of the Esprondean lyric, that of the romantic heyday, empty and rhetorical, which they still found cultivated with general taste in authors such as José Zorrilla. The Romanticism that attracts them is no longer that of French or English origin, but German, especially that of Heine, which they read in French translation —especially that of Gérard de Nerval— or Spanish —by Eulogio Florentino Sanz, a friend of Bécquer—. These authors form the prebecquerian environment: Augusto Ferrán, Ángel María Dacarrete and José María Larrea. All these poets were looking for an intimate lyricism, simple in form and sparing in ornament, restrained in the sensory so that the poet's deep feelings better shine through. It is a lyric not declamatory, but to say in the ear.
Bécquer's Rhymes were going to be financed and prefaced by his friend Luis González Bravo, minister of the Unión Liberal de O'Donnell, but the copy was lost in the revolutionary riots of 1868 Some, however, had already appeared in the newspapers of that time between 1859 and 1871: El Contemporáneo, El Museo Universal, La Ilustración de Madrid and others. The poet, with this help, with that of his memory and that of his friends, reconstructed the manuscript, which he titled Book of Sparrows and is kept in the National Library of Madrid. Later, his friends published it with a prologue by Rodríguez Correa in two volumes with the title Rimas and together with his Leyendas in prose, in 1871, to help the widow and her children. In successive editions the selection was expanded. From the fifth the work already consists of three volumes. Iglesias Figueroa collected in three volumes Páginas desconocidas (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1923), with another substantial portion of the Becquerian corpus. Gamallo Fierros also published his Abandoned Pages in four volumes. Jesús Rubio has edited two albums by Julia Espín with texts and drawings by Gustavo dedicated to her muse, whom he would never forget. There are eighty-four short compositions, of two, three or four stanzas, very rarely more, generally assonanted with very varied meters, in accordance with romantic poetry.
Bécquer used to repeat Lamartine's phrase that «the best written poetry is the one that is not written». It is so in his seventy-six short Rhymes brief as arpeggios, since he concentrated in them the poetry that he would have wanted to pour into numerous longer poems that he did not write. Bécquer's influence on all subsequent poetry written in Spanish is important, outlining aesthetics such as symbolism and modernism in many aspects. Faced with the high-sounding and Byronic Romanticism of a José de Espronceda, Bécquer represents the intimate tone, to the ear, of the deep lyric. His "Giant and Strange Anthem" breaks with the tradition of the civic and heroic poetry of Manuel José Quintana and the showy colors and national history of Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, or José Zorrilla, to deeply meditate on poetic creation, love and death, the three central themes of the Rhymes. Manuel Altolaguirre affirmed that Bécquer's poetry is the most human of Spanish Romanticism. This rare originality earned him the contempt of Núñez de Arce, who, perhaps because of his liberal ideology contrary to Becque's traditionalism, described his Rhymes as "Germanic sighs". But Bécquer meditated deeply on poetry and tried to reflect the elusive concept he had of it in the Literary Letters to a Woman, in the form of a long commentary on Rima XXI, concluded with the verse «poetry it's you". A you that could also be harmful and cruel, as demonstrated by the rhyme discovered by José María Díez Taboada (see bibliography):
- Serpent of love, treacherous laughter,
- the execution of the dream and the light,
- Perfumed stab, hidden kiss...
- That's you!
Bécquer's poetic models were various; first, Heine; W. S. Hendrix also pointed to Byron, and Dámaso Alonso to Alfred de Musset; also Count Anastasius Grün, and his Spanish poet friends, especially Augusto Ferrán. There are traces of all of them in his poetry.
His idea of poetry was exposed in the review he made of his friend Augusto Ferrán's book La soledad:
There is a magnificent and sound poetry; a poetry daughter of meditation and art, who marries all the pomps of the tongue that moves with a merciful majesty, speaks to the imagination, completes its paintings and leads it to its craving for an unknown path, seducing it with its harmony and beauty. There is another, natural, brief, dry, that springs from the soul like an electric spark, that hurts the feeling with a word and flees; and naked of artifice, disembarked within a free form, awakes, with one that touches them, the thousand ideas that sleep in the ocean without the background of fantasy. The first one has a given value: it is the poetry of everyone. The second lacks absolute measure; it acquires the proportions of the imagination that impresses: the poetry of the poets can be called. The first is a melody that is born, develops, ends and fades. The second is a chord that starts from a harp, and the strings remain vibrating with a harmonious buzz. When it is finished, the leaf is folded with a soft smile of satisfaction. When it is finished, the forehead is tilted with thoughts without name. One is the divine fruit of the union of art and fantasy. The other is the swollen spark that springs from the shock of feeling and passion. The poems of this book belong to the last of the two genres, because they are popular, and popular poetry is the synthesis of poetry.
But apart from his important poetry, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was also a great narrator and journalist. He wrote twenty-eight stories of the legend genre, many of them belonging to the genre of gothic or horror stories, others, authentic outlines of prose poetry, and other adventure stories. María Rosa Alonso found six main themes in them:
- East and exotic
- death and the life of ultrasound
- the embedding and the sorcery
- the religious theme
- inspired by the Romancero
- those of animist tendency.
Bécquer proves to be a prose writer on a par with the best of his century, but he is of superior inspiration and imagination and an absolute master in the field of lyrical prose. In his descriptions, one can see the poet's deep love for nature and the Castilian landscape. He also wrote the Letters from my cell in the monastery of Veruela, on the slopes of Moncayo, where he went to recover from tuberculosis or tuberculosis, a deadly disease at the time; his letters overflow with vitality and charm. His journalistic work has not yet been studied.
Bécquer is, at the same time, the poet who inaugurates —together with Rosalía de Castro— modern Spanish lyric poetry and the one who succeeds in reconnecting us with traditional poetry. The Rhymes fall within two currents inherited from Romanticism: the revaluation of popular poetry (which cultured lyric had abandoned in the XVIII) and the so-called «aesthetics of feeling». Bécquer's poetic ideal is to develop an intimate lyric, expressed with sincerity, simplicity of form and ease of style. Bécquer and Rimas de él are the threshold of lyric poetry in Spanish of the XX century. Rubén Darío, Miguel de Unamuno, the brothers Antonio and Manuel Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso and others have considered him a founding figure, discoverer of new worlds for sensibility and the expressive form.
Bécquer as a cartoonist
Since he was a child, he was surrounded by his father's canvases and drawings, which also made him interested in painting. He said that painting is a means of expression towards the ineffable, surpassing writing.
Among his friends, his talent as a draftsman was always appreciated and he collaborated several times with his brother Valeriano. It highlights his great technique and reflects his inner world. Life and death are intertwined in most of his drawings from his series Les morts pour rire: Bizarreareis . The drawn scenes provoke laughter, laughing at death.
He also made drawings where he represents his imaginary worlds reflected in his Rhymes and Legends.
Julia Espín also covers a large part of Bécquer's pictorial work, reflecting it in different situations.
Bécquer and music
Bécquer was always a great fan of musical theater. He worked on five zarzuelas in collaboration with his friend Luis García de Luna, of which only one remains, La venta encantada. Composers of the Century XIX as Gabriel Rodríguez Benedicto and Tomás Bretón put music to some of their Rhymes. Also, already in the XX century, the composer Manuel de Falla composed Dos rimas de Bécquer (1900) for soprano and piano and the composer Enrique Belenguer Estela put music to two of his Rhymes (Saeta que voladora and I don't know what I dreamed of i>), composing two songs for tenor and piano. And they are just a few, including Joaquín Turina, Enrique Granados, Isaac Albéniz, Jesús Guridi, Federico Mompou, Antón García Abril...
Works
- Rimas, a work that his friends gathered, after the fire of the house where these poetic works were kept, as a kind of love story in which it is seen how the poet goes through the creative process, hopeful love, disappointment and pain or death.
- History of the temples of Spain, Madrid, 1857, published only volume I.
- Literary letters to a woman, 1860-1861, published in The Contemporary.
- Letters from my cell, Madrid, 1864, are nine, published in The Contemporaryand later assembled in the Fortanet edition with the title From my cell.
- Book of sparrows1869, manuscript.
- Complete works, Madrid, Fortanet, 1871, two volumes.
Legends
- The leader of the red hands1859.
- Round the fight1858.
- The Cross of the Devil1860.
- The Golden Garlic1861.
- The Mount of the Anniversaries1861.
- Green eyes1861.
- Maese Pérez, the organist1861.
- Believe in God1862.
- The moonlight1862.
- The Miserere1862.
- Three dates1862.
- The Christ of the skull1862.
- The gnome1863.
- The cave of the Moor1863.
- The promise1863.
- The white tie1863.
- The kiss1863.
- The Passion Rose1864.
- Creation1861.
- It's weird!1861.
- The dressing of the emeralds1862.
- The sale of cats1862.
- Prologue1863.
- A natural sketch1864.
- A heavy lance1864.
- Memories of a turkey1865.
- Dry leaves1865.
- History of a butterfly and a spider.
- The Stone WomanUnfinished.
- Forbidden loves.
- King Albert.
Theater
- The bride
- Lovely sale
- The distractions
- The Cross of the Valley
- Such for which
Articles
- The teacher
- Loneliness
- The Carnival
- The Baby
- The pearls
- The woman in fashion
- Laziness
- The ridicule
- Case of ablative
- The singing cricket
Other works
- The talisman, zarzuela with music by Joaquín Espín and Guillén and Bécquer libretto, based on Our Lady of ParisVictor Hugo. The work did not come to premiere, thinking lost until its discovery in 2014.
- The Bourbons in the ball, satirical drawings made between 1868 and 1870 and signed with the pseudonym SEM. According to a necrologic dedicated to Gustavo de 1870 published in the republican magazine Gil BlasGustavo and Valeriano used the SEM signature for their drawings. This has led Robert Pageard, Lee Fontanella and Maria Dolores Cabra to publish the album in 1991 stating that the Bécquer brothers are the authors of The Bourbons in the Ball. However, Jesús Rubio Jiménez doubts this attribution, Rubén Benítez denies it and Joan Estruch Tobella asserts that the true author was probably the Republican and anticlerical Francisco Ortego. One element against attributeing to the Bécquer brothers the pseudonym of SEM is that one of the caricatures signed by that name mocks the attack on Prim, which took place on December 27, 1870, when Gustavo and Valeriano had already died.
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