Spanish literature of Romanticism

Contemporary poets (1846), by Antonio María Esquivel. In it he drew many literate who constituted the pleiade of Spanish Romanticism, together with politicians, painters, musicians, actors and intellectuals. Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1806-1880)

Romanticism is a revolutionary movement in all areas of life that, in the arts, breaks with the schemes established in Neoclassicism, defending fantasy, imagination and the irrational forces of the spirit. Neoclassicism still persists in some authors, but many, who began with the neoclassicist position, eagerly converted to Romanticism, such as the Duke of Rivas or José de Espronceda. Others, however, were convinced from their romantic beginnings.

The origin of the term «romanticism» is far from clear, in addition, the evolution of the movement varies according to the country. In the 17th century it already appears in England with the meaning of «unreal». Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) uses it in the sense of "exciting" and "loving". James Boswell (1740-1795) uses it to describe the appearance of Corsica. Romantic appears as a generic adjective to express the "passionate" and "emotional". In Germany, however, it was used by Johann Gottfried Herder as a synonym for 'medieval'. The term romanhaft (romantic) was replaced by romantisch, with more emotional and passionate connotations. In France, Jean-Jacques Rousseau uses it in a description of Lake Geneva. In 1798, the Dictionary of the French Academy included the natural meaning and the literary meaning of romantique. In Spain, one had to wait until 1805 to find the expression romancista. During the years 1814 and 1818, after successive controversies, the terms romanesco, romancesco, románico and romántico were used, even with indecision.

The precursors of Romanticism, which spread throughout Europe and America, are Rousseau (1712-1778) and the German playwright Goethe (1749-1832). Under the influence of these figures, the romantics headed to create less perfect and less regular works, but deeper and more intimate. They search among the mystery and impose the rights of feeling. Their motto is freedom in all aspects of life.

Romanticism in Spain was late and brief, more intense, since the second half of the XIX century was dominated by Realism, of antagonistic characteristics to romantic literature.

Trends of Romanticism

Lord Byron, portrait of Thomas Phillips, 1813 (National Portrait Gallery, London).

In Spain, romanticism is considered complex and confusing, with major contradictions ranging from rebellion and revolutionary ideas to a return to the Catholic-monarchical tradition. Derek Flitter in his work Theory and criticism of Spanish romanticism (original title Spanish Romantic literary and criticism., 1st ed. 1992) insists on the conservative nature of romanticism Spanish. In this sense, he points out the enormous influence in Spain of the German historicist romanticism of Herder and the Schlegel brothers, imported by Böhl de Faber. Under the impact of these romantic ideas, the writers will vindicate the literature of the Golden Age and the ballads as an expression of national identity. Thus, from magazines such as El Artista (1835), El Renacimiento (1847) or the Picturesque Weekly (1847) classicism was rejected and he spreads an organicist conception of history influenced by Herder, with the defense of Christian literature. Historicist romanticism is chosen as an ideological monument inscribed in Spanish cultural nationalism. In fact, the Herderian ideology, collected by the Schlegel brothers and applied to literature, will later be incorporated into Krausist aesthetics by Francisco Giner de los Ríos who He will show his rejection of the French neoclassical aesthetics and will defend the Spanish tradition in Literature. In this way, the Krausists are sensitive to the influence of romanticism and pick up regenerative ideas already present in previous romantic and literary criticism.

The truth is that Spain was a romantic theme for Europeans of all ideological tendencies, more than in Spanish literature itself, but that didn't stop them from using their own places.

With regard to political freedom, some understood it as a mere restoration of the ideological, patriotic and religious values that the rationalists of the century had wanted to suppress XVIII. They exalt, then, Christianity, the Throne and the Homeland, as maximum values. This strand of Traditional Romanticism includes Walter Scott in England, Chateaubriand in France, and the Duke of Rivas and José Zorrilla in Spain. It is based on the ideology of the Restoration, which originates after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, and defends the traditional values represented by the Church and the State. On the other hand, other romantics, as free citizens, combat all established order, in religion, art and politics. They claim the rights of the individual before society and the laws. They represent Revolutionary Romanticism or Liberal Romanticism and their most prominent representatives are Lord Byron, in England, Victor Hugo, in France, and José de Espronceda, in Spain. It rests on three pillars: the search and justification of irrational knowledge that reason denied, the Hegelian dialectic and historicism.

Customs

The costumbrismo fixes its attention on contemporary habits, mainly from the point of view of the popular classes, and is expressed in a purist and traditional language. The main costumbrist author is Mesonero Romanos, located outside of Romanticism and with an ironic position before it. Costumbrismo, generated within Romanticism as a sign of melancholy for the values and customs of the past, contributed to the decline of the Romantic movement and the beginning of Realism when it became bourgeois and became a descriptive method.

Historical framework

Romanticism covers the first half of the 19th century, which is a period of strong political tensions. Conservatives defend their privileges but liberals and progressives fight to suppress them. Secularism makes its way and Freemasonry enjoys great influence. Traditional Catholic thought defends itself against the new ideas of freethinkers and followers of the German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. The working class triggers protest movements of anarchist and socialist sign, with strikes and attacks. While industry is strongly developing in Europe and culturally enriching, Spain offers the image of a country that is not very advanced and that is increasingly far from Europe.

Characteristics of Romanticism

The walker on the sea of clouds (c. 1817) by Caspar David Friedrich (Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

• I reject Neoclasicism. Faced with the scrupulous rigor and order with which, in the centuryXVIII, the rules were observed, the romantic writers combine the genres and verses of different measures, sometimes mixing the verse and the prose; in the theater the despises the rule of the three units (place, space and time) and alternate the comic with the dramatic.
• Subjectivism. Whatever the genre of the work, the exalted soul of the author pours into it all his feelings of dissatisfaction before a world that limits and slows the flight of his cravings both in love, and in society, patriotism, etc. They make nature merge with its mood and show melancholic, tetric, mysterious, dark... unlike the neoclassicals, who hardly showed interest in the landscape. The longing for passionate love, the desire for happiness and the possession of the infinite cause in the romantic a disappointment, an immense disappointment that sometimes leads to suicide, as is the case of Mariano José de Larra.
• Attraction for the night and mysterious. The romantics place their hurtful and defrauded feelings in mysterious or melancholic places, such as ruins, forests, cemeteries... In the same way that they feel attraction to the supernatural, that which escapes any logic, such as miracles, apparitions, ultratumba visions, the diabolical and sorcery...
• Escape from the world around them. The rejection of the bourgeois society in which it has touched them to live, leads the romantic to escape from their circumstances, imagining past times in which their ideals prevailed over others or inspiring in the exotic. In front of the neoclassicals, who admired Greek antiquity, the romantics prefer the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As more frequent genres, they cultivate the novel, legend and historical drama.

First demonstrations

Romanticism penetrated Spain through Andalusia and Catalonia (The European):

• In Andalusia: The consul of Prussia in Cadiz, Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber, father of the novelist "Fernán Caballero" (pseudonym of Cecilia Böhl de Faber and Larrea), published between 1818 and 1819 in the Mercantile Journal Gaditano, a series of articles in which he defended the Spanish theater of the Golden Age, so attacked by the neoclassicists. José Joaquín de Mora and Antonio Alcalá Galiano faced him, using traditionalist, anti-liberal and absolutist arguments. The ideas of Böhl de Faber were unacceptable to them (for they continued to cling to the Enlightenment), although they represented European literary modernity.
• In Catalonia: The European was a magazine published in Barcelona between 1823 and 1824 by two Italian writers, one English and the young Catalans Bonaventura Carles Aribau and Ramón López Soler. This publication defended moderate and traditionalist Romanticism following the Böhl model, totally denying the values of neoclassicism. In its pages, for the first time an exhibition of romantic ideology is made through an article by Luigi Monteggia entitled Romanticism.

Poetry

Sculpture dedicated to Bécquer, in Seville

Romantic poets compose their poems in the midst of an outburst of feelings, translating into verses everything they feel or think. According to some of the literary critics, in his compositions there is a lyricism of great force, however, coexisting with vulgar and prosaic verses.

There are several themes of romantic poetry:

• The Me.the privacy itself. It was Espronceda, leaving in his I sing to Teresa a heartbreaking confession of love and disappointment, who has successfully managed to poet his feelings.
• The Passional lovewith sudden deliveries, totals, and fast abandonments. The exaltation and the haste.
• They are inspired by historical and legendary themes.
• La religioneven though it is frequently through rebellion with the consequent compassion and even exaltation of the devil.
• The social demands (revaluation of marginal types, such as beggar).
• La naturewhich is shown in all its modalities and variations. They usually set their compositions in mysterious places, such as cemeteries, storms, the faded sea, etc.
• La satireoften linked to political or literary events.

It is also worth noting that the new spirit affected the versification. Faced with the monotonous neoclassical repetition of letrillas and songs, the right to use all existing metric variations was proclaimed, to acclimatize those of other languages and to innovate when necessary. Romanticism is ahead here, as in other aspects, of the modernist audacity of the end of the century.

José de Espronceda

José de Espronceda

He was born in 1808, in Almendralejo, Badajoz. He founded the secret society of Los numantinos , whose purpose was to "overthrow the absolute government" thus avenging the hanging and subsequent defilement of the corpse of Rafael del Riego. He suffered imprisonment for it. He flees to Lisbon at the age of eighteen and joins the liberal exiles. There he meets Teresa Mancha, a woman with whom he lived in London. After a hectic political performance, he returned to Spain in 1833. He led a dissipated life, plagued by incidents and adventures, for which Teresa Mancha abandoned him in 1838. He was about to marry another loved one, when in 1842 he died in Madrid.

Battles, storms, love,

by sea and land, lances, descriptions

of fields and cities, challenges

and the disaster and anger of passions,

enjoyments, said, successes, ravages,

with some moral reflections

about life and death,

of my own harvest, which is my strong.

Espronceda cultivated the main literary genres, such as the historical novel, with Sancho Saldaña o El castellano de Cuéllar (1834), the epic poem, with El Pelayo, but His most important works are the poetics. He published Poems in 1840 after returning from exile. They are a collection of poems of an unequal character that brings together poems from his youth, with a neoclassical air, along with others from the most exalted romanticism. The latter are the most important, in which he magnifies the most marginal types: "Song of the pirate", "The executioner", "The beggar", "Song of the Cossack". His most important works are The Student of Salamanca (1840) and The Devil World :

• The student of Salamanca (1840): It is a composition consisting of about two thousand verses of different measures. The crimes of Don Felix de Montemar, whose beloved Elvira, by abandoning her, die of love. One night, he sees the appearance and follows it through the streets and contemplates his own burial. In the mansion of the dead, he rests with Elvira's body, and dies.
• The devil world: This work was unfinished. It consists of 8100 polymetric verses, and intended to be an epic of human life. The second chant (I sing to Teresa) occupies much of the poem, and in it evokes her love for Teresa and weeps for her death.

Other poets

Carolina Coronado

Despite the brevity of romantic lyric poetry in Spain, other notable poets also arose, such as the Barcelonan Juan Arolas (1805-1873), the Galician Nicomedes Pastor Díaz (1811-1863), Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-1873), Salvador Bermúdez de Castro (1817-1883) and Pablo Piferrer (1818-1848). The latter, despite writing only in Spanish, was one of the forerunners of the romantic movement in Catalonia.

Carolina Coronado

Carolina Coronado (Almendralejo, 1823-Lisbon, 1911) spent a large part of her childhood in the countryside of Extremadura and at a very young age manifested herself as a poet. Married to an American diplomat, she has lived in several foreign countries. Her family misfortunes made him seek solitude and retirement from her in Lisbon, where she died in 1911. Her most important work is Poems (1852).

Prose

During Romanticism there was a great desire for literary fiction, for novels, in contact with adventures and mystery, however, Spanish production was scarce, sometimes limited to translating foreign novels. There were more than a thousand translations that circulated in Spain before 1850, belonging to writers such as Alejandro Dumas, Chateaubriand, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, etc., of the historical, sentimental, gallant, serial genre... Spanish prose is basically limited to in the novel, scientific or scholarly prose, journalism and the intense cultivation of costumbrismo.

In the first quarter of the century, four types of novels were distinguished: the moral and educational novel, the sentimental novel, the horror novel, and the anticlerical novel. Of all of them, the most purely romantic is the anti-clerical type. However, the romantic influence will be reflected mainly in the historical novel.

The historical novel

Enrique Gil y Carrasco

The historical novel is developed in imitation of Walter Scott, whose most representative work is Ivanhoe. It follows two tendencies: the liberal and the moderate. Within the liberal tendency there is an anti-clerical current and a populist one. On the other hand, the moderate trend sometimes leads to novels exalting traditional and Catholicism. The most prominent Spanish authors are:

• Enrique Gil y Carrasco (Villafranca del Bierzo, 1815-Berlin 1846). Lawyer and diplomat, was the author of The Lord of Bembibrethe best of Spanish historical novels influenced by the work of Walter Scott.
• Antonio Trueba (1821-1889) wrote a series of legends and stories, especially the stories that have by scenarios Castilla or the Basque Country. It's famous for writing the historical novel. Dove and falcons (1865).
• Francisco Navarro Villoslada (1818-1895), which writes a series of historical novels when the romantic genre is in decline and the rise of Realism begins. His novels are inspired by Basque traditions, set in medieval times. His most famous work is Amaya, or the Basques in the 8th centuryIn it, the Basques and the Visigoths join to fight against the invasion of the Muslims.
• Other authors who highlighted for their contribution to the historical genre were Mariano José de Larra (Don Enrique el doliente), Serafín Estébanez Calderón (Christians and Moors) and Francisco Martínez de la Rosa (Doña Isabel de Solís, king of Granada).

Scientific prose

Most of these works arose from the discussions that took place in the assembly that promoted the Constitution of Cádiz. The most representative authors are Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) and Jaime Balmes Urpía (1810-1848):

• Juan Donoso Cortés it comes from the liberal current, although later it ended up defending Catholic and authoritarian conceptions. His most important work is Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialismpublished in 1851. Its style is of solemn and efectist tone, and it whispered lively polemics.

• Jaime Balmes UrpíaHowever, it is situated within the conservative and Catholic sector. Of his extensive work, it is worth highlighting Protestantism compared to Catholicism in its relations with European civilization (1842) and The criterion (1845).

The chart of customs

Mesonero Romanos.

During the years 1820 and 1870, costumbrista literature developed in Spain, manifested in the so-called customs tableau, a short prose article. These paintings of customs dispense with any argument or reduce it to a sketch, describing the way of life of the time, a popular custom or a stereotype of person. In many cases (such as Larra's articles) they contain a high satirical content.

Costumbrismo arises from the romantic desire to highlight what is different and peculiar, induced by the French fondness for this genre. Thousands of customs articles were published, it also limited the development of the novel in Spain, since in this genre narration and individual characters predominated, while in the customs table they are limited to describing their characters as generic (bullfighter, castañera, water carrier, etc.). Large collective compilations of articles of this genre were written, such as The Spaniards painted by themselves (Madrid: Ignacio Boix, 1843-1844 2 vols., reprinted in one in 1851). Ramón Mesonero Romanos from Madrid and Serafín Estébanez Calderón from Andalusia stood out in it.

Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, The Curious Talker'

Mesonero Romanos was born and died in Madrid (1803-1882). He belonged to the Spanish Academy and was a peaceful bourgeois. His thinking was anti-romantic and he was a great observer of the life around him. He was famous under the pseudonym The curious speaker .

His main literary production is dedicated to costumbrismo, however, he wrote the romanticism Memories of a seventy-year-old, an allusion to the people and events he met between 1808 and 1850. He gathered his paintings of customs in the volumes Panorama matritense and Escenas matritenses.

Serafin Estébanez Calderón, The lonely one

He was born in Malaga (1799) and died in Madrid (1867). He was in charge of high political positions. Conservative in tendency, in his youth he was a liberal. He published several poems and a historical novel, Cristianos y moriscos, although his most famous work is the set of paintings of customs Escenas andaluzas (1848), with paintings such as The bolero, The Mairena fair, A dance in Triana, The Philosophers of the kitchen...

Journalism: Mariano José de Larra

Mariano José de Larra (c. 1835), by José Gutiérrez de la Vega. (National Museum of Romanticism, Madrid).

Throughout the turbulent XIX century the role of the newspaper is decisive. The Barcelona magazine El Europeo (1823-1824) publishes articles on romanticism and, through it, the names of Byron, Schiller and Walter Scott are known in Spain. But the press was also a weapon for the political struggle. In this sense, we must highlight the political-satirical press of the Liberal Triennium (El Zurriago, La Manopla), where not only social issues appear, but also sketches of customs that are clear precedents for the production of Larra.

After the death of Fernando VII in 1833, important changes took place in journalism. The emigrants after the absolutist reaction of 1823 returned and together with the new generation (that of José de Espronceda y Larra) were going to mark the style of the time, since they had learned in the years of exile from the much more advanced English and French presses.. In 1836, the Frenchman Girardin was going to initiate in his newspaper La Presse a habit destined to have a sudden and lasting success: that of publishing serialized novels. The Spanish press, always with its sights set on that of the neighboring country, will immediately copy the initiative; however, its peak period in Spain will be between 1845 and 1855.

Mariano José de Larra, The poor little talker

Mariano José de Larra (Madrid, 1809-id., 1837), son of a liberal exile, soon became famous as a columnist. His character made him unpleasant. Mesonero Romanos, his friend, talks about "his innate sharpness of him, that he had so little sympathy for him." At twenty he married, which failed. In full success as a writer, at the age of twenty-eight, Larra committed suicide with a shot to the head, apparently by a woman with whom he had illicit love affairs.

Although Larra is famous for his journalistic work, he also cultivated other genres, such as poetry, neoclassical and satirical (Satire against court vices); the theater, with the historical tragedy of Macías; and finally, the historical novel, with El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente, about a Galician troubadour who was killed by a husband blinded by jealousy.

Journalistic articles about Larra

Larra wrote more than two hundred articles, under the signature of various pseudonyms: Andrés Niporesas, El pobrecito hablador and above all, Fígaro. His works can be divided into three groups: customs, literary and political.

• In the Coastal articlesLarra satirizes the Spanish way of life. He feels great sorrow for his imperfect homeland. Stress Come back tomorrow (Satira de las oficinas públicas), Bullfighting, Getting married soon and wrong (with autobiographical dyes) and The rude Spanish (against the thickness of the peasantry).
• His French education prevented him from completely taking off neoclassical tastes, and this is reflected in his literary articleswhere he criticized the romantic works of his time.
• In his political articles its liberal and progressive education, with articles hostile to absolutism, traditionalism and carlism, is clearly reflected. In some of them, Larra unloads her revolutionary exaltation, as in this one that says " Murder Murder Murder Murders, as there must be, I am for the people."

The theater

Neoclassical theater failed to penetrate the tastes of the Spanish. At the beginning of the XIX century, the works of the Golden Age continued to be applauded. These works were despised by the neoclassicalists for not being subject to the rule of the three units (action, place and time) and mix the comic with the dramatic. However, those works attracted people outside of Spain, precisely because they did not adhere to the ideal that the neoclassicalists defended.

Juan Eugenio de Hartzenbusch, author of Lovers of Teruel.

Romanticism triumphed in the Spanish theater with The Conjuration of Venice (1830), by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa; El Trovador, by Antonio García Gutiérrez; Lovers of Teruel, by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch; but the key year is 1835, when Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, by the Duke of Rivas (1791-1865) premiered. The most cultivated is the drama. All the works contain lyrical, dramatic and fictional elements. Freedom reigns in the theater in all aspects:

• Structure: The rule of the three units, imposed in the Enlightenment, disappears. The dramas, for example, tend to have five acts in verse, or in prose and mixed verse, with varied metrics. If in the neoclassical works the scenic collections were not accepted, this does not happen during Romanticism, because the acotations are abundant. The monologue gains strength again, for being the best way to express the inner struggles of the characters.
• Scenarios: Theatrical action gains dynamism by using a variety of places in the same representation. The authors base their works on typical places of romance, such as cemeteries, ruins, solitary landscapes, prisons, etc. Nature is shown according to the feelings and moods of the characters.
• Thematic: Romantic theatre prefers legendary, adventurous, horse-ridden or historical-national themes, with love and freedom as a banner. Night scenes abound, challenges, hidden and mysterious characters, suicides, gallantry or cynicism samples. Events occur in a vertiginous way. As for the bottom of the works, he does not aspire to alectionas the neoclassicals intended in their works, ♪.
• Characters: The number of characters increases in the works. The male hero is often mysterious and brave. Heroin is innocent and faithful, with intense passion. But both are marked by a fatal fate. Death is liberation. The dynamism of actions is more important than the analysis of the psychology of the characters.

Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas

Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas

Ángel de Saavedra and Ramírez de Baquedano (Córdoba, 1791-Madrid, 1865). He fought against the French invasion and, in politics, acted as a hotheaded progressive. For this he was sentenced to death, although he managed to escape.

In Malta he met an English critic, who made him value classical theater and converted him to Romanticism. He lived in France during his exile, and returned to Spain ten years later, in 1834. If, when he left Spain, Ángel de Saavedra considered himself a neoclassical liberal, when he returned to Spain he was already a romantic and liberal moderate.

He held important public offices. Like most of the writers of his time, he began by adopting the neoclassical aesthetic in the lyrical genre ( Poesías , 1874) and the dramatic genre ( Lanuza , 1822).. His incorporation into Romanticism was progressive and can be seen in poems such as El desterrado . In Historical Romances he makes his conversion complete.

Rivas's fame is based on Legends, but above all on Don Álvaro or the force of fate, which premiered at the Teatro del Príncipe (currently Spanish) in Madrid in 1835, before some 1,300 attendees, who witnessed the first Spanish romantic drama, with as many innovations as the combination of prose and verse.

Jose Zorrilla

José Zorrilla

He was born in Valladolid in 1817 and died in Madrid in 1893. He began his literary career reading some verses at Larra's funeral, with which he gained great fame. He married a widow sixteen years older than him, but it failed and, fleeing from her, he went to France and then to Mexico in 1855, where Emperor Maximilian appointed him director of the National Theater. Upon returning to Spain in 1866 he was enthusiastically received. He remarried and, with constant monetary hardships, had no choice but to sell off his works, as Don Juan Tenorio . The Cortes granted him a pension in 1886.

Work

Zorilla's literary career is prolific. Her poetry reaches its zenith with Legends, which are small dramas told as narratives in verse. The most important of his legends are Margarita la Tornera and A good judge, better witness .

However, his recognition is due more to his dramatic works. Of his dramas, The Shoemaker and the King stand out, about the death of King Pedro; Traitor, unconfessed and martyr, about the famous pastry chef from Madrigal, who posed as Don Sebastián, King of Portugal; Don Juan Tenorio (1844), the most famous of his works, is performed as a tradition in many cities in Spain at the beginning of November. It deals with the subject of the famous mocker of Seville and El Convidado de Piedra, written before by Tirso de Molina (XVII century) and by other national and foreign authors.

Other authors

Martínez de la Rosa

Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, transition writer

Martínez de la Rosa (1787-1862), was born in Granada. As a politician he fervently intervened in the Cortes of Cádiz. For his liberal ideals, he suffered a prison sentence. He emigrated to France and upon returning to Spain he was appointed head of the Government in 1833. His policy of "holy mean" failed between the extremisms of the left and the right. His contemporaries nicknamed him & # 34; Rosita la pastelera & # 34;, although he had suffered prison, exile and attacks in his fight for the long-awaited freedom.

His early works are imbued with neoclassicism, such as The girl at home and the mother in the mask. Later, by practicing the «golden mean», adopting the new latent aesthetic, he wrote his most important works: Aben Humeya and The Conjuration of Venice .

Antonio García Gutiérrez

He was born in Chiclana de la Frontera, Cádiz, in 1813 and died in Madrid in 1884. From an artisan family, he dedicated himself to letters and, with limited resources, enlisted in the army. In 1836 he premiered The Troubadour , a work that enthused the public, for it forced him to wave from the stage, inaugurating in Spain a custom in force in France. Thanks to his successes, he was able to get out of the economic hardship with which he lived. When the & # 34; Gloriosa & # 34; broke out, he joined the revolutionaries, with a hymn against the Bourbons that gained great popularity.

Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch

Breton of the Herreros.

He was born and died in Madrid (1806-1880). The son of a German cabinetmaker and an Andalusian mother, at first he dedicated himself to his father's profession, more devoted to the theater, he achieved resounding success with his most famous work, Lovers of Teruel (1837). He continued to publish customary stories, poems, and articles.

Manuel Bretón de los Herreros

He was born in Quel, La Rioja, in 1796 and died in Madrid in 1873. He began his literary adventures at a very young age, with works such as A la vejez variuelas, Muérete y verás and The hair of the meadows. He satirized Romanticism, although some traits seep into some comedies, such as Die and see.

Late Romanticism (Post-Romanticism)

During the second half of the XIX century, previous tastes for the historical and legendary faded into the background and the poetry becomes more sentimental and intimate. This is conditioned by the influences of German poetry and the new interest aroused by Spanish popular poetry. The post-romantic school leaves aside the other European schools, with the exception of the influence exerted by the work of the German poet Heinrich Heine.

Poetry, unlike the novel and the theater, continues to be romantic (the novel and the theater will follow the realistic trend). In poetry, the form loses part of its interest to focus its attention on how emotional the poem can possess. The narrative declines in favor of the lyrical. Poetry is more personal and intimate. Rhetoric is reduced and lyricism is increased, with love and passion for the world of beauty as main themes. New metric forms and new rhythms are sought. The homogeneity enjoyed by Romanticism is transformed into plurality in poetic ideas. Post-romantic poetry, then, represents the transition between Romanticism and Realism.

The most representative poets of this period are Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Augusto Ferrán and Rosalía de Castro. They no longer triumph in that Restoration society, utilitarian and not very idealistic, since writers who dealt with issues of contemporary society were admired more, such as Ramón de Campoamor and Gaspar Núñez de Arce, although today they do not have much critical relevance.

Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

He was born in Seville in 1836. Although his surnames are Domínguez Bastida, he signed with his father's second surname, a German descendant. He was orphaned at an early age and had the frustrated desire to study sailing, although he would later find his true vocation, that of a writer. At the age of 18 he moved to Madrid, where he tried to achieve literary success and suffered hardship. At the age of 21 he contracted the tuberculosis disease, which would later take him to the grave. He fell fervently in love with Elisa Guillén, who reciprocated, although they broke up soon, much to the poet's regret. In 1861 he married Casta Esteban and worked as a journalist with a conservative political attitude. Later he obtained 500 pesetas a month (an important amount for the time) as a censor of novels, but he lost it in the revolution of September 1868. He separated from his wife, whose fidelity is not complete. He begins to lead a life of disillusionment and bohemianism, and dresses shabby. In 1870, his brother Valeriano, the poet's inseparable companion, died. Gustavo Adolfo reconciled with Casta a few months before his death in Madrid, in 1870. His death went almost unnoticed and his remains were buried, along with those of his brother, in Seville.

Prose

His prose work consists of Leyendas (1858-1864), twenty-eight stories, in which, according to the romantic ideal, mystery and the afterlife predominate. In addition, he also wrote Letters from my cell, a set of chronicles composed during his stay in the monastery of Veruela.

Poetry: Rhymes

The poems that Bécquer composed throughout his life were collected and published posthumously in Rhymes (1871), a compilation of short poems (96 in the most modern editions), of two, three or four stanzas (with rare exceptions), generally assonanted, with combinations of free verses.

Rosalia de Castro

She was born in Santiago de Compostela, in 1837, and died in Iria Flavia, Padrón municipal area, in 1885. She was the daughter of parents who were not married, a fact that caused her incurable bitterness. She moved to Madrid, where she met the Galician historian Manuel Murguía, whom she married. They live in various parts of Castilla, but Rosalía, who did not feel sympathy for the region, manages to settle permanently in Galicia.

Their marriage was not a happy one. They had economic problems, together with the need to support six children. She died of cancer in Iria Flavia, but her mortal remains were transferred to Santiago de Compostela, where a crowd accompanied them, since Rosalía was the soul of Galicia.

Work

Although his prose writing was not prolific, it includes five novels, a short story, and a few essays. It is worth noting "The daughter of the sea" and "Flavio", both feminist novels, and The Knight of the Blue Boots, with a philosophical and satirical background, a critical novel of the Spanish capital and bad literature. It is in her poetry that gives Rosalía a more important place in literature. Her first books, La flor (1857) and To my mother (1863) have characteristic features of romanticism, with sporadic verses. However, the three most memorable works of hers are:

• Galician singers: This work was developed during the stay of Rosalía in Castilla, where it yearns its native land, Galicia. In Castile she feels as exiled since, according to her, there felt little esteem for the Galician. Galician singing it is a work of simple poems, with rhythms and popular themes. He feels nostalgia for his land and longs for his return:

Rosary of Castro.

Airiños, airiños,

airiños da miña terra;

airbuffs, airbuffs,

Angers, wash ela.

He also departs from Castile, which he considered exploiting the poor Galician reapers:

Premit God, Castilian,

Spanish I hate,

What's going on?

to ask for sustenance.

• Novas foils: In the foreword of this work, Rosalia explains that her book is the fruit of pain and disappointment. It is not the physical Galicia that aspires and sings in these poems, but its own suffering and that of its countrymen. It also resorts to ubi sunt, where she expresses her regret and complains about feeling stripped of happiness and past illusions:

That endless laughter,

That painless brincar,

that loucateth joy,

Why did you finish?

• On the banks of the Sar: For most of the criticism, this is the top work of Rosalia's poetry. The only one of the three quotes written in Spanish. At the time it was little valued outside the Galician lands, however, the Generation of 98 rescued its poems. In The banks of the Sar makes confessions of his intimacy, love and pain, human injustices, faith, death, eternity, etc.

Gaspar Núñez de Arce

Gaspar Núñez de Arce (Valladolid, 1834-Madrid 1903) was also a civil governor and deputy, as well as a minister. He wrote the play El haz de leña , whose plot is set in the mysterious death of Prince Don Carlos, son of Felipe II. His most outstanding poetic works are The Last Lamentation of Lord Byron, a long soliloquy about the miseries of the world, the existence of a superior and omnipotent being, politics, etc., in The Vision by Fray Martín Núñez de Arce presents Martin Luther contemplating from a rock the nations that are to follow him.

Anti-romantic poets

These poets may also be affiliated with Realism, given the decline of the Romantic movement and their stance against it.

Statue of Ramón de Campoamor in the Retiro Park.