We explain who Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was, what his literary work consisted of and why it marked a before and after in the Spanish poetic tradition.
This is what Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer looked like in 1862, according to this portrait by his brother Valeriano.
Who was Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer?
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer He was a Spanish poet and writer, considered one of the first modern poets of the Spanish tradition. His most important work, published posthumously, was the book Rhymes and legendswhere his poetry and narrative texts are collected.
Bécquer’s work constitutes, like that of Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536), a crucial point in the Spanish literary tradition, It marked a before and after by breaking with the romantic rhetoric of the time. and embrace a more contemporary aesthetic.
Bécquer, however, did not enjoy the recognition due to his work during his lifetime, probably because, in many ways, He was a man aesthetically and politically ahead of his time..
Childhood and youth of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida was born on 17 February 1836 in Seville, in the Spanish region of Andalusia. His parents were Joaquina Bastida Vargas and the painter José Domínguez Insausti, who already signed his works with the pseudonym “Bécquer”, taken from his father’s family. Gustavo Adolfo was the fifth of the couple’s eight children.
The family had a good standard of living.However, when Bécquer was five years old, his father died prematurely, leaving the family without support. Gustavo Adolfo’s godmother, the Frenchwoman Manuela Monnehay, helped them financially from then on.
The young Bécquer began his studies at the Colegio de San Francisco de Paula in 1841, and at the age of ten he entered the Colegio Naval de San Telmo, where one of his brothers studied. There he met his great friend and companion in literary adventures, the future short story writer Narciso Campillo (c. 1835-1900).with whom he composed at those early ages a dramatic piece called The conspiratorswhich was performed at school festivities, as well as an unfinished novel called The big bug in the desert.
In 1847, Gustavo Adolfo’s mother also died and, a few months later, the school where he studied was closed by royal decree. Gustavo and his brother Valeriano then ended up in the house of Maria Monnehay, an illustrious woman with an important library.
In that home Gustavo Adolfo and his brother were able to devote themselves to reading the classics. And in 1848 they were adopted by Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer, another relative of theirs, who was also a successful painter. Under his tutelage, the young people entered the School of Fine Arts.
Gustavo Adolfo left the academy in 1850, although he continued to frequent the artistic workshop of Joaquín, his tutor. He was better at drawing than painting, but his vocation was more in literature. Some poems, drawings and theatrical versions that Gustavo Adolfo composed in his adolescence are still preserved.using unused pages from his father’s account book. He also kept a diary in which he recounted his early love affairs, some of which inspired him to compose some early poems.
Bécquer’s departure to Madrid
Becquer began to publish his first literary works in Seville, in the magazines The Aurora and Futureat a time when he was also a great fan of Italian opera. And in 1853, thanks to the influence of one of his teachers, he also managed to publish in the magazine The throne and the nobility from Madrid, founded by the editor Manuel Ovilo y Otero (1826-1885).
Convinced that his literary future lay in Madrid, Gustavo Adolfo met up with his friends Narciso Campillo and Julio Nombela (1836-1919) and devoted themselves to writing poems to be published in the capital. Finally, in 1854, the three of them left Seville.
Madrid did not meet Bécquer’s initial expectations. He found it dirty, ugly, not up to what he had imagined, and In contrast, his city seemed to him like a “lost Eden”. Furthermore, during those first years in the capital, he distanced himself from his friend Campillo, who went so far as to accuse him of being illiterate and lacking culture.
However, The letters of recommendation that Bécquer brought from Seville opened the doors of the conservative elite and the local press for him.. Thus, he went from writing on commission to writing for the magazine Musical and literary Spaintogether with his friend Luís García de Luna (1834-1867). This publication lasted only a year due to financial problems.
Together with García de Luna, he also wrote the comedy The bride and the pantspremiered at the Madrid Variety Theatre, under the pseudonym “Adolfo García”. Later they did it again with The enchanted saleinspired by a chapter of The Quijote.
In 1856, similarly, Bécquer and the archaeologist Juan de la Puerta Vizcaíno undertook the writing of the book History of the temples of Spainpublished in installments in a deluxe format. This opened the doors to the court of Elizabeth II, where they were received to offer the kings funding for the project.The work also had the support of 38 bishops and the collaboration of 12 historians and 52 journalists and writers.
The preparation of this book led Bécquer to visit Toledo and other nearby cities, where he admired the glorious past evoked by medieval Spanish temples. The first installment of History of the temples of Spain It appeared in 1857, with a prologue written by Bécquer himself. The work also included numerous drawings by him.
That same year, together with his friend Nombela, the poet became acquainted with the works of the poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), recently translated from German, which had a profound influence on his aesthetic ideas.
The first legends of Bécquer
Drawing by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer for History of the temples of Spain (1857).
Since the publication of History of the temples of SpainBecquer began to have a presence in Spanish literary society. He is mentioned, for example, in press articles of the time, participating in receptions at the Teatro Real.
However, In 1858 the successful publishing project stopped when Bécquer fell seriously ill.. It is possible that this was the first manifestation of the tuberculosis from which he already suffered. Other sources suggest that it could have been syphilis.
Seeing him so ill, his friend and colleague Ramón Rodríguez Correa (1835-1894) decided to publish some of Bécquer’s texts in the Madrid newspaper The chronicwhere he himself worked, to help him get some money. And searching through his writings he found the first of his famous legends, The leader of the red handswhich appeared in installments in June 1858.
This was the first of Bécquer’s twenty-eight stories, written over the following years. and inspired by the local traditions of Toledo, Soria, Catalonia, Navarre, Aragon and other Spanish regions that he visited at different times in his life. These stories delve into a medieval imaginary, have a dreamlike atmosphere and are inhabited by fantastic characters, such as nymphs or souls.
Becquer recovered his health towards the middle of the year and in September 1858 the publication of History of the temples of Spain. This serial work continued to be offered to readers during the following year, until in 1860 disagreements with the printing press and lack of funding finally interrupted it. Bécquer then obtained a position as a literary critic in the newspaper The time.
Bécquer’s muse
Bécquer fell in love with Julia Espín y Guillén, but their union never came to fruition.
Sometime between 1858 and 1860, Bécquer met the woman who, according to tradition, was his muse and his great love: the young Julia EspínMuch has been written about this relationship, but there is no definitive version of the story.
It is known that the poet and the young woman met regularly, as she kept an album with drawings and writings made by Bécquer; but some of Bécquer’s biographers claim that it was an unrequited love for the young woman, who ended up becoming an opera singer at the age of 28 and marrying another man in 1874.
Bécquer had another lover, between 1859 and 1860, whom he described in his diary as a “lady of direction and management” from Valladolid, and whom some biographers identified with Elisa Guillén. Today we know that this name was not real, but that the lover broke the poet’s heart. There is no consensus as to which of the two women, if there were only two, Bécquer referred to in many of the poems that later made up his Rhymes.
Throughout 1860, on the other hand, Bécquer and García de Luna produced various plays and theatrical adaptations, and later formed, together with other authors, a society that managed the Teatro del Circo. Various plays and zarzuelas were presented there, and the writers received a 10% payment from the tickets.
At the end of the year, Bécquer also joined the collaborators of the recently founded newspaper The contemporary. There he published between 1860 and 1861 his Literary letters to a womanin which he assimilated the essence of poetry and the body of the beloved womanIn them she stated, for example, that “…poetry is feeling and feeling is woman” (December 20, 1860) or that “Poetry is, finally, all those inexplicable phenomena that modify the soul of a woman when she awakens to feeling and passion” (January 8, 1861).
In 1861, Bécquer married Casta Esteban Navarro, the daughter of a bloodletting surgeon, with whom he later had three children.The couple married in Madrid and during the following years they traveled to different places in Spain, from which Bécquer obtained material to continue his Legends.
However, around 1868 the couple began to have strong disputes, some of them due to the courtship of an old lover of Casta, with whom Bécquer fought a duel in the town squareOthers, however, had to do with the terrible relationship between Casta and Bécquer’s brother, Valeriano.
During the summer of 1868 the couple separated amid great scandals, which earned Bécquer the enmity of his wife’s family and friends. After separating, they had their third son, Emilio Eusebio, and after the death of Valeriano Bécquer in 1870, they were reconciled.
The fertile years and the Revolution of 1868
The bulk of Bécquer’s literary work was produced from 1860 onwards and revolved around poetry and stories, many of them published in The contemporarysuch as “The Dead Man in the Hole”, “The Moonbeam”, “The Emerald Dressing”, “The Miserere” or “The Christ of the Skull”. These texts show his love for Seville and for Andalusian popular culture.
In 1863, they joined this streak…