Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
1836–1870
Biography
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–1870) was a Spanish poet and prose writer, born in Seville, who died in Madrid at the age of thirty-four. He signed his work with the surname Bécquer, the name his painter brother Valeriano had used before him. He also drew and wrote for the press, but he was little known while he lived, and most of what made his name was printed after his death.
His reputation rests on two bodies of work that are usually read together as Rimas y leyendas (Rhymes and Legends). The Rimas are short lyric poems, often about love, memory and loss, written in a plain and musical style that departed from the rhetorical verse of the earlier Romantic poets. The Leyendas are brief tales with supernatural or medieval settings, such as 'El monte de las ánimas' and 'Maese Pérez el organista'. Many critics count him among the founders of modern Spanish poetry, and his influence can be heard in the poets who followed.
The site holds Cartas desde mi celda and Rimas. The letters were written during a stay at a monastery in Aragon, and they show him as a sharp observer of the landscape and of everyday life in the countryside. The Rimas let readers hear the lyric voice that later generations of Spanish poets took as a model.
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Books
Cartas desde mi celda
by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Nine letters written from the monastery of Veruela, where the poet went to recover his health, describe the Moncayo mountains, their legends and the people who live there. Bécquer's lyrical prose mixes landscape, folk tale and memory.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Rimas
by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Seventy-six short poems on love, loss and the mystery of poetry, put together after the author's death from his notebook. Bécquer's Rimas are among the most loved verses in the Spanish language, plain in form and full of feeling.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.