BÉCQUER, GUSTAVO ADOLFO

(Sevilla, 1836-Madrid, 1870)

The parents of this Spanish poet, son and brother of painters, died when he was 10. Gustavo Adolfo Domínguez Bastida, his real name, lived his childhood and adolescence in Seville, where he studied Humanities and drawing.
In 1854 he moved to Madrid, with the idea of starting a literary career, but he was not successful. His ambitious plan of writing a History of the Temples of Spain was a fiasco, and he only could publish one part, years later.
He uses to work as journalist to obtain money and also adapted foreign dramas, mainly French pieces, collaborating with his friend Luis García Luna, with the pseudonym of “Adolfo García”.
During a trip to Seville, he had to stay nine months in bed for an illness. Some say it was tuberculosis, but some of his biographers say it was syphilis. In his convalescence was published his first legend, “el Caudillo de las Manos Rojas”, and met Julia Espín, who some say is the muse of his poems. Others say his muse was Elisa Guillén, who was related to the poet until their break in 1860, fact that inspired his most bitter compositions.
In 1861 the poet married Casta Esteban, daughter of a doctor, and mother of his three children. The marriage was never happy, and Gustavo Adolfo immersed in his poetry or in the company of his brother in Toledo to paint to escape of his situation.
The most fruitful stage of his career was from 1861 until 1865, when he composed the most part of his legends, wrote for different newspapers and wrote the romantic letters, where his theories about poetry and love were exposed. The period of time he spent in Veruela, monastery in Castilla, in 1864 inspired the “Cartas desde mi Celda” (From my cell), a selection of beautifully written landscape descriptions.
Economically, things went better for Bécquer from 1866 on, when he obtained the job of official censor of novels, situation that gave him free time to concentrate on his legends and rimes, published in the universal Museum. But with the revolution of 1868 he lost his job and his wife abandoned him.
He moved then to Toledo with his brother Valeriano, and there he reconstructed the manuscript of the Rimes, because the original was destroyed when his house was attacked during the September Revolution. Again in Madrid, he was nominated director of La Ilustración, where his brother also worked as drawer. When Valeriano died, in 1870, Bécquer entered in a heavy depression, and, feeling his time also was near, gave to his friend Narciso Campillo all his writings, so he could manage them after his death, three months later.
The huge literally fame of Bécquer is grounded on his Rimes, which initiated the romantic side of intimate poetry inspired by Heine, and opposed to the rhetoric of the previous romantic authors. The critic of the time did not support his poems, but his fame kept growing in the following years. The prose is also important for its easiness and musicality, full of feeling. Following Poe and Hoffmann, his Legends describe fantastic environments, with an unearthly and mysterious atmosphere.