Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (February 17, 1836 – December 22, 1870) was an Spanish poet and tale writer, one of the most important in Spanish literature, associated to the romanticism movement. He was moderately known during his life, but it was after his death that most of his works were published.

Biography

Born in Seville, Bécquer was left an orphan at an early age. He was educated by his godmother, refused to adopt any profession, and drifted to Madrid, where he obtained a small post in the civil service. He was dismissed for carelessness, became an incorrigible Bohemian, and earned a precarious living by translating foreign novels; he died in great poverty in Madrid of tuberculosis at age 34. His works were published posthumously in 1873. In such prose tales as El Rayo de Luna and La Mujer de piedra, Bécquer is manifestly influenced by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and as a poet he has analogies with Heine. He dwells in a fairyland of his own, crooning a weird elfin music which has no parallel in Spanish; his work is unfinished and unequal, but it is singularly free from the rhetoric characteristic of his native Andalusia, and its lyrical ardour is of a beautiful sweetness and sincerity.

Related Topics:
Seville - Madrid - Bohemian - Tuberculosis - 1873 - E.T.A. Hoffmann - Heine - Andalusia

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