The Rhymes by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

First published:Rimas, 1871 (English translation, 1891)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Appraised by many critics to be among the greatest love poets, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer had not published any books before his death at age thirty-four. Although Bécquer had little money for his education because of the death of his parents when he was nine years old, he read voraciously and was writing odes by the time he was twelve. Bécquer obtained literary recognition when he was twenty-four with the beginning of the serial publication of Cartas literarias a una mujer (Letters to an Unknown Woman, 1924) in 1860 in the periodical El Contemporáneo. After Bécquer’s death, his friends collected the poet’s poems that had been printed in periodicals and published them in a book. The poems in The Rhymes represent the poet’s major work.

Bécquer’s poetry reflects a tendency toward Romanticism, a literary tendency advocated by the liberals upon their return to Spain in 1833 after the death of Fernando VII, who had exiled them. The desire of the Spanish people to depose this oppressive Bourbon monarch corresponded with their desire to free themselves from French classicism, which, as Spanish artists saw it, represented the point of view of the cultured elite of another country and restricted artists’ freedom to compose works in their own styles. Romanticism directly opposes such classical restraints as using plots or subjects taken strictly from ancient sources and using formal language in a highly stylized format. Bécquer’s poetry treats one of the themes characteristic of Romanticism: love. He shows the multiple facets of love: a longing for the ideal woman, disillusionment, and intense despair. Bécquer’s poems expose the states of his soul as it wavers between light and darkness. His poems do not necessarily relate to real love affairs; Bécquer even indicates that he has mixed fact with fiction in his memory. Bécquer is so focused on love that he considers it an enigmatic power enlivening nature and permeating the universe.

The structure of The Rhymes reflects Bécquer’s inner life. His work can be divided into sections that represent different spiritual states. Bécquer’s work begins with his supreme attraction toward art in rhymes 1 through 8, in which he hopes to attain glory through the immortality of his creation. Rhyme 2 compares his spiritual state with a flickering light whose final spark may guide his footsteps to glory, and rhyme 7 refers to his underdeveloped talents; he, like Lazarus, is waiting for a voice to call him.

The next section, consisting of rhymes 9 to 12, reveals the vague foreshadowing of the proximity of love. Rhyme 9 portrays the image of the kisses that nature gives to her surroundings, such as the radiant clouds becoming purple and gold from the sun’s kiss. Rhyme 11 is presented in the form of a dialogue; each of two women relates her attributes in the first-person singular, and the poet responds. Bécquer rejects the passionate dark-haired woman full of desires that transcend shame and the tender blond woman longing to make his dreams come true. He chooses the woman who is a fleeting phantom of light and mist. This phantasmic woman with whom Bécquer is enamored represents the feminine ideal of Romanticism, for she is not a physical being but a spiritual projection: a shadow, a phantom, or a dream. Bécquer thus embarks on an impossible quest for an inaccessible woman.

The next division, presented in rhymes 12 through 15, shows the poet’s undefined feeling of love in the process of forming. In rhyme 12, Bécquer describes the physical features of the woman who so attracts him. Her eyes are as green as the sea, her cheeks are rose-colored, and her mouth is like rubies. Rhyme 15 emphasizes the powerful image of the woman’s unavoidable eyes, which penetrate his soul.

The poet is then ready to declare his love in rhymes 16 through 24. His beloved appears like an image of a red flower asleep in the heart of the beloved; but upon inclining her head in times of sadness, she seems to him like a broken white lily. Bécquer links his concepts of love, flower, and sadness through his use of rhyme: amor, flor, and dolor. In rhyme 21, Bécquer defines the “you” of the poems, the woman, as poetry.

Rhymes 25 through 29 continue to express the poet’s idealized love; at last he arrives at the perfect union of his soul with that of his beloved. Rhyme 24 completes this union through its image of two red tongues of fire growing close together and, upon kissing, forming a single flame. The exaltation of their love is continued in rhymes 25 through 29.

The idealized love begins to rupture in rhyme 30. This rupture, produced by pride and tears, results in the separation of the poet from his beloved, the two taking separate paths. Rhymes 31 through 36 show the effects of the broken love on the poet. He is dismayed, and his sadness leaves a permanent mark on his heart, producing a profound discouragement within his soul. He reveals his bitterness through his confusion of tears with laughter and pride with dignity. These distressing sentiments lead the poet to consider death for the first time; he fills his mind with melancholy memories of the past and, in rhyme 41, laments both his beloved’s betrayal and her ingratitude.

Rhyme 42 accentuates the poet’s complaint, indicating that even in his imagination he has not seen an abyss as deep as the heart of the woman who has betrayed him. Because the poet, reacting to his melancholy in frenzy, cannot silence the memory within his soul, he decides to let himself be carried away into the distant places that rhyme 52 suggests. After this delirious declaration, Bécquer becomes calm and delivers his best-known poem, rhyme 53, which begins “Volverán las oscuras golondrinas” (the dark swallows will return). The poet is saved by faith in his own love. Although the external manifestation of love (the faithful swallows, who return every year to the same nest) disappears, Bécquer will not be overcome by complete despair because his love is unchangeable. In the form of a symmetric ballad, the poem shows the future alternating with the past (the future year’s return of the swallows recalls their past return and the poet’s past love) and at the same time shows how the future cannot be the same as the past.

After this relatively optimistic poem, rhymes 54 and 55 disclose that Bécquer is inspired by memory and tears of repentance; rhymes 56 and 57 reveal the resurgence of the poet’s loss of faith in love. The poet’s skepticism is more ironic in rhymes 58 and 59, culminating in rhyme 60, in which evil deflowers the flowers of which Bécquer is fond. The next few poems demonstrate the poet’s skeptical sentiments until his concentration on sadness and tears causes him to ponder death, and the final poems relate his yearning for the soul’s infinite qualities, linking death with awakening.

The Rhymes reflects Romantic qualities of melancholy, passion, and yearning, but the poems in this collection also contain an element of ambiguity, signaling a new concept of poetry that was developing during the decade of the 1860’s, when Bécquer was composing his poetry. Bécquer believed that poetry, like love, permeates every aspect of life and that the poet needs to suggest this idea to the reader. Hence, Bécquer’s beloved in The Rhymes does not represent a person of flesh and blood; she appears as a symbol of the states of his soul. The poet’s attempt to transmit to the reader the subtle nuances of his sentiments is reflected by his copious use of metaphors. As precise terms for the fleeting impressions that the poet wishes to discuss do not exist, he opts for the tools of poetry. Bécquer chooses his words and images for their imprecise emotional implications to suggest those feelings that cannot be directly designated.

Bécquer is one of those poets on whom the mantle of envisioning an innovative concept of poetry fell. Although at his death he seemed destined for obscurity, his poems have been widely read, imitated, and heralded as a high point of the Romantic era. Admiration for Bécquer’s innovation and sympathy for his lamentable life give the reader additional reasons to appreciate his melodious, impassioned verses.

Bibliography

Bell, Aubrey F. G. Contemporary Spanish Literature. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. Briefly discusses Bécquer’s poetic techniques. Shows how his poetry marks a transition from Romanticism to the modernist innovations of the twentieth century.

Brenan, Gerald. The Literature of the Spanish People: From Roman Times to the Present Day. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Describes the characteristics of the poetry of the nineteenth century. Appraises the poetry of Bécquer and examines his place in Spanish literary history.

Bynum, B. Brant. The Romantic Imagination in the Works of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Aptly explains how Bécquer utilizes Romantic techniques in The Rhymes. Includes an excellent list of consulted works.

Moss, Joyce, ed. Spanish and Portuguese Literatures and Their Times: The Iberian Peninsula. Vol. 5 in World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events That Influenced Them. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Group, 2002. Reference work presents analyses of both The Rhymes and the Bécquer collection The Infinite Passion (1924).

Pattison, Walter T., and Donald W. Blezniek. Representative Spanish Authors. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963. Concisely relates a brief history of Spanish literature in the nineteenth century and the tenets of Romanticism. Gives an excellent introduction to The Rhymes.

Turnbull, Eleanor L. Ten Centuries of Spanish Poetry: An Anthology in English Verse with Original Texts, from the Eleventh Century to the Generation of 1898. 1955. Reprint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Presents the Spanish and English texts of the best-known poems of Bécquer. Contains a brief but informative introduction to Bécquer’s poetry by the renowned scholar Pedro Salinas.

Walters, D. Gareth. “Love Poetry.” In The Cambridge Introduction to Spanish Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Survey of poetry from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America is organized by genre; the section on love poetry discusses Bécquer’s work.