Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer - vida y obra (las Rimas)

Takeaways

• 📜 Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was a Spanish romantic poet born in Seville in 1836, with the surname Bécquer adopted from his father's Flemish ancestry.
• 💔 Bécquer had a difficult personal life, losing both parents at a young age and enduring several tumultuous relationships, leading to an unhappy marriage and eventual separation.
• 🖋️ Bécquer worked as a journalist and a novel censor to support himself while pursuing his passion for writing, primarily in poetry and prose.
• 📚 His health was poor, suffering from tuberculosis or possibly syphilis, which caused him to take frequent breaks from his work to recover.
• 🌹 His most significant contributions were in poetry, with his famous work *Rimas*, a collection of 86 poems divided into four thematic sections.
• 🏰 Bécquer also wrote short stories with romantic and mysterious elements, such as his collection *Leyendas* and *Cartas desde mi celda*.
• 🎨 His writing style is characterized by its simplicity, intimacy, and symbolic meanings, making him a precursor to modern Spanish poetry.
• 💫 Bécquer preferred natural, concise poetry over elaborate, ornamental forms, emphasizing emotion and soul over technical complexity.
• 🎭 The themes in *Rimas* progress from poems about poetry, to joyful love, to heartbroken love, and finally, existential topics like life and death.
• 🖼️ His work was appreciated both in Spain and abroad, marking him as a significant figure in European Romanticism with a lasting influence on modern poetry.