Romanticism: A 19th-Century Cultural Revolution
Romanticism was a cultural and political movement that originated in Germany and the United Kingdom in the late 18th century. It was a revolutionary reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and Classicism, giving importance to feeling. Its key feature was the break with classical tradition based on a stereotypical set of rules. Real freedom is the constant search of Romanticism, which is why its revolutionary feature is unquestionable. Because romance is a way of feeling and designing nature, life, and man himself, it is presented differently in each country where it develops, even within a nation. It also projects other trends in all the arts.
Romanticism developed mainly in the first half of the 19th century, extending from England to Germany, and then to France, Italy, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, etc. Its literary side subsequently fragmented into different flows, such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence, and the Pre-Raphaelites, gathered under the general heading of Post-Romanticism. A bypass of Post-Romanticism was named Hispanic Modernism. Romanticism had fundamental contributions in the fields of literature, art, and music. Subsequently, one of the avant-garde currents of the 20th century, Surrealism, led its tenets to their end.
Romantic Lyricism
In lyrical Romanticism, the soul expresses its feelings. The intimate nature of the “I” is one of the two principal themes. Romantic lyricists were innovators in the measure of verses and stanzas. The expression of feelings predominates in traditional themes. In syntax, vocative interjections, exclamatory and interrogative sentences, and intense adjectivation are common.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
The position of this author is intimate and delicate, corresponding to his sensible and intimate character. Influenced by German poetry, his simple and sincere verse is inspiring. His Posies deal with love, pain, and death. In search of glory, he arrived in Madrid in 1854, where he worked as a journalist and began writing the “History of the Temples of Spain,” some of his “Legends,” and the “Rhymes.” In 1863, he traveled to the Aragonese monastery of Veruela, where he wrote nine letters sent to the Madrid newspaper El Contemporáneo, entitled “From My Cell.” Bécquer titled the manuscript “Book of Sparrows,” which is the basis of his “Rhymes.” It was published in 1871 by his friends after his death. Bécquer’s art is innovative: the first and delicate musicality is presented, supported by the combination of major and minor art meters, and a direct and intimate treatment. Bécquer’s lyrical influence has been decisive for contemporary Spanish and Hispano-American poetry.
José de Espronceda: A Revolutionary Romantic Poet
This revolutionary poet was one of the greatest Spanish Romantics, the most popular of the 19th century. His life is part of the moral and political rebellion, and his style is characterized by images taken from it and the constant contradiction of two moods: exaltation and despair.
Born in Almendralejo (Badajoz) in 1808, he soon moved to Madrid and began his studies with remarkable achievement under the leadership of the famous Don Alberto Lista.
Early Life and Political Activism
At fifteen, the day General Riego was hanged, he founded a secret society, The People of Numancia, to avenge his death. The youth activities of the conspirators were discovered, and they were sentenced to five years in prison. However, the sentence was reduced to a few weeks in a convent in Guadalajara, where Espronceda composed the poem Pelayo.
Exile and Literary Pursuits
At eighteen, he voluntarily exiled himself to Lisbon, where he met Teresa Mancha, whom he followed to London. After a trip to Holland in 1828, he moved to Paris, where he participated in the revolution of 1830. He then entered Spain with an expedition of revolutionaries, which failed. He was banished, and during that period, he composed several poems and the tragedy Blanca of Bourbon. He abducted Teresa, whom he had found married with children, and went with her to Spain in 1833. She would inspire one of his most beautiful poems: Canto a Teresa. He experienced the triple intoxication of romantic love, freedom, and country.
Return to Spain and Literary Fame
Upon returning, pardoned, to Spain in 1833, he took part in other pronouncements, which led to further persecution. At a banquet, he delivered a satirical speech in verse, which made him speak to the whole court, and he was banished to Cuellar, where he composed The Student of Salamanca. He then began a brilliant literary, diplomatic, and political career. He acquired national fame after 1836, when he published The Pirate Song. Despite its debated debt to Lord Byron, it is the manifesto of Spanish Romantic lyricism with its intense defense of freedom and religious, social, and political rebellion. This poem and others were collected in Poems of José de Espronceda (1840), where poems that reflect philosophically on human fate are found alongside others that are political and amorous. After the death of Teresa in 1839, he made new interpretations of love, as in the famous poem A Jarifa in an Orgy, where he expresses disappointment, disgust, lamenting lost pleasure, and rebellion against the reality of life with a lyrical content unpublished, adding poetic rhythms that anticipate modernist verse.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: A Posthumous Success
He eventually became one of the most important figures of Romanticism. He worked in various literary magazines but faced many economic and health disadvantages. He died of an illness in 1870. At the time of his death, his friends published his now-famous “Rhymes,” which achieved a success he could never enjoy.
Legacy and Influence
With his “Rhymes” as the starting point of modern poetry in Spanish, Bécquer was also the best representative of the intimate and romantic current, exerting great influence on figures such as Rosalía de Castro. In his training, literary readings of the Latin classics and Spanish writers of the Golden Age were very important.
Early Life and Family
Born in Seville on February 17, 1836, he was the son of a painter, John Doe Insausti, who signed as Bécquer, a name his ancestors from Flanders used. He had a brother, Valeriano. He was the fifth brother in a family of eight boys. While still very young, just five years old, he lost his father, and shortly after, his mother.
Move to Madrid and Personal Life
After having to drop out of seamanship studies, which he had begun in Seville, he moved to Madrid. There, he collaborated on several literary magazines and faced many economic and health disadvantages. He fell in love with Julia Espín y Colbrandt, the great love of his life, but it was never returned. He married Casta Esteban, with whom he had three children. The marriage failed, and they separated in 1868 when he discovered that his wife was having an affair with another man. He was left alone with their children, although he reconciled with his wife before his death.