Romanticism, Imagination, and Bécquer
[In the following excerpts, Bynum presents an overview of Bécquer's writing in the context of the philosophical and aesthetic orientation of European Romanticism and then explains Bécquer's view of the imagination's significance.]
There are words of a superficially romantic character in which the imagination is used simply to provide a holiday from reality. But the true romantic fancy constitutes a valid mode of perception, perhaps even of thought.
Alan Menhennet, The Romantic Movement
The complete literary production of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer is the brilliant result of a coherently elaborated world view that closely parallels that of other major European romantic authors. It is a philosophical and aesthetic orientation marked by a sense of the duality of existence in which the imagination, as conceptualized during the Romantic era, plays a vital role. This study proposes to examine Bécquer's texts in the light of this world view and its consistent dependence upon the imagination.
Every individual, whether an ordinary human being or one of genius, has the responsibility of developing some acceptable way of viewing the world that is the means by which he attempts to explain the universe and orients himself within it. This way of seeing things may coincide, to a certain extent, with that of vast numbers of people or with that of only a few, but first and foremost, it must be personally meaningful. We may speak, however, of a collective Weltanschauung when the world view of an individual is significantly similar to that of a particular group. Indeed, any recognized philosophical movement or tendency may be characterized by the analogous fundamental viewpoints of its followers.
Such is the case of Romanticism. Although no single, satisfactory definition has been, or is ever likely to be, found for such a term, the critics have referred to certain identifiable qualities that make Romanticism, as a philosophical world view, a powerful and pervasive tendency of the nineteenth century. The following characteristics are emphasized: imagination, genuine feeling, spirituality, intuition and intimate subjectivity.
These elements are involved in a personal process of discovery by means of interiorization. The author, and more specifically the poet, attempts to find out what intimate emotions, feelings and ideas, what truths and mysteries exist within the soul. The principal emphasis is on the releasing of the inner self since, according to critic Alan Menhennet, the romantic potential cannot be fully realized “as long as reality and truth are ‘given’ to the Self, as long as the external world has priority over the internal” (12), as was the case during so much of the eighteenth century.
M. H. Abrams corroborates this important affirmation by pointing out that “through most of the eighteenth century, the poet's invention and imagination were made thoroughly dependent for their materials—their ideas and ‘images’—on the external universe and the literary models the poet had to imitate”; whereas “a salient aspect of the romantic era in general was the sharpened ‘Inner Sense,’ as Coleridge called it, for the goings on of the mind” (Mirror & Lamp 21 & 141). The work of art “is essentially the internal made external, resulting from a creative process operating under the impulse of feeling, and embodying the combined product of the perceptions, thoughts and feelings” (22).
Thus, in order for Romanticism to retain its essential nature, “a conscious decision in favor of freedom for the Self is the crucial step” (Menhennet 12). No matter what author is being considered and no matter what country is represented, the liberated inner faculties must dominate. Otherwise, we are left with little but hollow rhetoric.
This emphasis on the liberation of inner faculties, however, does not indicate “a mindless wallowing in some indeterminate irrational state,” since for Menhennet, only “a Romanticism which fails to grasp and communicate, however indirectly, a real experience … could subside into that condition” (12). The romantics did not dismiss reality. Nevertheless, the release of the inner self makes plausible what Lilian Furst considers to be “the highest function of Romantic art,” that is, “to portray the world in such a way that the infinite in the finite, the ideal within the actual is unveiled in all its beauty” (Romanticism 41). The romantic looks within himself in order to project meaning upon the world around him.
This turning inward corresponds to what Abrams terms “the radical shift to the artist” (Mirror & Lamp 3). The mimetic orientation—“the explanation of art as essentially an imitation of [exterior] aspects of the universe” (8)—had long held sway in aesthetic theory. This, as well as the pragmatic orientation, which believes that the function of art is to delight, in addition to having a moral or social effect, gives way to an expressive orientation. In expressive theories “the artist himself becomes the major element generating both artistic product and the criteria by which it is to be judged” (22). From the mimetic position “art imitates the world of appearance and not of Essence” (8). In expressive art the world of appearance becomes the projected images and symbols of the artist's inner self and his search for the ideal.
Moreover, W. H. Auden points out that artistic creation during the eighteenth century was conceived as “an entirely conscious process,” whereas the “Romantic reaction, … was to stress imagination and vision; i.e., the less conscious side of artistic creation, the uniqueness of the poet's individual experience, and the symbolic rather than the decorative or descriptive value of images” (60-61).
Such an emphasis on the imagination and its relationship to the revelation of the inner self is generally regarded in recent criticism as one of the most important keys to a comprehensive understanding of Romanticism. It is viewed as perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic which separates the Romantic world view from that of the preceding neoclassical period and by which either national or individual manifestations of Romanticism may be evaluated and compared.
John Spencer Hill asserts that in neoclassical literary theory:
the meaning of the term Imagination is determined by its association with the empirical philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hartley and others. In these ‘mechanical’ systems the human mind is described as being merely the passive recorder of sense impressions (especially those originating in sight); ‘images’ or replicas of original sense impressions are stored in the memory, whence—in the acts of thinking or reflection—they are recalled and combined with other stored-up ‘images’ by the faculty of association.
(11)
He continues by explaining that for the eighteenth-century mind the imagination
is endowed with a two-fold function. First, it is thought to be a mode of memory, that is, the mental faculty which recalls images from the memory and so represents sense objects not actually present. … Second, the Imagination is described as the power by which originally distinct impressions are welded together to form images of things that have no existence in the sense: … the Imagination is a combining but not a truly creative faculty.
(11-12)
This neoclassical view of the imagination as a combining and associative faculty, however, is supplanted by the view of the romantic poets and theorists who “are unanimous in claiming for it a much more exalted position” (12). Indeed, for them, “the Imagination is a truly creative faculty; rather than simply rearranging materials fed to it by the senses and the memory, the Imagination is a shaping and ordering power, a ‘modifying’ power which colors objects of sense with the mind's own light” (12). It becomes
the resolving and unifying force of all antitheses, and contradictions. It reconciles and identifies man with nature, the subjective with the objective, the internal mind with the external world, time with eternity, matter with spirit, the conscious with the unconscious … It relates the static to the dynamic, passive to active, ideal to real, and universal to particular … Imagination becomes the process to understand and to view both the world and the self.
(Engell 8)
Furthermore, to the “true Romantic of any age or land, the objects of this world are, as for Blake, no more than an uninteresting frame to be ‘seen through’ on the path toward the only meaningful perception, that presented by the imagination” (Furst, Perspective 119-20). In Germany the Schlegels and Novalis viewed the imagination as an indispensable element “in poeticizing the world,” in transforming “dull and sensate life into a transcendental romantic kingdom” (Engell 218). The great English romantic poets, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats, were champions of the imagination as “the means for a fresh perception and consequently … the cardinal quality of the poet, indeed the very ‘Soul’ of poetry according to Coleridge” (Furst Perspective 120). And although somewhat later, the prominence and significance of the imagination were recognized in France with the appearance of Baudelaire and the Symbolists who finally conceived of it “as a divine faculty that can perceive directly secret and intimate relationships, ‘correspondences,’ between things” (126).
In contrast, a consideration of the imagination as an essential-element of Romanticism, so widely acknowledged elsewhere, has been, by and large, overlooked by those scholars studying the nature of Spanish Romanticism. Indeed, so august a critic as Juan Luis Alborg effectively manages to disregard its possible significance after having paid lip-service to the well-founded arguments of Lilian Furst and René Wellek by asserting the following:
Ningún país ni romántico alguno en concreto abarcó todas las caras del poliedro; varias quizá, o a veces una sola. De donde resulta que se podía ser romántico caminando en muy varia dirección … Sostenemos, pues, que no existe un solo modo de ser romántico, y que todo criterio exclusivista o excesivamente uniformador puede ser vicioso. Tendremos que recordar este postulado al enumerar los rasgos del romanticismo español.
(21-22)
Perhaps this subtle dismissal of the idea that certain fundamental and pervasive characteristics can be attributable to Romanticism, is explained by Alborg's awareness that many other critics, when considering Spanish Romanticism, are apt to emphasize its superficial nature in comparison with other national manifestations. Indeed, Ángel del Río acknowledges that:
… en España el verdadero espíritu romántico en lo que tenía de más revolucionario—la nueva concepción naturalista y panteísta de la vida, el lirismo sentimental profundo y la rebeldía del individuo frente a toda realidad externa; la subjetividad de raíces metafísicas con el imperio lírico del “yo” y el entronizamiento de la sensación como materia de arte—aparece solo como un eco débil.
(103)
And further: “No sobresale el romanticismo español ni en el sentimiento de la naturaleza ni en la poesía de implicaciones filosóficas” (103).
F. Courtney Tarr explains the nature of Spanish Romanticism, albeit somewhat simplistically, by stating that “the Spanish spirit and Spanish letters are individualistic, but not suggestive” (36). They are “extroverted not introverted,” and because of this “the epic and the dramatic predominate over the lyric, and form, or rather expression, over sentiment and feeling” (36). The principal characteristics of Romanticism in Spain, therefore, are the “historical and legendary in subject matter” and expression that is “superficial, declamatory and rhetorical” (42).
Perhaps with greater penetration, Edmund L. King affirms that Romanticism in Spain “was seen as an empty affectation” (“Spanish Romanticism?” 2) which did not take deep root; that the “Spanish Romantics did not really, in a profound way, go through the spiritual experience (responding to deep inner feelings of dissatisfaction both with themselves and their understanding of life) behind the Romantic attitudes, and that is why their Romantic literature is more rhetorical than expressive. They are answering questions that they have not asked”; and that “Spaniards had only superficial contact with idealistic philosophy, Germanic or otherwise, and this contact, such as it was, did not take place because the Spaniards themselves went in search of it; it was imposed by circumstances which they would have preferred to be different” (7-9).
Thus, when considering the Spanish Romantics in general terms we must often contend with a type of superficial posturing that is coupled with an unshakable allegiance to the rich national tradition that was snubbed, at least in theory, during the latter part of the eighteenth century.
The case is different, however, for Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, who has long been recognized as the most noteworthy product of the Romantic movement in Spain. He stands out as a striking exception to this preceding evaluation of Spanish Romanticism, yet for reasons that are far from easily explainable. Be it from whatever combination of personality, heredity, environment, background, education, experience or influence, he is generally regarded as the sole Spanish author who truly embodies the essential Romanticism outlined here.
Indeed, in Spain, no author's conception of the world is as clearly representative of the essential qualities of Romanticism as is Bécquer's. No author is as irrepressibly concerned with exploring the inner self, since it provides a point of orientation from which he attempts to grasp ultimate reality. And no author places his confidence in the imagination more directly.
The critics have offered various insights into the poet's unique position. José Pedro Díaz describes Bécquer as the “más destacado epígono” of Romanticism (Vida y poesía 319). His late appearance, outside the accepted chronology of the movement, implies “una actitud creadora más sabia y equilibrada y más consciente de sí propia que la de los románticos propiamente dichos” (319).
Ángel del Río declares that “en lo fundamental, es cierto que el mundo poético de Bécquer manifiesta, acaso por primera vez en España, lo que el espíritu romántico tenía realmente de nuevo, auténtico y creador” (154). He attempts to explain Bécquer's uniqueness by describing him as an historical phenomenon:
Bécquer, como todos los grandes poetas, da expresión superior a algo que está en la sensibilidad y la conciencia de su época, al menos a los niveles más atentos a los verdaderos valores poéticos. Lo que la historia no explica es el hecho singular que distingue al poeta excepcional y verdadero inmerso en su propio mundo y en su propio estilo.
(156)
Luis Cernuda describes the poet as the supreme culmination of “una línea … que llamaremos ‘nórdica,’ para oponerla a la garrulería, vaciedad y exageración meridionales de los románticos españoles” in which he includes Enrique Gil y Carrasco, Pablo Piferrer and Pastor Díaz (“G. A. Bécquer” 317).
Bécquer's originality is explained in psychological and social terms by Robert Pageard:
L'art poétique de Bécquer, dans ce qu'il a de personnel, répond aux réactions normales du génie humain placé dans certaines conditions contraires à son expansion … La première de ces conditions est une santé nerveuse défaillante … La seconde condition est l'isolement social.
(105-06)
Martín Alonso suggests that Bécquer's works represent a distinct sensibility (“No quiso una nueva escuela, sino dar una nueva sensibilidad, un segundo estilo al romanticismo”) that is surely the result of the spiritual experience (“El romanticismo para Bécquer no es una escuela, es un estado … Es algo consustancial con la persona”) that King associates with true Romanticism (261 & 274). While García Viñó echoes this same point of view by declaring that Bécquer's romanticism “tiene menos que ver con los caracteres propios de una escuela que tuvo su nacimiento, su esplendor y su muerte en una etapa histórica determinada, que con el sentido permanente de una manera de entender al arte literario” (23).
Julio Nombela, one of Bécquer's closest companions, further establishes the poet's uncommon nature by characterizing him as “formal, ingenuo, soñador, romántico; pero sobre todo sincero y artista en toda la extensión de la palabra; era una excepción entre sus paisanos” (207-08, emphasis added). He stresses Bécquer's dynamic passivity, that is to say, his serene outward appearance belying intense psychic activity: “pasaba horas y horas en aquel bullicioso silencio, en aquella poblada soledad, en aquella pasiva actividad, que le hacía olvidar las exigencias de la materia para entregarse en su solemne pobreza a los puros e inefables goces del espíritu” (372).
Nombela acknowledges that Bécquer was acquainted with many authors, but explains that they made little lasting impression upon him. His writing is much more the result of a projection of his psyche upon the world around him:
Aunque en su mocedad tuvo ocasión de conocer a los más inspirados poetas antiguos y modernos, pronto cesaron de ejercer influencia en su espíritu, que adquirió un sello propio contemplando, comprendiendo y admirando la obra de Dios en toda su grandeza.
(788)
In addition, Pageard has pointed to the poet's affinity with other important romantics while rejecting the notion of any direct and conscious influence:
Ainsi, les rapports que l'on peut établir entre l'oeuvre de Bécquer et celle de tel poète, allemand ou autre, ne peuvent résulter, à notre avis, que d'une communauté de situations psychologiques et sociales … Ne parlons donc ici ni d'influences ni d'écoles, mais simplement de familles d'esprits dont les traits communs sont le résultat d'un concours de circonstances qui peut, théoriquement, se produire à travers tous le temps et tous les pays.
(107)
Thus, while there are many suggestions and much speculation as to the appearance of so great a writer on the Spanish literary scene, there is a clear recognition that Bécquer is an exception. The poet does indeed partake of the spiritual experience at the root of Romanticism; he does indeed ask the profound metaphysical questions that set him apart from his countrymen and grant him spiritual kinship with the great romantic authors of other countries, especially England and Germany.
The phrase “spiritual kinship” is one that merits emphasis since it discounts external similarities while focusing on the affinities that are discernible at an inspirational level among writers of various nationalities. It is in this way that Bécquer can be related to an essential pan-European Romanticism that has imagination at its core.
More than one critic has become hopelessly bogged down in trying to determine which authors have directly influenced Bécquer's works. In particular, there has been much speculation as to whether the German poet Heine exerted a strong influence on the poet. Unfortunately, such a critical approach, more often than not, loses sight of the poet's originality. Indeed, Cernuda has chided: “Esta crítica de parecidos y comparaciones que se practica en España …” (“Bécquer y el romanticismo” 1276).
Following a similar path are those critics, including Rica Brown and José Pedro Díaz, who perhaps place too great an emphasis on a one-to-one relationship between the people and events of the poet's life and his literary production. Again, the poet's originality is undermined by a biographical cause-and-effect explanation.
Then, there are critics, Alborg for instance, who, because of their “afán españolista” (Cernuda 1276), tend to concentrate solely upon Spanish Romanticism as a separate entity, with little consideration of the larger European context into which it must necessarily fit. Thus, Bécquer is often effectively disassociated from the very philosophical foundations on which his world view rests.
Certain others, López Estrada among them, run the risk of a dilemma akin to tunnel vision by compartmentalizing Bécquer's works, that is, by placing an almost exclusive emphasis on his poetry, or his legends or his letters. The poet's works simply cannot be adequately accounted for if they are limited in such a way.
Indeed, if there is one characteristic of Bécquer's total literary output that should be stressed, it is its cohesiveness. On this point Carísomo agrees:
La prosa de todo auténtico poeta es casi siempre índice de su verso. Y no estoy muy lejos de creer que un índice infalible … Bécquer escribió prosa con la misma conciencia artística, con la misma encendida emoción que sus rimas estremecidas; …
(9 & 13)
So too does Pageard: “L'originalité poétique de Bécquer se retrouve dans les Leyendas et les Cartas literarias. Ce sont non seulement la plupart des thémes de Rimas que l'on reconnait dans ces écrits en prose, mais aussi le meme vocabulaire vaporeux et les memes images” (100).
Cernuda asserts that it is “difícil separar su verso de su prosa, que fueron ambos obra poética” (“G. A. Bécquer” 323). In addition, del Río admits that “en las leyendas becquerianas se objetiviza el mundo sentimental y lírico de las rimas” (161) while García-Viñó declares: “Separar en Gustavo Adolfo … al poeta del prosista no pasa de ser un mero artificio. Idéntica atmósfera, semejante temática, igual tonalidad se dan en uno y en otro … sus relatos son el exacto complemento de sus versos” (24).
Finally, Phillip Stuyvesant avows the following:
Pocas veces en las obras imaginativas de un escritor se encuentra tal fusión de unidad de propósito y expresión entre su poesía y su prosa como en el caso de Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Además de la unidad filosófica que se espera, se halla simetría de forma y cohesión de símbolos así en las composiciones poéticas como prosaicas.
(301)
Taking into account, therefore, the coherence of inspiration, themes and images to be found in Bécquer's works we can feel more than justified in regularly referring to him as “the poet.” Indeed, both his prose and verse become the means to a common end, the expression of the poetic. They are, as we will see, the effective instruments of poetry (Cernuda, “Bécquer y el poema en prosa” 987).
Furthermore, because of the recognized cohesiveness of the poet's texts, it is appropriate to look to those critics who identify and follow specific thematic and/or stylistic threads that can be traced throughout his poetry and prose. Only in this way can we begin to grasp the meaning of the poet's works as an integrated whole.
Hence, the most fruitful line of critical inquiry, extracted from the vast and diverse amount of criticism that has been written, is that which in some way deals with the indefinite quality of Bécquer's works, or with any one of a whole constellation of related terms. In effect, this indefinitiveness has been perceived as perhaps the most salient element to be found in the poet's works.
Immediately, the article, “Bécquer y ‘lo evanescente,’” by J. M. Aguirre comes to mind. Aguirre points to “un conjunto de objetos no sujetos a formas sensibles fijas, imposibles de someter a límites estrictos, ‘objetos’ de apariencia inestable, pasajera, evanescente” that the poet uses to express his poetics (28). Indeed, he asserts that “todo lo que de una u otra manera tiene que ver con la poesía participa de esa misma evanescencia” (31), thereby indicating an invaluable approach not only to Bécquer's system of images but to his world view as well.
The evanescent may be paired with the unobtainable, the term chosen by Rita Geada-Pruletti to characterize the poet's work (341-47). While many authors may be inspired by the thought of the inaccessible, the critic sees this idea in Bécquer converted into “eje obsesionante” (341). His poetry, and indeed his works in general, expresses “insistentemente, lo inasequible como foco de interés estético hacia cuya aprensión final tiende su espíritu” (341). The critic affirms the “naturaleza fantasmal e inasible” (341) of the poetic object and further echoes Aguirre in the following noteworthy passage in which she enumerates several of the many forms that Bécquer's impreciseness may take:
El poeta “huésped de la niebla” encierra en sus versos y en su prosa poética un mundo nebuloso de visiones, de objetos sin contornos precisos, de sombras que se encuentran y se pierden, de luces que impresionan y se evaden, de colores que se diluyen, de música asordinada, de sonidos combinados con silencios, de intuiciones reveladoras, y de emociones expresadas con infinita sugestibilidad.
(341)
A third term that, according to Jorge Guillén, lies at the heart of the poet's writings and may be applied to Bécquer's indefinitiveness, is ineffability (“Lenguaje insuficiente” 145-82). The poet is a visionary—“el español que asume del modo más auténtico el papel de poeta visionario” (148)—who is unable to express what he sees in comprehensible terms: “Allá, en el fondo de una intuición, lo visto, lo sentido, lo soñado resisten, inefables” (171). It is only possible for him to “sugerir más que expresar directamente” (175); therefore, we are most often confronted with poetry and prose that are based upon “vaga sugestión” rather than “estricta comunicación” (175).
This ineffableness which thwarts direct communication is also emphasized by Gabriel Celaya: “… lo que Bécquer experimenta es inefable, es decir, estrictamente, lo que no cabe en el habla, lo que no puede decirse con palabras” (82). Consequently, the poet speaks to us in images, “incoherentes y locas” perhaps, but “fuertemente ligadas entre sí por alguna ley que la Lógica no explica” (124). For Celaya, Bécquer presents us with “un mundo primordial de virtualidades, latencias e imágenes indecisas,” and “nos pone en contacto con la existencia como virgíneo brotar, y en lo que ésta tiene siempre de indeterminado” (123). He further emphasizes “este carácter de inestabilidad y fluencia sin fin” to be found in Bécquer's works (123).
Similarly, González López describes the poet's art as “más sugerencia que precisión, más alusión que realidad, más forma vagarosa y etérea que sólida” (633). He sees a relationship between what he calls Bécquer's “poesía de ensueño” and prose in which “impera lo misterioso, lo sobrenatural, lo mágico,” and Symbolism “que, insatisfecho con la simple materialidad de las cosas, buscó su significación espiritual trascendental … sugiriéndola más que precisándola” (627). Bécquer's words and images “no representan cosas sensibles, sino con ellas, más que definir las cosas, trata de sugerirlas o de unirlas … a un mundo superior que está más allá de la percepción de los sentidos humanos,” hence their undefinability (633).
The poet creates “espacios misteriosos,” to use Ildefonso Manuel Gil's term: “lugares indefinidos y misteriosos que adquieren una segunda naturaleza que invalida la que realmente les pertenece” (121). And Bécquer emphasizes what King calls “the reality of the changeable moment” that is comprised of elements characterized by “some sort of vagueness—they are changeable, mobile, transitory, intangible, invisible, minuscule” (Painter to Poet 156-57) because, as Martín Alonso asserts, “al poeta le produce insatisfacción todo lo que no es incorpóreo” (277).
García-Viñó speaks of “un sistema de imágenes que expresan lo vago, lo impalpable, lo flotante, lo impreciso, lo suave, lo brillante” that is an integral part of the poet's constant longing “por lo inalcanzable, o por un mundo como él creía que debía de ser el mundo” (48). Casalduero reiterates the poet's dissatisfaction with “todo lo que no sea incorpóreo e intangible, que no sea espíritu puro,” while noting that “toda realidad que se interponga en su camino queda volatilizada, desaparece, se desvanece, se convierte en sombra aérea” (Las rimas 106). Phillip Stuyvesant notes that the search for “lo ilusivo y lo inefable” is the essence of Bécquer's art (311), while A. D. Inglis states that the poet's aesthetic position “is virtually founded upon a willing acceptance of the ineffable” (26). Indeed, the critic maintains that Bécquer views the unattainable as a “principal ingredient of meaningful experience” (26).
These analogous assertions evidence a broad-based agreement among critics that Bécquer's art is indeed characterized by its indefinitiveness, by its dissatisfaction with the tangible. Furthermore, they indicate a positive direction to be taken in order to arrive at an understanding of the poet's Weltanschauung. There are, however, questions which remain either partially or completely unanswered: Why does the poet rely on this undefinability? On what world view is such a quality sustained? What forces or processes are involved in its expression? Under what circumstances is it perceived? What significance does it have? In the chapters to follow I hope to shed some new light on these questions, using this recognized indefinite quality of Bécquer's works as a point of departure.
In the present chapter we have attempted to characterize an essential Romanticism that, while more or less indiscernible among other writers in Spain, not only accounts for Bécquer's art, but also establishes a fundamental affinity between the poet and other great romantic authors. This Romanticism encompasses intuition, spirituality, feeling, intimate subjectivity, and first and foremost, imagination, while emphasizing the liberation of the inner self.
Furthermore, in conjunction with Romanticism, I have outlined the development of the concept of imagination. The associative and memorative functions ascribed to it by theorists of the eighteenth century are no longer seen as valid in the nineteenth century. Imagination becomes a truly creative power capable of revealing an entirely new reality that lies beyond the world of appearance. In Spain, however, the imagination, a concept so vital to Romanticism, was scarcely a topic for consideration among writers of the period, and has very seldom been evaluated by modern critics. Nevertheless, we have pointed to a general recognition of Bécquer's uniqueness in relation to other Spanish romantic authors, not only in terms of chronology, but in terms of inspiration.
Moreover, we have insisted upon the importance of assessing Bécquer's works as a cohesive unit, and have chosen to stress a body of criticism that emphasizes the poet's cohesiveness by reason of his indefinitiveness. This, I would maintain, is the most valuable way of approaching Bécquer's works.
In subsequent chapters an extensive use of textual analysis will clarify the poet's world view and its relationship to Romanticism. In addition, we will explore the various ways in which this way of seeing things is expressed, and especially the central role played by the imagination. A coherent theoretical framework for Bécquer's compositions will emerge by carefully examining thematic and stylistic elements taken from all aspects (letters, legends, poems, narrations, etc.) of the poet's literary production.
.....
“Thus, the range of Imagination is unlimited. Its materials extend throughout the universe.”
Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia
Bécquer's world view, delineated in the preceding chapter, reveals a profound awareness of the duality of existence. Consequently, the poet's creative universe, his means of expression, is founded upon a desire to mediate this duality, and is therefore fundamentally dependent upon the imagination as a primary force in achieving such a goal. The imagination offers communication between matter and spirit, and is capable of giving form to the poet's inner world while transforming the world around him. It is incited by both these inner and outer realms, providing images to what is intimately sensed while supplying new meaning to the exterior world. It is indispensable to his singular vision, although fraught with certain limitations.
As previously outlined, the concept of the imagination developed a far greater significance during the several decades prior to Bécquer's lifetime, changing from an associative agent to a truly creative power. Furthermore, recent critics have repeatedly affirmed its essential relationship to Romanticism. Indeed, James Engell declares that a philosophy of the imagination “became the core and sine qua non of Romanticism and the key to romantic art, literature, and thought,” that “far more than any one thing, [imagination] shaped and sustained Romanticism,” and that “the attracting and unifying force of the imagination made Romanticism in the first place” (4).
René Wellek names imagination as one of the three criteria central to romantic literature (161), while C. M. Bowra acknowledges that for the romantics “imagination is fundamental,” and “a divine faculty concerned with the central issues of being” (“Romantic Imagination” 87 & 91). In addition, Lilian Furst describes imagination as “the supreme faculty of the Romantic, distinguishing him immediately from those who approach objects empirically through sense impressions” (Perspective 119).
Precisely because it is a creative power that receives its dynamic energy directly from the spirit, the imagination is the principal force behind the push toward the objectification of spirit and poetry. It is the element that “elaborates essence into existence” (Engell 351), and thereby reveals the spiritual side of the universe, a revelation that was the romantics' greatest desire. They were men “concerned with the things of the spirit and hoped that through imagination and inspired insight they could both understand them and present them in compelling poetry” (Bowra, “Romantic Imagination” 95).
Hence, the creations of the imagination are not simply the memorative reproduction of past sensory experience since “la imaginación crea más allá de la memoria” (Guillén, Poética 12). Nor are they mere fantasies completely divorced from life. On the contrary, such creations, no matter how absurd they may seem to ordinary intelligence, symbolically determine life's true and most profound meaning. More than simply an agreeable escape from everyday reality, they share in a higher reality that exists beyond actual life. Indeed, without the imagination the poet has little means of getting at that higher spiritual reality which he knows to exist, and is constantly striving to attain.
Furthermore, Bowra tells us that the romantics, “in rejecting Locke's and Newton's explanations of the visible world, ‘obeyed’ an inner call to explore more fully the world of spirit” (“Romantic Imagination” 94). Each author
believed in an order of things which is not that which we see and know, and this was the goal of their passionate search. They wished to penetrate to an abiding reality, to explore its mysteries, and by this to understand more clearly what life means and what it is worth. They were convinced that, though visible things are the instruments by which we find this reality, they are not everything and have indeed little significance unless they are related to some embracing and sustaining power.
(94)
The imagination enables this “abiding reality,” this realm of spirit and poetry, to manifest itself, and is the individual's special tool that allows him “to perceive and recreate the world according to his own inner vision” (Furst, Perspective 119).
As a romantic, Bécquer is acutely aware of the imagination's significance in creatively giving form to his inner world. Nevertheless, he seldom deals with the term conceptually and directly, as poets like Blake and Coleridge attempted to do. Instead, he repeatedly alludes to it throughout his works without further explanation, thereby placing the burden of interpretation on the reader. In addition, although the poet gives preference to the word imaginación, he does not appear to make any significant distinction between that word and fantasía, as Coleridge would have done, choosing rather to employ the two terms interchangeably. Therefore, in order to obtain an initial insight into his ideas about the imagination, its properties and its characteristics, it becomes necessary to evaluate some of the many passages in which these words appear.
We might begin with one of the most direct statements that Bécquer makes concerning the imagination. In his sketch entitled “Una tragedia y un ángel” the poet exclaims: “¡El que tiene imaginación, con qué facilidad saca de la nada un mundo!” (755). The imagination is clearly conceived as a creative force that renders the individual who possesses such a special gift capable of producing a world from nothingness. This “nothingness” cannot be considered as absolute negation, but rather in a mystic sense, as the region of absolute being and of ineffable, non-objective reality (Cirlot 229). The creative imagination that produces a world form nothingness provides images for that reality—“Yo quisiera tener la fuerza de imaginación bastante para poderme figurar cómo fue aquello” (606, emphasis added)—and discovers meaning in seemingly utter insignificance. It has the power to form mental images out of intangible spiritual reality: “la fantasía, que oye y ve y palpa en su exaltación lo que no existe …” (120).
The imagination is primarily incited to form these images by the predispositions and desires of the poet's inner world: “la vara mágica del deseo hizo posibles en la mente nuevos absurdos” (535); “mi deseo, seguía contando con la imaginación” (725); “Mis deseos comenzaron a hervir y a levantarse en vapor de fantasías” (633). Paul Chauchard has affirmed the fundamental importance of the concept of desire to our psychic existence by noting that it is “ce que en nous a quelque chose à voir avec la violence de la passion et son incompréhensible source, avec la mystérieuse attirance de l'objet, avec la note de sérénité qui marque d'un trait de feu le moment de son accomplissement” (10-11). And further: “Le désir est comme le coeur et la couleur du temps de l'homme. Il bat la mesure de sa vie. Il la nuance d'une teinte particulière” (11). It seems, therefore, that the poet's desire may be characterized as an intense, yet formless, internal motivational force inextricably linked with spirit and poetry. It is bound up with their compelling need and push toward expression, and thus avails itself of the imagination.
At the same time, the physical world, as noted earlier, is unavoidably involved: “Las obras de la imaginación tienen siempre algún punto de contacto con la realidad” (763). Indeed, García-Viñó notes that Bécquer, “buceador de lo invisible, no desdeña en ningún instante lo visible, como espejo o cristal a través del cual vislumbrar o al menos sentir el latido de aquello” (157). The physical realm provides the poet with a limitless supply of sensory impressions that are assimilated both actively and passively—“el botín de ideas e impresiones que para enriquecer la imaginación he recogido …” (540)—and worked on at a psychic level, as well as a whole range of elements that serve as triggering devices.
Ideas that are intuitive and subjective rather than rational and objective develop from the combination of sensory experience and the immaterial spiritual and poetic force within the poet. In turn, these ideas, when instantaneously triggered by some known or unknown, internal or external stimulus, seek to be expressed and actively come in contact with the imagination: “Un mundo de ideas se agolpó a mi imaginación en aquel instante” (96); “… muchedumbre de reflecciones se agolparon a mi imaginación” (639).
In effect, the verbs that Bécquer chooses in conjunction with appearance of the word suggest the progressive involvement and developing bond between these ideas and sensations and his imagination. Ideas initially flock to the imagination, as to a charismatic presence, and present themselves to it for worthy consideration: “… la ignorada historia del tesoro … presentándose a su imaginación …” (361).
Next, they offer themselves to it, making themselves available to its creative power: “… ideas … nunca como ahora se han ofrecido a mi imaginación …” (501). Finally, they assault it—“… ciertas cosas que asaltaban mi imaginación …” (718)—in an effort to make their existence known.
Thus, these ideas and impressions begin to act upon the imagination and be acted upon by it: “… se fundían en su imaginación de fuego esas ideas gigantes …” (774). In a sense, they travel through it as through a labyrinth, as through a zone of infinite possibilities. They move it to action, thereby intensifying its creative activity: “Nunca ha herido mi imaginación una amalgama más disparatada de dos ideas …” (97); “Los diferentes y extraordinarios objetos que, unos tras otros, van hiriendo la imaginación, …” (525); “… nada extraño venía a herir la imaginación” (194); “… la figura de aquella mujer cuya especial belleza había herido mi imaginación de un modo tan extraordinario” (761); “… la rapidez con que los objetos y los pensamientos que estos engendraban herían los ojos y la imaginación” (953).
They positively influence it: “… la noche se aproxima y comienza a influir en la imaginación con su alto silencio …” (524); “… la influencia que las creencias religiosas ejercen sobre la imaginación de los pueblos que crean un nuevo estilo” (902); “… influir en mi imaginación, ya sobreexcitada extrañamente” (507). They seize it—“… presa su imaginación de un vértigo de poesía” (163)—and excite it: “… la idea … enardece la fantasía y hace vibrar todas las fibras sensibles, cual si las tocase alguna chispa eléctrica” (622); “… ese astro … que ha inflamado la imaginación” (655).
Clearly, the poet's imagination is activated from within, and exterior objects seem to set its power in motion only because they have already been assimilated by the inner realm of spirit and poetry and thereby charged with significance: “… la basílica … levantándose en nuestra imaginación pensamientos …” (840).
Ideas and impressions travel through the imagination's labyrinth in their search for expression: “… ideas locas que cruzan por nuestra imaginación, sin que ose formularlas el labio” (116); “… las fantásticas ideas que cruzaron por mi imaginación” (508); “Estas ideas que ya han cruzado otras veces por la imaginación …” (531); “… a través del dédalo de confusas ideas de mi fantasía” (766). They have the ability to cause the poet to free himself from physical reality and turn inward: “… yo corría por aquellos inexplorados laberintos, …” (1075). They live in the dynamic chaos of possibilities that exists prior to being given specific form: “… eran tan rápidas las ideas, que se atropellaban entre sí en la imaginación” (842); “… mis ideas … registrando en el fondo de la imaginación, en donde andan enmarañadas e indecisas” (516). They boil with incessant energy—“Estas y otras ideas semejantes hervían en nuestra imaginación” (850)—and constitute a latent power: “las mil ideas que duermen en el océano sin fondo de la fantasía” (1186).
When the imagination is exalted by these ideas and impressions—“… según que mi imaginación se hallaba más o menos exaltada y propensa a ideas risueñas o terribles …” (349)—it in turn produces a myriad of provocative, although often unintelligible mental images that also seek, perhaps even more intensely, to be given tangible form: “… impresionada la imaginación por la vaga melancolía o la imponente hermosura de un lugar cualquiera, se lanzaba a construir con fantásticos materiales uno de esos poéticos recintos …” (537); “Otras veces, exaltada la imaginación, creo distinguir confusamente” (519); “… imaginaba percibir formas o escuchar sonidos misteriosos, formas de seres sobrenaturales, palabras ininteligibles que no podía comprender” (162).
The imagination supplies the poet with a special kind of freedom and the means by which he can break away from the material world: “… su alma se reviste de una forma imaginaria y huye de los lazos que la aprisionan para lanzarse al éter” (67); “… su espíritu, libre de los lazos terrenales, vaga por ese mundo invisible que a su antojo crea y transforma la fantasía” (835); “Como quiera que cuando se viaja así la imaginación, desasida de la materia, tiene espacio y lugar para correr, volar y juguetear como una loca por donde mejor le parece” (514). It is a freedom in which the poet revels and is loath to give up.
Bécquer likens the imagination to a horse, an image intriguingly identified with divination and intuitive understanding (Cirlot 152), that is initially spurred and then given free rein: “Una vez aguijoneada la imaginación, es un caballo que se desboca y al que no sirve tirarlo de la rienda” (123); “… dando rienda suelta a la imaginación, forjaba un mundo fantástico, habitado por extrañas creacciones, hijas de sus delirios y sus ensueños de poeta” (161); “… lanzándose a rienda suelta sobre el radiante corcel de la fantasía en el espacio sin límites de la originalidad …” (772); “… su fogosa imaginación se exaltaba más y más, como el corcel que golpea impaciente la tierra con su casco, ardiendo en deseos de lanzarse al escape a través de la llanura que se dilata a su vista” (855). These images of a horse running free through wide open spaces are a striking equivalent to the poet's desire for imaginative freedom so as to escape the superficially imposed restraints of ordinary existence.
The poet seeks freedom of imagination—“Con qué gusto dejaría volar la imaginación desatada …” (958); “… eché a volar la fantasía por espacios imaginarios” (514)—because he recognizes it as the key that can unlock the realm of spirit and poetry. It is the imagination, free from rational control, that enables spirit and poetry (la idea) to be made manifest: “Me parece que miro materializarse la idea viéndoos comenzar a crecer y levantaros” (833); “La superioridad de la idea sobre la materia, la mirábamos allí como personificada” (844).
Consequently, Bécquer is drawn to the art of the Middle Ages and the Orient rather than to that of Greece, Rome and the Renaissance. The medieval artistic styles, Romanesque and Gothic, as well as the oriental styles of India, Egypt and Arabia are seen as intrinsically spiritual and imaginative, while the classical styles are bound by rationalism. The antipathy, that is, the strong opposition of intent and feeling which the poet perceives between Renaissance and Medieval is expressed in the following passage from “San Juan de los Reyes,” which begins Bécquer's Templos de España:
… se exhumó en Italia el gusto romano, … inundó a las otras naciones bajo la forma del Renacimiento. Nada se respetó: profanáronse los más caprichosos pensamientos de nuestra arquitectura propia, a la que apellidaron bárbara; dióse a los templos la matemática regularidad de las construcciones gentílicas; insultóse el santo pudor de las esculturas, arrancándoles, para revelar el desnudo, sus largos y fantásticos ropajes, y, tal vez para alumbrar su vergüenza, dejóse por la ancha rotonda penetrar la luz a torrentes en el interior del santuario, bañado antes en la tenue y moribunda claridad que se abría paso a través de los vidrios de colores del estrecho ajimez o del calado rosetón.
(773)
The Renaissance is profane, calculated, straightforward and lit by the light of reason while the Medieval is just the opposite—sacred, mysterious, subjective and illuminated by the imagination—and eminently more alluring.
Indeed, while contemplating the towers of Burgos in “Caso de ablativo” the poet clearly distinguishes between the soaring spirituality of the Middle Ages—“tan llena de ideas extrañas, de aspiraciones infinitas”; “que soñó, aunque de un modo confuso, con la soberanía del espíritu del hombre sobre los elementos que le rodean” (959); “esas vetustas torres que esconden entre las nubes sus flechas agudas, o lanzándose desde la tierra al cielo como con ansia de prolongar hasta lo infinito el último punto del triángulo” (960)—and the earthbound Renaissance represented by the Escorial:
… cuyo cóncavo cimborrio pesa sobre los muros como un cráneo de plomo … el matemático producto de un genio frío, material y severo, que traduce, con la regularidad inalterable de sus líneas, con su igualdad monótona y su antipática dureza de contornos. …
(960)
In addition, it is a medieval lady of stone in the poet's sketch entitled “La mujer de piedra” who completely captures his fancy. Discovered among a profusion of details which embellish a church that is characterized by its curious blend of Byzantine and Gothic elements, she is vastly different from the Greek statues with which Bécquer's artistic training has acquainted him and far more noteworthy:
Acostumbrado a reproducir el correcto perfil de las estatuas griegas, irreprochables de forma … no podía hallar la fórmula de aquella estatua, a la vez incorrecta y hermosa, que sin tener la idealidad de formas del antiguo, antes, por el contrario, rebosando vida real en ciertos detalles, tenía, sin embargo, en el más alto grado el ideal del sentimiento y la expresión.
(763)
As an artist, Bécquer acknowledges that he is more accustomed to formal and academic works that are produced in accordance with prescribed formulas and specific models. He is, therefore, unable to copy this special statue distinguished by its beauty as well as by its incorrectness and lack of ideal form. The lady of stone is neither bound by classical models nor by objective reality and its rules. She is a work of imagination—“rompía con todas las tradiciones” (764)—and partakes of spiritual reality: “… que debajo de aquel granito circulaba como un fluido sútil un espíritu que le prestaba aquella vida incomprensible, vida extraña, que no he podido traslucir jamás en esas otras figuras humanas …” (763). Thus, a significant contrast is again established between the rational and static perfection of classical art, with its modeled surfaces and ideal form, and the spiritualized art of the medieval period represented by the lady of stone.
Furthermore, in “El Cristo de la Luz” Greece is described as “aquella sociedad que sujetó la idea a la forma, que tiranizó la libre imaginación por medio de los preceptos del arte” (903), and Rome “no fue más que el espíritu de Grecia encarnado en un gran pueblo” (903). Both aesthetics, then, emphasize form/object over idea/subject and intellect/reason over feeling/imagination.
In contrast, Bécquer speaks of the “magníficos edificios en que el genio oriental desplegó todo el lujo de su imaginación inagotable” (906). Egyptian art is characterized by “terribles misterios,” “locas e incomprensibles concepciones” and “oscuros jeroglíficos” (902). India is marked by “su atmósfera de fuego” and “sus imaginaciones ardientes, alimentadas por una religión todo maravillas y mitos emblemáticos” (902). Arabian architecture, produced by “ese pueblo conquistador, a cuya imaginación poderosa tanto deben la poesía, las artes y las ciencias” (897), is described as “hija del sueño de un creyente dormido” (903).
Implicit in each of these descriptions is the poet's clear preference for art that is expressionistic; art that seeks to depict the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist, and that are viewed as senseless and perhaps irrational with regard to objective reality, yet profoundly meaningful. Thus, Menhennet's statement to the effect that the “romantic, in which the liberated inner spiritual faculties dominate … finds more truth in chaos than in devisive system” (17), is suggested by Bécquer's artistic evaluation.
The poet freely chooses to surrender himself to a kind of chaos (taken as a “state of disorganized creation, blindly impelled toward the creation of a new order of phenomena of hidden meanings” (Cirlot 43), when he speaks of the “absurdas sinfonías de la imaginación” (350), and the “sueños de la imaginación” (359 & 514). These are intimately related and highly significant images because both connote a release from reality. While a symphony is generally composed of a complex consonance of sound, one that is absurd suggests something ridiculously unreasonable and incongruous, something that does not make sense. Nevertheless, like a dream, an absurd symphony can be seen as a visionary creation that is abstracted from the material world and charged with profound meaning.
Indeed, Bécquer speaks of “la extraña lógica del absurdo” (745) that is fraught with deepest significance and is a part of what he calls a type of second existence—“… segunda y misteriosa vida …” (743)—the realm of spirit and of content par excellence, that is “oculto tras la forma de mi vida prosaica y material …” (742). Dreams are also a part of this second existence—“Los sueños son el espíritu de la realidad con las formas de la mentira” (75); “… la vida del sueño, que es sin duda alguna una existencia doble y aparte de la existencia positiva …” (723)—and offer the poet “un mundo de seres animados con la vida de la idea, visión magnífica, profética y real en su fondo, vana sólo en la forma” (67-68), that is, absolute spiritual reality.
Thus, the realm of the imagination “no es un mundo ilusorio sino la realidad, la total realidad—la realidad real—que la mayoría no registra, pero el poeta, con un raro poder, nos hace patente” (Celaya 89-90). The poet shares in the “Romantic preference for seeing not the surface appearance but the inner reality beneath it” (Furst, Perspective 289). He assumes, like Shelley, that the imagination “is a means of knowing” (Baker 226); “ignota música del cielo que sólo la imaginación comprende” (154); “… revolvía con velocidad increíble la imaginación buscando nuevos argumentos para mi tesis …” (688). He dreams, “pero no un mundo ilusorio sino la realidad última” (Celaya 83, emphasis added). And it is the imagination, with its dreams and absurd symphonies, with its special way of knowing, which creatively unveils that reality because it has the power to form mental images from it: “… la imaginación, saltando de idea en idea, se entretiene en reunirlas como en un mosaico disparatado y extravagante” (741). Yet, whether those images crystalize and come to the surface, and are somehow made known in the world, remains to be seen.
The imagination is an indispensable element in attempting to bridge the vast gulf between conception and expression. But for comprehensible expression to occur imagination must be seconded by reason—“si merced a un supremo esfuerzo de la fantasía, ayudada por la erudición y el conocimiento de la época, se consigue condensar en la mente algo de aquella atmósfera …” (542)—and supported by language. Without these two ordering elements the images produced by the imagination live a kind of dynamic and profoundly significant, yet nebulous existence: “Las ideas vagan confusas, como esas concepciones sin formas ni color que se ciernen en el cerebro del poeta, …” (60).
In effect, Bécquer addresses the issue of conception versus expression in his “Introducción sinfónica.” The poet's great need is that of being able to give tangible form to the countless mental images to which the imagination gives birth: “Fecunda … mi musa concibe y pare en el misterioso santuario de la cabeza, poblándola de creaciones sin número, a las cuales ni mi actividad ni todos los años que me restan de vida serían suficientes a dar forma” (39).
It is significant that Bécquer equates imagination with the word “muse,” and thereby implies that imagination and inspiration are in reality one and the same, an inner creative source. His imagination/muse engenders innumerable creations—“los extravagantes hijos de mi fantasía” (39); “los rebeldes hijos de la imaginación” (40)—that become a part of the profound inner existence that the poet senses: “una vida oscura y extraña” (39); “su fantástica existencia” (40); “este otro mundo que llevo dentro de la cabeza” (41).
It is an existence that intensely strives to be expressed: “… agitándose en formidable aunque silencioso tumulto, buscan en tropel por donde salir a la luz de entre las tinieblas en que viven” (39). Hence, Bécquer likens the imagination's offspring to germs that seek to bear fruit: “… los siento a veces agitarse … semejante a … esas miríadas de gérmenes que hierven y se estremecen en una eterna incubación …” (39), to an underground spring that searches for a path to the surface: “Necesario es abrir paso a las aguas profundas, que acabarán por romper el dique, diariamente aumentadas por un manantial vivo” (40), to an excessive amount of blood that needs to be drawn: “… necesito, del mismo modo que se sangra el cuerpo por cuyas hinchadas venas se precipita la sangre en pletórico empuje, desahogar el cerebro …” (40), and to the notes of a harp that wait to be played: “No quiero que al romperse esta arpa … se pierdan, a la vez que el instrumento, las ignoradas notas que contenía” (40). Each of these corresponding images strikingly suggests burgeoning expectancy, latent energy and tension that push toward the externalization and objectification of the poet's inner world. It is his task to capture that vital, yet formless existence in words.
Yet, as the poet attests, it is a task that is all too often marked by frustration: “Yo quisiera escribirle, del hombre / domando el rebelde, mezquino idïoma, / con palabras que fuesen a un tiempo / suspiros y risas, colores y notas. / Pero en vano es luchar, que no hay cifra / capaz de encerrarlo …” (“Rima I”, 401); “… un mundo de ideas confusas y sin nombre se elevaron en tropel en mi cerebro y pasaron volteando alrededor de mi frente … ¡Escribir! ¡Oh! Si yo pudiera haber escrito entonces, no me cambiaría por el primer poeta del mundo” (624); “pero no creo posible dar con la palabra una idea de ella, ni mucho menos reducir a términos comprensibles la impresión que me produjo” (760);
Inútil fuera el querer hoy dar formas a los mil y mil pensamientos que asaltaron nuestra mente … eran tan rápidas las ideas, que se atropellaban entre sí en la imaginación, como las leves olas de un mar que pica el viento; tan confusas, que deshaciéndose las unas en las otras, sin dar espacio a completarse, huían como esos vagos recuerdos de un sueño que no se puede coordinar; como esos fantasmas ligerísimos, fenómenos inexplicables de la inspiración, que al querer materializarlos pierden su hermosura, o se escapan como la mariposa que huye dejando entre las manos que la quieren detener el polvo de oro con que sus alas se embellecen.
(842)
Clearly, the poet longs for wholeness, for completeness, for nothing to be lacking in the expression of what he senses; but, like Shelley, he must agree that “when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conception of the Poet” (71).
In spite of this dilemma, however, the poetic text is indeed born when the images produced by the imagination are coupled with words under the guidance of the imagination's creative power and supported by the poet's reason, reason that is essentially intuitive rather than conceptual, logical and discursive (Maritain 55). It is a forming process that occurs during certain indeterminate moments of creative insight when the barrier between conception and expression is briefly lifted. The resulting composition is, to Bécquer's mind, never more than a partial success, pointing to a distressing awareness that his ability to wield the power of the imagination has its limits. It is, at the same time, the closest approximation to that which is deeply known.
Thus, the various images of partiality that Bécquer employs in his “Introducción”—“Mi inteligencia os nutrirá lo suficiente para que seáis palpables; os vestirá, aunque sea de harapos, lo bastante para que no avergüence vuestra desnudez” (40); “Quedad, pues, consignados aquí como la estela nebulosa que señala el paso de un desconocido cometa, como los átomos dispersos de un mundo en embrión …” (40); “… quedad en él [the world] como el eco …” (41)—not only point to the inadequacy of expression, but also stand as the symbolic equivalents of the inexpressible. In that capacity they are of the utmost significance.
Bécquer's imagination and reason, in the secondary role of establishing order and form, have enabled the realm of spirit and poetry to manifest itself in those images, albeit insufficiently. At the same time, the imagination retains a primary position for the poet because it, rather than reason, is the vital creative force allied with the spiritual and the poetic, and given impetus by them: “… ¿qué imaginación concibió vuestra majestuosa mole … ?” (832); “… poder de imaginación suficiente a concebir un nuevo arte” (903); “… esas mil fantásticas y caprichosas creaciones de la imaginación que el arte misterioso de la Edad Media dejó grabados …” (524); “… el poeta … cuya imaginación ardiente reconstruye sobre un roto sillar un edificio, y sobre el edificio … una edad remota” (773); “… un libro; yo lo he hecho algunas veces en mi imaginación” (329); “qué diáfanas, qué ligeras, qué impalpables son las gasas de oro que flotan en la imaginación al envolver esas misteriosas figuras que crea …” (624).
Furthermore, by making use of the imagination, the poet has three great powers at his disposal: the power to achieve unity, “to perceive, as it were intuitively, a secret web of connections within the universe,” the power to transform the material world according to his personal vision, and the power to mediate between the material and spiritual realms.1
Romantics, like Schelling and Coleridge, to name but two, experienced a “longing for harmony” and the “urge to perceive the recondite laws of the universe, to comprehend and seize the flux and flow, the inner hidden unity of the universe” (Furst, Perspective 139). In addition, their goal of “a mysterious apprehension” of this underlying unity “could only be achieved through the exercise of the creative imagination” (139).
Similarly, Baudelaire and the Symbolists fused sensibility and imagination in order to “see behind and beyond the objects of the real world to the essences concealed in the ideal world” (Chadwick 3). They sought to discover the correspondences “between the material world and spiritual realities” (Preminger, “Symbolism” 837), an idea greatly influenced by Swedenborg.
Bécquer, too, finds that a fundamental unity or harmony is to be discovered if he but relies upon the “integrating force” of the creative imagination (Furst, Perspective 144). Such a force enables him to be aware of what he describes on more than one occasion as a “thread of light” that joins disparate elements together—“Ideas ligerísimas sin forma determinada, que unían entre sí como un invisible hilo de luz, la profunda soledad de aquellos lugares, el alto silencio de la naciente noche y la vaga melancolía de mi espíritu” (96)—and offers the possibility of perceiving the interwoven relationships of the universe, and of glimpsing the supreme order of a higher reality: “Vio los hilos de luz imperceptibles que atan los hombres a las estrellas …” (182); “… si tú supieras cuán imperceptible es el hilo de luz que ata entre sí los pensamientos más absurdos …” (624). Thread may be viewed as a symbol for the connection of different planes of existence (Cirlot 341), and this combined with light, which suggests illumination and enlightenment, most certainly intimates an upward movement toward the revelation of a transcendent reality.
Indeed, in “Tres fechas” three seemingly insignificant dates are integrated in the poet's imagination during a moment of brilliant lucidity and revelation: “… al cruzar su imaginación la memoria de estas fechas …” (369); “Un hilo de luz, ese hilo de luz que se extiende rápido como la idea y brilla en la oscuridad y la confusión de la mente, y reúne los puntos más distantes y los relaciona entre sí de un modo maravilloso, ató mis vagos recuerdos, y todo lo comprendí o creí comprenderlo …” (369).
Similarly, in “La mujer de piedra” the poet describes the vision of a thread of light that briefly offers him profound insight:
Cierto que algunas veces creía ver flotar ante mi vista el hilo de luz que había de conducirme seguro a través del dédalo de confusas ideas de mi fantasía, y por un momento se me figuraba encontrar y ver palpable la escondida relación de los versos sueltos de aquel maravilloso poema de piedra.
(766)
By employing this image of a synthesizing thread of light Bécquer has documented one of the “three modes of renovative perception” that Abrams sees as being a part of the romantic's vision, the moment of illumination during which an epiphany is communicated (Supernaturalism 377).
Moreover, this moment of illumination or epiphany is recorded by the poet in his “Rima X”:
Los invisibles átomos del aire
en derredor palpitan y se inflaman;
el cielo se deshace en rayos de oro;
la tierra se estremece alborozada.
Oigo flotando en olas de armonía
rumor de besos y batir de alas;
mis párpados se cierran … ¿Qué sucede?
¿Dime? … ¡Silencio! … ¡Es el amor que pasa!
(411)
By means of the imagination, reality, encompassed within three elements—the air around the poet, the sky and the earth—is completely transformed as the invisible begins to take shape sensorially. Bécquer sees atoms of air catch fire, and the sky burst into golden rays. He feels the air throb and the earth tremble. He hears the murmur of kisses and the beating of wings. Thus, within the poem he experiences a moment during which the transcendent, suggested by such images as rayos de oro, olas de armonía, besos and alas, manifests itself.
In order to comprehend his vision, however, the poet must turn inward. The imaginatively altered reality he has met with is shut out as his eyes close. Silence replaces previous sounds. He questions his experience—“¿Qué sucede?”—searching for an answer—“¿Dime?”—and it comes to him intuitively. In his exclamation that love passes by Bécquer recognizes that the fundamental harmony of the universe has been briefly communicated to him.
To be sure, part of Bécquer's quest and goal is to be able to truly comprehend (choosing verbs like penetrar 356, 542; entrever 357; adivinar 357; descifrar 770; revelar 770, 999) the intimate relationship that binds all parts to a harmonious whole, that brings together random words and verses to comprise a poem or that joins various architectural elements in order to form a church. The essence of the uniting power of the imagination indeed lies “in the fusion of all things into one harmonious entity without losing sight of the validity of each individual element” (Furst, Perspective 144). Thus, by relying on this particular power of the imagination, the poet discovers the hidden connections that lie behind apparently dissimilar elements and details, and sees a vast web of correspondences at work: “… la tradición es al edificio lo que el perfume a la flor, lo que el espíritu al cuerpo: una parte inmaterial que se desprende de él y dando nombre y carácter a sus muros les presta encanto y poesía” (918).
At this point one cannot help but think of Baudelaire's theory of “correspondences” in which he speaks of the intimate link between the material world and spiritual reality. Moreover, just as we may follow the French poet's journey through a forest of symbols to be deciphered, we may join Bécquer in his tireless search for comprehension: “… decidí no descansar hasta encontrar la clave del enigma …” (215); “… en dónde, en fin, está la clave invisible …” (769); “… tratando de resolver este enigma …” (711). At times it is a search that seems fruitless and thwarted: “… procuraba en vano arrancarle el secreto de su existencia” (139); “… se pierde por completo la idea de la íntima relación que estas cosas tienen entre sí …” (551); “… comienzo a perder el hilo invisble de las misteriosas relaciones de las cosas …” (745); “… por más que buscaba la cifra del misterio, … nunca veía claro, nunca me era posible explicarme el verdadero objeto, el sentido oculto, la idea particular …” (766).
On other occasions success is possible: “… penetré el misterio de su existencia …” (343); “… hay alguna afinidad secreta, porque a mi imaginación se ofrecen al par y siempre van unidas en mi memoria, sin que en apariencia halle entre los dos ningún punto de contacto” (742); “… en ciertos momentos se me figura hallar su escondida relación, y como oculto tras la forma de mi vida prosaica y material, me parece que he sorprendido algo misterioso que se encadena entre sí …” (742); “… encuentro yo como una relación secreta …” (960).
The poet is able to discern harmony both visually and aurally, and when this occurs a union between the material and spiritual realms is effected: “Las aguas, los bosques, las aves, el espacio, los mundos, tienen un sola voz …” (49); “… la iglesia, completamente armónica en su confusión y su desorden artístico …” (364); “Todo es original, todo armónico, aunque desordenado” (357); “mientras el aire en su regazo lleve / perfumes y armonías” (“Rima IV” 405); “Como la brisa … / cargada de perfumes y armonías” (“Rima VI” 409); “Oigo flotando en olas de armonía” (“Rima X” 411); “… son sus movimientos / silenciosa armonía” (“Rima XXXIV” 427); “Las ondas tienen vaga armonía” (“Rima LXXII” 448); “Parece una armonía que a la vez baja del cielo y sube de la tierra, y se confunde y flota en el espacio, mezclándose al último rumor del día que muere el primer suspiro de la noche que nace” (522); “… las partes relacionadas entre sí correspondían perfectamente al todo, … una armonía maravillosa” (542); “… esa extraña armonía de la forma, el color y el sonido …” (551); “Sus facciones … ofrecen rasgos perfectamente regulares, mezclándose en ellas con extraña armonía la volubilidad y ese no sé qué imposible de definir …” (557); “Me figuro, … todos los esplendores del cielo y de la tierra reunidos en una sola armonía, …” (607); “Por todo el frente de la fachada se veían interpolados, con un desorden del cual, no obstante, resultaba cierta inexplicable armonía …” (757); “… del color y de las formas que, armoniosamente combinados, formaban un conjunto inexplicable …” (760); “La soledad y la Naturaleza hablan aquí al alma con su misterioso lenguaje y la llenan de sus extrañas armonías” (955); “la armónica y misteriosa relación de los objetos …” (999).
By perceiving harmony in the world again and again Bécquer shares in Romantic philosophy, a philosophy that Abrams characterizes as “primarily a metaphysics of integration, of which the key principle is that of the ‘reconciliation,’ or synthesis, of whatever is divided, opposed and conflicting” (Supernaturalism 182). Moreover, he has effectively made use of the imagination to synthesize “disparate elements in order to generate a new reality” (Hill 13). The imagination has permitted to poet's mind “to see beneath the transitory surface of the material world—to see, that is, into the life of things and to perceive the intimate relationship between the perceiving mind and the objects of its contemplation” (13). The poet's perception of harmony transcends, if only for a moment, the duality of existence and thereby suggests fulfillment and wholeness: “… un mar de lava arde en tu fantasía, y entre las hirvientes crestas de sus olas se agitan y confunden las partes del todo que buscas” (832).
Indeed, “Rima XXIV” (419-20) is comprised of eight corresponding images of harmonious unity that the poet has chosen to approximate the spiritual union of the lover and the beloved, of two becoming one. By the insistent use of anaphora Bécquer initially draws attention throughout the poem to the number two, a number suggestive of conflict, counterpoise, dualism and contraposition (Cirlot 232): “Dos rojas lenguas de fuego”; “dos notas”; “dos olas”; “dos jirones de vapor”; “dos ideas”; “dos besos”; “dos ecos”; “dos almas.”
Nevertheless, each of these images of duality is subsequently synthesized into a series of images of oneness, whether explicitly or implicitly: Two flames “forman una sola llama”; two notes “armoniosas se abrazan”; two waves “se coronan con un penacho de plata”; two shreds of vapor “forman una nube blanca”; two ideas “al par brotan”; two kisses “a un tiempo estallan”; two echos “se confunden.” And like each of these elements, two souls become one.
The kiss, which is one of the images of unity in the preceding poem, becomes the predominant image in “Rima IX” (411). A kind of cosmic equilibrium is established as various natural elements reciprocally kiss each other:
Besa el aura que gime blandamente
las leves ondas que jugando riza;
el sol besa a la nube en Occidente,
y de púrpura y oro la matiza;
la llama en derredor del tronco ardiente
por besar a otra llama se desliza,
y hasta el sauce, inclinándose a su peso,
al río que le besa, vuelve un beso.
As was briefly noted in the preceding chapter, the kiss comes to symbolize the integration of matter and spirit into a higher context in which the duality of existence is momentarily conquered. Therefore, Bécquer declares that poetry will always exist “mientras sentirse puedan en un beso / dos almas confundidas” (“Rima IV” 406). It is a kiss that effects ultimate comprehension in “Rima XXIX”: “… y nuestros ojos se hallaron, / y sonó un beso … yo dije, trémulo: / ‘¿Comprendes ya que un poema / cabe en un verso?’ / Y ella respondió, encendida: / ‘¡Ya lo comprendo!’” (425).2 And in both “Los ojos verdes” and “El beso” the greatest desire of each protagonist is a kiss from an ideal woman who is the incarnation of poetry and spirit: “‘Ven …’ y la mujer misteriosa lo llamaba al borde del abismo donde estaba suspendida, y parecía ofrecerle un beso …, un beso …” (141); “Una mujer blanca, hermosa y fría … ofreciéndome un tesoro de amor … ¡Oh sí! … Un beso …, sólo un beso tuyo podrá calmar el ardor que me consume” (290).
Perhaps the significance of the kiss is most vividly expressed in “Rima XXIII,” one of Bécquer's shortest poems, yet one in which very great ideas and feelings are concentrated in a minimum of words:
Por una mirada, un mundo;
por una sonrisa, un cielo;
por un beso …, ¡yo no sé
qué te diera por un beso!
(419)
Within the framework of a love poem the poet/lover/yo is seeking union with the beloved/spirit/tú, and sets up a series of hypothetical circumstances of increasing scope.
First, he would give a world in exchange for a glance from her. He is willing to give up everything related to earthly existence for the most fleeting acknowledgement of his presence. Nevertheless, a glance would require no true involvement, since it is oftentimes little more than a passive reflex. It would, however, mark a first step toward the possibility of recognition.
Next, the poet would give heaven for a smile from his beloved. He would renounce all that he has perceived of the universe if his beloved would find him worthy of her more respectful attention. A smile would physically activate the face while at the same time communicating a positive expression of feeling welling up from within.
Finally, the poet finds himself at a complete loss. In exchange for a kiss from his beloved he is incapable of finding objects, ideas, feelings or words that would correspond to such a great gift. A kiss is the dynamic physical and emotional union between two individuals. By extension, therefore, it is the maximum point of contact between the material and spiritual realms, offering the possibility of instantaneous harmony. It is the point most desired by Bécquer, yet he does not have the ability to attain such a metaphysical level. He can speculate about it, but cannot realize it. The fact that the beloved must give so very little, while the lover must give everything, and that is not enough, dramatically exposes man's insignificance in comparison with the transcendent.
In addition, even the poem's structure further enhances its meaning. Each of the first two lines contains a pair of related elements—mirada/mundo, sonrisa/cielo—while the third line breaks the pattern—beso/?—as the lover can thing of nothing greater to offer in exchange. The three words that are related to the beloved—mirada, sonrisa, beso—denote physical actions that are insignificant in themselves. Nevertheless, on one level they show the beloved's increasing commitment, intimacy and degree of communication, while on another level they indicate the gradual approach of the spiritual.
The two words that are related to the lover—mundo, cielo—show his attempt to ascend to the spiritual by hyperbolically enlarging the scope of his dedication. The final exclamation breaks the tension which to that point has been mounting. The poet is forced to give in to his human condition, but is exhilarated by his effort. The imagination is the force that has enabled him to at least perceive unity, if not to experience it. Like Coleridge and Shelley, the poet trusts “the power of the imagination to perceive, in some sense, essential reality with a directness impossible to the discursive faculties” (Hough 217).
Furthermore, while being attuned to the harmonious accord of the universe, Bécquer sets a second power of the imagination into motion, that of transforming the material world in keeping with his personal vision. It is the imagination that “shows us the real nature of the world” (220) and allows the poet to see and hear differently: “Al estudiar la Naturaleza, prefiero hacerlo a la luz de la imaginación, que da a todos los objectos tonos vivos y calientes, rodeán-dolos con el ambiente esplendoroso que emana de la poesía” (652); “El estado de nuestra imaginación, la soledad que nos rodea, hasta los accidentes locales parecen contribuir a que sus palabras suenen de otro modo en el oído” (518); “la imaginación ve aparecer sobre el haz de la Tierra todos los quiméricos seres de la leyenda” (654); “… parecía como escuchar algo que sonaba en la imaginación” (199); “cuando vino a herir mi imaginación y a ofrecerse ante mis ojos una cosa extraordinaria … vi a una mujer” (281).
Because of his distinct, imaginative perceptions the poet is separated in a sense from ordinary existence: “Por la imaginación llega Bécquer a penetrar las capas de la vida vulgar y cotidiana de sus contemporáneos que ocultan la virginidad de los sentimientos y de las cosas” (Casalduero, “Las rimas” 119). Yet, he generally delights in such a separation: “No oigo la música, que os lleva a todos envueltos como en un torbellino; no veo en esa agitación continua, en ese ir y venir, más que lo que ve él que mira un baile desde lejos; una pantomima muda e inexplicable, grotesca unas veces, terrible otras” (525). Indeed, everyday life, with its harried pace and pressures, has nothing to offer.
When the imagination is in control, however, the world around him takes on a new dimension as a creative, forming surge often manages to meld the images produced by the imagination with tangible objects or words. These points of contact with the exterior world are transformed and possessed of heightened meaning: “La imaginación se apodera de estas sensaciones exteriores, y desfigurándolas y dándoles una forma extraña, las asimila a sus extravagantes desvaríos” (724). They are no longer bound by a denotative function since they have become projections of the poet's inner self:
… ese misterioso expíritu, en fin, que domina en la obra del artista, la cual no siempre hace aparecer el objeto tal cual realmente es, sino como se presenta a la imaginación, con un relieve y acento particular en ciertas líneas. …
(1002, emphasis added)
To see the world by means of the imagination—“Al reconstruir en la mente este fantástico cuadro, al ver con los ojos de la imaginación” (978)—is to deny exterior reality any real power or potency: “La verdad es que, realmente, detrás de ella no vi nada; pero, con la imaginación me pareció descubrir un bulto; el bulto de una mujer, en efecto” (353). Indeed, the external world scarcely makes sense:
Los diferentes y extraordinarios objetos que, unos tras otros, van hiriendo la imaginación, la impresionan de una manera tan particular que, cuando … penetro al fin en mi celda y desdoblo otra vez El Contemporáneo … paréceme que está escrito en un idioma que no entiendo. …
(525)
“Dotada … de una imaginación ardiente, apenas su razón pudo darse cuenta del mundo que a su alrededor se agitaba” (855).
Thus, the imaginative way of seeing things is the only valid and vital way: “Sea prestigio de la imaginación … aquella figura me trajo a la memoria no sé qué recuerdos confusos de siglos y de gentes que han pasado” (975); “Me acuerdo …, ¡qué sé yo! de cosas que no debería acordarme, porque no las he visto sino con la imaginación” (1075).
Like Keats, Bécquer views the external world as “an inanimate cold world,” in which “objects as objects, are essentially fixed and dead”—“el esqueleto material de las cosas se alzaba a sus ojos frío y descarnado” (854)—and the ordinary things of that world “are un-substantial in themselves” (Bowra, “Romantic Imagination” 101 & 99). Life is given to the external world only through the imagination
(Sólo un poder existe capaz de devolveros [ruins] por un instante vuestro perdido esplendor y hermosura: el poder de la exaltada mente del poeta. Sí; yo puedo reanimaros, yo veo. … Yo siento vibrar … yo miro … veo animarse con el rayo de luz y de vida que les presta mi imaginación)
(834)
and ordinary things become “rich as symbols of greater realities” (101 & 99): “¡Qué grandes proporciones, qué imponente poesía adquiere entonces a nuestros ojos aquella estrecha y solitaria calle …” (1006). They become the poet's personal symbols: “… estos pequeños acontecimientos que, agrandados por mi fantasía …” (214).
Moreover, Furst affirms that “the symbolical image of the Romantic grows out of a vitalistic interplay of body and soul,” and that “only in this context could the image become the visual incorporation of an idea, as it did first for the Romantics and subsequently for the Symbolists who based their aesthetic system on the perception of the latent correspondences between the physical and the transcendental” (Perspective 172).
In addition, the symbolical images produced by the poet are organic images in that, like a plant, they are “vital,” and grow, “spontaneously, from a root,” thereby unfolding their “original form from within outward” (Abrams, Mirror & Lamp 200). They are the tangible fruit or flower of the hidden creative process. Consequently, Bécquer cannot and does not disdain the outer world in its entirety, although it may at first seem inanimate and cold, because he further apprehends his inner world through it.
Tangible reality provides objects and impressions that, when absorbed and transformed by the poet's imagination, are released again as a kind of intuition—“la intuición literaria”—that is intimately related to the spiritual, and that “consiste en una visión penetrante de la realidad, en el hallazgo de un sentido más hondo y más original de las cosas, que es el lógico propio del entendimiento o el práctico que nos da la vida” (Alonso 256). Or to put it another way that can hardly be emphasized enough, the imagination is a creative force that receives its dynamic energy directly from the spirit. It is capable, therefore, of revealing the spiritual and poetic side of the universe by transforming the objects of sense and marking them as a crucial point of reference of psychic significance.
The imagination, then, is the crux of the creative, forming process that is constantly in operation within the poet. And not only does it endow him with its uniting and transforming powers, but also allows for the maximum mediation between the spiritual and the material. Because of its mediating power matter can be saturated with spirit and poetry, and spirit and poetry can be given some sort of material form. The poet is able to discern the secret relationship that exists between the inner and outer world by means of the imagination's power of mediation. It allows the imagination “to serve as a link between the known universe and the transcendental realm” (Furst, Perspective 147).
Indeed, the specific points of mediation where spirit and poetry are made manifest that were highlighted in the preceding chapter would not be apprehensible without the imagination's mediating power. Along with the power to unite and the power to transform, it is poetry's closest ally. For poetry, being the submerged, potent force that it is, utilizes the imagination's powers to make itself known. To a very great extent, Bécquer is able to view the world poetically because of the powers of the imagination.
This mediating power can perhaps be best understood by considering the concept of threshold, the place where it is not only intimately interrelated with the uniting and transforming powers, but also simultaneously at work with them. Threshold, in effect, marks the point of maximum creative power at which communication between matter and spirit occurs, at which reality is transformed and at which integration may take place.
According to psychologist Harold Rugg all of life is lived on a conscious-nonconscious continuum and “the true locus of the creative imagination is the border state that marks off the conscious from the nonconscious” (39). The illuminating flashes of insight that the poet seeks occur only at a critical “magic threshold” that is “the stage between conscious alert awareness and deep nonconscious,” “where daydreaming and reveries go on,” “where we know before we know we know” (39). The threshold state is “a conscious state, yet having antechamber access to the unconscious” in which the mind is “off guard, relaxed, receptive to messages,” but also “magnetic, with a dynamic forming power” (39).
It is “hypnoidal, resembling the light trance of hypnosis,” “partakes of both the hypnogogic, marking the drowsy state between waking and sleeping, and the hypnopompic, the corresponding state between sleeping and waking,” “satisfies the criteria of the intuitive, receptive, identifying mind of intense concentration,” and is a permissive state that is “actively magnetic, attracting materials out of the non-conscious into the vestibule of the conscious mind” (39-40).
Cirlot describes threshold as “a symbol of transition and transcendence” whose function “is clearly to symbolize both the reconciliation and the separation of the two worlds of the profane and the sacred.” In addition, he notes the “dualism characteristic of the threshold, which can be related analogically to all other forms of duality” (341). Eliade points out that the threshold “separates two spaces” and “also indicates the distance between two modes of being.” It is “the limit, the boundary that distinguishes and opposes two worlds and at the same time the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate, where passage from one to the other becomes possible” (25).
Bachelard speaks of “the sacred properties attributed to the threshold,” which like a door “is an entire cosmos of the Half-open” characterized by desire and temptation; “the temptation to open up the ultimate depths of being, and the desire to conquer all reticent beings” (222 & 223). For James, threshold is “a symbolic designation for the point at which one state of mind passes into another” (134), while Abrams is essentially concerned with threshold when discussing moments of illumination “in which an instant of consciousness, or else an ordinary object or event, suddenly blazes into revelation” (Supernaturalism 285).
Bécquer, too, is keenly aware of the existence of the threshold, where his imaginative powers are at their peak. He symbolically suggests or represents it, and progressively discovers it, time and time again. In effect, the points of mediation that were described in the last chapter, as well as the instances where harmony is perceived that were discussed in the present chapter, are important images of the threshold. They indicate points at which matter and spirit come into contact with each other, at which the poet, in a sense, sees poetry and spirit, at which their presence is imaginatively communicated. These mediative points are different from other images of the threshold, however, in that they also serve a second function for the poet—that of actually embodying or becoming tangible symbols of poetry and spirit. There are other elements that represent the threshold itself and not poetry and spirit per se.
Indications of threshold fall into at least three principal categories: physiological, sensory and spatial. And while any single element may perhaps be sufficient to suggest the threshold, Bécquer, as an integral part of his creative process, often joins together various intricate combinations from all three categories in an interdependent cluster in order to achieve a more powerful statement of inner vision. Indeed, the potency of the elements in each threshold category is dependent upon its ability to suspend effectively in some way the “reality principle … with its orientation to practical coping with the objects and events of the outer world” (Rugg 157).
With this in mind, we may again turn to the poet's texts in order to explore the processes at work. Thus, in “Carta I” of Desde mi celda what starts off as an amiable custombristic observation of his fellow passengers during an overnight train ride begins to change dramatically: “El peso de las altas horas de la noche comenzaba a dejarse sentir. En el vagón reinaba un silencio profundo, interrumpido sólo por el eterno y férreo crujir del tren …” (506). The lateness of the hour begins to alter the poet's normal physiological functioning as he feels as if a weight were bearing down upon him. In the railroad car, a close interior space, the silence becomes a controlling force (reinaba) that he can sense, while the monotonous repetitive noise of the train serves to heighten the intensity of the silence. A new dimension of awareness, implicit in the adjective eterno, is taking shape.
Bécquer slips out of full consciousness and temporality as his imagination begins to take charge:
… me entretuve en ver pasar a través de los cristales, y sobre una faja de terreno oscuro y monótono, ya las blancas nubes de humo y de chispas que se quedaban al paso de la locomotora rozando la tierra y como suspendidas e inmóviles, ya los palos del telégrafo, que parecían perseguirse y querer alcanzarse unos a otros lanzados a una carrera fantástica.
No obstante, la aproximación de aquella mujer hermosa que yo sentía aun sin mirarla, el roce de su falda de seda que tocaba mis pies y crujía a cada uno de sus movimientos, el sopor vertiginoso del incesante ruido, la languidez del cansancio, la misteriosa embriaguez de las altas horas de la noche, que pesan de una manera tan particular sobre el espíritu, comenzaron a influir en mi imaginación, ya sobreexcitada extrañamente.
(507)
The reader is confronted with a series of visual, aural, tactile and physical sensations which, if considered individually, are seemingly insignificant. Yet, when taken as a whole, they exert a powerful influence upon the poet's level of awareness, and at the same time, serve to detach him gradually from the surrounding material reality.
We see a landscape that has been reduced to a blur of darkness, clouds of smoke and sparks, and whizzing, anthropomorphic poles. We note that a striking contrast is developed between Bécquer's acute physical disorientation, characterized by drowsiness, dizziness, languor, fatigue, and an inexplicable intoxication, and his supercharged inner state. The physical world acts as a stimulus for his imagination, and the details of that world lose their previous meanings as they are joined and transformed by the poet's imaginative faculty. Ordinary circumstances produce an inordinate response at a point that must be labeled as the creative threshold.
The poet explains further:
Estaba despierto; pero mis ideas iban poco a poco tomando esa forma extravagante de los ensueños de la mañana, historias sin principio ni fin, cuyos eslabones de oro se quiebran con un rayo de enojosa claridad y vuelven a soldarse apenas se corren las cortinas del lecho.
(507)
Bécquer describes a sort of trance state, similar to that of a day-dream, that is further enhanced by the semi-darkness around him. He observes his surroundings—he is awake—yet at the same time his mind is open to the unconscious spiritual realm. His ideas are intellectually indecipherable, yet somehow filled with profound significance.
Indeed, the poet affirms that there are
… horas peligrosas, horas lentas y cargadas de extraños pensamientos y de una voluptuosa pesadez, contra las que es imposible defenderse; en esas horas, como cuando nos turban la cabeza los vapores del vino, los sonidos se debilitan y parece que se oyen muy distantes, los objetos se ven como velados por una gasa azul, y el deseo presta audacia al espíritu, que recobra para sí todas las fuerzas que pierde la materia. Las horas de la madrugada, esas horas que deben de tener más minutos que las demás, esas horas en que entre el caos de la noche comienza a forjarse el día siguiente, en que el sueño se despide con su última visión y la luz se anuncia con ráfagas de claridad incierta, son, sin duda alguna, las que en más alto grado reúnen semejantes condiciones.
(507)
The early morning hours become an important indication of the threshold. Those hours form the boundary between night and day and thus are characterized by the subtle equilibrium that exists between a formless state, the chaos of night, sleeping, stupor, and one of more rigid structure, the following day, waking, sobriety. They are described as “dangerous” because the individual is off guard and receptive, and therefore no longer safe within the confines of conscious reality.
They are “slow,” suggesting the stage of motion between that which is truly active and truly passive, during which the steady progress of time seems to be disrupted, thereby releasing the poet from temporality. They are filled with “strange thoughts,” reflecting the suspension of rationality, and with a “voluptuous drowsiness,” which emphasizes a trance-like physical and mental inertness while reinforcing the idea of the sensual delight or pleasure that is experienced in the threshold state.
These hours easily overwhelm any rationally oriented defense mechanisms—“es imposible defenderse”—and are likened to an alcohol-induced state, a state of consciousness that James has compared with the mystical:
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.
(387)
Several noteworthy changes occur. There is a noticeable objective disorientation supported by the verbs turbar and debilitarse, and by words like distantes, velados, gasa and incierta. Sounds are weakened and heard indistinctly; objects are seen obscurely. In effect, the poet experiences the distancing of material reality as he is given access to a new dimension of being at the threshold. It is the point at which divergent elements—night and day, waking and sleeping, chaos and creation, the visionary and the rational—while becoming blurred and indistinguishable, achieve a vital state of reciprocity in which, as the poet says, the spirit becomes more audacious as the material world becomes less insistent. At the threshold he is at least partially liberated from his surroundings as his awareness of a new reality is heightened.
Outwardly, the poet appears to be held in a state of suspended animation, yet inside, the creative imagination is fast at work:
Yo no sé el tiempo que transcurrió mientras a la vez dormía y velaba, ni tampoco me sería fácil apuntar algunas de las fantásticas ideas que cruzaron por mi imaginación, porque ahora sólo recuerdo cosas desasidas y sin sentido, como esas notas sueltas de una música lejana. …
(508)
After the passing moment, however, the poet can no longer experience and capture the new reality that was at hand. It remains chaotically fragmented—“cosas desasidas y sin sentido.” The creative moment is composed of interdependent conscious and unconscious elements involved in a process of becoming that seldom leads to permanent fruition. Although at the threshold it is supported by a force as powerful as the imagination, it can only achieve a partial success. The intensity necessary to synthesize opposite states of being, or even to mediate between them, cannot be long maintained.
The creative power of the imagination is limitless, yet Bécquer's ability to use its power is not. The privileged poet is unfortunately a human being and subject to an ironic, self-conscious and disheartening recognition of his limitations. Indeed, irony, resulting from Bécquer's awareness of his human condition, often restrains or diminishes the imagination's powers through a personal distancing or drawing back from the revelatory moment in time or space or emotion.
Still, what the imagination presents is indeed a new reality. While there remains a vast gap between that which is presented and its coherent expression and explanation, the poet recognizes that the discovery of the threshold is a great step in the right direction.
Consequently, it comes as no surprise that Bécquer again pinpoints the creative threshold in “Rima LXXI,” and attempts to document his experience at that point:
No dormía; vagaba en ese limbo
en que cambian de forma los objetos,
misteriosos espacios que separan
la vigilia del sueño.
Las ideas, que en ronda silenciosa
daban vuelta en torno a mi cerebro,
poco a poco en su danza se movían
con un compás más lento.
De la luz que entra al alma por los ojos,
los párpados velaban el reflejo;
mas otra luz el mundo de visiones
alumbraba por dentro.
En este punto resonó en mi oído
un rumor semejante al que en el templo
vaga, confuso, al terminar los fieles
con un amén sus rezos.
Y oí como una voz delgada y triste
que por mi nombre me llamó a lo lejos,
y sentí olor de cirios apagados,
de humedad y de incienso.
Entró la noche, y del olvido en brazos
caí, cual piedra, en su profundo seno:
dormí, y al despertar exclamé: “¡Alguno
que yo quería ha muerto!”
(447-48)
Here the poet does not concern himself with a detailed documentation of the process that leads to this state of heightened awareness as he did in “Carta I.” He does not provide us with any reason for its onset as he often does. We are placed squarely in the middle of his trance-like state, in medias res as it were, although the experience is being recalled from some point in the past, as is evidenced by his use of the imperfect tense.
He is not asleep, nor is he fully awake, but rather describes himself as roaming without direction through a kind of limbo. The verb vagar appropriately derails any notion of conscious direction or decision, while limbo suggests an intermediate or transitional state that is clearly the threshold that separates waking and sleeping. It is made up of mysterious spaces, ones which defy precise description, but are characterized by two important elements.
First, if we can accept the space of limbo as a place of vast confinement, in the sense that the poet is separated, but not shut off, from both outer and inner existence, it is a zone of possible integration in which the poet has the potential of greatest insight and awareness. Second, from this vantage point the objects of the physical world change form, implying that it is here that the imagination is at work, creatively transforming a given reality. Objects take on new meanings and are endowed with new significance.
At the same time, there exists the desirable possibility of turning inward in order to focus upon and comprehend some of the ideas that populate the poet's mind. They have an independent, chaotic and silent existence that Bécquer likens to whirling movement. And it is only when this movement becomes less insistent—“con un compás más lento”—that new insight may occur.
In the third stanza the peculiar state of equilibrium or counter-balance that Bécquer experiences is reiterated. Using light as a central image he expresses an awareness of two distinct types of illumination. Light that has the external world as its source, and thereby suggestive of empiricism and reason, is diminished. Simultaneously, an inner light, that of the imagination, is intensified, thus revealing a new and far more desirable realm of awareness—“el mundo de visiones.” Intriguingly, the premise of Abram's critical work, The Mirror and the Lamp, is incapsulated in this stanza. The mirror—el reflejo—is superseded by the lamp—alumbrar.3
After having sketched his intensified threshold awareness in the first three stanzas, in stanzas four and five Bécquer focuses his attention upon a specific vision that asserts itself at the threshold - “en este punto.” It is presented symbolically by way of auditory and olfactory sensations which the poet can only approximately describe due to their imprecise presence. A murmur (a low, confused and indistinct sound) echoes (implying progressive distance and detachment from the initial sound) in his ear, similar to (approximating) a vague and confused amen at the end of one's prayers. He hears a scarcely audible voice calling him from afar and senses the smell of candles, dampness and incense. Each of the words emphasized further documents the nebulous nature of the threshold and intensifies the distance between the poet's experience and his ability to comprehend or communicate it. As symbols, the sensations delineated here partake of the material world in a very limited way, although they are loaded with meaning.
The poet's trance-like state crumbles in the final stanza. It can no longer be sustained as deep sleep and forgetfulness overcome him. Nevertheless, on awakening, the insight that was at first communicated symbolically at the threshold with the aid of the imagination, returns to mind in a more coherent way. In an instantaneous flash of understanding, and with unshakeable conviction, the poet intuitively knows that someone whom he cares for has died.
It is evident that the “intuitive creative state at the threshold of the nonconscious mind” that is “the locus of the creative imagination,” and that Rugg labels “the transliminal state,” is exposed in this poem (97). And since the extremes of the conscious-nonconscious continuum, that are represented here by waking versus sleeping, “are marked by warping, inhibiting forces,” i.e., censorship, it is this “transliminal,” across the border state revealed in the poet's trance that is the creative center “because it alone is uniquely free to create” since the imagination's powers are in control (89).
Bécquer speaks on several other occasions of the state that is experienced between waking and sleeping, of the conditions surrounding it and of what may take place at that point. Indeed, in “Tres fechas” the poet mentions “ese punto que separa la vigilia del sueño” (349), the threshold point and dividing line, implicit in the verb separar, that possibly holds the key to his “nocturnos y extravagantes delirios” (349).
In addition, Garcés, the main character of the legend “La corza blanca,” finds himself in a situation similar to that related by the poet in “Carta I” and “Rima LXXI.” In his search for an elusive white deer he finds himself in a thickly overgrown glen, a natural equivalent of a close interior space:
… la cañada … una hondonada … los apretados carrascales, por cuyos troncos subían y se enredaban las madreselvas … formaban un espeso muro de follaje alrededor del remanso … los frondosos pabellones de verdura. …
(266-67)
“… el laberinto de los árboles” (271). While he is acutely sensitive to every detail of his surroundings—“este minucioso reconocimiento del lugar en que se encontraba” (266); “con el oído atento al más leve rumor” (267)—he also fixes his attention on a specific point—“la vista clavada en el punto en donde, según sus cálculos, debían aparecer las corzas” (267)—and absorbs the embracing stillness: “Todo permanecía a su alrededor sumido en una profunda calma” (267).
Thus, he effectively prepares the way for a gradual detachment from the world around him:
Poco a poco, y bien fuese que el peso de la noche, … comenzara a dejarse sentir; bien el lejano murmullo del agua, el penetrante aroma de las flores silvestres y las caricias del viento comunicasen a sus sentidos el dulce sopor en que aparecía estar impregnada la Naturaleza toda. …
(267)
As was the case in “Carta I” an intense feeling of drowsiness comes over him as a series of sensations—aural, olfactory and tactile in this passage—serve as threads of communication between the external world and the protagonist's inner being. He has come to the threshold—“mecerse … en ese vago espacio que media entre la vigilia y el sueño” (267)—a place of mediation clearly indicated by the verb mediar, and of being at once open to both consciousness and the unconscious, strongly suggested by the rocking motion encapsulated in the verb mecerse.
As in “Rima LXXI,” a change is perceived in the individual's thought process—“comenzó a sentir que sus ideas elaboraban con más lentitud y sus pensamientos tomaban formas más leves e indecisas” (267)—as the progressive loss of conscious control and full awareness of perceptual experience that takes place in the threshold state paradoxically brings with it freedom as well as distortion (Rugg 228 & 218). Such an assertion is supported by modifiers like vago, leves and indecisas. Indeed, vagueness implies a release from unsatisfactory rational explanation, even though such a release is coupled with obscurity.
Consequently, the vision that eventually appears before him is vivid, yet necessarily and effectively shrouded, first, by the uncertain light of the moon—“hacía ver los objetos como a través de una gasa azul” (270)—and by the protagonist's continued contemplative inertia—“lleno aún de ese estupor del que vuelve en sí de improviso después de un sueño profundo” (267); “dominado por la invencible languidez que embargaba sus miembros” (268); “lleno de estupor” (270)—and then by his unpredictable yet constant vacillation between two modes of perception, the rational or ironic versus the imaginative or poetic, that vie with each other for control:
Imaginative: “creyó percibir un extraño rumor de voces delgadas, dulces y misteriosas”
(268)
Rational: “en la firme persuación de que cuanto había creído oír no era más que esa vaga huella del ensueño que queda, al despertar, en la imaginación. …”
(268)
Imaginative: “tornó a oír el eco distante de aquellas misteriosas voces.”
(268)
Rational: “riéndose interiormente de su credulidad y su miedo, desde aquel instante sólo se ocupó en averiguar.”
(269)
Rational: “no se atrevía a dar crédito ni al testimonio de sus sentidos, y creíase bajo la influencia de un sueño fascinador y engañoso.”
(272)
Imaginative: “No obstante, pugnaba en vano por persuadirse de que todo cuanto veía era en efecto del desarreglo de su imaginación, porque mientras más la miraba y más despacio, más se convencía. …”
(272)
The vision that is communicated by the imagination to the protagonist in this threshold state between waking and sleeping offers him Constanza, the woman of his dreams. Symbolically, it is Bécquer who is searching for a tangible manifestation of the poetic and spiritual. Both character and creator are thwarted, however, by the inevitable intrusion of the rational.
Still, in the sketch “Entre sueños” Bécquer is again fascinated by the dynamics of the boundary between waking and sleeping. We find the poet within the enclosed space of his bedroom, and witness the gradual approach of the threshold. A pendulum clock that he has purchased serves as a central focus in the progression toward off-consciousness. The absence of visual stimuli—“cerrando los ojos no sin haber antes apagado la luz” (723)—serves to intensify the poet's perception of the sound of the pendulum: “empezaba a moverse con un ruido más igual y perceptible” (723).
The regularity of its beat becomes a controlling force—“el acompasado tric … trac del péndulo, que llevaba la batuta en esa misteriosa sinfonía de ruidos que accidentan el alto silencio de la noche” (723)—while Bécquer's conscious will is increasingly diminished and his senses are deadened by the aural monotony:
comencé a encontrar alguna monotonía en aquel continuo y alternado martilleo … comenzaron mis párpados a cerrarse insensiblemente … mis ideas se elaboraban con más lentitud … el sopor del sueño comenzó a embargarme con su voluptuosa languidez.
(723)
He is fast approaching a threshold trance state—“todo se apagaba y parecía borrarse dentro y fuera de mí” (723)—at which point the imagination is at the peak of its mediative and creative powers.
Again, two distinct modes of perception are implied:
Unas tras otras, mis ideas reales fueron desapareciendo, y otra serie de ideas informes que pertenecen a la vida del sueño, que es sin duda alguna una existencia doble y aparte de la existencia positiva, se alzaron del fondo de mi cerebro y comenzaron a flotar como un vapor ligerísimo ante los ojos del alma.
(723)
And, indeed, the poet sets up three pairs of contrasting elements in this passage—ideas reales/ideas informes; existencia positiva/existencia doble y aparte; los ojos del cuerpo (implied)/los ojos del alma—that strongly suggest “the active equipoise of opposite forces” (Cirlot 85).
Furthermore, the alternating tick tock of the pendulum emphasizes this counterbalance that can only be grasped first hand at the threshold where exteriority and interiority, the material and the spiritual, communicate by means of the imagination. The external world may exert its influence over the internal—“Aquel monótono ruido debió de influir en la visión de mi sueño, o al menos modificarla, …” (724)—yet at the same time the inner world powerfully animates the external: “La imaginación se apodera de estas sensaciones exteriores, y desfigurándolas y dándolas una forma extraña …” (724).
Thus, the poet appropriately describes the condition in which he finds himself—“entre despierto y dormido” (726)—as a type of “sonambulismo lúcido” (727). Although these two words may seem quite incongruous, their connection is entirely possible at the threshold between waking and sleeping. In effect, a lucid state of sleep is suggestive of clear intuitive understanding making its way to the surface, and of the at least partial apprehension of a realm that is ordinarily beyond our reach.
In the several passages we have considered, the idea of threshold has been most closely related to the physiological trance-like condition that occurs between waking and sleeping, although spatial and sensory indications of the threshold are so interwoven as to make reference to them unavoidable. Furthermore, such a trance state may be described as off-conscious (as distinguished from unconscious), in which objective reality is present, yet no longer insistent, and the individual experiences limited sensory and motor contact with his surroundings. In effect, the trance produces a kind of “anesthesia, either completely or selectively [abolishing] the functioning of any of the senses” (Rugg 142).
Concurrently, powerful emotions can be in control, and what Rugg calls “a fantasia of kaleidoscopic imagery” that tenants “the layers just below consciousness” makes its way toward the surface (59 & 69). Images that lie “outside the conventionally sanctioned ways of sensing and perceiving are entertained and projected by the poetizing psyche” while “the power of internal and external censorship over the forming powers of the minded [individual] is reduced” (157). The trance state marks the threshold at which the individual “has access to both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ resources,” but is dominated by neither (61).
Moreover, the development of the threshold trance state does not often occur spontaneously, but rather is the result of a “tuning in process” to the proper stimuli that is “bipolar—a fusion of external and internal elements” (242). The mind must be off guard and receptive to a general internal emotional mood (11 & 15). In addition, relaxation and concentration of attention, “involving the shutting out of all extraneous outer and inner stimuli,” are necessary as a part of a process of introversion and intense contemplation (184 & 242).
Introversion, a withdrawal “from the hurly-burly of the external world,” a severing of the ties with all outside influences and a dedication of the individual's mind to “the communion with the real” (188), and contemplation, “the condition of all valid seeing and hearing” that does not lie “in the sharpening of the senses, but in a peculiar attitude of the whole personality: in a self-forgetting attentiveness, a profound concentration, a self-merging, which operates a real communion between the seer and the seen” (Underhill 300), not only lead the way toward the threshold, but also relate the creative man with the mystic.
Certainly, that which takes place during the threshold trance can be appropriately described as a type of mystical experience in that it is characterized by four noteworthy qualities that, for James, define such a condition: ineffability, noetic quality, transiency and passivity (380-81). Of ineffability James remarks that “the subject of [the mystical state] immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words,” that “its quality must be directly experienced” and that “mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect” (380).
Regarding its noetic quality he writes:
Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to also be states of knowledge. They are states of insight into the depths of truth unplumbed by discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain.
(380-81)
On noting the transiency of mystical states, James ascertains that they “cannot be sustained for long,” and that “when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory” (381). Yet, he quickly adds that they “are never merely interruptive,” that “some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance,” and that “they modify the inner life” (381).
Finally, with regard to their passivity, the author notes that
Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, … the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.
(381)
In the light of these remarks, it is clearly evident that Bécquer is attempting to document the threshold as one way of approaching personally experienced mystical states. And in his doing so, we have seen that the poet represents the threshold physiologically by various conditions—waking/sleeping, drunkenness, ecstasy, meditation, hallucination, etc.—that may be construed as trance-like. We will now, however, turn the emphasis of our investigation toward a second threshold category, the spatial, which Bécquer concentrates within the dynamics of the doorway, opening or passageway.
The doorway marks the point that separates two dimensions of being, yet offers access to each. It is the place where they communicate with each other, and crossing the threshold is clearly indicative of moving from one state of being to another. Consequently, just by stepping inside “El Cristo de la Luz,” one of the churches included in the poet's Templos de España, Bécquer finds himself transported to the realm of poetry and spirit:
No siempre hemos de venir con los pergaminos en la mano pidiendo una fecha o una autoridad para creer; dejemos alguna vez que el alma se arrebate en alas de la fe y crea por esa intuición misteriosa que la ilumina cuando, ávida de sentimientos grandes, traspasa los umbrales santificados por el sello de los siglos y pide a las generaciones que se hundieron en el polvo sucesos maravillosos y extraordinarios que la hagan olvidarse por un momento de la prosaica realidad de nuestra existencia.
(918)
Rationalism, suggested by the words pergamino, fecha and autoridad, yields to intuition, feeling and imagination. The poet is no longer bound by empirical reality as a whole new vista opens before him. By crossing the threshold he finds himself within the sacred precincts of a church where the profane world is transcended (Eliade 25). Symbolically, he has also passed into a personal sacred space that “reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes orientation [in the world] possible” (30).
Moreover, as we witness in “Santa Leocadia,” there is an immediate and profound change in the poet's perception upon traversing the threshold:
Traspasamos el umbral de Santa Leocadia. La rápida transición de la claridad del atrio a las sombras … nos deslumbró al principio. Después, … los objetos fueron poco a poco destacándose … deshaciéndose de la oscuridad que los envolvía.
(845)
Bécquer is made very much aware of the opposition that exists between a space that is existentially significant and the indifferent and disorienting expanse surrounding it:
Fuera del lugar en que se guarda su memoria, lejos del recinto que aún conserva sus trazas, donde parece que todavía respiramos la atmósfera de las edades que les dieron el ser, las tradiciones pierden su poético misterio, su inexplicable dominio sobre el alma.
De lejos se interroga, se analiza, se duda; allí la fe, como una revelación secreta, ilumina el espíritu y se cree.
(846)
Indeed, this delineation of space is the thrust behind Bécquer's work entitled “Roncesvalles.” The poet at first finds himself engulfed by the coldly indifferent rationalism of profane space:
… donde nuestros mayores se sentían embargados de una profunda emoción, donde se exaltaba su fantasía, donde se elevaba su espíritu y vibraban, sacudidas por el entusiasmo, todas las fibras del sentimiento, nosotros nos sentimos indiferentes,. …
(971)
Later, however, upon reaching the threshold (literally the entrance to a church and symbolically, the gateway to a heightened state of being), and then crossing it, he enters the sacred space that is the realm of absolute reality:
… penetré en el claustro, … sentí que una emoción profunda hasta entonces desconocida agitaba mi espíritu. … La atmósfera de la tradición, que aún se respira allí en átomos impalpables, comenzaba a embriagar mi alma, cada vez más dispuesta a sentir sin razonar, a creer sin discutir.
(975)
The verb penetrar, which Bécquer uses here and on other occasions in conjunction with the spatiality of the threshold, strongly suggests not only the passage into a new dimension of being, but also the discovery of profound inner meaning.
Indeed, in the third section of “Tres fechas” the verb penetrar again figures prominently. The poet finds himself inexplicably drawn back to the isolated plaza that was discovered in the second part of his narration, and there his attention is fixed on a convent that borders the plaza. He approaches its entrance—“llegué a la puerta del templo” (363)—and feels compelled to go inside: “penetrar en su recinto” (363). He has again come to the threshold and penetrated it.
In addition, the characteristics of the sanctuary's interior are highly significant in further supporting the presence of the threshold. Bécquer discerns a wonderful harmony in the seemingly incoherent mixture of artistic styles: “completamente armónica en su confusión y su desorden artístico” (364). Thus, he senses the union of opposites that can only occur at the threshold. There is an interplay of light and shadow as objects are alternately revealed and obscured—“estos reflejos, … luchaban confundiéndose entre sí en algunos puntos, mientras que otros los hacían destacar con una mancha luminosa y brillante sobre los fondos velados y oscuros de las capillas” (364)—thereby suggesting the mediation between matter and spirit. The air is perfumed, and the poet's vision further veiled, by a blue haze of incense, emphasizing matter's vagueness in the close presence of the spiritual.
Having entered the sanctuary, the poet is witness to the final minutes of a solemn ceremony in which a young woman is taking her final vows in order to become a nun. Although he is in close proximity to the proceedings, he is separated from them by a second threshold that bars entrance: “… al coro, … me encaminé hacia aquel sitio con el objeto de asomarme a las dobles rejas que lo separaban del templo” (364). He can vaguely see, but cannot physically pass beyond this point. And from this distance the virgin's silhouette stands out from among the shadows, yet her face remains hidden.
As the ceremony gradually approaches its conclusion, however, a brilliant ray of light shines in the darkness as the cloister door at the rear of the choir is opened. That door marks a third threshold at which the poet glimpses the spiritual realm in all of its glory before just as quickly being cut off from it as the door closes. The young woman, literally standing at the threshold—“Al poner el pie en el umbral” (368)—turns her face toward the altar, and it is illuminated for the first time. Bécquer recognizes her to be the elusive woman of his dreams, the incarnation of poetry and spirit: “Al mirarlo tuve que ahogar un grito. Yo conocía a aquella mujer: no la había vista nunca, pero la conocía de haberla contemplado en sueños; …” (368). At the very same moment the poet experiences dizziness, the priests shout “Hosanna,” clouds of incense fill the air, the organ sings out in thunderous harmony and the church bells begin to peal. In effect, each of these elements point to the special moment in which an epiphany has taken place. The manifestation of the spiritual has occurred at the threshold.
In this particular text, Bécquer has made use of three specific threshold points that move us in space, at first physically from outside to inside, and then visually with increasingly narrowing focus, toward a final dramatic point. At the same time, this spatial progression from threshold to threshold effectively combines with a technique of gradual intensification of awareness that draws us ever-closer to this brilliant climactic vision. At the final opening we, like the poet, see beyond for an instant before the door of revelation is unalterably shut: “en aquel instante la puerta claustral se cerró … para siempre” (368).
A slight variation concerning the spatial indications of the threshold occurs in “Rima LXXIV”:
Las ropas desceñidas,
desnudas las espaldas,
en el dintel de oro de la puerta,
dos ángeles velaban.
Me aproximé a los hierros
que defienden la entrada,
y de las dobles rejas en el fondo
la vi confusa y blanca.
La vi como la imagen
que en leve ensueño pasa,
como rayo de luz tenue y difuso
que entre tinieblas nada.
Me sentí de un ardiente
deseo llena el alma;
como atrae un abismo, aquel misterio
hacia sí me arrastraba.
Mas, ¡ay!, que de los ángeles
parecían decirme las miradas:
“¡El umbral de esta puerta
sólo Dios lo traspasa!”
(453)
The whole poem is structured around the image of a doorway, one that is far from ordinary. Indeed, it obviously stands at the entrance to the spiritual realm. Its lintel is made of gold, “the image of solar light and hence of the divine intelligence,” “of all that is superior,” and an “essential element in the symbolism of the hidden or elusive treasure which is an illustration of the fruits of the spirit and of supreme illumination” (Cirlot 119-20). Its entrance is guarded by two angels, spiritual beings superior to man in power and intelligence, and further defended by double bars of iron.
In a very real sense both bars and angels act as guardians whose purpose it is to protect “spiritual wealth or power … against possible intrusion by the unworthy” (134). Furthermore, “guardians symbolize the forces gathered on the threshold of transition between different stages of evolution and spiritual progress … [and] must be overcome before Man can enter into the mastery of a higher realm” (134).
Bécquer finds himself on the outside in what must be described as profane space. Yet, because of his special nature as a poet and his great gift of imagination, he is able to approach the threshold and see beyond. In the background, far removed from the entrance, he vaguely catches sight of the woman of his dreams—“la vi”—who, as we have noted on so many occasions, is a primary manifestation of poetry and spirit. The imprecision and elusiveness that are unavoidable in the presence of the spiritual are captured in the adjectives confusa, leve, tenue, and difuso, in the verb nadar and in the noun ensueño.
Nevertheless, the vagueness that surrounds her does not diminish the fact that she is strikingly recognizable, and the poet is filled with longing to know her more intimately, that is, to progress toward the spiritual realm. He actually feels himself being drawn ever-nearer the abyss, which, in the context of this poem, positively symbolizes spiritual profundity. Still, the passage from profane to sacred space is thwarted because man is indeed unworthy. Ultimately, he may not pass through the door that separates him from, and leads to, absolute reality.
There is, however, yet another means by which the poet discovers the threshold and attempts to get at the realm of poetry and spirit. It is achieved sensorially by sight, and perhaps with even greater impact, by sound.
Bécquer represents the threshold visually by a number of elements that have one important attribute in common. Each serves in some way to limit or disrupt the process of clear physical vision so that the sense of the presence of a new dimension grows stronger as the imagination creatively takes control. The poet is intrigued by atmospheric conditions, such as mist, fog, vapor, incense, smoke, haze or clouds, that blur the outlines of the objects around him: “… la azulada niebla del crepúsculo tiende sus alas diáfanas sobre los valles, robando el color y las formas a los objetos, que parecen vacilar agitados por el soplo de un espíritu” (45); “El crepúsculo comenzaba a extender sus ligeras alas de vapor …” (95); “… la niebla de la tarde flotaba como un velo de gasa azul” (116); “… cuando flota en el aire una nube de incienso …” (119); “[el] humo del cigarro que se extiende ante mis ojos como una gasa azul, …” (501); “… comenzaba a elevarse una niebla inquieta y azul, … borrando los objetos y los colores” (561); “… cuando el crepúsculo envuelve en una azulada niebla los objetos, que al perder el color y la forma se mezclan entre sí, confundiendo sus vagos contornos” (774); “… una tinta azulada y melancólica baña en tenue vaguedad el interior de vuestro templo” (837).
Such conditions are compared with delicate fabrics, veils and curtains of tulle, chiffon or gauze, that are drawn in front of objects, thereby separating the poet from clear-sighted inspection: “Rompe de una vez el misterioso velo en que te envuelves como en una noche profunda” (139): “… las nieblas rosadas y azules, que flotaban en el espacio como cortinas de gasa transparente, …” (183); “… a través del confuso velo” (287); “paisajes que aparecen / como a través de un tul” (“Rima III” 403); “al través de una gasa de polvo / dorado e inquieto” (“Rima VII” 410); “levantaremos otro pliegue a la misteriosa cortina que encubre este asunto” (641).
Furthermore, Bécquer is drawn to shadows and silhouettes since they too mark the dim middle ground between the seen and the unseen: “… el sol poniente hería de soslayo la tierra y las sombras … se dilataban por momentos a lo largo de la llanura” (217); “… un caso incomprensible de sombra y luz, en donde se mezclan y confunden con las tinieblas … los rayos de colores” (119); “deformes siluetas / de seres imposibles” (“Rima III” 403); “Las sombras de los montes bajan a la carrera y se extienden por la llanura … la alameda se envuelve en la indecisa luz del crepúsculo” (521-22); “Las sombras del crepúsculo comenzaban a envolver todos los objetos, confundiendo las líneas y borrando los colores” (714); “El sol … comenzó poco a poco a ocultarse … las sombras … insensiblemente se habían ido alargando … acabaron por envolverlo en una tinta azulada y ligera” (761); “… la silueta oscura del templo … Los detalles de la arquitectura comenzaban a confundirse, los ángulos perdían algo de la dureza …” (761); “… las sombras bajan a grandes pasos de las montañas para envolver los valles en sus oscuros pliegues” (831).
In conjunction with these visual indications of the threshold, and at times taking precedence over them, are those of an auditory nature. The poet becomes aware of sounds that, while perhaps originating in the physical world, are at the same time highly suggestive of another dimension of reality. They, too, define the zone where the material and spiritual worlds communicate. And by taking the form of music, notes, chords, echoes, sighs, murmurs or vibrations, they intimately speak to the poet. Indeed, because these sounds are not bound by the fixed or conventional meaning of words—el círculo de hierro de la palabra” (624)—they are filled with far greater freedom of suggestion, expression and direct communication at an intuitive level. Bécquer tells us the following:
Bien sea que la imaginación, … ayude a prestarle apariencia; … se opera en mis sentidos un extraño fenómeno. Creo reconocer una por una las diferentes voces de las campanas; … creo, en fin, que … logro sorprender palabras misteriosas que palpitan en el aire envueltas en sus prolongadas vibraciones.
Estas palabras sin ilación ni sentido, que flotan en el espacio acompañadas de suspiros apenas perceptibles y de largos sollozos, comienzan a reunirse unas con otras, como se reúnen al despertar las vagas ideas de un sueño, … y todas juntas interpretan por medio de sonidos simbólicos, el pensamiento que hierve callado en el cerebro de los que las oyen sumidos en honda meditación.
(1026)
As this passage attests, the poet, already closely approaching the threshold by way of a state of trance (“sumido en honda meditación”), is able to reach it through an auditory medium. Bells serve as an indication of the threshold, as their resounding vibrations reflect the interplay between matter and spirit, between sound heard and sound transformed. Indeed, the imagination, at its most potent at the threshold, enables the poet to hear differently. He is released from the conventional cognitive process as new meaning is communicated to him symbolically.
Moreover, at least two aural dimensions may be said to be in operation, not only in the preceding passage, but throughout the poet's work. The first, corresponding with Bécquer's characteristic visual diminishment and/or distortion at the threshold, is his distancing and fragmentation of sound, which again allows the imagination's creative power to come into play as it mediates between what is heard and what is not heard: “Los confusos rumores de la ciudad, que se evaporan temblando; los melancólicos suspiros de la noche, que se dilatan de eco en eco … los mil ruidos misteriosos … un canto dulce, vago y perdido como las últimas notas …” (46); “Suena en mi oído una voz insólita que murmura palabras desconocidas en un idioma extraño y celeste” (61); “El aire gemía … trayendo … como notas perdidas de una sinfonía misteriosa, ya palabras ininteligibles, clamor de campanas o ecos de golpes profundos y lejanos” (361); “… y estas páginas son de ese himno, / cadencias que el aire dilata en las sombras” (“Rima I” 401); “Si al resonar confuso a tus espaldas / vago rumor, / crees que por tu nombre te ha llamado / lejana voz, …” (“Rima XVI” 417); “Solo turbaban el alto silencio … el monótono rumor del agua … el trémulo murmullo del viento, que suspiraba … y el temeroso y confuso rumor de las hojas … que parecían hablar entre sí en voz baja” (633); “… trajo la brisa, con el melancólico clamor de las campanas y los lejanos ecos del órgano, que rodaban temblando en los aires al unirse a las graves notas del salmo religioso, el primer suspiro de la noche que iba a nacer, el último rumor del día que acaba de morir” (774-75); “tu música de murmullos halagadores” (1075).
In effect, these sounds that are heard only partially and indistinctly are all the more imbued with profound significance since their ultimate meaning is not drawn from the material world. By means of the imagination at work at the threshold the poet hears something of what the spiritual world has to say:
Entre el discorde estruendo de la orgía
acarició mi oído.
como nota de música lejana,
el eco de un suspiro.
El eco de un suspiro que conozco,
formado de un aliento que he bebido
(“Rima L” 438)
Bécquer symbolically presents, by means of sound, the dynamic interplay of matter/threshold/spirit. On the one hand, the physical world is disguised as a raucous orgy. On the other hand, the spiritual realm is represented by the indistinct aural images of distant music and a sigh. The threshold materializes in the fragmented form of a note from that distant music and an echo of that sigh. These like elements caress his ear, or rather, speak reassuringly to him of the existence of a greater and more meaningful reality. And indeed, it is a reality that he both knows and has experienced before.
The second aural dimension of the threshold is concerned with the joining of different sounds, and thus, with the steadily increasing intensification of sound that occurs when the poet manages to draw especially close to the spiritual realm, as when in “La ajorca de oro” voices, organ and bells join in thunderous harmony, and thereby open the door to an intimate understanding of divinity:
… cuando … las voces del coro y la armonía de los órganos y las campanas de la torre estremecen el edificio … entonces es cuando se comprende, al sentirla, la tremenda majestad de Dios, que vive en él, y lo anima con su soplo,. …
(119)
Similarly, we are drawn to the following passage from “Maese Pérez el organista”:
En aquel punto sonaban las doce en el reloj de la catedral.
Pasó el Introito y el Evangelio y el Ofertorio, y llegó el instante solemne en que el sacerdote, después de haberla consagrado, toma con la extremidad de sus dedos la Sagrada Forma y comienza a elevarla.
Una nube de incienso que se desenvolvía en ondas azuladas llenó el ámbito de la iglesia y maese Pérez puso sus crispadas manos sobre las teclas del órgano.
Las cien voces de sus tubos de metal resonaron en un acorde majestuoso y prolongado. …
A este primer acorde, que parecía una voz que se elevaba desde la Tierra al Cielo, respondió otro lejano y suave, que fue creciendo, creciendo, hasta convertirse en un torrente de atronadora armonía. Era la voz de los ángeles, que atravesando los espacios, llegaba al mundo. …
(149)
We join Bécquer's account as the cathedral clock is striking twelve, the aural indication of the threshold moment that divides one day from the next, yet at the same time, joins the two together. His description is of the Christmas Eve “misa de gallo,” which liturgically and musically celebrates Christ's coming into the world, and the Spirit being made Flesh.
We witness the solemn moment in which the priest begins to elevate the Sacred Host, a tangible symbol of the spirit, as a cloud of incense rises and obscures the outlines of the objects within the sanctuary. At the same time, the bells resound, the verb repicar insinuating echoes and reverberations, vibrating sounds that oscillate in alternately opposite directions, as the blind organist, a man who cannot physically see, puts his hands on the keys of the organ.
The immense chord summoned by the organist harmoniously unites the many voices of his instrument while intensifying the effect of the striking of the hour and the pealing of the bells. Moreover, it is described as a chord that ascends from earth to heaven, and is answered by another which descends from heaven to earth, building in sound until it becomes “a torrent of thunderous harmony.”
In effect, Bécquer establishes a moment of truly incredible tension as his imagination causes the elements of the material world to couple with the world of the spirit. There is an intricate interplay of thesis / antithesis / synthesis relying upon both the senses of sight and sound, yet especially upon the progressive intensification of the latter: “En aquel instante la nota … se abrió, se abrió, y una explosión de armonía gigante estremeció la iglesia. …” (150). For a supremely intense moment the faithful, and Bécquer first among them, are connected aurally with the divine.
It is in the legend entitled “El Miserere,” however, that the threshold, as the point of maximum comprehension and creative energy, is most dramatically revealed through what is primarily the progressive intensification of sound and light. The legend's principal character is both a musician, an individual who is gifted with the insight to potently express and communicate on a non-verbal level, and a pilgrim, one who is in quest of the lost harmony of existence. His dogged search for a musical form, a miserere, which most perfectly expresses what he feels within—“lo que siento en mi corazón, lo que oigo confusamente en mi cabeza” (191)—leads him to the place where the “Miserere de la Montaña” is to be sung that very night by those who “muertos tal vez sin hallarse preparados para presentarse en el Tribunal de Dios limpios de toda culpa, vienen aún del Purgatorio a impetrar su misericordia cantando el Miserere” (193).
Consequently, after having followed the current of a rivulet upstream toward its source, an image of the quest for the spiritual center, for initial harmony, the pilgrim eventually arrives at the monastery that is his destination. Alone, isolated and in the dark he sits on a broken statue among the dark ruins and, at first, experiences nothing that might stir his imagination and begin its process of moving toward a new reality: “nada sobrenatural, nada extraño venía a herir la imaginación” (194).
The reader is witness to a preparatory period that is pregnant with expectancy, like the calm before a storm. It is a lapse of time dominated by an accumulation of sounds, rather than by visual images, although those are not lacking. We participate in the musician's intense perception of his surroundings, a perception that is appropriately aural, when we hear the wind beating against the buttresses and howling through the deserted cloisters. Like the musician, we hear drops of water falling on the tombs, the cries of an owl, the sounds made by reptiles—“todos esos extraños y misteriosos murmullos del campo, de la soledad y de la noche llegaban perceptibles al oído del romero” (195).
In this state of concentration the musician is acutely aware of every noise, and describes a constant state of flux that never seems to produce anything new: “aquellos mil confusos rumores seguían sonando y combinándose de mil maneras distintas, pero siempre los mismos” (195). Sensory perception continues to hold sway while the innumerable combinations of sound remain bound by a reality that is tangible and demonstrable. However, just as doubt begins to replace hope in the musician's mind, an entirely new sound is perceived whose inexplicable nature begins to open a new dimension of awareness.
He hears the whirring of the gears of a clock about to strike and then eleven strokes of a bell. And while the vibration from that bell is still quivering in the air, the entire church is illuminated unexpectedly: “… todavía se escuchaba su vibración temblando en el aire, cuando … la iglesia entera comenzó a iluminarse espontáneamente” (195). Both “vibration” and “quivering,” as terms that apply to sound and are characterized by an alternation in opposite directions from a position of equilibrium, suggest a point of creative force and of heightened awareness.
A new reality begins to form, having commenced with sound and proceeded to light, an intriguing point since sound has been said to be “the first of all things to be created, and that which gave rise to all others, commencing with light, …” (Cirlot 286). The musician is witnessing the construction of a dimension above physical reality, a supernatural realm that has been brought into his presence through the creative power of the imagination. Concentrated awareness of the minute details of reality has led to visionary revelation. A trigger has been released, a new sound has been apprehended in the ceaseless combinations of existing sounds. And this sound leads to illumination, not just in the physical sense, but also in the sense of enlightenment. Furthermore, the air continues to hum, thereby emphasizing the dynamic tension experienced by one who is drawing nearer the threshold to the spiritual realm.
In the midst of the vibration a distant chord is heard, a harmonious blending of tones that emanates from “un conjunto de voces lejanas y graves …” (196). Voices are joined and heard as one voice springing from the bowels of the earth and growing ever-louder and ever-more perceptible: “parecía salir del seno de la tierra e irse elevando poco a poco, haciéndose de cada vez más perceptible” (197). Indeed, the musician discovers the source of the distant voices upon seeing the skeletons of monks returning from the realm of the dead—“salir del fondo de las aguas” (197)—while chanting the first verse of the psalm of David.
Before his eyes, the monks enter the sanctuary and kneel upon reaching the choir. As they continue their chant the musician is captivated by the music that sounds in time with their voices. That music is the union of all of Nature, of all reality plus something more, the spiritual realm:
Aquella música era el rumor distante del trueno, que desvanecida la tempestad, se alejaba murmurando; era el zumbido del aire que gemía en la concavidad del monte; era el monótono ruido de la cascada que caía sobre las rocas, y la gota de aqua que se filtraba, y el grito del buho escondido, y el roce de los reptiles inquietos. Todo esto era la música y algo más que no puede explicarse ni apenas concebirse; algo más que parecía como el eco de un órgano que acompañaba los versículos del gigante himno de contrición del rey salmista con notas y acordes tan gigantes como las palabras terribles.
(197)
In his description of the music Bécquer creates an intricate symphony of sounds with stunning dynamics—the distant rumbling of thunder, the monotonous sound of the cascade, the slight patter of dripping water, the screech of the owl, the rustle of the reptiles. There is a blending of opposites—soft and loud, large and small, near and far into a startling harmony. The addition of the notes and chords from a celestial organ, an instrument capable of producing a variety of musical timbres and orchestral effects, further intensifies Nature's symphony and joins its individual tones into a harmonious unity beyond physical reality, yet still at some distance from the spiritual center. Only the echo of the organ is heard.
At this point, however, this symphony of sound comes to what may be described as a second movement as the monk's skeletons repeat the weightiest line of the Miserere: “In iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea” (197). This movement is far more intense than the first, and characterized by howls, cries, screams, lamentations, shouts and blasphemies. The subtle modulations and variations of the first movement give way to an incredibly forceful main theme, “concierto monstruoso,” and then to the alternation of that theme with another of equal importance. The terrible theme of contrition interchanges with the light and jubilant theme of forgiveness: “Prosiguió el canto, ora tristísimo y profundo, ora semejante a un rayo de sol que rompe la nube oscura de una tempestad, haciendo suceder a un relámpago de terror otro relámpago de júbilo” (198).
Just as unexpectedly, a third change, the third and final movement, begins. It is a hymn of joy and glory that breaks all earthly bonds. Rather than lit by the previous phosphorescent glow, the church now shines, bathed in heavenly light. The skeletons are once again covered with flesh, symbolic of reintegration, and aureoles, “manifestations of the emanation of spiritual light,” surround their heads (Cirlot 56). The dome of the church breaks open, an image equivalent to the rending of the temple veil, so that the blessed may look up at the heavens which are likened to an ocean of light. The heavenly hosts have joined in to accompany the monks in their song, and the hymn finally ascends to the throne of God, the ultimate point of union, of harmony and of illumination: “Los serafines, los arcángeles y los ángeles y las jerarquías acompañaban con un himno de gloria este versículo, que subía entonces al trono del Señor como una tromba armónica, como una gigantesca espiral de sonoro incienso” (198).
The poet's description of the hymn as a harmonic whirlwind and as a gigantic spiral of sonorous incense is perhaps the most striking image of the entire text. The spiral is a supreme cosmic symbol. Its movement is dynamic and ascending and connotes “the relationship between unity and multiplicity” (Cirlot 291). The whirlwind, as one striking example of the spiral, could symbolize a destructive force, but this possibility is negated by the qualifying adjective harmonious. Both terms represent creative spiritual power, and their movement is related to the state of ecstasy in which man is able “to escape from the material and enter the beyond, through the ‘hole’ symbolized by the mystic Centre” (292).
Furthermore, the spiral is “essentially macrocosmic,” that is, related to the universe in its entirety (291). The qualifying adjective gigantic enhances this cosmic dimension, while the dramatic use of synaesthesia, “sonorous incense,” emphasizes the ecstatic state that is at work, recalling similar images employed in the poems of San Juan de la Cruz that attempt to describe the state of mystical union.
The pilgrim, alas, can no longer withstand the vision of glory that has enveloped him. His senses collapse. He is blinded, in both the physical and spiritual sense, by the dazzling brightness, and at the same time, hears no more. Indeed, the threshold leading to the spiritual realm disintegrates as the musician plummets into the material world: “En este punto, la claridad deslumbradora cegó los ojos del romero, sus sienes latieron con violencia, zumbaron los oídos y cayó sin conocimiento por tierra, y no oyó más …” (198).
The entire description of the pilgrim's vision is marked by dramatic processes of intensification of light and sound that lead to the threshold, to the boundary between matter and spirit and beyond. The amount of light has grown ever-brighter, from its initial paleness and uncertainty—“un furtivo rayo de luz pálida y dudosa” (194)—to its final overwhelming brilliance, “la claridad deslumbradora” (198). The music has developed from a first chord scarcely distinguishable from the wind, “comenzó a oírse un acorde lejano que pudiera confundirse con el zumbido del aire” (194), to an immense hymn of praise sung by heaven and earth. Correspondingly, the musician's state of awareness has progressed from a superficial level, “nada extraño venía a herir la imaginación” (194); “todos aquellos ruidos le eran familiares” (194), to the most profound as his imaginative powers are set in motion at the threshold, and become increasingly dominant.
After having asserted that the imagination is considered perhaps the most fundamental element of Romanticism, we have, throughout the present chapter, attempted to explore the ways of the imagination in Bécquer's works in an effort to demonstrate just how indispensable it is for the poet. To begin to understand what imagination means to Bécquer we have turned to his texts to glean insight from the verbs and images that are used in conjunction with the word, from the poet's conception of artistic styles and from the dilemma of conception versus expression with which he is forced to deal.
Furthermore, we have established the premise that there are three great powers of the imagination at work in the poet's texts: 1) The uniting power is reflected in Bécquer's image of the thread of light, in his ability to discern hidden connections in a seemingly disordered universe, in his ability to perceive harmony both visually and aurally and in the dynamics of the kiss. 2) The transforming power asserts itself in the poet's capacity for seeing and hearing differently. 3) The mediating power is best apprehended in conjunction with the idea of threshold, the point at which two essentially separate modes of being are able to communicate with one another.
Indications of the threshold, and thus of the imagination at work, are divided into three categories—physiological, spatial and sensory. The first is best represented by any state that might be construed as trance-like, although we have especially emphasized the state between waking and sleeping. The second indication of threshold is centered upon images of doorways and openings that offer possible movement between sacred and profane space. The final category is encapsulated in images of visual blurring, aural distancing and the progressive intensification of sound.
Notes
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Furst, Perspective 143. Furst delineates these three powers in her discussion of the imagination as an essential characteristic of the romantic movements in England, France and Germany. I have chosen to explore the presence of these powers in Bécquer's works.
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Joaquín Casalduero notes the significant equivalence between beso/verso in the following statement: “El poema ideal es el que cabe en un verso, como la unión ideal es la que se realiza en el beso. … la vida es un beso y el poema un verso. Poema y vida son ese instante en que los dos elementos opuestos logran superar su antagonismo y deshacer la tensión de lo contrario en la armonía de la unidad.” “Las rimas de Bécquer,” in Estudios de literatura española (Madrid: Gredos, 1962) 110.
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Abrams sees a shift of emphasis concerning the work of art in romantic theory. No longer is it a mirror image of the world outside the artist, but rather an illumination of his inner world.
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Self Realization in the Leyendas of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
‘Poesía … Eres tú,’ or the Construction of Bécquer and the Sign of the Woman
