[In the following essay, Inglis examines the theme of ineffability in Bécquer's Leyendas.]

The question of Bécquer's treatment of ‘lo inefable’ in his Leyendas has recently been raised again, in an article¹ in which special attention is paid to ‘la mujer inalcanzable’ as a theme used in this connexion. The ineffable is important also in other ways, and helps to explain certain variations in quality to be found within the Leyendas. To show how this is so will be the main aim of the present article.

The theme of the ineffable or unattainable corresponds to tendencies which are already to be observed in Bécquer during his youth in Seville, and which are epitomized, then and later, in the Historia de los templos de España project. The Historia exemplifies Bécquer's highly-developed sense of the past, which attracts him above all because of its remoteness and mystery. This is what engages him in the legends of the people, and this, also, is what especially interests him in his ‘templos’: a building is an expression of the ideals of the men who have made it, and to understand an old building is to understand the spirit of another age. Such a view finds quite explicit expression in “La ajorca de oro,” where Toledo Cathedral is ‘eterno monumento del entusiasmo y la fe de muestros mayores, sobre el que los siglos han derramado a porfía el tesoro de sus creencias, de su inspiración y de sus artes.’² And, if one's investigations into these buildings lead one to stumble on legends which are themselves expressions of mystery and of striving after the unknown, so much the better. Bécquer's paths lead him always in the same direction: towards what is there to be understood and experienced, which beckons him on but which is always just beyond his reach. This is no cause for pity. The attraction of the elusive for Bécquer lies in its very elusiveness: “Rima XI” is not a tragic poem in any sense. Even “El caudillo de las manos rojas,” viewed on the simplest level of narrative content, is not tragic in its outcome. ‘Siannah fue la primera viuda indiana que se arrojó al fuego con el cadáver de su esposo.’ (103) She has accepted the implications of the elusive and unknown, and follows Pulo in pilgrimage ‘en esas regiones desconocidas, de las que ningún viajero vuelve.’ (103) These, coming from Bécquer, are not words of doom but carry the promise of continuing experience, enriched by the very fact that it is unknown and of uncertain outcome.

The elusive, then, attracts because of its elusiveness, and this can give meaning to life rather than bring frustration. But, if one is to live with the elusive and the ineffable, one has to accept and savour them as such. Their value must be clearly recognized, and turned to account. Pedro, in “La ajorca de oro,” fails to do this, and his failure drives him mad. In profaning the Virgin's image by stealing the bracelet, he has failed to distinguish between what is attainable and what is not, and is thus closer to don Félix de Montemar than to Bécquer's own position, which is virtually founded upon a willing acceptance of the ineffable. Such an interpretation is in no way contradicted by his love for the girl María, which can quite reasonably be viewed as equivalent to the situation in the last stanza of “Rima XI”:

—Yo soy ardiente, yo soy morena,
yo soy el símbolo de la pasión,
de ansia de goces mi alma está llena:
¿A mí me buscas?
                                                                                          —No es a ti: no.
—Mi frente es pálida, mis trenzas de oro,
puedo brindarte dichas sin fin,
yo de ternuras guardo un tesoro:
¿A mí me llamas?
                                                                                          —No: no es a ti.
—Yo soy un sueño, un imposible,
vano fantasma de niebla y luz,
soy incorpórea, soy intangible:
no puedo amarte:
                                                                                          —¡Oh ven; ven tú!(3)

The relationship can exist, if its elusiveness is accepted and welcomed. Any attempt to resolve the paradox, or to throw aside the veil, reduces it to meaninglessness. The other two possibilities of love which are offered in the first two stanzas of “Rima XI” are on a par with Pedro's situation when he has stolen the bracelet: they are readily available, but they are lacking in substance for this very reason. Pedro and María, in their relationship, in their attitudes and in their actions, are the main element in the legend, and, however one interprets it, one is always brought back to one theme which is basic to all of the possible interpretations: the unattainable as a principal ingredient of meaningful experience. “El monte de las ánimas,” “Los ojos verdes,” “El rayo de luna,” “El gnomo,” “La corza blanca” and “El beso” are among the more obvious examples of this, with “El rayo de luna” as perhaps the most striking illustration of the point:

Cantigas …, mujeres …, glorias …, felicidad …, mentira todo, fantasmas vanos que formamos en nuestra imaginación y vestimos a nuestro antojo, y los amamos y corremos tras ellos, ¿para qué?, ¿para qué? Para encontrar un rayo de luna.

Manrique estaba loco; por lo menos, todo el mundo lo creía así. A mí, por el contrario, se me figura que lo que había hecho era recuperar el juicio.

(189)

Manrique has come to his senses because he has realized that a moonbeam is what he will find, and Manrique is a poet.

In “El Miserere,” the theme is dealt with in a way which is directly related to Bécquer's specifically literary problems, and to the effect on him of his notion of reality. The musician, witnessing the ghostly ceremony in the supernaturally restored monastery, hears the magnificent “Miserere” in a setting which eclipses all others he knows or can imagine: ‘Creía estar fuera del mundo real, vivir en esa región fantástica del sueño, en que todas las cosas se revisten de formas extrañas y fenomenales.’ (216) But, when he returns to reality and tries to give expression to this experience, he is unable to do more than copy out what he has heard. When he attempts to go beyond this and continue the setting himself, the effort is useless and such as to lead to his madness and death. This concern with expression and its difficulties is clearly no merely technical question. The difficulty is not simply that of finding words which can express an emotion or an idea, but of translating an emotion which belongs to one field of experience into terms which can be understood in another. This is the difficulty which lies at the roots of Bécquer's views on poetry, as they are expressed explicitly, although loosely, in the “Introducción sinfónica,” in the Cartas literarias a una mujer and Desde mi celda, and in several of the Rimas; and implicitly throughout his prose and poetry. The Leyendas represent an attempt to deal with the same problems of definition and expression as Bécquer faces in the Rimas. If these problems are less well resolved in the Leyendas, this is because Bécquer, perhaps in an attempt to justify the Leyendas as stories, allows himself to be drawn away from his essential purpose (evocation and suggestion) into areas which contribute little to his aims and where he is ill at ease.

The way in which this comes about is seen in “El caudillo de las manos rojas.” The second and third paragraphs of the first canto (51-52), with their description of nightfall over the city of Kattak, contain features which characterize Bécquer in his descriptive writing. The dying day and the oncoming night struggle briefly, and there is a period of uncertain balance, difficult to perceive and even more difficult to describe. Twilight takes the form of an ‘azulada niebla’, which spreads its ‘alas diáfanas’ over the valleys, ‘robando el color y las formas a los objetos, que parecen vacilar agitados por el soplo de un espíritu.’ The noises are ‘confusos’ or ‘misteriosos’, the ‘suspiros’ are ‘melancólicos’, and so on. The nouns are mostly indeterminate, and the only adjective which might be said to relate to observable features of twilight is ‘azulada’, although this too seems more properly to belong with the other adjectives used, which tell one more about the observer than about what is observed.

These opening paragraphs are far from being exceptional. If one looks at the imagery used throughout this legend, it soon becomes clear that there is very little observation of natural beauty or attention to detail, very little which springs from without rather than within. The natural objects which are used from time to time to illustrate a point or establish a relationship are very obviously introduced for this purpose, as in the fourth paragraph: ‘el Ganges, como una inmensa serpiente azul con escamas de plata’ (52). Here, the Ganges is important less for itself than for the implications it can be made to convey. The image is neither compelling nor convincing, and shows signs of being forced. The serpent, with its silvery scales, will play its part later on in the legend (78 onwards), and the Ganges is pressed into service to make the point now. Similarly, Siannah brings ‘la fragancia que la precede como la mensajera de un genio’ (53). The nature of the fragrance is of no consequence in itself. It is enough that it can be compared to ‘la mensajera de un genio’. Other examples may be quoted: ‘la luna se desvanece como una ilusión que se disipa’ (54); the description of sunrise is in purely subjective terms (55); there is a passage in which cities, rivers and regions are mentioned, but in terms of allusions rather than descriptions (65); and, a most striking example: ‘Entre las brumas del lejano horizonte, se lanza al vacío el Himalaya, y, empinado sobre sus cumbres, el Davalaguiri, que pasea sus miradas sobre medio mundo.’ (61)

All of these examples are from the section which precedes Pulo-Delhi's dream, ‘la visión del caudillo’. As soon as the dream has begun, there is a noticeable change, the turning point being the seventh paragraph of the fourth canto:

Cuando la materia duerme, el espíritu vela. En tanto que el cuerpo del caudillo permanece inmóvil y sumergido en un letargo profundo, su alma se reviste de una forma imaginaria y huye de los lazos que la aprisionan para lanzarse al éter; allí la esperan las creaciones del Sueño, que le fingen un mundo poblado de seres animados con la vida de la idea, visión magnífica, profética y real en su fondo, vana sólo en la forma. Oíd, según la tradición la conserva, la visión del caudillo.

(75)

Such a statement as this is no mere form of words, and one of the implications of Bécquer's insistence on the reality of dreams is that he is never at his best when he is trying to draw directly on observable reality. Not only does this not provide his starting-point, but he is gravely hampered even by such a situation as the one at the opening of “El caudillo de las manos rojas.” Although this too is fictional, and, as such, is a product entirely of Bécquer's imagination, yet within the fictional context it is reality in our sense rather than in his, and he cannot take it seriously.

Within the ‘visión del caudillo’, things are very different. The eighth paragraph of the fourth canto is a good indication of this. Here, Bécquer is able to do with confidence and assurance what he has all along been doing timidly and without conviction. The wind, the thunder and the rain here exist, quite legitimately, only in terms of his imaginative purpose, and need not be related to their natural counterparts. Their importance derives entirely from the qualities which, elsewhere in the legend, Bécquer has to foist upon them. This can be seen in the case of a specific natural object, such as the following, of leaves, which is within the dream: ‘Los gigantescos árboles se agitan y, retorciéndose como a impulsos de una horrorosa convulsión, comienzan a alfombrar el suelo con las pálidas hojas que se desprenden de sus ramas, como se desprenden los cabellos de la cabeza de un anciano.’ (78) This picture springs naturally and with truth and conviction from Bécquer's vision of the situation. It may be contrasted with an earlier mention of leaves, before the dream has begun. On this occasion, all is not only sweetness and light but also objectively real. Pulo and Siannah are resting quietly, shortly before succumbing to temptation and thus removing the grounds for their present satisfaction: ‘… las hojas … se agitan como abanicos de esmeraldas sobre sus cabezas’ (66). There is, of course, a certain justification in this, with cool, fragrant air being wafted over the happy pair in their brief moment of bliss before they are parted. Yet, however appropriate in general terms the leaves here appear to be, there is a lack of conviction in the way in which they are introduced, such as is never to be seen when Bécquer is writing in terms of his own reality, as, for example, in the ‘visión del caudillo’. When the ‘visión’ comes to an end, there is an immediate regression in the imagery; and, at the end of the fourth canto, which has been dominated by the ‘visión’, there is a restatement of the significance of the distinction: ‘Los sueños son el espíritu de la realidad con las formas de la mentira: los dioses descienden en él hasta los mortales, y sus visiones son páginas del porvenir o recuerdos del pasado.’ (83)

In “El caudillo de las manos rojas,” it is not only in the ‘visión’ that one sees Bécquer freed from what is, for him, the inhibiting influence of objective reality. Something similar occurs in the songs sung by Siannah. The second of these, ‘La vuelta del combate’, in fact culminates in what is another treatment of the theme of “Rima X”:

LA VIRGEN.—Tu aliento humea y abrasa como el aliento de un volcán. Tu mano, que busca la mía, tiembla como la hoja del árbol. La sangre se agolpa a mi corazón, rebosa en él y enciende mis mejillas. Un velo de sombras cae sobre mis párpados. Todo se borra y confunde ante mis ojos, que no ven más que el fuego que arde en los tuyos. Caudillo, ¿qué espíritu invisible llena el aire de melodiosos acordes v me estremece a su contacto?

EL CAUDILLO.—Virgen, es el amor que pasa.

(72)

Here, the prose passage is much closer to the comparable rima than is the case in many of the other instances when a rima and a leyenda are seen to be related and this greater similarity seems likely to be due to the considerations of reality which have been discussed above.

“El caudillo de las manos rojas” may be thought perhaps to present Bécquer with problems which he will not have to face when the description is of something known to him, something observed. But, even at such moments, he displays the same tendencies. The opening section of “La cruz del diablo” is again a description of twilight, this time at Bellver. In strictly physical terms, the description is more informative, and yet it is neither impressive in this sense nor very evocative emotionally. The two requirements appear to be conflicting ones in Bécquer. There is a suggestion of half-heartedness about this opening which is betrayed by the image of the houses spread over the lower slopes of the hill, like ‘un bando de palomas que han abatido su vuelo para apagar su sed en las aguas de la ribera.’ (104) This is almost the image which is used at the beginning of “El caudillo de las manos rojas,” where the city of Kattak is ‘semejante a una paloma que descansa sobre un nido de flores.’ (51) Descriptions such as these have to be negotiated by Bécquer; he has to get them out of the way before he can proceed to the heart of the matter. In “La cruz del diablo,” the transition from one to the other comes as the narrator contemplates the devil's cross:

Un mundo de ideas se agolpó a mi imaginación en aquel instante. 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.

Impulsado de un pensamiento religioso, espontáneo e indefinible, eché maquinalmente pie a tierra, me descubrí y comencé a buscar en el fondo de mi memoria una de aquellas oraciones que me enseñaron cuando niño; una de aquellas oraciones que, cuando más tarde se escapan involuntarias de nuestros labios, parece que aligeran el pecho oprimido y, semejantes a las lágrimas, alivian el dolor, que también toma estas formas para evaporarse.

(105)

With such a passage, Bécquer recovers his assurance.

Jorge Guillén has already noticed the importance of dreams in Bécquer and has developed some of the consequences in a most stimulating way.⁴ He has shown how important for an understanding of Bécquer's worth is his writing from within. One can, however, go further, and say that this is also in part the explanation of much of the unevenness within the Leyendas, and also of the disparity between the achievement of the Leyendas and that of the Rimas. When Bécquer writes from without, he reveals the fact at once in the weakness of his images and the hesitancy of his approach. In the Rimas, Bécquer is free from the demands which external reality imposes upon him and which he is unable to meet.⁵ This also happens occasionally in the Leyendas, and it is really only at such moments that one is justified in describing them as prose poems.

It is here rather than in any failure to develop his characters that Bécquer's weakness in the Leyendas lies.⁶ The action in “El caudillo de las manos rojas” is not something which Bécquer can be accused of turning his back on. It is a further means of conveying the idea of the ineffable and unattainable. Pulo-Delhi and Siannah live out this idea from beginning to end—in their relationship, in the demands made of Pulo to expiate his crime, and in their deaths. This is what interests Bécquer, from whom we should not expect also an examination of motives or a discussion of the many, admittedly interesting, problems which the couple's situation may suggest. The difficulty is not that Bécquer neglects such themes as these in order to paint his verbal landscapes, but rather that his descriptive passages, except when pure fantasy is involved, do little to illuminate his themes. Scenes do not evoke ideas for Bécquer in any direct sense. The ideas are there, and while they must be expressed in ‘the language … of the phenomenal world’⁷ they find their true expression when that language is directly linked to the theme itself rather than to observed facts of nature. Bécquer in the Leyendas sometimes succeeds in this and sometimes fails. The success or failure has more to do with the real and the imagined than with the descriptive and non-descriptive.

Notes

1. Wallace Woolsey, ‘La mujer inalcanzable como tema en ciertas leyendas de Bécquer’, Hispania, Appleton, XLVII (1964), 277-81.

2. Bécquer, Obras completas (Madrid 1954), 131. Page references in the text are to this edition.

3. Bécquer, Rimas (Clásicos castellanos, Madrid 1963), 30. Accentuation and punctuation amended.

4. Jorge Guillén, Lenguaje y poesía (Madrid 1962), 145-82.

5. vide J. M. Aguirre, ‘Bécquer y “lo evanescente”’, BHS [Bulletin of Hispanic Studies], XLI (1964), 28-39. Aguirre, in demonstrating how vague are Bécquer's ‘symbols’, considered separately, has shown how important this freedom is in the Rimas.

6. E. L. King, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: From Painter to Poet (Mexico 1953), suggests (66) that the action in El caudillo de las manos rojas is neglected to such an extent that the pictorial, or descriptive, elements come to predominate, this being a fault which can be partly explained by Bécquer's interest in painting and by his desire to express in visual terms what he still feels unable to express in words.

7. King, 70.