SOURCE: “Analysis of the Leyendas,” in German Romanticism in Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Short Stories, Allen Press, 1959, pp. 19-55.

[In the following excerpt, Turk offers an analysis of Leyendas in the context of German Romanticism.]

… We have observed definite features of German Romanticism that must have influenced Bécquer's thinking from earliest childhood, beginning with Hoffmann, then Heine (early in Madrid), and probably also Schiller and Goethe. Bécquer had to be acquainted with Schiller and Goethe, if we are to believe the information in his Obras completas. If he had not died so young, we can be sure that he would have produced Spain's first major works on the great German literary duo. First of all, he contemplated issuing a sort of one-volume anthology of Schiller's works. The title was already chosen: Ecos de Schiller.¹ All we know of its contents is that it would contain poesías chicas. That he knew Goethe's works also, we gather from another place in his Obras² arriving at this fact by simple inductive reasoning. Under the heading Proyectos de obras y publicaciones, he plans to publish a sort of “Great Books” series that would be cheap enough for every Spaniard's pocketbook. It is the only evidence of a militant or concerted effort on the part of Bécquer to bring both the classics and contemporary works of Romanticism, English and German, into lively circulation. His description follows: “Biblioteca popular: Los grandes autores extranjeros. Edición esmerada, aunque económica. Dar a conocer a Dante, Tasso, Homero, Milton, Byron, Schiller, Goethe …”

And now, since Bécquer had extensively read writers like Dante and Byron, referring to them often in his prose writings, we can conclude that he had read enough of Goethe (and Schiller) to want his countrymen to explore them with him. Anyone who has read Bécquer knows how often he refers to the “Mefistofeles” and “Margarita” of Faust.

His knowledge of Uhland might also be referred to advantageously at this point. In Bécquer's “Prólogo” to Ferrán's La Soledad he gives a very revealing constellation of German names while speaking of “canciones populares”: “Goethe, Schiller, Uhland, Heine, no se han desdeñado de cultivarlo; es más: se han gloriado de hacerlo. Entre nosotros, no …”³

Díaz is intrigued by this group:

… creemos que hay una influencia más importante, aunque también más difusa: la que viene del mundo romántico alemán y de la poesía alemana de inspiración popular.

Su propia confesión, en este sentido, es un índice importante. Indice que viene a coronar, además, una afirmación teórica previa: la que debe integrarse, en la poesía culta, la experiencia poética popular.

Cuando Bécquer hace esa afirmación se apoya como hemos visto en los nombres de Uhland, Goethe, Schiller y Heine. … Ellos parecen servirle para designar, además, un mundo poético que reconoce como ejemplar.

Es ese conjunto global de la experiencia poética alemana (italics our own) el que parece completar—conjuntamente con la atención que el poeta pone en lo popular—el paisaje en el que deben inscribirse las Rimas.⁴

It is precisely this paisaje or cultural environment which we shall set up in this chapter as we analyze each story to illustrate what was “in the air” that Bécquer breathed as he wrote the Leyendas. We do not promise many precise literal German antecedents of his themes, although there are some unmistakable ones, but the “mood” or romantic atmosphere will be identical, as we shall see. It is more important to identify the mentality or spirit of Bécquer (who was saturated with German Romanticism like no other colleague then or at any time) than to pinpoint a word or passage that he “lifted” out of a German text. Such precision would be as inconclusive as when Satan quotes the Scriptures.

1. THE CONCEPT OF NATURE IN BéCQUER'S “LOS OJOS VERDES”

Below are listed some passages from “Los ojos verdes” in which Bécquer reveals the same vitalistic feeling for Nature that we find in the works of Tieck, Hoffmann, and the other German mystics of Romanticism, all disciples of Schelling, the theoretician.

The “fuente de los Alamos, en cuyas aguas habita un espíritu del mal,” was described to Fernando de Argenzola by the superstitious Iñigo, without deterring the youthful hunter. But the next time they saw Fernando, one could say to him that “una mala bruja os ha encanijado con sus hechizos.”

Fernando said he had seen the spirit of these waters in the figure of a woman, adding that, upon arriving at the forbidden spot, first “se llenó mi alma del deseo de la soledad.”

The following description of the water presents the senses as enraptured, thereby arousing the full play of imagination (nature to art to imagination). Hearing, too, plays a large role at first:

Lamentos, palabras, nombres, cantares, yo no sé lo que he oído en aquel rumor cuando me he sentado solo y febril sobre el peñasco, a cuyos pies saltan las aguas de la fuente misteriosa para estancarse en una balsa profunda. …⁵

It is particularly in the moments of loneliness that one can commune with nature, so that man's spirit comes into contact with the spirit of nature:

La soledad con sus mil rumores desconocidos, vive en equellos lugares y embriaga el espíritu con su inefable melancolía. En las plateadas hojas de los álamos, en los huecos de las peñas, en las ondas del agua, parece que nos hablan los invisibles espíritus de la naturaleza, que reconocen un hermano en el inmortal espíritu del hombre.⁶

The sense of sight is finally stimulated once the imagination has been stimulated by hearing:

Creí haber visto brillar en su fondo una cosa extraña … muy extraña … los ojos de una mujer.⁷

These observations reveal the concatenation and mechanics of the romantic writer's art, whereby he slips his hand under our arm, as it were, and leads us and our critical sense into a world of fantasy that seems as logical as the work-a-day world that allows for little play of imagination.

What we have witnessed is a mystical growth from inherent urges to externalized wishful thinking, as Fernando expresses it. A dualistic world has been bridged by a person as sensitive as E. T. A. Hoffmann's characters.⁸ Like Poe and our protagonist, Hoffmann, too, was personally subject to hallucinations in broad daylight.

Fernando did not stop with the hallucination. A deep passion had been generated by the uncanny sight. He confessed:

Sabes tú lo que más amo en este mundo? Sabes tú por que daría yo el amor de mi padre, los besos de la que me dió la vida y todo el cariño que puedan atesorar todas las mujeres de la tierra? Por una mirada, por una sola mirada de esos ojos. … ¡Como podré yo dejar de buscarlos!⁹

The next step was Fernando's return to the fatal spot where he now began to speak with “her,” to question “her” and to declare himself forever “hers.” This final externalizing of passion into speech required but one more step to satisfy his ever-growing curiosity. He insisted upon an answer to be sure that his love was not unrequited:

Háblame; yo quiero saber si me amas; yo quiero saber si puedo amarte, si eres una mujer. …¹⁰

At last he believes he even hears this response:

O un demonio … ¿Y si lo fuese?

The cycle has been completed. He is back to sound, and of course, he is sure that he can trust his senses. The music he hears is her voice:

Fernando, dijo la hermosa entonces con una voz semejante a una música:—yo te amo más aún que tú me amas; yo que desciendo hasta un mortal, siendo un espíritu puro. No soy una mujer como las que existen en la tierra; soy una mujer digna de tí, que eres superior a los demás hombres. … Yo no castigo al que osa turbar la fuente donde moro; antes lo premio con mi amor, como a un mortal superior a las supersticiones del vulgo, como a un amante capaz de comprender mi cariño extraño y misterioso.¹¹

Fernando met his end when he reached for the fatal “beso,” the carnal, or ultimate, phase of his evolution.

Bécquer, with his life of wishful thinking, expressed himself as only an artist with suppressed desires could. He, too, felt that his longing for “the one and only” would some day be rewarded, because of a lifelong torture and dedication to such an idealized creature; he too hoped for something better than that indulged in by the “vulgo” or the less sensitive “herd,” which blindly went on in a materialistic world, wholly unable and unworthy to discover that ideal love only to be found in a pure spirit. Artist and esthete that he was, of course he would deny his human nature and thus tear himself away from all mundane things, exchanging a life in this world for the one longed for in the ideal world. But he had to love sufficiently to take the fatal step—to deny the best that this world offered. Here is a revelation of his inner soul, and he joins all those Romantic spirits who, like him, sought escape in a world of fancy, be it heavenly or demoniacal.

This short story might have had the title that Fouqué gave his most popular Novelle (Undine), judging from its similarity of mood. It also reminds one very strongly of the poem by Goethe entitled “Der Fischer,” which came into print in 1779 in Seckendorff's Volkslieder with music, and then in Herder's Volkslieder under the title “Das Lied vom Fischer.” It was included in Goethe's Schriften in 1790. Herder made the comment to the effect that if German poetry were really to become Volksdichtung, it must follow in the footsteps of this ballad.¹²

The ballad does not emphasize the “beauty” of the water creature (as in Fouqué's Undine). Her enticing ways are enumerated in a regular sequence, first her argument and plea:

Sie sang zu ihm, sie sprach zu ihm:
“… Ach wuesztest du, wie's Fischlein ist
So wohlig auf dem Grund,
Du stiegst herunter, wie du bist,
Und wuerdest erst gesund. …”
She sang to him, she spoke to him:
“… If only you knew how happy a fish is
                    way down here,
You'd come on down just as you are,
Then all were well with you.”

She refers next to the rest of nature which communes with water—the moon and the sun and the many reflections, the sky, and one's own face.

The “magic” became greater with physical contact. As the water rises, it “netzt ihm den nackten Fusz” (moistens his bare foot). The longing and desire thus aroused is compared with a lover's experience:

Sein Herz wuchs ihm so sehnsuchtsvoll
Wie bei der Liebsten Grusz.
His heart waxed great with deep desire,
Like when his lover greets.

Once more she sings and talks to him and then with her own physical force, she draws him down, half “aided” by him:

Halb zog sie ihn, halb sank er hin
Und ward nicht mehr gesehn.
She for her part half pulled him in, he
                    sank in passively—
Was no more to be seen.

Thus ends the popular ballad of the abduction of a man by a water spirit.¹³

These spirits are depicted as being irresistible. Undine, in the Novelle, likewise succeeds, in a more “human” way (by marriage), to “get her man.” She is all sweetness and irresistible charm, with nothing demoniacal emphasized (unlike the typical one of Goethe's ballad or the seductive creature described by Bécquer). These examples, then, give us that background of the German romantic world, the general mood we find in Bécquer.

As to specific sources, Hoffmann has been suggested. Benjamin Jarnés says,

En las leyendas pudo colaborar Hoffmann …¹⁴

And elsewhere,

¿Cuáles son sus hombres? … Fernando de Argensola, venido de algun poema de Hoffmann, que corre en pos de unos ojos azules.¹⁵

Schelling's concept of nature was only poetically and philosophically generalized. Hoffmann was doubtless one of his best disciples. We might review one of Hoffmann's best Novellen, Der goldene Topf, keeping Bécquer's “Los ojos verdes” in mind, as we construct the backdrop again, all in harmony with the spirit of Romanticism reflected in Bécquer.

There is no similarity in plot—only in the “mentality.” Like Fernando, so is Anselmus, the theological student, closely attuned to nature because of his fine qualities of observation and his disturbing repressions in matters of love. He, too, starts his communion with nature with the sense of hearing. Sounds which others take for granted or do not even notice start him in the cycle of “Nature” mysticism previously analysed. In this particular case, it was the rustling of the leaves in a lilac tree that for him was a whispering and a ringing of tiny crystal bells. Instead of a water nymph, we have primitive amphibious creatures which, according to the Bible, also communed with Eve in Eden: snakes—in this case with beautiful, passion-arousing blue eyes.

The evening sun playing in the foliage now captured his attention. His sight was focused on the leaves, and finally he discerned three shining green-gold snakes crawling about in the tree:

“That is the evening sun playing in the lilac tree,” thought Anselmus, the student: but then the bells sounded again and Anselmus saw how a snake stretched her little head towards him. Something like an electrical shock ran through all of his members, he quaked in his innermost soul—he stared upwards and a pair of glorious dark blue eyes looked at him with inexpressible desire, so that a feeling of highest bliss and deepest woe, such as he had never known, sought to burst his bosom. And while he continued, filled with ardent desire, to look into the blissful eyes, the crystal bells sounded forth more distinctly in lovely harmonies, etc. … The lilac tree moved itself and said: “You lay in my shadow, my perfume encompassed you, but you did not understand me; the perfume is my language, when love sets it off.” The evening wind glanced over and said: “I played over your brow, but you didn't understand me: The breath is my language, when love sets it off.” The sunbeams burst through the clouds, and the gleam burned as in words: “I poured glowing gold about you, but you did not understand me: Fire is my language, when love sets it off.”¹⁶

This sort of thing grows more intense as passions rise, until finally the “Philistine” townsfolk laugh our student to scorn. They ironically conclude that the theological student got drunk on that Ascension Day. Members of the faculty fear more for his sanity, and they invite him to a boat ride on the Elbe with their blue-eyed daughters.

Fireworks are shot off that evening at a riverside castle, and the reflections in the water remind Anselmus of the beautiful snake eyes; and this distraction again alarms his learned companions. He is about to leap into the water to find the owner of the enchanting eyes (the fatal move of “Los ojos verdes”) but his friends succeed in making him feel foolish about the fantastic imaginings. There is more humor and satire, more emphasis and repetition for the sake of building up an atmosphere and perhaps to ensnare the reader into a metaphysical approach (more theorizing, unlike Bécquer's work). Hoffmann continually brings in science to fetter or destroy one's logical thinking. He finally makes an emotional appeal for “faith—faith—faith!” Imagination goes rampant in exotic symbolism which really seems to make sense when studied. As an anti-intellectualist, he shows how vain is the psychiatry of his contemporaries. They deal with terminologies and hardly ever penetrate the soul proper. We find a rare humor in the “Philistine approach” of the academicians in the story.¹⁷

This intriguing interaction of realism, metaphysics, and art represents the work of Hoffmann. And shall we hesitate to call Bécquer a convert of E. T. A. Hoffmann? He had a life-time to absorb him.

“Die blaue Blume”¹⁸ was the symbol for this entire early movement of German Romanticism with its story of longing for the infinite and unattainable ideal by the young man who saw the blue flower in a dream (but was awakened too early by his mother and criticized by a father who could not realize that there might be some fine souls that would much rather attain this flower than to have a breakfast). Just so, this longing for the unattainable absolute, sometimes called “love” and popularly made synonymous with Romanticism, is the basis of most of the short stories by Bécquer. Here we have the essence of Romanticism per se, blue flowers or blue eyes; the romantic soul strives for an unobtainable summum bonum, and the quest is often fatal.

2. ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN “LA CORZA BLANCA”

Here moonbeams, forest loneliness, and metamorphosis are the basic elements for the creation of a story, and here again we have the flavor of German Romanticism at its height. We have these same three basic ingredients in the Novelle which made Ludwig Tieck, who ran the gamut from Rationalism to Romanticism to Realism, outstanding in his middle or Romantic period (1797-1821). In Der blonde Eckbert Tieck maintained the folklore atmosphere, but instead of a fairy-tale ending or an idyllic theme, he brought in the gruesome type of dream, the atmosphere of the ballad, the kind of literature designed to assure an effect. For instance, Eckbert found out at the end that he had been married to his sister, but not a thing was hereby added to the plot; only “rational” explanation was given for the tragic atmosphere that surrounded the principals. Regarding the verse interpolated in the tale and known as “Waldeinsamkeit” (Forest solitude), it is interesting to note A. W. Schlegel's comment: Diese Verse sind die Quintessenz deiner Dichtung (these lines are the quintessence of your writings). Here it is in all its simplicity:

Forest loneliness
Which pleases me
As much tomorrow as today,
Foreverlastingly
There pleases me
Forest loneliness.

Although the general theme is Classical (the myth of Diana and Acteon), the elements are consistently and poetically Romantic, with a logical plot that flows smoothly to the end.

This, in brief, is Bécquer's “Corza blanca”:

In the thirteen hundreds, the retired knight and warrior don Dionís of Aragón lived quietly as a hunter with his daughter Constanza, descriptively called Azucena for her white skin, who often accompanied his party. One of his men told about the local shepherd, Esteban, a queer looking, simple-minded youth, who could “understand the language of birds” (much repeated theme of Romanticism, also in Tieck). Father and daughter sought out the recluse, child of nature, and pressed him for a fantastic tale. The latter repeated the hearsay of the tillers of the small plots, who told of seeing hoof-prints of a herd of deer. Esteban had lain in wait to see it too. The hoof-prints of one, as of a weightless creature, were about the size of the tiny feet of Constanza (repeated reference). Esteban and Constanza exchanged apprehensive glances as he told of the mischievous girls' voices in the forest, followed by the appearance of the white doe with the common herd in the clearing in moonlight.

The story is well motivated throughout, which lends it a touch of realism. Garcés, secretly in love with Constanza, was with the laughing group, but not as incredulous as the others. His father had died without revealing the secret of Constanza's gypsy origin. Garcés decided to win her by bringing back the slain doe. Lying in wait that night, he, like Esteban, heard the riotous girls; next he saw the herd of deer, and after a series of metamorphoses in the moonlight, he decided that the corza blanca, which had turned out to be Constanza (who had been indulging in moonlight bathing with her likewise nude companions), could reasonably be only the white deer he had heard about, and which at another moment he had clearly discerned. He fired his crossbow and then was horror stricken to find his beloved writhing in her blood.

Instead of having two parallel plots, the narrative is written as a sequence which makes the metamorphoses necessary. Reference must be made here to Bécquer's use of lyrical inserts (twice a chorus sings of undines, sylphs, nymphs, and “marvelous transmutations”).

Continuing the comparison with Tieck's Novelle, we likewise find a series of transmutations: Walter reappears as Hugo, then as a peasant, and finally as an old woman, all in a “dreamlike reality” and sequence.¹⁹

Heinrich Heine, as a sort of post-graduate in Paris, gave a satirical description of German Romanticism at its height while referring to Tieck in his Romantische Schule, where he says:

Still more precious than the dramas are the Novellen, which Herr Tieck wrote in his second period or manner. Also these are usually modelled after the old folk tales. The outstanding ones are “Der blonde Eckbert” and “Der Runenberg.” In these creations a secretive intimacy predominates, a peculiar understanding with nature, especially with the plant and stone kingdom. The reader there feels himself as in an enchanted forest; he hears the subterranean springs rushing melodiously; sometimes he believes he can perceive his own name in the whispering of the trees; the wide-leaved clinging vines occasionally entwine his foot frighteningly; exotic wonderflowers behold him with their colorful longing eyes; invisible lips kiss his cheeks with teasing tenderness; tall mushrooms like golden bells grow upwards ringing at the foot of trees; large silent birds rock themselves on branches and signal down with their wise long bills; everything breathes, everything listens, everything is frightfully expectant:—suddenly the soft hunter's horn sounds, and a beautiful female figure hurries past upon a white palfrey, with flowing feathers on her barrette, with the falcon upon her wrist. And this beautiful woman is so beautiful, so blonde, so violet-eyed, so smiling and yet so earnest, so true and yet so ironical, so chaste and yet so languishing, like the fantasy of our egregious Ludwig Tieck. Yes, his fantasy is a blissful ladyknight, that hunts in the magic forest for fabulous animals, perhaps even for the rare unicorn, which only allows itself to be taken by a pure virgin. …²⁰

The Tieckian fantasy is the knightly female image with the flowing feathers on the barrette, with the falcon on the wrist. These two lead a curious married life, and sometimes it's saddening to see, how that poor blue-blooded woman should be helpful to the dry bourgeois husband in his business or even in his cheese store. Sometimes, however, at night, when the honorable lord of the house peacefully snores with his cotton cap on his head, the noble lady gets up from the connubial bed of coercion, and mounts her white steed, and again chases lustily, as before, in the romantic magic forest.²¹

This sort of material, which reached the French reading world before Bécquer was born, gives a fitting setting and mood for the short story “La corza blanca.” Bécquer breathes the same mystic air and like Tieck tries to keep at least one foot on the ground of realism.

The author's feeling for “moonlight” is also akin to that expressed by Clemens Brentano in the poem “Sprich aus der Ferne”:

Communicate from afar, mysterious world, which so gladly fraternizes with me. … When the silently soothing tears of the moon are redeemed by the hidden grief of the nights, then peace rides the breezes. In golden ships the spirits sail on the heavenly sea. The resounding course of shining songs curls its way down; surges upwards.

When midnight's sacred horror fearfully slinks through dark forests and even the bushes strangely behold—everything somberly, profoundly bears witness: There wanders in darkness a friendly caprice, a silent sparkling of lights, a shimmering goal.

Everything's friendly, well-wishing—united; offers consoling and mourning its hand. As in the night the lights are entwined; internally all's eternally akin.

Communicate from afar, mysterious world, which so gladly fraternizes with me.²²

Bécquer succeeded in synthesizing in one moment, as it were, all the likes, desires, loves, and ambitions of Garcés—as is only possible in a dream:

Marchando de sorpresa en sorpresa, el enamorado joven no se atrevía ya a dar crédito ni al testimonio de sus sentidos, y creíase bajo la influencia de un sueño fascinador.

The hunter, close to nature, desiring the rare trophy of the “white deer,” and passionately longing for his lady-love, finds eventually (to his heart-rending grief) that all was one in a mystical moment: he had killed Constanza when he shot the white doe.

Still another German poem having some resemblance to Bécquer's Leyenda is Goethe's poem “Jaegers Abendlied.”²³ Unrequited in love and hunting in the moonlight, “her” dear, sweet image appears before the hunter, as “she” glides through field and valley: “Only in this association with moonlight can a quiet peace work miraculously upon him.”

A woman being shot for a doe, because of a marvelous transmutation, is an old classical theme. Ludwig Tieck in a student's experiment with drama (1790) wrote his second play entitled Das Reh (the deer, or doe) in which the protagonist is also a renowned hunter. He finds the deer, which belongs to the little elves and fairies, right after they have decorated it with flowers and wreaths. They hurriedly hide themselves upon the approach of our hunter. His first arrow, which had previously been taken by his queenly stepmother to a witch for poisoning, hits the deer, and it is at once transformed into a horrible beast which pursues the terrified hunter. This juvenile horror play in fun is a mixture of “Sturm und Drang” violence and Romantic fantasy. It lacked the fairy tale style of Tieck's later, maturer works, and he himself did not include it in his collected works. It finally appeared posthumously,²⁴ but it is hardly ever read. It was, however, the basis for another of his more successful plays, and that may be the reason for his hiding the crude forebear. The “dramatic fairy tale” inspired Tieck to write Das Ungeheuer und der verzauberte Wald (1800), just ten years later.

Bécquer tries to be convincing by referring to a literary antecedent:

Cosas más extrañas hemos visto en el mundo y una corza blanca bien puede haberla, puesto que, si se ha de dar crédito a las cantigas del país. San Huberto, patrón de los cazadores, tenía una.²⁵

Such a buildup towards realism is a standard device in this exotic genre. It leads from the known and obvious (often using sound psychology) to the unknown or miraculous, with tricks of suggestion, used by Bécquer and his German predecessors alike. It is an interaction which demonstrates the monistic theory of Schelling, more fully described in the final chapter.

Another important fact about German Romanticism is often overlooked, and it may throw some light on the subject in this story where a medieval Satan is frequently referred to. German pre-Romanticism has its roots in eighteenth-century idealism and pietism, with its belief in divine miracles in the realm of nature and a parallel belief in the dark powers of Satan.²⁶ Inevitable was the literary outgrowth, built upon folklore, where the occult was emphasized, and there followed a blossoming in Romanticism where anything seemed possible in Nature (as Bécquer capitalizes it)—that nature of “good” and “evil” forces.

Like Tieck in Germany, Bécquer can truly be called “the king of Spanish Romanticism.” Despite the “Spanish” medieval setting in “La corza blanca,” we are again confronted with a story, the mood and devices of which clearly reflect a kinship with the poems and legends that flooded Germany in this period of reaction to eighteenth century rationalism. Let us not forget that it was Walter Scott's translation of Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen that started him, and soon France and Italy, on a new course in literary plot and setting. We dare say, “the middle ages” of literature are German—Gothic—although all of Europe experienced them.

3. ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN “LA ROSA DE PASIóN”

This short story is a mixture of the ancient Virginius, of The Merchant of Venice, of Romanticism, and bitter anti-Semitism. “Hatred” did not play a role in German Romanticism,²⁷ and so there was no room for anti-Semitism there. The youthful Tieck may have used a mythical “beast” to horrify his readers, but human beings did not fall into this category. Bécquer leaves it up to the reader to conclude that the irate Jewish parent, Daniel Levi of Toledo, crucified his own sixteen-year old daughter, Sara, a convert to Christianity, who came at night to rescue her Gentile lover from the gruesome rite originally prepared for him. A beautiful flower grew on the site where the lovely martyred Jewess was last seen; that flower is called “La rosa de pasión,” because of the connotation of its form. We could well imagine an El Greco painting for this short story, cruel with its Realism and exotic with its Romanticism.

There is the possibility that it was the Jewish writer, Heine, who gave the idea for the story when he minutely described the Passion flower as a unique flower, even as Bécquer finally does at the end of his story. Heine brought it in only incidentally in his Die romantische Schule. He makes another reference to it in a poem “Fuer die Mouche” (Nachlese zum “Romanzero”: Lamentationen). Of the thirty-seven stanzas, he uses numbers seventeen to thirty to develop the theme of what he saw in a dream:

Zu Haeupten ueber meiner Ruhestaett'
Stand eine Blume, raetselhaft gestaltet,
Die Blaetter schwefelgelb und violett,
Doch wilder Liebreiz in der Blume waltet.
Das Volk nennt sie die Blume der Passion,
Und sagt, sie sei dem Schaedelberg entsprossen,
Als man gekreuzigt hat den Gottessohn,
Und dort sein welterloesend Blut geflossen;
Blutzeugnis, heiszt es, gebe diese Blum',
Und alle Marterinstrumente, welche
Dem Henker dienten bei dem Maertyrtum,
Sie truege sie abkonterfeit im Kelche.
Ja, alle Requisiten der Passion
Saehe man hier, die ganze Folterkammer,
Zum Beispiel: Geisel, Stricke, Dornenkron',
Das Kreuz, den Kelch, die Naegel und den Hammer.
Solch eine Blum' an meinem Grabe stand,
Und ueber meinen Leichnam niederbeugend,
Wie Frauentrauer, kueszt sie mir die Hand,
Kueszt Stirne mir und Augen, trostlos schweigend.
Doch, Zauberei des Traumes! Seltsamlich,
Die Blume der Passion, die schwefelgelbe,
Verwandelt in ein Frauenbildnis sich,
Und das ist sie—die Liebste, ja dieselbe!
Du warst die Blume, du beliebtes Kind,
An deinen Kuessen muszt' ich dich erkennen,
So zaertlich keine Blumenlippen sind,
So feurig keine Blumentraenen brennen!
At the head of my resting place
Stood a flower curiously formed,
The leaves sulphur-yellow and violet,
But a love charm lives in the flower with abandon.
The people call it the Passion flower,
And say it sprang forth from the place of a skull,
When they crucified the Son of God,
And there his world-redeeming blood flowed;
A “blood witness,” one says, this flower is,
And all instruments of martyrdom, which
Served the executioner for the tortures,
It bore reproduced in the chalice.
Yes, all the things needed for the Passion
One saw here, the entire torture chamber,
For example: scourge, ropes, crown of thorns,
The cross, the chalice, the nails, and the hammer.
Such a flower stood at my grave,
And bowing down over my corpse
It kissed my hand, like a woman in mourning,
Kissed my brow and eyes, silently unconsoled.
Lo! Magic of a dream! Remarkably
The Passion flower, the sulphur-yellow one,
Changed itself into a woman's form,
And that is she, the dearest one, the very one!
Thou wast the flower, thou dearest child,
By thy kisses I had to recognize thee,
So dainty are no flower lips,
So fiery burn no flower tears!

Thus inversely Heine depicted the mystic Passion flower, the loveliest girl he knew. H. H. Houben says this about “die Mouche,” a devoted friend of Heine's who lightened his last years of suffering in Paris: “Ihren Besuchen bei dem Todge-weihten (i.e., Heine) verdanken wir ja das entzückende Gedicht von der “Passionsblume.”²⁸

The only romantic elements in Bécquer's story are the choice of a horror theme for effect on the reader. There is a constant use of the words Lucifer, diabolical, bedeviled, Satan, devil. Sara has a “supernatural presentiment”; and the flower that grew from her place of crucifixion by her father was a “miracle.”

4. ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN “EL RAYO DE LUNA”

The setting is “romantically” medieval with the rumble of knightly arms and the echoes of the troubadours. The hero, Manrique, whiled away his time at a cloister, or on the edge of a tomb, trying to snatch a message from the other world. He wished he had no shadow. He loved to observe nature in complete solitude, giving free rein to his imagination, as a true poet. He saw spirits in the flames of a Gothic fireplace. He believed there were water spirits below the waves, in the fountains, the lake fogs:

… unas mujeres misteriosas, hadas, sílfides u ondinas, que exhalaban lamentos y suspiros o cantaban y se reían en el monótono rumor del agua, rumor que oía en silencio, intentando traducirlo.²⁹

So also in the clouds, in the air, deep in the forests, in rock crevices, he sought to distinguish supernatural figures and to translate or understand unintelligible words. (Thus he excelled even Hoffmann's Anselmus.) He was born to love all women (for some reason or other). He often watched the moon all night, wondering about its “heavenly” female inhabitants. And he was distracted enough to talk to himself like Anselmus.

The action begins in a convent of the Templars at an unspecified time after its abandonment. The wind moaned in the buildings; vegetation grew wild in beautifully primitive freedom. It was at midnight, and Manrique saw the fringe of a woman's dress disappear in the woods (a Freudian element).

—¡Una mujer desconocida! … ¡En este sitio! … ¡A estas horas! Esa, ésa es la mujer que yo busco—exclamó Manrique; y se lanzó en su seguimiento, rápido como una saeta.³⁰

The story continues as an account of the pursuit. Rare sounds are “her” foreign language. He even smelled “her” perfume while in pursuit. All his senses were keener than ever.

Godlessly he blasphemed on an elevation when he distinguished “her” on the sailboat crossing the Duero returning to Soria. And next the author returns us to the reality of city life, even though fantasy carried our hero ever on to the bitter final conclusion, after two months of vigilance, that “love, all is vanity, a moonbeam.”

In those last two months Manrique even divined the color of “her” eyes (blue), her angelic figure (like those of the basilica), and the nature of her soul: “un espíritu hermano de mi espíritu. …” (with the same tastes or likes, etc.). And then he found it was a moonbeam flashed by moving branches!

Was the bachelor wrong in his conclusion?

In this short story the author carries on as a true pupil of the German Romantic School, but ends, as most rational modern writers would, with a typical realistic anecdote.

Heinrich Heine in his (sarcastically) critical book on German Romanticism, while referring to his youthful imaginings near the castle of Duesseldorf on the Rhine where he recited the fantastic lyrics of Uhland in his lonely reflective moods, also tells of having seen a female figure flit by, possibly the lovely King's daughter of Uhland's tragic poem, “Der schoene Schaefer zog so nah.” He states:

According to the legend, a lady wandered about there at night without her head. Sometimes, I believed I could hear the long silk train of her dress rustle by, and my heart pounded … that was the time and the place when I was enthused about the poems by Ludwig Uhland.³¹

He continues, saying that he no longer can believe in such spectral women, for in Paris, because of the modern times and the distracting noises of the boulevard Montmartre, it is an anachronism; and the women there have disillusioned him, finally making him bitter.

Here, then, was a beautiful theme for Bécquer to grasp as he sought escape from the “fickle” Latin ladies that likewise had disillusioned him, forcing him to chase imaginary “dresses” in the dark in that desperate search for his “otherworldly lady-love.” (See the Rimas, II).

Heinrich Heine added one more touch, reminding us of Bécquer's story, while critically referring to the female figures in Uhland's poems:

And indeed, when one studies the women of Uhland's poems closely, they are only beautiful shadows, moonbeams with human bodies (verkoerperter Mondschein), with milk in their arteries, in their eyes sweet tears, that is, tears without salt.³²

This was published several years before Bécquer was born, and since, as we have pointed out in Chapter I, he knew Heine so well, he may have gotten the basic idea from Die romantische Schule in its original French version of 1833.

Heinrich Heine also antedated Bécquer with this theme in his Neue Gedichte (Romanzen) IX, “In der Fruehe:”

Auf dem Faubourg Saint-Marceau
Lag der Nebel heute Morgen,
Spaetherbstnebel, dicht und schwer,
Einer weiszen Nacht vergleichbar.
Wandelnd durch die weisze Nacht,
Schaut ich mir voruebergleiten
Eine weibliche Gestalt,
Die dem Mondenlicht vergleichbar.
Ja, sie war wie Mondenlicht
Leichthinschwebend, zart und zierlich,
Solchen schlanken Gliederbau
Sah ich hier in Frankreich niemals.
War es Luna selbst vielleicht,
Die sich heut bei einem shoenen,
Zaertlichen Endymion
Des Quartier Latin verspaetet?
Auf dem Heimweg dacht ich nach:
Warum floh sie meinen Anblick?
Hielt die Goettin mich vielleicht
Fuer den Sonnenlenker Phoebus?
Fog this morning heavy lay
On the Fauburg Saint-Marceau,
Thick late autumn fog, it was
Like a night of utter whiteness.
Walking through the night so white
Gliding past me there I saw
Form and figure of a woman
Best compared to light of moon.
Yes, she was the light of moon
Floating lightly, tender, stately,
Such a slender shape of limbs
Never did I see in France
Could it be that goddess Luna
From a handsome young Endymion
Comes returning late today,
From the Latin Quarter fleeing?
Coming home I thought once more:
Why did she evade my glances?
Did the goddess think I was
Phoebus, driver of the sun?

The “evanescent woman” also smacks strongly of Novalis' “Blaue Blume” in his unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, referred to above. The object “desired” by a romanticist has characteristics of a dream and escapes as rapidly: symbol of his love (again, Bécquer's theme, “mujer soñada”).

Like E. T. A. Hoffmann in Der goldene Topf, Bécquer has attempted to end with his feet solidly on the ground, after leading our imagination “by the nose,” but Hoffmann managed to keep us fairly convinced despite all his romantic irony. Bécquer's is not a typical romantic Novelle, for “mistaken identity in the moonlight” is an old theme, but there is the reflection of a highly romantic person in it: Bécquer himself. Like Ludwig Tieck in his fairy tales, he too, shows that life is a dream; and the dejection following the discovery of this truth attaches itself to the reader.

The author often “leaned over backwards,” as we express it, to create the “atmosphere” found in German Romantic literature. The best example of this sort of thing we find in a little reference (nonsense in itself, but significant when seen from this point of view)—a reference made here in “Un rayo de luna.” One of the first typical and unmistakable German themes to call our attention in the story is the reference

… algunas veces hubiera deseado no tener sombra, por que su sombra no le siguiese a todas partes.³³

There is no good reason at all for the introduction of this detached remark, as far as the plot goes. We find it in a catalogue describing our hero and designed to build up “atmosphere,” the lifeblood of the Novelle. Obviously, the atmosphere wanted was a “German” one. For it he borrowed a basic idea from Chamisso's Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1814), a very popular and “original” Novelle of about seventy-five pages, which established the Jewish word Schlemihl as a byword in Germany: a Pechvogel, who has only bad luck.

The story is of a “man who sold his shadow,” written by a man of Gallic clarity plus Teutonic humor, born and raised in France. Adelbert von Chamisso himself tells us how he created the unusual story, saying that while traveling he had lost all of his effects, and when he told his friend Fouqué about it, he laughed, suggesting that he had lost all but his shadow. This thought intrigued the writer, and after wondering what would happen to a person who lost it, he wrote this well-known short story, unique in world literature.

Like the discovery of the influence of Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde in “La pereza” …, this is evidence of the first order of the vast, so far undetected, direct sources of German literature at Bécquer's finger tips.

5. BéCQUER'S ROMANTIC TREATMENT OF MUSIC

(A) EL MISERERE

Heinrich Heine, in his revelation to the French regarding the Romantic School in Germany, had this to say about the stolid Germans:

A living German is indeed a sufficiently earnest creature, but now talk about a dead German! A Frenchman has no idea how earnest we really are when dead; then our faces are even longer, and the worms, which feast upon us, get melancholy while looking at us. The Frenchmen think it miraculous how terribly serious Hoffmann could be; but that is child's play in comparison with Arnim. When Hoffmann conjures his dead and they come forth from their graves and dance about him, then he himself dances in their midst, and makes the most ridiculous grimaces. When however, Arnim conjures up his dead, then it seems as though he were holding a general military review, and he sits so quietly upon his tall spectral grey horse, and lets the horrible hordes file past him, and they look up at him fearfully, and seem to be afraid of him. But he nods to them in a friendly manner.³⁴

In German lyricism we find just such ghostly reviews. Heine himself indulges to some extent. His well-known poem, Die Grenadiere, might have been known to Bécquer. Note the following:

                              “An eine Saengerin”
          (Als sie eine alte Romanze sang)
                                                  (Third stanza)
Die Maerchen fangen an zu leben,
Die Ritter steigen aus der Gruft;
Bei Ronzisvall da gibts ein Streiten,
Da kommt Herr Roland herzureiten,
Viel kuehne Degen ihn begleiten, etc.(35)
                                        “To a Singer”
(When she sang an old Romance)
The fairy tales begin to live.
The knights climb up out of their grave;
At Ronzesval there is some fighting.
There comes Sir Roland riding onward;
Brave lads along with him come riding, etc.

… not exactly the atmosphere to compare with that created by Bécquer in his short story “Miserere”! But here is the spectral procession theme.

In Bécquer's “El Miserere” we have three stories telescoped. The author begins telling about the copy books of music he found with an unfinished Miserere. Instead of the “usual” Italian notation, he found “German” marginal notes to this effect:

Crujen … crujen los huesos, y de sus médulas ha de parecer que salen los alaridos. …

… La cuerda aúlla sin discordar, el metal atruena sin ensordecer; por eso suena todo, y no se confunde nada, y todo es la humanidad que solloza y gime. …

… Las notas son huesos cubiertos de carne; lumbre inextinguible, los cielos y su armonía … ; ¡fuerza! … fuerza y dulzura.³⁶

This all looked “crazy” to the author, and he found out that it was the work of a romero who stopped at the celebrated Abadía de Fitero, asking for shelter and refreshments. As a musician in his youth the latter had obtained powers for “seduction” which led him to crime; now in old age he wanted to use these talents for good, for his own redemption. He could not find adequate words to ask mercy of God, and upon opening a book of Psalms at the place Miserere mei Deus, he wanted to make a musical composition that would make the angels weep and God give what he required. The other monks told him that he had not heard the most appropriate musical model as yet if he had not heard the Miserere de la Montaña. They explained to him that centuries ago a rich man who had disinherited his son built instead a famous monastery which the revengeful son burned down una noche de Jueves Santo, just as the monks were about to sing their Miserere—all burning to death without receiving absolution.

Every year strange lights and rare music are heard coming from the ruins, for the monks come from purgatory to complete the expiation of their unforgiven sins. In three hours they would make their annual return, and he just had time to climb to the horrible spot, if it were advisable. Against their warnings he went to hear this “real” Miserere (and, in true Romantic style, it was a stormy night). A lay friar declared the departing investigator loco. A bell which no longer existed rang at the mystic hour. The building slowly rose from its ashes, services began as the penitent skeletons came in formation, nature's sounds mixed with the church music:

Todo esto era la música, y algo más que no puede explicarse ni apenas concebirse … un grito de dolor arrancado a la Humanidad.³⁷

There was lightning; a waterfall. Flesh began to cover the skeletons as the Psalm progressed, then with all the sounds in unison—a blinding light. And the observer fainted. The next day he wrote what he heard; he wrote day and night and finally went insane and died.

Benjamín Jarnés reminds us how Bécquer loved the Stabat Mater of Rossini.³⁸ He connected this with a visit Bécquer made at Fitero where he spent a night and saw the monks promenade, thus suggesting a part of the “Miserere.” But let us also consider Heine as a source. The latter touches upon one part of this theme in Neue Gedichte (Romanzen), IV.

“DIE BESCHWOERUNG”

Der junge Franziskaner sitzt
Einsam in der Klosterzelle,
Er liest im alten Zauberbuch,
Genannt der Zwang der Hoelle.
Und als die Mitternachtstunde schlug,
Da konnt er nicht laenger sich halten
Mit bleichen Lippen ruft er an
Die Unterweltsgewalten.
Ihr Geister! holt mir aus dem Grab
Die Leiche der schoensten Frauen,
Belebt sie mir fuer diese Nacht,
Ich will mich dran erbauen.
Er spricht das grause Beschwoerungswort,
Da wird sein Wunsch erfuellet,
Die arme verstorbene Schoenheit kommt,
In weiszen Laken gehuellet.
Ihr blick ist traurig. Aus kalter Brust
Die schmerzlichen Seufzer steigen.
Die Tote setzt sich zu dem Moench,
Sie schauen sich an und schweigen.

“THE CONJURATION”

The youthful Franciscan monk sits
Lonely in his cloister corner,
He reads of ancient magic lore
That's called “controlling hell's power.”
And at the mystic hour, striking twelve,
He could not contain himself longer;
With lips so pale he calls upon
The hordes now serving Satan.
You Spirits! Fetch me from the grave
The body of loveliest woman.
Put life in it just for tonight;
All this for edifying.
He speaks the horrible magic word;
Behold his wish accomplished!
The Beauty, poor soul, that was dead so long,
In white comes walking up towards him.
Her eyes are sad. From her frigid breast
Arises most heart-rending sighing.
The dead one sits right close to him,
Both silent behold each other.

But Heine's poem “Himmelsbraeute,” in Romanzero: Erstes Buch, Historien, gives the very essence of Bécquer's “Miserere,” in its theme of penitence and its parade of the dead:

Wer dem Kloster geht vorbei
Mitternaechtlich, sieht die Fenster
Hell erleuchtet. Ihren Umgang
Halten dorten die Gespenster.
Eine duestre Prozession
Toter Ursulinerinnen;
Junge, huebsche Angesichter
Lauschen aus Kapuz’ und Linnen.
Tragen Kerzen in der Hand,
Die unheimlich blutrot schimmern;
Seltsam widerhallt im Kreuzgang
Ein Gewisper und ein Wimmern.
Nach der Kirche geht der Zug,
Und setzen dort sich nieder
Auf des Chores Buchsbaumstuehle
Und beginnen ihre Lieder.
Litaneienfromme Weisen,
Aber wahnsinnwueste Worte;
Arme Seelen sind es welche
Pochen an des Himmels Pforte.
Braeute Christi waren wir,
Doch die Weltlust uns betoerte,
Und da gaben wir dem Caesar,
Was dem lieben Gott gehoerte.
Reizend ist die Uniform
Und des Schnurrbarts Glanz und Glaette;
Doch verlockend sind am meisten
Caesars goldne Epaulette.
Ach der Stirne, welche trug
Eine Dornenkrone weiland,
Gaben wir ein Hirschgeweihe—
Wir betrogen unsern Heiland.
Jesus, der die Guete selbst,
Weinte sanft ob unsrer Fehle,
Und er sprach: Vermaledeit
Und verdammt sei eure Seele!
Grabenstiegner Spuk der Nacht,
Muessen bueszend wir nunmehre
Irre gehn in diesen Mauern—
Miserere! Miserere!
Sueszer Jesus, o vergib
Endlich uns die Schuld, die schwere,
Schliesz uns auf den warmen Himmel.
Miserere! Miserere!
Also singt die Nonnenschar,
Und ein laengst verstorbner Kuester
Spielt die Orgel.(39) Schattenhaende
Stuermen tol durch die Register.

“BRIDES OF HEAVEN”

Going through the cloister grounds
One at midnight sees the windows
Brightly lighted; apparitions
Socially communicating.
Gloomily they march along—
Ursulines, these nuns, long buried;
Youthful, pretty, are their faces
List'ning through their hoods and linens.
Each a candle in her hand—
Light with gruesome blood-red shimmer—
Strange the echo in the cross-way:
Just a whisper and a whimper.
Towards the church the long line goes,
And there the whole group then is seated
On the choral beech-tree benches.
All join in, begin their singing.
Litanies with pious tunes;
Words thereto with insane meanings:
Here we see lost souls before us
Knocking on the gate of heaven.
Brides of Christ one time we were,
But the love of world deceived us,
And we offered unto Caesar
What the dear Lord called his own.
Charming is a uniform,
And a moustache smooth and graceful,
But enticing most of all are
Caesar's golden epaulettes.
On the brow which once did bear
Cruel crown that was so thorny,
We have placed the cuckold's headgear,
We, unfaithful to our Saviour.
Jesus full of tender goodness
Wept because of our transgressions,
And he said: You are accurséd
And your souls be dammed forever!
Grave-forsaking spooks at night,
Penitent we do our penance,
In these walls must stray about,
Miserere! Miserere!
In the grave it's, oh, so good,
Though it would be so much nicer,
Warmer, up above in heaven—
Miserere! Miserere!
Sweetest Jesus, Oh, forgive
All our guilt, though it be heavy,
Finally unlock warm heaven.
Miserere! Miserere!
Thus they sing, this host of nuns,
And a sexton, long time buried,
Plays the organ. Shadow fingers
Storm like mad across the keyboard.

(B) MAESE PéREZ EL ORGANISTA

Those last three lines of Heine's “Brides of Heaven” are the essence of “Maese Pérez el organista,” perhaps the best loved of Bécquer's legends, having a dialogue worthy of the theatre. It begins with the splendor of midnight mass in Seville as a background. The convent nuns have the good fortune of having the services of Pérez, the lonely blind old man, who lives only for his daughter and his organ. He knows that with his seventy-six years he will soon see God. His art customarily reaches its zenith on Christmas Eve, when he is inspired at the elevation of the host. This year Pérez is ill, but, to the surprise of all, he manages to make his appearance, and, at twelve, one could believe he heard the music of angels. A discord, and then silence, tells the worshipers that Maese Pérez has died in his ecstasy. His disconsolate daughter will not hear the successor play the next year. His music is a profanation, say many. The year following, the daughter, a music teacher, is asked the last minute to play. She says ominously that she fears “una cosa sobrenatural,” for the previous night she had tuned the organ for such an emergency, and in the dim light she saw her father in the shadows as the church bells struck the hour. He then played the organ with the same inspiration as of old.

The prioress consoles the frightened young woman, and she accepts the invitation. But, at the moment of consecration, one hears the organ and a scream of the daughter simultaneously. She tells the perturbed nuns to look at “him,” but they see the organ only, which continues to play, sounding like archangels.

Like Bécquer, Tieck also felt that music was the highest expression of Romanticism, and he gives us a striking description of the organ music in a tiny rural chapel (Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, Erstes Buch, Siebentes Kapitel). A new religious painting by Franz had just been erected on the altar.

Now the bell rang for the last time; the church was already filled; Sternbald's mother had taken her usual seat. Franz found a place in the middle of the little church, and the organ playing and singing began; the church door opposite him was open, and the whispering of the trees wafted in. Franz became oblivious of all in devotion, the singing traveled as with clouds through the church, the serious notes of the organ swelled up majestically and came down upon the listeners speaking like a melodious stormwind: all eyes were directed towards the new painting during the singing. Franz also looked there and was amazed at the beauty and moving significance of its figures; they were no longer his handiwork, but instead he sensed respect and devotional awe before the painting. It seemed as if the colored figures moved, and spoke, and sang along with the sounds of the organ, as though the distant angels came closer and drove away every doubt and every frightful thought from one's mind with their rays; he experienced an inexpressible bliss with the thought of being a Christian. From the picture his glance moved along toward the green cemetery before the door, and it seemed to him, as though trees and bushes outside also prayed with piety and rested under the embracing devotion. Voices of the departed seemed lightly to sing forth and to hasten after the serious organ tones with tongues of spirits; etc.⁴⁰

Here is inspirational material that would be available for either “Maese Pérez el organista” or even Bécquer's “Miserere.” Men like Tieck and Hoffmann had long prepared a tradition by giving music the same mystical treatment that they gave nature in their Novellen. Bécquer skillfully made a short story out of each phase of the combined elements of music and nature. Even in his “La Noche de difuntos” the bells play a role in what he thinks about the harmony of sounds.

E. T. A. Hoffmann considered himself quite a musician, and his short stories reflect his rich background. There is, as in Bécquer's story, the same mystical treatment of music and the dead musician in his story, The Cremona Violin, which ends as follows:

Shortly before my return, it seemed to the councillor one night as if he heard some one playing on his piano in the next room and soon he recognized plainly that it was B—, improvising in his accustomed style. He tried to rise, but it was as if a heavy burden lay upon him, or as if fettered with iron bands he could neither move nor stir. And now Antonia joined in with sweet long-drawn-out notes that rose and rose into a ringing fortissimo. Then the wonderful sounds formed themselves into a most entrancing melody which B—had composed long ago for Antonia, in the devout style of the old masters.

Krespel said that it would be impossible to describe the state in which he found himself, for terrible anxiety mingled with a deep sense of delight. Suddenly, a dazzling brightness shone around him, and in the light he saw B—and Antonia clasped in a fond embrace, and with a look of happy rapture on their faces. The notes of the song and the accompaniment on the piano continued, without anything to show that Antonia was singing, or B—touching the keys.

But now there came over the Councillor a kind of dull faintness, in the midst of which the vision and the music faded away. When he awoke the terrible anxiety of the dream still held possession of him. He hurried to Antonia's room. She lay on the sofa with her eyes closed, a sweet smile upon her face, and her hands piously clasped together, as if she were dreaming of heavenly joys and happiness.

But she was dead.

There are at least two other stories by Hoffmann (repetitious evidence by now) that seem akin to the spirit and the details of the story of the inspired musician Pérez: (1) Ritter Gluck, and (2) Don Juan.

Romanticism has been given many metaphors, and a most significant one is “music.” We may recall the avalanche of Lieder that surged out of the literature of the prolific romantic German writers (Schubert alone wrote about five hundred). Bécquer, with his unusual interest in good music, in comparison with other contemporary Spanish writers, had to be the chosen vessel to bear to his compatriots something new in ideas and lyricism. And this he did with both the Leyendas and the Rimas. Benjamín Jarnés speaks of this phase of Bécquer's disposition with perspicacity: “¿Cuales son sus hombres? Maese Pérez, reducido a un alma sonora.”⁴¹ Most of his prose works could fittingly be reduced (or distilled) to music, like those of Hoffman, the German painter and musician, who became a great man of letters, if not a great musician.

We cannot point to any specific influence by phrase or paragraph, but the kinship is undeniable.

(C) LA NOCHE DE DIFUNTOS

“La noche de difuntos” deserves the same comment given to the two preceding stories, although it is not a legend, but a poem in prose, which Bécquer lists with his Ensayos. One great German poem comes to mind when reading this one: Das Lied von der Glocke, by Schiller. But Bécquer maintains the atmosphere of a Tieck or a Hoffmann in a manner impossible for Schiller, and we dare say that Bécquer is more German than a German this time, since we have called German Romanticism the most exotic of all.

Bécquer begins pretty much with the serious note of the classical Schiller as he tells for what the bells ring and for whom the bell tolls. But the last fifth of the essay has a bell confess that it is the bell of fear-inspiring stories, of tales of apparitions and of damned souls, etc. Then we are reminded of Heine and his processions with these lines:

A mi voz los caballeros, armados de todas armas, se levantan de sus góticos sepulcros; los monjes salen de las oscuras bóvedas en que duermen el último sueño al pie de los altares de su abadía, y los composantos abren de par en par sus puertas para dejar paso al tropel de amarillos esqueletos que acuden presurosos a danzar, en vertiginosa ronda, en torno al puntiagudo chapitel que me cobija, …⁴²

When he ends with references to superstitious terror and to sleep with a fatiguing nightmare, one forgets what novel observations he made concerning the music of bells.

6. SIMILARITIES TO THE GERMAN ROMANTICS IN THE REMAINING PROSE WORKS OF BéCQUER

(A)

In the essay “La pereza,” Bécquer shares the sentiments expressed in Friedrich Schlegel's chapter “Idylle ueber den Muesziggang” from his well-known and “scandalous” Lucinde:

… von der gottaehnlichen Kunst der Faulheit … einziges Fragment von Gottaehnlichkeit, das uns noch aus dem Paradies blieb. … Warum sind denn die Goetter Goetter, als weil sie mit Bewusztsein und Absicht nichts tun, weil sie das verstehen und Meister darin sind? … unter allen Himmelstrichen ist es das Recht des Muesziggangs, was Vornehme und Gemeine unterscheidet, und das eigentliche Prinzip des Adels.

In der Tat, man sollte das Studium des Muesziggangs nicht so straeflich vernachlaessigen, sondern es zur Kunst und Wissenschaft, ja zur Religion bilden! Um alles in eins zu fassen: je goettlicher ein Mensch oder ein Werk des Menschen ist, je aehnlicher werden sie der Pflanze; diese ist unter allen Formen der Natur die sittlichste und die schoenste. Und also waere ja das hoechste vollendetste Leben nichts als ein reines Vegetieren.⁴³

Bécquer, exactly like Schlegel, whom he is apparently quoting, begins by saying: “La pereza dicen que es don de los inmortales” (a most radical point of view, for Schlegel, whose race has the saying “Arbeit macht das Leben suesz”). Here Bécquer displayed his humorous side (seldom found in his other writings), on a subject seriously treated by his German predecessor. But it must be added, on the other hand, that Schlegel did intend the main part of Lucinde to be entertaining with its light, sparkling touch. If Romanticism is a break away from the seriousness of the rational past, then both Schlegel and Bécquer succeeded in their own way.

Just as Schlegel suggested that idleness should be made a religion, in the second paragraph cited above, so Bécquer proceeds to say:

La pereza es una deidad a que rinden culto infinitos adoradores; pero su religión es una religión silenciosa y práctica; sus sacerdotes la predican con el ejemplo: la naturaleza misma, en sus días de sol y suave temperatura, contribuye a propagarla y extenderla con una persuasión irresistible.⁴⁴

Schlegel, too, held up nature as an example, and more specifically spoke of the plants, suggesting that we simply vegetate to attain “the highest fulfillment of life.” Bécquer must have had Lucinde before him on his writing table—a direct influence.

Concerning “Schlegel contacts” that Bécquer must have made, indirect though they may have been, we consult Díaz, who reports:

La poesía de P. Piferrer evidenciaba, también, antecedentes alemanes (Uhland). De él dice J. Frutos Gómez de las Cortinas que era “el schlegeliano español más puro y el prebecqueriano de más hondura.” El mismo autor señala que Bécquer le sigue en su proyecto de la Historia de los Templos de España, luego de afirmar que también recoge el romanticismo de los Schlegel que, a través de Böhl de Faber, adoptaron los poetas del Mediodía.⁴⁵

This tells us less than the parallel texts above.

(B)

In one of his earliest legends, “La creación,” Bécquer brought in a kind of exoticism oriented to India that we also find in the German Romanticists like A. W. Schlegel and Heine. The theme of the parable is the one found in Goethe's poem, Der Zauberlehrling,⁴⁶ to which is added Schelling's mystic Naturalism. A bitter tone penetrates all of this, such as we would not find in Germany until the post-Romantic appearance of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The condition of the universe was all a “mistake” on the part of Brahma, who left his keys accessible to his childish, meddling servants.

(C)

“Creed en Dios” recalls Buerger's Lenore with the ride on a black horse to the heavenly spheres described. We have a combination of Pegasus, Dante's Paradiso, Rip Van Winkle and a faint remembrance of Faust, for we hear that the lord of the castle has been carried off Faust-like by the devil. This legend was written the same year as “La creación” (1861), but it does not have the romantic impact of “Maese Pérez” and “Los ojos verdes,” both of the same year.

(D)

The first legend that Bécquer wrote, “La cruz del diablo” (1860), has even more of the “Sturm and Drang” of Schiller's Raeuber and also involves a Faustian pact with the devil. But this “Faust” is of the blackest kind; and instead of improving with experience, as does his German counterpart, he becomes more destructive, until he is finally captured by the efficacy of prayer—really more of a Mephistopheles in this respect. Bécquer pulls all of the stops to play upon our emotions with the gruesome details of this medieval battling, knightly spectre; with the recording of groans and gory descriptions of the struggle between godless and Christian forces in the Middle Ages.

(E)

“La ajorca de oro” has generally been associated with an episode in Faust, I. As Bécquer's protagonist knew, so the Mephistopheles of Goethe knew that he could win the heart of Marguerite if he procured the beautiful “ajorca de oro” for her. That was the opening for Faust's long career under contract. The “theft” of the bracelet in Bécquer's story is even more vile, a sacrilege, for it belonged to the Cathedral image of the Virgin. In an exotic background and after nightmarish visions the culprit lover is found mad the next morning by the churchmen.

(F)

The curious device of the “white hand,” so popular in medieval Romances⁴⁷ (and in German Romanticism), is conspicuous in the three stories: “La promesa,” “Tres fechas,” and “La venta de los gatos,” where part of the theme is expressed in the verses:

En el carro de los muertos
ha pasado por aquí,
llevaba una mano fuera;
por ella la conocí.(48)

This highly romantic idea also reflects the longing for a dead sweetheart, as we find it in the lives of Hoelderlin and Novalis, who drew their highest inspiration from these longings for the dead loved one. One could cite also Heine's poems on the subject in Lyrisches Intermezzo, XXXI and XXXII, and especially in XLI.

(G)

The story entitled “El beso” (1863) is a new version of the Pygmalion plot plus the Oedipus-Sphinx theme. Again we find that it was Heine who wrote on a very similar theme, though with a much more fantastic and poetic treatment. The following is a rough translation of the preface to the third edition of his Buch der Lieder, dated Paris, February 20, 1839.

That is the ancient fairy-tale forest!
The lindenblossom is perfumed!
The wonderful moonlight
Enchants my mood.
I went forthright, and as I went
There sounded something on high.
That's the nightingale; it sings
Of love and of love's woe.
It sings of love and love's woe,
Of tears and of laughter,
It sings so sadly, it sobs; glad,
Forgotten dreams awaken.
I went forthright, and as I went
I saw there lying before me
A large castle in an open place.
The gables rose up high.
The windows closed; all around
A silence and a mourning;
It seemed, as though silent death
Lived within these barren walls.
There lay a sphinx before the gate,
Combination of terror and lusts,
The body and paws of a lion,
A woman's head and breasts.
A beautiful woman! The stone white glance
Spoke of her wild desires;
The mute lips became puckered
And smiled silent acquiescence.
The nightingale—it sang so sweetly—
I could not offer resistance—
And when I kissed the angelic face,
Then my fate was sealed for me.
The statue became alive,
The stone began to groan—
She drank the glowing ardor of my kisses
With thirst and with longing.
She almost drank away my breath—
And finally, filled with passion,
She embraced me, tearing the flesh
From my body with her paws.
Enthralling martyrdom and blissful pain!
The pain like the pleasure immeasurable!
While the kiss of the mouth blesses me,
The paws wound me horribly.
The nightingale sang: “Oh beautiful Sphinx!
Oh love! What does it mean,
That you mix with pain of death
All of your bliss?
Oh beautiful Sphinx! Oh solve for me
The riddle, the marevelous one!
I've already thought about it
Many thousand years.”

In Bécquer's story⁴⁹ the soldier who fell in love with a piece of stone sculpture stumbled and fell when he could no longer resist kissing it, and his face was found bloody, a sign of retribution. This is perhaps one of the least “Germanic” stories of Bécquer, and only the ending bears similarity to the above cited material. The “night scenes” are the most fascinating description.

(H)

There is a generous sprinkling of water nymphs and mountain dwarfs in the nonagenarian's tales of “El gnomo” (à la E. T. A. Hoffmann) reminding one of “Los ojos verdes” and the corresponding German literature cited in our discussion of this story. For our purpose this sample of the text⁵⁰ is better than a summary of the tales:

Medio escondidos entre aquella húmeda frondosidad discurrían unos seres extraños, en parte hombres, en parte reptiles, o ambas cosas a la vez, pues, transformándose continuamente, ora parecían criaturas humanas deformes y pequeñuelas, ora salamandras luminosas o llamas fugaces que danzaban en círculos sobre la cúspide del surtidor. Allí, agitándose en todas direcciones, corriendo por el suelo en forma de enanos repugnantes y contrahechos … andaban los gnomos …

True to Schelling's precepts we have demonstrations of the unity of man and nature as we hear the conversation of Marta and Magdalena with Water and Wind personified, where the last two tell of their mysterious powers, reflecting the fraternizing of diabolical spirits with mankind by means of Nature itself. The subject of metamorphosis has been treated in detail above as a typical phenomenon of German Romanticism. Here again we can point to no specific influences, but the general atmosphere is there.

(I)

There is a link between the stories, “El gnomo” (1863) and “El aderezo de esmeraldas” (1862), for in the former we also hear of the jewels which attracted the girls, of “una esmeralda más clara,” which proved fatal.

In regard to the story “El aderezo de esmeraldas,” which has the simple plot of the young man who gambles to buy a set of emeralds for a girl who admires them in a store window, giving them anonymously, but making her unhappy thereby, let it suffice to say that it contains the much cited passage about the ability of “Mefistofeles” to seduce “Margarita” with gems.

(J)

“El monte de los ánimas” (1861) has for its theme the punishment of an overemphasized pride, an idea developed in Brentano's Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schoenen Annerl. Bécquer's women are heartless, but Brentano painted a German girl, idealized in spite of her faults.

In the complex story by Brentano, honor is treated from various points of view. Kasperl imparted to Annerl his ideas of honor. To guard his own honor he later commits suicide, but Annerl, too, exercises her sense of honor now as she awaits execution for a tragic crime of hers. The Novelle is one where Stimmung or “atmosphere” rather than plot plays the usual important role.

In Bécquer's story there is no connection of plot at all with the story by Brentano referred to above. But Alonso remembers his reputation as rey de los cazadores and accepts a challenge to his bravery, to his honor. Horrors of nature, and imagination, create the atmosphere necessary. The girl, Beatriz, upon seeing the bloody evidence of the haughty treatment of her worshiping Alonso, is fatally stricken, we know not how.

A hunter, left behind by his comrades who took refuge from the mystical hunting grounds, filled with horrors, reported seeing resurrected Templars and nobles chasing a beautiful woman who looked like a wild animal. She ran around the tomb of Alonso, screaming desperately.

We have already seen other examples of the resurrected dead performing at night like this in both German and Bécquer's writings. Here is an example of how Bécquer repeats himself, as is evident especially in his Rimas, where he works with a minimum number of ideas, many derived from the Leyendas.

Our study comes to an end with what are perhaps the least romantic legends (if measured by the German tradition). “El Cristo de la calavera” is a story of the rivalry of two gallants stopped from killing each other in a duel over a vain, flirtatious lady by the “miraculous illuminating powers” of the skull at the end of a dark street, and the discovery of a third lover. The unmistakable elements like “a mysterious voice,” etc., are present, but the setting is Spanish.

“La cueva de la mora” is a very short story of “the wandering soul” of the daughter of a Moorish alcaide. She had been shot rescuing a dying Christian knight, who, however, baptized her before they both died in the secret cave.

Bécquer himself calls his “Tres fechas” “absurdas sinfonías de la imaginación” (of an obscurely seen “mystery woman” who finally takes the veil).

“La Promesa” tells of Margarita and her “misterioso amante,” who promised to return to save her honor.

Mention has already been made above of the significant “white hand theme” in “La Promesa,” “Tres fechas,” and “La venta de los gatos” (which is listed as an essay).

Notes

1. Bécquer, op. cit., pp. 1292-93.

2. Ibid., p. 1294.

3. Ibid., p. 708.

4. Díaz, op. cit., p. 153.

5. Bécquer, op. cit., pp. 83-84.

6. Ibid., p. 84.

7. Ibid.

8. To explain this psychological development on a rational basis, Hoffmann set forth his “Serapiontischeprinzip,” the name being derived from his “Serapionsbrueder.”

9. Bécquer, op. cit., p. 85.

10. Ibid., p. 87.

11. Ibid.

12. See notes to “Der Fischer”: Goethe's Poems, edited by Clarence W. Eastman, F. S. Crofts and Co., New York, 1941, pp. 57-58.

13. Goethe emphasized the mystical element in water in Faust II, where sirens and sprites lent considerable atmosphere. Goethe already had been interested in the stories of water nymphs as a boy, according to his Dichtung und Wahrheit, I, where he states that he read the old tale of “Melusine” as narrated in the old Volksbuch.

    Ludwig Tieck also wrote a Melusine, the story of a water sprite who forbade Reymund, who had taken her as his wife, to ask whence she came. Reymund by his prying discovered her identity, and she fled from him (Cupid and Psyche theme).

14. Jarnés, Doble Agonía de Bécquer, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1936, p. 192.

15. Ibid., p. 109.

16. Translation from E. T. A. Hoffmann's Sämtliche Werke, Leipzig, Hesse, 1904, I, pp. 180-181.

17. We must not forget that Hoffmann was interested in the “Undine” theme enough to make an operatic adaptation in three acts based upon Fouqué's Novelle (and with the same title).

18. The blue flower in Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Novalis.

19. With his story, Der blonde Eckbert, Tieck definitively established the German Novelle as a literary genre, and his compatriots called him “der Koenig der Romantik.”

20. H. Heine, Die Romantische Schule, Hamburg, Hoffmann Campe, 1836, p. 158.

21. Ibid., p. 162.

22. Oxford Book of German Verse, no. 178.

23. Ibid., no. 110.

24. Ludwig Tieck's nachgelassene Schriften. Rudolf Koepke, ed., Vol. I, Leipzig, 1855.

25. Bécquer, op. cit., p. 237.

26. This brings to mind the French medieval dramas, and Dante's, as well as Milton's, great works where Satan had a most conspicuous role. See p. 35 (below) in regard to Bécquer.

27. During the time of the Mendelssohns, there was a tolerance in Germany unknown in other European countries—from the time of Lessing's Nathan der Weise in the eighteenth century to the time of German Romanticism, when one of Mendelssohn's daughters, sister of the great Romantic musician, became the wife of Friedrich Schlegel, one of the three greatest leaders of the Romantic School in Germany.

28. H. H. Houben, Gespräche mit Heine (2. Aufl.), Potsdam, 1948, p. 900.

29. Bécquer, op. cit., pp. 154-55.

30. Ibid., p. 157.

31. Heine, op. cit., p. 303.

32. Ibid., p. 308.

33. Bécquer, op. cit., p. 154. (The italics are ours.)

34. Heine, op. cit., pp. 235-36.

35. Oxford Book of German Verse, no. 268.

36. Bécquer, op. cit., p. 350.

37. Ibid., p. 358.

38. Jarnés, op. cit., p. 219.

39. This reference to the spectral organist and the “mad” playing also reminds one of Bécquer's Maese Pérez el organista.

40. L. Tieck, op. cit., pp. 57-58.

41. Jarnés, op. cit., p. 109.

42. Bécquer, op. cit., pp. 761-62.

43. Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde, Leipzig, Reclams Univ. Bibl., no. 320, pp. 26-31.

44. Bécquer, op cit., pp. 633-34.

45. Díaz, op. cit., p. 62.

46. Oxford Book of German Verse, no. 131.

47. Tristan forgot Isolde of the golden hair because of the Isolde of the white hands. (See also Bécquer's Rima VII.)

48. Bécquer, op. cit., p. 670.

49. For further information on this theme during the period of Romanticism see the following: J. R. Spell, “Pygmalion in Spain,” Rom. Rev., XXV (1934), 395-401.

    Le Globe, Paris, VII^e année, May 6, 1831, p. 510, had the following review reflecting the taste of the times: “‘Zampa,’ ou la Fiancée de marbre, a été representée avec succès mardi dernier à l'Opéra-Comique. Cette pièce a signalée très heueusement l'ouverture de ce théâtre …”

50. Bécquer, op. cit., p. 334.

Bibliography

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