Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Leyendas (1857-1864)


The striking portrait of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer painted by his brother, Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer. An iconic image formerly used on 100-peseta notes.

This was my 2014 holiday reading, found at a beachside bookstall on the Playa del Cura in Torrevieja (Alicante). My purchase contained only seven of the legends; I imagine from the attractively minimal apparatus that it was a booklet supplied free with some newspaper or other. Anyway ten years later I bought myself a fuller edition (from Santos Ochoa in Zenia Boulevard, for completeness), so here's a run-through of all* the stories. 

 Leyendas is a well-known book in Spain, and a regular on the school curriculum; Bécquer's stories have also been adapted for children. It's a collection of romantic tales in the tradition of Hoffmann and Heine. Most of the stories feature the supernatural. The author, we understand, doesn't consider any of the stories to be true. This creates a fertile arena for literary artistry; in effect, these are early exercises in the use of an unreliable narrator, because the author's commitment to the material is always uncertain. The artistry co-exists happily with a healthy simplicity for the most part, but sometimes the ironies become more restive. Bécquer is also, of course, an important poet, his poems speaking with a kind of direct freshness that was then new in Spanish literature.

The bare plot-summaries that follow don't convey much of Bécquer's artistry, the varied narrative frames, styles, linguistic registers ... e.g. the head-swimmingly seductive poetry of Los ojos verdes, or how the story of Maese Pérez el organista is deliciously wrapped in the salty gossip of Seville churchgoers. Still, I hope some people find them useful. 


Bécquer adapted for children


El caudillo de las manos rojas (The chieftain of the red hands)

Published in El Orbe, 26 March - 26 April 1857.

Location: India (Cuttack, Benares, the Himalayas, the Bay of Bengal)

One of the two "Indian" legends. Pulo kills his brother and is tormented by remorse and by the bloody hands that cannot be washed clean. To achieve redemption he is sent on a long pilgrimage to Tibet, accompanied by his beloved Siannah, with the proviso that they remain chaste throughout the pilgrimage, but when their journey is nearly done they rest under a tree and give way to their desires. Siannah instantly vanishes, and the devastated Pulo is now instructed to spend many years building a magnificent temple to Vishnu and finally to admit a mysterious stranger for the consecration of the idol, but with strict instructions that he must not pry on the stranger's work. On the cusp of success Pulo is once again too eager, and can't resist taking a peek. The idol assumes the terrifying form of Shiva, and Pulo dies, glimpsing Siannah in his last moments; she commits Sati. 

More about this story:



Jacket of El caudillo de las manos rojas when it appeared in the series La novela semanal in 1925. 

[Image source: https://www.todocoleccion.net/libros-antiguos/el-caudillo-manos-rojas-gustavo-adolfo-becquer-novela-semanal-n-198-ano-1925~x476001942 .]


La Cruz del diablo (The devil's cross)

Published in La Crónica de Ambos Mundos, 21 October - 11 November 1860.

Location: Bellver on the R. Segre (in the Pyrenees near Andorra)

High in the Pyrenees the narrator offers a prayer to a sinister-looking wayside cross, but is interrupted by a horrified local, who tells him its story. 

A wicked overlord once marauded and devastated the region. Finally the local inhabitants take up arms and succeed in killing him. However they continue to be harried; his armour comes to life, possessed by a devil, and becomes the cruel leader of an even worse band of villains. After this happens repeatedly, the inhabitants finally melt down the accursed armour and re-cast it in the form of a cross, which successfully imprisons the devil. However all prayers to the cross are fulfilled by contraries. 

Illustration for La cruz del diablo by Ángel García Nieto, from a webcomic of Leyendas.



La creación (The creation)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 6 June 1861.

Location: the Dawn of Creation

The other Indian legend. Brahma is creating the world in his laboratory. When he takes a rest, he doesn't lock the door properly. This is noticed by the curious and mischievous cherubs, who go in and make an unholy mess of everything, creating a world that's deformed, ramshackle and absurd, in which they've mixed up sadness with joy, ugliness with beauty, fragility with presumption, selflessness with egoism.... Brahma is appalled and is about to scrap it and start again, but the cherubs beg him not to break their toy. Brahma relents, reflecting that under their guidance the world probably won't last long anyway....

Illustration for La Creación 




La ajorca de oro (The gold bracelet)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 28 March 1861.

Location: Toledo

Pedro is hopelessly in love with Maria, who possesses the kind of beauty that is more demonic than angelic. One day he finds her in tears, and she, after insisting that it's nothing and he'll only laugh at her, eventually confesses to a crazy desire to possess the gold bracelet on the statue of the Virgin in the cathedral. He is horrified, but that night, when the cathedral doors have closed after the magnificent celebration of the Octave of the Virgin, Pedro emerges from the shadows. He approaches the statue of the Virgin and, terrified at his own sacrilege, shuts his eyes as he plucks off the gold bracelet. When he opens his eyes again, he finds that all the sculptures have left their niches and are watching him from the nave: saints, bishops, warriors, angels, gargoyles.... When the vergers discover Pedro the next morning, he has gone mad. 

La ajorca de oro: Leyenda de Bécquer, oil painting by Casto Plasencia y Maestro (1846 - 1890) 



El monte de las Ánimas (The mount of souls)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 7 November 1861.

Location: Soria

The hunt is called off, because it's All Souls Night (2 November). The young heir Alonso explains to his sceptical cousin Beatriz (visiting Soria) that on this night the mountain chapel is haunted by the ghosts of dead men who re-fight a bloody battle between templars and local hidalgos that ended up being a feast for the wolves, and it's too dangerous to stay up there. Back in Soria, Alonso hopes for some sign of affection from his cousin on the final day of her visit, but she behaves coldly, and accepts his parting gift (a jewel) ungraciously. Then with a malicious glint in her eye she says she would have liked to give him her blue ribbon as a memento, but she must have dropped it during the hunt. Alonso says that on any other night he would go back and find it, but...  "Oh of course, tonight it would be utter madness...", she agrees but with such cutting irony that Alonso is provoked into setting off into the darkness. He does not return by midnight, and Beatriz falls asleep. She wakes and spends a terrible night, tormented by stealthy sounds approaching her bed. In the morning she finds her blue ribbon on her side-table, torn and spattered with blood. When the servants come to tell her that Alonso has been devoured by wolves, they find her rigid and staring, dead from horror. 

Years later, a benighted hunter at the mountain chapel on All Souls Night reports seeing the skeleton knights hunting down a beautiful woman who is pacing round and round Alonso's tomb.


Telemadrid announcing a stage version of El monte de las Ánimas (2024)


Los ojos verdes (The green eyes)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 15 December 1861.

Location: the mountains of Moncayo (Aragon), to the east of Soria.

Young Fernando has wounded his first boar but his master huntsman Iñigo halts the pursuit, explaining that the boar has fled towards the Spring of Poplars, a place the huntsmen never go because an evil spirit lives there. Fernando is infuriated and rides on alone. 

Some weeks later Iñigo asks Fernando what's wrong? Since that accursed day Fernando seems to have lost all his zest and spends every day alone in the hills but hunts nothing. Fernando describes the beautiful spring where he caught up with the dying boar and a woman he has seen there, with eyes of a remarkable colour.... Iñigo, horrified, tells him that the green eyes belong to the evil spirit, and begs his master to keep away from the spring, but Fernando prefers his fate to life itself. 

Fernando and the green-eyed lady declare their love for each other. She draws him into her arms, he loses his footing and he feels her cold kiss on his lips as the waters close over him.


Illustration for Los ojos verdes by Amparo Saera




Maese Pérez el organista (Maestro Pérez the organist)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 27-29 December 1861.

Location: Seville

It's the Misa de Gallo (midnight mass on Christmas Eve) at Santa Inés, and the congregation eagerly await their beloved blind organist Maese Pérez, but news comes that he's seriously ill. Other arrangements are being hastily made when Maese Pérez unexpectedly appears, though very frail. The service starts and the organ music is overwhelming, until it stops with a sudden discord and the sound of screams (the organist's daughter). Maese Pérez has died in mid-recital, his head slumped on the keyboard. 

At the same service a year later. Maese Pérez' daughter has refused to play, and the congregation, believing that the organ should stay silent this year as a mark of respect, have prepared a hot reception for the inferior organist who has been drafted in. His first note is greeted by rattles and whistles, but then they fall silent, stunned by the beautiful music that issues forth. Afterwards the archbishop congratulates the new organist, and hopes that he will play at the cathedral next year (something Maese Pérez always refused to do). The organist accepts, but says he will never play at Santa Inés again. When asked why, he says only that the organ is old and doesn't play as he wishes. 

Another year passes. This Christmas Eve most of the congregation have deserted Santa Inés for the cathedral; only the convent sisters are here, and Maese Pérez' daughter will play the organ, but she feels afraid. The night before, she went to the organ loft to prepare, and seemed to see her blind father sitting there. The service proceeds, but when the music begins there is a cry. The daughter is pointing at the organ keyboard, which is playing the music on its own.

Maese Pérez and his daughter, from a 1976 RTVE dramatization.



[Image source: https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/cuentos-y-leyendas/cuentos-leyendas-maese-perez-organista-1976/1847632/ . Rafael Anglada played Maese Pérez, Mercedes Prendes his daughter. NB I had no trouble watching this excellent adaptation without registering, perhaps because I was outside Spain.]


El rayo de luna (The moonbeam)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 12-13 February 1862.

Location: Soria

The noble youth Manrique is a passionate solitary, too much a poet to ever write poetry, preferring the dream of love to real women. Late one evening, when he's crossed over the Duero to linger in the deserted convent of the Templars, he seems to see the white dress of a woman moving under the trees. He feels sure that this beautiful woman, in this unlikely spot, is the true love he's been waiting for. He tries to follow her but gets only uncertain glimpses. Eventually he decides she has rowed across the river, and he searches the narrow streets of Soria in vain. His hopes come to rest on a lighted window, but in the morning he finds it belongs to a wounded royal huntsman who has no female connections. Finally he returns to the place where he first saw his beloved. He sees the same flickering white dress again... then he realizes that it's just a moonbeam piercing through the moving canopy of leaves. Subsequently he is reduced to utter lethargy, and is reckoned to be mad. If anyone attempts to stir him into action he asserts that love is just a moonbeam... glory is just a moonbeam...

Illustration for El rayo de luna



Creed en Dios (Believe in God)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 23-27 February 1862.

Location: the Valle de Montagut (eastern Pyrenees, near Banyoles)

Teobaldo of Montagut is the ultimate wicked baron. He and his followers lead a life that's debased in every way, and he has no belief in God. One day he and his band, out hunting, take shelter from the rain in a church. He is admonished by the priest, becomes enraged and is about to kill him when news comes that a boar has been sighted, and he rides off in pursuit, outstripping his retinue. When he has ridden his own horse to death and is cursing his ill fortune, an unknown page brings him a black horse. Teobaldo jumps on, and this tireless horse leads him on a frantic journey across deserts and snows and eventually into the heavens where he sees a vision of the paradise of the just, followed by the hell of the atheists. When he returns to consciousness he is back beside his own dead horse. He returns to Montagut to discover that 120 years have passed, no-one knows him, and his abandoned castle has been given to a religious order to use as a monastery. He begs, as a miserable sinner, to make confession and to become a monk. 

Illustration for Creed en Dios



El Miserere (The Miserere)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 17 April 1862.

Location: Fitero (Navarre), to the north of the mountains of Moncayo.

A pilgrim comes to the Abbey of Fitero. He is a musician who wants to redeem the sins of his youth by writing the ultimate musical setting of the Miserere. A local shepherd tells him the story of a Miserere that seems to emanate from the ruins of a nearby mountain monastery every Holy Thursday. Today happens to be Holy Thursday, and the pilgrim excitedly sets off in the awful weather to witness it. (The lay brothers think he's mad.) He arrives and at midnight he's terrified by the sight of the ancient monks (skeletons in tattered habits) intoning their Miserere. The overwhelming music is at first despairing and finally heavenly. Returning to the Abbey the next day, he begs for board and lodging for a few months in return for making the abbey famous by delivering the greatest of Misereres. But despite hundreds of drafts he's unable to capture in musical notes what he heard, and he goes mad and dies. 

El Miserere, from a 1971 comic book by Carlos Giménez.



El Cristo de la calavera (The Christ of the skull)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 16-17 July 1862.

Location: Toledo

In the streets of Toledo at midnight, two fierce rivals for a beautiful woman search for a place to settle their differences, and eventually find a Christ on a wall that is illuminated by a torch. But every time they cross swords the torch goes out, plunging them in darkness. Eventually they get the message and make friends, and they decide to go together to seek out their lady and ask her to choose between them; but when they get to her lodgings they are disgusted to find another, unsuspected, lover just leaving.

Illustration for El Cristo de la calavera



El gnomo (The Gnome)

Published in La América, 12 January 1863.

Location: the mountains of Moncayo (Aragon)

An old shepherd describes finding a subterranean cache of incredible treasures guarded by the gnomes. Most of his audience dismiss the story as nonsense but it affects two sisters, Marta and Magdalena. The two sisters are very different from each other. They encounter the gnomes themselves and (after a protracted choral set of temptations), the idealistic Magdalena escapes the lure of the treasure while Marta is drawn in and disappears underground for ever.


Illustration for El gnomo by David Vela


[Image source: https://davidblogcartoon.blogspot.com/ .]



La cueva de la Mora (The cave of the Moorish lady)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 16 January 1863.

Location: Fitero (Navarre)

The Christians attack a Moorish stronghold. The Christian leader is captured but after some days ransomed. However he remains melancholic, having met a beautiful Moorish lady while in captivity. He gets together another force, attacks the fortress again and is seriously wounded. The Moorish lady manages to get him into a cave, but he is dying from thirst. She goes to get him water, and is accidentally shot by Moorish soldiers. Before they both die, the hero baptises her in the Christian faith. The ghost of the lady continues to haunt the river-bank outside the cave.

Illustration for La cueva de la Mora


Published in La América, 12 February 1863.

Location: Gomara, near Soria; Cordoba, Seville.

A noble leaves his reluctant beloved to go to the wars, making a promise to return and save her honour. He returns successful but haunted by a mysterious hand that rescues him from dangers and is always visible to him. Eventually a mysterious troubadour explains to him that his beloved has died but will not allow her hand to be buried until he has come back to redeem his promise.

Sketch by Santiago Caruso for "La promesa" [https://santiagocaruso.tumblr.com/]





La corza blanca (The white roe-deer)

Published in La América, 27 June 1863.

Location: Aragon: Tarazona, Moncayo.

A nobleman, out hunting with his daughter and retinue, meets a half-crazed shepherd who tells them of his meetings with deer -- including a white one -- who talk in human voices. While most dismiss this as gibberish, one person does not. This is the daughter's servant, Garcia, who is in love with his young mistress (a pale girl with dark eyes and a somewhat mysterious history). He determines to hunt the white deer for his mistress's honour. She mocks him and tries to dissuade him, but he persists. He finds that the shepherd's story is true, he sees the deer, hears them talk, sees them swim and transform into beautiful women, one of whom looks a lot like his mistress. Time and again he decides not to shoot, but each time he draws back he hears the sound of jeering. Eventually the hunting instinct overcomes him and he looses his arrow at the white deer as it disappears into the shadows. Following up, he finds to his horror that he has slain his mistress.


Illustration by Maria Pascual for La corza blanca




El beso (The kiss)

Published in La América, 27 July 1863.

Location: Toledo

The French army are occupying Toledo during the Peninsular War. Avoiding a resentful populace, they are compelled to bunk down in churches. Our hero, a French officer, finds himself in these strange surroundings. Wakeful, he finds himself falling for a marble statue of a beautiful woman on a tomb (accompanied by a statue of her husband). He invites his officer pals to a drunken party, and during the increasingly outrageous evening, mockingly addresses the husband and finally attempts to kiss the lady. At this moment, he is felled by a blow from the husband's stony fist.

Luis Buñuel used the climax of the story in the opening scene of The Phantom of Liberty (1974).



Statues who do things to libertines are a common trope in European literature. In Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787) a statue of the Commendatore (slain by the anti-hero) comes to dinner. In Zampa, the popular opera by Hérold (1833), the statue of Zampa's abandoned lover Alice closes her fingers round his ring, intervenes in his schemes in other ways and eventually carries him down to hell.  



La rosa de Pasión (The Rose of the Passion)

Published in El Contemporáneo, 24 March 1864 (Good Friday).

Location: Toledo

In old Toledo there is a Jewish metalworker (Daniel) with an inveterate hatred of Christians. He has a beautiful daughter, Sarah, who constantly rejects her Jewish suitors. One of them hints to Daniel that his daughter has a Christian lover. Daniel and his allies plan to secretly and gruesomely murder the Christian, and gather together instruments reminiscent of Christ's passion, but Sarah foils their plans and boasts to her father of her own conversion. Daniel kills her instead, and some time later a new kind of flower containing symbols of the Passion appears in the ruins of the old church where they carried out their evil deed. (Evidently this is the New World plant known to us as the Blue Passion Flower (Passiflora caerulea), now a common alien species in Spain.)

Obviously an example of a "blood libel" story (like Chaucer's Prioress's Tale), and it's uncomfortable that Bécquer should choose to tell this story in 1864, even though he frames the tale in ironies. The pious girl who, he says, told him the story, is both very good and very pretty; that is, naive and uneducated. And the story abundantly underlines the persecution of the detested Jews by a Christian populace addicted to just such anti-Jewish stories as this one seems to be.

The bald summaries I've supplied fail to represent Bécquer's concise artistry, and this story is particularly rich in that respect (though some see it as one of the thinnest of the Leyendas), but it doesn't make me feel much more comfortable. Can the story be re-focussed as one in which the father is only "said" to be a wicked bogeyman, and in which his sad sacrifice in honour of his religion balances his daughter's fervent martyrdom? (Hang on a minute, can I really be proposing this?)   

Bécquer projected a number of other stories based on medieval "Jewish" (i.e. anti-Semitic) material, but this was the only one he produced; these nasty old stories seem to have been considered appropriate in Holy Week. 

There is a mismatch between the generally progressive, philosemitic views of Bécquer's  circle and his own absorption in the legends of medieval Catholicism, as interestingly discussed in Yolanda Montalvo Aponte's "Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer y el antisemitismo", which you can find in El oliva y la espada: Estudios sobre el antisemitismo en España (siglos XVI--XX), ed. Pere Joan i Tous and Heike Nottebaum, 2003. You can read most of it on Google Books:




Collage illustration for La rosa de Pasión



[Image source: https://delpoemadebecquer.tumblr.com/page/4 .]









*

*The Leyendas, often combined with Bécquer's poems as Rimas y leyendas, were only put together after his early death in 1870. Every edition seems to have a slightly different selection of stories, and in a different order. 

The above list is as in Enrique Rull's 2016 edition of Rimas y leyendas: seventeen tales in order of first publication (between 1857 and 1864). Others are often included, but Rull excludes tales that are unfinished or are not legends in the strictest sense. 

All the above Leyendas  (and more) in Spanish: 


English translation from 1909, by Cornelia Frances Bates and her daughter Katharine Lee Bates (but sadly it doesn't include the two Indian legends):






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