Legends, Tales and Poems
This collection gathers the finest legends, tales, and poems of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, the great voice of Spanish Romanticism, in an edition annotated for English-speaking students. Across stories like "Los ojos verdes," "La corza blanca," "El beso," and "Maese Pérez el organista," Bécquer leads us through the moonlit cloisters, haunted forests, and crumbling Gothic towns of old Spain, where knights, organists, and dreamers meet enchantment, temptation, and doom. Alongside the legends stand his celebrated "Rimas," the brief, musical poems that made his name, together with a life of the author and an introduction to Spanish versification.
Bécquer's work distills the Romantic fascination with love, death, beauty, and the supernatural into prose of rare delicacy and verse of haunting simplicity. These tales matter as both a gateway to Spanish literature and a lasting record of one of its most original and beloved imaginations.
How it begins
In preparing this collection of Becquer's legends, tales, and short poems, which is the only annotated edition of this author's works that has been published as yet for English-speaking students, the editor has aimed to give to our schools and colleges a book that may serve, not only as a reader for first or second year classes, but also as an introduction to Spanish literature, through the works of one of the most original and charming authors of the Spanish Romantic school. Fondness for good literature should be stimulated from the very first, and the quaint tales and legends of old Spain contained in this edition, told, as they are, in a most fascinating style, are well adapted to captivate the student's interest and to lead him to investigate further the rich mine of Spanish literature. Becquer's poetry is no less pleasing than his prose, and not much more difficult to read. With the aid of the ample treatise on Spanish versification contained in the introduction, the student will be enabled to appreciate the harmony and rhythm of Becquer's verse, and in all subsequent reading of Spanish poetry he will find this treatise a convenient and valuable work of reference.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.