10 h 37 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 10 h 37 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
In old Spanish towns, ghosts linger close, and love can lead you toward a vision no one else can see.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’s Selected Works brings together the Rimas, the Leyendas and prose sketches. The short lyric poems ask what poetry is and trace love from wonder toward loss. Their quiet, musical voice makes room for private feelings: longing, loneliness and the pain of what no longer remains.
The legends lead through Toledo, Seville, Soria and the mountains of Aragon, where ghosts, curses and enchanted places draw desire toward danger. In one tale, a poet follows a figure in a moonbeam, certain the vision matters more than any living person. Here, the unseen feels close enough to follow.
What you’ll discover
- Love in a few lines Discover how the Rimas hold wonder, longing and disappointment within brief, plain poems.
- Old towns, uneasy shadows Enter legends where narrow streets and enchanted places bring the supernatural close.
- The pull of impossible desire Follow a poet toward a moonlit vision that draws him away from living people.
- Poetry looking at itself Explore poems that ask what poetry is, alongside their searching accounts of love.
- A quieter kind of darkness Feel the later Rimas turn toward sleeplessness, loneliness and the end of life.
Who will love it
Readers who love ghost stories, medieval Spain, moonlit ruins and tender love poems will find all three here, along with mountain folklore and travel letters.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Imagination crowds the mind until it must spill out
- A blind organist holds Seville spellbound at Christmas
- Two dreamers chase women who may be only light
- Three dates in Toledo trace a romance of glimpses
- A white doe and a mountain flower hide dark tales
- A promised return and a cruel dare
- A spring and a psalm tempt two seekers
- Leaves and an inn show how joy can fade
- Letters from a cell record a vanishing Spain
- The Rhymes turn love and loss into short songs
Who’s who
- Master PérezA blind, kind organist of seventy-six who wants nothing more than to play his old organ at Christmas Eve Mass in Seville.
- Fernando de ArgensolaA young lord and hunter who cannot forget a pair of green eyes glimpsed in the Poplar Spring.
- ManriqueA dreamy poet-nobleman of Soria who searches every night for a woman in a white dress.
- ConstanzaThe pale, golden-haired daughter of Don Dionís, nicknamed the Lily of Moncayo, who loves to tease her father's huntsmen.
- GarcésA loyal young huntsman who secretly loves Constanza and sets out to catch the white doe for her.
- SaraA beautiful sixteen-year-old in Toledo who refuses every suitor and follows her father and his brothers through the night.
- MargaritaA village girl who loves a squire and begs him to keep his promise of return.
- AlonsoThe young king of hunters in Soria, who fears the Mount of Souls but will not be called a coward.
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Ausgewählte Werke
A blind organist insists on playing one last Christmas Eve Mass in Seville while the whole city waits.
Medium level10–20 hours to readDeutsch
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In short
Picture a blind old organist carried into a Seville convent church on Christmas Eve, too ill to stand and determined to play. Selected Works by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, who died in 1870, opens with a preface about giving imagined creations life through words.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Imagination crowds the mind until it must spill out
In the preface, Bécquer pictures his imagination as a crowd of naked children sleeping in the dark corners of his brain. They wait for the words that will let them enter the world. His muse conceives more creatures than all his years could ever give form to.
A gulf separates ideas from their expression, and words, hesitant and sluggish, are the only means of crossing it. So the creatures struggle toward the light and sink back, like yellow leaves dropped by a dying wind. Sleeplessness makes it worse, until he can hardly tell what he dreamed from what happened to him.
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Cite this edition
Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo. Selected Works. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/selected-works.
Bécquer, G. A. (2026). Selected works. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/selected-works
Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo. Selected Works. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/selected-works.
@book{becquer2026selected,
author = {Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo},
title = {Selected Works},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/selected-works}
}
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What is Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Selected Works about?
It gathers his Legends, his Letters from My Cell and his Rhymes. The legends are tales of ghosts, love and mountain spirits set in Spanish towns. The letters describe a monastery stay and folk lore, and the rhymes are short love poems.
What are the Legends and the Rhymes?
The Legends are short stories drawn from old Spanish folk tales, set in places like Seville, Toledo and Soria. The Rhymes are brief poems about love, longing and the nature of poetry, written in simple, musical verse.
Is Bécquer's Selected Works easy to read?
Most pieces are short and can be read one at a time. The legends have clear plots and vivid scenes, the letters read like friendly travel notes, and each rhyme is only a few lines.
The author
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
1836–1870 · Spanish Romantic poet
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was a Spanish poet and prose writer born in Seville in 1836. He moved to Madrid in 1854 and died there in 1870. He wrote poems known as Rimas and prose legends known as Leyendas. A collection of his works was published after his death in 1871.
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