10 h 37 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 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
You will love this book if you enjoy ghost tales, medieval ruins, folk legends, and love poems that glow like candlelight. It rewards anyone who likes Spanish history, mood and atmosphere.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A poet begs his visions to leave
- Music can carry a soul beyond death
- Beauty glimpsed once can undo a life
- Three dates hold a dreamer's memories
- The forest hides games and dangerous prizes
- Promises and dares have deadly weight
- Strange tales end in silence and fading leaves
- A letter writer describes mountain life
- The rhymes turn longing into short songs
Who’s who
- Maese PérezA blind, humble organist at Santa Inés in Seville who loves his old organ and plays Christmas Eve Mass for the whole city.
- Fernando de ArgensolaA young lord and hunter who follows a wounded stag to the Poplar Spring and cannot forget a pair of green eyes.
- ManriqueA dreamy poet of Soria who never writes a line and searches the night for a mysterious woman in white.
- ConstanzaDon Dionís's pale, golden-haired daughter, called the Lily of Moncayo, whose origins and moods set the neighbors talking.
- GarcésA loyal young huntsman who secretly loves Constanza and sets out to catch the white doe to please her.
- SaraThe beautiful daughter of the Toledo craftsman Daniel Leví, who loves a secret love and follows her father's hidden plans.
- AlonsoThe king of hunters in Soria, bold in the field, who is afraid of the Mount of Souls and loves his cousin Beatriz.
- Marta and MagdalenaTwo sisters in a Moncayo village, opposite in nature, who both secretly love the same man.
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- Audiobook
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Obras escogidas
A crowd packs Santa Inés in Seville to hear a blind organist play on Christmas Eve.
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In short
What if the stories in your head begged to be let out? Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer opens this collection with that very plea.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A poet begs his visions to leave
Bécquer says his mind is crowded with strange children of the imagination, waiting naked for words to dress them. They stir at night, he writes, and they feed his fevers and his sleeplessness.
He describes a gulf between the world of ideas and the world of form, and words are too timid and lazy to cross it. So he decides to send his visions out onto the page, even if they wear only rags. He fears that dreams and real people are starting to blur in his memory.
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What is Bécquer's Selected Works about?
It gathers his legends, his Letters from My Cell and his Rhymes. The tales are ghostly and romantic, the letters describe life near Moncayo, and the poems explore love, loss and what poetry is.
What are the Legends of Bécquer?
They are short tales set in medieval or old Spain, often in Toledo, Soria, Seville and Aragon. Each mixes folk belief, ruins, music or nature with a story of love, pride, fear or longing.
What is From My Cell?
It is a series of nine letters from Veruela monastery in 1864. The earlier letters address newspaper colleagues, while the last addresses Miss M. L. A. Bécquer describes travel, villages, customs and local legends, along with his thoughts about preserving Spain's past.
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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