Bécquer, narrator. A specter

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was born infirm and feeble, "un hechizado"

his halitus was invariably saturated with ethylmercurithiosalicylate and the Ethiopian teff that his mother made him drink.

The teff is a thick infusion -similar to the tea of Castile-, prepared with a wild cereal that smells like Coca-Cola, saliva and chocolate all mashed together... the mother forced Bécquer to drink it extremely hot, because she believed that it would cure him, while, in fact, it was a powerful narcotic that dried his spirits, like a contemplative Jesuit, or a martyr from the torrid colonies.

The tepid climate of Seville, whose bewitched lanes are warmed in January by communal stoves installed at every corner, and whose sidewalks are amorously wrapped in wool, it wasn't enough to alleviate his catarrhs, because Bécquer was affected by congenital grippes, common in the Belgian races, especially in those inhabitants of the inundated zones between Oostende and Walendijk, disease which was known in the depressed Andalusian hamlets as "Mal flamenco" (the term is forgotten and unused today, except by extremely old women).

Always pale and always covered in paños de Flandes, the brain of Bécquer was perpetually altered by the teff, so that he started having nocturnal visions:

at the age of 16 he wrote a brief incise called "The Two Castiles", in which one of his night horrors was narrated.
In the text, Castilla la Nueva & Castilla la Vieja were violently hammered by two hands full of fire, so that the territory was sunk so deep into the Earth that an interior sea was formed in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, which after such telluric disaster resembled a ring, or rosca de reyes.

Full of atrabiliary panic -augmented by his disease- and superstitious fears, Bécquer burned the texts some weeks later.


Desperate and exhausted with the smog of Seville, Bécquer caught a French map he had in his cabinet, extended it on the table, and prey of desperation, let a poniard fall on it with his eyes closed:

the blade fell vertically and got stuck on a precise point: Oviedo

the map was this:

The next day, overwhelmed by the supernatural signals and 1.000 things that don't exist, Bécquer packed some clothing, a fork, a knife, a pipe, opium, a spyglass, a sextant, a horologe, a monkey's tale, paper and a stylographic pen into an oblong and black suitcase, and escaped to Oviedo in a carriage, also called diligence.

The traject was extremely long and replete of ventures:

in the middle of La Mancha, two bandits stopped the carriage... the desperadoes named themselves Don Quijote & Sancho, and mounted big dogs.

Bécquer neutralized the malefactors pulling the tail of monkey like a weapon, because this tail of monkey had petrifying effects, like the stare of the Medusa:

the ladrones got paralyzed in front of the yellow and erect tail of platyrrhine, so that the wet jamón pata negra that they were devouring fell from their hands on the cracked ground of La Mancha, land of knight-errants that don't shave their faces:

Bécquer ran away from his harassers deleteriously, congatulating himself for the occurrence, while puffed on a pipe full of opium.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer arrived in Oviedo one day of 1.853 tranced in deliria, after so much opium and tabac à priser that he viciously took on the hazardous path of the Spains, replete of pirates and jetas.

Immediately after his disembarkation, he rented a room at the motel "Sietededos", which back then was in front of the Cathedral of Oviedo:

the rent of one month costed him 1 Real of silver "Isabel II", although he could stay only one week, because the brumous ambiance and the much cholesterol of the local diet almost killed him.

Bécquer returned immediately to Seville in the same carriage he came, asphyxiated by the condensed steam that floated in the town, and the unintelligible accent of the inhabitants.



But the point is that Bécquer didn't feel comfortable in Seville, he always was projecting travels in his mind, itineraries that would keep him away from Seville, travelogues to narrate, like the periplus of Laurence Sterne, so insufferably related in "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy", or the chronicles of Hanno the Navigator, a disdainful Carthaginian who discovered -and described- the hirsute monkey men on the shores of western Africa during a coastal circumnavigation of the continent.


The day 1 of January of 1.854 at 2:00 PM, Bécquer sticks the esoteric map to a wall of his cabinet like a dartboard, and throws the poniard from a distance of 9 yards:

the flaming blade flies in the air of the room and hits the target, getting firmly stuck on Madrid.


Now Bécquer takes his plan with care: 66 days later he is traveling in carriage toward the capital of the kingdom, which fortunately is much closer to Seville than Oviedo.

... And through extensions cut like the glass Bécquer traveled
mountains like pyramids he climbed, in carriage hauled by pregnant mare
and then Bécquer descended, to the infected villages, like Bailén
and the journey was tortuous and perpetual, and screamed at the empty skies

like the pain that the betrayal leaves, which will never die
because... the betrayal remains, floating in the air
forever, like a deformed abortion; your ultimate masterpiece.




Notwithstanding, this traject, despite it's shorter, is not exempt from perils and hazards:

on the exact equidistant point Seville-Madrid, at the gates of a hamlet called Brazatortas, at the warmth of the day, an ogre appears in the middle of the road:

-"Ea, good paisan, please stop obstructing my path, I do have important business and social occasion to attend in Madríz, can you get out of my road?"

Bécquer shouted.

The ogre, who wasn't too tall, but was alarmingly wide in extent from side to side, explained the reasons why he blocked the avenue:

-"Ea, good foreigner, my behavior has always been exemplar, I'm good neighbor and faithful subject of Her Majesty Isabel II, but my metier consists of assaulting occasional travelers, like you... I don't want your gold, no:
but I am ogre, and I'm obliged to devour you, 'cause:

My name is Rocky Muntanyola
son of the ogress Manola

and for the life of me
I will deglut thee."



And so, and so, and so, Rocky Muntanyola the ogre advanced over the dry asphalt of the avenue, walking to the encounter of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer with ogre-esque intentions...

... Bécquer was tempted to pull his tail of monkey again -lethal weapon indeed-, but he deemed it too predictable and corny, he was another kind of hero:

as the ogre caught the carriage with his enormous hands of granite, and started shaking it and shaking it with bad intentions, Bécquer pulled a small hand mortar or pistolete, and shot a dry and only shot on the chest of the ogre, who fell died, expelling a cavernous nasal sound, like a buffala.

This, and other events -like the killing of the silvery snake in Toledo and the resurrection of its blood- were later included by Bécquer in his "Relaciones de mis viajes anómalos al través de las Españas, y de las muchas cosas espantosas acaecidas en ellos, ansí como de las mercedes que me libraron de la matación", a voluminous book which was censored, expurgated and finally prohibited by Monsignor Celestino Botella, Protonotary apostolic of Badalona and Salou, and it stayed unpublished until 1.999.


Once in Madrid, Bécquer lived in a room located at Calle del Oso Nº 6 (Bear Street), a glacial cabinet sans calefaction where he wrote short stories -all born from his nightmares-, like "The skin", "El pantalón", "The enchanted window", "A Hebrew melody", "A pass of mine through Naples undermined by the tuberculosis", "The sister of a beautiful lady", "Two reflections of an opiated brain", "The bull", "The effigy and the sphinx", "Lady Cade" or "Merneptah", among others:

in 1.861, rejected by Doña Maida Vale, sister of Doña Rhondda Vale -two ladies of the aristocracy-, Bécquer marries Lorenza Miguel, in act of desperation.

Notwithstanding he had 15 children with her, Bécquer never loved Lorenza Miguel, the marriage just was spiteful, caused by the bitter rejection of Maida Vale, a bitterness full of fantasms that would accompany the narrator to the sepulchre.


In 1.862 Bécquer acquires a disease called vanillism after visiting the Royal Astronomical Observatory of Madrid, apparently due to his physical exposition to the decomposed sunlight accidentally projected by a replica of the telescope of William Herschel, whose lens was maladjusted:

soon, his frequent nightmares obtained an even more profound scope and distorted nature
the blues of his sleeps were bluer
and the yellows of his siestas were yellower:

the condition of his nocturnal visions was atrocious, populated by monsters who had the face of Maida Vale, and Bécquer continued procreating babies with Lorenza Miguel... his life became a Hell, like falling into a pot full of boiling meat stew.

During all those years Bécquer writes "Rimes & églogues", texts full of monstrosities, embittered love and hate, and starts compiling a collection of national legends of Spain, which he deforms, endowing the original tales with an omnipresent feel of infernality.

These legends are gradually published, in the guise of short tales, by several newspapers of Madrid, like "La América" or "El Contemporáneo":

Bécquer dies at the age of 34 in delirium tremens during a solar eclipse that filled Madrid with strange birds

full of hallucinations his mind was in his time of diying, like a poeta romántico alemán, still tasting like teff his halitus, surrounded by lecherous dancing figures around his bed that only he sees:
among these figures or figurines, Doña Maida Vale dances shameless and naked, licked her sex by tongues of men.

His detested wife and friend buried him in Madrid.
His tomb was violated in 1.913 by decree of Alfonso XIII: his bones were found miraculously anointed with honey

later, for political reasons, the human remains of Bécquer were transported to Seville against his will
the convoy that conveyed the bones of Bécquer was possibly escorted by Bécquer.





Once I burned the "Legends" of Bécquer. The book was accursed in my mind.