Augusto Ferrán
Encyclopedia
Augusto Ferrán y Forniés (Madrid
, 7 July 1835 - Madrid, 2 April 1880) was a Spanish
poet
of the Postromantic period.
on 7 July 1835 to well-to-do parents of Catalan
and Aragon
ese descent. The family business was in manufacturing gilded molding
s. His father went off to Havana
to seek his fortune and Augusto began studying at the Instituto del Noviciado. He travelled to Germany
, passing through Paris
, and there came in contact with the poetry of Heinrich Heine
as well as Fiedrich Schubert, Mendelshonn and Robert Schumann
. His mother died in 1859 and he returned to Madrid. Back at home, he founded a magazine
, El Sábado, with the aim of disseminating German lyric poetry
. The magazine did not last long, but his labors allowed him to meet and befriend Julio Nombela, a pamphlet
eer. Together they founded another short-lived magazine, Las Artes y las Letras. In 1860 he travelled to Paris with Nombela, but his economic difficulties and pridigal tendencies landed him in the hands of usurers. He was forced to return to Madrid, and there Nombela introduced him to an acquaintance: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
. In late 1861 El Museo Universal published his Traducciones e imitaciones del poeta alemán Enrique Heine (Translations and Imitations of the German Poet Heinrich Heine), and several of his other works appeared in Almanaque in 1863. He obtained an editorial post at El Semanario Popular, and this finally positioned him to spread Heine's work to Spain.
By 1861 his book La soledad had appeared in print. The first part of the book reproduced several popular song
s of traditional lyricism, and the second part featured original work that imitate their style and inspiration. Recurring themes are a search for solitude in which to flee from a hostile world, the struggle between rich and poor, the passage of time, existentialism
, and love. The book received enthusiastic support from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, and his words were added as a prologue in subsequent editions. He helped create a popular genre of song-based poetry that owed much to Heine; around the same time as Antonio de Trueba
's Libro de los cantares (1852), fellow Heine translator Eulogio Florentino Sanz and friend Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
were producing very similar work. Other examples of authors moved by the same Volkgeist include Terencio Thos y Codina (Semanario Popular, 1862-1863), Rosalía de Castro
(Cantares gallegos, 1863), Ventura Ruiz Aguilera
(Armonías y cantares, 1865), Aristides Pongilioni (Ráfagas poéticas, 1865), Melchor de Palau (Cantares, 1866), and José Puig y Pérez (Coplas y quejas, 1869). This genre would ultimately lead to the Neopopularist school of the Generation of 27.
Ferrán spent part of 1863 in the Veruela monastery, after having visited there on several previous occasions. At some point he also resided in Alcoy
, where he directed the Diario de Alcoy (1865-1866), but he eventually returned to the capital city. He may have returned to collaborate on La Ilustración de Madrid that Bécquer would direct in 1868 during the revolution
. When Bécquer died, Ferrán worked on the posthumous edition of his Obras (1871) alongside Rodríguez Correa and Narciso Campillo. In that same year he produced his second book of verse, La pereza, that revisited his previous work and included various newspaper-style articles. The book's content had a popular meter much like the first, but it possessed much more variety in that it featured soleá
s, seguidilla
s, and seguidillas gitanas in addition to the previous forms. The themes of the book were basically similar, but folklore
ran much more strongly in the second. Juan Ramón Jiménez
often recited his favorite poem from this book, reproduced below:
In 1872 or 1873 he emigrated to Chile where he supposedly married (according to Nombela). Soon after his return in 1878, he was admitted to the Manicomio de Carabanchel in Madrid where he died on 2 April 1880.
. His verse is closely related to spoken language, and his sparse words are directed toward a variety of intimate and openly sentimental content that is bettered by being brief and confident. The same tradition was followed by many other important poets like Bécquer, Antonio Machado
, and Juan Ramón Jiménez
.
In prose, Ferrán published German translations and several legend
s. His translations of Heine appeared in El Museo Universal (1861), in El Eco del País (1865), and in La Ilustración Española y Americana (1873). His translations often employed the same combinations of seven-syllable and eleven-syllable verses common to Bécquer's work. He also translated heine's famous preface to Don Quijote. Concerning the legends, "Una inspiración alemana" (A German Inspiration) describes the successive unrequited love affairs of a poet who withdraws into his own memory and commits suicide. "El puñal" recounts the mythical foundation of the Veruela monastery, and in "La fuente de Montal" a fountain
miraculously helps solve a crime.
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, 7 July 1835 - Madrid, 2 April 1880) was a Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
of the Postromantic period.
Biography
Ferrán was born in MadridMadrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
on 7 July 1835 to well-to-do parents of Catalan
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
and Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
ese descent. The family business was in manufacturing gilded molding
Molding (process)
Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping pliable raw material using a rigid frame or model called a pattern....
s. His father went off to Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
to seek his fortune and Augusto began studying at the Instituto del Noviciado. He travelled to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, passing through Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and there came in contact with the poetry of Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
as well as Fiedrich Schubert, Mendelshonn and Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
. His mother died in 1859 and he returned to Madrid. Back at home, he founded a magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, El Sábado, with the aim of disseminating German lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
. The magazine did not last long, but his labors allowed him to meet and befriend Julio Nombela, a pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
eer. Together they founded another short-lived magazine, Las Artes y las Letras. In 1860 he travelled to Paris with Nombela, but his economic difficulties and pridigal tendencies landed him in the hands of usurers. He was forced to return to Madrid, and there Nombela introduced him to an acquaintance: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Domínguez Bastida, better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, was a Spanish post-romanticist writer of poetry and short stories, now considered one of the most important figures in Spanish literature. He adopted the alias of Bécquer as his brother Valeriano Bécquer, a painter, had...
. In late 1861 El Museo Universal published his Traducciones e imitaciones del poeta alemán Enrique Heine (Translations and Imitations of the German Poet Heinrich Heine), and several of his other works appeared in Almanaque in 1863. He obtained an editorial post at El Semanario Popular, and this finally positioned him to spread Heine's work to Spain.
By 1861 his book La soledad had appeared in print. The first part of the book reproduced several popular song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s of traditional lyricism, and the second part featured original work that imitate their style and inspiration. Recurring themes are a search for solitude in which to flee from a hostile world, the struggle between rich and poor, the passage of time, existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
, and love. The book received enthusiastic support from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, and his words were added as a prologue in subsequent editions. He helped create a popular genre of song-based poetry that owed much to Heine; around the same time as Antonio de Trueba
Antonio de Trueba
Antonio de Trueba was a Spanish poet, novelist, and folklorist born at Montellana, Biscay, in 1821 , where he was privately educated....
's Libro de los cantares (1852), fellow Heine translator Eulogio Florentino Sanz and friend Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Domínguez Bastida, better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, was a Spanish post-romanticist writer of poetry and short stories, now considered one of the most important figures in Spanish literature. He adopted the alias of Bécquer as his brother Valeriano Bécquer, a painter, had...
were producing very similar work. Other examples of authors moved by the same Volkgeist include Terencio Thos y Codina (Semanario Popular, 1862-1863), Rosalía de Castro
Rosalía de Castro
María Rosalía Rita de Castro , was a Galician romanticist writer and poet.Writing in the Galician language, after the Séculos Escuros , she became an important figure of the Galician romantic movement, known today as the Rexurdimento , along with Manuel Curros Enríquez and Eduardo Pondal...
(Cantares gallegos, 1863), Ventura Ruiz Aguilera
Ventura Ruiz Aguilera
Ventura Ruiz Aguilera , Spanish poet, was born in 1820 at Salamanca, where he graduated in medicine.He moved to Madrid in 1844, engaged in journalism and won considerable popularity with a collection of poems entitled Ecos Nacionales...
(Armonías y cantares, 1865), Aristides Pongilioni (Ráfagas poéticas, 1865), Melchor de Palau (Cantares, 1866), and José Puig y Pérez (Coplas y quejas, 1869). This genre would ultimately lead to the Neopopularist school of the Generation of 27.
Ferrán spent part of 1863 in the Veruela monastery, after having visited there on several previous occasions. At some point he also resided in Alcoy
Alcoy
Alcoy may stand for:* Alcoy, Spain , a municipality in the province of Alicante, Spain* Alcoy, Cebu, province of Cebu, Philippines....
, where he directed the Diario de Alcoy (1865-1866), but he eventually returned to the capital city. He may have returned to collaborate on La Ilustración de Madrid that Bécquer would direct in 1868 during the revolution
Glorious Revolution (Spain)
The Glorious Revolution took place in Spain in 1868, resulting in the deposition of Queen Isabella II.An 1866 rebellion led by General Juan Prim and a revolt of the sergeants at San Gil barracks, in Madrid, sent a signal to Spanish liberals and republicans that there was serious unrest with the...
. When Bécquer died, Ferrán worked on the posthumous edition of his Obras (1871) alongside Rodríguez Correa and Narciso Campillo. In that same year he produced his second book of verse, La pereza, that revisited his previous work and included various newspaper-style articles. The book's content had a popular meter much like the first, but it possessed much more variety in that it featured soleá
Soleá
"Soleares" is one of the most basic forms or "palos" of Flamenco music, probably originated around Cádiz or Seville in Andalusia, the most southern region of Spain...
s, seguidilla
Seguidilla
The seguidilla is a quick, triple-time old Castillian folksong and dance form. The song is generally in the major key and often begins on an off-beat...
s, and seguidillas gitanas in addition to the previous forms. The themes of the book were basically similar, but folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
ran much more strongly in the second. Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in...
often recited his favorite poem from this book, reproduced below:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Eso que estás esperando
- día y noche, y nunca viene;
- eso que siempre te falta
- mientras vives, es la muerte.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
In 1872 or 1873 he emigrated to Chile where he supposedly married (according to Nombela). Soon after his return in 1878, he was admitted to the Manicomio de Carabanchel in Madrid where he died on 2 April 1880.
Legacy
Ferrán's poetry assumes a break with the traditional tone that is reminiscent of QuintanaQuintana
Quintana is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2004 was 5,574 and the area is 320.62 km². The elevation is 595 m....
. His verse is closely related to spoken language, and his sparse words are directed toward a variety of intimate and openly sentimental content that is bettered by being brief and confident. The same tradition was followed by many other important poets like Bécquer, Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado
Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....
, and Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in...
.
In prose, Ferrán published German translations and several legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
s. His translations of Heine appeared in El Museo Universal (1861), in El Eco del País (1865), and in La Ilustración Española y Americana (1873). His translations often employed the same combinations of seven-syllable and eleven-syllable verses common to Bécquer's work. He also translated heine's famous preface to Don Quijote. Concerning the legends, "Una inspiración alemana" (A German Inspiration) describes the successive unrequited love affairs of a poet who withdraws into his own memory and commits suicide. "El puñal" recounts the mythical foundation of the Veruela monastery, and in "La fuente de Montal" a fountain
Fountain
A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....
miraculously helps solve a crime.
Prose
- "Una inspiración alemana", in Revista de España, (March 1872).
- "El puñal", a legend published in El Museo Universal (1863).
- "La fuente de Montal" (1866)
- E l sapo concho(1868)