Un Bécquer trasatlántico: su influencia en Perú

Abstract

The influence of Bécquer in Latin America has been well-known during last thirty years of the 19th century, as much in poets as in narrators. Within Peru, the authors whose works can show footprints of Bécquer are Ricardo Palma and Manuel González Prada, who were considered the best poets of their generation. In Gonzalez Prada's conference in "El Ateneo de Lima" in 1886, he emphasizes the genius of the Sevillian as opposed to the mediocrity of the Peruvian authors who have imitated him. In addition, the influence of Bécquer in González Prada arises in many of his verses and stylistic procedures. Prada, the great "maker of verses", introduced new kinds of verses not seen in Hispanic Poetry. He knew of to assimilate the peculiar style of the Sevillian, and to reflect it in many of its subjects and topics. The German inheritance that influenced Bécquer's verses was the necessity and survival of poetry, the platonism that favors the soul against the body, the fundamental questions over existence.