SOURCE: “Analysis of the Leyendas,” in German Romanticism in Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Short Stories, Allen Press, 1959, pp. 19-55.

In the following excerpt, Turk offers an analysis of Leyendas in the context of German Romanticism.

… We have observed definite features of German Romanticism that must have influenced Bécquer's thinking from earliest childhood, beginning with Hoffmann, then Heine (early in Madrid), and probably also Schiller and Goethe. Bécquer had to be acquainted with Schiller and Goethe, if we are to believe the information in his Obras completas. If he had not died so young, we can be sure that he would have produced Spain's first major works on the great German literary duo. First of all, he contemplated issuing a sort of one-volume anthology of Schiller's works. The title was already chosen: Ecos de Schiller.¹ All we know of its contents is that it would contain poes...