Augusto Ferrán

Augusto Ferrán
Augusto Ferrán
	Postromantic
Notable works	La soledad

Augusto Ferrán y Forniés (7 July 1835 in

Postromantic period

.

Biography

Ferrán was born in

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

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 soleás, seguidillas, 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:

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 Quintana. 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

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.