“The one who feels seizes an idea, clothes it in a form, casts it into the realm of knowledge, and passes on.”

Original: El que la siente se apodera de una idea, la envuelve en una forma, la arroja en el estadio del saber y pasa. — The poet transforms an inward perception into artistic form without claiming to explain it completely. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Creation
• Expression
• Poetry

“Poetry is that melancholy, vague longing that stirs your spirit with the desire for an impossible perfection.”

Original: Que poesía es, y no otra cosa, esa aspiración melancólica y vaga que agita tu espíritu con el deseo de una perfección imposible. — Bécquer links poetry with longing for an ideal that can never be completely attained. · Letter III, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Longing
• Perfection
• Poetry

“The poetry is you because that vague aspiration towards beauty which characterises it, and which in man is a faculty of intelligence, might in you be called an instinct.”

Original: La poesía eres tú, porque esa vaga aspiración á lo bello que la caracteriza, y que es una facultad de la inteligencia en el hombre, en tí pudiera decirse que es un instinto. — Beauty is presented as an instinctive impulse as much as an intellectual one. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Beauty
• Instinct
• Poetry