The death drive that opposes the joy of living. Dying young as a romantic myth of rebellion and eternal youth. Melancholy, beauty and decadence come together on the path of Romanticism, trodden, among others, by John Keats, Percy B. Shelley and Lord Byron, the second generation that brought it to its maximum splendor.
All three died prematurely, after wandering around Europe and landing in Italy, following wandering lives, fraught with tragedy and fatality. Only Byron was over thirty. Keats had left England suffering from pneumonia in search of a healthier climate. Shelley was haunted by the tragic death of his three children, when he was just three years old. Since then, ghosts have haunted him without this preventing him from becoming the best poet of his generation. Byron bore the genius and intensity of his character that inspired The Vampire (1819) of his friend Pollidori, who also died in those years, committing suicide.
The poetics of Romanticism is laden with fatality. Beautiful penumbras that illuminate the ins and outs of the soul, awakening our attraction to mystery. The history of Romanticism is perceived as a tale by Edgar Allan Poe, who, without being part of the movement, could have been an extension of it. All the bohemia and the underground began with them. The narration of the last days of Keats, Shelley and Byron in the hands of Fernando Valverde becomes a heartfelt tribute, written in beautifully unusual prose. Its author, one of the most awarded voices of the new poetry in Spanish, seems to have been in situ with the protagonists. It reads like a literary nonfiction story.
“That small room, as cozy as it was messy in its shape, full of impossible angles and voices coming in from the streets along with the sound of water resounding on the walls, was going to be John Keats’s last hope and the scene of his agony. When he looked out of his window for the first time, he could see the flower vendors who had their stalls in the square, the fountain and the steps, which moved him so much that he wanted to quickly go out and discover the city.
Through the pages of the book run Rome, the eternal city, Pisa, Florence or the small fishing village of Lerici, in the bay of La Spezia, where Shelley will be shipwrecked.
“The light had revealed the seed of shadow too many times. The light of Rome brought death. The light of Florence pushed the black cloud full of voices and moans that made the nights their own winter. The light of Pisa was a mirage whose splendor was the sunset from the bridges and the nocturnal brightness of the stars. Lerici’s light was the brightest, like a voice announcing a resurrection or an intuition of the strange.
Valverde’s love for these poets and respect for Romanticism is immense. As he says “the lives of these three poets on the precipice of the world and the imagination is the greatest work of Romanticism and one of the most exciting and heartbreaking stories ever told.” As if it were a Hitchcock film articulated from suspense, despite the fact that we know the tragic outcome of the protagonists, we advance the reading hoping that Keats can heal, that Shelley’s poetic genius finds comfort and that the beautifully idealistic and aristocratic Byron do not see the flower of your youth wither.
Despite the specificity of its theme, this is a book for all audiences thanks to the precise goldsmithing of its author who manages to combine the language of Romanticism with a high narrative rhythm. Bringing the path of the romantics back to light is something necessary and almost essential. Their ghosts accompany the lives of many of us, both in the search for comfort and happiness. Eros and Thanatos converge in magical harmony like in that beautiful film called Rowing in the Wind (Gonzalo Suárez, 1988) with which many of us grew up.
Valverde seems touched by the muses of Romanticism.
Fernando Valverde. The death of Adonais. Planet. 352 pages
22 euros
