This poetry collection is made up of odes and poems on diverse subjects, such as the adoration of one’s family, religious fervor, and the love of God. The majority of its verses are dedicated to women: to their capacity to inspire, their beauty, the love that the author professes to his wife and others, and, sometimes, the loves that never manage to emerge. Meditations on life and the struggle to maintain a good ethical code in order to avoid such things as greed, quick profits and selfishness are also addressed.
As in the work of Bécquer or Espronceda, Echeverría’s style could fall into the tradition of romantic poetry for its paeans to womankind and its pessimism in the face of a society whose values the author rejects. Yet, there is also the author’s strong faith in God (always called the “Creator” or “Jehova”) to remind readers of Echeverría’s Christian roots.
The author divides the collection into six sections: “Meditative poems,” “Descriptive poems,” “Dedication poems,” “Educational poems,” “Personal poems,” and “Questions of Opinion.” Unfortunately, these sections are not especially illustrative, since each contains poems on a wide range of subjects, without a clear order or theme.
Perhaps the collection’s most notable aspect is its use of uncommon and sometimes poetic words (erebus, hyaline, etc.) that add an occasional touch of lyrical flair to these verses. On the other hand, the author’s ideas are often simplistic and conveyed with a lack of imaginative metaphors, and spelling mistakes are quite common and sometimes make the poems difficult to read, changing one concept into another. Additionally, although the poems are constructed on very simple lines that don’t follow meter or rhyme, sometimes the verb tenses don’t match.
Given such issues, the collection lacks verses of notable quality that would give it a broad appeal.
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