Wandering in Seville, near Plaza Espana, we encountered these three ladies and their standing escort, a 19th-century poet named Gustavo Adolfo Bequer, known for short enigmatic rhymes full of love, sighs, tears and deep eyes—and apparently the ability to draw tears and sighs from nearly everyone.
He died appropriately young, at 34; there’s probably nothing less romantic than a septuagenarian romantic poet. Aside from Bequer himself, there is a group of three women in various states of love, and carved from a single marble block, as well as a reclining bronze that represents ‘wounded love’ and a Cupid figure that represents ‘the love that hurts.’
The three women represent different aspects of love, based on Bequer’s poem “The Love that Passes,” although there are dozens of theories as to what aspects of love the three women represent. You’ll have to read and decide!
The invisible atoms of the air
all around they throb and swell,
the sky dissolves in golden rays,
the earth trembles with joy.
I hear, floating on waves of harmonies,
rumor of kisses and flapping of wings;
my eyelids close…what’s wrong?
Tell me.-Hush! It’s love that happens!
