Ferrán was born in
Madrid on 7 July 1835 to well-to-do parents of
Catalan and
Aragonese descent. The family business was in manufacturing gilded
moldings. His father went off to
Havana to seek his fortune and Augusto began studying at the
Instituto del Noviciado. He travelled to
Germany, passing through
Paris, and there came in contact with the poetry of
Heinrich Heine as well as
Friedrich Schubert,
Felix Mendelssohn and
Robert Schumann. His mother died in 1859 and he returned to Madrid. Back at home, he founded a
magazine,
El Sábado, with the aim of disseminating German
lyric poetry. The magazine did not last long, but his labors allowed him to meet and befriend
Julio Nombela, a
pamphleteer. Together they founded another short-lived magazine,
Las Artes y las Letras. In 1860 he travelled to Paris with Nombela, but his economic difficulties and prodigal tendencies landed him in the hands of
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
songs of traditional lyricism, and the second part featured original work that imitate their style and inspiration. Recurring themes are a search for solitude in which to flee from a hostile world, the struggle between rich and poor, the passage of time,
existentialism, and love. The book received enthusiastic support from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, and his words were added as a prologue in subsequent editions. He helped create a popular genre of song-based poetry that owed much to Heine; around the same time as
Antonio de Trueba's
Libro de los cantares (1852), fellow Heine translator
Eulogio Florentino Sanz and friend
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer were producing very similar work. Other examples of authors moved by the same
Volkgeist include
Terencio Thos y Codina (
Semanario Popular, 1862–1863),
Rosalía de Castro (
Cantares gallegos, 1863),
Ventura Ruiz Aguilera (
Armonías y cantares, 1865), Aristides Pongilioni (
Ráfagas poéticas, 1865),
Melchor de Palau (
Cantares, 1866), and
José Puig y Pérez (
Coplas y quejas, 1869). This genre would ultimately lead to the
Neopopularist school of the
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==