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Thread: Federico Garcia Lorca

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    Federico Garcia Lorca

    I just read Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre) which was really exceelent and wondering if anyone had any insights on Lorca, or reccomendations. I'll read the other 2 tragedies in the collection today/tomorrow and can post up thoughts then...

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    I've never read any of Lorca's plays... but I have read quite a bit of his poetry and his biographies. Lorca was certainly one of the most important figures in 20th century Spanish poetry... probably the most well-known to the English-speaking world. He played a central role in the artistic renaissance in Spain that occured prior to the rise of Franco and included the artists Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Juan Gris, the architect Antonio Gaudi, the film-maker Luis Bunuel, and poets Rafael Alberti, Vinciente Aleixander, Luis Cernuda, Antonio Machado, Miguel hernandez and Lorca. Lorca wrote in a variety of styles. There are elements of symbolism borrowed from the great French poets such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire. There are aspects of Surrealism (which should come as no surprise considering Lorca's association with both Dali and Bunuel). there are elements of Gypsy and Spanish folk ballads and songs found especially in his Gypsy Ballads. He was also greatly inspired by the poetry of Arab Andalusia which led to his book The Divan. Finally... his experiences in America led to a rather scathing body of politically informed works which are included in The Poet in New York. I would especially recommend a good anthology of his works. My own, the version edited by Christopher Mauerer is probably the standard right now. For more on Lorca I'd suggest a quick look at his link at Wickipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Garc%C3%ADa_Lorca
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    Hello bo bara! I love Lorca! Actually, I live about 3 hours from the town where he was born and raised, Fuentevaqueros. I was also in his house because they turned it into a museum.
    Besides the recommendations Stlukesguild gave you (very good, by the way), I would definitely recommend that you read some of his plays, because they're a good representation of what life was like in the little towns in Spain before Franco's dictatorship (which started at the end of the Civil War in 1939). One I particularly liked is La Casa de Bernarda Alba.
    Enjoy!!
    "... I TAKE ON RESPONSIBILITY. I HIDE MYSELF FROM NO ONE. I AM ON MY PATH... I WON'T LET MY FOCUS CHANGE, TAKING OUT THE DEMONS IN MY RANGE ("The Warrior's Reminder". E.B.)"

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    deadly! thanks for the input. read yerma this evening, very good, but not quite as beautiful as blood wedding.

    the surrealism influence is particularly interesting, what works would you suggest for looking at it? (recently read bataille's story of the eye so am quite into surrealism at the minute).

    lorca seems to me like an intriguing modernist, deeply rooted in the ancient culture of his region, but without any glorification of the situation, bth blood wedding and yerma show tragic conflicts beween desire and the moral law and suffocating closeness of the peasant community. Actually this in particular makes me feel that Lorca could be writing in 1950s Ireland, we have many works which deal with the desires of people for sexual happiness against the constraints of rural life. It cerainly makes it clear why church-burnings and the gruesome 'weddings' of priests/nuns took place.

    but Franco's dictatorship wasn't just post 1939, it was only Catalonia and Andalusia which held out that long against the fash (Viva los amigos de durruti!). actually while we're on that, why was Garcia Lorca killed? i prob won't get a chance to read his biography for a while, so I'm curious, what were his politics? I saw that his bro was a Socialist Mayor, but was that enough for him to be killed?

    I'll read La Casa today...

  5. #5
    Luislee
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    If you've enjoyed reading Lorca I would certainly recommend you to read some of Miguel de Unamumo. They have similar styles, Unamuno is a little more terse with his prose but they both are excellent authors.

    Lorca's poetry is filled with symbolism and doublemeaning, he uses colors as a means to unveil the deeper meaning in his verses. Green is a color he likes to use a lot.

    La Casa de Bernarda Alba is such a telling story, it is such a typical story in the spanish and latinamerican societies of the time, the widowed mother and her single daughters living in a traditional spanish society.

    Many argue that Lorca's own sexuality accentuated most of his characters and plots. His supposed homosexuality is overly exposed in his poetry as has been discussed in some of my spanish lit courses in college. The use of horses, masculinity and virility become a topic of interest in his poetry.

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    I took a Spanish literature class and read La Casa de Bernara Alba. There are so many themes and insights in the play. It's defnitely worth reading although I'd suggest reading the Publisher's Introduction or some literary criticism to get the most out of it.

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    vjscadence is right. Reading some critical introduction might help you understand all the meanings of La Casa de Bernalda Alba, unless you're familiarized with Spanish history during the Civil War.
    "... I TAKE ON RESPONSIBILITY. I HIDE MYSELF FROM NO ONE. I AM ON MY PATH... I WON'T LET MY FOCUS CHANGE, TAKING OUT THE DEMONS IN MY RANGE ("The Warrior's Reminder". E.B.)"

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    Registered User quasimodo1's Avatar
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    Federico Garcia Lorca

    Federico García Lorca
    TO HIS FATHER,FEDERICO GARCÍA RODRÍGUEZ [MADRID, C.A.APRIL 10, 1920]

    Dear Father:
    I've just gotten your letter, with its wise, serious tone, and I'll answer you in exactly the same way. I'm much more anxious to see all of you than you are to see me—after all, you're all together there, and here I am alone. . . But when it is a matter of circumstance and of one's vocation, one has no choice but to submit. What I can't stand is this business of whether I stay here or go home. It does me great harm, and at a moment like this what I really have to do is settle down and work hard and show a little cleverness, for what goes on now is crucial to my well-being. I know perfectly well what you think (alas!). But I am telling you and solemnly promising you—because I love you so—that when a man strikes out on his path neither wolves nor dogs should make him turn back. And I—fortunately for me— have a lance like Don Quixote's. I am on my path, Papa. Don't make me look back!

    I know you all love me very much, but you're only paying me in the same coin, because I love you all even more. I also know that you would like to have me there by your side, but this is something imposed by circumstance. What would I do in Granada? Be the butt of a lot of nonsense, a lot of arguing, a lot of envy and slander (this only happens, naturally, to men with talent)? Not that it matters to me—thank God, I'm above all that—but it would be very, very bothersome. One doesn't argue with a fool, and just now, in Madrid, I'm being argued about, or rather talked about, by truly respectable people, despite the fact that I've just set out, and I'm going to really be a hit when I put on other things in the theater and I'll probably end up with a great name as an author. Sudden, complete triumph harms the artist. Anyway, I'm preparing my things and going very slowly, very deliberately, so I can give birth to a sensational book. Up here I write, work, read and study. The environment is marvelous. I hardly go out at all. People (a few) come to visit me. I only go out to visit [Gregorio] Martínez Sierra and the staff of Espa–a, with a group of young, strong intellectuals. But the main reason I can't leave isn't my books (which is a very important one) but because I am in a student residence—it's not as though it were a boarding house! It's extremely difficult to get into this place and if I happened to have done so easily, without formally applying, because of my merit and the affection and friendship of others, with the director using his influence and getting me in while excluding another ten students who had applied, it would be unforgivable to simply get up in the middle of the academic year and announce that I'm leaving, and just say "thanks" and "goodbye." The fact that I hesitated before, and didn't come (you know the whole story) will make them say I'm a fickle person, and I'll end up looking unworthy and ridiculous.

    ....

    You know I love you with all my heart.
    Federico

    —translated from the Spanish by Christopher Maurer

    http://www.jubilat.org/n7/lorca.html

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    Registered User sofia82's Avatar
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    IT is a great play, and he even uses colors as symbols in this play. I read this one more than once, I once dared to act it out at the university which I have to say my apologies for Dear Lorca. I love it.

    Thank you quasimodo1 for the letter.
    Art is a lie that leads to the truth.
    --Picasso

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    Searching for..... amalia1985's Avatar
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    One of the best plays in the History of Theatre!!!
    None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free.
    -Goethe

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    Tu le connais, lecteur... Kafka's Crow's Avatar
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    I read The House of Bernarda Alba back in 1990. Very powerful play and I can still recall many things from it even after almost two decades.
    "The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
    -- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett

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    Registered User sofia82's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow View Post
    I read The House of Bernarda Alba back in 1990. Very powerful play and I can still recall many things from it even after almost two decades.
    Great that you can recall after almost two decades! I read it, too But cannt remember
    Art is a lie that leads to the truth.
    --Picasso

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    Registered User quasimodo1's Avatar
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    Federico Garcia Lorca

    "As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die."
    Federico Garcia Lorca

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    I suggest you read Ian Gibson's mammoth (but still very readable) biography of Lorca.

    I love Lorca as a poet ("Sonnet. Narcissus" is to my mind one of the most beautiful poems ever written) and as a playwright ("Once five years pass" doesn't seem to have been recommended in this forum - but it's wonderful). He's one of a small number of writers who managed to produce a body of work that's very even and homogeneously good - even his experiments with surrealism and modernism produced enduring works.

    Read also Antonio Machado's poem on Lorca's death, "El crimen fue en Granada" ("The crime took place in Granada"), which never fails to move me on every reading.

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    Read also Antonio Machado's poem on Lorca's death...

    Yes read Machado's poem on Lorca's death... and read more by Machado... and Miguel Hernandez... and Jorge Guillen... and Vincente Aleixandre... and Rafael Albert... and Juan Ramon Jimenez. Lorca is great... but all too often it seems that his tragic history (not unlike Van Gogh's) obscures the genius of the other great Spanish poets around him.
    Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
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