Federico Garcia Lorca
Lorca was a Spanish poet and playwright, and is remembered as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was born in 1898 and was killed by the Fascists in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
I first learnt about him about two years ago after reading Harold Bloom's supposed book of "one Hundred Geniuses"--the man's (Bloom, not Lorca) is rather pompous but still an intruiging introduction to great literature for the uninitiated. I can't say that it was love at first sight, but I was charmed by the extracts I gleaned from the book, even if I couldn't understand them. (Which was/is understandable as he wrote after the style of the French Symbolistes, which to this day I cannot understand either.)
Okay. So the guy grew on me. Now, he's my first choice to go visit Spain with.
To me, Lorca is one of the faces of Spain and Spanish culture. His poems have the mystical charm and rythm of folk songs and the imagery and diction (perhaps not so much this, I can only read the English translations and then make up for the deficit Lost-in-Translation with my instincts) clearly reflect the "rocky gravity" of the Spanish terrain. They also encompass a quaintly dreamy, mournful romance regarding the culture and spirituality we all associate with the Iberian Penninsula; it's obsession with death and it's perfume of sleep are sublime. I also smell some Moorish influences here--Spain was once home to the Moors until the Catholic Kings drove them out, it was another very beautiful era, but bloody too--I'll have to think more about it first before I can say anything.
This is what he looks like--http://www.whitbyhs.cheshire.sch.uk/features/blood/lorca.htm--charming fellow.
Some of his poems:
City That Does Not Sleep
by Federico García Lorca Translated by Robert Bly
In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.
Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.
Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca Translated by Robert Bly
I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
More here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/163
Now, I know that most Spanish people are NOT like him unless perhaps you count the really old ones living in the countryside or something. I know that most of them like football and beer and coke and movies like other normal people.
I just feel that Lorca brings out the mythical, wounded side of this country for he could find it within himself in his struggle as an artist and fear and worry as a homosexual.
He was killed by the Spanish Nationalists for his sexuality; the murder was made to look like an indecent assualt.
I first learnt about him about two years ago after reading Harold Bloom's supposed book of "one Hundred Geniuses"--the man's (Bloom, not Lorca) is rather pompous but still an intruiging introduction to great literature for the uninitiated. I can't say that it was love at first sight, but I was charmed by the extracts I gleaned from the book, even if I couldn't understand them. (Which was/is understandable as he wrote after the style of the French Symbolistes, which to this day I cannot understand either.)
Okay. So the guy grew on me. Now, he's my first choice to go visit Spain with.
To me, Lorca is one of the faces of Spain and Spanish culture. His poems have the mystical charm and rythm of folk songs and the imagery and diction (perhaps not so much this, I can only read the English translations and then make up for the deficit Lost-in-Translation with my instincts) clearly reflect the "rocky gravity" of the Spanish terrain. They also encompass a quaintly dreamy, mournful romance regarding the culture and spirituality we all associate with the Iberian Penninsula; it's obsession with death and it's perfume of sleep are sublime. I also smell some Moorish influences here--Spain was once home to the Moors until the Catholic Kings drove them out, it was another very beautiful era, but bloody too--I'll have to think more about it first before I can say anything.
This is what he looks like--http://www.whitbyhs.cheshire.sch.uk/features/blood/lorca.htm--charming fellow.
Some of his poems:
City That Does Not Sleep
by Federico García Lorca Translated by Robert Bly
In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.
Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.
Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca Translated by Robert Bly
I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
More here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/163
Now, I know that most Spanish people are NOT like him unless perhaps you count the really old ones living in the countryside or something. I know that most of them like football and beer and coke and movies like other normal people.
I just feel that Lorca brings out the mythical, wounded side of this country for he could find it within himself in his struggle as an artist and fear and worry as a homosexual.
He was killed by the Spanish Nationalists for his sexuality; the murder was made to look like an indecent assualt.
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