“In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in
the world.”
― Federico García Lorca
This week marks the anniversary of the most prolific Spanish poet;
Federico Garcia Lorca, who was assassinated under Franco’s regime; August 1936.
Federico Garcia Lorca-full name-Federico del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus
Garcia Lorca-became fascinated by folklore music from the age of 2. His father-Don Federico Garcia Rodriguez-was a very energetic man, owning many acres of
land for farming-inherited from his ex wife and father-in-law. His mother-Vicenta Lorca Romero-was a teacher and keen pianist. Due to the already growing
talent of his family, Lorca loved performing puppet shows, and playing the
piano. His life was suffused by the government’s prerogative towards
homosexuality and it was the discrimination he was assigned to that ultimately lead to
his assassination. He was a very talented young man who loved to write. Moving
to Madrid to study he associated himself with a group of artists that included: Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. We gain folklore imagery through Lorca's poetry.
His poems speak volume of love, life and death. Federico Garcia Lorca became
obsessed with death, addressing so in his poems. During his time in Madrid he and Salvador Dali became very
close, but Salvador Dali had his own inner demons and removed himself away from
Lorca.
Lorca became depressed due to breaking his relationship with sculpture
Emilio Aladren and the continuous distance made by Dali. During this
time he agreed to provide lectures in Cuba and New York, spending 12 months in
the USA between 1929 and 1930.
Whilst travelling through America, Lorca came across a small group of
Spanish intellectuals residing in New York; they welcomed him with open arms.
One of the Spanish intellectuals-Federico de Onis- was a Spanish Professor who
taught English at Columbia University. Taking the advice from Onis, Lorca
enrolled on an English class. However, his lack of interest derailed him from
achieving an appraisable pass. Lorca was particularly interested in the City
and socialising with his new-found friends. On his travels he visited Harlem
where he frequently attended a Jazz Club; it was here that Lorca began to see
the dark side of America. Lorca noticed the communication between the rich and
the ethnic minority; having a close bond with social minorities-Gypsies-blacks-Jews-
and any oppressed people who were degraded and excluded from the welfare
society. Lorca spoke out for the poor and the disadvantage people who were
afraid to. It was becoming more and more clear that behind the American curtain
was a broken city that dehumanised those they saw undeserving. During his stay
in America he witnessed the 1929 crash that resulted in financial misery. He
wrote his emotional feelings and experiences in his book “Poeta en Nuevo York.”
In 1930 Lorca returned to Spain forming a company-La Barraca-in order to
present Spanish classical drama to provincial audiences. He wrote many a plays
e.g. Yerma, Blood Wedding, The house of Bernarda Alba, The Public and so forth.
He used the ability of his characters to vocalise his inner thoughts and
demons. He became obsessed with the way gypsies lived and he spent many times
joining their company.
In August 1936, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war,
Lorca was executed by a Falangist firing squad. There isn’t any evidential
proof that can vouch for the real reason-if this can ever be justified- as to
why he was premeditatedly assassinated; lined up in unknown territory with three other men he was shot-twice. His death resulted in him
becoming an international symbol of political repression adding to his legend;
a sacrificial victim. During Franco’s regime Lorca’s books were banned and
burnt and his name was forbidden
So, now that I have given you limited background of his life here is my
main purpose: I wanted to somehow create a page that I could dedicate to
Federico Garcia Lorca, to somehow show my appreciation for who he was and what
he brought to the world. So, I share with you my favourite quotes of his,
photographs that shows him smiling-happy-quotes from his plays, and poems. It
is not too late, if you have a favourite quote/photograph/poem/ then please
contact me and let me know and I shall show it on my blog-with your name
underneath-
“To burn with desire and keep quiet
about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
“Only mystery makes us live, only mystery.”
“Everyone understands the pain that accompanies
death,
but genuine pain doesn’t live in the spirit,
nor in the air, nor in our lives,
nor on these terraces of billowing smoke.
The genuine pain that keeps everything awake
is a tiny, infinite burn
on the innocent eyes of other systems.”
-----This is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg 1926-1997-----
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt
Whitman, for I walked down the side streets
under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket
dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full
of husbands!
Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were
you doing by down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely
old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who
killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant
stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together
in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes,
possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey
in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary
streets? The trees add shade to shade,
lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America
of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old
courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry
and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the
black waters of Lethe?
The author imagines himself walking through a supermarket and seeing
Walt Whitman and Federico Garcia Lorca just shopping-so ordinary?-
This poem was forwarded onto me by Mason West a very intelligent friend
of mine from Google+
I had not read this poem, until Mason West shared it with me. I had to share it
because it is sentimental, yet there is a touch of humour-“and you, Garcia Lorca,
what were you doing down by the watermelons?”
It is just a delightful poem!
I was sent this photograph and exert from G. G. Gonzalez (Thank you very much for doing so-such a charming young man he is in this wonderful photograph)
Blinded the source of your saliva,
son of the dove,
grandson of the nightingale and the olive
you will be, as the earth go and return,
husband always evergreen,
Honeysuckle manure father.
(excerpt from "Elegy" dedicated to Lorca)
Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to
Salvador Dali
A rose in the high garden you
desire.
A wheel in the pure syntax of
steel.
The mountain stripped bare of
Impressionist fog,
The grays watching over the last
balustrades.
The modern painters in their white
ateliers
Clip the square root's sterilized
flower.
In the waters of the Seine a marble
iceberg
Chills the windows and scatters the
ivy.
Man treads firmly on the cobbled
streets.
Crystals hide from the magic of
reflections.
The Government has closed the
perfume stores.
The machine perpetuates its binary
beat.
An absence of forests and screens
and brows
Roams across the roofs of the old
houses
The air polishes its prism on the
sea
and the horizon rises like a great
aqueduct.
Soldiers who know no wine and no
penumbra
behead the sirens on the seas of
lead.
Night, black statue of prudence,
holds
the moon's round mirror in her
hand.
A desire for forms and limits
overwhelms us.
Here comes the man who sees with a
yellow ruler.
Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors run
away.
Cadaqués, at the fulcrum of water
and hill,
lifts flights of stairs and hides
seashells.
Wooden flutes pacify the air.
An ancient woodland god gives the
children fruit.
Her fishermen sleep dreamless on
the sand.
On the high sea a rose is their
compass.
The horizon, virgin of wounded
handkerchiefs,
links the great crystals of fish
and moon.
A hard diadem of white brigantines
encircles bitter foreheads and hair
of sand.
The sirens convince, but they don't
beguile,
and they come if we show a glass of
fresh water.
Oh Salvador Dali, of the
olive-colored voice!
I do not praise your halting
adolescent brush
or your pigments that flirt with
the pigment of your times,
but I laud your longing for
eternity with limits.
Sanitary soul, you live upon new
marble.
You run from the dark jungle of
improbable forms.
Your fancy reaches only as far as
your hands,
and you enjoy the sonnet of the sea
in your window.
The world is dull penumbra and
disorder
in the foreground where man is
found.
But now the stars, concealing
landscapes,
reveal the perfect schema of their
courses.
The current of time pools and gains
order
in the numbered forms of century
after century.
And conquered Death takes refuge
trembling
in the tight circle of the present
instant.
When you take up your palette, a
bullet hole in its wing,
you call on the light that brings
the olive tree to life.
The broad light of Minerva, builder
of scaffolds,
where there is no room for dream or
its hazy flower.
You call on the old light that
stays on the brow,
not descending to the mouth or the
heart of man.
A light feared by the loving vines
of Bacchus
and the chaotic force of curving
water.
You do well when you post warning
flags
along the dark limit that shines in
the night.
As a painter, you refuse to have
your forms softened
by the shifting cotton of an unexpected
cloud.
The fish in the fishbowl and the
bird in the cage.
You refuse to invent them in the
sea or the air.
You stylize or copy once you have
seen
their small, agile bodies with your
honest eyes.
You love a matter definite and
exact,
where the toadstool cannot pitch
its camp.
You love the architecture that
builds on the absent
and admit the flag simply as a
joke.
The steel compass tells its short,
elastic verse.
Unknown clouds rise to deny the
sphere exists.
The straight line tells of its
upward struggle
and the learned crystals sing their
geometries.
But also the rose of the garden
where you live.
Always the rose, always, our north
and south!
Calm and ingathered like an eyeless
statue,
not knowing the buried struggle it
provokes.
Pure rose, clean of artifice and
rough sketches,
opening for us the slender wings of
the smile.
(Pinned butterfly that ponders its
flight.)
Rose of balance, with no
self-inflicted pains.
Always the rose!
Oh Salvador Dali, of the
olive-colored voice!
I speak of what your person and
your paintings tell me.
I do not praise your halting
adolescent brush,
but I sing the steady aim of your
arrows.
I sing your fair struggle of
Catalan lights,
your love of what might be made
clear.
I sing your astronomical and tender
heart,
a never-wounded deck of French
cards.
I sing your restless longing for
the statue,
your fear of the feelings that
await you in the street.
I sing the small sea siren who
sings to you,
riding her bicycle of corals and
conches.
But above all I sing a common
thought
that joins us in the dark and
golden hours.
The light that blinds our eyes is
not art.
Rather it is love, friendship,
crossed swords.
Not the picture you patiently
trace,
but the breast of Theresa, she of
sleepless skin,
the tight-wound curls of Mathilde
the ungrateful,
our friendship, painted bright as a
game board.
May fingerprints of blood on gold
streak the heart of eternal
Catalunya.
May stars like falconless fists
shine on you,
while your painting and your life
break into flower.
Don't watch the water clock with
its membraned wings
or the hard scythe of the allegory.
Always in the air, dress and
undress your brush
before the sea peopled with sailors
and ships.
What is your opinion of this poem?
And the last poem I wish to share with you is his
most famous poem of them all.
Lament for Ignacio Sanchez
Mejias
1. Cogida and death
At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the
afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death
alone.
The wind carried away the cotton wool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and
nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard
wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolated horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high
heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with
iodine
at five in the afternoon.
Death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At five o'clock in the afternoon.
A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his
ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through
his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridescent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now
comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green
groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the
afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the
afternoon!
These are just
some of my favourite poems/quotes of Federico Garcia Lorca.
IS THEY ANYTHING SPECIFIC YOU WISH TO KNOW ABOUT FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA THAT I COULD LOOK UP FOR YOU?
I did not want to
place too much information regarding Lorca due to my current research. It is
going to take a very long time because there are many leads, many directions….
I hope I have done
this page worthy, for you, and for Lorca himself!
HERE IS WHERE YOU, MY FRIEND, MY READERS COME INTO THIS:
WHAT IS IT ABOUT FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA THAT YOU ADMIRE?
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE QUOTES, POEMS OR PLAYS?
WHAT DO YOU THINK TO HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SALVADOR DALI?
SALUD!
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