Anniversary week: The assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca

“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!