Lorca's hands change meaning

On the 20th April 2011, some vandals (for lack of a stronger word) took the bird held by Lorca's bronze statue in the Santa Ana square in Madrid.

Now instead of holding a bird in his hands, his palms are reaching for the sky - is he asking why?

To have a look at the "before and after" pictures, click here.

On Federico Garcia Lorca - Part 3

In 1928, the first issue of the magazine “El Gallo” was published. It contained essays by Lorca and other writers including Guillén, and illustrations by artists such as Dalí. The magazine was certainly something new and had a touch of surrealism in it. In a letter to Sebastian Gash, Federico wrote:

“ ‘El Gallo’ in Granada has been a true scandal. Granada is a literary city and nothing new had ever happened in it. Therefore ‘El Gallo’ has produced a noise you’d never imagine” (Cano). 

However, the magazine closed down after publishing its second issue. Later on in the year Lorca published his collection of poems which he had written four years earlier: ‘El Romancero Gitano’. The book was a great success and bookshops were soon out of stock.

The happiness for which Lorca was known was due to his living life to the full with his five senses. But behind his constant smile there would be bursts of sadness and depression which only those close to him were aware of. In autumn 1928, in a letter to Jorge Guillén, he wrote:  

Fortunately, Autumn’s coming. I have had a bad time myself. Very bad. One needs to have the amount of happiness God has given me not to succumb before the amount of conflicts that have lately jumped upon me.[...] You can’t imagine what it is like spending a whole night at the balcony watching Granada at night, empty for me.

It is no wonder therefore that in 1929, Lorca seized the opportunity presented to him by his teacher and friend Fernando de los Ríos to leave Spain.

On Federico Garcia Lorca - Part 2

Jorge Guillén (Spanish poet and good friend of Lorca’s) maintains that he was driven by a juvenile force. He managed to keep the child within, without adopting a childish attitude. Federico always got on well with children and seemed to have a special talent for understanding and communicating with them. It is therefore of no surprise that the song repertoire of every Spanish child contains at least one song written by him. Lorca seemed to be full of a desire to keep alive the spirit and essence of his childhood and was aware of it:  

The feelings from my childhood still lie within me. I don’t seem to have left them. (Cano)

And indeed, according to Margarita Ucelay’s prologue to the play, ‘When Five Years Pass’ is full of childhood memories. She tells how Isabel García Lorca (his sister) can identify details from her younger years within the play: “the boys from the neighbourhood being capable of stoning any unfortunate animal that crossed their path, the sad tradition in our town of throwing dead cats to the river or to other people’s roofs, his brothers dressed up as Harlequin and Clown during Carnival, ... the Mask costumes left for years in the family arks, and the chimes of the clock which Federico repeatedly used to alter, creating his own confusion with time and driving the maid crazy.”

Having completed his degree, Lorca wrote to Jorge Guillén that he was beginning to feel guilty for not having followed the path his family would have liked him to and hence had decided to go for a professorship and maybe lecture on Spanish and Spain outside his country. This would not only keep his father happy, but would also allow him to leave the country, as he felt the need to get away.

Guillén managed to arrange for him to go to Paris to lecture. But this idea was soon abandoned and Federico found himself back in Spain, once more immersed in his writing.

On Federico Garcia Lorca - Part 1

The most important thing about Federico was...

being Federico.

Jorge Guillén

Publishing his first book at the age of 20, the poet enjoyed great fame in his native Spain from an early age, as well as being loved by most people around him. In 1919 he moved away from his native Granada in the South of Spain, to Madrid to study law.

He lived at the Residencia de Madrid, a hall of residence where most of the intellectual figures of the time were staying. There he met and became friends with artists such as the painter Dalí, the future cinematographer Luis Buñuel, and the poet Alberti. Though Lorca had moved to Madrid to attend lectures which would lead him to completing his degree, he used to spend most of his time writing poetry and conversing in cafés. In Jose Luis Cano’s words, he was “a burst of freedom and youth”.                                                                           

 

Ahead of his time

Federico Garcia Lorca was well ahead of his time.

The themes he tackled in his plays, the rebellious women he created through his work and the dramatic styles he used, often took the audience somewhere different, somewhere difficult to be in, difficult to understand.

His ideology, his charisma, his connections and his political views unfortunately got him killed.

This is the welcome post for the blog I love Garcia Lorca - maybe I should have titled it "I love Federico" but then you probably wouldn't have found it through your search engine. I will be gradually building the site with links to other pages and direct links to publications of his dramatic works.

Feel free to comment, add and bring to our attention your thoughts, experiences and passions for his works.

Pilar Orti