Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), Spanish writer, the most popular poet of the Spanish-speaking world and one of the most powerful dramatists in the modern theater. García Lorca was assassinated in August 1936 by Francisco Franco’s Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War.

García Lorca was born on June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, the son of a well-to-do Andalucían family. He studied law at the University of Granada and literature at the University of Madrid. During his youth he wrote poetry and developed an interest in music, a field in which he received encouragement from Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. De Falla introduced García Lorca to the cante jondo, or deep song, an ancient type of Andalucían Romani (Gypsy) song. The cante jondo influenced García Lorca’s poetry considerably, and in 1922 he organized the first festival devoted to it.

From 1919 to 1934 García Lorca lived principally in Madrid, where he organized theatrical performances and gave readings of his poems, which were first collected in Libro de poemas (Book of Poems, 1921). The poems in this book show the influence of two leaders of 20^th-century Spanish poetry, Rubén Darío and Juan Ramón Jiménez, but even here two of García Lorca’s basic and distinctive characteristics are evident: the musical quality of his verse and its popular inspiration. While he took his inspiration from the themes of popular songs, he gave them a new poetic value both in subject matter and in form.

After the publication of Primer romancero gitano (First Book of Gypsy Ballads, 1928), on Andalucían Romani (Gypsy) themes, García Lorca became renowned among both the intelligentsia and the common people of Spain. In both the Primer romancero gitano and El poema del cante jondo (1931), there is a vision of humankind dominated by the fatal destiny of death and of passion. The poet alludes to objects and scenes common to the daily life of Andalucía, describes the elements of nature, and at the same time transforms all this into a fantastic and unreal world in which the forces of nature take charge of the human tragedy they witness and become active agents in the drama.

García Lorca lived in New York City in 1929 and 1930, writing the poems published posthumously in Poeta en Nueva York (1940; Poet in New York and Other Poems, 1940). However popular his poems, it was his dramatic works that brought him international fame. His first successful play, the historical drama Mariana Pineda, had appeared in 1927. In 1931, after returning to Spain from New York, he became codirector of a traveling theater company for the Spanish government; the group put on performances of classical Spanish plays throughout Spain. His tragedy of rural life, Bodas de sangre (1933; Blood Wedding, 1939), a true story of jealousy and death among the peasants of Andalucía written in vivid symbolic language, marked a new departure in the modern poetic theater. Bodas de sangre enjoyed immediate success and was soon translated into English, French, and other languages. It was followed by the great tragedies Yerma (1935; trans. 1941) and La casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernard Alba, 1936); and the tragic comedy Doña Rosita la soltera (Doña Rosita the Spinster, 1935).

García Lorca’s other works include the comedy La zapatera prodigiosa (1930; The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife, 1941) and Llanto per Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935; Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and Other Poems, 1937). The latter was written upon the death of a famous bullfighter who was his personal friend.

Concerned principally with the themes of fate and death in the lives of country people and Roma (Gypsies), García Lorca’s works portray elemental human passions and emphasize the interpenetration of dreams and reality in their lives. In addition, the plays incorporate elements from traditional Spanish and Andalucían popular songs as well as from surrealist poetry. His spontaneous and refined language is marked by startling images and highly original metaphors.