Poet in New York

Phrase by Federico García Lorca.

Phrase by Federico García Lorca.

The name of Federico García Lorca is synonymous with greatness and tragedy. His are several of the most representative works of Spanish poetry of the XNUMXth century, among them, Poet in New York is considered the most relevant. Not surprisingly, most academic specialists point to this piece inspired by the American metropolis as a turning point in his career.

The poet from Granada wrote Poet in New York while living in the “city that never sleeps” (June 1929 – March 1930). It is a piece composed of free verses loaded with surreal images, perfect for illustrating the prevailing urban chaos. There, Lorca showed the hardships of the most disadvantaged to the detriment of technology and the growth of civilization.

Analysis of Poet in New York

Themes and style

Lorca demonstrates in Poet in New York a more refined elaboration and a conceptual evolution lacking the topics linked to the folklore of his homeland (frequent in his predecessor works). Likewise, the free written verses loaded with oneiric, subjective and irrational expressions, seek to induce the reader's reflection through the spontaneous manifestation of feelings.

For this reason, this piece represents a transition point in the Andalusian poet's career from traditional poetry to avant-garde proposals. Gone are the metric compositions based on the romance and the songbook (obvious in Songs, for example). Already at the end of the 1920s, Lorca's lyric poetry gave plenty of room for fantasy and surrealism.

Dehumanization

The work inspired by the Big Apple represents a social protest that exposes the miseries of the weakest inhabitants of the metropolis. There, African-Americans and children of the lower classes appear cruelly stripped of their humanity to the detriment of mechanization and architectural geometry. In contrast, the idyllic image disclosed to the rest of the world shows a lavish city.

Similarly, Lorca made clear his rejection of capitalism and the consequences of modernization. Likewise, the systematic discrimination and incessant injustices suffered by black minorities filled the writer from Granada with pessimism. Thus, Poet in New York It is considered as a cry in favor of freedom, beauty and love.

Fatality

The urban fauna —dogs, mainly— complete the gloomy panorama of the underground new yorker. The dogs do not escape the misfortunes generated by an industrialized civilization, alienated, materialistic and hypocritical. Furthermore, the timing could not be worse: Lorca's arrival on North American soil occurred on the eve of the 1929 Crash.

Consequently, the Iberian author felt a deep bitterness as he toured Harlem with his jazz friends from the Small's Paradise club. These impressions were evident in what Lorca called "the oppression of man by man" in the cold and dark concrete jungle. This generated a frontal clash with the light of natural surroundings and the vitality to which he was accustomed.

internal deliberations

The immoralities suffered by the lower classes aroused the empathy of a poet who also perceived himself bound by convention. Meanwhile, Lorca subtly revealed the contradictions generated by his homosexuality in the midst of the rigorous social norms of that time.

It should be noted that Lorca's sexual preference has always been a matter of discussion for historians. It's more, that orientation was part of the imputations (along with accusations of affiliation with communist groups) used by the Falangists to justify their arrest and subsequent execution.

A work of permanent validity

The complaints that Lorca expressed in Poet in New York almost a century ago they are still latent today. Certainly, digitization has not corrected the great social inequalities while the most disadvantaged continue to be invisible within the glamorous image projected to other latitudes. Moreover, these contradictions are persistent in many other large cities on the planet.

Excerpt from "Dusk at Coney Island"

The fat woman was ahead

pulling out the roots and wetting the parchment of the drums;

the fat woman

that turns dying octopuses inside out.

The fat woman, enemy of the moon,

ran through the streets and uninhabited flats

and left small pigeon skulls in the corners

and raised the furies of the banquets of past centuries

and called the demon of bread across the hills of the swept sky

and filtered a longing for light in the subterranean circulations.

It's the cemeteries, I know, it's the cemeteries

and the pain of the kitchens buried under the sand,

are the dead, the pheasants and the apples of another hour

those who push us in the throat.

About the author, Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico García Lorca.

Federico García Lorca.

The "martyr poet» became an emblem of the resistance after his execution at the hands of the rebel side during the Civil War. Historians believe that this execution occurred on August 18, 1936, on the road between Viznar and Alfacar, Granada. In this way, the life of a poet far ahead of the Spain of his time and one of the icons of the Generation of 27 was extinguished.

For this reason, Federico García Lorca's life can only be described from his childhood to his youth, since its maturity was very short. He was born on June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada. He grew up in a family headed by a landowner (his father) and a teacher (his mother), which allowed him a childhood full of walks in the countryside, reading, music and joy.

A youth full of travel and intellectual joy

In 1914 the young Federico enrolled at the University of Granada, there he studied the careers of Philosophy and Letters and Law. During his leisure time, his passion for writing awoke while he traveled the Spanish geography in the company of his university classmates. At that time, he completed the first published writing of his, Impressions and landscapes (1918)

Later, Lorca lived for a few years in the famous Residencia de los Estudiantes in Madrid, where he met the likes of Einstein and Marie Curie (among others). As well, Together with artists and intellectuals such as Salvador Dali, Rafael Alberti or Luis Buñuel, the Andalusian poet was part of the avant-garde movement that passed to posterity under the name of "The Generation of 27".

Tours of America

The political friction of the Spanish writer with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera prompted him to leave Spain between the spring of 1929 and the summer of 1930. During this period, he gave lectures while coming into close contact with the culture and people of places such as New York, Vermont, Miami, Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

In parallel, Lorca wrote Poet in New York —published four years after his death— and, During his stay in the Caribbean, his most outstanding theatrical work was The public. The intellectual from Granada would return to the American continent in 1933, when he made successful presentations of his dramatic pieces (and a good number of conferences) in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

Works

Poetry books

  • Songs (1921)
  • Cante jondo poem (1921)
  • Ode to Salvador Dalí (1926)
  • Gypsy romance (1928)
  • Poet in New York (1930)
  • Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935)
  • six galician poems (1935)
  • dark love sonnets (1936)
  • Tamarit Divan (1940)

theatrical pieces

  • The Butterfly Hex (1920)
  • Mariana Pineda (1927)
  • The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife (1930)
  • Altarpiece of Don Cristóbal (1930)
  • The public (1930)
  • So five years go by (1931)
  • Don Perlimplín's love with Belisa in his garden (1933)
  • Bodas de sangre (1933)
  • yerma (1934)
  • Doña Rosita the single or the language of flowers (1935)
  • La casa de Bernarda Alba (1936)

Prose

  • Impressions and landscapes (1918)

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