Federico García Lorca is one of the most relevant authors of Spanish letters. The quality of his work and his early death give curious readers and philologists food for thought. What would he have been able to do if he hadn't been murdered at the age of 38. His poetry and his theater have been fundamental in the configuration and development of literature in Spanish. and they have left a mark that will last in the same way that the most important figures of Spanish literature did centuries ago.
Within his work, what surprises the most are his metaphors and the types that abound: water, blood, the moon, animals like horses and bulls, women and farm work. Her literature is full of symbols that enrich the vision of those who read it and make her books some of the best texts of the entire XNUMXth century. We review his most important work that includes his poetic and dramatic work.
Poetic work
Cante jondo poem (1921)
Set of poetic compositions, among which are the «Baladilla de los tres ríos» or «Poema de la soleá». The work aspires to poetically explain the essence and character of the Andalusian people from its most ancient roots. These roots are fundamentally tragic, rural and a bit dark. The poems harbor themes such as death and life, love, pain and the deepest sadness. Like the Andalusian cante jondo, moving and violent in equal parts.
Gypsy Ballads (1928)
It is an anthology of eighteen romances that elevated Lorca as one of the best poets of the history of Spanish literature. Lorca does it again. With these compositions he returns to remove Andalusian authenticity, hardship and pain, tradition and the efforts and abuses of work in the field, as well as the nature of rural Andalusia.
It does so with a metaphorical, yet tangible language that fascinates readers and scholars in a timeless way., with elements such as the night, the moon, death, images of water, the knife or the horse, or the gypsy culture, always so recurrent in his work. Something that also stands out is the conjugation that Lorca achieves of the most popular poetry with the highest.
Poet in New York (1930)
It was published after Lorca's death, but he He wrote this collection of poems between 1929 and 1930 after his stay in New York. Poet in New YorkHowever, it is a much more enigmatic collection of poems than the previous ones; his style is more cryptic and veiled and does not help the philological study that the original manuscript would have been lost.
The themes that appear in the text are essentially the poet and the big city, what better example than New York at the end of the 20s. However, the arrival in this great city, a symbol of modernity and capitalism, caused a conflict for Lorca that led to the writing of this work, which was finally a plea against injustice and dehumanization of man.
Tamarit Divan (1936)
Poetic compositions with the name of casidas y gazelles, this is a tribute to Granada Arabic poetry. Lorca divides the work into love poems (the gazelles) and death (the casidas). All these poems exude the sensuality typical of Arab beauty, as well as all its artifice. The pieces contain metaphors and a new showiness in Lorca's work.
Sonnets of Dark Love (1936)
This collection of sonnets was written during his last years and published after his death. Although many of the poems would remain unpublished until the arrival of Spanish democracy. Among the sonnets it is possible to find great passion, love and sexual delirium; albeit in a slightly fearful way dark, since Lorca at the time in which he lived came into conflict with his sexuality.
Theatrical work
Blood Wedding (1933)
It is a tragedy in verse and prose in a rural setting. It is based on a true story that Lorca knew and decided to capture in this work full of dramatic poetry. Two lovers eloped the night before the woman's wedding to another man. These elements were enough to create a beautiful composition that explodes with desire for freedom, love and death. The moon will be fundamental in Bodas de sangre, because he appears as a witness in a personification beautiful and deadly alike.
Barren (1934)
yerma is another tragedy whose main theme is motherhood. Lorca develops in his creative work the fundamental role of women, as the basis of the family, children and the forging of their personality and destiny. The impossibility of having children and of upbringing in her marriage fatally mark the fate of the protagonist, who is supposed to be barren and wasteland due to her sterility.
The house of Bernarda Alba (1936)
La casa de Bernarda Alba closes a cycle of dramas in a rural environment initiated and continued by Bodas de sangre y yerma. It was not released until 1945 in Buenos Aires, after the author died. on the job you breathe all the oppression and the inevitable tragedy of the town and the rural environment that Lorca has used to capture in his dramatic works. It is what is known as deep spain, the most obscure, traditional and immobile bias of the Spanish character. All this translates into the story of Bernarda and her five young daughters; the woman after being widowed she will decide to keep the whole house in strict mourning for eight years. Lorca also includes his avant-garde and innovative style, which results in a pioneering and unique work.
Relevant notes on García Lorca
Federico García Lorca was born in 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros (Granada) into a middle-class family.. He studied Philosophy and Letters and Law at the University of Granada and was soon influenced by different intellectual friendships. He attended the meetings of artists that were held in El Rinconcillo and after traveling through Spain, through different towns and traveling roads, he settled in Madrid. Over there He became friends with Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, among other students, with whom he coincided in the Student Residence.
After a trip to New York and due to his intellectual concerns and his desire to bring culture closer to the Spanish people, Lorca founded La Barraca, a traveling university theater. Finally, after returning from a stay in Argentina, Lorca would be assassinated in 1936 for his progressive ideas when he found himself in rebel territory just after the start of the civil war.
García Lorca is the most widely read Spanish poet and his poetic and dramatic work is one of the most influential of the XNUMXth century, if not the most. He belonged to the Generation of '27. Although his style was modernist at first, it later evolved towards the avant-garde, but always with a traditional perspective that he would never lose. For example, his dramatic works are tragedies strongly rooted in rural customs and country drama.