Garcia Lorca´s theme page

Many intellectual figures which have developed the "Spanish myth" exist beyond our frontiers. In all myths it exists an emotional component. It doesn´t matter too much how difficult Lorca´s work is, as the dramatic circumstances surrounding figures we want to deal with. Lorca has always been one of Spain´s biggest myths. Neither Lorca´s short life, filled with frustrations , nor its personality has shown in the writer´s work. His poetry and his plays have always been influenced by the confrontation between reality and desire. One of the aspects that still has not been researched enough is the relationship that the writer had with Salvador Dali. The image that always has been given of both intellectuals prevented that we could speak of a homosexual relationship.

LORCA´S DRAMA
In his last years he worked almost exclusively in Theater due to his need to produce plays that were more accessible to man. In his plays he deals with themes that reach a audience which is not just Spanish. In his plays appear two existential dimensions. One is poetic and with universal character and the other is external and conventional to the point of being repressive. Breaking up the norms laid by it is the only way to obtain freedom but this inevitably leads to death, loneliness, or frustration characteristic of his work.
His first work are not so important compared with the later. His first success was Mariana Pineda (1925) that was written in a verse that is similar to modernist.

After that he reaches a certain maturity with work such as The Shoemaker´s marvelous wife(1926 and 1933) and Doña Rosita, the Spinster(1935). In the first the duality among reality and desire ends up in a minor tragedy and is easy to read. In the latter he deals with love that is unfulfilled because of social conventions such as hypocrisy. Such drama is also found in his great "plays of the Spanish land". Among his surrealist work we find The Audience which is filled with images and intimate symbols. It is characteristic the bravery and sincerity of how homosexuality is advocated if it is accompanied by love. In five years pass (1931) deals with the passing of time and how it is not used by the man which dies without self-actualizing. His mature work has been called the "dramatic trilogy of the Spanish land".
Though only Yerma and Blood wedding were written as part of a trilogy that analyses Spanish society but not The House of Bernarda Alba. One can say that this are the ones that best treat the opposition among desire for liberty and repression. Blood Wedding (1933) is a naturalist work where most instincts are crudely described. The play tells the story of a relationship that ends in tragedy because of its impossible fulfillment in the gypsy world. Yerma (1934) is a tragedy of unfulfilled love, a drama of a sterile woman whose desire for motherhood turns the love for her husband into an irrational hatred. Its monologue form gives Yerma a special touch, making the main character the most important. The House of Bernarda Alba (1936) is the one that has the most realistic form though it is still symbolic. The House of Bernarda Alba can be defined as a "rural drama of women in Spain", treating the most social themes in Lorca´s last work.

POETRY
His life filled with frustrations and his character fill his work with poems of a calmed tone, close to a vast audience. His poetry can also express how troubled the author was, specially in his surrealist period. Lorca did not let his deep passion shadow his intricate technique. Book of poems (1920)
contain very diverse poems treating love and sex. Deep Song (1931) treats the Andalusian reality and adapts poetry to this particular musical form. Lorca wrote other books inspired in traditional music and Lope de Vega such as Songs (1927). His mature period begins with Gypsy Ballads (1928) one of his most famous work. His sense and metaphoric transcendence reflect the character of the gypsy. This acts as a mythical symbol that leaves out artificiality trying to recover a humanized world through poetry. Poet in New York is the most complex book he has written after suffering an emotional and aesthetic crisis. His surrealism differs from the French movement since it deals with a feeling that is pure and spiritual and not with the unconscious. Poet in New York deals with themes such as death, love and loneliness. The most important work in his last period, characterized by its sensitivity and beauty, is Lament for the Death of a bullfighter.
This work underlines the bravery of bullfighters and treats their death as an immortalizing element. Divan is also from the same period. This book is associated with the oriental world and its main theme is love as a source of pain. Los sonetos del amor oscuro treat tastefully the alienating and distressing homosexual desire.

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