GARCÍA LORCA, FEDERICO (June 5, 1898--August 18-19, 1936)

Spanish poet and dramatist, was born at Fuente Vaqueros, a village on the banks of the River Genil, a few miles from Granada. His father, Federico García Rodriguez, was a successful farmer, a landowning liberal who--unlike many of his neighbors--paid his workers a fair wage. Lorca's mother, Vicenta Lorca Romero, had been a schoolteacher before becoming Don Federico's second wife in 1897. Federico used to claim that he inherited his intelligence from her, and his passionate temperament from his father.

Some evocative words written by Lorca himself, cited by Gibson, aptly sum up the effects upon him of his childhood: "I love the countryside. I feel myself linked to it in all my emotions. My oldest childhood memories have the flavour of the earth. The meadows, the fields, have done wonders for me. The wild animals. . .the livestock, the people living on the land, all these are suggestive in a way that very few people understand. I recall them now exactly as I knew them in my childhood. . . .My very earliest experiences are associated with the land and work on the land. That is why there is at the basis of my life what psychoanalysts would call an 'agrarian complex.' . . .My whole childhood was centred on the village. Shepherds, fields, sky, solitude. Total simplicity. . . .I have a huge store of childhood recollections in which I can hear the people speaking. This is poetic memory, and I trust it implicitly."

In those words may be found the fullest explanation of the power and authenticity of Lorca's poetry and drama. He was always, even in his maturity, able to see with the eyes of a child; hence, when--in the wake of an affair with a cruel and manipulative lover, and to escape being spoiled by his sudden popularity as a "gypsy poet," a label which he felt insulted his intelligence--he found himself in 1929-1930 in the city of New York, unable to speak a word of English, and with only a few Spaniards Ángel del Rí, the poet Leon Felipe, and the poet-critic Dá Alonso among them) for company, he suffered the most profound culture shock ever recorded by a poet. His record of it, reflecting his suicidal mood, is in the posthumously published Poeta en Nueva York (1940, translated on no less than four separate occasions, under the title of Poet in New York or The Poet in New York).  

Principal Works in English Translation: Poetry--Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter, and Other Poems (tr. A. L. Lloyd) 1937; Poems (trs. S. Spender and J. L. Gili) 1939; The Poet in New York (tr. R. Humphries) 1940 (tr. by B. Belitt as Poet in New York, 1955; tr. by S. Fredman, 1975; tr. by G. Simon and S. F. White in The Poetical Works of Federico Garcí Lorca, Vol. I, 1988); The Gypsy Ballads, With Three Historical Ballads (tr. R. Humphries) 1953 (tr. by L. Hughes as Gypsy Ballads, 1955; tr. by M. Hartnett as Gipsy Ballads, 1973; tr. by C. W. Cobb as Lorca's "Romancero gitano": A Ballad Translation and Critical Study, 1983); The Selected Poems (eds. F. G. Lorca and D. Allen) 1955; Lorca (tr. J. L. Gili) 1960; Lorca and Jimé (tr. R. Bly) 1967; Divan and Other Writings (tr. E. Honig) 1974; Songs (tr. P. Cummings) 1976; Lorca/Blackburn (tr. P. Blackburn) 1979; Poem of the Deep Song/Poema del cante jondo (tr. C. Bauer) 1987; The Poetical Works of Federico Garcí Lorca (ed. C. Maurer; trs. G. Simon, S. F. White, and F. Aragon) 2 vols., 1988-1991; Selected Poems (tr. M. Williams) 1993.

About: Adams, M. García Lorca: Playwright and Poet, 1977; Allen, R. C. The Symbolic World of Garcí Lorca, 1972; Anderson, R. Federico Garcí Lorca 1984; Barea, A. Lorca: The Poet and His People (tr. I. Barea) 1949; Campbell, R. Lorca, 1952; Cobb, C. W. Federico Garcí Lorca, 1967; Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, 1947 and 1980; Duran, M. (ed.) Lorca: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1962; Edwards, G. Lorca: The Theater Beneath the Sand, 1980; Garcí Lorca, Francisco. In the Green Morning: Memories of Federico (tr. C. Maurer) 1986