Lorca's Novena
Jun. 5th, 2013 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustFederico Garcia Lorca was born today, apparently. My first encounters with him very via Joan Baez's amazing album Baptism, which features arrangements and recitations of two of his poems, "Casida of the Lament" and "Gacela of the Dark Death," the latter taken from this translation:
I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.
I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.
Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.
For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
As it turned out, my Mom actually had a book of Lorca's poetry left over from when she'd appeared in his play Blood Wedding. It was laid out with the original Spanish text on one side and the translated text on the other, for easy comparison, which I found fascinating.
There's so much about Lorca that I think I've probably internalized with my own work, particularly his declamatory, almost oratorial, sentence structure--it's like he's performing out loud, addressing the reader directly, striking a pose he never lets slip until each poem's end. The thing I find most fascinating about him is his tendency to treat metaphor as though it was description, to omit "like" and "as if/as though" entirely, to treat his mental landscape and the images conjured therein as though they were as physically solid as the touch of earth, the taste of fruit, the towers of Grenada.
Because I was so hypnotized by his work, I didn't put myself out to discover anything about his actual background for years--his proud, flamboyant homosexuality, his firey politics, his disappearance during the Spanish Civil War, the likelihood and rumours about his death as the hands of the Garda Civil. Now I associate him in some degree with Guillermo del Toro's movies set during the same time-period, like The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, both of which I think he might have loved.
At any rate...if you haven't read any Lorca, go do so! But here's another of my favourite poems of his, to tide you over:
Suicide
(Perhaps because he did not know his geometry.)
At ten one morning
the youth forgot.
His heart was growing full
of broken wings and artificial flowers.
He noted in his mouth
but one small word was left.
When he removed his gloves, a fine
thin ash fell from his hands.
From the balcony he saw a tower.
He felt himself both balcony and tower.
Of course he saw how in its frame
the stopped clock observed him.
He saw his shadow stretched out still
upon the silken white divan.
And the boy, rigid, geometric,
broke the mirror with an axe.
When it broke, one huge stream of shadow
flooded his chimeric chamber.
*Both poems translated by Edwin Honig
Happy Birthday, Lorca!
I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.
I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.
Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.
For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
As it turned out, my Mom actually had a book of Lorca's poetry left over from when she'd appeared in his play Blood Wedding. It was laid out with the original Spanish text on one side and the translated text on the other, for easy comparison, which I found fascinating.
There's so much about Lorca that I think I've probably internalized with my own work, particularly his declamatory, almost oratorial, sentence structure--it's like he's performing out loud, addressing the reader directly, striking a pose he never lets slip until each poem's end. The thing I find most fascinating about him is his tendency to treat metaphor as though it was description, to omit "like" and "as if/as though" entirely, to treat his mental landscape and the images conjured therein as though they were as physically solid as the touch of earth, the taste of fruit, the towers of Grenada.
Because I was so hypnotized by his work, I didn't put myself out to discover anything about his actual background for years--his proud, flamboyant homosexuality, his firey politics, his disappearance during the Spanish Civil War, the likelihood and rumours about his death as the hands of the Garda Civil. Now I associate him in some degree with Guillermo del Toro's movies set during the same time-period, like The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, both of which I think he might have loved.
At any rate...if you haven't read any Lorca, go do so! But here's another of my favourite poems of his, to tide you over:
Suicide
(Perhaps because he did not know his geometry.)
At ten one morning
the youth forgot.
His heart was growing full
of broken wings and artificial flowers.
He noted in his mouth
but one small word was left.
When he removed his gloves, a fine
thin ash fell from his hands.
From the balcony he saw a tower.
He felt himself both balcony and tower.
Of course he saw how in its frame
the stopped clock observed him.
He saw his shadow stretched out still
upon the silken white divan.
And the boy, rigid, geometric,
broke the mirror with an axe.
When it broke, one huge stream of shadow
flooded his chimeric chamber.
*Both poems translated by Edwin Honig
Happy Birthday, Lorca!
