The Artistic Legacy of Federico Garcia Lorca
Federico Garcia Lorca: His work expresses his personality: intense vitality, the anxious shadow of death, and constant dualities: passion and technique, inspiration and work, the aesthetic and the human, popular and religious, traditional and avant-garde. His tragic fate, frustration, loneliness, and death are prevalent themes. Lorca expresses the pain of living, both his own and that of others, and his poetry tends to be quite dramatic.
First Stage: Youth and Early Works
Influenced by Bécquer and Antonio Machado, his early works include Poema del Cante Flamenco and Gypsy Ballads, which mark a step towards renewal. The penalty is the real star of this tragic and mythic Andalusia.
Second Phase: Influence of Travel
As a result of his travels to the US and Cuba, Poet in New York City becomes a symbol of a civilization in which the dehumanized man is just a piece of the machinery. Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías serves as an elegy for the death of his friend, the writer and torero, combining the most traditional and avant-garde elements.
Influence of Luis Cernuda
The voice of the G.27 reveals a more intimate romantic conflict arising between reality and desire. He formally rejected the excessive sound of verse and rhetorical excesses. His language is natural and colloquial.
Four Stages of Development
- Early Stage: A search for a personal tone influenced by Surrealism, reflected after his stay in France (e.g., A River, Love).
- Civil War Phase: Vital concerns stemming from historical circumstances.
- Exile Stage: Loneliness, bitterness, and nostalgia lead to more refined poetry.
- Influence of Vicente Aleixandre: Surrealism is evident in the use of images and free verse.
Three Levels of Poetry
- Physical Cycle: A stage of pure poetry and surrealism.
- Human Cycle: Simpler poetry with metaphysical musings.
- Tone Cycle: More surreal and complex lines, accepting death without fear.
Dámaso Alonso’s Contribution
His poetry is intermittent, going through a lengthy period of inactivity until he finds his poetic authenticity during the war. Pre-war poetry includes The Wind and the Verse (simple and transparent poetry). Post-Civil War poetry, such as Children of Wrath, serves as a protest against a senseless world ruled by chaos and cruelty.
The Prose of the G.27
The G.27 is not limited to poetry. Notable figures include Aub, Ayala, and Fernandez. The narrative has a cutting-edge experimental phase, as seen in Estación, Roundtrip by Rosa Chacel. Pedro Salinas wrote books of short stories, advocating for reading, literature, and values threatened by society.
Theater of the G.27
The theater of the G.27 is characterized by combining the popular and avant-garde. Pedro Salinas composed two long pieces of symbolic nature: Judith and the Tyrant and The Director, along with works in a single event: The Upper Atmosphere. Rafael Alberti wrote two very different pre-war works reflecting personal and political crises.
Contributions of Miguel Hernández
He started with a morality play in verse, taurine, and later transitioned to tragedy and social melodrama, creating allegorical drama about his own struggles at the front.
Theater of Federico Garcia Lorca
Lorca’s theater combines the dramatic and lyrical, prose and verse, making it a form of poetic drama. The central theme of Lorca’s theater has been defined as the myth of impossible desire, creating characters whose passions, hopes, and desires are confronted with an implacable fate that condemns them to suffer. Most of his characters are women, and he understands theater as a total show (including music and decoration).
Three Stages of Lorca’s Theater
- Early Stage: Includes The Curse of the Butterfly (modernist influence, raising unattainable love), Cycle of Farce (farces for puppets), and Mariana Pineda.
- Avant-Garde Stage: Resulting from personal and artistic crises, this cycle includes impossible comedies or mysteries (e.g., The Public).
- Cycle of Great Tragedies and Dramas: Presents universal themes through specific stories, mixing prose and poetry with many symbolic elements (e.g., Blood Wedding, Yerma, Doña Rosita the Spinster in prose and verse, and The House of Bernarda Alba in prose).