The Poetic Universe of Federico García Lorca
Tradition and Modernity
The poet embodies the ancient culture of his people and embraces the lyrical tradition, incorporating technical innovations of the avant-garde. This results in a fusion of popular references, lyrical elements, and visual artistry. Lorca’s poetry, rooted in oral tradition, draws inspiration from Andalusian flamenco song. He blends traditional elements with imaginative creations, resulting in original works characterized by the irrational. Lorca maintains tradition while embracing innovation.
Lorca and Surrealism
Lorca’s association with Surrealism is debated. His poetic language—sensuality, metaphor, symbolism of popular roots, personal references, and ellipsis—connects his poetic universe with the Baroque. Two phases are distinguishable: a vague surrealism before 1928, and a more radical surrealism from 1928 to 1931 (evident in Poet in New York). This natural evolution led to a more violent language expressing the frustration, brutality, and death that preoccupied him.
Mythical and Symbolic Poetry
Lorca’s poetry presents a mysterious universe with ancient instincts and atavistic forces projected through myth. His vision of Andalusia is magical and symbolic, with words imbued with mythical significance. Lorca viewed his existence as a question requiring a poetic response. His move to New York disrupted his spontaneous communication with the world, causing positive symbols to succumb to hostile ones (e.g., “four pillars of slime”).
The Tragedy
Lorca’s world is tragic and violent, with a tremor that intensifies his poetry. Andalusia evokes a unique sadness, prone to rebellion and tears. There’s sadness for life’s transience and the reality of death, which presides over his poetic universe, stained with blood and violent deaths. Life is truncated. An obsession with knives, razors, and blades carries a mythical component. Tragedy permeates his work. Beyond neopopularismo, a less visceral shade emerges. The mythical aura gives way to the sordid and disgusting, though death remains present.
Love and Sex
Love’s passion is an essential life force. Love and death are intertwined. Sex is an irresistible Dionysian impulse. Lorca is obsessed with fertility and pained by sterility. The inability to perpetuate the species adds a tragic dimension. The prevailing desolation culminates in the symbol of infertility. Sexually frustrated characters appear. Lorca speaks from personal experience (“anxious desire to embrace”). From 1929, love’s expression becomes more tormented, culminating in Poet in New York and Sonnets of Dark Love, filled with anxiety-laden imagery.
Social Concern
Lorca demonstrates solidarity with the oppressed, reflecting a growing social awareness. He is drawn to the aesthetic possibilities of this theme. Outsiders symbolize human loneliness, with the exotic becoming an erotic sublimation. He explores the conflict between nature and civilization, instinct and repression, condemning greedy white men and American girls, representing a fallen world. He encourages rebellion among blacks, uniting them (“the waiters and cooks and those who clean wounds with the language of the millionaires…”).
Metrical Form
Lorca’s verse draws from traditional sources (popular and cultured) while embracing freedom. He fluctuates between fixed traditional forms and free verse. Popular poetry uses octosyllabic verse, while lyric theater uses lines of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 syllables. Educated tradition favors Alexandrine and pentameter lines, sometimes using classical forms like sonnets. Poet in New York features free verse mixed with traditional rhythms. Lorca’s musical education contributes to his rhythmic intuition and mastery of sound combinations.
Language and Style
Lorca employs a wide range of rhetorical devices (metaphors, similes, epithets, transferred adjectives, alliteration, parallelistic structures). Metaphor is central; all sensations originate and end in metaphor. Personification of natural elements connects humanity with the world’s essence.
Symbols
Symbols are key to Lorca’s mythical universe, representing the conflict between life and death. They hold multiple, sometimes contradictory, meanings. Recurring symbols include the moon (death, fertility, eroticism), metal (death, conflict, danger), ominous symbols (green, black, cisterns, wells, herbs, night, shadows), stagnant water (evil), flowing liquid (positive, fertile, erotic), the horse (Roma, life’s pursuit, masculine, erotic, violent), blood (tragedy, death), wind (fateful), closed or open gates (repression or revolution), broken limbs (violence), emptiness (meaningless world), nature (life, liberty), and agents of civilization (machines, skyscrapers) representing death and slavery.