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| Federico García Lorca |
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García
Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a
Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved
international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He
was killed by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. In 2008, a
Spanish judge opened an investigation into Lorca's death. The García Lorca
family eventually dropped objections to the excavation of a potential gravesite
near Alfacar. However, no human remains were found. Presenting a note by Alasdair
Fotheringham : Being
Poet
On
12 July 12, 1936, Spain’s most translated poet and playwright, Federico García
Lorca, left the manuscript of one of his key works, Poet In New York, on the
desk of his editor José Bergamín in Madrid with a handwritten note on top:
“Back Tomorrow”.
But
tomorrow never came. Instead of returning Lorca – part of the ‘Generation of
’27’, an avant-garde artists collective that included his friends Salvador Dali
and film-maker Luis Bunuel – went home to Granada, where he was murdered five
weeks later by General Franco’s death-squads as Spain tore itself apart in its
three-year Civil War.
As
for the Poet in New York manuscript, it was taken first to Paris then to
central America by Bergamín as he and other Republicans went on the run from
Franco. But shortly after an initial dual print run in 1940, the manuscript
disappeared, with disputes lasting for decades over the accuracy of ensuing
published versions.
Now,
for the first time, those doubts should evaporate when the 96-page manuscript –
located in 2003 when it was sold at Christies to the Federico García Lorca
Foundation for £120,000 by an unemployed Mexican actress – finally goes on public view.
As
from next Friday, 5 April, the manuscript will form part of the largest-ever
North American exhibition of García Lorca’s work, held in New York’s Public
Library and also containing drawings, photographs, letter and mementos from
Lorca’s six-month spell at Columbia University in 1929-30 such as his guitar
and library card. Coinciding with the exhibition, new English and Spanish
language versions of Poet In New York are also due to be published.
Sent
by his parents to the USA to study English and recover from an unhappy love
affair with sculptor Emilio Aladren, Lorca’s Poet in New York harshly
criticises modern-day capitalism. It is also what Lorca expert Christopher
Maurer told NBC Latino media channel was “an indictment of contemporary
civilization and a dark cry of metaphysical loneliness.”
“Lorca’s
influence on American poetry cannot be overestimated,” added Susan Bernofsky,
director of the Literarary Translation programme at Columbia University’s
School of the Arts. “Something about his imagination has proved inspirational
for many generations of writers.”
Amongst
those North Americans inspired by the author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The
House of Bernarda Alba are pop musician and artist Patti Smith, who will give a
recital at the exhibition, Canadian folk singer Leonard Cohen, who called his
daughter Lorca, and top South American poet Pablo Neruda – together with Lorca,
one of the few Hispanic poets with a mass following among English-speaking
audiences.
If
one of his greatest works will now go on public show in its most complete
version to date, the body of García Lorca himself has not been found.
Murdered
by a right-wing death squad in the first months of the 1936-39 Civil War, his
body is one of hundreds of Republican prisoners in a mass grave in the ravines
of Viznar above Granada – and one of tens of thousands who suffered the same
fate still lying in roadsides and ditches across Spain, almost 80 years after
the war ended.
(source
: independent.co.uk)
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