uniform in its presentation, changing from bro-
ken and frantic stanzas to neat and near-uniform
quatrains. This change in form may reflect the
emotional state of the speaker: calm where he is
calm, distressed where he is distressed. This pro-
gression, this split in form and tone between the
first two sections and the last two sections, con-
tributes to a sense of time and movement
throughout the lament. While the narrative is
not necessarily a linear through line, neither are
the stages of grief. Time moves but does not
move. It centers around the death but then refer-
ences the funeral and the act of mourning. It
returns to the death. It begins with a sheet in
the first few lines of section 1, and then halfway
through section 3 a shroud is finally folded over
the matador’s body. Lorca’s ‘‘Lament for Igna-
cio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as’’ is in and of itself an act of
mourning. Therefore, like Kubler-Ross’s stages
of grief, it can hardly be held to a linear account.
Source:Leah Tieger, Critical Essay on ‘‘Lament for Igna-
cio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as,’’ inPoetry for Students, Gale, Cen-
gage Learning, 2010.
William Carlos Williams
In the following excerpt, American poet William
Carlos Williams illuminates Lorca’s influences and
identifies ‘‘Lament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as’’ as
Lorca’s greatest poem.
In 1936 Lorca was dragged through the streets
of Granada to face the Fascist firing squad. The
reasons were not obvious. He was not active in
Leftist circles; but he was a power—he was a man
of the people. His books were burned.
There are two great traditional schools of
Spanish poetry, one leaning heavily upon world
literature and another stemming exclusively
from Iberian sources.
Lorca was child of the latter, so much so that
he is often, as if slightly to disparage him, spoken
of as a popular poet. Popular he was as no poet
in Spain has been since the time of Lope de Vega.
He belonged to the people and when they were
attacked he was attacked by the same forces. But
he was also champion of a school.
The sources whence Lorca drew his strength
are at the beginnings of Spanish literature. In the
epic conflict which the Spanish maintained in
over four thousand battles for the reconquest
of the Peninsula from the Moors, there stands
out an invincible leader who was, and continues
to be in the memory of the people, the great
national hero: Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, calledEl
Cid Campeador. His popularity is justified not
only by reason of his qualities as a man of audac-
ity and power but also for his having been the
champion of popular liberties in face of the
kings, one who disdained and despised their sov-
ereignty under the dictates of reason and pro-
tected the people. The periods of the greatest
deeds of this hero make up theCantar de Mio
CidorPoema del Cid, the oldest work that sur-
vives in the Castilian tongue. The types are
intensely human, the descriptions rapid and
concrete:
Martin Antolinez mano metio al espada:
Relumbra tod’ el campo.
The flash of a sword lights the whole field.
ThisSong of My Cidwas written, tradition
says, by one of his loyal followers, not more than
forty years after the death of the hero it celebra-
tes: and there Spanish literature gives a first and
striking proof of its ability to make poetry out of
the here and the now. This quality it has never
lost. Lorca knew it in hisLament for Ignacio
Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as.
Not only isPoema del Cidthe first preserved
to the Castilian language but it sets at once
the standard in point of form for all Spanish
poetry to follow. Sometimes out of favor but
always in the background, its meters have
become imbedded inextricably in the songs of
the people—and there is no western poetry in
which the popular has a greater bulk and signifi-
cance than the Spanish. Its line is famous. It is of
sixteen syllables assonanced sometimes for long
periods on the same vowel. This line, divided in
half as usually written, becomes the basis for the
romanceor ballad, many of theromances viejos
being, in all probability, as old asPoema del Cid
itself or even older. It was a form much used by
Lorca whose reassertion of its structural line,
unchanged, forms the basis for his work.
Writing in the old meter eight hundred or
a thousand years perhaps after its invention,WITHOUT READING LORCA ALOUD THE REAL
ESSENCE OF THE OLD AND THE NEW SPANISH
POETRY CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD.’’Lament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as