ethical prejudice which characterizedEl Cidand
theBook of Good Love. The same power also to
make poetry of the here and the now. The same
realism, the same mounting of the real, nothing
more real than a bullfighter, mounting as he is,
not as one might wish him to be, directly up, up
into the light which poetry accepts and recasts.
That is Lorca....
Lorca honored Spain, as one honors a
check, the instinctive rightness of the Spanish
people, the people themselves who have pre-
served their basic attitude toward life in the tra-
ditional poetic forms. He has shown that these
modes, this old taste, are susceptible of all the
delicate shadings—without losing the touch of
reality—which at times in their history have been
denied them. In such ‘‘obscurities’’ of the words
as in the finalromancesin his book, the historical
pieces addressed to the Saints, he has shown how
the modern completes the old modes ofThe Cid
andThe Book of Good Love. He has carried to
success the battles which Juan de Mena began
and Go ́ngora continued.
Federico Garcı ́a Lorca, born in 1899 in the
vicinity of Granada, produced a number of out-
standing works in lyric poetry, drama and prose
between his eighteenth year and the time of his
death in 1936 at the age of thirty-seven. He was
a pianist, the organizer of a dramatic troupe,
and a distinguished folklorist of Spanish popular
songs of great distinction.
Many stories are told of him. He was loved
by the people. His murder by the Fascist firing
squad in Granada is perhaps as he would have
wished it to be: To die on the horns of the bull—
if a man does not put his sword first through its
heart. Like most men of genius he went about
little recognized during his life but he has left us
a weapon by which to defend our thought and
our beliefs, a modern faith which though it may
still be little more than vaguely sensed in the rest
of the world is awake today in old Spain, in proud
defiance of destruction there. By that Lorca lives.
Source:William Carlos Williams, ‘‘Federico Garcia Lorca,’’
inKenyon Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1939, pp. 148–58.
Sources
Anderson, Andrew A., ‘‘Federico Garcı ́a Lorca,’’ in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 108,Twentieth-
Century Spanish Poets, First Series, edited by Michael
L. Perna, Gale Research, 1991, pp. 134–61.
Boyle, Peter, ‘‘Some Notes on the Poetry of Federico
Garcı ́aLorca,’’inSoutherly, Spring–Summer 1999, p. 198.
Campbell, Roy, ‘‘Sound, Nature, Imagery, and the
Theme of Death in Lorca’s Works,’’ inLorca: An Appre-
ciation of His Poetry, Yale University Press, 1952.
Central Intelligence Agency,World Factbook, s.v. ‘‘Spain,’’
December 18, 2008, https://www.cia.gov/library/publica
tions/the-world-factbook/geos/sp.html (accessed January
15, 2009).
Dempsey, Amy,Art in the Modern Era: A Guide to Styles,
Schools, & Movements, Harry N. Abrams, 2002.
Gibson, Ian,Federico Garcı ́a Lorca: A Life, 1997.
Gonza ́lez-Gerth, Miguel, ‘‘The Tragic Symbolism of
Federico Garcı ́a Lorca,’’ in theTexas Quarterly, Vol.
13, No. 2, Summer 1970, pp. 56–63.
Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth,On Death and Dying, updated
edition, Touchstone, 1997.
Lorca, Federico, Garcı ́a, ‘‘Lament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez
Mejı ́as,’’ inThe Selected Poems of Federico Garcı ́a Lorca,
edited by Francisco Garcı ́a Lorca and Donald M. Allen,
New Directions, 2005, pp. 137–49.
Preston, Paul,The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Rev-
olution, and Revenge, revised and expanded edition,
W. W. Norton, 2007.Further Reading
Hemingway, Ernest,Death in the Afternoon, Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1996.
Originally published in 1932, this nonfiction trea-
tise on and about bullfighting is still considered a
landmark book on the topic. Hailed as a great
American author, Hemingway was a consum-
mate fan of the sport, and he eloquently cham-
pions the art of bullfighting in this volume.
Oppenheimer, Helen,Lorca—The Drawings: Their Rela-
tion to the Poet’s Life and Work, F. Watts, 1987.
This biocritical collection of Lorca’s illustrations
explores the author’s drawings in light of his
writing and his personal life. The volume provides
interesting insight into Lorca and his oeuvre.
Resnick, Seymour, and Jeanne Pasmantier, eds.,Nine
Centuries of Spanish Literature: Nueve siglos de literatura
espan ̃ola: A Dual-Language Anthology, Dover, 1994.
This comprehensive bilingual anthology is an
excellent introduction to Spanish literature dat-
ing from medieval times to the twentieth century.
The volume includes poetry, drama, and prose.
Rilke, Rainer Maria,Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition,
translated by Edward Snow, North Point Press, 2001.
For a different take on the elegiac form, read
Rilke’s famous cycle of elegies. Written between
1912 and 1922, the collection is a landmark
book in modern poetry.Lament for Ignacio Sa ́nchez Mejı ́as