Literary Criticism And Discussion Forum The poetry of Federecio Garcia..

Samuel Ferris

The poetry of Federecio Garcia Lorca

14 Years Ago

Lorca is one of my favorite poets. So i thought i would write something and see if anybody else is interested in contributing.

Lorca was a good friend of Spanish composer Manuel De Falla and a well trained amateur pianist himself. He not only composed his own piano music, but was interested in taking musical forms and using them in his poetry. Also among his circle of friends was Salvador Dali; Both Dali, and De Falla had considerable impact on Lorcas developing aesthetic.

There is a long history of aesthetic ideas diffusing from one artistic medium to another. The impressionist music of which Debussy and Ravel are best known for took inspiration from the paintings of Monet, Degas, and Renoir, at the same time the symbolist movement in poetry had taken root in the French poets Mallarme, Baudelair, and Paul Verlain. At the beginning of the 20th century there was a revival of nationlism in the arts. In music composers such as Dvorak, Kodaly, Donany, Bella Bartok, Leos Janacek (strange note, im friends with his grandaughter Holly, dont know how that happened) and many more, became interested in fusing the folk music of there countries into there own aesthetics. Bartok and Kodaly were some of the first ethnomusicologist traveling the countryside recording and transcribing the Magyar music of Hungary. Bartok in particular was unconcerned with merely imitating the folk style but instead was interested in fusing it with his own to create a new aesthetic. Bartoks view is mirrored in the conversations between Lorca and De Falla.

Lorca and De Falla were interested in capturing the essence and revitalizing the music of Andalusia called cante Jando, more popularly know as Andalusian Flamenco. Cante Jando has its origins primarily in Indian, moorish, and Byzantium church music. The influence of this music on Lorca is undeniable. His set of poems title "Poem of the Deep Song" is heavily influenced by this music and was written at the time that he and De Falla were collecting and preserving cante jando. Lorca writes, we should never want to copy there ineffable modulations; we can do nothing but blur them. Simply because of education." Lorca was concerned with distilling the quintessence of the poetry and fusing it with his own style, similarly to Bartok. Poem of the Deep Song embodies this ideal. It takes the form of a sequence of short poems that are intended to capture the majestic qualities of cante jando. Lorca compresses a world of possibilities into just a few well chosen lines. His style is an exultation of the metaphor as the high priest of modern poetry. Its simplicity and sense of mystery engulf the reader in Lorcas world of "lost possibilities" and unquenchable longings.

THE SILENCE

Listen my child, to the silence.

An undulating silence,

a silence

that turns valleys and echoes slippery,

bends foreheads

toward the ground.

(from the poems of the deep song)

if anybody is interested ill post more poems and maybe analyze a few to the best of my abilities.