Life and work of Federico García Lorca


Why did you, Spain,
look to the sky,
When Garcia Lorca was
led to be shot?
N. Aseev

August 19, 1936, eight kilometers from Granada, was shot by the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The boundaries of his life – as short as Pushkin’s – were marked by the dates of national catastrophes: 1898-1936. “My childhood is a village and a field, shepherds, the sky, a solitude,” the poet said, and his whole life is covered with the gleam of childhood. His name began to sound in 1922, when a festival of Andalusian folk song was held in Granada, the cante jondo. And Lorca created the wandering university theater “Balagan”.

Lorca did not belong to any of the political parties. He said about his convictions: “Love for the earth has awakened me as an artist in me, the land is inseparable from poverty, and I like poverty more than anything in the world.” Not poverty, frazzled and greedy, but poverty,

noble, touching, simple, like black bread “. Explaining his favorite book “Gypsy romance”, Lorca said: “Granada taught me to be with those who are being persecuted: with gypsies, negroes, Jews, Moors.” He said that on this earth will be with those who have nothing. People who have received education and who did not know the needs are called upon to sacrifice. “Lorca saw the poet’s mission as experiencing someone else’s pain as his own and always accepting the side of the outcast.” This “all-humanity” makes his work relevant to people of different nationalities. “I am a brother to all people and disgusting to me those who love their homeland blindly and sacrifice themselves to empty nationalist ideals.” Such words were not forgiven in Spain in 1936.

The first thing that the Spanish fascists did when they came to power – they began to destroy the intelligentsia, because they were afraid of those who could “harm” the regime with a word. “The death of the intelligentsia!” This was the slogan of the Franco-Spanish

fascists. They shot doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists, Arab scientists, the president of the Medical Academy and many others. For three war years in Granada, 6 thousand people were shot.

In the books of Lorca in the 1920s – “Poem about Kante Hondo” and “Songs”, his own, unique voice was already heard. In the life of Lorca music came in as a child: in the family all sang. Andalusian song culture is one of the oldest in Europe.

For great poets, whether Lope de Vega, Machado or Lorca, folk poetry was not a “naive” art, but a high and unattainable example. “Is not it a miracle,” Lorca said, “that an unknown folk poet in three or four lines holds all the wealth of the higher ups of the human soul?” Lorca managed to revive and transform the ancient, primordially Spanish genre – romance.

So the sunset is crying for the dawn,
So the arrow is crying without a goal,
So the glowing sand is crying
About the cool beauty of the camellias.

Lorca’s poetic world is distinguished by deep inner drama, it is no coincidence that, apart from the lyrics, he also wrote highly controversial plays.

“The most sad joy is to be a poet, everything else does not count, even death,” Lorca said. He seemed to foresee his fate. The profession of the poet brought him death. “Garcia Lorca was killed not because they did not know who he was, but for the fact that it was HE… He was killed by fascism,” wrote another poet, Cuban Nicholas Guillen.


1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Life and work of Federico García Lorca