biography
Federico Garcí​a Lorca was born on June 5, 1898, in the countryside of Spain's Granada province. He was the oldest brother of four children in an upper-middle-class family. His father was a wealthy landowner, and his mother worked as a schoolteacher. At their home in rural Andalusia, Lorca was"surrounded by images and social conditions that influenced his work" later in life (5). At age 10, he moved to the city of Granada, where he stayed through university, where he only managed to graduate after 9 years due to his obsession (and talent) with playing the piano. After university, Lorca began his residency in Madrid, choosing to live in the Residencia de Estudiantes in 1919. The Residencia, a "prestigious and socially progressive men's residence hall," housed many other famous artists at the time, such as Salvador Dalí. Lorca met Dalí here, and an affair between the two men began (5). While in Madrid, Lorca began his career as a poet and playwright, with a career that spanned continents, genres, and aesthetic forms. Lorca "resurrected and revitalized the most basic strains of Spanish poetry and theatre," as he combined basic forms with the experiments of the avant-garde (5). While his career only lasted nineteen years, Lorca is credited with starting the second Golden Age of Spanish theatre (5). Unfortunately, Lorca's inspiring career was cut short with the start of the Spanish Civil War. On August 16, 1936, Nationalist forces arrested and imprisoned Lorca without trial because of his liberal views and rumors of homosexuality. He was executed by a Nationalist firing squad a few days later. Despite this tragic end, Lorca's life contributed numerous advances for Spanish theater in both style and the inclusion of oppressed identities.
I'M
FEDERICO
GARCí​A
LORCA.
PLAYWRIGHT. POET. SPANIARD.
ATTRIBUTES
Federico Garcí​a Lorca, a crucial figure in Spanish literary and theatre history of the pre-Franco 20th century, used his identity to inspire his works and to highlight social issues of his time. As a homosexual man in a society which emphasized manliness, or machismo, the social plight of women and gypsies in Spanish society became outlets for Lorca to express his own views on stigmatized identities. Lorca's identity as a gay man allowed him to "understand women's condition and to empathize with it," showing this empathy through his depiction of female characters (2). This identity also allowed Lorca to identify with the Spanish gypsies' "perceived marginality" in society, as gay men were also seen as "deviant" (3). Additionally, living in a cultural center like Madrid during the 1920s put Lorca in contact with many key figures of the Spanish avant-garde and feminist movements (2). These influences can be seen through Lorca's close connection with women like Concha Méndez and Margarita Nelken, to artists like Salvador Dalí (2). Moreover, Lorca's upbringing in pastoral Andalusia always remained with him and became a counterpoint to his life in big cities. A devoted man, Lorca excelled in any art form he tried, from piano to poetry to plays. Lorca's work was captivating, but so was he. Audiences came not only for his work but for the man himself, as Lorca "preferred to perform his poems and plays," drawing many supporters to experience his art (5).
society
The simplest way to describe early 20th-century Spanish society is machismo culture. Machismo has been a trend in Spanish society for a long time, traveled to Latin America through the Spanish colonies, and even remains in Spanish culture today. This manly, aggressive culture is that in which Lorca, a homosexual man, writes. In Lorca's society, it was "possible to brag publicly and with impunity about having killed someone 'for being queer'" (4). In machismo culture, anyone considered "unmanly" was allocated a lower position in society, such as women, gay men, and gitanos. Due to this stigma against being unmasculine, Spanish Lorquistas "refused to speak about [Lorca's homosexuality], fleeing from it (in public, of course) as if one were dealing with something terrible, or criminal" (4). Only more recently has Lorca's homosexual identity been fully embraced. In addition to stigmatizing gay men, machismo culture strictly divided the sexes, as femininity was something to be shunned. In Lorca's Granada, social life was divided by gender (2). However, the Spanish feminist movement had been increasing in strength beginning in the 1890s, and women made a huge leap forward by joining the workforce during World War 1 (2). Lorca's support of the feminist movement is easily seen in his plays, especially The House of Bernarda Alba, as he consistently gives his female characters a powerful voice. Finally, Spanish society at the beginning of the 20th-century blamed the gitano for all of society's problems. Spanish culture possessed a tradition of demeaning gitanos and flamenco culture in order to uplift the national identity and traditional morals of Spanish society (3). This trend of flamenquismo played into a larger conservative trend in Europe to return to a strict national identity to create unity, often influenced by biology and race (3). This movement in Europe began as a response to the rise of modern technology and so-called "degeneration" of society's values, which the Spanish blamed on the gitanos (3). In this culture of oppression, Lorca provided a friendly voice, as he produced feminist literature as well as traditional gitano poems and music.
Federico García Lorca's collection of writing contains a large number of works, most famously his poetry collections Romancero gitano and Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, as well as his Andalusian trilogy, Yerma, Bodas de Sangre, and La Casa de Bernarda Alba. In this summary, Lorca's plays are given more focus due to this project's focus on theatre. Lorca's works span genres and aesthetic forms but tend to express the same themes of social issues, such as marriage, work, and "otherness" consistently. Furthermore, Lorca wrote his female characters as complex and as poetic as his male characters (2). Lorca's play with genres normally occurred in his poetry, as his theatre generally upheld a more traditional practice. In his experimentation with style, Lorca used the modernist tradition of "disrupted metric patterns," as well as surrealist and symbolist techniques, in order to subvert the traditional meaning of Spanish religious and cultural icons (3). Lorca's first book, Impresiones y paisajes (Impressions and Places, 1918) and his first poetry collection both followed modernist tradition (5). His Romancero gitano of 1928 provides a good example of Lorca's symbolist and synesthesia-focused writings, as well as his support of the gitanos (3). Aside from his more avant-garde techniques, Lorca's early writing was influenced by Shakespeare, Goethe, Antonio Machado, and Rubén Darío, the father of Hispanic Modernismo, a version of late Romanticism (5). In 1920, Lorca wrote his first play, a symbolist drama about a lovesick cockroach called El maleficio de la mariposa (The Butterfly's Evil Spell). His next play, Mariana Pineda, crossed over into surrealism with Salvador Dalí in charge of the set design. In 1928, Lorca published his Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads), inspired by the traditional romance, a medieval Spanish ballad. This poetry collection brought Lorca to national attention, and its first edition sold out in a year (5). However, this success coincided with the end of Lorca's affair with Dalí (5). Finally, his Andalusian trilogy of plays is what Lorca is most remembered for in the theatre. His first major success in the theatre was with Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding). The other plays of this trilogy, Yerma (1934) and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (1936), were written in the last two years of his life. La Casa de Bernarda Alba was published posthumously and did not premiere until 1945, as the play was "looked upon with suspicion during the Franco era" due to its liberal views and portrayal of women (1). However, after its premiere, this play became Lorca's most frequently reproduced play due to its universal focus on the plight of women.
his works
theatre of his time
During the time Lorca wrote, the Spanish traditional form of theatre remained but at the same time, the avant-garde movement in Europe flourished, inspiring Lorca to incorporate all these styles in his works at different times. Lorca upheld Spanish tradition in his plays, choosing to maintain a more realist style and work with the themes of "the capriciousness of time, the destructive powers of love and death, and the phantoms of identity, art, childhood, and sex" (5). However, he did break with tradition in the way he covered these themes. In the 1920s, "virulent antifeminist backlash among Spanish male writers" caused many plays to appear more like "angry young men" plays (2). This lack of female inclusion still helped to propel the feminist movement due to the critiques that inevitably sprang from this theatre. Lorca, on the other hand, addressed the issues with women's status in Spanish society in his plays, revealing "an acute awareness...regarding class, education, work, and marriage" (2). Lorca also used his theatre to speak out for gitanos, and he was the first theatermaker to bring the issues and culture of the gitanos to the major artistic and intellectual world (3). Outside of social issues, Lorca was involved with almost every movement of the theatre of his time. In the early 1920s, Lorca's poetry incorporated Spanish folk song, Japanese haiku, and avant-garde traditions. He called these poetry collections his thematic suites. These suites successfully combined traditional cante jando (Andalusian gitano songs) and avant-garde writing styles (5). During his affair with Dalí, Lorca experimented with surrealism and became a part of Spain's "Generation of 1927, an avant-garde poetry group in Spain (5). Lorca even incorporated theater practices from outside of Spain, as his travels to the United States and Cuba inspired much of his poetry and writing style. Lorca's Poeta en New York (Poet in New York) used a series of hallucinatory images and free verse, and Lorca was greatly influenced by the works of Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, and Edgar Allen Poe (5). In Cuba, Lorca wrote his play El público (The Public), an expressionist play that explored "homosexual passion" (5). Finally, Lorca reacted against the dehumanization trend in art after he met Pablo Neruda, and decided to rehumanize his work by addressing human subjects and feelings (5). Lorca interacted constantly with the theatre of his time, choosing to accept and reject conventions as he saw fit.