artistic themes

• If there is no love, there can only be death
• Life and death

background

• Open about sexuality and politics
• From Andalusia
• Passion for music
• The Residence (Residencia de Estudiantes)
  • Theatrical performance
  • To bring youth together in cultural intellectual environment
• Musician before writing
• Surrealism 1920s Spain
  • Avant-garde movements in Europe after WWI
    • Cubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism: new ways of looking at the world
• Generation of '98
• Generation of '27
  • Seville Meeting
  • Vincente Aleixandre (Nobel 1977)
  • Luis Cernuda
  • Homage to Luis de Góngora's 300th anniversary of his death
  • 1898 change
  • Past and future of Spanish poetry society
• 1929–30: trip to Americas
  • New York
    • Fantasizes about how nature will one day wreak retribution on the metropolis
    • Denounces capitalism
    • Manufactures a rhetoric of revolt
    • Solidarity with African Americans
    • Self Portrait in NYC
  • Cuba
• The Fable and Round of the Three Friends, 1929
  • Wrote about his own demise
• Spain's second Republic is proclaimed in 1931
• Director of La Barraca, 1932 - Spain
  • Directed many plays by Lope de Vega
• The Left wins the election in 1936
  • Lorca signs anti-fascist manifesto
    • Franco received help from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939))
  • Attacks right for indifference
    • Suffering of poor and less fortunate
  • Uses literature as protest → The House of Bernarda Alba
• Executed August 18, 1936 without trial
  • Potential reasons
    • Political beliefs
      • Association with Republican ideals
    • Social views
      • Openly critical of traditional norms
    • Personal vendettas
      • Personal disputes with individuals in power in Granada (Nationalist-controlled)
        • Thought it might be safer there but it had been taken over
    • Homosexuality
  • Body still not found
• Andalusian writers close to him received prize
  • Juan Ramón Jiménez, 1956
  • Vincente Aleixandre, 1977
  • Exiled from Franco's dictatorship
    • Lorca did not have time and wrong time wrong place
• Leader of generation
  • Poetry
  • Most important playwright in 20th century Spanish-speaking world

relations

• Good friends with Salvador Dalí
  • Ode to Salvador Dalí
• Luis Buñuel, filmmaker
  • An Andalusian Dog
    • Trying to be provocative
• La Argentinita
  • Flamenco dancer and singer

works and influences

• Famous in 1920s for poetic work
• Poema del cante jondo (Poems of Deep Song), 1921 – 1931
  • Andalusian cultural essence established in poetry
  • Intersection of love and death as basic themes of Spanish life and culture (🔗 The Agony of Eros)
    • Dichotomy of love and death essential part of cultural works
    • Bullfighting
      • Liked it due to his obsession with death
        • You don't know at what moment you will bear witness to death
      • Lament for the Death of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1934)
  • Closely tied to Flamenco
• First to include Romani individuals in plays and poems
  • Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads)
    • Defend them against Spanish cruelty
  • Stereotypes: stealing babies
  • Expressed real problems
• Romani linked to development of music
  • Flamenco music
    • Created by minorities who met in the suburbs
• Defender of folk music
• Cafés cantantes
  • Where Flamenco could meet people of all classes

from poet to playwright

• Decides to focus on theater when Spain's second Republic is proclaimed in 1931
• Write about "the topics and issues people are afraid to address" (1934)
• Goal: to expose moral ills of Spain

references

• Antonio Rueda