Biography of Federico García Lorca | Spanish dramatist and poet.

(Source jeans, Spain, 1898 - Víznar, id., 1936) Spanish dramatist and poet. Early childhood by Federico García Lorca passed in the rural environment of the small Grenadian village, then go to study in a school of Almeria.

He continued his studies at the University of Granada: he studied philosophy and literature and graduated in law. At the University he became friends with Manuel de Falla, who exerted a great influence on him, passing his love of folklore and popular.

Federico García Lorca at age 18

From 1919, he settled in Madrid, at the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he met Juan Ramón Jiménez and Machado, and befriended poets of his generation, artists such as Buñuel and Dalí. In this environment, Lorca was dedicated with passion not only poetry, but also to music and drawing, and became interested in theatre. However, his first play, the curse of the butterfly, was a failure.

In 1921 he published his first work in verse, book of poems, with which, despite accusing the influences of romantic and modernist, got the attention. However, the recognition and the literary success of Federico García Lorca arrived with the publication, in 1927, songs and, above all, applauded and continued performances in Madrid of Mariana Pineda, patriotic drama.

Between 1921 and 1924, while working on songs, wrote a play based on the Andalusian folklore, the poem of the cante jondo (published in 1931), a book already more unitary and matured, that first experiences which is a characteristic feature of his poetry: the identification with the popular and its subsequent cultured stylization, and that led to its full maturity the Romancero gitano (1928) It was an immediate success. In the popular and the cultish merged to sing to the persecuted people of Gypsies, marginal characters marked by a tragic fate. Formally, Lorca got personal, unmistakable, language that resides in the assimilation of elements and popular forms combined with bold metaphors, and a stylization of forms of pure poetry that was labeled his generation.

Following this success, Lorca traveled to New York City he lived as a scholar during the academic year 1929-1930. The impressions that the city printed on your mood materialized in poet in New York (published posthumously in 1940), a distressing chant, with echoes of social protest against the urban, mechanized civilization today. Traditional and popular forms of his earlier works give way in this one to apocalyptic visions, made of illogical and dreamlike, images that harmonize with the surrealist stream French, although always within the personal poetry of Lorca.

Again in Spain, in 1932, Federico García Lorca was appointed director of La Barraca, University Theatre Group that intended to lead to the towns of Castilla classic Theater of the Siglo de Oro. His interest in the theatre, both in its creative and broadcasting, responds to a progressive evolution towards the collective and an effort to reach people in the most direct way possible. Thus, the last years of his life devoted them to the theatre, with the exception of two books of poetry: Divan del Tamarit, collection of poems inspired by poetry caviness, and lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1936), beautiful Elegy dedicated to his friend torero, which combines the popular images of surrealist affiliation with tone.

Federico García Lorca with the actress Margarita Xirgu and
Cipriano Rivas in the presentation of Yerma (1934)

Federico García Lorca's later works are plays. Yerma (1934) is a real tragedy to classic mode, including the choir of laundresses, with its coryphaeus, which converses with the protagonist, commenting on the action. Similar is the case in Blood wedding (1933), where a real event inspired the drama of a bride who flees after her wedding with an old boyfriend (Leonardo). The flight, filled with premonitions, which death itself appears as a character, presages an end that comes saying from the first scene and that both men be killed, thus reaping the possibility of continuity of the lineage by both branches and renewing the death of the father of the groom at the hands of the family of Leonardo. In this way, the passion and the search conclude with the destruction of all the established order.

Among all of them is La Casa de Bernarda Alba (1936), where the passion for the life of the young Adela, locked in her home along with her sisters because of the mourning of her father and oppressed under the yoke of a tyrannical mother, will revolt without fear of the consequences. In this way, his passion for life will crash against the wall of incomprehension of his family concluding everything with their elimination. Together with the figure of the protagonist, highlights the series of female portraits made by the author, from the own Bernarda until confident of all old maid (La Poncia), bitter sister and envious (martyrdom) or crazy grandmother who opposes the tyranny of Bernarda.

The House of Bernarda Alba, considered his masterpiece, was also the last, since that same year, at the outbreak of the civil war, he was arrested by Franco's forces and executed ten days later, under unclear accusations, pointing to its role as poet, thinker and character susceptible of altering the 'social order'.

End of the House of Bernarda Alba
in the autograph manuscript of Lorca

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas