Federico Garcia Lorca's driving force was passion for life, reflected both in his personality and his art. This passion for life was inseparable from a rooted fear of death which became a central theme in all his work. He lived life with intensity, from the joyful exuberance of his frequent evenings of music, conversation and wine to the deep depressions to which he was subject. His vitality was evident in his lasting friendships, and the symbols that permeate his work. He embraced all art: he was poet, playwright, platform speaker, pianist, composer, guitarist, painter, stage director, set designer, film scenist and puppeteer. The development of this complex personality and vast creative output of more than twenty years was cut short when he was shot in the first few months of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).Federico Garcia Lorca was born in 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, in the South of Spain, a once fertile but by then arid region of Granada. This fact, the condition of the climate and the soil, the heat, texture and colour of the land, the constant struggle to extract life from such a land, are central and obsessive themes in Lorca's work. Deeply aware of its harshness, yet he said: "I love the land...without this love of the land, I could never have written Blood Wedding."
Passionate about the very soil of his birthplace, Lorca was passionate too about the traditions and folk culture of Granada, learning the Andalusian folklore, romances and songs from peasant women. "What would become of little rich children"—he asked—, "if it were not for the servants who put them in contact with the truth and emotion of the people." In 1922 he organised a festival of "cante jondo", the original and non-commercialised style of flamenco song. In 1928 he published Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads), full of love and death, solitude, religion, superstition and the whole cultural mythology of Andalucia. Even though this work earned him fame and respect, he had for some time suffered deep depression and he left Spain for the USA (1929-30).
Lorca's experiences in America resulted in Poeta en Nueva York which recorded how dehumanized he found this sophisticated urban civilization. Compared with the lives of the labouring poor of Andalucia, Lorca saw the people of New York impoverished, rootless, lacking identity and any sense of spirituality.
In 1930 Lorca returned to Spain which was undergoing deep political tension. However, a general election in 1931 resulted in the Second Republic and a sense of optimism. The new government initiated a number of social reforms, among which was the creation of a Ministry of Culture and Public Information. This inspired Lorca the idea of taking the Spanish classical theatre to workers and peasants in their villages. His aim was to bring theatre direct to people often considered not educated enough to appreciate it, but also, he believed that theatre would be revitalized with such a popular contact. In 1932 his theatre group La Barraca, composed of university students, toured Spain giving outdoor performances. During the four years of its existence, La Barraca brought thirteen different productions to seventy four villages and towns throughout Spain. It survived several changes in government but finally came to an end in April 1936 in the face of rapidly escalating political, social and emotional turmoil.
La Barraca and the experience of these touring
Blood Wedding was inspired in 1928 by a newspaper account of a young bride in Andalucia who abandoned her husband-to-be on their wedding day to escape with her childhood sweetheart. Lorca wrote the play in a single week in 1932. It overwhelmed its sophisticated opening night audience with its stunning combination of elemental passions, rural realism and poetic symbolism. The first two acts of Blood Wedding are in the realm of this striking rural realism. The entrance of Death and the Moon in the third act, while prefigured constantly by the words and fears of the Mother, shatters this realism and catapults the play into the symbolic. For Lorca the poet, the symbolic was the most satisfying part of the play.
The play treats certain universal themes, although it can also be seen as a veiled criticism of certain customs and "values" of Spanish society. On the surface, Blood Wedding is a tragedy that plays out the conflict between individual wishes and societal decrees and laws. It is a tragedy insofar as two of the central characters, Leonardo and the Bride, were once in love, but due to unknown impediments, were never married. Their tragedy is the tragedy of love missed. In the meantime, Leonardo has married another and the Bride is betrothed and about to be married herself. The thought of a definitive loss of his first love to another man drives Leonardo to instigate the major event of the play, which is the lovers' flight on the very day that the Bride marries.
From the very beginning the idea of tragedy and death is introduced (the knife). The groom's mother is a bitter widow who mourns the killing of her husband and son by a member of the Feliz family. The bride is excited to be marrying her wealthy husband-to-be, but she still harbors forbidden love for Leonardo Feliz, a brutish labourer to whom she had been engaged three years earlier. After the wedding ceremony the bride runs off with Leonardo, who abandons his own wife. Engraged, the scorned bridegroom runs off to find Leonardo to even the score.
Lorca's theme is based in the rigid laws of the lovers' community, which decree that Leonardo must die for his transgression. Lorca evokes the spectacle of human passion through sophisticated and often surrealistic poetic technique, elevating the love story to a tragedy of fate that the characters can not escape.
Death was Lorca's preoccupation throughout his life—his friend Dali said he spoke of it at least five times a day—Lorca perceived death as always violent. Some critics want to see the events of Blood Wedding as tragic premonitions of his own fate.
Jesus Angel Miguel Garcia, Prof., Ldo., M.A.
Director
The Spanish Institute of Manitoba
301 Park Blvd. North, Winnipeg
Canada R3P 0G8
Tel./Fax (204) 832 9893