Federico García Lorca, the universal myth (II)

Madrid and the Students Residence (1919)

 

In 1919, one of his teachers, Fernando De los Ríos, encouraged Federico to go to Madrid to study at the Students Residence[1], and gave him a letter of recommendation for the director and another for the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez[2].

Between 1919 and 1926, Federico met many of the country’s most important writers and intellectuals at the Student Residence, including Luis Buñuel[3], Rafael Alberti[4] and Salvador Dalí[5]. But he also had difficulties, because his homosexuality caused suspicion in some colleagues.

 

[1] The Residencia de Estudiantes was the first cultural center in Spain for scientific and artistic creation and exchange in interwar Europe. Its origin lay in the innovative ideas of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, founded in 1876 by Francisco Giner de los Ríos, a pedagogue and philosopher.

[2] Spanish poet, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956, exiled in Puerto Rico due to the Spanish Civil War of 1936.

[3] Spanish film director, who went into exile in Mexico because of the Spanish Civil War of 1936.

[4] Spanish poet exiled after the Spanish Civil War.

[5] Spanish painter considered one of the leading representatives of surrealism.

 

 

Lorca with some of his colleagues in the Students Residence sitting on a sofa drinking a coffee.
Lorca with some of his colleagues in the Students Residence.

 

Lorca with Dalí (1st from left) and Luis Buñuel (3rd from left) among others standing in the street.
Lorca with Dalí (1st from left) and Luis Buñuel (3rd from left).

 

In 1921 he published his second work, Libro de poemas, a collection of 67 compositions written in adolescence and youth that deal with the loss of childhood paradise, crisis or disenchantment.

During his early years in Madrid, he composed the poems of Canciones, which were not published until 1927. In these poems, the playfulness and humor characteristic of the avant-garde movements he encountered at the Residencia de Estudiantes are evident.

 

A catastrophic premiere (1920)

 

March 22, 1920 is perhaps the only black day in his literary life. The premiere at the Teatro Eslava in Madrid of the fable El maleficio de la mariposa written in haste a few months ago, was a disaster.

The public’s protest reached the point that at the exit of the theater there was an exchange of blows between the critics and Federico’s colleagues and friends.

 

Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti with La Argentinita, the star of the play.
Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti with La Argentinita, the star of the play.

 

In this work, Lorca hid all his adolescent love anxieties: his doubts about his erotic impulses and his fears.

It was a total failure: the show was only on for four days and then was forgotten.

The curse of the butterfly meant that Lorca met Martínez Sierra, the most important theater producer, and the actress Catalina Bárcena, who, together with Margarita Xirgu and María Guerrero, formed the most important trio in Spanish theater in the first third of the 20th century. And above all to Encarnación López, La Argentinita, with whom he maintained a close friendship and with whom he would record in 1931 the five original albums of the Spanish Popular Songs cycle.

In 1920, Federico García Lorca met the composer Manuel de Falla, who had recently arrived in Granada in search of refuge and tranquility to compose. The friendship with Falla was very productive and Lorca resumed his vocation for music, it helped him fuse traditional popular music with cultured and avant-garde music.

 

Lorca (1st from the left) with Manuel de Falla (2nd from the right) and other friends. 
Lorca (1st from the left) with Manuel de Falla (2nd from the right) and other friends.

 

Summers in the Sierra Nevada of Granada

 

Starting in 1924, Federico García Lorca’s family began their summer stays in La Alpujarra (mountain of Granada).

When his commitments allowed it, Federico García Rodríguez and his four children accompanied his mother, Vicenta Lorca, during the two weeks in which she treated her health with the medicinal waters of the spa of Lanjarón.

Lorca interrupted his work in Madrid to accompany his family and also write poems, make drawings and answer letters from his friends. In that calm space, Federico wrote at least two poems that in 1928 would appear in the first edition of his book Romancero gitano, which had great popular success.

However, this work earned him the disdain of friends such as Buñuel and Dalí, who were more interested in the experimental trends they had encountered in the Student Residence.

 

 

1st edition of El romancero gitano.
1st edition of El romancero gitano.
Lorca in the Alpujarra countryside (Granada) with a hat and a cane in his hands.
Lorca in the Alpujarra (Granada).

 

 

His relationship with Dalí (1925)

 

One of Federico García Lorca’s most influential friendships in Madrid was that of Salvador Dalí, who encouraged his friend in his role as a draftsman and in his effort to understand modern painting. But it was also painful, since the relationship, which included erotic attraction, ended abruptly, in the middle of a controversy that deeply affected the poet.

In April 1925, Lorca visited the Dalí family at his home in Cadaqués on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Lorca wrote, “It is a family different from the others and accustomed to social life, since inviting people to their home is done all over the world except in Spain.

The passionate relationship between the two culminated in 1926 with the Oda a Salvador Dalí, with a cubist[6] aesthetic, with which Lorca did not completely identify, but also a hymn to friendship, to the Dalí of the time of Cadaqués.

 

[6] Cubist: pertaining to Cubism, an artistic movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century, breaking with the laws of classical perspective and decomposing objects into geometric structures.

 

 

Portrait of Dalí and Lorca in Barcelona at the time of there relationship .

Portrait of Lorca and Dalí sitting together during the time of their romantic relationship        Portrait of Dalí holding Lorca by the waist in Cadaqués.

Lorca at the time of his relationship with Salvador Dalí.

 

The Generation of ’27 (1927)

 

In 1926 Lorca founded the Ateneo[7]  of Granada where he gave a series of lectures, including The Poetic Image of Don Luis de Góngora[8] . It was the beginning of a collective devotion for this poet that culminated a year later with the tribute at the Ateneo de Sevilla, which gave rise to the so-called Generation of ’27, in which, among others, Lorca, Alberti, Cernuda, José Bergamín, Juan Chabás, Gerardo Diego and Dámaso Alonso.

This meeting also included an uninhibited celebration and a long hangover. Federico García Lorca actively participated in the celebrations.

The meeting place was the farm of the bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, who paid for a lunch for sixty diners (flamenco-style eggs, fried “pescaíto” and oxtail) and then invited them to a party in style in his farm.

 

[7] Ateneo: a cultural association, generally of a scientific or literary type.

[8] Spanish poet and playwright of the Golden Age.

 

 

Celebration of the tricentennial of Góngora at the Ateneo of Seville in December 1927. In the group of ten intellectuals, Lorca is the second from the left.
Celebration of the tricentennial of Góngora at the Ateneo of Seville in December 1927.

 

Lorca sitting dressed as an Arab in a white chador and turban.
Lorca dressed as an Arab.
Portrait of Manuel Torre, Niño de Jerez, with a white handkerchief and a Cordobés hat.
Manuel Torre, Niño de Jerez.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The guests appeared in Arab clothing and began a celebration in which they recited poems and improvised theatrical scenes. Federico García Lorca recited a selection of his gypsy romances. To end the party, the singer Manuel Torre, Niño de Jerez, performed.

 

Theatrical premieres

 

Also in 1927, Lorca premiered in Barcelona and Madrid the play Mariana Pineda, the liberal heroine executed for embroidering the words law, freedom, equality on a flag.

The premiere was delayed due to fear of censorship during the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera.

In 1928, his book of poems El Romancero gitano was published, which had immediate success, although his fame as a gypsy poet had a negative influence on him. Buñuel and then Dalí, whose love relationship with Federico had already weakened, were his biggest critics.

 

 The adventure of Gallo (1928)

 

Facsimile of magazine Gallo.
Facsimile of magazine Gallo.

After a very long preparation, Lorca managed to bring to light in February 1928 Gallo, the magazine that he had so eagerly devised but which only lasted two issues. What was Rooster? Federico presented it as “the Granada Magazine, for outside Granada […] Living, anti-localist, anti-provincial, magazine of the world.”

The magazine reflected the creative concerns of young artists in one of the most brilliant periods of Spanish culture of the 20th century.

Federico, who rarely went to Granada, tried to incorporate all of his friends, not just those from Granada, into the project. He turned, among others, to Dalí, his brother Francisco (who took over the direction) and Jorge Guillén who did reciprocate.

Others, however, although they accepted, never sent the promised articles, among them, Manuel de Falla.

 

 

Cover of Pavo.
Cover of Pavo.

Between one issue and another, Pavo came out, a curious anti-Gallo magazine invented by the editors of Gallo themselves who posed as reactionary creators.

Although Federico gathered contributions for a third issue, it was never published.

1928 was not a good year for personal relationships. The friendship with Manuel de Falla cooled because Federico dedicated to him in the Magazine of the West the Ode to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, which the musician, who was very Catholic, considered very daring.

 

 

 

His relationship with Emilio Aladrén

 

Emilio Aladrén was a Spanish sculptor known above all for the sentimental relationship he had with Federico García Lorca during 1927 and 1928. He had entered the School of Fine Arts in 1922. There he coincided with Dalí and Maruja Mallo, with whom he also had a relationship. sentimental relationship.

Physically he was attractive, with exotic beauty, and athletic. As for his way of being, he was a rebel who did not arouse much sympathy in those around him, fond of parties and drinking. Many testimonies from the time maintain that he was not homosexual.

Aladrén wanted to succeed as a sculptor at all costs and was willing to attach himself to anyone who could help him. Among them, Lorca, although he was not the only one. The first surviving letter from Aladrén to Lorca is from 1925: “You don’t know how I would like to see you! Write to me, write to me every day! ”He claims.

 

Portrait of Emilio Aladrén.
Portrait of Emilio Aladrén.
Emilio Aladrén and Federico García Lorca.
Emilio Aladrén and Federico García Lorca.

 

 

 

 



 

 

Federico did his best to promote his friend and spoke of him as one of the best Spanish sculptors. Some letters are preserved where, supposedly, Federico talks about his relationship with Emilio Aladrén.

From them we know of the deep crisis that the poet suffered during the summer of 1928 due, among other things, to the estrangement that he was beginning to experience with the sculptor, in love with the Englishwoman Eleanor Dove. This was surely one of the reasons that led him to flee to New York.

 

 

Federico in New York (1929)

 

As Federico García Lorca could not overcome his sadness, in the spring of 1929, his teacher Fernando de los Ríos proposed that he accompany him to New York. There, he could learn English, live abroad for the first time and, perhaps, renew his work.

The stay in New York was, according to the poet himself, one of the most useful experiences of his life. The entire year he spent – between June 12, 1929 and June 30, 1930 – in New York and Vermont and then in Cuba, changed his view of himself and his art.

As soon as he arrived, he began to write one of his most important and influential books, Poeta en Nueva York. In it, the city appears as a symbol of materialism and mechanization. There are also echoes in the book of social denunciation of suburban life and the suffering of the poor, black and marginalized.

 

 

Drawing with the self-portrait of Lorca in New York.      Schematic drawing of a person vomiting.     Drawing made by Lorca of his name with a crescent moon in the letter F.

                                   Self-portrait, image and signature of Federico for Poet in New York.

 

 

Lorca walking down a street in New York with two friends and a male friend.
Lorca walking down a street in New York with three friends.

 

Lorca on the Columbia University campus with two female friends and a male friend.
Lorca on the Columbia University with some friends.

 

In Havana he gave five conferences and worked on the play El público, which would end in Granada after disembarking in Cádiz at the end of June, after three weeks of travel.

 

Photograph of Lorca smiling and waving.
Lorca in Montevideo.

 

Federico sitting surrounded by children in La Havana.
Federico sitting surrounded by children in La Havana.

 

 

Source: Universo Lorca

 

 

 

Picture of María Pérez
María Pérez

I am a Spanish Language and Literature teacher and hold a Master's degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language.

With all that I have learned from my teaching experience, I have adapted a selection of the best works of Spanish literature for different levels of Spanish teaching (from A2 to C2), accompanied by interactive exercises in comprehension and expression, grammar, and vocabulary with the answers.

You'll see how much you enjoy it and progress in your Spanish!

Picture of María Pérez
María Pérez

I am a Spanish Language and Literature teacher and hold a Master's degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language.

With all that I have learned from my teaching experience, I have adapted a selection of the best works of Spanish literature for different levels of Spanish teaching (from A2 to C2), accompanied by interactive exercises in comprehension and expression, grammar, and vocabulary with the answers.

You'll see how much you enjoy it and progress in your Spanish!

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