A Nightmare Canephoras (Third Text from Impresiones y Paisajes 1918)

It was wrapped in a shameless costume, vile with sexual degeneration. It might have been a strange animal or a satanic hermaphrodite. Flesh without soul or a Dantean Medusa. A dream of Goya’s or a vision of St John’s. A lover from a Valdés Leal painting or a martyrdom by Jan Weenix…Its flesh was a deathly green. It coughed repeatedly…and seemed to smell of sulphur…beneath the weight of evil spirits…the figure began to move.

It wore slippers half falling-off which progressed with a lugubrious rhythm; and necklaces of dirty coral and a bag hanging from its neck, which held some infernal amulet.

This poem was featured on Lorca’s first publication. Reading through several poems in his first book, I could tell that it features a variety of different styles of poems. In his early works, Lorca featured “elements of Spanish folklore, Andalusian flamenco and Gypsy culture, and cante jondos, or deep songs, while exploring themes of romantic love and tragedy.” A Nightmare Canephoras is a short story of a monster creeping in the streets of Granada, Spain.

 

Oficina y Denuncia (1929)

Excerpt

"They are killed every day in New York
four million ducks,
five million pigs,
two thousand pigeons for the taste of the dying,
one million cows,
one million lambs
and two million roosters
that leave the skies shattered.
It is better to sob sharpening the razor
or kill the dogs in the amazing hunts
to resist at dawn
the endless milk trains,
the endless blood trains,
and the trains of handcuffed roses
by perfume merchants."

This poem was written during Lorca’s time in New York City. Oficina y Denuncia depicts the unrest in New York City during the stock market crash in 1929. According to Christopher Maura, professor of Spanish at Boston University, this poem makes the turning point that Lorca started to stray away from writing just lyrical poem but also touching upon social issues and openly expressing his sexuality.

Blood Wedding (1933)

Blood Wedding was the first play in Lorca’s trilogy. His trilogy includes: Blood Wedding (1933) , Yerma (1934), & The House of Bernarda Alba (1936).

His tragic trilogy challenged the Spanish’s conservative views as in these plays, he displays rebellion over women’s roles in society.

In Blood Wedding, a bride runs away from her wedding ceremony with her former lover, who is married to another woman. The groom and her former lover engaged in a physical conflict and they both ended up dying. When this play was written, Spain was undergoing a massive social change. Before the fall of the dictatorship in 1930, Spanish women had little rights. Women were not allowed to vote, seek an abortion, or divorce. They were punished for adultery. In the early 1930s, Spanish women started to gain rights and more control over their lives. Lorca depicted this in the Blood Wedding. However, his left wing ideas were opposed by the Nationalists that took over in 1936.