WEBVTT

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No question then
of how important

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the fight that goes on inside
such a Spaniard as Lorca

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is, the fight to
live, to create that's

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haunted by that familiar
opponent, death.

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His poetry, his
plays, and his actions

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are understandably intimate
and intense because he's

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engaged in battle.

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One cannot go back to frivolous
creations or evasive behavior

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in art or in life after
understanding that death sets

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the whole of life in front
of you at every instant.

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The Spanish bull is always
in the room facing you.

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And it is a fight to the finish,
except that the bull turns out

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to be inside you.

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This is what Lorca
has taught us.

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And it is as spiritual
a message as any zen

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teaching or other
religious doctrine

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about the meaning of life.

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People who find Lorca amusing
because he gives humans

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animal qualities, or gives
life to inanimate objects,

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or find Lorca simplistic because
he's fond of nursery rhymes

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should listen more closely
because this is no mere slight.

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The moon came to the forge
wearing a bustle of nards.

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The child is looking,
looking, looking.

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The child is looking hard.

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In the troubled air,
the wind moves her arms,

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showing lewd and pure,
her hard tin breasts.

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This is elemental
terror and wonder.

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What does it mean to put
a child in that poem.

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But nothing is explained,
it's all in another realm.

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I think of this realm as
I think of dream and love

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as otherworldly, but where all
that is important in this world

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resides.

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How we get there, some of us go
by means of spiritual guides.

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And what we understand has to
do with how much we can take.

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And by take, I mean handle,
because it cannot be removed.

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Lorca's poetry is
symbolic activity

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because he's down deep
where communal signs

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and symbols live.

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His writing is lively
because it's words come out

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of primeval acts and pictures.

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This adventure down becomes a
necessity and a style second.

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Such linguistic
activity is essentially

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a violent world but organic and
akin to the world of memory.

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This is the realm in which
we are synonymous with nature

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rather than antagonistic to it.

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Lorca's dramas, you see
eventually I have come around

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to the dramas, are consumed with
lyric intensity and tragedy.

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Like his poems,
like Greek theater

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where god, blood, and
passions drive characters

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to their limits, like the giant
Sophocles or later Shakespeare.

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And these are not
mere comparisons.

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Lorca metes out
monumental fates.

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A bride runs off with her cousin
with whom she has previously

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had a relationship,
and who has now

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himself married another woman.

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The title predicts the very
worst: "Blood Wedding."

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Or in another play, a widow
is left with five daughters.

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The eldest of whom
is being courted

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by a shady character
who in fact has fallen

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in love with the youngest.

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When the mother finds out,
she tries to kill the man.

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And her youngest, thinking
him dead, hangs herself.

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Or again in the play "Doña
Rosita" the spinster,

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a young woman lets her life pass
by waiting for the great love

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of her life to return while he
has begun a whole other life

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in South America.

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You will forgive me for
simply condensing these.

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Go and read them, or
better yet see them.

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The words Lorca
wrote with seem still

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covered in the grime of his
excavation, the disorder.

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He is drawn not only
to tragedy but also

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to that ancient form
of comedy, the farce,

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where characters are vessels
for morality lessons.

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Such a one is the
prodigious shoemakers wife.

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Who is much younger
than her husband

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and complains about him
until he disappears.

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At which point, of course,
she misses him desperately.

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When he returns disguised,
she confesses to this stranger

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how much she misses her husband,
whereupon all is restored,

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or is it that she
learned her lesson?

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This remains ambiguous for her
and by extension the audience

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who have been in on
the mistaken identity,

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and had fun with the
wife's ironic situation,

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but must leave the theater
thinking of the serious matters

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of desire and responsibility.

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Another paradox Lorca
is drawn to early on

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is the ancient Arabs' lyric
obsessions with erotic love,

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in a context of the
notion of chastity.

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As Honig explains, alongside
the qaṣīda, or short lyric,

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grew the tradition
of the ballad.

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These are realistic
stories of battles,

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of love influenced
by the Gypsies.

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Tragedy, desire, purity, these
are usually discordant sounds.

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But here they are companions.

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Listen in.

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The subject, "The Civil Guard."

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Which by now you
should be afraid of.

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Here they are
approaching on horseback.

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"Because their skulls are made
of lead, they do not weep.

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With patent leather soles,
they come down the road,

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they come down the road,
they come down the road."

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Lorca accuses them of
brutality and cowardice.

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They've been responsible for
many of his friends' deaths.

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We know too, they'll
be responsible for his.

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Elemental song, rough language.

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Here's one more, in a lament
for the famous bullfighter,

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Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,
"Blood Death Music."

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"At 5:00 in the afternoon,
it was exactly 5:00

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in the afternoon, a boy
brought the white sheet at 5:00

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in the afternoon.

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A frail of lime already prepared
at 5:00 in the afternoon.

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And the rest was death
and death alone at 5:00

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in the afternoon."

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And it continues, "every
other line howls the hour."

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This is not a poem
for language poetry.

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Set this triangle of
purity desire and tragedy

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ringing in language from the
electric industrial world

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and you have full on Lorca.

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Metals, jewels, bugs, garbage,
nails, weapons, stones, sand,

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dragons, copper bells, we travel
a strangely familiar landscape

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looking for Lorca.

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And now, if you'd like,
let's look at one poem

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that I have passed out.

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And if you have any
questions, after

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that I would be delighted
to try to answer them.

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The poem before you, you have
heard a stanza of already.

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I was afraid to read
it all at first,

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hardly knowing who is here ,
because of how powerful it is.

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Now that we have spent
nearly, I don't know how long,

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40 minutes together?

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I feel that perhaps I can
read the whole thing to you.

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This is slightly different
translation from the great poet

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and translator WS Merwin.

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And again, I am reading
this, not in the Spanish,

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god forgive me, OK.

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"Gacela of Unforeseen Love."

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"No one understood the
perfume of the dark magnolia

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of your womb.

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No one knew that you
tormented a hummingbird

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of love between your teeth.

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1,000 Persian ponies fell
asleep in the moonlit plaza

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of your forehead.

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While through four
nights, I embraced

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your waist, enemy of the snow.

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Between plaster and
jasmines, your glance

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was a pale branch of seeds.

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I saw it in my heart to give
you the ivory letters that

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say always, always, always.

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Garden of my agony, your
body elusive always.

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The blood of your
veins in my mouth.

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Your mouth already
lightless for my death."

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