Federico García Lorca Biography, Poetry, Legacy, Major Works, Death

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. He became internationally known as a leading member of the Generation of ’27, a group of poets who brought European movements like symbolism, futurism, and surrealism into Spanish literature.

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He first became famous with Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928), a collection of poems about life in Andalusia. His poetry blended traditional Andalusian themes with modern styles. After spending time in New York City from 1929 to 1930, an experience later described in Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York, 1942), he returned to Spain and wrote his most famous plays: Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936).

García Lorca was homosexual and experienced depression after his relationship with sculptor Emilio Aladrén Perojo ended. He also had a close emotional bond for a time with Salvador Dalí, who said he turned down García Lorca’s romantic advances.

Age

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was born on 5 June 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Kingdom of Spain.

Biography & Early Life

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was born on 5 June 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town 17 km west of Granada in southern Spain. His father, Federico García Rodríguez, was a successful landowner with a farm in the fertile valley near Granada and a villa in the city. The family’s wealth grew during a sugar industry boom. García Lorca’s mother, Vicenta Lorca Romero, was a teacher. In 1905, the family moved from Fuente Vaqueros to the nearby town of Valderrubio, which was then called Asquerosa.

In 1909, when García Lorca was 11, his family moved to Granada, the regional capital, where he could attend high school. Their most famous home was the Huerta de San Vicente, a summer house on the city’s outskirts at the time. Throughout his life, he valued living close to nature and often spoke fondly of his rural upbringing. Today, all three of his family homes, Fuente Vaqueros, Valderrubio, and Huerta de San Vicente, are museums.

In 1915, after finishing secondary school, García Lorca went to the University of Granada, where he studied law, literature, and composition. As a teenager, he felt more drawn to music than to literature. At age 11, he started six years of piano lessons with Antonio Segura Mesa, a harmony teacher and composer at the local conservatory. Segura inspired Federico’s dream of becoming a musician.

Major works

Poetry collections

• Impresiones y paisajes [es] (Impressions and Landscapes 1918)
• Libro de poemas (Book of Poems 1921)
• Poema del cante jondo [es] (Poem of the Deep Song; written in 1921 but not published until 1931)
• Suites (written between 1920 and 1923, published posthumously in 1983)

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• Canciones (Songs written between 1921 and 1924, published in 1927)
• Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads 1928)
• Odes (written 1928)
• Poeta en Nueva York (written 1930 – published posthumously in 1940, first translation into English as Poet in New York 1940)
• Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías [es] (Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías 1935)
• Seis poemas galegos [es] (Six Galician poems 1935)
• Sonetos del amor oscuro [es] (Sonnets of Dark Love 1936, not published until 1983)
• Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter [es] and Other Poems (1937)
• Primeras canciones (First Songs 1936)
• Diván del Tamarit [es] (The Tamarit Divan, poems written 1931–34 and not published until after his death in a special edition of Revista Hispánica Moderna in 1940).
• Selected Poems (1941)

Select translations

• Poem of the Deep Song – Poema del Cante Jondo, translated by Carlos Bauer (includes original Spanish verses).
• Poem of the Deep Song, translated by Ralph Angel.
• Gypsy Ballads: A Version of the Romancero Gitano of Federico García Lorca Translated by Michael Hartnett. Goldsmith Press 1973
• “Poet in New York-Poeta en Nueva York,” translated by Pablo Medina and Mark Statman (includes original Spanish, with a preface by Edward Hirsch)
• Gypsy Ballads, bilingual edition translated by Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca.
• Sonnets of Dark Love – The Tamarit Divan, bilingual edition translated by Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca with essays by Christopher Maurer and Andrés Soria Olmedo.
• Yerma, translated by Kathryn Phillips-Miles and Simon Deefholts, “The Clapton Press”. 18 October 2020.
• The Dream of Apples: Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca, bilingual edition translated by Rebecca Seiferle, winner of the Stephen Mitchell Prize for excellence in translation.

Plays

• Christ: A Religious Tragedy (unfinished 1917)
• The Butterfly’s Evil Spell: (written 1919–20, first production 1920)
• The Billy-Club Puppets: (written 1922–5, first production 1937)
• The Puppet Play of Don Cristóbal: (written 1923, first production 1935)
• Mariana Pineda (written 1923–25, first production 1927)
• The Curse of the Butterfly, first production 1927 in the Teatro Eslava, Madrid
• The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife: (written 1926–30, first production 1930, revised 1933)
• The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden: (written 1928, first production 1933)
• The Public: (written 1929–30, first production 1972); only an incomplete draft is known
• When Five Years Pass: (written 1931, first production 1945)
• Blood Wedding: (written 1932, first production 1933)
• Yerma (written 1934, first production 1934)
• Doña Rosita the Spinster: (written 1935, first production 1935)
• Play Without a Title: (only one act, written 1936, first production 1986)
• The House of Bernarda Alba: (written 1936, first production 1945)
• Dreams of my Cousin Aurelia: (unfinished)

Death

Federico died on 19 August 1936 at the age of 38 near Alfacar, Granada, in the Spanish Republic.