Introduction


Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca was the Kurt Cobain of early-twentieth-century literature. Misunderstood, depressive, and dead at far too young an age, he remains an important and tragic figure in Spanish drama and poetry. Lorca was part of a group of artists and poets known as the Generation of ’27, whose defining aesthetic remains difficult to grasp in part because of the diversity of its membership. What ultimately united the group, however, was a focus on the avant-garde and a rejection of traditional forms of expression, both of which Lorca incorporated into his writing. Along with his dark and haunting love sonnets, Lorca’s most enduring work is a trilogy of “rural tragedies”: Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba. The third play, which allegorizes and criticizes dictatorial rule, was not performed for nearly a decade after his death.

Essential Facts

  1. Lorca was part of an artistic circle of some of the most influential and creative thinkers of early-twentieth-century Spain, including Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.
  2. Lorca’s first play, The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, was a symbolist work that depicted the thwarted love affair between a butterfly and a cockroach.
  3. A homosexual in a climate of extreme intolerance, Lorca suffered from severe depression throughout his short life.
  4. Lorca’s works were banned or censored for almost four decades after his death. Only in the mid-1970s, after General Franco died, were Lorca’s works again published in his homeland.
  5. Lorca was executed at the young age of 38 at the onset of the Spanish Civil War.