Fight (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Federico García Lorca
- First Published: 1928
- Type of Work: Ballad
- Genres: Poetry, Ballad
- Subjects: Twentieth century, Violence, Death or dying, Card games, Fate or fatalism, Blood, Spain or Spanish people, Gypsies, Angels
The Poem
Federico García Lorca’s “Fight,” in Robert Havard’s translation, is a short ballad narrating a fatal encounter between rival gypsies in the mountains of southern Spain. As in an ancient Greek tragedy, the story opens in medias res—in the middle of things—in this case, both spatially and temporally, as knives already flash half-way down a ravine. Horses rear in fury, a man named Juan Antonio of Montilla tumbles, his brow pomegranate-red with blood. A magistrate then arrives, accompanied by rural police, called “Civil Guards,” and sums up the...
[The entire page is 1563 words long]
