Federico García Lorca: Poetic Themes and Stylistic Elements

Lorca: Themes and Style

Themes

• Love: The love that validates erotic inclination. Sex (the real life force) is the source of energy and fullness; however, the love affair is doomed to frustration (due to individual shortcomings or social constraints).
• Death: The failure of love can lead to death; man is always directed towards fulfilling his destiny.
• Childhood: The Age of Innocence; the author looks at his infantile poems.
• Social Life: Moral impositions create frustration; reality always punishes the helpless.

Style

• Evocative function of words.
• Presence of symbols and visionary images.
• Impressionistic trend.
• Importance of musical and metrical form: popular resources (songs, ballads, and choruses) and classic forms (sonnet) and free verse.

Poetic Trajectory

Characterized by the search for an aesthetic of his own.

• First Works: Influence of modernism and romanticism.
• Following Works: Combines traditional elements with cutting-edge techniques.
• Latest Works: Prevailing tone and lyrical themes of love and death, and other poems concerning passion and the pleasure of enjoyment.

Gypsy Ballads

Reflects a focus on the Gypsy world of Andalusia.

Topics:

• Love and death (connected by a tragic sense).
• Competition (Gypsy vs. Civil Guard; full-erotic love is tragic).
• Story elements, dramatic (dialogue), and lyrics.
• Secrecy (indeterminacy and vagueness).
• Symbolism (multiple text values).
• Traditional elements, cults, and popular elements with vanguard symbols.

Poetic Symbols

• Moon: Death; associated with life and fertility and sterility; perfection and beauty.
• Gypsies: Wealth.
• Metals (Knives): Death.
• Blood: Life, fertility, and death.
• Water: Erotic provider of life (Bath); standing water: symbol of death.
• Horse: Life and male eroticism; the messenger of death.
• Roma: Freedom and primitivism.
• Guardia Civil: Order and repression.
• Green: Overly dramatic.
• Lemon: Negative.

Poet in New York

Written following his trip to NY in 1929 and 1930.

Topic:

The U.S. city, with its technological development and dehumanization, created a climate of anxiety where there is no love, nature, or happiness. Loneliness and suffering are constants, and material wealth reigns, fighting selfishness and cruelty.

Poetic Voice:

A complaint against social injustice, the oppression of the exploited and marginalized (Blacks). Increased presence of the lyric, alongside surrealist grounds and procedures. Visionary, irrational metaphors and symbols make understanding the poem difficult. Emotivity is expressed through free verse, although traditional metrics are sometimes present. This work represents vanguard aesthetics.