Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca biography

Federico García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright and prose writer. He was born on June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, province of Granada Spain, son of Federico García Rodríguez and Vicenta Lorca Romero, school teacher, who stimulated him for the literary taste. The eldest of four brothers whose name of Baptism was: Federico Del Sagrado Corazón De Jesús García Lorca. His early years were spent in the rural environment of his Granada town and his greatest love of music, he studied piano with Antonio Segura, at the University his friends knew him as a musician.

He was the most influential and popular poet of the twentieth century Spanish Literature and belonged to the Generation 27. When he was eleven years old, the whole family traveled to Granada, where he began his high school studies at the Sacred Heart high school. In 1909 he returned to Granada with his family and continued his university studies in Philosophy and Literature. He graduated in Law. In 1918 he published his first book in prose “Impresiones y Paisajes” and wrote some poems.

In 1919 he traveled to Madrid and settled in the student residence where he stayed until 1928, this place had a lot of influence on his intellectual training since there he met characters such as John Maynard Keynes and Albert Einstein. Between the years 1919 – 1926 he had connection with many writers and intellectuals, important of Spain, like: Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Rafael Alberti, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Antonio Machado, in this environment full of culture he left with his overwhelming personality and his interests multifaceted to dedicate themselves with passion not only to poetry but also to music and drawing, also interested in theater. In 1920 his work “The Butterfly’s Evil Spell”

was premiered in the theater.

In 1921 Federico García Lorca published his first book of verses, “Libro de Poemas” he returned to Granada, where he had the opportunity to meet maestro Manuel de Falla with whom he undertook several projects around music, “El Cante jondo” “The Puppets” with other parallel artistic activities. In 1923 the puppet comedies (“the girl who waters the basil” and “the Prince Preguntón”) were staged, in this same year, Lorca wrote “the poem of the Cante Jondo” work that was published ten years later.

In 1925 he traveled to the municipality of Cadaqués, to his friend Salvador Dalí’s house and spent a few days on vacation. In 1927 he returned for more time who, encouraged by his friend Salvador, began as a painter and in that same year he made his first painting exhibition at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona. These two visits to his friend Dalí deeply marked the life and work of both. Fruit of this friendship was the “Ode to Salvador Dalí” which was published in the Revista de Occidente. It can be said that the stage between 1924 to 1927 was the moment in which the writer Lorca reached his maturity as a poet.

In 1929, he traveled to New York accepting the proposal of Fernando de Los Ríos, in order to learn English, change his life and renew his work. He described his stay in th at city as one of the most useful in his life. In this city arises the book: “Poet in New York” which was published four years after his death. In his work, Federico García Lorca sought to express “the painful slavery of man and machine together” in a city that he named “Geometry and Anguish.”

In 1930 he traveled to Havana (Cuba), where he researched Cuban culture and music, working on new projects such as “El Público” and “When five years pass.” In June 1930 I was already in Madrid.

In 1932 Federico García Lorca was appointed the director of La Barraca, a university theater company that aimed to bring the classical theater of the Golden Age to the towns of Castile. In 1933, he managed to succeed professionally, during the six months he remained in Buenos Aires had the opportunity to direct “Bodas de Sangre.” The last years of his life he devoted them to the theater, although with exceptions: in 1934 he finished the “Divan de Tamarit” a book of poems inspired by the Arabic-Andalusian poetry, also in that year he returned to Spain, maintained a high creative rhythm, he finished several works as: “Yerma,” “Doña Rosita la Soltera,” “La Casa de Bernarda Alba” and “Llanto by Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (published in 1935), made a trip to Barcelona to direct some of his works, give lectures and recite his poems, visited Valencia and continued to represent works with the Barraca etc. He also spent some time in Montevideo (Uruguay).

On July 14, 1936, he arrived in Huerta de San Vicente, to join his family, then sought refuge in Granada, home of the family of his friend the poet Luis Rosales because he felt safer there. But on the afternoon of August 16 of that same year, he was presented at the house, the Civil Guard to arrest him, he was transferred to the Civil Government and then to the town of Víznar, spending his last night there (Due to his progressive ideas, his condition of homosexual and man of letters made him an object of persecution). The date of his death is still uncertain, it is said that Federico García Lorca was shot somewhere near the big fountain, next to the gully of Víznar (province of Granda) Spain, between August 17 and 19, 1936, a the age of 38, along with two banderilleros (Francisco Galadí and Joaquín Arcollas) and a school teacher (Dióscoro Galindo), all of republican ideology, his body is buried in an anonymous mass grave.

Today the death of the most universal Andalusian poet remains a fact without being clarified full of unknowns. Federico Garcia Lorca, is considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century. After his death, his works were published: “First Songs” and “Love of Don Perlimplín with Belisa in his Garden.”