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Three Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba | Federico Garcia Lorca | Spain not Peru
 
 


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 Three Plays: Blood...  

Three Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba
Federico Garcia Lorca

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993 - 192 pages

average customer review:based on 8 reviews
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     highly recommended  highly recommended



In these three plays, García Lorca's acknowledged masterpieces, he searched for a contemporary mode of tragedy and reminded his audience that dramatic poetry-or poetic drama-depends less on formal convention that on an elemental, radical outlook on human life. His images are beautiful and exact, but until now no translator had ever been able to make his characters speak unaffectedly on the American stage. Michael Dewell of the National Repertory Theatre and Carmen Zapata of the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts have created these versions expressly for the stage. The result, both performable and readable, has been thoroughly revised for this edition, which is introduced by Christopher Maurer, general editor of the Complete Poetical Works of García Lorca.



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Simply brilliant

Lorca uses simple mathematical expressions to convey emotions. A colour, for example white, combined with an object, for example a baby in the opening sequence of Yerma, will add up to a symbolic meaning where either two factors can be used somewhere else. Basically, anything white is a dream of happiness which is destroyed by an event. This very basic set of symbols and the application of "equations" makes Lorca one of the most powerful and accessible writers i've come accross. Oh and the stories are good too (!)


Spain not Peru

The trilogy by FGL, Yerma, Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba is set in Spain not Peru. They are an excellent portrayal of life in rural Spain during those times. A must read for anyone, but especially those who are studying Spanish literature. Allthough most widely known as a poet, FGL displays his talent for drama with these plays.


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Lyrical, Passionate, Elemental

I saw BLOOD WEDDING and THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA on television during the '50s or '60s. I loved them so much, I got the books out of the library read and re-read them during high school.

Garcia Lorca is a master of language and poetry. His plays and poems are romantic, lyrical, and passionate.

THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, BLOOD WEDDING, AND YERMA center on the urgent sexuality of women and the rage and pain that come when that sexuality is denied or thwarted. Lorca's plays are not pornographic or sexually explicit--rather they deal with drives, yearnings, impulses that inevitably flower, and how different characters in the play are affected by social pressures that allow--or restrain--her from expressing these ancient needs.

One reviewer included a quote in his review, and so will I--this poem will perhaps give the reader a sense of his style:

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

Now imagine these words in Spanish!


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Verde Que Te Quiero Verde

Here is one of Federico Garcia-Lorca's most famous poems, in Spanish. It will give you a taste of what it is like to read him in English or Spanish:

Verde que te quiero verde*
por F. García Lorca * Friday October 24, 2003 at 09:46 PM

Romance sonámbulo*

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas le están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.
*
Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha,
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.
La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.
¿Pero quién vendrá? ¿Y por dónde...?
Ella sigue en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.
*
Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando,
desde los montes de Cabra.
Si yo pudiera, mocito,
ese trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿No ves la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas,
dejadme subir, dejadme,
hasta las verdes barandas.
Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.
*
Ya suben los dos compadres
hacia las altas barandas.
Dejando un rastro de sangre.
Dejando un rastro de lágrimas.
Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.
Mil panderos de cristal,
herían la madrugada.
*
Verde que te quiero verde,
verde viento, verdes ramas.
Los dos compadres subieron.
El largo viento, dejaba
en la boca un raro gusto
de hiel, de menta y de albahaca.
¡Compadre! ¿Dónde está, dime?
¿Dónde está mi niña amarga?
¡Cuántas veces te esperó!
¡Cuántas veces te esperara,
cara fresca, negro pelo,
en esta verde baranda!
*
Sobre el rostro del aljibe
se mecía la gitana.
Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Un carámbano de luna
la sostiene sobre el agua.
La noche su puso íntima

como una pequeña plaza.
Guardias civiles borrachos,
en la puerta golpeaban.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar.
Y el caballo en la montaña

Federico Garcia Lorca*


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read and buy this book!!

garcia lorca is simply a person who must be read.

And where has gone the Argentine "Valsa de Requerda??"" Where?


reviews: page 1, 2



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