García Lorca Federico - Four Key Plays

Federico Garca Lorca

Four Key Plays

Federico Garca Lorca

Four Key Plays

The Audience Blood Wedding
Yerma The House of Bernarda Alba

Translation and Introduction by

Michael Kidd

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright 2019 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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For further information, please address

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

P.O. Box 44937

Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937

www.hackettpublishing.com

Cover design by Rick Todhunter

Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson

Composition by Aptara, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Garcia Lorca, Federico, 1898-1936, author. | Kidd, Michael, 1968 translator, writer of introduction. | Garcia Lorca, Federico, 18981936. Publico. English. | Garcia Lorca, Federico, 18981936. Bodas de sangre. English. | Garcia Lorca, Federico, 1898-1936. Yerma. English. | Garcia Lorca, Federico, 18981936. Casa de Bernarda Alba. English.

Title: Four key plays / Federico Garcia Lorca ; translated, with an introduction, by Michael Kidd.

Description: Indianapolis : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018038706 | ISBN 9781624667763 (cloth) | ISBN 9781624667756 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Garcia Lorca, Federico, 18981936Translations into English.

Classification: LCC PQ6613.A763 A2 2019 | DDC 862/.62dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038706

ePub3 ISBN: 978-1-62466-797-8

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Federico Garca Lorca, La Casa de Bernarda Alba . Edited by Paola Bianco and Antonio Sobejano-Morn.

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For Nico

Who can say, my son,
what the water brings
with its flowing skirts
and its chambers of green?

The door to the theater never closes.

Federico Garca Lorca

{vii} Contents

{viii}

This project came about as the result of a collaboration with the Theater Department of Augsburg College (now University), which performed my translation of The House of Bernarda Alba in the fall of 2013. I would like to begin by thanking all those involved in the production including the department chair, Darcey Engen; the director, Dario Tangelson; the stage designer, Michael Burden; and the wonderful all-student cast. Thanks also to Doug Green and Sarah Myers for allowing me into their drama classes to discuss the translation. It was a privilege to test the words of Bernarda and company in the actors mouths and to discuss the plays with such bright students, which then led to the idea of a volume of Lorca translations. Augsburg provided the sabbatical during which I accomplished the writing, for which I am also grateful.

I am fortunate to count myself a member of a reading group with whom I share both fiction and nonfiction. Becky Boling, Scott Carpenter, and Greg Johnson offered valuable critiques of several of the translations and most of the introductory materials. Other readers and correspondents who provided encouragement and helpful suggestions along the way include Christopher Maurer, Lee Jacobus, and Leslie Stainton.

I am indebted to my editor at Hackett Publishing Company, Rick Todhunter, who believed in the project from the beginning and was willing to return to it three years after an impasse over copyright threatened to derail it.

Finally, my son Nico read the Biographical Sketch in full and made many useful suggestions. Gracias, hijo!

{ix}

This anthology brings together four key plays by Federico Garca Lorca (18981936), Spains greatest modern dramatist, providing reliable translations into standard American English. The plays chosen for inclusion reveal the two poles of Lorcas dramatic output: his experimental impossible theater, represented by The Audience (1930), and his successful commercial theater, represented by Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936). While the latter three are the authors best-known plays and are often anthologized alone, they give an incomplete picture of Lorcas dramatic corpus. As Paul Julian Smith notes: If the impossible theatre was, as Garca Lorca declared, destined for the future, we are now that audience, and we have an ethical responsibility to respond to its challenge, a responsibility denied to earlier generations of scholars and theatre-goers. Such a burden cannot leave us indifferent, intellectually or aesthetically (Smith 2010, p. 34). Taken together, the four plays translated in this collection reveal the astonishing range of Lorca the playwright at the height of his creative powers.

The Spanish text used as the basis of all four translations is that of Miguel Garca-Posada in Obras completas II: Teatro (Crculo de Lectores/Galaxia Gutenberg, 1997), abbreviated throughout as OC . I have explained the few instances I diverge from the source text in Appendix 1. In my bibliographical references I use a modified version of the MLA Handbook , eighth edition, placing the date directly after the authors name to facilitate citing authors with multiple publications. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Spanish in the introductory materials are my own.

{xi}

The life of Federico Garca Lorcaor simply Lorca, as he is commonly referred tohas invited passionate description. Handsome, charismatic, romantic, a born poet. Private, stubborn, melancholic, terrified of death. Gypsy connoisseur, avant-garde genius, gay icon, left-wing martyr. The greatest Spanish writer since Cervantes. Though all these characterizations border on clichs, none is entirely without merit. Who was the man who inspired such awe?

Lorca was born on June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a tiny village in the heart of the southern Spanish province of Granada. Rich in cultural history, Granada was ruled by ancient Romans, Germanic Visigoths, and nearly eight centuries of Moorish kings before it fell permanently into Christian hands at the close of the Middle Ages. The myth and reality of Granada, and of the broader southern region known as Andalusia, would come to figure heavily in Lorcas literary imagination.

In addition to the place, the year of Lorcas birth weighs heavily in Spanish history. One month before he was born, the United States declared war on Spain, partly in response to the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. Lasting only four months, the Spanish-American War resulted in a decisive U.S. victory that had profound consequences for the once mighty Spanish Empire including the loss of its last overseas colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The disillusionment that took root at home led to a loose association of progressive {xii} writers and intellectuals known as the Generation of 1898. Lorca would come into literary consciousness during the course of this generations intellectual activity, as its luminaries ferventlyand very publiclydebated topics such as Spanish identity and Spains place in Europe.

One man who actually profited from the Spanish-American War was Lorcas father, also named Federico. A town clerk in Fuente Vaqueros, in 1895 he purchased several tracts of rich farmland outside the village, where he established a successful sugar beet plantation. When the loss of Cuba cut off Spains Caribbean sugar supply, Lorcas father quickly became a wealthy man. In contrast, Lorcas mother, Vicenta, who was the elder Federicos second wife (the first had died childless), was a schoolteacher of modest means. What they each brought to the relationship was a remarkably open mind and a deep cultural refinement. Vicenta had earned her teaching degree at the age of twenty-one and was commended by a state education official for her excellent pedagogy, leaving the profession only when she became pregnant with Lorca (Guerrero 2009). The elder Federico came from several generations of prodigious musical, artistic, and literary talent. As was common in Spain at the time, both parents were Catholic, Vicenta being the more devout of the two; both rejected religious zealotry and fundamentalism. After firstborn Lorca, the couple had four more children: Luis (1900), Francisco (1902), Mara de la Concepcin (1903), and Isabel (1909).