Leslie Stainton - Lorca: A Dream of Life

Leslie Stainton holds a BA in Drama from Franklin and Marshall College and an MFA in Theater from the University of Massachusetts. During her work on this book she received two Fulbright research grants to Spain, and assisted the Lorca family in editing and cataloguing Lorcas unpublished theatre manuscripts. She has published essays and articles in the New York Times, American Theatre, the Washington Post, and a number of scholarly journals, including the Boletn de la Fundacin Federico Garca Lorca. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is co-author of the annual desk diary On Writers and Writing.

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
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First published in Great Britain in 1998

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright 1998 by Leslie Stainton
Spanish texts by Federico Garca Lorca copyright Herederos de Federico Garca
Lorca 1998
Except where otherwise stated all translations of texts by Federico Garca Lorca
copyright Leslie Stainton and Herederos de Federico Garca Lorca 1998

Cover photograph: Federico Garca Lorca, 1919 copyright Fundacin Federico
Garca Lorca 1998. All drawings, photographs and other illustrative material used in
this book (except where otherwise stated) copyright Herederos de Federico Garca
Lorca and Fundacin Federico Garca Lorca 1998
(All enquiries for rights in the works of Federico Garca Lorca should be addressed to
William Peter Kosmas, 8 Franklin Square, London W14 9UU)

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from the following sources:

To Herederos de Federico Garca Lorca and the respective translators of the English translations of poems from: Federico Garca Lorca, Collected Poems. Ed. Christopher Maurer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990) and Federico Garca Lorca, Poet in New York. Ed. Christopher Maurer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988)

To the publishers for extracts from: Federico Garca Lorca, Deep Song and Other Prose. Ed. and trans. Christopher Maurer. 3rd ed. (New York: New Directions, 1980, and London: Marion Boyars, 1980); Federico Garca Lorca, Selected Letters. Ed. and trans. David Gershator. (New York: New Directions, 1983); Francisco Garcia Lorca, In the Green Morning: Memories of Federico. Trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: New Directions, 1986); How a City Sings from November to November, limited edition (San Francisco: Cadmus Editions, 1982)

To the Fundaci Gala-Salvador Dal, Figueres (Spain), with thanks, for extracts from the writings of Salvador Dal

To the President and Fellows of Harvard College for extracts from two poems by Antonio Machado. Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Antonio Machado: Selected Poems by Alan S. Trueblood (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press) Copyright 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

To the Houghton Picture Library Harvard for extracts from: Letter from Guillermo de Torre to Jorge Guilln (shelf mark, bMS Span 100 (484)) and Federico Garca Lorca by Pedro Salinas (shelf mark, bMS Span 100 (1060)), both by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University

Please note: every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material in this book. The Publishers apologize if any material has been included without permission and would be pleased to hear from anyone who has not been consulted.

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 9781448213443

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In New York, 1929. Beside Lorca is the Mexican heiress Mara Antonia Rivas Blair, who after meeting Lorca in America described him to a friend as a strange young man with a somewhat clumsy, ambling walk, as though his legs were too heavy from the knee downSimple and open in his relations with others. Deep and full of life He is a child, but a clumsy one, as though his body were about to escape from him, or weighed too much.

With friends at Madrid fair, 1936. Lorcas hand touches Rafael Rodrguez Rapns forehead.

For my parents
ANN SCARLETT PETTIGREW STAINTON
and
WILLIAM WHITFIELD STAINTON

I remember a certain thunderstorm when we were young. The two of us were walking from Valderrubio to Fuente Vaqueros, and all of a sudden, without our even noticing it, a storm came up. Halfway between the two villages, as we were going through the tall poplars that border the Cubillas, day turned to night. The fields were deserted and silent. A few heavy raindrops fell, and the wind began to rock the trees. Then, suddenly, there was a dry, formidable clap of thunder. An unsaddled runaway horse almost ran over us. Then came another more distant clap and the typical odor of ozone. Federico ran over to me, his face pallid, and told me that his cheek was burning. He said he had been touched by a spark of the lightning, which had, in fact, been blindingly bright. I drew near him, looked at his cheek, calmed him down, and we began our return in silence.

Francisco Garca Lorca,
In the Green Morning: Memories of Federico

On the evening of March 17, 1918, four days before the German army launched its final assault on the Western Front, Federico Garca Lorca, a nineteen-year-old university student, stood before a small crowd of friends in the Arts Center of Granada, Spain. He was of average height and weight, with pitch-black hair and mournful eyes. A smattering of moles sprinkled his face. His clothes hung awkwardly from his shoulders.

He had agreed to read that night from his forthcoming book, Impressions and Landscapes, a prose account of his travels through Spain with one of his professors and a group of fellow students. It was his first public recital. For months he had been reading his poetry and prose to friends as they sat together in local cafs. He carried copies of his work on folded slips of paper in his pockets, even though he knew much of it by heart. But he had never given a formal reading of his work before now.