Spanish poet & playwright (1898-1936)
There's no doubt that I really have a feeling for the theater. These past few days it has occurred to me to do a comedy whose chief characters are photographic enlargements. Those people we see in doorways. Newlyweds, sergeants, dead girls, an anonymous crowd full of mustaches and wrinkles. It should be terrible. If I focus it well, it will possess pathos without consolation. In the midst of those people I will place an authentic fairy.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
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letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, February/March 1926
We're all like the little sailor. From the harbors we hear the strains of accordions and the murky soapy noises of the docks, from the mountains we receive the dish of silence that the shepherds eat, but we don't hear more than our own distances. And what distances without end and without doors and without mountains!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Jose Maria Chacon y Calvo, 1920s
A dead man in Spain is more alive than a dead man anywhere in the world.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Theory and Play of the Duende", A Poet in New York
For each kiss I gave you
a huge cluster of tears!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Abandoned"
I know there is no straight road
No straight road in this world
Only a giant labyrinth
Of intersecting crossroads
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Floating Bridges"
Even money, which shines so much, spits sometimes.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding
Devoutly the teachers point out huge fumigated domes;
but beneath the statues there's no love,
no love beneath the eyes set in crystal.
Love is there, in flesh ripped by thirst,
in the tiny hut struggling against the flood;
love is there, in ditches where snakes of hunger wrestle,
in the sad sea that rocks dead gulls,
and in the darkest stinging kiss under pillows.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Cry to Rome", A Poet in New York
Oh, what grief not to have
grief, and to spend your life
on the colorless grass
of the undecided path!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Crossroads"
All one's personality is embedded in gloves and hats after they've been good and used. Show me a glove and I'll tell you the character of its owner.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Ana Maria Dali, autumn 1925
The still pool of your mouth
under a thicket of kisses.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Remansos: Variación", El Diván del Tamarit
Adam & Eve.
The serpent cracked
the mirror
in a thousand pieces,
& the apple
was his rock.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Initium"
The moon carries the masks of meningitis into bedrooms, fills the wombs of pregnant women with cold water and, as soon as I'm not careful, throws handfuls of grass on my shoulders.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
The Public
Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca's Poetry in Word and Image
Let the skein never end
of I love you you love me, ever burnt
with decrepit sun and old moon;
for whatever you don't give me and I don't ask of you
will be for death, which does not leave
even a shadow on trembling flesh.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"The Poet Tells the Truth"
Moon
like a large stainedglass window
that breaks on the ocean.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"A Game of Moons"
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the crowd broke the windows
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias"
Relish the fresh landscape of my wound,
break rushes and delicate rivulets,
drink blood poured on honeyed thigh.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Sonnet of the Garland of Roses"
The world is a shoulder of dark meat (black flesh of an old mule). And the light is on the other side.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, autumn 1924
Life is laughter amid a rosary of death.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca's Poetry in Word and Image
My poetry is a game.
My life is a game.
But I am not a game.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Melchor Fernandez Almagro, autumn 1924