Yair Huri Ben Gurion University
1. Lorca and the Arab-Andalusian Heritage
The purpose of this article is to explore the image of the renowned Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) as reflected in the writings of several prominent modern Arab poets. This article will attempt to demonstrate how Lorca's images and writings exercised a towering influence on Arab poets primarily during the 1950's and 1960's, and continues to influence contemporary modernist Arab poets in various ways.
More than one reason can be given to explain how Lorca became a prominent figure in modern Arabic poetry. The first reason is connected to the fact that the Arab poets, who employed his images in their works, were eagerly aware of the fact that Lorca considered himself an Andalusian poet par excellence, whose poetry bears strong affinities to classic Andalusian Arabic poetry. In a lecture delivered in Granada on February 19, 1922, Lorca acknowledged these affinities to his audience. The lecture, entitled "Historical and Artistic Importance of the Primitive Andalusian Song Called Cante Jondo," discussed his poems written during that year (and later published in a book titled Poema del cante jondo, "Poem of the deep song", 1931). In the following lines, Lorca lucidly expresses the way he perceives his poetical and spiritual sources:
Just as in the siguiriya [the prototypical song form of the
cante jondo…] and in its daughter genres, are to be found
the most ancient oriental elements, so in many poems of
cante jondo there is an affinity to the oldest oriental verse.
When our songs reach the extremes of pain and love they
come very close in expression to the magnificent verses
of Arab and Persian poets. The truth is that the lines and
features of far Arabia still remain in the air of Cordoba and
Granada. (al-Ahrām Weekly, 1)
Furthermore, in one of his most famous lectures called The Duende: Theory and Divertissement, Lorca acknowledged that the Duende, the unique inner zeal and the poetic inspiration which characterizes Spanish poetry and Spanish poets, derives exclusively from the cultural heritage that emerged in the Arab peninsula and from the ecstatic prays of the mystical Muslims:
In all Arabian music, in the dances, songs, elegies of Arabia,
the coming of the Duende is greeted by fervent outcries of
Allah! Allah! God! God!, so close to the Olé! Olé! of our bull
ring that who is to say they are not actually the same, and in
all the songs of southern Spain the appearance of the
Duende is followed by heartfelt exclamations of God alive! -
profound, human tender, the cry of communication with God
through the medium of the five senses and the grace of the
Duende…
In the lines that follow this explanation, Lorca maintains that the poetry written by Andalusian Arab poets in the Middle Ages (like the poetry of Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribī, 1214-1286), who assembled an anthology of Andalusian poetry which was translated into Spanish), bears striking resemblance to the cante jondo, the traditional Andalusian song. These songs combined intensely emotional yet stylistically spare poetry on themes of sacrifice, pain, suffering, love and death with a primitive musical form that bears traces of the poems written by Arab poets during the Moorish occupation of Spain (714-1492). During this period of time, Moorish influence had been assimilated into every facet of Andalusian life (Harrison Londré, 15). Lorca's acknowledgement of the Arabic culture of Spain as one of the essential components of his poetic world has blossomed into fruition in one of his last poem collection, Diván del Tamarit ("Diván of the Tamarit", 1934). The book, a cycle of poems written in tribute to Granada's old legacy, explicitly derives from the poetic heritage of the Arab-Andalusian poets of ancient Granada (whom he had read in translation) and from the Islamic tradition developed in Granada over a period of approximately 800 years.
Granada, the city of his upbringing, also played an essential role in forming his keenest sensibility to Arabic culture. In a study of Lorca's life and poetry, Felicia Hardison Londré indicates that Lorca was enchanted with Granada because of its refined stamp of Arabic culture left from the Moorish occupation: flowing water in innumerable public fountains, narrow streets creating shady respites from the glaring Andalusian sun, private patios heavily perfumed by lush vegetation, and, above all, the delicately filigreed arches of the fourteenth-century Alhambra Palace on a hill near the heart of the city. Granada is the subject of Lorca's most lyrical prose and poetry as well as the settings of one of his last and best plays, Doña Rosita la soltera ("Doña Rosita the Spinster"). Londré asserts that Lorca stalwartly believed that the sensuous and mystical Arab ethos represented in the flowering of Spanish culture, was unfortunately repressed by the puritanical strictures of triumphant Catholicism. (Harrison Londré, 4)
Another factor that contributed to Lorca's status as a heroic figure in modern Arabic poetry is undoubtedly related to his social awareness, which is reflected both in his poetic and discursive works, an awareness which perhaps led to his assassination by the infamous fascist "black squads". We would argue that Lorca's death possessed a fantastic aura about it in the eyes of leftist Arab poets during the 1950's and the 1960's, because of the fact that he was perceived as a true revolutionary poet, who did not side with any political party or establishment, and was willing to make the ultimate personal sacrifice for his socialist and liberal views. (Harrison Londré, 36)
Indeed, as Londré points out, there is no doubt that Lorca was antifascist. His last works indicate increasing willingness to treat social issues in art. However, it remains clear that Lorca never aligned himself with any political group or party. A month before his death Lorca told a friend:
I will never be political. I am a revolutionary because
there are no true poets that are not revolutionaries.
Don't you agree? But political, I will never, never be
[…] I am on the side of the poor. (36)
During this period, when asked about the reasons that have driven him to leave Madrid and return to Granada, he answered:
I'm going because they keep mixing me up with politics,
which I don't understand, nor do I want to know anything
[…]. I am everybody's friend, and all I want is for
everybody to be able to eat and work. (36)
In two different interviews Lorca expressed a similar view regarding the role of the intellectuals in Spain vis-à-vis the poverty in Spain:
I will always be on the side of those who have nothing,
of those to whom even the peace of nothingness is denied.
We - and by we I mean those of us who are intellectuals,
educated in well-off middle-class families - are being called
to make a sacrifice. Let's accept the challenge. (Gibson, 34)
The day when hunger is eradicated there is going to be the
greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever seen. We will
never be able to picture the joy that will erupt when the
Great Revolution comes. I'm talking like a real Socialist,
aren't I? (54)
Lorca further elucidated his view regarding the role of art in the last interview published before his death. In this interview, Lorca ardently attacks the artists who believe in the notion of 'art for the art's sake":
The idea of art for art's sake is something that would be cruel if it weren't, fortunately, so ridiculous. No decent person believes any longer in all that nonsense about pure art, art for art's sake. At this dramatic point in time, the artist should laugh and cry with the people. We must put down the bunch of lilies and bury ourselves up to the waist in mud to help those who are looking for lilies. For myself, I have a genuine need to communicate with others. This is why I knocked at the doors of the theatre and why I now devote all my talents to it. (Gibson, 55)
Londré indicates that in an interview on February 9, 1936, Lorca made a direct link between his admiration for Arab culture and his opposition to the ruling regime in Spain and expressed an attitude that was probably as much responsible for any hostility toward him in Granada as any political label that may have been pinned to him. In that interview, Lorca straightforwardly stated his view regarding the fall of Moorish Granada to Catholic Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492:
It was disastrous event, although they teach the contrary
in schools. An admirable brand of civilization, of poetry,
of architecture, and delicacy unique in the world - all were
lost, to be replaced by a poor, craven town, a 'wasteland'
now dominated by the worst bourgeoisie in Spain. (37)
Another significant factor in forming the myth of Lorca as an "Arab" poet, is the Fuente Grande ("The Great Fountain") near Granada, the place were he was taken to be buried. In an outstanding research on Lorca's assassination, Ian Gibson points out, that the Fuente Grande has an intriguing history. The Arabs, noting the water-bubbles which rise continually from the depths of the spring, called it Ainadamar (the Spanish pronunciation of the Arabic name 'Ayn al-Dam', "The Fountain of Tears"), a name by which the pool is still known in the present day. Ainadamar was apparently more vigorous in the past than it is now. The water is abundant and excellent to drink and the Arabs, always skilled in matters of irrigation, decided to construct a canal to carry it to Granada. (Gibson, 163)
The Arabs admired the loveliness of the spring's surroundings, and a sizeable colony appeared near the pool. No vestiges of the villas remain above ground, but several compositions by Arab poets in praise of Ainadamar's beauty have survived, most notably one by Abū al-Barakāt al-Balafīqī (d. 1372). Al-Balafīqī was an Andalusian judge, historian and a poet born in Almería. He also was one of the literary men who adorned the Granadine court at the zenith of its splendour in the fourteenth century. In the poem, al-Balafīqī refers to Ishāq al-Mawsilī (d. 850), the most famous of all Arab musicians, while expressing his longing to the landscapes surrounding Ainadamar:
Is it my separation from Ainadamar, stopping the pulsation of my
Blood, which has dried up the flow of tears from the well of my eyes?
Its water moans in sadness like the moaning of one who,
Enslaved by love, has lost his heart.
Beside it the birds sing melodies comparable to those of
The Mausilīt, reminding me the now distant past into which
I entered in my youth; and the moons of that place, beautiful as
Joseph, would make every Moslem abandon his faith for that of love.
(163-164)
Gibson maintains that it seems appropriate that the Fuente Grande, praised in the past by the Islamic poets of Granada, should continue six hundreds years later to bubble up its clear waters only a few hundreds yards from the unacknowledged resting place of Granada's greatest poet.(164) Few Arab poets, as we will see, refer to this fact in their works to further portray the image of Lorca as an "Arab" poet who was killed on the very ground which Arab Andalusian poets used to pray.
-- Yoshie