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FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA:
SELECTED LETTERS






LORCA


FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA: SELECTED LETTERS

Edited and translated by David Gershator

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

This first English-language edition of Federico García Lorca's Selected Letters presents an intimate autobiographical record of the Spanish poet from the age of twenty to a month before his death at the hands of Franco's troops in 1936.

"I was born for my friends," Lorca wrote to Mechor Fernández Almagro in 1926, and these letters reveal the personality his friends found so magical. ("A happiness, a brilliance..." Pablo Neruda called him.) Lorca was by turns sympathetic, generous, demanding, whimsical, insecure, and always lyrical. Over the nineteen years covered in this selection he maintained correspondences with his closest friends, particularly his childhood companion Mechor Fernández Almagro and fellow poet Jorge Guillén, and wrote in concentrated bursts to many others. He could be playful with Salvador Dalí's younger sister Ana María; deferential to composer Manuel de Falla; lively and descriptive to his family; and exasperating to Barcelona critic Sebastían Gasch as he poured out literary plans and solicited favors, ever impassioned but good-natured. With their frequent enclosures of poems and scenes from plays, the letters also chronicle Lorca's growth as an artist, from self-doubting romantic dilettante to confident and internationally respected playwright and poet.

Begun at Columbia University under the sponsorship of Lorca's brother, Francisco García Lorca, the translation and selection of these letters has been made by David Gershator, poet, teacher, and co-founder of the Downtown Poets Co-op. Dr. Gershator has also provided an informative biographical introduction.

COMMENTS ON THE TRANSLATION:

"These letters capture the excitement of the literary scene in 1920s and '30s Spain....
A charming introduction to the author." Washington Post

"...intelligently and beautifully translated." The New Leader

"...translated imaginatively and idiomatically." The Boston Globe

"...exuberantly translated by Gershator." San Francisco Examiner


 The 192 page collection is available in cloth or paperback. New Directions, 1983.
 

For more about Gershator's connection to Lorquian studies and the poet's life and work, see Gershator's article "Federico García Lorca's Trip to the Moon"... plus extras.