28,124
days ago, on this date, in 1936, Federico Garcia Lorca died.
It’s
not accurate to say that he “died” as if the cause of death were a car accident
or meningitis or a broken neck resulting from a careless trip on the stairs
over an untacked corner of carpeting.
His full name was Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús GarcÃa Lorca.
He was born near Granada, Spain. He was killed
on his way back to his home in Granada. He was murdered somewhere near Alfacar.
Everything
in Spain seems to have so many names. Names piled up like an accident on a
California freeway. The full designation of Lorca’s birthplace is Fuente
Vaqueros, Granada, Andalusia, Spain.
He
was born on the 5th of June 1898.
He
was 38 years old when he was murdered, execution-style. He’d lived 13,955 days.
He might reasonably have been expected to live at least 10,000 more.
He
was killed three days before the Spanish Civil War broke out. It is generally
thought that he was arrested and summarily executed by the right wing
Nationalist Militia.
It
is argued that Lorca was a Marxist.
It
is argued that Lorca was sympathetic to members of the Falangists before that
largely idealistic group, originally a haven for modernists, futurists, and
other artistic types, was co-opted by Francisco Franco who transformed it into
a paramilitary political organization on the order of Mussolini’s fascists and
Hitler’s Nazis.
It
is argued that Lorca had friends among both groups.
It
is argued that Lorca was basically apolitical, a romantic naïf, a champion of
beauty, freedom, and the imagination who couldn’t properly belong to any
political party.
He
was a homosexual.
He
tried to seduce Salvador Dali (unsuccessfully).
He
traveled to the United States in 1929, staying mostly in New York.
He
sailed on the SS Olympic, a sister liner to the Titanic.
He
didn’t seem to like New York, or America, very much.
The
Titanic sank on the 15th of April 1912.
His
homosexuality caused him a great deal of anguish.
He
was not living in a culture that accepted homosexuality.
It
is argued that his sexual orientation played a role in his murder.
It
was not likely the reason for his murder, however.
There
are accounts that before his execution his homosexuality was referenced,
disparagingly, by his killers.
In
all probability, Lorca’s murderers used his homosexuality, not as a cause to
murder him, but as a means to dehumanize him further before shooting him.
He
was a poet and a playwright, known initially for his revival of the gypsy
ballad tradition.
He
was subsequently worried that he would be “typecast” as a gypsy poet.
He
wrote “The Shoemakers Prodigious Wife.”
He
took the Dali and Bunuel’s film “Un Chien Andalou” as a personal attack.
He
was, as photographs attest, an exceptionally handsome man.
His
best known plays make up what is called “The Rural Trilogy.”
They
are: The Blood Wedding, Yerma The House of Bernarda Alba
He
was a visual artist but his work as a visual artist is generally overlooked,
arguably with good reason.
In
2008 an investigation into his murder was re-opened. Nothing was concluded. A
potential gravesite was excavated. Nothing was found.
Some
things Lorca said and/or wrote:
“Besides
black art, there is only automation and mechanization.”
“As
I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.”
“The
only things that the United States has given the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. And
in Cuba, they make much better cocktails.”
“The artist, and particularly the
poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only
the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death,
with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.
“I've often lost myself, in order
to find the burn that keeps everything awake”
“Only mystery
allows us to live, only mystery.”
Lorca died today,
28,124 days ago.
He still helps keep everything awake.
