Poems of Love and Death

A translation into English by A. S. Kline
Published with illustrations.


Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), poet, playwright, and theatre director was a member of the early twentieth century group of Spanish poets who introduced the tenets of European movements (including symbolism, futurism, and surrealism) to Spanish literature. He was born in Fuente Vaqueros, near Granada, and educated in Granada and Madrid, where he befriended Dalí, Buñuel and Jiménez. His work became widely known on the publication of Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928), which incorporated themes and motifs from his native Andalusia, in a stylistically avant-garde manner. After his visit to the Americas, and New York City (1929 -1930), the latter recalled in the poems of Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York, 1942) Lorca returned to Spain where he wrote his later plays, Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936).

The poet was executed by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. His remains have not been found, while the motive for his death remains in dispute; speculatively it was aroused by his sexual orientation, his politics, or both, while a personal dispute nonetheless remains a strong possibility.

Lorca’s poetry appeals through its immediacy, its skilful exploitation of the vibrant Spanish language, its transmission of iconic elements of Andalusian culture, and its emotional intensity and honesty. Its apparent simplicity is often deceptive, while its resonances are moving and profound; though, truly, little can be said of it that is not better expressed by the poems themselves.