Federico Garcia Lorca: Spain's encore in the West.

June 5, 1998 marks the centennial of the birth of Federico Garcia Lorca, a birth year often belied by the poet himself because of Spain's calamitous loss of world empire in the Spanish-American War of 1898. So wounded was his patriotic pride by the events of 1898 that he deliberately evaded any reference to that year, preferring instead to claim the year 1899, or even 1900, as his natal year. But the parish registry in Fuente Vaqueros, a village on the outskirts of Granada, records his baptism on June 11, 1898, and his family affirms the date of his birth some six days earlier.

Underlying Garcia Lorca's antipathy toward Spain's nadir was his deep devotion to his homeland and to the dissemination of its rich culture. In his brief lifetime, Garcia Lorca spent two extended sojourns in the Americas, and he was on the verge of leaving for a third tour when he fell victim to the vengeance of the Spanish Civil War in August 1936. In Latin America his poetry and theater had already met with such overwhelming acclaim that he was eagerly anticipating his projected return visit to the Americas.

Garcia Lorca's zeal to spread Hispanic lore had first brought him to the Americas in the summer of 1929, just as his literary productivity and publication began to bring him fame. He went first to New York City, where he enrolled to study English at Columbia University. The classroom, however, was not, and in fact had never been, his milieu. While he had hoped to broaden the scope of his creative experience, this foreign venture left him depressed and restless, yearning for a warmer, more gregarious ambiance.

After six months in New York, Garcia Lorca sought a respite and embarked for Cuba, where he planned to give a few lectures and recitals, establishing artistic and cultural ties. On March 9, 1930, the Havana Post carried on page 2 an item entitled "Dr. Lorca Will Lecture Here." At the invitation of the Hispano-Cuban Institution, "the noted Spanish writer and lecturer" was to present a lecture on the mechanics of Spanish prose and poetry, which was to be followed by three more lectures on other aspects of Spanish literature. During the poet's New York stay, according to the news item, he had studied American life, specializing In the folkways of Harlem. Garcia Lorca, in fact, had been greatly drawn to African-American life, musically and socially, and would later draw parallels between the emotional expressions of Spain's gypsies and those of American blacks.

Undoubtedly, this reference to Garcia Lorca's study of Harlem alludes to his collection of poems, Poet in New York, composed during his sojourn there but not published until four years after his death. Considered by some to be Garcia Lorca's greatest poetic achievement, this work contains several poems based upon his observations of Harlem, poems reflecting his bitterness and dejection as he contemplated its misery and squalor. Yet, after arriving in Havana, he added an epilogue. With those final verses Garcia Lorca's lyrical style rebounded, embellishing his old themes and ballad forms. It seems that once the poet had ensconced himself in Cuba, he quickly recovered his innate zest for life and rhythmic expression.

All through the spring of 1930, as Garcia Lorca basked in his popularity in Cuba, his creativity surged with the presentation of his lecture series, which included discourses and poetic presentations on Gongora, Spanish lullabies, the baroque poet Pedro Soto de Rojas, and one of his perennially favorite topics, the cante jondo. During his visit some of his poems were published in Cuban journals, and he continued work on two surrealist dramas, El publico [The Audience] Asi que pasen cinco anos [When Five Years Pass]. In a letter to his family he marveled: "Many people have joined the Institute [Hispano-Cuban Institution] just to hear me, and many others have asked me for tickets.... I will send you the newspapers. But it would take three or four hours to clip out all that has been written, and is still being written."

Amid constant acclaim and repeated receptions in his honor, Garcia Lorca left Havana in June. Later he would confide to friends that his visit there had been the best three months of his life. Returning to Spain, he was recharged with exuberance and serf-assurance as his theatrical works, poetry, and lectures met with renewed favor. But he was deeply concerned that the Spanish theater was stagnated by works of mediocrity and by audiences lacking the intellectual discernment to recognize true artistic and dramatic merit in theatrical performances. Shortly after his return, Garcia Lorca stated in an interview, "The new theater, advanced in forms and theory, is my greatest preoccupation."

And in November 1931, in a conversation with his close friend Carlos Morla Lynch, he further elaborated on his plan "to save the Spanish theater." In the middle of the night, after attending a traditional Halloween performance of Don Juan Tenorio, Garcia Lorca enthusiastically described his own plan to create an avant-garde theater that would tour Spain and later travel to international venues, performing the classic works of the Spanish theater for those who had never seen them. The theater group, La Barraca, was founded the following February, with government subsidy, and would continue to give performances into the early days of the civil war, even traveling to battlefields. As founder and director, Garcia Lorca was assisted by a young playwright, Eduardo Ugarte; the actors, inexperienced but eager and receiving no pay, were selected from the ranks of university students.

For the Andalusian poet, his boundless ambition "to save the Spanish theater" meant exactly that: to save it, wherever it exists throughout the Hispanic world. As he stated in a newspaper interview in Madrid, "Imagine! . . . With so many Spanish-speaking countries! Our theater in those countries always has an enormous audience, a great audience right now that no one can even imagine . . . There the Spanish theater has the unanimous attendance of the large cities. I await an opening of mine in Buenos Aires with the same interest as I await an opening in Madrid. And it is unimportant whether a work has its opening in Buenos Aires or in Mexico . . . Because it is written in the Spanish language . . . and because it has Spanish sensibility in its expressions, it is the spirit of the language that shines forth."

This conviction brought him back to the Americas for a tour that was to be the climax of his brilliant, brief career. At the invitation of the prestigious society Friends of Art, Garcia Lorca, with his friend and scenographer, Manuel Fontanals, sailed for Buenos Aires in October 1933. This excursion, projected to last a few weeks, stretched into an odyssey of five-and-a-half months. Initially, Garcia Lorca had been invited to Buenos Aires to present a series of lectures and to celebrate the one-hundredth performance of his drama Bodas de sangre [Blood Wedding], which was based on a real-life assassination that occurred before a wedding in the Andalusian town of Nijar. Starring the popular Argentine actress Lola Membrives and her company, the centenary performance was to be staged in a bullring, with Garcia Lorca and Fontanals collaborating on the sets and direction.

Not only did Bodas de sangre enjoy exceptional favor in the Argentine capital, but two earlier works, La zapatera prodigiosa [The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife] and Mariana Pineda, also had record-breaking performances there. In fact, Garcia Lorca met with success at every turn. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, living in Buenos Aires at the time, would later claim that he had been witness to "the greatest triumph ever achieved by a writer of our race."

In December Membrives and her company presented the premiere of Lorca's new, enhanced version of La zapatera. In an interview published in La Nacion just before the Buenos Aires premiere, the poet himself described the differences between the Argentine and Spanish versions:

"The work that I staged in the Espanol Theater [Madrid] was a version de camara [abridgement] in which this farce acquires a greater intimacy, but was losing all its rhythmical perspectives. In reality, its true premiere is in Buenos Aires, linked to the songs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and danced with the extraordinary grace of Lola Membrives and her supporting cast."

Garcia Lorca created this new interpretation of La zapatera especially for the Argentine actress and ballerina, realizing that Membrives's unusual combination of talents would give added dimension to his work and to her performances.

Two weeks later, again with the performances of Membrives and company, Garcia Lorca presented a fin de fiesta. As a festive event, with decor and stage sets by Fontanals, the poet-dramatist presented three popular Spanish folk songs, "Los Peregrinitos," "Los cuatro muleros," and "Cancion de Castilla en otono," which the Membrives company performed in traditional settings. In mid-January, the same company gave its opening presentation of Mariana Pineda.

Back home, the newspaper Defensor de Granada carried on its front page an Argentine press release extolling Garcia Lorca's unprecedented popularity and acclaim in Buenos Aires. The article noted that the poet had triumphed there both in his absence and in his presence. Before his arrival, Bodas de sangre had met with unique success, and since his arrival it had reached one-hundred-thirty performances, La zapatera, about sixty, and Mariana Pineda was expected to gamer the same popularity, even in the heat of the Argentine summer.

At the end of January 1934, Garcia Lorca accepted an invitation to visit Montevideo to present several lectures and to meet the poets Enrique Amorim and Alfredo Maria Ferreiro. There too, the young dramatist's popularity and his enthusiastic presentations on Spanish literature and culture inspired glowing press notices and genial invitations to linger there.

After about two weeks in the Uruguayan capital, however, Garcia Lorca returned to Buenos Aires to continue work on his sensational presentation of the Spanish classic theater, Lope de Vega's La dama boba [The Simple-Minded Lady]. On March 4 La Nacion gave a glowing description of the performance, starring Eva Franco in the role of la dama. With unerring verisimilitude, Garcia Lorca and Fontanals had literally transcended three centuries, transforming Buenos Aires's Teatro de la Comedia into the sixteenth-century Corral de la Pacheca, where many of Lope's works were performed. In describing his own version of the famous Golden Age play, Garcia Lorca stressed that he had in no way altered Lope's work; he merely cut some of the digressing dialogue, in order to reduce the length and to make the play more easily understood by contemporary audiences. He likened his technique to that of a botanist pruning a plant. At one of the performances, he introduced the play to the audience, offering a brief homage to Lope de Vega.

Another salient event of Garcia Lorca's sojourn in Buenos Aires was the reception accorded him by the famous PEN Club, the International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists. At that banquet, Garcia Lorca and Neruda, now good friends, offered a homage al alimon, to the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario. Here are some excerpts from that memorable dialogue:

Garcia Lorca: We are going to name the poet of America and of Spain. Ruben ...

Neruda:. . . Dario. Because, ladies...

Garcia Lorca: And gentlemen...

Garcia Lorca: Pablo Neruda, Chilean, and I, Spanish, agree upon the language and upon the great Nicaraguan, Argentine, Chilean, and Spanish poet, Ruben Dario.

Neruda and Garcia Lorca: For whose homage and glory we raise our glasses.

And the amicable discourse and camaraderie between these two great poets would not end there. For Neruda would arrive in Madrid as Chilean consul in late May 1934, soon after Garcia Lorca's return there. Subsequently, they were in constant contact with each other and with the entire company of Hispanic artists and intellectuals of that era.

In late March, Garcia Lorca's lengthy and glorious visit to Latin America had to end. His self-appointed mission "to save the Spanish theater" had borne plenteous fruit, and he availed himself once more of his earliest theatrical device: his puppets. In his childhood, he had entertained his playmates and the servants of Fuente Vaqueros with his first theatrical fabrications in his little puppet theater. Intermittently, even in adulthood, he had continued to return to his own beloved miniature stage and marionettes to regale his friends. That gesture of cordiality, as a grateful gift to his hosts, inspired his final theatrical presentation in Buenos Aires, as he offered a special performance of El retablillo de don Cristobal in the Avenida Theater on March 25. Collaborating on this event were Helena Cortesina and other members of Membrives's troupe.

Two days later Fontanals and Garcia Lorca boarded a ship to return to Spain; but first they enjoyed a festive stopover in Rio de Janeiro, where Alfonso Reyes, the well-known Mexican writer, came aboard, along with other friends, to present gifts and enjoy a pleasant reunion.

Again in Spain, Garcia Lorca plunged feverishly into his work with La Barraca and into completing the daring Yerma, the second in his trilogy of tragedies, following Bodas de sangre. The year ended triumphantly for him as Margarita Xirgu, the famous Catalan actress, opened Yerma in Madrid's Espanol Theater to a completely sold-out house and favorable reviews.

In 1935 Membrives and her company traveled to Spain to perform a revival of Bodas de sangre at Madrid's Coliseum Theater. In Madrid, as in Buenos Aires, the acclaim for her production was enormous. At the close of the performance, Garcia Lorca took the stage to address the audience and to express his gratitude to his Argentine colleagues. The true reason for Membrives's travel to Spain, however, was the projected presentation of the playwright's definitive version of La zapatera, which he himself would direct.

Early that summer Garcia Lorca participated with Jorge Guillen and other poets in the homage to Neruda on the publication of his Residencia en la tierra [Residence on Earth]. And later in the summer, Garcia Lorca's version of La dama boba, first performed by Membrives in Buenos Aires, was presented in Madrid by Margarita Xirgu and Enrique Borras for the tricentenary festival in homage to Lope de Vega.

Xirgu's interpretation of La dama boba was her last engagement in Madrid before her departure for a lengthy tour in the Americas. Like Garcia Lorca, she, too, aspired to bring international recognition to the Spanish theater. Returning to Barcelona, she interpreted the role of Dona Rosita la soltera [Dona Rosita the Spinster], another triumph for both the actress and the playwright, just before leaving for her international tour.

Xirgu earnestly wished to have Garcia Lorca accompany her for her theater tour in the Americas, and in an interview following the premiere of Dona Rosita, the dramatist had announced his intention to return with her for her extended itinerary. In Barcelona, he had told the theater critic Luis Gongora that he planned to go with Xirgu to Mexico for a brief engagement there, and to return quickly to Spain to complete work on his many literary and theatrical projects in progress.

But in Spain, the year 1936 brought constantly mounting tensions and anarchic demonstrations. For the poet, all this turbulence disoriented him and stymied his creative spirit. In May, expecting soon to finish La Casa de Bernarda Alba [The House of Bernarda Alba], the final work in his trilogy of tragedies, Garcia Lorca again announced his plans to return to the Americas to join Xirgu. He continued to insist that he was expecting a cable from Xirgu, and that he would join her in Mexico, where he would give a series of lectures on Quevedo. But those plans would never be realized.

By July 16 Garcia Lorca arrived in Granada from Madrid, fleeing the mounting violence of the capital to return to the safety of his family's home. On July 18 General Francisco Franco announced his command of the insurgent forces. The ensuing civil war began with the uprising that brought three years of death and horror to Spain. Among its first victims was the Andalusian poet.

As a centenary tribute to the poet who so deplored the year of his birth, it may be noted that if the Year 1898 brought to Spain and its colonies an ineluctable political schism, that year also gave birth to a poet who engendered a unifying spirit throughout the Hispanic world by his impassioned devotion to Hispanic life and culture.

Suzanne Byrd, formerly a professor of Spanish literature, is based in Atlanta, Georgia. Additional research was provided by Rei Berroa, professor of Spanish literature at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia. Illustrations and photographs are from Garcia Lorca: Biografia Ilustrada, by Jose Luis Cano, Ediciones Destino, Barcelona, 1962; and Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life, by Ian Gibson, Pantheon Books, New York, 1989.