Gypsy Ballads

By Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca wrote the Gypsy Ballads between 1924 and 1927. When the book was published it caused a sensation in the literary world. Drawing on the traditional Spanish ballad form, Lorca described his Romancero Gitano as ‘the poem of Andalucía...A book that hardly expresses visible Andalusia at all, but where hidden Andalucía trembles’. Seeking to relate the nature of his proud and troubled region of Spain, he drew on a traditional gypsy form; yet the homely, unpretentious style of these poems barely disguises the undercurrents of conflicted identity never far from Lorca’s work. This bilingual edition, translated by Jane Duran and Glora García Lorca, is illuminated by photos and illustrations of and by Lorca, his own reflections on the poems and introductory notes by leading Lorca scholars: insights into the Romancero and the history of the Spanish ballad form by Andrés Soria Olmedo; notes on the dedications by Manuel Fernández-Montesinos; Lorca's 1935 lecture; and an introduction by Professor Christopher Maurer to the problems and challenges faced by translators of Lorca.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enitharmon Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781907587825

Book preview

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) is one of the most popular of modern European poets and playwrights. His poems and plays about creation, desire and death have been translated into dozens of languages and transformed into song, ballet, opera and painting. Fascinated by the folk music of his native Spain, Lorca wrote two books inspired by gypsy rhythms: Poem of the Deep Song (on the world of flamenco and cante jondo) and the best-selling Gypsy Ballads. In Poet in New York (written 1929–1930) he turns the American city into an image of universal loneliness, and in tragedies like Yerma, Blood Wedding, and The House of Bernarda Alba he takes the measure of human longing and of the social repression that would contribute to his early death (he was shot by right-wing forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War). With this collection of ballads, carefully translated by Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca, the poet transforms into metaphor and myth the fantasy and reality of a marginalized people.

First published in 2011

eBook produced 2014

by Enitharmon Press

10 Bury Place

London WC1A 2JL

www.enitharmon.co.uk

Primer romancero gitano 1924–1927 / Gypsy Ballads by Federico García Lorca © Herederos de Federico García Lorca. English-language translation copyright © Jane Duran, Gloria García Lorca and Herederos de Federico García Lorca. Essays copyright © Christopher Maurer, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos García and Andrés Soria Olmedo. Drawings, photographs and other Lorca materials copyright © Fundación Federico García Lorca. All rights reserved. For information regarding rights and permissions, please contact William Peter Kosmas, Esq., 8 Franklin Square, London W14 9UU, England.

The moral rights of Herederos de Federico García Lorca, Fundación Federico García Lorca, Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca are hereby asserted under all applicable laws throughout the world.

ISBN 978–1–907587–82–5

Enitharmon Press gratefully acknowledges the

financial support of Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Translated and introduced by Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca

with essays by

Manuel Fernández-Montesinos

García Christopher Maurer

Andrés Soria Olmedo

ENITHARMON PRESS

Federico García Lorca

Gypsy Ballads

In memory of our parents

Laura de los Ríos and Francisco García Lorca

Bonté Romilly Durán and Gustavo Durán Martínez

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Fundación Federico García Lorca for their generous contribution to this book.

      Our thanks to Manuel Fernández-Montesinos García, Christopher Maurer and Andrés Soria Olmedo for their essays, widening the scope of the book with valuable information and insights on the poems and issues of translation. We warmly thank Cheli Durán for her translations of the texts by Manuel Fernández-Montesinos García and Andrés Soria Olmedo.

      We are deeply grateful to Christopher Maurer, whose meticulous reading of our translations helped us to correct some errors and thus come closer to Lorca’s meanings and intentions. We are also grateful for the use of his updated translation of Lorca’s lecture on the Gypsy Ballads. An earlier version appeared in Deep Song and Other Prose (New York: New Directions, 1980).

      Cheli Durán and Laura García Lorca read through our translations in great detail, and we thank them for their acute criticism and their support. We also sought the advice of Andrés Soria Olmedo time and again over aspects of the translations and we thank him for his patience and guidance. We are grateful to Mario Hernández whose knowledge and perceptions helped to shed light on difficulties we encountered in the text.

      The Spanish text we have used is Mario Hernández’ edition of Romancero gitano (Madrid: Alianza Editorial S.A., 1998), and we are indebted to Alianza Editorial for making the full text available to us. The Gypsy Ballads translations by Will Kirkland and Christopher Maurer in the Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) were helpful sources to consult during the translation process, as were H. Ramsden’s commentaries and notes on the Romancero gitano (Spanish Texts series, Manchester University Press, 1989). Christian de Paepe’s notes on the Romancero gitano (Madrid: Editorial Espasa Calpe S.A., 2008) were useful points of reference, and Christopher Maurer’s detailed notes in the Collected Poems were also illuminating sources of information when it came to writing our Notes. We have also consulted Miguel García-Posada’s edition of the Obras Completas (Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores S.A./ Galaxia Gutenberg S.A.).

      Our translation of ‘San Gabriel’ first appeared in Poetry London, issue 69 (Summer 2011).

      Our thanks to John Morgan for his sensitive understanding of the text and materials, and for imagining and realising this unique edition.

      We thank Larissa Attiso, Isabel Brittain and Peter Target at Enitharmon Press for their help and support with this project. Finally, we want to extend our thanks to Stephen Stuart-Smith, whose enthusiasm and dedication to this project in all its aspects has brought this book to fruition.

Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca

Introduction to the translations

Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca

With every reading of the Romancero gitano, new meanings and interpretations are unveiled. The poems are overwhelmingly beautiful in their language and imagery, and speak to each other. This has moved us to translate the book in its entirety, so that readers can follow the detailed progress of the sequence, and see the intricate interaction between the poems.

      We wanted our translation to convey the poet’s meanings and imagery as accurately as possible. Lorca’s ballads constantly draw on all five senses, and if one loses the particularity of an image by, for instance, interpreting or explaining, ‘unpacking’ the image in some way, one risks losing the vitality of that image, the ideas it suggests and perhaps its full interaction with other images in the sequence.

      We have left some words in Spanish, and these are defined in our Notes. In this way we can give full weight to the word and its resonances. For instance the word laguna in the ‘Mockery of Don Pedro on Horseback’, simultaneously means pond, lagoon and also lacuna – a gap, an absence. Both meanings have an important function in the poem so we have kept this word in Spanish. Similarly in this poem we have used the word caballero rather than ‘gentleman’, because it also suggests a horse (caballo), a rider. We have done this where there is no equivalent or near-equivalent word or short phrase in English that can express the meanings and associations of the word in Spanish.

      The occasional Spanish word is also a reminder of the sounds and cultural context inherent in the original poem. All place names and names of people are kept in Spanish. This reinforces the cultural identity of the person or place, and also enables us to listen to the music of these names. When we say ‘Seville’, this conjures the city from a distance, from another cultural context where English is spoken; whereas the word Sevilla conjures the city from a Spaniard’s point of view.

      We have tried to adhere, wherever possible, to the order of events and images as they appear in the Romancero, thus reflecting what Lorca wanted us to see first, how he presented the passage of time in his narrative. Lorca’s surprising shifts between past, present and conditional verb tenses in the poems help to create a timeless, fluid, dreamlike world, and here again we have tried to follow these fluctuations closely. However, in some cases we have altered the verb tense in the translation to preserve the flow and power of a line.

      Why are the Gypsy Ballads so difficult to translate into English? They are intensely musical, the rhythms and rhyme-scheme are characteristic of the Spanish ballad form and Lorca’s use of language and imagery are subtle interpretations and revelations of his Andalucía. His intention was to convey an Andalucía far more complex than the stereotypes ascribed to it, an Andalucía where invisible forces influence human actions and relations. In the poems, moon, wind and river become empowered protagonists, participating in and reflecting human dramas, altering a sense of reality in the constant dialogue between people and nature. Conveying these landscapes and sensations, so specific to southern Spanish culture, along with the playfulness, grace and intensity of Lorca’s imagery, are challenges for any translator.

      There are inevitable losses and compromises. In translating these ballads, we have tried to protect the clarity and refinement of

Reviews for Gypsy Ballads

[Laura · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My Spanish was just barely good enough to understand Lorca's poetry, it is rich and complicated. I was grateful for the translations. This book has a wealth of biographical, historical and academic notation on the writing and reception of this obra de arte.