Dámaso Alonso writes: "Salió España más agria y más suya, más cerrada, más trágica, más obsesionante que las otras naciones."
"una necesidad dramática de expresión diferenciada, nacional."
[Spain turned out more sour and more its own, more tragic, more obsessive than other nations... A dramatic necessity for differentiated, national expression]
"Federico García Lorca y la expresión de lo español" (1937).
I could write a paragraph on the neuter definite article "lo" here. "The Spanish" in the sense of "what is Spanish." Barea, in one of the first books about Lorca published in English, calls Lorca "an intensely Spanish Spaniard."
Curiously, this Spanish essence only expresses itself every few centuries, according to Alonso. If it could be found in every Spanish writer it wouldn't be all that remarkable! But then, what about all the other Spanish writers?
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