A Lie

It is a lie that the rhythm of haiku is based on the syllable. Actually, it is based on the mora. A syllable can have one or two morae. I'm unsure whether it can have three? So the word yube (twilight) has three morae but two syllables. So if you have been taught that certain Japanese line have to have 5 or 7 syllables you have been seriously misled.

A syllable with more than one vowel will have a long vowel, a diphthong, or the final consonant n.

The confusion comes because people don't now what a mora is, and because the 1-mora syllable is the most frequent type in Japanese.

Then There's This

Then there's this. There is a very simple point to be made here. Of course poetry is involved in nationalism, and nationalism is involved in nationalist violence. This is breathtakingly obvious.

Tristemente

Look how how Lorca uses words like triste / tristemente / tristeza in Libro de poemas. And how infrequently he does after that. This concordance is not 100% reliable but it is convenient.

Here is one clue, then, about how he was able to make that qualitative leap from his early work. Here is a poem that carries emotion without using words for emotion:

CANCIÓN TONTA

Mamá,
yo quiero ser de plata.
Hijo,
tendrás mucho frío.
Mamá,
yo quiero ser de agua.
Hijo,
tendrás mucho frío.
Mamá,
bórdame en tu almohada.
¡Eso sí!
¡Ahora mismo!

I won't insult your intelligence by translating it. Everyone should know enough Spanish to understand it, except maybe for the "We me in your pillow" at the end.

Is "Lorca Studies" a Functioning Field?*

I would say yes, on some level. The people who do basic biographical and bibliographical and textual criticism are cited by almost everyone. So everyone recognizes the importance of Andrew Anderson's definitive critical edition of Poeta en Nueva York. There is a core group of people at the center of this, like Anderson, Maurer, Soria Olmedo. I myself am not a Lorca specialist in this sense, though these people do read my work, for example.

The rest of the field is in overlapping circles, but sometimes there will not be much overlap. What defines these circles is geography (European vs. American), critical approach, genre (poetry vs. theater), etc... A narrow project will have to cite only a fraction of existing criticism. Also, there could be preferences for citing more recent work.

There will be gaps in even the best work. To cite everything in every project would be paralyzing. On the other hand, I have to cite a lot of things just to be legit in making a case for what Lorca studies ought to strive for.

I would hope that the circles would overlap enough to make the field functional.

Another question is the existence of a lot of work of really low quality in the field. I'm thinking that is not as bad a problem as it was, but I'm not sure. A bad talk in a conference about Lorca will be worse than a bad talk about anything else. A bad book about Lorca will be worse than other bad books on other subjects. This might be the function of sheer quantity, or something that makes Lorca attractive to unintelligent people. It is interesting in terms of the social epistemology of the field. What Lorca Knew means also What do we know about Lorca. How we know it, how we justify our knowledge, what we are trying to discover about him.
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*To answer a question posed by Vance in comments on an earlier post.

Tale of Two Poems

Here is a very nice poem Lorca wrote in 1919. He was born in '98 so he is the age of my college juniors.


NIDO

¿Qué es lo que guardo en estos
Momentos de tristeza?
¡Ay, quién tala mis bosques
Dorados y floridos!
¿Qué leo en el espejo
De plata conmovida
Que la aurora me ofrece
Sobre el agua del río?
¿Qué gran olmo de idea
Se ha tronchado en mi bosque?
¿Qué lluvia de silencio
Me deja estremecido?
Si a mi amor dejé muerto
En la ribera triste,
¿Qué zarzales me ocultan
Algo recién nacido?


It's nice, but it isn't great. I've bolded the parts I find weaker. The emphasis on sadness (tristeza) is too similar to Juan Ramón Jiménez. There is conventional language like "momentos de silencio" [moments of silence] and the poetically ineffective pleonasm "agua de río." The phrase "gran olmo de idea" [great elm of idea] is not very good. The poem is restating something that was better expressed earlier in the poem. The poem is confessional, autobiographical, placing the poetic "I" in the center. Nothing wrong with that. There is some typical pathetic fallacy.

But look how he is writing just a few years later:

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
¡Oh, guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

There is no late nineteenth century sadness, simply "weeping" or "sobbing." The poetic fact is there as a fact, rather than being described. There is no need for a poetic "I" anymore, because the emotion just is. Of course, he had to write a bunch of conventional poetry before he even thought about writing something this revolutionary, in which the pathetic fallacy becomes something so radically modernist.

If we want to learn about Lorca's biographical angst, maybe the first poem is more useful, no? Someone is cutting down his wonderful forest, his love has died, and something new for him is born in the brambles. If we want to understand why we revere Lorca as a poet, then the second poem is more useful. Presumably we only care about Lorca in the first place because he was able to transcend the mode of expression of his early work and write something so awe-inspiring.

Incommunication

Lorca studies are curiously fragmented. Because of the vast amount of material, most articles, books, etc... won't be cited in most other articles, books. There is no way the average article could have a bibliography of 20 pages to even cover the minimum necessary. So people are free to cite quite selectively or sometimes hardly at all. Take Cifuentes '86 book La norma y la diferencia. It isn't cited much in Soufas's 96 book Audience and Authority, or in Paul Julian's Smith '98 book The Theatre of García Lorca. There are a few citations among these three books, if memory serves me, but there is no real dialogue or exchange of ideas in three excellent books on a similar topic. If a Lorca book is really bad, and I am not kicking its ass just to prove a point, then I won't cite it at all.

But I do think excellent scholars should cite one another.

Things to Do in 15 Minutes

Suppose you only have fifteen minutes to work on your project today?

1. Go through your bibliography and see if there are incomplete entries. Mark them with an *. Correct any typos you see.

2. Order a book you've been meaning to order from interlibrary loan.

3. Order some books from the library to be picked up later at circulation desk.

4. Make a list of tasks you can accomplish when you have more than 15 minutes.