Overview

Translated by Gloria Garcia Lorca, the writer's niece, and Jane Duran, the family friend who became a celebrated poet, Gypsy Ballads is the most authentic version of Romancero Gitano imaginable. In their new translation Jane Duran and Gloria Garcia Lorca have been faithful to Lorca's work, searching out original meanings, avoiding overt interpretations, reproducing metaphors, so as to bring to an English-speaking reader the pure power of Lorca's poetry. What is revealed is a kaleidoscope of sensory images, characters and stories. Lorca described his most popular collection as 'the poem of Andalusia ...A book that hardly expresses visible Andalusia at all, but where hidden Andalusia 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 strong undercurrents of conflicted identity. This bilingual edition includes revealing insights into the Romancero and the history of the Spanish ballad form by Andres Soria Olmedo; notes on the dedications by Manuel Fernandez-Montesinos; Lorca's lecture on his own book; and an introduction to the problems and challenges faced by translators of Lorca, by Professor Christopher Maurer.

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9781907587085

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'competitive with the best English versions already in circulation; this is certainly a book which all with an interest in Lorca will want to get hold of. ...This is an illuminating, exciting and informative book; Enitharmon (and the contributors) are to be warmly congratulated on their Gypsy Ballads.' Acumen

Author Information

Federico Garcia 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 Garcia Lorca, the poet transforms into metaphor and myth the fantasy and reality of a marginalized people.

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