Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Reaction to the Publication of theSonetos del amor oscuro

1988; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382882000365261

1469-3550

Daniel Eisenberg,

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: GARCÍA LORCA, FEDERICO (1898–1936)PRINTING & PUBLISHING — SPAINSEXUALITY [IN HISTORY, SOCIETY, LITERATURE & CULTURE]SONETOS DEL AMOR OSCURO [F. GARCÍA LORCA]WOMEN/GENDER ISSUES — SPAIN & PORTUGAL Notes 1. The numbers and letters in parentheses refer to entries in the bibliographical appendix which follows the text. A large number of persons have assisted me in collecting the materials used in this article. They include José Amezcua, Andrew Anderson, Gilberto Greco, Victor Infantes, Thomas Lathrop, Christopher Maurer, Germán and Lilia Orduna, Ángel Sahuquillo, Giuseppe di Stefano, Scott Tucker, Noël Valis, and Jack Walsh. Andrew Anderson and André Belamich have read several drafts of this article and made valuable suggestions for its improvement. 2. Missing is an Italian (Pisa) tesina on the sonnets from November of 1985, on which I have been unable to obtain any more useful information. 3. HR and/HP received and acknowledged copies (LII [1984], 261 and VIII [1984], 260, respectively). 4. All the commentators save Eduardo Castro (8), Lázaro Carreter (9a), and Socrate (20) speak of a single perpetrator; Lázaro, with no explanation, uses the plural (‘los anónimos remitentes’), Castro speaks of ‘el editor o los editores’, and Socrate attributes the publication to ‘un gruppo di intellettuali granadini’ (p. 251). 5. ‘Los once sonetos han salido clandestinamente de los archivos de la familia García Lorca en Madrid’, echoes Eutimio Martín, Federico García Lorca, heterodoxo y mártir. Análisis y proyección de la obra juvenil inédita (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1986), p. 61, who refers, p. 60, to ‘el responsable (o responsables)’. 6. Cano's report that he discussed the edition with Aleixandre on 15 November 1983, must be an error for 15 December (21, pp. 279–80). 7. In Volume I of Belamich's translation of Lorca's Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1981) many poems appeared which had not been published in Spanish. This provoked many protests. Chronologically: ‘Improbable resulta que esos a quienes corresponde la responsabilidad no se sonrojen al ver aparecer así [i.e., in French] estos poemas, en esta extraña lengua con estas palabras extrañas’ (María Dolores Aguilera, ‘Lorca en francés’, Quimera, No. 14 [December, 1981], pp. 6–9, at p. 8). ‘Tanto este tomo II como el I ven la luz en circunstancias peculiares: aparecen faltos de un número considerable de poemas de García Lorca que se han publicado en lengua francesa … pero que siguen inéditos en castellano. Es de desear que esta situación se resuelva lo más pronto posible’ (Miguel García-Posada, ed., Obras [Madrid: Akal, 1980–82], II, ‘Advertencia’, an edition henceforth referred to as ‘Akal, perceptively reviewed by Andrew Anderson in Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, IX [1984], 112–13). 8. José Luis Cano, ‘Nota sobre una fijación infantil de Lorca: los muslos’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Nos. 433–34 (July–August 1986), 139–44, at p. 144, n. 9. 9. Breaking the unanimity is Aleixandre: ‘son desiguales, y unos son más hermosos y dramáticos que otros’ (21, p. 280). 10. This, then, represents a correction of Montesinos’ previous statement: ‘Todo lo que está hoy guardado por la familia aparecerá o se hará referencia a ello en esa edición [the authorized critical edition]’ (‘Sobre los inéditos de García Lorca’, El País, 5 November 1978; emphasis added). However, it is in harmony with that of Isabel García Lorca, ‘no puedo anticipar si saldrá algo en algún plazo concreto’ (quoted in ‘Lorca el oscuro’, Cambio 16, 9–15 July 1978, p. 39). 11. Miguel García-Posada, García Lorca, in the series ‘Escritores de todos los tiempos’ (Madrid: EDAF, 1979), p. 321. 12. la. According to Belamich, Aleixandre's piece in which the comment on the Sonetos de amor oscuro was included is ‘en quelques pages, ce qui a été dit de plus profond sur Lorca’ (his translation, I, xi, n. 1). 13. From a letter to Jacques Comincioli, 1 August 1969, cited in Comincioli's Federico García Lorca. Textes inédits et documents critiques (Lausanne: Rencontre, 1970), 84–85. 14. 9e; ‘Sobre los inéditos de García Lorca’. According to Martínez Nadal, the same factor—that Lorca did not leave us a written discussion or outline of the book—was responsible for the delay in publication from 1973 to 1983 of Belamich's reconstruction of Lorca's Suites (‘Los inéditos de Lorca’, El País, 26 November 1978). 15. In his anthology García Lorca (supra, note 14), García-Posada wrote that los … sonetos antologizados pertenecen, sin duda, a los Sonetos del amor oscuro’ (p. 321). 16. Neruda: 1b, and also a quotation in W. Mauro and E. Clementelli, Los escritores frente al poder (Barcelona: Caralt, 1975), p. 73 (cited by Eutimio Martín, ‘Los puntos sobre las íes. Edición de la obra de Federico García Lorca’, Quimera, No. 17 [March 1982], pp. 15–18, at p. 18). Ayala: 12. Cernuda: 18, pp. 194–95. Rivas Cherif: ‘La muerte y la pasión de García Lorca’, Excelsior [Mexico], 13 January 1957; Rivas is discussing a publication of Juan Rejano, which I have not seen. Martínez Nadal: introduction to Poems, trans. Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili (New York: Oxford U.P., 1939), p. xxv; El público: Amor, teatro y caballos en la obra de Federico Garcia Lorca (Oxford: Dolphin, 1970), pp. 159, 169, 189, 258; letter, El País, 8 September 1978; Cuatro lecciones sobre Federico García Lorca (Madrid: Juan March/Cátedra, 1980), p. 105. Giner de los Ríos: 9f. Guillermo de Torre: review of the Aguilar Obras completas, reprinted in Las metamorfosis de Proteo (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1956), pp. 143–51, at p. 148. Altolaguirre: El caballo griego, in his Obras completas, ed. James Valender, I (Madrid: Istmo, 1986), 87 (note the same title in the variant text in the footnote). José Bergamín, in a draft of his introduction to the Séneca and Norton editions of Poeta en Nueva York; see Eisenberg, Poeta en Nueva York: Historia y problemas de un texto de Lorca (Barcelona: Ariel, 1976), p. 37 (why Bergamín, having included the title, then deleted it, is not clear, but there are in his introduction many allusions to the collection, as was pointed out by García-Posada in the notes to his edition of Lorca's works (Akal, II, 759). Blanco Amor: Javier Alfaya, ‘El rostro oculto de Lorca’, La Calle, No. 132 (30 Sept.–6 Oct. 1980). Benítez Inglott: Crucifixión, Planas de Poesía [Las Palmas], 9 (September 1950), according to Arturo del Hoyo, textual notes in the Aguilar edition to the sonnets ‘Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla’ and ‘El poeta pide a su amor que le escriba’. 17. ‘El título fue simplificado por el propio poeta en declaraciones últimas, bajo el simple título de Sonetos’ (Montesinos, ‘Sobre los inéditos de García Lorca’; also 9e, 9f). 18. According to García-Posada (9c), one can understand why the title Sonetos del amor oscuro ‘no trascendiera a las declaraciones públicas del autor’. 19. Quoted by Ian Gibson, El asesinato de García Lorca (Barcelona: Crítica, 1979), p. 181. The same information is found in Hernández's introduction to his edition of Diván del Tamarit, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, Sonetos (Madrid: Alianza, 1981), pp. 128–29, citing a report of Gibson's interview with Rosales in Triunfo, 24 February 1979 (not seen). 20. According to García-Posada, Akal, II, 759. 21. Rosales' statement contradicts an earlier statement of his sister Esperanza that it was their father who had turned over to Lorca's father all the manuscripts in their possession (Gibson, El asesinato, p. 180), and also fails to address the fact that Rosales, who met Lorca in 1930, conserves poems from 1918 unpublished until 1976 and 1982 (Akal, II, 770–71), perhaps the same ‘inéditos’ of Lorca he was reading in 1944 (Charles David Ley, La costanilla de los diablos (Memorias literarias 1943–52) [Madrid: José Esteban, 1981], p. 41). If either Rosales did give these sonnets to Lorca's father, what has happened to them? Montesinos has repeatedly denied that his family possesses the texts in question, and most recently is quoted as follows: ‘Respecto a los Sonetos del amor oscuro, Fernández Montesinos dijo no conocer la existencia de otros, aunque reveló que quizá “los tenga Luis Rosales” ‘ (‘Montesinos revela parte de la obra inédita de García Lorca’, Diario de Granada, 9 November 1984, p. 1). Furthermore, there is the question of Lorca manuscripts other than sonnets: Hernández believes it likely that at this time there passed from the Rosales to the Lorcas the or a MS of La casa de Bernarda Alba (18, p. 208), a text with a confusing history of its own (see my ‘Nuevos documentos relativos a la edición de Poeta en Nueva York y otras obras de García Lorca’, forthcoming in Anales de Literatura Española [Alicante]). No comment at all has been made on my suggestion {Poeta en Nueva York, p. 36) that Rosales might be one of the still-unidentified holders of a MS of El público, a work Lorca was carrying with him in July 1936. 22. Eduardo Molina Fajardo, Los últimos días de García Lorca (Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1983), p. 178. 23. Gibson, El asesinato, p. 181; Hernández, introduction to edition of Diván del Tamarit, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, Sonetos, pp. 128–29; José Luis Vila-San-Juan, García Lorca, asesinado: toda la verdad (Barcelona: Planeta, 1975), p. 116. 24. 1 July 1936, according to Auclair, p. 323. 25. 1b. The title is also used by Neruda's widow, who refers to ABC's edition not by its title Sonetos de amor but as Sonetos de amor oscuro [ABC, edición internacional, 18–24 July 1984, p. 21). Also in ABC, Claude Couffon is quoted as using the title Sonetos del amor oscuro (15); it is used three times in the heading and text of ‘Amancio Prada cantará los Sonetos del amor oscuro, de García Lorca, en el teatro María Guerrero’ (ABC, edición internacional, 5–11 February 1986, p. 32). While reprinting the Sonetos de amor, the heading being the only place that title is found, the editor of ABC, Luis María Ansón, three times in his introduction uses Sonetos del amor oscuro (Los domingos de ABC, 17 August 1986, p. 27). In the same issue, the title is also used by Charles Marcilly: ‘la denuncia de la marginación más dolorosa y personal, la del amor homosexual que se confiesa en los poemas del Diván del Tamarit y los Sonetos del amor oscuro’ (‘El pensamiento de Federico’, p. 13), and by Julio Huelamo Kosma: ‘el código amoroso que recorre con manifiesta acuidad los Sonetos del amor oscuro’ (‘El soneto “El poeta pregunta a su amor por la Ciudad Encantada de Cuenca” ‘, pp. 42–43, at p. 42). According to Mario Socrate, ‘le obiezioni risentite al “mítico” titolo Sonetos del amor oscur … appaiono trascendere gli scrupoli d'un rigore filologico’ (20, p. 252). 26. García-Posada himself, carefully choosing his words, wrote (in Akal, II, 131) that ‘no se puede negar que hay en él [the word “oscuro”] una franja de significado que conecta con una concepción amorosa no heterosexual’, although in Lorca it was ‘exento de connotaciones turbias’. If it does not have those connotations, though, then why is there such resolute opposition to its use? 27. The quotation of Aleixandre which closes Cano's Cuadernos de Velintonia: ‘Lo curioso es cómo en todos los artículos que acompañan a los sonetos [in ABC] se evita cuidadosamente la palabra homosexual, aunque se aluda a ello, pues nadie ignora que esos sonetos no están dedicados a una mujer. Se ve que todavía ésa es palabra tabú en España, en ciertos medios, como si el confesarlo fuese un descrédito para el poeta. Todo eso viene de muy antiguo, de cuando la Inquisición quemaba vivos a los culpables del delito nefando. No es extraño que aún haya gentes para las que toda sospecha de ese supuesto pecado sea vista como peligrosa, aunque ya no haya inquisición’ (21, pp. 284–85). Ian Gibson, who also calls the texts published in ABC the Sonetos del amor oscuro, also notes that in ABC ‘no aparece una sola vez la palabra “homosexualidad” … pero sí encontramos expresiones despectivas contra los lectores vulgares, maldicientes, presos de “torpes manías”, etc.’ (‘En torno a Lorca, hoy’, Cuadernos de Música y Teatro 1886–1936–1986 [Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores de España, 1987], pp. 81–91, at p. 88. 28. 2. Mauro Armiño is credited in the colophons of Akal I and II, and is also listed on García-Posada's García Lorca as the editor of the series in which the book appeared. 29. 9c; García Lorca, p. 321. 30. For an introduction to this crux of Shakespeare scholarship, see Martin Green, The Labyrinth of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (London: Charles Skilton, 1974), Chapter 4, and Joseph Pequigney, Such is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985). 31. Such as Diván del Tamarit, El público, La destrucción de Sodoma, La bola negra, and, less directly, Comedia sin título and La casa de Bernarda Alba. An introduction is provided by Andrew Anderson, ‘El último Lorca: unas aclaraciones a La casa de Bernarda Alba, Sonetos y Drama sin título’, in Lecciones sobre Federico García Lorca, ed. Andrés Soria Olmedo (Granada: Comisión Nacional del Cincuentenario, 1986), 131–45. Anderson does not use the title Sonetos del amor oscuro. 32. For an introduction, see Rafael Martínez Nadal, ‘Los inéditos de Lorca’, El País, 26 November 1978. In response to Nadal's accusations, a joint letter from Lorca scholars appeared in El País on 7 January 1979, stating that ‘el archivo de la familia del poeta ha permanecido desde hace años abierto y a nuestra entera disposición para el trabajo que realizamos’; this letter was signed by Ian Gibson, Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Mario Hernández, Marie Laffranque, Eutimio Martín, and Antonina Rodrigo. Missing from the signers are García-Posada and Belamich, the former because he had not been able to consult the Lorca archives (Akal, II, 763); the latter's access, which he has commented favourably and gratefully on (11; his translation, I, lx), was prior to the death of Francisco García Lorca. 33. A surprising recent revelation is the statement of Eutimio Martin that if it had been up to the Lorca family—as, by the laws of literary property, it should have been—Poeta en Nueva York would not have been published in 1940 (‘Los puntos sobre las íes’, 17). 34. It was revealed in a talk given in Granada by Montesinos on 8 November 1984, reported in an article significantly titled ‘Fernández Montesinos reveló parte de la obra inédita de García Lorca’ (italics mine), Diario de Granada, 9 November 1984, pp. 1 and 10; according to the article it includes fragments, up to 114 pages long, of five of the six works mentioned as in press or in preparation at the end of the long-unavailable Impresiones y paisajes. In May 1985, Ian Gibson added that the juvenilia also include ‘unos 140 poemas, algunos de ellos largos, otros muy extensos …, varias pequeñas obras teatrales’ and ‘otros interesantes manuscritos’ (‘Crisis de religión y dudas de amor’, La Gaceta del Libro, V quincena de mayo, 1985,2 pp). The prose material has been reported on by Christopher Maurer, ‘Sobre la prosa temprana de García Lorca (1916–1918)’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, (1986), Nos. 433–34, 13–30, who includes some brief excerpts and some notes on materials other than prose. Further information on the juvenilia is scattered in Martín, Heterodoxo y mártir, in the appendix of whose thesis of the same title Gibson read the unpublished juvenilia (‘Un probable artículo de García Lorca sobre Omar Jayyam’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, [1986], Nos. 433–34, 37–42, at p. 39).Gibson (‘Crisis de religión’) comments on the material's importance: ‘la publicación de este material nos brindará importantes claves para el mejor entendimiento del mundo lorquiano … Demuestra, en primer lugar, que la crisis religiosa del joven Lorca fue mucho más profunda y virulenta de lo que hubiéramos podido deducir de la lectura de Impresiones y paisajes, El maleficio de la mariposa y Libro de poemas.’ He adds—the possible connection with the inaccessability of this material is obvious—that ‘si el Lorca adolescente ha llegado a odiar al Dios de las Batallas [of the Old Testament], es principalmente porque éste condena la sexualidad humana’. 35. El público, 15. See also 21, p. 229, and Montesinos, ‘Sobre los inéditos de García Lorca’. 36. Gerardo Diego: Martín, Heterodoxo y mártir, 54, n. 24; one letter from Lorca to Diego was published in Los domingos del ABC, 17 August 1986, p. 8. Dalí: Mónica Zerbib, ‘Salvador Dalí: “Soy demasiado inteligente para dedicarme sólo a la pintura” ‘, El País, 30 July 1978. This is apparently not to be identified with the letters of Dalí to Lorca, published (together with others written to Lorca) on the basis of MSS in the family archive by Antonina Rodrigo in Lorca-Dali: una amistad traicionada (Barcelona: Planeta, 1981); that book was obviously prepared without Dali's cooperation, and the incomplete and erroneous nature of one letter published in it was pointed out by Martín, Heterodoxo y mártir, 86–88, n. 6. 37. Autógrafos, ed. Rafael Martínez Nadal, I (Oxford: Dolphin, 1975), xx, n. 6. 38. Described as lost: Lola la comedianta, ed. Piero Menarini (Madrid: Alianza, 1981), 83. Published in Títere, a small magazine devoted to puppet theatre, it first came to my attention in an advertisement on the back of Akal II, announcing its inclusion in the second edition of Volume III (Teatro, 1) of García-Posada's Akal edition of Lorca's works. This has not been published; the text is available, however, in Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, IX (1984), 295–306, and was studied by the editor, Luis González-del-Valle, in ‘La niña que riega la albahaca y el príncipe preguntón y las constantes dramáticas de Federico García Lorca’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, VII (1982), 253–64 In response to a draft of this article, André Belamich sent me a draft of part of the introduction to his translation of Lorca's theatre, setting forth his reasons for believing the text of La niña to be a forgery (personal communication, 5 February 1985). 39. Rapún is also supposed to be the ‘destinatario’ of the sonnets, something which Aleixandre ‘sospechó siempre’ (21, 280) and is stated without qualification by Mario Socrate (20, 250). 40. Along with a MS of El público (Nadal, Autógrafos, II [Oxford: Dolphin, 1976], vii, n. 3), and the only drafted act of La destrucción de Sodoma, according to Luis Sáenz de la Calzada, ‘La Barraca’: teatro universitario (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1976), pp. 12, n., and 157. On Rapún, see C. Rivas Cherif, ‘La muerte y la pasión de García Lorca’, Excelsior, 13 and 27 January 1957; Suzanne Byrd, ‘La destrucción de Sodoma: A Reconstruction of Federico García Lorca's Lost Drama’, García Lorca Review, IV (1976), 105–08; Sáenz de la Calzada, 187–91; and Hernández, 18, pp. 223 and 226. 41. See Martín, Heterodoxo y mártir, 81, for one example. I fear the loss of the manuscript of Poeta en Nueva York, which could be recovered rapidly were there cooperation among the various parties interested in it.