Conflict in Lorca's Work - Book Report/Review Example

Running head: Conflict in Lorca's Work Evaluate to what extent you would agree with the contention that the notion of conflict is the central concern in all of Lorca's work By ________________ The most alarming criticism leveled against Lorca comes from his ability to write conflicting literature, and this ability is not novel due to the fact that one can sense his main "conflicting" concern right from the beginning of his writing era when he wrote his first book "Impresiones y paisajes"(Impressions and landscapes) from which he was recognized as one of the most critically acclaimed Spanish poets of the 20th century, famous not only for his poems and dramas, but also as an early martyr of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). If Lorca is blamed to write, "conflicting" and "contradictory" literature, he is absolutely right to the extent that Lorca's theme focus upon areas of confliction. The circumstances depict the social, cultural and political attitudes of the then era, which Lorca used to focus on his work as a reflection of Spanish culture or one can say as a critique to that culture in which Lorca himself survived or an answer to the social dilemmas of Spanish awkward norms, those cultural values which even swallowed their dearest writer Lorca himself as labeling a word "martyr" does not overcome the flaws of the society, Lorca tried his entire life to change those loopholes of his society but instead of succeeding, he himself became a victim of those flaws of the society. Disappointment is reflected at the impossibility of validating the claim of martyrdom from his each and every drama and poetry; a reaction which would be further aggravated by the realization that Lorca, though not by any means the greatest Spanish poet of his time, is the most intensely and nationally Spanish. So much enthusiastic with the spirit of patriotism, that he left the patriotism of an Englishman too far behind him. He is also one of the most narrowly regional of Spanish poets; and at the same time, paradoxically enough, he is the most popular and universal in his appeal both inside and outside of Spain. His appeal is never more universal than when he is writing, at home, about his native Andalusia. It is never more parochial and provincial than when he is self consciously trying to be "cosmopolitan," under the influence of Whitman, in the poems written in, and about, New York and Caribbean. Andalusia is Lorca's "querencia" (The querencia is the exact spot, which every Spanish fighting bull chooses to return to, between his charges, in the arena.) It is his invisible fortress or camp. It is not marked by anything but the bull's preference for it, and may be near the center, near the barricade, or between the two, as the bull chooses. (Lima, 1963) The nearer the bull is to his querencia or stamping-station, the more formidable he is, the more full of confidence, and the more difficult to lure abroad into the territory of the bullfighters, for their territory is wherever the bull is most vulnerable, and least sure of himself. It is the situation with his writing, for which he is often criticized. Unlike other poets and writers of "day dreaming" attitude, he is a "reflector" of the society, a true "mirror" of the society, such a mirror which does not possess the ability to focus only the "good" things and hide the imperfections, instead he is a true "well wisher" of the society who wants to see his homeland free from the devils of orthodox cultural norms. It is impossible to analyze whether he succeeded or not but one thing is for sure, the society succeeded in eradicating such a wonderful patriotic, such a wonderful writer. His work possessed the uniqueness of reflecting upon two opposite directions at the same time, revolving around and sometimes in his story, which makes his work identifiable by this unique characteristic. Let us take a look at some of his dramas, and then we would come to know the truth behind the developing behavioural conflicts of Lorca: Blood Wedding - Bodas de Sangre The best example of a conflicting attitude of Lorca can be admired in his supreme artwork "Blood Wedding". Although the story seems to be a magnificent paradigm of simplicity and one can feel the openness upholding the emotions of "Blood Wedding" appealing in its torrent of passions, telling the story as an idiom of folk tragedy. The principal characters of this drama live within the confinement of thick walls based upon the grounds of socially driven morals and values. Each character portrays a blend of uniqueness along with a taste of extremism in it. That is where Lorca's plays are easily identified, as he possesses a unique capability of portraying only such characters, which upholds a certain degree of violence in them. Based upon the triangular paradigm of love, honor and death, it depicts the three stories at a same time. The story of a mother, who is limited by the walls of social and cultural values, possesses the opinion that the best place for a woman is her husband's home and the best work she does in her life is the upbringing of his children and nothing else. The story of a wife whose aim is to up bring her infant and the story of an envious love portrayed in the form of physical appearance as "Leonardo", who is the past of "El-Novio's" fiance. La Madre is a strong-willed woman, ancestor of Bernarda, and possessed by a despairing fear that her son, El Novio, will die, as did her husband and another son. Her love for El Novio is cast in this emotional mold. Her hatreds are as powerful as her love; it is the name of Leonardo that evokes both hatred and fear for the two dead men that had been crushed in the traditional feud between the families. These passions are again aroused as El Novio prepares to marry the woman who had been Leonardo Felix's fiance. La Madre still suspects their mutual devotion and fears that her son will suffer thereby. It is La Madre who holds the tragedy together; it is her sense of love and hatred, honor and vengeance that directs the physical action of the drama. Therefore, it is her tragedy. On the other hand, the bride who has just entering into womanhood, still possesses soft corner for Leonardo, in other words she has failed to forget the memories of her past love and is unable to abandon the world of reminiscence. In the "Blood Wedding", what Lorca has tried to present is the conflictual society with conflictual personalities. While analyzing the main notion of conflict in Lorca's work I found that "Blood Wedding" is the symposium of conflicting characters in two senses: Physically and logically i.e., the conflict in his work depicts the physical as well as logical conflict revolve around the story. Here Leonardo is the one and only main character depicting conflict in two different aspects. On one hand he is the husband of a devoted wife, the father of a child, a character sketch of traditional values, a man of social norms and customs who despite of having freedom, likes to live the way of his conventional traditions. While on the other hand, Leonardo, despite of being a traditional man with a family, does not want El Novio to live happily. His dislike for El Novio for one simple reason clearly depicts violence and aggression of Leonardo and arises conflict that Leonardo himself is blessed with a family but does not want others to live a happily married life. He shows sincerity to his wife while betrayal too. Then comes the bride, the second conflicting character. Despite of being a traditional woman, she is still in love with Leonardo, again contains two conflicts. Being traditional is one thing, and being against customs is another. She is a faithful wife in one aspect, and to be in love with someone, other than her husband is the other aspect. That means Lorca in "Blood Wedding" has portrayed society as a mirror with two sides. Basically, the plot develops in a triangle situation but Lorca builds intricate patterns of tradition and mysticism around it, which depicts the extent of conflict around the story. First, there is an obvious concern with Spanish conscience as reflected in everyday existence. As Lorca portrays it, this conscience in turn mirrors the many years of Catholic and Oriental influence imposed upon it. This is the tradition. Next, Lorca places his characters within the embrace of strict codes, which exists at the same moment as the patient lessons of Christianity and these mixed concepts produce the strange and demanding laws of Honor so prevalent in Spain. And these already awkward people, regulated by tradition and codification, are finally pawns in the hands of the very mysticism, which they have guarded faithfully through the years. Fate is their master and fate always leads them to Death. Lorca has also shown the belief in marriage, not so much because of the mutuality of love, but because through it a man can create a life which will carry on his memory and the family name. So if Lorca's work were followed by critics it would not be wrong to say that his work is an impeccable prototype of Spanish orthodox traditions enclosed within a society of conflicting characters, such characters which not only presents contradiction, but their personalities are also heavily influenced by conflicting attitudes. Mariana Pineda "Mariana Pineda", an unending tale of true love painted in the colours of freedom and preserved in the pages of Spanish history, is Lorca's first play to lead him towards the road of success. Unlike other plays Mariana Pineda has cling its roots in the grounds of historical facts and legends, which has kept the memory of Granada's heroine alive. Lorca was aware of the traditional folk story very well, Mariana was famous as one of the city's plazas bore her name, a marble statue at its center serving as a more obvious reminder; the children's nurses still sang them the ballads that told of her heroism. Mariana's name was never too far from Lorca's reach, and conducting several researches in the name of Mariana cleared the rest confusion. (Lima, 1963) Lorca laboured arduously in the selection and editing of the great body of material, factual and otherwise, that was available. The story, however, as Lorca tells it, is dependent on fact only in the general plot line, centered on a core of the important events in Mariana's life. Again the conflict starts as a traditional love story in which Mariana's love is "Pedro" while Pedro's love is "freedom" for which he is willing to do everything. The conflict first starts between Mariana and Pedro's philosophical view of love, according to Mariana, Pedro is the only one and dear thing for her, for which she could sacrifice everything. She expects from him that instead of going to the war, rising sword and colouring his hands in blood he should come to her. Although Mariana herself possesses the spirit of patriotism within her but not to that extent to which Pedro holds it. Mariana offered her services by aiding rebellious elements in Granada who sought the overthrow of Ferdinand VII. These republican conspirators induced her to sew a flag of liberty, as the symbol for their cause. Mariana did so. Her carefully embroidered words-"Ley, Libertad, Igualdad" on the flag were to be the beacon for the early nineteenth century revolt against the crown. (Lima, 1963) But despite of all these facts, she still wants to be the first love of Pedro, the first preference of Pedro. Pedro on the other hand bears the opinion that "freedom" is the first love to every human as no other love could be possible unless and until freedom is there. "Only liberty will cure their fears, the liberty which her flag will herald", Don Pedro tells her. Then, in an impassioned confession, Don Pedro reveals his true feelings: "Mariana, what is man without liberty Without that fixed and swelling light that is felt inside How could I love you not being free, tell me How could I give you a firm heart if it isn't mine" It is at this moment that the first hint of possible conflict between the lovers appears. To Don Pedro, love cannot be a consideration until his battle for freedom has been won. He is the man of destiny. Mariana, on the other hand, follows a different path: "My victory consists in really having you! In looking at your eyes while you're unaware. When you're by me I forget what I feel and I love all the world . . . . . . Pedro, when there is love one is beyond time . . ." He fought his own battle between artistic freedom and discipline with his conscience gravely concerned with the problem of the enduring quality of his work. This conflict between freedom and discipline on the one hand, between poetry and reality on the other or between nature and art, to state it in traditional terms he lived with such intensity that it would not be mere conjecture to say that it took on a dramatic aspect within the poet himself. The flag was confiscated and Mariana taken into custody. An illness overtook her during the imprisonment. She tried to escape, but the efforts of the ailing woman were not sufficient. During her illness she was confined to the convent of Santa Maria Egipciaca, located well beyond the city. Thereafter, the prosecution demanded her death and the best efforts of her lawyer, Jose Escalera, could not forestall the judgment pronounced on May 26, 1831. Upon her decease, Mariana became a martyr in the eyes of the people and her unselfish acts and life were preserved in folk ballads and stories. By Lorca's time, the selection of pieces musical, literary, artistic had grown impressively so that the playwright had to decide on a new and totally untouched aspect of Mariana's life as the center for the proposed play. To achieve this end, Lorca approached his subject from the human rather than the historical view. Through his imaginative powers he was able to embellish and augment the hard facts of her later life. In Lorca's rendition, Mariana becomes more than a martyr for a cause; in Mariana Pineda she is disclosed as a very warm, very human figure whose dedication to the rebellious cause is decided by love. She, then, achieves a further dimension, endearing herself much more to the populace in her guise of love martyr. Thus, she is more understandable and believable than if Lorca had chosen to let her remain the cold figure which history adopted. Mariana is a woman in love. Her love is for Don Pedro, but it also embraces his cause and so the conflict. Don Pedro temporarily relinquishes his love for Mariana to attain a greater goal; Mariana gives up her life, its spiritual aspect is sacrificed here when she loosens her hold on Don Pedro, also to attain a higher end. And the tragedy lies in that their sacrifices are never concurrent. But Mariana does not realize that Don Pedro's dedication to his ideal of liberty will prove to be far greater than his love for her. Blinded by subjectivity, Mariana cannot sense the truth. Lorca's magnum opus is up to a severe extent of conflicting nature which can not only be judged by the way his dramas are written, but it could be sensed by his poetical work too. "The Faithless Wife" is also among one of the variant works of Lorca, shaped in between the fantasies of imagination and reality. Lorca as a poet possesses such a conflicting attitude that is much more than a quarrel; too much above than a disagreement and being a dramatist he is unable to present his frustration in a well-mannered form that he has presented in his poetries. Yerma The drama centers about the violence with which the main character lives her personal conflict. It has been argued a little childishly, that Yerma's dramatic obsession is not entirely justified psychologically, since it could have a solution. And in effect, it could have one, and there would be no drama, but by making Yerma, Lorca wanted the readers to feel her maternal instinct tragically. It would not be worth the effort to falsify Yerma's character by making her violate to the sense of duty, another defining trait of her character so that afterward she might continue being Yerma as before. This solution is proposed in the play and rejected. In spite of the fact that in Yerma reality appears according to the best of direct inspiration is lesser measure, as the drama is not determined by external accidents live torrents. But in Yerma the conflict is determined by a force that struggles against itself within the soul. A violent anxiety of fertility and sterility, or of life and death as in all of Federico's plays. So here the nature of conflict is somewhat different to the extent that it dwells within Yerma. The instrument, which brings death to that child who never existed except in the form of a desperate hope, is Yerma herself. It is the right thing for the play that Yerma should kill with her own hands and not with a knife, as in Blood Wedding; those hands held the power of death, embodied by now in the central character herself. It is Yerma who dies, just as it was she who was in final agony before. In its dramatic conception everything is a reference to the single character. This is achieved in a purer classic conception, toward which the poet turned his eyes in search for simplicity and sobriety. Yerma the "Barren" an invented name of symbolic and univocal character, which answers the conception in a perfect fashion. The Faithless Wife Too many conflicts in just two characters; Lorca made it possible by implementing the quarrels on those characters. The characters are "I" and "she", which can be taken as "Lorca" and "her". The poetry starts in a conflicting manner and depicts the following facts: The woman despite of being happily married, lie to Lorca and pretends as if she is unmarried. Lorca, pretended a gypsy before her and being aware of the fact that she already has a husband, pretends her as if he has believed her to be unmarried. After going through and making intense love, Lorca reveals in the end that he had not fallen in love and the reason he presented for not doing so is in itself a conflict that she is already married. "but I did not fall in love for although she had a husband she told me she was a maiden when I took her to the river". It seems that Lorca has mapped a particular image of women in Spanish society, which can be seen in his major works, and the most amazing thing comes to it as in all his dramas or his poetries on women, the conflict starts up with women and ends up making women sufferers. The female characters reveal themselves most easily to the surroundings and crucial circumstances welcoming them to get easily in deep conversations with other women. The poetry, which erupts at moments of emotional intensity usually, comes from the mouths of female characters. Especially in the three great tragedies, which are known as his "trilogy of rural life," Lorca chooses women to exemplify the human life, which is crushed by Spanish customs and social life. (Garcia Lorca) Garcia Lorca's work revolves on a single main theme: the preservation of honor leads to the frustration of love, this frustration, in turn, becomes a despair, which leads to Death. This is always the major theme, the premise that gives rise to several conflicts serves as a point of departure for many variations. Starting there, he develops richly colored situations and populates them with strong central characters, personages who live passionate lives whether their emotions find expression or are repressed. However they react, they are primarily pawns of Fate, for it is this dark force, which governs the entire premise. As Lorca develops "conflict" as a traditional code based on law, superstition and religion which orders a strict interpretation of Spanish life. Though originally the code served the desires of society for betterment, its gradual twisting by taboos dominance has made it an instrument of oppression. Because Fate so decrees, however, it is an instrument of self-torture rather than a weapon in another's hand. Thus, Lorca's characters are their own enemies, failed to live "normal" lives, thus they are in a continuous momentum of conflict not only with each other but also with themselves. Lorca connects the preservation of conflict with the frustration of love by making the latter result entirely from the former. Hence, conflict represses love. And this process is activated primarily through another important element in the dramas, time. It is only through the lapse of time that the notion of conflict becomes more and more excruciating. Time always has an undeniable role, one that serves to point out and emphasize the torment of frustration within the characters of respective plays. It, therefore, fits into the pattern of plot development as a catalytic agent. With the aid of Time, the element of frustration appears thereby rising conflicts in some aspect in all of Lorca's drama. It is Lorca's consistency in the treatment of frustration that serves to unite his work in spite of the diversification of characters. All his masterpiece contains a connection with this umbilical cord: Mariana Pineda and Dona Rosita la soltera deal with abandonment and sacrifice; El maleficio de la mariposa is the original treatment on disillusionment; Bodas de sangre is the picture of remorse and defeat; La casa de Bernarda Alba is a view of hopelessness expressed through suicide; Yerma is the most striking presentation of maternal and infertility repression; All have in common the element of conflict which arises from and results in frustration. References Byrd Suzanne, Federico Garcia Lorca: Spain's Encore in the West in Americas. Volume: 50. Issue: 4: August 1998. Organization of American States; COPYRIGHT 2002 Campbell Roy, 1959. Lorca: An Appreciation of His Poetry: Yale University Press: New Haven, CT. Garcia Lorca, Hughes, Langston & Ogunsola, Dellita Martin, 2003. The Translations: Federico Garcia Lorca, Nicolas Guillen, and Jacques Roumain: University of Missouri Press: Columbia, MO. Lima Robert, 1963. The Theatre of Garcia Lorca: Las Americas Publishing: New York. Lorca, Federico Garcia & Lujan, James Graham, 1955. Three Tragedies: Blood Wedding, Yerma, Bernarda Alba: New Directions Publishing: New York. Read More