It’s Spanish Lit month over at Winston’s Dad (see https://winstonsdad.wordpress.com/category/spanish-lit-month-2021/), so it’s time to venture into the work of the avant-garde poet Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). I have been meaning to do this ever since I went to Spain, but it’s only recently that I discovered that the Penguin Moderns include a collection of his poetry, dialogues, and short prose. At $1.99 AUD (£1GBP) It was breathtakingly cheap because it seemed only to be available for the Kindle.

Needless to say, I am out of my depth when discussing modern poetry because we went no further than Four Quartets at university, but FWIW, here are my thoughts:

It is not possible for me to read Lorca’s work without remembering that he was assassinated by Franco’s Nationalist forces early in the Spanish Civil War. This is especially so with ‘In the Garden of Lunar Grapefruit’ which is prefaced by a quotation from Moral Advice by (the Castilian Chaucer) Pero López de Ayala :

"Like a shadow our life slips away, never to return; nor shall aught of us or ours return".

In this short prose piece, with a sharp pain in his heart, he girds himself for battle with the gigantic dragon of Common Sense. Only some pieces in this collection are dated and I found myself wishing that I knew when this one was written, to know just when it was that Lorca felt this intimation of death.

To read the rest of my thoughts about this collection, please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/07/01/the-dialogue-of-two-snails-by-federico-garci... ( )