Culture
8S
Conspirator
Garcia Lorca's career as poet, col·
lector of Spanish folk-music and im-
presario of the native drama was
brought to an abrupt and shocking end
by a fascist firing-squad in Granada
in the early weeks of the Spanish war.
Lorca died in his middle thirties: he
was already an accomplished poet, in
a vein of popular and indigenous ex-
pression which contrasted markedly
with the Europeanizing tendency of the
Madrid intellectuals.
And the high
degree of sophistication in his work
promised a still more mature poetry to
come. (For examples of Lorca's work
see
Lament for the Death of a Bull-
fighter,
by Federico Garcia Lorca.
Oxford. $2.50). The democratic char-
acter of Lorca's poetry leaves in little
doubt the general tendency of his poli-
tical sympathies; yet, at the time of
his death, he was not known to have
any very definite political convictions.
His execution appears, then, to have
been the result of some brutal bureau-
cratic "error" on the part of the
Granada fascists. A possible clue to
the means by which he became im·
plicated in the anti-fascist cause has
been supplied by Rolfe Humphries
(The Nation,
September 18): Lorca's
sister lived in a house owned by the
Popular Front mayor of Granada! But,
as Mr. Humphries adds, "More prob-
ably the fascists recognized in him the
kind of person they were eager to get
rid of." And whatever the exact cir·
cumstances of Lorca's death, we are
at liberty to see in it something more
than a grievous individual tragedy. If
a single poet may be shot down as a
political conspirator, so, in effect, may
a whole culture.
76
PARTISAN REVIEW
(RIPOSTES
is
a department der;c>tedto brief editorial comment and to com·
munications. Readers are invited to contribute.)
keynote. "They could scarcely write
more bleakly," says Hicks, "if they
were avowed Spenglerians, or felt,
with Joseph Wood Krutch, that the
triumph of the proletariat would mean
the end of civilization; and "the prose
writers express disgust, bitterness, pity,
cynicism, but seldom hope." And when
you consider that the Spenglerians have
in their ranks not only younger writers,
but, as Hicks later adds, such well-
known figures as Dos Passos, Farrell,
Cantwell, and Caldwell, the menace of
gloom is very great indeed.
True,
Hicks does admit that the Spenglerians
are by far the more talented writers,
and he advocates, therefore, that they
be tolerated, but so far as the direc-
tion of literature is concerned Hicks
takes an unequivocal stand on the side
of optimism.
Naturally, no one could be opposed
in principle to optimism, so long as
it is not mere ideological cheerleading,
and it is not difficult to understand
why Hicks, whose passion for pigeon-
holing experience offered him but two
alternatives, should have chosen hope
in preference to despair.
But it
requires a critic of Mr. Hicks' simple-
minded fanaticism to squeeze the
qualities and meanings of literature
into such naive categories, and to per-
suade his readers that the hope of
American literature is in such writers
as Jack Conroy and Fielding Burke,
whom he lists among the apostles of
optimism. Then, too, there arises the
problem of deviations, for writers who
are not pessimists may still not be out
and out opitimists. Would Granville
Hicks say that the optimism of Bruce
Barton, for example, is good in form
but bad in content?
