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detail in color and movement conveys something of the same incongruity,
the same heat and tropic light that illuminated The Federal Theatre's pro–
duction of a Negro "Macbeth." It is the far distance between the writer
and his object that charms the reader. It is the proof that here was an
Andalusian poet who saw the city and heard the name of Whitman.
We may be confident that legend speaks truly when it reminds us of
his great promise in reviving poetic drama, and in
Bodas de Sangre,
the
first of his three pastoral tragedies, one discovers the recurrent images of
blood and the evocative power of "contagious magic" that seem to antici–
pate the violent story of his death.
Whatever we learn of his loyalty to his own heritage and to the
imaginative resources of the Spanish language, all attempts to interpret it,
or to associate his name with the cause of Loyalist Spain in terms of direct
political action, seem false and fatuous. The publicity that attended the
oews of his death and the first publication of his poetry in England and
America illustrates once more the obvious failure of political journalism
to interpret literature.
If,
as I believe, further translations of Lorca's poetry into English will
be
published in America, I also predict that a definitive or adequate
translation of his work is an almost impossible task in the present genera–
tion. So far, the greatest service that his translators and editors have
accomplished is the conscious effort to give the reader a literal translation
of his work: the result, of course, is not poetry in English, and one is
guided back to a reading of Lorca in Spanish. Mr. Lloyd's, Mr. Spender's
and Mr. Neiman's English versions of Lorca's text point in the same direc–
tion and this direction is toward an unEnglish variety of prose and verse.
Although brilliant flashes of Lorca's imagery emerge from the right hand
page in English, there is nothing here to equal the felicity of Mr. T. S.
Eliot's version of The Anabasis, or Messrs. Fitts and Fitzgerald's adapta–
tion of Alcestis or Mr. MacNeice's brief experiment in conveying the spirit
and temper of Horace's Ode I, Book 4. It would seem that the immediate
pressure of events as well as the spectacular and inaccurately reported
lllory
of Lorca's death had forced the hand of his translators. Even the
unaccounted for elisions in the Gili-Spender version of his "Poems" seem
to
bear marks of rushing manuscript to print as an overworked journalist
might prepare his copy for the pre-midnight edition of a morning paper.
The intense, and in some quarters, artificial heat of Lorca's legend has
brought misfortune as well as fame to Lorca's poetry and at the present
bour
it will be difficult to find a poet whose particular insights and abil–
ities
are of a quality that recreates the verbal spirit of Lorca's felicitous
inagination.
At the risk of making what may seem to be a tenuous and illogical
analogy-since no two poets of like quality possess the same intentions
mel
abilities-! would say that the promise of finding a translator for
Lorca rests upon the unlikely appearance of someone whose work resem–
bles
the poetry of Mr. E. E. Cummings. Although the literal resemblance
