For expediency I group Castilian, Catalan and Galician poetry under the title Spanish poetry. Technically the poetry comes from three different regions and languages of what is now known as Spain. The early history of the poetry was influenced by the traveling troubadours, the Church, the Moors and French Romanticism.
Galician in the western region of what we now know as Spain was the first Hispanic lyrical poetry and dominated Hispanic literature from the 12th century to the 14th. The Galician language and culture are closer to the Portuguese than Spanish and the language was eventually pushed to the background and Castilian became the language of Spanish literature by the 15th century. Only a few of the original Galician poems have been preserved. The lyrical poems were influenced by French Romanticism, the cantigas de amor which include the viralai’s and rondeaus, traditional French forms and saudades, poems of longing, carried a fatalistic tone. The narratives found in the cantigas de santa maria tell of Marion festivities and describe the life of the Virgin Mary in very human terms. In the 19th century there was a resurgence of Galician poetry, often political in nature.
Catalan poetry in the eastern region began as prose poetry. By the 15th century narratives in octo-syllabic couplets became popular. Eight syllable lines became a standard in both Catalan and Castilian poetic forms. By the 16th century Catalan poetry experienced a similar fate to the Galician and Castilian became the language of the east. The only poetry that remained in the Catalan language were ballads and a popular religious song.
The term Spanish poetics usually refers to poems written in the Castilian language which began in the central region of Spain. This poetry has a rich history. The earliest poems have survived in fragments recorded in Arabic or Hebrew letters, these include the Hispano-Arabic zejel. In the 13th century the clerical poets competed with the troubadours and the strict monastic form cuaderna vida became prominent, quatrains in 14 syllable lines in mono rhyme. Lyrical poetry developed in Castilian much later than in both the Galician and Catalan regions. The Castilians used the hendecasyllabic line in much of the metered verse borrowed from the Italians.
The richness of Spanish verse has spilled over to the verse forms of Central and South America which are also included here.
Spanish Prosody
My elementary understanding of Spanish prosody is still growing. Here are some basics one should know when studying Spanish verse forms.
In English, Spanish verse forms are measured by simply counting syllables. In Spanish prosody the counting of syllables is a little more complicated. In Spanish, syllable count is added or subtracted depending on where the accent lies in the end word of the line. Therefore what appears to be a 7 syllable line in English could in Spanish be counted as 6, 7 or 8 syllables depending on the placement of the accent in that last word. A verse that ends with a word with the accent on the final syllable is given the count of one extra syllable because the end accent counts as 2 syllables. An accent falling on the penultimate syllable of the last word stays true to the actual syllable count and verse with the accent on the antepenultimate or 3rd to last syllable of the last word loses a syllable.
In English prosody the term consonant rhyme means vowel sounds are disregarded and only the last consonant or penultimate and last consonants are considered. However in Spanish prosody, consonant rhyme is full rhyme, considering the last stressed or accented vowel, a following consonant and if any, a following unstressed vowel. The only other rhyme is Assonant or half rhyme in which only the last stressed or accented vowel and a following unstress vowel are considered the consonant sound between the accented vowel and unaccented vowel is disregarded. casa and casta half rhyme. (this gets even more complicated when a dipthong is involved, the weeker unstressed vowel isn't considered at all, iglesia rhymes with fuerza - the si between e and a are ignored as is the rz between the e and a )
Like the Japanese onji, this is one more example of how verse form is modified by language. A better explaination of this the syllable count can be found at Spanish Metrification
Last edited by Tinker1111 on Tue Sep 22, 2009 7:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
“He was seen walking…
Friends, carve
a monument of stone and dreams
for the poet , in the Alhambra,
near a fountain where weeping water
for ever tells:
the crime took place in Granada, his Granada!”
Life can’t be understood without death. It took three bullets in the neck to kill Federico García Lorca, but at the same time they gave him life as a poet and a dramatist of worldwide acclaim.
Federico was born on the June 5th 1898 in a house in Trinity Street in Fuente Vaqueros. Very little is known about his early childhood. He had an obsession for silver cutlery and he also listened to countless Gypsy songs and ballads from his father and relatives.
Federico said, “At the age of seven I went to Almería and I stayed at ‘El Colegio de Padres Franciscanos’ where I began to study music”. He grew up next to the family piano. One day, out of the blue, Federico began to recite. The musician had not lost his love of music, but had become a troubadour.
Continuing to write and to recite poetry, Federico arrived at ‘La Residencia de Estudiantes’ in Madrid during the late spring of 1919, where he gave a recital, as a kind of audition to enter the institution. A year later saw the first production of The Butterfly’s Evil Spell. The play was a fiasco. Catalina Bárcena dressed as a cockroach asked herself ‘What do I have in my head?,’ to which a joker replied “a pair of horns!”. Manuel Machado wrote in La Libertad of Madrid, -‘Mr. García Lorca should, in the future, only write verse’-.
In 1921 Lorca published his first book of poems. His play Mariana Pineda had its premiere in 1927 in Barcelona, featuring Margarita Xirgu and a set designed by Salvador Dalí. Yet it was in 1928 that The Gypsy Ballads appeared in shop windows, a tiny book of poems which made Lorca a famous poet.
The Gypsy Ballads is, as Lorca called it, the poem of Andalucía. The book starts with two invented myths: the moon as a mortal dancer and the wind as a satyr.
The book’s greatest triumph is its appraisal of Gypsy life. In the past, authors like Prosper Mérimée and Washington Irving had been fascinated by the Gypsy world, but it was Lorca who said, “The Gypsy is the highest, the deepest, the most genuine, and the greatest aristocrat of my country; also the guardian of the alphabet, the blood, and the marrow of the Andalucian truth”.
Lorca is the poet of the myth, as Don Quixote calls it ‘the reason of the no reason’. He describes the conflict between the Gypsy’s eagerness to live without social restrictions, and the pressure society brings to bear on him. His freedom implies a return to a basic way of life. This “primitivism” springs from the very core of the earth; an encounter between popular and poetical sentiments. This common feeling is watered by blood: when blood flows it is the essence of life; once it is shed, it is the essence of death. This myth carries surrealist overtones, which came to Lorca though Dalí and Buñuel, at the time, his closest friends.
“Primitivism” was to be full of human feeling, love, hatred, passion, memories, joy and pain. The poetical world of Lorca is based on an intense struggle. However, this violence does not stand alone, but is accompanied by eroticism. Lorca wrote in “Beautiful and the Wind”:
The giant-wind chases her
with a hot sword…
And in “The Unfaithful Wife”:
I touched her slumbering breasts
and soon they blossomed for me…
The theme of death also assumes a prominent place in Lorca’s lyricism. The poet manipulates his marionettes through a game of passion and death. Of the eighteen poems, thirteen end in pain, disillusion or death.
The “Ballad of the Civil Guards” has the message of Picasso’s “Guernica”.
Romance de la luna, luna
A Conchita García Lorca
La luna vino a la fragua
con su polisón de nardos.
El niño la mira, mira.
El niño la está mirando.
En el aire conmovido
mueve la luna sus brazos
y enseña, lúbrica y pura,
sus senos de duro estaño.
Huye luna, luna, luna.
Si vinieran los gitanos,
harían con tu corazón
collares y anillos blancos.
Niño, déjame que baile.
Cuando vengan los gitanos,
te encontrarán sobre el yunque
con los ojillos cerrados.
Huye luna, luna, luna,
que ya siento sus caballos.
Niño, déjame, no pises
mi blancor almidonado.
El jinete se acercaba
tocando el tambor del llano.
Dentro de la fragua el niño,
tiene los ojos cerrados.
Por el olivar venían,
bronce y sueño, los gitanos.
Las cabezas levantadas
y los ojos entornados.
Cómo canta la zumaya,
¡ay, cómo canta en el árbol!
Por el cielo va la luna
con un niño de la mano.
Dentro de la fragua lloran,
dando gritos, los gitanos.
El aire la vela, vela.
El aire la está velando.
Joined: 04 Aug 2004 Posts: 1872 Location: California
Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:38 pm Post subject:
Hi Esmarelda, Thank you for this wonderful salute to one of Spain's great poets. It is a creative compliment to the technical articles contained in this forum. It appears the poem by de Lorca you provide may have been written as a Servensio
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