Looking Through A Brother's Eyes

In the Green Morning: Memories of Federico by Francisco Garcia Lorca; Translated by Christopher Maurer. (New Directions, 258 pp, paperback).

Lewis Hyde, writing in the New York Times Book Review (July 27, 1986), made the following observations in reference to In the Green Morning, Francisco Garcia Lorca's book of memoirs about his brother, the Spanish poet-playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936): "...every family has things no one speaks of...as if the spirits feed on silence as well as speech." Similarly, Lorquian scholar Mario Hernandez, in his prologue to the book, hints at the cause of this "silence." He states that while writing In the Green Morning, Francisco (1902-1976) "must have" had a "difficult" time "deal[ing] with the emotional substratum of the poems and plays." Hernandez also points out that in order for Francisco "to write these 'memoirs' he had to overcome an 'inner resistance.'"

What it all boils down to is a reluctance in both cases to be straightforward about Federico's homosexuality. According to Paul Binding, in his scholarly book Lorca: The Gay Imagination (GMP Publishers), "most people of his acquaintance knew--to some extent or other--the truth about his nature." So it was virtually impossible for Francisco, who was very close to his older brother, not to be aware of Federico's sexual orientation. Knowing the truth, Francisco chose to omit that part of his brother's life, fearing it would tarnish the poet-playwright's international image.

I think it would be unfair to Francisco to judge his "inner resistance" too harshly. "To be homosexual in conservative provincial Spain," writes Paul Binding, "can have been no easy matter." So if one is looking for juicy tidbits about Federico's love life, it won't be found here.

What will be found, however, is a panoramic view of the people, places, and events that helped shape and nurture Federico as a writer and as a young man. All of this in a slim section titled "The World of Federico."

These memoirs, written between 1959 and 1965, were never finished, partly due to Francisco's poor health. They cover the period from 1898 to 1919, the year Federico left Granada to live in Paris. The ten essays that comprise the second half, and deal with Federico's plays, were written first.

Federico and Francisco became part of a literary gathering called the Back Corner, which met in a local Granada cafe. They read and discussed each other's works, as well as talked "shop" about literature in general. "The history of the Back Corner," writes Francisco, who later emigrated to the United States, following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, to teach Spanish literature at Columbia University, "would be the history of Granada's intellectual class at the time, for no one who was at all distinguished in art or literature failed to attend its meetings, whether as a regular member or an occasional one."

It is quite evident that Francisco benefited from attending the Back Corner meetings. His theatrical essays in the back of the book attest to his skill as a writer and a scholar. The style throughout is conversational; the tone, warm and caring. And the content is thought-provoking.

I highly recommend In the Green Morning to anyone who wants a good introduction to the life and works of Federico Garcia Lorca, albeit through the not entirely unbiased eyes of his brother Francisco.

Federico Garcia Lorca, whether adversaries of the gay community like it or not, is as much a part of gay history as he is a part of world literature.



This is an excerpt from an article that was published in the Lambda Book Report in 1986.

Note: On June 4, 2013, the New York Public Library is celebrating the life of Federico Garcia Lorca at its main branch on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. This event is one of several events scheduled that will complement an exhibition called "Back Tomorrow: A Poet in New York/Federico Garcia Lorca." The library's NYPL Now! brochure (May-August 2013 edition) describes the exhibition as "featur-ing] drawings, photos, and letters from the Federico Garcia Lorca Foundation in Madrid and the writings of such poets as Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot from the Library's collections." The exhibition runs until July 20, 2013.