terça-feira, 6 de janeiro de 2009

A Casa de Bernarda Alba, de Federico Garcia Lorca.

A Casa de Bernarda Alba é uma peça teatral intensa, escrita por Federico Garcia Lorca. À parte da simbologia que contém, relativamente à ditadura de Franco que se vivenciava na altura em que foi escrita, trata-se da história trágica de uma familia do campo composta por uma mãe viúva, controladora e aústera,e das suas cinco filhas.Estas vivem ainda na companhia da governanta La Poncia, que serve de intermediária e apaziguadora da relação tensa e desconfortável que entre elas existe, estando obrigadas pela mãe a viver dentro de casa num luto e repressão constantes. A filha mais velha, Angústias, está prometida em casamento a Pepe Romano,porém o último encontra-se frequentemente e às escondidas com a irmã mais nova da noiva, Adela. A peça desenvolve-se no decorrer dos preparativos do enxoval de Angústias, entre as confidências, tristeza,inveja e ciúme das irmãs restantes perante o destino da irmã mais velha,e entre a relação secreta dos dois amantes que se vão encontrando furtivamente durante a noite, até que são descobertos. Perante a situação de desespero em que se vêm envolvidos,Pepe Romano foge e Adela acaba por cometer suícidio.




"La casa de Bernarda Alba".

Drama de mujeres en los pueblos de España

La casa de Bernarda Alba

Esta obra de Lorca, La casa de Bernarda Alba, es una obra poetica;por ello, los dialogos son muy liricos y a veces desbordan el habla vulgar. Lorca subtitula la obra : Drama de las mujeres en los pueblos de Espana ; y ello significa la escenificacion de una familia andaluza. Toda la obra se orienta alrededor del conflicto entre el principio de autoridad (ley social), representado por Bernarda, y el principio principio de libertad (ley natural), representado por las hijas de Bernarda.

El drama se abre con la muerte del marido de Bernarda, con motivo de la cual Bernarda impone un luto estricto y riguroso a sus hijas, obligandolas a ir vestidas de negro y asegurandoles que guardaran ocho anos de luto. Tambien las obliga a quedarse en su casa a bordar, prohibiendoles salir ni encontrarse con el sexo opuesto, diciendo ella misma que esa es la condicion de la mujer; obligandolas a permanecer en casa , tambien evita las malas lenguas de la gente del pueblo , ya que Bernarda concede gran importancia al que diran.

La accion comienza cuando aparece Pepe el Romano , que va a casarse con Angustias , la hija mayor y la que mas fortuna ha heredado. Entre las hermanas empieza a envenenarse el ambiente, ya que todas piensan que Pepe solo quiere a Angustias por su dinero, y estan pendientes de el. Angustias empieza a encontrarse con Pepe por las noches , pero Adela , la mas pequena rompiendo el cerco impuesto por su madre, consigue atraerle hacia si y envolverlo en su pasion amorosa, representando, al hacerlo, la rebeldia y la libertad en La casa de Bernarda Alba . Martirio , enamorada tambien y celosa del triunfo de Adela , llama a Bernarda, que viene armada y dispara a Pepe. En la confusion que sigue, Adela piensa que Pepe ha muerto, se encierra en su habitacion y se suicida. Cuando la Poncia , la criada, descubre muerta a Adela , Bernarda impone silencio , ordenando en la casa que se diga en el pueblo que su hija a muerto virgen.

Lorca hace que la rigidez de Bernarda tense los animos de sus hijas hasta la exasperacion. Pero la naturaleza y la vida tienen sus propias leyes, y las hijas de Bernarda romperan esa atmosfera opresiva, buscando liberarse ; especialmente, la mas joven y valiente, Adela. La muerte y el amor van unidos en Lorca ; por eso , Adela , que se entrega al amor, se entrega tambien a la muerte. La casa de Bernarda Alba es la obra dramatica maestra , y , tambien, la mas universal del teatro LORQUIANO.

"The House of Bernarda Alba", by Federico Garcia Lorca

"Silence! Silence!" These are the first and last words spoken by Bernarda Alba, the tyrannical mother who attempts to dominate and control her five unmarried daughters. In this repressed environment, Lorca creates an explosion of hatred, jealousy, despair and passion.

The play takes place in a small village in southern Spain following the funeral of Bernarda Alba's second husband. After the mourners depart, Bernarda Alba announces to her five daughters that their period of mourning will last eight years. During this period their lives will consist of needlework inside the darkened house, which, according to Bernarda, is the only proper thing for women of their class. Obsessed with family honor, Bernarda Alba rules her household with an iron fist. It is an environment in which social appearances take precedence over individuality, compassion and desire.

All of Bernarda's daughters secretly harbor a passion for Pepe el Romano, the handsomest man in the village. Angustias, the eldest daughter, is engaged to him. At 39 she is 14 years older than he, but the arrangement is a financial one, since she will inherit money and land.

Despite this engagement, it is the youngest daughter, Adela, who becomes Pepe's lover throughout the play. When the truth finally breaks through the atmosphere of suppressed desire and jealousy the consequences are tragic. Adela takes her own life and Bernarda makes a desperate attempt to maintain absolute control of her shattered household by declaring silence.

Written in 1936, just before the Spanish Civil War, The House of Bernarda Alba was Lorca's final play: he was assassinated in the same year at the beginning of the war. He never lived to see a staging of his play, which was not produced until 1945 in Argentina, and not until 1964 in Spain. It stands today as one of the masterpieces of modern theater.

Federico García Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) was born in the Andalusian town of Fuente Vaqueros, but spent much of his youth in the nearby city of Granada. Many years later, he would be executed by a Falangist firing squad in that city during the early weeks of the Spanish Civil War. Lorca studied law at the University of Granada, but in 1919 he moved to Madrid to pursue his passion for art and literature. Although in the early 1920s he published both drama and poetry, it was not until he linked Spanish folklore with surrealist imagery in his collection of poems Gypsy Ballads (1928) that he earned national recognition. His theater during the 1920s alternated between comedy and avantgarde experimentation in works such as The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1926) and Once Five Years Pass (written in 1929 and 1930). In the 1930s, however, Lorca began to focus more intensely on tragedy and wrote his three most important dramatic works: Blood Wedding (1933), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936). The three plays as a whole, but Bernarda Alba in particular, portray the tragedy of individual oppression in rural Spain with an extraordinary blend of lyrical passion and social detail, both hallmarks of Lorca’s drama.


The poetry of the Spanish author Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) is marked by brilliance, originality, and dramatic flair. His plays are among the best examples of 20th-century poetic drama.

In the 20th century Federico García Lorca, Miguel de Unamuno, and José Ortega y Gassett are perhaps the Spaniards most widely known in international circles, Lorca for his poetry and the dramatic circumstances of his death, the other two for their philosophical and political ideas. In Spain, Lorca was a member of the Generation of 1927, largely a group of outstanding poets (Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, and Rafael Alberti, among others). Lorca's generation, which followed Unamuno's famous Generation of 1898, dominated Spanish letters during the decade prior to the Spanish Civil War.

Federico García Lorca was born in Fuentevaqueros, a village near Granada, on June 5, 1898. His father, Don Federico García, was a respected and prosperous landowner; his mother was Vicenta Lorca, from whom the poet said he received his intelligence and artistic inclinations. (Thus by Spanish custom he should be called by his patronym, García, but he himself preferred to be called Lorca.) The family moved to Granada in 1909, and Lorca attended the schools there, graduating from secondary school in 1914.

After attending the University of Granada for a time, Lorca went to Madrid in 1919 and entered the famous Residencia de Estudiantes to continue his university work. The Residencia, or living quarters, was a center of liberal activity in generally conservative Spain. Young Lorca was much more in his element in metropolitan Madrid than in provincial Granada, and he soon joined the radical young groups of students, exploring novel ideas and spending much time in the cafés. He stayed in the Residencia (except for summers) until 1928, without ever choosing a course of study.

In the Residencia about 1921 Lorca met the painter Salvador Dali, then also a student, and the two formed a personal and artistic attachment. Dali later emphasized the strong physical presence of Lorca's personality, his dominance, charm, and magnetism. Dali's sister, on the contrary, found Lorca short, swarthy, and somewhat ungainly--almost homely. The attachment to Dali proved to be a crucial personal problem for Lorca, and it was not settled until Lorca left Spain in 1929.

Early Works

Lorca's first publication was Impresiones y paisajes, a description of an Andalusian trip in 1918. In 1920, after meeting Gregorio Martínez Sierra in Madrid, he staged an insignificant dramatic piece. His first poetic publication was Libro de poemas (1921), influenced by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rubén Darío, and others. During the early 1920s Lorca wrote the poems for his first important book, Canciones, which was published in 1927. Canciones reveals the two strong influences on Lorca's poetic formation: the traditional and the vanguard. Of the traditional he utilized the ballad and other popular forms and the Andalusian themes; of the vanguard (called ultraism in Spain) he developed the tendency toward novel and surprising metaphor and a syntax without normal connecting and relating words.

In 1928, during his years of intense personal crisis and feverish literary activity, Lorca published his Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads), the book which gave him his international reputation. The Gypsy Ballads is concerned with the omnipresence of the sexual instincts, forever threatened by repression but breaking out and often leading to death. Lorca chose the gypsy as a character because the gypsy represents the natural man, whose instincts and vital passions are not repressed by moral and cultural training. Lorca's gypsies are therefore usually in conflict with their society, which seems to be persecuting them. In Spain the Gypsy Ballads was viewed as a daring book, for most of the 18 ballads explore the total range of sexuality, normal and abnormal. The most popular ballad graphically describes a normal sexual experience, but others concern incest, homosexuality, and the sexual awakening in a nun.

In form the Gypsy Ballads comprises traditional ballads, characterized by the swinging rhythms associated with this form. Lorca develops many of them in a dramatic context, with an interplay of character and situation, at times even including himself. Above all, Lorca reveals in this book his extraordinary talent for creating striking and memorable metaphors. Although only a few literary men understood the poet's artistic intent, great numbers of people read the book and memorized the most striking stanzas. This book in fact made Lorca something of a celebrity as well as a recognized poet.

"Poet in New York"

In 1929 Lorca, still suffering from serious emotional problems, arrived in New York and settled in a dormitory at Columbia University. During his year in New York and nearby Vermont, Lorca wrote the powerful Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York), a book of poems so revolutionary he did not dare to publish it during his lifetime. Poet in New York has a double theme: the poet's personal struggles with himself and his general struggle with the great city and its masses. On the streets of New York and in rural Vermont, the poet battles with his homosexuality, loneliness, and suicidal tendencies, finally recovering his equilibrium. He depicts the depersonalizing effects of mass living in the city. His resolution of the two themes is contained in two odes. His "Ode to Rome" challenges the Christian Church to reform itself and reach out to the masses; his "Ode to Walt Whitman" is the poet's ringing demand for absolute personal freedom.

Career as a Playwright

During the 1920s Lorca dedicated himself to poetry, but in the 1930s he devoted his energies to the drama. Soon after he returned to Spain in 1930, the Second Republic was created, ushering in a period of intense cultural activity. Lorca himself became one of the directors of La Barraca, a traveling theatrical group responsible for presenting plays (usually of earlier periods) in the provincial towns. At the same time Lorca developed his own plays. While in New York he had written Así que pasen cinco años, a surrealist piece; in 1930 he had a successful premiere of La zapatera prodigiosa, a sparkling play of traditional Andalusian theme.

Lorca's first resounding dramatic success was Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding), premiered in 1933, a powerful poetic drama in which the vital passions ride roughshod over established social conventions. In 1934 his Yerma, another poetic drama, which explores the thwarting of the maternal instinct, enjoyed a long run in Madrid. In 1935 he saw the premiere of Doña Rosita la soltera, a tender play which traces the fading of a passionate young woman into the barrenness of spinsterhood. Finally in 1936 he wrote La casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba), a realistic drama of social protest, not staged until 1945. Of these plays, Bodas de sangre, Yerma, and La casa de Bernarda Alba are still living dramas, staged especially by college theaters.

In the 1930s Lorca's poetic production was diminished but distinguished by high quality. His Diván del Tamarit, written about 1931 but not published until 1936, presents the poet's desperate state of loneliness because of a lost love. His long poem Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías ( Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter), carefully orchestrated in four sections, describes the bullfighter killed in the ring as a modern existential hero. His last poems, Sonetos del amor oscuro, were published only partially, because of their overt homosexual theme.

In 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Lorca went home to Granada. He was taken into custody by the Nationalist forces controlling the town, perhaps because of his personal connections, perhaps because of his known sympathies for the Republican cause. In the terrible confusion reigning, even his friends in the Falange failed to save him, and he was shot on the morning of Aug. 19, 1936. The complete circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery.

Federico García Lorca's reputation rests equally on his poetry and his plays. He is widely regarded as Spain's most distinguished twentieth-century writer, his work has been translated into at least twenty-five languages, and his name is as familiar to the general reader as those of the novelists Miguel de Cervantes and Benito Pérez Galdós or the dramatists Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón. Lorca was a major participant in the flowering of Spanish literature that occurred over the years between World War I and the Spanish Civil War--an era whose wealth and diversity have been compared to those of the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Spanish Golden Age. He is normally categorized, therefore, as a leading member of the "Generation of 1927," a term as misleading as it is useful, but, nonetheless, Lorca's career coincided with those of certain other writers, mainly poets, who were friends and significant figures in their own right: Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre, and Luis Cernuda among them.