Bound Hand and Foot: Lorca, Dalí, and the ‘Flight’ of Surrealism

Abstract

Abstract The traditional narrative of Federico García Lorca’s embrace of Surrealism follows a familiar, all too familiar dialectical sequence: triumph, crisis, supersession. In this progression, Salvador Dalí plays the key role of the cosmopolitan, more advanced friend, who opens up a rift and puts things in motion with his mixture of harsh criticism, sentimental disappointment and visionary pushiness. Lorca, on the other hand, is basically reduced to the secondary, diffident, reactive role of heeding someone else’s insights and following an already trodden path. This article offers a different view of these initial moments of the Surrealist avant-garde in Spain, emphasizing the contested understanding of the idea of ‘flight,’ ‘escape,’ or ‘evasion’ as the grounds for a Surrealism that neither aspires to domesticate the strangeness of reality, nor dares to face it with the cold indifference of the heroically adventurous pioneer; a Surrealism, in that elusive sense, that perhaps is not one.