Lorca After Life by Noël Valis

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lorca After Life by Noël Valis Salvatore Poeta Valis, Noël. Lorca After Life. Yale UP, 2022. Pp. 439. ISBN 978-0-300-25786-1. Lorca After Life proposes to complete what the author labels an “incompleteness” built into Lorca’s life and work (4). According to the book’s thesis Lorca’s work, homosexual identity, and murder left behind an unending transformative undercurrent, which the author labels Lorca’s afterlife with ties previous and posthumously to the Granadine’s life and work. The catalyst for this transformational process was Antonio Machado’s “El crimen fue en Granada,” the very first funeral elegy devoted to Lorca’s assassination by the right, memorialized by the republican left as a testimonial of the events. Notwithstanding the historical, cultural and literary scenarios leading to Spain’s civil war, the author argues, in contrast, that the seeds of much of Lorca’s afterlife were planted by the poet himself, driven by a conscious and deliberate motivation to self-fashion his historical and literary identity for posterity. This study attempts to recontextualize the specific events of García Lorca’s life and work within the larger literary, cultural, social and political framework of Spain, reaching as far back as the seventeenth century to present times. Following the “Introduction” (1–26), Lorca After Life is divided into two main thematic sections, with each section divided into three subsections: Part One, devoted to the murder (29–153), is subdivided as follows: 1. “Why Dead Poets Matter” (29–68), 2. “Lorca’s Grave” (69–98), 3. “The People’s Poet and the Right” (99–153). Part Two, equally subdivided into three sections, is devoted to Lorca’s gayness as follows: 4. “Fabulous Fag (I), or the Politics of Celebrity Murder” (157–85), 5. “Fabulous Fag (II), or the Celebrity of Sex” (186–230), 6. “Fabulous Fag (III), or the Face in the Crowd” (231–86). The book concludes with a “Postscript” (287–91), rather extensive and detailed “Notes” (293–361), and a considerable “Bibliography” (363–425). “Why Dead Poets Matter” presents Lorca as the culmination of what the author labels a “Dead Poets Society,” arguing that Lorca’s unfinished work due to his premature death, either for political intolerance or personal reasons—the right’s rejection of his gayness—have served to “postpone” the poet’s death. Moreover, beyond Lorca’s conversion to a civic poet of the people of Spain, the poet’s international stature and celebrity status, versus the national recognition of such figures as Conde de Villamediana, Garcilaso, Zorrilla, Bécquer, Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, and Cernuda, position the gay poet as a leader in this society of dead poets. Further, the countless failures to locate and exhume the body have served to perpetuate Lorca’s postponement of death, substituting the stone for what Valis terms Lorca’s “paper pantheon.” “Lorca’s Grave” contrasts the definitive death of Francisco Ayala, his Granadine compatriot, at 103 years of age, with Federico García Lorca’s unfinished death as a continuous arrival, as portrayed in the poet’s “Canción de jinete”; a future, unending death filled with the past. [End Page 155] “The People’s Poet and the Right” discusses how, if on the one hand, Lorca transformed himself as a poet of the people, thanks to his work with La Barraca and talks throughout Spain, Barcelona in particular, he was also used as a political football by the left as well as the right. Lorca did not associate himself officially with a particular party, but he had friends and mixed with individuals on both sides of the political spectrum; José Antonio Primo de Rivera among them. Particularly insidious was Roy Campbell’s accusation of Lorca as a rich señorito of the left while at the same time associating the poet with fascist views in Flowering Rifle. Part Two advances the theory that Lorca’s gayness was a contributing factor to his assassination. “Fabulous Fag (I), or the Politics of Celebrity Murder” contextualizes Lorca’s criticism for being a famous gay writer within the wider socio-cultural spectrum of seventeenth century Spain (Conde de Villamediana, Góngora), nineteenth century Europe (Wilde...