federico garcia lorca and the poem of the four mule drivers

Spain is a country of contradictions which can wear out the mind that chooses to dilucidate upon its history and identity. It is, to begin with, the one Spanish- speaking country in the world where that language is least spoken. It actually has five official tongues different enough from each other to be considered separate languages. These are Castilian (European Spanish), Galician, Basque, Catalonian and Andalousian. Also, the different regions where these five languages are spoken, alongside with some two hundred dialects, are geographically and culturally extremely distinct from each other. In broad strokes, the North is primarily Celtic, and even weather wise it resembles other places in the so called Atlantic Arch, especially Ireland and Wales. The folklore of these lands is almost indistinguishable from that of any other Celtic realm. It must be said that it is a rather simple folklore which never developed into a great art form, lovely as it may be. The center (Castile) is the notorious, nowadays nefarious, land of the conquistadors who invaded most of America from Argentina to California, and wiped out numerous indigenous cultures along the way, . The Castilians, whose famous king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabel, known as the Catholic Queen, are the direct descendants of Teutonic tribes, and were a part of the Holy Western Roman Empire, so called, ruled by the visigoths and the house of Hapsburg. The Catalonians are closer in culture and geography to the French and the Italians. The Basques are unfathomable, in spite of thousands of genetic and ethnological studies carried out to find out where they came from. The results vary from Finland, to Japan, to Africa. The probability is they come from all those three backgrounds put togehter. And finally, Andalousia,whose name in old arabic means the land of the vandals, because the Moorish conquerors encountered there a concentrated population of hostile Nordic people who were in fact the dregs of the demolished Roman Empire. These people, in comparison with the Islamic arrivals, whose culture was at the time the most sophisticated on earth, from science to architecture and military might, were living in perfectly savage conditions. Andalousia became an extension of mighty Islam, and it has to be said for the fierce conquerors that they were liberal enough to allow freedom of religion in that land to Jews and Christians alike. The result of their long dominion was a centuries- long period of conviviality and culture which affected the development of European knowledge in all ways in a very positive manner. When the visigothic Spaniards managed to move against the MOORS, most of which had no longer any real reason to think of themselves as anything but citizens of Iberia (Spain and Portugal), there ensued a period of fanaticism, coinciding with the conquest of the new world, which gave birth to the so called Inquisition, the expulsion from Europe of non Christians, and the dismantling of what had been one on the most wonderful and artistic periods of history the world has ever known. In the caliphate of Granada, Islam left some of its most outstanding masterpieces of architecture and art. and a wealth of prose and poetry, as well as thousands of songs of arabic background wich later came to create flamenco music and influece very intensely the arts and letters of Spain. It is in the city of Granada, close to the hills of sacromonte, in whose caves the gypsy people still gather for long haunting feasts of drinking and dancing around the fire, that Federico Garcia lorca was born and grew up. He was a delicate child from a middle class Spanish family,but he was soon fully versed in the lore of the Moors, and fascinated by their great culture. He sought to intertwine words in the same harmonious way in which they had crafted their delicate and powerful symbols on the walls of the temples of the South. And he was to be possessed by what he called the gypsy "duende", or "magical spirit", which allowed the work af an initiated artist to bewitch the public. He was to become one of the greatest poets of all times. And the most beloved poet of the gypsies themselves.
Spain, responsible for a large amount of the atrocities commited agaist humanity throught time, is also, ironically enough, the homeland of some of the most antiestablishment artists of all times, critical of all sorts of opression to the point that they were sacrificed in the name of freedom. Goya, Picasso, Bunuel, to name a few who are world renown. There are many others who never achieved such fame. Also, it was in Spain where fascism began and where it was first fought against in one of the bloodiest civil wars in history. Lorca, when he had not yet reached the age of forty, was killed for his supposed political views by the henchmen of the dictator, Franco. Yet Lorca was notoriuolsy apolitical. The charge which lead to his execution at night in some obscure cemetery was actually having published a poem about a bloody raid carried out by the Spanish Civil Guard (rural police) against a gypsy village. It is a terrifying and beautiful poem, where opression and death are treated through an almost cabalistic symbology. Yet there is no direct blame placed on anybody. Like Goya, Lorca was a universalist, and felt that evil was to be blamed on all, and even on nature, and that it changed its position in history at different times. He was, moreover, not interested in what the powerful might or might not understand, and wrote to move the soul of the people to love through imagery that usually came from their own folklore. His book, poet in New York, affords us, through symbols as dark as have ever been penned, an interpretation of the misunderstanding among the races, of the blind opression that is suffered by those without power, the hatred which discrimination and lack of compassion bring about, and a prophecy, an undecipherable warning of what price we will pay for our stupidity, an apocalypse, but without redemption, without any coming kingdom. As he said, racism is more than a crime against individuals, but it is a brutal agression against the soul of humanity. And it would ultimately be the reason for the undoing of the human breed. So he wouldn´t work on literature to enlighted the mind, but on imagery and music to move the soul. The idea is simple: intellect, devoid of passion and compassion, is as dead as a doorknob. His most wonderful book of poetry is possibly "Gypsy Romance", a collection of poems wich move us through their music and surrealistic imagery which, non the less are very simple in expression and manage to reach the remotest part of the human unconscious. Lorca seems to know how to use historical memory very naturally, in order to allow us to understand
our own hidden selves and that part of us which belong to others. He is always bittersweet, and electric, melancholy and vibrant, never violent...With the voice of the most delicate guitar, he conveys the most desperate message: that beauty and innocence are the daily sacrificial lamb of a world full of prejudice and idiocy. Lorca, as those of you who know him well know, writes like a child whose innocence occassionally turns into dreamscape, and often into a sort of whispered rage.
He is the gypsy and the moor of old, a nomad impelled by dreams, and an oriental aristocrat who sees the world with a loving sensuality, and speaks in parables so his people can love his visions. His people were the opressed gypsies, the blacks, the poor, and women. The homosexual, the broken hearted lover, and those dead by the guns of totalitarianism. Yet he never uttered a word that could be considere essentially political.
He wrote many beautiful songs.One of them, "a little Vienna waltz, has recently been translate into English, and interpreted, by Leonard Cohen, with the title Take this Waltz.
I have posted another very famous song by Lorca, sang by the beautiful Estrella Morente, on facebook. It was used by the antifascist side in the civil war. People love this song as if it were a lullaby their mothers had sung to them in childhood.
Ye all it says, rally, is:
Of the four mule drivers, mother, whom you see coming down the hills
the one I love is the dark one who drives an unruly mule.
Oh, mother of mine, my soul aches with love for him.

WHEN I BECAME WATER
AND WIND AND FIRE
I LOOKED FOR MY MOTHER THE EARTH
AGAIN
BUT I COULD NO LONGER FIND HER
IN HER COLD BLUE HEAVEN
NOR DID THE FROSTY STARS THERE
REMBEMBER
HER

the doubting Thomas

Painting: the doubting Thomas. At Regis college, Toronto, Ontario.

by Vidal Alcolea.

Photo by Josef Hochleitner

sang froid

I get my dialysis at a Red Cross facility. When I first began treatment, I couldn´t assimilate the fact that a couple of weeks before I had been a normal, apparently healthy fifty two year old male and now I was suddenly immersed in a world of life support machines, syringes, catheres, blood flowing out and being put back inside frail bodies through tubes. It was, it is, a sort of subterranean world where tired old people and some younger ones, like myself, slide in from an outside reality and dive into a sort of bubble outside of time theree times a week for four or five hours each time. This dialysis thing is a tough experience, and it teaches one to seriously think about life and death. It mainly teaches one to see how thin the line is separating one from the other. Sometimes, when I am peacefully half asleep on the metal bed, with the blood suddenly going out of me and back into me again, I have a feeling I really don´t know which side of the divide I am on. Life and death, one learns when on dialysis, are just parts of a strange circle of existence, and there is a marked suspicion, after a while, that one has lived before, and being on dialysis must be the karmic result of things done in other lives. This thing, this alien procedure, cleanses you from being human, and brings you closer to the world of spirits, form which many beings look at you expectantly. To a degree, you lose, you must lose, your fear of dying, And you must love life all the more, in order to survive.
Every week you are told by other patients ( I would like to say inmates, as dialysis really feels at times like a jail sentence, like you are in deathrow)that someone, maybe someone you have talked with, exchanged jokes with just a couple of days ago, has died. It puts things in perspective: it is very possible that you yourself will die one of these days. I mean, people can live on the machine for many years . But it is also a fact that they may die a lot quicker than they would if they were healthy.
When I come out of dialysis I feel more or less awful. I try to forget what I have just gone through and immerse myself in the here and now. When you are not having treatment, you must forget that you are on dialysis, because otherwise you may fall into chronic depression and act as a patient even when you are feeling allright, thus taking the pleasure out of leaving quite completely.
I still go out on weekends and hang out at the bars, drink some wine here and there, and look at women with some kind of longing.
Things are still quite possible.
But when it´s warm outside, I cannot wear a tshirt, lest I expose the horrific growths the constant needles have sculpted on my forearm, and thus revolt and turn away anyone who might have considered loving me a little...

song

I would have liked to write
a song so sad
it would remind the heart
where it came from,
of all the colours and skins and faces
it had worn
across the centuries, and of how it had been
everyone it had dared to love,
and lost.

Yeah, I would have liked to let the words
rise like the sun and draw across the sky
the heart´s longing for what was
and will be true, for beauty now
and long ago, and then fall
fall down into a sea
limitless, and of bleeding gold.

I would have liked to write the words
that could have moved a stone to tears,
guileless like a child´s eyes,
like a child´s laughter, without fear-
brave, like a peaceful beast,
deep like a father´s tears,
words that are music, understood
across the cultures and frontiers-

a song for all who were, and all
who are to come and feel,
full of regret for what was done,
of hope, for what will be.

Meditación rápida

Bien, ya se ha dicho en tiempos antiguos, incluso en el remoto Egipto, que la legislación no es sino yeso para tapar la brecha de un muro. Lo cual signifíca que la política jamás será capaz de conseguir la harmonía entre la gente. Esto se debe a que el verdadero problema, la principal fuente de inquietud humana, tine que ver con la presencia del alma, los misterios del porvenir, las razones cósmicas de la muerte.
En los tiempos antiguos seguramente existió una creencia verdadera, transmitida a la humanidad mediate las enseñanzas herméticas, es decir los misterios de iniciación practicados por los llamados terapéutas helénicos y, al mismo tiempo y aún anteriormente, por los antiguos egipcios. Los libros de los misterios de Hermes Trimegisto, el libro de los muertos de los egipcios
y el de los tibetanos, el Bagdava Gita, el poéma inca de las naves de oro, son todo parte de una religión antigua universal, aunque con las diversidades lógicas otorgadas por la individualidad de cada cultúra. ¿y cual era el propósito de las religiones, por así llamarlas, origínales? Bien, lo que alentaba tras todas ellas era la nostalgia de la atribulada, mortal humanidad por volver a su origen, a su hogar, a la paz del principio. En cada una de esas filosofías del espíritu es pivotal la creencia de que la llama que aníma a la materia proviene de un estado, o lugar, inmaterial. cuanto más se indaga en la historia cercana al origen de las cosas, más obvio parece que aquellos antiguos eran recipientes de alguna sabiduría que nosotros, la gente moderna, hemos perdido, y en la cual, por ser tan distante a nuestras preocupaciones cotidianas, no queremos pensar. Sin embargo, toda nuestra cultúra está influenciada por religiones falsas, por nociones tergiversadas de una verdad perdida en el tiempo. Podría decirse que la causa de todas las guerras, de todos los conflictos que nos castigan a lo largo de los siglos, proceden de las falsas filosofías, o más bien las filosofías maleadas, tergiversadas, que todas las religiones modernas han impuestro sobre nosotros, escondiendo verdades esenciales, para guardar el poder. Nos preguntamos por qué la percepción mística de grandes revolucionarios del espíritu se convierte de pronto en una jerarquía, regida por poderosos que mantienen intelectúal y fisicamente sometidos a sus seguidores. No solo la iglésia católica, sino la musulmana, la judía etc... se ha pasado los últimos siglos elaborando formas de mantener el poder a través de la tergiversación de la verdad teológica-¿ Y cual es es verdad? preguntaréis. Aquí está: la verdadera religión no es un culto necesariamente, sino una serie de ejercicios que deben llevarse a cabo de acuerdo con ciertas fórmulas, en las que uno debe ser iniciado por sabios, sacerdotes, maestros o como queráis llamarlos. Las verdaderas religiones están ahí para liberar al ser humano, y el resultado de sus simbologías y rituales es otorgarle la libertad original de viajar entre el mundo de la materia y el de los espíritus. De eso se tratan los grandes misterios de la pirámides: lugares de iniciación, donde todo propiciaba al ritual del viaje astral, a la visita al más allá. Sí, las religiones verdaderas estan empapadas de fórmulas para que los iniciados experimenten en vida el pasaje entre este mundo y el inmaterial. Y por todo el mundo, como veréis si echais un vistazo a la reciente historía de la arqúeología, hay dispersos lugares donde los rituales pertinentes se oficiaban.
Es muy interesante lo que a raíz de las investigaciones de los rollos del Mar Muerto, hallados en las famosas cuevas de Qúmram por un beduíno que buscaba una oveja perdida, asi como las revelaciones contenidas en otros pergaminos milenarios, del tiempo de los cristianos primitivos, encontrados en remotos lugares de Egipto, Etiopía,etc..
Jesús, aparentement críado por zelotes, o judios ortodoxos dispuestos a deshacerse del yugo de Roma por medio de la violencia, fué llevado a egipto por su familia a raíz de violentas persecuciones llevadas a cabo por Roma contra esos revolucionarios hebreos, que acabarían en la masacre de Masada. Aquellos años pasados en egipto, de los cuales los Evangelios lo omiten todo, probablemente los pasó en un casi desconocido templo del Delta del Nilo, construido por el sacerdote exiliado Onias III, o su hijo, Onías IV. Este monasterio era muy especial, pues su razón de ser era reemplazaral de Jerusalén que había sido arrasado. Sin embargo, la proximidad con los viejos cultos egipcios había influeciado mucho a este enclave judío, y existías unas enormes diferencias entre los ritos que allí se llevaban a cabo y los típicos impuestos por la Tora de losmjudios de la época. Para empezar, las mujeres eran iguales a los hombres en la busqueda del reíno de Dios. La naturaleza de dicho reíno fue lo que causó eventualmente la muerte de Jesús, ya que su mandato era iniciar a sus seguidores en los ritos herméticos de las religiones antiguas, por medio de los cuales un ser aún vivo puede reconocer y visitar el más allá, el reino de dios, o la verdadera vida. Los zelotes esperaban que el mesías les deparar libertad de roma y poder propio, pero Jesús era un revolucionario del espíritu, que predicaba cómo entrar en el más allá y comunicarse con la esencia de la creación, de la divinidad. Por eso precisamente el vaticano mantiene en absoluto secreto la información contenida en estos pergaminos que datan de la época de Cristo, y hacen lo posible para que los pilares de la religión cristiana sigan siendo cuatro escritos muy posteriores a Jesús, y manipulados a lo largo del tiempo.

ONION

I could try to find me
in the deepest of things.
For instance, in an onion:
How I go about cutting it.
No one slices an onion
like anyone. The way
of moving the knife, the pressure
applied to the blade.
What one thinks
while dividing its form
into thin wheels:
that the onion does not bleed.
that it looks just like ice.
That everyone, since people cook,
has cut onions.
The onion is a moon- the moon
may be an onion.
Somehow the world would be
something else without onions.
And onions reflect us
inescapably.
Did you ever bother placing
an onion, having peeled it,
upon a black table
with nothing else,
in tne middle of a dusky room?
Then you have understood
that an onion is a brief
sphere of white light,
a strange organism
more beautiful perhaps
than a woman´s face or a flower.
If you have contemplated
the snowy sheen of an onion
in the dark,
then you know that, within it,
there are half seen worlds,
lakes under mist,
remote hamlets, where
live people of minute size.
You also know that some onions
are sad as the unattainable
or tombs
for beautiful dead midgets,
or wintry woods,
intricate kaleidoscopes
of black branches and icicles
about which the blue ravens
draw their circular flight.