Gypsy Ballads: Federico García Lorca’s Romancero gitano, the Poem of Andalusia
Written by Federico García Lorca and published in 1928, Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads) is one of the most significant works of twentieth-century poetry. The poet himself described it as the poem of Andalusia, and called it gypsy because, for him, the gypsy was the highest, deepest and most aristocratic element of his land, the keeper of the ember, the blood and the alphabet of Andalusian and universal truth.
Author: Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
Title: Romancero gitano (1928)
Format: Bilingual paperback (Enitharmon Press), 218 pages, translated by Jane Duran and Gloria García Lorca
Scope: Eighteen ballads; a key work of the Generation of ’27
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1911253476 (ASIN 1911253476)
Eighteen Ballads
The book is made up of eighteen poems, all about gypsies, though in very different situations. Among the best-known ballads are:
- Ballad of the Moon, Moon
- The Quarrel
- Sleepwalking Ballad
- The Gypsy Nun
- The Unfaithful Wife
Themes
The book belongs to the Generation of ’27 and is read by Spanish students in their final year of secondary school, in both literature and history classes. Its main themes are:
- Andalusian mythology
- Tragic destiny
- Death
- Impossible desire
- Passionate love
- Religious feeling
- Existential anguish
- Loneliness
- The foreboding of tragedy
Other works by the author include Blood Wedding and Poet in New York.
The Romance Form
Lorca chose the romance, the traditional Spanish ballad of eight-syllable lines with assonance on every second line, a form that goes back to the Middle Ages and that every Spanish child knows. He filled that old, popular shape with startling modern images: the moon dancing for a gypsy child, a Civil Guard with "souls of patent leather", and the famous opening of the "Sleepwalking Ballad": "Green, how I want you green." That meeting of tradition and avant-garde is what made the book a sensation.
Andalusia, Myth and Violence
The gypsies of these poems are less a real community than a mythical people, proud, passionate and persecuted, through whom Lorca expresses the Andalusia he loved. Death is everywhere: knife fights, executions, the arrest and death of Antoñito el Camborio, and the destruction of a gypsy town by the Civil Guard in one of the most powerful ballads. Religious imagery mingles with the pagan, and the moon presides over all of it.
Success and Its Shadow
The book was an immediate popular success in 1928 and made Lorca famous far beyond literary circles. It also brought him the label of "gypsy poet", which he came to resent, and his friend Salvador Dalí criticised it as too traditional. Lorca soon moved in new directions with Poet in New York and his great tragedies for the stage. He was murdered by Nationalist forces near Granada in August 1936, at the start of the Civil War, at the age of thirty-eight.
Reading It in Translation
Lorca’s music is notoriously hard to translate, which is why a bilingual edition is so valuable: English readers can follow the sense and still hear the Spanish. Reading a ballad aloud in the original, even with imperfect pronunciation, is the best way to feel its rhythm.
Where to Start
First-time readers could begin with "Ballad of the Moon, Moon", which opens the book, then the "Sleepwalking Ballad" and "The Unfaithful Wife". Together they show the range of Lorca’s voice, from lullaby to tragedy to sensual storytelling, in just a few pages, and why the book has never gone out of print.
A Faithful Translation
This bilingual edition was translated by Gloria García Lorca, the poet’s niece, and the poet Jane Duran. It prints the Spanish and English side by side, so you can enjoy Lorca’s music and metaphors in the original while the translation keeps you on track.
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