Editing Luis Cernuda (section)

===Lorca===

Cernuda's relationship with Lorca was one of the most important in his life, notwithstanding the fact of its brevity. He first met Lorca in Seville in December 1927, during the celebrations in honour of Góngora.  He recalled this meeting in an article he wrote in 1938.<ref name=Cernuda2148>Cernuda OCP vol 2 Federico García Lorca (1938) p148-154</ref>  They met on the patio of a hotel in the evening.  Cernuda was struck by the contrast between Lorca's large, eloquent, melancholy eyes and his thickset peasant's body. He was not favourably impressed by his theatrical manner and by the way he was surrounded by hangers-on - reminiscent of a matador.  However, something drew them together: "Something that I hardly understood or did not wish to acknowledge began to unite us....he took me by the arm and we left the others."{{cn|date=October 2022}}

He next met Lorca three years later in Aleixandre's apartment in Madrid<ref name="Cernuda637"/> after Lorca's return from New York and Cuba.  He noticed that something in Lorca had changed; he was less precious, less melancholy and more sensual.<ref name=Cernuda2148 />

Considering the friendship between them and his admiration for Lorca, Cernuda is dispassionate in his assessments of Lorca's poetry.  He is not a whole-hearted admirer of the ''Romancero gitano'', for example, unimpressed by the obscurity of the narratives in many of the individual poems and by the theatricality and outmoded [[costumbrismo]] of the collection as a whole.<ref name="Cernuda210">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 210</ref>  When he discusses ''Canciones'', he deplores the jokiness of some of the poems -

<blockquote>an attitude unworthy of a poet, but more appropriate to the son of a wealthy family who, comfortable in his very bourgeois status, is able to mock it, because he knows that it will not cost him anything and that it will earn him the reputation of being a smart, witty chap.</blockquote>

He notes that this is a fleeting characteristic in Lorca but more persistent in someone such as Alberti.<ref name="Cernuda211">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 210-211</ref>  For Cernuda, poetry is a serious business and he tends not to approve of people who take it lightly.  It also tends to show how his criticism is guided by his own principles.  He tends to be more lenient in his judgments of poets who are like him.  He seems to approve of the fact that after the success of the ''Romancero gitano'', Lorca continued along his own track, not seduced into writing more gypsy ballads.<ref name="Cernuda211_2">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 211</ref>  In ''Poeta en Nueva York'', a collection not published in Spain in Lorca's lifetime, Cernuda identifies the heart of the collection as the "Oda a Walt Whitman".  This is interesting as it is a poem in which Lorca clearly shows his identification with homosexuals<ref name=Gibson297>Gibson p 297</ref> but Cernuda's reference is rather obscure -

<blockquote>in it the poet gives voice to a feeling that was the very reason of his existence and work.  Because of that it is a pity that this poem is so confused, in spite of its expressive force.<ref name="Cernuda212">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 212</ref></blockquote>
 
On March 8, 1933, he was present at the premiere in Madrid of García Lorca's play ''Bodas de sangre''.<ref name=Gibson348>Gibson p348</ref> but he makes no reference to it, or indeed to any of Lorca's plays in his writings.  He notes at the end of the chapter on Lorca in ''Estudios sobre Poesía española contemporánea'' that Lorca's later poems give clear signs to suggest that he had a lot more to say at the time of his death and that his style was developing in emotional force.<ref name="Cernuda214">Cernuda: OCP vol 1 Federico García Lorca p 214</ref>

Cernuda wrote an elegy for Lorca which he included in ''Las nubes'' and to the end of his life took pains to try to ensure that the image of Lorca was not academicised, that he remained a figure of vitality, rebellion and nonconformism.<ref name="Villena introduction50" />