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FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

Born 1898, Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Spain

Died 1936, between Víznar and Alfacar, Granada, Spain

A representative sampling of Federico García Lorca’s poetry, dialogues, and short prose. Included here are very well known and some lesser-known works, some of which appear in English for the first time, ranging from Lorca’s earliest poetry to his renowned Gypsy Ballads and posthumous publications.

GARCÍA LORCA IN PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

The House of Bernarda Alba and Other Plays

Poet in New York

Selected Poems

Federico García Lorca

THE DIALOGUE OF TWO SNAILS

Translated from the Spanish by Tyler Fisher

PENGUIN CLASSICS

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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

This selection first published 2018

Translation copyright © Tyler Fisher, 2018

All rights reserved

The moral right of the translator has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-34041-7

Contents

The Dialogue of Two Snails

The Encounters of an Adventurous Snail

Tree of Surprises

In the Garden of Lunar Grapefruit

Telegraph

Bandolero (Bandit)

Scene of the Lieutenant Colonel of the Civil Guard

Song of the Battered Gypsy

Las Seis Cuerdas (The Six Strings)

Riddle of the Guitar

The Six Strings

Castanet

Conjuring

Knell

Song

Quasi-Elegy

Landscape

Trees

Field

They Felled Three Trees

Street of the Wordless Ones

Tree of Song

Seashell

Cradle Song

Amor (Love)

Gypsy Zorongo

The Moon and Death

Ballad of the Moon, Moon

The Gypsy Nun

Tamar and Amnon

Each Song

Autorretrato en Nueva York (Self-portrait in New York)

Notes

Series List

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The Dialogue of Two Snails

White Snail.–(Silence.)

(A young lady with a lace parasol comes along counting her steps. Upon reaching a little brook, she hesitates. Then she jumps.)

Black Snail.–(Silence.)

(The rat has crossed the river. The bad rat. The rat that devours the tender rootlets.)

White Snail.–(Silence.)

(The young lady consults the scent of the fennel beds. The evening, lacking intelligent relations, crumbles down into the haze of the horizon.)

Black Snail.–(Silence.)

(The rat returns to the blackberry bushes. An obscure voice delights in pronouncing this word: blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.)

White Snail.–(Pause.)

(The young lady sits down on the green hillside. She has come outside alone because she does not recall the mice.)

Black Snail.–(Dumbstruck.)(Silence.)

(In the watery cove, with nary a crease, a long cloud quivers in place. The rat heads for it like a bird. The Lord must have consented to his inflicting this abuse.)

White Snail.–(Silence.)

(No one likes the book the young lady is reading. She is silly, unaware that her mountains of sugar are full of ants.)

Black Snail.–(Exit.)

White Snail.–(At the top of the fennel stalk.)

Ay!

(February 1926)