{ Tuesday, August 5, 2003 }
Again and again I come across this lovely passage from Balada de la Placeta by Federico García Lorca, Ballad of the Little Plaza.
mi coraz�n de seda,
de campanas perdidas,
de lirios y de abejas,
y yo me ir� muy lejos,
m�s all� de esas sierras,
m�s all� de los mares,
cerca de las estrellas,
para pedirle a Cristo
Se�or que me devuelva
mi alma antigua de ni�o,
madura de leyendas,
con el gorro de plumas
y el sable de madera.
Translated:
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give me back
the soul I had
when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
Started a long series of thoughts about "lost innocence" and "lost paradise", conceptions of children as angelic vs. children as demonic, the limitations of the imagination, the corrupting taint of knowlege, the experience of pre-literate societies. It also precipitated a frantic search for my bilingual collection of Lorca, now apparently lost.
LINK | 3:02 AM | TB
i love that.
denise | August 5, 2003 6:17 PMI'd never read that before. But it's beautiful. Look at my desktop now.
gaston | August 8, 2003 2:28 PM
Thanks. For my brother who needed to read them again, I looked all over the internet for those lines and you're Google's best source. Thanks thanks thanks.
HB | October 20, 2003 1:59 PM{ Post a comment }
beautiful, as lorca often is.
loaded with allusions to the bullfight, i think: silk, lights, bells being references to the matador's suit of lights; the supplication of Christ calling to mind prayers offered before the spectacle; and legends, cap and sword tying the act to its primal origins... your "pre-literate societies" and their ritual conquest of death. even the title, "placeta," could itself refer to the plaza de toros.
or, just a knight off on some tragic, quixotic quest, another suitably spanish (and lorcan) theme.
Carlos | August 5, 2003 6:02 PM