Frederico Garcia Lorca - Three Plays

Before I write about each of the plays in turn.  There are some general themes that arise from the trio.  First, and most powerful, is the feeling of oppression and violence that emanates from Lorca’s depiction of society.  People are forced to do things they hate, marry people they don’t love and live miserable lives all for the sake of societal convention and ‘honour’.  All three plays contain lovers deemed illicit by society; in “Blood Wedding” the bride cannot be with her true love as he is too poor to marry her, in “Yerma” the eponymous woman was married too young to realise what she was doing and in “Casa De Bernarda Alba” the cause is monetary again.  Juxtaposed to this is a theme of true love and it’s all encompassing power.  It described more than once as a rope, which pulls those under its power in ways they are powerless to resist. In all three plays, the power of this love eventually leads to death, which illustrates Lorca’s point as dramatically as possible!

There is further social comment on the rigid roles expected of men and women.  All three plays seem to highlight the terrible oppression suffered by women in this age; confined to their houses, in the interests of decency and appearances, and only permitted to look after the men and produce children.  Bernada Alba and her daughters, the mother in Blood Wedding and the protagonist in Yerma are all examples of the terrible results of this oppression.  It’s less clear to me if there is also a condemnation of the behaviour of men.  Both men and women cheat on their families in these plays so the dishonesty isn’t confined to one sex.  Nonetheless, two of the male protagonists do cheat on their wives or fiances so perhaps men are being portrayed as the more dishonest and the weaker of the sexes.  There is some comment on men's’ predilection for prostitutes too but it isn’t harsh.  I feel like the criticism is aimed at society as a whole, perpetuating unimaginably repressive stereotypes, which, in turn, make everybody miserable.  However, in a male dominated society I suppose there must be some criticism of men as the primary culprits in its continuation, although, Bernarda Alba is a fine example of a woman who does a huge amount to perpetuate it.  There is also some criticism of differences between rich and poor but this seems secondary to the criticism of people being forced to repress their true feelings.  However, when La Poncia says, “all we’ve got is our hands to work with and a hole to be buried in” in “Casa de Bernarda Alba” I felt a pang of empathy for her miserable life.

Alongside this apparent criticism of tyrannical society sits a seeming reverence for certain traditions, nature and the natural forces in life.  Each of the three plays contains a symbolic or metaphorical section; in Blood Wedding we have ‘The Moon’ and ‘Death’ disguised as a beggar woman, in Yerma the fertility ceremony involving the bull and the cow and in Casa de Bernada Alba the mad grandmother who seems to be an example of the wise fool as in King Lear.  As such, I found a stinging criticism of tradition and societal norms sitting beside an endorsement of nature and natural feelings as experienced by feelings, emotions and desires.  The character of La Poncia in Casa Bernarda Alba seemed to embody this for me and is simultaneously full of folkloric wisdom while not being prudish or despotic in its application.

The importance of nature and the closeness Lorca felt to it in his rural life near Granada are also apparent in the text.  I’m really glad I read these plays in Granada as they are rooted in this landscape and culture in a way I could still feel today.  The palette of biscuit coloured browns, striking blues and brilliant whites is immediately identifiable.  The Andalucian summer sun is brilliantly described as, “heavy as lead”.  There are also countless similes and metaphors that point towards a life lived at far closer proximity to nature than most modern urban dwellers.  Features drawn from the observation of corpses like ‘yellow lips’ and ‘tongues full of ants’ and stories of sows eating babies show a rural life entirely alien to me.  Indeed, in Blood Wedding, the ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ discuss the prospect of grandchildren like farmers discussing livestock including the choice phrase, “my son will cover her well.  He has good seed”!  The ‘Mother’ wants girls to do the embroidering, the Father boys to work the land for free.  I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend's aunt near Granada when she bemoaned the fact her brother didn’t marry an ex-girlfriend who, “knew how to kill a pig and make something from every part of it”! I feel like there is still proximity to the rural way of life portrayed in these plays.  Albeit within a far more open and liberal society.  

All plays feature songs or poems that are presented in the manner of an oral tradition.  Even though they didn’t speak to me, I feel they are more evidence of Lorca’s connection to a specific place as a writer.  They also represent another perspective on the past and the role of tradition in society.  To me, they seem to draw a connection between the current events and those that have happened in the past.  Demonstrating that major themes of human life are constant and unchanging.  I couldn’t really connect with these in the same way as the descriptions of the landscape or, in a much more remote way, the customs of the local people.  My British cultural background is surely one part of the problem.  While the translator does a great job, invoking some Scottish phrases, they simply don't have the same significance for me nor are they as euphonic as I suspect they are in Spanish.  Reading them in Spanish is certainly a project for next year!

My major criticism of the plays is their portrayal of unending misery and wretchedness.  Everyone is unhappy, often with good reason, and cheats, lies and behaves dishonourably.  There are few, if any, examples of pure love or enjoyment.  Everything is sullied by deception or oppression.  While this has the advantage of creating a very vivid impression it also makes it seem like Lorca thought everyone was dishonest or vindictive and that the world was only full of unhappiness.  Doubtless, Lorca wanted to do this to prove a point about the society he was living in but after three plays worth of total depression I found myself wondering why he couldn’t find space for even the slightest celebration of the joys of life or a good, honourable and, most importantly, happy person.  Perhaps it is because most pleasure is fleeting while sin occupies a far more permanent position within the human condition.  Whatever the case, I found it unrelenting!   

BLOOD WEDDING

The play has a minimalist feel.  The plot is simple and the characters’ personalities don’t play a central role.  Far more central is the importance of existing customs and the primacy of tradition.  Many of the characters are given generic names like ‘Mother’ or ‘Bride-To-Be’ perhaps to reinforce this subservience of the individual to the family or community.  Sometimes, this can be a bit confusing when you have ‘Mother’ (the mother of the groom) and ‘Father’ (the father of the bride) interacting in the same scene!  On the whole I liked the simplicity of the plot; a prelude to the wedding as viewed from the respective families, the introduction of the bride’s illicit love, the wedding itself, the disappearance of the bride and her lover, their pursuit and the death of both men followed by the bride offering herself to the mother to be killed.  It was exciting.  However, there was a heavy, depressing quality to the whole story.

The Mother is grieving for her murdered husband and son.  Sadness and bitterness appear to have inundated her life and she holds that life is nothing but suffering saying at one point, “As long as one lives, one is always at war”  Her son is to be married to the daughter of a local farmer and she is paranoid about how suitable she is as a match.  This turns out to be justified when she runs off with her former lover, who was too poor to marry her and married her cousin instead.  There are some beautiful metaphors in the style of observations taken from a life lived in close proximity to nature.  One of my favourites was, “their eyes are broken flowers.  And their teeth two fistfuls of frozen snow.”  As with all three of the plays, the songs and poems didn’t translate particularly well.  I wasn’t sure I liked the allegorical sections involving the Moon and Death.  

On the whole it was quite enjoyable.  It made a lot out of its short, simple storyline and was exciting to read.  The Bride-to-Be’s actions are fairly inexplicable, an ill-conceived, and ill-fated, escape from her wedding followed by an attempt to get her mother-in-law to kill her.  Unless we believe in the all encompassing power of love that Lorca refers to in all three plays.  Looked at from this perspective, it quickly becomes the society that is insane rather than the Bride-to-Be and this theme recurs throughout the other plays.  

YERMA

Yerma’s longing for a baby is claustrophobic and harrowing.  It’s unclear if giving birth is associated with nature, and therefore treated positively by Lorca, or if insistence on women giving birth is seen as imposed by society and therefore negative.  I’m very much inclined to think that it is the latter.  The nameless ‘Girl 2’ who talks to Yerma in the fields supports this view and seems highly critical of society’s role in governing personal relationships.  “I’m nineteen years old and I hate cooking and washing. But that’s what I’ve got to do all day. Things I hate doing. And why? Why does my husband need to be my husband? We do exactly the same things we used to do before we got married. It’s just old people’s silliness”.  She concedes that everyone will see her as “mad” but that she doesn’t want to get married and concludes that it ensures, “that the whole world is stuck in their houses doing things they hate doing.”  For whatever reason I feel like I hear Lorca’s voice more clearly in her words than the other characters although I may be mistaken and her views are being presented as young and mistaken!

Throughout the story various explanations are offered for why Yerma, who is ostensibly fit and healthy, can’t conceive.  One is that she doesn’t love her husband and this is true.  Yerma is in love with another man who she talks to briefly during the play and fantasises about.  Here there is an obvious and quite violent attack on the practice of getting married before having had any experience of relationships.  Yerma says, “Girls like me, girls who grow up in the country . . . all the doors are shut and bolted shut in our face. It’s all words left only half-spoken, gestures only half-made, because these are all things that you’re just not supposed to know . . . And you too, you keep quiet too, and then off you go looking like you know, like you know the answer to everything, but won’t say it, won’t tell me, even though you know I am dying of thirst.”  This criticism seems similar to Blood Wedding and entirely sensible and justified to me.  

There is a lot of nonsense talked about childbirth and the reasons for conception in the play but this seems to be aimed at illustrating the gossiping and credulous society that produces it.  One further reading could relate to the role of religion in society.  During her search to get pregnant, Yerma encounters a pagan women who tells her that she needs to concieve with a man she loves.  While this advice is probably of dubious empirical or biological value, one feels at bottom it is probably sound.  On the other hand, the old Christian women she consults with has her performing magic rituals in the middle of the night and paying her bushels of wheat! I relate this to Lorca’s criticism of society’s blind conformity with tradition, and the church’s role within that, and his possible endorsement of more ‘natural’ ways of living although I accept this interpretation may be a little speculative.

Towards the end of the play, I found myself asking if Yerma is mad for wanting children so much.  The atmosphere in her house becomes totally toxic when her husband’s two sisters move in and perhaps it is this that drives her into a frenzy more than the absence of a child.  Generally speaking, her marriage is miserable, she doesn’t love her husband and he knows this.  However, while he seems content to occupy himself with his business and is simply happy to avoid public scandal she dreams of a different life with another man she loves.

I found this play to be more intense in its claustrophobia and misery than “Blood Wedding”.  There’s more dialogue, the play itself is longer and the characters are deeper and more complex. Nonetheless, finally the same theme of overpowering love leading to death dominates albeit in a slightly altered format.  Yerma seems to choose the sin of murder over that of adultery when she kills her husband in a fit of rage after he reveals he doesn’t want children.  

CASA BERNARDA ALBA

The protagonist is horrible!  She enforces all the oppression of her age by not permitting any of her daughters to leave the house for 8 years after the death of her husband.  A charitable interpretation of this situation would invoke her grief but it quickly becomes apparent she has a sadistic love of being puritanical.  The consequence is that all her four daughters become extremely sexually frustrated and things deteriorate further when a man does come into the equation.  She is also a despicable hypocrite, which makes her especially detestable.  She claims to hate gossip but is an inveterate gossip herself.  She spreads toxicity all around and it’s so unpleasant you really can’t forgive her even though her husband has died.  The three plays form a crescendo of misery, increasing in detail and volume to this shrill finale.  It really is a masterpiece of misery and I was not at all surprised to learn from my Spanish friend that they say “Casa Bernarda Alba” for a situation where everything is completely fucked!  In fairness to Lorca, who I’ve criticised earlier for being all doom and gloom, some of her pronouncements are quite amusing in their ludicrous severity.  For example, “The only man women should look at in church is the priest. And only because he wears a skirt. To look at any other man is to act like a bitch on heat.”  However, it really is only momentary relief as you’re quickly bludgeoned into distress by her tyranny with her daughters. Not to mention far crueler pronouncements like, “I’m not concerned with feelings. What people feel is their own affair. What matters is the way things look” and “If you should be happy then you are happy. They are one and the same.”  She is the very embodiment of the societal repression that ‘Girl 2’ speaks so eloquently against and against which all three plays speak strongly.  The scene where she bays for the blood of a mother who has had an illegitimate child and killed it for fear of the repercussions is truly dreadful.  It cements the idea of a person, and probably a society too, so wrapped up in misery and anger that it’s only pleasure can be exacting punishment on those who dare to follow nature and ignore the societal laws that are making them all miserable.

La Poncia is a great character and my favourite from these three plays.  She is worldly and I think it is mentioned  she is a prostitute’s daughter in conversation with Bernarda.  As such, she is sure to be classified as ‘dishonourable’ or ‘undignified’ although all her actions in the play show her to be quite the opposite.  She is a servant in Bernarda’s house and is subjected to all kinds of humiliation and cruelness.  Despite all this abuse, she is very wise and tries to warn Bernarda about the lethal situation developing amongst her daughters.  Bernarda cruelly dismisses her kind advice as jealous gossip.  It is in La Poncia’s mouth we find the best diagnosis of the play’s myriad woes, “They are women without men, that’s all. And when it comes to sex, everything else gets swept away.”  The crazy grandmother, who is locked in her room most of the time, also speaks in a prophetic or metaphorical way.  However, La Poncia’s advice is far less poetic and far more practical.  Perhaps more akin to the Pagan women in “Yerma”.  In any case, because she depicted as a sage it is interesting to find her as an apologist for men’s voracious sexual appetites.  This may be due to her mother’s profession but it is surprising to hear her say, “He can’t control himself. He’s only a man.” of the man who proposes to the eldest, ugliest and richest daughter while sleeping with the youngest and prettiest.  Better still she says, “I gave my son money to go with her [a prostitute]. Men need these things.” I’m not sure how to take this as Lorca doesn’t seem to be very sexist in the rest of his writing.  It may simply be that he wanted La Poncia to be an authentic character with views of the age and I have over interpreted her role as a truth teller in the play.  

In the end, death inevitably comes and, as with the misery in the house, it’s worse than in the other two plays.  At a higher pitch and volume.  The deadly squabbling between the siblings is already worse for being within a family.  Yet furthermore, it seems to take on an even darker hue because it has been incubated by their mother and would probably not have happened if not for her vindictive, sadistic and superficial approach to life.  When Adela, the youngest daughter, says, “and I’ll gladly wear my crown of thorns.” before committing suicide I’m not sure if we’re supposed to think of her as Christ-like.  She is certainly portrayed as being truly in love and this could be interpreted as the greatest celebration of God if ‘God is Love’.  However, Bernarda’s obsession with burying her as a virgin, despite the fact it seems fairly obvious she has slept with Pepe, shows religion as having an entirely opposing view of this kind of love!  This was the best of the three plays and I enjoyed them all but wasn’t blown away by any of them.

 

     

AA Gill - Pour Me: A Life

The last time I read any AA Gill, I was a prepubescent leafing through my parent’s copy of The Sunday Times. I remember being impressed by the acerbity.  Now, some 20 years later, the sheer acidity of his prose fails to cover his other stylistic woes.  George Orwell, who Gill inexplicably claims to have had a “titanic crush” on at school, tells us, “good prose is like a windowpane” in his essay Why I Write.  Gill describes, “glazed windows with curtains, behind which is painted a Home Counties landscape” in one of the dive bars he used to drink in.  This is an apt description of his prose although he’s also scrawled ‘Look at me! I’m so clever’ across the glass.  Arcane words litter the text but fail to add much to the general meaning leaving the impression they’re only there to show you how much he knows.  I looked up ‘octorate’, apparently how spider’s move, on google to no avail. He’s also loquacious and floral but in a self-satisfied way that brings little extra satisfaction to the reader.  For example, “they hate it and rant at the propinquity, rage against the intimacy” repeats the same idea two, if not three, times and it seems Gill will never use one convoluted, unclear phrase or word where three or four would suffice.  The most farcical example of this is the following, written in praise of omission:

“writing is the art of editing, each of these words is the result of a decision not to utilise, call on, pick, substitute, designate, suffer, frog-march, choose other words”

It reads like he’s copied and pasted from a list of synonyms!  Other phrases are ludicrously highfalutin; the remnants of a dinner party left to decay are described as, “the corruption of earthly vanity and fleshly lust”. All without apparent irony!  There are also some outright mistakes; “ossuaries of bones” is tautological, “actuary accounting” should be “actuarial”.  At other points, this 60 year old man writes like a 16 year old referencing “cranking”, “barfing” and saying “they’re on it. They’re doing shit”.  It might be faintly amusing and help to appeal to younger readers in a 500 word piece about a restaurant but in a longer, allegedly more reflective, format it’s clunky.  It’s populist, shock-jock prose that sits awkwardly with his attempts at a more refined, less colour-supplement journalistic style.  Metaphors are mixed and muddled.  Tears ‘swim’ down his cheeks, but swimming is something that takes place in water not something water does.  There is ‘an attempt to reconstruct, resurrect the boat that is going the other way’ but if it’s going in any direction then presumably it can’t be resurrected as it’s still afloat!  He either wants to turn it around or dredge it up from the ocean floor but not both at the same time while chucking in ‘reconstruct’ for good measure.   I’m still wondering what phrases like, “they are pre-National Health, a quaint black-and-white starched wimple rectal thermometer condition”, used in reference to DT, or “the wilful extravagance of a tissue-paper basement bohemianism” actually mean other than being a collection of words the author loosely associates with the concept he’s trying to express.  The tone is mean and sneering.  In the first chapter alone, we contend with references to ‘dagoes’ and ‘randy fat girl[s]’ but at least these are comprehensible.   He’s also snobbish, name dropping his quasi-famous society mates and bemoaning that alcoholism and LSD aren’t what they used to be. I find this fecklessness amazing for a former addict and suspect he’s faking it at some level.  He tells tall tales about his pathetic exploits as a drunk with a kind of pride makes me wonder if he’s learned anything except to stop drinking.  Gill is the consummate attention seeker; seemingly both in prose and life.  

Stylistic gripes aside, I found it really hard to work out what’s going on chronologically in the first chapter.  There seems to be almost no structure amidst the sneering, the showing off and the confusing metaphors.  It’s like he wrote it as a stream of consciousness.  We start off and Gill’s in rehab.  He’s thirty and he’s talking about some exercise they do in rehab about being adrift at sea and making choices about getting back to land.  So far, so comprehensible.  However, he then goes on to say that 27 years later he realised he made the wrong choice.  As such, I’m thinking he is 57 when he realises this.  However, later on he says the book will cover the period between his time and rehab and the end of his marriage, which is between six and eighteen months.  Incidentally, this turns out to be totally untrue; the book seems to cover almost all parts of his life apart from this period.  It seems he gets divorced first, then stops drinking in rehab a year or so later.  So what of the 27 years?  We can only presume that he is NOW 27 years removed from the time when he chose to get married and that the choice to get married is the ‘choice’ he is talking about and not the choice he was confronted with in rehab.  Perhaps this sort of vagueness is supposed to pique the reader’s interest but I found it unclear and annoying.  It’s like he’s remembered the incident from rehab and written about it but then made only the vaguest attempt to connect it to the rest of the chapter.  Sadly, unconnected and rambling rants are all too common throughout the book.

We continue in this higgledy-piggledy way through a hodge-podge of half-baked philosophical observations, autobiographical remembrances and miscellania. All suffused with the ambience of a recalcitrant schoolboy dashing off an essay before a deadline.  It’s as if Gill believes he’s so clever and his life so interesting that anything he says will be worthwhile. So what’s the point of thinking about what’s being said or giving it a structure?  Of course, structure isn’t essential. The real problem is the material, the observations are commonplace but presented in such a smug, self-congratulatory way it’s a nauseating.

The book does improve from the truly shocking start.  There are more interesting, and comprehensible, sections on him studying art while at the Slade, a brief history of his family going back two generations and a dissertation on cooking.  However, all read like individual essays inserted into the broader stream of consciousness and all suffer from his ‘why use one word when I know fifteen’ approach to writing.  None are explicitly linked to the stated subject matter of the book; namely, addiction except for the therapeutic qualities of cooking in his family.  Coupled with the insufferable style and propensity to pontificate on subjects well outside his expertise using the same tone of arrogant assertion, it doesn’t amount to good prose.  In general, he reminds me a bit of Jeremy Clarkson.  He knows about his specialist subject but expresses his knowledge in such a mean spirited way.  Both are intelligent and capable of making interesting points but insist on playing the class clown.  It’s lowest common denominator stuff; sexism, wild exaggeration, oversimplification of complex issues, racism, xenophobia, outlandish stories, arrogance, name dropping and unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts.  Both should really be above such carry-on but are egged on by the class.  As the comedian Stuart Lee puts it so unforgettably, “with his outrageous politically incorrect opinions which he has every week to a deadline in The Sunday Times for money”.  Anyone wondering why it is so unacceptable for intelligent, privileged people with a public platform to behave like this should watch this part of his stand up routine! I haven’t read any Clarkson since I was about 12 either so perhaps he’s changed, but I very much doubt it.  I was most amused when Gill reveals the two are friends, a fine match in my opinion.  

Gill also seems fixated on portraying himself as close to penniless throughout the book but doesn’t seem to think it contradictory to mention his expensive education, flats on High Street Kensington, not working and drinking non-stop which all clearly contradict this narrative.  I’m not saying they were filthy rich but the idea of him, his father and his brother ‘pooling 30 francs’ to bet on a horse at Longchamp because they had ‘run out of money’ is plainly a ridiculous fabrication.  His father was a very successful television producer and director and many parts of the book point to the family’s occupation of fairly elevated social strata.  However, as with the outrageous politically incorrect views, Gill must show off and exaggerate at all costs!  He also tries to simultaneously claim he is middle class while also working at Tatler, which even he admits is solely for good looking people with trust funds.  While his family could be described as upper middle class, it’s clear from the contents of this book, and his job at Tatler, that he is a SERIOUS social climber.  His good looks and natural affinity for being a snob probably helped considerably in this regard.

For a brief moment, around Chapter 10, Gill does actually talk about addiction before moving on to more worthy topics like how wonderful he is at journalism, how funny he is and how really it critics who are the lifeblood of the world and facilitate all progress in it.  What he says is, for me, far too broad and inauthentic.  It’s a sort of caricature of addiction for those who know nothing about it but are interested in it in a sort voyeuristic way.  Addicts are this, addicts aren’t this, addicts do this, but addicts don’t do that.  It’s as if every single addict were exactly the same and he has knowledge of the whole field because he was once a degenerate with a couple of war stories; most of which sound heavily embellished.  He asserts that no addict indulges in self-pity, which is far too general to be meaningful.  Of course people feel sorry for themselves, often with good reason, and an addict is no different.  He might not feel pity for himself over his addiction, which often has physical and psychological aspects that are hard to overcome, but to assert that it plays no role is simply too broad a statement.  In the same vein, we are told “living sober is nothing like as heroically gritty as trying to live stoned and drunk”.  Again, that depends on the person, the circumstances and a thousand other variables that Gill doesn’t care to examine.  He even goes so far as to say he doesn’t mind if his children take heroin because, “I know what to do about heroin”.  It’s hard to express the arrogance and stupidity of this sentence.  However, it’s all of a piece; what he wants to do is write something that will shock the non-addict, something at odds with their middle class, Sunday Times view of the world.  By turns this can be talking about shitting yourself or claiming heroism for the addict or saying taking heroin is OK.  It doesn’t matter, as long as sufficient shock is produced and he’s the centre of attention.  It’s tiresome, much like the prose.  The exact same motivation lies behind all Gill’s outpourings; he’s showing off and acting for the crowd.  

This book doesn’t examine addiction in any detailed or meaningful way.  I also suspect it doesn’t really reveal much about Gill’s life.  It reads like 100 frivolous pieces for some weekend supplement of the Sunday Times vaguely joined together. He flits from subject to subject telling tall tales and making jokes.  The only unifying theme is the desire to shock, to impress, to seem clever or controversial.  He thinks he’s hilarious, and even writes as much, but I didn’t even smile once during this book.  A consummate show off, he’s always making outlandish claims and trying to show that what others find complicated is comprehensible to him by virtue of his wit and irreverence.  He glamorises his addiction and rarely writes about the terrible effects it must have had on those around him.  He comes off as a mean, snobbish, arrogant and unpleasant man with a huge ego and far too high an opinion of himself, his views and his exploits, which he admits he largely can’t remember and has probably largely invented.  Those hoping for a honest examination of addiction should look elsewhere as this is just a few stories about addiction coupled with a load of sundry material on how great he thinks he is.  I had most empathy with the Scandinavian guide who told him, “You’re a cunt”!  Just like the glazed pane with the fake Home Counties scenery behind it; Gill shows us a mish mash of fabricated stories through the grubby window of his pretentious prose.