Transcription
[Laughter] [Music] a few days today we are going to comment on the poem by Federico García Lorca titled "Romance Sonámbulo" which is the fourth in the collection "Romancero Gitano" published in 1928. "Romance Sonámbulo" is, according to the almost unanimous opinion of readers and critics, a splendid poem, surely the best of the romances in "Romancero Gitano," one of the most unsettling and enigmatic, and at the same time one of the best lyrical compositions written in the Spanish language throughout the 20th century. In our commentary, we will follow the following order: first, we will briefly summarize the content of each of its six sections, sections graphically separated by Lorca himself with an asterisk, and after each of these summaries, we will read the corresponding fragment. This way, the literal meaning and even the literary meaning of the poem as a whole will be better understood. We will thus be doing a preliminary gloss before reading each of the fragments. Next, we will dwell on the exact meaning of some very specific verses, some very determined verses that offer some difficulty or that stand out for their formal interest, for how they are constructed, for the type of rhetorical device used, for their surprising nature, or for any other reason that may catch our attention. Therefore, we will focus on a few verses, on certain verses, and explain them more calmly. Next, we will carry out the commentary on the poem itself. We will begin by talking about the structure of this romance, how the narrative or lyrical matter is organized in the different sections. Then, we will talk about the main theme, the secondary themes, and how these themes relate to those of other romances in "Romancero Gitano." Next, we will contextualize "Romance Sonámbulo" within the entire "Romancero." Then, we will proceed to comment on some of the important symbols in this romance, which are at the same time symbols that are reiterated, that are repeated throughout the book. Finally, we will focus on the formal aspects, on the way the author has decided to give shape to his text, on the way he has formalized this poem, and we will see how Lorca, as he has accustomed us in this collection of poems, has fused the tradition of the old romance, the ancient romance, with the innovation of the avant-garde movements in which he is inscribed. Therefore, we will detect traits of the traditional romance and how these combine with new, novel, avant-garde characteristics of the time. And with this, we will conclude our commentary on "Romance Sonámbulo." We begin the reading with a gloss, with a commentary, with a preliminary explanation that will serve as an introduction to each of the sections. As we have already had occasion to note, "Romance Sonámbulo" is graphically divided, and therefore it is a decision of Lorca himself, into six sections. We will have occasion to see that it is, as the title "Romance Sonámbulo" already announces, a hallucinatory poem, a nocturnal poem that plunges us into a night from which apparently no character escapes, and the reader also cannot escape. It is a perpetual night in which an awakening is constantly announced, an awakening that never occurs, that will never fully dawn. In this romance, a love tragedy is recounted, a love story in a tragic key, in which two protagonists appear, two young people with a destiny marked by death. The poem, therefore, this hallucinatory poem with a nightmarish air, recounts the death of two lovers, one explicit and the other suggested. Well, let's begin. In the first of the sections, we will learn that a young gypsy woman leans out over a railing, a balcony. The balcony or railing, in literary tradition and also in artistic, pictorial tradition, is usually a symbol of the woman waiting for her lover. It is the place of amorous encounter. Let us recall, for example, the balcony as a place of amorous meeting in Shakespeare's tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. This young gypsy woman has eyes of cold silver, eyes that remind us, by their color and also by the use of a metallic symbol, silver, of the color of the moon. The moon is a symbol that will appear throughout the poem and that invites us and suggests death from the beginning. Indeed, that young gypsy woman leaning over a railing is dead. She has eyes of cold silver, which is why things look at her, but she cannot look at things. Her eyes, therefore, are dead, they are cold, and they have the color of metal. Green, moreover, as any reader of Federico García Lorca knows, green is the color of death. The entire poem is tinged with green. "Romance Sonámbulo" is a kind of symphony in green, reminiscent of earlier compositions by Juan Ramón Jiménez or Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, where this color predominated. In Lorca, green is the color of mold, of stagnant water, the color of the putrid, a disturbing color that has nothing to do with life or with flowering or with fertility, but quite the opposite. Green is infertile, it is sterile, it is bitter, and it is therefore a color related to the funereal. This dead gypsy, therefore, leaning over a railing with eyes of cold silver, who cannot see things, but things can see her. In the first section, the distant absence of a smuggler is indeed suggested, the distant absence of a lover who is dedicated to smuggling, a gypsy who is dedicated to smuggling and perhaps to banditry. And hence, as we will see shortly, we encounter the symbol of the sea, the symbol of ships, and also the symbol of the mountain and the horse. By sea, through ships, smugglers received merchandise, and in the mountains, through horses, smugglers sought secret routes to elude the forces of order, which in this case are represented by the Civil Guard, to transport that merchandise. We will proceed, after this summary, this preliminary gloss, to the reading of the first section. It says: "Green, how I want you green. Green wind, green branches. The ship on the sea, and the horse on the mountain. With the shadow at her waist, she dreams on her balcony. Green flesh, green hair, with eyes of cold silver. Green, how I want you green. Under the gypsy moon, things are looking at her, and she cannot look at them." The beginning is somewhat enigmatic and requires, at the end of the poem, a rereading of the entire composition to fully understand that, in fact, a dead woman is described here, a dead young gypsy woman, tired of waiting for her smuggler lover. It comes in the second section, which spans from verse 13 to verse 24. Nature appears, nature as if it were a chorus, as if it were the chorus of a Greek tragedy, a classical tragedy. Nature witnesses the tragedy of the characters with emotion. Dew appears, we are told about stars, about frost, which corresponds to the dew. The wind becomes harsh and unpleasant, the wind becomes aggressive, and in the present romance, this aggressiveness, this harshness, is manifested through the detail of the fig tree leaves. The wind brushes the harsh leaves of the fig trees, and Lorca uses an inverted image: it is the fig trees that rub their leaves in the wind. The mountain, at the same time, feels a shiver, like that of a cat that bristles its fur. The dead gypsy, in this section, continues to wait for someone, but we still don't know who it is, and she wonders who will come and from where. At the same time, this gypsy dreams of the sea, dreams of the place of origin, of her beloved's provenance, but this sea is a bitter sea, and let us also note the paronomasia: bitter sea, and the alliteration. This sea is a bitter sea because it announces death. Well, let's proceed to the reading of this section, which says: "Green, how I want you green. Great stars of frost come with the shadow fish that opens the path of dawn. The fig tree rubs its wind with the sandpaper of its branches, and the wild mountain cat bristles its sour pitas. But who will come and from where? She continues on her balcony. Green flesh, green hair, dreaming of the bitter sea." We therefore still find the typically romantic, traditional portrait of the woman waiting for her lover on the balcony. In the third section of the poem, which spans from verse 25 to 52, a dialogued part appears, a dialogue in which two characters participate in direct style. They are not presented; there are no introductory verbs, nor do we know the names or identities of these two characters. We therefore do not know who is speaking, but we can guess from the content of this dialogue that it is, on the one hand, the gypsy smuggler, the gypsy's lover, and on the other, her father. The young gypsy, the smuggler, returns to his beloved's house while bleeding, surely after an confrontation with the Civil Guard. The young man asks the father for help, asks for refuge in his house, but the father, completely beside himself, completely distraught by his daughter's death, refuses to open to him. The young man's attributes, the smuggler's attributes, are three: three elements that function here as symbols: the horse, the saddle, and the knife, which are also attributes of bandits and smugglers. The character himself, the young man himself, tells us that he comes bleeding from the ports of Cabra. The ports of Cabra are located in Córdoba and were a place famous for the presence of bandits and for the very common smuggling routes during the 19th century and the early 20th century. The gypsy proposes to the father to renounce that external life, that dangerous life, to renounce, therefore, the horse, the saddle, and the knife for more domestic, more familiar elements. He proposes to exchange these three symbols of the wild, dangerous life for other symbols of domestic life, specifically the house, the mirror, and the blanket. The wounded gypsy addresses the other, addresses the father, always repeating at the beginning of his interventions the form of address "compadre," although they are not compadres beforehand, since one is the girl's father and the other is the one to whom he is addressing. Always repeating at the beginning the apostrophe "compadre." And in turn, the girl's father, this recently mentioned compadre, always ends all his replies by repeating a refrain, a refrain that may seem a bit cryptic, a bit enigmatic, but which will be perfectly understood. The father will say: "But I am no longer myself, nor is my house my house." Indeed, his daughter's death has destroyed him, has distraught him, he has therefore ceased to be. "But I am no longer myself," he has ceased to possess, "nor is my house my house." In this section, we will see how the railings, that is, the place of encounter with the beloved, are now inaccessible, they are high railings, railings touched by death, and they are therefore green railings, and also railings impossible to reach, since the gypsy will never manage to reunite with his beloved in life. They are impossible to reach, and Lorca uses hyperbole, exaggeration, to express this idea: railings of the moon, railings that reach the height of the moon. Well, let's proceed to the reading of this fragment, which says: First the wounded young gypsy speaks, and then the father replies. "Compadre, I want to trade my horse for your house, my saddle for your mirror, my knife for your blanket. Compadre, I come bleeding from the ports of Cabra." And the father replies: "If I could, young man, this deal would be closed. But I am no longer myself, nor is my house my house." To which the young smuggler responds: "Compadre, I want to die decently in my steel bed, if possible with holland sheets. Don't you see the wound I have, from my chest to my throat?" To which the father replies: "Three hundred dark roses your white chest carries. Your blood oozes and smells around your sash. But I am no longer myself, nor is my house my house." And finally, the smuggler says to the father: "Let me at least climb to the high railings, let me climb, let me reach the green railings, railings of the moon, where the water rumbles." And thus ends the third section, the dialogued part of "Romance Sonámbulo." Well, in the following section, much shorter, from verse 53 to 60, the narrator reappears, the same narrator we encountered in the first two sections. And what is recounted, what is explained in this part? The father finally agrees to let the young man climb, to let the young man enter the house and climb to the railings. So both climb to her room, they ascend to the high railings. The young man ascends, and the other weeps for his daughter's death, the father, while the moon, a symbol of death, is reflected on the rooftops and the stars shine before dawn. Well, this is the content of the fourth section, which we will now read. "Already the two compadres are climbing towards the high railings, leaving a trail of blood, leaving a trail of tears. Tin plate lanterns trembled on the rooftops. A thousand crystal tambourines wounded the dawn." As we have seen, there is also a commotion of nature, moved by this thunderous sound of the thousand crystal tambourines that wounded the dawn. In the following section, which is the penultimate of the poem and begins in verse 71 and ends in 72, the narrator insists on the ascent of the lover and the girl's father. Next, the wind, which is usually a hostile element in Lorca, appears to us in a synesthetic way, mixed, interwoven, contaminated with green elements, with bitter elements, with elements that announce or are related to death. Specifically, the wind smells of bile, the bitter substance of the liver, it smells of mint, and it smells of basil. Next, a dialogue occurs between the wounded young man and the father. The former, the young smuggler, asks about the gypsy girl, and the father replies that she is dead and that before dying, she... but many times we will read this passage: "Green, how I want you green. Green wind, green branches. The two compadres climbed. The long wind left a strange taste of bile, mint, and basil in the mouth." And now the young man says: "Compadre, where is she? Tell me, where is your bitter girl?" And the father replies: "How many times have I waited for you? How many times will I wait for you, fresh face, black hair, on this green balcony?" And in the last section of the poem, from verse 73 to 86, only the narrator intervenes. It does not happen as in the previous passage, where the narrator began and ended with a dialogue in direct style without any presentation. In this last block, the narrator intervenes, describing the body of the dead gypsy, drowned or hanged, it is not clear, although it gives the impression that she died hanged over a well or cistern. The well or cistern in this case is a symbol in Lorca of death. The well contains stagnant water, still water, dead water. Well, the girl's corpse is described through suggestive metaphors and symbols. The girl's body, this corpse, has undergone a transformation. We had seen how the father had described her with a fresh face, black hair, while she was there. Now, on the contrary, she is green flesh, green hair, she has been transformed by death into a green character, like the rest of the poem. Her fresh face, therefore, has become green flesh, and her black hair, green hair. The eyes of cold silver, which we found at the beginning of the poem, are also repeated: metallic eyes, cold, dead, insensitive eyes, and therefore unable to see. The girl hangs, sways over the reflection of the moon in the well. The moon, as we will see shortly, is here an icicle, it is an icicle because it is cold, and because death is also cold. Finally, the Civil Guard, which was pursuing the wounded fugitive, bursts in. When we reach the end of the story, an actually open ending, but one that invites us to think about the young man's death. When we reach the end, the initial verses are repeated: "Green, how I want you green. The ship on the sea, and the horse on the mountain." That is, the allusions to death, the green, the smuggling, the sea, the ship, and banditry, the horse on the mountain. We finally understand, at the end of the poem, that the gypsy hanged herself because she could not bear the long absences of her beloved and could not live with the uncertainty produced by the dangerous life, the life exposed to danger and death, of her activities as a smuggler. Well, we will read this ending and then make some reflections before the commentary. "On the face of the cistern, the gypsy swayed. Green flesh, green hair, with eyes of cold silver. A moon icicle holds her over the water. The night became intimate, like a small plaza. Drunken Civil Guards at the door were knocking. Green, how I want you green. Green wind, green branches. The ship on the sea, and the horse on the mountain." The end of this romance forces the reader to reread the entire composition. This ending forces us to reinterpret the beginning. The green, as we have already seen, is an aquatic color, it is the mossy water of the well. All this is tinged with that dead green. Everything is tinged with the humidity of the moss and the putrefaction. The wind, the branches, and the protagonist herself. This wind and these branches are surely what enter or are reflected in the well, where the gypsy's corpse is also reflected. The gypsy, despite being dead, dreams, that is, sleeps, according to the ancient topos that told us that dying is sleeping. She was presented to us at the beginning with the shadow at her waist, which we interpreted literally as the shadow of the railing from which she waits for her lover, but which we now must necessarily interpret as the shadow of death. The shadow at her waist is an omen, it is a harbinger of death. She, therefore, from the beginning of the romance, we insist, not only at the end but already from the beginning of the romance, dreams on her balcony, and that balcony is no longer the balcony of the house, but the gallows where she is hanging over the well. The entire universe, the stars, the sky, the wind, the plants, the entire universe witnesses her death as if it were a performance. And indeed, we have already read that all things look at her, and she is the only one who cannot look at things. Well, we find several very ancient literary motifs in this romance. The first of these is the motif of the beloved, the young girl who commits suicide and whose death is bitterly lamented by her father. Let us think, for example, of the characters of Melibea in La Celestina, Melibea who committed suicide by throwing herself from the top of a tower and who is mourned by her father Pleberio with Pleberio's lament, which precisely ended, closed the work, La Celestina. Or let us also think of Juliet's death in Shakespeare's famous tragedy, and how, after Juliet's almost accidental death, or at least due to a misunderstanding, her parents mourn the loss. Another motif that appears in this romance, also very ancient, is that of love leading to madness, and of madness that ultimately leads to death, that is, to suicide. We find many characters in literary tradition who fit this motif, this topos, for example, the character of Ophelia in another tragedy by Shakespeare, in Hamlet. Ophelia goes mad, Ophelia goes mad singing songs in the middle of a meadow of herbs and flowers, crowning herself with flowers, and ends up drowned, presumably voluntarily or at least due to madness, in a river. Or let us also think of Juliet, dead from love, or of Melibea, driven mad by the impossibility of being with Calisto, which will lead her to suicide. In all these cases, as happens in Lorca's romance, after the death of the lovers, we can guess at a lonely, desolate father, who is no longer himself, whose house is no longer his, only on the stage of the performance. Furthermore, a literary nod to the character of Ophelia, the female character of Ophelia from Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, surely appears here. Ophelia in Shakespeare's tragedy floats on the water, wrapped in flowers. In Lorca's romance, the gypsy sways, perhaps hanged, or according to other interpretations, floats drowned on the waters of the cistern or well, over a moon reflected on the water. Well, we begin by explaining the reason for the title. Why is this a "Romance Sonámbulo"? It is a "Romance Sonámbulo" because the setting is exclusively nocturnal, everything takes place at night, and moreover, the protagonist is a character who stays awake at night waiting for her lover, therefore remaining in a state of somnambulism. Furthermore, it is a "Romance Sonámbulo" because the setting that Lorca has very carefully prepared is a hallucinatory setting. Lorca has prepared a nightmare, a nightmare, a hallucination in which the characters live enclosed, and which also seems like an endless nightmare. It is a night that does not end, it is a death whose effects continue after death in the father's pain. And moreover, all this in a romance that begins and ends exactly the same, from whose end it leads us back to its beginning. Another aspect that should be highlighted is the motif of the bandit, the smuggler. We know, in fact, that García Lorca felt admiration, at least an aesthetic admiration, a literary admiration, for the figure of the bandit, for example, the well-known bandit in Andalusia, in the Sierra de Córdoba, Diego Corrientes, and other bandits of the time, whom he mentions in some of his literary works. Well, next, we will focus on the meaning of some very specific verses. We begin with the verse "Green wind, green branches." In this verse, we find a kind of metonymy, by virtue of which the wind, which is an element contiguous, close to the branches because it passes through them, is infected by the vegetal color of the branches, and in this way, the wind is transformed. It is a wind converted into synesthesia, it is a wind in which a chromatism, a color that strictly does not belong to it, intersects. The wind ends up filling the entire environment with that color after having touched the branches, as if it were a kind of paint or expandable matter. The wind, after brushing against the branches, impregnates everything with green, with the symbolism that we already know that green acquires in this poem. From that point on, from the verse "Green wind, green branches," the girl's flesh will also be green, and her hair will also be green. Moreover, the color green itself can refer to the girl's dark complexion. Recall, for example, that in another romance, the "Romancero," dedicated to Antoñito el Camborio, it is said that this gypsy is "moreno de verde luna" (dark with a green moon). The same happens with the protagonist of Lorca's drama "Bodas de Sangre" (Blood Wedding). Well, another passage that draws attention is formed by three verses that say: "Under the gypsy moon, things are looking at her, and she cannot look at them." In this case, we are faced with a personification of the elements surrounding the girl. Things, nature, objects, the universe, everything that surrounds the girl looks at her. Therefore, these elements have been personified, and the presence of the moon, which perceives the scene, also draws attention. "Under the gypsy moon, things are looking at her." Everything is presided over by the disturbing figure of the moon, which is always related to death. Another passage, also formed by three verses, and which should be commented on, is the following: "Great stars of frost come with the shadow fish that opens the path of dawn." And in this image, it is much better understood if one has contemplated a sunrise in the countryside. Lorca's childhood was rural; he knew nature very well. From his own experience, he constructs these images, these metaphors. The first is that of the frost stars, which is a way of describing the fresh dew. The dew becomes an ice star, a frost star. On the other hand, the shadow fish refers to the sudden darkening that takes place before dawn on the horizon. Shortly before the sun rises, a sudden darkening occurs due to the contrast between darkness and the light that is about to appear, and that darkening, seen on the horizon, has the elongated shape of a fish. Thirdly, the image of the path of dawn describes the sunrise, the dawn, as a temporal process that here becomes spatial. That is, it approaches in time, but in this verse, the path of dawn approaches in space, it is approaching through a path, as if it were a walker. Many other verses could be commented on, but I will focus on a few more, and then we will do the structured commentary. "Three hundred dark roses your white chest carries." These are words that the compadre, the girl's father, directed to the smuggler. "Three hundred dark roses your white chest carries." We are faced with a beautiful metaphor, with a hyperbole, that refers to the bloodstains that the wounded man, the smuggler, carries on his chest, on his shirt. We must also note, besides this metaphor of roses and this hyperbole of three hundred, the fact that this blood is already drying: they are dark roses. We must also note the contrast, the chromatism, between the red, the dark red of the blood, and the white chest of the shirt. Well, finally, we will dwell on two of the most enigmatic verses of "Romance Sonámbulo." They are the verses that say: "A thousand crystal tambourines wounded the dawn." Lorca himself, in a conference, tried to explain, as we shall see, but in reality, he did not explain these verses. Lorca said about this image: "If you ask me why I say 'a thousand crystal tambourines wounded the dawn,' I will tell you that I have seen them in the hands of angels and trees, but I will not be able to say more, let alone explain their meaning." And it is good that it is so. Man approaches, through poetry, more quickly to the edge where the philosopher and the mathematician turn their backs to silence. It is therefore an image that does not ask to be interpreted, that cannot be translated into rational terms, but that simply has to provoke, has to produce an impression, a sensation. It is said to be an image that connotes more than it denotes. In any case, we can try to rationalize this image of the thousand crystal tambourines that wounded the dawn a little. According to some critics, what the poet refers to here is the crowing of the roosters that announce the dawn. This crowing of the roosters is associated with the noise, with the sound of crystal tambourines, tambourines that emit a sharp, cutting, strident sound. On the other hand, one could also think of a synesthesia: the imminence of light, the imminent arrival of dawn, is transformed here not into a visual image, but into a sound image, a preliminary sound, a sound that we would associate with suspense, with something that is about to happen and that announces the imminent rising of the sun. Well, let's proceed to the commentary on the poem, after having done an in-depth reading of it, and we will begin by talking about the structure of this poem. Well, we will first talk about the external structure, how the poem is presented graphically, and secondly, about the internal structure, considering the content and narrative progression. We can point out three parts. The first part goes up to verse 24, corresponds to the presentation. It begins abruptly; it is an in medias res beginning, and a young gypsy woman who is dead is presented to us, and someone who is approaching. In the second block, from verse 25 to 72, we find the core of this narrative. The person who arrives is the young lover, who arrives gravely wounded. This young man, just when he is about to leave life, just when he is about to die, wants to change his life and insistently asks the father to allow him to climb to the railings, and indeed, both climb. The last section, the third part, would cover from verse 73 to the end and constitutes a truncated, open ending. The body of the young woman is discovered floating or hanged in the cistern, and the Civil Guard knocks on the door. This would be the structure of the poem. This romance also has a circular structure, since the four verses with which it begins, those that said "Green, how I want you green," those verses that insisted on the tragic symbolism of the color green, are repeated exactly at the end of the composition. Furthermore, the poem begins with the dead gypsy, in the middle appear the characters of the father and the lover, and it closes again with a return to the image of the dead beloved. Therefore, the circular or framed structure is undeniable. Well, next, we will talk about the theme of this "Romance Sonámbulo" and how it relates to the main themes of "Romancero Gitano." The most important, most relevant theme of "Romance Sonámbulo" is the theme of frustrated love, a love associated with death, to which the color green symbolically refers. The gypsy, who so often waits for her smuggler lover on the balcony, hangs dead over the well, over the cistern, and paradoxically, she has committed suicide precisely when he returns to change his life and live with her. This love, therefore, is a doubly frustrated love because it has ended a life, and because it has ended a life just at the moment when it seemed that this love was going to be resolved. In the case of the gypsy, it has been a frustrated love due to distance, due to the separation from her beloved, which leads her to suicide. In the case of the young man, it is also a frustrated love because when he returns precisely to change his life, it is already too late; his beloved is dead, and surely he will also die from his wounds or from the execution by the Civil Guard. The feeling of frustration is a common element in the four romances of the book protagonized by gypsy women: "Romance Sonámbulo," as we have seen, "La Monja Gitana" (The Gypsy Nun), which is a case of a woman forced into a convent against her will, "La Casada Infiel" (The Unfaithful Wife), and finally "Romance de la Pena Negra" (Romance of the Black Sorrow), which is the romance protagonized by Soledad Montoya. Frustrated love and death are related to the central theme of "Romancero Gitano." The central theme is tragic destiny, and it is related to that central theme because the protagonists of this collection of poems are all marked by frustration or are all condemned to death. Their desires for personal fulfillment are impossible to fulfill. The gypsies in Lorca's world represent a primitive and marginalized culture, a culture oppressed by the forces of nature and by the forces of society, and it is therefore a culture frustrated in its desires, in its ambitions, and in its projects. This oppressive force that frustrates the gypsy people can take various forms: it can take the form of the Civil Guard, the form of the moon, the form of the wind, and in all those cases, these symbols – the Civil Guard, the moon, other gypsies, or the wind – are symbols of fate, of destiny, of the doom that tragically marks the gypsy people. Well, we will now proceed to locate this romance within the overall work. "Romance Sonámbulo" belongs to the group of strictly gypsy romances, that is, to poems 1 to 15. Specifically, it is part of the texts that focus on a gypsy woman, that focus on the feminine figure as a representative of double marginalization, because the gypsy woman in Lorca's works experiences a double marginalization: she is marginalized as a gypsy and she is also marginalized as a woman. The young gypsy in this poem dies due to a love frustration that her lover will also suffer. In other romances, we find very similar feminine prototypes. For example, in "La Monja Gitana," the character dreams of love in the solitude of the convent, a love she cannot fulfill. In "La Casada Infiel," an adulterous encounter outside of marriage is narrated, of a gypsy who is frustrated within it. And finally, in "Romance de la Pena Negra," the protagonist, Soledad Montoya, feels a sorrow, feels a pain and a longing, a yearning that has no object, that has no goal, and therefore has no solution. Well, regarding the symbols in this poem, the following stand out. First, the symbol of the color green. This color has tragic connotations; it symbolizes forbidden desire that leads to frustration, to a tragic end. In this romance, the green of the cistern's water extends throughout the poem; it is the same green as the wind that has been contaminated with the green of the branches. In Lorca, green is a symbol of death. The wind is green, the branches are also green, the railings, the flesh, the hair of the gypsy, the bile, the mint, the basil. Therefore, everything has been tinged with green, and not in vain have some critics referred to this poem as a kind of symphony in green or a green painting, a pictorial work of green color. Second, the symbol of the moon. The moon announces the tragic, announces death. Sometimes it is personified; it becomes like a human being who dances, who has arms, who shows her breasts, as happened in "Romance de la Luna." In "Romance Sonámbulo," there are several references to this symbol. For example, in verse 10, the "gypsy moon" appears, which not only indicates that the action takes place at night but also serves to create an atmosphere, a funereal atmosphere, a mysterious atmosphere, an atmosphere of fatality. In verse 51, we are told about the "moon railings," and in the following one, it is said that on those railings, the water rumbles. The railings, by being associated with the moon and the color green, take on a connotation of death. Third, the last reference to the moon in this poem appears in verses 77 and 78, where we read "a moon icicle holds her over the water." The moon is reflected in the cistern and seems to hold the gypsy over the water through a very well-achieved visual effect. Another symbol that is reiterated, that is recurrent in Lorca, is that of the well or stagnant water. The well or stagnant water symbolizes frustration, unsatisfied desire. In this case, the frustration of the gypsy who awaits her lover's return. The symbol of metals also appears. Metals, in this case, silver and copper, or any other noun related to them, for example, forges or anvils, configure the tragic atmosphere of the poem. The gypsy's eyes in this composition are of cold silver, in clear allusion to her death. Another symbol we find in the romance is that of the mirror and also that of the blanket, which represent domestic life, the home, sedentary life. In contrast to these symbols, appear those of the horse, the saddle, and the knife, related to the dangerous life of a smuggler. Well, finally, in addition to other secondary symbols that we will not comment on now, such as that of the shadow or the dream or the gypsy, the symbol of the horse also appears: "the ship on the sea, and the horse on the mountain." This symbol, that of the horse, is very common in Lorca and has different meanings depending on the poem. Sometimes it has erotic connotations; the horse symbolizes amorous passion. Sometimes it represents destiny or death that leads the gypsy to his end. Sometimes the horse is the messenger of death. But in this case, the horse is associated, related to the profession of the smuggler, and hence the image of the ship is also mentioned. We will begin by talking about the traits of the traditional romance present in "Romance Sonámbulo." First, we will refer to the meter. As we know, Lorca presents in this book a collection of 18 romances that generally follow the guidelines of the traditional romance in terms of measure and rhyme, that is, they are octosyllabic verses with assonant rhyme in the even verses, so that the odd verses remain free. There is some exception to this tendency, for example, what happens in "Romance del Emplazado" where the rhyme is inverted, that is, it is not the even verses that rhyme, but the odd ones, and the latter therefore remain free. There is also a small exception, a modification of this scheme in "Romance la Burla de Don Pedro a Caballo" where the verses present different measures, that is, not all are eight syllables. "Romance Sonámbulo" is an example without exceptions, without anomalies, of the meter of the traditional romance, as it presents octosyllabic verses with rhyme in the even ones. Another aspect that can be related to the traditional romance is the plot, and more specifically, the way, the form in which this plot develops. It is a characteristic of old romances, of old romances, their fragmentary nature, their fragmentarism, that is, these romances normally began in medias res, began without any introduction, without any setup, but rather started directly in the thick of the action. And moreover, it is characteristic of these old romances their truncated ending, their open, enigmatic, mysterious ending, as is observed precisely in Lorca's "Romance Sonámbulo." The text begins with the dead gypsy in the cistern without us knowing exactly how she died, or when, or for what reasons, and the romance ends when the Civil Guards knock on the door, but we do not know the fate of the young smuggler. Therefore, so far we have found two typical characteristics of the traditional romance: the perfectly regular metrical scheme and the development of the plot with a beginning and an end. Another characteristic of the old romance that appears in ours is the dominance of the narrative, the lyrical, and the dramatic, and this is something that happens in all the texts of "Romancero Gitano." In all the romances of this book, narrative elements, that is, the explanation of a plot, the telling of a plot, are combined with lyrical elements, with purely creative, evocative, suggestive elements that are not strictly narrative. In the romance in question, a brief story unfolds in which passages full of metaphors are mixed, passages full of symbols, sometimes hermetic, cryptic, ambiguous symbols, such as the use of the symbol of the shadow, the symbol of cold silver, or the color green, all of them attributed to the dead gypsy. In addition to narrative and lyrical elements, dramatic elements, dialogued elements, also appear. These dialogues, as we already...
We have had the occasion to verify that they are not always preceded by an introductory verb, nor is it indicated who is speaking. It is also a common feature in the romances of the 'gypsy romancero' another traditional element not always linked to the old romancero but to popular poetry is the presence of a refrain, the presence of verses that are repeated regularly, sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end, sometimes in the middle of the poem, and that function as a refrain. This happens in the sleepwalking romance with the first two verses, which say "green, how I want you green, green wind, green branches." This repetition allows emphasis on the funereal and tragic atmosphere in which the romance unfolds. Furthermore, the poem opens and closes, begins and ends with exactly the same four verses. Another common feature in popular poetry and therefore also in the old romancero are figures of repetition: the repetition of morphemes, structures, words, or, as we have had the occasion to see, complete verses. Let's analyze some of these figures of repetition that appear in the sleepwalking romance. We will begin with anadiplosis, anadiplosis or chaining or concatenation, which consists of ending a sequence with a word that appears at the beginning of the next, in such a way that these two sequences appear chained. We find anadiplosis, a figure of repetition of this type, in the first two verses: "green, how I want you green." If we look closely, the last word is "green," and this word is taken up at the beginning of the next verse: "green wind, green branches." Another figure of repetition is anaphora. We have already seen one form in the first two verses, verses that begin with the adjective "green," and another new anaphora appears in the words that the young man addressed to the gypsy's father when he repeats the verb "let me, let me climb, let me." Epanalepsis is a figure of repetition that consists of beginning and ending a sequence with the same word. An example would be the verse "green flesh, green hair." In this verse, "green" is the first and also the last word of the sequence. More figures of repetition, for example, parallelism. Numerous examples of parallelism appear in this romance. We will cite some of them, for example, in verses 26, 27, and 28, where we read "horse for his house, my mount for his mirror, my knife for his blanket." It is a clear case of parallel syntactic structure, as for example, another very clear parallelism can be identified in verses 55 and 56, where we read the following: "leaving a trail of blood, leaving a trail of tears." And in this parallelism, as we can see, anaphora is also combined: "leaving, leaving." Finally, another interesting example of parallelism appears in verses 69 and 70: "how many times I wait for you, how many times will I wait for you," which again combines with the resource of anaphora. That is to say, they are two verses that not only present the same structure but also begin exactly the same: "how many times" and the pronoun "you." "How many times" the pronoun "you." Well, in this last example, we have also found a case of polyptoton, that is, the use of the same word with different inflection: "how many times I wait for you, how many times will I wait for you." In this case, the polyptoton occurs between the words "wait" and "will wait." The same happens with the repetition of the adjective "green," "green," "greenish" – they are the same word with a small difference, with a small change in inflection. Or, for example, in verses 10 and 11, where we find the words "looking" and "to look," "to look at them," and which therefore would also be an example of polyptoton. Very close to polyptoton appears the resource of derivation, that is, words that use the same root but differ by their derivational morpheme. An example of derivation would be the use of the words "barandas" (railings) and "barandales" (handrails), which share the root "baranda" but differ by their derivational morpheme. They are all, I insist, figures of repetition typical of popular poetry, since they are the most elementary and most suitable figures for the memorization of an oral text. Well, another very common resource in popular poetry and especially in the romancero is what is known as verbal alternation or dismetry, that is, the use of different verbal forms or moods as if they were equivalent. Let's see some examples which will make it crystal clear. In verses 53 and 63, we read "they go up, the two compadres," and in this case, "they go up" is in the present indicative, and then we read "the two compadres went up," and in this case, the verb "went up" is in the simple past perfect. Another case will be between verses 53 and 57: "the two compadres go up, they trembled on the rooftops." In the same scene, the same scene is described with two different verb tenses. In the first case, "they go up" in the present, and in the second case, "they trembled" in the imperfect past. One of the most striking examples was verses 69-70: "how many times I wait for you" in the simple past perfect, and "how many times will I wait for you" in the imperfect subjunctive. And finally, another case of verbal alternation occurs between verses 79 and 81: "the night became intimate," therefore in the simple past perfect, "became," "they knocked on the door," in this case in the imperfect past. This alternation of tenses or verbal moods, as we have already said, was very frequent in the old romancero. A final resource typical of the ancient romance is apostrophe, the apostrophe to the audience, to a public that is listening, to maintain interest, to maintain intrigue, to awaken the audience's expectation. Let's see an example in verse 21. In verse 21, we read "but who will come and from where." These words, which could be attributed to the thought of the dead gypsy, can also be put into the mouth of the narrator, that kind of juggler narrator who has an audience in front of him and tells a story to that audience. The reader immediately discovers that that person, discovered very soon, will discover that that person who is coming is the gypsy's lover. Alongside these elements typical of the old romancero, there are other features of a completely opposite nature, avant-garde features, typical of surrealist poetry especially, and of other currents typical of the avant-garde. For example, the very abundant use of symbols, as we have already examined them, we will not deal with them now. The romance also stands out for the use of abundant adjectivation, which often has a synesthetic or symbolic value. And let's remember that synesthesia consists of the crossing, the combination of sensations that come from different senses. We will give some examples. We have already commented on the symbolic value of the adjective "green": "green flesh, green hair, green wind," etc. In verse 10, we find the adjective "gypsy" applied to the moon: "the gypsy moon." It is a synesthetic and symbolic adjectivation. The action of this romance takes place in the mythical world of the gypsies, and hence that qualifier is applied to the moon. Furthermore, the moon, with its symbolism, is a constant for the gypsy, to whom it announces his tragic destiny. In verse 24, the adjective is "bitter," and it is applied to the name "sea": "dreaming in the bitter sea." This is synesthetic adjectivation because the sea is associated with the feeling of bitterness that the gypsy experiences because her lover is far away, in the sea and in the mountains. Finally, in verse 68, the adjective "bitter" is not applied to the sea but to the girl: "your bitter girl," says the smuggler, the young gypsy. He refers with this adjective to the dead young woman, perhaps because of the feeling of frustration or bitterness that she felt. Another avant-garde feature appears in the metaphors, in the numerous metaphors that appear in this romance. In reality, metaphor is the queen figure, the star figure in avant-garde language. These metaphors are often visionary, meaning that between the real term, between the reality they express, and the image, and the image with which they manifest, there is no objective, rational resemblance, because the relationship between the image and reality proceeds from an emotional, subjective meaning. The poet has associated the image with a real term based solely on his emotions or perceptions. The influence of Luis de Góngora, the culterano poet Luis de Góngora, on the metaphors of the Generation of '27 is evident because they are metaphors that demand to be deciphered, they are hermetic, obscure metaphors with a notable degree of creativity but also with a notable degree of difficulty. Let's get to them. We will begin with the metaphor in verses 14 to 20, where we read: "great stars of frost come with the shadow fish that opens the way of dawn, the fig tree rubs its wind with the sandpaper of its branches, and the mountain cat-lynx bristles its sour pitas." In these verses, an unpleasant atmosphere, full of bad omens, is recreated through an accumulation of images. The stars of frost surely allude to dew drops. The sandpaper, that is, the leaves of the fig tree, which are rough, evoke the laziness of the wind. Finally, the mountain has become a cat-lynx, a wild animal very similar to a lynx with bristly fur. Another metaphor that we already know appears in verse 8, where the gypsy's eyes are of cold silver, in such a way that a metaphor and a symbol are combined: the symbol of silver, of metal, with the metaphor of the color of the eyes of a deceased person. In verses 41 and 42, a beautiful but also terrible metaphor appears, put into the mouth of the father, who says: "three hundred dark roses your white chest carries." With these three hundred dark roses, he refers to the young man's bleeding wounds. Here, hyperbole is combined, since there are 300, with a metaphor, with an image, in this case, very simple, very easy to decipher, by which the dark roses are identified with blood. In verses 57-58, we find the following image: "tin lanterns trembled on the rooftops," which surely refers to dew drops or the reflection of stars on the rooftops. In the following verses, 58 to 60, the image, the metaphor used is the following: "a thousand crystal tambourines struck the dawn." We have already spoken about this metaphor before, a metaphor that not even Lorca himself fully understood, because, as we have seen, the relationship between the image and reality in avant-garde poetry is purely subjective, it is emotional. The last metaphor we are going to list is that of the "carámbano de luna" (icicle of moon), we read in verses 77 and 78 that "an icicle of moon sustains her," sustains the deceased woman, "over the water." In fact, the reflection of the moon on the water of the well, on the water of the cistern, or perhaps a moonbeam similar in shape to an icicle, creates the impression that the moon is holding the gypsy above it, making her float or reflecting her body on the moon's reflection. Other forms of images appear that are not strictly metaphors, for example, comparisons. We find one of them in verses 79 and 80: "the night became intimate, like a small square." They are two somewhat enigmatic verses that perhaps, given the circular shape of the small square, should be interpreted as the reflection of the night inside the well, a reduced reflection, a circular reflection, so that the night has shrunk and become intimate, turning into a small square. It is the night reflected at the bottom of the well. Well, we will finish with personifications, which are very frequent in the gypsy romancero. One appears between verses 17 and 20. In these verses, the fig tree and the mountain are personified; or rather, they are animalized, given animal traits. We read that "the fig tree rubs its wind with the sandpaper of its branches." The fig tree, therefore, ceases to be a passive element and becomes an active element. And later, that "the mountain is a cat-lynx," the mountain, therefore, has been animalized and has acquired traits of a cat, a kind of wild lynx. Another personification can be found in verses 57 to 60. There we read that "the tin lanterns tremble," "they trembled on the rooftops." Therefore, they become animated objects, objects capable of feeling fear or cold. Finally, in verse 73, we find another surprising personification, by virtue of which the cistern, the well, comes to have a face, comes to have a face. In that verse, we read that "over the face of the cistern the gypsy swayed." And that's all for the very detailed commentary on one of the best romances in the collection, which can serve as a guideline or as a guide for carrying out a text commentary. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music]