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El Diván del Tamarit
Paul Archer has translated into English the complete collection of Lorca's El Diván del Tamarit consisting of 12 Gacelas and 9 Casidas.
Please click on the titles below to read the poems.
Lorca wrote the poems in the last years of his life and they were published after his untimely death. The word 'diván' is taken from the Arabic meaning a collection of poems. Tamarit is the name of the country estate, outside Granada in Andalusia, where Lorca wrote most of the poems.
The poems are divided into two types, Gacelas and Casidas: both of these words refer to Arabic poetic forms, however Lorca doesn't use these forms strictly and they are used to merely express an Arabic background in the same way as the history, culture and landscape of Andalusia is infused with Arabic influences.
Love and death are the thematic leitmotifs of the poems. Both are seen as ambiguous. Love is an attractive life-force but also can be the source of torment, frustration and bitterness. Death is antithetical to life, but as it naturally grows out of life they are inseperable.
1. Gacela: Unforeseen Love
2. Gacela: The Terrible Presence
3. Gacela: Desperate Love
4. Gacela: The Love that Hides from View
5. Gacela: The Dead Child
6. Gacela: The Bitter Root
7. Gacela: Dark Death
8. Gacela: Marvellous Love
9. Gacela: The Memory of Love
10. Gacela: The Escape
11. Gacela: Hundred Years of Love
12. Gacela: The Morning Market
1. Casida: The Child Wounded by Water
2. Casida: The Weeping
3. Casida: The Branches
4. Casida: The Reclining Woman
5. Casida: The Open-Air Dream
6. Casida: The Impossible Hand
7. Casida: The Rose
8. Casida: The Golden Girl
9. Casida: The Dark Doves
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