Poetry and Stagecraft in La casa de Bernarda Alba

It is reported that Federico Garcia Lorca interrupted a reading of his last play, La casa de Bernarda Alba, with the repeated exclamation: iNi una gota de poesia! iRealidad! iRealismo!l There is little doubt that the work is a culmination of Lorca's conscious progression toward a theatre free of the lyricism and fantasy so prominent in the rest of his plays. In his study of Lorca's life and works, Angel del Rio sums up this development in the following way: Esa pareeia su meta y aspiraci6n. Elevarse a la tragedia fria, objetiva, esencial, deprovista de todo aditamiento lirico. Estaba liegando a una madurez serena, sin haber perdido nada de su fresca genialidad creadora.2 Yet despite the greater artistic austerity and discipline, poetic elements persist, in an incomparable integration, for Lorca, of drama and poetry. The realism is interwoven with images, symbols, and stylizations which form a poetic restatement of the dramatic action. The conflict in the house of Bernarda Alba--a conflict between an anachronistic honor code distorted to the point of tragic absurdity and the instinctive desire of the individual for freedom of conduct and for his own perpetuation through procreation-is presented on two planes: the one, dramatic and realistic; the other, symbolic and poetic. Lorca's own comments cannot be taken literally but must be considered in the light of the highly lyrical nature of his earlier dramatic works. For purposes of introduction Lorca abandons all prefatory devices in favor of a brief statement which declares: El advierte que tres tienen la intenci6n de un documental fotografico.3 He is still explicitly el poeta even as he specifies estos tres actos to call attention to the fact that under his self

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