The books of great poets about great poets are a subgenre that has brought us some of the best plays of literary criticism. I think of the book about Melville by Charles Olson, in the Pound by TS Eliot, in the book about Dante de Borges, in that of Chesterton about William Blake. In such a brief catalog, which could extend to the end of this page, there is the book that Ory dedicated to Lorca in the 60s of the last century and that only now appears in its original version of El Paseo Editorial.
It is important to say that it is not a set of articles together to make a book : there is a clear unitary conception that, if it is divided into monographic chapters of equal length, it is for reasons of rhythm and use of the material (Ory used some of the chapters to give lectures).
The story is as follows: in 1965 Ory signed a contract with a French publisher to write a monograph on Lorca, a poet who was known by heart. The book took a couple of years to come out in a translation that did not satisfy the Cadiz poet. He kept the original in a drawer and from there he has come out now to show us his impassive youth, his enduring brilliance.
Ana Sofía Bustamante points out - in charge of the edition - that it is still strange that despite the family relationship that Ory had with Lorca since his dazzling in adolescence, the name of Lorca barely appears in the monumental Diario de Ory. It is not easy to discern the reasons, perhaps simply the book about Lorca, being an editorial commission with very precise conditions - it would have to be edited in a collection of monographic studies on great authors - it was not for Ory, when writing it , more than work. It is also rare that after published in French, when Ory began to be a fundamental name among us, no one could think of the opportunity to bring to light the original text. The truth is that more than 50 years after the French version appeared, the original text is put within our reach, scrupulously respected by the editors - who have dispensed with the chapters that Ory decided to cross out.
Ory approaches Lorca as a poet and scrutinizes him with a sensational ability to see his mystery, unravel his energy, locate his tradition. At this point to say something new or surprising about Lorca seems like a complicated company, and yet Ory manages to get into the maze of his work and give light to some of its shady areas and, above all, convincingly combat some of the cheap topics that fell on the grenadine.
Highlights in the book are the chapters dedicated to locating the Andalusian modernist tradition from which Lorca proceeds - although the lists of loans that Lorca took from Salvador Rueda are not quite convincing, to whom he undoubtedly read and for which he was influenced, tracing some expressions or certain jewelry of images, which are sometimes reduced to a single word, such as the comparison of the diversity with which popular poetry struck Alberti and Lorca himself - bright and cheerful in that, gloomy and dramatic in this .
Sensational is the reading he makes of the Romancero gypsy , who would give the poet worldwide fame and that ended up assuming a burden: the comments about Dalí's stupid things about that book, which would affect Lorca so much, would be very accurate . It is true that this one loaded as a slab the gypsyism of his poems, and how many times he said by letter or in public that that of the gypsies was nothing more than a subject, but he linked it with that theme to the point that he arrived at times to detest a success that was due to some unfortunate pathetic statement ( Borges, calling Lorca "professional Andalusian" after the Argentine edition of the Romancero ). For Ory, the Romancero Gypsy is a badly read book: Lorca's gypsyism is merely decorative, a theme on which to slide the impressive ride of baroque images that is linked in narrative compositions that actually have very little. That book is rightly linked to the resurrection of Gongora carried out by the poets of 27, but it goes further, with learned intelligence: the most refined voice of Lorca with respect to the South and its topics, to flamenco, you have to look for it in Poem del cante jondo , a misunderstood book, much deeper, in its bold economy, and true, less bright, no doubt, but no less impressive.
Ory is also convincing when, when reading Lorca's other masterpiece, Poet in New York , he sees an excellent example of expressionism in the book. The link with the surrealism that this book has suffered from the first hour makes it cheaper, because as Ory de Lorca demonstrates, it is a rhetorical surrealism. But for that reason, when the poet manages to sustain through images his chaotic funeral discourse, critical, while hitting us («the night is endless when he leans on the sick / and there are ships that only seek to be watched to sink Quiet ») also reveals that a good part of his image rides are hardware or style exercise.
Ory treats Lorca, of course, for what it is: a giant. But that does not stop me to point out your weaknesses, that facility of yours for sound goodness. The Lorca de Ory is an extraordinary book because it not only helps to get into the work of the poet he studies, but, above all, he injects the reader with an unplayable desire to immerse himself in Lorca's poems .
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