The multiplied shadows of the double-mirror effect expand into the space of the poem-as-cosmos as a metaphysical symbol, then, this image of Christ and his mirrors could contain the entire incarnate universe. Placing mirrors in the hands of Christ, Lorca invokes the location of the stigmata (nail-wounds), sites of mystical openness or self-emptying. What does it mean for an imperfect person to be made in the image of God? Lorca writes (translated from the Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg): The first poem of the set, titled “Symbol” with a deceptive frankness, opens up with a mysterious representation of a speculative Christian cosmology. Lorca’s first concern in exploring the idea of “likeness” is to consider the supposed likeness between the human and the divine.

He turns it from side to side, sometimes appearing to catch his own reflection and sometimes tilting it toward the unknown. In Mirror Suite ( Suite de los espejos), composed in 1921, a younger and safer Lorca explores questions of selfhood using the mirror as his guiding motif. His story, these days, sounds very familiar, provoking consideration of what Lorca’s experience means for how we read his poetry now, more than eighty years after his death, as we think about love and identity in crisis. With his Catholic cultural roots and romantic love of his homeland, Lorca was in a complicated position as a poet, playwright, and artist during a time of political turmoil-and, ultimately, of violent fascist ascendancy-in his beloved country. It was just one month after the military coup that precipitated the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. On August 18, 1936, Lorca was executed by a government that chose to exercise a different kind of power. But between love and the power of love, the latter tends to be much more controversial. Federico García Lorca was interested in love: love in its beauty, love in its poetic expression, and love in its powers of liberation.

Suites by Federico García Lorca