Myth of Arrival

"the bride" by ZJC

Around January of this year I began to work on translating Federico Garcia Lorca's poem-play, Bodas de sangre or better known in the English speaking world as Blood Wedding. I think I got through maybe two scenes in the first act and then, like a lot of my projects (short attention spans are both a blessing and a curse) went off and did something else for a while. It is now July and I am finishing up putting the last touches to the whole play. I went back and edited a whole lot of what I had, since it was wrong; thus the [remix]. I hope the second time around pleases more than the first.

It is the most gypsy-ish drama I have ever encountered and so it fits nicely with Garcia Lorca's poetry, such as The Gypsy Ballads and his essay on the duende. The story was based on a true account; Federico had read a newspaper article that talked about a crime which had occurred in the his Andalusian part of Spain. Hardly anyone has a name in this play, instead they have archetypal names, The Bride, The Mother, The Bridegroom, etc. The plot is rather straight forward, at least in the first act:

At the beginning of the play, the Mother speaks with her son, the Bridegroom; he wishes to marry the Bride, a woman who lives near the town and asks for permission and blessings from his mother. The Mother, although she is still filled with bitterness over the death of her husband and elder son many years ago, grants the Bridegroom her blessing, and expresses her desire to have grandchildren. The Bridegroom then departs to go the vineyards. Soon a Neighbor arrives to chat with the Mother, and reveals to her that the Bride was previously engaged to a man named Leonardo Felix, a relative of the men who killed the Mother's husband and son. The Mother, who still hates the Felix family, is furious, but decides to visit the Bride before bringing the matter up with her son.

I had wanted to present the English translation along with the Spanish original; however, due to the complications and limitations of space on the computer screen, the two works side by side were almost impossible to read and gave me a headache. So I nixed the original and present only the translation of mine. A very good version of the original can be found here, if you are curious. I won't ruin the play for anyone by giving away the ending. Tomorrow I will published act i, scene ii and so on. If nothing else, it will get me to wrap up working on the play. Hurrah!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

House of the Bridegroom and Mother. Kitchen painted yellow.

Bridegroom [entering]: Mother?

Mother: Yes?

Bridegroom: I'm going now.

Mother: Where?

Bridegroom: To the vineyard. [starts to exit]

Mother: Wait.

Bridegroom: What is it?

Mother: Your breakfast, my son!

Bridegroom: Do not fuss about that. I will eat grapes. Give me the knife.

Mother: The knife? What for?

Bridegroom [laughing]: To cut the grapes with.

Mother [between her teeth, muttering and looking]: The knife! The knife!… Damn the knife, damn all knives and the devil who invented them.

Bridegroom: Enough! Just forget it.

Mother: And all the rifles and the pistols and the smallest of all knives — and the hoes and the pitchforks [1] as well!

Bridegroom: All right.

Mother: Everything that can cut and slice into the body of a man. A beautiful man, his mouth like a flower, a man who goes out to the vineyards or to his own olive orchard … because they are his, because he inherited them …

Bridegroom [looking down]: Mother, no more.

Mother: And then the man does not return. Or if he returns it's only to lay him out and cover him with a palm leaf and rub rock salt on his body so it won't bloat in the heat. I do not know how you dare to carry a knife on your body! — or how I let this serpent rest in my cupboard [she takes a knife from a kitchen drawer].

Bridegroom: Are you finished?

Mother: No! If I lived to be one hundred I would not speak of anything else. First, your father; who smelled to me of carnations and I enjoyed him for only three little years. Then, your brother. Oh, is it right? — how can it be? — that a small thing like a pistol or a knife can end a man? — a man who is a bull? [2] No! I will never shut up. The months die and the despair stings me in my eyes — to the roots of my hair.

Bridegroom [harshly]: Have you finished?

Mother: No. I am not going to finish! Can someone bring back your father and your brother to me? And then there is the prison. What is a prison? They eat there, smoke there, they play their music there. There! My dead ones, covered in long grass, silent, turning to dust. My two men who were two geraniums … and their murderers, in prison — carefree with all that fresh air, gazing at the far mountains…

Bridegroom: Are you asking me to kill them?

Mother: No… If I speak about this, it is just because… How can I not speak? watching you go through that door? It is just that … I do not want you to take that knife. It is just that…. just that I do not want you to go to the fields.

Bridegroom [laughing]: Enough!

Mother: How I so wish that you were born a girl! You would not be going away to the arroyos then and we would stay and embroider linens and small woolen dogs.

Bridegroom [take her by the arm and laughs]: Mother, and what if I take you now down to the vineyards with me?

Mother: What would an old woman do in the vineyards? Were you going to lay me down under the vine-roots?

Bridegroom [raising her up in his arms]: O, what an old woman; you old, old woman; you old, old, cranky woman! [3]

Mother: Your father, yes, he used to take me. That is the way of good blood and he had the best of blood. Your grandfather left a son on every street corner where he went. That I like; the men to be men, the grapes to be grapes, the wheat to be wheat. [4]

Bridegroom: And of my life, mother?

Mother: Your life? What?

Bridegroom: Do I need to say it again?

Mother [seriously]: Ai! [5]

Bridegroom: But you still think it is a bad idea?

Mother: No.

Bridegroom: So, then…?

Mother: I do not know. But suddenly, like this, it always surprises me. I know that the girl is good. Truth be told she is. Modest. A hard worker. She kneads her father's bread and she sews her own skirts … and yet I feel, still … when I say her name … it is as if someone hit me in the forehead with a rock.

Bridegroom: Foolishness.

Mother: It is more than foolishness. I will be left all alone. All alone! You are the last man in my life and it breaks my heart to see you leave.

Bridegroom: But you will come with us, of course?

Mother: No! I cannot leave your father and your brother here all alone. I must go to their graves every morning … and if I go away, and if one of those Felixes dies? One of that family of murderers … they might be buried alongside ours. And that? — never! No, not that! Because with the nails of my own hands I will unearth them and crush their corpses against the mud wall.

Bridegroom [hard]: That old threat again!

Mother [slowing down]: Forgive me. [pauses] How long have you known her?

Bridegroom: Three years. I've saved up enough to buy her a vineyard.

Mother: Three years. But she … had a fiancé once, if I remember?

Bridegroom: I do not know. I do not believe so … Anyway, girls must have a good look at whom they shall marry, too.

Mother: True. I never looked at another man. I watched only your father and when they killed him I watched only the empty wall in front of me. One woman with one man and that is all there is to say.

Bridegroom: You've said that my girl is good.

Mother: I do not doubt it … But still, I would feel better if I had known her mother.

Bridegroom: What does that have to do with anything?

Mother [looking directly at him]: Son.

Bridegroom: What do you want?

Mother: No — you are right! When do you want me to go ask on your behalf?

Bridegroom [cheerfully]: How about this Sunday?

Mother [seriously]: I will take her my old brass ear-rings, they are our family's heirlooms and you must buy her…

Bridegroom: You understand more about this than I do …

Mother: Purchase for her some embroidered silk stockings … And for you, perhaps two suits… No, three! You are all I have left in this world.

Bridegroom: I must go now. Tomorrow I will see her.

Mother: Yes, yes … and just make sure you cheer me up with six grandsons, or even more if your heart desires … since your father was cheated out of the chance to give them to me.

Bridegroom: The first will be all for you.

Mother: Yes, but make sure you have some girls, too. Then I can embroider and embroider … I want to make lots of lace and finally find some peace.

Mother: I will, you know I will. [goes to kiss him and pauses] Get on with you, already. You are much too big for kisses. Keep them for your wife. [aside] When she is your wife.

Bridegroom: I am off now.

Mother: Make sure that you dig the vines near the little well, you have been neglecting them.

Bridegroom: You are right. I will.

Mother: May God walk with you, son.

[The Bridegroom exits. The Mother remains sitting with her back to the door. A Neighbor woman appears in the doorway, dressed in black with a shawl wrapped around her head.]

Mother: Come in.

Neighbor: How are you?

Mother: As you see for yourself.

Neighbor: I had come to the shops so I decided to pay you a visit … we live so far from each other.

Mother: For twenty years I have not been been to the top of the street.

Neighbor: Perhaps you are right.

Mother: You think so?

Neighbor: Terrible things have happened. Two days ago they brought in the son of my neighbor home with both hands cut clean off by the machine. [she sits down]

Mother: You mean Rafael?

Neighbor: Yes. And there you have it. I often think of ours, yours son and mine, are better where they are; slept, resting, with no chance of getting crippled. What use is a crippled man?

Mother: Hush your mouth! There is no comfort in your talk.

Neighbor: Ai!

Mother: Ai! [they both pause]

Neighbor [sadly]: And your son?

Mother: He has left.

Neighbor: So he got enough money to buy the vineyards!

Mother: He had luck.

Neighbor: Now he is sure to marry.

Mother [as if waking up, she approaches the chair of her neighbor]: I want to ask you …

Neighbor [confidential tone]: Go on …

Mother: You know the girl my son wants to marry?

Neighbor: Ah yes! a good girl!

Mother: Yes, but…

Neighbor: But you see, nobody knows her very well. She lives with her father all alone, just the two of them far out there, so far, leagues from anywhere. But she is a good girl. She is familiar to the solitude … it is good to know about solitude if you plan to get married.

Mother: And her mother?

Neighbor: I knew her mother. Beautiful. Her face glowed, like a saint's … but I never liked her. She did not love her husband.

Mother [hard]: The things people know!

Neighbor: Pardon me, I did not mean to offend. But it is the truth. Now, if she were a chaste woman or not, nobody ever said. Of this it has not been spoken. She was proud.

Mother: Must you go on?

Neighbor: You asked the question to me, didn't you? I answered.

Mother: I wish nobody knew anything about that woman … or her daughter. I wish that they were like two thistles in a field of wheat no one dares to name. I wish that their stings would last forever on anyone who touched them. [6]

Neighbor: You are right. Your son is worth much more.

Mother: I know and for that reason it is my right to care. I have heard it said that the girl had fiancé once … a long time ago.

Neighbor: She would have been fifteen years old then. He got married two years ago, to a cousin of hers, by the way. Today nobody even remembers their engagement.

Mother: How is it that you remember?

Neighbor: You keep asking these questions to me!

Mother: Everyone is curious about the things that can hurt them. Who was that other young man in the life of my son's girl?

Neighbor: Leonardo.

Mother: Which Leonardo?

Neighbor: Leonardo … Felix. [7]

Mother [rising from her chair]: One of the Felixes!

Neighbor: My dear woman, what blames does Leonardo have in any of this? He was eight years old when those terrible things happened. An innocent child!

Mother: Felix! Felix! That name! When I hear the name of Felix my mouth reeks of muck and filth! [between teeth] I must spit! Spit! Spit! or that muck and filth will poison my whole soul! My body! Felix! The murderers of my body, my blood!

Neighbor: Be at peace! Be at peace! Please!

Mother: How can I be at peace? You do not understand.

Neighbor: Do not spoil the happiness of your son. Do not say anything to him. Look at us! You are old. I am old, as well. Old women should keep their eyes open and their mouths shut.

Mother: I will not say anything to him.

Neighbor [kissing her]: No, not a thing.

Mother [calming]: Ai! Things!

Neighbor: I must go now, soon my family will return from the fields.

Mother: Have you ever known such burning heat? Such a terrible day. Such heat!

Neighbor: The children are worn out and burnt from the sun whenever they take water to the harvesters. May God walk with you.

Mother: And you. Good bye.

[The Neighbor exits. The Mother moves to the door, stage left, stops halfway. She slowly crosses herself. Curtain.]

Footnotes

1. The hoes and the pitchforks. Johnston (1989) notes in the end of his book: “Lorca frequently chooses certain objects out of a multiplicity of possibilities, all of which would suit his meaning, primarily to satisfy the demands of musicality and rhythm … what is really important here is the way in which the knife has suddenly been transformed from a simple domestic utensil into a source of threat to human life which is present in every sphere of activity” (107).

2. A man who is a bull. Again I consulted Johnston (1989), since he picked up on the idea that the play is structured on a whole series of dualist images which "speak of apparently positive values (the bull here being equated to strength) whilst simultaneously foreshadowing destruction (in Spain the fighting-bull is bred solely to die)” (ibid.) thus Fate, at least as Garica Lorca sees it, rules everything that will happen here.

3. Old, cranky woman! I took some freedoms with the translation here. The original, “vieja, revieja, requetevieja,” while sounding wild on the tongue in Spanish does not literally translate as I have it. The sense I was trying at is that the Bridegroom recognizes his mother is becoming something of a crab as the years go on.

4. The wheat to be wheat. Like a lot of stern, overbearing traditionalists, the Mother obviously has an idea about the way things should be in the world, sort of like in Lake Woebegone, Where are the women are strong, the men good looking and the children above average.This phrase has a proverbial ring to it, though I can find no other reference to it in my studies of Federico.

5. ¡Ai! The universal cry of pain or surprise (pronounced “I”). I have heard it frequently used in flamenco and deep song. My friend Edith from Mexico once finished a letter with this sentence explaining “Ai!” to me: “like the Cisneros said, you know a man is a Latino when he hits his finger and instead of saying ouch he says ai!, its from the gut.” Thanks Edith!

6. Anyone who touched them. One probably of being a gringo is a lot of cultural references go over my head. I might get the words down, but the meanings? Hmm … I discovered this with Johnston (1989) as a reference: “At the heart of the Mother's fear is what is known in Spanish as the 'el que diran', meaning basically 'what folk will say'. In a society in which, historically, the slightest slur on character could lead to an unpleasant confrontation with the Inquisition, an unblemished reputation was essential to be able to maintain one's position within the status quo. This is an early echo of the obsession with reputation which drives Bernarda Alba” (108). I learn a new thing every day! Bravo.

7. Felix. The family clan system, the McCoys feuding with the Fuzzy Lumpkins for generations, is, perhaps an universal motif. Passionate people killing each other and then getting killed only to have more children to kill again. Brilliant. Johnston (1989) writes:“It is worth noting that Leonardo is the only principal character of the play to be given a name, the others being cast only in terms of function rather than individuality. Leonardo suggests 'burning lion', a clear reference to his passionate nature, while Felix provides both a generic surname, in that it refers to 'cats', and also echoes the Spanish 'feliz', meaning 'happy'. Lorca is clearly implying that Leonardo belongs to a different 'breed' of person” (ibid.).

Work Cited

Johnston, David. Blood Wedding. London: Hodder & Stoughton. (1989)

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