Forbidden Love, again... (article on Dali & Lorca last year on The Jakarta Post)

Sorry, I forgot to put this in my blog; it's been almost a year! So, here is the original article that I sent to The Jakarta Post : ............................................................................................................................................ The Power of Love, Metaphor and Death ............................................................................................................................................ 2016 is a significant literary year for Spain. This year marks two death anniversaries: the 400th of Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616) and the 80th of Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936). This is the reason why the Cervantes Institute with the support of the Spanish Embassy invited me celebrate this event in Indonesia by composing music based on works by these 2 great writers, to be sung by the rising young soprano Mariska Setiawan during the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, 25-30 October. ............................................................................................................................................ While Lorca has long been cherished by the hearts of Indonesian literature, Cervantes is still not, and that could be the indication of how Spain has missed the opportunity to use his name and works as a cultural asset during these 400 years. The Spanish language is not an excuse: Tolstoy, Goethe, Dante, even Rumi are more known worldwide while their languages are much less spoken on this planet. It is a curious coincidence that both Cervantes and Shakespeare died less than 24 hours apart: the Spaniard on April 22 and the British on the 23rd, 1616. Shakespeare has gone Hollywood several times, he is everywhere in classical music, ballets and operas and everyone on the streets quotes "To be or not to be, that is the question" besides his other famous quotes, while Cervantes' fame would only lie in Don Quijote. Needless to say, tourists going to the U.K. would make an effort to go to Stratford-upon-Avon to be at Shakespeare's birthplace, while Alcala de Henares has not established its name as a tourist destination as Cervantes' birth town, even if it's much more accesible since it is so close to Madrid than Stratford to Britain's capital city. ............................................................................................................................................ Lorca is a different case, and his dramatic death might contribute to his popularity. The two great Indonesian writers who studied, translated and were influenced by him were Ramadhan K.H (who translated the novel The House of Bernarda Alba in the 1950s and then followed by other works) and Sutardji Calzoum Bachri who explored the repetition techniques, such as in the poem Romance Sonambulo where Lorca used the word "verde" (green) repetitively in different aspects. ........................................................................................................................................... Green, I want you green. / Green wind. Green branches./ The ship out on the sea / and the horse on the mountain. / With the shade around her waist / she dreams on her balcony, / green flesh, her hair green, / with eyes of cold silver. / Green, I want you green. ............................................................................................................................................ It was Hasan Aspahani (b. 1971) in the beginning of this millenium that brought Lorca back to the Indonesian poetic scene. He translated his poems not to be published, but for personal studies although he uploaded them in his blog, which (accidentally?) became very popular. As Aspahani is not fluent in Spanish, he investigated several translations existing in English (made easier by the internet). He himself declared that he is a "traitor" : he didn't translate them truthfully, but he made his own rhymes. "If you want a translated poem to have beauty, you should be a traitor to the original poem". But the most Lorcian poet in Indonesia, according to Aspahani would be W.S. Rendra in his early works. Lorca has brought out the lyrical and metaphorical qualities in Rendra. They both fell in love with the landscape of hills, birds, trees, grass and leaves. Most importantly, they were very much attached to their own music: Rendra with the Javanese children's folk songs, Lorca with Flamenco dancers and musicians and even its instruments. Rendra also learned how the Spaniard used metaphors, such as in the latter's "The Six Strings" (one of his few poems about the guitar) that I set to music for this occasion: ............................................................................................................................................ The guitar / makes dreams cry. / The crying of lost souls / escapes from its round mouth. / And like the tarantula / it weaves a huge star / to catch sighs / that float on its black wooden tank. ............................................................................................................................................ This would then influenced poets such as Subagio Sastrowardoyo, and I am sure Sapardi Djoko Damono too, though he never mentioned it. ............................................................................................................................................ . An important aspect of Lorca's life would be his open homosexuality and his relationship with Salvador Dali, which complicated their lives during the Franco dictatorship. This contributed to his arrest and assassination by the right wing dictator in 1936 according to his biographer Stainton, although another biographer Ian Gibson stated that it was also as part of a campaign of mass killings intended to eliminate supporters of the Marxists. Lorca and Dali met when they were students in Madrid in 1922. Dali could not be open about it in their time, but he did admit their close friendship "although we never had sex" as he admitted more than once to his biographers. Yet there was the beautiful "Ode to Salvador Dali" by Lorca, from which I took 3 stanzas and set it to music too. It is a clear and poignant love letter to the Catalan painter, who responded it with a love letter recently discovered, with a sketch referring Lorca as "my St. Sebastian" who was tied up on a beach of Ampurias, where Dali lived. ........................................................................................................................................... In the music world, Lorca has inspired many composers far beyond the Spanish borders and of Hispanic backgrounds. Lorca himself was a musician; he studied music and even wrote some songs in his teenage years, considering a career in music and closely befriended the great Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, working together in some productions. His first prose works such as "Nocturne", "Ballade" and "Sonata" clearly drew on musical forms. Composers who have set his works to music include the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich, the Finnish Einojuhani Rautavaara, the Mexican Silvestre Revueltas and the American George Crumb (in more than 5 works). My "Two Songs on poems by Garcia Lorca" would be the most recent modest contribution to this list, based on Oda a Salvador Dali and Las Seis Cuerdas mentioned above. ........................................................................................................................................... (all fragments of poems are translated truthfully but unpoetically by me)