Yerma Federico Garca Lorca Salvador Dal Lorca Luis

Yerma Federico García Lorca

Salvador Dalí, Lorca, Luis Buñuel Dalí and Lorca

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

“La Barracca” (1933)

Pablo Picasso, Pierrot (1918) and Juan Gris, Pierrot (1919)

“[Yerma] is Federico’s own tragedy. What he’d like most in this world is to get pregnant and give birth … It’s what he truly longs for: to be pregnant, to give birth to a little boy or little girl … Yerma is Federico, the tragedy of Federico. ” Encarnación López, quoted in Leslie Stainton, Lorca: A Dream of Life (London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999).

“I want to take topics and problems that people are afraid of confronting and put them onstage… In this world I am, and will always remain, on the side of the poor. ” Lorca, quoted in Leslie Stainton, Lorca: A Dream of Life (London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999).

Lorca and Margarita Xirgu (1934)

Lorca, Xirgu, Cipriano Rivas

“Yerma is a tragedy. A tragedy in the true sense. From the first scenes, the audience will recognise that something formidable is going to happen… What does happen? Yerma has no plot. ” Lorca, quoted in Reed Anderson, Federico García Lorca (London: Macmillan, 1984).

ACT ONE Scene One: Yerma’s house Scene Two: In the fields ACT TWO (three years later) Scene Three: At the falls in the river Scene Four: Yerma’s house ACT THREE Scene Five: Dolores’ house Scene Six: Shrine in the mountains

Salvador Dalí, Persistence of Memory (1930)

• YERMA: When he takes me, he is doing his duty, but his body feels as cold as a corpse! (3. 2) • YERMA: I can see it in his eyes, and since he doesn’t want [children], he doesn’t give them to me. (3. 1) • PAGAN OLD WOMAN: It’s your husband’s fault!. . . Neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his greatgrandfather, behaved like a breed of real men… (3. 2)

VICTOR’S VOICE [singing]: Why are you sleeping alone, shepherd? My blanket is wool. My blanket is warm Why are you sleeping alone, shepherd? YERMA [listening]: Why are you sleeping alone, shepherd? My blanket is wool. My blanket is warm. (1. 2)

YERMA: What a strong voice! Like a gush of water filling your whole mouth. (1. 2)

YERMA: …even if I did [want another man], in my family, honour comes first! (2. 2)

YERMA: And I have no hope? JUAN: No. YERMA: Nor you? JUAN: Nor me either. Accept it! YERMA: Barren! (3. 2)

JUAN: And we shall live in peace. Both of us, quietly, with pleasure. Embrace me! [He embraces her] YERMA: What are you after? JUAN: You are what I’m after! In the moonlight, you are beautiful! YERMA: You pursue me as if I were a dove you want to devour! JUAN: Kiss me – like this! YERMA: Never! (3. 2)

YERMA: Barren, but sure. Now I know it for certain. And alone… Don’t come near me, for I have killed my son! I myself have killed my son! (3. 2)

YERMA: Barren, yes, I already know it! Barren!. . . Ever since I got married, I’ve been turning the word over in my mind, but it’s the first time I’ve heard it, the first time it’s been said to my face! The first time I know it’s true! (3. 2)

YERMA: You must tell me what I have to do, and I’ll do whatever it is, even if I have to stick needles in the most sensitive part of my eyes! PAGAN OLD WOMAN: Me? I don’t know anything! I used to lie on my back and begin to sing. The children came like water. (1. 2)

YERMA: For [my son’s] sake, I gave myself to my husband, and I keep giving myself to make sure he’s on the way— but never for my own pleasure! PAGAN OLD WOMAN: And the result is, you’re empty! (1. 2)

Teatro para un Instante, 2011

José Caballero, Yerma poster (1934)

FIRST WASHERWOMAN: We must moan on our bed-sheets! FOURTH WASHERWOMAN: And we must sing!. . . FIRST WASHERWOMAN: Alas for the wife who is dry! Alas for the wife with breasts of sand!. . . THIRD WASHERWOMAN: Let her sing! SECOND WASHERWOMAN: Let her hide! THIRD WASHERWOMAN: And let her sing again! (2. 1)

YERMA: You must have been singing, yes? I sing. (1. 1)

YERMA [in a low voice]: Wanting something in your head is one thing, but it’s something else when your body – damn the body – won’t respond. (3. 1)

YERMA: Every woman has enough blood for four or five children, and if she doesn’t have them, it turns to poison, as it will with me. (1. 2)

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Advertisement for “hysterical paroxysm” water treatment

“[Yerma] is barren because she is hysterical, not hysterical because she is barren. ” Rupert C. Allen, Psyche and Symbol in the Theater of Federico García Lorca (University of Texas Press, 1974), 142.

Venus of Willendorf (28, 000 -25, 000 BCE)

Rogier van der Weyden, Visitation (c. 1445)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Triumph of Death (1562)

Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

Tabitha Moses, Investment (2013)

“Any artist would think like this: all experiences can feed into what you produce. But I was also giving myself a safety net, thinking something good will come of this, baby or not. ” “The Art of Infertility, ” The Independent, August 25, 2016.

YERMA: Men have another life – their flocks, their orchards, their conversations! Women only have their children and caring for their children. (2. 2)

[The dancers] are not grotesque in any way, but are of great beauty and pure earthiness. (3. 2)

JUAN: I finally have to tell you! All I care about is what I can hold in my hands. What I can see with my eyes! (3. 2)

“Yerma’s tragedy is not that society keeps her from fulfilling a biological urge or realizing herself in full. It is that she can desire, can imagine and feel what is absent, while her husband cannot. ” Christopher Maurer, in Three Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba, by Federico García Lorca, Penguin Twentieth. Century Classics (London: Penguin Books, 1992), xxiv.