El Publico. Amor, Teatro y Caballos en la Obra de Federico Garcia Lorca by Rafael Martínez Nadal (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 341 EL PUBLICO. AMOR, TEATRO Y CABALLOS EN LA OBRA DE FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA, by Rafael Martinez Nadal. Oxford: The Dolphin Book Company, 1970. 272 pp. In the Introduction Rafael Martinez Nadal, who had been one of Lorca's close friends, summarizes what he knows about the composition of his "lost" surrealistic drama, EZ publico (The PUblic). Lorca probably began the work in Cuba in 1930. Twice, once early in 1931 and again in July, 1936, Nadal was present when Lorca read the play, the first time from a hand-written manuscript, the second from a typewritten one. Both versions have disappeared. In June, 1933, Lorca published in the Madrid journal, Los cuatro vientos, two scenes from the play, and they were subsequently collected in his Complete Works. Lorca did not publish the entire play at that time because he was still revising it. Up to now these scenes were all that was known of the work. In July, 1936, before leaving Madrid for Granada, Lorca gave Nadal the first draft of EZ publico to keep for him. He apparently left the manuscript behind when he emigrated to England and only regained' possession of it in 1958. The manuscript, which consists of sixty-two sheets of paper of various sizes, some written in pen, others in pencil, was never revised carefully and contains many uncorrected slips. One entire scene is apparently missing, and there is also some question as to the order in which the scenes belong. Nadal requested permission of Lorca's brother to publish the manuscript, but he refused, saying it would not be fair to do so as long as there is a possibility that the final version will tum up. So instead, Nadal gives a detailed summary of the play together with extensive quotations from it, reproducing the text verbatim with all the corrections and errors. The work has a dual theme: love, both heterosexual and homosexual, and men's search for his own identity. The plot is too surrealistically chaotic to give an idea of it in a few sentences, as a partial listing of the characters will suggest: the director of a theatrical company, Romeo and Juliet (who turn out to be a thirty-five year old man and a fifteen year old boy), three white horses, a figure wearing red vine leaves, another with bells, a naked red man suggesting Christ, a prestidigitator representing death. Nadal then analyzes certain aspects of the play: the structure (as often occurs in his theater, Lorca is more concerned with themes than with plot); the characters (lacking proper names, they are really abstractions); the poetic elements (Lorca belongs to the tradition of Bosch, Quevedo, and Goya rather than the contemporary surrealistic schools). The second part of Nadal's study consists of chapters on the role played by love and the horse in Lorca's works in general. They are perceptive essays, although these themes have been treated before. Lorca was ahead of his time when he wrote El publico. His friends were bewildered by it. He is quoted as saying that it was the best thing he wrote for the theater and that within a decade or two people would come to appreciate it. Hopefully, some day the finished version of El publico will be found and published. If not, the first draft, in spite of its lacunae, should be edited and brought out in toto. In the meanwhile, we must be grateful to 342 BOOK REVIEWS Nadal for giving us a better idea of this important "lost" play and its significance. CYRUS DECOSTER Northwestern University CLAUDEL'S IMMORTAL HEROES: A CHOICE OF DEATH, by Harold Wilson. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972. 199 pp. $9.00. L'oeuvre claudelienne offre de multiples aspects et Harold Wilson y a choisi Ie theme de la mort qu'il a traitee de fa~on differente dans quatre de ses pieces. Passionnants sont les problemes que la mort, toujours presente pour Claudel, envisagee soit sous forme de symboles, soit selon un profond mysticisme, soit sous l'influence de sesnombreuses lectures, la Bible, les Grecs, Baudelaire et Rimbaud ou resultant de sa propre conversion. Ce sont ces...