New Lenses for Lorca: Literature, Art, and Science in the Edad de plata by Cecelia J Cavanaugh (review)

Cecelia J. Cavanaugh’s New Lenses for Lorca is a meticulous, clearly articulated analysis of how Federico García Lorca’s artistic production was affected by two important twentieth-century Spanish scientists: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Pío del Río-Hortega. The central thesis asserts that Lorca was aware of some new scientific ideas and practices of the early twentieth century, understood them to a certain extent, and incorporated them into his work. Cavanaugh’s study is an example of the very “cross-fertilization” she describes as taking place among the arts and sciences in early twentieth-century Spain (8).

In chapter 1, “Literature, Art, and Science in the Edad de plata,” Cavanaugh describes the social landscape of intellectuals and artists in Madrid in the early 1900s, focusing on connections between Cajal and del Río-Hortega, and Lorca. Both scientists specialized in histology, the area of biology which studies tissue structure on a microscopic level; however, they were also well read, had studied visual art, and skillfully drew cells and tissues. The latter’s connections with these figures—through tertulias, common acquaintances, publications—demonstrate his awareness and relative knowledge of publications and work by Cajal and del Río-Hortega (and by other intellectuals). Cavanaugh stresses that because “an in-depth grasp of scientific principles was not necessary to provoke discussion and inspire creative activity” (2), artists and scientists discussed ideas openly, effectively “building bridges between the sciences and the humanities” (9). The Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid was founded with this interdisciplinary environment in mind, one in which Spain’s intellectuals flourished in the decades before the Civil War, an Edad de plata, or “Silver Age” for Spanish science and letters.

Chapter 2, “Microscopic and Macroscopic Imagery,” explains and gives examples of the influence that “scientific thought and drawing” had on Lorca’s poetry and drawings. Seven of these (reproduced in the book) are compared either directly to del Río-Hortega’s drawings of microscopic biological images and/or drawings based on Cajal’s (whose drawings could not be reproduced). Conversely, science also borrowed from art, del Río-Hortega and Cajal being perfect examples of the scientist-artist. Just as Lorca borrowed from scientific imagery (e.g., slides, dissection tables, cells, veins), the scientists employed metaphor and poetic description in scientific texts, for, as Cavanaugh writes, “the dynamics of scientific and artistic principles did not militate against each other, but rather enriched the work of writers . . . as well as the work of scientists” (31).

Chapter 3, “Scientists and Artists,” delves into texts by Cajal, del Río-Hortega, and Lorca, and attempts to identify a common poetics among these figures. An examination of the three men’s processes of observation and creation proves them to be quite similar, as they all engage emotionally with their subjects, whether a cell, poem, or drawing. This emotional animation allows the artist or scientist to “see” reality in minute detail, and to be able to convey its beauty through image, description, or metaphor. Cavanaugh affirms that the scientists often drew “rhetorical material and examples” from literature, while Lorca’s interest in science supplied him with “imagery and models for the poetic process” (75).

In chapter 4, “Cells and Cells,” Cavanaugh examines Lorca’s treatment of nuns, monks, and monastic life in his texts and drawings in light of “cell theory” or Umwelt, a scientific theory that may well have filtered “into [the] artistic awareness” of that era (118). This theory looks at the functions and interactions of microscopic cells as analogous to those of their “macroscopic counterparts” (90). Just as cells evolve, affect, and are affected by their environments, as Cajal theorized, so do/are people. Cavanaugh studies inhabitants of monasteries because of Lorca’s fascination with them in addition to the parallel between “cell” as both an isolated biological element and a...