Blood Wedding (Bodas De Sangre)
Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, undoubtedly the most memorable play by the most famous 20th-century Spanish writer, has by now clearly gained a place in the Spanish theatrical literature comparable to that of Romeo and Juliet in the English literature.
Garcia is one of my favourite poets who also is known with his plays.
His cleverly use of symbolism always fascinates me. In Blood Wedding, one can’t escape but realize the bridegroom’s mother speaks greatly about the danger of knives. “Is it right?” she asks, and continuous “is it possible that so small a thing as a pistol or a knife can do for a man, a bull of a man?” What I understand here is the tragic fact that humans are so violent that they find ways to end each other’s lives with even the smallest tools.
In this particular scene, there is a passage I’d like to share with you;
Whatever can cut through a man’s body, a lovely man, in the flower of his life who is off the vines or the olives, because they are his, his family’s…
… and he doesn’t return. Or if he does return, it’s so we can lay a palm leaf or a big plate of salt on him so the body won’t swell. I don’t know how you can carry a knife about you, or why I have these serpent’s teeth in my kitchen.
Act I goes mostly between the bridegroom and his mother. Finally, they go to the bride’s house where they meet the bride’s father and bride. Throughout the wedding reception in Act II, the bride runs off with her true love after the ceremony, the passionate and handsome Leonardo, to whom she had been attracted from the age of 15 but who is now married and has a small child. Their escape is, of course, a source of shame to both families and in Act III they go deep down into the woods where both lovers think they’ll be not found. But the shining moon quickly reveals them. During the chase, an old woman who in the play represents death appears and claim that they won’t be able to make it. Nonetheless, they both decide that nothing but death will “separate” them. When two-man encounter each other, they get into a relentless fight, both using a knife.
Back in the ceremony, everybody wondering why nobody returned, at that time the old beggar woman appears and tells them that the Bridegroom and Leonardo have both died.
The poem the beggar woman sang was so effectual that I dropped a couple of tears…
The moon is gone, and they are nearby.
They’ll not leave here. The sound of the river
will drown in the sound of the trees
the broken flight of their cries.
It must be here, and soon. I am weary.
The chests and the white sheets ache
await on the empty bedroom floors
the heavy corpses with slashed throats.
Not a bird will stir and the breeze,
will sweep the sound of their cries
away with her through the black trees,
or bury them deep in gleaming mud.
The moon! The moon!
The moon! The moon!
When the Bride arrives at the funeral, bridegroom’s mother finds it difficult to withhold her anger. “You would have gone too,” the young woman insists. “I was a woman burning, full of pain inside and out, and your son was a tiny drop of water that I hoped would give me children, land, health.” Continuing, she says that Leonardo was like a “dark river” that swept her away.
