Juan De Urda, associate professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures
A 130-year-old Spanish journal has published work by Juan De Urda, associate professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures. The article was published in Boletín del Centro Artístico de Granada and discusses poems which were written in Federico García Lorca’s honor after he was killed in the Spanish Civil War.
“Living in Granada and being a scholar and a poet myself, I have been always aware of the magnitude of Garcia Lorca's work. So, he was the obvious Granadan topic to write about; but there is so much written about him that I decided to research on how other poets depicted his death and reflected on his significance,” Dr. Urda said when asked about his inspiration behind the piece. Urda focuses on three poets in his piece, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández and Antonio Machado, all who have drawn inspiration from Lorca.
Lorca gained recognition as a member of the Generation of '27 which consisted of poets who introduced European movements into Spanish literature. He became a partner of the Boletín del Centro Artístico de Granada at 15 years old in 1915 and published his first work, “Fantasía Simbólica” in the bulletin. Lorca was executed at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War by Nationalist forces in 1936.
Urda, on the honor of being published in an historic journal noted, “It is a great honor. It is a journal which, throughout different periods, has been published for more than 130 years and it is a cultural reference in a city so absorbed with the arts and the letters such as Granada. Lorca, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and many relevant Spanish cultural figures published on those pages at some point; and, in these last issues, it included text by prominent Spanish poets and academics.”
Many other famous poets from around the world inspired by Lorca and angered by his death released works based on the poet, including Nikos Engonopoulos, Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda and Yevgeni Yevtushenko.
The Literary and Scientific Artistic Center of Granada was established in April of 1885 by artists who felt the need to expose their concerns, as well as showcase their creativity. In 1885, the center had released its first Bulletin, the Boletín del Centro Artístico de Granada.
