Approaching Lorca’s "Viaje a la luna": Structural Patterns, Symbolic Concatenation, and "El público" (original) (raw)

This close reading of Lorca's Viaje a la luna is based on three overlapping approaches: the complete segmentation of the text and the identification of discrete sequences and interpolations within it; the recognition that the work's cohesiveness, such as it is, depends much more on the symbolic rather than the narrative; and the use of imagery and themes found in Lorca's drama El público to inform an analysis and interpretation of the film scenario. The psychic journey obliquely depicted in Viaje traces in nonlinear fashion the protagonist's trajectory from birth to death, and is focused above all on issues of sexuality, ranging from attitudes to intercourse and procreation to vacillation between heterosexuality and homosexuality. He submits to the forces of social convention (the wearing of the Harlequin suit), but a return to "authenticity" (the anatomical dummy) inevitably brings about his demise, demonstrating the inextricably interwoven nature of eros and thanatos. During his twelve months in New York and La Habana, Lorca was busy with a number of different literary projects. He completed or revised previous works-Los títeres de cachiporra, Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín, "Oda al Santísimo Sacramento del Altar"-and he wrote new ones: most of the poems included in Poeta en Nueva York, Viaje a la luna, and a good portion of El público. In the fall of 1929, in Manhattan, one of the groups of Spanish speakers that Lorca fell in with was made up of several Mexicans, among them the artist, designer, photographer, and filmmaker j 1