Gypsy Ballads: A New Translation of the Romancero gitano
First published in 1928, Federico García Lorca’s collection of Gypsy Ballads (Romancero gitano) marked his first major publication, and the beginning of his rise to fame. Depicting life in his native Andalucía, and the Romany peoples who lived there, it takes motifs of the countryside into its view, describing the night, the sky and the moon alongside more universal themes like life and death.
Written in a stylised version of the countryside ballads that proliferated at the time, the Gypsy Ballads propelled Lorca to overnight fame, and he soon became counted amongst Spain’s finest poets. Later in his career his name became synonymous with the theatre, but this new edition of the Gypsy Ballads returns the reader to where it all began. Presented here in a smart new translation, this edition is the perfect place to discover Lorca the Poet.
‘What a poet! I have never seen grace and genius… come together in anyone else as they did in him.’
Pablo Neruda