Federico Lorca – Cordoba, Distant and Lonely

Warm earthy colours, soft silvery transitions, and hints of blue. A woman, a horse, and a vase. Broken fragments are tickling our imagination. The mood of this painting goes well with Lorca’s poem ‘The Horseman’s Song’, at least for me. Both artworks are pure avant-garde; Jean Metzinger was considered the forerunner of Cubism, and Lorca nurtured a style that combined modernistic tendencies in European poetry with tradition of his homeland Andalusia. In ‘The Horseman’s Song’, he repeats certain motifs – olives, horseman, Cordoba, Moon, wind and road – developing the mood of anxiety and mystery. Who is the horseman? And why won’t he see his beloved Cordoba again?The utter strangeness of this poem and its mood of desolation and death endlessly captivate me.

Jean Metzinger, La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a horse), 1911-12, oil on canvas

The Horseman’s Song
‘Córdoba
Distant and lonely.

Black steed, big moon,
and olives in my saddlebag.
Although I know the roads
I will never reach Córdoba.

Across the plain, through the wind
Black steed, red moon.
Death is staring at me
from the towers of Córdoba.
Oh, how long the road is!
Oh, my valiant steed!
Oh, death awaits me,
before I reach Córdoba.

Córdoba.
Distant and lonely.’

There was a full moon (in Gemini) last two nights. If you go out for a walk, or just move your curtains, say hello to the moon, and think of Lorca this evening, the strange beauty of his poetry deserves it.