Sonnets from dark love
Translated from the Spanish and introduced by Line Amselem
Editions Allia
"I fear to lose the wonder
of your statuesque eyes, and that touch
that puts on my cheek during the night
the solitary rose of your breath."
Federico García Lorca wrote the Sonnets de l'amour obscur in 1936, in the months leading up to his assassination. Long believed lost, these texts finally appeared in Spain, in 1983, in a pirate edition. The poet's heirs had restrained the distribution of this suggestively titled book, inspired by a man in a country that harshly repressed homosexuality. Yet it is through the modesty of images that Lorca expresses the power of desire, restrained by the formal rigor of the sonnet. Line Amselem offers a new translation, accompanied by counterpoint drawings by the poet. In these variations on the double portrait, a motif inherited from his twin love affair with Dalí, the self-portrait becomes a kiss.
Translated from the Spanish and introduced by Line Amselem.
Bilingual, illustrated edition.
