Three Tragedies: Blood Wedding, Yerma, Bernarda Alba (New Directions Paperbook)

Here in the authorized translation by James Graham-Luján and Richard L. O’Connell, with an illuminating biographical introduction by the poet’s brother, Francisco García Lorca, are three tragic dramas by the great modern Spanish poet and playwright which have caught the imagination and won the critical acclaim of the literate world.

Blood Wedding. Concerned with love that cannot become marriage among the primitive hill people of Castile, this is a play of the workings of tremendous passions and tribal ritual toward an inescapable tragic end. Yerma. “The whole tragic burden of Yerma is measured by the deepening of her struggle with the problem of frustrated motherhood.” ―From García Lorca, by Edwin Honig. The House of Bernarda Alba. Again about “women whom love moves to tragedy,” Bernarda Alba tells of the repression of five daughters by a domineering mother, of how their natural spirits circumvent her but bring violence and death.