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19 abr 2006

Langston Hughes' translation of Lorca's "Romancero gitano" can be found here. It isn't in the Hughes Collected Works, because apparently they couldn't get permission to reprint it. You can find "Blood Wedding," however, in Volume 16 along with some translations of Nicolás Guillén.

This is still relatively early in the Lorca-in-English chronology (1951). The Spender/Gili volume is from 39. Humphries' "The Poet in New York" is from 1940. Interesting fact: this bilingual edition is actually the first edition of Lorca's book in any language. It certainly wasn't going to appear in Franco Spain.

The first mini-burst of Lorca translation takes place in the mid-50s. That New Directions Selected Lorca is from '55. (In paper since '61). That book was in my parents' house as I was growing up. It must have been in the house of many educated people in the 1970s. I have the 24th printing myself. The book is still in print: they tacked on a preface by Merwin in 2005 and changed the cover, but it's basically the same book: in print continuously for 51 years and counting. It's got legs. How many copies is that? How many copies of "Waiting for Godot" has Grove Press sold over the years? What was the best selling novel of 1955 in the US? Has the Selected Lorca outsold that novel, from a longitudinal perspective? I'd bet it has. (Bourdieu makes this point about Godot. )

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