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Lot 133
LORCA (FEDERICO GARCÍA) Autograph letter signed ("Federico"), to Emilia Llanos Medina ("Querida Emilia") [Madrid, 28 November 1920]; with autograph envelope ("Emilia Llanos/ Plaza Nueva/ Granada") and a cabinet portrait of Emilia seated under a Moorish archway in the Alhambra
11 November 2015, 13:00 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £3,125 inc. premium
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LORCA (FEDERICO GARCÍA)
Autograph letter signed ("Federico"), to Emilia Llanos Medina ("Querida Emilia") telling her how much he misses her and his native Granada ("Yo la veo en medio de ese maravilloso paisaje granadino como la única mujer granadina capa de sentirlo, y me alegro extraordinariamente de tener una amiga que mire los chopos encendidios y las lejanías desmayadas como si yo las mirase... Yo recuerdo a Granada como se deben recordar a las novias muertas y como se recuerda un día de sol cuando niño"); lamenting the onset of winter and the leafless trees ("sólo en algunos queda una hojilla, que se mueve con el triste viento como una mariposa de oro"), Lorca goes on to mention seeing a woman who reminded him of Emilia, and how the woman stopped into an antique shop Emilia would have loved; he finishes by asking Emilia to send him a signed portrait, in payment for which he will send her a poem, 2 pages, written on the first and third pages of a single bifolium, small 4to, [Madrid, 28 November 1920]; with autograph envelope ("Emilia Llanos/ Plaza Nueva/ Granada") and a cabinet portrait of Emilia seated under a Moorish archway in the Alhambra
Footnotes
THE MELANCHOLY POET IN MADRID: A FINE POETIC LETTER REMINISCING ABOUT GRANADA TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND EMILIA LLANOS: "Yo..., siéndole franco, estoy un poco triste, un poco melancólico; siento en el alma la Amargura de estar solo de amor. Sé que estas melancólías pasarán..., per el rastro ¡queda sempre!" The letter was written one year after Lorca arrived in Madrid, at a time when he was just becoming part of an artistic and literary movement which included his friends Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. His first book of poems was to be published in 1921.
Lorca met Emilia Llanos, who was 10 years older than him, in 1919. They became the closest of friends, at the centre of cultural life in Granada, and it has been suggested they might have married if Lorca's sexual ambivalence had not stood in the way. But their friendship proved to be long lasting and Emilia was of the first to hear the news of Lorca's death in 1936: two days previously, on hearing from the poet's mother of Lorca's arrest, Emilia had set off to see their mutual friend Manuel de Falla, with the intention of asking him to intervene on Lorca's behalf. On the way, she met Antonio Gallego Burín (another mutual friend and publisher of Lorca's first poem in the journal Renovación in 1919), who told her that she should not go as Lorca had already been shot. The chance meeting seems likely to have saved Falla's life as he would have almost certainly been arrested himself had he gone to the authorities.
The letter is published in Federico García Lorca. Epistolario completo, edited by Andrew Anderson and Christopher Maurer (who dates the letter), Cátedra, 1997, and in Obras, VI, edited by Miguel García-Posada, Akal, 1994, p.764.
Provenance: Emilia Llanos; Antonio Gallegos Burín; and thence by descent to the present owner.