Analysis of Gracia Lorca´s Lament for Ignacio Sanchex Mejias

In Spain people idealized those who deliberately placed themselves in the greatest danger. The core of this idea is centered on the Spanish sport of bullfighting. In such an act, the bullfighter, or matador, baits the bull in a bullring and then kills the bull for the audience. One matador in particular was enormously popular. His name was Ignacio Sanchez Mejias. Not only was he praised for his bullfighting skills, but was gifted intellectually. He was a critic, poet, actor, and sportsman. He eventually retired bullfighting, but in 1934 made the fatal mistake of getting back into the ring one last time. In this last event, he was gored by the bull, and eventually died of gangrene from his injures. A dear friend and poet of the matador, Garcia Lorca, memorialized him by writing an elegy titled, “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias”. It was written to commemorate and celebrate the death of a man who many considered the bravest and most gallant matador of Spain. It’s a long elegy divided into four parts corresponding to four dramatic movements. These movements are geared by an emotional pattern, descending into grief and despair as the full awareness of loss was felt, and then gradually working through the grief to a point where the poem begins to rise again, finding some kind of reconciliation and comfort. Through this emotional journey Garcia Lorca immortalizes the memory of a departed friend.

In part one, “Cogida and Death”, Lorca creates the turmoil and Ignacio’s accident and the agony of death that eventually surrounded it. It immediately opens up at the very hour of the tragedy, “five in the afternoon” (1), and proceeds to dwell on the horrific details of the bullring. Lorca recreates the scene with, “A boy brought the white she...

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...nly art can preserve Ignacio, and with his words he will construct a verbal monument that will stand the test of time.

Garcia Lorca’s poem carries us all through the tragedy, to the bitter resolution. He paints us a morbid, cold but memorable scene of the death of Ignacio, while showing honesty in his feeling towards his beloved friend’s death. He refused to accept the bullfighter’s death at first, refusing to gaze upon his blood. But through this refusal he recounted the many wonders of his friend, which guided him to eventually look upon the body. As he does so, he ponders the mystery of death, and with the idea of death you will become nothing but a distant memory, and eventually be forgotten. But in Lorca’s final protest, or resolution, he accepts he will always carry his memory will him, and sing his name, giving him a permanent form that death cannot conquer.