Elements of Classical Greece in the work of Federico García Lorca

Abstract

An aspect very little reviewed by Lorca’s critics has to do with the traces in his writing of his great literary training (influence admitted in his own critical and metapoetical work). Some of the readings that show the greatest amount of resonances in Lorca´s work can be grouped into what we call classical Greek culture, and range from precepts or philosophical ideas (ranging from presocratics to Socrates himself and his entire school) to certain mythological or dramatic figures and concepts. The three cases that we present as exemplary topics are the transience of time, the use of the fire element and its relation to the postulates of Heraclitus, and the effective antecedents of the goblin in the Socrates daimon. These elements may also be susceptible to comparisons.