Only Mystery

Weaving together twenty-one full-color drawings and new translations of prose pieces and poems, Only Mystery presents a textured life of Spain's greatest modern poet and playwright. In 1936 a death squad executed thirty-eight-year-old Federico Garcia Lorca, dumping the body into an unmarked common grave near his native city of Granada. This volume of his visual art - largely unknown - and his writing chronicles Lorca's short existence, beginning with poems of his childhood and ending with his prophesies of assassination. The work illuminates his vision of nature, the gypsies of southern Spain, his experiences in New York, and, above all, his sense of the mystery of love and death. The guiding principles for selecting poems, prose, and paintings were dramatic effect and narrative cohesion. Originally designed for performance in Readers Theatre, Only Mystery may be appreciated as both a dramatic text for performance and an illustrated narrative of the poet's lyrical world.