The 305 Greatest Books - #183: The Gypsy Ballads by Federico García Lorca

The next up on my reading of the 305 greatest books is The Gypsy Ballads by Federico Garcia Lorca. The book can be found on the Norwegian Book List. 

Comprising 18 poems, each about 2 pages in length, The Gypsy Ballads, is by far one of the shortest works on this list. And since it is so short it is hard for me to properly do it justice. That, and I am no expert in poetry. Also, while I feel the translator did his utmost best to translate these poems into English to put across the same feeling as they did in their original Spanish, there is something inherently lost when you move from one language to another in any form of literature, most of all poetry, which relies not only on the words choices of the authors but also the cadence of the lines, and even how the words look on the page. All that being said I rather enjoyed this short work. Since it was so short I wanted to take my time and absorb each of the works in their own right and slowly analyze of the metaphors that were being used. While a poetry expert would be able to extract far more than I ever could, I did enjoy the poems as they were presented to me. The introduction in my edition helped me to get into the mindset required to understand most of the work and even rather gather information about a lot of the metaphors presented. While some of the poems were rather gruesome, especially towards the end, they were written in order to shock the reader purposefully to the atrocities being committed against the gypsy people. Other of the poems were sweet and soothing to read. His poetry formats also bounced around with some being more free verse while other rhyming. Overall, even though it was short, I also rather enjoyed it.