The poem is about Lorca's doomed relationship with Salvador Dalà and was written in his period of deep depression followed by creative/spiritual rebirth during a year long trip to NYC and Cuba. Dalà had a ton of sexual hang-ups and though their relationship was intensely emotional, as soon as things turned physical he freaked out and rejected Lorca, living out a weird, closeted half-life with his nymphomaniac wife Gala, with whom he claims to have only slept once with no interest in ever repeating the experience.
Tons of imagery in here is drawn straight from their letters one to the other, but all in all, this is a song of frustrated, closeted love that ends in a prophecy of martyrdom (re: the myth of Hyacinth, and Lorca's obsession with the archetype of queer martyrdom in St. Sebastian and his frequent predictions that he would end up so martyred, as he did when he was shot by one of Franco's "black squads" at the outset of the Spanish Civil War).
The poem is about Lorca's doomed relationship with Salvador Dalà and was written in his period of deep depression followed by creative/spiritual rebirth during a year long trip to NYC and Cuba. Dalà had a ton of sexual hang-ups and though their relationship was intensely emotional, as soon as things turned physical he freaked out and rejected Lorca, living out a weird, closeted half-life with his nymphomaniac wife Gala, with whom he claims to have only slept once with no interest in ever repeating the experience.
Tons of imagery in here is drawn straight from their letters one to the other, but all in all, this is a song of frustrated, closeted love that ends in a prophecy of martyrdom (re: the myth of Hyacinth, and Lorca's obsession with the archetype of queer martyrdom in St. Sebastian and his frequent predictions that he would end up so martyred, as he did when he was shot by one of Franco's "black squads" at the outset of the Spanish Civil War).