Little Ashes

I just finished watching the untold story of the intimate friendship of the famous artists Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali set during the Spanish Civil War era. Federico was a great poet and playwright on the other hand Salvador was a great surrealist painter, sculptor and designer. They are both multitalented and very ambitious. Both have similar things in common. They enjoyed doing alot of things together. I also enjoyed how Robert Pattinson portrayed the role of Salvador Dali. His changing looks and characters were portrayed beautifully. The movie had a good musical score. I love how the music gives you a feeling of surprise, anger, love, and deep thinking. Whew!


However, Federico was executed by a group of Nationalist militia for reasons I am not really sure about. Historically, he was an anti-communist poet who wanted freedom and democracy for Spain. Too sad, Federico was later on abducted and killed during the war.



In Summary, Little Ashes was a great story of life showing passionate friendship marked by a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics and the constant interaction between poetry and painting.



The film also features the writings of Federico Garcia. One of which was

"ODA A SALVADOR DALI"



(English Translation to the Spanish Writing)



Federico Garcia Lorca - Ode to Salvador Dali





A rose in the high garden you desire.



A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.



The mountain stripped bare of Impressionist fog,



The grays watching over the last balustrades.







The modern painters in their white ateliers



clip the square root's sterilized flower.



In the waters of the Seine a marble iceberg



chills the windows and scatters the ivy.







Man treads firmly on the cobbled streets.



Crystals hide from the magic of reflections.



The Government has closed the perfume stores.



The machine perpetuates its binary beat.







An absence of forests and screens and brows



roams across the roofs of the old houses.



The air polishes its prism on the sea



and the horizon rises like a great aqueduct.







Soldiers who know no wine and no penumbra



behead the sirens on the seas of lead.



Night, black statue of prudence, holds



the moon's round mirror in her hand.







A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us.



Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.



Venus is a white still life



and the butterfly collectors run away.











*







Cadaqués, at the fulcrum of water and hill,



lifts flights of stairs and hides seashells.



Wooden flutes pacify the air.



An ancient woodland god gives the children fruit.







Her fishermen sleep dreamless on the sand.



On the high sea a rose is their compass.



The horizon, virgin of wounded handkerchiefs,



links the great crystals of fish and moon.







A hard diadem of white brigantines



encircles bitter foreheads and hair of sand.



The sirens convince, but they don't beguile,



and they come if we show a glass of fresh water.











*







Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!



I do not praise your halting adolescent brush



or your pigments that flirt with the pigment of your times,



but I laud your longing for eternity with limits.







Sanitary soul, you live upon new marble.



You run from the dark jungle of improbable forms.



Your fancy reaches only as far as your hands,



and you enjoy the sonnet of the sea in your window.







The world is dull penumbra and disorder



in the foreground where man is found.



But now the stars, concealing landscapes,



reveal the perfect schema of their courses.







The current of time pools and gains order



in the numbered forms of century after century.



And conquered Death takes refuge trembling



in the tight circle of the present instant.







When you take up your palette, a bullet hole in its wing,



you call on the light that brings the olive tree to life.



The broad light of Minerva, builder of scaffolds,



where there is no room for dream or its hazy flower.







You call on the old light that stays on the brow,



not descending to the mouth or the heart of man.



A light feared by the loving vines of Bacchus



and the chaotic force of curving water.







You do well when you post warning flags



along the dark limit that shines in the night.



As a painter, you refuse to have your forms softened



by the shifting cotton of an unexpected cloud.







The fish in the fishbowl and the bird in the cage.



You refuse to invent them in the sea or the air.



You stylize or copy once you have seen



their small, agile bodies with your honest eyes.







You love a matter definite and exact,



where the toadstool cannot pitch its camp.



You love the architecture that builds on the absent



and admit the flag simply as a joke.







The steel compass tells its short, elastic verse.



Unknown clouds rise to deny the sphere exists.



The straight line tells of its upward struggle



and the learned crystals sing their geometries.











*







But also the rose of the garden where you live.



Always the rose, always, our north and south!



Calm and ingathered like an eyeless statue,



not knowing the buried struggle it provokes.







Pure rose, clean of artifice and rough sketches,



opening for us the slender wings of the smile.



(Pinned butterfly that ponders its flight.)



Rose of balance, with no self-inflicted pains.



Always the rose!











*







Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!



I speak of what your person and your paintings tell me.



I do not praise your halting adolescent brush,



but I sing the steady aim of your arrows.







I sing your fair struggle of Catalan lights,



your love of what might be made clear.



I sing your astronomical and tender heart,



a never-wounded deck of French cards.







I sing your restless longing for the statue,



your fear of the feelings that await you in the street.



I sing the small sea siren who sings to you,



riding her bicycle of corals and conches.







But above all I sing a common thought



that joins us in the dark and golden hours.



The light that blinds our eyes is not art.



Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords.







Not the picture you patiently trace,



but the breast of Theresa, she of sleepless skin,



the tight-wound curls of Mathilde the ungrateful,



our friendship, painted bright as a game board.







May fingerprints of blood on gold



streak the heart of eternal Catalunya.



May stars like falconless fists shine on you,



while your painting and your life break into flower.







Don't watch the water clock with its membraned wings



or the hard scythe of the allegory.



Always in the air, dress and undress your brush



before the sea peopled with sailors and ships.